Someone perfect, p.26
Someone Perfect, page 26
“Your brother is going to have blisters on his hands tonight, Lady Estelle,” Mr. Ormsbury said, nodding in the direction of the boat, where his wife and her sister, Lady Crowther, were being rowed by Bertrand. All three of them were laughing. Bert did not seem to be feeling any lack of belonging. He was being sociable and kind and charming to all, and Estelle knew he was actually enjoying himself here, despite his misgivings before they came.
“I doubt it,” she said. “He was on a rowing team when he was at Oxford, and I never once heard him complaining of blisters.”
“Complaining to his sister?” Mr. Sharpe said. “I should jolly well think not. A man has to have some pride.”
Estelle laughed.
She felt her lack of belonging, something she never felt when she was with the Westcotts, her stepmother’s family, though she had no blood connection with them either. Most of them were not even really her stepmother’s family. Viola had been married to Humphrey Westcott, the head of the family, for twenty-three years, but the discovery had been made soon after his death that, unknown to her, it had been a bigamous marriage and her three children were illegitimate. The Westcotts had simply refused to let her and her children go. They had rallied, something at which they excelled. They were always more willing to give love a chance, to ignore differences and forgive wrongs, than to bear grudges or stubbornly maintain old hurts. As this family was perhaps more prepared to do than either Justin or Maria had given them credit for.
When Viola had married Estelle’s father at a family Christmas, the Westcotts had gathered Estelle and Bertrand into the fold too. Honorary Westcotts, Alexander Westcott, Earl of Riverdale, head of the family, had told them at the wedding breakfast, his eyes twinkling.
She could have been drawn into this family too, Estelle thought—if she had said yes instead of no at the summerhouse. She could still belong—if he made good upon his warning that he would offer for her again before she and Bert left here within the next few days. And if she said yes.
Would he?
Would she?
There was still so much darkness in him. And it would be very much worse if Ricky Mort was never found. Was she willing to take on a man’s darkness? It would be madness.
But was she willing to walk away from the only man who had ever stirred her deepest emotions?
Bertrand was holding the boat while the Earl of Brandon handed his aunts out. The two men turned the boat over on the bank, and all four of them came across the bridge to the picnic site for tea. The earl stopped on the way and offered his arm to Maria. She hesitated a moment, but then she slid her hand through it.
An hour or so later they straggled homeward in small groups after the gig had arrived to take Lady Maple. This time it was Lady Crowther who went with her. Bertrand helped the earl put the boat away in the boathouse while Estelle and Maria gathered up the wet towels from beside the lake and the cushions from the grotto. They heaped the towels into a hamper in the boathouse to be collected later and put the cushions on their assigned shelves. Bertrand set out for the house with a few other people while Estelle and Maria followed. The earl waited on the bridge for his dog to finish sniffing around the boathouse.
“What a lovely day it has been,” Maria said. “I hate to see it come to an end.”
Estelle chuckled. “Yet just a couple of weeks ago you were dreading coming,” she said.
“I know.” Maria thought for a moment. “Estelle, I loved my mother. I will never stop doing so. But I think perhaps she may have been oversensitive about some things. She easily felt threatened, probably because she was of humble origins socially—though the Dicksons have been wealthy and influential in Yorkshire for several generations, I understand. They have also always been unabashedly middle class, except for Great-aunt Bertha and Mama, who wanted something they considered better. And then there is the fact that Mama was very young when she married Papa—good heavens, she was three years younger than I am now. She saw criticism and jealousy and quarrels where none were intended, and walled herself off from further threats that simply did not exist. It is all very sad. She could have been far happier if she had had her family about her, and she could have found consolation with them after Papa died. So could I. I do not believe I am being disloyal to her in allowing myself to be restored to them now. Am I?”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Estelle said. “You need your family, Maria. You have been so very alone. Now they will always belong to you.”
“Rosie wants me to go home with her for a while,” Maria said. “And Aunt Betty and Uncle Rowan are willing to take me if it is all right with Brandon. Gillian and Megan and Wallace want to come back here later when Aunt Sarah and Uncle Thomas come. They do not believe Aunt Sarah will mind. According to Wallace she is a brick—whatever that means.” She laughed. “And Aunt Augusta and Aunt Felicity have told me Brandon and I simply must come to Cornwall next summer—if I do not meet someone and marry him during the spring. Or if Brandon does not.”
“Goodness,” Estelle said. “It sounds as if you have a busy year ahead.”
Or if Brandon does not. Meet and marry someone during the next Season, that was.
Fortunately there was some sort of distraction up ahead. “But what is this?” Estelle asked.
This was a ragged beggar standing in the middle of the drive just on the house side of the Palladian bridge, looking hesitantly toward Lord Crowther and his eldest son and daughter-in-law. They had been distracted for the moment by the two children, who were gazing intently into the river and pointing and demanding to know what sort of fish those were.
“Oh dear God,” Estelle said, hurrying past the others until she was just a few feet from the beggar. “Ricky?”
He looked at her warily, a tall, solidly built young man with pleasant features more or less disguised by a scruffy growth of beard and a few layers of dirt, and dirty fair hair that stood in stiff, untidy spikes on his head. He had no hat. His clothes were not so much ragged as filthy and grass-stained with clumps of straw clinging to them in places. The sole of one of his boots was bound in place with what might once have been a handkerchief. Even from several feet away Estelle could smell him.
“I don’t know you,” he said slowly.
“I am a friend of the Earl of Brandon,” she told him. “Justin Wiley. Juss.”
“You know Juss?” he said.
“I do.” She smiled at him. “He will be so happy to see you, Ricky. Let me take you to him.”
But he was looking suddenly anxious and agitated. “Did he find his sister?” he asked.
“His sister?” Estelle said. “Maria?”
“Did he find her?” He took a step toward her. “She is lost. He is looking for her. I come to help.”
Oh. In his letter explaining why he could not go to see Ricky as planned during July, the Earl of Brandon must have explained that he was going to find his sister and bring her home.
“I’ll look too,” Ricky said. “We’ll find her, me and Juss.”
“She has been found and brought home,” Estelle said. “Here she is, Ricky. Maria is Justin’s sister, and she is back home safe and sound.”
Maria was gazing at him, both hands pressed to her mouth. The others had turned from the river and were gawking.
“Good God,” Lord Crowther said. “Here he is. He found his way.”
“She is back?” Ricky said. “I’m happy. I come to look with Juss, but now I can go home to Wes and Hildy. Maybe Hildy will make my favorite soup. I’m hungry.”
“Let me take you to Justin first,” Estelle said, stepping up to him and taking his large hand in hers. “Come. I believe he will be at the stables by now.”
He was not. He had walked home, not beside the river as Maria and Estelle and the others had done, but closer to the house. He was up on the terrace now, looking toward the bridge. Captain was looking too, and then bounding down the stone steps and streaking through the formal gardens and across the lawn to jump up on Ricky, both large paws against his shoulders while he licked his face.
“Cappy,” Ricky complained, laughing. “You mustn’t do that. Your paws may be dirty. Juss will be cross with you. Hildy would be cross if she was here.”
But Estelle was not looking at either the dog or the man. She was looking at Lord Brandon, who was still up on the terrace, a wide, sun-filled smile on his face as he took off his hat and dropped it at his feet. He strode down the steps then and down to the bridge, his eyes never leaving Ricky’s face.
“Well, it’s about time,” he said as he drew close. “What kept you so long, Ricky? I thought you would never get here.”
And he caught Ricky up in his arms, heedless, it seemed, of either the dirt or the smell, and laughed.
And oh, the realization hit Estelle low in the stomach like a real physical blow.
Oh, she loved him.
Nineteen
Ricky launched into excited chatter, much of it incoherent, though Justin did understand some of what he said. He had come to Everleigh, it seemed, not because Justin had failed to go to him but because Justin had lost his sister and was going to look for her and bring her home and Ricky wanted to help in the search.
He had remembered the name of the house because when Justin had said it, he had also said, Everleigh is mine for everly and everly after, Ricky. And he knew the house was in a big place with a long name, but Juss had told him it was often shortened to sound like a place where hearts (or Herts) belong because it is home. He had found his way by asking stagecoach drivers when they were stopped outside inns. They refused to give him a ride.
“Though I never did ask, Juss,” he said, “because you can’t do that without money and I didn’t take any from Hildy’s jar because she buys stuff with it to make dinner.”
But they would wave off in the direction of hearts belonging because it was home and told him that was where it was but it was too far off to be walked.
He did get some rides, usually on farmers’ carts among hay or vegetables or even manure, once for a whole afternoon standing up behind the vehicle of a wild young man whose name he could not remember. But they had moved like the wind, and when Ricky had laughed, the young man had laughed too and they had gone even faster. He sometimes got food, but only when he could do something to earn it. Not otherwise. He would not let that young man buy him a meal even though it was going to be beef and potatoes and gravy and other things. It was wrong to beg unless you were starving and he was never starving, just hungry. He was very, very happy now.
“That lady told me you found your sister, Juss,” he said. “She is nice. I wouldn’t’ve talked to her because she is a stranger, but she said she is Juss’s friend and that’s you. And she said she’d bring me to you.”
“She is my friend,” Justin told him, looking at Lady Estelle, who was flushed and bright-eyed and smiling at the two of them. “She is Lady Estelle Lamarr. Ricky, you stink.”
“That’s not a nice word, Juss,” Ricky said. “I don’t stink, though Hildy would tell me time to wash my hands and Wes would tell me time to shave. The sole come almost off my boot, but I used my handkerchief to keep it on. Look!” He raised his foot for Justin to see. And he was off again, recounting some of his adventures and how yesterday a few men had shouted after him. “They even guessed my name, Juss. That was clever, wasn’t it? But they was strangers so I ran and hid and then they went away.”
Word had spread fast in the last few minutes. There was a crowd on the terrace, Justin could see. A few of the guests had come closer. There was a little huddle of servants under the portico.
“And this, Ricky,” Justin said, “is my sister, Maria. She is home now and quite safe, as you can see.”
And Maria, who had come to stand beside Lady Estelle, smiled with warm sweetness. “Thank you for coming all this way to help search for me, Ricky,” she said. “Maybe Justin would have found me sooner if you had been with him. But he did find me and bring me home.”
“Ah,” Ricky said with a big smile. “You must be very happy.”
“I am,” she said, and transferred her gaze to Justin for a few moments. “It always feels good to be home.”
She was, Justin realized, speaking to him.
“And on the subject of home, Ricky,” Justin said, “Wes and Hildy are worried.”
“No!” Ricky said, and shook his head vigorously. “They’ll know I come to help you, Juss. I’m good at finding things. Remember when I found Mrs. Klebb’s cat when it didn’t come home for two days that time? And remember how I found the button that come off Wes’s shirt when Hildy was ironing it and it rolled and no one else could find it?”
“I remember. But come,” Justin said, setting an arm about his shoulders. “It is time for a bath and a change of clothes, Ricky. I know you hate baths and like to wear your own clothes, but there will be no arguments today, please. You stink. Afterward you will smell like a rose.”
“Like a rose.” Ricky laughed. “Do I want to smell like a rose, Juss?”
“You do if the alternative is this,” Justin said firmly. And he led Ricky off toward the house while his sister and all his guests inexplicably applauded. The servants too.
“Have hot bathwater and shaving gear sent to my dressing room,” Justin told Phelps as they climbed the steps to the portico. “And a pot of chocolate with extra milk and sugar and a few sweet biscuits immediately. A full meal can follow half an hour after the bathwater.”
He had no idea where he would put Ricky until Wes found his way here too—and even perhaps after that. But for now it was going to be his own room, even if his valet quit without notice.
His valet did not quit. He brought shaving water and a new razor within minutes of Justin’s arrival in the dressing room with Ricky. A footman came behind him with the chocolate and biscuits. The valet’s nose twitched only slightly at the smell before he went into action, stripping Ricky from the waist up and wrapping a towel about his shoulders while he seated him and lathered his face and shaved him. Ricky sat very still and stopped grinning when he was told to.
He ate his biscuits and drank his chocolate while the valet dug out some of the plain clothes Justin always took with him when he went to spend a few weeks with his friends at the stone quarry. Fortunately, he and Ricky were of similar enough size that the clothes would more or less fit him.
By then the bathwater had arrived and Justin’s valet stripped Ricky of the rest of his clothes and the sorry boots, directed one of the footmen who had brought the water to take everything away, and soon had Ricky immersed in the water and being thoroughly scrubbed. He shut his eyes tightly while his hair was being washed.
Justin sniffed the air when Ricky was finally standing on a towel beside the bathtub, being vigorously dried off. “Soap,” he said. “Not roses, but plain soap. A much better smell for a man. Hildy would be proud of you, Ricky. Clean from the top of your head to the tips of your toes.” His valet had set a new toothbrush and tooth powder on the washstand, but the meal would come first.
And thinking of Hilda, he must write to her without delay, send one of his grooms across country again to deliver the letter in person and set her mind at ease—about Ricky, anyway. Wes would be less of a worry to her. He could look after himself. Though as for that, it had turned out that Ricky could look after himself too.
A hot meal was awaiting Ricky in Justin’s bedchamber, where it had been set out on a table. He devoured every morsel.
“That soup was good, Juss,” he said when he was finished. “Almost as good as what Hildy makes.” And he yawned hugely and noisily.
There was a room adjoining Justin’s own, separated from it by his dressing room and another, empty one. It would be his countess’s bedchamber after he married, Justin had always thought, though this was not the suite of rooms his father and mother—and then his stepmother—had occupied. Those were in the west wing, while this was in the corner of the east wing. He took Ricky through to the other room, which his valet had prepared by drawing the curtains across the window and turning back the bedcovers. Justin helped him off with his coat and cravat and then with his boots—a bit of a tight fit—after Ricky had sat on the side of the bed, yawning again.
“We ought to have put you straight into a nightshirt, I suppose,” Justin said. “But no matter. You can sleep here for the rest of the day and all night too if you wish, Ricky. You must not be frightened if you wake up and I am not here. I am going to leave a candle burning once it gets dark. And that door into the dressing room is going to be left open, as well as the one on the other side that leads into my room. You can call for me during the night if you need me. If I am not there, then you must pull on this bell rope and someone will find me and I will come up to you. Just wait here for me.”
“Call for you if I am frightened,” Ricky said. “Pull on that rope if you do not answer. I’ll remember. Pull on that rope. I’m awful tired, Juss.” He yawned again to prove it.
“I know,” Justin said. “Lie down now and I will tuck you in. And, Ricky? Thank you for coming. I know you would have helped me look for my sister. You probably would have found her too, long before I did.”
“I’m good at it,” Ricky said as he lay down and Justin tucked the covers around him.
Justin stood by the bed looking down at his friend. He had been privileged in his life. He had been given the chance, as so few were, to live with people of all sorts and stations in life, to find friendship in unexpected places. Even family. And love.
But he really must go and write to Hilda.
The library was empty, he thought at first when he got there. Perhaps everyone was getting dressed for dinner. Perhaps they were at dinner. Perhaps they had already eaten. He really had no idea what time it was. But the room was not empty. Lady Estelle Lamarr was standing at one of the windows looking out, and she turned her head to see who was coming into the room. She turned fully when she saw it was him. She was dressed for the evening and looking stunningly beautiful in emerald green. She made him conscious of the fact that he had not changed, or even combed his hair, since he had returned from the lake.
