Chapter 2
Chapter Two
maidens of the river, who always walk with rosy feet…”
Georgiana frowned, picked up her pen, and tried again.
“…river maidens who—who what?” Andrew would know.
“Walk? Tread? Amble about? Ramble?” None sounded right to her. “And did they always do it? Did they do it continually?”
Georgiana ran her thumb over the black stains on her index finger.
She succeeded in removing the stain no better than she succeeded in translating the fragments of poetry by a woman named Moero.
Whether they walked or tread was the least of Georgiana’s problems anyway.
She had precious little from this poet and no context to give it meaning.
Andrew would... She squashed the thought. The toad didn’t even acknowledge me at Groghan’s. What was it that made me believe he could help?
“Eunice, what do you think?”
“My lady?” Eunice Williams blinked up from her incessant stitching with the wide eyes of a frightened doe. She sat, as always, in the farthest corner of Georgiana’s upstairs sitting room, as far from her mistress’s writing desk as the dainty room allowed.
“Listen. ‘Nymphs of Anigrus’—whatever or whoever that may be—‘river maidens who tiptoe with rosy feet these, these...’depths, I think.”
Eunice darted eyes left and right as if seeking a place to hide. “I...I...,” she stammered.
“Come, come Eunice. I know it is crude, but does any of it make sense to you? Rosy feet? Pink feet? What do you think?”
“I’m sure I don’t...”
Don’t have any sense? No, Eunice, you don’t.
Andrew would know. He always understood.
She could hear him say, “Close Lady Georgie. Accurate, but you might try...” He always had a suggestion.
His schoolboy grin accompanied every word.
Though two years her junior and only fifteen when he discovered her secret, he still beamed like a proud papa every time she solved a problem.
Georgiana allowed a deep sigh to escape her.
Andrew had ignored her. First, he pretended he didn’t know her and then he sent no reply to a perfectly proper and perfectly innocent message.
Had he changed so much? Drat the man. If he had replied I might have had an excuse to call on him. She pushed him out of her head again.
“Perhaps...that is,” Eunice stammered on. “Perhaps your little poem needs the attention of a scholar.”
Georgiana glared and watched the color drain from Eunice’s face. She knew that Eunice meant the attention of a man. Eunice ducked her head and applied herself to her endless needlework.
Georgiana tamped down her anger. Eunice might be little company and less help, but none of it was her fault. Custom drove Georgiana to accept their “companionship.” Poor Eunice was forced into it by economic necessity.
“Eunice,” Georgiana called, causing the woman to jump as if she feared a sudden attack. “Fetch Chambers and tea, the good China tea.”
Eunice scurried away, relief on every line of her face.
Chambers, austere in butler’s black, opened the door with a flourish fifteen minutes later. Eunice, who floated in behind the tea cart on a flutter of ruffles, asked in her reedy voice, “Shall I pour, my lady?”
“Yes, yes,” Georgiana said with an impatient wave toward the tray. She glanced up to see the butler backing toward the door.
“Chambers!”
“My lady?” He stopped at the door and stared at the wall behind Georgiana’s left shoulder.
“I wish to show you something. You had schooling, didn’t you? You have some Greek?”
“Greek, my lady?” he said through tight lips. “Of very little use in my current position, I fear, but yes. I studied as a schoolboy.”
Local vicar no doubt. Even a boy destined for service got that much—more than any girl, even a Duke’s daughter, she thought bitterly.
“Very well,” she said holding up a piece of parchment. “Take a look.”
He hesitated, eyes fixed on the wall.
“Come, come, man. It won’t bite.”
Chambers took the paper between two fingers and held it as if it would indeed bite him.
“Well?”
“It appears to be a poem, my lady. By a person named Moh-rho.”
“Moero. Correct.”
“I’m not acquainted with that writer. We didn’t, that is, I have not had the privilege.”
“I’m not surprised. She isn’t much read.”
“She?” His face remained impassive, but distaste was palpable in his voice.
“She,” repeated Georgiana. “Now look at the Greek and listen to this: “Nymphs of Anigrus, river maidens, who, who, always? Forever? Still? walk with, with rose colored feet on the deep, greet and hail and save Cleonymus who set these fair pictures—statues probably—to you, goddesses, beneath, beneath something, some sort of tree?”
Chambers stared at the paper still pinched between his fingers.
“Well?”
“What is it you wish, my lady?”
“Your opinion, man. Is it adequate? Nymphs are goddesses, are they not?” That much at least she knew; though, how they looked was beyond her. “Do they walk? Glide? Tread? That’s more formal. What do you think?”
“If this is your translation, I’m sure it must be correct just as it is,” the old man said through lips so tight she feared for his tongue. She ought to let him be.
“Do you care for it Chambers? In Greek or in English, either one?”
“Care for it, my lady? It is not my place.” He raised his eyes from the poem only to look back at the wall, avoiding eye contact. “I have no opinion.”
An unholy urge to goad him came and went. Infantile gestures never satisfied.
“Will that be all, my lady?” The voice betrayed no emotion.
Georgiana set down her quill. “You may go, Chambers.”
She sank back in her seat and lifted her cooling tea. Her butler was a gray cipher of a man with no more interest in her poems than Eunice had.
There were twenty people on Georgiana’s staff, and not one of them so much as looked her in the eye, much less engaged in conversation. To expect more was ludicrous. Differences of class aside, not one person had taken any interest in her study of Greek in the eleven long years since Andrew left.
Andrew cared, at least he did once. She squeezed her eyes shut. Andrew again. The man’s horridly scarred face—and the untouched face of the long-gone schoolboy—haunted her, had done so since she saw him at Groghan’s store. Thoughts of that face left her unable to get any work done.
She replaced her cup in its saucer with a slap. The clang of crockery made Eunice jump. Everything made Eunice jump.
“Stay put, Eunice. I’m just gathering my references.”
Georgiana rose on a swish of silk skirts, tossed the cup and saucer onto the tray, and pulled Liddell’s Lexicon and a handful of others off the shelf.
She spread them on the desk and began to flip absently through them, checking various words.
“Nymph” was clear and consistent. “Anigrus” didn’t appear and was likely a proper noun in any case, but she wondered what or who it was.
Any man with a half-decent education probably knew.
She resented her own ignorance. She didn’t know how the nymphs moved. Walk was the simplest translation, she suspected, but she wanted to know how they walked, what sort of movement the poetess was trying to depict. Lack of knowledge frustrated her.
She picked up a shabby little book from the scattered pile and ran a finger over it affectionately.
Stewart’s Advanced Greek for Young Scholars, her oldest and dearest friend.
She smiled at the odd conceit. Her oldest Greek reference perhaps, though she had few enough friends.
She opened the cover. A neatly copied inscription covered the frontispiece.
To Lady Georgiana, with wishes for success.
Respectfully,
A. Mallet
She was seventeen when he found her lurking behind the palms in her father’s conservatory, contending with an abbreviated passage from Plato.
Andrew acted as though it was perfectly normal for a girl two years his senior to struggle alone over material he had mastered many years before.
Fear of discovery and her mother’s bile had made her very careful.
Only Andrew knew, and he never revealed her secret to her parents.
Two weeks after the encounter, an anonymous parcel arrived. It contained Stewart’s.
Andrew didn’t think like the others. She savored his suggestions.
He helped her through Pindar. He helped her through Paul.
He told her she did “amazing work.” She refused to believe that life had changed him, no matter what passed between them in the end.
A glimmer of hope sparked back to life in her. She rose abruptly.
“Call for the carriage, Eunice. We’re going into Cambridge.”
The placid face didn’t alter. Eunice seemed quite used to her mistress’s sudden odd starts. “Yes, my lady. Shall I bring a basket for goods? Are we going to the bookstore?”
“Yes, bring it, but we probably won’t need it. Fetch my parasol. Once we get there, we’re going for a walk.”
Andrew Holden may not want to further our acquaintance, but he will. Oh yes, he most certainly will.