Someone Perfect (Westcott Book 10)

by Mary Balogh

  “It’s the prettiest thing ever,” Ricky said.

  Maria turned her head to look up at Justin. “I feel as safe as I always used to,” she murmured. But instead of smiling, as she might have done, her eyes filled with tears, and she bit her upper lip and turned her head away.

  Love was no soft emotion that brought endless bliss, was it? Why, then, did one allow oneself to feel it at all? Because the alternative was unthinkable?

  “Shall we walk around the gallery?” Justin suggested.

  His guests had been here for two weeks, Justin realized the following day. All were planning to leave within the next few days. He hoped no one would go away disappointed. He had not organized any grand activities for them— excursions beyond the confines of the park, for example, or parties or even a ball that included his neighbors. If he had had a countess, she might have thought of that and the necessity of entertaining their guests.

  If he had had a countess …

  The days were running out, and soon, if he was to keep the promise he had made to Lady Estelle out at the lake, he was going to have to propose marriage to her again. Would she accept this time? Sometimes he thought she might. At other times he could not imagine why she would. What did he have to offer her except all this— Everleigh, a title, wealth? And his heart, for whatever that was worth. He did not have any of the … the light, for want of a better word, that filled her and surrounded her like an aura. It was the word she herself had used, now that he came to think of it. It was something she had said he lacked.

  He did not even know how he was going to go about asking her. How did one make a proposal of marriage in such a way that it would tip the scales in one’s favor?

  But he was distracted from that problem by Wes’s arrival, two days after Ricky’s.

  Unlike Ricky, Wes did not come at a time when there were other people outside. And he did not come to the front doors or even to the kitchen door. A groom brought word from the stables that Mr. Wesley Mort had come for his brother and would be obliged if someone would bring him to the stables so that they could be on their way and not trouble anyone any further.

  A typical Wes sort of message.

  Justin was having tea with his guests at the time in the square reception room in the state apartments. The butler came discreetly to his table and murmured in his ear.

  Justin set his napkin beside his plate and got to his feet. “Excuse me,” he said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Wes Mort has just arrived at the stables. No, please.” He held up a hand to discourage those of his guests who had also begun to get to their feet. “Wes is nothing like his brother. He would be mortified beyond belief if he were to see anyone but me coming from the house. It sounds as though he intends to leave here as soon as Ricky joins him. He would leave sooner than that if he could. I’ll go alone.”

  Wes was frowning darkly when Justin strode into the stable yard. Captain was sitting beside him, panting in ecstasy. “Good God, Juss,” Wes said. “You didn’t say anything about living in a palace. And just look at those clothes you are wearing. And all those fobs and watches and whatnot. And that quizzing glass. Good God!”

  Justin grinned and reached out his hand. “And good day to you too, Wes,” he said. “Ricky found his way here two days ago, hungry, tired, unshaven, and dirty, but unharmed and undaunted. He came to help me find my sister, who, according to his interpretation of my letter, was lost.”

  Wes stared at him. “I didn’t even notice that,” he said. “But you ought to know, Juss, not even to whisper the word lost to Ricky. He thinks of himself as some sort of super finder of the missing. But I knew he was here. A tavern keeper about twenty miles away told me. I loosened a few of his teeth after he told me the raving lunatic was safely confined at Everleigh and everyone could sleep safe in their beds again.”

  “Did you?” Justin grinned again. “I wrote to Hildy, Wes. Or at least, one of my guests wrote and I signed my name and sent it with one of my grooms so that she would not worry longer than necessary.”

  Wes set a hand in his at last and shook it with what might have been a hearty grip if he had not looked so uncomfortable. “This is all deuced embarrassing, you know, Juss,” he said. “Good God! You live in a palace! And Ricky walked into it, I daresay, as though he belonged here. Where is he? I’ll take him and get going. You’re a real nob, aren’t you, Juss? Mr. La-di-da.”

  “He is having a sleep after spending the morning with the blacksmith,” Justin explained. “And you will stay here tonight, Wes. I daresay your borrowed horse needs a good, long rest even if you do not. And I have a proposition to make to you.”

  “What?” Wes asked warily.

  “A job,” Justin told him. “Something you once told me would be your dream come true. And a home to go with it. For you and Hildy and Ricky.”

  Wes’s eyes narrowed on him. “A dream come true,” he said. “What do you think I am, Juss? A wide-eyed girl waiting for her prince like in that one story you used to tell that so thrilled Ricky and Hildy?”

  “The story you never listened to?” Justin said, grinning once more. “I value my personal safety too much ever to call you Cinderella, Wes.”

  “Ricky isn’t sleeping in that palace, is he?” Wes asked.

  “In the room adjoining my own,” Justin told him. “Like old times.”

  “Oh, God in his heaven,” Wes said in disgust while Captain got to his feet and licked his hand. “Sometimes, Juss, I wish you had another nose to bust.”

  Twenty

  Most of the family and guests were gathered in the drawing room again that evening, though Bertrand and Mr. Sharpe had wandered off to the library, and Nigel Dickson and Angela Ormsbury had followed them. There was a group of people clustered about the pianoforte, though they were doing more talking and laughing than actual playing. A few of the men were playing cards. Mrs. Dickson, Mrs. Chandler, and Mrs. Sharpe were sitting with Lady Maple. Maria and Estelle were listening to Lady Crowther and her sister reminiscing about their courtship by brothers and the early days of their marriages. The Earl of Brandon was standing behind Maria’s chair, listening too.

  He looked tired, Estelle thought. He had had a busy couple of hours before dinner. His friend Wesley Mort had been persuaded to stay for at least one night before taking Ricky home, but it had not been easy, apparently. He had been quite adamant about not staying anywhere in the house— and upon Ricky’s not staying here for another night either. The blacksmith had offered them a room in his cottage up in the laborers’ village on the other side of the hill behind the house. That was where they both were now. Estelle had the feeling there had been an argument. They were best friends, the earl had once said. They also butted heads now and then, she believed. She also suspected they were similar sorts of men, both very proud.

  The sisters’ memories had turned to their mother, Lord Brandon’s grandmother. They were laughing over how she had loved the slightest excuse to dress in all her best finery and deck herself out with as many of the family jewels as she could comfortably drape about her.

  “Or uncomfortably, for that matter. If she had had more than ten fingers,” Lady Felicity Ormsbury said, “she would have worn more than ten rings.”

  “But she did,” Lady Crowther said. “She always wore her wedding ring and her diamond on the same finger.”

  “But no rings, surely, on her thumbs,” Maria said.

  Her aunts looked at each other.

  “Well, perhaps not on her thumbs,” Lady Crowther conceded. “But there were all the other pieces too, most of them heirlooms. Papa used to threaten sometimes to call out the militia to guard her because she was carrying around a fortune on her person.”

  “Mrs. Sharpe reminds me of Mama a little, Augusta,” her sister said. “Always jingling and jangling with necklaces and bracelets and bangles. We would stay awake in the nursery despite all of Nurse’s threats and scolding on evenings when Mama was going somewhere or expecting guests here. She would always come to say
good night, sometimes long after our bedtime, and we would gaze at her, speechless with awe.”

  “You might have been speechless, Felicity,” Lady Crowther said. “I always used to jump up and down on my bed with excitement until Mama threatened that if I fell off and broke a leg, she would positively not come up and see me ever again.”

  “She was such a liar,” Lady Felicity said, and they both laughed.

  “I have not seen the family heirlooms for years,” Lady Crowther said. “Of course I have not. I have not been here for years. Neither have you, Felicity. And we will be leaving here the day after tomorrow. Justin, may we see them before we go? Where do you keep them?”

  All eyes turned his way. Maria looked over her shoulder at him.

  “That is a good question,” he said. “I have no idea.”

  “What?” Lady Crowther half shrieked.

  “Where were they usually kept?” he asked.

  “In the safe,” Lady Crowther said. “In Papa’s bedchamber. In your bedchamber.”

  “I am not in the room Grandpapa and then my father slept in,” he said. “I have rooms in the corner of the east wing. I … do not go into those rooms.”

  His aunts both stared at him.

  “Indeed,” Lady Felicity said. “Well. That is understandable, I suppose. But you have not given a single thought to the family heirlooms and where they all might be? One can tell you are not a married man. They are probably still there in the safe.”

  “They are probably not,” Maria said sharply. “They probably disappeared with Mama’s jewels.”

  There was an awkward silence, during which Estelle wished there were a way to get up and move somewhere else without drawing attention to herself.

  “Perhaps we should go and see,” Lady Crowther said.

  “How are we to get into the safe?” the earl asked. “I must confess I never even knew of its existence. I do remember once seeing the heirloom jewelry with my mother. I must have been quite young at the time. I do not believe she ever wore any of it. Or Maria’s mother. I suppose I would have assumed it was all in a bank vault somewhere if I had ever thought of it at all.”

  “If he had ever thought of it,” Lady Crowther said to her sister.

  They gazed at each other and spoke in unison.

  “Men!”

  “You never even knew of the existence of the safe, Justin?” Lady Crowther asked, sounding dismayed. “You do not have the key, then? Maria?”

  She shook her head. “Papa used to keep Mama’s jewels in his room,” she said. “But I never knew where. I never saw the family heirlooms. Mama said they were ugly.”

  “Our father, your grandpapa, was not so secretive with his children,” Lady Crowther said. “We were always fascinated by the safe, hidden away as it was, and by all the jewels our mother used to wear whenever she had an excuse to do so. But who would know where the key is? Our brother surely would have left that information with someone, Justin.”

  “He left a whole lot of information with his lawyer and his man of business,” the earl said stiffly. “I have not encouraged them to share any but essential business with me.”

  They stared at him, frowning, and Estelle realized, not for the first time, how badly his father had hurt him.

  “Well,” Lady Felicity said, looking a bit shamefaced, “I know where the key used to be kept. I watched Papa open the safe once and then close it, and I memorized just what he did and where he got the key from and returned it to. I crept back in there one day to make sure I was right, and I was. I got it open. But that was years ago. I must have been eleven or twelve.”

  “And you still remember it, Aunt Felicity?” the earl asked.

  “I still do,” she said. “It is amazing what sticks in one’s head from childhood, while something I take particular care to memorize today will in all likelihood be gone without a trace by next week. The human mind is an odd thing.”

  “Then let us go,” Lady Crowther said, getting to her feet. “Justin, you had better come too. Those heirlooms are, after all, your property now. Your countess will wear them one day, and I hope that will be sooner rather than later.”

  “I am coming too,” Maria said. “Estelle, please come with me.”

  Estelle held up one hand. “I believe I had better not,” she said.

  “Please do,” the Earl of Brandon said.

  “Oh, by all means, Lady Estelle,” Lady Crowther said, linking her arm through Estelle’s. “I hope my brother did not do the sensible thing after our papa died and change the lock or hide the key elsewhere or both. And I hope Felicity’s memory has not become decrepit with age. Otherwise this is going to be very anticlimactic.”

  The suite of rooms that had always been the earl’s until six years ago was at the south end of the west wing. The earl’s bedchamber was magnificently decorated in deep shades of wine and gold. The furnishings were heavy and old-fashioned and stately. It was a grand room, Estelle thought as the earl lit candles until the darkness and the shadows receded. Yet it had an air of being unlived in.

  The Earl of Brandon’s face, she noticed, looked as though it were carved out of granite.

  Maria came to a stop just inside the door. Estelle remained at her side. Lady Crowther pointed to the ornately carved fireplace, and she and her sister made their way toward it. The earl, having finished lighting the candles, stood and watched.

  “It was one of those knobs down there,” Lady Crowther said, pointing to the paneling to the left of the fireplace. “This one, I believe.” She bent and pressed and poked at the carved leaves there with no result until her sister bent across her and twisted an acorn. A panel above them slid back. “The safe is still there, at least. Now we just need to get into it. Felicity? Here, I will stand back out of your way and cross all my fingers. And my eyes too. And I will hold my breath for good measure.”

  Neither Maria nor her brother moved at all. Estelle found that she was also holding her breath. It somehow seemed terribly important that the family treasures be intact. What would happen if the safe was empty? Or if some of the pieces the earl’s aunts remembered were missing? Or if the safe could not be opened at all?

  Lady Felicity went to the other side of the fireplace, reached up to a carved leaf just below the mantel, and pulled outward on it, pressing on the inside of it at the same time. The leaf opened on some sort of hinge to reveal a small dark cavity. She reached inside with two fingers and her thumb and brought out a small metal key.

  They all, it seemed, exhaled at the same moment.

  She crossed the fireplace again and bent to insert the key in the lock of the safe and turn it.

  The door swung open, the key still in the lock.

  “Oh,” Lady Felicity said, and stepped back. Her sister crowded forward to join her and peer inside. “It is not empty.”

  “Let us take everything out and spread it on the bed,” Lady Crowther suggested. “Come and see, Justin. Come closer, Maria. And you too, Lady Estelle. Oh, this is exciting. I would have kicked myself if we had gone home the day after tomorrow and then I had remembered the family heirlooms. Oh, look, Felicity. The ruby brooch. It was my favorite.”

  Soon the bed was half covered with jewelry that must surely be worth a king’s ransom, Estelle thought. But while the sisters were exclaiming over remembered items and declaring that absolutely nothing was missing, the Earl of Brandon was picking up a folded document or letter that had been tossed out with everything else but had not drawn anyone’s interest. He slipped it into an inner pocket of his coat.

  Maria meanwhile was reaching out with a trembling hand to pick up a bulging white silk drawstring bag.

  “Oh,” she said when she had opened it and peered inside. She closed her eyes and swayed on her feet. “Oh, dear God.”

  Estelle set a steadying hand on her arm, and the earl strode across the room to stand behind her and grasp her by the shoulders.

  “Mama’s jewels,” she said. “Papa always kept them for her. In this bag.�
��

  “Look through it,” the earl said. “See if everything is there.”

  She emptied it onto the bed and spread out the items. She set one hand over her mouth before removing it to speak.

  “Everything,” she said. “Oh, I think everything is here.”

  “My dear Maria,” her aunt Augusta said, “they were here all the time. Your mama was mistaken.”

  Or she had lied. No one said that, though.

  “Or I could simply have put them back in there,” the earl said, lowering his hands from his sister’s shoulders. “I told the truth, Maria, when I said downstairs that I did not even know of this safe. I certainly did not know where it was or how to expose it or where to find the key. But I could be lying.”

  “No,” she said, running a shaking hand over the jewels. “No, Justin. I think I have known for some time that there was no theft, that Papa had some other reason for sending you away. Mama made up that story, did she not? Just for my ears. I do not remember Papa ever saying anything about any theft or Mama mentioning it in his hearing. My mind is weary. I do not want to think about why you were really sent away. You are not a thief. And I am glad.”

  She turned to look at him, her eyes troubled.

  “She never wore any of them after that day,” she said. “It must have been very important to her that I believe you had stolen them, for she always loved wearing them. She did not take any of them to Prospect Hall with her when we left here. Perhaps she was afraid I would see them. She was very eager to blacken your name and preserve her own name. Did she not understand that I loved her? That I always would have done, no matter what? Perhaps she simply did not know how to get them from the safe,” she added wearily.

  Her brother drew her into his arms and kissed the top of her head.

  “Some things are best left in the past, where they belong,” he told her. “I have always loved you, Maria, past and present. I will love you as long as I live. Perhaps you will come to love me again in time. I will try to be patient.”