by Mary Balogh
Estelle sucked in a deep breath of air, perhaps the first since she had heard the panting. She turned more fully, drawing her feet from the water at the same time, curling her legs under her, and pulling her skirt down over them. All a bit too late for modesty.
People never came this way. Well. Almost never.
He was astride a massive horse, an equally massive man, or so he appeared to Estelle from her vantage point close to the ground. Oh dear God, her hair was all about her in a half-tangled, untidy mass. Her dress was soggy and clinging to her bare legs. He, on the other hand, was immaculately clad for riding, a man with wide shoulders and a broad chest and powerful-looking thighs. He was dark and dour of countenance, though the fact that his tall hat was pulled low over his brow and cast his face in shadow might account for at least part of that impression. His black-faced brown bloodhound panted up at him as though awaiting the order to attack and kill.
He was some distance away from Estelle, holding his horse quite still while he regarded her in silence. He made no apology. He asked for no assurance that she was unharmed. He uttered no greeting of any sort. Except that even as she noted this he touched his whip to the brim of his hat and inclined his head perhaps an inch and a half in her direction. Then he rode down the track, across the bridge, in among the trees that lay beyond the bank on the other side, and disappeared.
After that one slight acknowledgment of her existence he had not once looked her way.
Well.
Estelle gaped after him. She was trembling, she realized. Her heart was still beating at what felt like double time. It pounded in her chest and sounded like a drumbeat in her ears. Her hands were tingling with pins and needles. Her teeth were chattering, though certainly not with cold despite the fact that her skirt was definitely wet and uncomfortable about her legs. Her hair felt like a jungle and probably looked like one. She felt foolish and humiliated despite the fact that he was a stranger and it was unlikely she would ever see him again. She also felt indignant and ruffled. Downright angry, in fact. How dared he have a vicious dog like that on the loose where it might attack any unwary person walking alone— or sitting with her feet dangling in the water— and tear her to shreds?
Her heart speeded up further if it was possible and made her feel quite faint for a moment. And how dared he not dismount from that monster of a horse and hurry to her assistance, all gentlemanly concern for her well-being? For all he knew, she might have swooned as soon as his back was turned and toppled into the water and drowned and floated away like Ophelia and eventually sunk, never to be seen or heard of again. At the very least he ought to have been abject in his apologies for frightening her. Instead, his silent stare had somehow put her at fault, as though she had upset his poor dog— had she really called him a doggie? Captain! Whoever had heard of calling a dog Captain?
So much for a perfect summer day.
It was ruined.
She wondered if she would tell Bertrand. She could narrate the encounter amusingly. He would laugh—after ascertaining that she had taken no real harm. But she would have nightmares for a week. Perhaps longer. Perhaps for the rest of her life. She was still breathless. She was almost whimpering. A butterfly fluttering past her face made her jump.
She pulled on her stockings, tried unsuccessfully again to comb her fingers all the way through her hair, gave up the struggle, and got to her feet. She pushed them into her shoes and made her way home, her bonnet dangling from the fingers of one hand, her hairpins tinkling around inside it.
Aunt Jane would have needed to be revived if she could have seen her now. Not, now that Estelle came to think of it, that she had ever seen her aunt swoon.
Justin Wiley, Earl of Brandon, was not in a good mood, and that was putting it mildly. He had no wish to go where he was going, was not looking forward to getting there, and was wondering even now if he should simply turn around and go back even though he had come a long way and was almost at his destination. He did not, then, appreciate a distraction on top of everything else, especially when it came in the form of a woman whom he had mistaken at first for a farm wench playing truant from her chores before realizing that she was far too finely clad to be anything other than a lady. But a lady out alone in the middle of nowhere? With her hair in a dark, unruly cloud down her back and skirts up over her knees while her bare legs and feet dangled in the river?
The very sight of her had irritated him because of course he had reacted as any vigorous male would have in the circumstances— with a surge of sheer startled lust. After he had called off Captain, that was, and watched the woman try to contain her terror and at the same time make herself look respectable. Her efforts had done the opposite by drawing attention to a heaving bosom and bare, shapely legs. And that wanton hair.
It had been a brief distraction, over in a matter of minutes as he rode across the stone bridge that spanned the river and in among the trees on the other side. But his already dark mood had been further darkened, and he did not appreciate it one little bit. He had frightened a helpless woman— or at least Captain had, which was really the same thing since the dog was his. And he had reacted to her in an undisciplined, quite despicable way, even if he had not acted upon his baser instincts.
Prospect Hall must be close, within a mile or so anyway. That meant that the lady who was behaving with such scandalous disregard for propriety back there probably lived somewhere close. It was a fact that accused him, and he did not need more guilt heaped upon him.
For longer than a year now he had had the sole charge of his sister. He was her guardian, but had procrastinated in fulfilling his duty to her simply because she wanted nothing to do with him. He had respected her wishes while she was in mourning for her mother and had stayed away. And so he had perhaps exposed her to the bad influence of neighbors who did not know how to behave. Yet even now, when he had come at last to take charge, he was reluctant to complete his journey and was even tempted not to do so.
Good God, they might be acquaintances, that woman and his sister. Half sister, to be precise. Perhaps they were even friends. It was true that Maria had Miss Vane as a companion for respectability and some protection. But he had never met Miss Vane and knew little about her except that she had once been Maria’s governess. He really had been unpardonably derelict in his duty. Even while Maria’s mother was still alive he had been his sister’s official guardian after his father’s death six years ago.
He had just this moment been deficient also in his duty as a gentleman, he realized with a sudden grimace. He had not apologized to that woman for frightening her or explained to her that Captain was far too well trained to attack anyone, or any creature, in fact, without his master’s say-so— which had never yet been given. Or that Cap was far too good-natured a dog to want to attack anyone. Doubtless he had been galloping up on the woman in the hope that she would allow him to slobber and pant all over her in exchange for a belly rub. It was distinctly to the dog’s disadvantage that he was so large and fierce-looking with his giant paws and black face and wobbling jowls. And that his bark was deep and loud enough to wake the dead.
Justin had not even stopped long enough to assure himself that the woman had recovered from her fright. His dog had not gone within eight feet of her, but she might well be a vaporish sort. She might even now be stretched senseless upon the riverbank, getting fried by the sun.
It was extremely unlikely.
But he resented the distraction and the way the incident had somehow put him in the wrong. He needed to concentrate his mind upon the coming encounter with his sister. Soon. A mile or so beyond the bridge, he had been told at the village he had passed through twenty minutes or so ago. A couple of miles all told. About three miles if he continued along the road, as he would have done if he had been traveling with his carriage. He had sent that by the road with his valet and his baggage and had taken the shorter route himself. Something he now regretted. So. Less than a mile to go.
Maria was the daughter of his f
ather and his father’s second wife, now deceased. She was fourteen years younger than Justin. He had not seen her for twelve years. She had been a child then, eight years old, thin and pale, with fine blond hair and big blue eyes, and he had adored her. And she him. But he had left home abruptly and been gone for six years before he inherited the title and properties and fortune upon the death of his father. One of his first acts as Earl of Brandon, before he went home to Everleigh Park, was to have the countess, his stepmother, and therefore her daughter too, sent here to Prospect Hall to live. It was one of his smaller properties, though the house was said to be a comfortable, attractive manor set in pretty grounds and run by a small but competent staff, most of whom had been here forever. Justin had never come in person.
His stepmother’s health had broken down a year or two after the move and had deteriorated steadily over the following years. Her illness had become more and more debilitating, until by the end she could neither rise from her bed nor move her limbs nor speak. Even swallowing apparently had become well nigh impossible, according to the brief, very factual reports Miss Vane had sent him twice a month. He had sent a physician from London and a few nurses who had come highly recommended. Each of the nurses had been dismissed within a week. Maria had nursed her mother herself right up to the end. The countess had died a little more than a year ago, and Maria had been left alone with her companion. She would remain under Justin’s guardianship until her twenty-fifth birthday or until she married— with his permission. Whichever came first.
His sister had been here, then, since she was fourteen, with a sick mother for three or four of those years. She had been in mourning during the year since her mother’s death. One could only imagine the sort of hell she had lived through. Yet she had refused his summons, couched very carefully as an invitation, to return to Everleigh Park after the funeral and again a year later. On the latter occasion, just a couple of months ago, she had dictated her answer to Miss Vane, who had written it in her small, distinct handwriting.
Lady Maria Wiley must confess to a certain degree of puzzlement over the Earl of Brandon’s invitation to return home. She is already at home. Unless, that is, his lordship should choose to assert his sole ownership of Prospect Hall and require her removal, in which case she will purchase a home of her own with the inheritance left her by her mother and thus free him of an inconvenience and herself of any future harassment.
He had read and reread the extraordinary letter with amazed incredulity. Harassment? Could she hate him so much? It was obvious she could and did.
Did she realize, though, that the money her mother had left her was in trust with him for another five years? Did she understand that he was her legal guardian?
He had thought himself hardened against everything life could possibly hurl his way. He had had long practice, after all. But Maria had found a small chink in his armor. She was all that was left of what he had once valued, of what he had once loved.
A long, long time ago.
A lifetime or two ago.
There was a cluster of cottages up ahead on one side of the track. A picturesque stone manor stood alone on the other side, set back some distance from the road within a large garden of lawns and trellises and roses and myriad other flowers. This must be Prospect Hall.
Even now he considered turning back or simply riding on by. Being hated wore upon one. He was, however, long inured to such pain. He turned onto the wide graveled pathway that led through an open gate and along beside the manor to a stable block behind and to one side of it.
He wondered if in her wildest nightmares Maria expected him to come here in person to fetch her home. But she had given him no choice.
Two
It rained heavily and relentlessly the following day, from the middle of the morning on. But, disappointing as it was, a rainy day had its own beauty. Estelle was sitting on the window seat in the study, her favorite room in the house, with her back against a cushion, her feet flat on the padded sill, her knees drawn up before her. She had an open book propped against her legs but was no longer reading it. She was watching the rain slanting against the backdrop of the tall trees in the distance, beyond the lawn and the parterres. The wind was bowing the branches. The grass was emerald green and a bit overlong, though it was not yet unruly. It was the way she liked it best, actually, just before it was scythed. Though she did love the smell of newly cut grass too.
She turned her head to look at her brother. He was inelegantly slouched in the ancient leather chair before the fireplace, though the fire had not been lit. Aunt Jane would have frowned at his posture, yet there was a certain grace to it, as there was to his every movement. He was long and lean, just as she was on a smaller scale and with a few feminine curves thrown in. He was darkly handsome. Charming too, with a smile that could warm a room. She had seen the effect it had upon London drawing rooms and ballrooms. Men instinctively liked him, and women of all ages melted before him in droves. Young women almost visibly fell in love with him on sight. It really was not much of an exaggeration. The fact that he was Viscount Watley, heir to a marquess’s title and fortune, was no doubt part of his appeal, but it was only a small part. It was his person that attracted. Yet he never flirted or sent out deliberate lures— not in Estelle’s experience anyway. There was no vanity in him.
His long legs were stretched out before him now, one of his booted feet braced against the hearth. One elbow rested on the arm of his chair while his fingers played absently with his hair, which was slightly ruffled on that side. The other hand turned the pages of his book, in which he had been deeply engrossed for more than an hour. It was, she knew, some ancient Greek play— in Greek. It lost something in translation, he had explained when she had pointed out that there was a highly rated English version of the same play on one of the bookshelves.
He sensed her eyes upon him and looked up to smile at her. “Still raining?” he asked.
“Is the world still turning?” she replied.
He laughed. “It was a foolish question,” he admitted. “It feels good to be quiet again, does it not? Just the two of us?”
“It does,” she said.
“Though that sounds disloyal to our aunt and uncle,” he added, setting his book facedown across his lap. “It was good having them here.”
“It was,” she said. “And Aunt Annemarie and Uncle William last month.” Annemarie Cornish was their father’s sister. “And seeing Papa and Mother and all the Westcotts at Hinsford and in London during the spring. It was all lovely. But yes, Bert, it feels very good to be quiet and alone here again with all the autumn and winter to look forward to. I think we must be hopeless cases.”
“Not hermits, but close.” He smiled again and hesitated before continuing. “Do you ever feel damaged, Stell?”
Oh! Where had that come from? The question had hovered between them for years but had never actually been put into words by either of them. Until now. Right out of the blue. Or, rather, right out of the gray and the rain. Damaged.
“By our upbringing?” But it was the only thing he could mean. There was a longish pause while she gave her answer some thought and they stared across the room at each other. “No. Not damaged. It is the wrong word. Influenced, yes. Of course. All adults are influenced by their childhood and youth. It would be impossible not to be. For some people those growing years are difficult. Oh, I suppose they are for all people to greater or lesser degrees. There is surely no such thing as a perfectly idyllic childhood. And if there were, it would perhaps be a poor preparation for adulthood. But … Even difficult childhoods are not always damaging. They can be just the opposite, in fact. They can build character and understanding and even wisdom. And fortitude.”
“Mama stumbled over the hem of her dressing gown and tried to steady herself with a hand against the wall behind her,” he said. “Except that she set her hand where the window would have been if Papa had not opened it earlier.”
And fell to her death. It had happened upstai
rs in this very house, in what had then been the nursery, hers and Bertrand’s, early one morning while their father was rocking them to sleep. They had been cutting teeth.
“It ought not to have happened,” Bertrand added.
“But it did,” she said. “I wish I remembered her. She had us for almost a whole year, held us, fed us, laughed with us, played with us. Why is it we do not start remembering things right from the moment of our birth?”
“Have you forgiven our father?” he asked. “I mean really forgiven him?”
“Papa?” she said. Quite frequently now Bertrand called him that. Sometimes, though, he still referred to him as Father. “Yes, Bert. I have. For opening that window, of course. He could not have predicted … It was pure accident. But yes, for the rest of it too. He cannot go back to change the sixteen years following Mama’s death, though I believe he would if he could. That is always the trouble with life, is it not? We cannot go back, even by as much as a day or an hour, to change something we said or did, or something we did not say or do. Or everything that resulted from those words and deeds. I have asked myself what might have happened if Aunt Jane and Uncle Charles had not come here and stayed and taken over our upbringing and really done a pretty commendable job of it. Every time Papa came home, he must have seen that we were well cared for, with a substitute mother and father and even older cousins as a substitute brother and sister. And we never complained to him. We never even spoke to him unless he spoke to us. He must have felt like an intruder. Like a failure. He must have convinced himself— he has told us he did— that we were far better off without him.”
