CHAPTER 8 #2
“She is not having a very good day today, I am afraid, my lord,” she said, curtsying to the marquess and glancing sidelong at Claudia.
The room behind her was in semidarkness, all the heavy curtains being drawn across the windows. In the hearth a fire burned.
“Is she not?” the marquess said, but it seemed to Claudia that he sounded more impatient than concerned.
“Papa?” a voice said from inside the room. And then more gladly, filled with excitement, “Papa?”
Miss Edwards stood aside, her hands clasped at her waist.
“Stand and curtsy to the Marquess of Attingsborough, Lizzie,” she said.
But the child was already on her feet, her arms held out toward the door. She was small and thin and pale, with dark hair waving loose down her back to her waist. Her face was alight with joy.
“Yes, I am here,” the marquess said, and strode across the room to fold the child in his arms. She wrapped her own tightly about his neck.
“I knew you would come,” she cried. “Miss Edwards said you would not because it is a sunny day and you would have a thousand things more important to do than coming to see me. But she always says that, and you always come when you say you will. Papa, you smell good. You always smell good.”
“Especially for you,” he said, untwining her arms from about his neck and kissing both her hands before releasing them. “Miss Edwards, why on earth is there a fire burning?”
“I was afraid that Lizzie would catch a chill after you took her out in the garden last evening, my lord,” she said.
“And why the darkness?” he asked. “Is there not enough darkness in Lizzie’s life?”
Even as he spoke he was striding over to the windows and throwing back the curtains to flood the room with light. He opened the windows wide.
“The sun was shining directly in, my lord,” Miss Edwards said. “I wanted to protect the furniture from fading.”
He looked at Claudia as he moved back to his daughter’s side and set one arm about her shoulders.
“Lizzie,” he said, “I have brought someone to meet you. She is Miss Martin, a friend of mine. Miss Martin, may I present my daughter, Lizzie Pickford?”
There was something strange about the child’s eyes, Claudia had seen as soon as the curtains were drawn back. One was almost closed. The other was more open, though the eyelid fluttered, and the eye wandered beneath the lid.
Lizzie Pickford was blind. And if Claudia’s guess was correct, she had been blind from birth.
“Lizzie,” Miss Edwards said, “make your curtsy to Miss Martin.”
“Thank you, Miss Edwards,” Lord Attingsborough said. “You may take a break. You will not be needed for the next hour or so.”
“Lizzie Pickford,” Claudia said, walking closer to the child, taking her hot, thin little hand in her own and squeezing it before letting it go, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“Miss Martin?” the girl said, turning her face to her father.
“I had the pleasure of visiting her last week when I was away from you for a while,” he said, “and then of escorting her to London. She has a school in Bath. Would you like to offer Miss Martin a seat and me too since we are visiting you? My legs are aching from all the standing.”
The girl chuckled, a light, childish sound.
“Oh, silly Papa,” she said. “You did not walk here. You rode. In your curricle—there was more than one horse. I heard them. I told Miss Edwards that you had come, but she said she had heard nothing and that I must not get my hopes up and become feverish. You are not tired of standing. Or Miss Martin either. But I am pleased you have come, and I hope you will stay forever and ever until bedtime. Miss Martin, will you please sit? Papa, will you? I will sit beside you.”
She seated herself very close to him on a sofa while Claudia sat as far from the dying fire as she was able. The child took his hand in hers and laced their fingers. She rubbed her cheek against his sleeve, just below his shoulder.
He smiled down at her with such tenderness that Claudia was ashamed of what she had thought of him on the way here. He very obviously did know a great deal about love.
“Miss Martin’s school is just for girls,” he told his daughter. “It is a delightful place. They learn lots of things, like history and mathematics and French. There is a music room full of instruments, and the girls have individual instruction. They sing and have choirs. They knit.”
And not a single one of them, Claudia thought, had ever been blind. She remembered his asking if she had ever thought of taking in girls with handicaps. However did one teach a blind child?
“When I heard the violin that one time with you, Papa,” the child said, “Mother said there must never be one in this house as the sound of it would give her the headache. And when I sing the songs Mrs. Smart taught me, Miss Edwards says I give her the headache.”
“I think,” he said, “Miss Edwards is beginning to give me the migraines, Lizzie.”
She laughed with glee.
“Shall I send her to work for someone else?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Oh, yes, if you please, Papa. Will you come to live with me instead this time?”
His eyes met Claudia’s, and they looked suddenly bleak.
“I wish it were possible,” he said, “but it is not. I come to see you every day, though, when I am in London. How could I not when you are my favorite person in the whole wide world? Shall we be polite and include Miss Martin in this conversation since I have brought her just to meet you?”
The girl turned her face in Claudia’s direction. She looked in dire need of air and sunshine and exercise.
“Do you read stories at your school, Miss Martin?” she asked politely.
“We do indeed,” Claudia told her. “My girls learn to read as soon as they come there if they have not learned before, and they read many books during their years with me. They may choose among the numerous volumes we have in the library. A library is a place where there are shelves and shelves of books.”
“So many stories all in one place,” the child said.
“Mother could not read me stories because she could not read though Papa told her many times that he would teach her if she wished. And Mrs. Smart does not read. Mr. Smart does, but he does not read to me. Miss Edwards does because it is one thing Papa told her she must do when she came here as my companion, but she does not choose interesting stories and she does not find them interesting. I can tell from the way she reads them. She has a flat voice. She makes me yawn.”
“I read you stories, Lizzie,” the marquess said.
“You do, Papa,” she agreed, lifting her free hand and touching his face before patting it with her fingertips. “But sometimes you pretend to read when really you are making up your own stories. I can tell. But I don’t mind. Indeed, I like those stories best. I tell stories too but only to my doll.”
“If you told them to someone who could write,” Claudia said, “then that someone could write them down for you and read them to you whenever you wished to hear your own story again.”
The child laughed. “That would be funny,” she said.
A plump, elderly woman entered the room then, carrying a large tray of tea and cakes.
“Mrs. Smart,” Lizzie said, “I know it is you. This is Miss Martin. She is Papa’s friend. She has a school and it has a library. Do you know what a library is?”
“You tell me, dearie,” the servant said, smiling fondly at her after nodding politely to Claudia.
“It is a room full of books,” Lizzie said. “Can you imagine?”
“They would not be much good to me, dearie,” Mrs. Smart said, pouring the tea and handing around the cups. “Or you either.”
She left the room.
“Lizzie,” the marquess said after they had eaten some cakes, “do you think you would ever like to go to a school?”
“But who would take me, Papa?” she asked. “And who would bring me home?”
“It would be a school where you could stay,” he said, “and be with other girls, though there would be holidays when you would come home and I would have you all to myself again.”
She was silent for some time. Her lips moved, Claudia could see, though whether it was with trembling or silent words it was impossible to tell. And then she cast aside her empty plate and climbed hastily onto her father’s lap and burrowed close to him, her face hidden against his shoulder.
He stared bleakly at Claudia.
“Miss Edwards said I was not to do this ever again,” Lizzie said after a short while. “She said I was too old. She said it was unseemly. Is it, Papa? Am I too old to sit on your lap?”
But the child had no eyes, Claudia thought. The sense of touch must be far more important to her than it was to other children of her age.
“How could I bear it,” he said, resting his cheek against her hair, “if you were ever too old to want my arms around you, Lizzie? As for sitting on my lap—I think it is quite unexceptionable until you turn twelve. That gives us five whole months longer. What does Miss Martin have to say on the subject?”
“Your father is absolutely right, Lizzie,” Claudia said.
“And I have a rule at my school. It is that no girl is ever forced to go there against her will. No matter how much her parents may wish for her to come and learn from me and my teachers and make friends with other girls, I will not allow her to set foot over the doorstep unless she has told me that yes, it is what she wants. Is that clear to you?”
Lizzie had half turned her head though she was still burrowed safely against her father like a much younger child.
“You have a nice voice,” she said. “I can believe your voice. Sometimes I do not believe voices. I can always tell which ones to believe.”
“Sweetheart,” the marquess said, “I am going to take Miss Martin home now. Later, I am going to come back on my horse. I will take you out for a ride on him. Would you like that?”
“Yes!” She sat up, her face alight with joy again. “But Miss Edwards says—”