Brave New Earl

by Ashford, Jane

  “Perhaps. If one wishes to make excuses.” She did not. People could overcome their upbringing. She had.

  “So I see why you were so concerned about young Geoffrey,” continued Mrs. Thorpe. “You mean to make good fathers of them both.”

  “Both?”

  “Lord Furness, and then Geoffrey, in his turn.”

  Jean stared at her. She’d never put it that way. But the idea grew in her mind.

  “The same goes for mothers, I suppose. Though they do say that’s more of a natural instinct.”

  A snort escaped Jean. “You have children?”

  “I do not,” replied the older woman. “I would have liked them. But it never happened for me. It seems I’m barren.” Her tone was melancholy but even. “Still, one can be motherly. I’m always ready to comfort and advise youngsters in the theater.”

  Jean didn’t know if this was an offer or a simple comment, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t want or need any maternal impulses. She wanted to end this conversation. “You should come and meet Geoffrey,” she said. “And Tom. You’ll like Tom.” She went to the door and opened it, standing ready to depart.

  Even Mrs. Thorpe couldn’t ignore such an obvious signal. She rose, and they walked together up to the nursery.

  Thirteen

  The noise was obvious even before they entered the nursery a few minutes later. Jean opened the door to find Geoffrey racing around the perimeter of the large room, yelling at the top of his lungs and waving a stick with a tuft of feathers fastened to the end. His high-pitched shrieks bounced off the peaked ceiling; his small feet pounded on the wooden floor.

  Tom lay in wait at the far side of the chamber, ready to grab the child when he passed by, while Lily the nursery maid tried to remove breakable or hazardous objects from his path. Geoffrey skipped and leapt. Just before he reached Tom, he veered one way, then the other, causing Tom to stumble into the cone-shaped tent. It collapsed around the older lad, tangling him in folds of cloth.

  Geoffrey laughed. He put the stick in his teeth and swarmed up the draperies on one tall window like a maddened cat. He swayed at the top, leering down at them with a mouthful of feathers. With his red-gold hair and celestial-blue eyes, he looked like a cherub gone wrong.

  “I can’t get up there,” said Tom, beating back the encroaching tent and rising. “I’m too heavy. The curtains will come down, and Geoffrey with them.”

  Geoffrey opened his mouth to say, “Ha!” The momentarily forgotten stick clattered to the floor. “I’m a mighty chief!” the boy declared. “You can’t catch me.”

  “He likes to climb,” said Jean, remembering the incident at Cheddar Gorge. “He’s…a very lively child.”

  “My dear, I work in the theater,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “This is nothing.” She stepped over to pick up the stick and examine the feathers. “This looks quite old.”

  “The label on the shelf said it was Mohawk,” answered Tom. “I don’t know what that means. It’s part of the old lord’s collections, which we just went in to look at. I told Geoffrey to leave it alone.” Unusually, he sounded a bit weary.

  Jean introduced them, then looked back up. “Geoffrey, this is Mrs. Thorpe. Now that she’s here, I can stay longer.”

  The boy looked puzzled.

  How was she to explain a chaperone to a five-year-old?

  “A duenna,” said Tom. “I heard that word in Bristol. She’s like a…a nursery maid for young ladies.”

  Mrs. Thorpe laughed.

  “Come down and say how do you do,” Jean added as if this was a normal introduction. “You are one of her hosts, you know.”

  Geoffrey cocked his head, surveying the group below him with solemn doubt. Then he smiled—a sweet, charming smile that reminded Jean of his father while being all his own—and slid down the drapery to alight at their feet. “Hello,” he said. His polite little bow was all a high stickler could ask. “Are you her nursery maid?”

  “More a companion,” the older woman replied. She cast a shrewd eye over the group. “Like you and Tom, perhaps.”

  “Oh.” Geoffrey nodded. “Where did you come from?”

  “I’ve been staying in the village for a little while.”

  The boy looked her over more closely. “Are you the mystery lady?”

  The two women exchanged a surprised glance.

  “They talk about her in the kitchen,” Geoffrey went on. “Because the other lord said he met her on his walks. Cook thinks she’s a French spy. Only Bradford said that’s daft because the war’s over. And anyway, what would she spy on here? Lily reckons she’s run away from a tie-rannical husband.”

  Jean and Mrs. Thorpe looked at Lily, who flushed.

  “I think Clayton knows,” Geoffrey added. “He looks like he does. But he won’t tell.”

  “I was staying in a cottage for a bit of rest,” said Mrs. Thorpe. “Not hiding. Or spying.”

  Geoffrey looked disappointed.

  “I did meet a French spy once though.”

  “You did?”

  Mrs. Thorpe nodded. “Shall I tell you the story?”

  An affirmative chorus encouraged her.

  “Come and sit.” Mrs. Thorpe settled on a battered sofa. Her audience found seats around her, Geoffrey right at her side.

  “The young man in question—his name was Etienne—joined a London theater company as a cover.”

  “What’s a cover?” asked Geoffrey.

  “He pretended to be an actor. Do you know what an actor is?”

  The boy looked wary, as if he didn’t want to admit ignorance and yet wished for information.

  “It’s like when you’re Robin Hood and I’m the sheriff,” said Tom. “That’s playacting. Only actors do it inside a big building in front of a load of people.”

  “Like a barn?”

  Tom shook his head. “A fancy building with velvet draperies and chairs. The actors have special clothes to wear. Sometimes there’s dancing.” Seeing that the others were looking at him, he added, “I saw a play once—part of one—in Bristol.”

  “So the spy was pretending to pretend,” Geoffrey said.

  He really was an exceptionally quick child, Jean thought as Mrs. Thorpe nodded. “But after a while, Etienne found that he enjoyed acting more than spying,” said the older woman.

  “Why would he?” Geoffrey wrinkled his nose. “Didn’t he want to sneak around and find secrets? And fight with swords?”

  “Well, I’m afraid he wasn’t very good at any of those things. And he was rather a good actor. Audiences loved him.”

  Jean caught the twinkle in Mrs. Thorpe’s eyes. She wondered how well the lady had known this young Frenchman.

  “So he just stopped being a spy?” Geoffrey asked with disgust.

  “He might have, but someone, er, tattled on him. One of the other actors told the Home Office he was a spy. It seemed he would be arrested.”

  “So then he had to fight.”

  Mrs. Thorpe looked rueful, clearly aware that her tale wasn’t going over well with her smallest listener. “Etienne decided to go back to France,” she continued. “We, some people I know, dressed him as a young lady so that he could slip away to a ship.”

  Geoffrey gazed up at her. “He ran away? Dressed as a girl?”

  “Yes. It was his most challenging role, and he did it superbly. He made it home, too. After a while, he went to work in a theater in Paris, and he’s still there. He specializes in playing oafish Englishmen.”

  “Really?” asked Jean.

  “All quite true,” said Mrs. Thorpe with a graceful gesture. “You might say we shouldn’t have helped him, but he had no important information, and we couldn’t see him hanged.”

  “That’s not a very good story,” Geoffrey said.

  “Not much action was there? I’ll do better next time.”
<
br />   The boy shrugged.

  The door of the nursery opened, and Lord Furness walked in. At once, the room felt smaller to Jean; the air seemed to crackle with energy. He fixed her with a penetrating stare, as if no one else was present, and said, “Ah, there you are. It’s a lovely day. I thought we might take a walk in the garden.”

  Geoffrey climbed down from the sofa and walked toward him. “There’s frogs in the pond,” he said. “I could show you.”

  Benjamin tore his gaze from his lovely, baffling houseguest and looked down. His son looked back at him, blue eyes clear, though a little wary. Benjamin saw the problem at once. The nursery was Geoffrey’s territory. It was logical to conclude that anyone coming here was looking for him. In fact, Benjamin had searched several other parts of the house first. “Frogs,” he repeated.

  “There’s baby ones, too,” Geoffrey replied. “They’re called tadpoles. Tom told me.” He made a wriggling motion with his hand.

  Benjamin hesitated. He saw doubt begin to creep into his son’s face, quickly replaced by a stoic blankness. He couldn’t tell the boy he’d misunderstood the invitation. “I must have a look at those,” he said. “Have you ever seen a tadpole, Miss Saunders?”

  “No.”

  “You must come as well then.” Benjamin edged around to cut woman and boy out of the herd filling the nursery.

  “I suppose that’s quite all right since Geoffrey is accompanying you,” said Mrs. Thorpe.

  He’d thought only of the advantages of her presence when the Wandrells called. Now Benjamin realized there were a number of disadvantages as well. Mrs. Thorpe was another barrier between him and Jean Saunders. His new houseguest smiled at him as if she knew precisely what he was thinking.

  “I should fetch my bonnet and—”

  “No need. It’s quite warm. We’ll go as we are. You don’t care about a hat, do you, Geoffrey?”

  “’Course not.”

  No more than he would have as a child, Benjamin thought. Hats were good for nothing but falling off at inopportune moments and earning one a scolding for careless destruction of haberdashery. “Lead on,” he told the boy. He thought of offering Miss Saunders his arm, but settled for chivying her gently toward the stairs. She didn’t seem reluctant. Bemused, yes. That was all right.

  It was a beautiful spring day. The sun was warm, punctuated by a few floating clouds. Flowers were in bloom, scenting the air all over the gardens. Bees hummed around them, and birdsong trilled. His grounds held several romantically secluded spots. Benjamin went over them in his mind, plotting various routes.

  “The pond’s this way,” Geoffrey said to Miss Saunders.

  That was one of them, Benjamin thought. There was a bench. But Geoffrey would be more interested in the muddy verge, he suspected.

  A few minutes later, the boy squatted there, water lapping at the toes of his little boots. “There,” he said, pointing. “Tadpoles.” He looked over his shoulder and up at them, triumphant.

  Miss Saunders bent beside him. “The things that are all head and tail?”

  “That’s it,” said Benjamin. “Frogs start out that way. They develop legs later.”

  “There are so many. You’ll be up to your ears in frogs soon.”

  “No,” said Geoffrey. “Birds eat ’em. They pick ’em out of the water and swallow them down.” He lifted his chin and made a gulping noise. “They’ve gotten a lot already.”

  Miss Saunders nodded.

  “Must feel funny in their throats,” Geoffrey added. “Wriggling like that. They die in the bird’s stomach, I reckon.” He looked to his father for confirmation.

  “I suppose they do.” Not an image to beguile a young lady. He would take her to the bluebell wood next time, Benjamin decided.

  “I wanted to put some in a fishbowl and watch ’em,” Geoffrey went on. “But Tom said they’d likely die.” He glanced up again, as if hoping for a different answer.

  “Very true,” said Benjamin. He had no idea whether it was or not, but he knew he didn’t want his house filled with newly mobile frogs.

  “Fish are surprisingly fragile,” said Miss Saunders. “I had two goldfish. Not at the same time. They both died.” When her companions gazed at her, she turned her head away.

  “Did you have a fish funeral?” Geoffrey asked.

  “No. The servants just disposed of them.”

  “I’d’ve had a funeral,” he declared. “Look!”

  On the opposite side of the pond, a flash of color. In the next instant, a bird flew off with a tadpole in its beak.

  “That’s a kingfisher,” Geoffrey said. “Tom told me.” He stood up to watch it disappear. “They’re kings because they’re the best of all the fishers.”

  “Lovely,” said Miss Saunders.

  She was lovely, Benjamin thought. He needed to speak to her, to hold her again. “Shall we walk?” he asked.

  As he’d hoped, Geoffrey ran ahead of them. He found a sturdy stick and waved it about like a sword, beheading random bits of vegetation with great panache.

  “You should get him a dog,” Miss Saunders said.

  “You seem determined to populate my home with animals.”

  She laughed. “It just seems natural that Geoffrey would have a dog. Look at him run and jump.”

  “Did you have a dog? Along with your fish?”

  “No.” She bit off the word.

  Benjamin took the hint and didn’t ask further. “We had three when I was a boy,” he said instead. “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.”

  “What?”

  He acknowledged the oddity of the names with a nod. “My mother found them as tiny puppies in a shed that had caught fire.”

  “A fiery furnace?”

  “Not quite so bad, but it made her think of the Biblical story. They were her dogs. Papa had no interest in pets. We ended up calling them Shad, Mesh, and Ben, of course.”

  “Animals weren’t allowed in my home. Mama thought dogs dirty and noisy, cats sly and cold.”

  The more Benjamin heard about her mother the less he liked her. “Parrots? Rabbits? Hedgehogs?”

  As he’d hoped, she smiled. “I never heard her opinion of those.”

  “Heigh-ho!” shouted Geoffrey. He’d leapt onto a large, flat rock at the side of the path and was fencing with an encroaching thistle.

  The stone, and the trees behind it, sparked Benjamin’s memory. “Ah,” he said. He went to a certain spot in the thicket, pushed aside one large leafy branch, and then another. A narrow, twisting path, just barely visible in the leaf litter, was revealed.

  “Hey!” shouted Geoffrey.

  “What is it?” Jean asked.

  “Come and see.”

  His smile was so impish that Jean went, even though the opening was dark and close. Slivers of sunlight did filter down through the tangled branches.

  Lord Furness bent his tall figure and stepped inside.

  “Hey,” called Geoffrey again. He pushed past Jean and plunged into the thicket. The opening fit him much better than the adults.

  The path bent around great clumps of roots. Jean had to duck under swathes of bramble. At one point she was so hunched over, she was nearly crawling. Her chest tightened in the constricted space.

  And then the way opened out into a strange half hut in the middle of the thicket.

  Four posts held a roof of old planks inches over Jean’s head. There were no walls, only the thick vegetation. A scatter of flat stones covered the ground. It would be dry here in the rain.

  “How did you know about this place?” Geoffrey demanded. Hands on hips, he confronted his father, looking outraged. “It’s mine! I didn’t even show Tom.”

  “I made it,” replied Lord Furness. He had to stoop to stand in the odd little building. “When I was ten years old. It was my secret hideout.”


  The boy stared up at him, his face shadowed. “It’s my secret hideout.” His voice held astonishment as well as resentment.

  “I’m amazed you found it.”

  “I’m an explorer,” declared Geoffrey. “I know every place in the gardens.”

  “So did I. Still do, I suppose.” The man looked about as if remembering many happy days in this place. “Did you find the treasure?”

  Geoffrey gazed up at him, startled. “What treasure?”

  “Come and see.” He led the boy to the back edge of the little shelter. Kneeling, Lord Furness worked his fingertips under a flat rock that lay half in and half out of the cleared area. He pulled until it came free of the earth, then turned it over like the lid of a container and set it aside. “Help me dig,” he said to Geoffrey. “You can use your stick to loosen the soil.”

  After another moment of hesitation, the boy fell to his knees beside his father.

  They dug together, with rising enthusiasm. Jean watched them while fighting her need to run. This space wasn’t closed in, she told herself. It had no walls. She could leave whenever she wanted.

  The task took several minutes. Father and son had grubby hands by the time they uncovered a small metal box and pulled it from the hole they’d made. “I buried this years ago,” Lord Furness said. “I’d almost forgotten.”

  He set it down between them. Man and boy looked at each other, eyes gleaming in the dimness. Geoffrey looked like his mother, Jean thought, but he also resembled his father in more subtle ways. Their faces showed identical glee at the result of the treasure hunt.

  Lord Furness pushed the box toward Geoffrey. “It’s yours now.”

  The boy’s lips parted. He blinked, then set his small hand on the lid as if it was an emperor’s hoard. “What’s in it?” he whispered.

  “You know, I don’t quite recall. Things I cherished, years ago.”

  Geoffrey started to open the box.

  “No,” said his father.

  The boy snatched his hand away from the lid. His face went carefully blank.

  “Open it when you’re alone.” Lord Furness added, “Don’t let anyone else see. Whatever’s in there, it’s your secret now.”