Chapter 13 #2
“Glad to hear it.” Sorcha had needed to hear it, in fact. “I’ve missed you too.”
When they reached the mews, Bernard stumbled a bit getting off his horse.
Sorcha summoned his junior nannies and consigned them to the kitchen.
She sat Bernard down before a sizable plate of toast, eggs, and ham, and when he was doing justice to the meal, she sent an epistle off to Mr. Kessler, who needed to learn a thing or two about the proper care and treatment of his employer.
“Mr. Huxley’s done fallen asleep, your ladyship.” The first footman sounded both embarrassed and amazed when he found Sorcha at her escritoire. “Has the butter knife in one hand and a piece of toast in the other, sitting as upright as a bishop, but he’s gone for forty winks, ma’am.”
“Or more than forty.” The situation would be comical, except that Sorcha did not feel inclined to explain to Coraline or the duchess why Bernard had been napping in Sorcha’s breakfast parlor.
“Have the coach put to. You can see Mr. Huxley home. Have a word with his staff about a firm hand being needed with people who work too hard. They were employed by Lord Lorne before he came into his honors. You will find them a sympathetic audience.”
“Yes, my lady. Shall I waken Mr. Huxley?”
“We’ll do it together.” Less potential for talk that way.
Sorcha wanted to dismiss Bernard’s maunderings about spies and schemes, but Bernard was, above all, sensible. Kind, patient, occasionally inventive, occasionally passionate, but also sensible. He wasn’t given to mad flights.
He was utterly daft, though, if he thought Sorcha would remove the children from London over what could only be a nasty prank gone awry.
“I’m sorry, sir.” Kessler looked pleased with himself rather than contrite as he stood across from Bernard’s desk. “Her ladyship was very clear you were not to be disturbed. I must say you look a little more the thing for having taken a day of rest.”
The allusion to the Sabbath was hardly subtle. Bernard had slept for eighteen hours and awoken feeling eighty years old and sleep-drunk. Also foolish.
“Her ladyship does not employ you, Kessler, and should a similar situation arise in future, I will expect you to recall that.”
Kessler smiled, putting Bernard in mind of a beatific Father Christmas in the off-season. “His lordship used to holler something marvelous when we let him sleep. He never wrote his notes in Latin, though.”
Very foolish. “Latin?”
Kessler settled into the chair opposite the desk and passed over a wad of correspondence. “I could have managed French, German, or even some Scots, but my Latin went begging decades ago.”
Each page of the stack was adorned with notes in Bernard’s own tidy hand, all written in Latin.
Reiectionem comiter mitte. Send a polite rejection.
In principio consenti, vitanda sunt specifica. Agree in principle, specifics to be avoided.
Statim singula pete. Ask for details immediately.
The business directions were sound enough. Some consolation there.
“Kinrade has fairly good Italian,” Kessler said, “but he didn’t want to guess. His lordship would mutter in German, I think it was. Might have been speaking Yorkshire, though.”
Kessler was in good form. “Did you win the betting pool, Kessler?”
He sat up. “You know about that?”
I do now. “You all speculated about how long it would take me to work myself into a collapse, and not one of you thought to suggest that I voluntarily get some rest?”
“With all due respect, sir, you are a Huxley. Telling you something you do not want to hear would be a thankless and pointless task. The polite word for that quality is ‘determination,’ but stubbornness might apply as well.”
By blood, Bernard was a Dolforth, which mattered not at all. He was a Huxley by name and upbringing. “Does the term pigheaded come to mind?”
“I wouldn’t go that far, sir.”
“Kind of you.” Bernard began translating his Latin notes. “Might you hire me an assistant, Kessler?” Sorcha had made that suggestion, and she was right. She was wrong about the Greers, but to tell Lady Barclay something she did not want to hear… a useless business. Negotium inutile.
Thankless and pointless, in fact. Perhaps she’d be a Huxley one day too.
“Were you jesting about an assistant, sir?”
“The Latin has amused me. I am in complete earnest about an assistant. Find me a banker’s wayward son, a restless curate with no vocation, a would-be fortune hunter ready to give up the game and work for a living.”
“A discontented man?”
“A man motivated to make the best of what might be his last chance. If he knows Latin, so much the better. He should have charm if he’s not to offend the clerks, and he’ll want basic honor if he’s not to offend me.
The need is urgent, but discernment must take precedence over haste.
Here.” He handed the translated stack across the desk.
“We can start on the morning batch next, but I have a luncheon appointment. Please send me Heevers and Ipswich.”
“Of course, sir.”
Kessler departed without further homilies, which was fortunate because Bernard needed no more preaching from any quarter. He’d been dangerously tired, stupidly tired, and all because Mayfair hostesses were entitled to look him over and count his figurative teeth.
“Entitled by whom or by what celestial decree?” he muttered, getting out his calendar.
Meetings as far as the eye could see, evening entertainments—using the term euphemistically—and no time to spend with Sorcha and the children when those activities encompassed both his greatest pleasure and his solemn duty.
He gave Ipswich and Heevers their orders for the next week, plowed through the morning correspondence, and was out the door by the eleventh hour. Time enough to get home, change into riding attire, and make it to the park with ten minutes to spare.
Amazing what adequate rest could do for a man’s productivity and sense of purpose.
“That’s Cousin Bernard,” Bridget said, standing on the picnic blanket. “His horse is gray, like a ghost.”
Jordy was on his feet in the next instant. “Bounder isn’t a ghost. He’s a gelding. Cousin is trying to put both weight and muscle on him.”
Such manly talk. “What does that mean?” Sorcha asked. “To put weight and muscle on a horse?”
“Grimes says that means to get the horse fit,” Bridget replied before Jordy could admit he hadn’t a clue. “Grimes also says Cousin Bernard is no sylph, but I don’t know what a sylph is.”
“A fairy of the air,” Sorcha said, shading her eyes the better to watch Bernard’s approach. Bounder was looking a bit less ribby, and the horse cantered down the path without laboring for breath. “I am no sylph either.” Which Bernard seemed to enjoy about her.
Coraline had already started remarking on Bridget’s unfortunate tendency to height, and Jordy was also tall for his age. Not a sylph, fairy, or gnome to be seen.
Bernard slowed Bounder to a walk, patted his horse, and pretended to hold up a spyglass. “Picnic off the port bow! The SS Bounder asks permission to dock in the royal harbor.”
“Bounder isn’t a ship,” Jordy said, settling back onto the blanket. “Cousin Bernard is silly.”
Better silly than spouting accusations and suspicions. “Imaginative. Permission granted by order of Her Majesty Queen Sorcha!” And to blazes with what the footman, enjoying a respite on a bench in the shade, thought of a lady raising her voice.
“And by Princess of the Unicorns, Bridget Catherine Marie Dolforth!” Bridget plopped on the blanket in an unroyal heap.
Jordy opened the hamper at his corner. “You lot are all silly, and I’m hungry, and now Cousin is here, so we can eat.”
“Your Majesty, Princess Unicorn, Lord Jordy of the Picnic Feast, good day.” Bernard swung off his horse. “No eating until diplomatic protocol has been observed.”
“If I had a ring, you’d have to kiss it.” Bridget flung a curtsey at him and sat back down with a bit more decorum. “Annette knows all about being a princess, and that’s what she says.”
Jordy opened the second hamper. “You don’t have a ring, and Annette is stupid.”
Bernard ran up his stirrups and loosened Bounder’s girth. “Young man, is that any way to greet an ambassador returned to the royal court from the distant and perilous purlieus of the City?”
Jordy held up a silver flask with the Dolforth coat of arms engraved on it. “What’s perilous about the City?”
“A question for the ages, young man. We haven’t enough crossing sweepers, to begin with.
Hazards everywhere as a result. Noxious miasmas rise from the very streets, and solicitors occupy every third building.
” Bernard extracted a length of rope and a stake from his saddlebag and picketed Bounder a few yards off.
“Please keep a sharp eye on my dragon, or I’ll have a long walk back to my office. ”
To Sorcha’s sharp eye, Bernard had regained his balance. He was spontaneously entertaining the children with his imaginative flights, moving with energy, and back on his mettle.
Bless Mr. Kessler, who’d acknowledged Sorcha’s note with a few words of polite understanding.
“We have tarts,” Jordy reported, still nose-down in the hampers. “Also meat pies, oranges, a cheese-and-ham pie, and chocolates.”
Bernard lowered himself to Sorcha’s side. “I have a prodigious appetite for all delicious things. Leave me at least two chocolates, or I’ll toss you into the Serpentine by your boots.”
A governess would have missed the look Jordy aimed at Bernard. Bernard might have missed it, and even Sorcha wasn’t certain what that expression portended—fear, annoyance, anger?
“I can’t swim,” Jordy said. “If you toss me into the Serpentine, I will drown, and then I will come back and haunt you to death, even if you hide in the City where nobody will ever think to look for you.”
Bernard passed Sorcha a plate. “Tell me, Jordy, would you like to come see the City with me some pleasant day?”
Bridget wiggled over to Bernard’s side. “I want to see the City. I want to see the Tower too.”