Someone perfect, p.17
Someone Perfect, page 17
Everyone was, it seemed. Energy was instantly restored and they were all on their feet in moments.
The earl crossed the room to a closed door and spoke to the footman who was standing beside it, waiting to open it. The young man hurried away, back through the state apartments, and the earl opened the door himself and stood back to let them through.
And so they entered the room with the dome, which Estelle had been longing to see since her arrival yesterday. It was a vast round hall with a tiled mosaic floor and a high balcony that ran all about the circumference and that was held up by marble pillars and made safe by a marble balustrade, which must be at least waist-high. The great glass dome above it filled the room with light. Even as Estelle looked up, clouds must have moved off the sun and a shaft of sunlight beamed downward, to be fractured into all the colors of the rainbow as it caught walls and balcony and pillars and floor.
“Now that,” the earl said to the whole group, “was perfect timing. This is sometimes a grand reception hall, occasionally a ballroom. Today it will be a tearoom.”
“A ballroom,” Estelle said, looking up and about her at the fractured light. She spread her arms wide and turned once about. “It would surely be the most wonderful place in the whole world in which to dance.”
Maria laughed. “Oh,” she said, her voice filled with delight. “I had a birthday party here once. It was my eighth birthday. How could I have forgotten until now?”
Perhaps, Estelle thought, because not long after there had been a great upset in the house and her brother had vanished. She wondered what it had been like here then, after he had gone. How upset by it all had Maria’s father been? And her mother? And Maria herself? It must have been a life-changing event for all of them.
“I remember it well,” the earl said, looking at his sister with what was surely fondness. “The room was filled with squealing little girls, and I had been put in charge of organizing games and entertainment for you all.”
“I can just picture it,” Mrs. Sharpe said, clapping her hands once before clasping them to her bosom and beaming at her nephew. “I suppose you performed your magician’s act, Justin? You were always so good at it. I never knew how you could produce an endless stream of ribbons from an empty hat or gold coins from behind people’s ears.”
“It was pure magic, of course,” the earl told her. “Maria, this is your tea, I believe? You are the hostess.”
The center of the room had been set up with several square tables covered with crisp white cloths and laid with gleaming china and crystal and silverware. Maria moved toward them.
“Ah, and here comes Lady Maple,” the earl said.
She was being ushered into the room from the entrance hall by the young footman the earl had sent upon an errand a short while ago. The Ormsbury uncles and aunts came in behind them.
“A private showing of the summerhouse this morning, complete with a marriage proposal,” Bertrand murmured, coming up behind Estelle and setting his hands upon her shoulders. “A private moment in one of the sitting rooms this afternoon while everyone else moved on. Do I smell a romance after all, Stell?”
“If you do,” she said, “there is something drastically wrong with your nose. But, Bert, have you ever in your life seen anything more splendid than all this?”
“Yes,” he said, grinning at her. “Elm Court.”
She laughed. “Splendid?”
“It is a sizable manor house,” he said. “More important, it is home. This is a magnificent showpiece, though. I was particularly impressed with the half-square rooms with their perfect mirror imaging. Twin rooms.”
“We are an imperfect example of the type, alas,” she said. “We are not quite mirror images of each other.”
“Sometimes,” he said, squeezing her shoulders, “imperfection can be more interesting than perfection, Stell. It is something you may wish to keep in mind, actually, when you continue your search for your Mr. Perfect.”
“Continue?” she said. “Have I started?”
Maria was approaching them. She had already seated most of the other guests. “Lord Watley,” she said, “would you care to sit beside my aunt Margaret at that table?” She indicated it. “And, Estelle, will you sit with my cousin Megan? She admires you greatly but is also a bit in awe of the fact that you are the daughter of a marquess.”
Servants were bringing in plates of sandwiches and scones and various dainties. Others were carrying in teapots and hot water jugs.
They took their places and Estelle spread her linen napkin across her lap. She turned to make conversation with the very young, blushing daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Chandler.
The Earl of Brandon’s best friend had been—and still was?—a man from a tavern somewhere who had taken exception to his cultured accent, got into a brawl with him for no other reason than that, and broken his nose.
Really?
Estelle would be willing to bet the earl had not been so large and well muscled at that period of his life. So what had happened during those years? Where had he gone? What had he done? What had he lived on? What had he been like before? He had told stories to his young sister out in the summerhouse. He had entertained her and other little girls with a magic act at a birthday party. He had told a man at a tavern not to molest the barmaid.
Who exactly was the Earl of Brandon?
“Which was your favorite room?” she asked Megan, and determinedly gave the girl the whole of her attention.
Twelve
The weather remained fine for the next few days, and Justin found that his guests did not need to be entertained at every moment. There was much to explore and much to do, both indoors and out, and most of them were content to do it all in small unstructured groups.
The disaster that had happened in the drawing room on the first full morning of their stay seemed to have had no serious consequences. Maria’s apology at luncheon afterward had undoubtedly helped, and everyone’s determination to put the embarrassment out of their minds made it possible to carry on as though none of it had happened.
But almost everyone now probably believed he was a thief, Justin thought, and a cruel one at that. There was nothing he could do about it, though, since he was certainly not going to tell the truth. All he could do was continue regardless. As for what Lady Maple had said about his father having been trapped into marrying her niece . . . Well, that also must be set aside for now and pondered at some later date.
If her story was true, though, it would change a great deal. Everything, in fact.
Meanwhile the house party continued.
The children’s early-morning ride and playtime with Captain became a daily event and sometimes included more than just the original two. There were also Olwen and David Ormsbury, aged five and three, children of Justin’s cousin Bevin and Esme, his wife. All of them enjoyed the usual activities as well as trudging out to the sheep pens to watch the sheep and lambs being released and led out to their pastures. They all enjoyed being taken to the smithy out behind the stables to watch the blacksmith at work at his anvil.
And at other times of the day the children never tired of running through the maze and getting hopelessly lost. Even when by sheer accident they arrived at the center, it was still difficult to find their way back out. Some of the young people tried it too and fared no better. Even Watley got lost when Gillian Chandler and Rosie Sharpe persuaded him to go in with them because they were scared to go alone. They had giggled and clung to his arms and looked anything but scared.
Justin took a party of youngsters up over the wilderness walk behind the house one morning. Some of them had pulled faces at the initial suggestion, and he had agreed with them that they might indeed be wise not to come. It involved the climbing of a few steep slopes that might tire them needlessly, after all, and even a bit of a scramble up a rocky series of steps that were not for the faint of heart. Also there was a tall lookout tower near the top with dark stone stairs spiraling about the inside of it that might be too scary for some. And there was a hollow dragon amid some dark, dense trees that one could climb right inside if one could get up the courage. Then one could roar to create deep, hollow echoes that would scare birds and wildlife and unwary passersby for miles around. There was one lookout point that offered a view of a church spire all of twelve miles away down the valley, if one could imagine being able to see such a distance. He would take a telescope for anyone who wished to verify that it was indeed a spire with what looked like a miniature church below it. At the end of the walk, he told them, there was an easy way down a gently sloping path, and there was a dangerous, scary way down a sheerer, grassy slope. They would doubtless consider rolling down it beneath their dignity, of course. They were undoubtedly right to turn up their noses and go find some safer, more sedate amusement elsewhere.
Everyone below the age of thirty joined the walk, as did Justin’s cousins Ernest and Sidney, who remembered persuading Doris to climb those steps inside the tower when they were all children, though they had had to half carry her down again. She might otherwise have stayed up there for the rest of her life.
Captain went too, and the children enjoyed making him bark and bare his teeth at the roaring dragon.
They all gazed wistfully at the long, steep slope down one side of the hill, which provided a superb sledding run when it snowed.
Almost everyone went to church on Sunday morning, and during the following days Maria received several neighbors, who came to pay their respects to her and the guests. A few of the older ones remembered Aunt Augusta and Aunt Felicity and were happy to reminisce with them while their children listened and laughed. One of those visitors, Lady Jemima Hodgkins, had been a particular friend of Justin’s aunts when they were all girls—they both called her Jim, while they were Gussie and Fliss. Her call had to be returned, and the aunts went off to visit her one afternoon, taking Maria and Paulette Ormsbury with them.
It pleased Justin to think that his sister would not be entirely alone after all the guests had returned home but would be a part of the community as mistress of Everleigh and could be a social leader in the neighborhood if she chose to be.
They all occupied themselves in the evenings with conversation and cards. Once they engaged in a spirited game of charades. Often there was music, though none of them pretended to any extraordinary talent.
And just occasionally it was possible for Justin to steal an hour or so to be alone out at the summerhouse without feeling that he was neglecting anyone. He varied his destination one afternoon, however, after he had spent the morning leading a group through the portrait gallery in the north wing and then taking those who had a head for heights up to the balcony that surrounded the base of the dome. After luncheon he collected Captain from the stables and took him for a walk to the lake.
He had written a letter to Ricky a few days before and sent it by special messenger. Hilda would read it to him. Justin had explained that he had not come during July because he had needed to go in search of his sister to bring her home. “But it hurts my heart that I will be unable to see you in person for a while,” he had written. “I will come as soon as I possibly can, Ricky, but I cannot say exactly when. I think of you every day and miss you every hour.” He had sent his love and asked Ricky to tell Wes and Hilda that he sent love to them too.
It was not a fully satisfactory explanation. Ricky had a very literal mind. When one told him one would come in July, he expected that one would make an appearance on one of those thirty-one days—and somehow he always knew what month it was and what day of that month. He could not think in abstractions. For a while and as soon as I possibly can would very likely mean to him that Justin was not coming for a long time, that therefore Justin did not really love him. Perhaps the mention of a sister would wound him more than it would console, suggesting as it might that Justin’s sister meant more to him than Ricky did.
Justin did not know quite why Ricky had grown so attached to him during those years. Perhaps it was because he had always believed he was the protector and Justin the one in need of protection. It had been a novel role for him. He was the one who had first invited Justin inside Wes’s house. It was he who had offered—with a huge, anxious eagerness, lest Wes and Hilda forbid it—that Justin share the loft with him, with a curtain between the two halves to mark their territory. Ricky had loved the fact that they could talk after they went to bed at night and that Justin would actually listen to him—and respond. He had loved settling in his bed and telling Justin about the new ducklings on the village pond or how Hildy could not believe he had chopped so much wood all in one morning or how the village baker had given him a currant cake all for himself after he had swept off the step of the bakery without being asked but how he had brought half the cake home for Hildy because she was always giving him food and it was nice to give back. He had assured Justin very kindly that he did not look very ugly with his broken nose even though Wes had said he did that very evening. Ricky told Justin he would love him forever and ever even if he did have a bust nose.
When he had left Wes’s house and his job at the quarry to return to Everleigh, he ought perhaps to have said a firm and final goodbye to them all, Justin thought as he picked up a broad stick Captain had brought and deposited at his feet and hurled it as far as he could. His dog tore after it. It would have been ultimately easier on Ricky, easier on him.
But an idea had been forming in his head ever since he read Wes’s letter. He did not know how workable it would be, or how desirable to his elderly blacksmith, whom it would involve. It was not always wise to try playing God with other people’s lives, after all. Sometimes it was necessary, as with his forcing Maria to leave Prospect Hall to return here. At other times it was not. And it was never wise to act impulsively. Just consider his marriage proposal, as a case in point. He stood on the bank of the lake, gazing out across it, occasionally stooping to pick up the stick, wrestle with a playfully snarling Captain for possession of it, and then hurl it into the distance.
He needed to ponder his idea carefully before acting on it and perhaps regretting it for the rest of his life.
It was a large natural lake, fed by the waterfall, which cascaded down the steep hillside to his right. Its waters emptied into the river that flowed through the valley below the house. His grandfather had had a wooden mock-Chinese bridge constructed over the narrow part of the lake just below the falls. It had steps leading up to it and down at the other side. It had a bend in the middle, taking it across the other half at a different angle. There was a roof over the central part, pointed like a cone but with four corners that were curled upward. It was fanciful and brightly painted and probably did not resemble any bridge that had ever been constructed in China. On the far side was a boathouse.
Justin went to stand on the bridge. He gazed at the waterfall and let the sound of rushing water fill his ears and shut out the rest of the world. Captain, minus his stick, trotted across the bridge behind him and sniffed about the boathouse.
Justin looked up at the grotto—the cave in the hillside to one side of the waterfall. Someone had once called it a grotto, because the word was more evocative than cave, he supposed, and the name had stuck. It was far larger inside than it looked to be from here and used to be a favorite boyhood haunt of his. He had been a bandit of the Robin Hood variety and a marooned sea captain and a spy hiding out from his enemies there and a thousand other heroic characters. A boy’s imagination was limitless, after all. He wondered if blankets and cushions were still stored in the boathouse and—if they were—when they had last been laundered.
They were still there. They also looked and smelled clean and free of mildew. He took a few with him and climbed to the grotto. It was not far up the hill or difficult to reach, but one definitely felt cut off from the world when one was inside it. He spread a blanket on the stone floor, sat close to the entrance, a cushion at his back, and made room for Captain, who had scrambled up after him. The dog sniffed every inch of the cave, panted in Justin’s face as if to ask if they were really going to stop here for a while, turned in a few circles when he guessed the answer to be yes, and then plopped down on the blanket to gaze out at the lake.
There was surely nothing quite as blissful as solitude, Justin thought. Of course, one did tend to bring one’s teeming thoughts along with one, but a few minutes of stillness, during which one concentrated upon one’s breath and nothing else, usually helped quell them. Maria—how was he going to secure a proper come-out Season and a happy future for her? His father—had he really been trapped into marrying Lilian Dickson? Ricky—how could he atone for letting him down? Lady Estelle Lamarr—how could he have been so gauche as to rush into proposing to her? The Season in London next year—how was he going to find a countess soon enough to help with Maria? Could the Duke of Netherby help—or the duchess? Lady Estelle Lamarr—why did she have to be so dashed beautiful and so dashed . . . vibrant and . . . Argh!
Finally his thoughts stilled enough that he could close his eyes and be lulled by the sound of the waterfall.
* * *
* * *
After luncheon Estelle went with several of the other guests to look inside the greenhouses. Maria was with them. She had explained ahead of time that she was not at all knowledgeable about the plants within them, though she did intend to learn. Fortunately it did not matter. One of the gardeners was there, and he cheerfully agreed to walk about with them and identify all the plants and answer all their questions. They spent a very agreeable hour there.
“You will not mind, Maria, if Leonard and I go and sit in the summerhouse for a while with Patricia and Irwin?” her aunt Margaret Dickson asked when they came outside at last into the relatively cool air of an English summer afternoon. “We feel too lazy to do anything else even remotely strenuous, but it would be a pity to return to the house so soon.”
