Chapter Thirteen #4
Olivia watched with amusement as Nat’s eyes darted about the room.
The child was evidently impressed that so much in the way of clutter was tolerated.
He had been gently warned upon his entry that he should not touch anything, and to his credit, his hands had not left his sides.
He’d made one slow, but complete circuit of the room, gazing at the books with something like yearning in his face, making a cursory examination of the porcelain and jade figurines crowded together on the drinks cabinet, and finally pausing to study his own narrow face in the mirror above the mantel.
Olivia did not think she would ever forget how he’d turned his head, just so, to better make out the line of his scar.
Her own attention had darted to Griffin then, and she saw that he had been riveted by the very same.
“I imagine you are wondering how Lord Breckenridge finds anything,” Olivia said. “It remains a mystery to everyone, including his lordship, but if he wants a particular item, he knows precisely where to go.”
Nat bit off a piece of toast and chewed thoughtfully. “The Castle of…” He paused, his tongue working around a word he didn’t know.
Griffin set his cup down and arched one eyebrow sharply. “Otranto. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Otranto. Yes. That’s the one.”
“That is too easy.” He pointed to the stack of books to the right of the chaise. “Third up from the bottom. It is not a particularly good representation of a Gothic novel, but it helps support the candelabra nicely.”
“He is rather too confident,” said Olivia, finding her voice after a moment’s astonishment had left her without words. “I would not trust him. It is all right if you wish to look.”
“No, that’s where it is. I remember.”
Olivia looked from Nat to Griffin. Her accusing glance took in both of them. “You arranged this. I have never heard of The Castle of Otranto.”
“Horace Walpole,” they said as one, but Griffin was looking at Nat oddly while Nat was sinking his small teeth into a muffin the size of his fist.
Olivia excused herself from the table and went to the stack. Dropping gracefully to her haunches, her gray morning dress wreathing her like smoke, she counted three up from the floor and tilted her head to read the spine. “You are both unnatural.”
She returned to the table and regarded Nat with an expression only marginally less surprised than Griffin’s. “You have read the book?”
“Only the side of it.”
Griffin found he could only shake his head. “He is a quick study, I think. What else did you observe, Nat? Can you tell me, for instance, where I might find The Vicar of Wakefield?”
Nat licked at the muffin crumbs above his lip as he applied considerable thought to this challenge. He closed his eyes, scanning the room in his mind’s eye, and said slowly, “Bottom shelf. Left side. Between four and eight from the far end, I should think.”
“Six, actually,” said Griffin as Nat opened his eyes and looked at him expectantly. “Now, have you seen a deck of cards with a blue backing?”
“No, sir.”
“That is too bad. Neither have I, and I was most particularly fond of them.” He dipped the point of his toast into the yolk of his soft-boiled egg. “Miss Cole?”
“They are in your desk drawer. I put them away.”
Griffin sent Nat a look that put them on the same side against the sole female in the room. “You see? She has put them away. It is an annoyance, but one that must be occasionally suffered if one wants—”
“Wants?” Olivia asked pointedly when Griffin suddenly fell silent. “Wants what, exactly?”
“Harmony,” said Griffin, inspired to respond in this fashion by Olivia’s look, as well as the tines of the fork she was pressing into his thigh. “There are certain advantages to harmony, Nat.”
“Does it hurt, sir?”
“Harmony? Why, no, it is—” He stopped this time because Nat was shaking his head. “Oh, you are referring to the fork in my leg.”
“Yes, sir.”
Olivia removed the fork and stabbed a thin slice of ham with it. “How did you know?” she asked Nat. “I am not always so easily caught out.”
Nat was uncertain he could explain it. He’d seen it in their faces—one pained, but more as a pretense than fact, and one grim, but slyly so.
There was also the matter of a missing fork and the hand that had held it, as well as the exchange they’d made in which no word passed between them.
It was not easily explained when he understood almost none of it. He’d simply said what came to his mind.
“It just seemed you might be moved to take a poke at him,” Nat said. “I think he meant to push you to it.”
“Sometimes his lordship doesn’t require a push. He just steps into it. I acquit him of cruel intent.”
“You are too kind,” Griffin said dryly. He glanced at Nat. “Miss Cole tells me you won twenty-three farthings from her yesterday.”
“Yes, sir. It was her money.”
Griffin considered that. “Yours now, though I understand what you mean. Would you like to have some money of your own? Like it enough to earn it?”
Surprised, Nat still did not hesitate. “Yes, sir.”
“We had a boy here, a few years older than you. Beetle. Do you recall seeing him about?” When Nat shook his head, Griffin went on, remembering how the child had rarely left his mother’s side. “He’s gone now, moved away with his family. There are things he did for me that you could do.”
“Griffin,” Olivia said softly.
Griffin did not give any indication that he’d heard. “Everyone here does something, Nat, and earns a wage for it. What do you think of that?”
“Would I be a servant, then?”
“You would be Nathaniel Christopher, I believe. Nothing about working for sixpence a week makes you more or less than that. I will speak to Truss about what he can expect. You will have to make time for your studies, of course, and what you get by way of compensation there is a head full of peculiar things that someone else thinks you should know. As fine a memory as you possess, you will take to it admirably.”
“I shall have a tutor?”
“As soon as I can secure the services of one. Later you will go to school, but not just now, I think. You’ve had a tutor before, haven’t you?”
“Mother taught me.”
Griffin tried to imagine it and failed. “Then she did well by you,” he said vaguely.
“She did not know about battles, sir. History was tedious, she said.”
“And you like it?”
“Yes. Very much. Comte DeRaine liked it also, and he had books and maps. Do you have maps, sir?”
“No, but that is easily rectified.” Griffin might have imagined the smile that tugged at the boy’s pinched mouth, but he was quite certain he did not mistake the wistfulness in his eyes.
Satisfied, Griffin finished the last of his coffee.
“Did I tell you, Miss Cole, that Nat left his room last evening?”
He had told her all about it, but she feigned ignorance. “You did not, my lord. What was that in aid of, Nat?”
Nat fought mightily to refrain from squirming. Beneath the table, he gently swung his legs. “The noise,” he said. “It woke me.”
A slightly different version, Griffin thought, than he’d heard the night before. He’d thought Nat hadn’t been able to fall asleep. He said nothing, allowing Olivia the opportunity to learn what he had not been able.
“The voices from below rumble through the house,” Olivia said. “Sometimes you can feel it when you’re lying abed. Did you?”
Nat nodded.
“You probably didn’t notice when you stayed before.
I’ve been told you were very attentive to your mother.
” She regretted causing the flash of pain she saw in his eyes.
“When I slept there, I could sometimes hear shouting from the street. It is hard to imagine anyone could be so loud, but there you have it. The hours on Putnam Lane are rather different than what you’re accustomed to, I expect.
” She watched him closely, trying to divine what it was that she saw in him.
There was a reserve in his demeanor, a sense that he was holding something tightly to his chest. She imagined herself lying in that bed again, alone, hearing and feeling every strange sound, and then she imagined herself at his age.
At not yet quite six.
“I was afraid,” she said. “Deeply so. And I am ever so much older than you.”
“You are a girl.”
“True, though I am not certain that alone accounts for it. I know I didn’t show your courage, because I stayed in bed with the covers pulled up around my head, while you went off on your own.”
Nat’s eyes dropped to his plate, and he bit his lip. He thrust out his chin, but it still wobbled.
Olivia felt very much like weeping herself. She didn’t dare look at Griffin. If he was in any way sympathetic, she would most certainly cry, and if he wasn’t, she would be provoked to stabbing him again.
“Tell us about the noise you heard,” Griffin said. His tone was quiet and firm and did not invite refusal. He put his hand over Olivia’s when she would have answered on Nat’s behalf. “I think Miss Cole and I have mistaken the matter. You must set us right.”
Nat nodded ever so slightly. His feet stopped swinging under the table.
Griffin and Olivia found themselves actually holding their breath.
“The window,” he said.
Now Griffin and Olivia exchanged glances. They realized as one that Nat had not gone to find the source of the noise that had disturbed him, but fled from it.
“What sort of noise was it at the window?” asked Olivia. “Tapping? Scratching? Rattling?”
He nodded again.
“All of that?” asked Griffin.
“Yes, sir.” Nat finally looked up, his features set as stoically as a Spartan’s. “It was my mother come for me. She said she would come for me.” The remains of his muffin crumbled between his fingers. “I do not want to go with her, sir.”