Chapter 7 #2
By the time I reached Lady Clotilda’s front door, my fingers and toes were tingling with cold, but the jaunt had improved my mood. Lord Dunsford was keeping secrets, not the least of which was a secret fondness for poetry and a secret paternal concern for his younger surviving son.
Lady Clotilda had also been less than forthcoming. Her seemingly innocent invitation to tea turned out to be an ambush.
All three Delaplane sisters were in attendance, as was Miss Quiggan, along with several other young ladies, Freddy Delaplane, and a smattering of other local fellows.
We were a good dozen in all, an adult version of the adolescent tea dance, and me walking into the situation with my damp boots and ruddy cheeks.
I adjusted my expectations, greeted my hostess, and made a note not to underestimate her.
“We so seldom entertain ducal connections in these parts,” her ladyship said when I’d bowed over her hand. “You must resign yourself to being popular, my lord. Your mother has eluded my attempts to show her off, but she allowed as how you are less adept at disappointing your hostess than she is.”
“Provided I have time to look in on my nephew, I will be as convivial as my nature allows.”
She guffawed, though I hadn’t been making a jest.
“Come along, and I will introduce you around. You can stop glancing at the door. Miss West will be here presently. She must change out of her riding habit. By the standards of a Carstairs, Sandy does not qualify as hunt mad, but he has rural propensities nonetheless. I’m sure he regaled Miss West with the bloodlines of every hunter, hack, and mouser on the premises. ”
I had not been glancing at the door. “I have yet to meet the middle Miss Delaplane,” I said, “though she is Mrs. Carstairs now, I take it?”
“Has been for some years.”
Her ladyship saved the introduction I’d requested for last, which I took for some sort of test of my congeniality.
Had anybody asked me, I’d have said that the oldest Delaplane sister, Philomel, would have been the first to marry.
She had tradition and seniority going for her, also a demeanor that could charitably be called outgoing.
Her height made her easy to notice, as did her tendency to laugh more boisterously than was considered demure in Mayfair.
She was across the parlor, holding court in what was likely her usual fashion. Sandy Quiggan, still in riding attire, stood at her elbow. He smiled and sipped his cider and smiled some more, as did the other bachelors in Miss Philomel’s ambit.
Wren, the youngest sister, had conventionality and youth in her favor. She was quieter than Philomel, not as tall, and presented as a potentially more biddable wife, for those who valued such a trait.
Robin, the middle sister and first to wed, turned out to be a blend of her female siblings. Taller than Wren, quieter than Philomel, and pleasantly visaged. She was neither plain nor striking. Her hair was honey-blond, her eyes blue, and her smile entirely appropriate for the wife of a vicar.
Welcoming and friendly without a hint of flirtation.
“My lord.” She dipped a curtsey. “Forgive me for dodging supper at the Keep last night. The baby is teething, and a mother tends to hover. Peter reported that a fine repast and a good night’s sleep were followed by a dismal hunt this morning.”
“Dismal for the riders,” I replied. “The fox has a different perspective, I’m sure. What is your preferred nostrum for an infant suffering sore gums?”
That question for some reason had Lady Clotilda murmuring excuses and fading off to see to other guests.
“You are genuinely curious?” Robin asked. “Peter’s eyes cross, and he nods off when the topic of nursery remedies comes up.”
“Nurseries in general mystify me, though I spent my share of years occupying one. I have recently become the guardian of record for my late brother’s son. When an opportunity presents itself to acquire some knowledge relevant to child-rearing, I avail myself of it.”
If Hyperia remained fixed on her present course, I would never need to know about the care and rearing of infants.
“I’ve met Leander,” Robin replied. “A bright boy, though he struck me as lonely. We can offer only girls for company at the vicarage, but he’s welcome to come by any time.”
Lonely. An intimidating word, suited to the dreary winterscape beyond the parlor windows. The sky was an oppressively low, pewter overcast, the trees bare, the ground a frozen expense of white broken by dark slashes of exposed earth.
I was no authority on how to assuage a lonely boy’s misery, but I had to agree with Mrs. Carstairs’s assessment.
Leander would be in line for a dukedom, except that his father hadn’t bothered to marry his mother.
That legacy put him above much of Society, below the rest, and outside of nearly every circle.
Dishonor and prestige were both his by association, and he had neither siblings nor local cousins to buffer those burdens.
“If you are extending that invitation sincerely,” I said, “I’ll bring the boy along for a visit tomorrow morning. I’m sure his governess would appreciate a respite from his company.”
Mrs. Carstairs glanced around and leaned a few inches nearer. “Your nephew won’t mind that we’ve no boys?”
Oh, for the love of blooming crocuses.
The entire shire was doubtless looking to the vicarage to safeguard the baronial succession “just in case.” If Algernon refused to marry out of some filial pique, and Bryson would not take a wife when he had only a gamekeeper’s cottage to offer her, then Parson Petey was the forlorn hope for avoiding escheat.
Parson Petey and his wife.
“Growing up,” I said, “I was often more diverted by the company of my sisters than that of my older brother. My sisters brought a different perspective to life, from the challenge of climbing trees while wearing skirts, to riding aside, to having what I believed was naturally elegant penmanship. Leander will be fascinated by your daughters.”
The vicar’s wife regarded me steadily. “You mean that.”
I saw then what I’d overlooked previously. Mrs. Peter Carstairs was tired. Tired of being the vicar’s endlessly cheerful wife, tired of motherhood, tired of what local society expected of her.
She was a bit plump around the middle compared to her sisters, and the finest of lines had formed about her eyes and mouth, though she was younger than the vivacious Philomel.
Her funds were tied up in trusts, her husband was dependent on the baron for his bread, and she had three daughters to show for her attempts to save the succession.
“Let’s nip up to the nursery,” I said. “I will properly introduce you to Leander and explain that he’s been invited for a morning’s play with your offspring. Be warned that when he starts asking questions, he can go on until the End Times.”
“My Avis is similar. She chatters like a magpie, while her older sister can take apart anything you hand her—a pipe, a watch, puzzle box. Lark doesn’t speak much, but her curiosity is endless. She’s like her late cousin Michael in some regards. She loves the out of doors as Bryson does.”
We made our way to the door, and when Lady Clo raised an eyebrow at me, I simply nodded and completed my escape, Mrs. Carstairs at my side.
“Lady Clo means well,” Robin said when we’d gained the much cooler corridor. “She hosts a lot of informal gatherings, especially in winter. We’re mostly farming folk around here, and the winter doldrums drive us barmy.”
“But you,” I said, offering my arm, “would rather be home napping.”
“I’m afraid to nap.” She was again glancing around and speaking quietly. “I might not wake up until spring, like those bears that sleep all winter. We are very busy at the vicarage, despite the season, and Peter has no curate. The baron doesn’t see a need for one.”
Peter had no restraint. Three children in five years was asking a lot of a wife. Hyperia would say it was asking too much.
“Any weddings in the offing?”
“Not a one. Months from now, we might have some engagements announced at the spring assembly.”
We reached the nursery floor, a space that in many homes was relegated to utilitarian status. Even at Caldicott Hall, the nursery and schoolroom had been devoid of good art, fresh appointments, or new furniture.
Lady Clo, perhaps because of her childlessness, had taken a different tack.
The corridor boasted sunny depictions of childhood—an apple-cheeked boy fishing, a smiling girl tending her geese—and the sideboard and wainscoting gleamed with recent polishing.
The runner down the middle of the corridor was thick, and not a single cobweb dared blight the corners of the windows.
Robin stopped before the painting of the boy with his fishing rod. His bare feet dangled a few inches above the water, and the dock upon which he sat stretched back to a green bank dotted with orange daylilies.
“Lady Clo painted this,” she said. “People who haven’t any children have time to paint.”
A lament lay buried in that observation. “You will have time to paint again. Children do grow up, and the consensus is, they manage it much more quickly than their parents anticipate.”
She shook her head. “I will teach my daughters to paint—it’s not the same thing. Then I might teach my granddaughters. Art like this,”—she gestured to the cheerful moment in the frame—“is no longer mine to create.”
What to say to a woman grieving the loss of her freedom? “Soldiering stole all the joy of the hunt from me and from many others. In winter quarters, officers had little to do but follow the hounds, but we’d lost our heart for the whole endeavor.”
I had avoided winter quarters, preferring to remain in the countryside, perfecting my command of the local dialects and my understanding of the varied Spanish terrain.
The corridor was fairly warm, being near the top of the house, and yet, Mrs. Carstairs rubbed her hands over her biceps.