Lost Among the Living(27)

As I tugged on my hat, a maid descended the staircase behind me, carrying an armful of linens. I turned to her as Martin waited for me in the doorway. “I’m sorry about the leaves,” I said.

The maid paused. “Pardon, miss?”

“The leaves in my room.” I was unused to the idea of a servant cleaning up after me, and I felt the need to explain. “I must have tracked them in somehow. It’s a bit of a headache for you, I know. I’ll try to watch more closely next time.”

But she looked at me blankly. “There were no leaves in your room, miss.”

“Oh.” I felt myself flush. “Perhaps one of the other maids already cleaned them.”

“I’m the only maid who does the bedrooms.”

I glanced at Martin, who was looking at me curiously, then looked back at the maid. Panic tried to close my throat. “I, er—I must be thinking of something else, I suppose.”

“Certainly, miss,” the maid said, bemused.

I escaped through the open front door and onto the front steps. “Is everything all right?” Martin asked me.

I managed a smile. “Yes, of course. Let’s go.”

He took me over the grounds, starting behind the house. We walked through the gardens—unkempt and dying now—and to the stables, where no horses resided, and the tennis court, where no one played. The tennis court had not been cleaned in years, and piles of dead leaves stood in drifts, straggles of weeds growing through the hard surface.

“Did you ever play?” I asked, trying to forget my exchange with the maid as I pulled up the collar of my coat and followed him past.

“Hardly,” Martin replied. “I had no one to play with. Franny was too young—she tried awfully to please me, but she was easily distracted and could never finish a proper game. Alex played with me a few times when he lived here, but he beat me with so little effort I soon became discouraged. He said he learned the game from his father.”

I didn’t know Alex played tennis—and he had never told me much about his father. I tried to picture a man resembling Alex but older, teaching a six-year-old to play. Where had they practiced? Had they laughed, or was the air tense between them? Had Alex fondly recalled those sessions, or were they memories he’d rather put away? I’d never know, and I was suddenly jealous that Martin knew something of Alex, of his life before me, that I didn’t. “Tell me about Alex living here,” I said.

Martin flinched a little, and too late I remembered Dottie’s rule not to speak of Alex. But my companion recovered himself quickly, taking me over the path now around the side of the house. “Alex was twelve when he arrived,” he answered me, “and I was eight, stuck in the countryside with a baby sister and ripe for a bit of hero worship. He was good enough to let me stay in his presence, as annoying as I was. He stayed for three years, and they were the best of my life.”

We were at the front of the house now, and we followed the path into the trees. I thought briefly of the mist I’d seen from my window—and the mist in my room—but in the crisp sunlight the memory seemed distant. Martin’s pace slowed; he was tiring already, but still he glanced at me over his shoulder and motioned to the woods around us. “This land goes all the way to the sea. Mother’s father bought it for Mother when she married.” He gave me a wry smile. “We’re new money all the way, you see. My great-grandfather was one of those nasty old Victorian industrialists. Children working in his factories, paying his workers pennies, all of that sort of thing. Mother is of his blood. She tried to sell the land here for lumber value just before the war—she thought lumber would be valuable with war coming, and tried to parcel the whole thing off. But she had opposition from the neighboring estates as well as the local government. She was stuck in a legal mire over it for years.”

I looked around me, feeling the dry hush of old leaves underfoot, listening to the throaty caw of a crow somewhere, and I tried to envision owning a piece of the earth and wishing to sell it off. “So she lost,” I said.

“She did.” Martin gestured off to the left with one thin hand. “Our property ends several miles that way—there’s a government installation there, though you can’t see it through the trees. I think the installation is the reason she couldn’t sell.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Ministry of Fisheries.” Martin’s breath came deeper now, as if the simple walk through the trees had exhausted him. “An outpost thereof. Lots of boats coming and going, which is rather nice to watch. In the other direction, the border of our land ends nearly in town. The locals will tell you the views are lovely.” He dropped his hands in his pockets. “It will all be mine someday, which is why I’ve come home. That and to continue the family line, of course.”

My jaw froze shut. With me. He means to continue the family line with me.

But when we stepped into the strong sunlight of a small clearing and he turned to me, I saw only weariness in his face. His skin seemed thin as parchment, his cheekbones prominent beneath. He sat on the fallen trunk of an old tree and put his forearms on his knees, his thin wrists dangling. He looked up at me, squinting a little. “It really is nice to meet you, Cousin Jo,” he said quietly. “I’ve always wanted to meet the girl Alex married. I’m glad you were here when I returned after all this time. Franny died while I was away, you see, and I thought I’d be here alone.”