“No doubt when a king sleeps here,” Mr.Martin Haig, Doris’s husband, said, “he hangs his crown on the bedpost and exchanges it for a scarlet nightcap.”
“With a gold tassel,” Mr.Chandler added.
“And his courtiers gather around him in the morning for the levee,” Mr.Bevin Ormsbury said.
“But not too early,” Ernest Sharpe said, looking down at Estelle and winking. “Never before noon. One can only hope that none of them have arthritic knees when it comes to climbing those steps.”
“One must hope the present king never sleeps here,” Mr.Dickson added. “He has arthriticeverything, does he not?”
“Oh, do hush, Leonard,” his wife told him, laughing. “You will end up in a dungeon deep beneath the Tower of London.”
“And I will carry forever the shame of having had a brother beheaded for treason,” Mrs.Chandler added.
There was a great deal of such quipping and laughter. Oh, shedidlike silliness, Estelle thought, when it drew a group together and caused general amusement without any suggestion of malice.
“If King George ever does decide to honor my humble abode with his presence,” the earl said, “I daresay I will have to have a sling lift installed to convey him to bed at night and out of it the following morning—afternoon.”
He had a sense of humor too, Estelle admitted grudgingly. But of course he did. He had invented that accidental hero, had he not?
“It is all really quitemagnificent, Justin,” Mrs.Sharpe, his aunt, assured him. “I never tire of seeing these rooms.”
They all looked avidly about them as they moved from room to room, oohing and aahing at the splendor of it all. There were three connected rooms in the center of thewing, a grand, square, high-ceilinged reception room in the middle, with half-square sitting rooms on either side. The latter were mirror images of each other in both decoration and furnishings. Young Rosie Sharpe and Nigel Dickson and Paulette Ormsbury ran several times across the central room to peer into each smaller room in turn to confirm that yes, they really were mirror images, down to the finest detail—even the arrangement of the furniture.
All three rooms had coved gilded ceilings with painted scenes from mythology and crystal chandeliers, the ones in the sitting rooms exactly half the size of the one in the reception room in the middle. The floors were covered with Persian carpets rimmed with highly polished wood. All three rooms were furnished in the slightly faded elegance of the previous century.
The Earl of Brandon was a good tour guide. He gave enough information to draw everyone’s attention to features of each apartment they might not otherwise have noticed and to set it all in historical context. He pointed out to them, for example, that two of the cherubs in the mythological scene on the ceiling of the large square reception room had the faces of the young sons of the earl who had built the house. And one of the cherubs in each of the twin rooms on either side had the face of a daughter of his. The guests all acquired stiff necks from gazing up at the likenesses. Yet the earl did not drone on about every little detail as some guides did until their listeners were ready to scream with boredom.
Even so, Estelle’s mind was feeling close to bursting by the time the group moved on to the state dining room, all chatting merrily. She slid her hand unobtrusively from Ernest’s arm and let him go ahead with everyone else while she wandered to the window of one of the smaller sittingrooms—thoughsmallerwas a relative term in a wing of the house that was designed to convey the impression of size and grandeur.
A grand house’s kitchen gardens were usually behind it. That was not so here. The hill against which the house had been built sloped gradually upward. It was largely covered with trees, though near the house was mostly low bushes—azaleas, rhododendrons, others she could not immediately identify—and there were flowers planted among them to give the appearance of their being wild though they were not. It was a clever piece of gardening, contrasting pleasingly with the cultivated formality of the parterres and lawns and walking paths at the front—and the fields and meadows to the east of the summerhouse. She had still seen only a fraction of the whole park during the twenty-four hours she had been here. She had not even seen the lake yet, except off in the distance while she and Bertrand were descending the hill opposite.
She might have been mistress of all this, she realized suddenly. Ah, but at what a cost.
“This hill looks at its absolute best,” the Earl of Brandon said from behind her shoulder, making her almost jump with alarm, “when the bluebells are blooming among the trees. They form a carpet of blue just when the leaves on the trees are at their freshest spring green.”
Estelle hunched her shoulders for a moment. She did not turn. He had a deep voice, a bit gravelly. A rather attractive voice, she conceded—if one had never seen the man or had any dealings with him or if one did not know that he had done something so villainous as a younger man that his father had banished him from his home...thishome—and never reprieved him. Jewel theft, perhaps? She really didnot know if she believed that story. But even if it was not that, it wassomething.
She had already conceded, though, had she not, that she might be attracted to him? Whatever did that say about her?
“I love bluebells,” she said.
“Sometimes,” he said, “one could wish to grasp time within one’s two hands and hold it there for a good long while before releasing it. The bluebells bloom all too fleetingly.”
“But there are the snowdrops and primroses before them,” she said, “and the roses and so much else after. Everything is precious in its season. Perhaps we would be less appreciative if we had the bluebells with us all year long.”
“The voice of good sense,” he said. “But you are right. If we could find a way to manipulate time or weather to suit our preferences, can you imagine the wars that would have to be fought against people with different preferences?”
“Farmers with their pitchforks wanting rain for their crops against the idle rich with their dress swords wanting sunshine for their spas and seaside promenades?” she said.
They both laughed.
It was a horrible moment. She had no wish to enjoy any moment of shared amusement with this man.
“I owe you an apology, Lady Estelle,” he said.
Two robins had landed on a frail branch of one of the trees near the house. It swayed beneath them, like a swing. They did not fly away to a steadier perch, though, and it occurred to Estelle that perhaps they were enjoying themselves.Couldbirds enjoy themselves? But why not?
Had there not already been apologies enough for one day? This was at least to be a private one.
