“Emotional?” she suggested.
He considered. “Is that what I mean?” he asked her.
In her case the wanting was entirely physical. It could not possibly be anything else. She had believed him when he denied stealing his stepmother’s jewelry. But he had donesomething.And it had been so dreadful that his father, who had loved him dearly and with whom he had always been close, had banished him for life. There was, surely, only one possibility. And it was just as bad as theft. No, it was worse.
She could not want such a man in any but the most base physical way. She certainly could not marry him.
He had spent four years living and working with people he loved as dearly as he loved his own family members. He still spent time each year with them. That cottage by the stone quarry and the coarse laborer with his woman and his simpleminded brother were from a world that was alien to her. Not inferior, just... different. That madehimdifferent. How could she ever be close to him when half his life was lived in a world so different from her own that it might as well be a distant planet?
He kept vast swaths of himself to himself and presented a granite exterior to the world—at least toherpart of the world. When she married, it would have to be to a man who welcomed her with open warmth into the very depths of his being, just as she would welcome him into the depths of hers. That could never happen with this man. His years away from home and the reason he had been sent away had deeply damaged him. She could neither mend nor heal him.No one could. His father had died and stranded him in a life of guilt and probable regret. She could not, would not, take that on.
She slid her hands down to his shoulders.
“I believe it would be best for you, Lord Brandon,” she said, “if you abandoned your... courtship now. For my answer at the end of next week if you asked the question again would surely be the same as it was the last time. I want a happy, light-filled marriage when the time comes. I— Ah, pardon me. That sounded like an insult and that is not what I intended. But... I feel no joy at the prospect of being your countess.”
“Then it is a good thing you are not being asked to be my countess,” he said, releasing his hold on her and bending to pick up her bonnet and hand it to her after brushing off a few blades of grass. “Not yet, anyway. Perhaps over the next week I can cause you to feel a little more joyful at the thought. No. A little would not suffice, would it? I shall see if I can fill you to the brim with light and joy at the idea of marrying me.”
And suddenly she wanted to weep. The light had gone from his life when his mother died, he had once told her, but he had remained close to his father, who sounded like a kind, honorable man from what she had heard of him. He had been planning a summer holiday in Cornwall with his son just before he had married his second wife instead. Had joy deserted Justin forever after he had committed some heinous sin at the age of twenty-two and broken his father’s heart? Was he grasping for a return of it now—with her?
It could not be done.
She put on her bonnet and tied the ribbons beneath her chin before turning without another word. Captain was lying at the bend in the middle of the bridge, his head up,watching them. He scrambled to his feet, waited for her to come up to him and run a hand over his huge head, and then went trotting off ahead of her.
Estelle made her way back to the house. The Earl of Brandon fell into step at her side but did not offer his arm. Or any conversation. They walked beside the river in silence, and she wondered if despite herself she was in love with him.
***
Justin settled Captain in the stables and paused to have a chat with a few of the cousins who had returned from a ride half an hour or so before and were gathered at the rail of the paddock, watching one of the grooms put a new horse through its paces. On his return to the house he went to the library to check the day’s mail.
The library, normally a quiet haven, had been invaded. His uncle Rowan was in there facing one of the bookcases, his nose in a book he had drawn from one of the shelves. Nigel Dickson was standing not far from him, a sheet of paper in his hand. Viscount Watley was sitting in one of the leather chairs by the fireplace, reading. Angela Ormsbury, Aunt Felicity’s daughter, sat on the companion chair at the other side of the fireplace, frowning down at the book she held, though it was not clear if she frowned because she was deeply absorbed or because she disapproved of what she was reading.
“I say,” Nigel said eagerly when he saw Justin. “Mr.Sharpe has been as good as his word, Lord Brandon. He has made lists of recommended books for us. Yours is on the desk. This is mine.” He waved the page he held. “I cannot wait to get Pa to take me to my favorite bookshop inYork. I daresay I will spend the whole of my allowance there and not even make a dent in the list.”
“Those books do not all have to be read in a month,” Uncle Rowan said with an affable smile for the young man. “It takes a lifetime to get to the end of a good reading list. More than a lifetime, in fact, but a lifetime is all any of us has. And what a horror story it would be if wedidrun out of everything worth reading. What would we do then? Your list is a bit different, Justin. I tried to avoid adding books I can see are already here.”
“Thank you.” Justin took a quick look before putting the list away in a top drawer. “I shall take it with me the next time I go to London.”
He sat down at the desk and had a quick look through the pile of mail stacked there, mostly official estate business his secretary had already dealt with. There were two personal letters as well, though, one of them from Maria’s aunt Sarah, addressed to him. She and her husband were enjoying their tour of Scotland, she had written, but they were very sorry it had coincided with the house party at Everleigh. She hoped it would be convenient to him and her niece if they invited themselves there sometime after their return. She would write again later.
“It would be so wonderful to meet Maria and to see you again,”she had written.“I remember that you were very kind to me when I was at Everleigh for Lilian’s wedding to your father—who was also extremely kind, by the way. I recall being quite terrified because you were aristocrats and lived in a vast mansion, and I was just fifteen. But you befriended me, although you were only thirteen yourself, and made sure I relaxed and enjoyed myself.”
Despite the fact that he had been horribly bewilderedand upset at the time of that wedding, Justin could remember liking his new stepmother’s family, who were all very different from her. They had been hearty and warm and genuine and comfortable in their own less-than-aristocratic identities—and yes, a bit awed by their surroundings and in need of some reassurance.
“A letter from your aunt Sarah you may be interested in reading,” he said, handing it to Nigel. “She seems to be enjoying herself in Scotland.”
His other letter was addressed in Hilda’s handwriting. Justin wondered as he picked it up and broke the seal if his own letter had reached them before she wrote. Was Rickystillupset that he had failed to come in July?
It was a brief note. His own letterhadarrived, and Hilda had read it to Ricky and he had run from the house.“And that was the last we have seen of him, Juss. He is gone and we are frantic,”she had written. There was no sign of him anywhere, and no one had seen him. He had never been farther from home than a few miles in any direction, but where could he be? He had no money on him that they knew of, or anything else except the clothes he was wearing. But he was gone without a trace. Theonlything they could think of now—Hilda had both capitalized and heavily underlined the one word—was that he had gone to see Justin since Justin had not come to see him.
“But how would he know where to go?”she had written.“How would he get there even if he did know? How would he manage without any money? And without someone to look after him? He won’t be able to manage, and that is that. But it is all we can think of, Juss. We are at our wits’ end. Wes is beside himself. He is running around in circles. And all the men from the quarry and all the neighbors are out looking.”
“It is grand that they intend coming here later,” Nigel said, setting his aunt’s letter down on the desk. “Aunt Sarah and Maria will surely like each other. I’ll go find Pa and Aunt Patricia and tell them the Scottish tour is going well.”
Justin smiled vacantly as the boy left the room, still clutching his precious book list, all youthful exuberance.
Justin’s hands were tingling as he set down Hilda’s letter. He could remember once when he had gone to the grotto by the waterfall without telling anyone and had fallen asleep there after playing for a while. It had been after dark when one of the gardeners had found him and carried him home to his parents, both of whom had been outside while search parties went in every direction. They were both so frantic that even Justin’s five-year-old self had recognized the blind, helpless panic that consumed them. That was what Wes and Hildy would be feeling now for Ricky. It was whathewas feeling. He felt sick to his stomach and wanted to dash off... But where?
Good God, could they possibly be right? But they would not have written to him until they had exhausted all other possibilities. And they had not searched alone. Friends, neighbors, fellow workers—everybodywould have turned over every stone and forked over every haystack and searched every barn.
