Chapter 19
Nineteen
Phillip left the next day, having secured both fifty pounds and the assurance he would someday be the Earl Drake.
That night at dinner, Harry stirred the soup in the bowl in front of her. She did not lift the spoon to her lips. Thomas, for his part, ate his soup hungrily as he had missed his luncheon, having spent the whole afternoon riding Octavius. He eyed Harry.
Suddenly, Harry put her face in her hands and burst into tears.
Thomas stood, unsure what to do. Damn. He had forgotten to have Dr. Andrews look in on Harry yesterday. He had become neglectful, distracted by Phillip’s visit. He would never have ignored an illness of, say, Octavius. Couldn’t he treat his wife as well as he treated his horse?
Finally, he looked at Whitson and jerked his head towards the butler’s pantry. Whitson and the footmen left the dining room.
Harry continued to sob.
Thomas went to the sideboard and poured two glasses of port. He crossed to Harry and put a glass in front of her. He sat next to her and sipped his port and waited.
Eventually, the tears slowed. Thomas handed Harry a handkerchief. She wiped her eyes before seeking out a dry corner and blowing her nose. She saw the glass of port and took a sip.
“Thank you,” she said glumly.
“For what?”
“Partly for the port and the handkerchief, but mostly for just sitting and not making a fuss.”
“Here now, Harry, you must tell me what’s wrong.”
Her bottom lip began to quiver.
“Today is . . . my birthday.” A tear rolled down her cheek.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Thomas felt momentarily relieved and then cursed himself inside his head.
These things were important to women. He should have known his wife’s birthday and done something to mark the day.
“We should have had a party. You should have gotten gifts. But we can do it next week, eh?”
She sobbed again.
“You must tell me what I must do to fix this, Harry. Shall we plan the party together? Tell me what you want.”
“No, no, no! I would hate that, Lord Drake.” She wiped her face again with the handkerchief. “I expected you might know that.”
“Well, what’s the trouble then?”
“I’m so old!” she howled.
“You’re what? Twenty-four?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not old, Harry.”
“But the anno mirabilis for Newton was the year he was twenty-three. 1665. Calculus, gravity, light as a spectrum. All three of those things he did in one year. Three brilliant strokes. Three miracles, any single one of which would lead you to become the most celebrated mind of your day. I was of a mind to prove Fermat’s conjecture when I was twenty-three. ”
“Yes. But you didn’t,” Thomas said calmly.
Harry looked at his cravat, tears still welling in her eyes.
“There’s no magic in the number twenty-three, Harry. You know that. So perhaps when you are twenty-four?”
Harry hiccoughed.
“Or twenty-five? Or twenty-six? You told me Fermat’s conjecture has been around for one hundred and eighty years.
Now, I am no mathematician, but I have gambled enough to know the odds that someone else—some puling man somewhere—solves the conjecture this year are very low. You are still in with a chance.”
She looked in his eyes.
“You are an eminently reasonable man, Thomas Drake. I didn’t expect that.”
With those words, Harry began to eat her soup. At Thomas’ ring, Whitson and the footmen returned to serve the rest of the courses. Harry ate a very good dinner that night.
Thomas did not understand her reversal but was pleased by it, nonetheless.
A few weeks later, after a long morning walk with Dr. Andrews, Harry came in for luncheon and found Thomas in the dining room.
She was surprised. She had eaten well at breakfast, so there was no reason for him to join her.
Since her birthday, she had needed no cajoling to make a good meal.
And hadn’t he said yesterday he was going to London today?
Harry caught sight of herself in one of the many mirrors in the room.
She had some good color, but her hair was a fright.
There had been a great deal of wind on the walk, and her bonnet had blown off, and she and the doctor had chased it, laughing, across the lawn.
Now she took her hair completely down and twisted it and pinned it back up quickly.
She could see in the mirror that Thomas was looking at her.
She looked down at herself to see what he might be looking at.
“It’s one of my new dresses.”
“Yes, I see that. It’s very pretty.”
Harry sat and filled her plate from the offerings presented to her by the footmen.
Thomas was still looking at her. She had that feeling in her stomach that had nothing to do with appetite.
She turned her attention to her napkin, the floor, the skin at the base of her nail on the third finger of her right hand.
Thomas broke the silence. “What do you talk about?”
“Pardon?”
“On your walks with Dr. Andrews, what do you discuss?”
Harry looked down at her plate and picked up a knife and fork.
“Oh.” She cut a piece of trout and peered at it, looking for bones. “Nothing. Everything.”
“Do you discuss the calculus?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you know, you never did finish telling me about the rabbits.”
“Rabbits?” Harry felt brave and looked at him and forked a piece of fish into her mouth.
“The rabbits that were multiplying in a place called Enth. Or was it Exth? At the inn. On our wedding night.”
“Mmpf.” Harry tried to summon the function she had created in that warm bed.
Had it been f of x equals n times two to the x?
Yes, that was it. Not a very good example.
She should have chosen a linear function for Thomas.
He might have understood that. And what a pity he didn’t come to her bedchamber nowadays and toast up the bed before she got into it herself.
She had some notion on her wedding night that the future might hold some version of that.
But she supposed one couldn’t ask an earl to do those things.
Not if one wasn’t going to do all the other things that went along with sharing a bed.
It was a pity.
Thomas stood suddenly. “I’m off to London.”
He was going, after all. But it had nothing to do with her. That was not her function. She was not a rabbit. She would do some good thinking on consecutive residues.
“Farewell, my lord.”
Despite his late start, Thomas made good time to London and to Madame Flora’s. In the parlor where gentlemen selected their whores, he looked around the room and chose the shortest, plumpest, and silliest of the women available.
As the woman led him to the bedchamber and began removing her rather scant clothing, she kept up a constant stream of giggles and chatter about how his lordship had missed several weeks at the brothel and all the girls had been wondering if that meant his new wife had learned to satisfy him although she had been sure he would come back because men like him always did—
He crossed the room and took her in his arms and covered her mouth with his. He kissed her long and hard. He thrust his tongue between her lips and tasted sherry and laudanum and tobacco. When their mouths broke apart, they were both panting.
“You remember kissing costs extra, my lord?”
He grunted and kissed her again before picking her up by her very round buttocks and falling onto the bed with her. She seized his cock with her hand. He bit her breasts, which were four handfuls apiece, at least. He managed the French Letter just in time.
It was a long night. He thought he might have dozed for an hour or so at one point after he had penetrated her for a third time.
But mostly he lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling while Sally—that was her name—slept next to him.
He wondered how soon he could go out and saddle Octavius and make the return trip to Sommerleigh.
In the morning, Sally drank coffee by the window as he dressed. She wore a modest, sensible gown with an apron. There wasn’t a trace of silliness in her manner now.
“My lord, I want to make sure you are pleased with me.”
Thomas was surprised. Wasn’t his nocturnal activity with her evidence enough? Hadn’t he paid her handsomely? And paid for the kissing as well?
“I do like to keep neat, and I pride myself that most gentlemen appreciate my appearance. But, several times last night, you told me I was hairy, and I wondered if it was my maidenhair or the hair under my arms or some other hair that had offended you.”
Thomas blushed, something he had not done in front of a whore for many years. He mumbled some excuse and fled the room.
He was back to Sommerleigh in plenty of time for his bath and shave and intercepting Harry as she was leaving the aerie for dinner. Could he be mistaken or did she smile just a bit when she came out and saw him standing there?
He must take his encouragement where he could get it.
They would have a good dinner tonight, and he would see if he could convince her to spend more time with him.
Especially since she was no longer working towards that absurd completion date she had set herself.
He must get her to know more of Sommerleigh.
Perhaps he might even teach her to fly a kite as he had imagined he would when he thought she was a boy named Harry.
It would be good for her health, after all. That was his rather wonderful burden, and he must make sure it remained his.
At the end of dinner, Thomas looked up. Harry was scraping her dessert plate with her spoon, trying to get up every bit of custard and apple. It looked like she was moments away from licking the plate.
“Whitson, please tell Mrs. Haversham that Lady Drake enjoyed the Apple Charlotte very much and may we have it again tomorrow?”
Whitson removed Harry’s plate. She had such a hangdog look that Thomas added, “On second thought, please have one of the footmen ask Mrs. Haversham if there might be two more portions of the Apple Charlotte right now?”
Harry brightened. Really, she had been so easy to please since her birthday. Provide a fire in the drawing room, a cup of coffee, a piece of cake, a book, and she would stretch out like a cat and say, “Lord Drake, this is heaven.” And mean it.
“The apples have been quite good this year, haven’t they, Whitson?”
“I haven’t spoken to the orchard men myself, Lord Drake, but Mrs. H says they are starting to come in by the bushel, and the kitchen staff have been busy laying them into the root cellar and making applesauce.”
The footman came in with two plates of Apple Charlotte.
Thomas later learned they had been rescued by Mrs. Haversham from under the protesting noses of Jackson and one of the coachmen.
“I had to stop them from eating it, my lord,” Mrs. Haversham confessed.
“I couldn’t believe my lady was going to have a second helping of my Apple Charlotte. ”
In point of fact, Harry ate a third helping as Thomas merely twirled his fork on his own plate before getting up and carrying the plate down to Harry’s end of the table and giving it to her.
He sat in the chair next to her and drank his port.
She was wearing another one of her new dresses.
As he had suspected, the rich blue was just right for Harry’s coloring.
Smythe had told him the color was called mazarine blue.
“Like the butterfly,” Thomas said out loud.
“What’s that?” Harry asked around a mouthful.
Thomas shrugged.
Finally, she pushed back from the table and groaned.
“Are you regretting the three puddings, Harry?”
“No, my lord, I am regretting the soup and the joint before that.”
“Dr. Andrews says you are to eat some of everything. “
“And so I did.”
“And so you did.”
She held her abdomen and said, “There are apple trees on the estate?”
“Yes, there are. Many dozen, I think.”
“I’ve never seen an apple tree.”
“Shall we go and see them tomorrow?”
Thomas picked an apple and tossed it to Harry.
“Catch.”
She plucked it out of the air and looked at it. “Lovely.”
“Go ahead and eat it,” Thomas said.
“A whole apple? After my enormous breakfast?”
Thomas came alongside her and took it out of her hand. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his folding pen knife. “I’ll eat half.” He cut the apple and handed half to Harry.
Harry bit into the cream-colored flesh.
“Can I see that?” she said through her mouthful, nodding at his knife.
“This? Yes.” Thomas made sure the knife was folded shut and handed it to her.
The handle was made of mother-of-pearl. Harry held her apple half in her mouth and opened the knife.
“My father gave it to me,” Thomas said. “I’m afraid I haven’t used it much as a pen knife.”
She folded it and gave it to Thomas and took another bite of the apple.
“It’s a cunning little knife,” Harry said with her mouth full. She swallowed. “Feels good in the hand. Easy to open.”
He handed it back to her. “You keep it. You have more quills to sharpen than I do. It’s a late birthday gift.”
Harry nodded and put the small knife in the pocket of her dress. She took one last enormous bite of her apple and threw her core into a clump of briars. She brushed her sticky hands together.
“I’m glad I had pockets put in all my dresses.”
“Yes.”
“I might ask you to find some pencils for me the next time you are in London. I could put one in my pocket with some paper and then be able to scribble equations when the fancy takes me. I could use your knife to sharpen the pencils.”
“Here.” Thomas handed her his half of the apple he hadn’t touched.
“It’s a delicious apple, my lord. You should eat it.”
“I assure you it will give me more pleasure to watch you eat it than to eat it myself.”
Harry crunched down greedily and, ignoring Thomas’ proffered hand, climbed over the stile without assistance.