by Jane Steen
“Very much.”
“Then I hope you won’t mind mine. They’ve been enjoying a story in the house with their uncle, but I imagine they’ll be here any moment.” She rang the little bell again. “I will need more tea and some more robust fare for the little ones. Or the not so little—my oldest children eat like horses.” She laughed.
“Their uncle?” I supposed, for a moment, that some brother of Mr. Dermody’s was visiting. Mrs. Dermody’s next words sent a hot wave across my face that had nothing to do with the warmth of the day.
“Armand, of course.”
“But isn’t he with his patients?” I asked, trying to stamp firmly on my confusion.
“He does take some time for himself. He was up till dawn with an old man at the workhouse. He slept till luncheon and says he will only visit two patients today.”
A commotion inside the house announced that the arrival of the children was imminent. I braced myself for the first real sight I’d had of Fortier since March. It wasn’t long in coming. A tall girl and a pudgy, belligerent-looking boy burst out of the French doors, followed by Fortier with a small boy on his shoulders. Behind him was another boy who walked slowly, his attention on the book in his hands.
I had been alarmed at the notion of meeting Fortier so unexpectedly, but when I saw him I found myself suppressing a giggle at the look of utter astonishment on his face, mingled with a dawning dismay—not, I rather thought, at my presence, but at his own appearance. He was in shirtsleeves, the areas around his beard were unshaven, and his hair and cravat showed a degree of disarray. The state of his hair was perfectly congruent with the activities of the little boy, around four years old to my eyes, who clung around his neck like a monkey and gave me an impudent grin, large black eyes wide with mischief.
“Tu aurais pu m’en avertir,” Fortier admonished his sister in a tone of well-controlled exasperation.
“If I had warned you,” said the latter, motioning to her youngest to leave her brother be, “you would have stayed inside the house and the children would not have been able to take tea with their uncle. And how often does that happen? I would not deprive them of their treat. Besides, you have worked together in difficult circumstances. I don’t think Lady Helena requires you to stand on ceremony with her.”
“No more I don’t.” I was determined not to be rattled by a chance meeting, if this could be called chance. After all, Littleberry was a small town—our paths were bound to cross eventually. “Please do not trouble yourself about—anything.” I felt a grin tug at the corners of my mouth but fought it off. I didn’t want Fortier to think I was making fun of him.
Fortier caught at the small boy’s arms to prevent the little fellow landing in the teacups. The children were followed by two maids with fresh tea. They also brought large plates of bread and butter, plain cake, jam tarts, and a squat ceramic pot of anchovy paste.
“This is Sebastian,” Fortier informed me as he lowered the child to the ground. Gesturing at the other children, who were waiting with well-trained courtesy to be introduced and regarding me with the same black eyes as their little brother, he reeled off their names: “Mariette, Constantin, and Hugh. Children, say how-d’ye-do to Lady Helena Whitcombe of Whitcombe House.”
The children chorused, “How do you do?” with the confident air of those used to society. Mariette made me a pretty curtsey and the two older boys bowed in a rather Continental fashion. Little Sebastian stepped forward and gravely held out a tiny hand. I shook it with as much ceremony as I could muster and then resumed my seat, which Fortier was holding ready for me.
The next few minutes were devoted to the absorbing matter of food and drink. The children, having filled their plates, retired to a blanket spread near the summer house and made a picnic there in the company of a young woman who’d emerged a little belatedly from the house. I thought she was probably their governess.
Fortier, I noted, took his tea without milk or lemon. He eschewed cake and tarts in favor of bread and butter thinly spread with the anchovy paste. He had apparently recovered from his discomfiture and seemed perfectly at ease.
“How go your studies?” he asked me after a few bites of bread.
“They go well. I was telling Mrs. Dermody that Guttridge has been a great help.”
“Miss Guttridge is a remarkably sensible and cool-headed woman.” Fortier drained his teacup and passed it back to his sister. “She’d do well in the Army Medical Department.”
“You told me Lady Helena also evinced a large measure of courage and level-headedness,” Mrs. Dermody said, smiling sideways at me.
“She did,” Fortier said simply, but the look he gave me made me lower my eyelids and hope fervently that my cheeks weren’t reddening. I took a deep breath and quickly diverted the conversation away from my own qualities.
“Guttridge’s help has allowed me to make an index of those of Mama’s journals I’ve already read. We’ve cross-referenced them to the books on herb lore that I’ve acquired. I’ve come across quite a few useful volumes by now, and the index means I don’t have to keep searching for the information I need.”
“A very scholarly work.” Mrs. Dermody’s expression was encouraging and friendly.
“That’s the first time in my life I’ve been called scholarly.” I couldn’t help grinning. “My sister Blanche—the Marchioness of Hastings, you know—would be horrified to think I might become a bluestocking. I have to impress on her that I’m still a complete dilettante, albeit an organized one. Guttridge and I found two ladies’ writing desks in the attics at Hyrst and have arranged them side by side in the workroom so we can work together on a volume. One of us calls out page numbers and dictates extracts while the other writes—usually Guttridge because her handwriting is clearer.”
This led to a prolonged discussion of the difficulties of note-taking and the tendency of handwriting to become untidy as the writer became tired. Fortier then held forth on the subject of typewriting machines, in which he appeared to take an interest.
“I take it, then, that you haven’t finished your mother’s notebooks?” he asked after a while.
“I don’t feel the need to hurry.” By now, I felt as if I were among friends. The voices of the children, who were playing games on the lawn, gave the sunny afternoon a holiday feeling, and I felt expansive and confiding. “I’m up to the 1850s, when Lady Odelia was old enough to be given lessons.” I paused, but there seemed no reason to withhold what I’d found. “For a while, there was a feeling of happy domesticity to Mama’s journals, and she frequently mentioned entertaining. At the point I’ve reached, though, she’s far more like the mother I knew before she became ill.”
“The formidable countess?” Mrs. Dermody suggested softly. She was clearly well informed about my family, but that wasn’t surprising. I was used to people knowing far more of my business than I knew of theirs.
“She was formidable,” I agreed. “A no-nonsense whirlwind of efficiency and activity.”
“Upon whom the poor of Littleberry and its district relied far more than on the town’s doctors.” Fortier, having disposed of an impressive quantity of food, also seemed relaxed, his head resting on his fist as he listened to my account. “I’ve seen the workhouse records that show how often she attended.”
“Yes.” I looked away, up to the roof of the house where three seagulls sat, squawking with desire for the food they dared not try to reach.
“Was she unhappy?”
“What makes you think that?” I was startled, and my voice sounded brusque to my ears.
“Intuition.” Fortier ran a thumb along the underside of his beard, where unshaven hairs showed instead of the neatly trimmed separation of hair and skin I was used to.
“We don’t gossip, Lady Helena,” Mrs. Dermody said as if she, too, understood my hesitation.
“Then you’re the only people in Littleberry who don’t.” But I knew I would continue. The brittleness, almost cynicism, in some of Mama’s writings had pert
urbed me of late. I was reluctant to discuss the matter with Julia, my usual confidante. She was heavy and slow with advanced pregnancy and the June warmth. I somehow felt I should keep melancholy topics away from her, however distant the past.
“I don’t know if she was exactly unhappy,” I said. “But she wasn’t happy either. I wonder if it had something to do with the Crimean War. I’ve got as far as ’54, and at that time Papa was doing something political or diplomatic and was frequently in London. She must have missed him. She often mentions Miss Florence Nightingale and her nurses, wishing she, too, were attending to the sick in Scutari.” I shrugged. “Impossible, of course. She was a married woman, a mother, and a countess—all effective disqualifications from professional nursing.”
“She must have felt frustrated, especially with her husband absent on work that I suppose was vital to the country.” Fortier frowned.
“I’m glad you realize that,” I said. “Most men would refuse to believe that a husband, a house, and children did not provide enough gratification. We women are expected to be entirely consumed by such matters.”
“Not I,” said Mrs. Dermody, grinning at Fortier. “When I have an artistic bee in my bonnet, all household concerns fly out of my head. My children would go in rags, uneducated and unfed if I didn’t have servants. Quinn would leave me, and Armand would suddenly find that lodgings and meals at the chophouse were far more pleasant than living with his slatternly sister.” She smiled affectionately at her brother.
“Don’t listen to her, Lady Helena. She’s an excellent wife and mother.” Fortier leaned over to kiss Mrs. Dermody’s cheek, but she waved him away.
“You’re too bristly. And you smell of anchovies,” she said, laughing as Fortier caught at her hand and kissed that instead. “Ah, Lady Helena, these little brothers! How they plague us.”
A pang went through me as I imagined Michael ever plaguing me with affection, but the momentary sadness was lost in the confusion I felt as Fortier’s gaze fell unreservedly on my face. His striking, amber-green eyes held laughter, but also something else—a yearning, perhaps. I felt my breath catch in my throat before his lashes fell and the moment passed. He turned from me to his sister.
“I must shave, and then I shall walk to my patients. Thank you for the tea, Gaby.”
Mrs. Dermody gave a regal nod. She watched as Fortier bowed in my direction and then moved quickly away to take a noisy, affectionate leave of the children, who were being ushered indoors by their governess. When I turned back from watching them, I saw that Mrs. Dermody was, in her turn, watching me.
“I think you are very sad about your mother,” she said. “And no wonder. Do you read her journals as a way of finding her again?”
I considered the question for a moment before answering. “At first, I simply read them to look for remedies. Now—yes, I suppose I can find the real Mama in their pages. Such glimpses are as precious to me as—” I hesitated again.
“—as if she had passed away,” Mrs. Dermody said quietly. “I understand. My mother died when I was nine years old. If she left any writing or drawing behind, it was probably lost or discarded when we moved to London the next year. Our father has a miniature of her. I would give much for a letter written in her hand.” She smiled, a little sadly.
“Yes, I suppose in a sense I’m fortunate. Only—you see, I always thought of my parents as happy people, and now I’m beginning to find they weren’t.”
“Is anybody happy all the time? I think you’re finding out that they are and were human, that’s all.”
I shook my head. “Perhaps. But I’m going to talk to my sister Gerry about my parents. After all, she’s known them for a lot longer than I have.”
27
Behind closed doors
“Why this sudden curiosity about Mama and Papa?”
Gerry and I were sitting at tea in the drawing room of Four Square, the house in which she and Ned had lived for twenty years. Like the Dermody house, it was situated in a quiet corner of the upper town, away from the bustle of the High Street. Littleberry was so small a town that the commercial establishments could be reached by a three minutes’ walk, and Ned had not much farther to go to reach his warehouse by the river.
The room was elegant yet comfortable, filled with the touches of family life that Whitcombe now seemed to lack—an embroidery hoop of Maryanne’s, Petey’s stamp collection, and a stack of books that might have been Ned’s or Thomas’s. Framed daguerreotypes of the children and grandchildren were everywhere.
Gerry looked well. Her heavy mass of corn-blond hair, streaked with white glints that made it look even richer in hue, shone in the golden afternoon light. Her eyes were an unusual shade of pale blue, much prettier than Blanche’s, and her strong, straight eyebrows were still as impressive as they’d ever been. She could curve those eyebrows into perfect arcs when she wished to indicate disapproval. That expression—so well known to the women of Littleberry—was trained on me.
“Am I not permitted to be curious?”
I tried my most winning smile. Since my earliest memories, I had been in awe of Gerry, who was twenty-two years my senior; we had never lived at Hyrst at the same time. Besides, most people were in awe of my oldest sister. I supposed that was a quality to be desired in the undisputed leader of Littleberry society, but it did rather keep one at a distance.
“Curiosity is vulgar.” Gerry secured a single lump of sugar in the silver tongs and dropped it into her tea. “The past is sometimes best left in the past.”
That remark was guaranteed to pique my curiosity even more. To give myself time to ponder my best approach, I took a sip of my tea. Gerry served tea in the most wonderfully fine china, the porcelain so thin it was almost transparent, the tea itself fragrant and delicious. I still remembered the first time I’d been allowed to drink from one of these wonderful cups, on my twelfth birthday.
I set my cup and saucer down carefully and searched my mind for the most diplomatic approach.
“I’m reading one of Mama’s journals from the time of the Crimean War. You know I’ve been going through her journals looking for her herbal recipes. But there’s more to them than that. I keep catching glimpses of Mama at a time when I wasn’t even born. I’m fascinated by them. Right now, for example, she seems somehow—well, unsettled.”
“What do you mean?” Gerry spoke a little sharply, and I looked at her in surprise.
“I have no idea. That’s why I’ve come to you, to see if you can fill in some of the gaps. There’s no harm in that, is there? It was a long time ago. Right now I’m in the years of your marriage to Ned and Lydia’s birth. It occurred to me that a young bride, about to become a mother, would be close to her own mother. Especially as Papa was clearly away a great deal.”
“Yes, he was.” Gerry turned to look out of the window so that her profile—which, Ned had once told me, had turned every man’s head during her first Season—was clearly outlined. A little weakening of the skin around her chin perhaps detracted from its former perfection, but the thoughtful, almost dreamy look on her face could have been that of the young woman she had once been.
“You’ve never really spoken to me about the past,” I said softly, watching the memories flicker across her face. “Nobody does. I sometimes feel as if I were a doll born into this family, not a real person. Michael was always a real person—wasn’t he?—because he was the longed-for son and heir. But I was a little pet to be fussed over and made much of and then put away in the nursery until you had time for me again.”
I said this without rancor. A sixth daughter is accustomed to being overlooked. I had benefited from a great deal of relative freedom, not to mention a bevy of servants who could always be relied upon for food, drink, and comfort. All in all, I had little to complain about.
“You were always so quiet.” A smile curved Gerry’s lips. “We never so much banished you to the nursery as allowed you to escape there when you were tired of playing behind a chair or sitting on someo
ne’s knee, lost in your own thoughts while we all talked. Michael was so horribly noisy and difficult that you seemed a little angel by comparison.”
She turned to face me. “It amazes me that you didn’t hear more than you were supposed to. Nothing ever seemed to touch you, not until Daniel died, and then you simply became withdrawn. Before that, you were—” She stopped to consider her next word. “You were self-sufficient. Until you and Daniel began to fall in love, you never seemed to need anyone. You never seemed unhappy. You never seemed to think other people might be unhappy. Except for Michael, of course. I don’t suppose even you could have missed Michael’s signs of distress.”
“I think Michael was the reason I learned to ignore other people.” I grinned. “When the nearest person to you is noisy and disruptive all the time, you build a wall and retreat behind it.” I took another sip of tea. “Are you trying to tell me there was something I missed?”
“Not always.” Gerry ran the fingertips of a beringed hand over her immaculate coiffure. “There were years when they seemed perfectly happy together. Those years inevitably resulted in more children. I’ve occasionally wondered how many of us there might have been if our parents had always been in harmony. You could easily have been the sixteenth daughter, not the sixth.”
“Heaven forbid. And in the years they weren’t happy? What happened?”
Gerry shrugged. “The usual sort of thing, I suppose, when people are bound together for life. Papa strayed a little, here and there. Never close to home, and never for long.”
“Strayed?” I stared at her, the meaning of her words gradually sinking in. This was not at all what I’d expected to hear. “You mean other women? Papa?”
I felt cold all over. My handsome, charming, kind father had always seemed to me like some princely ideal of a husband. Truth be told, it was an ideal that had made it easier for me to accept Justin’s proposal at a time when I had felt little more than affection for him. Daniel had gone and my youthful passion with him, and if I couldn’t have that passion I could at least found the rest of my life on fidelity and trust—as I thought my mother had.