Maria was over by the pianoforte with some of the young people, a promising sight. Lady Estelle was with them. Rosie Sharpe, his young cousin, was sitting on the pianoforte bench, her back to the instrument. The others were standing in a semicircle around her. There was a burst of laughter from their direction even as Justin looked.
“Maria is really quite lovely, Justin,” Doris said, following the direction of his gaze. “She is on the pale side and a bit thinner than she ought to be, but losing her mother must have been a terrible ordeal for her. Apparently she nursed the countess almost single-handedly throughout her lengthy illness until she died.”
“It need not have been that way,” Leonard Dickson said, clearly annoyed. “And so I have told my niece. If Lilian had written to us or got someone else to write to us, we would have been there, Margaret and I, and I daresayPatricia and Sarah too, as fast as horses could gallop. If Lilian was alive at this moment, I would be hard put to it not to give her a good shake. Poor Maria. She could certainly do with some meat on her bones. I absolutely agree with you, Mrs.Haig. Though girls these days seem to have the daft notion that the thinner they are, the more the boys will like them.”
Irwin Chandler, Justin’s uncle Rowan Sharpe, and his uncle Harold Ormsbury were in conversation together. Lady Maple was seated on the side of the room farthest from the pianoforte, alone until Viscount Watley took a seat close to her and engaged her in conversation. Everyone else was either part of a group or moving from one to another.
Yes, it was all working out as Justin had hoped it would and feared it might not. Though it was early days yet, of course.
Uncle Rowan, tall and thin, with a narrow, kindly face and bushy eyebrows turning gray to match his unruly hair, came to join Justin’s group, bringing young Nigel Dickson with him.
“You have an impressive library, I saw this afternoon while you were busy greeting new arrivals, Justin,” his uncle said. “I remember that about Everleigh. Though you have added to it since I saw it last.”
During the past six years, yes. He had traveled light before that, but books had been his one indulgence since inheriting the title and having a fixed home again—and money to spare.
“I have,” Justin said. “Though I am always open to recommendations.”
His uncle, a gentleman with a modest private fortune, was something of a scholar and spent much of his timeimmersed in his studies, mostly of astronomy and mathematics. He had always been a family man too, however, interested in and involved with his children—and now his grandchildren—and proud of them all. Justin, as his only nephew on his wife’s side, had always been included in that group.
“If you have a sheet of paper long enough, Justin,” he said, his eyes twinkling, “I will make a list for you.”
“With the headingBooks to Make You Snore,” Sidney said, grinning and slapping a hand down on his father’s shoulder.
“Oh, please, sir,” Nigel said in all earnestness. “Would you make a list for me too?” The boy was at Cambridge and was apparently a serious student.
Lady Estelle had linked an arm through Maria’s and was leading her toward Lady Maple. Ernest Sharpe joined them there, and soon a small cluster of young people was gathered about the old lady, who was holding court, her lorgnette waving about in one hand, looking rather pleased with herself. Viscount Watley meanwhile had given up his seat to Maria and then moved away to talk with the older ladies gathered about Aunt Betty.
“Ernie is such a dreamer,” Sidney said, indicating his younger brother with a jutting of his chin. “Lady Estelle Lamarr is far beyond his orbit. And that is not just because she is the daughter of a marquess.”
“You think you would have a better chance with her, then, Sid?” his sister asked.
“That was not my point, Dor,” he said, but he did look a bit abashed.
“Lady Estelle Lamarr is a true lady,” Leonard Dickson said, beaming with hearty approval. “As is my niece.LadyMaria Wiley. I am only sorry we never saw her while shewas growing up or during the years when she had it so hard nursing Lilian. No young person should have to do that alone. Young people should be able to enjoy their youth—with plenty of support from their families, aunts and uncles and cousins as well as just parents. Like my boys, even if Nigel heredidturn out to be bookish and not at all interested in kicking up his heels for a year or three. Sebastian at least is interested in the mill. Although, come to think of it, he has never kicked up his heels either. Margaret and I have been blessed with good boys. But no daughters. Thank goodness for nieces.”
“Studying is how I enjoy my youth, Pa,” his younger son said. “And you and Ma have always encouraged me even if you do not quite approve of the path I have chosen.”
“Well,” his father said, beaming. “I do, I must confess, like making mention to my colleagues and competitors of my son the Cambridge scholar.”
Lady Estelle Lamarr was almost certainly in her mid-twenties, Justin thought. Why the devil was she not already married? Everything about her—everything—made her into surely one of the most eligible ladies in England. Just as her brother must be one of the most eligible bachelors. Of which number he was probably one too now, he supposed. He had not really thought of himself that way. Of course, he was almost an unknown to theton.Though that very fact might actually enhance his eligibility. The elusive earl and all that nonsense.
For a moment he longed to have his old life back, the one he had lived for the six years before his father died and still did whenever he could get away for a few weeks or longer. He missed his friends. He had had women during that time too. Three of them in total, two for just a few months apiece, one for longer. In fact, he still saw Gertieoccasionally, though it was strictly a friendship now. She had insisted from the start that she did not want anything permanent, and that had suited him. She had had one husband, she had told him. He had died, and she was happy to run with her good luck for the rest of her days. When word had reached him of his father’s death and she had learned that he was now an earl, she had laughed with what had seemed like genuine amusement and told him he had better go away before her customers started calling hercountessand getting themselves clipped about the ear for their cheek. Gertie was the widow of a publican and since his death had run the tavern he had owned. The tavern where Justin had acquired his broken nose.
His father’s death had forced him to return to the life of a gentleman, or, rather, to that of anaristocrat.And let no one try to tell him that birth and position and money gave a man freedom. They gave him a lot, admittedly, but freedom was not part of it. Six years later he was still adjusting to life as the Earl of Brandon. Sometimes it seemed almost as though Juss Wiley, his alter ego, had ceased to exist.
Hedidmiss the old life, dash it all. And he resented this life and the responsibilities it had brought him. Including Maria. But there were other duties too, and some of them he had still not faced. He gazed at Lady Estelle Lamarr while conversation flowed around him, and he found himself resentingher.For whenever she looked at him, she saw a dour barbarian. And that was at least partly his fault. Hewasdour. He had not always been so. He had learned dourness and silence and self-containment as a defense against a world that was often hostile and sometimes downright dangerous to vagrants, especially vagrants with soft hands and fine linen and fastidious ways and accents that inspired ridicule at best, violence at worst.
He had taken on some of the burdens of his position in the past six years. There were others he had been avoiding.
He stepped away from his group and approached the one around Lady Maple. She was in the middle of telling the young people how she had been considered a rare beauty when she was a girl and how she had caught the eye of Sir Cuthbert Maple at an assembly in Harrogate and nothing would do for him but he must have her. He had proposed to her that very night and married her, by special license, one week later.
“What a very romantic story, Great-aunt Bertha,” Gillian Chandler said with a sigh.
If Justin had the rights of it, Lady Maple had been barely eighteen when she married, while her groom had been sixty. She had been a wealthy widow at nineteen and had remained single ever since.
“You introduced my mother to my father,” Maria said. “And they married one month later.”
“Five weeks,” Lady Maple said, pointing her lorgnette at her great-niece. “Your papa insisted upon having banns read.”
