Meggie had said nothing upon hearing that. Nor did she say anything about her brother’s plans, not that Leo had asked her for her opinion.
As for Max Sherbrooke, their Latin scholar, who had finally surpassed his stepmother in his knowledge of everyday Latin, he’d announced that he planned to become a man of the cloth, like his father. There was, Tysen said, and blessedly so, a very big difference between fa ther and son—Max brought laughter into the room with him, just like his uncle Ryder, and laughter was a wonderful thing, only discovered by Tysen after he’d met Mary Rose. Tysen was very pleased, knowing his son would bring joy to his future congregation from his very first sermon.
Meggie looked up at the sound of a stranger’s voice, a man’s voice that she’d never before heard, and she saw that indeed, she had never seen him before either. He was young, perhaps in his mid-twenties, and he was tall, taller than her father, possibly as tall as Uncle Douglas, and he was dark as a bandit on a midnight raid, dark hair, dark eyes, his complexion swarthy. There was no question that he’d spent a lot of his recent time at sea.
He was also taller and darker than Jeremy, whose wife was going to have a baby. No, no, put away that lump full of pain.
Rory tugged on her skirt. She looked down to see him holding the remains of a stick of candy Mary Rose had given him to keep him quiet during his father’s sermon in his left hand, no longer in his right, as was always the instruction from his mother. His left hand was now as sticky as his right hand and now so was the skirt of her beautiful new gown.
“Oh, no. Rory, just look at my skirt. How could you?”
Rory shook his head, big eyes ready to weep. He whispered that he didn’t know how he could have done that. He began frantically sucking his fingers, saying between his fingers and licks, “I’m sorry, Meggie,” then he gripped her skirt and brought it to his mouth. He began sucking hard on the sticky material.
Meggie couldn’t help herself. Her irritation with him evaporated. She burst into laughter, swung Rory up in her arms, and said, “You little sweetheart, how can I ever be upset with you when you are so cute?”
“I wonder,” the man said slowly, his voice pensive, looking at her directly now, “if my mother ever held me like that and told me I was a sweetheart and cute. Somehow, I doubt it.”
Meggie turned, still laughing, and said, “I’m not his mother and that, I believe, saves his adorable self from a hiding.”
Tysen said easily, “Lord Lancaster, this is my daughter, Meggie, and one of my sons, Rory. The candy does work to keep him quiet during the service, but occasionally he forgets, and this is the result. Meggie, my dear, this is Lord Lancaster. He has just returned to England to assume his responsibilities and see to his property.”
“Oh,” Meggie said, “Lord Lancaster—how odd that sounds. Your father was an old man, you see, and quite deaf toward the end of his life. I am sorry that your father died, my lord.” She paused a moment, and added as she hugged Rory closer, “However, he died some seven months ago, and you weren’t here then.”
“No, I was not.”
And no explanation forthcoming, she thought, because it was none of her business. He’d put her very nicely in her place. But it was strange nonetheless. She’d never even heard Lord Lancaster himself mention that he had a son, although she remembered now that there had been an occasional mention of an heir by a servant. To the best of her knowledge, the new Lord Lancaster had never even lived with his father at Bowden Close. It was a pity that such things happened in families.
“Welcome home, my lord,” she said, gave him an absent nod, and carried Rory away, back to the vicarage, Rory’s mother on his other side, wiping his hands with a handkerchief dampened from the well that stood on the edge of the cemetery. When Old Lord Lancaster had finally shucked off his mortal coil, a heart seizure Dr. Dreyfus had said, Meggie had mourned him perfunctorily since she’d known him all her life. Why, she wondered, had the son never visited his father?