And that was the home and the life for which he still sometimes found himself yearning. He had proved himself worthy of that life. He had gritted his teeth and refused to accept defeat and made himself fit in—until he no longer had to make the effort.
And now he had to find a way of sending a message that would comfort Ricky. And reassure him that he had not been forgotten. That he was still loved. And that Justin was safe even though Ricky was not here to protect him.
***
All the way back to the house, Estelle had been desperately hoping she would not meet anyone before she reached her room. She needed time to get her teeming thoughts and her battered emotions in order before she could even think ofputting on her social face. She had just been proposed toand kissedby a man who gave her the shivers. And it was entirely her own fault. A coolNo, thank yououtside the house earlier when he had asked if she would like to see the summerhouse would have averted all of this. So why had she not said it?
But she had not done so and that was that. And she was not going to escape, it seemed. Even before the Earl of Brandon turned away toward the stables with his dog she both heard and saw the approach of the lake party. They were hurrying back to the house, apparently in great high spirits despite the lowering sky and the discomfort of the drizzle. So she had to don her social manner after all and greet them with answering smiles and laughter as they all dashed up the marble steps to the shelter of the portico and on into the great hall.
“You are not half as wet as we are, Lady Estelle,” Gillian Chandler observed, shaking droplets of water from her skirts. “We had that horrid rain in our faces all the way back. It did not have the courtesy to go around us.” She found her own words funny. So did everyone else.
“Those of us who wagered that there was rain in those clouds,” Mr.Frederick Ormsbury, one of the Cornish cousins, said, “ought not to have allowed ourselves to be overruled by those who insisted there was not. How much did we wager?”
“I believe that was nothing. The rain deniers were afraid to take us on,” Bertrand said to the loud amusement of all.
“Thank heaven for bonnets, I say,” Rosie Sharpe said. “Though I do wish I had not worn one of my favorites.”
“What we ought to have done,” her brother Mr.Ernest Sharpe said, “was jumped in the lake and gone for a swim. We were going to get wet anyway.”
“Ugh!” Maria said to more laughter.
Estelle, smiling brightly as she shook out her skirt, met her brother’s eyes. He held her look for a moment and raised his eyebrows. Was she in for a scold? For going off alone with the earl instead of staying with the main group? But he was their host. They were all at his home. She wastwenty-five years old.
“You were wise, Lady Estelle, to go only as far as the summerhouse,” Angela Ormsbury said. “And you were even wiser to remain at the house, Mrs.Sharpe. Though we were all enjoying the walk exceedingly before the drizzle came on. That waterfall isbreathtaking, just as Mama has always said it is.”
Mrs.Sharpe, the earl’s maternal aunt, had been waiting for them in the hall with her husband and was clucking and fussing over them and urging them to run up to their rooms to change their clothes before they caught their deaths. She had taken the liberty, she told Maria, of asking for hot chocolate and hot cider to be sent to the drawing room in half an hour’s time.
“I am so glad you did, Mrs.Sharpe,” Maria said.
“Fresh Chelsea buns straight out of the oven too,” Mr.Sharpe added. “Or so your housekeeper promised us, Maria.”
“And, Maria, dear,” Mrs.Sharpe said, “you must please call us Aunt Betty and Uncle Rowan. We are, after all, yourstepaunt and -uncle, if there is such a relationship. Now, off you go. All of you.”
Even then Estelle could not fully escape. Maria slipped an arm through hers and they climbed the east staircase together while Bertrand came up behind them.
“I am sorry you felt obliged to go off to the summerhouse, Estelle, and missed the walk to the lake,” Mariasaid. “It was a lovely outing even if itdidend prematurely with the rain. It was bad of Brandon to take you away.”
“You are enjoying the company of your guests, then?” Estelle asked.
“I have little choice,” Maria said. “They are here at my home, and it would be shockingly bad mannered of me to ignore them or treat them with disdain. And it is really not difficult to be civil. They are all very amiable. I do wonder, though, if I am being disloyal to Mama. They treated her dreadfully, you know, disowning her merely because they were jealous of her. She wassoalone after Papa died and Brandon sent us away. None of them came to see her or even wrote to her.”
Estelle wondered if the late countess had written tothem.But it was a subject best left alone.
“They have come now,” she said. “And it is surely a good thing that you are giving them a chance to make your acquaintance. They are your family, after all. Even Lord Brandon’s relatives on his mother’s side want to draw you into their fold and show some affection to you. They have asked to be called uncle and aunt.”
“Even Lady Maple turned against Mama,” Maria said, stopping outside her door while Bertrand went by with merely a smile for them and disappeared into his room.
“Maria,” Estelle said, taking one of her friend’s hands in both of her own. “Is it perhaps time youtalkedwith your relatives? Asked them about what happened? It was all a long time ago, was it not? More than twenty years? They have come now to seeyou, and they all seem delighted to be here. Why not take the opportunity to mend some bridges, if it is possible? They are not evenyourbridges, are they?Talkto them. A great deal can be accomplished through frank, honest conversation. I know from personalexperience. Bertrand and I were virtually estranged from our own father from the time of our mother’s death before we were one until we were seventeen. I will not burden you with details, but the whole thing got cleared up when we talked with one another eventually, honestly and from the heart.”
Maria smiled at her. “Perhaps I will do it,” she said. “Otherwise I fear we will all have a wonderful time here for a couple of weeks, and then everyone will go home, and nothing more will ever happen. Nothing will have been resolved, and nothing will have been accomplished. Though it does seem a bit disloyal.”
She shrugged and went into her room and closed the door. And finally Estelle was able to shut herself inside her own room. She set her back against the door and closed her eyes.
She had been kissed a number of times by a number of men. Some kisses had been pleasant. A few had not. But none of them—not one—had disturbed her as had that brief one in the summerhouse half an hour or so ago. None of them had shaken her to the core. And never before today had she realized that revulsion and attraction could be so similar that it was virtually impossible to distinguish the one from the other. The very look of him repulsed her. His touch made her shudder. But she was so powerfully attracted to him that she felt as though she might well be going out of her mind. He was not even handsome. Or charming. Or refined in manner. Or...
She shook her head and opened her eyes. She was damp and uncomfortable, and the thought of hot chocolate and even of a Chelsea bun, close as it must be to luncheon, was very tempting even though getting them would mean stepping into the drawing room with her social face back on.But she was going to have to do that soon enough anyway. She could not hide out here for the next two weeks.
Olga was in her dressing room and helped her out of the wet clothes and into dry ones. She also brushed and coiled Estelle’s hair, which had remained largely dry beneath her bonnet. Estelle was soon ready to leave her room, though she hoped fervently the Earl of Brandon would not be in the drawing room. Why would he not, though, when he had been away from his guests all morning so far?
