They both laughed.
“Why did you say,” Anna asked, curling her legs to one side of her on her chair and hugging a cushion to her bosom before realizing that this was probably not the way a lady ought to sit, “that the responsibilities of being the Earl of Riverdale would be burdensome to your brother? It must be very grand to be an earl.”
“I love Alex dearly,” Elizabeth said, taking her embroidery out of the bag she had brought up with her. “He deserves every good thing that could happen to him, and I had high hopes for him just a few days ago. But now all this has happened and I am not sure he will be happy after all—and not just because he feels terrible for Harry.”
Anna watched as she threaded a length of silk through her needle and bent her head over her embroidery frame.
“As the Earl of Riverdale, for example,” she continued, “Alex will be expected to take his seat in the House of Lords, and because he can never take responsibility lightly, he will feel obliged to be here each spring when Parliament is in session. He does not enjoy London. He came this year just to please Mama and me, though he did admit too a few days ago that he intended to take the opportunity of being here to look about him for a bride at last, for someone to complete his life.”
“Can he not still do that?” Anna asked. “Is he not even more eligible now than he was? Surely there must be any number of ladies who would be only too happy to marry an earl.”
“But would they also be happy to marry Alex?” Elizabeth said. “I want someone to marry the man, not the title. Someone who will love him. Someone he will love.”
How wonderful it must be, Anna thought, to have grown up with a real brother and such obvious affection. But she had Joel. And really she wanted the same things for him as Elizabeth wanted for Cousin Alexander.
“Alex has always lived more for other people than for himself,” Elizabeth said. “He has always had what Mama sometimes calls an overdeveloped sense of duty. And now, just when he seemed to have his head above water, along has come this deluge.”
Anna settled back in her chair to listen, as Elizabeth clearly wanted to talk.
She talked of her father, a cheerful, hearty, irresponsible man who had been mad for hunting and lavished most of his fortune on horses, dogs, guns, and other hunting gear, followed the hunt about the country, and hosted lavish hunting parties on his own property. By the time he died, his farms and all the buildings on it had been long neglected and there was very little ready money left with which to bring all back from the brink of financial disaster. But Cousin Alexander had done it through sheer hard work, determination, and the sacrifice of his own comforts. At the same time he had looked after their mother, who had sunk into the depths of a devastating grief for a year or so after the death of her husband. And he had taken on the care of his sister too not long after their father’s death when she had fled from one of her husband’s drunken rages. He had even defended her, with questionable legality, when the husband had come to take her back. Her brother had refused to give her up.
“Oh, Anna,” Elizabeth said, “I had never before seen Alex resort to violence, and I have not seen it since. He was perfectly . . . splendid.”
His property in Kent having been restored to prosperity, Cousin Alexander had looked forward to securing some personal contentment by marrying and settling down to raise a family. He really had not wanted the earldom. He was not an ambitious man.
“And the worst of it is,” Elizabeth said, “that Cousin Humphrey—your father—did not like Brambledean Court, his main seat in Wiltshire, and rarely spent time there. I have never been there myself, but we have always been under the impression that he neglected it shamefully. Alex is very much afraid it is in a similarly bad way as Riddings Park was when our father died, but on a far larger scale, of course. He could continue to neglect it, but that is not Alex’s way, I fear. He will be very conscious of all the people who live and work on the estate or are otherwise dependent upon it for a livelihood, and he will consider it his duty to set matters right there. I do not know, though, how he will do it. His income had at last become sufficient for his needs until this happened, but now it will be woefully inadequate. And he will doubtless abandon his plans to marry until he feels he has something of substance and security to offer his bride. He may be forty by that time, or older. It may never happen.”
In the silence that followed it occurred to Anna that if she had not existed everything would have gone to Cousin Alexander and he would have had quite sufficient money to restore Brambledean Court and still look for a bride to complete his happiness. But she did exist, and the money was all hers.
“If I pull on that bell rope,” she said, “will someone come?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Doubtless bearing the tea tray,” she said.
Anna got to her feet and pulled gingerly upon it.
“Mrs. Eddy wants to show you the account books and the house treasures tomorrow morning,” Elizabeth said. “Mr. Brumford wants to call upon you tomorrow at your convenience, preferably in the morning as well. Madame Lavalle will want your opinion and approval of a hundred and one little details in the sewing room. Cousin Matilda’s genteel acquaintance will possibly arrive and wish to begin explaining to you to which persons you should curtsy, to which you should merely incline your head, and upon which you should look with gracious condescension as they bow or curtsy to you. And I daresay Cousin Mildred’s dancing master will make haste to claim you as a pupil. Some or all of your aunts may call here before luncheon with further plans for your education.”