“Well, how could I recognise you when you were still in the nursery when I left?” Simon protested. “And Ruth, I think, should be there now. How old are you, Ruth?”
But she only sucked her thumb and clutched a doll to her chest.
“She is six,” Andrew said. “The very last, unless Mama has a surprise in store for us.”
They all laughed, even Mama, but Simon was stunned. When had he last heard laughter in Edlesborough? It had never been a happy place, but now… his father must have changed indeed to cause such a happy transformation.
“We have overwhelmed him,” Andrew said, still smiling.
“You have, rather,” Simon said. “I confess, this is not what I was expecting, Kendle.”
His brother nodded. “You were always very correct, brother, but I suppose you are in the right of it. I do not take the title officially until after the funeral.”
After the funeral?Take the title?
Simon’s jaw dropped. “Then you mean… he isdead?”
So that was why his mother looked so different. Finally, she had escaped from tyranny.
They all burst into excited speech.
“Then… you did not know? You have not come in response to my letter?” Andrew said.
“I saw no letter. I came on a matter of my own. Well, if that does not beat all,” he said, suddenly outraged. “I came all this way to finally confront him and give him a piece of my mind, and the old buzzard has gone off before I could tell him precisely what I thought of him. Well! Now I shall never have the chance. That is the most infamous thing.”
They all laughed again, and Andrew shook his head. “Simon, you must be the only person in the entire Kingdom who is sorry he is dead. Well, maybe his hunting cronies, perhaps, but no one else. Certainly no one else in this room. We have been quietly celebrating, I assure you. I wrote to you and Juliet within an hour of his death.”
“Juliet!” Simon cried. “She is waiting in the carriage outside.”
The entire crowd streamed out into the hall and down the steps, the carriage door was wrenched open and Juliet urged excitedly out.
Andrew said to the footman who had followed them out, “See the carriage sent round to the stables, the luggage unloaded and the postilions seen to. Mr Simon and Lady Juliet will be staying here.”
***
The ladies bore Juliet away to some feminine fastness, but Andrew sent the rest of his brothers away, and led Simon to a small office cluttered with boxes of papers in a far corner of the house.
“Come in here, brother,” he said. “I need to talk to you, and I am settled in this room for the moment. The steward’s office.”
“You do not wish to use the library?”
Andrew visibly shuddered. “Too many bad memories. What will you have — Madeira? Canary? Port?”
“Claret, if you have any.”
“Good idea. I’ll get Spearman to fetch some up. The cellar is full of the stuff, but we were never allowed to touch it before. Unless there were guests, of course.”
Thus fortified, the brothers settled into a pair of chairs set either side of a small table in the window.
“So tell me what happened,” Simon said. “It sounds as if it was sudden. Did Mama poison him? He always said she was trying to.”
“No one would have blamed her if she had,” Andrew said sombrely. “He treated her abominably. But it was his own fault — hewouldeat lobster and it never agreed with him. His digestion had only got worse over the last few years, and this time he had only taken a mouthful or two when he just droppedlike a stone. Served him right, frankly. He always said it was Mama’s fault when he overate. Do you know, he put a clause in his will that if he were to die after eating something, Mama should be arrested for murder,” he said, in outraged tones. “The man was pond scum. Fortunately, Dr Caffrey has better sense than to do anything of the sort. He said Father had always suffered with his digestion and this was just a particularly virulent bout of it, and the foaming at the mouth was not unusual in such extreme cases. We have all seen him do it before, after all.”
“I never remember him doing so,” Simon murmured. “But that was a long time ago.”
“Far too long,” Andrew said, smiling. “But you are looking so well, brother, and Juliet, too. You both look as fine as fivepence.”
Simon, laughing, told him of their borrowed finery. “But how are you?” he said gently. “You do not look as robust as I recall.”
