Messenger of Truth

“Girls, please! Let’s not bicker in front of our guest.”

“Hear, hear, Em, hear, hear.” Piers raised an eyebrow in mock annoyance, then reached out to place a hand on the hand of each daughter. “They may be grown women, Maisie, but together they can be like cats!”

“And when Nick was here, why—”

Maisie looked from Emma to Piers. The head of the Bassington-Hope household had released his daughters’ hands, and now looked down, shaking his head.

“Oh, darling, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have.” Emma shook her head, admonishing herself. “It was the wrong moment, with us all together here, and with company.”

“If you would excuse me—” Piers placed his table-napkin next to his still-full glass and left the room.

Nolly pushed back her chair, as if to follow her father.

“Noelle!” Emma used her elder daughter’s Chistian name, which, Maisie noticed, caused her to turn immediately. “Let your father have a moment. We all feel grief, and we never know when it might catch us. For Piers, it is as a father for his son, and none of us know how deeply that might touch the heart.”

“Emsy’s right, you know, Nolly, you always think you can—”

“Enough, Georgina. Enough!” Emma turned to Maisie and smiled. “Now then, Maisie, I understand that you are good friends with Lady Rowan Compton. Did you know we were presented at court in the same year?”

Maisie held her wineglass by the stem and leaned aside as Mrs. Gower served pea soup from the tureen. She smiled at her hostess. “What a coincidence! No, I didn’t know. I bet she was quite a firebrand in her day.”

“My goodness, yes. In fact, I think that’s why I quite admired her, you know. After all, neither of us really enjoyed that sort of thing, though one was terribly honored to be presented to Her Majesty. Of course, she went off and married Julian Compton—he was considered quite the catch—when, according to my mother, her mother feared that she might take up with that funny man, what was his name?” She tapped the table, trying to remember.

“Maurice Blanche?” offered Maisie.

“Yes, that’s the one. Of course, he’s very famous now, isn’t he?”

Maisie nodded.

“And I—thank heavens,” continued Emma, “found an artist who saw the world from eyes like mine, and who also had a name, much to my parents’ delight.”

“Talking about how fortunate you were to bag me, eh, Emsy?”

“Darling, yes I am!” Emma Bassington-Hope’s eyes glistened as her husband entered the room once again, taking his place at the head of the table.

“Here we go, ready for a walk down memory lane, Piers?” Nolly rolled her eyes in a conspiratorial fashion.

“A finer walk could not be had—if our new friend could bear to join us.” Piers looked to Maisie.

“Of course. And I must say, this is an exquisite wine.”

“Yes, and hopefully there will be more of it—where’s Gower?” Nolly interjected again.

Two more decanters of Piers Bassington-Hope’s carefully crafted wine tempered the family’s tensions and, thought Maisie, made them sparkling company. By eleven o’clock they were lingering over the cheese course, Piers had loosened his tie at Emma’s request and the two sisters were finally at ease with each other.

“Do let’s tell Maisie about the big play. You remember, when Nick almost drowned dear little Harry in the river.”

“Should’ve held his head down a bit longer!”

“Oh, Nolly, come on!” Georgina reached across and tapped her sister playfully on the hand, and they both began to laugh. She turned to Maisie. “Now then, I think Nolly must have been sixteen, because Harry was only four.”

“I was sixteen, silly—it was my birthday!”

Piers laughed. “Sweet sixteen and we invited everyone we knew for the weekend. How many sixteen-year-olds have two members of Parliament, three actors, a clutch of poets and writers and I don’t know how many artists at her party?”

“And not one other sixteen-year-old!” Nolly turned to Maisie, giggling. Maisie thought that she was most like her sister when she laughed.

Georgina took up the story. “We decided to do a river play—all of us.”

Maisie shook her head. “What’s a river play?”

“A play on the river! Seriously, we had to compose a play that could be acted from the rowing boats, so we thought it would be a good idea to plunder Viking history.”

“Pity we didn’t know your friend Stig, then, isn’t it?”

“Now then…” Piers cautioned his eldest daughter, concerned that such a remark might annoy Georgina, who just waved her hand as if swatting a fly.

“There we were, all dressed up in our finery, the actors in boats, thee-ing and thy-ing and throwing hysterical fits of dramatic art back and forth, and Nick decided, on the spur of the moment, to bring some realism into the play. Harry, dear Harry, had just mastered the recorder and had been cast as a court jester—he was always either the dog or the court jester—” Georgina could hardly speak for laughing, aided, thought Maisie, by another glass of the somewhat lethal damson wine.

Nolly continued where her sister left off. “So, Nick picked up Harry, saying, ‘I shall cast yonder servant into the sea!’ and threw him in the river. Well, of course, Harry went down like an anchor, and there was a bit of laughing, until Emma screamed from the bank, which reminded us that he couldn’t swim! Very stupid, when I come to think