Chapter 4 #2
Mr. Huxley frowned at the daffodils bobbing along the south wall.
“A child must develop some confidence in this life, and that is made more difficult if adults around the child imply that exploring the park, venturing out in a breeze, beholding drab vistas, or spending time without siblings is simply not done. The child will wonder, ‘Why is it not done? Why is a perfectly sensible path closed to me? Am I somehow lacking, or are my minders a pack of dullards?’”
He swiveled his gaze to the aspens leafing out in the southern corner of the garden and then to Sorcha.
“Soon enough, the child either breaks the rules and gets in trouble or consigns himself to sedate walks on fair Sunday afternoons.”
“Damn you.” I am not like those governesses.
He smiled an astonishingly genial smile. “You take my point.”
“I don’t want to.” Sorcha marched along toward the aspens, trying not to return that smile. “You aren’t at all what I expected, Mr. Huxley.” He was more than a parson come to Town to sponge off his family’s investments. Much more.
“You cannot manage me, and I cannot intimidate you, you mean? Your ladyship might be surprised to know that the average vicar cannot excommunicate a parishioner, cannot extort funds from the wealthier souls, and has little chance of intimidating even his curate, who can go whining to the bishop at any moment. I will spare you a recitation of the oppression the pastoral committee and vestrymen are capable of.”
He kept stride with her easily.
In other words, Mr. Huxley had had to rely on native wit to achieve his ends. Sorcha well knew how that felt.
“What do you propose in terms of the children spending time separately?” And what was to be done about the lack of a governess?
“I can take them up one at a time with me when I hack out. One should have some horseback experience before acquiring a personal mount.”
A sidesaddle did not allow for that sort of excursion. “If you are determined on this point, start with Bridget. Jordy took a tumble from a pony last summer when his Greer cousins were looking on. He’ll be reluctant to try again unless Bridget goads him into it.”
“How bad of a tumble was it?”
“Nothing awful. The saddle slipped to the side. The pony was very round, and the grooms said the girth was as tight as possible, but ‘the young lad’ hadn’t acquired a balanced seat yet.
Jordy felt foolish for being so alarmed, though—he came off in a crying heap.
That he was clearly afraid probably stung more than the conk on the noggin and a few bruises. ”
“Very well, I will start with Bridget, and you and Jordy can amuse yourselves as you please. In my experience, no child can resist learning a card trick. Teach him one or two, and he will forget that Bridget has gone to the park.”
They rounded the corner at the aspens, which put the breeze at their backs.
“You’ve raised many children, Mr. Huxley, that you’ve become a card sharp?”
“You don’t know any card tricks, my lady, and you with a surfeit of siblings? I account myself appalled. What passes for childhood education in Scotland?”
“You are teasing me. Scottish children learn Latin, Greek, history, natural philosophy, literature, heaps of theology, and the like. No card sharping.”
“Let’s do our duty by the rest of the besoms, then, and I’ll show you a few card tricks.”
He linked arms with Sorcha, but she disentangled herself from him as soon as they had ascended the terrace steps.
“Mr. Huxley, do you never lose your temper, burst out laughing, or use profanity?”
“I have a temper,” he said. “I was ready to strangle my mother.”
He’d probably offered his dear mama a short lecture on financial restraint before she’d taken ship. “And the laughter and profanity?”
He paced off across the flagstones, and Sorcha followed him to the back door. Her question appeared to trouble him, which gratified her to an unladylike degree.
“I grow lonely and bored and resentful,” he said.
“I sometimes find commerce inexpressibly tedious, and I entertained untoward thoughts about the friendlier widows in the churchyard. I am as much a creature of animal spirits as the next fellow, Lady Barclay. I am no paragon, so you needn’t fear I’ll expect perfect deportment from your children.
My objective is their lifetime happiness and their ability to make a meaningful contribution. Shall we return to the parlor?”
“I am not a paragon either,” Sorcha said, which had nothing to do with anything. “Far from it. I do not expect perfection from anybody, Mr. Huxley.”
He frowned down at her, not his usual thoughtful expression, but rather, a masculine, almost angry perusal. The expression was gone before Sorcha could properly describe it.
“Back to lists with us, my lady.” He opened the door and bowed slightly.
Sorcha preceded him into the house, and they resumed the thankless business of interviewing women wholly inappropriate for the post on offer. All the while, Sorcha was preoccupied with that last little exchange with Mr. Huxley.
He was lonely. He entertained untoward thoughts about the friendlier widows in the churchyard, and he was no paragon. Coraline’s daft scheme to see him married to Annette might bear fruit after all, and that bothered Sorcha exceedingly.
“Lady Barclay is ferociously protective of her children,” Bernard said. “They are at risk for becoming spoiled, in part as a result of their mother’s influence in their lives.”
“I cannot abide a spoiled child.” St. Didier turned his horse off Park Lane into the quiet surrounds of Hyde Park at dawn. “I also find it difficult to see Lady Barclay allowing her offspring to be overindulged.”
“I am unclear on the whole dynamic myself. The children are together the livelong day. They terrorize their nurse, who is no simpleton, and their studies have been neglected. Why Chanderton has allowed matters to come to such a pass, I do not know.”
Bounder was in good spirits, while Bernard was… not in good spirits. Lady Barclay was a damsel in distress, though she did not seem to know it. Bernard was no knight in shining armor, and explaining to a mother that she must enforce some discipline in the nursery was hardly a noble quest.
More on the order of a doomed and thankless task when that mother viewed every offer of assistance as an attempt to interfere in her maternal demesne.
“Is Chanderton testing you?” St. Didier asked. “Seeing how you fare with a problem he can’t solve by ducal fiat before he proposes to sponsor you in politics?”
“I have no ambition to stand for the hustings.” Though illegitimate sons had been put to that use by many an influential family.
“You had no ambition to take up trade until Lorne started whispering in your ear.”
“I had no vocation for the Church, according to you, though I was an exemplary parson, according to some. What am I to do with these children, St. Didier? Every governess we interviewed was a temple of rigidity and backwardness trussed up in bombazine and righteous certainty.”
Bounder began to prance, a sure sign that Bernard’s mood was communicating itself to his horse. He eased his grip on the reins, relaxed his legs, and exhaled. The horse settled.
“Which agency are you using?”
“Beardon’s Select Service. Coraline Greer swears by them, and Cousin Coraline—who is apparently trying to marry me off to her eldest—is the family authority on all matters domestic.”
“Beardon’s has a reputation for uppishness, I’ll grant you that. Try Swindon’s Preferred. They aren’t as venerable and aren’t as high in the instep. Will you marry Miss Annette?”
“Have you memorized DeBrett’s?”
“No. Tallister Greer has four daughters to fire off and no sons. He is an object of passing pity in the clubs and otherwise well liked. Even if his finances are very solid, four dowries going out, and none coming in, will be a challenge.”
St. Didier, whose family had lost their title thanks to a paucity of legitimate sons, would know of other families similarly situated.
“The Dolforth succession rests on little Jordy’s shoulders, doesn’t it?” Perhaps that explained why the boy was overindulged.
“For now. Duchess Lillian isn’t yet thirty.
Coraline is hardly doddering. Either lady could produce a child who would bump Jordy out of contention for the title.
Before Lady Barclay joined the family, Coraline would remind any who cared to listen that the earldom midway down the family’s pile of titles can be preserved through the female line. ”
“The earldom is Scottish?”
“I believe so. What do you think of Lady Barclay when you aren’t contemplating ripping her children from her loving embrace?”
“It won’t come to that.” Bernard could not let it come to that. Her ladyship would at the very least steal his horse should he even make the attempt. “She is formidable, intelligent, and…”
All manner of adjectives came to mind. Troublesome, vexatious, contentious, difficult, intense, distrustful, contrary…
And yet, she had warned Bernard of Cousin Coraline’s matrimonial nonsense, she listened to Bernard’s concerns regarding the children, and she was right to be horrified by the parade of nursery wardens masquerading as governesses.
St. Didier tipped his hat to a pair of ladies in a low phaeton. “You were saying?”
“One finds descriptors for Lady Barclay both too numerous and insufficient. I gather her husband was not the doting sort.”
“You gather correctly. Sorcha was the usual sacrificial young bride, more or less bought for her reproductive potential and blue blood. She held up her end of the bargain and mourned his lordship properly. She is and was dutiful.”
“You call her Sorcha?” Roughly translated to mean radiance or brightness, and that struck Bernard as a little off. Her ladyship gave off the occasional blazing spark, but the true flame of her spirit burned behind manners, self-restraint, and maternal worries.
“She might grant you the privilege of familiar address,” St. Didier said, “if you don’t go all Archbishop of York on her. She has a wicked sense of humor when she’s among friends.”
St. Didier was her friend, apparently, which was surely fortunate. Surely not an indication of anything amatory or inappropriate.
Bounder began to prance again.
“We’d best let them have a gallop,” Bernard said. “I am to collect Miss Bridget for a short outing when I’ve finished a proper hack. Bounder still hasn’t much bottom, but we’re making strides.”
St. Didier tugged at his hat brim. “Keep up as best you can.” He touched his heels to his horse’s sides, and though Bounder gave it a good effort, he was no match for a fit youngster who’d had the best of care and conditioning.
“What will you do about Lady Barclay?” St. Didier asked as Bounder came down to the walk five minutes later, head low, sides heaving.
“I will see to the education of her children to the best of my ability. She hasn’t said as much, but she seems to grasp that public school is an inevitability for Jordy.”
“Sending him off sooner rather than later might be the kindest decision, Huxley. Little boys can establish a pecking order with less real viciousness than their elder brothers do.”
“Those older boys often learn their cruelty at the hands of the headmasters in charge of the lower forms. Jordy is by no means ready for public school. His scholarship is sorely lacking.”
“Sack the tutor.”
“First, we will hire a governess. The tutor at least minds the boy for part of the afternoon.”
They approached the gates, and Bernard was reluctant to leave the quiet, leafy surrounds of the park. The air was better here, the views green and growing. I miss Yorkshire.
“You never did answer my question, Huxley.”
“Which question?”
“What will you do about Lady Barclay?”
“Why must I do anything about her? I am not her guardian.” Though for a woman for whom Bernard had no responsibility, she was taking up rather a lot of Bernard’s mental landscape.
Not a pretty woman, but she moved with the sort of confidence that made watching her a pleasure.
Comfortable in her skin, sure of her powers.
“You have noticed her,” St. Didier said gently.
“You could ignore every belle and bishop’s daughter in Yorkshire.
You’ve let the Mayfair hostesses look you over from teeth to tail, and you hardly turn a hair when you tell me that Coraline Greer, a veteran general of the ballrooms, has you in mind for her eldest. I use Lady Barclay’s given name, and you are ready to challenge me to fists at dawn on Hampstead Heath. ”
Bernard drew his horse to a halt. One could admit the charges and look a fool, or deny the charges and look an utter dunce.
An image came to mind, of Lady Barclay declaring herself to be no paragon either.
She’d been so earnest about her admission and so utterly oblivious to where her words would lead the thoughts of a healthy, if flawed, male mind.
Such sincere blue eyes, such a fierce spirit.
Cease and desist. “I will comport myself as a gentleman,” Bernard said. “In all matters, at all times.”
“Precisely what I was afraid of. Enjoy your outing with Miss Bridget. She’s partial to peppermint sticks.”
“Stop twitting me, or it will be fists in the park at eight in the morning, St. Didier.”
“I am aquiver with dread. Good day, Huxley.” He trotted off and disappeared into the throng of morning traffic on Park Lane.
Bernard decided that, in a byzantine, backward manner, St. Didier had been trying to encourage the faint of heart, though Bernard was not faint of heart. He was perplexed, true, and in uncharted territory.
He stopped by a tobacconist’s to buy a half-dozen peppermint sticks, then walked Bounder through the alleys the rest of the way to Lady Barclay’s mews.
He had noticed Lady Barclay as a man notices a woman whom he both esteems and could desire. Absolutely nothing unusual about that.
She was worth noticing. The puzzle was how to earn her notice in return, and that was a quest Bernard was surprisingly willing to contemplate.
Interesting.