“How uncivil of you, Laura. No wonder the poor man was eager to leave. You must have grievously wounded his masculine sensibilities.”
“Nonsense, you are teasing me, Mama, but I am persuaded you will agree that we are well rid of the tiresome creature and will likely never hear from him again.”
“Hmmm,” her mother replied noncommitally when Laura’s raised eyebrows seemed to demand an acknowledgment. Mrs. Marsh continued to study her daughter in silence until Burns appeared in the doorway to announce dinner.
“At last,” Laura declared, jumping to her feet. “Although I shan’t be able to eat a thing, Mama. Mrs. Judson successfully plied me with food for the better part of the afternoon.”
During dinner Laura entertained her mother with droll stories of the Judson children’s antics. Neither woman referred to the brief tenure of Lord Hastings at Wellstead Farm again that evening. Nor did his name come up in the three days that followed his abrupt departure.
Life resumed its even tenor in the Marsh household. The late winter routine engaged Laura’s hands and mind, and the few hours when they had sheltered a concussed accident victim, who had been less than truthful about his identity, drifted to the back of her mind and were nearly forgotten.
It was on the fourth day after the accident that two letters arrived at the Marsh home and ruffled the tranquility of its occupants, though not to the same degree.
When she entered the dining room for the midday meal, Laura found her mother in an oddly abstracted frame of mind. Mrs.Marsh murmured conventionally in response to her daughter’s greeting but followed this with a decidedly random reply to a gay query about her morning’s activities that brought Laura’s head up from the serviette she was draping across her lap.
“Is there something on your mind, Mama?” she asked, her eyes following her mother’s to the fingers fluttering aimlessly about the tableware.
Mrs. Marsh’s gaze lifted to her daughter’s face momentarily, then flickered over the impassive countenance of the butler placing a dish of vegetables on the table. “No, no, dearest … nothing to speak of.”
“Thank you, Burns, we’ll serve ourselves now,” Laura said, with a fleeting smile at the butler as he withdrew in silence. She thought she detected a hint of disappointment beneath his dignified bearing, but her main concern was with her parent, who was helping herself to a modest amount of food.
“Will you have some bread, Mama?”
Laura offered a plate, keeping her eyes on her mother, who shook her head. “No, thank you, dearest.” Mrs. Marsh smiled across the table, then lowered her gaze to her own plate again.
“Mmm, this fricassee of chicken is delicious,” Laura said, savouring the juicy morsel she’d speared.
“Yes.”
Noting that her mother’s ready agreement had not been based on actual tasting, Laura sighed inwardly and prepared to probe for clues to the excitement or agitation she sensed behind the abstracted manner. “Did you have any callers this morning, Mama?” she asked, assuming a casual tone.
“What did you say, dearest? Oh, no, no one called.”
No human contact to account for the preoccupation, then. A letter perhaps? Laura chewed and swallowed another bite before asking, “Has anyone gone into the village for the post today?”
“Yes, Sukie stopped at the receiving office after visiting her mother this morning.”
“I don’t suppose there was anything of interest in the post?” Laura continued, trying a different approach when nothing else was forthcoming. “We had a letter from my godmother just last week.”
The silence lasted long enough that Laura was mentally framing more direct questions when her mother began slowly, “Well, actually there were two letters today. One was from Lady Hastings and —”
“Who?” Laura was at a loss for a second before her brain made the connection. “Oh, do you mean our late patient’s mother?”
“Yes, she wrote to thank us for our care of her son.”
“Does she propose to deliver her thanks in person?”
“She said nothing of that,” Mrs. Marsh replied, then, perhaps reading censure in her daughter’s expression, added earnestly, “but she expressed her gratitude in very civil terms, saying all and more than was proper to the occasion while conveying her sincere desire for our continued good health and fortune.”
“And equally conveying by what she did not say her disinclination to continue, or prolong an acquaintance with, persons she deems beneath her notice.”
“No, Laura, it is unfair to assign such sentiments to Lady Hastings on the evidence of what is really a very pretty and cordial expression of a mother’s gratitude for the disinterested kindness of strangers to her son. You may read the letter yourself. It is on my desk in the morning room.”
“Who was the second letter from?” Laura asked, losing interest in the Hastings family.
“Your uncle Oswald.”
“Since Sir Oswald has rarely deigned to acknowledge my existence in the last twenty years, I prefer to think of him simply as your half-brother, Mama. Would I be mistaken in believingthis to be the first communication since he wrote to inform us of his wife’s demise a year ago?”
