An Encounter at the Museum

by Claudia Dain

  “Not so far away,” the girl answered with a shrug. She cast a single, lingering glance at Lisbeth’s portmanteau and let the conversational ball drop once more.

  Lisbeth rocked back on her heels and hoped that Hestia Wright’s business would conclude quickly. Surreptitiously, she watched the girl, her curiosity growing.

  The child was a puzzle. Dress of a quality wool, but in an unflatteringly pale grey, and in need of letting out a good inch. Shoes sturdy, but scuffed. Long chestnut hair that needed a good brushing. She spoke well and though her face was thin, she did not display that peaked, pinched look that hunger so heartbreakingly lent. Clearly there was a story here. But how to learn it?

  Lisbeth pursed her lips and looked up into the glassy eyes of the nearest giraffe. “Do they have names, I wonder?”

  Relief coursed through her as the child suddenly lit up.

  “They do have names,” the girl answered, her words colored prettily with an air of confession. “Not real ones, I guess. At least, not officially real. But my mama gave them names.” Her smile faded a bit.

  Lisbeth found herself wanting to see it come back. “Can you share them? Would your mama mind, do you think?”

  The girl bit her lip. “This one is Stubb. She pointed overhead. “Because of his stubby antlers. Do you see?”

  Looking up, Lisbeth smiled. “I do see them, now that you’ve pointed them out.”

  “And that is Swivel.”

  “Because of the position of his ears?”

  The child nodded, pleased. “And this one,” she reached out and touched the largest specimen. “This is Stretch.”

  “For obvious reasons,” laughed Lisbeth. “Your mother has quite a talent for names.” She grimaced. “Unfortunately, I’m terrible at it. It’s a terrible confession to make, but once, when given a chance to christen the family cat, I chose to call him Puss.”

  No reaction.

  Lisbeth valiantly continued. “But I admit, I’m marvelous at guessing games—and I’ll wager your mother gave you a lovely name as well.” She grinned. “Shall I try and guess it?”

  There it was, a spark of interest in the child’s eyes. She worried her lip again, but nodded.

  “Fine. Let me think a moment.” Lisbeth frowned and stepped back. She made a show of narrowing her eyes and searching the girl from head to toe. “Yes. I think I have it. You look like your name must be . . . Ermengarde.” She announced it triumphantly. There, I’ve guessed correctly, have I not?”

  The girl’s eyes widened. “No.”

  “Dash it—I should have gone with my first instincts. They tell me that your name is . . . Hortense?”

  She surprised a girlish giggle out of her audience. “No!”

  “Oh. I’ll get it this time. You simply must be named . . . Theodora. That is it, isn’t it? You look just like a Theodora.”

  “No!” The child laughed outright. “That isn’t right either!”

  “Oh, fiddlesticks. I must be losing my touch. Will you tell me your name, then?”

  “My name’s Aurelia!”

  Lisbeth basked in the sudden light shining through the child’s whole countenance, and let it chase some of the chill away from her heart. “I was right about one thing. Your mother has a wonderful talent. That is the perfect name for you.” She summoned up a mock frown. “But only the one name? How unusual!”

  “I’ve more than one,” Aurelia assured her. “I’m Miss Aurelia Fredericka Tierney.” Belatedly, she gave a quick, credible curtsy.

  Lisbeth returned it. “Fredericka? That was going to be my next guess—and I would have been partially right, at least.” She heaved a sigh. “Alas, my own mother, who is fanciful in nearly every other way, gave me quite the plainest name imaginable. I am Miss Elisabeth Mills Moreton.” She leaned close. “But as I count you a friend, you may call me Lisbeth.”

  But a good deal of the brightness had faded from Aurelia’s face. “Where is your mother?” she asked. And as the question emerged on such a ginger note, Lisbeth knew to answer carefully.

  “She is at home, in Sussex.” Likely flitting about the house like a deranged butterfly, berating her eldest daughter for her duplicity and callous disregard of her own feelings. Her sister Celia, on the other hand, would be stomping about in a fury, throwing random objects and reducing the servants to tears. And her stepfather? Lisbeth hoped the tempest had driven him from the house. She wanted to picture him alone and miserable in the barn, staring forlornly at his prized roan Shorthorn bull and dreaming of calves that would never be.

  She pushed that wickedly satisfying image away, focused on Aurelia, and gentled her tone. “And where is your mother?”

  One of her little hands gripping the railing tight, she turned back to the stuffed figures. “She went on a trip.”

  Lisbeth tensed, but kept a light note to her response. “How nice! Has she traveled to visit family?”

  “No, she traveled to see animals.”

  “Animals?” Lisbeth frowned in confusion.

  “She was very sad, you see, and sick too, for a long time after my baby brother died. Papa said she needed sun on her face and good air to breathe. She loved animals, dogs and cats, horses and even mice, and we dearly loved to learn all about the strange animals abroad. Papa said it would cheer her to see new places, people and animals in person. They went on a boat. She was going to see donkeys and camels and perhaps a monkey. I was to stay at school this trip, but go along next time. Papa promised that when it was my turn we would go far enough so that I could ride an elephant.” She tilted her head. “Have you ever seen a picture of an elephant?”

  A picture was forming in Lisbeth’s mind, one colored darker by Aurelia’s unconscious use of the past tense, but she forced a smile. “I have seen them in the caricatures. Such strange, large creatures they look to be. Did your mother see one in person? Did she send you a picture?”

  “No, I saw it in a little book we had at home. She didn’t see an elephant, although she met a darling burro named Willful, saw a hundred bright and colorful birds and rode some beautiful and dainty horses, fast as the wind.”

  “It sounds lovely.”

  Aurelia’s fingers continued their caresses, her gaze fixed firmly upon that one patch of stiff hide. “She died. And Papa, too.”

  Lisbeth had to bend close to hear her soft words continue.

  “A terrible sickness came on their boat. All of the passengers and nearly all of the crew died of it.”

  Lisbeth crouched down. She laid her hand over Aurelia’s where she still gripped the rail. “I’m so sorry to hear that, Aurelia.”

  “She never saw a giraffe, or a camel.” She stopped her rhythmic stroking. “Now she never will.”

  How well she recognized that flat note of despair. “I know it is hard to lose a parent. My own father passed on, not so long ago. I cannot imagine losing both together.”

  Frowning fiercely, Aurelia turned to her. “How did he die, your Papa?”

  “His heart gave out.” Lisbeth sighed. “He was in the fields with his men, as he always was with the early planting. They were fussing over some piece of broken equipment. Sometimes it comforts me to think he was doing what he loved most.” She squeezed the small hand still resting under hers. “I am sorry for your loss, Aurelia.”

  The little face contorted as she began to chew at her lip once more. “Can I ask something?”

  “Of course.”

  “How do you feel? When you think of him, I mean.” She pulled her hand away from the railing and Lisbeth’s. “I know you must miss him, of course.”

  Understanding dawned. “Yes. Of course I do miss him dreadfully. It hits me at odd times. In the early morning, when we used to breakfast together, or when I hear his hounds out on a run, it feels like a great weight on my chest. I’m sure you know what I mean, just as I’m sure you miss your own parents.” She leaned forward confidingly. “But do you know what? Sometimes I am angry as well.”

  “You are?” There was no mi
staking the plea in her tone.

  In the distance she could hear the porter’s bell again. All of the day’s troubles still lingered, unsolved, and she still didn’t understand Aurelia’s circumstances, but nothing was as important right now as easing this child’s burden. She nodded. “It can’t be helped sometimes, especially when I think about how much my life has changed because of his passing, and how I’m forced to deal with the changes alone.”

  Aurelia sucked in a breath.

  “Sometimes it makes me so angry I want to stomp my foot and have a regular tantrum. How could he do this to me? I want to shout it at the sky and hope he hears me.”

  Horror and fascination collided on the little girl’s face. “Do you? Stomp your foot and yell?”

  Lisbeth shook her head. “No.” But then she grinned sheepishly. “Well, perhaps I’ve stomped my foot, a little.” She breathed deep. “I thought myself a horrid daughter for even thinking in such a way, but I had a long, comfortable coze with our vicar and he assured me that it is normal to feel such things. It is part of learning to let go, he says.”

  Aurelia looked skeptical. “Do you believe him?”

  “I do.” Lisbeth smiled at her. “Do you know why? Because even if I am angry sometimes, it doesn’t mean that I don’t miss him. It doesn’t mean that I love him any less. I will always love my father. I will always remember him and all that he gave and taught to me, through all of my days.” She reached out and took both of the girl’s hands. “Just as you will love and remember your parents, always.”

  The tightness in those thin shoulders had eased a bit and her eyes shone bright. Lisbeth swallowed. Celia always said that everything happened for a reason. Of course, she usually said it in a snide tone while remarking how Lisbeth’s unfeminine height and sturdy disposition made her the perfect fit to take on the burdens of the estate, but the sentiment held. Perhaps all of Lisbeth’s troubles had happened so that she would be here today, able to bring this girl a measure of relief.

  Aurelia’s gaze had strayed to her portmanteau once more. “Miss Moreton, I wondered if perhaps . . .”

  Her words trailed away as her gaze shifted over Lisbeth’s shoulder. Suddenly her spine stiffened and her lips pursed. Flat and dismal once more, she gave a nod to someone behind Lisbeth. “Good afternoon, my lord.”

  Edmund Banke, Baron Cotwell, stormed up the British Museum’s grand staircase for the third—or was it the fourth?—time this month. Other visitors, those few stragglers left this late in the day, fell aside, cringing their way out of his path as if he were a bear set loose in their midst instead of a man pulled from his work at a critical juncture.

  They exasperated him, these small-minded, narrow-visioned people who treated anyone who looked or thought differently from them as a pariah—but his newly acquired ward exasperated him more at the moment.

  Ah, there she was, right on the top landing. A no-doubt-well-meaning lady knelt before her, probably under the impression that the child had been abandoned. His jaw clenched. He made an effort to loosen it. He would take relief where he could find it and be thankful he would not have to scrub through all the natural history rooms to find her this time.

  Aurelia caught sight of him as he stalked her way. Her face tightened and she spoke in that frustratingly distant tone, “Good afternoon, my lord.”

  “Good afternoon, my lord?” he repeated. “Is that all you have to say?”

  He hated towering over her. She stared up at him with that steady, unflinching regard and made him feel like an ogre.

  The lady she’d been speaking with cleared her throat.

  He drowned her out, letting loose an annoyed growl, then stooping to pick the child up and hold her at eye level. “Aurelia Tierney, you made me a promise.”

  She hung from his grip like a rag doll. “I know, sir. I tried to keep it.”

  “And yet you did not, for here we are again. Making a spectacle again.” He sighed. “What is the one thing I told you I cannot abide?”

  “A spectacle, sir.”

  “But here we are, back at it.”

  “Yes, sir.” No apology. No assurances. No emotion. He stared at his conundrum of a ward and wished again that she were more like her father. Laughing, easy-going Frederick Tierney had been one of his best friends. He would have apologized. Hell, he would have shrugged and gone along with the sensible order to wait for an adult escort.

  Edmund had been devastated to learn of Freddy’s fate. His friends were few and dear, and Freddy had been the best of them. Nine years ago he’d watched his friend beaming over a wrinkled newborn pate and agreed that yes, of course he’d act as trustee to the waif, should anything ever happen to his friend. Trustee was not the same as guardian, though, so he’d been shocked to find a solicitor and the girl on his stoop a few weeks after Freddy’s death.

  There’d been no turning the chit away, however. He’d looked into that small, solemn face and hoped she’d forgive his lack of child-rearing skills, even as he sighed and prepared to forgive continual disruptions of his work.

  But, indeed, there’d been no shouting, no feet scampering up and down the stairs, no persistent knocking on his laboratory door. Aurelia had proved quiet, well-mannered and biddable. So biddable, in fact, that she’d uttered not a word when the nurse he hired to look after her had taken to spending her afternoons sipping his best brandy from the nursery china. He’d only discovered it when he’d gone looking for the child and found her reading quietly in the schoolroom. The nurse he’d found next door, passed out in the old rocking chair.

  Who would have guessed that Aurelia’s silence would worry him as much as another child’s boisterousness? Or that her one major flaw would be this irritating propensity to slip out of the house and through the streets to the museum? It had to stop. It wasn’t safe. And today he’d had to interrupt the delicate installation of a pneumatic tube to track her down again.

  At his side, the well-meaning stranger cleared her throat again. “Excuse me.”

  Her voice sounded strained. He suppressed a surge of boredom and annoyance at the thought of another timid matron, frightened by his size. “Thank you for your concern, but I will take charge of my ward from here.” He didn’t bother to look at her as he said it.

  “Your ward?”

  Ah, not fear, then, but skepticism. He could better respect that.

  “Aurelia, is this man your guardian?”

  “Yes. That is, I think so.” And no joy did she find in it, either, judging from her tone.

  “Nevertheless, I have a question or two, and I’d feel better asking them if you would kindly put the child down.”

  Not timid, then, either. Interest peaking, he turned to address the interfering female.

  And slowly lowered Aurelia to the ground, while simultaneously—heroically—keeping his mouth from taking the same journey.

  This was no sharp-tongued spinster, no scolding matron. No, nothing so predictable or off-putting.

  This was . . . interesting.

  A young woman stood next to him. Not grandly beautiful at all, but made up of so many disparately pleasing parts that he found he could not tear his gaze away. Her hair was chestnut, thick and just slightly disheveled. Her eyes—the lightest blue, but with a remarkable dark ring around the iris. He might not have been able to turn from them, had her mouth not begged for his attention. No spinster had ever possessed such perfectly plump, full lips, stung pink just now from being pinched in disapproval.

  Seconds and lifetimes passed as he stared. Striking, that’s what she was. Not a conventional English beauty, but an object of fascination, nonetheless. Like one of his beloved machines, she was made of tiny, incongruous parts that came together to make a wondrous whole.

  He continued to look until all the corners in her face—on her large eyes and past the ripe curves of her mouth—started to turn down. He let his gaze move on, then, to encounter more curves, encased in a sturdy carriage dress of some quality. The wrinkled skirts held testamen
t to recent travel and a portmanteau sat at her feet. His gaze flew up to meet hers once more.

  Interesting. Yes. Still the right word.

  “We don’t have to continue in this fashion any longer, my lord,” Aurelia piped up. “Now that we have a governess, I mean. Miss Moreton can bring me to the museum whenever I need to come.”

  Edmund blinked and found it difficult to pick up the thread of his previous complaint. He glanced down at his ward. “I waited all afternoon, and the governess from the agency never kept the appointment.” He frowned. “And her name was Mrs. Kirk.”

  “There was some confusion,” Aurelia answered earnestly. “That’s why they sent Miss Moreton instead—and rather late.” She took a step closer. “I’m afraid I grew tired of waiting and I . . . I slipped out again. Miss Moreton caught me on the front walk, but by then I just had to come.” She looked down at her shoes. “Sometimes it’s all that helps.”

  Edmund softened. That had to be the single longest stretch of words Aurelia had ever strung together in his presence—and the absolute first thing of a personal nature she had revealed.

  “Miss Moreton didn’t think I ought to go alone, but I was insistent, so she came along. We’ve got along very well.”

  He glanced over to find the young woman directing a hard stare at the girl. “Is this true?” he asked her.

  She kept her eyes on Aurelia. “We have got along remarkably well.” She turned to him and raised a saucy brow. “My lord, is it?”

  He made her a quick bow. “Edmund Banke, Baron Cotwell, at your service, Miss . . . Moreton?”

  She nodded and dipped into a curtsy.

  “And are you not a bit young to be thinking of going into service as a governess?” If she felt free to be saucy, then he would indulge in the direct approach.

  “She’s just exactly the right age,” Aurelia insisted. “She talks to me. And she listens, too.”

  Something passed between the two of them. Something Edmund noted, but could not label. And for the first time in a long time, something unfurled in his gut, something wistful—and unacceptable.