“Why would I need to forgive him?” he asked her. “I was the transgressor. He punished me with banishment.”
“For something you could not possibly explain to him,” she said. “Not without accusing your stepmother. Your father’s wife. Maria’s mother. That is the truth of it, is it not? You sacrificed yourself so that his life would not be impossibly wrecked. So that Maria’s would not be.”
“You would make a saint of me, would you?” he said. “I was furious with him. For not seeing the truth himself. For having married her—after he had been married tomy mother.They were not just different sorts of women. They were more like differentspecies.But he married her, and he always—always—treated her with unfailing courtesy. Forgive me, Lady Estelle, but I have said enough. More than enough. He was myfather.Maria ismy sister.”
“I think perhaps,” she said, “you were and are very like your father.”
He did not reply.
“Do you think he probably suspected the truth?” she asked. “Even knew it? Do you think he expected that you would go and live with one of your aunts? Or find some respectable employment with their assistance? Was his intention to remove you from a place and a situation that were intolerable to you—and to him? Did he never expect that he would lose all communication with you?”
“Howthe devilam I supposed to know what he expected or intended orthought?” he asked her.
“But instead,” she said, “you went off on your own and worked at any menial job you could find until you ended up at the stone quarry and made your home there. And your family. I suppose your aunt and uncle had promised to say nothing of your whereabouts or of the place where they sent you letters. Was it your way of punishing your father?”
He wheeled on her. Beneath the brim of his tall hat his eyes looked black and bleak. Just a few weeks ago Estelle would have been frightened. She might have taken a step back.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. That isexactlywhat I was doing. Thank you for making me understand that. I had not realized it until this moment. And you were quite right a few minutes ago too, Lady Estelle. No one is innocent. But how can I forgive my father now? He is dead. How can he forgive me now?He is dead.”
They stood facing each other for several moments, his breathing labored as he glared at her, and she gazed back. He reminded her a good deal of her father as he had been during those weeks after Viola had broken off their betrothal and he was at home with her and Bertrand, determined to be there for them at last but still bearing the burden of his guilt and loneliness. Wanting to let them in but not knowing quite how to do it. Wanting forgiveness. Wanting Viola but punishing himself by not going after her.
Lord Brandon turned away first, and they stood side by side, gazing out over the countryside mapped out below them stretching west, south, and north. There was little to see except fields and pasture, sheep, a few cattle, some huddles of farm buildings. Almost no people. There was a cart in the middle distance, driven by a man with a womanat his side. It looked as though she was holding an infant on her lap. There were three children standing on the bars of a gate not far off, watching the sheep on the other side.
“Ricky,” the Earl of Brandon murmured. “Where are you?”
Estelle touched his hand, and without turning to look at her he set his arm about her waist and drew her to his side. She did not believe he was even fully aware that he was doing it. His dog had settled, panting, at their feet.
“He was always the peacemaker,” Lord Brandon said. “You must not imagine that life in that cottage was some sort of rural idyll. Wes and Hilda used to quarrel occasionally, and quite noisily at times. Wes sometimes bickered with me and I bickered right back. Ricky would say things like‘You weren’t nice to Hildy, Wes. She didn’t mean to burn the crust on the pie. You ought to say sorry.’Or‘You needn’t get cross with Wes, Juss, because he can’t read those words. He’s trying. You ought to say sorry.’And dash it all, we always did. No one ever lost their temper with Ricky. Or got impatient with him. Or made fun of him. There was a great deal of love in that house too.”
“It was a family,” she said. For four years it had beenhisfamily. It still was.
“Please, God,” he muttered a while later, and his eyes were closed and his head tipped back, Estelle could see when she turned her head. “Let him be found. Let him be safe.”
Estelle leaned her head to the side and rested her cheek against his shoulder.
***
The next day the sun was shining, the air was suddenly almost hot again, and Maria suggested they cheer themselves up with a picnic at the lake after luncheon. They allwent, even Lady Maple, who rode there in a gig with Mrs.Chandler, her niece, while Mr.Chandler carried a chair for her, having brushed off the services of a footman. A whole fleet of servants carried their tea out there in large hampers, however, and spread big colorful blankets on the grass for them to sit upon.
It was a lovely occasion, Estelle thought, and surely something that ought to have been happening every summer for years past. The three distinct family groups had mingled well from the start of this visit and were enjoying one another’s company today. One person had kept them apart until now—the late countess. What an unhappy woman she must have been. And what unhappiness she had spread around her.
The boat was brought out of the boathouse, and rides were given in relays, the various rowers being the earl, Ernest Sharpe, and Bertrand. Estelle stayed away from it, having always been of the opinion that water was best appreciated from the safety of firm land beneath her feet, or beneath some part of her person, anyway. A few of the younger people—Paulette Ormsbury, Megan and Wallace Chandler, Nigel Dickson, and Rosie Sharpe—went swimming, though they did more splashing and shrieking and laughing than actual swimming. The young children surprised their parents by being more interested in playing in the grotto than in frolicking in the water.
Some people strolled along the banks of the lake, on both sides of the bridge. Maria stood right on the bridge for a long time, gazing at the waterfall, her cousins Angela and Frederick Ormsbury on either side of her. Gillian Chandler and Sidney Sharpe climbed partway up the steep hill on the other side of the waterfall from the grotto while both their mothers kept anxious eyes upon them, though neither—toher credit—called out to them to come down. A few people simply sat and soaked up the heat and the sunshine and chatted with whoever happened to be close.
Captain, reclining upon a flat rock outside the grotto, kept watch over the children.
Estelle strolled between Mr.Rowan Sharpe and Mr.Harold Ormsbury, enjoying their conversation though not participating in it a great deal. She was too busy watching everyone else and appreciating the whole scene. And feeling—paradoxically—a bit melancholy. Everyone belonged here in one way or another, except her and Bertrand.
“Your brother is going to have blisters on his hands tonight, Lady Estelle,” Mr.Ormsbury said, nodding in the direction of the boat, where his wife and her sister, Lady Crowther, were being rowed by Bertrand. All three of them were laughing. Bert did not seem to be feeling any lack of belonging. He was being sociable and kind and charming to all, and Estelle knew he was actually enjoying himself here, despite his misgivings before they came.
“I doubt it,” she said. “He was on a rowing team when he was at Oxford, and I never once heard him complaining of blisters.”
“Complaining to hissister?” Mr.Sharpe said. “I should jolly well think not. A man has to havesomepride.”
Estelle laughed.
Shefelt her lack of belonging, something she never felt when she was with the Westcotts, her stepmother’s family, though she had no blood connection with them either. Most of them were not even really her stepmother’s family. Viola had been married to Humphrey Westcott, the head of the family, for twenty-three years, but the discovery had been made soon after his death that, unknown to her, it had been a bigamous marriage and her three children wereillegitimate. The Westcotts had simply refused to let her and her children go. They hadrallied, something at which they excelled. They were always more willing to give love a chance, to ignore differences and forgive wrongs, than to bear grudges or stubbornly maintain old hurts. Asthisfamily was perhaps more prepared to do than either Justin or Maria had given them credit for.
