Chapter One
A GENTLEMAN OF VERY FEW WORDS—EXCERPT
AGentleman of Very Few Words by Grace Burrowes
The Lord Julian Mysteries—Book Thirteen
“A wedding journey by the sea!” My beloved gazed southward, as if crashing waves and brisk shore breezes lurked behind Caldicott Hall’s home wood rather than miles away.
“What a marvelous idea, Julian. We can take Leander and Atticus and they will recall the happy memories for the rest of their lives.”
A wedding journey by the sea was not to my taste. A wedding journey by the sea with a couple of fidgety boys in tow struck me as a month’s worth of disasters waiting to happen, which I would recall for the rest of my life.
And not fondly at all.
“For our honey month, might I not have you to myself, Perry? A forced excursion to the shore, much less for both children, might hold little appeal for them. They are hardly boon companions.” And Hyperia, fair-minded to a fault, would not choose between Atticus and Leander.
My intended and I occupied the gazebo along a slope in the Hall’s park. Beyond the hedgerow at the foot of the hill sat the stables and various other outbuildings. Above us, the Hall reposed in all its springtime, neoclassic glory.
I was honestly not keen on leaving the place, which might be why the whole topic of a wedding journey hadn’t earned much of my attention.
“Who could object to time spent by the ocean, Julian? No vista is as imposing, no sunlight as bright as morning sun upon the water.”
The very same bright sunlight that literally hurt my eyes.
“The sea has tempests,” I said, gaze upon the solid reality of the Hall’s eastern facade.
“Those tempests sink ships. People drown in the sea, and as for the shore, it frequently smells like rotten eggs and is rife with flies. Great and terrible waves rise up from the sea and wipe out entire villages, for no discernible reason. Unpredictable currents bear the unsuspecting to a watery death if they are foolish enough to swim beyond the shallows.”
Hyperia rummaged in our picnic basket and produced a pair of oranges. “You list all the reasons why little boys would be fascinated with the ocean, and rightly so. The sea is one of creation’s most impressive wonders, and no son of Britannia should go his entire life without beholding it.”
The sea had taken so many of Britannia’s sons off to war, sons who never again beheld their native land, that the sea should beg Britainnia’s eternal pardon. Bad enough that the rubbishing sea was no longer much of a safeguard against invasion, but must it speed so many good men to their deaths?
My darling passed me an orange, which I set about peeling. “I grant you the sea is an impressive sight.” A heartbreaking sight as the shores of one’s homeland grew smaller and smaller. “Supervising two small boys on holiday will require impressive resources.”
“That’s easy. We take Miss Hunter and a pair of nursery maids. A couple of the younger footmen will be delighted to accompany us, and I’m sure Lady Ophelia’s staff will aid the cause.”
I ripped off a strip of peel too precipitously and got a squirt of juice on my fingers for my heedlessness.
Hyperia took my hand and put my fingers into her mouth. “Delicious,” she said, running her tongue over the tip of my index finger. “I promise not to neglect you on our wedding journey, Julian, but we must find something to do during the day while we recover from our nightly connubial exertions.”
Was there ever a more luminous phrase than nightly connubial exertions or a more strategically deployed distraction?
I was in the middle of a serious debate, and marshaled my wits accordingly.
“I thought, wherever we journeyed we might picnic, go for a stroll, nap, read, nap, hack out, nap some more.” I’d contemplated long, lazy days spent mostly in bed or in deshabille, and long lazy nights spent celebrating the joys of the married state.
Nattering children, rotting seaweed, and bad memories had not figured in my fantasies whatsoever.
For that matter, neither had imposing on my godmother’s hospitality, much less taking an entourage of staff who would report the details of our excursion to my mother, and to the larger community at the Hall.
“Hyperia, what I seek most of all on our wedding journey is privacy with you. The sort of privacy we haven’t had much of, for various reasons.
I want time to talk about trivialities and read the newspaper to each other over breakfast. Time to pretend to fish while I ogle your ankles as you wade barefoot in some obliging steam… ”
“My ankles are simply ankles, Jules.” She took the orange from me and finished peeling it.
“We will have a lifetime to read the newspaper to each other over breakfast. We need not accept Lady Ophelia’s offer, but we have seen little of her lately, and she was instrumental in bringing us back together. ”
Hyperia, perhaps unknowingly, had just fired some heavy artillery.
At Waterloo, where seasoned officers had been in perilously short supply, I’d acquitted myself adequately. That effort on my part had been not only my irrefutable duty, but also a futile attempt to atone for earlier failures in uniform.
While serving in Spain, I’d been taken captive by the French, which would have been disgrace enough for several eternities. While imprisoned, I had also accomplished exactly nothing to protect my older brother Harry, who’d been taken prisoner as well. He had not survived the ordeal.
That sequence of events had sent me into a melancholic spiral at the bottom of which lay the ultimate act of surrender.
Former officers were notoriously prone to accidents while cleaning their pistols. I had been contemplating such an accident nearly a year after the final battle, when Lady Ophelia had demanded that I escort her to a house party.
The notion had struck me as bizarre. What mattered pall mall and polonaises when one’s brother was likely rotting in a shallow grave on some French mountainside?
And yet, one did not lightly refuse her ladyship, who had herself been acting at Hyperia’s prompting. I would not consign my godmother to unescorted travel on Albion’s rutted roads, and thus my duty had been clear.
Perry had been among the guests at the party, and that encounter had begun my slow climb from the Slough of Despond back to a semblance of normal functioning.
So normal had my functioning become that I was soon to marry the most wonderful female personage ever to grace a man with her smiles.
“If we spend our honey month along the southern coast,” I said, “we might look in on her ladyship as we journey back to the Hall. The idea of imposing on her, and expecting her to play hostess to the children as well, might be asking a bit much.”
“She is inviting us, Julian, and she specifically mentions bringing the boys.”
She would. Godmama had lost two children to the vagaries of illness, and she blamed herself for her son’s death in particular. She had two other children enjoying healthy adulthood, but the losses were yet carried in her heart.
For all I knew, she was more interested in renewing her acquaintance with Atticus and Leander than she was in hosting a newly wed couple.
“Eat your orange, Jules.”
I tore off a section and did as I was told. “Delightful,” I said, gazing like a fool in love at Hyperia’s mouth. “Delectable and delicious.”
“A lucky orange, so late in the season.” She started peeling the second orange.
“Her ladyship writes that she’s surrounded by interesting people for once.
She says her patch of the seaside usually attracts governesses on holiday and pensioners, J.
Worthington Pierce has decided to take a seaside holiday in the vicinity, and all manner of literary fashionables are in evidence as a result. ”
Literary fashionables. Spare me, Great Jehovah. Fops fashioning fanfaronades about their fiction. Etiquette aunties. The marquess’s martial memoirs.
“Pierce writes children’s books.” The sum total of my knowledge regarding Mr. Pierce.
“I am astonished that you recognize the name, though half the realm has bought his tales. They are written to appeal even to boys, and have succeeded enormously.”
“He’s mentioned in the society pages, and I read those.
” A former recognizance officer never lost the habit of vigilance.
“His characters are intrepid, plucky, and tiresomely dauntless.” Also bratty, proud, and foolish.
“They have loyal dogs for pets or sagacious cats that never chase Miss Verbena’s loose canary.
They invariably run afoul of trolls or talking frogs. ”
“Miss Verbena?” Hyperia dropped her peels over the side of the gazebo and tore off a section of orange. “I must have missed that one.”
The nursery collection held six Pierce titles, though the author was always referred to as the notably prolific Mr. Pierce. Considering how short the stories were, six was doubtless only a sampling of his work.
“Miss Verbena is my own invention. Her Grace added some J. Worthington Pierce titles to the offerings in the nursery. I might have read one or two to Leander.”
But not to Atticus, who having come from humble origins, had attached himself firmly to the stable.
He had a rudimentary sort of literacy acquired through Hyperia’s tireless tutelage.
Atticus would not have made the same strides for me, but for Hyperia, he would do battle with even the hazards of proper English.
And like my intrepid tiger, I would take on any foe at Hyperia’s behest.
“We could be married by sea, Jules.” Hyperia’s tone became wistful. “To the music of the waves, in the sparkling light, the fresh air wafting about.”
The scent of rotten eggs, clouds of flies. Pestilential sea gulls threatening the buffet. A grim horizon that led to death and disgrace.
“You’d like that?”
She nodded and took another section of orange. “I am not fanciful by nature, but a seaside wedding would be different, as we are different. I’m sure Her Grace would understand.”