by Candace Camp
They stood in an awkward group for a few minutes before two more women arrived along with another man, a rotund, smiling sort who greeted everyone with bluff affability. Both the women had dark hair shot through with silver, but one of them, Lady Phyllida Kent, was almost as tall as Lady Euphronia, and the other, Lady Cynthia Atwater, was softer and shorter than the others and possessed of a certain vague sweetness of expression. The gentleman, Mary learned, was the husband of Lady Phyllida.
There was a faint resemblance among the three older women, and Mary could see something in them that reminded her of her own mother’s face—though it was hard to catch it in the stiff arrogance that stamped these women’s features.
The earl took a look at the watch that was tucked into his waistcoat pocket and sighed. “Apparently Fitzhugh has chosen not to honor us with his presence. One never knows whether to wait for him, so I suggest that we move forward. Aunts, Cousin Elizabeth, I am sure you are rather curious about the reason for my invitation… .”
Lady Euphronia gave him a regal nod. He drew breath to continue, and at that moment, a man came striding into the room.
“Sorry. Am I late again?” He came to a dead stop as he caught sight of the older women. “Aunt Euphronia! Beg pardon.” He made a bow that, even to Mary’s untutored gaze, surpassed all the other men’s efforts. “Aunt Phyllida.” He spoke to each of the women, then to Sir Royce and the earl, his expression growing increasingly puzzled as his gaze traveled from one to another, ending with the Bascombes.
His greetings gave Mary and her sisters ample time to observe him. This, Mary thought, must be the man Sir Royce had referred to as Fitzhugh. He was the earl’s younger brother—as well as Sir Royce’s—if she remembered correctly Sir Royce’s explanation of the family tree. Mary could see the resemblance. This man was tall and broad-shouldered like the earl and Royce, though Fitz was the tallest of the three, and his figure was more lithe than powerful. He was also almost dazzlingly handsome. His hair was thick and black and perfectly styled in a carelessly windswept way. His eyes were a brilliant blue, and his face was almost too well-modeled—but a mischievous twinkle in his eyes and the deep dimple that creased his cheek when he smiled saved him from the blandness of perfection.
“I beg your pardon,” he went on, casting an engaging grin at Mary and her sisters. “Did I know we had guests this evening?”
“No. I invited our aunts to meet these young ladies. You will be interested in their history as well, Fitz.”
Mary and her sisters were now the object of several interested stares. Mary forced herself to remain still under their scrutiny, as if she were unbothered by the situation. She was glad that Royce was still standing by her side.
“The Misses Bascombe are our aunt Flora’s daughters—your nieces, ladies, and our cousins, Fitz.”
For a moment the room was completely silent. Then Fitz let out a crack of laughter. “Cousins, is it? No, really, I think you are far too lovely to be related to this old fellow and me. But if we are cousins, then I must claim the right to welcome you to the family.”
He bent and kissed each of the girls lightly on the cheek, engendering a series of blushes and giggles. Stepping back, he went on, “I cannot simply call each of you Cousin. You must give me your names. I will start by telling you that I am your cousin Fitz.”
With more smiles, the sisters went through their given names.
“Flowers,” Fitz remarked. “Most appropriate.”
Aunt Euphronia snorted. “I must say, it does sound like the sort of silly thing Flora would do.”
Aunt Cynthia smiled at them. “Rose rather looks like Flora. Such a pretty girl.”
Aunt Phyllida studied them, frowning. “I really could not say for sure.”
“No, I would not want to decide too hastily,” Aunt Euphronia agreed.
“Dear aunts, I fear you misunderstand.” The earl glanced over at the older women. “I did not ask you here to judge my cousins’ legitimacy. Their papers seem to be in perfectly good order. They are Flora Talbot’s and Miles Bascombe’s legitimate children. I merely thought that you would welcome the opportunity to meet your nieces.”
Aunt Euphronia favored the earl with a frosty look, but Aunt Cynthia nodded. “Of course.” She turned to the girls. “I always wondered what happened to Flora. I wished that she had written me and let me know where she was. Father forbade us to correspond with her, but I would have, anyway, if only I had known where she had gone.” She took a step forward. “Is she here as well?”
“No, ma’am,” Mary told the woman. “I am afraid my mother died several months ago.”
Aunt Cynthia’s face softened with sadness. “I am so sorry. Flora was a bit unconventional, of course, but I thought that Father was too harsh with her.”
Again Aunt Euphronia snorted. “She was wild as a March hare, and we all know it. Father had every right to cast her off.”
“No doubt.” The earl cast his aunt a quick, tight smile. “However, that is neither here nor there. I believe it is time for us to dine. Aunt Euphronia, if you will allow me to escort you?”
Everyone sorted themselves out, the men offering the women their arms to escort them the few feet down the hall, in some sort of order that the earl and his British relatives all seemed to understand, though Mary could not see how the matter was decided. Lord Kent did not escort his wife, she noted, and the order did not seem to follow along lines of age, but she was rather glad that Sir Royce offered his arm to her.
She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow and they followed in Lady Phyllida’s wake, her sisters trailing along behind them.
Royce glanced down at Mary, his eyes glinting. “Had your fill of the aristocracy already?”
“Everything seems a bit … formal.”
“Mmm. Stewkesbury is … a traditional sort of man. He does not even have to consider what the rules for an occasion are; he simply knows.”
“Then he knows what to do when a gaggle of cousins is dropped on him unexpectedly.”
Her companion let out a laugh. “No. There, I think it is safe to say, he is a mere novice. As completely ignorant as I. It’s rather refreshing to see, actually.”
“And you’re enjoying that.”
He chuckled. “A bit.”
“Why? Do you dislike him?”
Royce glanced at her, startled. “My, you are one for bluntness, aren’t you?”
Mary shrugged. “Are you one for answering bluntly?”
“I am not averse to it. However, you have asked a question that is—well, a trifle complicated to answer. And, as we are already here, I fear there is no time.”
They had walked down the hall as they spoke and entered the next room. A long table surrounded by heavy chairs stood in the center of the large room, dominated by a huge vase of dried flowers. Two smaller epergnes of fruit were placed halfway between it and both ends of the table. A sideboard along the wall at one end of the room was flanked by servants.
There seemed to be an order to the seating as well, Mary noted, and again, everyone else went unerringly to the correct seats. After seating Mary, Royce took the place next to her. Servants jumped to pull out chairs for the other three girls. Lily sat down beside Mary and Camellia and Rose were seated across from them, spoiling the careful man/woman arrangement about the rest of the table.
Mary looked down at the table before her. There were plates of varying sizes and bowls and glasses, not to mention a plethora of forks, knives, and spoons. She realized that she hadn’t any idea what three-fourths of the utensils were for. Down the table, she heard Aunt Phyllida begin to describe the opera she had attended the evening before. Mary sighed inwardly. It was going to be a long and excruciating evening.
Chapter 7
Servants moved around their table, carefully filling glasses or dishing food onto plates. Rose thanked the footman with a smile and received a sharp glance from Aunt Phyllida. Mary suspected that Rose had made some sort of faux pas, but Mary could not w
orry about that. She was far too involved in determining which utensil to use to eat her fish.
She cast a furtive glance at Sir Royce on her right, and when he picked up a knife and a fork, she chose the same utensils beside her plate. As they ate, she began to notice that Royce reached for his utensils each time with great deliberation, lingering over the right one before slowly picking it up, and she realized that he knew what she was doing and was trying to ease her task. Mary let out a giggle, cutting her eyes over to him.
He shot her a playful wink and returned to his food.
Conversation at the table was slow and erratic. Most of the early conversation consisted of polite general remarks about such things as the weather. Fitz, however, seemed determined to get the group talking. Over the soup course, he smiled down the table at Rose and Camellia and asked where they hailed from in America.
“Pennsylvania,” Rose answered softly. Mary knew that Rose did not like talking to strangers, and she was sure that this situation inhibited her even more.
“Ah.” Fitz smiled. “Philadelphia, yes? That is in Pennsylvania, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Mary put in, coming to Rose’s rescue. “But that isn’t where we are from. We are from a much smaller town—Three Corners.”
“But we’ve lived in quite a few places,” Camellia spoke up.
“Oh, yes,” Lily added. “Maryland for a while. Then there was the farm.”
“Your father farmed?” Aunt Cynthia asked. “How nice. Did he have many tenants?”
“Tenants?” Lily replied blankly.
“Yes. Perhaps you use a different word. The people who worked the land.”
“He didn’t have any workers,” Mary assured her. “Except us, of course. He did the work himself.”
All the rest of the table froze, staring at the girls.
Mary gazed back at them, annoyed. What was the matter with these people? They seemed appalled by the simplest things.
“It was on the frontier,” Mary went on. “The farms were small, worked just by a family. We all helped with the planting and the harvesting.”
“I see.” Aunt Euphronia raised her brows disdainfully.
Some imp in Mary made her add, “Except, of course, that one of us had to carry the rifles and stand guard.”
All the heads swiveled back to her.
“To warn everybody if we saw Indians coming,” Mary explained.
Aunt Cynthia gasped. Across the table, Rose made a strangled noise and raised her napkin to her mouth, coughing.
“Indians?” Lord Kent asked, his eyes going round. “You mean wild Indians?”
“Very wild. It was the edge of civilization, you see.” It was wrong of her to goad them this way, but Mary could not seem to stop herself. Her aristocratic relatives’ attitude was simply too annoying.
“And you—you girls carried a gun?” Aunt Phyllida looked even more appalled at this than at the idea of marauding Indians.
“A knife as well,” Camellia added.
“We had to be able to fight,” Mary explained calmly.
This statement elicited a gasp from one of the aunts, and Mary heard a muffled noise from Royce beside her. She slid her eyes over to him and saw that he was studying his plate with great interest, his lips pressed tightly together.
“It came in very handy later, too, when Papa bought the tavern,” Rose piped up.
Mary shot a surprised glance at her sister. Apparently even gentle Rose had become tired of their aunts’ quiet condescension.
“The tavern? Your father owned a tavern!” Aunt Euphronia’s eyebrows appeared in danger of climbing into her hairline.
“Yes. We lived above it.”
“You lived there! Four young girls!”
“We were not terribly young by that time,” Mary pointed out. “We were all old enough to help—cooking, serving the food, sweeping up, that sort of thing. I kept the books, as Papa was not fond of that.”
“Dear Lord,” Aunt Cynthia murmured.
“The pistols were handier there, of course,” Camellia said judiciously, “when you had to break up a fight. The rifle simply wasn’t practical for close-in situations.”
Fitz let out a bark of laughter, and Sir Royce closed his eyes, quickly covering his mouth with his hand. From the end of the table, the earl shot a look at his brother and stepbrother, then regarded Mary and her sisters sternly.
“Heathens!” Aunt Euphronia exclaimed. She swung round to the earl. “Stewkesbury, they are absolute heathens! I hope you are not contemplating trying to bring these girls out in society. It simply would not do. We would be the laughingstocks of the beau monde.”
“A Talbot living above a tavern!” Aunt Phyllida chimed in. Across the table, Aunt Euphronia’s daughter nodded vigorously.
“Flora must at least have taught them how to speak, for their English is decent, if somewhat spoiled by that accent—but everything else!” Aunt Euphronia fairly quivered in her outrage.
“We are sitting right here,” Mary pointed out, anger rising in her like steam. “If you wish to criticize me, you should say it to my face.”
The older woman swung to look at Mary, her gaze so haughty that Mary was sure it had withered many another person. What it engendered in Mary was a strong desire to hit her. “I was speaking,” Aunt Euphronia said in a slow, measured way, as if she were addressing someone hard of hearing or mentally deficient, “to the earl, as he is the one who has charge of you lot. It is he who must exercise some control over you, God help him.”
“He is not in charge of Mary or any of us!” Camellia shot back.
“As long as you are living on his generosity, I should think he has every right to control your behavior! Heaven knows, someone needs to. A more rag-mannered group of girls I have never seen.”
All four of the Bascombes jumped into the conversation at that remark, and as Aunt Phyllida, Lord Kent, and Aunt Euphronia also chimed in, the result was pandemonium.
“Silence!” The earl’s voice cut like a knife through the din, and the table immediately fell quiet.
“Now.” He looked at Mary and her sisters. “You will not speak to your elders in that way. It is most impolite. Aunt Euphronia, Aunt Phyllida, I would remind you that these young women are indeed my charge and not yours. I assumed that you might welcome the opportunity to meet your late sister’s children.” He swung his head back to the Bascombe girls. “And I thought that you might wish to meet your relatives. Clearly I was wrong on both counts. You do not have to like one another. However, I do insist on everyone behaving with some decorum when you are seated at my dinner table.” His gaze moved around the table, taking in each of the combatants.
Mary flushed, abashed. “You are right. I am sorry.”
These women were her mother’s sisters, and she should have reached out to them, not judged them on the basis of their clothes or their manner. She knew, deep down, that part of her resentment was based on her own embarrassment.
She turned to her aunts. “I apologize for behaving rudely. I should not have spoken as I did. I assure you that my mother taught me to treat my elders with respect, and she would be most upset to see me ignore her lessons.”
Her sisters chimed in with subdued apologies. Aunt Cynthia smiled at them, and Lady Euphronia answered with a frosty nod of acceptance. Mary noticed that neither she nor Lady Phyllida was moved to respond with an apology to their nieces.
The rest of the dinner continued in a more subdued manner. As soon as the meal was finished, Mary asked that she and her sisters be excused, pleading tiredness. Beside her, Sir Royce jumped to his feet, pulling back her chair, and offered his arm.
“Pray allow me to escort you.”
“I think I would be able to undertake the long trek to our rooms on my own,” Mary replied with a twinkle. But she slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow.
Her sisters went ahead of them, obviously eager to escape the dining room. Mary strolled along more slowly at Royce’s side.
; “I hope you will not allow the aunts to, shall we say, discourage you …” Royce began.
Mary cast a sideways glance at him. “I am afraid you do not know me very well if you think that they will discourage me.”
“No, I suspected they would not. But let me assure you that they are a trial to everyone in the family—and outside, I suspect. I make it my business to avoid Aunt Euphronia whenever possible. I hesitated about coming tonight, truthfully, but I pulled my courage together. I could not in good conscience allow you to face her on your own.”
Mary chuckled. “You are a brave soul.”
“I have suffered enough cuts from that razor tongue to be wary.” He smiled wryly.
“Thank you for your kindness tonight.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I appreciate your words, but I don’t know what you mean.”
“I noticed how you indicated which fork and knife to use. I would have been lost without your direction. And do not try to deny it. I appreciate the help—heaven knows we need all the help we can get here, I fear.”
Royce shrugged. “’Twas little enough. I know how difficult it is to be an outsider among the Talbot family.”
They stopped at the foot of the staircase. The other girls were already running up the stairs, chattering, but Mary paused and turned to face Royce, holding out her hand. He took it in his.
“I am mindful of all you have done for my sisters and me, and I am most grateful. We are all most grateful,” she amended quickly.
Royce did not let go of her hand. She knew that he should, that she should pull free of his grasp. Instead, she looked up into his face, neither of them saying a word.
It would be easy to get lost in his eyes, she thought. They were dark green now in the candlelight, the large pupils softening the sharpness they had held earlier in the day. She was aware of an urge to reach up and caress his cheek; she wanted to learn how his skin felt against her hand. Indeed, she wanted, God help her, to feel his lips on hers again.
