Yesterday, since courtesy was getting him nowhere withMaria, he had asserted himself as the owner of Prospect Hall. He had spent time with the housekeeper and inspected the kitchen and pantries with her. He had sat down at the desk in her office and examined the account books. He kept no steward here, just as his father had not, since the size of the house and grounds and the farmland beyond them did not justify the extra expense. He had a man of business who managed all the smaller properties of the earldom from his office in London and sent regular and detailed reports. The man had proved both honest and efficient, as Justin had expected. He had worked for the late earl for twenty years before his death.
Since it had been raining too heavily for him to go out, he had asked the housekeeper if he might have the use of her room for a short while longer and had summoned Miss Vane. He had asked her if she was satisfied with her position as companion to his sister when she had been originally hired as a governess. Yes, she had told him. It was Maria herself who had begged her to stay when the countess had decided that her formal education was over after she turned seventeen.
“Only seventeen?” Justin had said.
“The countess, her mother, needed her, my lord,” Miss Vane had told him. “She was ill and required almost constant company and assistance.”
“None of the nurses I sent were as good as they were reputed to be?” he had asked her.
“They did not suit the countess,” Miss Vane had said. “She preferred her daughter.”
“Not you?” Justin had asked her. “Did you help nurse her, Miss Vane?”
“She preferred her daughter, my lord,” she had said.
She was a serious, dignified young woman. She hadlooked him in the eye as she spoke to him, but she would not open up to him, he suspected, and give anything more than a brief factual answer to any question he asked. Which was fair enough. She was an employee. She had her livelihood to protect. He suspected she might be fond of his sister.
“It was Maria rather than the countess who persuaded you to remain in the capacity of companion after your duties as governess were terminated, then?” he had asked.
“Yes, my lord,” she had said. “She persuaded the countess that she needed me. And she wrote to your man of business in London for permission, since it is you, I believe, who pays my salary.”
“Nursing her mother single-handed must have been hard on my sister,” he had said.
“Yes, my lord,” she had said. “But it is what daughters do.”
And hard on Miss Vane too, he did not doubt. She was clearly a gentlewoman. She was almost certainly impoverished, or at least her father was. This could not be much of a life for her. But one could not always choose one’s own way of life or even one’s occupation, as he knew well from personal experience. At least she was employed. And he knew she was well paid.
“You are prepared to continue as my sister’s companion?” he had asked her. “Though it will entail a removal to Everleigh Park?”
She had hesitated. “I would be uncomfortable going so far from my own home, my lord,” she had said. “From my father’s home, that is. My mother gave birth again a year ago. She is not a young woman. Four of my brothers and sisters are under the age of ten. I believe she is finding it hard to cope. I... I would rather not go so far away.”
He would guess her age to be somewhere betweentwenty-five and thirty, Justin thought. How many children were there, for God’s sake? And how old was her mother? Fortunately, it was not his concern.
“I understand,” he had said. “I will see to it that you are paid the equivalent of six months’ salary when you leave here, Miss Vane. And I thank you for your service to my sister.”
“That is very generous of you, my lord,” she had said.
He had got to his feet and indicated the door behind her. It was a disappointment. Compelling Maria to leave here to return to Everleigh Park with him was going to be even more difficult than he had thought.
This morning the rain had stopped and Justin had found the foreman of the farm and inspected the barns and granaries and fields and the cattle sheds and sheep pens. He had spoken with some of the laborers and even looked in upon the cottages of a couple of them and spoken with their wives. As he had expected, though, all seemed to be running smoothly. No one expressed any outstanding grievances.
This afternoon he was having a good look around the park—or garden, rather. It did not quite qualify in size as apark.It was very pretty, nevertheless, and well cared for. The showpiece was the front garden and its profusion of flowers, most notably roses. All the beds and trellises and surrounding banks of shrubs made of it the quintessential English country garden against the backdrop of the gray stone manor.
But Justin preferred the back with the stables and carriage house and paddock off to one side and herb and vegetable gardens half hidden behind borders of flowers destined for the urns and vases inside the house—it was filled with them. Behind the gardens were tall trees withrhododendron and azalea bushes blooming beneath them. Captain was back there, sniffing and marking out his new territory. He was more reconciled to the stables as a temporary home than he had been at the start. The groom, who had very little else to do, was lavishing a great deal of time and attention upon him, it seemed.
Justin stood on the cobbled pathway between the two halves of the garden, gazing back toward the trees. Yesterday, after talking with Miss Vane, he had repeated his invitation to Maria to come to Everleigh with him when he returned there next week, keeping alive the myth that he was asking her rather than telling her. It was her home, after all, he had reminded her. It was where she had lived until after her father—theirfather—died when she was fourteen. It was unfortunate that circumstances had prevented her from taking her proper place in society when she turned eighteen. But it was not by any means too late. She was only twenty now, and she was both the daughter and the sister of an earl. He would take her to London next spring for the Season and see to it that she had a suitable female to sponsor and chaperon her. In the meanwhile he would provide some company and entertainment for her during what remained of the summer and through the winter. There would be old acquaintances to renew, new ones to be made.
He had fumbled his way onward, without any help from his sister.
“No, thank you, Brandon,” she had said when he had finished making his case. “I will stay here with Melanie. She and our neighbors are all the company I need or want.”
It had been a lengthy speech for her. He suspected she was refusing the life he offered just because she had a grudge against him. She wastwenty, for the love of God. Itdid not seem to him that there could be any robust social life to be found here.
He would have to force the issue, of course, and he suspected she knew it. He was going to have to insist, though he did wonder why. If she was content to stay here, shut away from society, gradually seeing her youth dwindle, nursing whatever grievance she had against him specifically and perhaps the world in general, then why not allow her to do so? She was a rational being and no longer a child, after all. And Miss Vane, who would probably remain in her employment if Maria stayed here, did offer her some respectability.
He could not do it. He could not allow Maria to remain here. He felt responsible for her. Hewasresponsible for her.
He wondered again what her mother had told her about him. And their father before he died. Though he very much doubted their father had told her anything. Certainly not the truth—or the truth as he had perceived it. And his father had never told lies. He might have closed up like a clam, but he would rather have done that than utter an untruth. It had been one thing upon which he had always been firm and inflexible. Had the countess told her daughter the truth? Justin very much doubted that too. So whathadshe said to make Maria hate him so much?
