by Mary Balogh
“I am glad you brought the subject up with them,” Estelle said. “They are very pleasant people. And honest too.”
“Mrs. Sharpe explained that losing her sister was the greatest, most painful loss she has suffered in her life,” Maria said. “Greater even than the loss of her parents. They were very close. But she had never expected that Papa would mourn her for the rest of his life. She told me some things about her sister after I asked, and Mrs. Haig and Mr. Ernest Sharpe added a few memories of their own. I think she must have been a warm and charming lady. When I asked why none of them had ever come here after Mama and Papa’s wedding, they told me they had considered it more tactful to stay away than to make Mama uncomfortable with the reminder of Papa’s first wife. I think … Maybe there was no actual quarrel? Maybe they did not hate Mama. Maybe it was a mere misunderstanding and she simply thought they did.”
“I am very glad you had a frank talk with them, then,” Estelle said. She was not so sure there had been any such misunderstanding— or that any of the fault lay with the Sharpes. But she had not known the late countess personally, and it would be unfair to judge.
“I asked Mrs. Sharpe if she resented me.” Maria sounded breathless. “I asked if she hated the fact that I am the daughter of the house but not her sister’s daughter. She simply said, “Maria!” in a shocked voice, while Mr. Sharpe called me a goose, and then they all hugged me.”
“Well.” Estelle hugged her too when she saw tears brighten her friend’s eyes. “I believe this family gathering is turning out to be a very good thing for you, Maria. It is helping you discover that you do have family and that they are all disposed to love you.”
“Mrs. Sharpe told me,” Maria added, “that Papa always adored me and that Jus— She told me that Brandon did too. They both talked about me a great deal whenever they went to the Sharpes’ house to visit. She told me they had always loved me too even though they had never met me. She begged me again to call her Aunt Betty, and I am going to do it.”
This gathering was also enabling Maria to separate her own identity from that of her mother and become her own person, Estelle thought as they made their way to the dining room together. Maria sat between Mr. Dickson and Mrs. Chandler, her maternal uncle and aunt, at the foot of the table, and she conversed with each of them in turn with some animation and a becoming flush of color in her cheeks. Estelle wondered if she had admitted to herself yet that she owed all this self-discovery and reconciliation with her family to her stepbrother, the Earl of Brandon.
Even as she thought it he began to speak from his position at the head of the table. He was addressing everyone. Estelle turned her eyes his way. She had avoided looking at him throughout the meal, lest he catch her at it. Justin. She had called him that in the library earlier, quite inadvertently. She hoped he had not noticed. Bertrand certainly had, of course. He did not miss much. Sometimes she wished he were anyone’s twin but her own.
“Justin?” Bertrand had murmured as they made their way up to their rooms in the east wing after making a list in the library and assuring the earl, without any evidence to support their confidence, that all would be well and Ricky would be found safe and sound and restored to his brother.
She had not misunderstood her brother for a moment. “Well,” she had said, very much on her dignity. “That is his name, is it not?”
The conversation had ended there.
“I am spreading word of a missing person as far and as wide as I possibly can,” he said now— Justin, that was. The Earl of Brandon. The man who had warned her this afternoon that he was going to harass her for the rest of her stay here, though, to be fair, he had not actually used the word harass.
His words drew everyone’s attention. And he told them about Ricky and his own connection with the man and with his brother and … sister-in-law. There was always a pause before he indicated Hilda that way, for of course she was not married to Ricky’s brother. Inevitably he told part of his own story, something he had not done with anyone before he had told her, Estelle, today out at the grotto. She could guess how much this telling was costing him. It must make him feel as though the armor he had built about himself with such painstaking care were being ripped away, leaving him exposed to view and to censure.
“I do not even know if he can find his way anywhere close to here,” he said at last. “I cannot even know for sure that he is trying to find me. But I must do all in my power to spread the word so that if he is seen, he will be taken home or brought here, whichever is closer. I let him down in July by not going to see him when I had promised I would. I will not let him down now. I will make every effort to find him.”
“Including letting us all know things about yourself and the missing years that you would otherwise have kept to yourself for the rest of your life,” Mr. Sidney Sharpe, his cousin, said. “I honor you, Justin.” He held up his empty wineglass.
“So do I,” Lord Crowther, his aunt Augusta’s husband, said. “Though why you did not come to us in Cornwall when you had to leave here, I do not know, Justin. Family and all that.”
“It is my hope,” Lord Brandon said, “that you will all keep your eyes open for a strange young man, though it seems too much to hope that he will find his way here on his own.”
“But why is it you had to work at a stone quarry and live in a laborer’s cottage?” Maria asked. “Had you squandered all the money from Mama’s jewels?”
There was a sudden uncomfortable silence. Estelle had the impression that several of them would have slid under the table to avoid further embarrassment if they could.
Lord Brandon looked directly at his sister, whose face had turned pale except for two spots of color high in her cheeks. “The first I heard of stolen jewels, Maria,” he said, “was when you mentioned them while I was talking with Lady Maple several days ago. I do not know what happened to them, but I do assure you I did not take them.”
“Then why did Papa banish you?” Maria cried, regardless of the appallingly public nature of this exchange. “Why did he send you away and never relent for the rest of his life?”
“It was a private matter between him and me,” Brandon said after a brief pause. “But it had nothing to do with theft or your mother’s jewelry, Maria. And absolutely nothing to do with you either. I loved you dearly, as your memories of childhood will perhaps confirm for you. How could I have done anything to hurt you? You have my word on this, if my word is good enough for you.”
“I daresay, Justin, your pa thought you were an idle young buck who stood in need of some toughening up in the real world,” Mr. Dickson said in his usual hearty Yorkshire voice, breaking what threatened to be an awkward silence no one else would have had the courage to fill. He was also patting Maria’s hand on the table beside him. “So he pushed you out the door like a bird from the nest and you found your wings and your backbone and stayed out until after he was gone. It was a pity he never saw you again. I daresay he regretted that at the end. He would surely have been proud of you for making your own way, even if it was at a stone quarry. Any father would.”
“Strict love,” Mr. Harold Ormsbury said. “It sometimes works, though I have never approved of it or even considered it with my own son. And we never heard that Justin was running wild as a young man, did we, Felicity? You should indeed have come to us, Justin. But forcing you out the door does not sound quite like your father. I do not know what could have—”
“Estelle and I have helped Brandon make a list of people in the vicinity who may help in the search for Ricky Mort,” Bertrand said. “Men, women, servants— they are all on it. The more the merrier. We all know how news and rumor spread. I daresay the poor young man will be spotted in no time at all once the word is out. I will fetch the list to the drawing room if I may, Brandon. Someone may be able to suggest names we missed, or other ideas altogether. Two heads are said to be better than one, and three better again. How many of us are there? I have not stopped to count. But all our heads together will be vast
ly better than three.”
Maria took that as her cue to get to her feet and lead the ladies from the dining room.
There followed a spirited discussion in the drawing room over what could be done to help find Ricky. Viscount Watley led it, the list in one hand, a pencil in the other. Almost everyone participated, as though they were playing a parlor game. It was a cause and a story that seemed to concern and animate everyone. They were all nearly enjoying themselves, Justin thought. He took himself off to the library for a while to write to a few people on the list and left everyone else to it. He felt a bit as though he were standing on his head rather than his feet. Or as if the whole of his world had been turned upside down while he had not.
He felt bruised, disoriented, exposed. He had worked hard to keep his two worlds separate, and his two lives and his two persons. Now he did not know how he would cope with having everything merged. It had happened all of a rush in the course of one day, and he was aware that there would be no going back. He had made the decision after Watley had asked his questions in the library this afternoon to put Ricky first, the consequences to himself be damned, and now everyone knew. Everyone. His butler and four footmen had been present in the dining room while he told his story. He had been aware of them and had briefly considered dismissing them. But what would have been the point when part of the strategy was to involve servants as well as everyone else?
He did not doubt that well before the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room everyone belowstairs was buzzing with the news that their master had lived for a number of years after his father kicked him out of here with the foreman of a stone quarry and his daft brother in a cottage and had earned his living in the quarry.
Did it matter that everyone now knew how he had spent those missing years? Did it matter that they knew he had not relied upon privilege or the charity of relatives or friends? That he had worked for a living at the most menial and brutal and backbreaking of tasks? That he loved the people who had taken him in and given him work? That he was frantic over the fact that one of them was missing— and did not have the mental capacity to look after himself?
It did not matter, he decided as he dipped his quill pen into the ink bottle to continue one of his letters. He was not ashamed of those years or of those people. He could have stayed with his aunt and uncle Sharpe after running to them. He could have crawled off to Cornwall to throw himself upon the charity of his aunts and uncles there. He could have tried a number of other options more suited to his status and upbringing. Instead he had gone alone into the world to make his own way.
It was not his pride that mattered now, but Ricky. And Wes. And Hilda. His first letter, which he would send off early tomorrow morning with a groom rather than with the regular mail, was to Wes and Hilda.
Would his father have been proud of him? Leonard Dickson thought so. Or had his father gone to his grave believing what he had believed that day— the worst day of Justin’s life and possibly of his father’s too? No, not quite the worst. The day his mother died had that honor.
When he returned to the drawing room a number of the young people were taking sides for charades while most of the older ladies had gathered in a circle to talk. Angela Ormsbury was playing the pianoforte softly while Ernie Sharpe stood behind the bench and turned the pages of her music. Lady Maple was seated in her usual chair. Maria and Lady Estelle Lamarr were with her, though Maria had been picked for one of the teams for charades and was being summoned to join it. Lady Estelle was rising with her. Four of the older men had made up a table for cards.
Watley removed his list from an inside pocket of his coat when he saw Justin and waved it in his direction.
“We have lots of new ideas and suggestions,” he said. “Poor Ricky does not stand a chance against us, Brandon. Tomorrow we will spring into action. But for now … ? My team has a game of charades to win.” He returned the list to his pocket.
“Or to lose,” Sid Sharpe said. “You are not on my team, Watley. Jolly bad luck, old chap.”
“Ah, but we have Lady Maria,” Watley said, grinning.
“And I am about to acquire your sister,” Sid told him. “Lady Estelle?”
“I am going to escort Lady Maple to her room,” she said. “She is tired. Please proceed without me.”
“Dash it all!” Sid exclaimed. “Who is that hiding in the corner? Wallace Chandler? Get over here, young man. You are on my team as of this moment.”
Justin strode toward Lady Maple’s chair. “You are ready to retire for the night, ma’am?” he asked her. “Allow me to join Lady Estelle in escorting you. You may have two arms to lean upon instead of one. I shall have your maid sent up.”
“I am not old, Brandon,” she said rather tartly. “Merely a bit on the elderly side. However, I never was able to resist the escort of a handsome man. And I like Lady Estelle. She does not fuss or treat me like a doddering old thing.”
He helped her to her feet and gave her his arm before taking her cane in his free hand. Lady Estelle went ahead of them to open the door. They walked at a sedate pace along a wide corridor, up one flight of stairs to the west wing, and along another corridor to Lady Maple’s room. She talked most of the way.
“She looks like a frail, timid thing, that great-niece of mine,” she said. “But she has backbone. No thanks to Lilian. She is beginning to understand that all the members of her family on both sides plus those on your mother’s side, Brandon, are not the collective enemy. One is not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but really there is just one villain in this whole situation. I am not sure Maria has got quite there yet, but she surely will. She is beginning to talk to her relatives and to listen to them. Bless her heart.”
“Your niece was only seventeen when she married the late Earl of Brandon, I believe, ma’am,” Lady Estelle said. “She had not been raised in his world or even the world of the lesser gentry. She came from a wealthy middle-class family and had a very brief training in the manners of the upper classes when you took her to London. She was little more than a child. Perhaps it would be kinder to see her not so much as a villain but as a bewildered girl whose insecurities must have been enormous. I suppose she did the best she could to cope with a situation that must have almost overwhelmed her.”
“I suppose you are of the sort that has always felt sorry for Cinderella,” Lady Maple said.
“Well.” Lady Estelle laughed. “I have. The dazzlingly glamorous life of a princess she must have expected was probably neither as dazzling nor as glamorous in reality as it appeared in anticipation. Even the romance of falling in love with a prince would not have helped her beyond a certain point. The late Lady Brandon—Maria’s mother—was probably no more villainous at heart than anyone else. She just did what she believed must be done to help her adjust to the new world into which she had been thrust.”
As he had done under totally different circumstances, Justin thought. Except that he did not believe he had ever hurt anyone in the process— except Ricky. He had made a careless promise to a man who did not understand that promises could not always be kept, and the consequences might well be catastrophic.
“What you mean,” Lady Maple said, “is the new world into which she thrust herself with her lying and scheming and determination to better herself.”
Fortunately they had reached her room. Justin opened the door and was thankful to see that candles were burning within and Lady Maple’s maid already awaited her there.
“Maria wanted me to tell her more about her mother tonight,” Lady Maple said. “So I did. I told her how she had been spoiled and flattered throughout her childhood and girlhood because of her looks. I told her how she wheedled and pestered me until I agreed to take her to London and let her attend a few parties. I told her that Lilian’s one goal in life was to marry a prince, or as close to a prince as she could get.”
“Ah,” Justin said. “Your maid is here, ma’am. I am sure she will see to it that you have everything you need.”
&
nbsp; “I hope you sleep well,” Lady Estelle said.
“I still believe,” Lady Maple said, “that she caused that rift with your father, Brandon. And I disagree with you, Lady Estelle. She was not a normal human being, that one. She was a wicked puss. My one consolation for having agreed to take her to London is that Maria is in this world as a result and that she seems to have more of her father in her than her mother.”
“Good night, ma’am,” Justin said. “Sleep well.”
And he shut the door firmly and turned toward Lady Estelle. They stared silently at each other for a few moments in the flickering light of a candle in one of the wall sconces.
“You do not need to be playing charades in the drawing room in order to become involved in high drama here,” Justin said. “I do beg your pardon for dragging you into it. It was not what you bargained for when you agreed to come here.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “days and even weeks go by and one has no memory afterward of what one did during them. And then there are days like today. You do not need to apologize. You could not have predicted any of this.”
“I must lack something of imagination,” he said. “I hoped that gathering our families would draw Maria into the fold and help her feel less alone in the world now that both our father and her mother are gone. I ought to have guessed that if that was to happen there would need to be a few confrontations or at least a bit of plain speaking and truth telling.”
“A writer admitting to a lack of imagination?” she said. “Your poor hero. Will he ever slay his final dragon? Will he ever find his way back home?”