Belgravia by Julian Fellowes Page A

twenty-one.”
    “Twenty-one.” Caroline looked a little wistful. “How time flies by. I’m surprised Lady Templemore has said nothing to me.” She and Maria’s mother had been friendly acquaintances for years.
    “Perhaps she was waiting until things were quite settled.” Grace smiled.
    “And they are settled now. They have an understanding.” Consciously or unconsciously, Lady Brockenhurst’s tone told the table she thought the idea of this mismatch an unlikely one.
    Grace’s smile became more firm as she put down her knife andfork. “There are one or two details to clarify, but after that we’ll announce it properly.”
    Caroline thought of the pretty, intelligent girl she knew and of her pompous, pushy nephew, and then, inevitably, about her own beautiful son lying stone-cold in the ground.
    “So you see, we, I mean John, needs funds,” said Stephen, glancing appreciatively across at his wife. She had been right to play that card. Surely Peregrine could not really refuse the money. Imagine how badly that might reflect on the family if Peregrine kept his own heir in penury. Particularly as the Countesses were bound to discuss it between themselves almost immediately.
    At last, after the currant pudding and the lemon ices had been consumed, the coffee drunk in the drawing room, the gardens toured, Stephen, John, and Grace left. They had secured enough cash to pay their tailors, as well as the other debts that Stephen had failed to mention. Peregrine retired to his library.
    It was with a heavy heart that he sat down next to the fire in his large leather armchair, attempting to read some Pliny. He preferred the Elder to the Younger, as he liked dealing in the facts of history and science; but this afternoon the words didn’t dance off the page but rather half swam before his eyes. He’d read the same paragraph three times when Caroline walked through the door.
    “You were quiet at luncheon. What’s the matter?” she said.
    Peregrine closed the volume and sat in silence for a moment. He stared around the room at the line of portraits above the mahogany bookcases, stern-looking men in periwigs, women laced into their satin dresses, his forebears, his family, who had lent their blood to him, the last of his immediate line. Then he looked back at his wife. “Why does my brother, a man who never said or did anything of the slightest value, live to see his children married and his grandchildren gathered round his chair?”
    “Oh, my dear.” Caroline sat down next to him and put her hand on his thin knee.
    “I’m sorry,” said Peregrine, shaking his head as his face flushed. “I’m being a silly old man. But sometimes I can’t help railing at the injustice of it all.”
    “And you think I don’t?”
    He sighed. “Do you ever wonder what he would be like now? Married, of course, and rather fatter than when we knew him. With clever sons and pretty daughters.”
    “Perhaps he’d have had clever daughters and pretty sons.”
    “The point is, he’s not here. Our son, Edmund, is gone, and God knows I don’t understand why it had to happen to us.” Peregrine Brockenhurst suffered from the Englishman’s lack of ease when it came to discussing his emotions, that could at times be more poignant than fluency. He took hold of his wife’s hand and squeezed it. His pale blue eyes were watering. “I am sorry, my dear, I’m being very foolish.” He looked at his wife with something like tenderness. “I suppose I can’t help wondering what is the point of it all.” But then he laughed drily, pulling himself together. “Don’t listen to me,” he said. “I must stop drinking port. Port always makes me miserable.”
    Caroline stroked the back of his hand. It would have been so easy to tell him the truth, tell him that he had a grandson, an heir to his blood if not to his position. But she did not know all the facts. Had Anne Trenchard been speaking the truth? She needed to investigate. And she had