He had read and reread the extraordinary letter with amazed incredulity.Harassment?Could she hate him so much? It was obvious she could and did.
Did she realize, though, that the money her mother had left her was in trust with him for another five years? Did she understand that he was her legal guardian?
He had thought himself hardened against everything life could possibly hurl his way. He had had long practice, after all. But Maria had found a small chink in his armor. She was all that was left of what he had once valued, of what he had once loved.
A long, long time ago.
A lifetime or two ago.
There was a cluster of cottages up ahead on one side of the track. A picturesque stone manor stood alone on the other side, set back some distance from the road within a large garden of lawns and trellises and roses and myriad other flowers. This must be Prospect Hall.
Even now he considered turning back or simply riding on by. Being hated wore upon one. He was, however, long inured to such pain. He turned onto the wide graveled pathway that led through an open gate and along beside the manor to a stable block behind and to one side of it.
He wondered if in her wildest nightmares Maria expected him to come here in person to fetch her home. But she had given him no choice.
Two
It rained heavily and relentlessly the following day, from the middle of the morning on. But, disappointing as it was, a rainy day had its own beauty. Estelle was sitting on the window seat in the study, her favorite room in the house, with her back against a cushion, her feet flat on the padded sill, her knees drawn up before her. She had an open book propped against her legs but was no longer reading it. She was watching the rain slanting against the backdrop of the tall trees in the distance, beyond the lawn and the parterres. The wind was bowing the branches. The grass was emerald green and a bit overlong, though it was not yet unruly. It was the way she liked it best, actually, just before it was scythed. Though she did love the smell of newly cut grass too.
She turned her head to look at her brother. He was inelegantly slouched in the ancient leather chair before the fireplace, though the fire had not been lit. Aunt Jane would have frowned at his posture, yet there was a certain graceto it, as there was to his every movement. He was long and lean, just as she was on a smaller scale and with a few feminine curves thrown in. He was darkly handsome. Charming too, with a smile that could warm a room. She had seen the effect it had upon London drawing rooms and ballrooms. Men instinctively liked him, and women of all ages melted before him in droves. Young women almost visibly fell in love with him on sight. It really was not much of an exaggeration. The fact that he was Viscount Watley, heir to a marquess’s title and fortune, was no doubt part of his appeal, but it was only a small part. It was his person that attracted. Yet he never flirted or sent out deliberate lures—not in Estelle’s experience anyway. There was no vanity in him.
His long legs were stretched out before him now, one of his booted feet braced against the hearth. One elbow rested on the arm of his chair while his fingers played absently with his hair, which was slightly ruffled on that side. The other hand turned the pages of his book, in which he had been deeply engrossed for more than an hour. It was, she knew, some ancient Greek play—in Greek. It lost something in translation, he had explained when she had pointed out that there was a highly rated English version of the same play on one of the bookshelves.
He sensed her eyes upon him and looked up to smile at her. “Still raining?” he asked.
“Is the world still turning?” she replied.
He laughed. “Itwasa foolish question,” he admitted. “It feels good to be quiet again, does it not? Just the two of us?”
“It does,” she said.
“Though that sounds disloyal to our aunt and uncle,” he added, setting his book facedown across his lap. “It was good having them here.”
“It was,” she said. “And Aunt Annemarie and Uncle William last month.” Annemarie Cornish was their father’s sister. “And seeing Papa and Mother and all the Westcotts at Hinsford and in London during the spring. It was all lovely. But yes, Bert, it feelsverygood to be quiet and alone here again with all the autumn and winter to look forward to. I think we must be hopeless cases.”
“Not hermits, but close.” He smiled again and hesitated before continuing. “Do you ever feel damaged, Stell?”
Oh!Where hadthatcome from? The question had hovered between them for years but had never actually been put into words by either of them. Until now. Right out of the blue. Or, rather, right out of the gray and the rain.Damaged.
“By our upbringing?” But it was the only thing he could mean. There was a longish pause while she gave her answer some thought and they stared across the room at each other. “No. Notdamaged.It is the wrong word.Influenced, yes. Of course. All adults are influenced by their childhood and youth. It would be impossible not to be. For some people those growing years are difficult. Oh, I suppose they are for all people to greater or lesser degrees. There is surely no such thing as a perfectly idyllic childhood. And if there were, it would perhaps be a poor preparation for adulthood. But... Even difficult childhoods are not alwaysdamaging.They can be just the opposite, in fact. They can build character and understanding and even wisdom. And fortitude.”
“Mama stumbled over the hem of her dressing gown and tried to steady herself with a hand against the wall behind her,” he said. “Except that she set her hand where the window would have been if Papa had not opened it earlier.”
And fell to her death. It had happened upstairs in this very house, in what had then been the nursery, hers andBertrand’s, early one morning while their father was rocking them to sleep. They had been cutting teeth.
“It ought not to have happened,” Bertrand added.
“But it did,” she said. “I wish I remembered her. She had us for almost a whole year, held us, fed us, laughed with us, played with us. Why is it we do not start remembering things right from the moment of our birth?”
“Have you forgiven our father?” he asked. “I meanreallyforgiven him?”
“Papa?” she said. Quite frequently now Bertrand called him that. Sometimes, though, he still referred to him asFather.“Yes, Bert. I have. For opening that window, of course. He could not have predicted... It was pure accident. But yes, for the rest of it too. He cannot go back to change the sixteen years following Mama’s death, though I believe he would if he could. That is always the trouble with life, is it not? We cannot go back, even by as much as a day or an hour, to change something we said or did, or something we didnotsay or do. Or everything that resulted from those words and deeds. I have asked myself what might have happened if Aunt Jane and Uncle Charles had not come here and stayed and taken over our upbringing and really done a pretty commendable job of it. Every time Papa came home, he must have seen that we were well cared for, with a substitute mother and father and even older cousins as a substitute brother and sister. And we never complained to him. We never evenspoketo him unless he spoke to us. He must have felt like an intruder. Like a failure. He must have convinced himself—he has told us he did—that we were far better off without him.”
“He was wrong,” Bertrand said.
“He was,” she agreed. “And of course he ought to have known better. But he cannot go back. Neither can we. Isometimes wonder what might have happened if during one of his visits we had thrown ourselves upon him and begged him to stay or to take us with him. But we never did. We had been taught to behave with quiet decorum, to be seen and not heard. And we doubted his love. So we can never know what might have happened.We cannot go back.”
“No,” he agreed.
