Though the huge room was skylit and further illumined by tall sash windows, the light came from the north. The library always seemed dark to Jean and rather menacing. It smelt of leather and ancient snuff and decaying book glue. The faint scent of decay tickled Jean's nose and made her eyes heavy. Books jammed the tall shelves and the glass-fronted cases, overflowing onto tables and, indeed, every flat surface. Thanks to Miss Bluestone Jean was well read, but it seemed to her that the weight of words in the Brecon library dragged at one's soul.
Davies strode to the refectory table that stood before the hearth and touched the huge globe of the world that reposed there in its mahogany stand. "A magnificent room."
Jean's apprehension lightened. She felt almost giddy. "It's a large collection. My grandfather added to it."
"He was a famous collector. Is that Hakluyt?" He moved to the unlit hearth and ran a hand along the open shelf beside it.
"In the original edition." Jean fished in her reticule for a handkerchief. "Here. You've smudged your cuff."
He took the square of lawn as if it were the favour of some medieval princess. "Thank you. my lady. Shall you help me with my book list? I'm a hopelessly impractical fellow in dire need of rescue. Yes, I think you are going to take pity on me."
"I'd like to be useful." Jean winced at the stiff propriety of her own words but he held her eyes, returning the crumpled handkerchief. His smile faded to something more intense as, greatly daring, she tucked it in her bosom.
"I should like it of all things." Jean half whispered.
"Only fancy, Jean, I've found The Monk!" Maggie was still near the doorway. "It was here all the time. What a hum. We needn't have sent to Lincoln after all."
Miss Bluestone had interdicted Mr. Lewis's gothick tale, so Jean and Maggie obtained it from Piersall's Circulating Library by stealth and took turns reading it to each other. Reading The Monk in a whisper late at night by the light of flickering candles had added to their delicious terror. Now Maggie flipped the pages, announcing the edition was inscribed to their mother by the author. Her voice squeaked.
"We enjoyed the book when we were younger," Jean heard herself say. They had first read The Monk in November. "Do you have a scheme for the library, sir?"
"I'll use the system my tutor worked out for the collection Lord Edgware donated to the Bodley. Lord Clanross approves."
Jean had no idea what system he was referring to, but it seemed unlikely to include gothick novels. "Clanross and my sister Elizabeth receive a great many scientific journals."
His nose wrinkled. "I daresay. I shall have them bound."
"You best ask Lizzie first."
Jean jumped.
Maggie had materialised at the poet's elbow. "She likes to have the journals to hand. For her correspondence, you know."
"I believe Lady Clanross uses a telescope."
"Lizzie," said Maggie, rather pink in the face, "is astronomer. Her instrument is one of the finest in the nation."
"Indeed," Davies murmured, his eyes heavy-lidded. "I'd like to see it."
Maggie's chin went up. "I daresay she'll show it you if ask her nicely."
Jean wanted to sink into the carpet. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew of Lizzie's spy glass. Why was Maggie so fierce about it? Mr. Davies had said nothing disparaging.
Jean shifted from one slipper-clad foot to the other. "Clanross says my grandfather had a catalogue made."
"His lordship gave me a copy, but it was never completed. The collection has doubled since your grandfather's death." Davies ran his hand through his hair so that it stood up in gold tufts. He smiled charmingly at Maggie. "It seems I have a heavy task ahead of me. Shall you help, too, Lady Margaret?"
Jean felt a stab of jealousy.
He turned his gaze back to her and again the smile faded. His eyes bespoke her. "Lady Jean has already been kind enough to offer her assistance."
Jean trembled.
Maggie said baldly, "To be sure. We've nothing to do until we go to London in April. Cause one of the footmen to go over the books with an oiled cloth first, however, or we'll all be covered in dust."
"Yes," said the poet absently.
He held Jean's gaze, and they spoke volumes together without saying a word.
* * * *
"What think you of the poet?" Elizabeth asked.
Miss Bluestone smoothed the cuffs of her sober grey gown. "Mrs. Davies says he is greatly improved. His father has high hopes of him."
Cecilia Wharton had gone off in her husband's carriage, and the two ladies sat alone in the withdrawing room over the remains of the interrupted tea. The fire crackled as a gust of wind shook the windowpanes.
"I can't approve his manners," Elizabeth said bluntly. "He's full of himself."
Miss Bluestone's eyes twinkled. "All young gentlemen of three and twenty are full of themselves."
Elizabeth's tension eased. "True. At least Johnny Dyott contrives to conceal his self-absorption."
"But Mr. Dyott is unusual, and several years older than this sprig."
"Johnny unusual?" Elizabeth smiled. "You must find our captive poet commonplace indeed."
"It's certainly the fashion, to play at being a poet these days. He may have a genuine gift, but I cannot like his neckcloth."
"Byron has a great deal to answer for." Elizabeth hesitated. "I think Jean is taken with young Davies."
Miss Bluestone's eyebrows rose. "Indeed? That would not be at all suitable."
Elizabeth shrugged. "Oh, the connexion is respectable enough. And though Jean has her share of step-mamma's fortune, the boy doesn't strike me as mercenary. I don't fear for Jean's establishment, merely for her heart."
"She has been losing it regularly these past three years."
"True." Elizabeth spread her hands. "But she was not then of an age to act on her impulses. Now she fancies herself grown up. She's not up to snuff, Miss Bluestone. I've been remiss. I meant to prepare the girls, but the past year..." She rose and began to pace before the fire. She had spent the past year recovering from childbirth. It had not been in her power to give children's balls and breakfasts and musicales suitable to the entertainment .of very young ladies, and for a sixmonth before the boys' birth she and Tom had been in Italy. At least the Christmas season had provided Jean and Maggie with a few social encounters.
Miss Bluestone had taken out her workbasket and was mending a lace scarf. "Jean and Margaret do very well. Do not alarm yourself needlessly, Lady Clanross."
Elizabeth flung herself onto the sofa. "Very well, ma'am. I shan't start at shadows, but I wish Tom's librarian were a trifle less intense." She looked at Miss Bluestone. "And a trifle less like the statue of a Greek god."
"You could remove the girls to the Dower House again."
For three years Jean and Margaret had lived under Miss Bluestone's care in the Brecon Dower House. They had been invited to move to Brecon itself as a token of their new maturity--and to relieve that modest household of overcrowding. Three other schoolroom misses, Miss Bluestone, and four servants inhabited Elizabeth old home; and it was not a large house.
"It's kind of you to offer," Elizabeth said with a sigh, "but they would be deeply offended. And Jean, at least, would perceive my motives. I'll simply have to keep a close eye on them--and the poet. Thank God for Maggie's common sense."
"You mustn't neglect your telescope, my lady." Miss Bluestone folded the scarf and bestowed it in the small basket.
Elizabeth smiled at her. "I shan't. The weather is far too cold to permit me to work at it now, but I do wish Johnny Dyott had not broken his leg. He would keep Master Davies in line. Johnny has a tendre for Jean."
"And Margaret has a tendre for him."
Elizabeth stared.
Miss Bluestone inspected the torn flounce of a petticoat.
"Does she indeed?" Elizabeth began to laugh. "Perhaps it's as well Johnny is stuck in Hampshire. I've no desire to enact A Midsummer Night's Dream in my drawing room--Maggie pursuing Johnny, Joh
nny pursuing Jean, Jean in love with the poet, and Mr. Davies in love with himself."
Miss Bluestone set a deft stitch. "Perhaps you have noticed, my lady, that these small affairs of the heart are comic to observers but the stuff of tragedy to the participants."
Though there was no censure in the governess's mild voice, Elizabeth flushed. She had spent a miserable summer in the not-distant past mooning over Tom, and Miss Bluestone had comforted her.
Elizabeth bit her lip. "I shan't laugh at them. At least not in their presence."
Miss Bluestone smiled. "I place too much reliance on your good sense to apprehend any such blunder on your part, my lady."
Nevertheless, Elizabeth was troubled. She had found Owen Davies ill mannered, conceited, and thoroughly charming. He was a double for the statue of Apollo Belvedere she had seen in the papal collection--clothed, of course. She wished Davies were still a callow undergraduate afflicted with spots.
* * * *
For Jean the first days of Owen Davies's residence at Brecon spellt pure enchantment, though she hugged her feelings to herself. The only flaw in the reverberating crystal of her delight was her failure to confide in Maggie. Always before, she had poured out her sentiments to her sympathetic twin, and Maggie had always entered into her feelings exactly. There was no reason for Jean to keep her passion from Maggie, but such was the intensity of her emotion she could not speak of it.
Every morning after breakfast the two girls met with the poet in the newly dusted bookroom. He was an exacting taskmaster, keeping them to their chores until midday.
Because Jean wrote a clearer hand--so he said, but she thought he meant to keep her near him--she made a list of the books Maggie fetched to the larger of the two refectory tables. The poet examined each tome, taking note of its author and contents, the probable date of its publication, though a surprising number of works contained no date, and the condition of its binding. Sometimes be would lose himself in the work as a stack of calf-bound volumes mounted on the green baize.
He read snatches of poetry aloud. Some of the works were in Latin, which the twins had studied briefly, or in Greek. They knew no Greek, but Jean thought his voice conveyed all the music of the Aegean. She could have listened forever as he recited the long mellifluous lines of Homer's Odyssey. He read from Chapman's English translation of Homer, too, but when he read in Greek Jean could concentrate on the beauty of his voice and dream unhindered.
When he forgot to replace the books in the order Maggie had brought them from the shelf, they would have a game of hunt-the-fox, chasing after the elusive volumes amid much laughter. He teased Maggie, who had warmed to him, but it seemed to Jean that when he read, he read for her alone.
They took their nuncheons with Elizabeth, of course, and made up the numbers of Elizabeth's quiet dinner parties in the evening. A few months before that would have seemed an enormous treat, but Jean was growing rather blasé about small social privileges. The February weather was foul--snowing and blustery. Often enough Elizabeth seated only Mr. Davies, Jean, Maggie, and herself at dinner. Miss Bluestone rarely ventured from the Dower House in the icy wind, and no one came to visit from farther away than Earl's Brecon.
Once Elizabeth sent her carriage for Mr. Davies's parents, but the evening went slowly, all parties stiff with constraint. It was clear that the Davieses regarded their son with baffled admiration. His feelings were less clear.
The Sunday after he arrived, a snow-laden gale blew in off the North Sea. No one went to church, and they were quite without guests at dinner, so Elizabeth persuaded the poet to read from his works.
Jean knew she was incapable of judging the quality of his poetry. His voice rang so sweet in her ears that he might have read a list of dirty linen and still transported her. She knew that and it didn't trouble her. He read from his odes, and he touched on all the proper subjects--mutability, nature, the sublime. She thought his tropes particularly elegant, but she might have said the same had he recited Crabbe or Thompson. He seemed to prefer the Spenserian stanzo.
It was after this session, when their abigail had gone and they had scrambled into their nightclothes in the chill of their room, that Maggie finally forced her twin's confidence.
Jean tucked her red curls into her nightcap and leapt into the warmed sheets.
Maggie stood on one bare foot before the sea-coal fire. "You're mad for Owen Davies, aren't you?"
"What?"
Maggie cat-footed across the polished boards and jumped into her side of the four-poster. "You're in love with Owen Davies." She snuffed the candle and the room darkened, the only light a dancing red glow cast by the fire on the hearth.
"What if I am?"
"I don't know." Maggie's voice was muffled. She had yanked the eiderdown up to her chin. "I just wondered."
"He has a beautiful voice."
Maggie said nothing.
"He does, Mag. And he's so...so beautiful." Jean felt her cheeks go hot and was glad of the darkness.
"D'you think so?"
Jean sat up. "Do not you?" She squinted down at her twin.
"He's good-looking, and I like working with him in the bookroom, but he's not very organised."
Jean groaned and flopped back against the pillows. "What does that signify?"
"Nothing. Are you in love?"
"Yes... Oh, yes, Maggie--fathoms deep."
"As You Like It," Maggie said drowsily. "That's all right, then. I thought you were but you didn't say."
"Oh, Maggie, I'm sorry. It was so strange, as if something constrained me to keep my sentiments to myself. But I do love him. His voice is like...like an aeolian harp." Jean had never heard an aeolian harp, but she wanted to. "And his eyes!"
Relieved to have the ear of her lifelong confidante once more, Jean spoke at length of the poet's brilliance, beauty, and charm. It was only as she began to evaluate the quality of his verse that she realised her sister had fallen asleep.
5
The grand old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men.
He marched 'em up to the top of the hill
And marched 'em down again.
Johnny was finally finishing volume one of Richard Falk's history and the old jingle kept running through his head as he transformed Falk's scrawled words into his own neat copperplate.
Somewhere in the middle of Bavaria Johnny had lost interest in the War of the Spanish Succession. That was not the fault of Colonel Falk's handwriting, which was abominable, nor yet of his prose, which was lucid. Perhaps if Johnny had been reading neatly printed folio pages at his usual breakneck pace, his enthusiasm would not have flagged, but there was something about syllable by syllable transcription of dead bivouacks, dead skirmishes, dead battles, that rendered them very dead indeed.
Oh, when you're up you're up,
And when down you're down,
And when you're only halfway up
"You're neither up nor down," he sang mournfully.
"It can't be that bad."
Johnny finished the last scrolled letter, sanded the sheet, and regarded his hostess solemnly.
Emily Falk set a nuncheon tray on a chair by his daybed "What a beautiful hand you write. Richard's publisher will have palpitations." She peered over his shoulder "You're finished!"
Johnny flexed his fingers and grinned "Absolutely. Except for Volumes Two and Three."
"Murray will have to be satisfied with Volume One for the time being. You need a holiday." She flitted to the foot of the daybed and twitched the eiderdown over his legs "Richard will be delighted."
"Aux anges," he said dryly "In transports."
She looked at him, blue eyes serious. "He will be enormously relieved, Johnny, and grateful to you."
Johnny sighed. "And he'll say, 'Handsome work, Dyott. Pity it's such tripe.'"
"Is it?"
"Of course not. It's clear and accurate and gracefully expressed."
Her face fell. "Oh, dear."
"It will probably run
through two printings in a quarter." He wasn't sure what he'd said wrong. He hadn't meant to intimate he found the history dull. Its dullness was probably an illusion. "Really, ma'am, it's a solid piece of historical writing."
She looked as if she might burst into tears.
Alarmed, he struggled to a more upright posture. "I like it," he lied, gasping because he had jarred his splinted leg.
Emily Falk sniffed and gave him a watery smile. "It's kind of you to say so, Johnny. Now, let's move the manuscript out of the way so you can eat in peace." She squared the sheets of foolscap and carried the neat stack to Falk's desk. Falk had gone off for the day to see his sister.
"I wish you'd tell me what I said wrong." Johnny handed Mrs. Falk standish and pen and watched as she tidied the lap desk that also served him as a table.
"It wasn't what you said." She handed him a warm, damp cloth from her tray and he swabbed the inkstains from his hands. "I was just remembering Don Alfonso."
"Is that Colonel Falk's novel?"
She gave an exasperated cluck. "You're an ignorant jackanapes and don't deserve Mrs. Harry's burnt sugar custard. Richard has writ five novels dealing with the adventures of Don Alfonso." She arranged his cutlery and served him boiled chicken, fresh sliced bread, and preserved cherries, placing the custard and a glass of white wine whey--the last a medicinal draught--artistically on the tray. She was neat-fingered and her place settings always looked good enough to eat.
"I ought to read them one of these days." He spread the heavy linen napkin over his chest.
"Not until you've finished copying the history."
"Why not?" He cut a bite of savoury chicken.
"Because the contrast would throw you into the glooms. It's bad enough having Richard in a green-and-yellow melancholy. Two gloomy men I refuse to abide."
Johnny chewed. "I know Colonel Falk prefers the novels."
"Anyone with a sense of humour and a modicum of intelligence prefers the novels. I do wish he hadn't agreed to write this dreary history..." She bit her lip. "It can't be helped. Richard will return around four in a foul mood. We might as well prepare the manuscript. If he doesn't want to send Volume One off today he can always undo the parcel."
Love & Folly Page 5
