The Merry Month of May Read Free

near brush with marriage didn’t encourage her to try it again. She felt she was well off as she was. At twenty-four she wasn’t likely to receive any proposals, and it was a relief. Next year she would put on her caps and people would stop telling her it was time to forget Peter and look about for a different match.
     

Chapter Two
     
    Lord Haldiman sat in his oak-lined study, a glass of port at his elbow, as he gazed with unseeing eyes at a painting of his ancestral home, formally known as the Vynery, but called Haldiman Hall by the locals. The painting, executed upon the house’s completion in the late sixteen hundreds, differed dramatically from the present structure. He rather regretted that the row of statues along the roofline and the central dome had been lost in a fire shortly after construction. The roofline now was flat, stretching for hundreds of yards, punctuated only by chimneys. Austere gray stone lent more formality than charm to the place.
    But Lord Haldiman noticed none of this. His mind was far away, six years away. Mama had forgotten it was the anniversary of Peter’s disappearance. Lord Haldiman didn’t use the word “death” in his private thoughts, though it was the word used in public. He wouldn’t remind her. Why drag up all that wretched business again?
    He drained his glass and refilled it, then set it aside. Six years, and not a word. What the devil had Peter done? Where had he gone? No one was forcing him to marry Miss Wood. It had been his own idea.
    If he were alive, they would have heard from him before now. He would have been pestering the lawyers for his money. It had been almost a relief when Peter disappeared. A wastrel, a rake, and a born troublemaker. He would have made a sorry groom for Miss Wood, but Peter seemed genuinely in love with her. The family hoped a good woman might settle him down, and, of course, old Mr. Wood had pushed the marriage forward.
    The longcase clock in the hall chimed ten bells, rousing Lord Haldiman from his reverie. He must see if Mama had fallen asleep on the sofa again and have her woman put her to bed. There was a knock on the front door as he passed into the hall, and the butler walked carefully over the polished marble from his cubbyhole to answer it.
    “Who the devil can be calling at this hour?” Haldiman scowled. His face, rather a handsome one, took on a harsh appearance when he was displeased. His black brows drew together and his lips thinned as the severe, aristocratic geometry of his face stiffened in impatience. “Tell them to come back tomorrow, unless it’s my game warden. I told Bushkin to notify me immediately if he caught the poachers.”
    The butler nodded and threw the door open as Haldiman disappeared into the gold saloon. The muffled, low voices at the front door were ignored. Careless of the surrounding grandeur, Lord Haldiman looked at his mother, sprawled out on the sofa with her mouth open. Poor Mama. She had never been a beauty, but with age she had gone deaf, and her deafness seemed to have made her vague. Her cap, riding askew, was crushed in a mat of gray hair. A brilliant blue shawl vied with the purple of her gown. And with those colors she wore garnets! Mama, who used to be the best-dressed woman in the countryside! She looked like a vagrant, straggled by accident into all this elegance.
    “I’m hungry!” a young voice bellowed in the hallway. Haldiman was curious enough to go in search of the speaker.
    Before he reached the doorway, not one but two young boys in short coats bowled forward and began tearing around the room like a pair of colts. One was six inches shorter than the other. Neither was old enough to be in school. Haldiman blinked in surprise. He had no doubt they were some relatives. They had the unmistakable air of the Haldimans, with their black hair and dark eyes. Cousin Gloria? She had two youngsters ...
    He prepared a civil face and went into the hallway, ready to “welcome” the tardy