“You asked for permission?” Luke’s brow shot up. He looked impressed. “Well! That’s a testimony of care.”
Hal wanted to laugh. “I did,” he admitted. “Or…I didn’t actually ask explicitly, but it wasn’t nice. Lady Hartfield is…firm.”
“I can imagine!” Luke nodded firmly. “Dear chap, you were braver than I! I tend to ask Lady Hartfield only about a very narrow range of things, and I assure you I would not have shown half your courage, in approaching her.”
“You don’t know how courageous I was,” Hal commented lightly. “I looked about as brave as a gang of mice.”
Luke laughed, throwing his head back. “Mice are bold fellows! Ever seen them converge on grain-sacks in a farmer’s barns? They don’t care who’s watching.”
Hal started laughing too. His cousin had the happy talent of making him always laugh, regardless of what the circumstance was. “Well, mayhap I was courageous, but…”
“You tried, cousin.” Luke nodded. “That’s always brave.”
Hal was surprised to feel a lump in his throat. His father had always loved him, but he’d always had the sense he thought him fairly ineffective. Nobody had ever told him he was brave.
“Thanks, cousin.”
“It’s true,” Luke commented firmly. “Now, since you’re here, I’d love to have a second opinion on all these paintings, and where they best feature. We have bought four more of the pernicious things, and I simply have no idea where to put them.”
Hal started laughing. “You don’t like paintings?”
“On the contrary,” Luke opined. “I am a very active collector. So active that now we have far too many by that new sensational landscape-fellow…Halford, I think his name is. And I can’t find room for them. I thought, maybe, we could hang some in the hallway?”
“Here?” Hal indicated a blank spot on the hallway wall just outside the door, about a yard away from the nearest lamp.
“Not in this hallway,” Luke commented with a grin. “I had thought maybe further down, towards the breakfast-room…the sun comes in quite strongly there, and it will show better during the day.”
Hal shrugged. “If you say so.”
Luke grinned. “I like you, Hal. If anyone is going to let me get away with making my house look dreadful, you’ll do it. You are the one person who wouldn’t say a word against my choice, whatever it is.”
Hal started laughing. “I suppose,” he said. “Mayhap I ought to. It was your idea to climb that steeple when we were children, after all.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Luke said, laughing too now. “I seem to recall that was your innovation.”
“Maybe,” Hal agreed. “But it wasn’t my fault that we fell off.”
“No?”
“No.”
They were both laughing as they headed downstairs to the big parlor. Luke bent, grimacing, and lifted another painting. This one was of a forest scene, the trees in dark greens and golds. It was a massive thing; the sides as long as one of Hal’s arms and the frame an elaborate white construction decorated with gilding abundantly.
“Where are we going, with that one?” Hal asked, reaching out to help. Luke shook his head, grunting as his arms strained.
“I’ll manage, cousin. Upper hallway.”
Hal nodded and walked up the steps gingerly, keeping a small space between them as he fully expected to hear shattering when Luke dropped something. It looked like a very heavy painting indeed.
Downstairs, Hal thought he heard the echo of feet in the entrance-hall, and wondered if Lady Hestony was down there. At that moment, Luke grunted with effort and Hal went to join him at the wall.
They spent the morning marking places for the paintings to hang. Two – the scene with the forest and another one with a cliff – went in the upper hallway. There was another, the one with horses in a field in the drawing room and one depicting the hills around the estate, which went downstairs near the doors. When they were finished, they headed to Luke’s study for some tea. Hal’s back ached.
“So,” Luke sighed, leaning against the wall as he sipped his tea. “Have you heard anything?”
“About the intruder?” Hal felt himself go cold. “No, not yet.”
“I understand,” he nodded. “Getting information is going to be difficult. Mayhap we could ride over to Amhurst together? Interview the servants today?”
“I reckon it’s better if I go alone,” Hal commented. He was sitting at the study table, an elaborate thing of dark red wood, with a tasseled cover on it, edged in gold trimmings. A cup of tea stood on the table’s edge, its base in a fine saucer. The enticing smell wafted up to his nose, making him feel a little better.
“I agree.” Luke swallowed some tea, nodding firmly. “We don’t want anybody to get suspicious. If word started spreading fast that people were asking questions, soon the fellow would flee.”
“I hope he flees all the way to the damn sea and drowns,” Hal muttered.
“Well, that’s reasonable, but not quite what I had in mind when I thought about bringing him before the authorities,” Luke murmured.
“Serve him right.”
“Undoubtedly. Myself, I’d like to catch him. We have far too many of his sort around here and we owe it to the people to do something about it.”
“Probably.”
Luke just smiled. “Hal, I know you want to find whoever it was and tear their throat out with your teeth, but I don’t think this is quite the place.”
Hal chuckled. “I suppose I am being a bit rash.”
“A bit?”
Hal raised a brow. They both laughed. The pale sun shone through the long windows and Hal felt more at peace than he had since meeting Lady Hestony’s accountant. The anger of that still rankled, compounded by his new concern for her. He still felt hurt by Lady Hartfield. He still wished he could catch the outlaw and do something violent to him.
But here, in the study, he could also feel something he hadn’t been feeling before: a sense of hope. That was something that could lead him out from this dark place, and into the light.
Up in the parlor, he thought he heard a lady’s soft laugh and his heart thumped. Maybe he couldn’t talk to her right now, but Hestony was here and the joy of that, for the moment, sustained him.
Chapter Eighteen
Sharing Bad News