Chapter One
Lizzy entered the orangery where her menagerie lived, carrying a tray loaded with food from the kitchen. Lydia and Kitty followed after her.
“Good morning, Clive,” she said to the adult red fox she found injured under a hedge. He yipped. “I have a lovely rabbit haunch for you this morning.” Lizzy set the raw rabbit onto the tin plate in the corner of his enclosure. “Do not tell Jack and Jill that you are eating their cousin.”
Squeaky squirmed inside one of the pockets in her encompassing taupe apron. Her field mouse did not like the fox.
“We are moving along,” Lizzy promised him.
“Why does it always smell in here?” Lydia asked, wrinkling her nose.
“I have told you often enough, Lydia, that the animals function in here. We could use some fresh air, though. Open one of the doors, if you please,” Lizzy directed.
“Oh, very well,” Lydia said, gesturing for Kitty to follow the order. Kitty obliged, opening both leaves of one set of double glass doors.
“Something new will find its way in, Lizzy,” Kitty warned, shaking her head in a hopeless gesture. “I do not know how every sickly or injured animal in the neighborhood ends up here.”
“I think that is an exaggeration,” Lizzy said as she pushed two carrots and several stalks of celery through the gaps in the cage wall of the rabbit hutch.
She had divided the hutch into two spaces in order to keep the male and female occupants apart.
Two brown and white rabbits were lovely, but dozens would be too much.
Not a single bit of the vast orangery contained a spot without a habitat for this animal or that.
Bamboo and metal cages sat on racks. An enormous bird cage housed birds that got along.
However, she kept the occasional raptor in a cage outside, next to the stables.
Currently, two barn owls and a buzzard resided in it.
Having birds of prey in the orangery where she kept their prey seemed cruel.
Next, she fed the rodents—mice, voles, hedgehogs, red squirrels, and a water vole who had his own pond formed from a stone trough. It contained water plants, frogs, and a turtle, too. Lizzy had to keep the weasel away from this group.
“Is there something you wanted?” she asked her sisters. “Or did you simply wish for my company?”
“It is not that,” Lydia said, her voice sounding as though she had cast her gaze up to the ceiling.
“Of course,” Lizzy murmured.
Kitty rushed her speech, saying, “You ate so early that you did not hear the news.”
Lizzy paused in the act of filling the Pickle, the water vole’s, dish with bits of cut up fruit, the greens from vegetables, and a handful of fresh grass, to ask, “What news is that?”
“You know our new neighbor, Mr. Bingley?” Kitty asked.
“Wait a minute, Kitty, I was going to tell her,” Lydia reminded her sharply.
“Well, go on then,” Kitty said, scowling.
“I have met Mr. Bingley,” Lizzy reminded them.
Lizzy moved through the aisles of her menagerie, feeding this animal and that one, waiting for the news. A three-month old red deer, Carl, approached, and she petted him, making cooing noises, before she moved to set the tray on a high shelf so her hands were free.
“I will get the hay, Lizzy,” Kitty offered, hurrying over to put a bundle of alfalfa inside a hay crib attached to the wall. Carl left Lizzy and moved over to begin pulling hay free.
“My news!” Lydia cried, stamping her foot.
The menagerie became silent as every animal turned their eyes on Lizzy’s youngest sister.
“I will thank you to keep your voice down,” Lizzy ordered calmly, though a thread of steel ran through her words. “I will not have my friends made anxious by you.”
Lydia folded her arms and sniffed. “I do not have to listen to your orders, Lizzy. I was doing you a favor by telling you the news. Humph.” She turned on her heel and walked away. “Kitty. Come.”
Lizzy touched Kitty’s arm. “You are not a dog, dear.”
“I will go. But, first, the news is that Mr. Bingley’s friend is coming for a visit.”
“Is that all?”
Hurrying after Lydia, Kitty said, over her shoulder, “The rumor is that he has ￡10,000 per annum.”
Lizzy pressed her lips together. “Drat,” she muttered.
“That means Mama will be incorrigible.” Lizzy moved on to the bird enclosure and addressed her caveat to them as she put several scoops of seeds and nuts onto the wooden tray.
“But then, Mama would be incorrigible if he had a ￡1000 per year. After all, the lesser amount is still twenty times more than my ￡50.”
Straightening, she turned at the sound of padding feet crossing the flagstone floor. Her large, shaggy black and gray dog approached. Frowning, she crouched a little and peered at his muzzle. He had something in his mouth.
“Harry? What have you there?”
Harry lowered his head and deposited a damp animal on the floor. He licked it all over and the liver and white fur shifted with each pass of his long tongue.
“Is it a baby rabbit?” she asked, going down on her knees and peering closely at it. “No, its ears are too small.” The bundle of fur shifted. “And look how short its legs are.”
Finished his self-imposed task, Harry sat back on his haunches and tilted his head to one side as though saying, “Look what I have brought you.”
“Thank you very much, Harry,” Lizzy said.
She tugged her apron from beneath her knees and scooped the strange animal up into its folds, holding him close to her chest. Squeaky complained, squirming his way free of her pocket.
He scrambled past their new friend and perched on her shoulder.
“Hello, there,” Lizzy purred, staring down into the dark brown eyes of the animal on her chest. “What are you? Are you wild? Or someone’s escaped pet? And, what name should we give you?”
Lizzy walked him over to the corner where she kept her desk and chose a book from her book shelf, while holding onto the stranger with one hand.
“I think you are purring,” she said, setting the book on her desk and sitting in her chair. Lizzy began flipping through the book, looking for an article that might name his species for her. About to turn a page, she stopped and looked more closely at the image on it. “Is this you?”
The animal made a sort of grunting noise.
“Are you a cavia porcellus? A guinea pig? I have heard of them—of course I have—but you are my first,” Lizzy said, grinning. “What shall I call you? Perhaps you already have a name—if you are an escaped pet—but I do not wish to call you ‘pig’ until we discover to whom you might belong.”
“I think you should call him ‘Jeffry’,” a voice said from behind her.
Lizzy swiveled in her chair, smiling at her beloved sister, Jane. “Jeffry?” She folded back her apron and held him up for Jane to see. “Does he seem like a Jeffry to you?”
“He does,” Jane said in a firm voice. “Where will you put him?”
“I have a spare enclosure over here,” Lizzy said, rising. “With such short legs, I do not think he can jump. I will put in some tunnels and bedding.”
“What does he eat?”
“I think they eat like rabbits,” Lizzy suggested, setting him down in the straw-strewn enclosure.
Jane picked up the tray and handed it to her.
“There is still a variety of choices here,” she said, reaching for a spare, clean metal bowl from off the shelf over her desk.
She filled it and put the bowl in with the guinea pig.
“Some straw?” Jane asked.
“I think so.”
“I will get some,” her sister told her.
“Do you know anyone in our neighborhood who might have a guinea pig as a pet?” Lizzy asked, watching Jane put a handful of the golden straw into the enclosure.
“I cannot think of any,” Jane admitted.
Lizzy frowned at her. “Were you not going driving with that nice Mr. Bingley this afternoon? Perhaps Jeffry belongs to him or his sister?”
“Miss Bingley has a cat,” Jane told her while she brushed the straw dust from her hands. “His name is Basile. Miss Bingley said it is a French name that means ‘royal’, or ‘kingly’, and he is a Chartreux.”
“One of those gray cats with the orange or yellow eyes?” Lizzy asked
“He is gray with orange eyes.”
“Goodness, I would like to meet him.”
Jane frowned. “He is nice enough, but Miss Bingley is his favorite. She said he follows her from room to room and insists on sitting beside her, or on her lap.” Harry approached and leaned his head against her leg. Jane patted him, smiling. “You are a much nicer animal, are you not, boy?”
Harry chuffed his agreement.
“I wish you could tell me where you found Jeffry,” Lizzy said.
Harry chuffed again and turned to pad across to the open doors. He looked back at them once.
“That is his signal that we should follow him,” Lizzy said, tucking her hand through Jane’s arm.
“I can only go to the end of the terrace,” Jane said, lifting her foot to show she wore light slippers.
“Hmm. Very well, I will follow him.” Lizzy released her arm.
“Shall I give Jeffry a bowl of water?” Jane asked.
“Yes, thank you.”
Once outside, Lizzy found Harry sitting and waiting for her at the edge of the terrace. Approaching, she expected him to begin walking again. Instead, he kept sitting there. She frowned at him, and he nosed the ground.
Lizzy crouched in front of him and pointed at the flagstone. “Here? Right here?”
A gardener old enough to be her father, leaning over a nearby vegetable bed, straightened. “Were y’speakin’ t’me, miss?”
Standing once more, she shook her head and said, “No, Andrew. I was speaking to Harry.” She waved at the bed. “The tops of those beetroots look tasty.”
“I thought yer animals would like ‘em,” Andrew said, grinning. “I’ll pick y’some.”
“Wonderful. Thank you.” Lizzy looked down at Harry once more. “I wonder how Jeffry came to be here?”
Harry stood and shook his whole body.
“Do you want to take a walk?” she asked.
He barked once and wriggled with excitement.
“I will just tell Jane we are going,” Lizzy said, turning back toward the orangery.
Jeffry watched the sisters leave. Lizzy took the big, slobbery dog with her, back out the orangery doors.