“I’ve never had to look after a house this large before, but it all seems very clean and in good order, despite the lack of staff,” Meg said anxiously.“The bedchambers too...”She curtseyed again and backed toward the door.
“Are you leaving us?”April asked in some surprise.“Won’t you have tea too?”
Meg looked unhappy and awkward.
Mal said bluntly, “She’s not sure of her place.She now owns the house I live in in Oxford, and we are friends.But she’s not sure if she’s friend or servant to everyone else here.”
“Wearean informal party,” Piers said.“And we’re all friends here.”
“But Lady Petteril is our hostess,” Meg said.
Only because it was Piers who had heard of the house close to Oxford that the Temperleys were willing to rent for a few weeks.
“Then we shall all be comfortable,” April said.“I don’t stand upon ceremony myself.I can’t.”
“Why not?”Mal asked in surprise.
“Mal doesn’t notice gossip,” Piers said to April, “and wouldn’t be remotely interested if he did.”He glanced at the others and added mildly, “Not everyone approves of our marriage, which to most might appear unequal.Since this is a reunion of old friends, I vote for the egalitarianism of our student days.”
Not all students were egalitarian, of course.Many stood rigidly on their birth and wealth and allowed no one to forget it.But Piers, far from being the viscount in his student and early fellowship days, had found his friends among the true academics and eccentrics.
“He means sit down and have tea,” Mal said to Meg.“You’re one of us, not a servant.”Which was surprisingly succinct for Mal.
***
THE REUNION PARTY HADbeen April’s idea.She knew Piers missed his old Oxford friends.Indeed, he had missed his old life there to the point of agony.April doubted there had ever been a man more reluctant to inherit a title, relative wealth, and position in society.He had meant to live his life in study, research, and academia.Being sprung to the head of the noble Withan family, while dealing with his own grief at the many deaths that had got him there, had not been good for him.When April had first stumbled into him—accidentally while trying to rob his house—he had been something of a wreck of apparently insurmountable misery and melancholia who had lost every purpose in life.
In a word, he had needed looking after.And yet, somehow it was he who had looked after April, the urchin from the gutter who had stolen from him.She had thought he was mad, in a heroic kind of a way, for he was funny and reckless and frighteningly clever, with a kindness that had seemed bottomless.
She had never expected to become his wife, but here they were, still looking after each other, despite the disapproval of just about everyone.And she rather suspected something similar was going on with Mallory Keith and Meg Tilney.
“I’m not really Mrs.Tilney,” the young woman had blurted to April, almost as soon as they had met at the carriage door.“I’mMissTilney and Mal—Mr.Keith—lodged in my mother’s house.Neither of us saw fit to change that when my mother died, but when I offered to look after things for your party here, he thought you would all respect a Mrs.Tilney more than a Miss.”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” April had assured her, watching Piers and Keith approach, “Nor to my husband.”
“It will to some,” Meg murmured.
April, with experience of Society’s snobbery, felt a first stirring of unease.She had imagined Piers’s friends would all have his easy-going tolerance, but Meg appeared to know differently.
During tea, the two men slipped into banter, often of the learned kind that April couldn’t understand.A year ago, she couldn’t write her own name, so Latin and Greek jests were well beyond her.But the men obviously enjoyed it and April never tired of hearing Piers laugh.Their conversation didn’t cover the latest events in their lives—things women would have asked about immediately—but they were clearly happy to be together.
It was Meg who jumped to her feet at the first sound of fresh carriage wheels on the gravel outside.
Mal, close to the window already, craned his neck without rising.“It’s the prof,” he reported.“I’d recognize that old bone-shaker anywhere.Hale will be with him, I expect.”
The prof, April knew, was Professor Julius Algernon, after whom, in part, Piers had named his favourite horse.The other part of his decision had been, apparently, to do with the horse’s wisdom.
Piers jumped to his feet.“Hostly duties,” he said, but April heard the eagerness in his voice and rose nervously with him.Of all Piers’s friends, she supposed she most wanted Professor Algernon to like her, because he was something of a mentor to Piers and held so much of his respect.But she assured herself she was not seriously worried.The professor would at least tolerate her for Piers’s sake, and this whole party was for Piers.
So she trooped back downstairs to the front door with the others and pulled the bell there to summon the footman.
Two men had already emerged from the carriage, one older and greying, the other young and vigorous and handing down a lady.That was unexpected.Professor Algernon was a widower, and the Dr.Hale who apparently accompanied him was a college fellow and therefore unmarried.
But then, so was Mallory Keith.
“Withan, my boy!”exclaimed the older gentleman, advancing to grasp Piers’s hand in both of his, a smile of genuine pleasure on his face.“How splendid to see you!And how well you look!”
Smiling because Piers was clearly so valued by his mentor, April glanced at the couple by the carriage and saw that the lady was both young and pretty.They were not expecting her, so would Piers even know who she was?He had a curious debility which prevented him recognizing faces, especially those he did not see often.
