The Making of a Gentleman

by Ruth Axtell Morren

  “Thank you, miss.”

  “You’re welcome.” What else was she going to say to him once the courtesies of the meal were over?

  Was he going to beg her pardon?

  Another thought struck her. Did she owe him an apology? No! Her mind rebelled at the notion. He had to know that he must submit to the rules of this house.

  She felt a gentle rebuke of God’s Spirit. This man was under their protection, and her duty was to witness God’s love and mercy to him.

  Even if it stuck in her craw to apologize to him.

  “Florence, I wanted to discuss something with you,” Damien said in the silence. Her head snapped up, but he was already looking in Quinn’s direction. “With both of you, in fact.”

  Quinn laid down his fork, a look of worry creasing his forehead.

  Damien brought his napkin to his mouth and patted it before setting it down. Then he cleared his throat. “The rector of our parish, Reverend Doyle, will be dining with us this Sunday after services.” When Quinn said nothing, Damien continued. “I’d like you to join us.”

  Quinn blinked. “Me, sir?”

  “Yes. You’re to be part of this family for some time to come. I believe with your new garments and your, uh, shorn hair, you resemble nothing of the man who stood at the gallows. Moreover, very few, if any, members of the congregation, much less Reverend Doyle, would have attended the hanging, or have any idea of what you look like. Any drawings of you posted about look nothing like your actual self.”

  A dozen thoughts ran through Florence’s mind, none of them good. “Can you…risk it?” she asked. Her nightmare was too real. What if Quinn said or did something that would show him for what he was? Not only a common laborer, but a fugitive from the law.

  Damien regarded her. “It’s been my experience that what a person doesn’t expect to see, he won’t. No one who comes here will expect to see a condemned man who escaped the gallows. Much less will they suspect anything when they meet a well-dressed, presentable gentleman who—” here his mouth curved upward “—knows how to hold his knife and fork.”

  “And if I blunder and do something I’m not supposed to?” he asked.

  Florence could detect no sarcasm in his tone, and she realized he was as concerned as she was, if for a different reason. For him, it meant the gallows. As she had so summarily reminded him the evening before. Had that been the reason he’d come back? Because she and Damien were his only hope? Instead of giving her any sense of satisfaction, the sense of responsibility weighed more heavily on her.

  Damien glanced from him to Florence and back again. “I think if you pay strict attention to us in the coming few days, and heed all my sister’s instructions, even when they seem to make no sense from your point of view, you will be fine. On the day of the dinner, just follow our lead if you have any doubts, and—” here he grinned outright “—if you are unsure of how to answer something, just remain silent, and have one of us fill in for you. We are…more accustomed to dealing with the rector than you are.”

  Florence said nothing more. She would have a word with Damien later, when Quinn wasn’t present. No need to worry him with how concerned she really was over her brother’s plans. As a man, he couldn’t possibly see the subtleties involved in training someone to act like a gentleman.

  She eyed Quinn now, taking care not to be noticed by him. He clutched the scone in this large hand and brought it up to his mouth and took a healthy bite, much larger than a gentleman would.

  Quinn’s cheek bulged with his portion. A few crumbs had fallen on his shirtfront and vest. He grabbed his napkin and bunched it in his fist, bringing it up to this face and swiping it across his mouth.

  She turned away, thinking of the rector’s neat, precise manners. Did Damien expect her to perform miracles by Sunday afternoon? Especially now, after the words they’d exchanged the evening before?

  “I’d also like you to attend Sunday morning services with Florence and me.”

  Florence stared at her brother. Wasn’t it too soon to show Quinn in public? Another peek at Quinn showed her that he, too, did not welcome the news.

  “We also attend a prayer service Sunday evenings, but I wouldn’t require you to attend that, unless you wished to, of course.”

  Jonah coughed. “Are you sure you want me seen in front of people?” He held the half-eaten scone in his hand.

  Damien took a sip from his cup and set it down quietly. “Yes. I think the only way we are going to pull this off is to treat you as the person whose identity you’ve assumed. You are an acquaintance of ours from the north who has come to stay with us and explore his prospects in the metropolis. The sooner you are introduced by us into our admittedly small society, the more quickly people will accept you.

  “Soon, they’ll take your presence among us for granted. If you’d like, I can teach you the trade of clock repairer, or we can search around for some other skill you might be more inclined to learn.”

  Quinn’s look went from Damien back to his scone. Slowly, he lowered his hand, as if he hadn’t realized it had been suspended. “If you’re sure I won’t shame you at your table…or among your acquaintances…”

  “I’m sure.” Damien rubbed his hands together. “So, if that’s settled, perhaps you’d care to sit with my sister after breakfast and go over a few simple table manners. Then, if you’d join me in my workshop, we can begin your first lesson in clock repair. Afterward, we can resume your reading. Then you are on your own until supper. I have several calls I must pay on parishioners.”

  Quinn had a slightly dazed look. “Yes, uh, sir.”

  “One other thing.” Damien took up his knife and fork. “If you are to assume the role of a gentleman, you must desist in calling me ‘sir.’ I am your equal. You may address me simply as Damien, when we are together as now, or Hathaway or Reverend Hathaway when we are in public, and I shall do the same for you, William.” He smiled as he pronounced the assumed name.

  “Yes, si—” A flush crept over his shaved cheeks. “Reverend.”

  “Damien.” Her brother resumed eating, as if he had said nothing out of the ordinary.

  Florence suppressed a sigh. How like her brother. To think about something for days and then suddenly make an announcement as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  And the bulk of the responsibility would fall on her shoulders. It already had, actually. She thought of the scene last night again. If Damien had an inkling…

  She glanced from their guest to Damien. She would have to protect her brother from his most high-flown and altruistic impulses. He was an idealist, always expecting the best from people.

  And Quinn? She looked at him again. He was struggling to get his large fingers through the loop handle of his delicate teacup. A bit of tea splashed onto the saucer. If last night’s episode wasn’t so fresh in her mind, she would have found the sight amusing and oddly…touching. He was undoubtedly as frightened as she. After all, it was his life at stake.

  Could she pull off this transformation? More importantly, could he?

  Chapter Eight

  “Please remain seated, Mr. Kendall,” Miss Hathaway told Jonah when Hathaway had left the dining room.

  Jonah stiffened. What was she about now? Another tongue-lashing over spilling some tea on his saucer? Not his fault these bl—He stopped himself in time. Blasted, he amended, teacups weren’t made for large hands like his.

  Betsy cleared the plate in front of him and wiped the crumbs from the tablecloth. He looked down at the empty place, feeling like a schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s office. He still hadn’t figured out how to ask—beg—her pardon for last night.

  Before he could decide what to do, Miss Hathaway brought a clean plate and set of silverware from the sideboard. Without saying a word, she placed them before him.

  He waited, wondering if she was going to mention their set-to with the gin bottle. But she turned from him and set a clean place
for herself before seating herself catty-corner to him. Her movements held the same purpose and determination with which she’d fought him for the bottle.

  “Now, I shall show you a few differences in the way you eat from the way a gentleman eats and I want you to make a note of them.”

  She took up her knife and fork and brought them to the empty plate. “I noticed this morning that this is how you hold your silverware.” She pretended to cut something on her plate then brought the fork up to her mouth.

  “Now, notice the difference with how my brother eats.” She moved the position of her hand on the fork from clutching it upright like a stake to holding it at an elegant downward angle to the plate. Once again she imitated cutting something on her plate.

  “It does look more dainty,” he said, amazed at how closely she must have been observing him. Every time he’d turned her way, she’d been looking somewhere else.

  “Indeed. And when you cut, you must cut a small enough portion of food so that you can chew and swallow before you respond to someone who might choose to address you at that moment. Let’s find an example. Ah, Betsy has not removed the bread basket.” Miss Hathaway reached out and took two slices from it. “Let us pretend these are two portions of meat.” She placed one on his plate, and one on hers. “Note how small the piece I cut is.” He watched her cut and spear a tiny morsel with her knife and fork.

  “That’s not enough to satisfy a child.”

  “Nevertheless, each forkful you take should not exceed it. I want you to ask me a question as soon as I put it in my mouth.” She lifted the fork with the small square of bread and brought it to her mouth.

  As soon as her lips had closed around it, she began chewing in a way that hardly moved her jaw muscles. His gaze moved to her lips, soft and pink, like a pale rose, with nary a crumb. He pulled his attention from her mouth and looked into her eyes. “Were you sorry to see me show up again this morning?”

  Her eyes flew to his and she stopped chewing. She swallowed what remained in her mouth. “You can see the advantage of having cut off only a small piece of food.”

  “I beg your pardon—” There he went again, blurting out the wrong thing.

  She set down her utensils and cleared her throat. “If someone asks you an unexpected question and you are at a loss as to how to answer, you will be in no danger of choking on your mouthful.”

  “I can see that.” He bit back a smile. If she was going to pretend they hadn’t had a blow-up quarrel last evening, well, then, so would he. As he waited for her next instruction, he couldn’t help letting his eyes travel over her. As usual, she looked perfectly neat and clean in a light blue gown and white chemise, every hair tucked into the cap she wore as if she was a married lady instead of a maiden. He felt himself flush as he remembered the insult he’d flung at her in the heat of anger. Calling her an old maid. She wasn’t that. She certainly didn’t look old enough to be so. He wondered how old she was…

  He started, realizing she’d been saying something. “You place your fork and knife so, when you want to take a sip from your glass or wipe your mouth with your napkin.” She demonstrated both procedures as she spoke. “This morning, you wiped your mouth so. A gentleman would merely pat his lips.”

  She removed the napkin from her mouth after touching it briefly. Her lips were slim and pink with a nice bow at the top. Her nose was narrow with a slight bump, the nostrils flared in a dainty sort of way. Her eyes were turned downward and he noted the lashes. They were tinted gold at the roots and grew darker at the tips. Her eyebrows matched them in color. Her skin was evenly pale like alabaster.

  She raised her eyes and looked at him as if waiting for him to say something. “You…uh…certainly notice a lot of how a fellow eats.”

  “My brother may think you are ready to face society, but I want to ensure you won’t disgrace him.”

  He remembered more of her words last night and realized her primary concern had been her brother—not herself. Perhaps he’d misjudged her somewhat. Before he could say anything, she added, “I was somewhat surprised to see you walk in this morning as I knew not what to expect after last night.”

  He’d almost forgotten his earlier question to her and now her reply took him by surprise. Her gray eyes seemed to be weighing him, and he wondered for those seconds what it would take to measure up to a lady like her. She cleared her throat softly. “I thought you might have decided to leave us permanently.”

  He said nothing, not yet ready to admit he had crawled back, his tail between his legs, when in fact that’s exactly what he’d done.

  She fingered her napkin. “I take your coming back to mean that you are ready to accept my brother’s—our—conditions for your residence in this household?”

  Not a whit of yielding in those deceptively soft eyes. The woman was as rigid as a tree trunk. He blew out a breath, knowing when he was beaten. Curious thing was, at the moment, he didn’t seem to mind. Instead of anger, he felt a certain security, the way he had when she hadn’t turned him in to the soldiers. This woman’s standards might be impossibly high, yet her word was good.

  “Yes, miss.” When she said nothing in reply, he wondered what more she wanted. Was she expecting him to beg her forgiveness?

  She picked up her knife and fork once again. “All right. Now you try with this slice of bread.”

  He did his best to imitate her, holding his fork and knife poised above the piece of bread on his plate.

  “Yes, that is perfect.” She was actually smiling at him, her tone encouraging, so different from the one she’d used on him last night.

  The gleaming, cream-colored porcelain plate with its delicate chain of flowers circling its edge stared back at him. He pretended the slice of bread was a joint of roast. He brought his knife and fork over it, the way Miss Hathaway had demonstrated from the plate set before her. Not too quickly and small, penny-size bites of meat.

  “Never show people that you are hungry even if you have gone without food for hours.”

  The knife sank into the soft bread then squeaked against the plate as he made a sawing motion back and forth.

  “That’s it. Now bring it up to your mouth.”

  He did as he was told, making sure to keep the fork tines turned downward, the way Miss Hathaway held hers. He chewed with his mouth closed as he brought the fork back to the plate and set it down carefully against the edge. Then he brought the napkin and tapped it against his lips, resisting the natural impulse to rub it against his mouth.

  “That’s much better. Now, you must practice that until it becomes second nature to you.”

  He felt like asking if that’s what she’d done—practiced wiping away any softness from her nature until she appeared as hard as a seasoned piece of wood, its sap long since dried out of it?

  On the next breath he wondered what it would take to discover if anything soft and vibrant still lay within. He could feel himself flush. He bet a gentleman didn’t think such thoughts about a lady.

  Jonah stood over the large kitchen garden and breathed in the damp morning air. Give him the soil any day to a formal dining room and a blasted neckcloth. He took up a rake and began smoothing over the earth he and Albert had just finished spading. He’d removed his jacket in the morning sunshine and rolled up his sleeves.

  “We’ll have some fine peas by June,” Albert said from his end of the garden.

  “We will, indeed,” he agreed, and took up a hoe. With it he formed a long furrow down the length of the garden patch.

  He knelt down beside the row. In went the hard little dried pea. With his forefinger he pushed it into the soft earth and placed the next little pea an inch beside it. On down the row he went.

  When he’d finished his row, he sat back and removed his cap to wipe his forehead with the back of his arm. The sky was a beautiful blue with soft, scudding clouds in the distance. Birds twittered from their leafless perches all around him. He could almost imagine himself b
ack on his small holding, setting out the first seeds in spring…instead of a wanted man, hiding out from society until he could be presented as a new bird in fine plumage with manners to match.

  He shook his head, thinking of his lessons in “deportment,” as Miss Hathaway called them. If he managed to get through another one without feeling like a great, bumbling oaf—either that or succeeding in reining in his impulse to shout and bellow at her—it would be a miracle of self-control on his part, maybe the true test of a gentleman. It seemed he couldn’t say a sentence without her stopping to correct some word he’d said wrong—a word he’d been using his whole life.

  And not to mention the other words—the ones that were second nature to him, but which Miss Hathaway glared and called profanities of the vilest sort. It got so he hardly dared open his mouth for fear he’d say something wrong.

  He glanced across the garden. “Tell me, Albert, how long have you worked for the Hathaways?”

  Albert stopped working and leaned against his hoe. “My mum and da worked for their parents before the Reverend and Miss Hathaway were so much as a thought. I’ve seen them both grow up. Mrs. Nichols fed them so they’d grow strong and stout.”

  “I wouldn’t say she succeeded in that last one,” he said, picturing Miss Hathaway’s slender figure.

  Albert shook his head and smiled. “No, they both shot up like young tree limbs, straight and thin, like they was reaching for the sky.”

  “Oh?”

  Albert nodded. “In a way, they were. Always looking upward, heavenward.”

  “Ah, religious.”

  “Not religious, exactly.” Albert removed his own cap and scratched his gray head. “Lookin’ out for others, more like. Not that their parents didn’t help people, but not like them. Mr. and Miss Hathaway seem consumed with living for the ‘least o’ them.’ It’s like they’re never as happy as when they’re serving in some capacity.”

  “D’you think it had anything to do with Mr. Hathaway’s losing his leg?”

  Albert replaced his cap. “Mebbe. Hadn’t really thought on it. Nothing like misfortune to make you see others in trouble. But he was always a sensitive tyke. Takin’ in birds with broken wings, coming to me to ask me if I could fix ’em up. Field mice the cat was toying with. He’d rescue them before all the life was out o’ ’em and bring ’em to me, and I’d have to tell ’im it were too late, better to let the poor thing die. Then he’d dig a little hole and bury the critters and say a little prayer over their graves.”