Never Land the First Fish

Chapter Thirty-One: Part 1

The Earl of Chirbury's funeral attracted mourners from across Great Britain. His eldest son, the new earl, joked that they should have bought shares in the railway to Bristol, as they could have paid for the funeral on the profits from the extra travel.

Only immediate family could be accommodated at Longford Court—but when Emily offered to give up her room and hire one at the inn, she was refused in no uncertain terms. Daisy, Maddox's oldest sister, was juggling rooms, doubling and even tripling the beds in the rooms of the younger unmarried adults.

"Point one," Daisy said, "you are Maddox's betrothed, or will be if you ever put him out of his misery and accept him."

Emily opened her mouth to object, but Daisy kept talking. "Maddox would be heartbroken if I sent you down the road to the village. Point two, the inn is full to bursting, so you could not get a room if you tried. Besides, we have put you in the very smallest of the bedrooms, as you well know. We couldn't possibly fit a couple on that tiny bed, and any extra single people can easily be accommodated on a mattress in one of the bigger rooms."

Daisy almost certainly knew that Maddox shared Emily's room. Daisy missed very little. A couple could sleep on the tiny bed, as long as they slept in one another's arms. And there was no way that the family hadn't noticed that Maddox was never in his assigned room.

Daisy cast another look at the lists in her hand and sighed.

"Anyway, it is only for a day or two. Most of them will leave after the will is read."

Emily assumed that she would go, too. Either with Maddox, or—if he wanted to stay on for a while—without him. She couldn't talk about the future with Maddox; not yet. He was still absorbing the reality that his father was gone.

In the days between the earl's death and his funeral, he spent most of his time with various brothers and sisters telling stories of their youth, and older stories from before they were born of their father's adventures in his own youth. Since he like Emily to sit with him, she learned a lot about the late earl and about Maddox, too.

When the twins, who were several years older than he was, were rampaging across the countryside doing all the silly things that young sprigs of the aristocracy were famous for, Maddox had been studying local plant life and the stars, taking clocks and other mechanical devices to pieces, and making machines of his own.

"Father always encouraged me—encouraged all of us—to be ourselves. To find something we loved doing and to follow our dreams," Maddox told her. "My brothers couldn't believe it when a chance idea of mine ended up saving lives and winning me a title. I was surprised myself. But Father said he always knew I would do great things, and that I should just keep on doing them."

He squeezed Emily's hand. "I don't know about great. But I am going to keep doing what I love, Emily."

That was reassuring, but the endless procession of titled relatives and friends set Emily's doubts raging again. Two dukes and three duchesses, a collection of earls and viscounts, a marquis. And that was just the cousins. How could she, base-born daughter of a half-Indian courtesan and concert violinist, marry a baron from a family with connections into half the English aristocracy? And yet, given what she now knew, how could she not?

The day of the funeral was sunny and warm. The church service was so well attended that most of those allowed into the church had to stand and those who did not have designated places inside had to instead observe from the churchyard.

Julia and Gills had sent their condolences, but would not be attending the funeral. "I would not wish to impose a mere acquaintance, and such a notorious one, on your family," Gills had written from London. Julia was closer, having returned to Brickdale, but offered similar reasons in Julia's more caustic style. "My family connection with Maddox's family is of the slightest, through the marriage of my cousin to his," she wrote to Emily. "Do tell Maddox I am sorry for his loss and am thinking of him. As far as the remainder of the family are concerned, I am sure my sincerest sympathy will be received more readily than my infamous self."

Emily would have been quite happy to be at Brickdale herself, or outside of the church with the tenants and villagers outside, but found herself sitting with Maddox on one side of her and Stocke on the other.