Nancy Atherton: Aunt Dimity and the Duke

Yet there it was. A fifteen-year relationship had ended with neither bang nor whimper, but with the whispery sound of an envelope slipped through a mail slot.

She’d spent a long time in her garden after the wedding, raking over the compost and wondering why she felt so ... numb. Emma wasn’t given to expressing strong emotions, but even she had been surprised by the stillness that had settled over her. Was she in shock, as her mother insisted? Or was she merely going through a natural transition that would lead, ultimately, to a mature acceptance of her new situation? Emma preferred the latter explanation. She knew that there were some things in life she couldn’t change.

But there were some she could. She’d gone back into the house and spent the rest of the evening gathering up the odds and ends Richard had left behind—a worn bath-robe, a broken tripod, a stack of CDs and rock videos. As she dropped the garish video boxes in the Goodwill bin, she thought wryly that Richard’s taste in music had been as juvenile as his taste in brides, and the small joke had heartened her. It seemed to prove that she was ready to face the world without Richard.

Her friends—and her mother—remained unconvinced. They thought of her as a victim and expected her to behave like one.

It was ludicrous. Why couldn’t her friends be honest with her? Why couldn’t they just come out and say what they were really thinking? “You’re no kid anymore, Emma. You’re forty, fat, and frumpy, and your chances of landing another man at this stage of the game are nil. We understand, and our hearts go out to you.”

The faint smile returned as Emma put the map back in the bottom drawer. What a surprise it would be if she came home from England with a new man in tow—a six-foot-tall stunner with sapphire-blue eyes, broad shoulders, and ...

Emma’s pleasant daydream faded as common sense reasserted itself. She didn’t need her mother to remind her that men—of all ages—preferred mates who were younger than themselves, girls who were graceful and slim, with hair like silken sunshine and eyes like summer skies. She knew that the doors of romance were more often than not slammed in the faces of plump, plain-looking women approaching middle age.

Emma was proud of her ability to accept the truth, and she prepared for the trip accordingly. Come May, she would be in Cornwall, where she would feast on cream teas, explore pretty fishing villages, and, best of all, enjoy the springtime spectacle of massed azaleas in full bloom. She would do everything her heart desired. Except fall in love.

“Never again,” she murmured, stifling a wistful sigh. “When I come back from Cornwall, I’ll buy a hammock for the garden and settle down to a life of industrious spinsterhood. But as for love—never again.”

On that same day, in an Oxford suburb an ocean away, Derek Harris wiped the last trace of rain-spattered mud from the headstone on his wife’s grave. He could have left the task to the sexton, but Derek had worked with his hands long enough to know that, if you wanted a job done right, you did it yourself.

He tucked the dirty rag into the back pocket of his faded jeans and rose to tower over the grave. He was a tall man, just over six feet, and his deep-blue eyes were shadowed with grief as he read the dates he’d carved into the roseate marble. It had been just over five years since pneumonia had taken her from him. The thought made his heart swell until he could scarcely breathe.

“Ah, Mary,” he whispered, “I miss you.”

The spiderweb tracery of budding trees stood black against a darkening sky, and a chill April wind moaned low among the gravestones. Derek shivered, and thought of going back to the house. Peter would be home from school by now, and Nell would be back from her play group, and their Aunt Beatrice would be stopping by to check up on them.

Still he lingered by the grave, unwilling to face Beatrice’s barrage of questions. She’d already begun to nag him about his plans for the coming year. He wondered, not for the first time, how his sweet Mary could have had such a harridan for a sister.

Wasn’t it a shame that Derek had wasted his first in history—taken at Oxford, too, more’s the pity—and gone into this mucky business of restoration? You’d hardly know he was an earl’s son, such an embarrassment to his family and such a keen disappointment for poor Mary. His university friends were respectable gentlemen by now—financiers and politicians, most of them—and here was Derek, at forty-five, still messing about with leaky thatched roofs, crumbling stone walls, and nasty old brasses. It had turned her hair gray to think of her only sister living in such a higgledy-piggledy household.

And now it was turning her hair white (“as the driven snow, the cold and driven snow”) to think of poor Peter and Nell. Couldn’t Derek see that men weren’t meant to raise children? It was unnatural, unhealthy, and—“mark my words, nothing good will come of it.” Surely he must see that Peter and Nell would be better off in a stable home, with an aunt and uncle who adored them and had only their best interests at heart. Surely ...

Angrily, Derek ground a clump of mud beneath the heel of his workboot. He’d promised Mary he’d keep the family together and nothing would make him break that promise. Mrs. Higgins was a splendid housekeeper, more than capable of looking after things when Derek was away. Thanks to her, the house was immaculate, the children were well kept, and Beatrice, search as she might, could find no solid ground for complaint. He made a mental note to put a little something extra in Mrs. Higgins’s pay packet before he and the children left for Cornwall.

“Thank God for Grayson,” Derek murmured, blowing on his wind-reddened hands. The duke’s proposal had arrived last month—a stained-glass window to restore at Penford Hall—and, with it, an invitation. Bring Peter and Nell, his old friend had written, Spend the summer. It’d mean taking Peter out of school before the end of term, but Grayson had promised a governess to see to the boy’s lessons, and Beatrice, dazzled by Grayson’s tide, had been unable to object.

Luckily, among Beatrice’s many shortcomings Derek could not, in all honesty, include a fondness for the tabloid press. Beatrice thought the scandal sheets “common” and thus remained blissfully ignorant of the dark rumors and innuendo that had surrounded the scion of Penford Hall five years ago. Fortunately for Derek, Mrs. Higgins, whose passion for the rags was second only to her devotion to the Sunday radio broadcasts of The Archers, was not on speaking terms with the beastly Bea.

Derek had to admit to a certain amount of curiosity about the affair, and about Grayson, as well. Theirs had been an odd friendship, blossoming briefly during the summer Derek had spent touching up the ceiling in Oxford’s Christ Church Cathedral, where Grayson, still a student, had been the organist for the local Bach chorale. Grayson had expressed a keen interest in Derek’s work, and they’d had a number of lively discussions over pints of ale at the Blue Boar. But at the end of the summer, when the old duke had died, the younger man had been off like a shot, never bothering to finish his degree. Derek hadn’t been the least bit surprised. He remembered how Grayson’s eyes had softened whenever he’d spoken of his boyhood home, how they’d blazed when he’d described his plans for its restoration.

In the ten years that had passed since then, Derek had often wondered if his young friend’s grandiose plans had come to fruition. Well, soon he would find out. Come May, he’d be in Cornwall, restoring the window in the duke of Penford’s lady chapel.

And after that? He balked at thinking beyond the summer. Somewhere, tucked into a far comer of his mind, was the thought that Peter and Nell should have a mother to look after them, but it was a thought he was not yet ready to contemplate.