sometimes he loved to tease. He liked to hide even if it was perfectly obvious to the searcher where he was hidden. Is that not so, Elliott?' He looked at Viscount Lyngate, and for a moment the mockery Vanessa had seen in his face earlier was back. It was a pity. It was an expression that did not suit him.
The viscount - of course - frowned. 'You must miss him dreadfully,' Vanessa said.
Mr. Huxtable shrugged. 'He died on the night of his sixteenth birthday,' he said. 'He died in his sleep after a busy, happy day of play. We should all be so fortunate. I did not wish him dead, but now at least I am free to seek my fortune elsewhere. Sometimes love can be almost a burden.' It was shocking to hear the words spoken aloud. Vanessa could never have been so honest. But she felt a shiver of recognition in them. Was it not callous, though, to think thus? Though he had said /almost/. She knew all about the pain of loving. 'I say,' Stephen said, breaking a short silence that everyone else might have been finding embarrassing, 'I hope you are not planning to leave here soon, Cousin. There is much I wish to ask you. Besides, there is no reason to stop thinking of this as your home just because it is legally mine.' 'You are all kindness, lad,' Mr. Huxtable said, and the faint suggestion of mockery was there again in his voice and in one slightly arched eyebrow.
Was he a pleasant man hiding behind a mask of seeming carelessness, Vanessa wondered, or an unpleasant man hiding behind a mask of charm and smiles? Or, like most humans, was he a dizzying mix of contradictory characteristics?
And what of Viscount Lyngate? She turned her gaze on him and found him looking back at her. The blueness of his eyes was always a slight shock. 'It is not just kindness, Mr. Huxtable,' she said, still looking at the viscount. 'We are really very happy to find a cousin we did not even know we had. No one told us about you.' The viscount's lip curled ever so slightly at one corner, but the expression could not by any stretch of the imagination be called a smile. 'And since we /are /cousins,' Mr. Huxtable said, 'I beg you will all call me by my first name.' 'Constantine,' she said, turning her attention back to him. 'And I am Vanessa, if you please. I am sorry about Jonathan. It is hard to watch a young person die, especially when one loves him.' He smiled back at her without making any verbal comment, and she decided that he was at least partly a pleasant man. No one could fake that expression. It told her that he had loved his brother - though Jonathan had taken the title that might have been his. 'You told me at dinner, Constantine,' Kate reminded him, 'that you would teach me to ride. That cannot be done all in a day or so, I daresay. You must certainly stay longer.' 'It may possibly take a week if you are a slow learner,' he said. 'Though I will wager you are not. I shall stay at least until you are an accomplished rider, then, Katherine.' 'That will please us all,' Meg said.
Vanessa wondered if Viscount Lyngate realized that the fingers of his right hand were beating a rhythmic tattoo against his thigh.
Why were he and Constantine enemies? she wondered. Had they always been?
Elliott had intended taking Merton in hand the very morning after his arrival at Warren Hall. He had business of his own to attend to at Finchley Park, his own home five miles away. And even apart from that, he was eager to be home again, though he would, of course, have to ride over to Warren Hall quite frequently for the next month or two. There was much to be done.
He had intended to introduce Merton to his steward, Samson, a competent man Elliott's father had hired two years or so ago. He had intended spending the morning indoors, going over a number of things with the boy in Samson's office. And then during the afternoon the three of them would go out riding to see the home farm and other places of importance to the new earl.
He had intended being busy all day long with the boy. There really was no time to lose.
But after breakfast Merton informed him that Con had agreed to take him and his sisters on a tour of the house and inner park.
It was a tour that lasted the whole morning.
And after luncheon Merton informed Elliott that Con had promised to take him riding about the outer park and home farm and to introduce him to the laborers and some of the tenants. 'It is very decent of him,' Merton said, 'to be willing to give up his whole day for my benefit. Will you come with us?' 'I'll stay here,' Elliott told him dryly. 'But tomorrow you will need to spend some time with Samson, your steward, Merton. I'll be with you too.' 'But of course,' Merton said. 'There is much I need to know.' The next morning, though, Elliott had to go in search of him and found him in the stables with Con and the head groom, getting acquainted with all the horses and looking as if he was enjoying himself immensely. And then, of course, he had to go and change before coming to the office. 'Meg never likes the smell of horse in the house,' he explained. 'She fusses if she smells even a speck of manure on me.' He did apply himself to a whole pile of information in the office for a few hours before luncheon, and he showed an admirable eagerness to learn and asked a number of intelligent questions. After luncheon, though, he announced that Con was to take him to meet the vicar and the Graingers and one or two other of the more prominent families of the neighborhood. 'It is decent of him to be willing,' the boy commented. 'He might have resented me, I suppose. Instead, he is making every effort to make himself agreeable. He is going to take my sisters boating on the lake tomorrow if the fine weather holds. I daresay I will go too so that we can take out two boats. Come and join us if you will.' Elliott declined the offer.
Each evening after dinner Con conversed with a charm that was all too familiar to Elliott. He had always been able to wind people of all ages and both genders about his little finger whenever he chose. They had used to laugh over it. He had always been more skilled at it than Elliott had.
Con, of course, did not care the snap of his fingers for his newfound cousins. Or if he did, it was certainly not affection he felt. Good Lord, they had come, perfect strangers, to oust him from his own home or at the very least to make him feel like a guest in it. He probably hated them with a passion.
He had stayed only to irk Elliott.
The trouble was that they knew each other too well. Con knew just what would annoy his former best friend. And Elliott knew just what was going on in Con's mind.
Elliott, standing at the window of his guest bed-chamber early on the morning of the proposed boat rides, watched Con step out of the main doors below and stride purposefully across the terrace and down the steps to the flower garden.
Elliott was already dressed. He had been contemplating an early morning ride, in fact. But it was time he and Con had a talk far away from the other occupants of the house. Merton was young and impressionable. His sisters were innocent and naive. Con had used poor Jon quite successfully to make Elliott's task as guardian more difficult than it might otherwise have been. He was not going to be given the chance to use the present Merton for the same purpose.
He went after Con. He had turned left out of the flower garden - Elliott had seen that before leaving his room. He had not been heading toward the lake, then, or the stables. But it soon became clear where he /had /gone.
Elliott followed him to the private family chapel and the churchyard surrounding it. And sure enough, there he was standing at the foot of Jonathan's grave.
For a moment Elliott regretted coming. If this was a private moment, he did not want to intrude upon it. But almost immediately he felt angry.
For even if Con /had /loved Jonathan, he had also taken advantage of him in a most dishonorable manner, robbing him and making of his home a house of ill repute. It did not really matter that Jonathan had not known and would not have understood even if the facts had been explained to him. That was not the point at all.
And then the moment for turning back unseen - /if /he had wanted that moment - was gone. Con turned his head and looked steadily at him. He was not smiling now. There was no audience he might wish to charm. 'Is it not enough, Elliott,' he asked, 'that you must come prying into my father's and brother's home - and my cousin's - and throwing your weight around there as if it were your own? Must you now invade even the graveyard where they are all buried?' 'I have no quarrel with them,' Elliott said. 'And fortunately for you, they have no quarrel with you. They are all dead. But it amazes me that you choose to stand on such hallowed ground. They /would /have a quarrel with you if they were alive and knew what I know.' 'What you /think /you know.' Con laughed harshly. 'You have become a sanctimonious bore, Elliott. There was a time when you were not.' 'There was a time when I sowed some damnably wild oats,' Elliott admitted. 'But I was never a scoundrel, Con. I never relinquished my honor.' 'Go back to the house,' Con said harshly, 'while you still have your health intact. Better yet, go home to Finchley. The cub will prosper well enough without your interference.' 'But with /yours /he would doubtless be stripped of what remains of his inheritance,' Elliott said. 'I am not here to bandy words with you, Con.
Leave here today. If you have a scrap of decency remaining, go away and leave these people alone. They
