There was no doubt that shedidhate him. Without passion. The worst kind of hatred.
Could his stepmother not simply have told her that he had gone away, as young men will, to explore the world and sow some wild oats before it became necessary to settle down? Maria might still have ended up hating him, but surely with passion. She would be raging against him for neglecting and abandoning her. For not even saying goodbye.
Of course that explanation, if her mother had given it,would no longer have sufficed when, six years ago, he had not returned home after their father’s death. He had not returned, in fact, until well after he had given the command that the countess remove here to Prospect Hall.
Captain was dashing down the path toward him, woofing, and Justin became aware of the sound of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels.
“Sit, Cap,” he said, and his dog obeyed, but not without looking reproachfully at him, all panting intelligence and eagerness to be gone to investigate this new excitement.
The carriage did not come along the side of the house to the stables. It must have stopped at the front of the house, then. The groom was striding out of the stables and going in that direction. Maria had a visitor—her first since his arrival.
He stayed where he was for a few minutes. The last thing he felt like doing was being sociable to a stranger. However, he was the owner of Prospect Hall. He was Maria’s brother and guardian. It would not do for her visitor to discover that he had remained skulking back here throughout the visit. He turned and strode off toward the stables, where he left Captain in his stall—it was spread with fresh straw and the water bowl had been filled, he saw—and nodded to the groom, who was leading a horse and gig toward the stables.
Justin let himself into the house by the front door. There were two hats on the side table, a tall-crowned man’s hat and a fashionable bonnet with matching kid gloves. A couple, then. There was no sign of any servant. He proceeded to the sitting room and let himself in without knocking. Conversation, which had sounded cheerful and lively, stopped abruptly as the four occupants of the room, all still on their feet, turned to look at him.
The visitors were a man and a woman, both young, probably in their middle twenties, both smartly dressed in what he recognized as the first stare of fashion. The man was tall, dark, slim, and elegant. The woman was his feminine counterpart. And extremely, vividly lovely. There was a moment, a fraction of a moment, when he did not recognize her. Then he did. Perhaps it was the startled look upon her face, quickly suppressed.
“The Earl of Brandon,” Maria said by way of introduction, without adding any explanation of his relationship to her. But perhaps they knew? Surely they did, in fact. “Viscount Watley, Brandon. And Lady Estelle Lamarr.”
Not husband and wife, then. But he would have known it anyway. They were clearly brother and sister. No. More than that. There was something about them... They were somehow like two halves of a whole, masculine and feminine in perfect balance with each other. He would bet his fortune on it that they were twins.
“Brandon?” Watley inclined his head with easy courtesy and smiled. “Lady Maria’s brother, I believe?”
“Halfbrother,” Maria said.
Lady Estelle Lamarr acknowledged him with a nod of the head. No curtsy. Face like a mask.
And Justin, who might have said or done any number of things to set them all at their ease—like stepping forward with a smile of his own and an outstretched hand, for example, and some remark that would require a response—said and did nothing beyond making the pair a slight stiff bow.
Three
Well, that was awkward,” Bertrand said cheerfully as he guided the horse and gig through the gates and onto the road home, leaving Prospect Hall behind them. “Are yousurewe stayed for only half an hour, Stell? It felt more like three and a half.”
“Poor Maria,” Estelle said. “She does not seem at all happy to see her brother, does she?Halfbrother, to be more accurate. I cannot say I blame her. I have rarely if ever met a more morose man.”
The only thing she might say in his favor was that he had made no mention of that ghastly encounter by the river the day before yesterday. Not by the merest twitching of an eyebrow had he betrayed any sign of recognition. Perhaps he really hadnotrecognized her.
“What with Lady Maria sulking and Miss Vane playing the part of demure, near-mute companion and Brandon seemingly never having grasped the concept of makingpolite conversation, it was dashed hard going,” Bertrand said. “It is a good thing Miss Vane did at least open her mouth long enough to ask about Aunt Jane, Uncle Charles, and Ellen, and we were able to give an exhaustive account of their long-drawn-out departure. Lady Maria actually smiled when you described the prayer meeting.”
“It may be a little unfair to say she wassulking, Bert,” Estelle said. “I would say she was displaying a dignified sort of displeasure with her half brother without being openly ill-mannered about it. They must have quarreled. Not just now, I mean. Years ago. We have always suspected it. How could we not when everyone hereabouts was eager enough to inform us two years ago when we came back to live at Elm Court that Lady Brandon and Maria had notchosento move here after the late earl’s passing but had beencommandedto come by the new earl? Neither of us puts a great deal of trust in unsubstantiated rumor, but it did seem troubling that the earl did not once come here in person while the countess lay dying. Yet she was his stepmother. Nor did he come afterward to comfort his sister or attend her mother’s funeral. Maria herself has never spoken a word about her life before she came here, or aboutwhyshe and the countess came. She has never made mention of her brother—not in my hearing, anyway. None of it has beennormal.”
“It is a bit strange that we had not set eyes upon him before today, either here or anywhere else,” Bertrand said. “He has had the title for a number of years now, and someone mentioned—it might have been Papa or Avery—that he has taken his place in the House of Lords. That means he must have been in London.”
“But never at any of the social events we attended,” shesaid. “I would not have forgotten that face if I had seen it before. It is really quite unpleasant. Almost menacing. I wonder how he broke his nose.”
Bertrand laughed. “That detail has escaped the notice of the gossips hereabouts,” he said as he slowed the horse and steered the gig skillfully over the stone bridge, having chosen the scenic route home, bumpy though the track was in parts. “It is amazing the breaking of the aristocratic nose does not have a story of its own. There are enough other stories to lift the hairs along the back of one’s neck and remind one to keep the doors locked at night.”
The stories about the wicked earl were still resurrected by the gossips whenever there was little other news to enliven conversation. He was said to have left home at the command of his father, the late earl, several years before he succeeded to the title. He was said to have indulged in every vice and debauchery known to mankind both before and after his banishment. It was even said that he had spent a few years at hard labor in some particularly notorious jail in the north of England. It was all wild conjecture, of course. No one had any hard facts or credible witnesses to substantiate the rumors. For the past six years he had been the Earl of Brandon and had apparently settled down to a life of sober respectability. Though no one was sure even of that, since he had never come here and no one had ever run into him in London or elsewhere.
“I suppose,” Bertrand added, “no one knew about the nose in order to invent a story to account for it. That will soon be rectified, I am sure. I am betting on a jail yard brawl.”
“Surely notallthe stories we have been told can be untrue,” Estelle said. “Or can they? Having seen the mantoday and spent half an hour in his company, I must confess I am half inclined to believe everything. Including the prison story. He looks like a thoroughly bad lot. Yet poor Maria cannot even ask him to leave. HeownsProspect Hall. I wonder if he is her guardian. I suppose he must be, though she has never said. She is only twenty, after all.”
There was indeed a hardness to the look of him, and it was not just his broken nose. It was his dark hair and dark, unfathomable eyes, several shades darker than her own and Bertrand’s—chocolate without the cream—and his weather-bronzed, harsh-featured face. It was his massive size, which seemed to owe nothing at all to fat but everything to muscle.Notthe sort of muscle acquired by participation in gentlemanly sports, however, but the sort that came from manual labor. He looked like an impostor in his elegant gentleman’s attire. He did not behave entirely like a gentleman either. He had no easy, sociable smiles, no conversation. Estelle was sure he had not strung more than five words together during their entire visit. He had not uttered a word of apology to her during their first encounter, though it must have been clear to him that his dog had scared her out of her wits.
“How disappointing for you, Stell,” Bertrand said, turning his head to grin at her. “You were presented today with the unexpected opportunity of meeting someone new, a single gentleman, an earl no less, a man both eligible and below the age of sixty. But he does not fit your image of the perfect husband. He is missing a few attributes.”
“Make thatallattributes,” she said.
