Sebastian laughed. ‘Hardly a hero, grandmother. Merely lucky to still be alive.’
‘But you were hurt?’ She frowned. ‘Are you recovered?’
‘I am,’ he replied. ‘Lady Somerton ensured I had the best of care.’
‘Ah, Lady Somerton! She’s a good lady.’ His grandmother nodded with approval. ‘Not like that good-for-nothing husband of hers.’
‘Mother!’ Peggy reproved.
‘I’m too old not to speak my mind, Peggy, and you know it. The late lord did more to undo this estate in a few short years than his ancestors had spent in building it up. And the way he behaved after the baby died... Disgraceful.’
‘Baby?’ Sebastian asked, but his grandmother didn’t hear.
‘Edie!’ The old woman called, and a young maid appeared atthe door, bobbing a quick curtsey and colouring when she saw the two ladies had a visitor.
‘Edie, some tea, and bring some freshly-baked bread and our strawberry jam. His lordship looks like he needs feeding up.’
Sebastian opened his mouth to protest that he had already had a large breakfast, but the maid had vanished. He was desperate to ask about the baby, but he had to curb his impatience until Edie reappeared with a tray of tea and bread and jam.
Only after his aunt had ensured that he had been served a doorstopper-sized slice of bread and had a hot cup of tea did he feel he could return to the subject.
‘Grandmother,’ he said, noting that she coloured with pleasure at the new mode of address, ‘what were you saying about a baby?’
Peggy answered for her mother. ‘You don’t know? Well, I suppose you wouldn’t unless her ladyship has told you, which she obviously hasn’t.’ She took a sip of her tea and settled in to impart the gossip. ‘After all those years of marriage, her ladyship had a baby boy. William, they called him. A bonny little lad he was, wasn’t he, Ma?’
‘Oh, he was. All smiles and chuckles during his christening... His mother and father just doted on the boy. Never seen them really happy together, but the baby seemed to heal the rift. You go on, Peggy.’
‘It was so sad,’ Peggy continued. ‘When the babe was only six months old, the nursemaid found him dead in his cradle. Not a mark on his little body, she told me, just cold and dead.’
Sebastian set his empty cup down, recalling Isabel’s words. ‘As Anthony and I were not blessed with children, you are the heir to my husband’s estate ...’ She had been blessed, but for such a short time.
‘When was this?’
Peggy frowned. ‘It would be about a year ago now. They both took the death hard, in their own ways. Her ladyship became ... well ... as you see her now, and his lordship went backto his wild ways. Drinking and gambling, so they say ...’ Peggy continued.
‘Now, Peggy, that is gossip,’ her mother said.
‘It’s fact, Ma. We all know who he was visiting the night he died. That Lady Kendall?—’
‘Peggy!’
That Lady Kendallagain, thought Sebastian. He would like to make the acquaintance of Harry’s scandalous sister. As he took a bite of the still warm bread and the tastiest strawberry jam he had ever eaten, he thought about Isabel and her dowdy clothes and severe hairstyle and realised that she did not wear mourning for her husband but for her child, barely a year in the grave.
Peggy sniffed and glared at her mother. ‘I’m sorry Lord Somerton had to die like that but if it meant a good man, our Sebastian, came home, then that is God’s will,’ she concluded.
Sebastian brushed the crumbs from his breeches.
‘Are the Somerton family graves in the church?’ he asked.
‘Only the old ones. Your great-great-grandfather, had a mausoleum built on the hill looking over the Somerton lands. ’Tis that white building beyond the lake. ’Twas he that built the hall, earned his money trading in slaves,’ Peggy added with pursed lips that indicated her disapproval.
Sebastian agreed with her. His fortune, such of it as had been left to him by successive generations, had been built on the misfortune of others. It was indeed a tainted inheritance.
‘Enough dark talk,’ his grandmother said. ‘Tell me about your brother and sister while Peggy pours us another cup of tea.’
Sebastian told them about Matt and Connie and their life in the vicarage at Little Benning before his stepfather’s death. His aunt and grandmother sat in silence, hanging on his every word. Peggy, in her turn, told him about his aunts and the veritable tribes of cousins. It was only when the clock on the shelf chimed ten that Sebastian jumped to his feet.
‘They’ll be wondering where I am,’ he said. ‘I must go. We will... we must... you must...’
