Chapter Seven #3
The viscountess interrupted any debate about the White Ship. “Baron, tell us more about yourself. Where were you heading before you were waylaid by this terrible weather?”
“Oxford, and then on to London. My father has determined that I have lollygagged long enough in finding a wife so I am sent to open up our house in Town in readiness for the season. We’ve rented it out for years so the whole place needs a going over and there will be repairs to be made.
” The baron sighed. “It will likely take some months. It is a fine enough house, but I will miss my set of apartments at The Albany. C’est la vie, one cannot host a ball in a set of apartments.
I am determined to do my duty to my father and locate the lady who will accompany me through life. ”
The viscount’s brows knit together. “We don’t care for Town.”
“No?” the baron asked.
“Except for Lily, Papa,” Poppy said.
“Ah yes, Lily. We don’t know why she likes it,” the viscount said.
“She likes the opera and plays,” Henry said.
“Lord Montachet,” Teddy said, “if the White Ship didn’t sink, would you be king?”
Poppy widened her eyes and stared at Teddy, attempting to silently communicate her thoughts. Those thoughts were mostly shouting “Teddy! Do not bring us all back to the ridiculous conversation about who should be king in the fourteen hundreds!”
“We’ll never know,” the baron said.
“If you were king,” Teddy went on, “would you chase your queen around with an ax?”
The baron looked entirely startled by the question.
“You know,” Bertie said, “like Henry VIII did.”
“Certainly not, I should never be so uncivilized. As well, I am not sure that king was the precise person with the ax in his hand,” the baron said. “He would have hired an executioner to do the job.”
“You can hire people for that?” Teddy exclaimed, going rather white.
“It was a shameful business,” Lord Burkhart said, very predictably.
“There were reasons and not all of the queens!” Mr. Lelander said. Or shouted. It was hard to tell the difference.
And so, the dinner went on. The ladies made valiant efforts to introduce safe subjects nobody could argue over.
Somehow, though, the conversation always meandered back to the Roses War, with the delightful addition of The House of Normandy and the sinking of the White Ship.
Poppy was almost expecting somebody else to turn up who claimed to be descended from Athelstan.
Why not go all the way back? Maybe a Roman legion would turn up, or perhaps a descendant of Queen Boudicca.
Mr. Smuckers surveyed the drawing room. What a dinner he had just presided over.
The whole day had been fraught. First, Miss Pansy had set off with Lord Burkhart and Lord Smythesdon in a snowstorm.
If anybody had bothered to consult him, he could have informed them that it was a bad idea.
Commonsense would have prevented them from setting off.
He suspected that they’d all known it was a bad idea from the start.
There seemed to be something developing between Miss Poppy and Lord Burkhart so neither one of them had wished to put aside the plan.
As far as he could tell, Lord Smythesdon had just been following along for respectability.
But really, somebody ought to have said something to stop them.
There also seemed to be something developing between Miss Poppy and Mr. Lelander too. Really, the young lady made far too much of his preventing her from falling in the garden. It was as if the man were being hailed as one of Wellington’s top men.
Did nobody see the problem racing down the road toward these two couples?
If things were to eventually lead to matches, the future was impossible.
The twins would live close by one another, but they would live in enemy houses.
They would need to be loyal to their own side of the argument.
One of them would be a Lancastrian and the other would be a Yorkist. As absolutely ridiculous as that sounded, that was the truth of it.
He really did not think, despite everything they’d heard from these two gentlemen, the twins quite understood the enmity to be found up north. He’d hoped it had faded by now, but these two fellows had made clear that things were just the same as in his youth. They were all so entrenched in it!
And then there was this Baron Montachet to consider.
Who was he? He just turned up out of nowhere.
He might be any sort of adventurer, how would they know?
Smuckers found it suspicious that he’d chosen to stop at Chemsworth Hall.
He must have gone right past Holby House.
Why had he not stopped there? Holby House had a far shorter drive.
Why continue on and then when he finds the longest drive possible, a drive that ran all uphill, choose that one?
He suspected the cause might be what Holby House did not have to offer.
Holby House did not have any eligible young ladies.
Had this baron name-dropped The Albany because everybody in England knew that was where all the young lords stayed during the season? Was that part of the playacting of being a baron? Did he spin that story about being determined to wed because he’d found two eligible young ladies in the house?
He might be well aware of the twins’ dowries.
There were enough older sisters living across England to make it rather common knowledge, especially since Daisy Granger had wed a marquess.
If this fellow were a fortune hunter, that would explain why he’d passed by Holby House in favor of Chemsworth Hall.
This baron’s story did not add up and Smuckers planned to have a look in Debrett’s at the earliest moment to confirm there even was such a baron.
On top of not knowing who he really was, as perhaps he was a baron and perhaps he was a rogue, he’d brought yet another argument into the mix. The House of Normandy, for the love of heaven.
Just now, Miss Poppy played backgammon with Mr. Lelander, though Smuckers did not know how much they actually played as it seemed they were mostly talking and laughing. They’d started with piquet but for some reason gave it up rather quickly amidst rather loud laughter.
Miss Pansy played the pianoforte, attended by Lord Burkhart and Lord Montachet. There had been a slight scuffle between the lords regarding who was to turn pages, but Lord Burkhart had won out through sheer bullheadedness.
Smuckers really did not know where the current situation was going. What he did know was they would all be trapped in the house together on the morrow and Mrs. Featherstone would be delighted to hear of a suspicious stranger adding to the potential disasters in the making.