“Enjoying herself enormously,” Mrs Edgerton said, with a merry laugh. “She has had a very dull life, poor thing, so finding herself involved in a murder is tremendously exciting for her. She has thrown herself into it with gusto.”
“But what is there to discover at Pickering?” Eustace said. “A sleepy little place, I should have said.”
“There is Mr Nicholson’s house, for one thing,” Captain Edgerton said eagerly. “Then there is the matter of the missing fortune, and—”
“Michael,” Mrs Edgerton said gently. “It is over, remember?”
He subsided at once, with a rueful nod.
Lady Alice turned her sightless eyes towards him. “I am not convinced there is any fortune to find, Captain. You like chasing hares, I think, but not everything is complicated. Sometimes a murder is merely a sordid matter of a thwarted love affair, and perhaps a fortune is nothing but a few thousand pounds in the bank.”
“I expect you are right, my lady,” he said. “It is in the nature of my work to chase hares.”
“And to believe the worst of everyone,” Lady Alice said. “Of me, of my daughter… you even suspected Lord Farramont at one time, I believe.”
“And Mr Eustace,” the captain said. “I am happy to have been proved wrong on every point, and very happy that Shapman confessed.”
“He also exonerated my daughter,” she said. “I cannot forgive him for taking my husband from me, but at least he has not dragged Tess into his own disgrace. His actions may have been inspired by his passion for her, but she herself is entirely innocent.”
“Indeed, she is,” the captain said. “Tomorrow, I and my friends will be gone, Mr Eustace will rearrange the armoury display on the stairs, and you and all your family will be able to begin the long process of rebuilding your lives.”
“Which process one of my sons has already begun,” the earl said. “Walter and Winnie have found happiness and brought some sunshine into our current darkness. Let us drink a toast to their future together.”
Winnie acknowledged the toast with blushes and smiles, and Walter gazed at her with such love in his eyes that she almost exploded with happiness.
When the ladies withdrew, Winnie played cribbage with Olivia while Mrs Edgerton good-naturedly read to Lady Alice. When the gentlemen began to drift through, Uncle Alfred took over the reading. Winnie wondered what would become of Lady Alice when Mrs Edgerton had left and Uncle Alfred had gone back to London in October. She would have neither husband nor friend, only her own family, busy with their own affairs.
As they drove home that night, Winnie and Walter side by side, and Uncle Alfred with his back to the horses, she ventured to say, “Uncle, how will Lady Alice manage? She will not always have you or Mrs Edgerton to read to her. She must miss Mr Nicholson terribly.”
“Indeed,” he said, “but Lord Rennington is already training a footman to assist her at meals, as she used to have before she married. As for reading to her… what she needs is a companion, someone of her own age to talk to and depend upon. She manages very well, despite her blindness, but she cannot do everything for herself.”
“Ah… a companion. Yes, that would answer. A cousin, perhaps.”
“Or, in time, another husband,” Uncle Alfred said. “She is still a fine-looking woman, and the sister of an earl will always attract attention.”
“Another husband!” Winnie said, shocked. “Surely she would not! How can anyone love two people in a lifetime?”
“You are a romantic, Winnie,” Uncle Alfred said with a little smile. “You are so much in love with Walter that you cannot imagine having room in your heart for another, but I can assure you the heart is infinitely large. Does not a mother love every child just as much, whether she has one or ten, or even more? The mother with one child does not love him ten times as much as the mother with ten. So it is with marriage. One may love again and again, and each love is different from every other. Thefirst love is perhaps the most intense, and the most painful, but there is just as much joy in a second or third love as in the first.”
“You almost sound as if you speak from experience, Uncle,” Winnie said, suddenly suspicious.
“Perhaps I do, and perhaps I do not,” he said, and although it was pitch dark in the carriage, Winnie was certain he was smiling. “So do not despair for the Lady Alice. She may yet recover from her grief and learn to enjoy life again. So all her friends must hope, anyway.”
34: Settlements
Winnie went to bed in a haze of joy, her head full of Walter… his lazy smile, his imposing size, the warmth in his expression when he looked at her, but more than that, it was the very maleness of her beloved that set her shivering with delight. She could see now that Mr Lomax, with his obsession with his appearance, could never have made her a satisfactory husband. He could not set her aflame with one smouldering glance or a touch on her hand, or set her heart leaping just by entering a room. She was grateful for his affection, transient as it was, but love was surely a better foundation for marriage than gratitude.
She had not long finished her prayers, climbed into bed and blown out her candle, than there was a scratching on the door.
“Winnie? Are you awake?”
“Come in, Lily.”
She crept in, the flickering candle making her face seem to dance about. “I am so glad you are still awake. May I ask you something? About… about Mr Lomax?”
“Of course,” Winnie said, but her heart sank, all the same, for he was the last person she wished to talk about, or even think about, if she were honest.
“I have been wondering about something you said to him, and—”
