Chapter 7 #3
“And yet,” Coraline said mildly, “so many men do, from infancy, to boyhood, to fribbling in earnest, to inebriation, to senility. Mr. Huxley is cut from more admirable cloth.”
He’d been cut from an altar cloth, the kind made luminous with gold threads of aristocracy, propriety, and education, if Tally’s sources were to be believed. The Dolforth family good looks hadn’t done the former vicar a disservice either.
“He can sit a horse,” Annette said. “A real horse, not one of those prancing ninnyhammer Thoroughbreds that’s happy only at a dead run.”
Coraline smiled, and Tally recalled the younger version of his wife, the one who’d smiled more often and smiled at him.
The girl he’d courted had been quietly pretty, well aware of her ducal connections, and refreshingly sensible.
She’d not pored over ledgers and fashion magazines with an intensity that should have been saved for intimate moments with her spouse.
“You’ve become quite the equestrienne,” Coraline said. “That’s all to the good, of course, but do recall that the turf crowd venerates their blood horses, and plenty of dukes and earls own racing stables.”
Royal dukes had nigh bankrupted themselves with their bloodstock, as had the Regent in his younger days.
“Papa, will I still be riding Cinnamon when I make my come out next year? She is getting on, and Eglantine will need to begin learning her way about the park.”
The question was so earnest. “I will buy you a winged unicorn for your very own, darling girl. Apollo himself will envy you your mount.”
“Papa, be serious.”
“He is being serious,” Coraline said. “If a new mount is necessary to see you properly launched, we’ll procure one, but the question might well come down to seed pearls for the bodice of your presentation ensemble or a new mare.
Those are decisions for another day, my dear.
For now, be pleased with today’s accomplishments. You acquitted yourself well.”
Coraline had acquitted herself well too. Tally waited to compliment his wife until Annette had gone skipping up the garden’s flagstone walkway like the schoolgirl she still was.
“Well done, my dear. Annette did us proud, and all because you have prepared her for these next steps.”
The day was fine. The outing had gone well. Tally genuinely respected Coraline’s maternal devotion and understood how serious the business of launching Annette was. He also respected the need to remain apprised of his dear wife’s machinations.
“What did you think of Mr. Huxley?” Coraline asked, slipping a hand around Tally’s arm and leading him toward the bench beside the sundial. The garden was small, with high walls on all sides. The air was perfumed with irises, and the quince tree in the bottom corner was just beginning to blossom.
A lovely day, and yet, Tally wished for a larger garden in which to stroll with his wife. He wished to be able to buy each of his daughters a new mare—a matched quartet, like Sorcha’s matched chestnuts—and he wished Coraline was as determined on his happiness as she was on Annette’s success.
“Huxley struck me,” Tally said, “as a vicar whose exquisite manners are aiding him to manage a shift in circumstances that would defeat most men. He’s not only left the Church, he’s in trade, and his provenance is dubious.
Sorcha’s doing her bit for him, but then, she’s nobody’s fool.
Huxley will soon stand in authority over her children, and she does dote on them both. ”
“You don’t like him,” Coraline said.
How had she divined the truth from a few factual sentences? “I don’t know him well enough to have formed a valid opinion, but he vexes me anyway.”
“He refused to adopt familiar address with you.”
Tally thought back. “He called me Greer—that’s informal—but you cite an example of his… superiority, I suppose. He is related to you by blood, we are family, and, setting aside his true patrimony, he is merely a baron’s heir presumptive. Why not accept a friendly overture?”
Coraline plucked a sprig of blooming blue speedwell, twisted the stem off two inches below the flowers, and tucked the posey into Tally’s lapel.
“Illegitimacy and that peculiar transition you mention might make him cling to decorum, or he might just be shy. Provincials can be more fixed in their manners than their sophisticated Town cousins are. Do I take it you’d object to Huxley as a suitor for Annette?”
Tally tolerated the display of wifely attention, though speedwell could leave stains as they wilted, and the only audience for her little show of domestic fealty would be the children and staff.
“Nobody is good enough for our Annette.”
“Tally, I am asking because I want an honest answer. If you have taken Huxley into dislike, then I must not raise Annette’s hopes where he is concerned. He is eligible, and Annette is impressed with him.”
Annette was impressed with this week’s fashion plates as well. “We cannot alienate him, Coraline. He is family, and Chanderton has decreed that we acknowledge him cordially.”
Coraline studied the flower and nudged it more upright with a single gloved finger. “And?”
“And Vicar Huxley paid Annette a compliment because he knew we’d approve of him for that. He also knows that all of Mayfair is aware of his previous calling and will be predisposed to think well of him because of his churchly background.”
“I do think well of him,” Coraline said. “He was a perfect gentleman, and Annette has sense enough to recognize him as such. I was prepared for Mr. Huxley to be a very different sort of man.”
Coraline’s liking was a complicated gift, usually entailing some benefit to Coraline, or a lot of benefit.
“Be careful, Coraline. By rights, I should be the guardian of Sorcha’s children if Chanderton doesn’t want the job.
I am an experienced parent. I am family.
I know everybody and am accepted everywhere.
I’m not some vicar-come-lately from the wrong side of the blanket and in trade as well, but the vicar was deemed worthy to supervise the upbringing of Chanderton’s niece and nephew. ”
While I was found wanting. The conclusion stung, and Chanderton hadn’t shown Tally the courtesy of offering any explanation. Age was a possibility. Huxley was nearly a decade Tally’s junior, though experience as a parent ought to count for more than relative youth.
Coraline patted Tally’s sleeve, a particularly annoying presumption.
“Chanderton means you no insult, Husband. We have our hands full with our daughters. When suitors start cluttering up your study next spring, each of them convinced he will expire for lack of Annette’s hand, you will be glad you don’t also have Sorcha’s little hellions to manage.
The pair of them are entirely incorrigible. Barclay must be spinning in his grave.”
Sorcha had given birth to a son, and sons were different from daughters.
Daughters who had brothers were different from daughters who did not.
Coraline, for all her many fine qualities, knew only the joys of parenting her own four princesses.
Tally could not raise the point without indirectly alluding to his rambunctious indiscretions, both boys, both being raised by cousins north of the border in nurseries that included girl cousins.
Both boys were likely to be as handsome as their papa and twice as impecunious, at the rate matters were progressing.
“Dearest wife, if I must buy Annette a snow-white mare who boasts exquisite manners and an equine royal lineage, then Annette’s sisters will insist on equal consideration, and that will have me spinning in an early grave, and a pauper’s grave at that.
We will be cordial to Huxley. His nominal cousin was said to be doing quite comfortably in trade, and now Huxley helms the same enterprises.
He’s a contriving sort. A noticing sort.
I never cared for noticing sorts. They leave one no privacy. ”
Coraline paced off halfway to the gate and back.
“You have likely landed on Chanderton’s reasons for appointing Huxley guardian of those children.
Lord Jerome would have made generous provisions for any son, any son at all, out of duty and pride.
He certainly didn’t leave Richard without means.
Chanderton is pragmatic. Offending a former vicar who now has means…
Chanderton would avoid that. Then too, Huxley might have left his holy post, but the Church will still acknowledge him, especially if he’s well fixed.
Chanderton will not offend the bishops.”
Sound reasoning, though little comfort to Tally’s pride.
“The Church is likely pleased with Huxley—heir to a barony, tacitly received by a duke as family, of sound mind and sound finances, and he has all of his teeth.” No wonder Tally disliked him.
“I still can’t say he’s my idea of a match for Annette. ”
“Dearest husband, do you have any idea how much seed pearls cost? And do not think for one moment that Annette’s presentation gown can be made over for Elise, Jessica, or Eglantine. Each girl must have an ensemble that shows her off to her best advantage.”
Tally recognized a veiled threat when he heard one. “We are not made of money, Coraline. Far from it.”
“All the more reason why we must make a very favorable impression on Cousin Bernard this Sunday.”
She curtseyed, came up smiling graciously, and put Tally in the frustrating position of having been handed what he wished for. Coraline was smiling at him, but still… it wasn’t the right smile. She looked, in fact, smug at her own cleverness.
“You be careful, darling wife. All of Mayfair is watching Huxley, and he’s not the only bachelor in the ballroom.”
“But he was the bachelor on the bridle path who saved our daughter from ridicule, he paid Annette a lovely and public compliment, and he all but invited himself to Sunday supper en famille, Tally. Make of that what you will.”
She sashayed into the house, and Tally, as usual, let her have the last word.
The problem was, Tally wanted guardianship of at least Jordy—and thus supervisory responsibility for Jordy’s funds.
The solicitors would not allow him to personally touch the money, of course, but clerks could be bribed and accounts juggled when one held a position of authority.
Huxley was not yet legally established as the guardian, and thus Tally still had time to maneuver.
And yet… to discredit Huxley as a guardian would mean discrediting him as a suitor as well, and Coraline showed every sign of having fixed upon the notion that Huxley was intended for Annette.
The situation called for a few hands of cards at the club, perhaps many hands.
Somebody would have heard something unflattering about Huxley, more unflattering than mere illegitimacy.
Tally needed to lose just the right amount to get just the right gossip so that he learned all the unflattering details lurking behind Huxley’s fine tailoring and finer manners.
He jaunted back to the mews, his mood improved for having decided upon next steps that would lead to happier days for him—and for his womenfolk, too, of course.