Rosie Sharpe, Justin’s youngest cousin, had seen him standing slightly behind her chair and turned to look up at him.
“I could have died, Justin,” she told him, “when you walked into the drawing room with the other men after dinner. Of all my accomplishments, none of which will ever win me widespread acclaim, pianoforte playing is the most dismal.”
“Then the others cannot be bad at all,” he said. “What is yourbestaccomplishment?”
“Baking, actually,” she said. “Cakes and scones and éclairs and biscuits. But Mama complains that I am makingher fat.” She laughed and looked very pretty. She still had the freckles across her nose that he remembered from when she was a young child. “And Papa complains that I am not making him fat enough.”
He could remember hugging her that morning more than twelve years ago before he left to ride off into the unknown. He had pretended she was Maria, whom he had not been allowed to hug at all. Or even see.
“And what are some ofyourmain interests?” he asked Gillian Chandler.
“Carpentry,” she said without hesitation. “Papa is trying to get Wallace interested in it, for he says it is a worthy career if one has the skills. My brother is just notinterested, however. I am and I have even made a few things, which are not terribly good but would be very much better if only I had a proper instructor. Papa says a girl cannot be a carpenter. It is very provoking.”
Chandler did not follow his brother-in-law’s practice of allowing his children to follow their dreams, then? But Dickson did not have daughters.
“It is,” Justin agreed. “Why should you knit or paint with watercolors when you would far prefer to be sawing and pounding nails?”
“Exactly! Oh, Cousin Justin—mayI call you that though you are not, strictly speaking, my cousin?” she said. “Cousin Justin, Ilikeyou. How fortunate Maria is to have you for a brother. Perhaps I can exchange you for Wallace.”
She and Rosie and Paulette Ormsbury, Aunt Augusta’s youngest child, went off into peals of laughter while Maria bit her lower lip and Lady Estelle smiled and looked amused.
“A young lady’s foremost duty to herself is to secure a husband who can support her well during his life and leave her independently established when he dies,” Lady Maplesaid, drawing everyone’s attention back to herself. “Thenshe may think of doing something as cork-brained as learning carpentry. If she is wise, however, she will always leave the cooking to the servants. Otherwise, they may come to look down upon her, and that is never a desirable thing.”
Lady Estelle was looking even more amused when Justin caught her eye. But her smile quickly faded.
Only a barbarian, he supposed, would encourage a girl to make a cabinet rather than knit a scarf or paint a landscape.
***
The following morning was cloudy but warm with no noticeable wind. Although everyone was eager for the promised tour of the state apartments, it was a pity to waste a fine morning indoors, it was agreed at breakfast. It might be raining by this afternoon. Maria spoke up with a suggestion. She offered to take anyone who was interested to the lake to see it and the Chinese bridge and the waterfall, though she warned it was a longish walk.
Now, half an hour later, Maria was outside under the portico with an eager group of the young cousins. Estelle and Bertrand were out there too. It was getting a bit crowded. A few of the older couples were strolling among the parterres, having decided to stay closer to the house in case it rained, as it very well might.
Estelle, looking across the formal gardens to the river and the rock gardens and wooded slope beyond, down which they had traveled yesterday, thought that surely a lovelier stately home could not exist anywhere. What a pity it was not also a happier place. Though perhaps it would be in time. Certainly all the guests here seemed to be a congenial lot, and it must be remembered that it was the Earl ofBrandon, stiff and humorless as he seemed to be, who had invited them all here—for the sake of his sister. And hehadsympathized last evening with young Gillian’s dream of being a carpenter.
The group of young people began to make its noisy, chattering way down the marble steps to the terrace, led by Maria. Bertrand went with them. He had offered his arm to Angela Ormsbury, one of Maria’s cousins on her father’s side, perhaps because she seemed shier than any of the others. He was smiling at her and drawing her into conversation. Estelle held back until last. She was here to give her support to Maria, it was true, but she did not want to stifle her friend’s ability to manage on her own. Mr.Ernest Sharpe, her brother’s cousin, had given her his arm and Maria was smiling at him, apparently pleased to have his escort. Mr.Sidney Sharpe was hovering in Estelle’s vicinity and would offer his arm in a moment, she supposed. His young sister had just plucked his sleeve, however, to point out something across the valley before turning away to run lightly down the steps in pursuit of the others.
At the same moment one of the main doors opened and someone else stepped outside. The dour earl himself, Estelle saw with a glance over her shoulder. He was coming too, was he? He drew to an abrupt halt.
“Ah, Lady Estelle,” he said just as Sidney Sharpe was turning back to her. “May I show you the summerhouse? I am on my way there.”
“Oh, I say, Justin,” his cousin protested. “Pulling rank, are you? Cutting the ground from under my feet?”
“Pulling the age advantage, Sid,” the earl said. “I always was two years older than you, if you will recall. I still am. Buthadyou already asked the lady to walk to the lake with you?”
“I had not,” his cousin admitted. “But I was about to, as must have been glaringly obvious. Perhaps we ought—”
“Excuseme,” Estelle said, bringing the eyes of both gentlemen to her person. “The lady is standing right here. She has ears. She also has a tongue.”
“She is also a lady of some spirit,” Sidney Sharpe said, his eyes laughing into hers before he grinned more fully at his cousin. “Lady Estelle, the choice is yours. You may walk to the lake with my humble self, or you may admire the summerhouse with Justin. Or you may do something quite independent of both of us, I suppose, and go stalking off alone to walk the maze or explore the greenhouses. But before you decide, may I point out that if you reject my offer as an escort, I may be doomed to walk with my own sister?” He pulled a forlorn look.
Estelle laughed. The others, she could see, had crossed the terrace and were descending the wide stone steps to the formal garden and making their way to the fountain at its center, where Maria and Mr.Ernest Sharpe were awaiting them.
“That does sound like a sad fate, Mr.Sharpe,” she said. “However, when a lady has a choice of escort, good manners dictate that she accept the one who asked first.”
She heard the words that came out of her mouth rather as though someone else had spoken them. There was a measure of truth to them, but... She had agreed to walk to the lake before she had been asked to go in the opposite direction. So why...
“Run along, Sid,” the earl said.
