Rondo Allegro (44 page)

She faced Anna. “I played a role, when following the army.
It was a dreadful role, but it kept me alive, and in hopes of finding my
Michel. I played another role when she hired me. I made myself into what she
expected, but then . . . you see? She believed in the truth of
it. Never questioned. I lived that truth. I pray most earnestly every night
that your role will become your truth.”

Barford Magna was by anyone’s definition a very small
town, but the signs of prosperity were there in the well-kept buildings and the
paved street. It lay along a meandering river through excellent land kept in
good heart by its landowners and farmers.

Crowning the highest point of High Street was the church,
with the vicarage a short walk away, discreetly sheltered by an avenue of yew
planted in Queen Anne’s time by the vicar’s gently-born wife.

The other end of High Street was dominated by an equally
prosperous posting inn, named the Boar and Eagle. To the locals, it was The
Pig, shortened version of “The Pig in a Wig,” an ancient joke having to do with
a certain style of full-bottomed wig called the Eagle, and an unpopular judge
during the Restoration. The inn had been handed down through several
generations, the owners wisely catering not just to the traveler with enough
money to want the comfort of well-aired beds and good food, but to the local
merchants and laborers who provided steady custom.

The common room that opened onto the stable yard was where
Northcote Manor’s John-Coachman and his apprentice Noll waited, the latter stiff
and self conscious in his seldom-worn livery.

They knew the regular routes and habits of hired post
chaises. While not as regular as the Mail, these usually arrived during winter
between two and four, so as to avoid darkness closing in.

It was safe to say that everyone in Barford Magna awaited a
glimpse of the mysterious wife of the new Lord Northcote.

Several miles away, Henry Duncannon’s younger sister, Harriet,
paced between the rooms in the new wing of the Manor, delighting in the expanse
of shining floors, every bit of brass, silver, or gilding bravely shining in
the watery afternoon light, the wood polished to a gleam. Signs of neglect had
been judiciously hidden away. She herself had tended to the remains of the
garden, as poor Pratt, the only gardener left, had not had the time, the rest
of his men having been turned off.

She paused to look out the windows toward the sweeping drive,
which was still well graveled, though beginning to show what would probably be
deep ruts come spring. Would the new Lady Northcote’s sharp eyes detect them?

Harriet clasped her hands. Everything,
everything
depended upon this mysterious woman Henry seemed to have
married, did she know that?

Harriet moved away in an unsuccessful attempt to escape that
sick inward sense of having made a terrible error. She hated not knowing if
this lady had seen her letter to Henry—her letter that she knew her family would
consider forward and impertinent to the worst degree—and if she had, would she
betray her?

A mellow gong resounded from the clock in the hall. One.
Even if they arrived at the Boar and Eagle at two, there would be time wasted
as John-Coachman got their traps (their dunnage, as Henry always said) into the
gig. After that an ever-so-slow-drive, and then maybe arriving right before
dinner.

There might not be opportunity for private conversation even
then. That would not do.

Henry had told Harriet on his last visit that the great
Nelson had always said never to dither, but to board ’em smoke and oakum, or smoke
’em and oak, which made a bit more sense; the only part she was certain of was
that sea captains mustn’t dawdle.

And whatever was good advice for the great and glorious
Nelson’s own captains by reason ought to be good advice for anyone else,
surely?

She paused at the foot of the staircase. She knew her mother
had retired to her room with her hymn book, and Emily was in the morning room,
prosing away to Mary about what she thought she had detected in that stiff,
formal letter the mysterious Lady Northcote had sent, written as if she had
been alive in the First George’s time.

Harriet must meet the lady first. If she got away without
being seen, the others wouldn’t know until it was too late. After that, she
trusted, she would have the protection of company manners.

She flitted up to don her habit, her sturdiest hat, and a
muffler, and then she let herself down the back way, through the old part of
the house to the stable. She had her mare saddled in a trice. Then, avoiding
the drive altogether, she rode through the paddock and the cow pasture, leaped
the fence, and galloped cross country. Though there was a thin rain falling, it
felt cool on her face, and she laughed aloud.

As Harriet cantered down country lanes toward town, from the
other direction, Anna and Parrette bowled along the last distance toward the
town.

Anna had been expecting to see the beautiful green England
of her mother’s stories. Instead, the ground was iron hard where it wasn’t mud,
the fields mere stubble, the trees barren. Even the rivers seemed to run brown
under a low sky the color of steel. The sun, when it appeared, was so pale and
low in the southern sky that it seemed a different sun altogether from the one
she had always known.

The chaise carried them through a last small village, the
streets muddy, the austere buildings closed up tightly. Except for the glow of
candlelight in a window here and there they would have looked empty of life.

By then the sun had already begun its downward descent
again, and it was too dark inside the chaise for Parrette to see her thread.
She folded away her work and they sat in silence until they entered Barford
Magna at last, and rolled into a paved square before a rambling inn.

The windows at the ground floor glowed as the chaise came to
its halt in the stable yard, the horses blowing and steaming. Stable hands ran
to them, and others to hitch up the manor horses to the family carriage, which
had been waiting these two hours.

At that moment Harriet rode into the middle of the noise and
movement. She reined her horse moments before John-Coachman handed a lady out
of the chaise.

Of course she would be beautiful. They had all expected
that
. If Henry were to marry so oddly
out-of-hand it would not be to a plain pudding of a girl. This was a slender,
graceful young lady who did not look all that much older than Harriet herself,
but she was worlds beyond Harriet in the article of style. Her traveling
clothes of sober dove gray looked like something in one of those illustrated
magazines from Paris. Even her maid looked smart.

Harriet gained an impression of curling dark hair and dark
eyes inside the bonnet, and then she impulsively dismounted and splashed across
the courtyard before John-Coachman could hand them up into the family carriage,
waiting at the other end of the drive.

“You must be Lady Northcote,” she said. “Please say you are!
I am Harriet Duncannon,” she added belatedly, her face flooding with color.
Oh, thank Heaven no one at home was present
to hear that!

A neat hand in pearl gray took hers in a light grip. “I am ’appy
to meet you, Miss Duncannon.” She spoke with a French accent.

Anna and Harriet looked at one another, liking what they
saw. Anna descried a fleeting resemblance to the captain in this girl’s strong
chin and proud nose, and the color of her tousled hair under her hat. Harriet’s
smile was broad, reflected in the quirk of her wide-spaced eyes: there, the
resemblance was pronounced, and Anna’s heart constricted.

“I could not wait,” Harriet exclaimed, and as Noll loudly
thunked one of their trunks onto the top of the carriage, she stepped near and
whispered, “Did Henry receive a letter from me?”

Her voice was low, her face anxious. Anna hesitated, sensing
she was missing something, but what? “He was in a coma when I left,” she replied
evasively. “The physician insisted I come ahead.”

There was no mistaking the short sigh of relief. Anna
mentally set aside all the questions that had formed around that letter as her
words registered on Harriet.

“
Coma?”
Harriet
exclaimed in horror. “The papers said injured, they did not say what. Oh, pray,
has he wakened?”

“I do not know. The physician held out hope,” Anna said, and
when Harriet dropped her gaze, clearly unconvinced, Anna murmured, “I was told
that it was not to be expected, that I imagined it, but I believe I saw his
head move. I felt his hand move under mine.” Now she could put forward her own
question. “By chance, have any letters arrived for me?”

“No post for you, I am sorry to say.” Harriet shook her
head, her eyes filled with tears. But then she dashed them impatiently away and
took a deep breath. “I had better ride back. They do not know I’m here, but I
couldn’t wait.
Thank
you.”

Without saying why she thanked her, Harriet turned to the
ostler who waited at her horse’s head. He threw her expertly into the saddle.
She guided the horse away with a practiced flick of her wrist and a smile over
her shoulder, then she was gone.

Anna found the liveried man waiting to hand her into a fine
carriage; when she had climbed down, she was too weary and anxious to pay
attention to details, but now she was startled to find herself gazing straight
up into a pair of handsome blue eyes in a face like a marble carving. John-Coachman
gazed back, used to these reactions, though he took no particular pride in it.
God had made him what he was. What he chose to do with himself was what was
important.

He liked the way the pretty French lady dropped her gaze at
once, gave a nod of thanks, and climbed straight into the carriage. He was
secretly amused by the distrustful scowl sent his way by the tiny, beak-nosed
woman who climbed in after her mistress, and reached for the door as if to shut
it before he could. He closed the door, tipped his hat, and mounted the box.

“Here is a rug to put over your lap,” Parrette said.

“I am fine as I am,” Anna said.

“You do not look fine,” Parrette replied, eyeing her.

Anna leaned her head back, careful not to crush her bonnet.
She decided against explaining the increasing sense of fraud that she could not
avoid feeling. As if she were not just encroaching, but stealing the captain’s
home, and would she not be resented by his family? It seemed impossible that
she should not be.

“Nerves,” she said finally. “So much depends upon first
appearances.”

Parrette could see Anna’s uneasiness in her countenance. She
said nothing—there was nothing new to say.

The carriage was so smoothly sprung that the jouncing was
scarcely noticeable as they rolled up High Street. Anna looked for the
bookseller’s shop owned by Midshipman Bradshaw’s family. She spotted it, and
had enough time to perceive leaded glass windowpanes glowing upstairs, then
they were past.

They turned alongside a small, beautifully built stone
church in the English style, its steeple rising above surrounding bare trees.
She did not recognize many of the types of trees she saw here, except that they
were all drearily barren.

Past the churchyard the road took another turn, and soon
they were in the countryside again, as gray and brown as ever. How could her
mother have ever thought this land green? The darkness slowly closing in seemed
to settle in her heart. She tried to bolster her nerves by reflecting upon Miss
Harriet Duncannon’s friendliness.

She was not left long to brood. Over a bridge, down and up,
then Parrette said, “Look this way.”

Anna slid over to the opposite window, and beheld the place
where she must live. The Manor lay on rising ground, a gentle, forested hill to
the north sheltering it from the worst winds. The house was not symmetrical; it
had two wings, built in different styles, but from the same stone so the effect
was not unpleasing. She was relieved to see that it was not all built in that
odd style she had seen in London, a style she later would learn was called
Palladian, admired by high society. Accustomed to the arches, awnings, and
flowerboxes of the south, and Paris’s charming variety (under the revolutionary
damage), she had found London in November, preparing for winter, unrelievedly
grim.

Archways she saw, though no flowerboxes. The new wing,
constructed in the New Gothic style, pleased her eye, and even more pleasing
was the promise of golden light in the windows.

Harriet arrived home, at a flying gallop. She had just
enough time to throw off her habit and huddle back into her day gown, shivering
as no one’s fire was freshened until it was time to change for dinner. She
slipped out of her room then slowed when she saw her mother halfway down the
steps to the entryway. So the carriage had been sighted on the hill already!

“Oh, I hope and pray there is no bad news,” her mother said
softly as Harriet joined her, then she sighed. “Harriet, child, how have you
contrived to get your hair so untidy?”

“Only you could get into a scrape just coming downstairs,”
her elder sister Mary said fondly, reaching to twitch an errant lock and tuck
it up.

“Oh, bother,” Harriet muttered, and then added daringly, “No
one will notice
me
.” With relief, she
turned to watch Diggory open the front door as the carriage bowled along the
last of the drive and drew up. Beyond the steps the servants had already
gathered outside in a straight line.

It was exactly right, but for Anna it was the worst possible
introduction. She was intimidated to discover the line of servants on the
gravel, ignoring the thin, chill rain, and at the great doors several ladies
looking exactly alike at first glance. She did not want to get out of the
carriage.

However, here was a powdered footman in fine livery coming
to the coach door, and letting down the steps. She could not sit inside
forever. She must face the audience. She straightened her shoulders, chin high,
ribs tight, and out she stepped.