“And to hear about your accidental hero?” she said.
“I did not intend for you to meet him,” he said. “I ought to have hidden all evidence of his existence before I brought you here. But then I did not expect to be bringing you. Perhaps I have more in common with my hero than I realized.”
“You write with a pencil rather than a pen?” she said. It was not really a question. She could see that he did. He had bold, sloping handwriting.
“When he embarrasses me too much or gets himself into a scrape I cannot think him out of or becomes tedious for more than one page in a row,” he told her, “I can simply erase what he said or did and send him off in a different direction to do better.”
“As you cannot do in your own life,” she said. But that sounded insulting. “As none of us can do.”
“Being a writer does give one certain power,” he agreed. “The power to play God. But only on paper, alas. And only with people who do not even exist. Perhaps that is one of the attractions of writing fiction. It is therapeutic.”
She wished he would look away. His eyes were very direct on hers, very dark, quite unreadable. His voice was deep. Oh, what did that have to do with anything? He was not a comfortable man to be alone with. Not that she felt she was in any sort of danger. Just... uncomfortable. He was giving her glimpses behind the stark exterior that had so repelled her. She preferred to be repelled. She did not want to know him. For there was something about him that... disturbed her. She could not even put words to the unease she felt whenever she was in the same room as him.
“Why did you leave home?” she asked. “Before your father died, I mean. Youdidleave, did you not? Several years before?” She wished fervently then that she had not asked. She had just told herself she did not want to know anything more about him—especially about those years. Darkness lurked there, and it wasnone of her business.But her questions had not been written in pencil, alas. They could not be erased.
His eyes continued to bore into hers for a few uncomfortable moments before he turned his head away to look through the window again. His hands, clasped behind him, beat a slow, rhythmic tattoo against his back.
“All the gossip and wild stories have not satisfied you, Lady Estelle?” he asked her. “I assume there have been plenty of both in the neighborhood of Prospect Hall since the late countess and Maria went to live there after my father’s death.”
Because he had sent them there, apparently, despite the fact that the house just behind here was vast and he might have avoided them if he had so wished without sending them away.
“One cannot help hearing gossip when one is part of a community,” she told him. “Though I try not to give it too much credence unless I can confirm the facts for myself. But I do beg your pardon. I have no right to the facts in this case. They are not my business.”
His clasped hands continued the tattoo. “But you are my invited guest here,” he said, “and have a right to some knowledge of the man who persuaded you to come. I left here six years before my father’s death. He sent me away.Banishedme, if you prefer the more dramatic but very accurate word. I was banished on a moment’s notice, with time only to gather the personal possessions I could carry with me. I was told not to return. Ever.Ever, of course, expired with my father’s life, for he could not disinherit me, only disown me while he lived. I learned of his passing four months after it happened when I checked at the place letters were sent me occasionally by two persons I trusted. No one else knew where I was or how to find me or communicate with me. So far I daresay the facts match closely with the gossip. It is probable that none of the others do. I did not, for example, spend a couple of years or even one day in chains or walking a treadmill or at hard labor in jail.”
One thing stood out in Estelle’s mind. His father had been dead forfour monthsbefore he even knew it. The late earl would not have been able to rescind the sentence of banishment even if he had wished to do so. He could not have summoned his son home to his deathbed. Neither he nor anyone else—except two persons—had known how to contact him. No one had been able to find the new Earl ofBrandon after the old earl died. What on earth had happened to lead to such severe circumstances?
“Did you always have an adversarial relationship with your father?” she asked. What sort of father, no matter how difficult his son, hisonlyson, wouldbanishhim and tell him never to return? And cut off all lines of communication.
“On the contrary, we had an extraordinarily close relationship,” he said. “Until I was twenty-two years old, that is.” He looked at her again, his face harsh and forbidding. “Donotask me what I did that was so heinous that he would cast me off forever. I daresay you have heard theories, each more hair-raising than the last. Perhaps one of them is Maria’s. I will confirm or deny none of them. Only two living people, apart from me, know the truth, and they will never divulge it because I asked them not to and they are honorable people.”
Two people. His uncle and aunt came to mind. Mr.and Mrs.Sharpe. They seemed extraordinarily fond of him and he of them. Mrs.Sharpe was his mother’s only sister. Were they also the only people who had been able to write to him at a prearranged place?
“That is fair enough,” she said.
The dog had got to his feet and gone to stand by his side. He nudged the earl’s hand with his nose until he smoothed his palm over the dog’s head and the dog whined and pressed close against his leg. It was almost, Estelle thought, as though Captain had sensed distress in his master. Or perhaps it was more than justalmost.The Earl of Brandon had been very close to his father, but he had lost him—on a moment’s notice—six years before his actual death.
Oh, she did not want to know these things about him. Yet she was not being quite honest with herself. She hadasked the questions, after all. He had not forced the information on her.
“Perhaps we ought to return to the house,” she said.
“Something occurred to me last evening,” he said, turning abruptly but ignoring her suggestion. He crossed to the bed, picked up one of the books there, and fitted it into an empty slot on a shelf of the bookcase. He stayed in front of it, his back to her. “It occurred to me that I hate Everleigh. It was once my home but ceased to be a dozen years ago. Even though it has been my property for six of those years it has never again been myhome.It just looks vaguely like it. As though someone had re-created it but omitted the soul.”
“But it is beautiful,” she protested. “I have lived in or stayed at a number of stately homes, Lord Brandon, and none have been lovelier than Everleigh, either inside or out. I have not seen more than a fraction of it all yet, it is true, but it strikes me that it comes close to being paradise on earth.”
... but omitted the soul.
Perhaps she saw it her way because she had no emotional history with the house. He did, and that made all the difference. Whatever had happened when he was twenty-two must have shattered his world. Perhaps he was bowed down with guilt now. His father had never seen him again. There had been no chance for forgiveness or absolution. Oh, what if her father had died before they could talk things through with him, she and Bertrand, and so forgive him and begin a new life of love and happiness with him and their stepmother? It was unthinkable. Their lives would be so very different—and impoverished. And lacking in wholeness.
“I have looked at my aunt, my mother’s sister, and herfamily during the past couple of days,” he said, “and remembered all the visits I have made to their house, which isperhapsone-tenth the size of Everleigh but is ten times the home Everleigh is. This is not a home at all.”
“But it could be made into one again. It is people who make a home,” she said. But she stopped there. That was precisely the point, was it not?It was once my home but ceased to be...“Everleigh oncewashome?”
He reached out and half removed a book from a shelf before pushing it back. “When my mother was alive,” he said. “When we were a family.”
“You have a sister,” she reminded him. “And you have just insisted that she return here. To a place you hate. To a house that is not a home.”
“That was the very thought that occurred to me last evening,” he said. “That I have held back from making Everleigh my own. That I have neglected to make the earldom fully my own. There are responsibilities that come with being who I am, not the least of which is caring for my sister, whom my father loved. Whom I both loved and love. It is probably time I stopped resenting what I have inherited.”
