Jennie Kissed Me

by Joan Smith

  “There is no counting on the weather in April,” Mrs. Irvine lamented. “I doubt if the Prometheus will set sail today as she was due to.” She kept in touch with the wife of the captain who had replaced her husband aboard that ship.

  “Will you be staying long at Wycherly?” I asked Lord Marndale to forestall a naval conversation. Once she gets started there is no holding her back.

  “I hate being away in the spring, but I have business in London. I cannot stay here long. Of course, it’s close enough that I can come home weekends. As soon as I find someone to tend Vickie, I shall get back to the House.” His business was political business then, I deduced. My mind flew to Lydia Hopkins. “Would you know of a suitable lady, Miss Robsjohn?” he asked, as if reading my mind.

  “I have a friend at the seminary at Bath who might be interested,” I said. “A Miss Hopkins. She is accustomed to dealing with girls of Lady Victoria’s age—well, a little younger, perhaps. She is a particular dab at French,” I added, hoping to build Lydia up.

  “It is really not the lessons I am so concerned about. Vickie is out of the schoolroom. It is rather a companion I have in mind. Victoria is ... strong-willed,” he said, choosing his word with care. “Well, you have met her. Do you think your Miss Hopkins could handle her?”

  I dearly love Lydia. She is as close to a sister as I have ever had, but as I recalled Lady Victoria’s stunt of the preceding night, I could not give an unqualified affirmative. If I was a trifle hard on the girls, Lydia was too soft. “Perhaps not Miss Hopkins,” I said, my mind running over other teachers. Lydia would be wounded if I recommended anyone else over her head. And really the others were all old and stuffy.

  “Think about it, and if you come up with a name, let me know before you leave.”

  We talked for ten minutes. Mostly Lord Marndale told us about the history of the house. It was amusing to hear the comments of Queen Elizabeth, a frequent visitor in the distant past, but my interest waned as he explained how some ancestor had built the place eons before and other ancestors had modified it here and there, removing statues and adding wings. I was not sorry when the butler summoned us to lunch.

  Lady Victoria joined us. She continued polite if not exactly friendly. Soon the food and the selection of eating utensils required all my attention. I was not accustomed to such a plethora of cutlery to deal with. The array at either side of the plate seemed to go on forever. As course followed course, however, the use of each piece was discovered by keeping an eye on our host. We dined on fish and fowl, red meat and ragout and many vegetables, all of it delicious. It was too much of a good thing when fruit and cheese and a sweet followed.

  “I can’t find room for another crumb. I’ll burst if I eat that cake, delicious as it looks,” Mrs. Irvine said.

  I felt the same, though I could not like her manner of expressing it. “Just coffee for me,” I said.

  As we drank our coffee Mrs. Irvine displeased me again. “We’d love to see all your finery, Lord Marndale, but Jennie and I really ought to be getting along if we hope to make London tonight,” she said.

  “Just a glimpse at the park,” I told her. “I have been admiring that stream from my bedroom window, Lord Marndale.”

  “That is the work of Capability Brown,” he said, and went on to tell us how the place had been a field years ago, when his ancestor had lured Brown away from Blenheim Palace to oversee the doing of the park.

  “We’ll take a quick peek then,” Mrs. Irvine agreed, none too happily.

  We went directly from the table to the park. I admired the serpentine yet again. “There is so much more I would like to show you,” Lord Marndale said. “Must you rush off?”

  “We couldn’t begin to see it all if we stayed a week,” I said regretfully. Perhaps he was only repaying our kindness to his daughter, but if so, he did it with no air of conferring a favor. He was charming.

  “You must have a look at my work at least. I have added a pavilion on top of a little mound in the west park. It is modeled after Brighton’s Royal Pavilion, on a much less grandiose scale, of course. All I really mean is that it has a similar dome.”

  “Will it take long?” Mrs. Irvine demanded testily.

  “Only a moment,” he assured her, then led us on a ten-minute trek to see his new acquisition. It was not quite as large and grand as the prince’s pavilion at Brighton but a more elaborate house than many people inhabit. Except, of course, that the walls were not enclosed from the waist up. This did not prevent him from having furnished the edifice. Lovely iron furniture, painted white, sat around the edges of the house. He had set a fast pace, and by the time we reached the pavilion Mrs. Irvine fell onto a chair, gasping. “I’m not as young as I was ten years ago,” she panted, flapping a handkerchief to create a breeze.

  Lord Marndale took me to the far side of the place to point out a view of three trees sitting in isolated splendor on a carpet of grass. “One always plants three. Two will not group,” he explained. “As your companion is determined to drag you away so soon, I want to ask if you have thought of anyone who could look after Vickie.”

  You may deduce from the words that his interest was in finding a companion for his daughter. The delivery of them seemed to place the emphasis on Mrs. Irvine’s cruelty in tearing me away. It was the way he said it, with his eyes lingering sadly on mine. It quite took my breath away.

  “Perhaps Miss Hopkins would do,” I said uncertainly.

  “I would like someone like yourself. A lady of strong character and forceful personality. You certainly raked my hair with a stool at the Laughing Jack last night.” He smiled a smile of unbounded approval.

  “You were hiring adjoining rooms, and your daughter was not wearing a wedding ring,” I pointed out. “What was one to think?”

  “Why, I am very flattered, ma’am. I should have thought my advanced years must protect me from such unsavory suspicions.”

  This gave me an excuse to study him closely. Advanced years was certainly the wrong phrase. He was fully mature but still in the prime of life. “I don’t see any silver in your hair yet.”

  “The words ‘old enough to be her father’ were bandied about, if I am not mistaken?” Lord Marndale’s eyes had ceased meeting mine. They had lifted a few inches higher, to study my own hair. We had rushed out without bonnets.

  “I expect my hair is ragged as a bird’s nest,” I said, lifting a hand to tidy it.

  “You use the wrong simile. It is like a flame.” His voice was soft, and when he lowered his eyes to meet mine I was extremely conscious of being a woman. “It is the way the sun strikes it from behind. A man could get singed from such hair as that.”

  I lifted my chin and replied lightly, “Not if he keeps his distance, sir.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Now that is the very sort of thing I admire in you, Miss Robsjohn. You brook no nonsense from anyone. Not even eligible gentlemen,” he added enticingly. “You are quick-witted and clever. You even noticed Vickie wasn’t wearing a wedding band. I require such a lady to stay with my daughter. Her last companion was not on to her curves. There was a man teaching her Italian ...”

  “Borsini,” I nodded. “She mentioned him but assured me she had no intention of running away with him. Actually it was Mrs. Irvine who noticed the lack of a wedding ring.”

  “I don’t suppose you could spare her to me?” he joked.

  “She could not keep the pace. Only see how she is puffing.”

  “Don’t you think it would be better to let her remain here overnight and recuperate?” he suggested. I just blinked in astonishment.

  “We couldn’t do that!”

  “Is it your rigid schedule you are worried about or the proprieties? Surely the fact that you are accompanied by your chaperone makes it proper?”

  “My rigid schedule is a myth,” I smiled. Part of my smile was that he assumed my companion was a chaperone. A month ago I was the chaperone myself. Now I was young enough to require one.

&
nbsp; “Then what is to prevent your remaining? The weather is by no means auspicious. You haven’t seen half the house. I promise not to bore you with its history,” he said, glinting a smile from his dark eyes. “I have kept a sharp eye on you, you see. I noticed what did not interest you. But there is a splendid library that might interest an ex-teacher, and a music room.”

  I trust his acuity did not penetrate all my tricks, for what interested me a deal more than stone and lumber was the owner of it all. “I don’t know what Mrs. Irvine would say,” I replied. But whatever she said, she would couch it in rustic terms that embarrassed me.

  “Let us ask her.”

  He strode to her bench and we sat down beside her. “Have we tired you out completely?” he asked with an air of apology.

  “I feel as if I’ve been ridden hard and put in the barn wet, but I can make it to the carriage.”

  His lips twitched in amusement. “Hard usage for a filly,” he said.

  “Filly? Ho, there is no need to sweet-talk me, Lord Marndale. It is Jennie who steers our ship. She is the one who decides where we heave to and when.”

  “We have been discussing your dropping anchor here for the night.”

  Her eyes flew to mine in alarm. “Isn’t that wearing out our welcome?” she demanded. “All we did for Lady Victoria is rent her a truckle bed and stuff her with cream buns. There is no need to make us tenants for life, Lord Marndale.”

  “My intentions fall short of adoption,” he assured her.

  “What do you say, Jennie?” she asked.

  “I think it would make a pleasant break in our journey.” I could not repeat Marndale’s fiction regarding worsening weather, as the sun came out from behind a passing cloud and blasted the pavilion in light.

  “Well then, that’s it. We’ll stay. Odd that you, who in the usual way will argue with a gravestone, find no fault in interrupting our schedule,” she added tartly. “If we are to stay, I’ll go and have a lie down. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “Mea culpa,” Lord Marndale murmured.

  “What time should I be down for dinner?” she asked, hauling herself up from the bench.

  “Sevenish?” Marndale said.

  “We’ll need our trunks unpacked if we are to muster in Bristol fashion.”

  Lord Marndale took her arm, and we all proceeded toward the house. “I hear the echo of the sea in your speech, I think?” he said.

  “My husband was in the navy for twenty-five years. Davey Jones got him at Trafalgar. He was with Admiral Nelson.”

  “He died a hero’s death. You must be proud of him.”

  “I’d rather a live husband than a dead hero, but that is neither here nor there.”

  “I have a cousin in the navy,” he said, and chatted with her about nautical matters till we reached our destination.

  I thought his intention was to entertain me himself, but when Mrs. Irvine went upstairs he said he had some business to tend to in his office and told me to make myself free of the house and grounds, which I did. The library was large enough to supply reading to a whole city, but I only glanced at a few shelves before going for an unguided tour of the house. It was unlikely I would ever be given carte blanche of such a place again, and I strolled at leisure through state rooms and art gallery, elaborate bedchambers, and later out to wander in the park and enjoy the terraced gardens. By late afternoon I was pleasantly fagged and returned to our room to speak to Mrs. Irvine and plan a toilette to match our surroundings.

  Chapter Five

  Mrs. Irvine was just rising from the bed and directed a penetrating eye on me. “He’s up to something,” was her opening salvo. “Have you figured out what it is?”

  “Why, I expect he is just being polite.”

  “Pooh! I know when a man is trying to con me.”

  “You!”

  “Yes, me as well as you. You must have noticed how long he talked to me about the navy and my husband. Hah, I am too old a cat to be fooled by a pup. He has something in mind, and I wish I knew what it was. When a lad bothers to pour the butter boat over the chaperone, he is to be watched by all hands.”

  “Surely you mean eyes.”

  “At sea it is the hands who stand watch. Our trunks are here. I sent your silk citron down to be pressed. It was a mass of wrinkles.”

  “Oh dear! I wanted to wear my bronze.”

  “That’s a ball gown, Jennie! Don’t make a cake of yourself. There is nothing so underbred as overdressing. He’ll think you’ve never eaten dinner with a gentleman before.”

  “But his house is so fancy. And the citron washes my complexion out.”

  “Use my rouge pot,” she said, and went to examine her own dark blue crepe. Like all her gowns it was plain, but she had a small strand of diamonds that would add to its dignity.

  I had to make do with pearls, my one token of elegance, left me by my mother. My family belonged to the small landed gentry, with more breeding than capital. Papa was a younger son, and Mama’s small fortune had been used to see the family through a few lean years when the farm was in difficulty. After Papa died, the mortgage ate up any money that was left. I could have gone to live with Papa’s older brother, Seth, but I opted for independence.

  I changed into the citron silk, an expensive error. I had seen something similar on a brunette with darker skin than mine, and it looked lovely. My pale complexion and Titian hair are better suited to stronger colors. We revealed our provincial origins by going downstairs at the appointed hour instead of being fashionably late. My chaperone’s cosmopolitan doings were no help in that matter. “Nineteen hours is nineteen hours,” she said, hustling me out the door at one minute to seven. No one else was about, and we sat in state alone in one of the drawing rooms, sipping a glass of sherry that Petty supplied us.

  At ten past seven Lady Victoria and her father arrived, splendidly outfitted. She wore a charming ice blue gown. Her youth made her pearls eligible, but as I admired Lord Marndale’s toilette I wished I had diamonds to complement the ruby in his cravat. Seeing that we were waiting, he did the gentlemanly thing and apologized for being late. He also complimented me on the citron silk, but it was to my flame of hair that his eyes returned more than once.

  “We came down a moment early,” I prevaricated. “Mrs. Irvine wished to see the gallery.” I hoped the servants would not tell him we hadn’t been near it.

  “The Holbeins are considered the gems of the collection,” he said. “I prefer the Italian style myself. What did you think of the Leonardo cartoons?”

  Mrs. Irvine gave me a desperate look. “Lovely,” she said, with an utterly transparent expression of incomprehension.

  “I shall have Vickie painted when we go up to London. A pity Romney is dead. He did a lovely portrait of her mother,” he added briefly, and talked a little about art.

  I wondered where that Romney portrait was. I had not seen it in the gallery. In his bedroom, perhaps. I was curious to see it. His late wife must have been similar to Lady Victoria, as the daughter had not got her father’s looks or coloring.

  Soon dinner was announced, and we went in to a statelier meal than lunch, with a corresponding increase in china, crystal, and cutlery. The footmen hovering about the table unnerved me, but I tried to ignore them. Lord Marndale sensed our lack of ease and kept a lively flow of conversation going. When dinner was over he suggested Lady Victoria show me the library while he had his port.

  She obeyed with apparent goodwill, but her help did not extend further than showing us to the room. She had no noticeable interest in the actual books but sat down with a magazine on one of the sofas scattered about the room and chatted to Mrs. Irvine while I studied the shelves. I kept an ear open and listened while I browsed. It always amazes me that Mrs. Irvine, with her shocking outspokenness, seldom makes an enemy.

  “So you are not to get to Brighton after all, eh Lady Victoria?” Mrs. Irvine said.

  “I don’t mind so long as Papa is here. What I do not want is a horrid
governess that he calls a companion.”

  “You wouldn’t want to be left all alone!”

  “Oh no, I should like to go to London with him.”

  “But it is so lovely here! What is missing that you could possibly want?”

  “Young people. All Papa’s friends are old, and he won’t let me go to the local assemblies because of the sort of people who go there.”

  Public assemblies were my main entertainment in Bath. Mrs. Grambly provided a matron to accompany Lydia and myself to the Pump Rooms four times a year. She was no foe to marriage and liked to see her teachers make a match. How were young ladies to meet anyone if public assemblies were too déclassé?

  “I expect you ride?” Mrs. Irvine prodded.

  “Yes, but I don’t like it much. I want to get a tilbury and learn to handle the ribbons. Can you drive, Miss Robsjohn?” she asked, turning to include me in the conversation.

  How long it had been since I had the ribbons between my fingers! But one never totally forgets once the skill is mastered. “Oh yes,” I said airily. “I am a fair fiddler.”

  Mrs. Irvine stared to hear it. I had got lost amongst the ancient Latin and Greek authors and asked Lady Victoria to lead me to the English novels. She seemed happy enough to oblige. We chatted about our favorite authors, while Mrs. Irvine leafed through the magazines. I was wrong to conclude the girl did not read. Lady Victoria liked Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth. My own preference was for Scott and the older writers—Fielding, Sterne.

  After half an hour Lord Marndale joined us, and his daughter was packed off to bed with a dutiful exchange of pecks on the cheek. “How are you and Vickie getting along?” he asked. I took it for a banality, but he waited with apparent interest for my answer.

  “Very well. We have been discussing our favorite authors.”

  “You will be appalled at her lack of taste.”

  “Burney and Edgeworth are well enough for light reading, so long as one is familiar with the more worthwhile writers as well,” I said, with a touch of professional condescension.