Rondo Allegro (51 page)

When they reached The Manor, it had clouded up again. Anna
was glad to get to the drawing room, where tea things were in waiting. They got
their cups and sat down.

Penelope said, “Lady Northcote, if you will forgive my
asking, how does it come about that the family was not informed of your
marriage?”

Instant silence, into which the dowager uttered a faint
protest.

Anna had been expecting this attack all along. Her only
surprise was that they had waited thus far. “You must put that question to Lord
Northcote,” she said.

“But he is not here,” Penelope rejoined, with the assurance
of she who stands firmly astride the pinnacle of moral authority. “And you are
come among us alone, so suddenly.”

“I did not know anything about communications he might have
made,” Anna said. “He was sent out with the fleet very soon after we were
married.”

“You did not exchange letters?”

Harriet laughed at the idea of her brother writing
billets doux
. Penelope sent her a
reproachful glare, and she sobered.

“Once. But then I was obliged to leave Naples, as they were
daily expecting attack from the French.”

“Oh, how dreadful,” the dowager exclaimed.

“Europe,” Harriet said, “is in a dreadful state. I am
surprised anyone can get a letter, or send one, with Boney romping about.”

“Harriet,” Penelope stated, “if you cannot speak with the
delicacy expected of your age and position, you would do well to keep silent.”

The dowager roused a little at this attack on her daughter.
“However it was expressed, Harriet is quite right.” She turned her head, and
blinked in Anna’s general direction. “How did you come together again, my dear?
You were in Cadiz, before the glorious victory, were you not?”

“Yes,” Anna said. “Admiral Gravina told me himself that he
once was an ally of England. In honor of that, I believe, he somehow made occasion
to send me to the British fleet, to be reunited with Captain Dun—with Lord
Northcote.”

The mention of the Spanish admiral appeared to intimidate
even Miss Penelope Duncannon. She accepted that with a minute nod, saying after
a moment of reflection, “How did you come to be in Cadiz?”

“I was there,” Anna smiled, “for the opera. The Company
Dupree performed.”

She knew she treaded dangerous ground, but she resented Miss
Penelope Duncannon’s minatory tone.

“Opera,” the dowager repeated on a sigh. “Oh, it has been a
very long time since I have seen a performance. There was that beautiful one by
Gluck,
Orphée
et Eurydice
—”

“Opera,” Penelope stated, “ill bears close examination. So
much of it is preposterous, when not outright immoral.”

“I did not care for the recitations, but oh,
beautiful
music,” the dowager said.
“When Orfeo, sung by a woman, you know, finds Eurydice dead—I often wished that
arranged for the fortepiano, before my eyes made it impossible to see the music
sheets.”

“A woman dressed up in man’s attire?” Penelope gasped.

At that moment Diggory arrived to announce that the meal had
been laid out in the dining room.

Penelope made it plain that the subject of opera was as well
left behind as she followed behind Anna and Emily, the latter having once again
taken Anna’s arm. Emily said in her perfectly modulated voice, “You and I must
unite to bring music back to this house. Henry will find that a fine welcome,
do you not agree?”

o0o

The afternoon passed with excruciating slowness, Penelope
holding forth until the dowager slipped away, murmuring about a headache,
followed soon by Harriet and Caro. Anna remembered what Harriet had said about
the little children, whom Anna had scarcely seen. It seemed an imposition to go
without invitation to visit someone else’s children, so she had not yet dared
to venture alone to the nursery.

A bit later on, once again the little girls were brought
down to make their curtseys, which brought Harriet and Caro also. Then the
girls were banished and everyone else retired to the dining room for the cold
meal, after which they pulled on coats, hats, gloves, and shawls to venture out
to the coach again. After evening service, the dowager made the offer to the
elder Duncannon sisters to carry them back to Whitstead, as they had known she
would, and so the evening ended.

Monday was free of visitors. Anna offered to read to the
dowager, who accepted with pleasure. They sat side by side in the morning room,
one reading and the other doing tedious hemming in tiny stitches—almost entirely
by feel, as she could not see well enough for fancywork—as outside the sleet
hissed and roared.

In the afternoon, the weather cleared. The dowager vanished
somewhere with her daughter, and Anna took her book upstairs to her room, where
she could sit next to the fire with a shawl about her until it was time to
dress for dinner.

When Parrette came in, she was blowing on a knuckle and
wringing her hand. Anna, in the midst of unfastening her gown, stopped. “What
happened to your fingers?”

Parrette scowled at her blotched hands. “I cannot stitch
with gloves on, so I use my candle to warm my fingers. And I got impatient day
before yesterday. Burned myself stupidly; it is all but healed, except that I
splashed hot water on my finger just now, and it hurts again.” She wrung her
hand.

“Candle? Why would you do that?” Anna shivered as she
loosened her gown, and the obvious answer struck her. “The servants’ chambers
are not well warmed?”

“They are not warmed at all,” Parrette said grimly. “It is
worse in that attic than on board the ship for space, and no fireplace.”

“I wonder if my husband knows,” Anna said.

Parrette wrung her hand a last time, and then threw Anna’s
dinner gown over her head, and twitched it into place as Anna shrugged into it.
“
You
could fix it, but I daresay it
is better to wait. They have such peculiar customs, here.”

“I? Fix it? How?”

Parrette uttered a breathless laugh. “Everyone seems to know
it but us. You are a very wealthy woman.”

“I thought the household was in bad straits.”

“The household is, but it seems that your husband inherited
his own fortune from a relation on his mother’s side, and has never touched
it.”

Anna felt as if someone had struck her on the side of the
head. She turned to gaze at Parrette. “Have you been gossiping with the
servants?”

“Yes,” Parrette said. “Do you want to hear it, or not?”

Anna’s struggle was brief. “Only if it is true. Gossip so
often isn’t.”

“I cannot prove what is true or what isn’t, but they all
believe that it was discovering that his second son had inherited a vast amount
from some relation that caused the elder Lord Northcote to go off in an
apoplexy.”

“So he had not this wealth when we married?”

“He had nothing. He was not even given an allowance.
Whatever he did he must contrive himself.”

They contemplated this, having learned something of the
complicated affairs concerning meals on board a ship. If the officers had not a
private allowance of some kind, they might have to eat the same food as the
ship’s crew. And repair their uniforms as they could, or indent for what they
could not repair, as their earnings were scant. Captain Duncannon had possessed
beautiful silver serving dishes and fine porcelain plates. So all that was
relatively recent acquisition? Again, much was explained.

Anna nodded. “And so his leaving me to the Hamiltons was
necessity. But that was then. Now, how are we to address your situation? Shall
I order those rooms to be repaired?”

Parrette tipped her head to one side. “I think you would
upset the household entirely, especially if you put that ahead of the many
other things that need doing.”

“But your hands! This is intolerable.”

“The servants find ways to warmth,” Parrette said.
“Yesterday Peg Cassidy invited me to join them over the stable, when you are at
dinner. It is very congenial, and warm enough
there
.”

Anna said slowly, “The housekeeper did not show me your
rooms. And I never thought to ask.
Bon!
This is a question I will be putting to the captain, when he gets here.” Yet
another thing to add to her sense of anticipation, mixed with . . .
not dread. There was too much hope, and good memory for that. Brief as it was.

So much depended upon his reappearance! Anna had supposed it
was only she who thought about him, imagined conversations, questions.
Expectations. But in their own ways, the entire household seemed to be in a
mode of rehearsal, no, of waiting, until the main actor stepped upon the stage.

Parrette stepped back, gave a short nod, and said, “You’ll
do. Better get yourself downstairs.”

Anna plucked up her shawl and left. Parrette straightened
the room, picked up the basket of work waiting outside Anna’s door, and sped
along the servants’ hall to the back stairs. Here she met Polly and Peg
Cassidy, who were waiting for her.

Parrette, who had long ago schooled herself to brace for the
future, and to never anticipate, as that brought nothing but disappointment,
had found herself thinking about the prospective second visit all through the
day.

o0o

Tuesdays, Anna discovered when the fire was lit in the
formal parlor, were understood by the countryside to be their At Home day for
morning calls. These calls would be duly returned toward the end of the week.

However before breakfast was over a heavy, sleeting rain set
in. The storm lasted three days, keeping everyone indoors, and on Thursday,
when the weather cleared, Anna discovered the dowager gone somewhere with
Harriet as driver; not, ordinarily, an event to cause notice, except for
Emily’s surprise, indeed, her quick expression of disapprobation before her
expression smoothed.

Anna was not certain what to make of Emily, even without the
memory of her husband’s whispering of that name. More often than not Emily’s
tone, some of her words, reminded Anna of Therese Rose, which caused an
instinctive distrust. Not that Emily was as friendly, or as good company. It
was that sense of falsity, of words and tone not quite matching, though
outwardly she had been scrupulously civil.

Further, her musical evenings so far compassed her own
performance, with polite-nothing sayings offering the others an opportunity
before Anna was requested to accompany Emily’s singing, which occasioned an
exclamation from Frederick Elstead that they made a beautiful pair, that
someone ought to paint them. Emily simpered, but at no time did she appear to
think it necessary to ask Anna if she had another sort of performance in mind
besides accompaniment.

Anna was not quite certain what she ought to say if she did.
She sensed that Emily had been regarded as mistress of the household, that she
had once led the way in everything. Anna was aware that her own singing far
surpassed Emily’s modest talents and training; she sensed that Emily would be
put out of countenance. She resolved to let the matter lie until Emily might
think of asking her to sing.

But she wanted to sing again.

She must simply content herself by singing alone.

The resumption of social life meant that when the drawing
room was heated, Anna became wary of taking up the room for her own purposes.
Anyone might come in.

Then she remembered that long gallery in the other wing. It
was equally cold, if not colder, but she had learned in Paris that movement
made one warm, and oh, the space!

She made her way quietly to the deserted gallery, low slants
of wintry light splashing the paintings with dull color. As her husband’s
ancestors gazed out into infinity over her head, she danced up and down the
marble floor. Once her body was warmed, she hummed a note, and cautiously
tested the sound. There was an interesting echo, but that would swiftly blur
into unbearable murk.

She therefore took to walking outside in the bitter wind.
The ordered garden gave way to a profusion of trees and hedges that surrounded
the lake. Once she was out of sight of the house, she ran her scales and sang.

As her voice echoed among the trees, she was learning to
appreciate unexpected moments of grace: the subtle sun rays in the mist, the
silvery branches against the sky, the smooth hills accented by hedgerows.
England might not be as beautiful as her mother had promised, but it was not after
all as dismal as it had appeared on her arrival.

When she returned from her first walk, she paused to look at
the house sheltered beside its hill. It was so peaceful. The wounds of battle
were blessedly distant. She could understand what motivated the men of the
Aglaea
to protect their homeland against
the devastation Napoleon Bonaparte caused elsewhere.

But she could not comprehend the motivations of Bonaparte,
seen now and then at the theater in Paris, sitting next to his exquisite wife.
Why
would he invade England? What use
would the properties of an island be when he held already the whole of Europe
in his grip?

o0o

That Saturday, after her dance practice in the gallery and
her morning walk for singing, she returned to find everyone gathered as customary
for tea and Cook’s poppy seed cakes. Harriet presided, a proud look on her face
as she wore a new gown.

Anna recognized the stylish lines instantly. Though the
garment itself was a plain round gown, suitable for a girl not yet presented,
and the color was a subdued pale lavender with little ornamentation, there was
no mistaking the fine fit, the pretty line of the yoke in back, the little puff
sleeves at the shoulders, framed by a sedate ribbon before lengthening into the
long sleeves common in England, especially at this time of year.

Even more surprising was the expression on Emily’s face,
almost affront.

“You look very well in that new gown,” Anna said to Harriet.