Rondo Allegro (52 page)

The girl preened. “Is it not fine?
Infinitely
better than anything that can be got from Miss Reed.
Your Duflot is teaching Polly.”

Emily turned to Anna. “Am I to understand that your woman
makes your gowns, Lady Northcote?”

“She makes most of them, yes,” Anna replied tranquilly.

Emily bit back an exclamation, remembering that the
conjectures about Le Roy and Paris had all come from others. At no time had
this foreigner made any such claim herself. She had said nothing about her
clothes at all.

When Anna went upstairs later to dress for dinner, she said
to Parrette, “That was a fine gown you made for Harriet. Poor thing, they seem
to have neglected her altogether.”

Parrette made certain the doors were shut, then said in
Neapolitan, “When we sit above the stable while you are at dinner, I have been
teaching Polly what I know.” She smiled at the thought of those cozy evenings,
with the smell of freshly parched coffee beans smothering the odor of horse as
John-Coachman made the coffee himself.

Anna, seeing that smile, was surprised. She had so rarely
seen Parrette smile, especially in that way. But then Parrette’s brows twitched
into a frown. “Miss Harriet is not the only one neglected. There is but the one
man in the garden, until spring, and then the kitchen maids will be expected to
do most of the weeding. Miss Harriet thinks she is to go to London in spring,
but . . .”

She let that lapse, and Anna laughed. “I know.
When Lord Northcote returns
.” The
household’s expectation might be almost as intense as her own, though perhaps
for different reasons.

Parrette twitched curls about Anna’s face, stepped back and
cocked her head. “Polly wishes to be promoted to lady’s dresser. She’s a quick
learner. And a good turn requires another good turn, for Polly put me in the
way of meeting the Cassidys, so that I might hear Mass in the Aubignys’ private
chapel.”

Anna exclaimed. “Is there no church? Is hearing Mass against
the law in England?”

“It was, I learned,” Parrette said. “But they changed the
law not long after our revolution broke out. Though it is thought best to bide
quiet, as John-Coachman says, as there is still ill feeling.” Parrette frowned,
and added, “Some of it is on account of war in Ireland, five or six years back,
the Irish, mostly Catholics, wanting independence in the way of the American
colony.”

War everywhere
,
Anna thought as she disposed her shawl about her elbows. Why was it necessary
to forbid worship if it was not one’s own tradition?

She recollected that the legation in Naples had had to build
their own chapel, as the king had forbidden an English church to be built. Her
mother had told her that Lutherans and Catholics and Church of England and the
Jews as well all worshipped the same God, and read out of the same Bible, or
half the Bible, with the Jews.

But when kings and governments meddled with religion, there
was another excuse for war.

o0o

That evening brought another change: the dowager appeared
at dinner wearing spectacles. She said nothing about them, but commented in a
brisk tone, “I wonder when we may safely begin looking for Henry?”

Anna smiled across the table at her. “I thought to count up
the days from my own travel, but I know not how much time he spends when he
lands. Oh! I wake every day in hopes of post, saying when he is to come.”

“We’re all looking for Henry’s return,” Frederick Elstead
said genially.

Frederick and Mary Elstead were dining with them, as they
often did. Mary ignored the commentary about her brother. She was regarding her
mother’s spectacles with faint surprise. But she said nothing, and Emily, who
had not been consulted, decided not to take any notice, in hopes that the silly
old fool would take the hint and recollect what was due to the family, if not
to herself.

After dinner, as the women passed into the drawing room,
Harriet came to Anna and said low-voiced, “I would have told you, but she
desired me to keep her secret.” She pointed at the piano. “Now she can play
again.” Harriet made a face. “If Penelope doesn’t attack her first, and scare
her into putting them away.”

“Why should she do such a thing?” Anna asked.

“Because Papa had set his face against anyone making such a
spectacle
of themselves, and Penelope
will fuss about what others might say.” Harriet smothered a soft laugh. “Do not
be suspecting him of a pun. Papa would never have so lowered himself.” Her
expressive brows contracted. “My brother John was
far
worse. How would it look—we would be made a
laughingstock—people would ask us when we were to set up shop-keeping. He was
quite, quite—”

Whatever she was going to say was cut off when Emily
interrupted in a smooth, brisk tone. “Tea, Lady Northcote?”

It occurred to Anna that there was one more person in that
house who had set her mind against spectacles as well, though Emily
said
nothing. But Anna sensed it in the
way Emily looked everywhere else, as if the sight of those little framed lenses
offended her.

o0o

Sunday dawned with tiny flakes of snow falling. The wheels
of the coach crunched along the road to church, where, as before, people
gathered before and after the morning service. And as before Penelope Duncannon
decided when the family was to leave, marching through and rounding them up
like a scolding nanny.

Anna was peripherally aware of Caroline speaking with Dr.
Blythe, something she would have paid scant attention to had she not noticed
the way Dr. Blythe looked after Caroline when her sister pulled her firmly
away.

Surely there could not be anything wrong in talking to the
minister after church, Anna thought.

She was distracted when Penelope addressed the dowager the
moment the footman had safely shut the coach’s door. “Lady Northcote,” she
stated. “I had no wish to draw the stares of ill-bred persons, but I would be
failing in my duty if I did not point out that Papa would never have
countenanced the wearing of spectacles at any time, but most especially in
church.”

“Why not in church?” Harriet exclaimed. “Such rules are
spooney!”

“Harriet!” Penelope gasped in shock.

Emily said in a low, cold voice, “Harriet. You will permit
me to point out that vulgar expressions are never tolerable in persons of birth
and breeding, but are particularly unacceptable on Sunday.”

Caro turned to Penelope, and said, bravely, “Oh, but
Penelope, what can possibly be wrong if Lady Northcote is enabled to see her
hymn book—”

“Caroline, you interrupt me,” Penelope snapped.

Caro looked down like a chastened schoolgirl instead of a
woman of forty years.

“Nor,” Penelope went on, “would have my late brother, little
as we agreed. We should have agreed on
this
.”

“I think—” Caro began.

“Caroline, please. Must you continually put yourself
forward? You know better, at your age. Good manners requires the eldest finish
speaking.” And to Emily, “I very much loathe to point it out, but those have so
vulgar an appearance.”

“I agree,” Emily stated calmly. “But my authority in this
household has been superseded.”

Anna was about to speak—to say she hardly knew what—but
Harriet leaned forward. “You may think what you wish, Penelope, but I take
leave to tell you that you are wrong about vulgarity.”

“Harriet Duncannon!”

“Would an empress ever be called vulgar? How about the queen
of the French?”

“What nonsense is this?” Penelope demanded.

Anna tried a peace-making deflection. “Those spectacles are
modeled on the fashion put forward by the Empress Catherine the Great. She took
the fashion from Queen Marie Antoinette. I learned this in the royal court at
Naples.”

“Yes,” Harriet exclaimed. “
And
the oculist showed us in a book. Other great ladies wear them,
a
vast
number. So they
cannot
be vulgar.”

The dowager said in her timid voice, “I did so appreciate
seeing my hymnal. And I can now play the instrument again.”

Penelope stared at her, and, her face very much reddened,
turned Anna’s way. “You, Lady Northcote, may be looked upon in some wise as
representing my step-brother, until such time as he returns to his home to take
up his responsibilities. Do you mean to say that you approve of this start?”

Anna very much disliked being pulled into this dispute, but
she recognized that she had perhaps been a cause. Deference she would try, but
she would not attempt to placate so direct an attack. “I understood that I am
come into a musical family,” she said. “If spectacles will serve to enable the
Dowager Lady Northcote to see her music, I can only applaud. I saw many such in
royal houses,” she added.

Penelope sat back, pushing her hands into her muff. She
muttered under her breath; when they drew up before the house, her tone became
scolding as she vented her emotions in her patient sister’s direction. Anna
heard the words “French manners,” and “royal houses,” but chose to pretend to
deafness.

The rest of that day dragged on wearily, Penelope having
managed to destroy what was supposed to be a day of peace. She carried her
disapprobation all the way to church again, only unbending long enough to
accept her expected ride home.

o0o

The next week saw many changes.

On Tuesday, it seemed that the entire countryside crowded in
a continual line of carriages to pay their calls. Everyone sat stiffly in the
traditional circle on the fine chairs in the formal drawing room. Their
conversation was as rigidly defined: the coldness of the weather, the
prevalence of colds, fear of sore throats, which took up the requisite quarter
hour.

Anna remembered her mother telling her that one must never
be caught rudely looking at the clock, though calls must be strictly limited.
As she listened to the flow of talk, it occurred to her that people who had
been making and receiving these calls all their lives must have trained
themselves to know how much to say, and to listen to, before the time was over,
the same way a musician trained to find the true note, or to beat the correct
tempo.

She heard herself presented over and over, which intensified
the sense that she was merely playing a role. She did not catch all the names
in the series of pale faces that paraded in and out, their accents identical,
and their conversation nearly so.

The only person she recognized was the rector, Dr. Blythe,
who kept up a gentle dialogue about gardens until it was time to go. On
leaving, he issued a general invitation to call at the parsonage.

He said to Anna, “The ladies know that though I am a
bachelor, my housekeeper, Mrs. Eccles, is famed for her pies, and likes nothing
better than to serve my parishioners. She is happiest seeing her good things
eaten. I will admit to an ulterior motive, in hoping to elicit your interest on
behalf of our school. But that may wait until you have had time to look about
you.”

He was the last. When the household stirred again, Anna took
the opportunity to address Harriet. “What am I to understand by his
invitation?”

Harriet smiled, glad to put the elegant lady right, glad to
be asked. “Why, he is a bachelor, you know. In the ordinary way, we would not
call upon him. But his being our rector changes things. Everyone calls upon
him. And it’s true about the pies,” she added with the earnestness of youth.

Anna was able to get away soon after. Now that the dowager
could read for herself, Anna had no obligations, and she was learning to take
her walk when she could. She could dance in the gallery at any time. No one
went there. But her singing depended upon the weather. The least clearing of
the sky found her out on what was becoming a familiar ramble, along pathways
lined by stones now mossy with age.

She had found a grotto where sound cupped pleasingly, and
her only audience was birds and the occasional little creature. When she had
emptied her heart of song, she ran back, refreshed even though she shivered.

o0o

After dinner that night, the dowager introduced two
changes. First, she had invited her eldest granddaughter, whose first uncertain
attempts at music under Nurse’s guidance had revealed, she said, a great deal
of taste.

And then she sat down to the fortepiano herself, playing the
sonata that Haydn had written for the once-famed Miss Jansen, whom the dowager
had heard play at a private subscription concert at a ducal manse before she
was married.

The dowager attacked the piece with a vigor that surprised
Anna from so gentle and timid a woman. Here was clearly a joy in music akin to
her own, and proof that the lady, however aged, was still very much a part of
the world.

The dowager also made it clear that she preferred to make
her own music rather than serve as accompanist for Emily’s singing, and so Anna
continued to fill that post. She had no need to practice that.

While she played, her gaze wandered about the room, from
fire to framed pictures, then was caught by the earnest little figure sitting
on the edge of her chair, watching her mother. Eleanor Duncannon clasped her
thin hands tightly, and her lips parted.

When her mother sang one of her favorites, “Robin Adair,”
the child began to sing very softly. Anna easily differentiated the child’s
voice from her mother’s louder one, and liked what she heard. She was thrown
back to Maestro Paisiello’s music chamber, always warm and bright from the
brilliant Neapolitan sunlight, as she began singing at about the same age.

When Emily had finished, and was putting away her sheet
music, Anna got up from the instrument and approached the child. “Are you
partial to singing?” she asked Eleanor.

“Oh, yes,” the little girl said. “Nurse tries to teach me.
Until I can have a governess, which was to happen and then my papa died—”