Page 54 of Miss Determined
Phillip’s gaze went to the portrait, his eyes bleak. “I am nobody of any consequence. I’ll keep vigil over the mares, though, and you can give Dorning my regards.”
Lissa studied the portrait one last time, seeing a resemblance between Phillip’s expression and that of the serious boy. She visually reviewed the child’s features, one by one, until she reached his left ear.
Reynolds favored flattering his subjects, but perhaps with this small boy, the artist thought evidence of a typical childhood mishap might humanize his subject. The child had recently suffered a laceration to the earlobe, hinted at by the artist.
Everything in Lissa focused on the painting as a sense of dread congealed in her middle. The hair was too blond, but then, blonds were often lighter in childhood.
“Do you know who that child is, Phillip?” Lissa knew. She didn’t want to admit that she knew, but her body confirmed the boy’s identity. Peculiar sensations skittered down her arms, and a strange quality of mental distance came over her.
“I don’t know anything,” Phillip said. “Let it go, Lissa. Please.”
“You know that is the late Marchioness of Tavistock, and she is posing with her son, the present marquess.” The chin was the same, the line of the mouth, the resolution in the jaw, the reserve in the gaze… All unchanged by the passing years. “Trevor told me the marquess was his father. I assumed plain TrevorDorning,who has little use for doing the fancy in Town, would be one of the old man’s by-blows. I am apparently in error.”
“You don’t know that. Brothers often bear a resemblance, even half-brothers.”
Lissa stalked from the parlor. “Don’t take up the false art of empty platitudes now, Phillip. I have very nearly made a fool of myself over a man again, but the situation yet has a remedy.”
Lissa wanted to pound her fists against the ancient bulwark of the napping oak, to shut herself in the cavernous safety of Crosspatch’s watermill and curse down the rafters, and she wanted to pummel Trevor Dorning flat. Beneath those impulses, understandable in the circumstances, was also a howling sense of loss.
No dream, no future, no marriage worth the name was built on a lie, and as surely as Mr. Pevinger and Mr. Dabney would argue on market day, Trevor Dorning—if that was his name—had lied to Lissa and then taken her to bed.
“I simply cannot fathom that Jerome is gone,” Trevor said as he and Sycamore waited on the steps of the Arms for the Dorning coach to be brought around. The morning sun still rose in the east, and a daring rabbit had ventured onto the green from the shade of the vicarage’s oaks. The vicar himself was taking a constitutional outing about the green, his wife and housekeeper bookending him.
Daffodils bloomed beneath the market cross, and the village went about the start of its day just as it had been for centuries.
But Jerome Vincent—cousin, companion, traveling partner, aggravation, and heir—was no more.
“The notion of his death is difficult because you haven’t seen him in ages,” Sycamore said. “You weren’t there when he passed, never shared a final pint with him, probably can’t bring your last conversation with him to mind.”
“My last conversation with him was the same as many others. I tried to discreetly inquire if he needed funds as he prepared for another jaunt across the Continent, and he’d say, ‘No, thank you, my dear. But the inquiry is appreciated.’ He’d offer a casual wave farewell, and then I’d worry for weeks.”
“Like when my papa hared off on his horticultural sorties,” Sycamore said, slapping his gloves against his thigh. “He’d be gone for eternities by a small boy’s reckoning, and the longer he was gone, the more fretful Mama became, which made me fretful because grown-ups are not always forthcoming with children. I’d worry that Papa had gone away to die, like a cat that seeks solitude in its final days.”
Trevor bestirred himself from his grief—because that’s what this bewildered ache was—long enough to realize that Sycamore, ever confident, irreverent, and resourceful, had just disclosed more than he’d meant to.
“You asked your brothers, didn’t you? You made certain your papa wasn’t behaving like an old mouser.” Such a wealth of brothers Sycamore had, and some sisters too. If Trevor had a regret, it was that his wedding day would see so little in the way of family present on behalf of the groom.
Here in Crosspatch, that would not matter, but if the wedding were held in Mayfair, the lack would be endlessly remarked. Though to blazes with Mayfair, provided its denizens showed the future Marchioness of Tavistock a proper welcome this year.
“I asked my sisters,” Sycamore said. “The ladies had the ear of the staff, and my brothers started trooping off to public school when I was still toddling.”
And that, Trevor realized, had also been a source of grief for a very young Sycamore. Maybe a large family wasn’t the unqualified blessing Trevor supposed it to be.
“Où diable est… Where the hell is the coach?” Trevor wanted to pace, to fiddle with his hat, to slap his gloves as Sycamore was doing, but nervous behavior had been scolded and birched out of him decades ago.
“We aren’t the Royal Mail,” Sycamore said. “Jeanette would have sent an express if the news had hit Town. Jerome apparently died at some obscureschlossin the Bavarian forest.”
“A castle. My cousin died in a castle, a countess to mourn his passing. Jerome would have been pleased to know that.” If he’d ever regained consciousness, though drifting into oblivion after a passing tumble from the saddle was probably the kindest death possible.
That thought steadied Trevor. Jerome had led a rackety life as an impecunious spare barely supported by his expectations, but he’d had a kind death.
“Isn’t that Miss DeWitt up on your Jacques?” Sycamore asked, gloves going blessedly silent.
“Indeed it is.” The sight of her, trotting so calmly around the green, brought peace to Trevor’s heart. “They get on splendidly, and Jacques is a discerning fellow.”
Sycamore peered at him with those peculiar gentian eyes. “Have you gone and proposed?”
“Don’t sound so hopeful. I esteem the lady greatly and hope to further our acquaintance in Town this spring, though I have a spot of mourning to do first.” Four weeks of full mourning for a first cousin, but Jerome’s demise would buy Trevor a longer period of reduced socializing after the initial month.
