The Frog Earl (22 page)

The vicar nodded approvingly, and the colonel said, “An excellent point, Miss Harriet. I can see your opinion is going to be valuable and I hope you won't stint to express it. Well, here we are. Blake is before us, it seems.”

The front door of the manor, beneath an impressive portico sadly in need of paint, stood open. They found the lawyer and Mr. Lloyd within, and the Marburys and Squire Pell arrived not long after. Next came Lord and Lady Daumier, a distinguished middle-aged couple dressed with a quiet elegance greatly at odds with the frills and furbelows of the fawning Marburys.

“Lady Daumier makes Lady Marbury look like an opera dancer,” Mimi whispered to Harriet.

“Oh, Mimi, how do you know what an opera dancer looks like?” asked Harriet, whose sailor-brother Ferdie had enlightened her on the subject of Fashionable Impures.

“We went to the Royal Opera House when we were in London, before we came here,” her friend explained innocently. “The dancers wore excessively ornate costumes. Lady Daumier's dress is much simpler, but it looks much smarter, does it not?”

“Much. If I were rich, I should endeavor to copy her style. Listen, do you hear another carriage?”

“It must be Lady Thompson. Let's go and see if Simon and Gerald are with her.”

“Oh no, we ought not...,” Harriet chuckled, “... but as hostess you might go out to welcome her.”

With a most unladylike snort, Mimi caught her arm and pulled her out to the portico.

Lady Thompson was accompanied by both her young relatives, Gerald in the carriage with her, Simon riding alongside.

“Come in,” Mimi invited gaily. “Lord and Lady Daumier are here already, everyone's here, and Papa is ready to conduct a tour.” She ushered Lady Thompson into the dingy marble hall.

Following, Harriet noticed that Lord Litton appeared amused. He murmured something in Simon's ear that brought a look of alarm to Simon's face. Then they were inside, in the now crowded hall, in a confusion of greetings.

Lady Thompson, a longtime neighbor, knew the Daumiers well if not intimately, and Gerald was acquainted with them from London Society. Harriet was surprised when Simon was not presented to them. She looked around for him but forgot all about him when Gerald joined her.

“The colonel wishes every lady to have an escort,” he said. “He has offered my aunt his arm, so may I have the pleasure of offering you mine?”

Speechless with pleasure, Harriet laid her hand in the crook of his arm and they followed Colonel Lassiter and his motley crowd of advisers.

The house was, as Squire Pell loudly and repeatedly described it, “a demmed rabbit warren.” Inside as out, no effort had been made to merge the various additions into a harmonious whole. Doors in odd places led from fancifully baroque drawing rooms into plain, wainscoted Jacobean parlors.

“The first thing I'll do,” said the colonel, “is put in proper connecting passageways.”

“Oh no,” Harriet said, involuntarily but softly.

“No?” Gerald smiled down at her, his eyebrows raised.

“I like it the way it is. You never know what you will come upon next. But more important, I think the children will be happier in small groups, more like a proper family, than all thrown together in an indistinguishable mass. If there are few connections between the parts of the house, each will be more like a home.”

“You are undoubtedly right. Tell the colonel.”

“I could not! Later, when there are not so many people.”

“They will not bite you, you know. And if you leave it till later, Colonel Lassiter will have started to build plans on a faulty foundation. Courage, Miss Harriet.” Covering her hand with his, he raised his voice. “Colonel, this young lady has a suggestion to make.”

Everyone stopped and turned and looked at her. Harriet was ready to sink—or would have been without the encouragement of Gerald's hand gently pressing hers.

“Good,” said the colonel. “Miss Cooper has already made one valuable suggestion.”

So she told them her ideas, which were greeted with thoughtful murmurs and nods of approval. The tour continued.

“You see?” said Gerald. “That was not so dreadful, was it? Shakespeare wrote something about the foolishness of hiding one's light under a bushel. Or is it in the Bible?”

“In the Bible.”

“Is it not amazing how most quotations, and a great many common sayings, are in the Bible or from Shakespeare?”

Her composure restored, Harriet agreed with a smile. They followed the others into a long Elizabethan gallery with windows on one side overlooking the gardens. The opposite wall was hung with portraits so cobwebbed they might all have been of the same person. The portraits should be cleaned and kept, Harriet told Gerald, so that the children could pretend they were of their own ancestors.

“I shall tell the colonel later,” she said firmly. “It cannot make any difference to...”

“Colonel, sir!” A panting youth in soil-stained clothes rushed into the gallery, clutching a pair of shears. “Sir, I bin sent to tell 'ee there's a female on the roof!”

Harriet was not in the least surprised to discover that Mimi was missing.

* * * *

As they followed Mimi and Aunt Georgina into the hall of Highbury Manor, Gerald had murmured in Simon's ear, “I was not aware that the Daumiers were to be here. You met them once in town, and your father was closely associated with Lord Daumier two or three years ago in sponsoring some bill in the Lords.”

Simon shuddered and hung back. The last thing he wanted was to be exposed before the entire neighborhood. He was ready to flee but Mimi, having handed his aunt over to the colonel, came up to him.

“Papa means to show everyone the whole musty old house, but I doubt they will get so far as the banqueting room, right at the top, that I want to see. Papa says every lady must have a gentleman's escort. Will you come with me?”

“Certainly. Let's escape at once before we're trapped.”

They hurried up the nearest stairs, then headed in the direction of the older part of the manor. The rooms they glanced into, dimly lit by curtained windows, were all full of the lurking shapes of furniture in dusty holland covers. Their footsteps, muffled by dust, were the only sound until a floorboard creaked loudly as they passed. Mimi grabbed Simon's hand and hung on.

Proceeding ever upward, they found at last a winding stair that looked promising. At the top a small door in a turret opened directly onto a flat area of roof, enclosed by a stone parapet.

“There it is,” Mimi said with great satisfaction and started eagerly toward a belvedere some thirty feet off.

“Wait. We don't know what condition the leads are in. Let me go first.”

“Leads?”

“That's what a roof walk is called, I suppose because the roof is made of lead.” Simon repressed the temptation to tell her of the forays he and Gerald had made onto the roofs of his Hampshire home, the historic battles refought among chimney pots and gables. Cedric had considered them childish. What had made Cedric take the wrong turning that had led to his death in a tavern brawl?

Dismissing the question, he went cautiously forward across the roof, holding Mimi's hand to stop her from moving ahead. The gusty wind was strong up here, buffeting them playfully, but the roof seemed sound. They reached the banqueting room without any difficulty.

The turret was no more than a dozen feet square, with a pillar in each corner, arched windows, and a domed roof. The door, in the side nearest to them, was locked with a huge, ornate, rusty but still sound iron lock.

“Botheration!” said Mimi. “I wanted to see the view.”

“You can see it even better from out here,” Simon pointed out, laughing. “Those windows are filthy. Look, if we climb that slope, the chimney stack will shelter us from the wind. Let's sit down there and you can admire the view to your heart's content.”

He helped her up the pitched roof and they sat with their backs to the sun-warmed brick. The rich green fields of Cheshire, dotted with cows, stretched before them, merging into the hills of Derbyshire and Staffordshire.

“It's so very different from Bharadupatam. Most of the time, when you looked out from the highest tower in my grandfather's palace everything was brown as far as you could see. Even the trees were dust-brown except in the monsoons. England is very beautiful.” She sighed.

“You have found it difficult to adjust to English life, I think,” he said gently. “I can guess a little of what you have gone through, for the change from the freedom of the seas to the constrictions of a landlubber has not been easy for me.”

“For me it's been the other way about. Oh, when I was a child I used to go everywhere with Papa, to the villages and bazaars and temples and barracks. But when I was eleven my grandfather insisted that I must go into purdah. You know what that is? A woman must never be seen by a strange man, so you live behind curtains and behind walls. If I went out, it was in a palanquin with more curtains, and stifling veils to hide my face in case the curtains blew open. I hardly ever saw Papa anymore because if he came to visit me everyone else had to hide.”

“And your mother?”

“She died when I was eight. I don't really remember her, except that she was beautiful and had the softest voice.”

Simon took her hand for comfort. She was wearing thin cotton gloves, and as he held her slender fingers he realized he ought not to have brought her up here alone. He didn't give a damn.

Mimi went on. “Mrs. Forbes came to teach me about England. That is, to teach me the things an English young lady learns, but what I liked best were the stories about England. I used to dream about driving through Hyde Park in an open carriage, and going into shops to buy things, and talking to young men—even dancing with them! England seemed a paradise of freedom.”

However luxurious her grandfather's palace, he thought, she had been little better than a prisoner. No wonder she shied from a kiss! When speaking to a young man was forbidden, a stolen kiss became virtually equivalent to seduction.

“And then you came here?” he prompted.

“It was a paradise. For months I felt free as a bird. Oh, Mrs. Forbes had taught me all the rules, but compared to purdah they were nothing. But then I started to think, if the rules of purdah could be rejected so easily, what made the English conventions different? Some of them were obviously silly. As I said to Harriet, why should I wear a bonnet to protect my complexion when my skin is brown anyway?”

“What did Harriet say to that?”

“She had no answer. There is no answer. It's all so confusing. Some people are upset if I don't wear a hat and some people don't care. How can I possibly guess what will simply vex a few prim old ladies and what is truly scandalous?”

Simon wanted to hold her tight and tell her not to worry, all she had to do was to entrust herself to him for the rest of her life and he would smooth her path. He would stop her dancing half naked—in company, at least—but as far as he was concerned he didn't mind if she never wore a hat again.

Then he realized that he did mind. As his countess, his marchioness one day, she would have to conform to certain conventions, however senseless, or be ostracized by the society to which he wanted to present her proudly.

“As a sailor,” he said slowly, “I find many of the rules of etiquette silly. Nonetheless, in the end life is easier if one obeys them. I'm not saying that you shouldn't keep tadpoles, only that if you invite your guests to see them you are bound to offend some. Take off your bonnet when you walk alone in the garden, but wear it to the village. And some of the rules are for your safety...”

“Mimi!” The colonel appeared in the doorway to the stair turret. “My dear girl!” He ventured out, followed by Squire Pell and Lord Daumier.

“View halloo!” bellowed the squire.

Simon stood up, helped Mimi to her feet, and steadied her down the brief slope to the leads. “We have just been admiring the view,” he murmured to her.

She nodded. “Hallo, Papa,” she said composedly. “Mr. Hurst was kind enough to bring me up here to see the banqueting room, but it is locked. We stayed for a few minutes to admire the view.”

“A superb view,” agreed Lord Daumier. “There is my house, and I believe I can see the Welsh mountains to the west.” He turned back to the turret. “My dear, a most pleasant roof walk, though a trifle windy. Do you care to come out?”

Lady Daumier stepped over the sill. “Delightful. How clever of you to find it, Miss Lassiter.” She looked at Simon in a puzzled way.

“Blake,” called the colonel, “have you the key to the banqueting room?”

The lawyer joined them, and then Gerald and Harriet. Simon slipped round behind the growing crowd, trying to keep out of sight of the Daumiers. He shouldn't have let Henry practice his skills on his old clothes.

“I'm off,” he muttered to Gerald, “before her ladyship recalls where she's seen me before.”

 As he started down the stairs he heard the colonel ask, “Where's Hurst?”

“He went to inform my aunt that all is well,” came Gerald's smooth reply.

The Daumiers might connect Simon's surname with his father's and think it odd, but Simon doubted that in his absence they would mention it. He found Aunt Georgina and the rest of the party, reassured them, and hastily departed.

* * * *

“I don't know what to think,” Mimi confided to Rohan as she settled him in his stable bed for the night. “Be good now. You'll soon be housebroken and then you can sleep in my chamber. You see,” she continued, “once Lady Daumier had so kindly made it seem unexceptionable to be on the roof, Simon might have decided that if he disappeared people would forget we'd been up there alone together.”

Rohan uttered a drowsy bark and licked her hand.

“That's what you think, is it? Only if so, why did he go home, not wait downstairs? I have a lowering feeling that he suddenly realized, when they all arrived, how improper it was for us to be alone together. The female is always blamed for such transgressions, Mrs. Forbes says. Do you think Simon is angry with me again?”

The puppy's adoring brown eyes assured her that no one could possibly ever be angry with her, but she was not convinced.