Page 33 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
Chapter Seven
Eleanor found her grandmother in the library the next morning as she came down to breakfast.
‘You look busy, Grandmama.’ Her eyes fell to the large pile of books stacked in the middle of the table.
‘That is because I am trying to understand the world that Nicholas Bartlett inhabited during his time away.’
Of all the things she had expected her slight and frail grandmother to say that was the very last of them.
‘You have spoken with Viscount Bromley since he has been back?’
‘Briefly. The first night he came home with Jacob I saw him in the hallway and he told me he had just returned from the Americas. His grandmother would have been saddened by his losses, I think, God bless her soul.’
‘You knew his grandmother?’
‘Anna Bartlett? Yes, she came out the same year that I did and I was glad that she died before her son and her daughter-in-law went. A terrible death and I was always glad that Jacob was Nicholas’s friend when they both were sent up to Eton. You were his friend, too, if I remember rightly, Eleanor. That day in the Vauxhall Gardens just after you’d come out into society and I’d lost sight of you for a little while, I was certain he was there.’
‘There?’ Her heartbeat quickened.
‘Watching the fireworks and speaking with you. He was always a beautiful child and he became a beautiful man even with his wild ways and a weakness for gambling. But then he was a boy. Now he is a man.’
Her words flowed around the alarm that Eleanor had felt ever since Nicholas’s disappearance. Her grandmother was a woman who noticed things in a way others did not.
‘I’d hoped perhaps...’ She stopped, the crinkles at each eye deep.
‘What? What did you hope?’
‘That the happiness Anna always prayed for would be bestowed upon him. Did you know Richmond is a town in Virginia, too, Eleanor? A beautiful place by the sounds of it.’
The juxtaposition of these words and Nicholas’s at the tea shop made her head spin.
Once a travelling woman in Richmond told my fortune from a pile of sticks she carried.
How much of a conversation had her grandmother held with him?
‘If he returns again, my love, could you ask him if he might come and see me and have a proper visit? I would like to chat further for old time’s sake.’ She took a breath and turned the page on a large atlas. ‘You are looking lovely today, Granddaughter. It is a relief to see the fire back in your cheeks.’
Was it just coincidence, her grandmother’s chatter, or was there some other purpose underneath her words?
The Huntingdon family sorrows had overshadowed joy for such a long time now: her mother’s fatal illness, her own shame with an unmarried pregnancy and a lover whom she refused to name. The more recent deaths of her father and brother had been another blow and Jacob’s tendency to blame himself for everything had left them struggling.
‘I hope Lucy will be back in London in time for the New Year? I miss her chatter and her laughter.’
‘She is due back here tomorrow, Grandmama, for Jacob and Rose have a small family party planned for the evening of the first of January.’
‘And Nicholas Bartlett will be here, too?’
‘I am not sure. Why?’ These words broke through restraint and caution, and were harsh and discordant.
‘Because it is simply nice when the parts of one’s life come together, Eleanor. The old and the new. All the pieces of it finally making sense.’
‘Sense?’
‘There is a time for sadness and also one for joy. It is our turn as a family to find some happiness now and to look to the future. Had your father been here he would have been saying exactly the same thing.’
‘I am glad I like you so much, Grandmama.’
Kissing her grandmother on the cheek before walking away, Eleanor recited the words of Ecclesiastes under her breath.
