Chapter 16
Sixteen
One morning, Harry went out into the garden with a stake and a ball of string. Thomas spied her from the library and strolled out to join her.
“Good morning, my lady,” Thomas said. “You have already walked?”
“Yes,” Harry said. She found a soft place in a flower bed near the house for her stake.
“I did not know you had a fondness for gardening.”
She looked up. “I don’t.”
“Then what can you be doing?”
“I am measuring the height of your house, Thomas.”
It was the first time she had called him by his Christian name since their wedding night. He was pleased. Very pleased. Far too pleased. He had no business being so pleased.
Thomas looked up at the house. He squinted, shielding his eyes with his hand as he stood in full sunlight. The sun was fairly high, just peeking over the crest of the roof from where he stood. The shadow of the house right now only extended about eight or so feet from the house itself.
“I had imagined you would need to go to the roof.”
“No.” Harry had planted her stake so the shadow of the house fell across the stake, dividing it. She leaned over and placed the end of the string at the point where the shadow hit the stake and let the ball of string fall to the ground.
“Do you have a knife?” she asked.
Thomas fished a small folding knife with a white handle out of his pocket, opened it, and handed it to her, handle first. Harry squatted and cut the string where it brushed the ground and hung the string around her neck.
Then she laid out and cut a string from the house to the base of the stake and a string from the base of the stake to where the edge of the shadow of the house fell on the ground.
She folded up the knife, looking at it briefly. “Nice.” She handed it back to him. “Do you have a Bedwell ruler? Or really anything to measure feet and inches?”
Thomas did. He took her to the library and she measured her strings there.
“Seventy-six,” she said.
Thomas looked at her blankly.
“Feet. That’s the height of the house.”
“What trickery is this?”
“Do you have paper?”
Harry drew a picture and explained. It helped that Thomas had studied some geometry, long ago. He grasped the concept but was still confused.
“The number seventy-six. You did no calculations to arrive at that number.”
“Yes, I did.”
Thomas smiled. “Are you a mental calculator? How splendid.”
Harry shrugged and left the library.
Thomas began to look in some of the large drawers in the library that contained different documents, ones which did not need to be in a vault. He seemed to remember . . . yes.
He laid his hands on drawings of the house, drawings made by an architect long ago, before he was born, when his father had thought of adding another wing. Nothing had come of it as his father had soon realized his finances were contracting not expanding.
The drawings showed the height of the roofline as seventy-six feet.
Thomas was not surprised the number matched Harry’s. He was surprised by the degree of delight he felt that it did so.
An hour later, a message came from the house of the Dunbars, his nearest neighbors. Mr. and Mrs. Dunbar would be pleased to call on Lord and Lady Drake this afternoon, if it might be convenient to them. Thomas waited to send his reply.
He broached the subject to Harry at luncheon.
There was a plump brown partridge with Mrs. Haversham’s bread sauce and red currant jelly sitting on Harry’s plate.
She was cutting into the breast when Thomas said, “We may have some visitors this afternoon for tea. The Dunbars. My neighbors. I suspect they are anxious to meet you. We cannot make an excuse of your illness any longer. You are looking so well.”
Thomas was surprised to see Harry’s face redden. “I look so well?” she said and quickly put a forkful in her mouth.
“I don’t want to be accused of being a Blackbeard and keeping you locked away.”
Harry chewed and swallowed. “I see.” A pause. “Is Mrs. Dunbar a gossip?”
Thomas was startled. “What?”
“Is she a gossip? And is she gregarious and popular in the neighborhood? Will all the other local gentry hear of this visit? Will she recount what I say and what I wear to the other ladies, the shopkeepers, any tramp who might be passing through?”
“She is popular, yes, I believe. I don’t know whether she is a gossip, but she is . . . voluble.”
Harry continued to eat steadily. After she had eaten most of the bird, she said, “I suppose I had better be done with it. If she will come and tell the others what I am like, I will not have to entertain the rest of them individually. Their curiosity should be satisfied.”
Thomas didn’t think that was true but was relieved by her answer. “Yes.”
“And will there be coffee in addition to tea?”
Thomas knew Harry did crave coffee in the afternoon. “I will make sure of it.”
Thomas told Smythe to inspect for ink on Harry’s face and her hands and to dress her hair quickly in a becoming manner when it was time for her to descend from the aerie.
And when Harry came into the drawing room to meet the Dunbars, a hearty couple in their forties, Thomas thought Smythe had done a good job picking the dress—a pale-pink one that was soft and hid a great deal of Harry’s remaining angularity.
He also thought there might even be a hint of a flush to Harry’s cheeks.
She looked much better than she had at their wedding, and he felt a bit of pride over it.
Harry remembered her lessons at the hands of Mama Katie. She curtsied and smiled. She answered questions and asked her own. She hoped Thomas noticed how well she was doing. But he didn’t really understand how difficult this was for her, so he couldn’t possibly appreciate what she was doing for him.
She learned the Dunbars had seven children. She made the appropriate sounds of admiration. Their three oldest were daughters whom Mrs. Dunbar had named Faith, Hope, and Charity.
“Just a silly fancy of mine at the time,” Mrs. Dunbar said, sipping her tea, “but the girls have been so good as to say they like their names. Although some people hear their names and think we are Puritans.” Mrs. Dunbar laughed at that—a big, jolly laugh—and Harry smiled a meaningless smile.
“To be sure, Charity is only fifteen. Faith has married and lives in Tavishbourn, but we see her often. Hope has had her come-out and is a lovely girl, beautiful red hair like my own mother’s, so very sweet and kind. You two might become friends.”
Harry murmured politely.
“Hope is very sociable. She will call on you when she returns from London. She enjoyed the last month of the Season at her aunt’s house and then decided to stay on through the early autumn.”
“I am sure she will be very busy upon her return. Perhaps with suitors or a betrothal.”
“We had hoped, that is—” Mrs. Dunbar’s eyes went to Thomas, who was engaged in a conversation with Mr. Dunbar regarding the amount of rain and the effects on local farmers.
But Mrs. Dunbar suddenly seemed to remember something and pulled up sharply.
“Yes, yes, very busy. But we will see. She returns next week in time for her birthday. She will be just twenty.”
An upcoming birthday. Harry had one looming, too. She had forgotten. A pit opened up in her stomach.
Mrs. Dunbar went on to discuss the different balls Hope had attended during the Season.
It seemed unlikely Harry would have met Hope in town since Hope had traveled to London just as Harry and Thomas had made their way to Sommerleigh.
Mrs. Dunbar chatted away about minutiae even as Harry directed her mind towards that which was most crucial.
She had very few days left on her calendar. She must work harder, longer. She had no time for anything else. Especially not for thoughts of her husband.