“No,” Estelle said.
“I needed to know why none of them have been in my life until now,” she said. “I needed to know what their relationship with my mother was and why everyone quarreled with her—or she with them. I needed to know how they felt about me, my mother’s daughter. I have provoked those conversations. No one bears any grudge against me, Estelle. And I bear none against any of them. I reallylikehaving cousins who are close to me in age. I believe some of them, perhaps even most, will be real friends even after they have gone home. We will be able to write to one another. Some of them want me to visit them. I think some will visit me here again. And my aunts and uncles, even Mr.and Mrs.Sharpe, who are now Uncle Rowan and Aunt Betty, have affection to give. It makes me happy. I have always envied you your large extended family and all the things you do with them.”
“I am happier for you than I can say,” Estelle said, smiling at her. “You have been very brave in taking the initiative as you have.”
“But it is only because you are here,” Maria told her, plumping the cushions on the sofa before sitting down. “You and Lord Watley. I have tried hard not to cling to either of you. Or to hide in your shadow. It has been tempting, for you are both so confident and poised in manner. But you cannot know the sense of relief I feel every time I seeeither one of you. You look...familiar.You look likefriends.You give me courage even without a word spoken. I will never forget that you came here for my sake even though I strongly suspected you did not reallywantto come. I think perhaps you did it because you knew Melanie was leaving me.”
“You had a letter from her this morning?” Estelle said.
“Oh, yes,” Maria said. “I did not have a chance to read it until after luncheon. She is very busy helping with all the children. Her mother is not at all well after her last confinement. Oh, and Mr.Sheridan is still unmarried, and he has called at the house every second day since Melanie’s return—to see how her mother does.” She laughed.
“Mr.Sheridan?” Estelle raised her eyebrows.
“The gentleman farmer Melanie refused when she was eighteen,” Maria explained. “She thought he had asked out of pity then because her papa does not have a great fortune and there was already talk of her having to seek a position as a governess. But he has not married in the meanwhile, Estelle, and now he isback.”
“You think you smell a romance,” Estelle said, and they grinned at each other.
“Even from this far away,” Maria said. “She says—”
But Estelle was not to hear what Melanie Vane had said concerning Mr.Sheridan. A tap on the sitting room door preceded the arrival of the tea tray. It was Lord Brandon who had opened the door for the footman who carried it. He waited at the door to admit Bertrand and then close it after the footman left.
None of them spoke while Bertrand came to sit beside Estelle on a love seat and Maria poured the tea. Lord Brandon, predictably, took up a stand before the fireplace, his back to it, his hands clasped behind him.
“I will set your tea here,” Maria said without looking at her brother. She put his cup and saucer down on the small table beside an armchair close to him.
“Thank you,” he said.
She sat on the sofa and looked at him. “All the aunts and uncles—mine, yours, ours—remember you as a cheerful, kindly boy,” she said. “It is how I remember you too, though you never seemed like a boy to me. You always seemed like a grown-up.”
“That was all a long time ago,” he said.
“Yes.” She picked up her own cup but changed her mind and set it back down on the saucer. “You have denied taking Mama’s jewelry. The Sharpes and our Ormsbury relatives believe you. So does Lady Maple, Great-aunt Bertha. None of them think it would have been in your nature to do such a thing. Uncle Peter, Lord Crowther, said it would have been unkind, even cruel, as well as dishonest, and he did not believe you to be capable of any of those three.”
She looked at him briefly, but he made no comment.
“I have not asked my own aunts and uncles, as they met you only briefly at Mama and Papa’s wedding,” Maria continued. “Though they all—except Uncle Irwin, who was not yet married to Aunt Patricia at the time—remember you as a kindhearted boy who went out of your way to make them feel welcome here.”
“But what doyoubelieve, Maria?” Lord Brandon asked.
“If it was not theft, then whatwasit?” she cried in a sudden passion. “Whathappened, Brandon? I want to know the truth. Ineedto know. I have observed you yesterday and today, distraught over the disappearance of someone most men of your rank would not evennotice, any more than they would a worm at their feet, let alone care about and get upset over. I have seen that you care deeply, bothfor him and for his brother and the woman with whom he lives, presumablynothis wedded wife. I have seen you willing to bare your soul to all the relatives and neighbors. Even to the servants. All for the sake of a man with the mind of a child and for that of his relatives, who are frantic because he is missing. You have been behaving, in fact, as I would have expected you to do all those years ago. You have been behaving like a man of conscience and kindness.”
There was a silence none of them seemed prepared to break.
“But there was that theft and its consequences,” Maria said at last. “And I want you to tell me what happened. I want you to tell Viscount Watley and Lady Estelle so there can be no chance of any misunderstanding between the two of us. Tell me.”
He inhaled deeply and let the breath out with a ragged sigh. “It was something very personal between my father and me, Maria,” he said. “It had nothing to do with—”
“No!”She cut him off, and her eyes were flashing. “That isnotgood enough, Brandon. Papa wasmyfather too. He was notyourfather. He wasours.You weremy brother.Whatever it was that happened, it concerned my mother. I was only eight years old at the time. I understand why no one explained to me immediately what had happened. I was achild.But I am twenty years old now and can no longer be shut out of knowing what happened tomy family.Something did, and it broke everything apart. Even my childhood self knew that.”
He sighed again. “I was playing with you that morning,” he said. “Hide-and-seek. It was always one of your favorites, though you could never keep quiet when I was drawing close to your hiding place. You would start to giggle and Iwould pretend not to know from where the sounds were coming. Then you would burst out into the open just as I was about to pounce and run away, shrieking, while I took my time about chasing you down. It was all part of the game.” He sighed. “On that particular morning you dashed into your mother’s room, and after a few moments I dashed in there too—without knocking. I had seen your mother not long before at the escritoire in the morning room, reading a letter and preparing to answer it. But... she was in her room after all. You were not. You had darted into her dressing room and back out into the corridor and away, I suppose. I was horribly embarrassed and apologized profusely and would have left the way I had come without further delay, but our father came through from his dressing room and saw me there and was furiously angry that I had intruded upon your mother’s privacy without even knocking. He sent me down to the library and followed me there. He said my behavior was inexcusable, and he... sent me away.”
The Earl of Brandon, Estelle thought as the silence following his words lengthened, was not a convincing liar.
Maria had moved to the edge of her seat and was gazing incredulously at him. “You expect me to believe that Papa, who had always so openly adored you,banishedyou and never relented for the rest of his life because you had committed the indiscretion of chasing after me and bursting in upon Mama without first knocking on her door?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said after a pause. “It is what happened.”
It probablywaswhat had happened, Estelle thought. It was undoubtedly notallthat had happened, however.
