Charity Begins at Home (3 page)

"Handsome is as handsome does," Aunt Grace interposed with comfortable piety. "It is a shame for poor Lady Haver though. I don't think I've seen her about at all this season, but that's only to be expected."

Charity consulted her letter again. "Francis says she retreated back to Kent after the duel. I gather she isn't taking this well. She loved him madly, poor thing." For just a moment, Charity wondered if the rational contract her suitors offered weren't preferable to that madness. Then she shook her head decisively. One needn't, after all, fall in love with the likes of Kenny Haverton.

"She was one of those wives who could never see ill in her husband. And there was so much ill to see in Kenny, once you got past that face of his."

"Well, the wife is always the last to know," Aunt Grace said inarguably. "What a dreadful way to find out, however."

Charity would have liked to suggest that the wife of Grace's favorite, the rakish Sir Ralph, would doubtlessly face a similar fate, but instead returned to her brother's letter. "Dreadful is right. Listen to what Francis says: 'It's coming on three months now since his death, however, and she's never got out of bed.' "

"Oh, that must be an exaggeration," said the practical Aunt Grace. "She must have had to visit the conveniences at least once in three months. Now don't you start thinking that she is one more reason to go home!" she added over Charity's laughter. "I'm sure she has a family doting on her and allaying her grief, and needs you not at all."

"Anna does have a brother, at least, but it occurs to me he lives abroad." Charity frowned, for she'd never really considered that Lady Haver's trouble might not be her affair. "We have been friendly, you know, though never really friends. She's older, close to thirty, I think. She used to have me to tea when she was playing the grand lady of the manor. Taking pity on the country mouse, you know." She soon repented such a catty comment, however apt, and rushed on. "I've known Haver forever, of course. He wasn't a very good earl, having inherited so young. My word, little Lawrence must hold the title now, and he's but seven. They seldom set foot in the country, you know, although I gather Anna's now finding it more hospitable than London what with all the gossips." She folded the letter neatly and tucked it into her lace sleeve. "And I would go home, even were Lady Haver the merriest of widows. The fairs have been my responsibility for years now. I shouldn't have thought to shirk it, just for a London season."

"But we've had such fun," Aunt Grace said with a drooping look. "I was so hoping you could be spared another fortnight or more, for there are dozens of dances and picnics. And you said you would see to the leasing of the Chelsea house, for my man of business has no judgment about tenants. His last choice, I am persuaded, was an opium smoker, for he left burn marks all along the parlor wall."

Charity promised to engage a tenant before she left town and to attend every last picnic and ball offered in the next couple of days. Aunt Grace helped herself to the last muffin and said hopefully, "You don't suppose you could also accept an offer while you are being so conciliating? For the thought of sending you home unmarried, why, I feel as if I have failed."

Charity checked the watch pinned to her rose-embroidered bodice. "Oh, I am sorry, Aunt, but if I'm to engage tenants and attend picnics, I shan't have any time to entertain offers."

Back in her room, Charity kicked off her slippers and began to pack up her clothes to be sent home ahead of her. But she paused in her neat folding, her thoughts wandering. She packed the shawl carefully into the open trunk at the foot of her bed, then, from under the mattress, brought out her journal.

This journal was not the sort needing to be hidden. There were no speculations about an unknown man's intense gaze or breathless reports of stolen kisses. Would that there were! No, this journal only recorded the sights she had seen, the people she had met, to be read months from now when her memories of the season had faded, perhaps as a respite from organizing the Christmas carol service. And perhaps someday she might turn these into a little memoir, a girl's guide to the London Season.

It was a silly ambition, for who would read such a book? But Charity liked to have distant goals as well as reachable ones. So, innocent as her jottings were, she kept her journal hidden away. Life with a clutch of brothers had taught her that the most innocuous private thoughts could he turned into sport at the dinner table, and even now, sixty miles from home, instinct kept her secretive.

She smoothed the blue counterpane and sat down on the bed, tucking her feet up under her skirt. Editing pencil in hand, she read over yesterday's entry. She had, perhaps, made rather too much of that classical painting, lingering overlong on Adonis's burning gaze and well-defined musculature. A pretense at sophistication, she realized now, and perhaps an overheated and best-undefined longing. Enough, she told herself, and began an introduction to Braden's other painting, the Italian landscape she admired even more. "Lord Braden is known for—" and she immediately broke off her formal description to add a parenthetical note to herself. ("How old? Attendant said he was too young for ennobling, recently at the RA school— young enough, anyway, to inspire his envy, for a man of twenty does not envy a man of forty) his dramatic use of vivid colors and his interest, even obsession, with the sea. The sea reportedly figures in his every painting, even the classical studies. Both these qualities are in evidence in
Ferendisi
, his landscape of an island village on the Italian coast of the Adriatic. Braden is meticulous with detail. The rocky cliff, the trees bent from the sea breeze, the curling waves are precisely drawn, and the colors are almost shockingly real."

She frowned at her entry, wishing she could explain the real appeal of that landscape, that the mix of canvas and oil contained Italy in all its operatic drama. She could not, however, express in such careful words what the artist did so well in image. So she added, all in a rush, her precise lettering becoming scattered, "I would love to see a village so different from my own. To touch the Adriatic, so blue, so warm, so different from my cold gray Channel. To hear the music and laughter of a people so unlike myself."

And then she stopped, for it seemed unpatriotic somehow, as if she didn't love England, didn't love Kent and its down-to-earth residents. She did, of course, with all her heart. It was only that she had known nothing else all her life.

She put away her pencils and slipped the journal into her trunk. Already her thoughts were turning to Calder, the pretty Tudor village near the coast that had borne her family's name for three centuries. She wondered if Lady Haver suffered more from humiliation than grief, if more flint had chipped off the church tower, if a month was long enough to organize the Midsummer fair. And with a little relief she realized that her holiday was over. It was time to go home.

Chapter Two

After two days in his sister's house, Tristan Hale concluded that very probably he would never paint again.

His Muse had ever been an exacting mistress, refusing to bewitch except under perfect conditions. He'd never been able to paint well in England, for his Muse loved best the brilliant Italian sun. And she was apparently a rather déclassé sort for a divinity, preferring to tryst in bare garret studios, not opulent surroundings like Haver House. Most important, she liked her acolyte's attention focused entirely on herself, his mind empty of all but a desire to serve her.

But a focused attention was impossible in his sister's house. He couldn't concentrate even for the hour a day he set aside for painting. His hands felt wooden, his brushes unfamiliar and heavy. His thoughts were not of art but of guilt and melancholy. He couldn't relax into mindless sensual enjoyment, for at any moment he expected to be interrupted by two screaming demons.

So now, when he needed her most, his creative Muse denied him, and he was left with only the destructive chaos around him.

Tristan had done his best, setting up a makeshift studio in the sunroom, where the morning light played so evocatively. It had taken only an hour to achieve the careful order he needed, his brushes arranged just so, his painting shirts hung on pegs, his easels stuck up in a semicircle near the window wall. He'd even rigged a lock on the door to keep his nephews out. But staring now at the half-finished painting of a ship afire, he could dredge up not the least inspiration. He could not even mix his paints right; the ocher he needed for the depths of the fire was a mud brown, the midnight blue of the night sky remained stubbornly black.

And whenever he raised his eyes from the canvas, he saw the fallow fields of Haver through the windows and was reminded of his sister's far greater sorrow.

He had arrived here determined to set his elder sister's life aright, to assuage her grief and manage her household. But he hadn't counted on things being in such a state—Anna a near-invalid, her sons running wild, the house slovenly, and the grounds unkempt. No one had got round to the spring planting, on which most of the estate's income depended.

Tristan had grown up in London and Florence, among artists and intellectuals, and didn't know wheat from barley. But the fields visible through the great wall of windows looked melancholy, their fruitlessness only highlighted by the wildflowers that sprang up between the empty rows. So much neglect, and he was as guilty as anyone. He'd been so glad to be released from family obligations when his sister married that he'd never given more than cursory attention to her happiness.

He went to the basin and washed the paint from his hands, wishing he could as easily deal with his guilt. Then he stripped off his old paint-spotted shirt and put on a pristine one and his coat over it. He gave a last regretful look to his great effort, destined now to remain unfinished, and headed out the door.

"Uncle Tris! Uncle Tris!"

Swiftly he pulled the door shut behind him and turned the key. Then he caught, one in each arm, the nephews who catapulted at him. Lawrence, the elder, tried to squirm past to the sunroom door, but Tristan held him fast. "Now, lads," he said with a steely sort of pleasantness, "you remember I told you that my studio is off-limits. Out of bounds. Prohibited territory.
Terra vetata
. "

Jeremy was impressed with this litany, but Lawrence, as usual, objected. Flinging himself back into the hallway, he stood, arms crossed, like the arrogant little lord he was. "It's not a studio. It's only a sunroom. And Papa always let us play there. Now he's dead and you've come and you won't let us play in our own home!"

Tristan almost retorted that Lawrence's papa seldom noticed he had sons, much less a sunroom. But Lawrence was such a skinny little boy, more like an urchin than an aristocrat, his untidy fair hair reaching to his frayed collars, his thin face defiant, that Tristan bit back his sharp words. "I hereby designate the other thirty-seven rooms yours, Lawrence. Jeremy can have the garden and the stables."

"And Mother can have her sickroom. It's all she wants anyway."

Lawrence's words were so bitter they must have hurt his throat, for he swallowed hard several times and turned away. Ashamed of his anger at these near-orphans, Tristan grabbed Jeremy up in one arm and extended the other hand to Lawrence. "Let's go down to the kitchen. There's sure to be some bread and jam left from breakfast."

But a maid stopped them halfway down the backstairs. She was a bashful girl, a true orphan, the only maid left, for she had nowhere else to go. She was worn to a shade from trying to do the work of six. "Begging your pardon, my lord, but Mr. Langworth, the vicar, is here. He asked for her ladyship again, and I told him she wasn't receiving."

That understatement struck even six-year-old Jeremy as ludicrous. "Mama never receives. She doesn't even get out of bed."

"I'll see him." Tristan set Jeremy gently on his feet. "Go on down to the kitchen and get us some bread and jam. Then go on out to the stables and check on my horse, will you? See how he's settled in."

"The vicar probably wants to know why we don't go to church on Sunday." Lawrence sat down on the step, looking defiantly up at his uncle. "And I wager you won't know what to tell him."

"I'll tell him I'm your guardian, and I've decided to raise you as pagans. You've got such a good start already."

Lawrence was so delighted by the prospect that he took off running after his brother. "Pagans! We get to be pagans, Jerry!"

The Reverend Mr. Langworth, waiting in the dusty small salon, was a prosperous-looking man, for a vicar. Tristan would have preferred him cadaverous, so that the contrast between pallid skin and black garb would be more pronounced. But Mr. Langworth was all pink cheeks, cornflower blue eyes, pearly teeth, silver hair, and rosy nose. His black robe hadn't the slightest impact in the midst of all the pastels.

"I am so glad you have arrived," Mr. Langworth said after they had settled themselves into armchairs and the maid had gone to procure refreshments. His sincerity was almost palpable. "Things have not been happy here at Haver."

"So I've noticed." Tristan kicked at the couch. A cloud of dust arose, eliciting a sneeze from the vicar. "I would have been here sooner, but I was traveling in Italy and my sister's summons reached me very late." He felt a sudden need to confess his guilt; vicars cultivated that effect, he supposed. "Since the war ended, I've primarily lived abroad. I haven't kept up with my sister as I ought. But I never thought Haver would let things get in such a state. This looks like more than three months' neglect."