“Continue?” she said. “Have I started?”
Maria was approaching them. She had already seated most of the other guests. “Lord Watley,” she said, “would you care to sit beside my aunt Margaret atthattable?” She indicated it. “And, Estelle, will you sit with my cousin Megan? She admires you greatly but is also a bit in awe of the fact that you are the daughter of amarquess.”
Servants were bringing in plates of sandwiches and scones and various dainties. Others were carrying in teapots and hot water jugs.
They took their places and Estelle spread her linen napkin across her lap. She turned to make conversation with the very young, blushing daughter of Mr.and Mrs.Chandler.
The Earl of Brandon’s best friend had been—and still was?—a man from a tavern somewhere who had taken exception to his cultured accent, got into a brawl with him for no other reason than that, and broken his nose.
Really?
Estelle would be willing to bet the earl had not been so large and well muscled at that period of his life. So what had happened during those years? Where had he gone? What had he done? What had he lived on? What had he been like before? He had told stories to his young sister out in the summerhouse. He had entertained her and other little girls with a magic act at a birthday party. He had told a man at a tavern not to molest the barmaid.
Who exactlywasthe Earl of Brandon?
“Which was your favorite room?” she asked Megan, and determinedly gave the girl the whole of her attention.
Twelve
The weather remained fine for the next few days, and Justin found that his guests did not need to be entertained at every moment. There was much to explore and much to do, both indoors and out, and most of them were content to do it all in small unstructured groups.
The disaster that had happened in the drawing room on the first full morning of their stay seemed to have had no serious consequences. Maria’s apology at luncheon afterward had undoubtedly helped, and everyone’s determination to put the embarrassment out of their minds made it possible to carry on as though none of it had happened.
But almost everyone now probably believed he was a thief, Justin thought, and a cruel one at that. There was nothing he could do about it, though, since he was certainly not going to tell the truth. All he could do was continue regardless. As for what Lady Maple had said about his father having been trapped into marrying her niece... Well,that also must be set aside for now and pondered at some later date.
If her story was true, though, it would change a great deal.Everything, in fact.
Meanwhile the house party continued.
The children’s early-morning ride and playtime with Captain became a daily event and sometimes included more than just the original two. There were also Olwen and David Ormsbury, aged five and three, children of Justin’s cousin Bevin and Esme, his wife. All of them enjoyed the usual activities as well as trudging out to the sheep pens to watch the sheep and lambs being released and led out to their pastures. They all enjoyed being taken to the smithy out behind the stables to watch the blacksmith at work at his anvil.
And at other times of the day the children never tired of running through the maze and getting hopelessly lost. Even when by sheer accident they arrived at the center, it was still difficult to find their way back out. Some of the young people tried it too and fared no better. Even Watley got lost when Gillian Chandler and Rosie Sharpe persuaded him to go in with them because they were scared to go alone. They had giggled and clung to his arms and looked anything but scared.
Justin took a party of youngsters up over the wilderness walk behind the house one morning. Some of them had pulled faces at the initial suggestion, and he had agreed with them that they might indeed be wise not to come. It involved the climbing of a few steep slopes that might tire them needlessly, after all, and even a bit of a scramble up a rocky series of steps that were not for the faint of heart. Also there was a tall lookout tower near the top with darkstone stairs spiraling about the inside of it that might be too scary for some. And there was a hollow dragon amid some dark, dense trees that one could climb right inside if one could get up the courage. Then one could roar to create deep, hollow echoes that would scare birds and wildlife and unwary passersby for miles around. There was one lookout point that offered a view of a church spire all of twelve miles away down the valley, if one could imagine being able to see such a distance. He would take a telescope for anyone who wished to verify that it was indeed a spire with what looked like a miniature church below it. At the end of the walk, he told them, there was an easy way down a gently sloping path, and there was a dangerous, scary way down a sheerer, grassy slope. They would doubtless consider rolling down it beneath their dignity, of course. They were undoubtedly right to turn up their noses and go find some safer, more sedate amusement elsewhere.
Everyone below the age of thirty joined the walk, as did Justin’s cousins Ernest and Sidney, who remembered persuading Doris to climb those steps inside the tower when they were all children, though they had had to half carry her down again. She might otherwise have stayed up there for the rest of her life.
Captain went too, and the children enjoyed making him bark and bare his teeth at the roaring dragon.
They all gazed wistfully at the long, steep slope down one side of the hill, which provided a superb sledding run when it snowed.
Almost everyone went to church on Sunday morning, and during the following days Maria received several neighbors, who came to pay their respects to her and the guests. A few of the older ones remembered Aunt Augustaand Aunt Felicity and were happy to reminisce with them while their children listened and laughed. One of those visitors, Lady Jemima Hodgkins, had been a particular friend of Justin’s aunts when they were all girls—they both called her Jim, while they were Gussie and Fliss.Her call had to be returned, and the aunts went off to visit her one afternoon, taking Maria and Paulette Ormsbury with them.
It pleased Justin to think that his sister would not be entirely alone after all the guests had returned home but would be a part of the community as mistress of Everleigh and could be a social leader in the neighborhood if she chose to be.
They all occupied themselves in the evenings with conversation and cards. Once they engaged in a spirited game of charades. Often there was music, though none of them pretended to any extraordinary talent.
And just occasionally it was possible for Justin to steal an hour or so to be alone out at the summerhouse without feeling that he was neglecting anyone. He varied his destination one afternoon, however, after he had spent the morning leading a group through the portrait gallery in the north wing and then taking those who had a head for heights up to the balcony that surrounded the base of the dome. After luncheon he collected Captain from the stables and took him for a walk to the lake.
He had written a letter to Ricky a few days before and sent it by special messenger. Hilda would read it to him. Justin had explained that he had not come during July because he had needed to go in search of his sister to bring her home.“But it hurts my heart that I will be unable to see you in person for a while,”he had written.“I will come as soon as I possibly can, Ricky, but I cannot say exactlywhen. I think of you every day and miss you every hour.”He had sent his love and asked Ricky to tell Wes and Hilda that he sent love to them too.
It was not a fully satisfactory explanation. Ricky had a very literal mind. When one told him one would come in July, he expected that one would make an appearance on one of those thirty-one days—and somehow he always knew what month it was and what day of that month. He could not think in abstractions.For a whileandas soon as I possibly canwould very likely mean to him that Justin was not coming for a long time, that therefore Justin did not really love him. Perhaps the mention of a sister would wound him more than it would console, suggesting as it might that Justin’s sister meant more to him than Ricky did.
Justin did not know quite why Ricky had grown so attached to him during those years. Perhaps it was because he had always believed he was the protector and Justin the one in need of protection. It had been a novel role for him. He was the one who had first invited Justin inside Wes’s house. It was he who had offered—with a huge, anxious eagerness, lest Wes and Hilda forbid it—that Justin share the loft with him, with a curtain between the two halves to mark their territory. Ricky had loved the fact that they could talk after they went to bed at night and that Justin would actually listen to him—and respond. He had loved settling in his bed and telling Justin about the new ducklings on the village pond or how Hildy could not believe he had chopped so much wood all in one morning or how the village baker had given him a currant cake all for himself after he had swept off the step of the bakery without being asked but how he had brought half the cake home for Hildy because she was always givinghimfood and it was nice to give back. He had assured Justin very kindly that he did notlookveryugly with his broken nose even though Wes had said he did that very evening. Ricky told Justin he would love him forever and ever even if hedidhave a bust nose.
When he had left Wes’s house and his job at the quarry to return to Everleigh, he ought perhaps to have said a firm and final goodbye to them all, Justin thought as he picked up a broad stick Captain had brought and deposited at his feet and hurled it as far as he could. His dog tore after it. It would have been ultimately easier on Ricky, easier on him.
But an idea had been forming in his head ever since he read Wes’s letter. He did not know how workable it would be, or how desirable to his elderly blacksmith, whom it would involve. It was not always wise to try playing God with other people’s lives, after all. Sometimes it was necessary, as with his forcing Maria to leave Prospect Hall to return here. At other times it was not. And it was never wise to act impulsively. Just consider his marriage proposal, as a case in point. He stood on the bank of the lake, gazing out across it, occasionally stooping to pick up the stick, wrestle with a playfully snarling Captain for possession of it, and then hurl it into the distance.
