Joan Wolf (6 page)

Even to my own ears, my cool voice did not sound particularly welcoming.

I felt his familiar thin, hard fingers close around my hand, and then he dropped it as if the brief contact had scalded him.

“I am so sorry about Gerald,” he said. His eyes flicked upward, in the direction of Gerald’s old bedroom. “I still can’t believe that I will never see him again.”

I nodded, incapable of summoning up words of comfort on the death of his brother.

Two footmen came in the front door, carrying Stephen’s bags. Mrs. Nordlem asked, “In what room shall I have them put Mr. Stephen’s bags, my lady?”

Stephen looked surprised. “Can’t I have my old room?”‘

I said, “Giles and his governess have the nursery now, Stephen.”

The shuttered look that I had seen him wear so often in the years of our growing up settled across his face. “Oh, of course.”

He had never before put up that shuttered look for me.

“Take the bags to the blue bedroom,” I said, and the footmen went obediently toward the corridor that led into the family part of the house. Mrs. Nordlem and Hodges followed.

Stephen and I were alone in the hall.

He was staring at my face. “You haven’t changed at all, Annabelle,” he said in wonderment.

The power of his flesh-and-blood presence was beginning to take its toll on my nerves. I said in a hard voice, “You’re wrong, Stephen. I’ve changed a great deal.”

A slight narrowing of the eyes was the only indication he gave that he had heard the open hostility in my voice.

The door that led from the library directly into the west side of the hall suddenly opened and Adam came striding in. “Stephen! Hodges told me you were here! My dear boy, how wonderful to see you!”

“Uncle Adam.” Stephen smiled for the first time since he had walked in, and I felt my heart twist in my breast. He was holding out his hand, but Adam ignored it and enveloped him instead in a huge bear hug. Then he put his hands on Stephen’s shoulders and held him for inspection.

“Why, you’ve grown. You’re taller than I am!” Adam said in surprise.

“It must have been all that sunshine,” Stephen said.

“Or the rum,” Adam retorted, and they both laughed.

Aunt Fanny’s breathless voice came from behind me. “Is it true what Hodges has told me? Is Stephen really home?” I heard the sharp intake of her breath “Why, Stephen, you’re as brown as an Indian!”

He was holding out both his arms. “Aunt Fanny. How wonderful to see you again.”

She ran to receive his hug. “Do you know that Jasper is home also?” she said as she emerged from his embrace.

“No, is he really? That is excellent news.”

Aunt Fanny fluttered around him, chattering excitedly about “having both my boys home again,” and he regarded her with affectionate amusement. In all the years of our growing up, Adam and Fanny had always been very fond of Stephen.

“Come along to the morning room and have some tea,” Fanny said now, and Stephen’s eyes moved to me in obvious surprise that Fanny should be acting as hostess in my house.

“Adam and Fanny are staying at the hall while the Dower House is being refurbished,” I said.

This was the arrangement I had come up with to satisfy my mother about the propriety of Stephen living in the same house as I. Aunt Fanny had been delighted when I suggested redecorating the Dower House, and although her constant chatter could be wearing at times, she was infinitely preferable to some unknown cousin from Bath.

Adam and Fanny and Nell had moved in the previous week. Jasper had arrived yesterday.

Stephen and I would be well chaperoned.

Stephen said, “Tea would be wonderful, Aunt Fanny.”

“How was your voyage?” Adam asked as they began to move toward the door that would take them through the library and thence into the morning room.

I did not move, and Aunt Fanny turned to ask, “Annabelle? Are you not coming, my dear?”

I shook my head and gestured to my clothes. “I would like to change first, Aunt Fanny.”

“Did you and young Giles catch anything?” Adam asked genially.

“Yes, Giles caught four fish. He was delighted.”

Fanny and Adam smiled. Stephen said nothing.

“Jasper and Nell have gone for a ride, but they will be back soon,” Aunt Fanny said. “How pleased they both will be to see you, Stephen! I must tell you about Nell’s come-out. She had
four
offers, you know....”

Their voices died away as they disappeared through the library door. I realized that I had stopped breathing and inhaled sharply.

The initial meeting was over.

I had gotten over the first jump.

Now it was simply a matter of staying the course.

* * * *

I picked one of my five interchangeable black silk dresses to wear to dinner and let Marianne put me into it. I sat in front of my dressing table mirror as she dressed my hair.

“Perhaps I will get it cut after all,” I said as she wove it into a sleek arrangement of layers on the top of my head. “Long hair has been out of style for an age now.”

“You have such beautiful hair, my lady,” Marianne said. She pinned the last strand into place. “It would be a shame to cut it off.”

I had not cut it because Gerald had not wanted me to. He had loved to take down my hair in bed.

I shut my eyes, not wanting to remember.

“It is the exact color of honey,” Marianne said.

I stared at myself in the mirror, assessing my face, trying to see if the changes inside were at all reflected by the outward flesh.

I had been seventeen years old when Stephen had gone to Jamaica, and this afternoon, in an old sprig muslin dress, with my hair in a plait, I had probably not looked much older than seventeen. But I was twenty-three now, a widow with a four-year-old son. I had suffered. Surely the changes had to show.

“Does my face look thinner to you, Marianne?” I asked. “Do you think I am looking older?”

We both looked in the mirror. The face that looked back at us had my father’s gray green eyes and was lightly tanned with a sprinkling of golden freckles marching across the bridge of its straight nose. The tan and the freckles were scandalously unfashionable, but they certainly did make me look young and healthy.

“No, my lady,” Marianne said. “You are not looking older.”

Damn, I thought crossly.

My maid turned to remove a pair of earrings from my jewelry case. She slipped them into my ears, then picked up a single strand of pearls and clasped it around my throat.

I stood up.

“Thank goodness I don’t have to wear the bombazine any longer,” I said. “It would be stifling on a warm summer night such as this.”

My dressing room windows were open, and a light breeze was coming into the room, but the night was indeed warm. It wasn’t just the weather that accounted for the small beads of perspiration that had formed on my upper lip, however. Tonight I would have to face Stephen across the dining room table.

I was suddenly very glad that Adam and Fanny would be there.

I went from my dressing room through the door into the bedroom next door and thence out into the corridor. I looked for a moment at the wide oak staircase, then I set my foot resolutely on the bottom step.

This had to be done, and the sooner I did it the sooner I could cease worrying about it. I made my mind a blank, marched up the stairs to the first bedroom along the second-floor passageway, and knocked briskly on the door.

There was no sound of footsteps within, but the door opened, suddenly and silently, and Stephen was there.

He
was
taller, I thought. When he had left for Jamaica my eyes had been on a level with his cheekbones. Now they were on a level with his mouth.

My heart began to hammer in my chest.

He looked at me and didn’t say anything.

I spoke. “Before we eat, I would like you to meet Giles.”

He still didn’t say anything.

I stiffened my knees to keep them from trembling. “Will you come up to the nursery with me? “

He stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind him. “Yes,” he said.

We proceeded in silence back to the staircase and climbed the steps to the next floor, where we found Giles alone in the playroom working on a new puzzle.

“Mama!” Giles cried, and ran to hug me.

I stroked his shining blond hair. “Giles, here is your Uncle Stephen come to say hello to you.”

Giles turned eagerly to face Stephen, and for the first time Stephen looked upon the child who had cost him an earldom.

“How do you do, Uncle Stephen,” Giles said shyly. “I am very glad you have come home.”

Stephen’s face was once more wearing its shuttered look, but he held out his hand and said, “I am very glad to meet you, Giles.” Then, as Giles confided his small hand into his uncle’s larger clasp, Stephen said, “You have a great look of your mother.”

Giles did not appear pleased. During the last six months he had become very conscious of the fact that he was a boy, and he did not like being compared to a girl, even if the girl was his adored Mama.

Stephen immediately registered Giles’s displeasure—he had always been extraordinarily quick at reading people. “I meant that your coloring is like your mother’s,” he amended easily. “Your features are all Grandville.”

Giles smiled, placated. “Are you going to live with us, Uncle Stephen? Mama says that you are my guardian.”

“I shall be living with you for the present, Giles,” Stephen said. “Your papa wanted me to take care of the estate for you until you are grown up enough to do it for yourself.”

“Do you like to fish, Uncle Stephen?” Giles asked eagerly.

“Yes, I do.” For the first time, Stephen smiled at my son. “I did a great deal of fishing in Jamaica.”

“We have fishing right here in our park,” Giles informed him, “in our very own lake. And there is fishing in West Haven, too. On the
ocean.”

“Uncle Stephen grew up at Weston Hall, darling,” I said. “He knows all about the fishing.”

“Perhaps you would like to come fishing with Mama and me, Uncle Stephen,” Giles said, and the hopeful expression on his face caught at my heart. “I caught
four
big fishes today. I ate them for dinner, Mama,” he added in an aside to me.

A little of Stephen’s initial stiffness had subsided in the face of Giles’s childish chatter. He said now, “Surely you didn’t eat all four of them, Giles.”

“Yes,” Giles said. “I did.”

“They were not quite as big as you may be imagining, Stephen,” I murmured.

His eyes swung around to me in a quick flash of blue, and my heart gave an unwelcome jolt.

Giles reverted with unswerving determination to his original question. “Will you come fishing with us, Uncle Stephen?”

Stephen’s gaze returned to Giles. Part of me was anxious for him to say yes, so that my son would not feel rebuffed, and part of me wanted him to say no, so that I would be spared the excruciating agony of his company.

“I would love to go fishing with you, Giles,” Stephen said. His gaze brushed my face again. “I have many very happy memories of Weston’s lake.”

Anger, sudden, hot, and welcome, swept through me. “I think it would be even more fun for you two boys to go without me,” I said firmly. “It will give you a chance to get to know each other.”

Giles, who was thirsting for male companionship, said eagerly, “Will you, Uncle Stephen?”

I could see the reluctance in Stephen’s face. But he could see the hope in Giles’s, and Stephen had never had it in him to be cruel.

Except, of course, to me.

“Of course I will go,” he said to Giles. “It will be fun.”

Chapter Five

Dinner was not quite as dreadful as I had feared. Jasper and Uncle Adam sat on either side of me, and Nell and Aunt Fanny sat on either side of Stephen. This left Miss Stedham alone in the middle, facing an empty chair, but since this was a family party, the conversation was general and so wasn’t awkward.

My mother had redone all the formal rooms at Weston Hall, and the dining room was resplendent in pale green and gold. The large two-pedestal mahogany table was surrounded by gilt-and-green silk chairs, and overhead a huge crystal chandelier hung majestically from the domed ceiling. A carved mahogany sideboard, impressively loaded with silver servers, stood against the north wall. The pieces de resistance, however, were the matching portraits of my mother and Stephen’s father that hung next to each other on the east wall, facing the sideboard.

Sir Thomas Lawrence had done the portraits a few years after they were married. The earl, blond and handsome, looked just as Gerald would have looked had he lived to forty. It was not only the good looks that caught one’s attention when one looked at the earl’s portrait, however. Lawrence had captured the easy look of aristocratic confidence that had characterized the man, the sort of confidence that can belong only to someone who is supremely certain of himself and of his own high position in the world.

Lawrence’s portrait of my mother was already famous. He considered it one of his masterpieces, and it probably was.

He had painted her in a soft green-colored morning dress, holding a King Charles spaniel in her arms. (She had borrowed the spaniel from Lady Morton. My mother does not care for dogs.) It was a perfect matching portrait to the earl’s. She seemed, in all her immense feminine beauty and elegance, to be the very essence of a great aristocracy.

Mama was very proud of the portrait, and it had been praised and admired by legions.

I sometimes wondered if I were the only one who saw the other thing that Lawrence had managed to capture in the portrait, the thing that revealed his genius and marked him as a truly great painter and not just a social recorder. If you looked closely enough at the pictured woman, you could see the selfishness in her beauty, the coldness in her smile, the shallowness in her lovely green eyes.

The footmen came in with the first course, a delicate beef broth that our cook did very well. William and James filled each individual bowl at the sideboard and brought them to the table.

Aunt Fanny said, “You are so brown, Stephen! I shouldn’t have thought your skin capable of turning so very brown.”