Chapter 11
Eleven
Harry seemed a little overwhelmed by the formal staff greeting upon her entrance into the front hall of Sommerleigh.
“So many people. I see why you needed the money,” she said under her breath to Thomas.
“You don’t have to learn everyone’s name at once,” Thomas said, taking her arm and leading her towards the imperial staircase at the far end of the hall. Smythe followed, carrying Harry’s small bag, which she had retrieved from a footman.
Harry proceeded to name off everyone in the hall she had just met. “Of course, as soon as they change their clothes, I’ll be lost.” She stopped and turned to Smythe, panicked. “My books! The trunks!”
Smythe said smoothly, “The trunks will be brought to your bedchamber, my lady. Your bedchamber is the one meant for the lady of the house and, as such, was predetermined. But I am sure his lordship and you will want to select your room for your books. Then the trunks can be moved.”
“Yes, good,” Harry said. Smythe curtsied and walked towards the servants’ staircase.
Thomas noticed Harry was leaning on him and breathing rapidly as they climbed the first half-flight of stairs even though the steps were wide and the risers were low.
The day was not hot, but drops of perspiration beaded on her forehead.
Halfway up that first set of stairs, she had to stop.
For a moment, he thought she might collapse.
But she took a deep breath and stared grimly at the stairs still left to mount in order to reach the grand landing with an enormous window which faced the grounds that led to the lake.
“I’m looking forward to seeing the view from that window, Lord Drake,” she said.
She started up again, leaning more and more heavily on Thomas’ arm with each passing step. As they reached the landing, Harry crossed to the window without assistance and collapsed onto the window seat.
“This is nice,” she panted.
“I’m hoping the grounds will meet with your approval, Lady Drake,” Thomas said.
Harry looked out. Thomas looked out, too, and saw the familiar sloping green lawns, the glimmer of light on water, and beyond, forests and farmers’ fields. He was glad to be home. He was grateful his wife had saved this place for him. Unexpectedly, he felt the pricking of tears in his eyes.
“Pretty,” she finally said.
Thomas blinked rapidly.
“How tall is this house?” Harry asked.
“I don’t know, my lady.”
Harry looked down at the garden directly under the window.
“If you ever need to know,” she said, “I will find it for you.”
Thomas imagined Harry standing on the parapet on the top of the house, lowering a weighted rope, plumbing the air.
“It’s a good trick, and I have always thought it would be fun to execute, but I could never do it for the Mayfair house because the buildings behind and across the street were taller than our house.
Of course, I would have to do it earlier in the day when the shadow is slightly more pronounced. Or later, but round the other side.”
Harry stood, tottered, and fell back onto the cushion of the window seat.
“Oof,” she said.
“If my lady will permit.” Thomas stooped and put one arm under her knees and wrapped one arm around her back and swiftly picked her up.
Good God, she was even lighter than when he had picked her up after she had fainted in his London rooms.
Harry held herself rigidly as he easily carried her in his arms up the next flight of stairs.
“After all, this is traditional.” Thomas smiled. “It won’t hurt us to follow some traditions, would it?”
“Mmmf,” Harry said, staring at the ceiling.
“Based, of course, on the story of the rape of the Sabine women, the custom of the groom carrying the bride across the threshold of the bedchamber reflects the woman’s natural reluctance to submit to fornication and the man’s eagerness to perform it upon her. ”
Thomas marveled at her ability to speak at such length when moments before she had not had the strength to stand.
“Doesn’t the rape of the Sabine women really refer to the Latin for seize, rapere? Weren’t they kidnapped?” he asked.
Harry eyes widened, and she looked at his cravat rather than at the decoration on the ceiling of the corridor. Her eyes were more brown than green today.
“You remember your Latin?” she asked.
“Very little. I did have some tutoring. Had to read Cicero. Dreadful.”
“So you think your noble Romans kidnapped these women and didn’t force them into fornication? They just wanted some nice ladies around? To look pretty and maybe do the cooking?”
“That was my impression when I was nine.” Thomas laughed.
Smythe had reached the bedchamber, opened the door, and was standing in the passage, waiting.
The room was, of course, Thomas’ mother’s bedchamber, not used since her death and his birth.
He could only remember being in the room a handful of times, sneaking in as a boy, curious.
His mother’s personal effects had lingered in the room for years, likely due to his father’s wishes, but had disappeared around the time Jane married.
He carried Harry over the threshold of the room and deposited her in a chair by the fire.
The butler Whitson or the housekeeper Mrs. Dewey must have arranged to have the bedchamber freshly painted and the carpets and curtains cleaned after the announcement of the banns in the church of Sommerleigh three weeks ago.
There had been time for some womanly touches, too.
Flowers on a table. A cozy chair by the window where the light was best for reading.
Likely, his staff had arranged for the flowers, and Smythe had moved a chair to the window upon her own arrival yesterday. Smythe knew Harry.
The rest of the furniture remained unchanged—the delicate dressing table, the mahogany bed where his mother had given birth to him and died. He shivered.
“My lady,” Thomas inclined his head, “welcome to Sommerleigh.”
“Thank you, Lord Drake,” Harry said absently. She stared into the fire, not even noticing the lovely room that had been prepared for her, the best room in what many thought was the most beautiful house in this part of England.
When Thomas reached the door, he turned back and said, “I’ll arrange for some luncheon to be sent up.”
Harry waved her hand in an abstracted manner as if he were a footman. “Coffee.”
Smythe curtsied and said, “Thank you, my lord.”
Fifteen minutes later, Thomas asked to see one of the upstairs chambermaids. She had been in his service for a year, and he had never had occasion to speak to her, nothing beyond a nod and a “Good morning,” if they passed in one of the corridors, her carrying coals or linens or a duster.
She looked rather astonished at his request. But, an hour later, there was a knock at the library door.
The butler Whitson opened the door and entered, the chambermaid following behind him, holding a covered tray.
“My lady’s luncheon dishes, my lord,” Whitson intoned.
Thomas lifted the lid off the salver. A bite of meat gone, perhaps. A pristine pile of roasted potatoes. The butter and the cake untouched.
“How many bread rolls were sent up with this?”
The chambermaid looked at Whitson fearfully.
“Answer Lord Drake, Ellen,” the butler said firmly.
She curtsied. “Pleasing to say, my lord, two rolls.”
Two rolls still lay on their plate, nary a crumb missing.
“Send for the doctor,” Thomas growled.
Thomas had met Dr. Alasdair Andrews a few times in recent years.
The first time had been over a dislocated kneecap sustained while playing drunk cricket with James and some of the other fellows during hunt season.
Thomas felt Dr. Andrews was a sound physician.
A transplanted Scot, like many of the best doctors, and quite a sensible sort.
But when the young doctor came, Harry refused to see him.
Dr. Andrews seemed embarrassed to come back down and apologize to Lord Drake, but her ladyship would not permit his examination, her maid said Lady Drake said she was working on a lemma.
A lemma? What the devil was that?
Thomas went up the stairs, two at a time. He knocked on Harry’s door. Smythe answered, saw it was Thomas, and curtsied.
Harry’s voice floated out to the corridor. “Smythe, do tell that doctor to stop being such a bother.”
Thomas moved to come through the door, and Smythe stepped out of his way.
Harry was sitting in the same chair where he had left her, but now her feet were on an ottoman, her knees drawn up and a writing board propped there, covered in papers.
“I’m busy,” Harry said, not looking up.
“No one in my house—least of all my wife—is going to die of neglect!” he roared.
Harry was not the least bit cowed. She took her feet off the ottoman and put the writing board down. She met his eyes and knitted her brows together. She looked as fierce as he felt.
“Fine,” she grumbled.
“Fine!” Thomas thundered. He stalked from the room and walked down the stairs.
“Go,” he said to the doctor and jerked his thumb in the direction of the stairs. “Examine everything. I’ll be back in an hour to hear your report.”
He went out to Octavius, who whinnied at his return after such a long absence. Thomas rode him at a gallop until they were both lathered.
“Have ye always been this thin, my lady?”
Harry looked at Smythe, who shook her head.
“No, Doctor.”
“When did ye stop eating?”
“I never stopped, but I have no time for it.”
“Ye are starving yerself, my lady.”
Harry shrugged.
“’Tis a curious thing,” Dr. Andrews said.
“The Roman physician Galen was the first to suggest the brain was the seat of thought almost two thousand years ago. Two thousand years and it is still such a mystery. How does this hacket thing—it has the look of a slimy cauliflower, my lady—how does it produce the pyramids and aqueducts and Beowulf and our beloved calculus? And yet it does. I suppose some see the hand of God in it. Of course, my lady kens the work of Descartes.”
“Cogito ergo sum,” Harry murmured.
“Aye.”
“I know his mathematics well, but not much of his philosophy.”
“My lady, have ye ever entertained the converse notion? Aye, cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. But also, I am, therefore I think? I’m merely a country doctor.
I widnae presume to argue against Descartes in a formal setting.
But I have seen many things, and I cannae believe in Descartes’ notion that the mind and body are separate.
When the body eats, it gets nourishment, and that nourishment is for the brain and, subsequently, the mind, as well.
When our vital humors course through the body, they also flow to our brain and to our mind.
When the body is strong, the mind is made stronger, quicker, more graceful.
If the body is weak, the mind can be weakened and made dull. ”
Harry was thoughtful.
“What do you suggest, Doctor?”