Rondo Allegro (69 page)

He backed out and shut the door.

Anna tried once more for compromise, for peace-making. “If
you wish, I will cease teaching your daughters at once.”

Emily’s lip curled. “You ought to have thought of that
first.”

Anna reddened, guilty and contrite. “This is very true, and
I beg your pardon. It all happened by accident, when I saw that Eleanor wished
to learn to sing, and I discovered that I like teaching. So when Justina wanted
something of her own, well, it just happened, and she was the one who wished to
surprise you once she had learnt her little dance.”

“Save your breath. I’ve watched how you insinuated yourself
into this household, and though I had thought to spare the family by keeping my
knowledge of what you are to myself, I feel it is my duty to our neighbors to
let them know what sort of woman has practiced upon their trust—”

“What sort of woman would that be?” Anna asked, calm
spreading through her like snow.

Emily paused. Her cheeks glowed with splendid color as she
lifted her head. “A common stage actress, to put it no higher.”

Anna said, still calmly, “Oh, I do not believe I was common
at all! I was, in fact, very good. But not to be compared with La Catalani. But
I think the quality of my singing is not truly in question, is it not so? It seems
you are attempting to threaten me.”

The dowager struck her hand on the back of a chair. “Emily
Elstead, if you continue to behave so ill under this roof, I must request you
to return to your own home.”

Anna heard the tremble in the dowager’s voice, and sensed
how frightened the older woman was on her behalf. Sorrow crowded her heart, and
after that a sense of gratitude for the gentle woman’s courage in attempting to
defend her.

Though she had sung all the dramatic permutations of ‘love’
every day during all her years on stage, she had begun to understood the
wellspring of the joy she had rediscovered: it was love.

She walked to the dowager and touched her hand. “Thank you.
Let me make myself understood.”

She turned to Emily. “You seem to believe I can be
frightened by your threats. Such fears are, after all, very small, compared to
trying to keep from being eaten by rats.”

Emily recoiled in disgust, and the dowager gasped.

“To keep those rats at bay I danced through the night with
the sort of women you would scorn for their humble birth, who had no advantages
beyond the skills they struggled to attain. I lived through a battle, sewing up
torn flesh as cannon blasted the masts and sails overhead. Your threats hold no
fear for me.”

“Rats?” the dowager repeated in a whisper.

Humor pulsed in Anna, then was gone as she faced Emily’s
derisive countenance. “You see your daughter dancing and think only of evil, I
find it infinitely sad.”

“As for that . . .” The dowager cleared her
throat. “Emily, if you had at any time acted like a mother to those girls, then
perhaps Lady Northcote would have thought of you. Of course she did not,
because you have never taken the least interest in those girls.”

“That is not true.”

“You did not know that Nurse reports to me every day! No, do
not remind me that Nurse is my hireling. Here is a question for you: what color
are Amelia’s eyes?”

Emily glared furiously at her mother-in-law, her throat
closing. Tears? Why? When she was the one wronged! And the worst of it was, she
did not know the color of the brat’s eyes. She could scarcely bear to look at
Amelia, whose birth had ruined her life. “Blue,” she said, though she knew it
was merely a guess.

Indeed, the dowager lifted her chin, acknowledging a hit,
but then she said, “I suspect if I told you they were green, you would not
gainsay. Yes, they are blue, but I will never believe you knew that. I will
state my point, and then I am done. I have been happier since Lady Northcote’s
arrival than I have been in many years. The girls are happier. Harriet is
happier. And Henry is happier. You do not bring happiness to this house because
I do not believe you know what happiness is.”

Emily whirled and walked out.

The dowager let out her breath, clasped her hands, then
said, “Rats? Is that true?”

Anna wiped a strand of hair back with fingers she discovered
shook. “Oh, yes.” She laughed a little breathlessly. “Hundreds of them.
Hungry
rats. We could hear them
squeaking, and if I dared to look, I saw the reflections of their red eyes.”

The dowager tipped her head. “I think perhaps Harriet might
like that story.”

“Then I will tell her it,” Anna said, as they left the
chamber.

Outside, Emily found Noll still walking her hack;
half-blinded by tears of fury, she gained the saddle and rode out.

At first she turned the animal toward the well-traveled path
to the Groves, but she knew what her mother would say. She had ruined her
chances—she had spoken too soon—she had spoken wrong—everyone was at fault.
Everyone was always at fault, except for her.

Return to your home
.
As if she had not been mistress of the Manor for all the years of her marriage!
Now this interloper had replaced her within a few scarce weeks.

Emily wrenched the reins to one side, slapped the whip
against the horse’s ribs, and galloped hard, but as fast as she went, she could
not outride the desolation of defeat.

o0o

Anna retreated upstairs, where she discovered Henry
waiting. “What happened?” he asked.

Anna sank down in one of the vast old wing chairs,
queasiness stirring in her middle. “I feel such regret. She was right. I ought
never to have done what I did without asking her.”

Henry lifted a shoulder. “I am convinced she would have
refused in order to spite you, and for no other reason. Then everyone would be
the poorer. And she would go right back to neglecting those girls. If she had
exerted herself to find a governess when Eleanor reached five, there never
would have been a question.”

Anna nodded soberly. “Perhaps. And yet I still feel a sense
of failure. She was not merely angry, she was unhappy in a terrible way, I
could see it.” She paused, and then ventured into what she knew was a delicate
subject, but she could no longer settle for silence. “I believe she still loves
you.”

“She can’t. She doesn’t know me in the least. When we were
young, she was always trying to talk me into being less like me and more like
John. You cannot conceive the quarrels we had. What a pair of young fools we
were! We would never have made the other happy.”

Though Anna was aware how very limited her experience of men
was, she did understand how a person could be attracted to someone one had
little in common with otherwise, or whom one did not actually know.

“And yet the two of you had an understanding. Feel you
nothing whatsoever for her now?”

Henry held out his hand, and she came to him. They walked to
the window. She laid her head against his chest, delighted in the low fremitus
of his voice resonating through him as he murmured, “Oh, there is still the
remains of my admiration. She is still very beautiful. Is that unsettling for
you to hear?” He paused to squint anxiously down at her.

“No.” She chuckled. “At one time, perhaps, it might have
been. But I have learnt that life is seldom like the opera, everyone very, very
good, or very, very evil, altogether in love, or altogether in hatred. We are a
mixture of everything.”

“Just so. So you can listen with perfect equanimity to me
when I say that yes, a little of my old admiration is there when I see her, but
Anna, even if you had never come into my life, I would not have returned here
alone to marry her. She broke my trust, and though I could admire her, I could
never love her. I am sorry to have to say it. Perhaps Dr. Blythe would speak a
sermon against me if he knew.”

She was not yet ready for jokes. “I wish I could find a way
to get her to see that I mean her no ill, that we might begin again in peace.
We would all be more comfortable.”

“We will all be more comfortable if she leaves my house.”

“You would not force her to return to the Groves?” Anna raised
her head to look at him earnestly.

“No, no, she don’t deserve that. Her mother . . .
well, least said, soonest mended. No, while you were in there dealing with her,
I was sitting here deep in thought. Perhaps I ought to offer her a season in
London as well. I did not yet tell you, but one of my letters this morning was
notice from the Admiralty of my prize money for the action at Cape Trafalgar.
It is not a fortune, but if I gave it to her, she could go to London and return
to the smart set. I think she misses London, and if we get great good luck,
some likely fellow with sufficient money and title will fall in love with her
beautiful face, and take her off to his castle. As far from Yorkshire as
possible, I hope.”

“Sending her to London is a fine idea,” she said. “I think
she misses it, from a few things she has said.”

“Oh, that much is plain from all those bills I have been
paying. If I give her that money she may be as tonnish as she likes, and if the
result is she quits this house, we can turn those corner rooms into guest
chambers or, who knows? One day they might be needed for another purpose.”

Anna had meant to wait, but she turned her face into his
cravat, and murmured, “Perhaps sooner than you think.”

He straightened up, put his hands on her shoulders, and
moved her so he could turn his good eye to her face. “Is that what I think it
means?”

“Perhaps so,” she said, blushing fiery red.

He laughed, and hugged her, but gently, his mind ranging
beyond the startling idea of fatherhood to his house, his estate, and . . .

“And that is another thing,” Henry said. “I am sorry to have
to admit this, because the squire was always my friend. For a time I regarded
him as the father I never had in my own, but age has brought me to the
reluctant conclusion that his heart is as sound as it ever was, but his
intellects are not up to snuff. At least, not as a likely justice of the
peace.”

“Will he not bring his good heart to the task?”

“If only that were so! But I have been having to deal with
him extensively on the question of enclosure, and some parish affairs that
would be long and tedious to explain, the more because I am only beginning to
comprehend them myself. If I believed he could bring a sense of justice with
his good intent, I would throw myself behind him, but especially when he is in
liquor—which is oftener than anyone knows, not that I blame him—he has a
lamentable habit of agreeing with everything the last person said. Most often
his wife. Would you wish for Mrs. Squire to preside over questions of justice?”

“No,” Anna said on an outward breath of horror.

“Just so.”

She turned to him. “You have found a better candidate?”

He colored a little. “My dear, you are looking at the
candidate. Rackham insists, Ashburn too, Colby agrees with them, and even
Aubigny roused himself sufficiently from his arcane studies to take me aside
after a meeting recently between complainants in a question between certain
town interests and a farmer, to beg me to apply. They promise to help me to it,
and though I still am ignorant, I am discovering in dealing with the estate
that it is not so very different from commanding a ship.”

She looked into his face wonderingly. “But would that not
require you to stop here, and not return to the sea?”

“Can you tolerate an irascible one-eyed man underfoot?” he
replied, taking her face into his hands to kiss her.

“I might,” she said, “if you give me a barouche-landau, a
house in London, a parure of diamonds, and two dozen shirts.”

“You may have the shirts,” he retorted, and then his
answering smile faded. “Along with the letter promising the prize money, the
First Lord offered me an excellent sixth-rate recently bought into service,
should my eyesight return. If this had happened three months ago, I would have
closed with the offer at once. But all this morning, I have endeavored to
discover when it was that this house, and all that appertained, became a home
that I could not bear to leave. Look out there.” He pointed through the window.

Anna gazed out, her eyes widening in astonishment. Sometime
in the past few days, the melted snow and the mud had changed. Everywhere she
looked grew tender green shoots of grass, and the trees fuzzed softly with
green buds. “My mother was right,” she whispered softly. “It
is
green. It is a wonderful green.”

“Oh, you have seen nothing yet. Just wait until summer. I
have fallen in love with this land again, and this house, but that is because
you
are at the center of it. I love you,
Anna.” He looked down into her face.

“Je t’aime, Henri.”
And
she repeated it in Italian, Neapolitan, and Spanish, kissing him after each.

“Here’s an idea,” he said, twining his fingers through hers.
“We’ll get Blythe to let us marry again, this time properly. Even if everyone
stares. My mother would love all the doings, and you shall have a ring that you
have chosen.”

“You think our marriage was a mere rehearsal, then?” She
smiled.

“I do. You are now to play the proper role of a bride, and a
lady of rank, while I strut about in my new role as bridegroom, one-eyed baron,
and justice of the peace. And just as we accustom ourselves to our lofty
status, we will be thrown into new roles, as parents, and so we shall dance the
new pattern. Did not Shakespeare say that all the world is a stage?”

She laughed, and made unspoken answer.

Rondo Allegro

Sherwood Smith

Book View Café 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61138-428-4
Copyright © 2014 Sherwood Smith

Cover illustration © 2014 by Vicente Lopez y Portana

Production Team:

Project Coördinator: Sherwood Smith