Rondo Allegro (48 page)

He withdrew to await her arrival so that he could announce
her, while outside Mrs. Elstead—known with her full approval in the
neighborhood as Mrs. Squire Elstead, now that her son was married to Mary
Duncannon as was—stepped out of her carriage. Rendered curious by her son and
daughter-in-law’s accounts of the bride, she’d decided on the pretext of
calling on the bereaved widows to see this person for herself.

Spying an unfamiliar bonnet and a very elegant French jacket
cut from subdued black cloth on the lady just climbing into the gig with
Harriet, she bustled with more haste than she might have. Anna thus met the
gaze of a handsome woman in her forties whose vivid blue eyes glanced pointedly
at her waist before raking up to her face.

Harriet said hastily, “Lady Northcote, may I present Mrs. Squire
Elstead?”

Two wary curtseys, and Anna’s soft, accented voice was
heard, “I trust you will forgive us, but we were this moment departing.”

“Pray, do not stand upon ceremony with me, Lady Northcote!”
Mrs. Squire Elstead’s high voice was curiously grating on Anna’s ear. “I am one
might say almost in the family, with a daughter widowed in this house, and my
son having married Miss Harriet’s elder sister Mary.”

She appeared to be contemplating more speech, but Anna
curtseyed again. “Thank you. Fare well.”

She climbed into the carriage. That insinuating glance she
could interpret very well. She struggled to understand and to forgive. It was
probably a natural assumption, given that no one here had ever heard of her,
that she had married the captain out of hand. But she could not bring herself
to forgive that avid look at her waist.

The gig began to roll. Anna saw Harriet studying her, and to
get past an uncomfortable subject she said, “I noticed the instrument in the
drawing room. The harp as well. I hope that I am got into a musical family?”

“My sister Mary played the harp. She and Henry used to play
duets until he was gone, and sometimes she played when Emily sang. Only my
mother and Henry were keen. The fortepiano is my mother’s. She left off when it
became too difficult for her to see. My governess did her best by me, but however
it didn’t take. At all events,” she added with a rush of polite afflatus, “I
should very much like to listen if you play.”

Anna had been considering admitting to singing. She knew
that much was considered ‘genteel’ as long as one did not do it for money. She
decided it was better to wait, and smiled at Harriet’s mendacious enthusiasm.
“You are safe. I am an indifferent player, suitable only for accompaniment as
well. Tell me instead about the library. What sort of books shall I find?”

“Oh, a great many bores,” Harriet said. “Things they say you
ought to read, but no one ever does. That is, aside from a parcel of novels, as
my mother was used to be a great reader.”

“But no longer?”

“She would, but she cannot now see the pages. Sometimes I
read to her. Especially this year, when we cannot go out, and it seemed to rain
forever. I got through all three volumes of Sir Charles Grandison, which she is
partial to.”

“Do you recommend it?”

“I have nothing to say to it, except once they get into the
cedar-parlor, you know a thousand pages of prosing is sure to follow.
Frederick, you met him last night, my sister’s husband, you know, he said once
after I’d been reading a chapter to the family during a rainstorm, that if he
ever met a fellow like that, he would kick him down the stairs for a ranting
coxcomb.”

Without waiting for an answer, she pointed. “Ah! When the
weather is nice, the short walk through the meadows comes out at this turning.
Then you follow this road along the river. It is a very pretty walk, and when I
was small we were used to walking to church when the weather was fair. Then up
the hill there. You can see the steeple beyond the yew avenue, and High Street
is below on the other side . . .”

o0o

While Harriet chattered to Anna, Mrs. Squire Elstead—safe
in the knowledge that the new Lady Northcote, as she supposed she must call
her, was away, the dowager elsewhere in the house, and that irritating hoyden
Harriet gone as well—closed the door so that she and her daughter would be left
alone, and indulged herself with a long, disparaging description.

“. . . and when my own son declared she was
positively the most elegant woman he had ever seen! Frederick must have been in
liquor. That can be the only explanation.”

“But she
is
elegant,” Emily said, each word hurting the more because it was true. “She is
at least as elegant as anyone in the Devonshire House set, and a great deal
prettier.”

“A great deal
younger
,
that I will grant. That brown skin? Brown eyes of the most commonplace? My cook
has brown eyes. A nose that wants distinction—but I have said all that. At
least there is no evidence of a sixth months child, but what Henry was about to
marry in this scrambling way, I cannot conceive. I suppose it is too sanguine
to assume something can be done about it.”

“Apparently,” Emily said slowly, “it is
not
recent, however it came about.”

“Impossible,” Mrs. Squire Elstead declared, her cheeks quite
red. “Surely someone would have known. Dearest John would have known.”

“How?” Emily declared, the anger she had strictly controlled
flaring to heat. “You know very well there had been no communication between
them since
my betrothal
.”

The anger broke on those last two words, and the squire’s
wife, who had longed for a title her entire life, eyed her daughter with as
high a degree of anger. “I worked hard to bring it about. A betrothal that you
agreed to with every evidence of delight, Emily.”

“I was eighteen.”

“What has that to say to anything? You were delighted with John,
who was eligible in every possible degree. You agreed with your father and me that
throwing yourself away on a titleless and penniless second son, especially one
who might end up crippled, or worse, who would be away for ages, would be the
madness.”

“Henry and I were in love,” Emily muttered.

“You were boy and girl,” her mother retorted. “And you had
been quarreling, as I recollect right well. You did not want him throwing
himself away in the navy any more than anyone else, and as for that stupid horn
of his! So ill-bred, the manner in which blowing it distorts the face. Very
well for a certain class of person, as you yourself quite rightly told him.”

“To no effect,” Emily observed.

Mrs. Elstead snapped her fan irritably. “Those sentiments
are mighty pretty upon the stage, but people of breeding do not prate of
maudlin sentiment as if it replaced duty and responsibility. Furthermore, it is
abundantly clear that he forgot
you
,
if what you say is true. When did he marry this female? And what is her place?
Who are her people?”

“The newspapers, when they mentioned she was aboard Henry’s
ship with him, said only something Italian.”

“Which could be anybody,” Mrs. Elstead stated. “Or nobody.”

“Without knowing more, there is no use in looking in
Debrett,” Emily said. “My mother-in-law has not seen fit to question her, and
it is not my place. If her maid is to be believed, this Lady Northcote is
connected with some Italian duke, and was born at the royal palace in Naples,
or some such thing.”

“Italians,”
the
squire’s wife said, raising her palms dismissively. “There has to be something
ill-done about this entire affair. If they were people of birth, then Henry’s
family ought to have known. It is a simple matter of breeding and good taste.”

But there was no force to her words. Dukes, royal
palaces—those were very difficult to disparage, and then there was all that
endless talk of war, so she took herself off, her mood very much the worse.
After all her care, her hopes settled in her daughter, who alone of her offspring
had the proper ambition, here was John willfully getting himself killed before
he could bear a son, as he had been willful in all else. There was nothing to
be done about
that
.

Emily saw her mother off, then retreated to the morning room
to sit alone, staring out at the bleak gray lake and barren trees. She did not
know what she dreaded more: hearing that Henry was dead, or seeing him return.

She lifted her chin. Her mother was right in one respect.
She wasn’t a girl anymore. If Henry did return, he must find her unchanged,
with a heart as ready for him as it ever had been. There might be a deal of
trouble to be got over, as he had managed to entangle himself, but these days,
more marriages ended than began. London was full of such tales, and the
beau monde
shrugged.

Six days. She could not wear colors at once, but he had
always loved to see her in white. As for this Neapolitan foreigner and her
prating of promises, there was no doubt that vulgar, pushing Bradshaw woman
would use any opportunity to force herself upon them, bringing her entire set
with her. If Henry returned to find the house full of tradesmen’s wives coming
to call, what could be better?

The inside of the bookseller’s shop smelled delightfully
of books. Until she stepped in, Anna had not been aware how booksellers’ shops
smelled alike in Paris, Seville, and in this kingdom.

A tall, stooped man, obviously the proprietor, was busy
talking to a couple of men. On a high stool at the back, a ledger angled toward
the window, perched an equally tall, thin young man of perhaps twenty. He
resembled the older man in every respect except for the side-whiskers he was
attempting to grow.

Harriet started toward the proprietor, confident that her
rank entitled her to interrupt him, but Anna put out her hand to stay her. “I
would rather wait until the shop is empty,” she murmured.

Harriet shrugged, and both turned to the table displaying
the latest books. They were much the same as those Anna had seen in London,
save she found a play by Duval,
Le Menuisier de Livonie.
On the shelf below,
a title caught Anna’s eye:
Right and Wrong, or the Kinsmen of Naples.
Anna
took it down.

Harriet glanced at it. “Oh, we have some by that author.
Moss Cliff Abbey
—I had to read it to
Mama. Such stuff! Are there really haunted abbeys all over Europe?”

“None that I ever saw,” Anna admitted. “But then I have not
been all over Europe. Just in the south, mostly, except for a tour of France—”

She remembered that she must not speak about her days as a
singer, and fell silent.

Harriet did not notice. “That is more than I have ever seen!
I have yet to see
London.
I ought to
have been presented last spring, but, well, I know it is ill-bred to complain
about that. And yet it is very hard, especially when a cousin of mine made her
come-out, and a vast number of her friends. It would have been a great deal of
fun,” she finished wistfully.

At that moment the two gentlemen touched their hats to Mr.
Bradshaw and departed. The proprietor advanced on the ladies with the books.
When the bonneted heads faced him, he recognized Miss Duncannon from the Manor,
then checked himself when he apprehended an unknown lady with her, one dressed
in the height of fashion, though in the colors of half-mourning.

Harriet said, “Mr. Bradshaw, this is Lady Northcote, the
new
lady Northcote, just come among us
yesterday.”

As Mr. Bradshaw bowed, Anna said, “I am come with news from
your son aboard the
Aglaea
, sir.”

Mr. Bradshaw’s entire countenance changed. “My son! Would
you honor me by entering our parlor upstairs? Endymion, put down your pen. You
must tend the shop in my absence. Please, ladies?”

He moved faster than Anna would have expected from such a
tall, gaunt man, leading the way through the store to a narrow stairway at the
very back.

Upstairs, his wife, scolding the poor maid-of-all-work,
broke off, listening to the voices on the stairs. Under her husband’s familiar
rumble were the accents of a lady.

She dismissed the maid to the kitchen, hissing, “Get out the
fine tea things, and be ready if I ring!” then whisked herself into her parlor.

Mr. Bradshaw was talking as he led the way. “I beg pardon
for the darkness. I know this stair so well, have lived here man and boy
forty-one years, and . . .” He was still talking as they emerged
in a small hallway.

He opened another door, surprising a lady pouring over a
copy of
Corriere delle dame
. She
ostentatiously laid aside the magazine that she could not read, but she loved
the pictures, and even more loved being seen with the famous fashion magazine
all the way from Italy.

Putting on her most polite smile, she gave a quick twitch to
her best lace cap, which she had crammed on so fast she suspected it was not
quite straight, and advanced on the beautiful new guest.

“Mrs. Bradshaw,” her helpmeet said, “permit me to present
Lady Northcote, who does us the honor of a call with news from Beverley.”

“Lady Northcote!” Mrs. Bradshaw exclaimed, curtseying
prettily.

Anna surveyed her hostess, a small, round woman with reddish
ringlets escaping from under her cap, and blue eyes that Anna remembered
mirrored in her son’s face, if he resembled her in little else.

“I . . . I,
pray
enter,” Mrs. Bradshaw said. “Forgive this dreadful little
room, it is merely where I sit of a morning. If Mr. Bradshaw had thought a
moment, he might have brought you to our drawing room in proper form. I never
go downstairs, you see, it was a condition of marriage, as tending a shop is
nothing I have been used to . . .” She chattered on in this
manner as she led the way through two more narrow doors into an airless room
stuffed with too much furniture in a grand design of the end of the previous
century.