Lord Somerton’s heir had been found, saved from near death and installed at Brantstone. Her responsibility was done. The rest was up to him. She, Isabel, had other plans that did not involve him.
She picked up her pen and dipped it in the inkpot.
‘My dear Harriet,’ she wrote. ‘The new Lord Somerton is now at Brantstone and our plans for the school, so long delayed, can now proceed...
She paused and looked out of the window at the long sweep of the drive and the church spire rising above the trees. If she craned her neck to the right, she could make out the chimneys of the dower house. Her heart leaped with excitement. Her own home, freedom and a chance to make something of her life.
...Lord Somerton is a contradiction. Of course, it is but his first days here, and while he is doing everything wrong, treating the servants and the tenants with too much familiarity, yet it only seems to make him more endearing. Even in the short time he has been here, I can see in their eyes for all his rough edges, the staff appear to have accepted him. I do not expect he will change. However simple his upbringing has been, the one thing the Reverend Alder seems to have instilled in him is a great trust and respect for his fellow human beings, however humble...
She played with the feathers of the pen for a moment, remembering how he had stooped from his great height to ask a little kitchen maid her name. That had been the moment that had set the stamp on Lord Somerton’s heir.
…When the opportunity presents, I am looking forward to talking to him at greater length about our plans for the daughters of the mill workers in Manchester. I expect a more sympathetic audience than my late husband would have given me.
She put her elbows on her table and covered her ears with her hands as if she still heard Anthony’s mocking laughter.
‘My dear Isabel. You may as well throw money into the pigswill than try and educate the lower classes. Those girls who won’t go into the mills will end up on the streets. You are wasting your time andmymoney.’
She couldn’t save the world. She wasn’t trying to, but even ifshe could give half a dozen young girls a better start in life, then she would have accomplished something.
No, Sebastian Alder wouldn’t laugh at her as Anthony had done. He would listen with grave, approving eyes. She looked down at what she had written, scrawled a few lines of general gossip and signed her name. As she sealed the letter, she smiled. She picked up the travelling folio and shut it, hooking it closed.
That part of her life was over, and a new life was beginning, filled with meaning and purpose.
Chapter Thirteen
The bells of the village church chimed across the parkland, summoning the faithful from the estate. Isabel stood in the hall, pulling on her gloves. As she reached for her bonnet, held out by her maid, a clattering on the staircase made them both look up.
Sebastian had not been at breakfast and she wondered if he had slept late. He had, no doubt, left his bedroom immaculately dressed by Pierce, but in the short distance to the bottom of the stairs, his neckcloth had come askew. Isabel wondered if he ever looked tidy and decided his charm lay in his insouciance. She hoped he would never learn how to wear a neckcloth with the same dash as Anthony.
‘Am I late?’ he enquired as he reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘I heard the bells...’
‘No, you’re not late. The rector will not start without you.’
He carried his hat, cane, and a small book, which he laid on the table as he tugged at the recalcitrant neckcloth. The effort only worsened it.
Isabel shook her head.
‘Let me,’ she said.
He obligingly stood still as she reached up and tucked thewayward ends of the cloth back where Pierce had intended. He smelled of fresh soap with a faint spicy tang to it. Her fingers brushed the freshly shaven skin of his neck, and the muscles in his throat contracted. A warm flush rose to her face and she withdrew her hand, hastily pulling on her gloves.
He ran a finger around the edge of the neckcloth.
‘You don’t tie it as tightly as Pierce. Thank you, Lady Somerton. Where did I put my hat? Oh, thank you, Johnson.’
As the footman collected Sebastian’s hat and cane from the table and handed them to him, Isabel picked up the small, battered book, a copy of the Book of Common Prayer.
‘Your prayer book looks well worn,’ she remarked as she gave it to him.
He looked down at the book in his hand. ‘It was my father’s... my stepfather’s,’ he corrected himself. ‘I have nothing of my father’s except this.’ He raised his eyes to the painted dome. ‘The Reverend Alder gave the prayer book to me when I joined the army.’
‘Can I see it?’ Isabel asked, holding out her hand.
He shrugged and held it out for her. She flicked through the dog-eared pages, covered in annotations written in pencil in a crabbed hand that she suspected had been that of the Reverend Alder.
On the end pages and crammed into the margins were tiny drawings, mostly caricatures or hasty sketches of people, a curious anomaly to find in such a book. She doubted the Reverend Alder had turned his prayer book into a sketchbook. She looked up at Sebastian and noticed a flush of colour in his face.
‘Did you do these sketches?’
