And his cousin ran along, laughing and calling to the others to wait for him.
“You are on the way to the summerhouse, Lord Brandon?” Estelle asked, wheeling on him. “Alone?”When youhave guests to entertain?She did not say it aloud, but her tone implied it.
“I often spend time there,” he told her. “I thought to steal a private hour or two there this morning while everyone else is happily occupied. Lady Maple informed me last night that she never leaves her room before noon. My aunt and uncle are in the nursery with Doris and Martin and their children.”
“You do not like children?” she asked him.
“Doris’s two are of that alarming breed of youngster that awakes at the crack of dawn every day, bursting with energy and demanding to be entertained,” he said. “I took them out to the stables this morning, where they made Captain’s acquaintance—I am not sure who was the more ecstatic, he or they—and then came riding with one of my grooms and me. After that they helped brush the horses down and chased Captain around the stable yard before feeding him. I brought them home in plenty of time for their nurse to make them look and smell respectable before the other children, who all slept until a decent hour, were ready for breakfast. I believe I have done my duty by them for one morning.”
Well. She had had her answer.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you will not mind if we collect Captain on our way to the summerhouse. He does not take kindly to being in residence at the stables and thus relegated to an inferior status, on a level with the horses. He usually occupies the house with me, but it occurred to me that some of my guests may not enjoy his company. You, for example?”
They descended the marble steps together and turned to walk along the terrace. He did not offer his arm.
“Oh, you will not make me responsible for your dog’smisery in being put out of his own home, Lord Brandon,” she said. “I believe I have already conceded that he is not the vicious hound I took him for at first.”
Why, she wondered, did he often spend time at the summerhouse when he had this vast and splendid mansion in which to live?
Eight
Captain was sitting out in the stable yard, watching one of the grooms exercise a horse in the paddock, but he scrambled to his feet and turned when he saw them approach. He did not come dashing toward them, however, until he was summoned by a single word from his master.
“Come,” the Earl of Brandon said.
The dog came at a run then, panted up at the earl when he arrived, and sat to offer a paw to Estelle. As she shook it and bade him a good morning, she found herself smiling and wanting for some inexplicable reason to hug the dog. His brown ears were soft and silky, his black jowls, nose, and eyes mournful looking. Fleshy folds curved above his eyes, like eyebrows, and extended down the sides of his face, making it seem as though his eyes slanted downward. He was not so terribly fierce after all. Perhaps he was not sad either. Looks could deceive.
“I can remember,” she said, smoothing one hand over the dog’s huge head and down along one ear, “that Bertranddesperately wanted a dog when we were seven or eight. There was a litter of collie pups at a neighbor’s house. He begged and pleaded and moped, but our aunt was immovable. Dogs were dirty, in her opinion, and they shed and jumped on furniture and beds and frightened visitors and servants. Worst of all, they were useless. Except, perhaps, to warm a little boy’s heart.”
“You did not want one of those puppies too?” the earl asked, and Estelle looked at him in some surprise—surprise at herself, that she had confided such a distant and personal memory to him of all people. Good heavens, she had probably not even thought of that incident for years.
“I was not desperate for one,” she said. “But we are twins. We feel each other’s pain. I can remember wrapping my arms about him and weeping on his shoulder when I found him huddled in a corner of the attic after he had finally understood that he was not going to have his dog.”
“Your aunt had great power in your home, did she?” he asked.
“She and my uncle raised us,” she explained. “Our mother died in an accident before we were even a year old, and her elder sister and her husband and their two children came to Elm Court to care for us. They stayed for the funeral, and then somehow they stayed for the rest of our childhood and youth.”
“Your father...?” he asked.
“He went away,” she told him. “He came home a couple of times each year, but it was our aunt and uncle who raised us.”
“They did an excellent job,” he said.
She looked at him in surprise again.
“They are good people,” she told him. “I did not meanto imply by the dog story that my aunt was some sort of cruel and unfeeling tyrant. She was not and is not.”
“Shall we walk?” he suggested, and she fell into step beside him. What had he meant by that?They did an excellent job.He did not know either her or Bertrand. But even a slight acquaintance was often enough to give one a firm impression—just as she had formed one of him. She did not reallyknowhim, though, did she?
The dog loped along ahead of them.
The summerhouse was built on a steepish slope above the greenhouses and was largely hidden from them by a band of trees and bushes. It was slightly above the level of the house too and was angled to face away from it, toward the southeast.
“Someone was using his head when it was built,” the earl said as they approached it. “My great-grandfather again, I suspect. The lower level has windows from ceiling to floor, as you will see in a moment. The upper level too has large windows. Most people would choose to have the building face full south to get all the sunlight and then discover the heat of a summer day unbearable. This way the house gets all the gentle morning light, but more slanted rays in the afternoon.”
It was an attractive building. The lower level was all one room and furnished for relaxation with a number of comfortable-looking chairs and sofas and low tables to hold refreshments and books and newspapers. There was even a long, low bookcase against the back wall, its shelves filled with books. Two of the windows that made up the front wall could be slid back to open the room to the outdoors. They could also be kept closed to hold the warm air inside on a cool or rainy day. The view was unexpected and lovely.The summerhouse did not look over any part of the formal gardens or flower beds but rather over fields and meadows to the east and the low hedgerows that divided them and gave them the appearance of a patchwork quilt. There were sheep grazing in one large field. The view stretched into the distance over a widening valley and low, undulating hills. The river meandered through it.
“All your land?” Estelle asked.
