Chapter 10
Ten
The concubine had her own bed in the palace, but she had never slept there.
— The Concubine and Her King. Unpublished MS.
Susannah swallowed and willed herself to stay calm.
The coach had turned off the road five minutes ago and gone through a huge gate flanked by two gatehouses, each of which had to be the size of The Swan, and yet they had still not yet arrived at the house proper.
If the house were as grand as the property surrounding it, she didn’t know how she’d dare enter it.
She pinched her own leg. She was being a noodle. The house could not be more intimidating than the man who owned it. Yes, the earl did all kinds of queer things to her insides, but he did not cow her.
And she had dared so much already. She had sold the promise of a book and demanded to take a journey with him.
True, she hadn’t known he was an earl at the time, but, since learning that, she had dared to dine with him in a private room at a coaching inn, and she had sat in a carriage and conversed with him for hours at a time.
He had only treated her with great courtesy, just as if she really were a lady authoress.
Except for the kiss. That had been between a man and a woman, not a gentleman and a lady. Not an earl and his authoress.
But there would be no more of that.
She had wondered in the carriage and at the inn last night if he had really meant what he had said.
It seemed he did. There were times when she had been chattering away at him, asking him questions—she had no shyness about asking questions, not her—and looking out the carriage window at the scenery—she might not be going to London, but she was not going to lose the opportunity to see something new, even a field of turnips—and she’d felt his gaze on her and a sear of heat.
But when she’d looked at him, he’d always been a grave and proper gentleman, carved from a block of ice.
He thawed only when he spoke of his granddaughter. He could not hide his love for Mina.
What would Mina be like? Truly, and not just through her grandfather’s eyes. He was spending a hundred and fifty pounds on a book for a child. She had to be a spoiled, much-indulged little girl.
But, no. Susannah did not think the earl would allow bad behavior.
By virtue of his bearing alone, he demanded everyone around him do their best. Perhaps that came from being an earl, or, as she had learned more about him over the last two days, from his time as an army officer.
Or it was some essential part of his nature.
“Oh!”
There, past the sweep of the park, lay the house. The only reason she knew to call it a house and not a castle or palace was that the earl had called it a house.
She nearly pressed her nose against the window because this was like no house she had ever seen, even Sutton Hall. It was an enormous mass of gray stone, covered with windows that reflected the afternoon sun and festooned with spires and numerous towers with rounded tops.
It was more intimidating than its owner.
“Elizabethan,” that owner was now saying. “Designed after the privy lodgings at Hampton Court.”
Now it was far too soon for the carriage to stop, but it did.
“What am I?” she asked frantically. “Please, what am I? What are you going to tell people?”
“You are Miss Susannah Beasley,” he said simply. “And you are my guest.”
I am Miss Susannah Beasley, and I am the earl’s guest.
He exited the carriage and handed her down.
What followed then was a flurry of servants coming out to greet his lordship and unload the baggage from the carriage, including Susannah’s humble sack, and the earl was saying her name, and she was trying to smile at everyone, and then she was going through the immense doors and into a vast echoing hall lined with marble statuary and richly colored paintings the size of the village green.
“Here we are,” the earl said, and she realized he’d been holding her elbow the whole time. “There’ll be time to see the entire house at a later date, Miss Beasley, and I thought we’d sit in this drawing room while your room is made ready.”
She nodded, still struck dumb by her surroundings. He guided her to a sofa covered in red and gold damask and indicated she should sit. She sat.
“Mrs. Rumney likes things a certain way and is quite cross with me for not warning her there would be a guest. Tea,” he said to someone and then sat himself. “Mina is apparently having her afternoon nap.”
The word nap comforted Susannah more than anything else likely could have, although she had very much liked the idea of a woman somewhere in this house daring to be cross with the earl.
But a nap. A nap was a common and ordinary thing. Every child, from princesses to paupers, took naps. Except her brothers.
She half laughed. “Little girls take naps.”
“Your brothers didn’t?”
She thrilled to his question mark.
“My brothers weren’t happy unless they were running riot from dawn to dusk and beyond. If they’d taken naps, I would have never gotten them to go to sleep at night.”
“Not even with the promise of a Tommy Treadwell story?”
“Tommy might get them to lie in their beds to listen, but as soon as I left, a rumpus would break out unless they had all fallen asleep. You may have noticed some of Tommy’s stories are long and far more complicated than most children’s stories.
I had to keep inventing things until ten eyes closed. ”
“Five boys in one room.”
There was a note of wonder in his voice, and she could see how the idea of having no rooms to spare must be very strange to him, a man who had been raised in this magnificent place.
“Mother needed her own bedchamber because she was sick. And Father needed his room. So all the boys had to be together in one.”
“And you had your own room.”
She felt her face get hot. “No. Not for a long time.”
“Where did you sleep?”
Now she wished the questions would stop.
“I made up a bed on the floor of my mother’s bedchamber. Then I could tend her in the middle of the night if she needed me. But when she died . . .”
“You got her room.”
“Yes.”
A high-pitched voice called out, “Grandfather!”
The most beautiful sound in the world.
“Grandfather! Grandfather!” His little Mina, usually so dignified, ran into the red drawing room, and he caught her up in his arms.
“Mina,” he said and almost choked on the word.
“Grandfather. I’m so happy,” she said and sighed. She had a crease on her cheek from her pillow.
“I am, too. Did you have a good time while I was gone?”
She shook her head. “It was very dull without you.”
“We have a guest I’d like you to meet.”
Only at that moment did Henry realize he hadn’t discussed with Susannah how she would like to be introduced to Mina. Would he reveal she was Mr. Augustus Puddlewick or should he leave it to her?
“Who?” Mina said, looking around the drawing room and catching sight of Susannah, who had risen to her feet.
Knowing Mina didn’t like looking like a baby, as she put it, Henry set her down, and she walked over to Susannah and curtsied.
“How do you do?”
Susannah curtsied. “Very well, thank you. How do you do?”
“Very well, thank you.” Mina looked at Henry and then back at Susannah. “Are you my new grandmother?”
Susannah made a choking sound.
“No,” Henry said. “No, this is . . .well, she, she is . . .” He didn’t know what to say.
Susannah put her finger to her lips. “What I am is a very great secret,” she said. “And I think you should try to guess that secret.”
The tea came in then, and Mina chose to sit next to Susannah on the sofa.
After tea had been poured, with Mina getting mostly milk in her cup, and the servants had left, Susannah turned to Mina and said with a smile, “You can ask me questions, any question except my name, and I’ll answer. But you only have twenty questions.”
“Are you a queen?”
Susannah extended one finger. “No, decidedly not.”
“Are you married?”
A second finger. “No.”
Mina thought. “I should have asked the questions the other way around. Because if you’re not married, you couldn’t be a queen.”
“There have been many queens who weren’t married. Queen Elizabeth, for example.”
Mina nodded. “Bledsoe Park is shaped like an E after her.”
Susannah looked at Henry, and he nodded, too.
“Have I met you before?” Mina asked.
“In a way. But not like this. Not face to face.”
“Did you know my mother or father?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“My mother was an actress. Are you an actress?”
“No.”
Mina thought. “Grandfather said I wouldn’t need a governess until I was seven.”
“I would be a horrid governess. I’m terrible at sums. And you’re much too clever for me. You got an answer out of me without asking a question. You must have learned that from someone.”
Susannah winked at Henry.
Oh. He liked that wink.
Mina clapped her hands together. “Are you Augustus Puddlewick?”
Susannah smiled. “I am.”
“Oh, I knew Grandfather would find you.” Mina sat up very straight and bounced up and down on the sofa a little bit.
“Are you surprised?” Susannah asked.
“Yes. I didn’t know girls could be named Augustus.”
“Well, Augustus Puddlewick isn’t really my name. My name is Miss Susannah Augusta Beasley.”
“Augusta is very like Augustus.” Mina stopped bouncing. “That’s a very nice name. Why would you not say the books were by Miss Beasley?”
“Many reasons. But one is that I didn’t think people would want to read a story written about a boy if a woman wrote it.”
“Oh. That’s silly.” Mina darted a glance at Henry and then looked back at Susannah. “I mean the people not reading, not you, Miss Beasley.”
“And it’s common for authors to have a made-up name.”
“But isn’t it,” Mina looked at Henry again, “lying?”