Brave New Earl

by Jane Ashford

  Struck by a sudden impulse, Benjamin went over and opened a door he never opened. The bedchamber beyond was barren—with the requisite furniture and draperies, but no ornament. He’d had Alice’s room cleared out a week after she died. The sight of her clothes and trinkets—the mere knowledge that they existed—had lacerated him beyond bearing. He hadn’t thought that Geoffrey might want some of them. He hadn’t thought at all, actually. “Did I do wrong, Alice?” he said aloud.

  A small sound, a seeming response, startled him. Had he really heard it? And was he in the presence of a ghost? For months after his wife died, he’d half hoped for a visitation. Futilely, of course. Was he to receive one now? Preposterous. But he couldn’t help saying, “Alice?”

  The soft, slithery sound came again, and this time he traced it to the cupboard at the top of the wardrobe. Which he knew to be locked; the key was in his jewelry case with his cuff links.

  Benjamin went over and pulled at the cupboard door. Locked indeed. But a sudden flurry of movement from inside was not the least ghostlike. He knocked sharply. “Geoffrey?”

  “Go away!” came the muffled reply.

  Not bothering to argue, Benjamin went to fetch the key. He was not astonished to find it gone. Back at the wardrobe, he said, “Come out of there at once.”

  “Won’t!”

  “Then I shall have to break the door. That would be a shame.”

  There was a short silence. Then the key turned in the lock. One of the cupboard doors opened, and Geoffrey peered down at him.

  Benjamin opened the other, revealing a chamber pot sitting next to his son. He didn’t care to imagine using it in such a confined space. There was a clutter of stuff in the back of the cupboard as well. “Come down,” he said, holding out his arms.

  Geoffrey didn’t jump into them. He climbed down, using carvings on the wood of the lower doors as handholds. “I fell asleep. I’m hungry.”

  “You’ve no one to blame but yourself for that.”

  The boy scowled. “This is my mama’s room.”

  “It was. How do you know that?”

  “Cook told me.”

  The cook was a testy creature and often impatient with Geoffrey, though an artist with viands. Not the best source of information, Benjamin thought. He should have realized that the servants would talk about Alice, even if he didn’t. He should have realized a number of things.

  “She died in here,” Geoffrey added.

  Benjamin braced himself for questions, reproach, tears. What should he say? Geoffrey’s expression was bland, uninformative. “Yes,” Benjamin said. He’d hated this room for so many months. Now, it seemed just empty.

  “The old lord died in your room. His wife died in the one across the hall from here.”

  Startled, Benjamin gazed down at him. “Are you keeping a list?”

  “I ’spect people have died all over this house. It’s old.” Geoffrey said this with a certain relish.

  “Yes.”

  “The lord with the long curls in the picture gallery broke his neck on a hunt. Over a regular rasper. Bradford said so.”

  “It’s true. You’re, er, interested in death, are you?” What a foolish thing to say to a small child, Benjamin thought. Was this fascination related to Alice? Could it be when it appeared so…clinical?

  “Tom doesn’t know where his family died,” Geoffrey answered with no sign of distress. “’Cept maybe Bristol.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I do.” This knowledge seemed to gratify him.

  “Indeed,” said Benjamin. “I’m still alive, of course.”

  Geoffrey gave him one of the measuring looks that always made the boy seem older than his years. Benjamin wondered if he ought to say something comforting about Alice. He couldn’t say she’d loved her son, because she’d died without even seeing him. She would have loved him of course, but was that a consolation? “You look just like your mother,” he said. And then nearly cursed. Had the servants talked about his reaction to this fact?

  The boy still seemed unaffected. “I know. She’s in the library.”

  Did he believe Alice was actually there? Had Benjamin’s brooding over the portrait taught him that? Benjamin felt all at sea and just a bit aggrieved. Gentlemen of his acquaintance were not required to grapple with such questions. Women took care of the children. Didn’t they? Finally, he said, “Her picture is there, yes.”

  Geoffrey stared up at him. Benjamin had rarely felt at such a loss for words in his life. Before he found any, his son shrugged and turned away. “I’m hungry,” he said again. He started to walk away.

  “Wait a moment.” He’d been searching for a miscreant before they veered into this exploration of mortality, Benjamin remembered. “We have certain matters to discuss. Concerning Miss Saunders’s kitten.”

  Geoffrey’s expression grew sullen.

  Benjamin pressed on. “You shouldn’t have taken it from her room. You understand that was wrong?”

  “I would’ve put him back,” his son replied impatiently.

  “And Lily says you lied about having it.”

  “I did not! I didn’t speak!”

  “A lie isn’t always spoken aloud. Not admitting what you’d done was a lie.”

  Geoffrey scowled. He was quite good at that, Benjamin noted.

  “Did you take Miss Saunders’s kitten because of…anything you saw in the attic?”

  The boy looked less, not more, self-conscious. His celestial-blue eyes, Alice’s eyes, fixed on Benjamin. Then he let out a sigh and spoke like someone wishing to conclude an irritating bit of business. “What’s the punishment?”

  “Eh?”

  “That’s the rule. There’s always a punishment. Lily gives really stupid ones.”

  He appeared to see this as an annoying game. Misbehave, receive a silly punishment, and forget the matter. “An honorable gentleman makes things right,” Benjamin said. “When he sees that he has made a mistake, he takes steps to correct it.”

  Geoffrey’s face showed apprehension for the first time. Or perhaps it was just confusion?

  “What do you think the punishment should be?”

  His son blinked, astonished.

  Briefly, Benjamin enjoyed seeing the boy as bewildered as he was coming to feel much of the time. Then, Geoffrey’s cerulean eyes flamed. “I won’t give up Fergus!” he declared. He stood straight and fierce, his little hands closed into fists. “If you try to take him away, I’ll…I’ll—”

  “No.” Benjamin knelt and started to put his arm around the small, rigid figure. But Geoffrey stepped away before he could touch him. Benjamin put his reaction to this aside. “No, that’s too much.” And it was too much to ask the boy to choose his own punishment, he realized. “You will apologize to Miss Saunders. And you will leave her kitten alone unless you have her permission to play with it. Also, you will have no cakes for…a week.”

  Geoffrey’s glare gradually eased. His chest still rose and fell rapidly. “Muffins?” he asked.

  “No muffins. Or jam. In fact, no sweets of any kind.”

  “Not even cocoa?” The wheedle of negotiation had entered his tone.

  “Not even.” Feeling a little foolish on his knees, Benjamin rose. “So that’s settled then.” His son shrugged and turned toward the door. “You shouldn’t have taken that key from my room,” Benjamin added.

  Geoffrey’s hand went to his shirtfront and clutched at something beneath the cloth. Did he have the key on a string around his neck? “It’s mine!”

  Benjamin glanced into the still-open cupboard. He could just see a mass of white crumpled at the back. From a spray of lace along the edge, he thought he recognized one of Alice’s nightgowns. With a pang of muddled emotion, he let the subject drop.

  Twenty minutes later, Geoffrey stood before Miss Saunders and apologized. Not exact
ly sullenly, Benjamin judged—more like a workman ticking off an irksome task.

  “I’m sorry I took your kitten,” he said. “I won’t do it again.”

  Miss Saunders nodded and smiled at the boy.

  “I’m sorry I shut him up in the basket, too.”

  The tone of this second part was different. Insinuating? But that was ridiculous, Benjamin thought. Still, some odd emotion seemed to travel between the other two, palpable but mysterious. Unless he was imagining it; surely he was.

  “That’s good,” said Miss Saunders, no longer smiling.

  Geoffrey looked at Benjamin, waited for a nod to signal that his duties were complete, and left the library.

  The room was very quiet in his wake.

  Benjamin wouldn’t have minded a compliment. He wanted to feel he’d done well, fulfilled some of his responsibilities as a father. On the other hand, he wasn’t certain the apology had gone well. For some reason. “I don’t recall things being so complicated when I was a child,” he said. “None of this trouble.”

  “You were the child,” replied Miss Saunders.

  He shook his head. “My mother was just better at it,” he said, trying not to sound aggrieved. “Everyone knows women are more suited to caring for children.”

  “Everyone?” Her voice vibrated with some new outrage. “Does everyone?”

  “It is a generally accepted—”

  “So you’ve never encountered a bad mother? Not that you would have noticed, since women are simply designed by nature to care for their children. As everyone knows. And so, whatever they do must be right.”

  He took offense at her contemptuous tone. “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, you repeated platitudes. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “How the deuce have I offended you this time?”

  “Women can be as cruel as men,” she replied bewilderingly. “More so!” Her dark eyes burned into him, as if to etch her point onto his brain. Then she walked out.

  “Damn it all!” exclaimed Benjamin. He kicked at an ottoman. “What the devil was that about? What the hell is wrong with the woman?”

  His gaze caught on the portrait of Alice above the fireplace. “You never spoke to me that way. You thought my ideas very astute, as I recall. Yes, and admirable, too.”

  And now, instead of Alice, he had a female who exploded like a defective cannon at the least excuse—indeed with no excuse whatsoever, as far as he could see. Who complained and argued. Who…set him afire when she kissed him.

  Benjamin stood very still in the middle of the library. Why had he thought instead of Alice? He wasn’t going to put Miss Saunders in his wife’s place. Certainly not. He’d never know what to expect from one day to the next. Which was not—emphatically not—a curiously attractive notion.

  Nine

  The following day, Jean was surprised to hear the clatter of a carriage coming up the drive of Furness Hall. No one else had visited since she arrived, and curiosity drew her downstairs to see who this might be. She found her host and his uncle already at the front door, outside in the sunny afternoon. The arrival must be an oddity indeed to have brought them there. “Were you expecting someone?” she asked.

  “No,” replied Lord Furness. “It’s a post chaise,” he added. “Not one of the neighbors.” The carriage pulled up, and a lady stepped out. “Now I am experiencing déjà vu,” he went on. “Chaise, unknown female, trunks. Is this your doing, Uncle? Not your friend from the village, I hope?”

  “No, of course not. Looks nothing like her. And why would she be in a chaise?”

  Jean rushed past them onto the drive. “Sarah?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Hmm,” Jean heard Lord Furness say behind her. “Rather the look of a superior lady’s maid.”

  “I believe she is,” replied Lord Macklin. “I seem to recall seeing her at the Phillipsons’.”

  “You were quicker than I expected,” Jean said. She was so glad to see Sarah.

  “It seemed you wanted me to hurry.”

  “Yes, I did.” Jean gazed at the two large trunks tied on the back of the chaise. “You’ve brought so much.”

  “It was Mrs. Phillipson’s opinion that I should pack all your things.”

  “All my things?” Jean was heartily sick of the clothes she had with her, but she hadn’t meant to abandon the Phillipson house altogether.

  “All her things?” Lord Furness echoed from the doorway.

  Sarah handed Jean a note. She broke the wax seal, read it, and crumpled it in her hand. “What did you say to Mrs. Phillipson?” she asked Sarah. “She bids me farewell, sorry that my visit was so brief.”

  “I said nothing about that, miss. Your letter put me in a flurry. I was packing when she came to speak to me. She said something about her grandson and then directed me to take everything. I did think that perhaps she’d heard from someone else down here.”

  “Who?”

  Sarah merely shook her head.

  Jean marched back to the doorway. “Did you write to the Phillipsons?” she asked, including both noblemen in the question.

  “I did,” said Lord Macklin. “As I would to any of my friends. The blandest of letters. I said nothing that would get you thrown out.”

  “I haven’t been thrown out!” Though in a beneficent way, perhaps she had been; she couldn’t easily return to the Phillipsons this spring. “I’ve been…inconvenienced, because you inserted yourself into my affairs.” She didn’t intend to share the rest of Mrs. Phillipson’s message, or to reveal the history of their negotiations over Geoffrey. “I wish you’d left well enough alone.” Jean was aware of Sarah’s curious, amused observation. And, even more, of Lord Furness’s steady gaze.

  “I cannot believe that anything in my letter had this effect,” the older man replied.

  Miss Saunders was pure delight when that fiery spirit was directed at someone else, Benjamin thought. Particularly someone like his uncle, whose assumption of omniscience was slightly inflated. In his opinion. How forceful she was! As well as extraordinarily pretty when her eyes snapped with indignation.

  “If there is any question of propriety,” Uncle Arthur began, “I would be happy to write again.”

  “No!”

  He should have offered a simple apology, Benjamin thought. It was easy to see the wiser course when Miss Saunders’s ire was not directed at him.

  “There is no such question,” she informed him. “And you promised you wouldn’t interfere again.”

  “Again?” asked Benjamin. This was better than a play.

  “I certainly won’t. But if I can set right any misunderstanding…”

  She walked up to the older man. She might be inches shorter, Benjamin thought, but she made him draw back. “I will do any setting right that takes place,” she said. “Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  Silently, Benjamin urged his uncle to add an apology. Or more than one. Repetition was not unwelcome in such cases, he’d found. But Uncle Arthur only nodded. Miss Saunders looked at the waiting postilions. “Yes, all right, bring the trunks in,” she said.

  At this order, Benjamin was struck by a mixture of excitement and apprehension. “Do you have nowhere to go?”

  She went very still. The contrast between her previous animation and this sudden quiet was striking. “I have any number of places to go. Do you want the trunks left on the chaise? Shall I go to one of them?”

  Easy to see what others ought to say, Benjamin thought. And impossible to apply the same good sense to oneself—or to escape the reaction to remarks better left unsaid. “No. I was only concerned about your welfare.”

  “My welfare is…quite well, thank you.” She marched inside, followed by her maid and then the postilions carrying a trunk. Benjamin stifled a laugh when the maid’s hand reached
out, seemingly involuntarily, to her mistress’s untamable hair.

  In her bedchamber, Jean waited until the postilions had put down their burden and departed for the second trunk. Then she flattened out the crumpled note and read it again. “Do you know what Mrs. Phillipson wrote?” she asked Sarah.

  “No, miss.”

  “She commends me for my cleverness in becoming so close to Lord Furness. She thinks he would make a fine husband for me, and I a consoling wife for him. Consoling! She says I mustn’t imagine they would have any objections. In fact, they would be very pleased at the match.” Jean gritted her teeth. She hated the notion of a bridge burned by somebody else.

  “Well, it is only her opinion,” replied Sarah calmly. She took a key from her reticule and unlocked the trunk.

  “Yes, but it makes it awkward—impossible, really—to go back there. And I’d planned to spend the season at the Phillipsons’.”

  “As you’d said, miss. Yet you’ve stayed here a goodly while and sent no word about returning to London.”

  The appearance of the postilions with her second trunk spared Jean the necessity of replying to this irrefutable fact.

  And so Jean said nothing as she watched Sarah deal efficiently with the luggage. She’d hired Sarah herself, after her mother’s death, and gotten just the attendant she wanted—a skilled, calm, older woman, who knew nothing about her family history. Sarah was nearly forty and very good at her work. She didn’t stand on ceremony like some superior lady’s maids, and yet had more dignity than many, Jean thought. She was also an acute observer of society. They’d formed a cordial bond in the last few years, and Jean was glad to have her here despite her uncomfortably sharp observations a moment ago.

  The kitten emerged from under the bed to survey the additions to his realm.

  “You’ve gotten a cat,” said Sarah.

  “Yes, his name is Tab. I hope you like cats.”