The Land of Summer (2 page)

‘As you said, there is only one more dance, alas, Miss Nesbitt,’ he said, looking rueful. ‘And while I imagine there is little chance of your being free, I would give a great deal to have you spurn whoever it is who has the good fortune to have—’

Before he could finish, Emmaline put in quickly, ‘As it so happens, Mr Aubrey, this dance is free as well.’

‘How very fortunate!’ Aubrey exclaimed in
delight
. ‘Then perhaps we may repeat this last delightful experience? I do so hope so.’

It had taken only a few minutes for Emmaline to quite lose her heart to this man, who seemed to be at such pains to be gallant and charming. From the moment he stood in front of her chair and began to talk to her, she knew that nothing would ever be quite the same again. It was not that she felt she had been swept off her feet, rather it was as if his energy was infusing her with a courage she had never experienced before. As if he could see that she was not by nature a wallflower, but a spirited young woman suppressed by her circumstances, unable to escape from the confines of the gilt chair upon which she had been sitting with such an upright stance, her fan gently waving in front of her face, her eyes carefully avoided by those of her luckier sisters.

She spent the night remembering those two dances as if they were her last on earth, and was amazed when on the following day, preparatory to his departure for England, Julius Aubrey called once more on the Nesbitt household.

Emmaline watched him alight from his hired carriage, as elegant in his morning suit as he had been in his white tie and tails, and assumed that he was calling on her father in connection with the business that had brought him to America.

She turned to Mary, the girls’ devoted maid, who was dressing her for the walk she was intending to take, and said, as casually as she could, ‘I see that Mr Aubrey is once more visiting Papa.’

‘He sure is, Miss Emmaline,’ Mary replied, buttoning up Emmaline’s warmest coat, and handing her a fur hat and muff as a precaution against the increasingly cold November weather. ‘And a handsomer man I don’t suppose either of us has seen.’

Mary sighed, and shook her head. Everyone knew that until Miss Emmaline married, none of her poor sisters could. That was the convention in the Nesbitt family. Old-fashioned it might be, but it was a rule which Mr Nesbitt, and Mrs Nesbitt (much more reluctantly, of course), insisted upon. The other three would remain at home until their eldest sister left her father’s house. Sometimes it seemed to Mary, and indeed to the rest of the household, that Miss Emmaline was just being downright stubborn in not making herself more apparent to the young gentlemen of the neighbourhood. Although, as even Mary had to admit, Mrs Nesbitt had not exactly helped by always saying of Miss Emmaline, ‘Plain, plain, plain, and nothing to be done.’

Old Mary knew very well that if a young woman felt herself to be plain she would always be plain in her mind, and as a consequence, no matter what her features or attributes, she would never behave as though she thought she was worth looking at, and that was a fact. ‘And if you don’t think you’re worth looking at, no one else will,’ she would say, though only to Miss Emmaline, since the others were so vain she never had to bother with them.

Mary watched Emmaline disappear down the stairs to the hall, knowing that she would collect the two family spaniels from the dog room, and take herself out into grounds sparkling in the pale winter sunshine. The maid sighed. Walking the dogs, stitching evening purses and playing the piano for hours on end was no life for a healthy young woman. Please God someone would take Miss Emmaline off her parents’ hands soon, and then the other three could follow.

No sooner had Emmaline turned her face from the house and headed for the lake than she heard footsteps crunching the frozen snow behind her. Expecting her follower to be no one more surprising than one of her sisters, or a housemaid bringing her a message from her mother, Emmaline turned and found herself once more face to face with the handsome, dashing Mr Aubrey, himself well wrapped up against the elements in a fur-collared winter coat with a brightly coloured woollen scarf tied loosely round his neck. Given how cold the morning, it was surprising to see that he was nevertheless hatless, his thick dark hair standing out against the winter landscape. To Emmaline this only added to his charm, since his fine head seemed to be glistening as fresh snowflakes fell on it, and his face too shone, making him look younger than he perhaps was.

‘Miss Nesbitt? Forgive the intrusion.’ As the dogs circled round them, barking, he went on, ‘I would have sent a note, but there was no one
available
, given this sudden flurry of snow, to bring one out to you in time. So instead I came in person, which is probably what you did not want at all. Nothing worse than an uninvited visitor, particularly if you are on a walk, enjoying your own company, which I perfectly understand.’

Emmaline smiled. ‘I am always happy to walk with someone else, I do assure you, Mr Aubrey.’

‘I spoke to one of the maids, and she told me that you were out walking, so on I came, although I suspect she thought it a little forward of me to want to search you out, since we only met last night. She looked somewhat surprised.’

‘That is probably because when a gentleman calls here we always assume he is calling on Papa, not us.’

‘How very modest of you all. For myself, if someone calls on me I always think it is because they can’t do without my company,’ he told her gaily.

‘One thing, Mr Aubrey, that my younger sisters are not, I do assure you, is modest. We cannot be the least bit shy, if only on account of our names. Our mother, perhaps feeling that she needed to make us stand out against the rest of Boston society, named us Emmaline, Charity, Ambrosia and Ethel. Now, do please say which one of my sisters you wish to call upon, and you will find in me a friend.’

‘No, no, Miss Nesbitt, you are mistaken,’ her companion told her earnestly, his expression becoming suddenly serious. ‘Prior to my departure,
I
wished to see
you
once more, not your sisters, however exotically named, I promise you.’

‘You are leaving America already, Mr Aubrey? You are returning to England quite soon?’ Emmaline asked, not yet willing to believe that this tall, handsome man with whom she had danced all of two dances could have the slightest interest in her.

‘Yes, I am leaving America, and travelling back to Europe, Miss Nesbitt. First I must visit the Loire valley on business, then I shall return to England and set myself to tidying up some unfinished affairs in London, after which I shall, er, repair to, er – Somerset,’ he told her, his smile widening, and an impish look in his eyes. ‘Do you know Somerset, Miss Nesbitt?’

‘Somerset? No, I don’t think I know Somerset. Is that a state?’

‘No, Somerset is what we call a county in England – our island is too small to have states. No, Somerset is a county. The county of Somerset, the place that the Romans christened the land of summer, where they built their villas and grew their vines, and daylight seems to last longer than anywhere else in the world.’ He looked down at her with accomplished charm. ‘It is indeed a wonderful place, as you may well imagine, for the Romans to have so christened it.’

‘It sounds beautiful.’

‘It is beautiful. It has every kind of landscape, and we who have lived there for generations believe there is nothing to match it. After the
Romans
came King Arthur and his knights, and it is said that King Arthur’s Avalon was near Glastonbury in Somerset.’

‘The land of summer,’ Emmaline repeated, staring ahead of her at some imagined Utopia filled with graceful villas where vines grew, bees hummed, and the countryside was green and fertile.

‘It is a place where a man, and a woman, can be happy, I do assure you,’ her companion insisted, giving Emmaline the kind of look that no man had ever given her before.

‘A man and a woman, if they love each other, can be happy anywhere, or at least that is what I have always understood,’ Emmaline told him.

‘Indeed, you are right. A man and a woman can make a paradise out of very little, for that paradise is in their own minds, is it not?’

Emmaline found Mr Aubrey’s look difficult to return. After all, they had only known each other for two dances, and a short walk. As she understood it, emotions … feelings … in particular those that led to a man’s making a declaration to one, took longer than that to develop, could not mature in a moment or two. And yet …

‘I have often wondered about the story of Adam and Eve, how it was that it all went so wrong, and why Eve was the reason that they were thrown from Paradise.’

‘And you are right, Miss Nesbitt. Why, now I come to think of it, it is most unfair! Adam, if he had been any kind of gentleman, would have
shouldered
the blame. He would not let a lady take the full complement of God’s wrath.’

Emmaline saw that he was amused by this fantasy that she had begun, and she continued on the theme with him, both of them finally agreeing that the first story in the Bible should be rewritten to show Adam in a better light.

‘And it’s hard on the snake too,’ Aubrey continued. ‘People have been hard on those gentle creatures ever since on account of that story.’

‘Mary, our old nurse, who is now our maid, says that if you leave snakes alone they’ll leave you alone, and I have never found any different. But then she is Irish, and there are no snakes in Ireland. She tells me Saint Patrick banished them.’

They laughed together, and then walked along in companionable silence, a silence which Emmaline finally broke.

‘So when exactly is it that you sail, Mr Aubrey?’ she asked.

‘Early tomorrow morning, Miss Nesbitt. We sail from Boston on the flood, and let us only hope the return journey is considerably calmer than the outward one, where very few of the passengers ever saw the light of day – outside their cabins, that is. Gracious, the sea can be masterful, can it not?’

‘I have never sailed the Atlantic,’ Emmaline confessed, ‘but I know from Mary that it can be as rough as anything.’

‘It can indeed. And now I am being called to
brave
it for a second time I have to tell you that I am feeling very cowardly. I wish you were coming on the journey to alleviate the tediousness. You have no idea how long a journey can be when everyone else is nowhere to be seen. Why, I didn’t even have anyone to play cards with, or share a drink with. I spent the outward journey playing patience in my cabin and walking the deck like some poor spinster sent to America by her family to become a housekeeper!’ He stopped, and began again, his voice light and persuasive. ‘Miss Nesbitt, I have no wish to be forward, but I was wondering if you have the slightest curiosity as to why I should wish to see you again, after our dances together?’

Emmaline stared ahead of her. It was strange to be asked such a direct question, particularly since she had been brought up to consider direct questions discourteous. More than that, to answer a direct question from a gentleman, and a foreign gentleman at that, was not at all the thing. She frowned, still looking anywhere except at Mr Aubrey.

‘I am sure you have your reasons, Mr Aubrey,’ she finally replied with a nod, walking on one pace ahead of him, ‘but as to what they might be, well, I am afraid I cannot guess. Yet I do realise that you must have your reasons.’

‘Indeed I do have my reasons, as you call them, Miss Nesbitt, and they are fine ones, too, the most potent of them being a wish that I might see you once more, before setting sail. You yourself must
be
glad to see again someone who is so entranced with you, surely?’

‘I see.’ Emmaline could not help glancing quickly at him in order to gauge what his expression might be, and whether or not he was smiling, which he was.

‘I wished most sincerely to see you again,’ he repeated.

‘That is very kind of you, Mr Aubrey, and indeed I am glad to see you before you set sail. Truly, I am glad.’

Her clear answer seemed to satisfy him.

‘Thank you, Miss Nesbitt,’ he said. ‘You have made me more than a happy man, you have made me a gloriously happy man. But that is not the last of my reasons. I am here to tell you, now, if perhaps I might elaborate without causing you any—’

But further explanation was curtailed by the sound of a voice calling Emmaline. They turned to see one of the housemaids running as fast as she could in their direction from the house, skirts held to the side in one hand, while the other was on top of her head to prevent her cap from being blown away.

‘Miss Emmaline! Miss Emmaline! Miss Emmaline, you’re to come back to the house at once, please! You have to return to the house at once!’

‘Forgive me.’ Emmaline turned quickly to her companion. ‘I am needed up at the house – my mother, you know. She suffers dreadfully from her nerves. Please forgive me. I will be back.’

As she hurried back towards the house in the company of the maid, Emmaline learned, as expected, that her valetudinarian mother had suffered another of her famous setbacks and was calling for her eldest daughter.

Another setback
, Emmaline thought.
Mother always has a setback just when it matters. She always does. It is as if somehow, heaven only knows how, she knows that I am happy, and wishes to spoil it – as if she wants to punish me for Papa’s being such a philanderer
.

Emmaline flung off her outdoor clothes, handing them to the maid, and hurried upstairs. She found her mother as always in her bedroom, her devoted if aged maid Jean in attendance. Jean was a woman who liked to make it clear that any and every setback her mistress suffered was entirely due to the indifference of her family, most particularly her eldest daughter.

Of course, as Emmaline and everyone else knew, it would inevitably turn out that there was nothing really wrong with Anthea Nesbitt, certainly nothing that poor Dr Hill could ascertain. But then, according to his patient, the good, kind and long-suffering doctor was useless, and when not useless, on holiday, and when not absent inept. No different from all the rest of the doctors, some of them specialists, that Onslow Nesbitt was always being asked to call in. Anthea Nesbitt had been ill ever since her marriage to Onslow, and possibly always would be, the reason being something to which
no
one in the household would ever dare to refer, although everyone knew that the faithful Jean guarded it jealously, administering the precious laudanum drops when she imagined no one else was around.