“We have indeed,” Mrs. Bailey said firmly. She sniffed. “Lemon tarts? Is that what I smell?”
“Sugar biscuits with some lemon added,” Lydia said.
“They smell delicious. I never could resist lemon in sweet things,” Mrs. Bailey said. “Perhaps we can invite ourselves to sit down in your kitchen and be cozy for a little while. May we? And you must tell us if there is indeed anything of a courtship between you and the major. I must say you looked very good together last evening when you were dancing. I remarked upon it to the vicar after I had finished dancing myself. Perhaps this bit of bother will prod the major into coming to the point. Men can be very slow about such things. It took the vicar eight months to work up the courage to propose to me aftereveryoneknew he would get there in the end. I was near to screaming with frustration. I dropped hints as heavy as bricks. But perhaps the major has already asked you?”
Lydia was plumping up the already plump cushions on the back of the sofa while her three friends were standing in a line with their backs to the window.
“I will go and make a pot of tea,” she said. “I will be delighted to have you help me eat some of the biscuits. I made a double batch.”
But before she could move away, they all heard the noisy clopping of hooves and rumbling of wheels and jingling of traces coming from outside, and all of them turned to look through the window. A grand traveling carriage was turning onto the drive to Hinsford Manor. Another carriage, even grander, with a bright crest emblazoned upon the door and a coachman and footman in colorful, smart livery up on the box, turned after it.
“Major Westcott has visitors,” Mrs. Bailey said unnecessarily.
“I have seen that carriage before,” Hannah said, wagging a finger at the second one. “It belongs to the Duke of Netherby. That is the ducal crest. The duchess is Major Westcott’s sister. Half sister. The legitimate one.”
“I wonder,” Denise said, “if he is expecting them. Has he said anything to you, Lydia?”
Lydia did not answer.
“They must be coming for his birthday,” Hannah said. “He is going to turn thirty next week, though he has not said a word to anyone. Tom knows, though. He has been talking about arranging some sort of party, perhaps even at the assembly rooms. It looks as if that is going to be unnecessary, however. Oh dear …”
A third carriage had come into sight and turned after the others onto the drive. And then a fourth.
The Westcotts were coming in force, Lydia thought. To shield him from any adverse effects of this stupid …scandalthat was brewing and threatening to swallow her up. But they could not possibly know about that yet, could they? She did not doubt they soon would, however, and when they did they would close ranks about him and turn up their collective aristocratic nose at the very idea that he could be dragged into such trivial and sordid gossip, all over a mere nobody of a vicar’s widow.
Her bitterness surprised her. She did not even know any of them. It was just that her emotions were a bit on the raw side today. Well, more than a bit, to be perfectly honest.
Her friends were unabashedly watching the show proceeding beyond her garden fence. Yet a fifth carriage was approaching. Snowball stood by the front door, barking.
Lydia went into the kitchen. Well, she thought, it was all her own fault that she was not able to enjoy the show with the others.
Are you ever lonely?
Never,surely, had an impulsively asked question brought such ghastly consequences in its wake.
This would all have been highly coordinated, of course, Harry realized within seconds of clapping eyes upon the first carriage, followed by a second. By the time the others hove into sight, one after another, like some grand parade, he was not even surprised. How very foolish of him to have assumed that his family had simply given up after he had assured a few of them that he was definitely not going to London this spring. This was the Westcott family, after all. They never gave up on something once they had set their minds upon it. They just became more stubborn—and more creative.
And really the answer to this particular problem had not needed a great leap of imagination. If dear Harry would not go to them, then they would come to dear Harry. As clear as day. Yet Harry himself had not thought of it.Even though they have done it before.When Avery and Alexander had brought him home from Paris, they had expected to take him to London, where his mother and the whole family awaited him. He had insisted upon being brought here instead.But… the family had arrived within days.
They had all arrived now too. Every last one of them. Plus a few extras for good measure.
So Mrs. Sullivan and the cook had been too busy taking inventory earlier to serve him anything more elaborate than a cold luncheon, had they? For the first time in living memory, it might be added. And Brown had felt impelled for no apparent reason to change out of his everyday, perfectly respectable butler’s attire into the smart uniform reserved for special occasions, of which there had been very few if any during the past four years, had he? And Mrs. Sullivan had been so intent upon getting the spring cleaning done as soon as possible this year that she had felt it necessary to hire all sorts of extra help during the past few weeks? And extra help in the kitchen in order to feed all the extra help?
No doubt his whole house had been cleaned and polished to within an inch of its life and every bed in every spare room made up while he had been almost wholly oblivious. Mrs. Sullivan would have counted upon his maleness making him quite unobservant about matters pertaining to the house. Clearly she knew her man well. Had his head gardener counted upon the same thing with regard to the park? It occurred to Harry now that he was looking for it that the lawns about the house were more than usually immaculate. And he would wager that if he were to wander from one flower bed to another, he would search in vain for either a weed or a drooping bloom.
His family all arrived within three hours of one another. It was a remarkable feat but not, obviously, above the organizing skills of the aunts—and probably his mother. And Wren and Anna and Elizabeth and all the rest of the women. It was no wonder he had not suspected a thing. The men of the family seemed singularly lacking in such devious organizational abilities. Though they were not necessarily an abject lot. There was the famous occasion, for example—Harry had been in the Peninsula at the time— when Avery had whisked Anna off one afternoon to marry her by special license at the very time when the usual committee was deep in the throes of organizing a grandtonwedding for them. It was one of Harry’s favorite family stories. One thumb up for the men of the family.
The Dowager Countess of Riverdale, his paternal grandmother, came despite her advanced age, as did Great-aunt Edith, her sister. The aunts came, his father’s sisters— Matilda, Louise, and Mildred, the eldest and youngest of them with their husbands. Then there were Avery and Anna; Alexander and Wren; Elizabeth and Colin; and Cousin Althea, Alex and Elizabeth’s mother. They all brought their children, a few of whom were adults, most of whom were decidedly not. Viscount Dirkson and Aunt Matilda brought his son from his first marriage, Adrian Sawyer.
Aunts and cousins and assorted others shook Harry’s hand, slapped his back, clasped his shoulder, hugged him, kissed him, laughed and squealed over him, scolded him, and generally greeted him with hearty enthusiasm and unabashed affection. Children, released from long hours of being cooped up inside stuffy carriages, roared and shrieked over the terrace and the lawn and darted into the house, where those who remembered being there before led the way up to the nursery floor while parents largely ignored the mayhem and nurses clucked and fussed and shooed and tried to bring order out of chaos.
Then there was Harry’s immediate family. First to arrive of that group was his mother, with Marcel and Marcel’s two adult children from another marriage, the twins, Bertrand and Estelle Lamarr. Harry’s stepsiblings.
“I suppose,” his mother said after hugging him tightly, “you were expecting us.”
Harry felt like the village idiot because the answer was no. He refrained from answering.
Truly remarkably, Camille and Joel had done what they had avoided doing at Christmastime. They had left their home in Bath and come all the way to Hinsford with their whole brood.
