He turned his head the other way.
There was his mother, who had aged shockingly under her well-remembered powdered hair, but she wore a widow’s cap now. How many years had passed during which he had given her only silence in return for her steadfast love? Guilt pulsed through him as he looked past her to a tall girl with light brown hair done up in curls like Anna’s. Could that be Harriet? He remembered her as a spindly twig with tousled braids. Harriet looked like John at that age, save for the bright smile. John had never smiled like that.
Next to her, a golden vision who at first seemed miraculously unchanged. A faint stirring in his heart, echo of the pain he had felt when Emily’s image intruded in dreams, pulsed and then subsided. He looked away, at Dr. MacAdam. “My left eye is next thing to blind. Is that it?”
Dr. MacAdam said a great deal about time, and blows to the head, but what Henry heard was that the medical faculty had little more idea than he did. He had expected no less. Until they could open a living body in order to see its workings and set it to rights, there would probably always be at best a combination of guesswork and some experience, and the worst being the outright charlatans preying upon the credulous.
When MacAdam had run out of cautions and assurances, Henry said, “It is better than I expected. I had prepared myself for the worst.”
“Wise, very wise,” Dr. MacAdam said.
It remained only to invite him to refresh himself, pay him his fee, and send him off.
Henry said to Anna after Diggory had shut the door and vanished into the depths of the house, “Tell me the truth, now. Do I look terrible? Ought I to wear an eyepatch?”
She peered up into his face. “What would be best for you?”
“I hardly know. This side of the world is . . . soupy. Perhaps an eyepatch would be less distracting to me, but what about others? Did you—no, you have probably never heard of Captain Johnson’s book about pirates. I read that as a boy. Made me want to go to sea.”
“To be a pirate?” Her eyes widened.
He grinned. “To fight them. But Nelson never wore a patch. Here.” He looked around the entry hall. “I am going to reacquaint myself with the house. No, bide here. After being nose-led for months, I am going to take great pleasure in my own powers.”
He smiled down into Anna’s anxious brown eyes, sensing that she wished to be by his side, but she offered no expostulation.
He set off to explore.
More had changed than he had thought. The house had improved vastly since his departure. He could see John’s hand in the new balustrade, the fine Egyptian-patterned papers above the wainscoting, and the furnishings in the formal drawing room, chosen with an eye to pleasing color, and use of space.
Was this John’s form of art? John had never liked music, but he had always had a good eye for a painting, and for color and space. Before his arrival, Henry had resolved, if he regained his vision, to rid himself of all signs of his brother, but as he proceeded through his house, he felt the old resentment draining away. John had been bad-tempered, though no worse than their father; he had been profligate and arrogant, but he had paid the price for all those things with his life.
Henry decided, in the time it took to reach the well-remembered schoolroom with its sturdy, cheerfully shabby furniture, that save his own bedchamber, dressing room, and the sitting room, he would not change anything. The best of John could be seen all over the house, and he would preserve that as a better memorial than that stone statue in the family crypt.
In the schoolroom, Nurse, looking very old and faded, had his nieces dressed in their best. The two girls, just emerging into girlhood, dropped curtseys. The baby eyed him, lower lip protruding dangerously.
Henry backed away in haste, and tried to find some conversation for these girls. He had not thought about them until now; no one had brought them downstairs. But he knew that Harriet and Anna spent a great deal of time with them.
“Are you looking forward to Miss Timothy coming to us?” he asked finally.
“Yes, Uncle Northcote,” the eldest said, and the smaller one echoed, “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He had run out of things to say. With midshipmen, there was an established routine when they first came aboard, but now, he did not know where to begin.
He gave them an awkward nod, swung about, and nearly knocked his left knee into the low table. He must accustom himself to being effectively blinkered on that side. He let himself out, and almost ran into Emily.
“I don’t know them at all,” he said to her. “You scarcely let them downstairs.”
“I kept them from disturbing you,” she said. Strange, how much softer her voice sounded when he looked at those large blue eyes, her delicate skin crowned by soft golden hair.
He let his breath out. “And before I came?”
She tried to guess at his mood, and failed. His tone was indifferent, and she strove to reach him. “Nurse did well by them, better than I could. I don’t know children,” she admitted. “They are loud, sticky, and dirty. I look forward to them reaching an age of reason, and discourse. I will enjoy introducing them in London, if they improve.”
“Pray do not let me hinder you,” he said, and opened the schoolroom door for her.
She dropped a slight curtsey and passed by.
He continued on downstairs, Emily fading from his mind as he sought Anna. There she was, so different from Emily. Her features, considered singly, might not be accounted as perfect as Emily’s very English style, but their tout ensemble had become dear in an inexplicable way, and he gazed hungrily into her face, wanting to catch the subtle changes of expression in order to divine her mood. Her happiness had become of paramount importance to him.
They fell into their now-accustomed posture, arms entwined, walking together as had become their habit. But this time he took the lead, and she fell easily into the comfortable rhythm that he had learned to count upon.
o0o
Emily, who had gone in search of him in a rare and desperate impulse, found him a short time later in the morning room holding hands with the foreign creature, as if they were girl and boy plighting their troth. They did not notice her; she shut the door softly and went away.
After a bad night full of terrible dreams, she rose late, aware of the throb of a dull headache. She must get out into the open air. A gallop would clear off the headache, if it would not clear her heart or head. She rang for her maid to lay out her habit.
She was crossing the courtyard when once again something flickered at the edge of her vision. She remembered the previous instance, and glanced up at the row of long gallery windows in time to see a small figure flitting across the wavering glass. Justina?
She whirled around and ran to the side door, taking the stairs two at a time.
When she reached the gallery, an impossible sight met her eyes: the foreign creature and Justina prancing below the sedate portraits like a pair of performers at Astley’s Ampitheater.
The control she had fought so hard to establish vanished like smoke. “What are you doing with my daughter?”
The two figures at the far end of the gallery stopped and turned, two pairs of wide eyes looking guilty. Emily advanced upon them, her voice rising on every word. “How dare you turn my daughter into a performing strumpet!”
Anna caught her breath. “Justina wished to learn the ballet,” she said.
“Look, Mama,” Justina piped up. “I know all five positions, and I can leap like this, and turn a pirouette—”
“Justina, go to the schoolroom.”
“Let us all go to where it is warm,” Anna suggested, hoping that Emily would calm down if given a few moments. She knew she needed time to collect her wits.
Justina gazed from one to the other, burst into tears, and ran wailing from the gallery. Her voice echoed off the marble as she flitted to the new wing, followed by Anna and perforce Emily.
Unfortunately, Anna’s movement served only to heat Emily’s temper the more, as it
appeared that she had taken control of a situation that Emily felt justified in commanding. She was the one wronged.
When they reached the morning room, Anna shut the door. “I am only teaching her the rudiments of ballet. That is all I know myself—”
Emily snapped her riding whip through the air to crack against a table. “No one asked you to do anything to my children. I can tolerate the singing lessons, as that is a necessity for young ladies of good birth, as long as they do not make spectacles of themselves upon the public stage.”
Anna gazed in shocked silence.
“Oh, yes, I know who you are. What you are. If you think you can—”
The door opened to Henry’s hand. “Anna, did I hear your voice? Behold me reading the newspaper! I see here that there is a new comic opera by Guglielmi to be presented in London. And not long after, there is to be a benefit for Grassini. Did you ever hear her?”
He entered talking, newspaper in hand. But when he got far enough in and lifted his head so his right eye took in the two women standing stiffly on either side of the fireplace, he stopped.
Emily turned on him, all her determined resolves gone. “Did you know that your wife is a common opera clown, and possibly even a spy for the French?”
Henry squinted from one to the other, then said crisply, “What nonsense you talk, Emily. ‘Clown.’ You have your mother’s terrible habit of making everything and everyone sound worse than it is. My wife was a soloist in a French opera company, driven to earn her living because I neglected my duty to her, and abandoned her to the Hamiltons. I ought to have known better, in retrospect.”
The dowager appeared at the open door. “I heard Justina weeping all along the upstairs hallway. Anna, did she fall down during her lesson?”
“You knew what was going on?” Emily turned her way.
“Nurse comes to my powder room every morning to tell me everything,” the dowager said, coming in past Henry to face her daughter-in-law. “She always has. We were agreed that Justina was getting quite round-shouldered, and her learning to dance would almost certainly correct her posture.”
“I see what it is.” Emily’s voice trembled. “You have all united against me, and now you wish to turn my children against me as well.”
The dowager, much shocked, said, “That is impossible. You are their mother. No one can take your place.”
“She is trying.” Emily pointed her riding crop at Anna.
Hot resentment flared through Anna. She had to breathe out twice to banish it; she struggled not to assume the burden of anger that Emily wished to give her. Engage and deflect, whispered her mother’s voice in memory. “Your children talk of nothing but how much they wish you to see what they have learnt,” she said.
Emily’s face twisted. “Am I supposed to be pleased that you would turn them into the sort of woman who makes a spectacle of herself upon a stage for every low bumpkin to ogle and to bandy her name about? I would rather shut them up in a convent.”
Henry turned his good eye from one to another. What was he supposed to do here? On board his ship he knew exactly what to do, but he could not court-martial a woman, or stop her grog.
He looked toward Anna, who half-lifted a hand. He understood from her gesture that she deemed this her affair. He forced his voice to mildness. “I will leave you ladies to settle the question.”
He backed out and shut the door.
Anna tried once more for compromise, for peace-making. “If you wish, I will cease teaching your daughters at once.”
Emily’s lip curled. “You ought to have thought of that first.”
Anna reddened, guilty and contrite. “This is very true, and I beg your pardon. It all happened by accident, when I saw that Eleanor wished to learn to sing, and I discovered that I like teaching. So when Justina wanted something of her own, well, it just happened, and she was the one who wished to surprise you once she had learnt her little dance.”
“Save your breath. I’ve watched how you insinuated yourself into this household, and though I had thought to spare the family by keeping my knowledge of what you are to myself, I feel it is my duty to our neighbors to let them know what sort of woman has practiced upon their trust—”
“What sort of woman would that be?” Anna asked, calm spreading through her like snow.
Emily paused. Her cheeks glowed with splendid color as she lifted her head. “A common stage actress, to put it no higher.”
Anna said, still calmly, “Oh, I do not believe I was common at all! I was, in fact, very good. But not to be compared with La Catalani. But I think the quality of my singing is not truly in question, is it not so? It seems you are attempting to threaten me.”
The dowager struck her hand on the back of a chair. “Emily Elstead, if you continue to behave so ill under this roof, I must request you to return to your own home.”
Anna heard the tremble in the dowager’s voice, and sensed how frightened the older woman was on her behalf. Sorrow crowded her heart, and after that a sense of gratitude for the gentle woman’s courage in attempting to defend her.
Though she had sung all the dramatic permutations of ‘love’ every day during all her years on stage, she had begun to understood the wellspring of the joy she had rediscovered: it was love.
She walked to the dowager and touched her hand. “Thank you. Let me make myself understood.”
She turned to Emily. “You seem to believe I can be frightened by your threats. Such fears are, after all, very small, compared to trying to keep from being eaten by rats.”
Emily recoiled in disgust, and the dowager gasped.
“To keep those rats at bay I danced through the night with the sort of women you would scorn for their humble birth, who had no advantages beyond the skills they struggled to attain. I lived through a battle, sewing up torn flesh as cannon blasted the masts and sails overhead. Your threats hold no fear for me.”
“Rats?” the dowager repeated in a whisper.
Humor pulsed in Anna, then was gone as she faced Emily’s derisive countenance. “You see your daughter dancing and think only of evil, I find it infinitely sad.”
“As for that . . .” The dowager cleared her throat. “Emily, if you had at any time acted like a mother to those girls, then perhaps Lady Northcote would have thought of you. Of course she did not, because you have never taken the least interest in those girls.”
“That is not true.”
“You did not know that Nurse reports to me every day! No, do not remind me that Nurse is my hireling. Here is a question for you: what color are Amelia’s eyes?”
Emily glared furiously at her mother-in-law, her throat closing. Tears? Why? When she was the one wronged! And the worst of it was, she did not know the color of the brat’s eyes. She could scarcely bear to look at Amelia, whose birth had ruined her life. “Blue,” she said, though she knew it was merely a guess.
Indeed, the dowager lifted her chin, acknowledging a hit, but then she said, “I suspect if I told you they were green, you would not gainsay. Yes, they are blue, but I will never believe you knew that. I will state my point, and then I am done. I have been happier since Lady Northcote’s arrival than I have been in many years. The girls are happier. Harriet is happier. And Henry is happier. You do not bring happiness to this house because I do not believe you know what happiness is.”
Emily whirled and walked out.
The dowager let out her breath, clasped her hands, then said, “Rats? Is that true?”
Anna wiped a strand of hair back with fingers she discovered shook. “Oh, yes.” She laughed a little breathlessly. “Hundreds of them. Hungry rats. We could hear them squeaking, and if I dared to look, I saw the reflections of their red eyes.”
The dowager tipped her head. “I think perhaps Harriet might like that story.”
“Then I will tell her it,” Anna said, as they left the chamber.
Outside, Emily found Noll still walking her hack; half-blinded by tears of fury, she gained the saddle
and rode out.
At first she turned the animal toward the well-traveled path to the Groves, but she knew what her mother would say. She had ruined her chances—she had spoken too soon—she had spoken wrong—everyone was at fault. Everyone was always at fault, except for her.
Return to your home. As if she had not been mistress of the Manor for all the years of her marriage! Now this interloper had replaced her within a few scarce weeks.
Emily wrenched the reins to one side, slapped the whip against the horse’s ribs, and galloped hard, but as fast as she went, she could not outride the desolation of defeat.
o0o
Anna retreated upstairs, where she discovered Henry waiting. “What happened?” he asked.
Anna sank down in one of the vast old wing chairs, queasiness stirring in her middle. “I feel such regret. She was right. I ought never to have done what I did without asking her.”
Henry lifted a shoulder. “I am convinced she would have refused in order to spite you, and for no other reason. Then everyone would be the poorer. And she would go right back to neglecting those girls. If she had exerted herself to find a governess when Eleanor reached five, there never would have been a question.”
Anna nodded soberly. “Perhaps. And yet I still feel a sense of failure. She was not merely angry, she was unhappy in a terrible way, I could see it.” She paused, and then ventured into what she knew was a delicate subject, but she could no longer settle for silence. “I believe she still loves you.”
“She can’t. She doesn’t know me in the least. When we were young, she was always trying to talk me into being less like me and more like John. You cannot conceive the quarrels we had. What a pair of young fools we were! We would never have made the other happy.”
Though Anna was aware how very limited her experience of men was, she did understand how a person could be attracted to someone one had little in common with otherwise, or whom one did not actually know.
“And yet the two of you had an understanding. Feel you nothing whatsoever for her now?”
Henry held out his hand, and she came to him. They walked to the window. She laid her head against his chest, delighted in the low fremitus of his voice resonating through him as he murmured, “Oh, there is still the remains of my admiration. She is still very beautiful. Is that unsettling for you to hear?” He paused to squint anxiously down at her.
Rondo Allegro Page 51