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“You may,” Abby said.

“They may well not recognize you,” Estelle said. “They will wonder who this young lady wandering about the house is.”

Katy was about to whisk herself out of the room, but she turned back at the last moment and hugged Stephanie tightly. “Thank you so, so much, Lady Stephanie,” she said. “I do love you.”

And she was gone.

“Oh dear,” Stephanie said. “I do hope it holds in place. I have no experience whatsoever, you know. I am an utter fraud.”

“Well, fraud or no fraud,” Abigail said, “if you ever wish to apply for a position as a lady’s maid, you may appeal to me for a recommendation. You have made her very happy, Stephanie. Thank you. It is not easy having an eleven-year-old who believes she ought to be eighteen.”

“I believe we were all the same at her age,” Estelle said.

“We had better go down and see what is happening, Estelle,” Abigail said. “Are you coming down too, Stephanie?”

“You go on ahead of us,” Estelle said.

Stephanie turned to tidy the dressing table while Estelle wandered to the window to look down upon the lawn where the garden party had been held a few days ago.

“It is so lovely back there,” Estelle said. “I used to sit inside the summerhouse quite often when I lived here. I usually went to read, but I invariably ended up gazing off into my own dreamworld. Did you enjoy your morning at the lake?”

“I did,” Stephanie said. “It is so secluded and peaceful there. The dower house was a surprise. We went for a ride in one of the boats.”

“Did you?” Estelle said. “I do not envy you. Bert would tell you that I am terrified of water. Terrified is too strong a word, but large bodies of water do make me very uneasy. I like firm ground beneath my feet, even if it is only a bridge. I believe it must all have stemmed from the swimming lessons our uncle tried to give us when we moved here from Elm Court. He insisted that we put our heads underwater and assured us we could not possibly swim if we did not. I simply could not do it, and he turned stubborn. So did I. Uncle Charles was the mildest mannered of men and I had always been fond of him, but he was transformed into a monster in my eyes during those lessons, and I became a nasty, stubborn child in his eyes.” She laughed. “Fortunately, neither feeling lasted, but the swimming lessons ceased. By then Bert could swim like a fish and often deliberately terrified me by swimming halfway across the lake under the surface before bobbing up to wave and laugh at me while I was picturing him drowned at the bottom. Brothers can be horrid.”

“They can indeed,” Stephanie said, going to join Estelle at the window. “How could you bear to leave here after your father married? I have not seen Elm Court, of course.”

“It is pretty,” Estelle said. “But it was a bit of a wrench to leave here. I had grown to feel settled and had friends here. And I was so very happy to have Papa home at last and to have a real substitute mother instead of just an aunt. Though I ought never to describe Aunt Jane that way. Forgive me. I take back my words. But I did adore Viola even though I was already more or less grown up when she came here. Bert and I were seventeen. He went to Oxford the following year, and for the first time in my life I was without him for weeks at a time. But I had Papa and Viola and Abby. I began to discover a different sort of life, one not quite so focused upon my twin even though I missed him dreadfully. I was a bit dismayed when he came home after he was finished at Oxford and wanted the two of us to go back to Elm Court to live.”

“It was not a mutual decision to go there, then?” Stephanie asked.

“Oh, it was,” Estelle said. “We were virtually inseparable when we were growing up, and there was, and is, a bond between us that binds us far more closely than seems usually to be the case between a brother and sister. I do not see it between you and Owen, for example, though it is clear that you are very fond of each other. I realized that Bert did not just want to go back to Elm Court. He needed to. I went with him. We were happy there until we went to Everleigh Park a few years later, supposedly just for a couple of weeks, when Maria’s brother and guardian was insisting that she return home with him and she really did not want to go. He urged us to go too to help her settle. That experience changed my life, because that wicked guardian I hated so much on Maria’s behalf was Justin, and we fell in love and married. I long to see Bert settled and as happy as I am.”

Stephanie did not say anything, and they stood looking down at the beauty spread below them for a while.

“I have embarrassed you,” Estelle said. “I am sorry. I enjoy your company for yourself alone, you know. And you certainly seem to have made a friend for life of Katy.”

“I was a bit puzzled when she talked just now of a grandmama and grandpapa and a grandmother and grandfather,” Stephanie said. “But Viscount Dirkson is her grandfather, is he not, just as the Marchioness of Dorchester is her grandmother? How does one sort out all the complex relationships within the Westcott family?”

Estelle laughed. “The thing is,” she said, “that they claim and welcome everyone who has the slightest connection with them. Bert and I are members based on the fact that our father married a woman who was never really a Westcott at all because the hideous earl was a bigamist.”

“But Abby, Camille, and Harry are Westcotts, albeit illegitimate ones, because they are the…hideous earl’s offspring,” Stephanie said.

“Correct.” Estelle laughed and straightened up. “You are working it out, Stephanie. And Gil is the illegitimate son of Uncle Charles, Viscount Dirkson, who married Aunt Matilda Westcott after he lent his support to his secret son in retrieving Katy from her maternal grandparents. Shall we go down?”

“Another set of grandparents,” Stephanie said, shaking her head.

“Indeed.” Estelle laughed again. “But unless you join the Westcott family, however remotely, you really do not have to bother with all the intricacies, you know. Of course, you already do have a remote connection. You are Nicholas’s sister, and he is Winifred’s husband. I am afraid you are doomed, Stephanie.”

They left the room, arm in arm.

—

The walking party returned earlier than expected. Miss Margaret Linford, the youngest of the vicar’s daughters, had developed a nasty blister on her heel during the walk to the old church but did not say anything about it until they got there—the farthest point from home. By that time, she was in agony and in tears. The landlord of the inn there offered his gig in which to return her home and off she went with Peter Wayne as an escort. Mrs. Linford had insisted, however, upon some sort of chaperonage, and the eldest Miss Linford, who had been scolding her sister for wearing new shoes against her advice just because she thought she looked prettier in them than in her old ones, volunteered, and Owen went with her.

Mrs. Linford, beside herself with worry for her wounded youngest and anxiety over the slightly scandalous situation of two young couples traveling together without the proper adult supervision, had torn the vicar away from his leisurely visit with his counterpart in the ancient church, and marched the remaining members of the party homeward before they could swallow more than a couple of mouthfuls of their ale or lemonade. They had arrived back at the vicarage only half an hour after the gig.

“And that,” said Maria, “was the end of our lovely day out. We saw the church from the outside, we scarcely saw the inside of the inn, and Adrian was forced to make a herculean effort to soothe the ruffled feathers of Mabel Linford as she complained during the walk home about both her sisters and even her mother, while Mr. Melvin Linford kept asking me, rhetorically I believe, what he had done to be blessed with three sisters and not a single brother. The whole episode would make a delicious farce.”