Chelsea buns, he saw as soon as he went to the sideboard to pour himself a cup of chocolate. Plump and fresh and glistening with a liberal glazing of some sugary substance. Definitelynotlight refreshments. Irresistible, nonetheless. He put one on a plate and looked around for a group to join. Lady Maple was up, he saw, despite the fact that she had announced quite firmly last evening that she never rosebefore noon. She was in the same armchair she had occupied last night. He crossed the room and seated himself close to her. He set his cup down on the table between them.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he said. “I hope you slept well.”
“When you are my age, Brandon,” she said, “you are happy if you can say youslept.”
“Ah,” he said, realizing that the bun was sticky and he had forgotten to pick up a napkin from the sideboard. He pulled his handkerchief from a pocket. “I hope youslept, then, ma’am.”
She inclined her head regally.
Everyone else seemed to be part of a group, though there were still a few people missing. Lady Estelle Lamarr and her brother, for example. Justin wondered if she was pouring her complaints into her brother’s ear. He wondered if he would be facing pistols at dawn tomorrow.
Cousin Miriam Rogers-Hall, Aunt Augusta’s married daughter, had apparently skidded on the wet grass on the way back from the lake and had been saved from falling by two of the men, neither of whom was her husband. She was telling the story rather loudly to her group.
“It is quite a while,” she was saying, “since I hadtwohandsome men—Viscount Watley and Mr.Ernest Sharpe—with an arm about my waist and a hand clasping each of mine.”
“My ears are still ringing from the shriek you let out, Mrs.Rogers-Hall,” Nigel Dickson said, slapping a hand against the side of his face as though to restore his hearing.
Gillian and Megan Chandler, on either side of Maria, each had an arm linked through one of hers. They were strolling about the room with her as she made sure everyone had had enough to eat and drink. It was a promising sight, the three young cousins together, apparently inperfect amity with one another. Maria was looking flushed and very pretty.
“I suppose,” Lady Maple said, setting down her unfinished mug of cider beside Justin’s cup, “you want me to take your sister next spring and fire her off onto the marriage mart as I did her mother. She should take well. She has the looks and the refinement of manner, not to mention the eligibility, which is more than her mother had. It always helps to beLadySomeone. Lady Maria Wiley in her case. Daughter and sister of an Earl of Brandon.”
It had crossed Justin’s mind, especially as he could think of no one else. But he certainly would not want Maria’s great-aunt totakeher. His sister would live with him at his town house, as would be both proper and appropriate. He had thought that perhaps Lady Maple would come to stay with them for a few months or at least agree to chaperon Maria to the various social events that would fill her days once the Season began in earnest. He would have to attend many of those events himself too—perish the thought. However, he had seen since her arrival here that Lady Maple was really quite elderly. While she was not infirm, it seemed unlikely she would be up to the demands of chaperoning a young lady through her first Season.
“I do plan to take her to London next spring,” he said. “She will be twenty-one. It is rather late for her to be making her come-out, I suppose, but her mother’s illness and passing have made the delay unavoidable. I do not believe it will matter, however. She is, as you have just remarked, the daughter of an earl. I would be happy if—”
“With her mother it was more difficult, of course,” Lady Maple said, cutting him off. “Even though she was younger and twice, even three times, as beautiful and alluring as Maria is. I had to hire a voice coach to rid her of thatappalling accent you can hear now from my nephew and niece and their families. I had to teach her manners and proper etiquette and a thousand and one other things before I could even consider turning her loose upon society, the daughter of a mere cit.Before I took her to her firsttonparty I had picked out two perfectly eligible young bucks for her to choose between. I had them each to a smallish party in my own home. And both fell head over heels for her. But they were not good enough forher.I suppose she was the cause of your quarrel with your father?”
“I—” Justin was dumbfounded for a moment at the abrupt change of subject. “I do not ever talk of that, ma’am. It is old history.”
“Oh, pshaw!” She made a dismissive gesture with one heavily ringed hand. “I knew it as soon as I heard about the rift. She would have denied it if she had still been on speaking terms with me, of course, just as she always did. It was absolutely not her fault, da-da, da-da, da-da. Just as it was notherfault she and your father got locked accidentally together inside that little anteroom in the middle of her first ball when they were total strangers and were discovered an hour later, after I had raised a hue and cry and everyone was searching for her. Just as it was notherfault that she had become so overwrought at being stuck there alone with a strange gentleman that she had torn the bosom of her gown and pulled half the ringlets out of her hair.”
Justin was very thankful for many years’ practice at confining his feelings to a place deep within and presenting an impassive face to the world. Even so, he wished he could reach out a hand to clamp over her mouth or even just urge her to keep her voice down. Fortunately there was enough buzz of conversation going on around them that it was unlikely anyone had overheard.
Viscount Watley and Lady Estelle Lamarr had just come into the room together and turned toward the sideboard.
“She quarreled with me just after her wedding,” Lady Maple continued. “Told me I was a cruel, heartless woman, or words to that effect, for suggesting that she would descend to paltry trickery to satisfy her ambitions, which is something I never did myself, for all the fact that I landed Maple. I came here for the wedding and I had a good look at your father and took a good look at you—you were just a boy at the time—and at those relatives of yours, and I knew Lilian had done a wicked thing. Never in a million years would your father have married her under normal circumstances. I was not sorry when she told me she never wanted to see me again. I never wanted to seeheragain. I blamed myself, though, and Iwassorry when she quarreled with her brother and sisters too. None of us ever got to see Maria. Until now.”
Justin felt a little as he might if he were trying to chase down a runaway horse on foot. And whatwasall this? It was appalling. Could any of it be true?
“Until I went to Prospect Hall a couple of weeks ago to fetch her home, I had not seen her either since she was a child,” he said. He kept his voice low, willing Lady Maple to lower her own too. Or to speak of something else. “I am very pleased that she is back home and that—”
Where was Maria? He had lost sight of her. And of her two cousins. Perhaps they had left the room?
“It always consoled me that that child had her father,” Lady Maple said, cutting him off again—and she had not taken the hint to lower her voice. “He was a good and honorable man. And that she had you. You were just a lad when I came here, but you were a polite boy and good-natured,which was more important, and I thought you would probably be kind to a little sister.”
“I adored her from the day she was born, ma’am,” Justin told her. “She almost fit in the palm of my hand.”
Watley and his sister were drawing nearer. One glance at their faces was enough to convince Justin that they had heard every word. And was it his imagination, or had most conversations around him ceased?
“I knew as soon as I heard about the rift between you and your father that my niece must be behind it somehow,” Lady Maple continued, leaning forward in her chair to tap Justin’s hand with her lorgnette. “It was no ordinary quarrel, was it? It did not blow over with the cooling of tempers as most quarrels do. Your father was very proud of you when you were a lad, and you clearly adored him just at a time in your life when many boys begin to rebel. I remember the way you scarcely removed your eyes from him during the marriage ceremony. I thought it was good of him to have you as his best man. No, it could have been no ordinary quarrel, Brandon. Nothing—no one—could have come between you and your father but my niece. I have never doubted it for a moment. If I have one regret in life, it is that I agreed to bring her to London to introduce to theton.”
“I prefer not to talk about—” Justin began.
He was interrupted by Maria herself, who had stepped up behind his chair without his noticing. Her cousins were still with her, though she had freed her arms from theirs. What had she heard? But how could she not have heard everything?
“Oh,” she said, her voice soft and tight. “It is not true. You are a wicked, evil woman. It is not true that Mamatrapped Papa into marrying her in such adespicableway. It is alie.He saw her dancing at her very first ball, and he fell in love with her even before they were introduced. He asked her that very evening to marry him, and when she protested that she was not even a lady by birth while he was anearl, he told her that when a man fell in love, nothing else mattered. He would have married her if she had been a scullery maid, he told her. Theirs was a greatlovestory.”
“Oh, my dear child.” Lady Maple reached out with her lorgnette, but Maria pulled her arm out of its reach.
