Taking the hint, I turned away from the window. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind entertaining me, then? At least until the scenery improves.”
“Oh, good; I was so hoping you’d feel like talking.” She gave an eager bounce on the sofa and I tried not to smile; she might have been ten instead of seventeen. “I’m longing to know more about you.”
“And I you,” I said. “I would very much like to know more about the family. How many of you are there?”
“Let me see.” She frowned prettily. “Aminta and her husband have their own place in Derbyshire, so they don’t count. At Ellsmere there are Aunt and Miss Yates, of course, and me; Papa, and Charles—my brother; he’s much older—and Herron. Not very many of us at all; we scarcely take up one wing unless we have visitors, and Miss Yates will be leaving this summer, when I come out. I shall miss her terribly, but I cannot waitto be done with lessons and to put my hair up and go to parties and balls like Aunt Gwendolyn.” She greeted this prospect with a beatific smile, and I felt a twinge of sympathy for Miss Yates, who must find her work difficult with so distracted a student. “If Charles is well enough by the beginning of the season he will be my escort. He has only been home for less than two months. He was in the Crimea—like your brother—only Charles was invalided out.”
“He was injured?” I asked, thoughts of Lionel instantly engaging my sympathy.
She shook her head, her green eyes wide with relief. “No, he was dreadfully ill with malaria. It’s frightening to see him so pale and thin, when he used to be so strong and good-looking. He tries to hurry himself along, but he is still convalescing. But he hates to be treated as an invalid.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice to a thrilling whisper. “He’s terribly brave. Sometimes I know he must get awfully frustrated that he doesn’t have his strength back, but he never complains. I think he is wonderful.”
“He sounds a perfect paragon,” I said, hoping I was concealing my skepticism. “Has he no faults at all?”
“Well, he can be very obstinate at times—for instance, refusing to take good care of himself. Aunt and Aminta and I have to simply force him to rest sometimes. Aminta says all men are like that. Was your brother? Stubborn, I mean.”
I laughed, feeling a catch in my throat as memories thronged to mind. “He was. Thoroughly stubborn.”
“Well, so is Charles. He’s a dear, of course, but he refuses to listen to me just because I happen to be younger. I am very fond of him, but he can be quite maddening.”
I smiled at the lofty condescension of her tone, and the familiarity of her feelings. How many times had I thought of Lionel in just such a fashion? “What does this brother look like?”
“Oh, he’s awfully handsome. All the Reginalds are handsome,” she said complacently, sure of her place among these fortunates. “He has very blue eyes, and a fine gold moustache, and the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. It makes me frantic with jealousy; they are inches longer than mine. It’s so unfair they should be wasted on a man, don’t you think? You should see the way the ladies gush over him when we have guests. It is really rather revolting; they have no dignity at all. Even though he has been ill, he is still the most popular bachelor in the county. You will adore him.”
“I’m sure I will,” I said, positive I would detest him. I could envision him all too well: a middle-aged, convalescent Prince Consort, all drooping blond moustache and melting-eyed attentiveness, languidly reclining on a sofa whenever he grew fatigued from kissing the hands of the local beauties. I would not be surprised to find that he also played the flute and collected botanical specimens. So much for my fourth cousin.
“And the duke?”
“The—? Oh, you mean Herron. I cannot think of him as the duke.” Her forehead wrinkled in thought, and she sat back. “Herron is very different. He is quite dark, for a start, and all the rest of the Reginalds are fair. To say the truth, he rather frightens me; one never knows what he is thinking. He seems so contemptuous of everyone, and when he looks at you, it’s as if his eyes burn right through and come out the other side.” She shivered, wrinkling her nose in distaste.
“Has he always been so?”
“No-o-o,” she said, drawing the word out doubtfully. “That is, he has always been the quiet one of the family, but he used to be rather jolly, and we always got on well. But lately…” She hesitated, looking beyond me toward the duchess, but was evidently satisfied that her attention was elsewhere. “He was devastated by his father’s death,” she whispered, leaning closer once again in a conspiratorial manner. “He broods dreadfully, and avoids any kind of company, even me” (indignantly). “I think it very tiresome of him, but Aunt Gwendolyn says we must be patient, that some people must mourn longer than others.”
“I imagine so,” I said and, trying to be delicate, added, “you may have had experience of that yourself.”
“I? No, my mother died bearing me; I never knew her.” Perhaps this explained her impatience with the duke’s grief. I myself could well understand that a young man still reeling from his father’s death would find the company of this lively cousin a bit trying. “Aminta and Miss Yates always took care of me. That is why I am so pleased to have a real mother at last.”
“And your father?” This was no idle question. I was deeply curious about the duchess’s new husband. Before meeting her I had imagined that she must have been the instigator of this scandalous marriage, but now that I had begun to know her, I was forced to wonder if Lord Claude’s was the will behind the marriage. The thought increased my discomfiting awareness of my precarious position. If he were a powerful, ruthless man—the kind, indeed, who would not scruple to seize upon his brother’s new widow—he might well be someone to fear. He might not wish to receive a relative from the rejected branch of the family; worse, he might try to effect a reconciliation between myself and my father. I knew Felicity’s opinion would scarcely be unbiased, but it might be of help and prepare me, at least in part, for my host.
Whatever information I had hoped for from her, I was disappointed with the actuality. Felicity was evidently growing bored with discussing her family, and said offhandedly that her Papa was “a perfect darling, but you’ll meet him soon enough.”
“He is nothing at all like your father, from what I have been able to hear,” she added with her usual candor. “Aunt Gwendolyn said that she could not fathom what your mother ever saw in him.”
“She told you that?”
Felicity shrugged. “She didn’t know I was listening. She and Aminta only talk about truly interesting things when they believe I cannot hear.” She hesitated, and this was so unlike her that I knew some more than usually personal question must be fighting to emerge. She blurted, “Isn’t it difficult for you, coming to the place where your own mother died so horribly?”
I should have expected it; I should have made the logical connection once I had discovered the identity of my mother’s family. But I was still unprepared for the knowledge that my mother had drowned at Ellsmere.
“I had no idea of it,” I said, in a voice I hoped was steady.
Her eyes widened, but with excitement rather than alarm. “You did not know?” she exclaimed, but softly, so as not to alert her stepmother. “Oh, I am sorry to tell you so plainly, but does it not seem like fate? Aminta says I’m foolish to believe in portents, but it does look as though your destiny led you to us, and to Ellsmere. I wonder what is in store for you next!”
“You do destiny too much credit,” I said, trying to speak lightly. But after Felicity left me to take a nap on the duchess’s orders (protesting volubly that she was not tired, then falling asleep within five minutes), I wondered if something out of my hands was shaping my future. I could not help but marvel at how, after spending all my life knowing nothing of my mother’s family, in the space of a few days I had not only discovered them but had been practically adopted by them.
And I had always been possessed by a strange feeling—part curiosity, part attraction—toward th
e sea. It may seem strange that I did not fear it or hold a grudge against it for having stolen my mother away from me, but I did not feel that it had. Although I had no memory of ever having been near the ocean, I did not wish to avoid it; now that I knew Ellsmere was on the coast I had no desire to change my mind about accepting the duchess’s hospitality. My peculiar attachment to the ocean may have resulted from loneliness. In my childhood Lionel was a dear but sporadic and frequently dismissive presence, and as I grew older I could imagine that my mother went into the waters feeling, not fear or desperation or even sorrow, but solace. I had always imagined that she would have seen the agent of her death as a comforting certainty, a friend who could not and would not reject her or turn away. She had thrown herself into its arms, and it had welcomed her. And now I would know for myself this being whose embrace my mother had sought. The prospect excited and cheered me—perhaps in this place of strangers I would find reassurance in the sea, the companionship my mother must have felt before me.
We dined there in the railway car, and despite the lack of normal kitchen facilities the five courses were as elegant as anything ever served me in a stationary dwelling. Afterward Miss Yates and Felicity played cribbage, and the duchess took me aside to show me the purchases she had made in London.
“This cane is for Charles; very elegant, don’t you think, with the carved handle?” I agreed, admiring the hound’s head, worked in silver, that served as the grip. “He is still recovering from malaria, as Felicity probably told you, and has not regained all his strength yet.” She glanced over at her stepdaughter and smiled at me with just the conspiratorial expression Felicity had shown earlier. “I expect Felicity told you a great deal about Charles,” she said, lowering her voice, which was touched with amusement. “He is so much older than she that she is inclined toward hero-worship.”
I said that I had gathered as much. “But she does not seem to be as close to the duke.”
To my surprise, the duchess laughed. “Felicity is still too young to appreciate someone as introspective as Herron. In a year or two I fancy her feelings will change, and she will be extolling him as the Byronic ideal. She is a bit hurt that her old playfellow has no time for her now.” Her amusement faded from her face, and she shook her head. “How could she understand what it is like for him? Even I cannot truly comprehend what he must be feeling, and he confides in no one. He has withdrawn himself so.”
She no longer seemed to be speaking to me at all; these confidences seemed unconscious, her thoughts speaking themselves.
“Perhaps I indulged him too much, protected him too much,” she mused. “But he was such a beautiful child…” As if suddenly remembering my presence, she looked up from the cane, whose handle she had been stroking, and her reflective mood vanished like frost under sunlight as she dimpled. “Despite what Felicity says, I at least think my son the handsomest of all the Reginalds,” she confided. “If I were a young lady her age I should be madly in love with him. But then, perhaps as his mother I am not completely impartial. Now, I must show you the set of ruby buttons I found for Claude…”
I admired the jeweled buttons in their elegant gold settings, and after them the other purchases she showed me, including a handsomely bound edition of Childe Harold for the duke. As I was stroking the leather bindings and turning the yet-uncut pages, the duchess’s voice came quietly to me, lowered so that the other two, chattering gaily over their game, would not hear.
“Your father called on me two days ago,” she said, and my head jerked up, the book forgotten. At once I realized the display of purchases had been only a pretext for talking to me apart.
“You need not look so anxious,” she added gently. “He knows nothing of your being with us, and he has said nothing to make me change my good opinion of you.”
“Oh,” I said. It was a great sigh of relief, as all the breath left my lungs, and I felt the tension ease out of my shoulders. “Why did he call, then, if not to ask about me?”
“I had a business matter to discuss with him; that is why I had left my card. Don’t fear, child; your father is not all-seeing, and he does not know we have met.”
I nodded, thankful but still far from easy in my mind. “Did he—did he say anything about me?”
She frowned and took the volume of Byron from me, wrapping it up again with the rest of the set. I thought she might be taking the time to choose her words, perhaps to avoid hurting me, but when she spoke she sounded so puzzled that I wondered if she was still trying to account to herself for their conversation.
“I asked after you, as if I had not seen you since your infancy,” she said slowly, “and he looked straight at me and said, ‘I must tell you that my daughter is dead to me. If Your Grace has no objection, I would prefer to speak of other subjects.’ Snubbed in my own drawing room, if you please! When I pressed him, he simply refused to say anything further.” She flung up her hands in exasperation, her jeweled rings twinkling. “I declare, the man has changed little in twenty years.”
I dropped my eyes to the carpet. “You must wonder what I have done to make him speak of me in such a fashion.”
“Oh, child, I believe I am a good enough judge of character to have no need of asking that,” she said gently. “Whatever rift there is between you cannot be rooted in anything you have done.”
Encouraged by these words, I dared to meet her eyes again, and saw only sympathy. “I would rather tell you how it came about, ma’am, than risk having you doubt me later,” I said.
“Of course, if you wish. I have told you I would be glad to listen.”
Awkwardly, conscious of the proximity of Felicity and her avowed interest in eavesdropping, I described as briefly as I could the events that had led to my parting from Father. The duchess listened attentively, without interrupting, but the sound of my own words in my ears was unconvincing. All too aware of the implausibility of my story, I stumbled and faltered. Why would she believe such an outlandish tale? I must sound spiteful as well as mendacious.
“I hope you can understand now why I wanted my whereabouts to be secret from him,” I said at last. “For the first time I feel free of him, of his disdain and disappointment. I know it seems unnatural in a daughter, unfilial—”
Miserably, I fell silent, biting my lips. I did not dare look at her again. In the silence the rumbling of the train pounded in my ears, and I waited in dread to hear what she would say.
Before she could speak, Felicity’s voice came gaily from across the carriage. “Aunt Gwendolyn, you must not be so secret with my cousin! Miss Yates and I want to know what you are saying. Come now, tell us what has absorbed you so.”
The duchess turned to them immediately, her usual warm smile supplanting whatever expression her face had worn an instant before. “Yes, we have been too exclusive, have we not? I cannot blame you for scolding. But if you will find the cards, dear, the four of us can have a game of speculation, and then we may all visit together.”
She moved toward the others, shepherding me with one light hand on my shoulder. She said nothing to me, but her hand gave a reassuring squeeze, and when I looked up I saw that her eyes, regarding me so gently, were full of tears.
Chapter Four
Night had fallen when we reached Ellsmere, the early but consuming nightfall of autumn, so that my first view of the estate was no more than a clutch of fleeting impressions: a long stretch of woods giving way to parkland and a huge building of pale stone that almost glimmered in its own light, extending higher and broader than I could see, and studded with the warm sheets of light that were windows. Later, by day, I would see that the massive main wing was flanked by two others: the west, the oldest part of the house, which reared a crenellated tower, and the east, a newer addition, a mass of gables and balconies.
I was surprised and disappointed not to be able to hear the ocean, but I had little time in which to think about it. After the relative calm of our train journey, our arrival at Ellsmere was a pandemonium. As soon as our coac
h stopped we were met by a flood of servants, and the bustle of our arrival was evidently not the only urgent matter on their minds.
When the duchess had pieced together the cause for the general air of confusion and apprehension, she turned to me with a sigh. “My dear, I hope you will bear with us. The re-plastering of the guest rooms is not yet finished—why, I cannot fathom! I shall have to look into it later—and we must put you in Great-Aunt Agatha’s room this evening. It is a nuisance, but it is only for one night.”
“I have no objection, as long as Great-Aunt Agatha has none,” I said, winning one of the duchess’s trilling laughs.
“Great-Aunt Agatha has been dead these thirty years; I doubt she will be discommoded by your presence.”
“I would sooner risk disturbing a living relative than a dead one,” said Felicity, with a shiver of horror not unmixed with relish. “I hope for your sake she sleeps sound in the earth, cousin. She might choose to evict you.”
The duchess gave her a gentle frown. “That is scarcely hospitable, Felicity, to greet our cousin with tales of bogles and haunts. I myself have never heard that Great-Aunt Agatha makes a habit of revisiting her old quarters. She led a very contented life, as far as I know, and left no unfinished business behind but her embroidered altar cloth. No, my main concern is that you will be alone on the third floor. I hope you will not feel terribly isolated, my dear; I would not put you there if there were any other room fit for you to occupy.” She hesitated, a single worried crease appearing on her brow. “But we’ll find something better for you tomorrow.”
Even though it was on the top floor and had not been fitted with gas lighting, Great-aunt Agatha’s room was a quaint and comfortable chamber full of enormous, heavy furniture that had a reassuringly solid appearance. The hangings were rich but faded and fraying, and altogether I felt much more comfortable in this old and frankly shabby room than I would have in a more fashionable apartment fitted out in the fragile, eggshell-hued furnishings the duchess seemed to favor.
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