Chapter 2 #2
“The matter wants thought. I would like to meet my cousins now, if you please.” He would also like to stand in the slanting afternoon light and find names for the emotions chasing across Lady Barclay’s face.
When she firmed those full lips, she looked positively Puritan. For the few moments when she’d been twitting him, she’d looked younger, sweeter, and confident in a way that the relict of Lord Barclay did not.
The widow, by contrast, was imposing, formidable, purposeful—
A shriek came from the other side of the door. Her ladyship rapped three times on the stout oak and thrust it open.
The scene that greeted Bernard was utter chaos.
Toy soldiers lay everywhere amid blankets, dolls, books upended to resemble A-shaped tents, and a tray with a quarter inch of water in it on the bricks before the hearth.
A girl was rocking furiously on a stuffed horse mounted on springs, while an adult female in maid’s attire stood by a window, gazing out.
A boy charged across a cushioned sofa onto a toy chest and looked to be eyeing a leap onto the mantel when Lady Barclay spoke.
“Children, I’ve brought your cousin, Mr. Bernard Huxley, to meet you.”
“To the death, Sassenach!” The boy leaped off the toy chest, snatched the fireplace poker, and charged straight at Bernard.
Lady Barclay had described her children as unusually sedate. Perhaps she’d been teasing then too.
Please do not kill your prospective guardian.
Sorcha would have bellowed that order to her firstborn, except that Mr. Huxley, by the simple expedient of stepping aside, allowed Jordy’s own momentum to send him hurtling across the room.
The boy tripped on the flipped-up edge of the carpet and went down in a clattering heap while Bridget set up a wail from her horse.
“Jordy’s dead, Mama! Jordy fell on his sword, and now he’s dead!”
“He is not dead,” Mr. Huxley said as calmly as if he were trying to decide whether he beheld a Gainsborough or a Lawrence at the Royal Exhibition. “He does appear to have split his lip, however.”
Bridget dismounted and scowled at Mr. Huxley. “You are very big to be a cousin, sir. What’s a split lip?”
A split lip was a regular occurrence where Jordan was concerned, along with skinned knees, bruised elbows, and banged shins.
“Split lips are minor lacerations,” Mr. Huxley said, producing a plain white handkerchief. “They can bleed prodigiously, but usually heal in a few days. Master Jordan, I presume?” He hunkered down and offered his handkerchief to Jordy.
The boy grinned, blood trickling down his chin. “Is that a flag of surrender, Sassenach?”
Why did Jordy have to sound so convincingly Scottish?
“Let’s call it a flag of truce.” Mr. Huxley dropped the handkerchief on Jordy’s tummy. “Direct pressure will slow the bleeding before you stain your mama’s carpets.” He rose and extended a hand to Sorcha’s prostrate son.
The boy was on his feet in the next instant, the handkerchief pressed to his lip. “Am I supposed to make my bow? Mr. Entwhistle is always going on about a gentleman knows how to make his bow.”
“A lady makes a curtsey,” Bridget said, getting back on her horse. “I will not be a lady until I’m grown up, which won’t be for years and years. I’m a Cossack now.”
“For the sake of protocol,” Mr. Huxley said, “let’s dust off our manners, shall we? Master Jordan, let’s see that bow.”
Authoritative and amiable. Mr. Huxley had the balance down to an art.
“Jordan Dolforth, at your service.” The boy flopped over from the waist, handkerchief in hand, and came up beaming. “You next, Bridge.”
She dismounted by swinging her leg over the horse’s hairy mane. “Miss Bridget Dolforth, sir. Pleased to make your acquaintance, though you are still tall to be a cousin. I don’t have any boy cousins except in Scotland. Mama says they have red hair like me.”
Bridget was cursed with flaming locks. Jordy, thank providence, sported auburn hair that might charitably be called brown in low light.
“Bernard Huxley, late of Yorkshire and Bloomsbury, pleased to make your acquaintance. Cousin Bernard will do nicely. Do I take it we’ve been fighting some battle after completing the day’s studies?”
“The Battle of the Nations,” Bridget said. “Everybody slaughters everybody else, and Napoleon won.”
Jordy rounded on her. “He did not. Napoleon lost. He lost at Leipzig because his men were slaughtered, too, and he didn’t have any horses left, and his cannon—”
“Regardless of who is the victor and who is the vanquished,” Mr. Huxley observed, “somebody has to clean up the mess. I nominate those who created it.”
Oh dear. Gilchrist, who’d been minding the view of the mews from the window, turned. She was clearly agog at Mr. Huxley’s suggestion.
As well she should be.
“Napoleon isn’t here,” Bridget said, flouncing over to her horse. “This is Copenhagen. He is named for a victory.” She began braiding the mane of Wellington’s favorite battle mount. “I must see to my horse.”
“I have a split lip,” Jordy said, assaying another smile. “Somebody should carry me to the infirmary.”
Bridget excelled at changing the subject. Jordy’s default tactic was charm. Sorcha preferred bribery—no trips to the park until, at the least, the books were restored to the shelf—while poor Gilchrist had adopted the habit of appeasement for the sake of her sanity.
“You are looking rather able-bodied to me,” Mr. Huxley said. “Miss, please feel free to enjoy a cup of tea in the kitchen. Battles try the nerves of even noncombatants.”
Gilchrist looked to Sorcha, who nodded.
“Gilly can’t go,” Jordy said, his good cheer fading. “She has to clean up. She should carry me to the infirmary first.”
“Miss Gilly is excused to address a case of battle fatigue,” Mr. Huxley said, “provided Lady Barclay agrees.”
Amiable and authoritative. Sorcha motioned for the door, prepared to watch Cousin Bernard meet the force of nature that were her offspring in a stubborn mood. Not how she’d have preferred the first encounter to go, but then, she’d asked the children to be on their best behavior.
She should have known better. The legendarily horrific Battle of Leipzig hadn’t made an appearance since the children had been cooped up for an entire week in January.
“Two cups of tea, Miss Gilly,” Mr. Huxley said, “and when you come back, you may compliment the children on how effectively they have restored their domain to order.”
Jordy might not have understood the words, but he understood that he was being challenged.
“Mama, I don’t feel well. My lip hurts.” He raised his arms, expecting Sorcha to offer him a maternal hug.
“Then perhaps,” Mr. Huxley said, handing Jordy the poker, “you ought not to have charged so recklessly with your sword at the ready. Typical of the cavalry, though. You are no longer bleeding. You may keep my handkerchief as a memento of your valor. Find a fallen comrade or two, why don’t you, and see them to the infirmary. That duck looks to be in a bad way.”
Bridget had ceased any fiction of tending to her horse and frankly watched the combatants. Sorcha took a chair behind the desk by the window and waited for the next volley.
Jordy was in the act of replacing the poker in the stand when he apparently realized that simple act constituted a bit of cleaning up. He set the poker against the bricks, not among the implements in the hearth stand.
“That is Bridget’s duck, and he’s not injured. He’s not real.”
“He is a real stuffed duck,” Bridget snapped.
“He is on the floor,” Mr. Huxley said, “where he does not belong and would rather not spend the night.” Mr. Huxley swiped a book from beside the duck and settled into the rocking chair beside the hearth.
“A noble duck left to languish on the battlefield after doing his feathered best for king and country. A disheartening spectacle.”
He opened the book and began at the beginning. “Once upon a time, there lived a dragon who loved to fly over Hyde Park.”
“It doesn’t say that.”
Sorcha’s thoughts marched exactly with Bridget’s words.
“It says precisely that in dragon Latin,” Mr. Huxley went on. “London’s skies were so perpetually smoky that our winged friend could enjoy himself by the hour, and none of the people below knew he was above the clouds.”
Jordy looked askance in Sorcha’s direction. She gave him a bland smile. Mr. Huxley deserved to attempt whatever strategy he had up his sleeve. Sheer novelty might give him a temporary edge, and what a pleasant change that would make.
“What was the dragon’s name?” Jordy asked.
Mr. Huxley produced a pair of spectacles and peered more closely at the page. Then he sent a pointed look at the poker leaning against the hearthstones two feet from the stand.
“I can’t quite make it out. That poker is in my light.”
It wasn’t, of course. Bridget took the bait and moved it.
“Bridge…”
“What was his name?” Bridget asked.
“Socrates,” Mr. Huxley replied. “His full name was Socrates Copenhagen MacTavish MacGillicuddy Lorne.” Mr. Huxley turned a page. “Socks was his nickname. If you want to know what he saw way up in the smoky skies, you’d best take down all the tents cluttering up this carpet.”
Jordy kicked a book flat. Mr. Huxley said nothing.
Sorcha remembered to breathe. Sitting in the rocking chair, spectacles perched on his nose, Mr. Huxley did not look like a dragon, but he surely had an ability to upend castles and leave the peasantry dumbstruck.
Bridget picked up a book and returned it to the shelf. “You shouldn’t kick books, Jordy. I like books.”
“I don’t like you,” Jordy said. “I think books are stupid.”
Bridget went for a second book. “Tell me about the dragon, Cousin Mister.”
“Socks? He wasn’t very grown up, as dragons go, and he tended to break even the rules that were meant to keep him happy and safe. He did not, for example, remain above the clouds and the smoke when he went flying.”
Jordy nudged the next tent-book over with his toe. “What did he do?”