Vanessa had been in virtual hiding from him since the day on which she had lashed out at him and told him exactly what she thought of him. Afterward, part of her had been appalled at her temerity while another part had been proud that she had found the courage. And all of her had been horribly embarrassed at the thought of coming face-to-face with him again.
The moment had come.
Not that she had not looked at him in private a great deal more than she ought during their journey. He was undeniably good-looking—gross understatement—and virile and... well, and masculine. And she admired his effortless horsemanship—she had watched him often while trying to convince herself that it was Stephen she watched. It was all really not fair at all. Hedley had deserved everything good and wonderful this world had to offer and yet he had been thin and weak and very ill during the last couple of years of his life.
Indeed, she felt guilty about admiring someone who was his antithesis—as if she still owed her husband her
undivided loyalty.
Hedley was long dead.
“Thank you.” She forced herself to look into the viscount’s eyes as she set a hand in his and descended the carriage steps to the terrace. But then her eyes moved to the house. “Oh, it is far more vast than it looked on the approach.”
She felt like a dwarf. But what gauche words to speak aloud!
“That is because from a distance one sees the house and terrace and flower gardens as a unit and is impressed more by the pleasing vista than by the size of the house,” the viscount said. “One is meant to be impressed by the house itself when one arrives here.”
“The steps are marble,” she said.
“They are indeed,” he agreed, “as are the pillars.”
“And this is where our grandfather grew up,” she said.
“No,” he told her. “This house is no more than thirty years old. The old medieval hall was torn down and this built in its place. It was shabby and crumbling, I have been told. And this is certainly beautiful. I nevertheless wish I could have seen the house as it was. Much character and many memories must have been destroyed in the name of modernity.”
Vanessa looked at him with appreciation for his feelings. But at the same moment she realized that her gloved hand was still in his. She snatched it away as if it had been scalded, drawing attention to the fact, and he raised his eyebrows.
A very superior-looking gentleman, dressed all in black, was bowing to Stephen and indicating the marble steps. Vanessa realized in some shock that he must be the butler. Halfway up the steps stood a plumpish woman, also in black, who was probably the housekeeper. And at the top of the steps, she noticed for the first time, were two lines of smartly dressed servants, one line on each side of the huge double doors, which stood open. The servants were being paraded for their new master.
Oh, goodness. Could their arrival at their new home have been more intimidating? How would Stephen be able to deal with it all?
But Stephen had offered one arm to Margaret and the other to Katherine and proceeded up the steps in the butler’s wake after throwing a glance over his shoulder at Vanessa to see that she followed.
Viscount Lyngate offered his arm, and she took it.
The servants were not wearing cloaks and it was a chilly day despite the sunshine. Nevertheless, not one of them moved a muscle except to bow or curtsy to Stephen as each was introduced to him. He had a word with all of them—as if to the manner born, Vanessa thought with some pride.
She forced herself to smile and nod at all of the servants as she passed, and they bowed or curtsied in return. Rundle Park was like a rural cottage in comparison with this.
Mr. Bowen came behind them.
And then they were inside the great hall, which was great indeed and fairly robbed Vanessa of breath. It was round and pillared and stretched up the full height of the house and into the dome, which was gilded and painted with scenes from mythology. Light from its long, narrow windows streamed into the hall below, making patterns of light and shade on the pillars and checkered floor.
They all stood and gaped.
Viscount Lyngate was the first to speak.
“The devil!” he muttered while the rest of them were still standing with their necks craned backward, and the butler and housekeeper waited to escort them elsewhere.
Vanessa looked at him in some surprise. But then she saw that another gentleman was striding into the hall through one of the arches surrounding it, his boot heels ringing on the tiles.
Vanessa had an impression of tall, dark handsomeness, of a dark-complexioned face, a lock of dark hair fallen across his forehead, of black riding clothes that were well worn but nevertheless becoming on his athletic form. He stopped and clasped his hands at his back and smiled.
It was a smile of considerable charm.
He looked sufficiently like Viscount Lyngate that Vanessa would not have been surprised to learn that they were brothers.
“Ah,” he said, “the new earl, I presume? And his . . . entourage?”
Viscount Lyngate released Vanessa’s arm and strode forward, his heavy greatcoat swinging against his boots. He came to a halt only when he was almost toe to toe with the other man. They were almost exactly the same height.
“You were supposed to be gone by now,” he said curtly and with undisguised annoyance.
“Was I?” the other gentleman said, his smile still in place but his voice transformed into a drawl of what sounded like boredom. “But I am not, am I, Elliott? Introduce me if you will be so good.”
The viscount hesitated but then turned back to face them.
“Merton,” he said, “Miss Huxtable, Mrs. Dew, Miss Katherine, may I present Mr. Huxtable?”
Not a brother, then?
“Constantine Huxtable,” the gentleman said, making them all an elegant bow. “Con to my friends.”
“Oh, I say!” Stephen exclaimed, stepping forward to shake the gentleman heartily by the hand while the ladies curtsied. “You have our name. You must be a relative.”
“I must indeed,” Mr. Huxtable agreed while Vanessa and her sisters looked on with interest. “Second cousin to be exact. We share a great-grandfather.”
“Indeed?” Stephen said. “Nessie has been telling us about our family tree, something the rest of us have sadly neglected, I am afraid. Great-Grandpapa had just two sons, did he not?”
“Your grandfather and mine,” Constantine Huxtable said. “And then there were your father and mine. And then my brother—my younger brother, who is recently deceased. And you. Earl of Merton. My felicitations.”
He sketched Stephen another bow.
So Constantine Huxtable and Viscount Lyngate were first cousins—their mothers were sisters. But it was another relationship that Vanessa was working out in her head. So were her siblings by the looks on their faces. Stephen was staring at their second cousin, his brow knit in thought.
“There is something here I do not understand,” he said. “You are the elder brother of the earl who just died? Ought not you to have been—? Ought not you to be—?”
“The Earl of Merton myself?” Mr. Huxtable laughed. “I missed my chance for glory by two days, lad. That is what comes of being too eager in this life. May it be a lesson to you. My mother was Greek, daughter of an ambassador to London. She met my father when she was visiting her sister, who had married Viscount Lyngate and lived with him at nearby Finchley Park. But it was not until after her return to Greece with her papa, my grandfather, that she confessed to being in an, ah, interesting condition. He marched her back across Europe in high dudgeon. He demanded that my father do the decent thing—which he did. But I would not wait for the fairy-tale ending—or beginning—to my own story. I bowed to the stress of a sea crossing that had incapacitated my mother, and I made my squalling appearance in this world two days before my father could procure a special license and marry her. Thus I was and am and forever will be an illegitimate son. My esteemed parents had to wait another ten years for the a
rrival of a live and legitimate heir. Jonathan. He would have been more than delighted to make the acquaintance of all these new cousins. Would he not, Elliott?”
He looked at Viscount Lyngate, one eyebrow cocked in what Vanessa suspected was mockery.
Clearly there was no love lost between the cousins.
“But he died a few months ago,” Mr. Huxtable continued, “several years later than the physicians had predicted. And so, here you are, the new and legitimate Earl of Merton and his sisters. I assume these ladies are all sisters, including Mrs. Dew? Mrs. Forsythe, we will have tea in the drawing room.”
He spoke with absolute authority and with an aristocratic ease of manner, as if after all he were the Earl of Merton and owner of Warren Hall.
“That is the saddest story I have ever heard,” Katherine said, gazing at him wide-eyed. “I must write a story about it.”
Constantine Huxtable turned his smile on her.
“In which I figure as the tragic hero?” he said. “But there are compensations for having been born two days too soon, I do assure you. A certain freedom, for example, which neither Merton nor my cousin Elliott here can enjoy.” He bowed to Margaret. “Miss Huxtable, may I have the pleasure of escorting you upstairs?”
Margaret stepped forward and set a hand on his arm, and he led her through the arch by which he had entered the hall a few minutes ago. Stephen and Katherine followed close behind, gazing with eager interest at this newfound cousin. Viscount Lyngate exchanged a glance with Mr. Bowen before offering his arm to Vanessa again.
“I do apologize,” he said. “He was asked to leave.”
“But why?” she asked. “He is our cousin, is he not, and has welcomed us with considerable courtesy when he might have resented us—or Stephen anyway. His story is true, is it? He grew up here as the firstborn son of the Earl and Countess of Merton?”
“It is true. But English law is quite rigid in such matters,” he said. “There would be no way to make him legitimate even if there had been no other descendants of his line to inherit.”
“But if there had not,” Vanessa said as they walked through the arch and came to a magnificent marble staircase that wound its way upward, “he might have petitioned the king to grant him the title, might he not?”
Had she not read about such a thing somewhere?
“I suppose he might,” Viscount Lyngate said. “A lawyer would know the legalities of such a claim and the likelihood of his petition being granted. But there was a descendant—your brother.”
How could he not resent Stephen? Vanessa wondered as she looked up the stairs to where Constantine Huxtable was smiling at Margaret and bending his head to listen to something she said. It must seem to him that a crowd of strangers was invading his home.
He had been asked to leave his own home—by his younger brother’s guardian. By his own first cousin—his mother and Viscount Lyngate’s had been sisters.
“He is trouble, Mrs. Dew,” Viscount Lyngate said, his voice low. “He can mean only mischief by remaining here. You must not allow yourself to be deceived by his charm, which he has always possessed in abundance. Your brother must be quite firm with him. He must be given a week’s notice at the longest. He has had enough time to find another home and pack his belongings.”
“But this is his home,” Vanessa said, frowning. “This is where he has always belonged. It would have been his if he had been born two days later.”
“But he was not,” Viscount Lyngate said firmly as they followed the others into a drawing room. “And life is made up of what-ifs. There is no point in allowing ourselves to be distracted by them. What-ifs are not reality. The reality is, Mrs. Dew, that Con Huxtable is an illegitimate son of a former earl, while your brother is the Earl of Merton. It would be a mistake to be swayed by pity.”
But if one never felt pity for a fellow human, Vanessa thought, one was surely not fully human oneself, was one? That made Viscount Lyngate a little less than human. She looked at him, still frowning. Did he have no feeling for others, even his own cousin?
But he had moved away from her to stride forward to Stephen’s side.
Stephen was gazing admiringly at Constantine Huxtable. So was Katherine. Margaret was regarding him kindly. Vanessa smiled at him, though he was not looking her way.
What a dreadful day this must be for him. The fact that he was meeting four new cousins, all of whom would surely be kindly disposed toward him, must seem poor comfort.
For a few minutes Vanessa had forgotten her initial awe at a mansion that was magnificent beyond anything she had dreamed of. But the awe returned suddenly. The drawing room was large and square with a high, coved ceiling, painted with some scene from mythology and trimmed lavishly with gold. The furniture was elegant and the draperies of wine-colored velvet. Paintings in heavy gold frames covered the walls. There was a large Persian carpet underfoot, fringed by wood so highly polished that surely one would see one’s face in it if one bent forward.
Vanessa felt a surge of unexpected longing for Rundle Park—as if she had abandoned Hedley there.
She must not—she would not—forget him.
Her eyes rested upon Viscount Lyngate, who even without his greatcoat still looked large and imposing and virile and masculine. And handsome, of course. And very much alive.
She resented him greatly.
* * *
Elliott and Con Huxtable had been the closest of friends all their lives—until just a year ago, in fact. The three-year gap in their ages—Elliott was the elder—had not mattered one whit. They had lived only five miles apart, they were cousins, neither had had many other playmates in their neighborhoods, and they had enjoyed doing the same sorts of things—mostly outdoor sports and other vigorous, energetic games that involved climbing trees and diving into pools and wading through muddy bogs and devising other such strenuous activities that had filled their days with exercise and fun and got them into a great deal of trouble with their respective nurses.
When they grew up, they had remained close friends and had continued to enjoy life together, even if doing so had meant frequently stirring up mischief and mayhem and putting themselves in danger and raking their way to an admiring reputation among their peers and a less approving notoriety among society in general. They had both been great favorites among the ladies.
They had been two young blades sowing their wild oats together, in fact, never doing anyone any great harm, including—by some miracle—themselves. They had been young gentlemen, after all, and had known where to draw the line.
Even after Con’s father died they had remained friends though Con had started to spend more and more of his time at Warren Hall with Jonathan, of whom he had been inordinately fond. Elliott had missed him but admired his devotion to the handicapped boy. It had even struck him that Con was growing up and settling down faster than he was. Elliott’s father had been the boy’s guardian, of course, but he had been slack in his duties, trusting Con to look after the boy’s needs and oversee the day-by-day running of his estates with the aid of a competent steward.
And then Elliott’s father had died too.
And everything had changed. For Elliott had made the decision to take his new responsibilities seriously, and one of those responsibilities had been Jonathan. So he had spent some time at Warren Hall, acquainting himself with the nature of his duties there, though he had fully expected to be able to turn over the unofficial guardianship to Con again. He had even felt somewhat embarrassed that his uncle had not made Con the official guardian. He was old enough and quite capable enough, after all. And Jonathan had adored him.
But Elliott had soon made the painful discovery that Con had abused the trust Elliott’s father had placed in him, embezzling funds and stealing costly family jewels for his own gain, safe in the knowledge that Jonathan would never know the difference. And then there were the debaucheries Elliott had become aware of—house-maids impregnated and dismissed, laborers’ daughters ruined.
Con
was not the person Elliott had always thought him to be. There was no honor in him after all. He preyed upon the weak. He was the very antithesis of a gentleman. It was no excuse that through no fault of his own he had narrowly missed being his father’s heir.
His villainy had been an excruciatingly painful discovery.
Not that he had ever admitted to the thefts or the debaucheries. Though he had not denied them either. He had merely laughed when Elliott had confronted him with his findings.
“You may go to the devil, Elliott” was all he had said.
They had been bitter enemies for the last year. At least, for Elliott it had been bitter. He could not speak for Con.
Elliott had, of course, taken Jonathan’s care and the running of his estates directly into his own hands and had spent as much time at Warren Hall as he had at Finchley Park, it had seemed. There had been precious little time left for himself.
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