Page 32 of A Lady in Name

Lucy surveyed the closed and banded trunks and the three portmanteaux containing her personal and most needed belongings.

“Is anything forgotten?” asked Dion, poking about behind the chairs in case something should have fallen unnoticed. “Stefan will be here with the carrier soon.”

Over luncheon at the Half Moon, it had been decided to hire a carrier for the heavy luggage. When Lucy demurred about its destination, she had been speedily brought to a common sense frame of mind.

“If it is not sent to Pennington Manor,” asked Stefan drily, “where do you propose to have it stored?”

“It is not as if there is no room,” had added Dion with her characteristic giggle.

Lucy had given in, and was by now so exhausted, she was ready to abandon everything to the carriers and beg them to take it to the ends of the earth, as long as she had not to pack one more item. “We have scoured the house,” she said in answer to Dion’s query. “There cannot be anything left. And if there is, I don’t care if I never see it again.”

As Dion gurgled, the door bell sounded. “That will be Stefan.”

So it proved, and for some little time the two women were fully occupied in directing the activities of the men who came with the carrier, and who engaged to assist Stefan’s coachman to deliver the three portmanteaux to the Half Moon. When the last of the luggage had been despatched and Stefan was conferring with the carrier, Lucy stood in the hall looking about her, gripped by a sudden feeling of unbearable loss.

She found Dion beside her. “Dear Lucy, don’t be sad. It is hard to say goodbye, I know. Papa was wont to encourage us to look forward.”

Lucy nodded, unable to speak for the tightening at her throat. The urge took her to look one last time upon Papa’s beloved study.

She touched Dion’s arm. “Pray excuse me for a brief moment, Dion.” Aware of the husky note in her voice, she hurried away to the study door and seizing the handle, slipped quickly into the room.

It was strange to see it bare of all possessions that had made it home to her. For here had been her true home, here where Papa had worked and read and welcomed her in. The glass-fronted bookcases were empty of his many volumes; the desk, once cluttered with papers and books as well as his leather-lined blotter, his inks and his pens, was bare. In the side drawer he had kept his seal with his motley collection of half-used sticks of wax. And the carved chair with its leather seat was imprinted with the shape of his back, shadowing wear against the wood.

Lucy went to the desk, setting her fingertips down upon its surface, running them along the groove she had made on a day when she was but three years of age. Left for a moment, she had climbed on the chair, taken up the knife Papa used to mend his pens, and tried to draw a picture. Jenny had filled the groove with polish, but it had never truly mended. She saw again Papa’s laughing countenance once he had removed the treacherous knife from her tiny grasp.

“I shall keep this picture of yours, my child, and when you have children of your own, I will tell them the tale.”

He had not said it then, but later, when she was old enough to understand. But he never would tell the tale. If she ever had children, he never would see them. Papa was gone, and her life was irrevocably changed.

“Come, Lucy, you cannot be moping here all day.”

She jumped, turning quickly. Her cousins were standing just inside the door. Stefan’s tone had been rough and curt, driving across the near collapse of her mind into irretrievable melancholy.

Lucy sniffed back the threatening tears, hardly hearing Dion’s hissing admonition: “How can you be so unkind, Stefan?”

He came striding forward, wholly ignoring his sister. “It must be near time for dinner. If you are not hungry after your afternoon’s labours, you should be.”

Lucy tried to smile. “I am indeed. I am only sorry to have delayed you both.”

“Fiddlesticks!” Dion was beside her, positively glaring at her brother. “Nothing of the sort. Stefan has been talking to the carrier forever, if you must know, and has but just come in.”

Lucy did not believe this for a moment. She realised now there had been a presence for some little time, and could not doubt but that one, if not both, had been watching her. She managed a smile. “I am done here. Let us go.”

She moved with Dion towards the door, but suddenly Stefan seized her wrist and halted her. “Go on, Dion. We will be with you in a moment.”

His sister had not noticed, but at this she stopped, looked back, cast a glance from one to the other, and then slipped out of the room.

Lucy looked at Stefan. His features were set and hard, and he spoke in a lowered tone. “Did my manner upset you? If so, I am sorry for it.”

A feeling like molten liquid ran through Lucy. Her eyes caught with his, and there was no will behind her words. “It was just the bracer I needed. I was on the point of disgracing myself.”

He did not speak for a moment, and Lucy became aware of the pressure of his fingers about her wrist. “You are the most extraordinary girl, Lucy.”

Lucy smiled involuntarily. “I hope that is a compliment. May I ask you for the return of my hand?”

His gaze left hers and went to the wrist he was holding. Instantly he dropped it, as if it were red hot. Lucy rubbed it where he had gripped it.

“I beg your pardon.”