“What do you mean—only a week? Have you no heart?”
“Of course you have no heart. I have it here with me for safekeeping.”There was a drawing on that particular page of a heart colored with red ink cupped in two large wedge-fingered hands.
“I am counting hours now rather than days.”
Estelle kept all the letters, bound together with a silk ribbon. She read them all each night when she went to bed and smiled and even laughed over them. She shed a few tears too. For no, it was notjusta week when indeed seven days remained before her return to Everleigh for her wedding. It was an endless eternity.
***
Justin’s aunts had faced a number of problems, such as how to fill the church and the house with flowers for the wedding when it was October and most flowers had either gone to ground for the year or were looking distinctly sad. But the most serious problem, unlesssomeone did something about it, concerned the fact that the bride and groom might be sleeping beneath the same roof, albeit a very large roof,on the night before their wedding. How were they to be kept from seeing each other on their wedding day before they met at the altar inside the church? The slightest blunder and they would be doomed to all sorts of bad luck for all their married life. It was not to be contemplated.
They had found a solution in their friend Jemima, Lady Hodgkins, who had gone into transports of delight when she had been asked if she could possibly offer the bride a bedchamber in her house for the wedding eve. Not only could she accommodate the bride, she had declared, but the bride’s mother—What? Stepmother? Stepmother, then—and father simply must stay with her too. What else were she and Hugh to do with their twelve spare bedchambers? And Lady Estelle’s dear, handsome twin too if he wished. Indeed, they must all come during the afternoon of the wedding eve, in time for tea. And they must dine and spend the evening as well as the night. And they would be fed breakfast too, of course, though brides never had hearty appetites on their wedding day. A soft-boiled egg might be just the thing to tempt Lady Estelle. Lady Hodgkins simply could not be happier about anything.
Another problem had been solved.
So had all the others as they arose. Justin had spent almost six weeks feeling utterly helpless as his aunts took over his home and his servants—includinghis secretary—and his life. There was something undeniably heartwarming about it too, however. They were hisfamily.Theycared.They had given up weeks of their own lives for his sake and Estelle’s. They sang her praises almost every day, largely, Justin suspected, because she had turned over her end of the wedding planning to her stepmother, whom the aunts deemed to be a sensible woman. They had both met her a time or two in the past when she was still theCountess of Riverdale and universally respected—though Riverdale was a scoundrel of the first order, Justin, as witness the fact that his lengthy marriage to the poor lady before his death was bigamous from the first moment.The marchioness sent the information the aunts needed and answered promptly any questions they had without any fuss or bluster.
Justin spent some of his time alone with his dog, tramping about the park and the farm. He spent time in Wes and Hilda’s cottage after they had moved in and at the smithy after Wes had started work there, watching his friend learning his new trade, or rather reviving skills he had acquired as a boy and never forgotten. He took Ricky to the sheep pens a few times and left him to the care of the head shepherd, who assured Justin that the young man had a future there, since he obviously loved the animals and had endless patience with their frequent stupidity.
“And if you ever have a lost sheep,” Justin had said, grinning, though he was not quite sure the shepherd understood the biblical reference, “Ricky is your man.”
But finally the waiting was almost over and the guests began to arrive. Family only. But it was a very large family. Or group of families, to be more accurate. It was amazing to know that he or Estelle—soon to be heandEstelle—had a close connection to all of these people. Their anchor to this life. The network of family connections that would sustain them and enrich their lives and be passed on to their children. Who, please God, would begin to put in an appearance within the next year or so.
Maria was first to come, with Aunt Betty and Uncle Rowan and the cousins. It was lovely to see his sister glowing with youth and happiness, Justin thought as he met her down on the terrace and she dashed into his arms.
“Aunt Betty has come to help with the wedding preparations,” she said. “I have too, though I doubt there is anything left to do except take credit for it all as your sister. Aunt Augusta and Aunt Felicity areformidable, are they not? When will Estelle be here?”
Not soon enough for him.
But over the coming few days he was too busy to be able to indulge in too much pining. A surprising—surprising to him, anyway—number of the Westcott family came to Everleigh, as well as Estelle’s blood relatives on both her father’s and her mother’s sides. Justin was particularly interested in meeting the woman he thought of as the formidable aunt—Jane Morrow, who had raised Estelle and Watley. She came with her husband and daughter.
“I owe you a deep debt of gratitude, ma’am,” Justin told her when he met her, taking her offered hand in both his own. “I understand you raised Estelle to be the woman I love. Thank you, and welcome to Everleigh.”
She looked at him with pursed lips and suspicion in her eyes, nodded briskly, and answered him. “She is someone I love too, Lord Brandon,” she said. “I will expect you to make her happy.”
Avery Archer, Duke of Netherby, elegant and apparently indolent as always, shook his hand after presenting his stepmother and his eldest daughter and his son. “My guess is, Brandon,” he said, “that you are not going to be particularly popular with a certain element of the male population of London next spring when it is discovered that you have made off with Estelle Lamarr behind their backs. Congratulations. Anna sends her best wishes.”
“She is well?” Justin asked.
“She iscross,” Netherby said. “She believes herself to belarge and ungainly and useless. And other such nonsense while she fills my heart with terror for her safety.”
And finally, two days before the wedding, Estelle arrived in a carriage with her brother; her cousin Oliver Morrow, Dorchester’s steward; and Oliver’s wife. The marquess and marchioness came in a carriage behind them.
“It feels like years,” Justin said, turning to Estelle after he had greeted everyone else and they had disappeared under the portico and into the house. “It feels like eons. I am not going to let that happen ever again. I am never going to let you go anywhere without me for such a long time.”
“The autocrat already, Justin?” she asked him. But her eyes were dancing with merriment, and her lips were curved into a smile, and though the terrace was swarming with servants unloading all the baggage, he caught her up in his arms.
“Well, youaregoing to promise the day after tomorrow to obey me, are you not?” he said.
“I willthinkabout it,” she told him. “Oh, Justin, you are so verylarge.I have missed you.”
He drew back from her, leaving his arms still about her. He spoke very softly. “Are you with child?” he asked her. It was a possibility that had plagued him since that night at the summerhouse.
“No,” she said. “You are going to have to try again, I am afraid.”
Her cheeks turned pink. He laughed.
“Oh, I will,” he assured her. “Again and again and again.”
