Phillip held the plate of sandwiches out to her. “You don’t blame them for this conniving?”
“My fortune is all the money they have, so no, I don’t blame them, but no suitably obliging fellow over the age of sixteen stepped forward. Next, they tried to marry me to greater wealth, but again, no candidates volunteered. The last strategy was to put me on offer to gentlemen of exceedingly great age, with the understanding that I’d come into my widow’s portion in short order, but again, candidates were few and a bit too vigorous.”
She chose a single sandwich of butter and cress.
Phillip added two of roast beef and Stilton to her plate. The sandwiches were about the size of pocket watches, for pity’s sake. “You warned all these bachelors off.”
“After the first few, overt warnings weren’t necessary, but I hadn’t realized that my own solicitors—my former solicitors—were abetting my spinsterhood. I’ll have a raspberry tart, please.”
Phillip put three on her plate and bit into his own sandwich. “Thus you struck a bargain with your father. He agreed to stop leading you about Mayfair like a brindle heifer available to join a new herd, and you agreed to use your fortune for the family’s greater good.”
Hecate finished her first sandwich. “Your agrarian analogies want some polish, my lord.” She picked up a second sandwich.
“How old were you when you negotiated this cease-fire?”
“One and twenty, and I’d come into control of the first portion of my wealth. The whole of it is under my direction now, and I cannot tell you what a relief that is.”
“Probably about like gaining title to Lark’s Nest is for me. That place is my home, not simply the property where I dwell and sweat and snore. Mine. If Tavistock goes down in history as the worst brother ever to bear the label, I will still love and revere him for that single instance of generosity.”
Hecate took up her glass of punch, and Phillip considered she’d soon be off to avert various disasters on the terrace, in the kitchen, or in the garden shadows. He had a question or two yet to put to her.
“Tell me, Miss Brompton, did you love your cousin Johnny, or did you commend him to the Canadian wilderness with a sense of relief?”
She put her glass down slowly, the punch untasted. “Fast work, even for Flavia and Portia.”
Phillip waited, because her answer mattered.
“To be honest,” Hecate said. “A bit of both.”
Chapter Five
What had Flavia and Portia been about, regaling Lord Phillip with ancient family history? Their schemes ranged from outlandish to devious and both at the same time, and they were always scheming.
Edna doted on them shamelessly, which helped not one bit.
“Johnny is the one Brompton of whom the family is justifiably proud,” Hecate said, starting a second sandwich and surprised to find meat and cheese where she’d been expecting a dab of butter and some greens. “He talked the solicitors into allowing him a lieutenant’s commission and managed to get posted to Canada as hostilities on the Peninsula heated up. He even took a wayward younger brother with him.”
“For whom you were also expected to buy a commission?”
“I pay for everything. You needn’t carp on the fact. In any case, off they sailed, and in Canada they have remained. Johnny loves the out of doors, while Emeril is good with figures. Emeril attached himself to quartermastering in the eastern provinces, while Johnny went west. He eventually sold his commission and took to trapping and guiding. He’s apparently happy doing what he excels at. Emeril bides in the east, employed by some trading outfit, though I think they see each other every couple of years or so.”
How must it feel to have the vast, wild, whole of Canada to wander freely?
“And you are proud of them,” Lord Phillip said. “Do they write?”
“They write to Great-Uncle Nunn once or twice a year, and he deigns to share the letters. What of you? Any far-flung relations waiting for letters from you?”
Too late, Hecate realized her attempt to change the subject had been awkward.
“I have lady cousins throughout the home counties. I have met two of them thanks to Tavistock’s kind offices. I will meet the rest in the autumn if I return to London.”
Hecate sipped her punch. This was her second glass—and would be her last of the evening. “I’m sorry. I ought not to have asked after your family. You truly don’t know them?”
“They did not know I existed, and neither did Tavistock, by the old man’s design.” Lord Phillip munched on a second or third sandwich with what appeared to be complete equanimity. “I knew of them, though. We get the London papers in Crosspatch, and the nieces of a marquess were launched with some fanfare. I knew less of Tavistock because he was on evasive maneuvers in France.”
Soon, Hecate would have to wade into the affray on the main terrace, monitoring the punchbowl and keeping an eye on the buffet. If Eglantine and Edna or Portia and Flavia—or all four of them—became quarrelsome, Hecate would separate the combatants before the gentlemen started exchanging bets.
“What was it like,” she said, “to know you had family you were forbidden to meet?”
Phillip rose and propped a hip on the balustrade. “Probably like having cousins in Canada. You wish them well, you wait for the occasional word of them, you go on with your life. Did you love him?”
“We really must work on your small talk, my lord.”
“He abandoned you,” Phillip said. “I could not blame my relatives for ignoring somebody whose existence was unknown to them, but in the case of your Johnny…”
“He was all of twenty. I give him credit for understanding that with a fortune comes responsibilities. He preferred adventure, and at his age, the choice was understandable. He said I’d get the family sorted if I could avoid matrimony until age twenty-one, and he was right.”
“Your family is sorted, then?” Lord Phillip lounged, drink in hand, just out of smacking range.
“Keeping the Bromptons sorted is a near run thing from Season to Season, but they are all on allowances and have learned for the most part to live within their allotted means.”
For the most part, sometimes, in a manner of speaking.
Lord Phillip resumed his seat, gaze on the darkening line of trees. “Are you proud of yourself?”
A third sandwich awaited, and Hecate told herself she really shouldn’t, and she ought not to, and Lord Phillip had had no business putting so much food on the plate.
“Why would I be proud of myself? My every need is met not because of some effort I put forth, but because I had the good fortune to inherit wealth. I’m healthy through no fault of my own, of sound mind and reasonable appearance. None of it my doing. What do I have to be proud of?”
Phillip peered over at her, his expression hard to read in the gathering shadows. “You describe a pair of cousins who used your money to make their way to Canada, where everything from their boots to their biscuits was provided by the crown until other employment beckoned. Yet you are proud of them for following a path smoothed by your coin.
“Great-Uncle Nincompoop,” Phillip went on, resuming his seat, “has no idea how to make his land profitable despite having decades to study on the matter. When the Corn Laws are repealed—and they will be—he will expect you to keep Nunnsuch going, if you aren’t already. Edna the Ostrich expects you to dower those two hoydens, and it will take a small fortune apiece to find souls stout enough to meet those two at the altar. Cousin Charles would have gambled himself into exile but for your steadying hand, and that’s the recitation I can offer on one day’s acquaintance with your family. But you take no pride in these accomplishments.”