Had he done that on purpose? Brought in the fact that Drake was staying under Marple’s roof? As if it mattered. Marple Hall would have been sold long ago if Papa Wintergreen had not saved it.
That said, Drake would enjoy watching Mary Marple keep her husband in line. “I shall try not to glower,” he said.
With a nod, Marple left him to go downstairs. As for Drake, he had a different destination in mind. His wife was in their bedchamber, and Drake could do with a hug.
*
Bane
“My nephew seemsto have grown up,” Pa Wintergreen commented to Drake, Bane, and his daughters a few days later.
Since Marple was currently involved in riding an old tin tray down a grassy slope with one of his nephews between his knees, the remark seemed out of place, but Bane knew what his father-in-law meant.
The Viscount Marple of yesteryear would not have been seen dead joining in with the play of children, let alone behaving like a great overgrown boy for their entertainment.
Drake made a disbelieving grunt. He was going to take quite a bit more convincing, and Bane sympathized. Marple hadthreatened, kidnapped, and manhandled Cilla. Bane didn’t think he would ever forget the horror of those moments when he feared they would be too late to save Livy. Cilla gave his arm a sympathetic squeeze.
“Can a leopard change his spots?” Drake asked.
“He will make a good viscount,” Wintergreen commented. “He needs to learn more about English farming, but he understands bookkeeping and how to manage servants.” Wintergreen had spent hours over the past days closeted with Marple in the book room, or riding out with Marple and the steward over the estate.
“I do not trust him,” Drake growled.
“He does seem to have changed,” Cilla said. “Mary loves him, and she is no fool, that woman. I like her.”
“He was a weak boy who did a terrible thing, and would have done worse if you had not stopped him,” Wintergreen commented. “In the past decade, Drake, he has paid for those sins. Not as the Curstons did. As you know, they gambled with and lost the money the four of them had on the ship that took them to India. When they could not live off their names and rank, they gambled again, this time with theft and robbery. Their deaths wiped that slate clean.”
“Not clean, no.” Bane did not agree. “If there is justice after death, they are both in hell.”
Drake nodded.
“Be that as it may,” Livy said, “They are gone, and by their own misdeeds, furthermore. They are out of our lives forever.”
“As for Aunt Ginny,” said Cilla, “we shall not see her again. Mary says that she became a sword wife of the Maharajah Amarsinha, and is not permitted out of the seraglio. Sword wife is a lesser form of marriage, Mary says. In India, those who are wealthy and titled might have several principal wives andany number of lesser wives, as well as concubines. It is very interesting.”
Bane had become used to his sister-in-law’s fascination with other times and cultures. He exchanged a smile with his best beloved. Livy’s approach to life was far more practical, just as he preferred it.
Cilla hadn’t finished. “Once Jasper married, Mary—as Aunt Ginny’s daughter-in-law—was allowed to visit her. That was several years after she entered the seraglio, of course. Apparently, at the time Lord Curston died, she was advising one of the principal wives on European fashion and customs. The queen asked her husband to marry Aunt Ginny, to protect her and give her a home.”
“Was it the maharajah who found Jasper a position?” Bane wondered.
Wintergreen shook his head. “He had the position before the Curstons died. He says he had cut ties with them, and was slowly working his way up in the office of an American shipping company. As you know, he had become their chief agent in Bombay before his return to England.”
“And Marple did not think to bring his mother home with him?” Livy enquired, with a touch of disdain. She hated injustice to women, even a woman like her aunt.
“Even if the maharajah would have permitted it,” said Mary, who had approached with none of them noticing, “what is there for her here in England? Would an English woman who left under a cloud of scandal and became the divorced lesser wife of an Indian Maharajah be welcomed back into English Society?”
She raised her eyebrows in question, and Livy was quick to shake her head. “I see your point.”
“It was your aunt’s point,” Mary explained. “When we decided to leave India, Jasper sent me to see if she wanted him to petition the Maharajah for her release from the seraglio sothat she could come home with us, and she refused. It is a cage, the seraglio—luxurious and gilded, but still a cage. But Mother Marple likes better to be one of the lesser lights around whom the place turns, than to be a mere dowager viscount, and one with a stain on her character.”
“It is justice,” Livy decided. “She is in a prison, of sorts. And in her own way, when her own interests were not affected, she was kind to us.”
“You have been kind to Jasper,” Mary blurted. “I know his offenses against you. Especially you, Livy and Cilla. But you have welcomed him home and given him back his patrimony. I want you to know I am grateful, and I shall make sure that he is worthy of the trust you have placed in him.” She then blushed scarlet and hurried away across the lawn to join the whooping laughing crowd at the bottom of the slope.
Alfie and Gareth broke free of the group to race toward their parents and grandfather. “Pa,” Gareth screeched. “Did you see me coming down the hill on the tray? Grandpa, I was the fastest.”
“Not as fast as me.” Alfie gave him a friendly shove, which Gareth returned, saying, amiably, “You were faster. Grandpa, Alfie and I were fastest.”
