Aunt Dimity and the Duke (16 page)

Emma turned. From the balcony she could see Derek’s crumpled business card, still propped against the clock on the rosewood desk. Since Derek worked out of his home, the phone number on the card would allow her to speak directly to Mrs. Higgins. One telephone call would put her mind at rest about the housekeeper and spare her a potentially embarrassing conversation with Derek. Too bad it was so late.

Emma rubbed her forehead tiredly, remembering that another uncomfortable discussion with Derek was already in the offing. Why in the world had she promised Peter to talk to his father about fixing the window? Emma sighed, then went into the bedroom and turned off the lights. It wasn’t fair. After years of doing everything she could to avoid having children of her own, she lay awake now, worried sick about someone else’s.

17

“It’s none of my business,” Emma muttered, stabbing the pitchfork into the dirt. “Absolutely none.” She yanked a mass of bindweed up by the roots and tossed it into the wheelbarrow. They’d finished clearing the south wall and another of the raised beds before lunch, and she was determined to make a start on the lawn before supper. She jabbed the fork back into the earth and leaned on the handle, wiping the sweat from her forehead and wishing she’d remembered to wear her sunhat. It was too hot to work without it. Not a breath of wind stirred in the chapel garden, and the sun beat down relentlessly from a cloudless blue sky.

“Hey, Emma, you tryin’ to kill yourself?” Syd Bishop looked over at Peter and Nell, who were sitting like wilted flowers in the shade cast by the chapel’s projecting wall. “You kids take a breather. Go ask Gash to squirt you with the hose, or see if Bantry’ll let you play in the fountain. Go on. Outta here!”

They’d gotten word that morning. Grayson, Kate, and Dr. Singh would bring Susannah back to Penford Hall the following day. Excitement in the hall had risen to a feverish pitch as the staff threw itself into preparations for receiving their disabled guest and welcoming home their long-absent master.

Bantry was trimming the hedges at the front of the hall and freshening up the tulips in the beds around the fountain at the center of the circular drive. The drive itself looked like an eccentric used-car lot. Gash had emptied the garage and was busily washing Grayson’s cars. Why he thought it necessary to wash all of them at once, Emma couldn’t say, but the Rolls-Royce, MG, and Jaguar were in line with an ancient but meticulously maintained forest-green Landrover and a badly rusted orange Volkswagen bus. The last, Gash had informed her sadly, belonged to Derek. “Have to do something about it,” he’d muttered, surveying the decrepit vehicle with a calculating eye.

Crowley was supervising a phalanx of villagers who were polishing, dusting, scrubbing, or sweeping every inch of the hall. Mattie was fussing endlessly about what linens would look best in Susannah’s room, Hallard was pounding furiously at his keyboard, and Newland had his men on alert for last-minute gate-crashers, while Madama and three assistants were preparing a welcome-home supper with more courses than a college catalogue.

Derek hadn’t surfaced all day, and Emma was well past being a little peeved.

“Emma, will you quit already? Whaddya tryin’ to do, dig your way to China?” Syd removed the pitchfork from Emma’s hands with unexpected strength. Raising a gloved hand to shade her eyes, Emma realized that the old man had never looked better. His face had the ruddy glow of good health, and his eyes were clear and alert. Perhaps too alert. Emma quickly averted her angry gaze.

Syd took off his straw hat and plopped it on Emma’s head. “Get over there and sit your fanny down before you give yourself a stroke.”

Red-faced and winded, Emma stalked over to the wooden bench, folded her arms, and sat. Her hair was sticking to her back, and her face was streaked with mud and sweat. “What are you doing?” she snapped, when Syd came up behind her.

“I’m tuckin’ your friggin’ wig up in your bonnet. You gotta nice head of hair, Emma, but a cape you don’t need on a day like this. Sit still or I’ll give you such a clout ...” Syd twisted Emma’s long tail of hair into a French knot and pushed it up into the oversized straw hat. With the hair off the back of her neck, the heat in the garden was almost bearable.

Syd sat down next to her. “You gonna tell me what’s eatin’ you or do I have to pry it outta you?”

Emma’s lips tightened.

Syd leaned back on the bench, stretched his legs out in front of him, and crossed his ankles. He raised his face to the sun. “Okay, so I was a little rocky for a coupla days there. Seein’ Suzie all banged up kinda took the wind outta my sails. But I’m okay now. This here chapel garden’s like a tonic.” He nudged Emma with his elbow. “You think I don’t know what you done, bringin’ me out here? You think I ain’t grateful?”

“I’m not mad at you, Syd,” Emma said stiffly.

“I know that, honey. But I gotta return the favor, you understand? Maybe I can help.”

Emma took her work gloves off and placed them in her lap, then turned to face Syd. “Do you think Nell is a truthful child?”

Syd’s eyes slid toward her. “Sure,” he said. “She’s a bright kid. She may embroider a little here, a little there, but she knows what’s make-believe and what’s not.”

“Then what would you say if I told you that Nell implied that Derek leaves her and Peter alone for extended periods of time with no one but a drunk to look after them?”

“I’d say you should be discussing this with Derek,” said Syd.

“How can I?”

Syd waved a hand in the air. “You go up to him, you say, ‘Derek, got a minute?’—”

“No, Syd, that’s not what I mean. I mean, in a larger, philosophical sense, what right do I have to interfere? Why should it matter to me what Derek does with his children? It’s none of my business.”

“Seems to me that, in a larger, philosophical sense, you’re already makin’ it your business. You get much sleep last night?”

“Not much.” Facing forward, Emma ran her hand along the smooth, silvery arm of the wooden bench. Half angry, half embarrassed, she said, “I called there this morning.”

“There where?”

Emma sighed. “I called the number on Derek’s business card. And a woman answered. She was friendly, in a vague sort of way, but it ... it did sound as if she’d been drinking. Oh, Syd, I could practically smell the liquor on her breath.” Emma drummed her fingers on the arm of the bench. “She introduced herself as Mrs. Higgins.”

“You don’t say.” Syd let out a low whistle, then laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. “I’ll tell you one thing. If it is true, it ain’t Derek’s fault.”

“How could it not be?” Emma demanded.

“ ’Cause he loves those kids. He wouldn’t leave ’em hangin’ like that. Not on purpose.” Syd shrugged. “You ever think maybe he don’t know?”

Emma’s fingers stopped drumming.

“I mean, the love goes two ways,” Syd went on. “Those kids’d do just about anything for him, am I right? That Peter ...” Syd shook his head. “Never seen a kid wound so tight. Now, there’s one who don’t tell the truth.”

“What do you mean?”. Emma asked.

Syd gave her a pitying look. “I raised three sons, Emma. I got five grandsons. You think I don’t know when a little boy’s telling a fib?” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Lies about funny stuff, too. Like, he was tellin’ me about a football match at his school, right? And maybe he thinks he can fool me on account of I’m a Yank. But I been in this country twenty years, Emma. I know from football, and not just that the Brits don’t call it soccer. And I’m tellin’ you, if that kid ever saw a football match in his life, I’ll eat that sweaty old hat. Why should he lie about something like that, huh? You tell me.”

Nell’s words seemed to ring in Emma’s ears.
When Papa’s away, Peter has to do everything.
Emma realized suddenly that, apart from that evening when they’d built their Rube Goldberg machine, she’d never seen Peter playing at anything. He was the first one in the garden every morning and he was usually the last to leave. Nanny Cole had scolded him for straightening up the nursery, and Bantry had sensed that something was amiss when he’d caught the boy tidying up the potting shed. Emma remembered Peter’s vaguely puzzled attitude toward cricket and, with a sinking heart, began to understand why the boy had elected not to attend Harrow. A boarding school would have taken him away from home, where he was needed.

“But that’s terrible,” she said. “Why can’t he just go to Derek and tell him the truth?”

Syd snorted. “You’re makin’ me lose patience with you, Emma. You think that kid don’t know his father’s heart is broke? You think he wants his pop to feel worse?”

Emma was appalled. “You think this has been going on since Derek lost his wife? But Peter was barely five years old and Nell was—”

“Nell was his baby sister, what needed looking after. I’ll tell you something, Emma, and it ain’t something I tell too many people. I lost my mother, God rest her soul, when I was eight years old. My sister, Betty, was only two. I know what this boy’s feeling. What I didn’t know was about the drunk. That changes things. You gotta tell Derek about the drunk.”

“Can’t you tell him?” Emma asked.

“You’re the one got the invitation.” When Emma looked at him blankly, Syd rolled his eyes. “Emma, what’s a person gotta do to get through to you? What do you think, Nell don’t know how to keep her mouth shut? You think she tells you about that hooch hound for nothing? You ever heard of a cry for help?” Syd pursed his lips, disgusted. “Oh, I forgot. It ain’t none of your business.”

Emma flinched.

“So, this is why you been so mad at the poor guy?” Syd asked.

“I am not mad at—” Emma cleared her throat. “I’m not mad at anyone.”

“And I’m the queen of Romania.” Syd shook his head reproachfully. “What do you think, I’m stupid? You been a pain in the butt ever since that dope did his vanishing act.”

“Do you know where he is?” Emma asked, more quickly than she’d intended.

Syd examined his fingernails. “Madama says he’s been eatin’ in the kitchen at weird hours. Whatsamatta, he didn’t tell you?”

Emma swallowed once, then looked down at the ground. “No. Why should he?”

“Because that’s what people do when they care about each other,” Syd answered simply. He gave Emma a sidelong look. “Am I right?”

Emma’s glasses began to slide down her sweaty nose. She pushed them up again and sighed disconsolately. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You’re learnin’, though, huh?” Syd squeezed her arm sympathetically. “It ain’t easy, bein’ in love.”

Emma’s shoulders slumped. “Who said anything about being in love? And even if I were, that doesn’t mean that I would expect Der—whoever I might be in love with to account to me for every minute of his time.”

“You like bein’ miserable?” Syd asked.

“No, I—”

“Then you gotta lay down some ground rules. Next time you see that dope, you smack him in the kisser and tell him, he ever pulls this kinda stunt on you again, you’ll give it to him twice as bad.”

“I don’t have any right—”

“He gotta right to make you worry?”

“No, but—”

“You gotta be patient with him. But firm. Otherwise those kids’re gonna grow up seein’ you miserable and never seein’ their pop at all.”

“Syd...” Emma looked up at the sky. It was beginning to cloud over and she hoped for a good rain, to clear the heaviness from the air. “I appreciate your concern, but I must have given you the wrong impression. I have no intention of getting married, ever, much less to someone who already has two children.”

“Two kids and a bear,” Syd corrected. “You know, Emma, if you’d stop thinkin’ so much, you’d save everyone a whole lotta heartburn. Listen to your Uncle Syd. You turn off that brain of yours and give your heart a chance. It won’t steer you wrong. You got my guarantee on that.”

Emma looked down at her work-roughened hands, then reached up to brush at a tendril of hair that had escaped from Syd’s hat. “I think I’ll go in and wash up,” she said softly.

Syd reached over and tucked the loose tendril back into place. “Don’t be too hard on the guy, Emma. He’s out there struggling’, just like the rest of us.”

A mountain of thunderclouds had moved in over the sea by the time Emma emerged from her dressing room, freshly bathed and wrapped in her terry-cloth robe. Not a drop of rain was falling, but the sky was an unbroken mass of angry gray clouds, and the temperature had dropped so dramatically that Emma was glad to come in from the balcony. Although it was nearly time for supper, she stretched out on the bed, exhausted. She’d scarcely slept the night before, and she’d been hard at work all day. She was much too tired to sort through her conversation with Syd, or to battle her way through Crowley’s cleaning brigade to reach the dining room, and she wasn’t really hungry anyway. All she wanted to do was rest her eyes.

Emma awoke with a start. She reached toward the bedside table to grope for her glasses before realizing that she hadn’t taken them off. She was still wrapped in her robe. Peering at the jeweled clock on the rosewood desk, she saw that it was nearly midnight. Yawning, she looked around the room sleepily, wondering what had awakened her. Thunder, perhaps? She went to the balcony and saw that the storm had not yet broken, though the wind was blowing hard and lightning flashed far out at sea. Emma shuddered to think what the garden rooms would look like in the morning, then turned as she heard someone knocking at her door.

Wincing guiltily, Emma came in off the balcony. She shouldn’t have left her lights on. It was probably Mattie, coming to ask if she needed anything. Summoning an apologetic smile, Emma went to open the door.

The hallway was empty. Emma squinted into the darkness beyond the pool of light falling from her room, but saw no one. Perplexed, she closed the door.

Again she heard a knocking sound. It seemed to be coming from her dressing room. The hairs on her arms prickled as she picked up Crowley’s flashlight and hefted it. It was sturdy and she was fairly strong. Creeping quietly to the dressing room, she flung the door wide and leapt back, raising the flashlight above her head.