by Archer, Kate
As if they had been on Montrose’s heels, the two men were into the drawing room in a moment. The next minutes were as so many minutes of the day had been—a greeting, an inquiry into Lord Cabot’s health, and an assurance that his injury was minor and he would soon recover.
Montrose brought in fresh tea, always willing to show consideration for those individuals who carried with them a title.
“Well!” Lord Grayson said. “We are very much relieved that our friend has not suffered anything serious. Miss Dell, how do you get on?”
Penny bit her lip to stop a smile. Lord Grayson had taken only a moment to dispense with any worry over his friend and turn to the nearest lady. Mrs. Wellburton, seeing this was to be a nonsensical visit on Lord Grayson’s part, moved to the other side of the room and picked up her sewing.
“I get on very well, my lord,” Kitty said to him.
“I say, you are a very great reader, Miss Dell. Here you are with another book by your side. I quite admire it,” Grayson said.
“You admire reading? Or this particular book?” Kitty asked, her eyes seeming all innocence though Penny knew better. Kitty amused herself.
“Ah, both, I expect,” Lord Grayson said, coloring ever so slightly. “I suppose you are a great lover of poetry?”
“No more than the usual way, my lord, though I prefer history, biography, geography, and most particularly, science,” Kitty said, picking up the book by her side. “This is Malcom’s A History of Persia. Have you read it?”
Lord Grayson took a sip of tea and Penny thought he very much needed the pause before answering that particular inquiry.
He set his cup down and said, “That particular book? Not yet. Though I am certain I should find it fascinating.”
Kitty smiled. “As you plan to read it yourself, I would not for the world spoil it for you. I would only hint that the commencement of the Sassanian Dynasty was particularly riveting.”
“The Sassanians, yes they would be,” Lord Grayson said, appearing completely lost.
“Perhaps you would be interested in some other books in Lord Mendbridge’s collection,” Kitty said. “There is a small selection of titles I am interested in, just there on that shelf. I am sure my host should not mind if you borrowed one.”
Lord Grayson seemed to perk up at this idea. “Those are of particular interest to you? If you would consult with me on the best choice, Miss Dell,” he said.
Penny watched in great amusement as Kitty and Lord Grayson made their way to the small bookshelf at the end of the room. She was certain Kitty led the lord on a merry chase by way of his lackluster efforts to appear learned.
Beside Penny, Lord Dalton said softly, “Grayson has not read a book since school, and even then not many.”
“As anybody might surmise,” Penny said.
“Miss Dell would be better served to compare her ideas of the history of Persia with Cabot, is all I say.”
“Lord Cabot?” Penny asked. “That gentleman is no more the scholar than Lord Grayson.”
“As he would have people believe. He does a credible job of hiding it, I’ll give him that. A holdover from his school days no doubt. He was terribly teased in his first terms, everybody called him the know-all. Since then, he’s kept his proclivities under wraps and pretends only to be interested in horses.”
“I am surprised, Lord Dalton,” Penny said. And, indeed she was. Lord Cabot had only seemed interested in horses.
“Most people would be, I suppose,” Lord Dalton said. “Though, if you’d seen his personal library and knew how he spends his evenings when he does not go out, you would not be. Head buried in a book with a glass of claret by his side.”
Penny was entirely nonplussed. “But if he is naturally of a scholarly nature, why should he hide it so well?” she asked.
“Habit, I think. All those years ago he was teased mercilessly until he showed a talent for picking horses, and then he became very popular.”
A silence fell between them as Penny considered this startling news about Lord Cabot. As much as they had fallen out of late, she had thought she knew him fairly well. How could it be that there was another side of him that the world had never seen? A side that she had never seen?
Lord Dalton set down his cup and said, “It is no matter, I suspect. His secret preferences are likely to soon see the light of day. I understand he admires Miss Dell to a great degree and so he will wish her to understand that he is of a similar turn of mind.”
Penny noticed the hand that held her cup tremble and she set it down. Lord Cabot admired Kitty? It seemed a most unlikely preference. Impossible, really.
Though, perhaps not so impossible if what Lord Dalton said was true. In general, she would take the lord’s words with a grain of salt. But who would make up a tale of a person being a great reader?
In truth, when she examined the idea more closely, she must admit that Lord Cabot was exceedingly well-read when it came to horses. Much more so than the average gentleman. How many times had he waxed on about some dusty tome on horsemanship from the late 1500’s by Gervase somebody? What was to say he’d not read books on other subjects?
And then, his terrible put down at the Tudor ball. That began to make much more sense. He’d accused her of thinking she knew more than she actually did. It would follow that he should consider himself superior in knowledge if what Lord Dalton said was fact.
Penny’s cheeks grew hot as she imagined the lord to have studied all manner of sciences. Perhaps he had some formulas that proved her theory of the Arabian’s wider windpipe accounting for its speed had been only fanciful. Perhaps he pitied her very limited knowledge, so confined to horses as it was.
It might very well be so. The story did carry with it a general ring of truth. Young men could be beastly to their own. She could very well see how one might be teased for studying too much, and she could easily imagine the teased boy succumbing to the pressure of it.
And then there was Kitty. She was so lovely. What gentleman would not be interested in her friend? Lord Grayson was just now gazing at her as if he were lovelorn.
Before Penny was forced to voice an opinion on the facts recently communicated to her, Kitty and Lord Grayson returned to them.
Lord Grayson held a book. Kitty said, “You will know that Lord Grayson has made an excellent choice—John Galt’s The Life and Administration of Cardinal Wolsey. I had the pleasure of reading it last year and had thought to go back and revisit some of the more fascinating sections. I very much look forward to a thorough discussion of the subject.”
Lord Grayson, for his part, smiled weakly. Penny thought reading an entire book about a long-dead cardinal was more than Lord Grayson was used to do in pursuit of a flirtation.
It would not be too much for Lord Cabot, as it turned out. They were all soon to discover he was a scholar and admiring of Kitty. She supposed Lord Cabot would know all about the cardinal.
Penny brushed a crumb from her dress as if that crumb were the most irritating thing she’d ever encountered. She did not care a fig what the lord’s reading preferences were or who he admired. It only rankled that he’d set himself forward as somebody he was not. Or hid being somebody that he was.
She was horse-mad, she knew it. She cared little for books or all those tedious skills women seemed to think so worthwhile. Her efforts at sewing were not real efforts at all and not a thing made by her would ever be of any use. She’d only somewhat mastered the pianoforte to please her aunt. Her primary interest was horseflesh. There was not a thing wrong with it. But for another to pretend he was precisely the same as she was, well she did not know what sort of crime that was. At the least, it was off-putting.
She was most irritated that Lord Cabot had thought he hid his proclivities so well from her. It rankled that he thought himself on the verge of surprising the world with his knowledge.
Perhaps she might apprise him that his ruse no longer deceived. She might send a book up to the sickroom. The most confounded bo
ok she could find. That would let the lord know he’d been found out. That would educate him that his extensive reading had come as no surprise to Miss Darlington. Then he could be free to spout off any knowledge he liked to Kitty.
She knew just what book she would send up. Last year, Penny had desultorily scanned the books her father had acquired from the Oxford professor and one particularly drab tome had amused her. Principles of Algebra, by some fellow in the 1790’s. It had not been the title that tickled her, but the note inscribed in ink on the first page by a recent reader of the book. It had said, “Beware, this author rejects negative quantities!”
Penny had not the slightest idea of what it meant, but the outraged scrawl sounded to her the sort of rabbit hole that a puffed-up scholar would delight in. She would not be surprised to hear of two such gentlemen nearly coming to blows over whether one was to accept or reject the negative quantities. There could be nothing more obscure and ridiculous than that book.
This would be an instance where Lord Cabot would fail to take her unawares. He would know the moment he saw it that his great secret was out.
*
Doom had been raised by nobody and had early on experienced the unpleasant consequences of an empty belly. He had never been lazy, no matter how tempting it might have been. There had been days when he’d been weak in body and the sun had shined and it had seemed almost irresistible to lay oneself on a patch of grass in a park and rest. He had never given in to the feeling and it had served him well.
He’d started his career by holding horses for gents who wished to stop into a shop or a club. Then he’d been hired to muck out stalls for Mister Melvern. Then he’d been tasked with exercising the horses and had shown a proclivity for it. Then he’d ended up racing one of Mr. Melvern’s horses in a private bet with another gentleman. Lord Mendbridge had been there and he’d been promptly poached by that fine gentleman. It had not taken much convincing. Once he was apprised of the general situation, he’d only to confirm that he was to be called Doom and not Daniel. His father, wherever the blighter was now, was called Daniel. Doom wouldn’t stand for honoring the old criminal’s name and preferred a more threatening moniker. Once that was agreed to, he’d packed up his meager belongings and turned in his notice.
Since then, he’d become a connoisseur of two things—horses and food. Both were the finest at Lord Mendbridge’s establishment. He’d never eaten so much meat in his life. He’d never drank more fresh milk. He might have tea and a biscuit whenever he liked from Mrs. Payne. When he had the notion of something finer, he might slip into the house kitchens to discover what Mrs. Lowell was up to. There was no end of cakes that lady might whip up, particularly now that a certain Miss Dell was in residence. It was said that Miss Darlington’s friend was particular for fairy cakes and savarins and Doom had found a need to confirm the idea himself.
Just now, he sat at the small table in the corner of the kitchen, sampling Mrs. Lowell’s seed cakes.
There was a soft knock on the back door leading to the yard and a small boy entered carrying a large wicker basket.
“Is that from Mr. Slincher’s?” Mrs. Lowell asked, eyeing the basket. “I’ve been waiting on lard and flour this past hour.”
The boy, who Doom thought had the hard look about him of one used to managing for himself, said, “Slincher? He ain’t to be counted on. This here is from Mr. Cumberbald.”
Mrs. Lowell put her rag down on the counter. “Well that’s interesting,” she said. “As I never did order anything from a Mr. Cumberbald, whoever he may be.”
“Not yet, my good woman,” the boy said. “This here is compliments of my master. He’s the best grocer in these parts and he knowed that once a ’lustrious person such as yerself done tried his wares, ya give old Slincher the heave ho.”
“Did he now?” Mrs. Lowell said, eyeing the basket. “Very well. Never let it be said that I’m opposed to a tradesman vying for business. Let us see.”
The boy, who told Mrs. Lowell his name was Freddy, unpacked the contents of the basket, introducing each new item with what Doom considered a particular dramatic aplomb.
Freddy laid a fine-carved wood box on the table. “Tea, from the hand of Mr. Twining himself.”
He next pulled out a wood bowl filled with wrinkled brown specimens of something or other. Doom leaned over and examined them, flummoxed by what they might be.
“Turkish dates,” Freddy said. “Nothin’ sweeter than them from the distant land of Turkish. Good for eatin’ alone or in baking. Ya might even stuff ’em into a fowl.”
“I know what to do with dates, young man,” Mrs. Lowell said sternly, though her features belied her tone. She seemed rather taken with the dates.
“Then we got your more regular items—butter, sugar, salt, flour,” Freddy said, laying them out one by one. “And I save the last for your inspection as something that old Slincher never has got a bony hand on in his life.”
Doom waited expectantly to discover what this thing was that old Slincher had no hope of acquiring.
Freddy carefully lifted an oblong item wrapped in cloth. He unwrapped it with a flourish.
Doom heard Mrs. Lowell take in a sharp breath. He was certain this thing that lay before them was special, though he could not imagine what it was. It was exotic looking, and nothing he could fathom England grew. It was a pale yellow-brown, dotted with thorny protrusions, and had a great sprout of sharp green spikes on top.
“Now then,” Mrs. Lowell said, “wherever did you get your hands on a pineapple?”
Doom was perplexed beyond measure. He would have thought, if there were apple trees that grew a thing called pine apple, somebody would have mentioned it before now. Though it could be from Scotland, he supposed.
Freddy crossed his arms and surveyed the goods laid out on the table. “My master has got connections, while Slincher don’t. My master know all sorts in London and at the ports, while Slincher don’t. If you just need middlin’ eggs and flour, Slincher’s your man. If you be lookin’ for something finer, Cumberbald’s your man. It’s that simple.”
Doom had thought all these fine things that Freddy had delivered would be relegated to the family. However, Mrs. Lowell had different ideas. She said that nothing went to the family without her trying it out beforehand. That led Doom to his first, and possibly last, experience of pineapple. While he carved up the large slice that Mrs. Lowell had laid before him and tasted something sweet and yet tangy and yet indescribable, Freddy told him of the faraway islands where it was grown.
Doom was secretly relieved that he’d not given his ignorance of the thing away. He’d have sounded like a rube if he’d ventured that it was Scottish. As it was, he only nodded sagely. Privately, he found himself rapt to hear of those unknown places only reached by sailing ship.
The conversation eventually drifted away from Mr. Cumberbald’s goods, as Freddy inquired into the latest gossip. Mainly, Freddy was interested to know if Lord Cabot would die, as was being speculated on in the town. He’d even heard there were beginning to be bets laid on it and the odds were leaning toward dead by Tuesday.
Mrs. Lowell, mightily appeased by a pineapple and dates, decided to give Freddy the advantage on the betting. She regaled him with the real case of the thing. The lord was not particularly in danger, but he was not made comfortable either. He was a rude young gentleman who’d offended the miss of the house. On account of it, Mrs. Lowell had been sending up a wretched soup of flour and mutton fat, and one might just find rocks in his bed if one were to look. He wouldn’t go out in a coffin, but he’d go out a deal thinner and more sore than he came in.
Freddy appeared fascinated by the tale. This was all of great interest to Doom too. He’d known the lord was not liked and had followed suit in giving his valet the cold shoulder, but he’d not known of an actual organized campaign. It tickled him to hear of it. He was fond of Miss Darlington and if the high and mighty lord had offended her, then he ought to pay heavily for it.
Much to Doom’s surprise, they were interrupted in their cozy conversation by Lord Cabot’s valet. Jarvis appeared red in the face, as if he’d run a great distance. He stared at Mrs. Lowell and said, “There is to be no more of that wretched gruel sent up to my master. I require proper food to take to him. I require it this instant. Cold meats and rolls will suffice for now.”
“Calm yourself,” Mrs. Lowell said. “I’m sure the patient is complaining, don’t they all? Still, he’ll be better off with my bone broth.”
“I’ll be the judge of what’s better, madam. If you do not comply, I shall go directly to Lord Mendbridge about Lord Cabot’s treatment in this house.”
Doom had expected Mrs. Lowell to give the valet the what for, but Mrs. Lowell had looked distinctly frightened.
“As you wish, then,” she said, hurrying to find a plate.
Jarvis looked down upon the spread at the table and said, “And a large slice of that pineapple, if you please.”
*
As Henry laid waste to ham, beef, rolls, butter, and a large helping of chopped pineapple, he thought Jarvis had never proved his worth more. At least there was one servant in the house not set on killing him off. And how on earth had the fellow got hold of pineapple? Jarvis would not say and had only given him a knowing nod. The only thing Jarvis would say was Mrs. Lowell had been made to understand that her shenanigans on the food side of things would no longer be tolerated.
Whatever had transpired, his plate of real food sent energy through his veins. His headache faded and he felt better than he had since being thrown. That was well, as he must get up and show himself round the town soon. Perhaps as soon as the morrow if he could get his hands on a few more meals like this one. Jarvis had told him there was no end of speculation going round about his condition and he ought to put a stop to it before letters were written and the accident was more widely known. He had no wish to be bombarded by post from anxious family members, or worse, find one of them staring down at him.