Someone perfect, p.21
Someone Perfect, page 21
“That word makes me cringe,” Justin said. “Woo. Is that what I will be doing? I do not know. But you ought to know that I hope to marry your sister.”
“I am not her guardian,” Watley said. “Neither is my father. Estelle is her own person.”
“But you are her twin,” Justin said. “The bond is close, I believe.”
“It seems to be closer than any I have seen between mere siblings,” Watley told him. “I will not say we read each other’s mind. That would be ghastly. But we sense each other’s feelings. Well, we more than just sense them. We feel with each other or for each other. I have often tried to verbalize just what the bond is, but have always found it impossible to do, even in my own head. We do not interfere with each other, though we sometimes intervene. There is a difference. If through bringing up this subject you hope to enlist my help in convincing Estelle that the title Countess of Brandon would be a good one for her, I must disappoint you, I am afraid. The choice, whether yea or nay, will be hers to make.”
“If I cannot . . . woo my own woman, I would be a sorry excuse for a man,” Justin said. “Whether I succeed or fail will be all on me—and on your sister. I merely wanted you to know my intentions. If you believe that I am taking unfair advantage of her in my own home when I invited her here for another purpose entirely, then you may feel free to say so.”
He picked up Hilda’s letter, unfolded it, folded it again without reading any of it, set it on top of Sarah’s letter, picked it up once more, and slid it beneath her letter. He felt nauseated. Where are you, Ricky? Are you frightened? Have you been taken up as a vagrant somewhere and locked up in a jail?
He became aware of the silence and looked at Watley, who was looking back.
“If you take unfair advantage of Estelle, she will tell you so,” Watley said. “If she chooses to marry you, she will do so. If she chooses not to, that will be that. I will neither intervene nor interfere unless your wooing should turn into harassment. I do not expect it. I am not going to turn into the heavy-handed brother either with her or with you. But I wish you would believe me when I say I am a good listener. Something in the letter you have shoved out of sight is consuming your mind and your emotions. I know whatever that letter says is none of my business, and as soon as you have told me so I will leave the library and never refer to the matter again. If I may be of some assistance to you, however, I will sit here and listen.”
It was not in Justin’s nature—or had not been for the past twelve years, anyway—to confide anything to anybody. He bore his burdens alone. He buried his feelings beneath the armor of tough stoicism he had erected about himself soon after leaving home. But earlier this afternoon—and to a certain degree at the summerhouse a few days ago—he had let the sister beneath his guard. Was he now to confide in the brother too? The man he hoped to make his brother-in-law?
“I have a friend who is missing,” he said. “There is no trace of him close to home. His brother and . . . sister-in-law are frantic and believe that perhaps he is trying to come to me.”
Watley was looking steadily at him, his eyebrows slightly raised.
“Ricky is thirty years old with the mind of a very young child,” Justin told him. And he went on to explain the situation as briefly and clearly as he could.
“And you are not sure,” Watley said when he was finished, “if he knows your full name and title. Or the name of your estate or what county it is in.”
“But I cannot imagine Ricky setting out to come to me if he did not have at least one or two of those answers,” Justin said. “Even if he knew all four, though, how could he possibly find me here? He has nothing with him. He has no money. And my fear is that even if he has changed his mind and decided to return home, he will not be able to find it or tell anyone exactly where he lives. I blame myself for saying I would go to see him in July and then not going.”
“What you really blame yourself for,” Watley said, “is letting him love you and loving him in return. Life can be damnable when one opens oneself to love. It can be even worse when one does not.”
“Damned if you do, damned if you do not?” Justin said. He closed his eyes and set his hand flat on top of the two letters on his desk.
“But this is not the moment for either panic or philosophy,” Watley said. “Let us think of what we can do.”
“We?” Justin opened his eyes.
Watley shrugged. “I am your guest,” he said. “If you have your way, I will be your brother-in-law in the foreseeable future. More to the point, I am a fellow human being. You are going to have to get out the word throughout the county—a full description of Ricky and an emphasis upon his great importance to you, the Earl of Brandon. Titles and influence can be useful things at times. Fellow landowners. Magistrates. Clergymen. We need to make a list. And offer a reward—but only if he is detained without violence and treated with kindness.”
“If he gets as far as Hertfordshire,” Justin said.
“We must at least consider the possibility that he will,” Watley said. “For the rest of the country we must consider notices in newspapers, among other things.”
Justin sat back in his chair, drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly through his mouth. “Perhaps,” he said, “they will yet find him fast asleep in the hay inside someone’s barn close to home that they have not thought to search yet.”
“It would be the best possible outcome,” Watley agreed. “Though it does seem unlikely. May I make another suggestion? Will you send for my sister? You said you told her about those years you spent living with Ricky’s brother. She may have some ideas. A woman’s perspective and all that.”
Justin got to his feet and pulled on the bell rope beside the mantel. He sent the footman who answered his summons to find Lady Estelle Lamarr. “Ask her if she would be so good as to join me and Viscount Watley in the library,” he said.
They waited in near silence.
“I am making a mental list of everyone I know in this county,” Justin said after a few minutes. “It is not a long one. My steward and my secretary will be able to help. They have both been here a long time. They worked for my father before me.”
The same footman opened the door ten minutes after he had been sent and admitted Lady Estelle. She stood just inside the door and looked from one to the other of them, her hands clasped at her waist.
“I hope there is a reason for this odd summons that is not going to have me exploding in wrath,” she said.
“I am not about to order you to marry Brandon forthwith, Stell,” her brother said. “Nor am I about to forbid you to marry him and order you to pack your bags and be ready to leave within the hour.”
“Well, that is a relief,” she said. “You get to keep your head, Bert.”
“Ricky is missing,” Justin told her, and her eyes came to him and remained upon him while he told her about Hilda’s letter.
She did have ideas in addition to those her brother had suggested.
“Involve women and servants,” she said. “If you wish to spread any news as fast as wildfire, those are the people to tell. Men will spread the word in official ways and be very thorough and methodical about it. Women and servants will just talk. And the people to whom they talk will talk to others. Those others will talk to yet more. Soon scarcely anyone, either upstairs or down, will not know that a man of Ricky’s description and mental slowness is wandering around lost and—most important—that he is very precious to the Earl of Brandon, who will pay a handsome reward to whoever finds him and treats him with kindness while he or she brings him here to Everleigh.”
“If he finds his way to this county,” Justin said. By now Lady Estelle was sitting on the chair across from her brother’s and Justin was standing between them, his back to the fireplace.
“Well, you know, gossip does not stop at county borders, Brandon,” Watley said.
“But you must be prepared for much of that gossip being about you, Lord Brandon,” Lady Estelle warned him. “You have kept your secrets locked up tight and your two worlds very separate until now, have you not? The initial story will explain that Ricky is trying to find you here and that he is very important to you. You can control that explanation at the source of the story, but once it starts spreading you will lose control of the details, and the story will grow and swell like a hot-air balloon. Everyone will be very eager to fill in the why and the how.”
“You can control that too if you wish by getting ahead of the rumors with solid fact,” her twin added.
Lady Estelle set a hand on Justin’s arm, whether unconsciously or deliberately he did not know. He could feel the warmth of it and the comfort of it through his coat sleeve and shirtsleeve. “You can do a great deal more than his brother can to spread the word and find Ricky,” she said. “You have power and influence.”
He turned his head to look at her, and she seemed to realize where her hand was. She removed it after patting his arm a couple of times.
“Thank you,” he said. “To both of you. I do not know why you would be willing to help me. This is supposed to be a house party primarily for your relaxation and enjoyment.”
“We actually enjoy helping friends, do we not, Stell?” Watley said.
“Like you, we have a large extended family,” she said. “On our mother’s side and our father’s and our stepmother’s. Hers includes all the Westcotts, and there are dozens of them. Or am I exaggerating? But they include powerful people, like the Earl of Riverdale and the Duke of Netherby.”
“Netherby is a friend of mine,” Justin said.
“We will write to them all if it should become necessary,” Lady Estelle said. “He will be found, Justin. You must believe that he will.”
His panic was beginning to recede just a little. We actually enjoy helping friends.
She had called him Justin.
He wondered if she had noticed. Or if her brother had.
Fifteen
When Estelle was called away from tea in the drawing room to the library, Maria had been talking with Mrs. Sharpe, her son Ernest, and her elder daughter, Doris Haig. Mr. Sharpe had just joined them too. Maria reported on what Estelle had missed of the conversation before the two of them went down for dinner that evening.
“I asked them straight-out if they had resented my mother,” she said. “I even told them it would be perfectly understandable if they had. Mrs. Sharpe told me Papa had always been very good to her sister while she lived, but that she had thought him entitled to find happiness with someone else after she was gone. They did not blame him for marrying Mama. Though Mrs. Sharpe did add that it gave her a pang of sadness anyway since she had worshiped the ground her sister walked upon, to use her words.”
“I am glad you brought the subject up with them,” Estelle said. “They are very pleasant people. And honest too.”
“Mrs. Sharpe explained that losing her sister was the greatest, most painful loss she has suffered in her life,” Maria said. “Greater even than the loss of her parents. They were very close. But she had never expected that Papa would mourn her for the rest of his life. She told me some things about her sister after I asked, and Mrs. Haig and Mr. Ernest Sharpe added a few memories of their own. I think she must have been a warm and charming lady. When I asked why none of them had ever come here after Mama and Papa’s wedding, they told me they had considered it more tactful to stay away than to make Mama uncomfortable with the reminder of Papa’s first wife. I think . . . Maybe there was no actual quarrel? Maybe they did not hate Mama. Maybe it was a mere misunderstanding and she simply thought they did.”
“I am very glad you had a frank talk with them, then,” Estelle said. She was not so sure there had been any such misunderstanding—or that any of the fault lay with the Sharpes. But she had not known the late countess personally, and it would be unfair to judge.
“I asked Mrs. Sharpe if she resented me.” Maria sounded breathless. “I asked if she hated the fact that I am the daughter of the house but not her sister’s daughter. She simply said, “Maria!” in a shocked voice, while Mr. Sharpe called me a goose, and then they all hugged me.”
“Well.” Estelle hugged her too when she saw tears brighten her friend’s eyes. “I believe this family gathering is turning out to be a very good thing for you, Maria. It is helping you discover that you do have family and that they are all disposed to love you.”
“Mrs. Sharpe told me,” Maria added, “that Papa always adored me and that Jus— She told me that Brandon did too. They both talked about me a great deal whenever they went to the Sharpes’ house to visit. She told me they had always loved me too even though they had never met me. She begged me again to call her Aunt Betty, and I am going to do it.”
This gathering was also enabling Maria to separate her own identity from that of her mother and become her own person, Estelle thought as they made their way to the dining room together. Maria sat between Mr. Dickson and Mrs. Chandler, her maternal uncle and aunt, at the foot of the table, and she conversed with each of them in turn with some animation and a becoming flush of color in her cheeks. Estelle wondered if she had admitted to herself yet that she owed all this self-discovery and reconciliation with her family to her stepbrother, the Earl of Brandon.
Even as she thought it he began to speak from his position at the head of the table. He was addressing everyone. Estelle turned her eyes his way. She had avoided looking at him throughout the meal, lest he catch her at it. Justin. She had called him that in the library earlier, quite inadvertently. She hoped he had not noticed. Bertrand certainly had, of course. He did not miss much. Sometimes she wished he were anyone’s twin but her own.
“Justin?” Bertrand had murmured as they made their way up to their rooms in the east wing after making a list in the library and assuring the earl, without any evidence to support their confidence, that all would be well and Ricky would be found safe and sound and restored to his brother.
She had not misunderstood her brother for a moment. “Well,” she had said, very much on her dignity. “That is his name, is it not?”
The conversation had ended there.
“I am spreading word of a missing person as far and as wide as I possibly can,” he said now—Justin, that was. The Earl of Brandon. The man who had warned her this afternoon that he was going to harass her for the rest of her stay here, though, to be fair, he had not actually used the word harass.
His words drew everyone’s attention. And he told them about Ricky and his own connection with the man and with his brother and . . . sister-in-law. There was always a pause before he indicated Hilda that way, for of course she was not married to Ricky’s brother. Inevitably he told part of his own story, something he had not done with anyone before he had told her, Estelle, today out at the grotto. She could guess how much this telling was costing him. It must make him feel as though the armor he had built about himself with such painstaking care were being ripped away, leaving him exposed to view and to censure.
“I do not even know if he can find his way anywhere close to here,” he said at last. “I cannot even know for sure that he is trying to find me. But I must do all in my power to spread the word so that if he is seen, he will be taken home or brought here, whichever is closer. I let him down in July by not going to see him when I had promised I would. I will not let him down now. I will make every effort to find him.”
“Including letting us all know things about yourself and the missing years that you would otherwise have kept to yourself for the rest of your life,” Mr. Sidney Sharpe, his cousin, said. “I honor you, Justin.” He held up his empty wineglass.
“So do I,” Lord Crowther, his aunt Augusta’s husband, said. “Though why you did not come to us in Cornwall when you had to leave here, I do not know, Justin. Family and all that.”
“It is my hope,” Lord Brandon said, “that you will all keep your eyes open for a strange young man, though it seems too much to hope that he will find his way here on his own.”
“But why is it you had to work at a stone quarry and live in a laborer’s cottage?” Maria asked. “Had you squandered all the money from Mama’s jewels?”
There was a sudden uncomfortable silence. Estelle had the impression that several of them would have slid under the table to avoid further embarrassment if they could.
Lord Brandon looked directly at his sister, whose face had turned pale except for two spots of color high in her cheeks. “The first I heard of stolen jewels, Maria,” he said, “was when you mentioned them while I was talking with Lady Maple several days ago. I do not know what happened to them, but I do assure you I did not take them.”
“Then why did Papa banish you?” Maria cried, regardless of the appallingly public nature of this exchange. “Why did he send you away and never relent for the rest of his life?”
“It was a private matter between him and me,” Brandon said after a brief pause. “But it had nothing to do with theft or your mother’s jewelry, Maria. And absolutely nothing to do with you either. I loved you dearly, as your memories of childhood will perhaps confirm for you. How could I have done anything to hurt you? You have my word on this, if my word is good enough for you.”
“I daresay, Justin, your pa thought you were an idle young buck who stood in need of some toughening up in the real world,” Mr. Dickson said in his usual hearty Yorkshire voice, breaking what threatened to be an awkward silence no one else would have had the courage to fill. He was also patting Maria’s hand on the table beside him. “So he pushed you out the door like a bird from the nest and you found your wings and your backbone and stayed out until after he was gone. It was a pity he never saw you again. I daresay he regretted that at the end. He would surely have been proud of you for making your own way, even if it was at a stone quarry. Any father would.”
