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Opening the door, she found Frederick standing and scowling at the TV, the remote in his hand. The TV was on but it was a blank screen, with just the words,No Signal.
“It won’t work,” he said to Cara. “If we’re not going to have dinner right away, I want to watch the news. At home I always watch the news.”
“Let me find Alec,” Cara said. “Maybe he can fix it.”
Alec wasn’t in his study, or the library. She ran up the stairs and down the hall, and called Alec’s name. He didn’t answer. She knocked lightly on his bedroom door, it didn’t open.
“Alec?” she said loudly. “Your uncle needs help with the TV.” Still no answer.
She headed back downstairs and went through the various rooms on the tour—lingering for just a moment in the music room since the entire front parkland was so blindingly white that it looked as if it was still early morning instead of four o’clock in the afternoon. But still no Alec, and she could hear Uncle Frederick’s unhappy voice in the distance fretting over not being able to watch his news.
But then she heard a door open and a bark, followed by more dog barks, along with heavier footsteps. Alec.
She rushed down the corridor to the mudroom where he was hanging up his coat and easing off his outer boots.
“Your uncle needs you,” she said. “He’s very frustrated that he can’t get the television to work and he wants to watch his news.”
“I went through this with him this morning,” Alec said, running a hand through his dark hair, rifling it. “We can’t get any programming until the weather clears. The heavy snow creates a poor signal.”
She wrinkled her nose. “You might need to remind him of that. He seems to have forgotten.”
“Personally, I would love for the television to work. Everyone could just sit down and watch it and I—we—could relax.”
“Well, see if you can calm him down and I’ll help Dorothy serve the tea. Where would you like tea?”
“Why not the library? It’s far enough from the television that hopefully my uncle will forget why he’s in a terrible mood.”
But Frederick didn’t want tea in the library. He went to his room to take a nap. The aunts sat with them for fifteen minutes before Dorothy smothered a yawn and said that maybe she might rest for a little, too. Emma remained and wandering around the library, found some photo albums and carried themback to the couch, taking a seat next to Cara. As Emma opened the first album, she smiled. “This was Mother and Father’s,” she said, pointing out photos of her parents as a young couple to Cara, and then turning it around so Alec could also see.
The photos were all black and white, and the house at Langley Park looked austere in the snap shots. There were lots of pictures of dogs, too, and horses and cars.
“Do you still have horses?” Cara asked, remembering the huge framed oil of a horse in Alec’s study.
“No, haven’t in a number of years,” Alec said. “My father, like his father, was an avid sportsman, lots of riding and hunting, with hunting parties here in the autumn. While I was taught to ride, I wasn’t home enough to develop the passion my father had.”
“My brother was an expert rider,” Emma said. “But my father made sure of that.”
Cara looked at Alec’s aunt. “Did you ride, too?”
“My aunt Emma was horse mad,” Alec said. “My father and grandfather could ride, but Emma loved horses, and her favorite was Charlie. Even as a little boy, I remember watching her and Charlie, and Charlie wasn’t a horse most people wanted to ride. He was arrogant and a little bit mean, but he loved Emma.”
His aunt looked at him, surprised. “You remember Charlie?”
Alec nodded.
Emma’s lips pursed and she sat still for a moment. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone or anything the way I loved Charlie. He was stunning and fast, so fast. How we’d gallop across the park, covering every inch of the estate, and all around Bakewell. We jumped every wall, sailed across streams, splashed through ponds, jogged up roads we had no business being on.” She smiled, remembering. “He was a chestnut gelding. Sixteen and a half hands. I would return every weekend from London just to ride him. I even made George come home early from ourhoneymoon because I missed him. And then one day his big heart couldn’t keep up, and he was gone. It broke my heart, too. We’d been together almost twenty years. And I do not exaggerate when I say they were the best years, and happiest years, of my life.”
“I don’t suppose that’s Charlie in the painting hanging over the mantel in your study?” Cara asked Alec.
“That was Percy, the fifth earl’s favorite horse,” Alec answered.
Emma closed the photo albums. “I think I’ll go upstairs as well. We have some time before dinner?”
Cara glanced at her watch and realized the afternoon was quickly passing. “At least an hour, maybe longer.”
Emma nodded and walked out, leaving Alec and Cara alone together.
Cara yawned and slumped back against the couch. “All this talk of napping is making me sleepy.”
