Nancy Atherton - Aunt Dimity and the Duke

“What do you mean?”. Emma asked.

Syd gave her a pitying look. “I raised three sons, Emma. I got five grandsons. You think I don’t know when a little boy’s telling a fib?” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Lies about funny stuff, too. Like, he was tellin’ me about a football match at his school, right? And maybe he thinks he can fool me on account of I’m a Yank. But I been in this country twenty years, Emma. I know from football, and not just that the Brits don’t call it soccer. And I’m tellin’ you, if that kid ever saw a football match in his life, I’ll eat that sweaty old hat. Why should he lie about something like that, huh? You tell me.”

Nell’s words seemed to ring in Emma’s ears. When Papa’s away, Peter has to do everything. Emma realized suddenly that, apart from that evening when they’d built their Rube Goldberg machine, she’d never seen Peter playing at anything. He was the first one in the garden every morning and he was usually the last to leave. Nanny Cole had scolded him for straightening up the nursery, and Bantry had sensed that something was amiss when he’d caught the boy tidying up the potting shed. Emma remembered Peter’s vaguely puzzled attitude toward cricket and, with a sinking heart, began to understand why the boy had elected not to attend Harrow. A boarding school would have taken him away from home, where he was needed.

“But that’s terrible,” she said. “Why can’t he just go to Derek and tell him the truth?”

Syd snorted. “You’re makin’ me lose patience with you, Emma. You think that kid don’t know his father’s heart is broke? You think he wants his pop to feel worse?”

Emma was appalled. “You think this has been going on since Derek lost his wife? But Peter was barely five years old and Nell was—”

“Nell was his baby sister, what needed looking after. I’ll tell you something, Emma, and it ain’t something I tell too many people. I lost my mother, God rest her soul, when I was eight years old. My sister, Betty, was only two. I know what this boy’s feeling. What I didn’t know was about the drunk. That changes things. You gotta tell Derek about the drunk.”

“Can’t you tell him?” Emma asked.

“You’re the one got the invitation.” When Emma looked at him blankly, Syd rolled his eyes. “Emma, what’s a person gotta do to get through to you? What do you think, Nell don’t know how to keep her mouth shut? You think she tells you about that hooch hound for nothing? You ever heard of a cry for help?” Syd pursed his lips, disgusted. “Oh, I forgot. It ain’t none of your business.”

Emma flinched.

“So, this is why you been so mad at the poor guy?” Syd asked.

“I am not mad at—” Emma cleared her throat. “I’m not mad at anyone.”

“And I’m the queen of Romania.” Syd shook his head reproachfully. “What do you think, I’m stupid? You been a pain in the butt ever since that dope did his vanishing act.”

“Do you know where he is?” Emma asked, more quickly than she’d intended.

Syd examined his fingernails. “Madama says he’s been eatin’ in the kitchen at weird hours. Whatsamatta, he didn’t tell you?”

Emma swallowed once, then looked down at the ground. “No. Why should he?”

“Because that’s what people do when they care about each other,” Syd answered simply. He gave Emma a sidelong look. “Am I right?”

Emma’s glasses began to slide down her sweaty nose. She pushed them up again and sighed disconsolately. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You’re learnin’, though, huh?” Syd squeezed her arm sympathetically. “It ain’t easy, bein’ in love.”

Emma’s shoulders slumped. “Who said anything about being in love? And even if I were, that doesn’t mean that I would expect Der—whoever I might be in love with to account to me for every minute of his time.”

“You like bein’ miserable?” Syd asked.

“No, I—”

“Then you gotta lay down some ground rules. Next time you see that dope, you smack him in the kisser and tell him, he ever pulls this kinda stunt on you again, you’ll give it to him twice as bad.”

“I don’t have any right—”

“He gotta right to make you worry?”

“No, but—”

“You gotta be patient with him. But firm. Otherwise those kids’re gonna grow up seein’ you miserable and never seein’ their pop at all.”

“Syd...” Emma looked up at the sky. It was beginning to cloud over and she hoped for a good rain, to clear the heaviness from the air. “I appreciate your concern, but I must have given you the wrong impression. I have no intention of getting married, ever, much less to someone who already has two children.”

“Two kids and a bear,” Syd corrected. “You know, Emma, if you’d stop thinkin’ so much, you’d save everyone a whole lotta heartburn. Listen to your Uncle Syd. You turn off that brain of yours and give your heart a chance. It won’t steer you wrong. You got my guarantee on that.”

Emma looked down at her work-roughened hands, then reached up to brush at a tendril of hair that had escaped from Syd’s hat. “I think I’ll go in and wash up,” she said softly.

Syd reached over and tucked the loose tendril back into place. “Don’t be too hard on the guy, Emma. He’s out there struggling’, just like the rest of us.”

A mountain of thunderclouds had moved in over the sea by the time Emma emerged from her dressing room, freshly bathed and wrapped in her terry-cloth robe. Not a drop of rain was falling, but the sky was an unbroken mass of angry gray clouds, and the temperature had dropped so dramatically that Emma was glad to come in from the balcony. Although it was nearly time for supper, she stretched out on the bed, exhausted. She’d scarcely slept the night before, and she’d been hard at work all day. She was much too tired to sort through her conversation with Syd, or to battle her way through Crowley’s cleaning brigade to reach the dining room, and she wasn’t really hungry anyway. All she wanted to do was rest her eyes.

Emma awoke with a start. She reached toward the bedside table to grope for her glasses before realizing that she hadn’t taken them off. She was still wrapped in her robe. Peering at the jeweled clock on the rosewood desk, she saw that it was nearly midnight. Yawning, she looked around the room sleepily, wondering what had awakened her. Thunder, perhaps? She went to the balcony and saw that the storm had not yet broken, though the wind was blowing hard and lightning flashed far out at sea. Emma shuddered to think what the garden rooms would look like in the morning, then turned as she heard someone knocking at her door.

Wincing guiltily, Emma came in off the balcony. She shouldn’t have left her lights on. It was probably Mattie, coming to ask if she needed anything. Summoning an apologetic smile, Emma went to open the door.

The hallway was empty. Emma squinted into the darkness beyond the pool of light falling from her room, but saw no one. Perplexed, she closed the door.

Again she heard a knocking sound. It seemed to be coming from her dressing room. The hairs on her arms prickled as she picked up Crowley’s flashlight and hefted it. It was sturdy and she was fairly strong. Creeping quietly to the dressing room, she flung the door wide and leapt back, raising the flashlight above her head.

Nothing. Emma put her head inside the room, then uttered a startled yelp when a loud knock sounded right next to her. It seemed to be coming from her wardrobe. Cautiously, she opened the wardrobe door.

“Derek?” she called softly. “Is that you?”

A mufflied voice came through the wardrobe’s back panel. “Who else would it be? Glad to know I’ve got the right address, at least. Think you could let me in?”