Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(36)

“I daresay he will be here long before then,” André assured her cheerfully. “How do you do, Aunt Olwen? And Isabelle? Margaret?” He did the rounds of the room, bowing to each of the ladies in turn.

“I knew he would not come,” Bertrand said. “I told you so, Stell.”

“Oh you did not,” she protested.

“And I warned you that your father is sometimes unpredictable,” their aunt Jane said kindly. “I warned you too, Estelle, that he may not be as delighted as you hope at the prospect of a party in his honor here in the country. The company is bound to seem insipid to a man of his tastes. It will probably be just as well if he does not come in time, though I hate to see you spurned and disappointed.”

“Yes, Aunt Jane,” Estelle said as she resumed work on her embroidery.

“He has never spurned us,” Bertrand said, but he spoke quietly enough that his aunt either genuinely did not hear or wisely chose not to comment.

Their father had still not come after a week had passed or sent word to say when he would be there—if he came at all. Estelle grew steadily unhappier as the hope that he would arrive in time for his birthday grew slimmer. Bertrand, unhappy on his own account but even unhappier on his sister’s, tackled their uncle André about the true cause of the unavoidable delay—and then reported to his sister in her room.

By the time he had finished, Estelle had grown unaccustomedly angry—she had been taught that a lady never allowed strong feeling to rob her of a calm dignity. “I suppose,” she said, “that if he set off with Uncle André and then decided to stay in some godforsaken village—were those his exact words, Bert?—I suppose that if he did that and even deliberately stranded himself there without his carriage, there can be only one of two explanations.”

“He found a card game or a cockfight or some such thing,” he said.

“Or a woman.” She spoke with great bitterness.

“I say, Stell, Aunt Jane would have a fit of the vapors if she could hear you say that,” he said.

Her eyes were swimming with tears when she lifted her face to his. “I think it was a woman,” she said.

“Are you thinking what I am thinking?” he asked after they had stared at each other glumly for a few moments. His nostrils flared with a sudden anger to match hers.

“Yes, I certainly am,” she said. “It is time we went to find him. And bring him home. He is not going to ruin the only party I have ever planned. He is simply not. I have had enough.”

“That’s the spirit, Stell,” he said, clapping a hand on her shoulder and squeezing. “We are not children any longer. It is time we asserted ourselves. Let’s go find Uncle André again. He was in the billiard room five minutes ago.”

He still was.

“He could be anywhere by now,” André told them, chalking the end of his cue as though hopeful he was going to be able to resume his solitary game. “I really cannot imagine him staying in that village for longer than a day or two at most. The Lord knows where he went after leaving there or where he is now. There is never any knowing with your father.”

But they went anyway. They set off the following day on a journey they were fully aware might very well prove fruitless. Four of them. Estelle and Bertrand had insisted that their uncle go with them in order to lead them to the village where he had left their father, since he could not remember the name of it. To be fair, he went without any great protest. Redcliffe did not offer much by way of entertainment or congenial company, but he could not go off anywhere alone, since his pockets were sadly to let and creditors might pounce if he went to his rooms in London or to any of his usual haunts. And it was in his own interest as well as that of his niece and nephew to find his brother and persuade him to come home and make good on his promise to lend the money to pay the more pressing of André’s debts. The fourth in their company was Jane Morrow, who went after the failure of all her attempts to dissuade, command, wheedle, and threaten two young people who had never before in their lives given her a moment’s trouble.

“I cannot think what has got into them,” she had complained to her husband when he too had failed to talk sense into his wife’s niece and nephew. “Unless it is bad blood showing itself at last. I shall do all in my power to prevent that from prevailing, however, for Adeline’s sake. Oh, I could cheerfully wring that man’s neck, and I may do it too if we find him, which is very unlikely. It would be easier to find a needle in a haystack, I daresay.”

She was more annoyed than she could remember being since Adeline had insisted upon marrying a young man whose only claim to fame apart from extraordinary good looks had been his wildness. On this occasion she had even threatened to wash her hands of the twins if they defied her wishes. But she went. Duty was too strongly ingrained in her to be ignored. Oh, and affection too, though she did not like to admit to any gentle feelings for such disobedient children.

But she would have a word or two to say to her brother-in-law the very next time she saw him, even though she was very well aware that he would merely look at her in that way he had and finger the handle of his quizzing glass and make her feel like a worm crawling across the dirt before his feet.

How dared he disappoint his children?





Nine