Chapter Eight
Lelander was not at all happy to see this Baron Montachet arriving to the house. He was particularly not happy to hear the fellow was looking for a wife. Why did he need to stop here when he was looking for a wife? Why could he not look for a wife elsewhere?
And then this House of Normandy business! It was bad enough to have to defend the Lancastrians against the Yorkists, but now he’d got the House of Normandy attempting to make an earlier claim?
After the ladies had retired from the dining room and left the gentlemen to their port, the baron had murmured, “If only the White Ship had not sunk on that terrible day.”
The viscount had laughed. “Still thinking about that, are you?” he said. “What’s the point of it? Nobody can go back and change history.”
Lelander had been very tempted to say something like, “It’s the principle of the thing.
” He had refrained though. He was in the awkward situation of wishing to argue with Burkhart, and now Montachet, at the same time as trying to impress Miss Poppy.
He could see well enough that she was not impressed with all the arguing.
He and Burkhart really ought to just drop it.
At least until they got home. Then they could take it up again, as usual.
He and Miss Poppy had got on so well this morning while Burkhart was very stupidly out in a winter storm. He wished to continue whatever trajectory he was on with the lady.
Burkhart did choose to add his comments with some stupid speech about Richard of York.
As the fellow rambled, Lelander stole some looks at this baron in their midst. There was something not quite right about the fellow.
Was his neckcloth not properly starched?
Perhaps it was because he traveled without his valet.
Inns could be hit or miss for those sorts of things.
Was that a slight fray on his cuff? Perhaps he wore an old shirt for traveling purposes.
His boots were scuffed too. Did he not bring shoes to wear indoors?
He supposed all of it could be due to traveling and not expecting to find himself at a viscount’s table.
But the travel itself was odd too. Where was the man’s carriage? What gentleman set off on a journey of such length on horseback? With just panniers? No valet, no trunks.
He supposed it could be an eccentricity of the baron’s, but it certainly was not a rational eccentricity.
Fortunately, they had not stayed at table long. Lelander got the idea that the viscount was tired of hearing about long-ago fights for the crown. Especially when nobody would engage him in what he really wished to talk about, which was a fence that needed repairs.
Miss Poppy had promised Lelander a game of piquet and she had already collected the cards, which he found very encouraging.
“You must tell me if I am on the verge of being trounced,” he said, taking the seat opposite the lady.
“It is mostly a game of chance so who can say,” Miss Poppy said, laughing. “If the fates smile upon me, I will trounce you.”
“We’d best discover who the fates are favoring then. I defer to you to take the first turn.” It was a small courtesy, but the lady seemed very pleased by it.
Suddenly, she said, “Ought we to give it up before we’ve started and just play backgammon?”
That was a most welcome idea. Piquet really did take up too much concentration and he was not particularly good at it. He’d rather just talk. “Yes!” he said, perhaps louder and more enthusiastically than he’d meant to.
This had caused Miss Poppy to burst into laughter and caused him to as well.
The lady retrieved the backgammon board and sorted out the pieces. As she did so, he heard a small sigh.
“Does something trouble you?” he asked, his eyes drifting toward the recently arrived baron.
“A bit, I am afraid. I have been thinking about Miss Millthorpe. She was our governess and tutor and she teaches Teddy now. She lives in a cottage down the lane and I was just wondering how she is managing in the storm. Does she have enough food? What about firewood? I think we have been very careless that we did not go and get her today and install her in the house.”
“I see,” he said thoughtfully. “I think we should assess the conditions on the morrow and see if we can safely get there with a basket of supplies. If her cottage is in view from the upper floors, in the morning you might look to see if there is smoke coming from her chimney.”
“Oh yes, that is a splendid idea,” Miss Poppy said. “I will feel ever so much better to assure myself that she is well. Pansy and I spent years aggravating the poor lady and it is the least we owe her.”
“I expect twins might get up to no end of nonsense. I know I would have if I’d had a brother exactly my age.”
“We certainly did. We have realized, now that we are older, that there were so many times where I thought of a bad idea and might have dropped it, but then Pansy assured me that it was splendid. Then Pansy would come up with a bad idea and I would applaud it. There were many missed opportunities to drop a bad idea because of our misplaced encouragement of one another.”
Lelander laughed. “I challenge you to tell me the worst thing you got up to.”
Miss Poppy went very red in the face. “You would be shocked, I’m sure.”
“Try me out, I am very hard to shock.”
She leaned forward and said softly, “When he was the prince, we once wrote the regent a letter offering to take over ruling England for him if he needed some time to relax. We got an official letter back claiming we were skating on the edge of treason.”
Lelander guffawed. He really could not help it, it was too ridiculous.
“You may laugh,” Miss Poppy said, “but we were terrified and certain we would end up in the Tower.”
“I must know, though, how did you come upon such a ridiculous notion?”
“Mr. Beau Brummel was here for my sister Lily’s house party.
He told us the prince did not have advisors and would appreciate the help.
It was his idea of a joke upon the prince, who instantly recognized it as such and wrote us back that frightening letter.
We did not find out it was all a joke until later. ”
“What did you do when you got such a letter?”
“We burned it and went to bed with invented fevers. Our entire plan was that the magistrate would have to drag us out of our beds,” Miss Poppy said, laughing. “We were planning to look weak and pathetic for sympathy.”
“Poor girls,” he said with a smile.
She nodded. “Then when Mr. Brummel told us it was all a jest, we had to stage a miraculous recovery for the doctor so we didn’t have to stay in our beds. Poor Doctor Megthorn was disgusted with us. Now, I dare you to tell me something outrageous from your youth that is more terrible than that.”
“Challenge accepted. And I warn you, it is very terrible. I was exceedingly put out that I was not allowed to drink port after dinner. I was eight, so I understand my father’s reasoning now, but at the time it seemed very cruel.
I was bursting with feelings of independence and being a man, you see.
So, I became determined to set off on my horse and live in a more liberal place. ”
“What liberal place?”
“Ah, you have identified the first hole in my plan. I had no idea.”
“Did you set off on your horse?”
He nodded. “With much determination. However, the determination of an eight-year-old does falter rather quickly when he becomes hungry and thirsty.”
“So you had to turn round and come back.”
“Sort of. I was not willing to lose face after having left a terrible note of farewell that was to fill my father with regret. I left my horse at a neighbor’s farm.
I often did so when I went looking for berries so I knew he would not alert the house.
Then I snuck back into my own house and lived in the shadows for two days, creeping down to the kitchens at night while my father had search parties out looking for me.
They eventually found the horse and assumed I was lost on the moors and searched that too. ”
“That is awful,” Miss Poppy said.
“Indeed. And then it all fell apart when my tutor caught up with me the second night in the kitchens.”
“Were you punished terribly?”
Lelander nodded. “I spent the next six months with no privileges whatsoever. Not riding my horse, not desserts, it was just one long slog of lessons, lectures from my father, dark looks from my mother, and going to bed early. I earned every minute of it.”
“Gracious,” she murmured. “Perhaps it is well to remember these things and remember how we felt and what drove us to them. It will be helpful to the children who have not yet arrived to the world to remember how it was when they commit their own outrageousness.”
Somehow, this mention of children embarrassed them both and they put their attention back on the backgammon board.
Pansy was absolutely delighted with the scuffle at the pianoforte.
She’d sat down to play and Lord Burkhart had come to stand on her right side while Lord Montachet came to stand on her left.
Both gentlemen wished to turn her pages and they were both rather stubborn about it.
Lord Burkhart had persevered, though the struggle had resulted in a corner of one of the pages being ripped.
Lord Montachet had given up at that point, though he remained standing where he was.
She played one of Clementi’s sonatinas. It was light and happy and suited for the moment. At least, it suited her moment—she felt very light and happy just now. Lord Burkhart had been so brave to get them home through the snow. He was even braver to claim it was nothing.
He’d not uttered a single complaint. It was very manly! Pansy could hardly imagine her brother doing the same. Henry would have complained from here to Sunday over it. Lord Burkhart was a deal more stoic and she admired it very much.