Evelyn Richardson (19 page)

Fortunately for his peace of mind. Lady Frances was not at home when he arrived. As a treat after her nursing of Freddie, she had taken Cassie to the Tower, as Cassie had been wishing to view the lions at greater length than they had the previous visit. Frances had come home the previous night to find the little girl reading to Freddie in a valiant effort to put her twin to sleep and keep herself awake. She had barely managed to keep from bursting with pride as she shushed her sister. “Be very quiet, Fan. I've just now managed to get him to sleep.” She nodded importantly. “He was a little feverish, but I bathed his face with lavender water. I believe it is said a good night's sleep is the best thing for a fever.” Frances had no trouble in identifying the source of this wisdom, having heard Aunt Harriet intone it repeatedly during her childhood illnesses.

So it was that Mainwaring had the patient all to himself when Higgins showed him into the nursery. Its occupant was sitting up in bed scowling at Robinson Crusoe. He glanced up fretfully when he heard Higgins cough, but on seeing his visitor, became instantly animated. “Sir, I did not expect to see you here!” he exclaimed in astonishment, but with such a look of unfeigned admiration that the marquess began to question his ability to measure up to the demigod status to which Freddie seemed determined to elevate him.

“Well, cawker, I came to see how you did. And since I think this, ahem, unfortunate incident is partly my fault, I've come to take your mind off any ill effects of your adventure and to keep your sister from feeling compelled to amuse you. I thought you might enjoy this. I found it rather well done.” He handed the invalid the latest engravings of some “prime bits of blood” done in the manner of Stubbs.

“Oh, sir,” Freddie breathed. “They're wonderful! They do look so real they seem to step right off the page, don't they?” Then, remembering his manners, he added shyly, “I do thank you. It's very kind of you to think of me.”

“Not at all. As I say, I feel slightly responsible for putting the idea in your head. Besides, I know just how tedious recuperation can be. I once took a rather ugly gash one night in India from a dacoit who was trying to break into the shipping office. It wasn't all that bad, just across my arm, but it was deep, and out there you never know what complications will occur, what with their dreadful fevers and such. I knew that for my own good I should stay quiet, but I can tell you it was dull as dishwater lying there with nothing but my account books for amusement. However, I was right to do so, and I breezed right through it, unlike another poor fellow I knew. He cut his hand on a nail in a packing barrel he was unloading, contracted the most violent fever, and was gone within the day.”

“Fanny said you had traveled, but I thought she meant around the Continent, you know, the Grand Tour and the Congress. She didn't tell me you'd been in India. Did you see any tigers? Were there lots of deadly snakes and spiders?” Freddie asked hopefully.

The marquess had purposely brought in his accident to amuse the boy, but he had underestimated the curiosity of an intelligent eleven-year-old starved for tales of masculine adventure. Before he knew it, he was regaling Freddie with one story after another, from Cape Town to Calcutta. It did him good in the rather stifling atmosphere of mid-Season social London to recall those free and easy days when his quick intelligence and athletic skills were more useful and more admired than his name and the size of his rent roll. And he truly enjoyed making Freddie's eyes shine with excitement as he drew exotic pictures of tiger hunts, ships battling monsoons, and hostile rajahs. Moreover, he was impressed with the thoughtfulness revealed by the boy's questions and felt a real sense of pride in being able to bring to him a world that was at once diverting and educational. He experienced a sense of usefulness that he had not felt in a long time. In fact, he couldn't remember when he had last sensed that he, as a person apart from all he stood for, was important to anyone. Having spent a rather lonely childhood as the second son of a father who concentrated all his affections and energies on his heir, Julian had never looked on children as anything but necessary encumbrances for other people concerned with carrying on family names and traditions. He was surprised how much he enjoyed Freddie's company. He was even more surprised, when Frances appeared, to discover that he had been there an hour and a half.

She had come dashing up the stairs in a most unladylike fashion to check on her little brother. When she saw him, arms encircling his knees, listening with rapt attention to a description of tracking a man-killing elephant, she screeched to a halt, but it was too late to keep from interrupting. “Fanny, look at this capital book Lord Mainwaring brought me! And he's been telling me the most bang-up things about India. They make the Greek bandits who attacked your trip to Delphi seem pretty tame, I can tell you.”

She smiled at the marquess, shrugging apologetically. “I can see that my one claim to fame, my storytelling skill, has been completely cast in the shade. I can only warn you, my lord, that with fame comes responsibility, and you will now be hounded to death.”

“Oh, Fan, come now, you know I don't hound you and I certainly wouldn't bother his lordship,” protested her outraged sibling. “Besides,” he added with his engaging grin, “I know how much store you grown-ups set by learning, and these stories are as good as a geography lesson any day.”

“Freddie, my boy, you are incorrigible even when you are ill. I wish you'd gotten a stronger bump on the head. But, there, I only came up to check on you, not to give you a bear-garden jaw. I'll let Lord Mainwaring finish his tale.”

As she closed the door behind her, Freddie whispered conspiratorially to his companion, “She's a great gun, and I do love her. She doesn't ever nag or worry. But sometimes it is nice to talk to a man. I mean, women don't have many adventures, do they, sir? Fan has set-tos with Snythe and frequently she has to give Farmer Stubbs a talking-to, but those aren't really exciting. About the most dangerous thing she ever did was to go tell a wicked-looking Gypsy king that his band couldn't camp on our lands because she didn't want them stealing the chickens. But you'd never find her doing anything as thrilling as hunting a tiger.”

Privately Mainwaring thought that Lady Frances Cresswell led a more hair-raising existence than most of his London acquaintances, but he realized the futility of explaining that to a bloodthirsty eleven-year-old. “Well, I do agree she is an excellent sister. You mustn't be too hard on her. After all,, she isn't as old as I and she's been too busy looking after Cresswell and you two to get herself into as many ticklish spots as I have.”

Freddie was much struck by this novel view. He had never really stopped to consider that his sister might have wished to do something else besides managing the estate and bringing up him and Cassie. It suddenly occurred to him that teaching them Latin and geometry might be as dull and dry for her as it was for them. After all, they were only doing it for the first time and she was doing it for the second! Such drudgery didn't bear thinking of. Being a sympathetic lad, he was already concerned about the worry his accident might have caused her, but he had never stopped to think that the routine of daily existence at Cresswell might be as unadventurous for her as it was for him— more so because she wasn't constantly falling out of trees or tearing her clothes or getting caught trying to free the rabbits in Snythe's snares.

Mainwaring said good-bye to the patient, warning him that though his head might feel perfectly recovered to him in a horizontal position, any attempt to assume a vertical one would probably make him extremely unwell. Freddie grinned. “I may get into scrapes, but I'm not a complete bacon-brain, sir.”

“No,” agreed his lordship. “But you certainly are an impudent scamp.”

The marquess stopped in the front parlor, where he found Frances sorting through a sheaf of bills and frowning over the price of feed. She rose, saying in her frank way, “How very kind of you to visit and to hit upon the very thing to keep him quiet.” She would have gone on, but Mainwaring dismissed her thanks with a wave of his hand.

“I like Freddie. He's a bright lad and he has a great deal of spunk. Besides, if I hadn't taken you all to Astley's, he never would have gotten such a maggot in his brain in the first place.''

She interrupted, “Well, that is complete nonsense, because you know any child even halfway interested in horses feels compelled to experiment just as he did. After all, I had a very similar escapade and I am sure you did too.”

He smiled rather bitterly, she thought. “No, in a vain attempt to win my father's approval, I was a model child.”

“Thus your excessively adventurous existence in subsequent years,” she teased.

He grinned. “You must admit that these 'excessive adventures,' as you so skeptically call them, served their purpose today. I told Freddie such a hair-raising story about complications attending a seemingly simple accident that I promise you he won't stir from his bed for days.”

The quizzing look in her eyes disappeared, to be replaced by one of shy gratitude. “How very good you are to us, and just when you've had to take on such irksome new responsibilities of your own.”

He stood looking down at her, but his thoughts were elsewhere, and there was a rather fierce expression in his dark blue eyes. “My lord ...” She claimed his wandering attention.

His eyes softened. “Did you have no male relatives?”

Somewhat taken aback, she replied, “No, but we had no need of them.” She raised her eyebrows, and a distinctly frosty note crept into her voice. “Are you again questioning my capabilities? I assure you I have more sense than Papa's nearest relatives, distant as they are, all rolled into one.”

“Gently, my child. I have no quarrel with your obvious capabilities. I was merely thinking of you and the time you are forced to lavish on others when you should be spending it on yourself.”

“And what would I do with that time? Do as everyone else would have me do and flit from one social event to another, flirting with all and sundry to catch myself either someone who spends his entire time and energy choosing and changing clothes or some beefy squire who does nothing but hunt and is a great deal worse than I at managing Cresswell?”

He took both her hands in a firm clasp. “Don’t fly into a pelter. I would, if I could, give you time to ride or to write without eternally having to stop and cope with some problem. I would wish you free from worrying about the twins' education so you could visit all the museums, attend all the lectures, and enjoy all the concerts and plays that you wish.”

She glanced at him in some surprise. He truly was thinking of her, and showing an understanding that no one had ever shown before. Such sympathy quite undid her, and tears pricked at her eyelids as she gazed down at her hands in his. He raised them to his lips, forcing her to look up at him. “Don't wear yourself out, my girl. You take things so much to heart that your health is in far more danger than Freddie's.” He pressed a warm kiss on each hand, gave her an encouraging smile, and was gone, leaving her in a daze.

Finally she shook her head and returned to her bills, but try as she would, she could not focus on the figures. She kept seeing, instead, the concern in his eyes, hearing the understanding in his voice, and feeling the pressure of his lips on her hands. She tried to recapture her equanimity by explaining away his concern: he is so accustomed to running everything, to being admired and flattered, that he can't bear the thought that he might be responsible for some mishap. All this attention is to keep you from thinking the same thing. Now that he's done his duty and called on you, he'll think no more about it. But try as she would to put it down to arrogance, she kept remembering his sympathetic reading of her life and interpretation of her dreams.

Chapter Twenty-one

Contrary to Lady Frances' prediction. Lord Mainwaring continued to demonstrate his interest in the invalid and his family. Ostensibly, he came to see Freddie, maintaining that he didn't trust such an adventuresome spirit for a minute, but he managed to inject some enthusiasm into Cassie, who was at the same time concerned for her twin and ever so slightly jealous of all the attention he was receiving. As she later confided with great pride to her sister, “He came and asked Higgins if I were free to drive in the park, just as if I were a grown-up lady. And he has such a bang-up pair and drives so well that simply everyone was looking at us.” Freddie took this in good part, though he would have willingly traded all his tin soldiers to Cassie for the honor of driving with his hero.

Even Aunt Harriet had a good word to say for him. “He brought some excellent cuttings that his gardener had sent, as well as some fine fruit from the hothouse at Camberly, and how he talked that uppity gardener out of them is more than I can tell.”

Despite his attention to the other Cresswells, his real concern was for Frances, and he made sure that every day she got to the park for some fresh air and adult conversation. His earlier impressions were confirmed and he found her informed and interested in a wide variety of subjects. Their discussions ranged from Prinny's evolving designs for his Pavilion to the constant bickerings at the Congress of Vienna to crop rotation. Lady Frances was rediscovering the joys of intelligent companionship, a component of her life that had vanished with her father's death. How delightful it was to be able to share ideas and worries with someone who could understand them and offer a perspective different from her own. It was rare that she could talk with neighbors about anything more theoretical than breeding horses, and even then, they looked askance at any ideas more recent than the previous century. Here was someone who was ready to try new things, who had an inquiring mind that he stimulated by constant reading and travel. This adventurous outlook, as much as the information he had gathered from a vast array of experiences, excited her interest and her own curiosity, making her realize how much of her own personal development she had been neglecting for the past few years.