by Lisa Berne
Finally he went into the house, stuck his gloves into the face-plate of the suit of armor which had belonged to one or another of his disturbingly savage ancestors, looked around for Bunch and shortly found him in his butler’s pantry, eyeing a long line of silverware laid out on a sideboard.
“What ho, Bunch.”
“Good afternoon, Your Grace.”
“What are you doing?”
“Counting the silver again, Your Grace.”
“Again?” Anthony dropped into a chair at the foot of the large oak table, and comfortably stretched out his legs underneath it. “Why again?”
“It pains me to say it, Your Grace, but I have reason to believe the Preston-Carnabys departed with several pieces in their luggage.”
“Ha,” said Anthony. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”
“Indeed, Your Grace?”
“Oh yes. The mother in particular. Had a shifty look about her, don’t you think?”
“I really couldn’t say, Your Grace.”
“You mean you wouldn’t, Bunch. Most tactful person I know. Did they take the best silver? For all I know Margaret might send the Bow Street Runners after them.”
“Acting on what I might, perhaps, describe as a kind of professional instinct, Your Grace, I took the liberty of instructing the staff to utilize the third best silver during the Preston-Carnabys’ visit. Fortunately it bears a remarkable resemblance to the family’s premier silver, and is easily replaceable.”
“Not only are you tactful, Bunch, you’re also the cleverest person I know. Well, by all means order however much additional silver you think we need. Are you hungry? Let’s have some sandwiches and ale.”
Bunch declined the invitation, having, he said, recently enjoyed luncheon with staff, but passed along the order to the kitchen, and before long sustenance had arrived and Anthony managed to coax him into sitting down at the table with him.
Halfway through his first sandwich Anthony paused, took a long drink of crisp ale, then put his glass down and gave a great sigh.
“Your Grace?” said Bunch, looking at him with the same friendly inscrutability that had marked their earliest exchanges. Even back then Anthony had seen that Bunch was perfect butler material. One never, ever knew what Bunch was thinking. But one always felt that Bunch was on one’s side.
It was a very comforting feeling.
“Bunch,” Anthony said, “ever had to do things you didn’t want to, but felt you should?”
“Yes indeed, Your Grace.”
“Did you do them anyway?”
“Yes, Your Grace. Duty being what it is.”
“Yes, duty,” said Anthony, rolling these three syllables around in his mouth as if they tasted bad, then had another swallow of ale. He sighed again. “Do you ever wonder what things would be like if poor old Terence hadn’t kicked the bucket? He’d be the Duke, not me.”
“That is so, Your Grace.”
“He’d have done a much better job at it. Lord, do you remember the way he’d walk into a room? As if he owned it, and the rest of us his lowly vassals.”
“He certainly had presence, Your Grace.”
“That’s one way to put it. On the other hand, if he had been the Duke, there wouldn’t have been Wakefield, and that would be a great loss.”
“Indeed so, Your Grace.”
“Wake’s splendid, isn’t he?”
“He is indeed, Your Grace.”
“But damn it, Bunch—duty.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Moodily Anthony finished his sandwich and then had another. “Bunch, will you do something for me?”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
“Could you send someone to the village first thing tomorrow? There’s something I want there.”
“Certainly, Your Grace. What is it?”
Anthony told him what it was, feeling—inexplicably and against all odds—just a tiny, tiny bit better.
On Monday morning Miss Simpkin returned to the Hall, bringing with her the items Great-grandmother had ordered. Sitting on the edge of the pink flowery sofa in the Rose Saloon, Jane looked at everything with delight and awe as Miss Simpkin unpacked them from her baskets and laid them out on the opposite sofa.
Four new gowns, two bonnets, three pairs of gloves, ditto stockings, two pairs of slippers, a shawl and a pelisse, some chemises and a frilly nightgown, petticoats and stays, a warm dressing-gown, two dainty reticules, and (set neatly on the carpet) a new pair of half-boots made of gleaming dark leather which the Riverton shoemaker had crafted to the exact specifications Miss Simpkin had relayed to him.
“They’re all so beautiful,” Jane breathed, practically itching to try everything on all at once, which was obviously not possible or even desirable as one would smother in all that clothing and also distort their lovely and exquisitely crafted proportions. “Thank you, Miss Simpkin! And thank you, Great-grandmother!”
Sitting upright in an armchair, neat as wax in an elegant gown of pale violet ornamented with a soft white fichu, Great-grandmother smiled at her. “You’re most welcome, my dear,” she answered, then began to order additional items from Miss Simpkin, who made a list in her little notebook.
More of everything!
More gowns, bonnets, gloves, wraps, underthings, shoes!
Jane listened in bewilderment, but politely waited until Great-grandmother had finished. Then she said, “But surely, Great-grandmother, this is enough. This is all I could ever want or need.”
Great-grandmother laughed, but kindly. “My dear, this is only the beginning—these are merely the basics, to tide you over.”
The basics?
Jane swept her eyes again over all her beautiful new things.
Back in Nantwich she might have literally sold her eyeteeth for a fraction of this bounty.
“But Great-grandmother—”
“Now Jane, I trust you’re not going to deny me the very great pleasure of seeing you properly outfitted.”
Jane looked rather uncertainly at Great-grandmother, whose voice was both benevolent and oddly wistful, giving Jane the distinct impression that if she were to kick up a fuss, it might actually hurt Great-grandmother’s feelings.
And that was something she most certainly didn’t want to do.
Great-grandmother had already done so much for her.
So she said, with a rush of deepest gratitude, “Of course not, Great-grandmother. Thank you so very much.”
Great-grandmother smiled at her, and Miss Simpkin went away with her baskets and her notebook, and then Jane helped Sally, the nice young servant who had been assigned to be her maid—an event Jane still had difficulty assimilating—carry everything up to her bedchamber.
Once that was done, Sally helped Jane dress in a light woolen day-gown of the softest, most delicious pink color which was, Jane was pleased to notice, already just a little tight around the waist.
She put on her new warm stockings, in a lovely cream color, and her equally lovely new half-boots with the delightful little fringe on either side of the silver-grommeted lace-holes, and after that the wonderfully warm pelisse in the prettiest silvery-gray wool, and the matching gray bonnet with the dashingly high poke, all lined in pink satin and with a row of tiny, pink, perfect artificial roses across the top.
And she went off to lessons feeling incredibly well-dressed.
“I say, Jane,” said Wakefield, eyeing her closely, “you look different somehow.”
“I’m wearing new clothes.”
“Oh, is that it? Did you outgrow your old ones?”
“Not really. They’re gifts from my great-grandmother.”
“Not my idea of good gifts. Wouldn’t you rather have something useful, like battledores and shuttlecocks? Or a bow and some arrows?”
“Those sound nice, too. It’s just that I hadn’t many clothes before.”
“And now you do?”
“Oh yes, heaps.”
“Well, that’s jolly.”
Jane
smiled at him. “Yes, it is.”
Mr. Pressley gave a gentle introductory clearing of the throat and changed the subject to the intricacies of English grammar, after which, rather to the relief of both Jane and Wakefield, they all moved on to current events, encompassing the powerful earthquake that had struck Aberdeen, Scotland, last August; the Spa Fields riots, just outside London, back in December; the brilliant success of Sir Humphry Davy’s lamp in heightening safety for coal miners; and the daring British adventurers who recently had set out to explore the Congo River in Africa.
“I’d like to visit Africa,” said Wakefield. “And see the wildybersts.”
“Perhaps, Master Wakefield, you mean wildebeests.”
“Yes, that’s what I said. I read in a book that they can run awfully fast. And they’re also known as ganoos.”
“It’s spelled G-N-U, Master Wakefield, but pronounced as ‘new.’”
“What’s the ‘g’ there for, then?”
“Dutch explorers called it gnoe,” explained Mr. Pressley. “Which then became ‘gnu’ in English.”
“It seems silly to keep on with the ‘g,’” said Wakefield critically. “Why don’t we just get rid of it?”
“A very good question, Master Wakefield, and one for which I don’t have a good answer. Language isn’t a logical thing.”
When lessons were over, and Jane and Wakefield were standing on the front steps of the vicarage, Wakefield remarked, “I like Mr. Pressley, don’t you, Jane?”
“Yes, I do too.”
“He’s not one of those grownups who acts like he knows everything. Because I don’t think grownups do.”
“No,” replied Jane thoughtfully, “I don’t believe they do either.”
“They? Aren’t you a grownup too, Jane? You look like one, at any rate.”
Jane laughed. “Wakefield, you do ask the most delightful questions.”
“Really? Aunt Margaret says I’m an awful nuisance with all the things I ask. She says children should be seen and not heard, and when I asked why, she said it just proved her point. Would you like to come over for luncheon? Father wanted me to tell you we’re having macaroni again. He asked Cook to make it just in case you did.”
“How very kind,” said Jane, a little flutter of pleasure running through her, whether it was because it felt so good to receive a friendly invitation, or because she was hungry, or because she realized she was getting very fond of Wakefield, or because she would soon be seeing the Duke again: it was unclear to her at the moment. All she knew was that she was suffused with a light, happy, warm, floaty feeling that felt marvelous. She said to Wakefield, “That macaroni was so delicious. Yes, I’d love to come, thank you.”
So Jane sent the Penhallow groom and carriage back to the Hall, and drove with Wakefield and Higson in the pony-cart over to Hastings. Wakefield even let her take the reins for a little while, which was a bit nerve-wracking but also extremely exciting, and Wakefield said that she would make a capital whip someday, a compliment which Jane, flattered, acknowledged happily.
When she and Wakefield went into the house, Jane handed over her bonnet and pelisse to a footman, thanking him and then glancing past his shoulder to see Bunch bowing politely to Wakefield.
She saw, now, as she hadn’t the other day in the flurry of her arrival here at Hastings, that Bunch was very distinguished in his sober dark clothes, but also so intensely subtle, so unobtrusive in his manner, that one had to look closely at him to realize that he was of middling height and middling weight, with a nondescript face and a little dab of a nose and eyes of a vague kind of hazel but within them a quick intelligence, a perceptiveness, that was extraordinary and also, somehow, quite comforting.
Jane remembered as well that as a young vulnerable servant Bunch had risked his own well-being to be of service to a pain-filled, bedridden boy.
Clearly Bunch was a special sort of person.
As she came closer she smiled and said warmly, “Good afternoon, Bunch. I hope you’re well?”
“Indeed yes, Miss Kent, thank you. I trust the same is true for you?”
“Oh yes. Thank you, Bunch.”
From behind Jane a footman opened the front door, bringing with it a rush of chilly air and—Jane saw as she turned about—also the Duke, in his long greatcoat and tall hat and black scuffed boots.
Their eyes met and they smiled at each other.
“I say, you’re here,” said the Duke, as if something wonderful had happened.
“Yes.”
The Duke stripped off his gloves and gave them, along with his hat and greatcoat, to the footman, and strode forward. “I’m glad.”
“So am I.”
“I didn’t know if you would.”
“Wakefield invited me.”
“Did he tell you about the macaroni?”
“Oh yes.”
“I asked Cook to make extra.”
“How very kind of you. Your Grace.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Very.”
“So am I. It’s been ages since breakfast.”
“It feels that way.”
“I say, you look different somehow, Miss Kent.”
“I have some new clothes. Your Grace.”
“Oh, is that it? They’re quite fetching.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Your gown is a delightful shade of pink. If you don’t mind my saying so.”
“I don’t mind at all.”
“Extremely delightful.”
“Thank you. I like it, too.”
“It suits you.”
“That’s so kind of you to say. Your Grace.”
“Are those new boots as well?”
“Yes, they are.” Jane lifted up the hem of her gown just an inch or two, so that he could have a better look. Great-grandmother Kent would have called her a Jezebel, but Jane did it anyway. Also, she would have liked to lift up the hem quite a bit higher, but now, of course, was neither the time nor the place. Rather to her regret.
“They’re awfully smart,” said the Duke.
“Thank you.”
“Are they comfortable?”
“Oh yes. So far.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Sometimes one has to break in new boots, and they hurt.”
“Not with these.”
“That’s capital.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Jane realized that she probably sounded like a blithering idiot but found that, one, she couldn’t seem to stop, and two, she didn’t really care, because the Duke sounded like one also, and three, she was feeling extremely happy.
“They look just right for a nice stroll in the outdoors.”
“I agree.”
“Perhaps we could do that after luncheon.”
“I’d like that.”
“If you’re interested, there’s a topiary to the back of the house.”
“What’s a topiary?”
“Shrubs which have been clipped, you know, into various shapes. Our head gardener McTavish is a whiz at it. Wait till you see his rendition of Aphrodite rising from her clamshell. It’s ripping.”
“Who is Aphrodite, and why is she rising from a clamshell?”
“She’s the Greek goddess of love. She was born in the sea out of foam, then floats to land in a giant clamshell. So she must be getting up to go ashore.”
“That’s quite a story.”
“Isn’t it? One wonders why the clamshell didn’t sink underneath her weight. But that’s mythology for you. Full of loopholes.”
Jane nodded. “Well, I’d love to see McTavish’s Aphrodite.”
“Splendid.”
“I say,” intervened Wakefield impatiently, “you’re not the only ones who are hungry. Can’t we go eat?”
The Duke blinked, looking a little as if he were emerging from a pleasant dream. “By all means,” he said. “Is luncheon ready, Bunch?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Excellent. Lay on, Macduff.”
As they began walking along the wide, high hallway to the family dining-parlor, Wakefield, who had placed himself between the Duke and herself, said, “Father, Jane might not know who that is. The only Shakespeare she knows is what I told her about Hamlet. Jane, shall I tell you who Macduff is?”
“Yes, please, Wakefield.”
“He’s the thane of Fife in Macbeth, and—Father, what’s a thane again? I forget.”
“A Scottish chieftain.”
“Oh yes, I remember now. Father, if we were Scottish, would you be a thane?”
“I believe the term has died out in recent centuries.”
“Oh. If it hadn’t, and we were Scottish, Father, would we be wearing kilts right now?”
“Possibly,” answered the Duke, and Jane immediately found herself picturing him wearing one. He would, she thought, look very dashing dressed like that. She wondered if he had hairy legs. Which would be delicious.
“Well, I’m glad we’re not,” Wakefield said, “because I wouldn’t like to eat haggis. At any rate, Jane, Macduff kills Macbeth in the end, which is a good thing, because Macbeth’s a rotter.”
“Why is he a rotter?”
“Because in order to get what he wants, he does all sorts of terrible things.”
“What does he want?”
“To become king.”
“And what terrible things does he do?”
“He murders people.”
“He does sound like a rotter. And it sounds like he gets what he deserves in the end. Oh, hullo, kitty.” Jane paused as they came to a white marble statue of a severe-looking man’s head and shoulders set atop a pillar, on either side of which was a very expensive-looking chair upholstered in elaborately embroidered, deep red fabric. On one of the chairs was curled up a large, morose-looking tabby cat. Jane reached out a hand to pet it, then stopped herself. “Is this the cat that bit you, Wakefield?”
“Yes, that’s Aunt Margaret’s cat.”
Jane pulled her hand away, then realized that she was exactly the same height as the statue. It was rather disconcerting looking into his face, as he seemed to be frowning quite horribly at her, so she turned away and glanced up at the Duke. “Is this one of your relations?”