Mrs. Sachs turned a cold look on her son. “I was not aware that Lord Warburton was our relation.”
“My dear Mrs. Sachs,” said Lord Warburton. “I can certainly remove myself, if I am in the way.”
“I didn’t invent the rules or the customs of the country,” said Mrs. Sachs, “I must take them as I find them.”
Warburton gave a small bow. “I am happy to retire early,” he said.
“Nonsense,” protested Lazarus, with an appealing gesture. “You are our guest. We won’t send you off to bed before dark. Mother, please!”
Mrs. Sachs rolled her eyes and sank back down in despair. “Oh, for heaven’s sakes. Fine then. I’ll just sit here and stay up till midnight.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” said Libby, as if nothing had ever ruffled her. “We’ll go up together now.”
Lazarus watched his cousin for signs of temper. She seemed calmer and more self-possessed than ever. She bid the young men a cordial goodnight, but said nothing to her aunt as they climbed the long stairs, covered in a richly figured crimson oriental pattern.
At the top of the landing, still in silence, Libby turned to go.
“You are angry with me for interfering,” said Mrs. Sachs.
Her niece paused before her bedroom door. “I’m not angry,” Libby said slowly. “But I am confused. Was it so bad that I wanted to stay down in the drawing room?”
“It just isn’t done, not in this part of the world. Young women here, the decent ones, do not sit alone with young men late at night. “
Libby took this in for a moment. “You were right to tell me then,” she said. “I’m glad to know the right thing.”
“I will always tell you when I see you taking liberties,” said her aunt.
“I hope you will. But I may not always agree.”
Mrs. Sachs smiled tautly. “I expect you won’t. You’re a modern young woman. And you are awfully fond of having your own way.”
“Most people are fond of their own way. But I need to know what I’m not supposed to do.” Libby rested one hand lightly on the doorknob.
“So as to do it anyway?” asked her aunt with a sardonic smile.
“So as to choose,” said Libby, turning the doorknob and slipping into her room.
Chapter Six
The visit to Greyabbey was quickly arranged. Mr. Sachs, though rebounding from his recent illness and confined to a wheelchair, was eager to make the journey—“I want to see these so-called improvements,” the old man declared—and Margaret, as promised, came along to help out. Mrs. Sachs made herself unavailable. Old Irish houses bored her. Old Irish houses even when owned by English nobility were not much better—and she had friends from Italy visiting less than an hour’s drive away.
Though it was midsummer, Greyabbey was large, dim, and cool as a vault, and drafty enough that a fire in the large fireplace was welcome in August. Mr. Sachs sat in the great hall, with his shawl over his legs and a cup of tea in his hands. Libby, who was standing just beside her uncle, shivered in her lightweight cotton shift.
“What do you think of our host?” old Mr. Sachs asked his niece.
“I think he’s charming,” she answered promptly.
“Yes, he’s a nice fellow, but please don’t fall in love with him.”
Her lips twitched into a smile. “I will wait for your recommendation before I fall in love with anyone,” said Libby. “I’m not in a rush. Besides, your son seems to think Lord Warburton is an eccentric.”
“The British are an eccentric race. Most are hopeless romantics at bottom. At the top, it’s another matter. They appear to have a thin layer of ice. Brave, though. Look how they’ve just survived another war. But there’s no shortage of forward thinkers among the nobility these days. Of course, Warburton’s radicalism is almost entirely theoretical. He wouldn’t let them touch a stone of Greyabbey.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “I heard he sat in a chair and watched the bricklayers lay out that new entrance of his, brick by brick. Drew it out in advance, exactly the way he wanted it, even to the shades of brick.”
“Well, that sounds odd to me,” said Libby.
“Yes . . . Americans are dedicated to the idea of perfectibility. But we are less interested in actual perfection. That takes too much work. We are happiest when we are living among the clouds—like Emerson, with his head bathed in the ether and so on. The English are cheeriest grubbing out old roots in their gardens. Now, here are two more perfect examples,” he said, inclining his head toward two young ladies who had materialized at the top of the broad, stone interior stairs. They giggled shyly with their heads together like two schoolgirls.
Except, on second glance, they were not girls. They might have been middle-aged, or at least in their early thirties. Both wore shirtwaists made of Liberty cotton lawn, covered in millefiori patterns. The fairer and taller of the two wore cornflower blue. The other, a little plumper, dark red. They suddenly stood stock-still, like deer that have been spotted.
Lord Warburton appeared, throwing one arm around each of them, squeezing one shoulder at a time. “Here are my sisters, Katherine and Birdy,” he announced. The tall, fair sister was Katherine and the shorter, rounder one, Birdy. They regarded their brother adoringly. Libby had never seen such worshipful gazes, and she determined to see what lay underneath.
The sisters offered Libby a tour of the summer gardens after lunch. They walked with parasols over their heads, like beings from another century. Stout Birdy knew the name of every flower and shrub. And when Katherine stood still, a bright-red bird flew to her shoulder and stayed a moment, regarding Libby with one black, beady eye before it flew away.
“Is he kind to you, always, your brother?” asked Libby, beginning her cross-examination.
Both sisters regarded her with wide-open faces.
“Oh yes,” breathed Birdy.
“You can’t imagine how kind,” said Katherine. “People don’t know how much good he does—they simply don’t have any idea.”
“He seems to me to be an awful tease,” said Libby provocatively.
Birdy looked away, but Katherine blushed.
“And I wonder,” said Libby, “if he isn’t pretending.”
“Pretending?” echoed Katherine faintly. She folded her hands high over her chest and held them there, gazing helplessly at her strange guest.
“He is completely genuine, isn’t he, Katherine?” said Birdy, as if Libby weren’t there. “And he’s been decorated, twice—though he never speaks of it, and he’d be angry if he knew I had mentioned it.”
“But would he really give”—and here Libby made a sweeping gesture with her hand, to take in the gardens, and the high stone towers of Greyabbey, and the cottages, fields, and hills beyond—“all this away? Would he give it all up?” She was recalling her conversation with him.
“Because of the expense, do you mean?” breathed Katherine, while Birdy just stared at their guest. “I suppose,” Katherine went on faintly, “he might let out a few of the houses, if it came to that.”
“Let them for nothing? To whoever needed them most?” demanded Libby.
“I don’t understand,” Katherine said.
“Your brother’s a great radical, I thought,” said Libby.
“Oh!” said Katherine. “Yes, Alfred is very advanced.”
“But he’s always rational,” said Birdy. “He’s not some cuckoo, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Not at all,” put in Katherine.
“But if I were you—I mean all of you—I would fight to the death to defend and claim it. All of this.” Her sweeping arm took in the greenish-gray scenery, its rising mists, and the blue sky sparkling between mottled clouds. “Why should you let anyone take it? What better use are they going to put it to? Things once taken apart are usually destroyed, aren’t they?”
“But we have always been liberal people,” said Katherine.
“Oh yes,” Birdy agreed. “Going back hundreds and hundreds of
years.”
They were interrupted by shouting, cries of laughter, and more shouting. The two sisters listened intently, then took to their heels, pounding across the grass, their Liberty shirtwaists flapping around their legs.
“Good heavens, it’s the vicar!” cried Birdy.
“Not a moment’s notice!” Katherine called back.
“Typical, typical!”
Libby trotted after them. Her skirt was cut narrow, not full like theirs, and she had worn sharp little heels that day, which cut into the furze and wanted to stick there. By the time she caught up, she saw Lord Warburton fending off the attack of some fair-haired stranger, roaring and charging at him, butting him with his head. The new man was a few inches shorter, but broader built, with immense shoulders. He wore a collarless white shirt.
“In the name of our Lord, have at me!” called the attacker. “Do it in Jesus’s name!”
“I’m wearing my best suit!” protested Warburton. He braced himself for the next tackle.
“Do it with heart! With heart, I command you.”
“Is that really a vicar?” asked Libby in amazement.
Birdy turned her head. She was smiling. “Yes, it’s our brother!” she answered.
Warburton had now caught sight of Libby, and his expression changed. He stepped forward with a look of determination—did something with his foot—and the vicar landed upside down on the lawn, howling in outrage.
“Foul play!” he shouted. “You swept me with your leg. I swear! I’ve never seen you do that, never—” Something in his brother’s look made him turn around. He spotted Libby as well, and scrambled to his feet, reaching for a purple surplice lying crumpled nearby and throwing it on hastily over his head. Katherine darted forward to straighten it, tugging on the hem, as if she were dressing a boy in his nightshirt.
“Oh Christ our Lord, I didn’t realize we had female visitors. Forgive me. Very nice to meet you! I’m the idiot brother, Charles.” He put out one wide hand, realized it was smeared with dirt and grass, and wiped it on his purple robe.
Warburton stepped in and made introductions all around.
“Jesus.” The vicar tugged at his own thick mop of hair. “You must think I’m glocky.”
The elderly Mr. Sachs, arriving in his wheelchair from the manor house, where he’d been contentedly studying the china patterns, looked to his son. Lazarus spun his finger beside his head.
“Charles used to be a wrestler,” Lord Warburton explained. “Best in five counties.”
“Best in the North of Ireland,” said Katherine.
“Best on the Emerald Isle,” said Birdy. “No one in the south ever pinned our Charlie.”
“Now I’m a man of the cloth and hammered for life,” said the vicar.
“Married,” Birdy explained.
“With three strapping boys. While my poor big brother languishes up here all alone on his hill, like a vestal virgin. It’s not right. It’s not healthy.”
“Oh no,” said Lord Warburton, shaking his head, his face going purple with embarrassment. “Don’t. Please don’t.”
“Everything to do with the soul comes through the body,” persisted the vicar. “You cannot have the one whole without the other fully intact. Look at me!” he proclaimed, gesturing at his broad chest. “I grant you, I’ve a bit of a gut, but at least I’m not wasting my essence in the bloody House of Lords.”
“Oh, Charles,” said Katherine faintly. “Must you speak of such things in front of company?”
“Wouldn’t you like to see the pond?” Warburton asked Libby desperately. “It’s fully stocked with carp this time of year. Beautiful creatures.” He put out his hand and pulled her away.
“Right!” Lazarus called after him. “Leave us here with the Sermon on the Mount.”
“You mean the Sermon of the Mount!” boomed back the vicar with a laugh while the two sisters chirped their disapproval.
Warburton clutched Libby’s arm firmly and dragged her out of earshot. They climbed up and down a few small hills till they stood gazing down at a sizable lake, brimming with blue water and fringed with alders. As if he had just realized that they were still touching, he released Libby’s arm and gestured at the scene below. “Pond,” he announced, unnecessarily. Then after a moment, his long legs akimbo, he added, “I suppose all families are a little mad.”
“Yours seems rather nice,” she said.
He glanced at her, then away. “I should like you to really get to know this place properly. There’s more to it—more to us—than meets the eye.”
“I should like that,” she answered, hardly knowing what she said.
“Ah, I’m glad to hear you say that, Miss Archer. It charms me when you say that.”
Libby traced with the toe of her shoe a semicircle over the grass where they stood, as if drawing with a writing instrument. “I fear you are too easily charmed.”
“No,” he said. “I’m not easily charmed. But you have charmed me.”
Libby straightened, sensing a familiar danger. She seemed very American in that moment, and any one of a number of magazine editors writing on the propriety of women in this day and age would have been proud of her. Her expression was watchful, her hazel eyes bright but cool. “I’m afraid it may be impossible for us to visit again, however,” she went on quickly. “We’ll be leaving for the Continent soon. My aunt spends most of her time abroad, and I am in her hands.”
The water made small plashing noises. A golden fish leaped into the air and fell again into the blue depths. “I don’t believe that,” said Lord Warburton. “You strike me as someone whose fate is entirely in her own hands.”
“I’m sorry to give a false impression,” she said. “I’ve never met anyone whose fate was entirely in their own hands. I don’t believe such a person exists. And if they did,” she added more passionately, “it would not be a young woman in my position, living in the 1950s—or at any time within human memory.”
“Is your position such a poor one?” he asked gently. The question hung in the air. Both of them blushed, and they moved a little farther apart. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pry . . .”
“I hate being an object of pity, and I’ve found myself in that position so often lately. I can’t reconcile myself to it.” She shook her head ruefully. “I should become one of those nuns who live in the caves in France.”
“That would be a terrible waste,” said Warburton. “I hope you won’t give up on humanity altogether—there are one or two corners of it still worth saving.” He picked up a flat stone at his feet and skimmed it across the pond. The air smelled like salt from the sea. The stone skipped once, twice, three times. “This place, for instance.” He turned to face her, hands at his sides. “My brother’s right. I spend too much time alone on that hill. But outside the company of my sisters, and a few good hunting dogs, I’m never at ease in the world. London seems like a gigantic gray beehive to me—full of buzzing.”
“You must find it peaceful here,” said Libby, trying not to make too much of his lumping his sisters together with his hunting dogs.
“I do,” he said. After a long pause he added, still awkwardly, “I think you would find it peaceful too.”
“I do,” she replied. Then they both blushed again. There was a cloudiness in the air, like the lull before rain. Her host was trying to convey . . . something that he was not saying. Libby, to hide her confusion, bent and picked up a small, smooth black stone. She held it up to show him.
“You’re never far from the sea here,” he said, pocketing the black stone, “but I’m afraid you must find this place very provincial and dull, after New York. I’m afraid you despise us.”
“Despise you?” she asked.
“Yes.” He picked up another flat rock and threw it from him as if trying to get rid of it. It flashed across the pond six times before it sank out of sight. Insects chirped in the grass, singing like birds.
“Of course I don’t despise you,” she said. “Yo
u’ve been lovely to us. You, and your sisters—”
“Yes.” He simply stood a moment, looking at her. There was a gentle, hopeless expression on his face, and then he shrugged. “I hope at least you’ll let me come to Gardencourt to say goodbye before you go. I’d like to speak privately. May I come and see you one day next week?”
“You are a family friend. I don’t see how I could prevent you.”
“I don’t feel safe with you, Miss Archer. I have a sense that you’re always judging people, summing them up.”
“Well, if I’m a good judge, and you have nothing to hide—”
“But why judge people at all? Why not just let them be?” He turned his head as if he could hear something at a distance. Yes, there was the barking of one of his retrievers. “We’re being rude. We should head back.” He strode ahead of her, his long legs scissoring through the grass. But he held one hand on the small black stone in his pocket, as if it were a promise he meant to keep.
Chapter Seven
The phone rang close to Lazarus’s sleeping head. His room was dark and chilly. He pushed the heavy black receiver off its cradle. He spoke into the receiver. “Who in God’s name is calling at this hour?” he demanded.
“It’s after eight a.m.,” exclaimed a clear female voice. The accent was obviously American. “You must be the sick cousin!”
“You must be . . .” His voice trailed off, and he sat up in bed, drawing the covers around his naked shoulders. “I give up,” he said. “Who is this?”
“I’m Libby’s best friend,” said Henrietta. “Didn’t you get my telegram? Henrietta. I’ve just arrived in Belfast. I had to get the money straightened out, and my boss at the Rochester newspaper was being awfully cheap.”
“What telegram?” asked Lazarus. He fumbled around with his fingers for a pack of cigarettes, drew out a cigarette, and lit it.
“Are you joking?” she cried. “I checked three times to make sure it went through. Three times.”
“I am joking,” said Lazarus. “We’ll send a car to fetch you and your elderly great-aunt. You’ve flown together into Belfast, haven’t you?”
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