“She is not quite alone any longer,” he said. “She has me.”
She slanted a glance his way as though to say that that might be no great asset to her friend. But she did not say it aloud, or anything else.
They walked side by side and in silence until Elm Court came into view as they rounded a bend in the river. He stopped to take his leave of her.
“We will be setting out four days from now,” he told her. “May I expect you and Viscount Watley to follow a couple of days after that?”
“We will leave a week from today,” she said.
“I will look forward to welcoming you to Everleigh Park, then,” he said, and held out a hand for hers.
He did not think she was going to take it. But after a moment’s hesitation she set her own in it and he clasped the warm, gloved slimness of her hand. She didnotshiver, but it seemed to him that she came close. She raised her eyes to his.
“Thank you for the escort home,” she said. “One never knows what dangers and terrors might be lying in wait for an unwary woman walking alone.” And this time that half smile lurked in her eyes as well as at the corners of her lips and suggested mockery—or just amusement.
He watched her as she walked away, and Captain sat on his haunches beside him, everything drooping—ears, jowls, eyes in their folds of flesh. As though his best friend were deserting him, the ungrateful cur.
“It is sometimes hard to be disliked,” Justin said, realizing only after he had done so that he had spoken aloud. He was not much given to self-pity—not since leaving his aunt and uncle’s house early one morning more than twelve years ago, anyway. “Come on, Cap. Time to go home.”
Six
Justin rode all the way from East Sussex to Hertfordshire and Everleigh Park, leaving his carriage to his sister and her maid. It was no hardship. For years he had not set foot inside a carriage, and for a while even a ride in a cart or gig had been a luxury. The hardest aspect of this journey was the necessity of staying close to the carriage, of stopping more frequently than he would otherwise have done, for rest stops and refreshment at approximately regular intervals. He took his own meals separately whenever he could, in taprooms rather than dining rooms or private parlors.
There had been no hysterics when they left Prospect Hall. No arguments or dragging of heels. No tears, unless Maria had shed them privately or when she took her leave of Miss Vane, who would be leaving an hour or so after them by private chaise. Or when she walked for the last time in the rose garden. Or when she went with Miss Vane the day before their departure to the churchyard where her mother was buried. She was behaving, in fact, with a maturedignity, cool in her manner to him but not openly rebellious. She initiated no conversation, but she spoke in more than just monosyllables whenever he directed a question or a remark specifically to her.
“I have had the Chinese bedchamber in the east wing prepared for you at Everleigh,” he told her when he joined her for breakfast on the final morning before their arrival. “I am sure you would not wish to return to your old room on the nursery floor. I recall that you always loved being taken to the Chinese room to see the screens and the paper on the wall.”
Specifically, she had likedhimto take her there because he had had the patience to wait, often by lying on the bed, his hands clasped behind his head, while she gazed at all the intricately stylized figures on the walls and screen and sometimes outlined them with a finger, though it was a rule that they were never to touch walls. She had also loved the Chinese fan, which she would wave with both hands before her face and then, leaning over him, beforehisface, giggling gleefully whenever she could raise the hair from his forehead and make him shut his eyes and wrinkle his nose.
“Thank you.” He did not expect her to say anything else, but she did. “And I liked the colored lamps there. I loved to go in the dusk and dark if someone was willing to light them for me.”
Almost always he had been that someone.
“Lady Estelle Lamarr will have the gold room next to yours,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said again.
They arrived home in the middle of the afternoon. It was a rather gray day, though they had at least avoided rain. And so, Justin thought, he was back to the cold magnificence of a stately house he had once loved as though it werean integral part of his very being. Now he hated it. But no, that was not quite true.Hatedwas too passionate a word. He felt nothing for Everleigh. Not even pride. Only a dull ache about the heart he had no wish to analyze.
He dismounted at the foot of the marble steps that led up beneath a broad portico to the great double doors of the house. He strode over to open the door of the carriage while Captain dashed off with happy woofs to greet a familiar groom who was approaching. Justin set down the steps before offering his hand to help Maria alight.
“Welcome home,” he said.
Both Phelps, the butler, and his wife, who was the housekeeper, had come out onto the portico, Phelps stiffly formal, his wife smiling and curtsying.
“Oh,” Maria cried, her face breaking into smiles. “Mrs.Phelps.” And she grasped the sides of her traveling dress and dashed up the marble steps to be enfolded in the embrace of a servant who had been with them forever. “You are still here. And Mr.Phelps too.”
Within minutes she and her maid had been borne off to the east wing and the Chinese bedchamber. It was the first time since she was a child, Justin thought as he went to the library even before going up to his own room, that he had seen Maria animated and smiling. She had scarcely spared a glance for him.
He checked his mail. There was a formidable pile of it on the large oak desk, or rather there weretwopiles. The larger pile consisted of letters concerning business his secretary had already been able to deal with. But even the smaller pile seemed alarmingly high.
Maria knew, of course, that the Lamarrs were coming. She had had to approve the invitation before they would accept. She knew too that his aunt and uncle Sharpe and hiscousins—all four of them—were coming. She had made no open protest beyond a certain tightening of the lips when he told her. Her mother had wept when Justin’s father had wanted to invite them to Everleigh for Maria’s christening. They would hate Maria, she had protested between sobs, just as they resentedherfor marrying him and making him happy and helping him forget his first wife. At the time—Justin had been only fourteen—it had not struck him how inappropriate it was that she would make her complaint to his father in his hearing. He had felt only shock at the very notion that his father mightforgethis mother, who had been so very far superior to his stepmother in every imaginable way. Fortunately, perhaps, he had held his tongue and his father had said something soothing to his second wife. But he hadnotinvited Aunt Betty and Uncle Rowan and the cousins to the christening, to Justin’s great disappointment. Or to any event ever again, in fact.
He had not told Maria of the other guests he had invited, for he had had no idea if any of them would come or, in the case of her mother’s relatives, even acknowledge his invitation. But they had responded to the letters he had written before leaving for Prospect Hall. And all except one had agreed to come. It felt more than a little overwhelming. It was also gratifying.
Sarah and Thomas Wickford, the late countess’s younger sister and her husband, expressed regret. They were about to set off for a tour of Scotland, including the Highlands, with a group of friends. But Leonard Dickson and Patricia Chandler, the late countess’s older brother and sister, would be delighted to come with their spouses and children, to meet their niece at last. Aunt Augusta and Aunt Felicity, sisters of Justin and Maria’s father, would come from Cornwall with the uncles and cousins. Lady Maple, Maria’sgreat-aunt, would be pleased to spend a couple of weeks at Everleigh Park to acquaint herself with her great-niece.
Justin shared the news with his sister when she joined him in the dining room for dinner. She did not react with the hysteria he had feared. She swallowed a mouthful of soup and set her spoon down beside the bowl.
