The Tutor's Daughter

Chapter 15





The next afternoon, Lizzie found Emma in the schoolroom just after the boys had been dismissed for the day. She held a battledore under her arm and a shuttlecock in her hand. With her free hand, she thrust a second racquet toward Emma. “Do say you’ll play, Emma.”

Emma stared down at the offered racquet with resignation but little pleasure. She had refused the girl too many times to do so again. Besides, the thought of fresh air and sunshine appealed to Emma more than usual. She was eager to leave behind the tense confines of the manor and her relentless questions about Adam.

“Very well. I shall.” She accepted the battledore. “But I warn you—I play very ill.”

At least Emma assumed she did. She had not played in years but accepted the fact that she was not athletic in general. She had long avoided any activity involving fast-flying objects.

After Emma retrieved bonnet and gloves from her room, the girls went downstairs and outside. As they walked to an open area of the lawn, Lizzie asked, “Did you hear what happened yesterday, after most of us left the music room?”

Emma shook her head. “No.”

Lizzie explained, “After the Penberthys departed, I asked Julian what all the fuss had been about. Apparently Miss Penberthy saw a stranger playing the pianoforte, but Lady Weston passed him off as a distant relative. Like me. Really, it was a fifth Weston brother. They’ve been keeping him in the north wing!” Lizzie shook her head in wonder. “It was the first I’d heard of him. I told you they don’t trust me to keep a secret.” She looked at Emma accusingly. “I suppose even you knew about Adam Weston before I did.”

Emma soothed, “I only learned of him Saturday night. I heard him cry out during the storm.”

Lizzie nodded in relief. “I went up to see him this morning.” She darted a sly smile at Emma. “He is quite good-looking, isn’t he, for all his odd ways?”

“Yes, I suppose he is.”

Lizzie stepped several yards away and faced Emma, shuttlecock held in her fingertips over the battledore, poised to serve. “I wonder about Henry. If he’ll still be heir and all. Julian says they’ll likely have Adam declared incompetent to inherit or something like that.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Emma said, though she imagined Julian was probably right.

Lizzie struck the feathered shuttlecock, and it lofted in the air in Emma’s general direction. As Emma tried to follow it, the sun got in her eyes and she blinked. The shuttlecock fluttered to the ground.

“Sorry.” Emma bent to retrieve it, tried to mimic Lizzie’s method of serving, missed the feathered object altogether, and had to retrieve it once more.

She groaned. “I told you I was out of practice.”

Unconcerned, Lizzie said, “Lady Weston is sorely vexed. She fears Adam has spoiled their chances with the Penberthys.”

Emma swung hard, sending the shuttlecock high. Too high. The wind caught it and carried it far out of Lizzie’s reach.

“Sorry!”

As the girl hurried after it, Emma thought back to the ball. If she had read Miss Penberthy correctly, the young woman preferred Phillip. Though it was less easy to tell if either Phillip or Henry admired her. Emma found she felt no jealousy where Philip was concerned. For all his warmth, Emma had come to realize he felt only platonic friendship for her.

When Lizzie returned and prepared to serve, Emma asked, “Do you mean that Lady Weston hoped for an attachment between Miss Penberthy and Phillip?”

Lizzie snapped her head up. “Why would you say Phillip?” She frowned. “Why should it be him and not Henry? He is the eldest after all, if one doesn’t count Adam, and Lady Weston certainly does not.”

Emma felt her brow pucker. Had she misunderstood Lizzie’s declaration of love for an “older Mr. Weston,” or had Lizzie changed her mind? She sputtered, “I don’t know. I—”

Lizzie smacked the shuttlecock hard and it flew right toward Emma’s face.

Emma squealed and ducked. When she looked up, she saw Lizzie roll her eyes.

Emma picked up the shuttlecock and positioned it. But a glance told her something else had caught Lizzie’s attention from across the stable yard.

Head turned, Lizzie said, “Here come Phillip and Henry now. They went to interview another possible guardian for Adam, I believe.” She slanted Emma another of her sly looks. “Or so I overhead.”

The two brothers came striding across the lawn, coattails billowing in the breeze. Henry wore his customary intense look, topper pulled low. Phillip’s sat a jaunty angle, but even he appeared uncharacteristically sober.

Lizzie hurried toward them and thrust her battledore at Henry’s midriff. “Henry, do be a dear and take over for me with Miss Smallwood. I need to ask Phillip something.”

Emma was offended and embarrassed all at once. Lizzie had all but begged her to play, only to abandon her when they had barely begun? And worse—handed her off to Henry Weston? That man would not relish the notion of playing any sort of sport with her. Making sport of her, yes, but not playing an actual match. Nor did she want to play with him. How intimidating to face off against the man with all his masculine athletic prowess.

Henry looked down at the battledore in his hands as though unsure how it suddenly appeared there. He glanced to the side, where Lizzie had taken Phillip’s arm and was all but tugging him away.

Phillip looked at them over his shoulder with a self-conscious shrug.

Lizzie said, loud enough for them all to hear, “I have vexed Lady Weston yet again. You must advise me. You always know just what to do to regain her favor.”

Emma wondered if that was really what Lizzie wanted to talk to Phillip about. She had said nothing about Lady Weston being vexed with her.

Henry looked from the battledore to Emma, then strode slowly toward her.

“You needn’t play, Mr. Weston,” Emma said. “I only agreed to play for Lizzie’s sake, so . . .”

“Oh, come, Miss Smallwood. Please tell me you don’t shun all things athletic as you did as a girl.” A teasing light shone in his eyes. “Afraid you’ll lose?”

Emma huffed. “I am not afraid to lose. I know I shall. This isn’t chess, after all.”

One eyebrow rose. “Oh, ho! A shot to the heart. The lady recalls soundly trouncing me, I see. Then you must give me a chance to redeem myself.” He set aside his hat and adopted a ready stance, bouncing lightly from foot to foot. He looked fifteen years old all over again.

Emma felt a grin lift a corner of her mouth. “Oh, very well. But promise not to laugh too hard.”

“I promise.”

She positioned the shuttlecock, concentrated, and swung her battledore. Thwack. A satisfying echoing snap, and the shuttlecock lofted in a graceful arc. Henry leapt to the side and smacked it back. Emma stepped backward, raised her racquet, and miracle of miracles, made contact with a hollow plunk. The shuttlecock flew, and Henry ran forward and tapped it lightly at her. The shuttlecock rode the soft breeze slowly enough to give Emma time to judge distance and react. Much easier than a fast-flying ball. She hit it again, hard, and since Henry had run forward to return her last hit, he had to quickly backpedal. She thought—hoped—he might miss it, but the man had the wingspan of a wandering albatross. He reached back, back and whacked it high overhead. Emma was determined not to waver for a second or blink in the sun as before. She would not mortify herself in front of this man if humanly possible.

Eye on the shuttlecock, she ran forward, raised her battledore high, and slammed right into Henry Weston’s chest.

The wind knocked from her, Emma lost her balance and might have fallen had not Mr. Weston’s arms shot out and caught her about the waist and shoulder.

“Oh,” she cried, embarrassed to have plowed into the man. Embarrassed to find his arms around her.

Embarrassed to find she liked it.

“I’m so sorry,” she blurted, pushing away from him.

“Don’t be. I admire your singular focus. My goodness, Miss Smallwood, where is the timid little creature who flinched at every flying bird as though it were a cricket ball headed for her nose?”

Emma straightened and righted her off-kilter bonnet. “I was determined not to embarrass myself,” she admittedly breathlessly. “Only to do just that.”

He chuckled, and their eyes met in a moment of shared levity.

Then he sobered. “Thank you for the laugh, Miss Smallwood. Just what I needed after yesterday.”

“Then I am happy to oblige. Lizzie told me a little of what happened after I left the music room. Is your brother . . . Is Adam all right?”

“Yes, I think so. Lady Weston less so.” He told her briefly what had happened, then held out his hand for her battledore. “Shall we walk instead, Miss Smallwood?”

She surrendered her racquet. “Yes, thank you. I am a far more accomplished walker.”

Henry laid both racquets along with the shuttlecock on a garden bench, retrieved his hat, and then gestured for Miss Smallwood to precede him out the garden gate. He walked beside her, near enough to talk easily but not too near.

When their footfalls left crunching gravel for spongy turf, Henry began, “I had hoped now that the ‘awful secret’ was getting out, she might ease up a bit. Instead she’s in high dudgeon, pushing for Phillip and me to find another place for Adam. But my heart’s not in the search, I own. I’ve only just been reunited with Adam; I’m not ready to send him away again.”

Beside him, Miss Smallwood nodded in empathy, then said gently, “I don’t recall either you or Phillip mentioning an older brother.”

Henry grimaced. “I only recently learned about him—that he was still alive.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Adam looks young, I know. But he is actually four years older than I am. When I was not yet four, and Phillip a newborn, Adam disappeared. There one day but not the next. When I asked, I was told he was gone and not coming back. I was too young to fully understand, or to question. And as time passed and no one spoke of him, my own memories began to fade. My mother died a few years later. After that loss, I retained vague recollections of a playmate named Adam but little else.”

Henry squinted out toward the distant horizon. “I asked once or twice when I grew older. But my father told me only that there had been another child, but he’d gone long ago. And in those days, when child mortality rates were even higher than they are now . . . well, no one questioned one more child apparently dying. My mother had lost an infant before Adam was born, I have since learned. But when I saw the little nameless marker in the churchyard, I thought it Adam’s.”

Miss Smallwood considered this. “Why would they want you to believe he’d died?”

Henry shrugged. “Perhaps they thought it easier than trying to explain why my brother lived elsewhere. Probably thought I’d never stop pestering them to bring him home.” He exhaled a dry puff of air. “They’d have been right.”

She asked, “When did Adam return to Ebbington?”

“The night before you arrived. And with very little warning.”

“Good heavens,” Miss Smallwood breathed. “No wonder Lady Weston and Sir Giles seemed, well, disconcerted by our coming when we did.”

Henry nodded.

“When did you find out he was still alive?” she asked.

The dreaded question. Guilt filled him instantly. “After I took my degree and returned home, my father asked me to take the place in hand. One day, when I reviewed the estate ledgers, I saw a monthly fee sent to a Mr. and Mrs. Hobbes in Camelford. When I asked Davies about it, I learned that Mrs. Hobbes was none other than Miss Jones—my old nurse before she married. It didn’t really explain why we were still paying her, but I didn’t question it for several months. We had far larger amounts to worry about.”

In his mind’s eye, Henry saw again the thick ledger, the many expenses documented in painful detail in their columns, and the occasional large deposit listed without explanation. Davies said it was a portion of the money Lady Weston had brought into the marriage, which she put into the estate when funds ran low. It had irked Henry—more reason to feel beholden to the woman. It had also irked him that he could not balance the books, for all his Oxford education.

Henry took a deep breath of salty air. “When I finally asked my father about the payment to our old nurse, he told me it was a pension he’d decided to grant her, in consideration of her ‘exceptional care’ for his offspring. We did not pay other servants after they left our employ, but I supposed a favorite nurse was a worthwhile exception and went away reasonably satisfied with his explanation.

“Then one day, village business took me to Camelford. I was curious to see my old nurse and, I admit, curious to see how she spent the money we sent. I asked around and easily located her home. Instead of the pleasant surprise I expected, Mrs. Hobbes came to the door dressed in black and seemed very nervous to see me. At first I thought she feared I had come to tell her there would be no more pension. Then I heard a commotion in the next room. Someone crying ‘No, no, no’ over and over again. Mrs. Hobbes explained that her husband had recently passed on, and their son was deeply unsettled by his death.

“I asked if there was anything I could do to help. But she was clearly eager for me to go. I was about to oblige her when something crashed in the next room. She ran in and I followed her. I saw a young man sitting amid broken glass, banging his head and muttering nonsense. It was clear he was not right in his mind. I was repulsed, I admit, and quickly took my leave.”

Henry shook his head in regret. “I should have suspected. Guessed. But I did not. Perhaps I simply did not want to acknowledge the evidence of my eyes.”

He paused to gather his thoughts. And to swallow his guilt once more. “I put it from my mind, and years passed. But then, three or four weeks ago, Mrs. Hobbes wrote to my father. I’ve been handling all of the estate correspondence for some time, so I read the letter myself. In it, Mrs. Hobbes acknowledged she had agreed to care for Adam discreetly, as her own. But she could not do so much longer. She was dying.”

Henry risked a glance at Miss Smallwood and saw her listening intently, fern green eyes large and sad. He continued, “The name Adam struck a chord with me. And I realized the young man Mrs. Hobbes referred to—the young man I had seen—was my older brother, whom I had assumed dead. I was shocked, as you can imagine. And yet . . . not completely. Lingering questions and memories surfaced, and began snapping into place like puzzle pieces.

“In her letter, Mrs. Hobbes also referred to my visit a few years before and explained that I had seen Adam at his worst. Any change unhinged Adam, and Mr. Hobbes’s death was a big one. She insisted Adam was usually quite sweet-natured, but she worried what her imminent death would do to him.

“I confronted my father with the letter, and he admitted the truth. He wanted to wait, to try to find another caretaker elsewhere. But Mrs. Hobbes had asked us to come quickly, for she feared what the local authorities might do with Adam after she died. Her last wish was to make certain Adam was never sent to a lunatic asylum or workhouse.

“So I went charging off to make certain that didn’t happen. A man with a mission at last. I even took a physician friend of mine with me. I was glad I did, for we found Mrs. Hobbes already dead and ended up having to sedate Adam to remove him from the house after she had been buried.

“I brought him home to Ebbington. I wanted to put him in his old room and arrange a caregiver for him. But Lady Weston insisted that he be kept in the little-used north wing away from the family. She wanted him to be locked in as well, but I battled against that. She relented on that point but still insists another situation be found for him, and that he not be kept at Ebbington Manor a day longer than necessary. And so, on that errand, I asked Mrs. Prowse to oversee Adam’s care and left for a few days, to close up the Hobbes’s house and interview possible replacements for the kindly couple. To no avail. When I returned, I was baffled to discover you and your father installed in the house. And my stepmother none too pleased about it either.”

“She made little secret of that fact,” Miss Smallwood said. “Now at least I understand why.”

Henry sighed. “I have judged my father as unfair and unfeeling, but I know he did what most upper-class people would do in this situation. There are no decent institutions for people like Adam. And a lunatic asylum, workhouse, and poorhouse are grim fates indeed. We can be glad Adam was spared any of those.”

“Yes.” Miss Smallwood nodded, then looked upward in thought. “I still wonder about the open windows in his room the night of the storm. Mrs. Prowse wouldn’t have left them open.”

Henry agreed. “I have been thinking about that too.”

She squinted in concentration. “Surely whoever it was could not have known what it would do to Adam—how it would throw him into a fit.”

Henry frowned. “Or perhaps they did know. And did it for precisely that reason.”

“But why?”

“To scare off the Penberthys, perhaps.”

“But who would want to do that?”

He shook his head regretfully. “I can think of several possibilities, unfortunately.”

Miss Smallwood nodded. “So can I.”





Care killed a cat.

—Shakespeare