Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
“Fresh air in moderation is acceptable,” Miss Babbington replied. “A weekly outing on the Sabbath, for example, provided the weather is fair and the children’s conduct is limited to a sedate walk or sitting quietly on a bench before a pleasing prospect. Excited children learn little.”
She smiled complacently at Sorcha as if waiting for agreement. To appearances, Miss Babbington was a favorite auntie in the making. Plump, graying, neatly attired, hair in a tidy bun.
She had thus far horrified Sorcha with successively more draconian views of childcare.
“And what of biblical instruction?” Mr. Huxley asked. “Do you include verses in the children’s curriculum, or leave that for the tutors in later years?”
Miss Babbington scooted about on her chair like a hen preparing to lay an egg.
“Sir, I might say in all modesty that I have found no greater instrument for imparting wisdom and discipline than Holy Scripture. Set a child to copy an hour or two of Proverbs, and that child will learn patience, persistence, and a good deal of durable wisdom. Include the exercise daily, year in and year out, and you will soon have a biddable scholar where an indifferent pupil had gone before. One can cure fidgets and daydreaming with Bible verses. In all modesty, I have done as much myself, several times over.”
Miss Babbington apparently conducted most of her activities in all modesty.
“Languages?” Mr. Huxley asked.
“French for the girls, Latin for boys.”
Sorcha bestirred herself to enter the conversation. “Have men no need of French and women no need of Latin?”
Miss Babbington all but smirked. “Here in England, my lady, we grasp that Latin is too complicated for female minds, while the male can easily absorb Latin, Greek, and Germanic tongues and then take on French as the social amenity it usually is. Girls are better advised to work on their needlepoint, watercolors, and pianoforte. If a young lady is particularly talented at the keyboard, she may be permitted to take up the flute or violin. In later years, she may be exposed to pastoral poetry as well.”
Sorcha was supposed to say, I see, then nod, grateful for even this crumb of instruction. Instead, she rose and tugged the bell-pull.
“Thank you for your time, Miss Babbington. We will make a decision early next week. The footman will show you out.”
Mr. Huxley rose and bowed. “Good day, miss, and thank you.”
The footman, who’d kept a straight face throughout the proceedings, held the door for Miss Babbington.
She sailed out, likely confident that she’d soon have Lady Barclay’s children proceeding through the strait gate and along the narrow way, thus earning her universal approbation from the household and Mayfair generally.
“I clearly have a reputation at the agency,” Sorcha said, returning to her wing chair when the footman had accompanied his charge through the door. “I am stupid, Scottish, and looking for somebody to torment my children.”
Mr. Huxley took the second wing chair. Sorcha had chosen to interview potential governesses in the informal parlor.
The house had a third parlor, almost an office, for meeting with tradesmen, prospective employees, and any social connection deserving of shame.
Barclay had delighted in subjecting anybody who owed him money or to whom he owed money to the third parlor.
Sorcha refused to use it.
“Perhaps the agency is stupid,” Mr. Huxley said, “and determined to torment your children. You specifically requested younger candidates this time, did you not?”
“Candidates accustomed to lively, active children. The agency apparently views liveliness as a fault to be cured.”
“The agency is wrong.” Said calmly enough that Sorcha’s budding sense of frustration eased.
“Anybody can punish a child into miserable quiet,” Mr. Huxley went on. “At least temporarily. The real teachers turn the liveliness into keen questions and informed curiosity. Let’s take a break, shall we?”
“We aren’t through the list.”
He consulted a plain silver pocket watch.
“We have twenty minutes before the next besom inflicts her backward thinking on us. I need a breath of fresh air and a sedate walk, or a not very sedate walk, and I am positive the view of the back garden will be more pleasing than the walls of this parlor.”
He rose and extended a hand to Sorcha, which she accepted.
“Don’t lose heart,” he said, patting her knuckles. “I have a few ideas if this batch fails to fill the need.”
Sorcha rose, all too willing to take a turn in the garden. “I use one of the best agencies in London, Mr. Huxley. Coraline will patronize no other, and she’s hired a dozen governesses and nurserymaids over the years.”
“Coraline Greer, daughter of my late uncle Cecil, now married to Tallister Greer, an earl’s spare. Tell me, are there other by-blows?”
He asked this question while casually escorting Sorcha along the corridor.
“Yes, but you’d have to apply to Chanderton for the particulars. One is female—Chanderton’s youthful indiscretion, who bides in Dorset—and Lord Jerome’s estate supports at least one other young man.”
“I might have a half-brother?”
“You sound pleased. His name is Richard, and he also bears a resemblance to Chanderton.”
They paused in the foyer to collect cloaks, the day being sunny but chilly. Sorcha decided against a bonnet, which was bad of her.
“I have a sibling,” Mr. Huxley said. “That is indeed a happy development. Consider my position, Lady Barclay. My mother and her spouse had no other issue. I have but the one cousin extant, and Lord Lorne is a cousin in name only, though he would protest that characterization. I have no children and no wife and am far from the home I claimed for my entire life.”
Was he admitting to loneliness? Lonely people were more apt to make regrettable choices.
Sorcha paused at the door to the back terrace. “May I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
Bernard Huxley was so innocent. Blithely anticipating that he was the equal to any challenge she might describe.
Believing implicitly that life was manageable, and every problem admitted of a solution.
That he should have complete legal control of her children was as unfair as it probably was unavoidable.
“You are being considered as a potential spouse for Miss Annette Greer.”
He held open the door. “I have not had the pleasure. I assume Miss Greer is Cousin Coraline’s offspring. Should I be flattered, insulted, or terrified?”
He concluded that the situation could be merely troublesome when, in fact, Coraline’s scheming might result in a lifetime of misery for two people and their offspring.
“You should be careful, Mr. Huxley. The duchess, Duchess Lilly, hinted at Coraline’s interest in you, and Her Grace does not spread gossip for entertainment’s sake.”
“She was hoping you would warn me? Sporting of you both.”
The brisk air in the garden was a tonic, though Mr. Huxley’s company was proving oddly annoying. “Do you not understand that, for some people, Mr. Huxley, matrimony is a matter pursued in deadly earnest?”
He accompanied her onto the terrace, the breeze teasing at his blond locks.
“I was a vicar, my lady. I have seen matrimony approached from every perspective: duty, joy, resentment, ignorance, cordial goodwill, and blind lust. Lorne warned me that Mayfair in spring is a scene of controlled madness. That a cousin I have yet to meet would consider me for her own daughter must be regarded as symptomatic of Society’s collectively imbalanced humors. ”
He offered his arm. Sorcha ignored the courtesy and stalked off down the steps. Mr. Huxley followed more slowly.
What is wrong with me? The interminable interviews with the governesses, each of whom was more overbearing and smug than the last, would put any mother in a foul humor, but Sorcha was also specifically out of charity with Mr. Huxley.
She mostly liked him and mostly did not trust him. Vexing. “How do you stay so calm?” she asked when he caught up with her. “How do you not want to upend the tea tray, leap out the window, and run howling back to Yorkshire?”
“I forget,” he said, “that you’ve been searching for a governess for months now, probably for years. They were a sorry lot, I grant you. Curiously so. If these are the elite exponents of the species, then Jordy and Bridget would be better off in any village dame school.”
“Chanderton would have apoplexies at that suggestion, and he’d be justified.
I dread the prospect of sending Jordy to public school, but those arrogant, righteous women with their Proverbs have a point.
Children who fidget and daydream have a hard road ahead of them.
Then I wonder if I am a bad mother because I believe daydreaming should be a child’s right. ”
She ought not to have admitted that, and not to this man.
“You are a very good mother,” Mr. Huxley said. “Unusually devoted, given your station, and I offer that as a compliment. I do believe, though, that the children might benefit from spending time with you individually.”
The compliment—a very good mother, unusually devoted—almost distracted her from the blow.
“To spend time with me individually, my children would have to spend time apart from each other. Jordy does pass two hours every afternoon with his tutor. Little scholarship is accomplished, but he’s separated from his sister.”
“I am curious about the tutor, though what of Bridget? What interests does she have that might allow her some freedom from her brother’s company?”
“You are cozening me. Presenting the topic of separating the children as individual time with me, or time free of each other. You have concluded that they are too close to each other.”