by Renee Duke
“My, my, how dutiful,” muttered Aunt Meredith, who was standing nearby with her son Stuart. “Strange how they didn’t feel obliged to help set up for it. Or pay for it, either.”
“Whisht, Maw. They’ll hear you.”
“Good.”
If they did, they gave no sign.
Cousin Willoughby went on speaking. “Well, are you going to accord my father a similar place of honour or not?” He waved a hand toward Grantie’s awaiting throne, where Great-Gran had shrunk back in her own chair looking nervous.
Seeing this, Arjun Bindal moved forward to address the Wolverton-Hernes in a polite, but serious, manner.
“Excuse me. As a medical student, I feel I have to caution against that. Mrs. Hollingsworth appears to find the idea upsetting. In observing her reaction, I would say she has mild anthropophobia, which means she doesn’t like having too many people around her. Especially in close proximity. One person, well known to her, is probably all she can handle. More could result in her becoming extremely agitated. I therefore think seating arrangements should remain just as they are. Uncle?”
He looked at Doctor Bindal, who nodded emphatically. “I quite agree. Mrs. Hollingsworth must not become agitated. Not at her age.”
Uncle Edmond was quick to seize upon this endorsement.
“That’s it, then,” he said, glaring at Cousin Willoughby. “The subject’s closed. Doctor Bindal is Mother’s GP, as well as Grantie’s, and we intend to heed his advice.”
“Heed his advice? Why, that’s…that’s absurd!” Cousin Willoughby spluttered. “If she believes sitting next to Pater will bring on some silly panic attack, why can’t she move?”
“Because she was already seated by the time you arrived,” said Aunt Meredith, pushing away her son’s restraining hand and moving forward. “Both common courtesy and consideration for her condition dictate that you abide by what the doctor says and have your parents sit elsewhere. Oh, look, Séamus has found them a nice spot over there.”
Her grandson-in-law, a young Irishman by the name of Séamus Ruane, had indeed moved two of the fancier chairs nearer to the throne-chair, but not very near, and at an angle behind it. If Grantie Etta or Great-Gran wanted to talk to their proposed occupants, they would have to turn their own chairs around and raise their voices quite a bit, which Dane, for one, didn’t think they’d be likely to do.
“Does Great-Gran have whatever Arjun said?” he whispered to his grandfather.
Granddad shrugged. “First I’ve heard of it, but if it keeps her from having to sit beside Percy, we’ll go along.”
Cousin Percy intervened before Cousin Willoughby could try a counter argument.
“Oh, just leave it, Willoughby,” he said, with a condescending nod toward Great-Gran. “We don’t want unpleasantness on what is supposed to be a pleasant occasion. Poor Emmy was always a bit delicate. Best to humour her.”
He and his wife shuffled forward, supported by both walking sticks and the respective arms of Cousin Bentley and Cousin Zenobia. As the Wolverton-Hernes settled the nonagenarians into chairs, Mr. Marchand gave Arjun a grateful smile.
“I thought you were going to specialize in allergies, not phobias.”
Arjun grinned. “I am. And it is my pre-specialist opinion that Mrs. Hollingsworth is allergic to her cousin.”
“I’d say she was afraid of him,” said Paige, who had come back into the hall upon hearing raised voices.
“She is,” Aunt Meredith replied. “Her childhood memories of Percy are not at all pleasant.”
“That’s because Percy was, and is, thoroughly unpleasant,” said Grandad, turning toward the main door. “Ah, looks like you girls have the first of your charges, Paige. Or will have, once Claire gets them in.”
Paige and Neeta turned too, and saw Cousin Claire trying to get through the door with her year-old son, whom she was carrying, and two small girls whose reins had become tangled. Her little nephew had been holding the door for her, but for reasons known only to not-quite-four-year-olds, had suddenly let it go of it and dashed forward into the hall.
“Is that the kind of manners we’ve been teaching you?” his father admonished, catching hold of him. “When you hold a door for a lady, you hold it ’til she’s all the way through, laddie.”
“Sorry, Auntie,” the child apologized as someone sprang to hold the door in his stead. Anxious to redeem himself he added, “I was good all morning.”
“He was,” Cousin Claire confirmed, handing the baby to her husband and stooping to release the toddlers from their reins. “They all were.”
“And when is my babby girl anything else?” inquired Cousin Séamus, scooping up his two-year-old daughter.
“What a lovely outfit,” said Mrs. Marchand, admiring the little girl’s traditional Irish dress.
“Aye, and handmade by me mother,” Cousin Séamus replied, beaming. “Not one of those touristy pieces from a diddly-idle shop.”
“Would you like to come with Paige and me and play with some toys?” Neeta asked the children.
Cousin Séamus hiked his child higher in his arms. “Toys, is it? Now that sounds like grand fun, doesn’t it, me treasure? Come with Daddy and let’s go see.”
Mr. Marchand watched them go off. “I used to carry my little treasures around like that,” he said, looking at Paige wistfully.
“Huh, you can’t even pick us up now.”
“Oh, can’t I?”
He took a step towards her. Laughing, she sidestepped him and headed for the nursery, stopping only long enough to wave a hello to the incoming Braxtons, and notice that fourteen-year-old Colby Braxton was quite good-looking.
“Looks like we got the right place,” Mr. Braxton, now Cousin Mitch, said upon recognizing Dane and Jack, who were standing near the door with Ravi. “Hi, boys. This is my wife, Myra, our two youngest kids, Colby and Amy, my sister Ginny, my brother-in-law, Wade Horner, and my niece, Jade. Trevor told me there’re a lot of folks coming. I see there are quite a few already.”
Uncle Edmond was also near the door. “Tip of the iceberg, old chap. I trust he was able to sort out some of your lineage for you last night?”
“He sure was. Didn’t know you’d traced the Wolvertons all the way back to the Conquest and beyond! Ginny and I might just forget about our Braxton heritage and go with this one.”
“Give me a bit of time and I’ll help you get the Braxtons back that far too,” said Trevor, coming up.
“Tracing family is the only time he shows any interest in eras predating the early twentieth century,” Uncle Edmond complained. “Can’t understand his having such a modern outlook. The only really old thing he has a passion for is Rosebank. He’s loved the place since the first day he was carried in there as an infant.”
Cousin Mitch looked toward the throne-chair. “Miss Wolverton not here yet?”
“Call her Grantie,” said Uncle Trevor. “We all do. It comes from my cousin, Gus, over there, not being able to say ‘Great-Aunt’ when she was small.”
Cousin Mitch’s gaze then went to the Wolverton-Hernes. His expression hardened only slightly, but Uncle Edmond caught it.
“Acquainted with our Wolverton-Herne branch, are you?”
“They’re staying at our hotel. They were just coming in when Ginny and I got back last night and found Wade, Myra, and the kids down in the lobby waiting for us. They must have heard us talking about what we’d learned from Trevor and figured out we were related. They came over to introduce themselves and—”
“Inflicted their society upon you until you were able to escape,” said Uncle Edmond, nodding. “You have my sympathy.”
“We do?” Cousin Mitch looked relieved. “Then it’s not just us that finds them… finds them, kind of, well…”
“Narrow-minded? Patronizing? Insufferable? No, that’s most of us.”
“That’s all of us,” corrected Uncle Ewan. Now dressed in full Highland regalia, he strode over and put out his hand. “Ewan McAllister, Edmond’s br
other-in-law. And no fan of them baheids.”
“That a fact? Well, that makes me feel better, then,” Mr. Braxton responded as they shook hands. “We came to England to find kinfolk, but I would have happily passed on finding them. I don’t think the one called Bentley strung together two sentences that didn’t involve money. I thought Brits considered it vulgar to talk about money.”
“Most do,” Uncle Trevor agreed. “Bentley’s an exception. Come with me and I’ll introduce you to everyone else here present. Like Dad said, these are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s lots more coming.”
Chapter Nine
Even as he spoke, the door opened to admit Mrs. Dexter, Chloe Dexter, and Cousin Ophelia, who were immediately followed by the vicar and his wife, a local policeman and his family, the Delacourt/Ziegler/Bauer group, the Traverses, and assorted Marsdens.
This influx increased the nursery room’s potential clientele by six - the Ziegler baby, the Travers baby, Constable Watson’s five-year-old daughter, Rosie, two-year-old Tara Marsden, and Tara’s twin siblings, aged three months. These little Marsdens belonged to Brad’s cousin, Rupert. As Granddad had predicted, Brad and Alexis did not want their children in the nursery.
“We don’t believe in isolating children and making them feel unworthy of being in adult company,” Alexis explained.
But upon hearing someone tell Tara about the toys, both Nolan and Cadence wanted to go there. Cadence threw herself to the floor, screaming and Nolan started bellowing.
“I don’t want to stay here. You’re stupid. I want to go to the toy room. The toy room! The toy room!”
“But darling…oh, well, all right,” Alexis said as, for good measure, he punched her. “Alexis will come and stay in there with you.”
She took her now beaming children off to the nursery, followed by Cousin Rupert’s wife Melanie, who did not share Brad and Alexis’s child rearing philosophies.
“I’ll stay, too,” she told the other parents grimly. “To supply protection.”
Despite this reassurance, Cousin Séamus hastened to remove his little treasure from the danger zone, and the Traverses and Watsons elected to keep their offspring with them.
“More kinfolk you could have passed on finding? Uncle Trevor inquired of Cousin Mitch upon hearing him mutter something about his ‘palm itching’.
Mitch Braxton grinned sheepishly. “Got some like that our end, too. A niece on Myra’s side’s into the permissive approach. We prefer ruthless dictatorship at our house.”
His son and eleven-year-old daughter rolled their eyes and nodded in affirmation.
Before long, the hall was full of people. Jack knew more of them than Dane did, but even he confessed to being unable to identify all the Traverses, Marsdens, Delacourts, Lythams, Ridgewells, Abercrombies, and others attached to the Wolverton line by blood or marriage, including a couple of actual Wolvertons, the Australian descendants of Grantie Etta’s Uncle Edward.
A number of friends, neighbours, and historians were in attendance too, as well as other non-relatives connected to Grantie Etta in some way, such as her vet, her solicitor, and a retired missionary nun. The hall buzzed with accents from the British Isles, North America, Australia, and Europe as people exchanged pleasantries with those they saw often, and caught up on news with those they didn’t.
Most people over eighty found chairs and remained fairly stationary. Everyone else drifted from group to group, with the exception of the teenagers, whose preferred location was close to the soft drinks, sandwiches, sausage rolls, and vol-au-vents. Children who were too old for the nursery, but too young to be considered on a social par with the teenagers, were sometimes in the hall, sometimes outside of it, and sometimes in a side room containing video games and DVDs.
When Paige and Neeta emerged from the nursery, they looked around for their brothers and Jack, whom they spotted standing near the stage in the company of Zacharias and Alina Bauer and Colby and Amy Braxton.
“Escaping?” Dane inquired as the girls joined them.
“No. Well, yes,” Paige replied, “but the village girls have taken over now, so we didn’t have to put up with Brad and Alexis’s little monsters for long. When Nolan clobbered Tara with a wooden block, I thought Alexis and Cousin Melanie were going to come to blows too.”
“Too bad one of the camera guys didn’t get it on film so they could use it as evidence of assault,” said Dane, nodding towards a young man making a visual record of the party. He was filming the socializing segments without sound, which was probably just as well, as not all the conversations were congenial.
Those that weren’t tended to involve the Wolverton-Hernes. Nearby, Cousin Zenobia was talking to Mr. and Mrs. Marchand, whom she had somehow managed to corner.
“I suppose it comes from having an ancestor who went off to live in a place populated by convicts,” she mused, looking in the direction of the Travers family.
“What does?” said Mr. Marchand.
“The loosening of standards.”
“And precisely how have standards been loosened?”
“Well…that…infant. You know—the little half-breed. I was quite taken aback at the hotel to see that our distant American relatives had adopted a Chinese girl—Jade, I think they said her name was—but at least she is, for her own race, pure. Whereas that small unfortunate over there is neither one nor the other.”
Cousin Ophelia happened to be passing by at that moment. Before Mr. Marchand could respond, she pushed past him and came to a stop about an inch from Cousin Zenobia’s face.
Her voice held an icy tone that was quite out of character for her. “Excuse me, but are you, by any chance, referring to Darren and Kiah’s beautiful little child?”
“Beautiful?” Cousin Zenobia’s lip quivered, as with amusement. “Well, perhaps there is some sort of native beauty. The mother’s quite pretty. I suppose that’s what attracted Darren.”
“What attracted Darren was a kind, loving, joyful young woman who is in complete harmony with herself. Something an insensitive, discordant, bigoted person like you would know nothing about.”
Cousin Zenobia drew back, looking aghast. “Alan, are you going to let this woman speak to me like that?”
“Yes.” Mr. Marchand’s tone matched his cousin’s. “Way to go, Bev. Keep it up. I’m sure you’ve got more.”
She did, but Cousin Zenobia didn’t wait to hear it. She moved off quickly, almost colliding with her daughter.
“My mother appears upset,” Penelope observed as she joined the other children. “What did that awful cousin of Uncle Alan’s say to her?”
“Nothing she shouldn’t have,” said Paige, somewhat surprised to find herself defending Cousin Ophelia.
“What do you want?” Jack asked rudely.
“I want to be in London, but since I’m not, my great-grandfather says I have to interact with you.”
“Well, aren’t we honoured,” Paige retorted, resenting her imperious air.
“Yes, you are. We had to turn down an invitation to a very exclusive wedding to come to this party. The daughter of one of my father’s business associates is getting married today. A very grand affair. She’s an only child and her father is sparing no expense, which is extremely generous of him, considering the young man churlishly refused to take her name. When I marry, I shall expect my husband to take my name.”
Paige snorted derisively. “You expect a guy to go around with the name Penelope?”
“You expect to get married?” Colby had only met her once, but she had obviously made an unfavourable impression.
Penelope bestowed a look of scorn upon him. “Of course I shall marry. As for the name, I don’t suppose Canadians—or Americans—know about such things, but it’s not uncommon for a man to take his wife’s surname if she’s the last of a very prestigious line.”
“What if he’s the last of a very prestigious line too?” Colby wanted to know.
“Then the name would be hyphenated, as it was for m
y great-great grandfather.”
“Jasper? He wasn’t the last of his line,” Jack scoffed. “Just a younger son who wanted to score points with his wife’s family—which she wasn’t the last of, either.”
“She only had sisters, and a mentally unbalanced brother who wasn’t likely to father children. My great-great-grandfather knew that if he didn’t change our name to Wolverton-Herne, the Wolverton line would eventually come to an end. He didn’t want that to happen. He was obviously far more family-conscious than your great-great-grandfather. Pelham Avery didn’t add the Wolverton name to his. Neither did your great-grandfather, Diggory Hollingsworth.”
“Good thing,” said Paige. “If he had, Mum would have been Britannia Wolverton-Hollingsworth Marchand, and I think her publishers might have had a hard time fitting that onto a book cover. She only kept the Hollingsworth part because she already had a following under that name when she married Dad.”
“And the Wolverton line hasn’t come to an end. Or the name, either,” Jack put in. “Those two fellows over there are both Wolvertons. Proper Wolvertons. No hyphen.”
Penelope spared the two young Australians a disdainful look. “Their branch of the family left England generations ago. They’ve ignored poor Grantie for years. My father says they’ve only come to see her now because she’s old and they want to worm their way into her affections. I expect the same could be said for several people here.” She cast a sly look at Colby and Amy, who stiffened slightly, but said nothing.
“She’s always kept up with them,” said Jack. He threw his shoulders back in a gesture of irritation, causing the medallion’s chain to become visible under his shirt.
Penelope’s eyes suddenly gleamed. “Oh, you’re wearing some kind of necklace. May I look at it? I love jewellery.”
