“Yes,” she sniffed. “Very proud and traditional. Doesn’t like the way the boy hangs about. If you ask me, he can’t stand the sight of him.” She pursed her lips, nodding in a most disparaging manner. “We hear things from the servants, you know.”
Before long, the bus dropped me off in the village, and I only had the walk to the great house to collect myself. My meetings with aristocracy have been few and far between, and even though they don’t have the authority they once did, they still send a wave of panic through me. If only I had been Mrs. B. with her so-called royal connections and indefatigable self-confidence—although I very much doubt Mrs. B. would have agreed to this undertaking, especially since it involves something both unsavory and illegal. Heaven help poor Carrington, as she would have him marched off to Parnham Police Station within the hour.
I was also incredibly nervous that my task was neither pleasant nor straightforward. Which son was I supposed to tell? What if the Viscount was the only one there and insisted on knowing my errand? What was I to say?
After a long walk through the mansion parkland, the main house came into sight, a sprawling Regency fa?ade, a double staircase separating and converging up to the massive front door. I shuddered as I approached, knowing that I was being observed as a shadow disappeared from behind a ground-floor window, my pull on the bell anticipated, my purpose already considered.
Holding the door ajar and waiting for my swift departure, the antiquated butler informed me promptly and pompously that the Viscount was not at home.
“I’ve come to see his son,” I said quickly, snaking around him into the hall. I hadn’t come this far to be palmed off.
“I shall inquire within,” he said snootily, and showed me into a chilly drawing room.
The interior was grand and austere but empty-looking and rather dismal. The faded colors—sage green, dove blue—had become gray with age, and I knew for a certainty that if I saw a duster lying around I wouldn’t have been able to help myself. The smell of wax polish and antique mothballs added to the starchy gloom. I felt completely alien and distinctly uncomfortable.
The door presently opened and a young man entered. Thank goodness, I knew straightaway that he was the one. Still slim from youth, he was medium height and rather dark in complexion and looks, walking in with a self-conscious deliberation, steady, slow, ponderous. One of his legs was obviously wounded, his trouser leg bulking with bandages as he limped forward, and when he looked up at me, his eyes avoided mine, glancing out of the great terrace window, and then at the fireplace. He seemed so vulnerable. There was some deep discomfort in him, an estrangement from everything surrounding him.
“Hello.” I smiled warmly, suddenly conscious that my mission was about to bring me closer to this man than most of the people he knew. “I’m Mrs. Margaret Tilling from Chilbury.”
“Do take a seat,” he said in a very upper-class voice. He didn’t return my smile, which I thought was both painfully understandable yet incredibly rude. Although how was he to know my horrific errand? I perched on the edge of a taut beige brocade settee.
He limped over to the couch opposite and gently picked up a cushion before sitting down, measuring every movement as to the effect on his leg. He sighed and looked out the window again, over the folds of hills to the bittersweet blue of the sea, Nazi-occupied France only twenty miles across the water, snarling on the horizon like an evil inevitability.
“What brings you to these parts, Mrs. Tilling?” he said, as if reading from an etiquette manual, exasperated by the need to deal with me.
“I have a message from Berkeley.”
His eyes darted straight to mine, his eye contact at once total and gripped. His bottom lip fell open slightly, taking in what I had said. A cascade of thoughts must have flooded his brain.
“What message?” he breathed.
“I was the nurse looking after him at Dover. He made me promise to give you this.” I opened my hand and held out the ring.
Carrington spluttered a cough, although I think he was covering a cry. He didn’t rush to look at the ring; he must have already known the object: seen it, touched it, held it. He sat for a while, then came over and took it, tucking it away in an inside pocket. Then he walked over to the terrace window, looking over the manicured gardens and hills, the parallel lines of classical statues and symmetrical garrisons of topiary bushes.
“It’s mine, you know,” he said quietly, “the ring.” He turned to me. “I gave it to him, four years ago. We were at boarding school together.” He became self-conscious and examined his hands. “What did he say?”