Chapter 2

Ellen was the first into the drawing room after the butler when they arrived at Limeglade. She was rewarded by the sight of both Lord and Lady Holmes as well as Mr. Bartlett and Harriet, all seated and obviously awaiting tea, though the tea tray had not yet been brought. She was less gratified by the sight of her brother, also seated.

She curtsied to all the occupants of the room and greeted each in turn. She turned to her brother last. “Julian,” she said sharply, “you did not say at luncheon that you planned to ride over here. I suppose you galloped as hard as you could. And I suppose you have told already?”

Julian Sinclair, a tall, slim young man with a pleasant, eager face and thick, unruly brown hair, raised his eyes to the ceiling for a brief moment. “I knew I would not have had a moment’s peace at home for a month if I had breathed a word,” he replied. “No, the pleasure is all yours, Ellen.”

“We thought you were never coming home, Rebecca,” Harriet was saying crossly. “I met Julian while out riding and invited him back for tea, and we have both been waiting here for half an hour. Maude insisted that we wait for you, though I do not see why. You know when teatime is, and even if you are not here on time, you will not starve. You can eat when you come.”

“The walk is too long, Rebecca, my dear,” the baron added, looking at his niece with disapproval. “You would not be late for tea, you know, if you would just take the gig as I have advised you to do. Your cheeks are positively red, my dear. You will be fortunate if you do not do permanent damage to your complexion, or—worse—take a chill. Perhaps I should summon Dr. Gamble to look at you just in case?”

‘‘But it is a good thing we did wait, Harriet,” Lady Holmes said calmly. “Now we can have tea with the Misses Sinclair too.”

“The rosy cheeks are vastly becoming to my mind,” Mr. Bartlett said with a dazzling smile and an elegant bow in Rebecca’s direction.

Rebecca smiled at everyone. “I am certainly ready for a cup of tea,” she said. “And Miss Sinclair has brought some news that will be of interest to everyone.”

She sat down as everyone’s attention turned to the elder Miss Sinclair.

Ellen was no more able than her sister had been to play with her audience and enjoy their attention for as long as possible before divulging the core of the matter. “Christopher is coming home!” she said, beaming first at Harriet, then at Maude, and finally at Lord Holmes. “In two days’ time he should be here.”

“Splendid!” the baron said, showing a flattering degree of interest in the youthful Miss Sinclair. “Shocking affair, that of his wife. Still in mourning, is he? A fine figure of a man he was when I saw him last. Fashionable. Top of the trees, you know. Liked to risk his health rather too much, perhaps—riding and boxing, you know. It is ironic that Mrs. Sinclair should be the one to pass on. One can never be too careful.” He sighed deeply. “He should have chosen his physician more carefully. One can never be too careful I always say. One should choose one’s physician with as much care as one chooses one’s tailor.” He paused a moment. “Perhaps even more carefully.”

Harriet waited impatiently for her father to finish his monologue. “Christopher Sinclair is coming here?” she said. “Papa and I met him several times when we were in town a few years ago. I hardly remembered him from before he left here. But there he was a spendidly handsome man. We would have entertained him more often if it had not been for his wife. She was the daughter of a cit,” she added, the explanation directed toward Mr. Bartlett. “Rather a vulgar creature, I am afraid.” She seemed suddenly to realize that she was in the presence of the brother-in-law and sisters-in-law of the late Mrs. Sinclair and had the grace to flush. “Of course,” she added, “one must not speak ill of the departed.”

Fortunately two events occurred to cover her confusion. The tea tray arrived and was carried over to Lady Holmes, who proceeded to pour. And Mr. Bartlett took up the conversation.

“Mr. Christopher Sinclair is your brother?” he asked Ellen, his eyebrows raised, one hand toying with the handle of his quizzing glass. “I had no idea.”

“You know him?” she said, all eager smiles and dimples.

“Why, yes, Miss Sinclair,” he replied, “I am acquainted with him. And was with his wife.” He turned with a reassuring smile to a still-flushed Harriet. “It is true that she did not share his breeding or his education, but she did have other qualities that perhaps saved her from being truly vulgar.” He turned back to Ellen. “I might have known, of course, had I given the matter thought, that he is of your family. He shares a remarkable handsomeness with his brother and sisters.”

Ellen blushed and giggled, and even Primrose looked gratified.

“Do you know my brother too, Lady Holmes?” Julian asked.

Maude looked up at him as she put down the teapot. “I am afraid not,” she said. “I spent only a short time in London before my marriage. Stanley knows a vastly larger number of people than I do.”

She turned her attention to Rebecca as the younger people continued to talk about the expected arrival and all the extra activities that the event was bound to bring.

“How was the school today, Rebecca?” she asked. 

Rebecca shrugged and smiled rather ruefully. “There were only fourteen boys there,” she said, “the fewest so far. But the weather is exceptionally good. I am sure there must be much work for them to do with their fathers.” 

“The Reverend Everett must be disappointed,” Maude said sympathetically. “He sets great store by the success of the school, does he not?”

“Yes,” Rebecca replied, “I am afraid he does. Poor Philip is so otherworldly himself and puts so much effort into all he does, that he expects an equal dedication from everyone. He cannot be contented with letting the school develop gradually. I keep telling him that it is a totally new idea for the people of the village and farms to be able to have their sons educated. They must be given time to get accustomed to the idea—a few years, perhaps.”

“The Reverend Everett deserves success,” Maude commented. “The welfare of others is always so much more important than his own well-being. I noticed last Sunday as I shook hands with him on leaving church that there was a patch on the hem of his surplice. I do admire him so.” 

“I call that affectatious,” the baron added, having swung his attention from one conversation to the other. “The fellow does not need to walk around with a patched surplice. This is the richest living for miles around. It don’t do for a clergyman to go around in rags. He makes the gentry look miserly. My brother never did that, Rebecca, dear, even though he had some peculiar notions.”

Rebecca smiled. “I am sure Philip will never be reduced to wearing rags, Uncle Humphrey,” she said. “But I do know that he cares little for personal vanity.”

“It is a kind of vanity to wear patched clothes,” the baron added sagely. “He likes other people to notice how godly he is. I still believe that the niece of Lord Holmes could have made a better match, Rebecca.”

She smiled affectionately at him but did not reply. They had exhausted all there was to say on that topic long ago. “May I come with you one day, Rebecca?” Maude asked, looking almost beseechingly at the niece who was three years older than she. “I should like to see your school when the boys are there. I would not get in the way at all. In fact, I could perhaps be useful. You are by far more knowledgeable than I am. Yet you said yourself but last week that my French is better than yours. Perhaps I could teach a little?”

Rebecca opened her mouth to explain as tactfully as she could that she and Philip had decided not to include any language other than English in their school curriculum—at first, anyway. Not even Latin was to be taught. They had both agreed that the boys had a great deal to learn merely to read and write their own language correctly. However, the baron spoke before she did.

“There is no call for you to do any such thing, my love,” he said to his wife. “It is bad enough to have my niece involved in such low pursuits. It would not do at all for Lady Holmes of Limeglade to involve herself in the running of a school for the vulgar. Such behavior would tarnish both your image and mine.”

“But, my lord,” Maude said, raising large eyes timidly to his, “it would give me something to do. Sometimes I feel so useless. The household runs so smoothly, and dear Harriet likes to do her part as she did before I came here. It is surely becoming for your wife to involve herself in charitable activities.”

“I shall take you to visit the school one afternoon,” the baron said, “and the boys can recite their lessons for us. That is charitable enough. But you will not teach. You have enough to do, my love, keeping yourself looking beautiful. You mustn’t exert yourself doing much else. Work ruins the health and the complexion.”

Maude’s eyes had dropped to the tea in the cup she held with one hand. “I shall not go, then, my lord,” she said quietly, “if you do not wish it.”

Rebecca turned her attention away from this mild domestic dispute. She felt sorry for Maude. Her uncle’s wife was a quiet and sensible girl. Yet she was married to a foolish and vain man thirty years her senior. He should have been much wiser than she, a father figure almost. Certainly he thought himself wiser. Consequently, he gave her very little freedom. It was not that he was a tyrannical or hardhearted man. Rather he was an aging man who was trying to prolong or recapture his own youth through a young wife. He cosseted her, protected her, and treated her more as a fragile doll than a woman. Having always been idle yet contented himself, he failed to understand that his wife was bored and restless.

It was a great shame that he refused to listen to her occasional pleas for more activity, Rebecca reflected. At least so far her suggestions had all been on the side of good. She had wished to create a flower garden to the south of the house, doing much of the work herself. The flower garden was now in existence, but Lady Holmes had not been permitted any part in its creation. She had wished to visit the sick, taking with her gifts of baking and needlework that she had made herself. She now did visit the sick one afternoon a month, conveyed in the baron’s best closed traveling carriage. But she carried offerings that the servants had made. And now she wished to help at the school.

Perhaps if she became bored and frustrated enough, Lady Holmes would turn her attention to less desirable activities. Perhaps she would learn to ride recklessly or . . . Rebecca’s imagination at the moment could provide no vice more terrible than that. But she did feel sorry for Maude. She knew that she herself would chafe terribly against such restrictions. At least with Philip she would be sure of always having plenty to do.

She let her eyes roam around the rest of the group gathered in the drawing room. Julian Sinclair, eager and boyish, was talking earnestly to Harriet. He fancied himself in love with her, perhaps really was so. They had grown up together, were only a year apart in age. He must know her well enough to know that she was moody: haughty one minute, all contrite affection the next; coldly aloof at one time, warmly impulsive at another. Yet he still sought her company, beseeched her with his eyes for something more than the offhand treatment he usually received from her.

Harriet, Rebecca suspected, still did not know what she wanted of life. She shared much of her father’s vanity and foolishness. Yet against all reason, Rebecca was fond of her cousin. She had little reason to be. Harriet had scant patience for Rebecca’s apparent lack of interest in her personal appearance and advancement and for her devotion to helping others.

She had once called Philip a pompous ass, but that had been immediately after she had been forced to listen to a sermon in which he had condemned the vanity of worldly possessions. She had been convinced that the sermon was directed against her because she was sitting conspicuously in her father’s padded pew at the front of the church wearing a particularly frivolous new bonnet. She had apologized to Rebecca later the same day, saying that the sermon could not have been meant personally as the Reverend Everett’s sermons were always prepared in advance and he could have had no way of knowing that she would be wearing a new bonnet on that particular Sunday.

However it was, Rebecca considered Julian’s chances of winning Harriet slim. He was too young and unsure of himself to control her headstrong temperament. And he was of no social significance. The Sinclairs were of good lineage and were a long-established family in the county. But they had never been particularly wealthy or prominent in any other way. Their only claim to distinction at present was their relationship to Christopher Sinclair, who had made himself quite fabulously wealthy by contracting a marriage with the daughter of a cit, a man who had amassed a fortune in business and trade.

Rebecca had no wish to continue that train of thought. She turned her attention to Mr. Bartlett, who was entertaining the two Sinclair girls. He was smiling; his eyes were dancing. The two girls were listening to him, brighteyed and rapt. Rebecca found herself smiling too. Their family circle had certainly brightened since the arrival of Maude’s brother, despite the fact that Maude herself had not seemed overjoyed to see him when he arrived unexpectedly. Maude still seemed not to think of Limeglade as her home. She seemed to have felt embarrassed that a relative of hers would invite himself to stay with Lord Holmes.

But he was a delightful man, Rebecca had decided. He was not remarkably handsome. He was of medium height, had auburn, wavy hair and eyebrows, and a pale complexion. His eyes were brown and set perhaps rather too close together for perfection. But they were candid and smiling eyes. His teeth were rather large for his face, or his mouth was too wide. But they were white teeth and showed frequently. He smiled a great deal.

He made friends very easily, a quality that Rebecca admired in him. Soon after his arrival he was on the best of terms with both the baron and Harriet, and thus any resentment that his unexpected visit might have caused was smoothed over. He made an effort to converse with Rebecca, though he need not have done so. Her approval was not necessary to his continued stay in the house. He had expressed interest in the school and had even agreed with her opinion that some form of education should be offered to the girls of the village, too. Philip had never been sympathetic to that idea. Mr. Bartlett had met Philip and the Sinclairs and had been warmly welcomed by all.

Only Maude, strangely enough, seemed less than delighted by his presence. But Rebecca could understand why. It must be hard for a girl as quiet and shy as Maude to have a brother like Mr. Bartlett, a man so much at his ease in company. She had taken months to get to know and feel comfortable with people whose approbation he had won within days. It must seem unfair to her to know that they were of the same family yet were so different in temperament.

The Misses Sinclair were the first to rise to leave. Julian reluctantly followed their lead and got to his feet.

“Christopher will be here in two days’ time,” Ellen reminded the company. “I do not know how we will live through the rest of today and tomorrow. We will bring him to visit as soon as may be, Lady Holmes.” She turned eagerly to Mr. Bartlett. “And you and he will have a chance to renew your acquaintance,” she said.

Mr. Bartlett smiled and bowed.

After they had left, Lady Holmes rang the bell for the butler to remove the tea tray, and everyone sat down again.

“I am so pleased that Mr. Christopher Sinclair is coming here,” said Harriet. “He is a very fashionable man, is he not, Papa?”

“Decidedly so, my dear,” her father agreed. He had taken a jeweled snuffbox from the table beside him, placed a pinch on the back of his right hand, and sniffed delicately through each nostril in turn. Then he took a lace-bordered handkerchief from his pocket and waited with half-closed eyes and twitching nostrils for the sneeze to follow.

Having completed the action to his own satisfaction, he continued the conversation. “It will be interesting to hear what news he brings from town,” he said. “It is so difficult here to be up to the minute on what styles and fabrics are currently in fashion. Mr. Bartlett, did you not tell me that black had become an almost acceptable color for evening wear? I can scarcely conceive of such a thing. Black!” He shuddered delicately.

“Beau Brummell started the fashion, my lord,” Mr. Bartlett replied, “though at the time it seemed just a personal eccentricity. Yet now one sees the style with fair frequency. Of course, all men of any distinction of looks and bearing—like yourself, my lord, if I may be permitted to say so—still prefer more palatable colors.”

The baron nodded affably to show that his guest was indeed permitted to say so.

“We must invite Mr. Sinclair to dinner within the week,” Harriet said, as always oblivious to the fact that she was no longer mistress of the house. “But will that mean having to invite the whole family, Papa?”

“It will be a pleasure to have them all," Maude said. “It is some time since we gave a dinner party. Do you not agree, my lord?” she asked, glancing with hasty selfconsciousness at her husband.

“Oh, quite so, quite so,” he agreed.

“I hope Mr. Sinclair makes an effort to appear to advantage with his family,” Mr. Bartlett added, smiling graciously at Harriet. “They are worthy and likable people.”

Harriet raised her eyebrows and looked back at him, all attention. Rebecca, too, looked sharply across at him.

“Why would he not appear to advantage?” Harriet asked.

“Pardon me,” Mr. Bartlett replied, serious for once. “There is nothing unacceptable in his manner by some London standards. If he is rather a spendthrift, one at least cannot say that he is so with anyone else’s money than his own now. And if he is something of a rake, one can say the same of many other men of rank in town.”

Maude got to her feet and gathered together the embroidery that she had earlier set down beside her. “I am sure that Mr. Sinclair will know how to behave when he is here, Stanley,” she said matter-of-factly. “Harriet, shall we go to my sitting room and make some plans for the dinner party?”

“Oh,” replied Harriet, “I already have it all arranged in my mind, Maude. You do not need to worry about it.”

“Then you shall tell me what you have planned,” Maude said with quiet persistence, and she preceded her stepdaughter from the room.

The baron too retired to his room in order to rest before beginning the exertions of evening dinner and a hand or two of cards in the drawing room afterward.

Rebecca also rose to leave the room. She planned to have a leisurely bath after the hours spent teaching in a warm schoolroom and the hot, dusty walk to and from the village.

“You must have known Mr. Christopher Sinclair before his marriage, Miss Shaw,” Mr. Bartlett said in his friendly way. He was smiling at her. “Though I believe he must be considerably older than you.”

“Only a few years, sir,” Rebecca replied. “And, yes, I knew him. It is impossible in a small place like this not to know one’s neighbors.”

“Tell me,” he said, looking at her candidly, “was he always such an unprincipled man? I must confess that now I have made the acquaintance of the Sinclairs, I find it difficult to understand how he has become the way he is. I suppose that in most families there has to be one black sheep.”

Rebecca sat down again. “Unprincipled in what way?” she asked guardedly.

“Perhaps he was a close friend, Miss Shaw?” Mr. Bartlett added, looking at her searchingly. “I would not wish to ruin your memories of him.”

Rebecca made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “It is many years since I have even seen him, sir,” she said.

“I knew his wife,” he said. “She was a friend. A delightful creature, though not by any means a beauty. And many people despised her because her father was in business and not, strictly speaking, a gentleman at all. Sinclair married her for her money, of course. And I would not stoop to blame him for that. Many a gentleman with pockets to let has been forced to do as much.”

Rebecca lowered her eyes to the hands in her lap. Perhaps she ought not to be listening to this. It was none of her affair, after all. But she could not help herself. It is sometimes too delicious to hear evil of a person one has despised for many years. She had not been mistaken, then.

“I could certainly have forgiven him for marrying my friend for her money,” Mr. Bartlett continued, “had he treated her with proper respect thereafter.”

“And he did not?” Rebecca prompted, raising her eyes unwillingly to his.

“The Sinclairs seem a humble enough family,” Mr. Bartlett said. “And that makes it all the more surprising that Sinclair himself is so insufferably high in the instep. He treated her with the utmost contempt, Miss Shaw. He never took her about with him, and he flaunted his mistresses before her most shamefully.”

“Poor lady,” Rebecca murmured, feeling sympathy for the late Mrs. Sinclair for the first time.

“Perhaps the situation would not have been so tragic had she not doted so much on him,” Mr. Bartlett continued. “She lived with the hope that perhaps the child would bring him closer to her. Her death was tragic, yet under the circumstances perhaps for the best. She would have been disappointed, I am sure.” His tone had become almost vicious.

“I do not find your story impossible to credit, sir,” Rebecca said, her voice strained. “Yet I believe it would be as well to keep it to yourself. I would not wish to see his family hurt.”

“Indeed, ma’am,” he assured her earnestly, “I would not dream of breathing a word to anyone else. I would not have said anything to you either, but you seem to me to be a lady of sense. And I fear that perhaps Sinclair will not, after all, behave as he ought here. He has lived for too long a life of self-indulgence and depravity. I wish to suggest, Miss Shaw, with all due respect, that you keep careful watch over your cousin. She is a lovely and impressionable young lady and wealthy enough, I believe, to attract a fortune hunter.”

Rebecca’s eyes widened. “Do you believe he would dare?” she asked. “I cannot think it.”

“And I trust you are right,” he said earnestly. “But I felt it my duty to speak. I would not be able to forgive myself if anything happened because I had felt the matter too delicate to involve myself. Forgive me, Miss Shaw. My sister’s family has in a sense become my own. I must be concerned for the welfare of its members. If Sinclair behaves as a gentleman ought, I shall be happy, though I may lose credit in your eyes.”

“Not so, sir,” Rebecca assured him. “I thank you for taking me into your confidence. You may be sure that I shall be properly concerned for Harriet’s welfare when Mr. Sinclair arrives.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and his face relaxed into its accustomed smile. He took Rebecca’s hand in his and raised it to his lips before turning and leaving the room.