Sherbrooke Twins (Sherbrooke Brides 8)

Corrie whispered, “I’m not. I’m not pathetic or a ragamuffin.”

James looked after his grandmother, shook his head. It was the very first time in his entire life he’d dished back some of her own sauce, and she appeared not to even have noticed. He felt like he’d fail

ed. Upon brief reflection, James realized that if his grandmother were to apologize to anyone for her rudeness, such an extraordinary event would likely signal the end of the world. Still, to attack both his mother and Corrie like that. He said, “I’m sorry, Corrie, but if it makes you feel any better, she treats my mother worse.”

“But I don’t understand, James. Why would she be so nasty to your poor mother?” Why hasn’t the old bat croaked it? That was what she really wanted to say.

“She’s nasty to all her daughters-in-law,” James said. “Her own daughter, my Aunt Sinjun, as well. She’s nasty to any woman who walks into Northcliffe, except for my Aunt Melissande. If it was a matter of not wanting any competition why would she be kind to Aunt Melissande?”

“Maybe it’s because you and Jason look exactly like her. That is so very strange, isn’t it?”

James winced. “Yes. Now, is your name really Coriander?”

Corrie looked down at her scuffed and dirty boots. “So I’ve been told.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Yes.”

He sighed and lightly laid his hand on her arm. “You don’t look like a ragamuffin.” It was possible she looked worse, he thought, but she also looked flattened, and he’d known her forever, and oddly, he felt responsible for her. Why, he didn’t know. Then he saw a little girl in his mind’s eye, beaming up at him, wetter than the captured frog she held in her hand, a gift, from her to him.

Corrie blinked up at him even as she tugged on her old brown waistcoat, doubtless worn in a previous life by a stable lad. “What do I look like?”

James stalled. He wanted to go study all the farm accounts for the last decade, he wanted to calculate the price of oats and wheat for the next twenty quarters, he wanted to go count the sheep in the east pasture all by himself, anything but answer her.

She said slowly, “You don’t know what to say, do you, James?”

“You look like you, dammit. You look like Corrie, not this wretched Coriander. Were your parents drinking too much brandy when they named you?”

“I’ll ask my Aunt Maybella, although she and my mother evidently never got along very well. She’s never called me anything but Corrie. Once when I was little, I’d been playing with my dog Benjie, both of us minding our own business all right, so Benjie had gotten just the littlest bit muddy, and so he did escape me and ran into my uncle’s library. I’ll even admit that he rolled around on top of my uncle’s desk and tore up two leaves my uncle was pressing. Well, that was when Uncle Simon yelled out my full name for the first time.” She paused a moment, looking out over the west gardens. “I didn’t know who he was yelling at.”

“Corrie, forget the nastiness. I will speak to my father; he’s the only one who can do anything about my grandmother’s meanness. I heard him tell my Uncle Ryder that my grandfather had doubtless hurled himself to the hereafter, just to escape her.”

“It doesn’t matter. I will simply avoid her in the future. I must be going. Good-bye, James.” And she went out the estate room glass doors, out into the gardens. If she meandered far enough, then she’d run smack into the naked Greek statues, all of couples copulating in varied positions. He and Jason had spent many many hours staring at those statues, giggling and pointing when they were young, then looking at them through very different eyes when they’d gotten older. To the best of his knowledge, Corrie had never been in this part of the vast Northcliffe gardens. He yelled, “No, Corrie! Come back here. I want you to have some tea and cake with me.”

She turned, frowned at him. Reluctantly, she came back into the estate room. “What kind of cake?”

“Lemon seed cake, I hope. It’s my favorite.”

She looked down at her boots, then up again, but not at his face, over his left shoulder. “Thank you, but I must go home. Good-bye, James.” And she dashed out the doors. He watched her run into the gardens. There were paths leading out; surely she wouldn’t explore; surely she wouldn’t find the statues.

JAMES FOUND HIS father in his bedchamber, alone, bandaging his arm.

“What happened, Father?”

Douglas jerked around, then heaved a sigh of relief. “James. I thought it was your mother. It’s nothing really, an idiot shot me in the arm, nothing more.”

James’s fear sliced right through to his belly. He swallowed, but the fear just kept bubbling up. “This isn’t good,” he said. “Papa, I really don’t like this. Where’s Peabody?”

James hadn’t called him Papa for many years now. Douglas tied off the strip of linen that he’d ripped from his shirt, pulled it tight with his teeth, then turned and managed a smile. “I’m all right, James.” Then because James looked afraid, Douglas walked to him, and pulled his precious boy against him. “I am just fine, it’s just a bit of a sting, nothing to worry you or me or anyone, particularly your mother who will never find out about this.”

James felt his father’s strength and was comforted. He also realized that he was now as large as his father, this man he’d looked up to all his life, seen as a god, an omnipotent being, and now they were the same size? He said against his father’s ear, “Did you see who it was?”

Douglas took James’s arms in his hands and stepped back. “I was riding Henry out on the downs. There was a single shot and Henry knows an opportunity when he sees it, and, of course, he threw me. I’d swear that damned horse was laughing down at me lying there in the bushes where I landed, luckily. I looked afterward, but the fellow had left no signs. It could have easily been a poacher, James, an accident, pure and simple.”

“No.” He looked his father right in the eye. “The Virgin Bride was right. There is trouble here. Where’s Peabody?”

“I got rid of him right away, sent him to Eastbourne to fetch some special pomade for me, I made up a name-Foley’s Special Hair Restorer.”