Angel in Scarlet

by Jennifer Wilde

  “Two inches! You’d never be able to wear it in public.”

  “That needn’t concern you.”

  “Takin’ in the waist, lowerin’ the neckline—that’d involve an awful lot of work. It’d take me hours and hours.”

  “I’d make it worth your while.”

  “Oh?”

  “That set of books at Blackwood’s, the one you’ve been eyeing every time you pass the window. I’ll buy it for you.”

  Blackwood’s was our village bookstore, directly across the square from the amber-brick schoolhouse where Father held classes, and I had indeed been eyeing the Strawberry Hill Press edition of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto. I knew a bargain when I heard one, and I agreed to alter the dress for her. Two inches tighter at the waist, neckline two inches lower! Marie would have conniptions for sure, but then I doubted Solonge intended to model it for her. I wondered if she planned to wear it for Hugh Bradford.

  “Just one more chocolate?” Janine asked plaintively.

  I took the box of chocolates from the mantel and held them firmly, ignoring her question. “Father home?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t any classes this afternoon,” Solonge said. “He’s in his study, poring over the parcels that arrived from London this morning. Where else would he be? I’ll bring the dress up to your room after dinner, pet.”

  Leaving them to their gossip, I took the box of chocolates up to my room and put them away, then hurried back downstairs and went to my father’s study. The door was closed. It always was. In a house overrun by women, constantly, perpetually surrounded by them, harried by their moods and whims and bored by their chatter, Father had to have a retreat, and he sternly forbade any female to step foot inside the study without his express permission. Janine and Solonge hadn’t been inside it in years, which distressed neither of them. Marie wasn’t even allowed in to tidy up. Despite this I opened the door and stepped inside without a moment’s hesitation. Father didn’t consider me one of the “females.” We had a special relationship, Father and I. We were friends as well as father and daughter, allies against the female tyranny that prevailed throughout the rest of the house.

  The study was my favorite room, too, small and sunny with windows looking out over the oak tree and shaggy gardens at the side of the house. There was a huge, battered old desk, two comfortable chairs covered in worn green velvet, a stool, a globe of the world that stood in one corner and a small tan marble fireplace. The room was awash with books and journals, papers and pamphlets, books crowding the shelves that covered the walls, stacked on the floor in untidy heaps, papers, pamphlets everywhere. Father had recently opened the parcels from London—books, of course—and the floor around the desk was littered with crumpled brown paper and coils of twine. The room smelled of ink and glue and dust and old leather, a heavenly smell I savored.

  Father sat hunched over the desk, examining a new volume, a precarious pile of books at his elbow. Immersed in print, which, like me, he loved and needed as an addict his opium, he hadn’t heard me come in, and I paused for a moment to look at him, feeling that great rush of love I always felt whenever I saw him again after a few hours. The feisty, smart-mouthed Angie became a different person in his presence, sedate and adoring.

  In his early fifties—he had married late, had been married some time before I was born—my father had thick, tousled hair that had faded to a pale gold, liberally streaked with silver now. Though still handsome, his face was worn, his skin like fine old ivory parchment, and his intelligent gray eyes always seemed a bit bemused. Wearing an old, once splendid brown frock coat, a rumpled yellow neckcloth and an ancient tan vest, he looked every inch the genteel, distinguished scholar he was.

  Father looked up and saw me and sighed, reluctantly pulling himself away from the pages he found so immersing.

  “Well, Pumpkin,” he said, “I see you’ve survived another day. There are a number of new scratches, I observe, and your skirt appears to be torn. I’m sure your stepmother was delighted to discover that.”

  “She was less than elated.”

  “I assume you’ve been getting into mischief again.”

  “A little,” I confessed.

  “Pumpkin, Pumpkin—” Father shook his head. “What am I to do with you?”

  I grinned. He grinned, too, and closed the book, carefully marking his place with a piece of paper. Father and I rarely hugged. It wasn’t necessary. The love and affection was like a palpable thing between us, enfolding us both in its cozy warmth.

  “Anything interesting?” I asked, examining the pile of new books.

  “Mostly dull history tomes. Nothing bloody or bawdy enough to suit your fancy, I fear.”

  “What about this?”

  I pulled a book from the pile. It was entitled A General History of The Most Famous Highwaymen by a Captain Charles Johnson and was extremely battered, the pages thumbmarked and threatening to fall loose. Sunlight streamed lazily through the windows and made wavering patterns on the floor as I turned the pages and looked at the crude but fascinating engravings.

  “I forgot about that. It was sent along by mistake, apparently got mixed up with the titles I requested. It was published in 1734, looks it, too. The binding’s in tatters. I suppose I’ll have to send it back,” he added, and he sighed again, as though the task were completely beyond him.

  “Let’s keep it,” I suggested. “I’ve always adored highwaymen.”

  My father smiled his vague, indulgent smile, the one he reserved exclusively for me. “Handsome, dashing creatures in long black capes and rakish black masks,” he said, “wielding pistols with aplomb. A romantic image, I confess, but the reality would fall far short.”

  “Have you ever met one?”

  “Haven’t had the privilege,” he admitted, “though I’m sure they’re a vile, bloodthirsty lot, pockmarked and puny and far from a maiden’s prayer. Keep the book if you like, Pumpkin. It’s probably no bloodier than some of those thundering melodramas Solonge sneaks home to you.”

  “I read good books, too!” I protested.

  “Sometimes I fear you read altogether too much,” he said, though I could tell he didn’t mean it. “What kind of wild, unprincipled prodigy have I sired? You’re twelve years old and far, far too knowing for your age, and far too mischievous, too, I might add. No wonder your stepmother is always in a state.”

  “Would you like me to grow up to be like Solonge and Janine?” I asked.

  “God forbid.”

  “Janine’s a slug,” I confided, “but Solonge is not so bad.”

  “Solonge is destined to bring ruin and destruction to any number of unfortunate men. It’s in her blood, though she’s singularly lacking in malice or spite. No, Pumpkin, I wouldn’t have you grow up to be like either of your stepsisters.”

  “At least they’re beautiful.”

  “They’re gloriously lovely, yes, and I fear that will be their downfall. You, my darling, have your own kind of beauty.”

  “I’d rather have glossy blonde hair and blue eyes,” I informed him.

  Father chuckled, shuffled some papers aside and stood up. He was tall, a bit stooped, a bit overweight, though far from fat. In his youth he must have been glorious himself, I mused, but all the years of living with Marie, all the years of trying to drum a smattering of knowledge into the heads of recalcitrant schoolboys had taken their toll. I loved him with all my heart and soul and saw him through a haze of rapt adoration, but even so I knew he was not a happy man. The wry humor, the amiability and gentle, distracted manner failed to conceal the aura of sadness and lost dreams. Strange though it might be, I often felt I was the adult, he the child, and I felt a strong protective feeling toward him. I took his hand and squeezed it, expressing emotions mere words couldn’t convey.

  Father smiled again and patted me on top of the head, and then, looking at the litter of paper and twine as though wondering how it got there, he began to place the new books on the shelves, wedging them in wherever h
e could find an inch or two of space.

  “And what particular mischief have you been getting into today?” he inquired.

  “Nothing much. I—uh—I was with The Bastard today, Father.”

  “Indeed? I assume you’re referring to Hugh Bradford?”

  I nodded. “He—he spanked me.”

  “Oh?” He wasn’t at all perturbed. “And how did this shocking event occur?”

  “I—well, I guess you could say I was trespassin’, but the sod still didn’t ’ave—have—any right to blister my backside.”

  “I would imagine you were quite taken aback,” he remarked, shoving one of the books into a space much too small for it. “First time you’ve ever been spanked, I assume. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  I sighed and gave him a carefully expurgated account of the event, leaving Clinton and Laura out completely, embroidering the rest of it quite a bit, presenting a most satisfactory drama with myself as wronged heroine. Father continued to put up the books, apparently giving me only half his attention. When I finished he sighed and lifted a long, graceful hand to shove an errant pale gold lock from his brow.

  “That’s done,” he remarked wearily. “One of these days I’m going to be forced to do something about all these books.”

  “Don’t you care that he spanked me?”

  “I’m sure you deserved it, Pumpkin.”

  “I guess I was awfully cheeky,” I confessed. “I—strangely enough, I didn’t—I didn’t really mind it, not—not afterwards. For some reason I felt—felt kinda sorry for him.”

  “Hugh’s lot has not been a pleasant one, Pumpkin.”

  “You—you know him?”

  “Quite well, though it’s been a long while since I’ve seen him. He’s a very intelligent young man, polite and mannerly, far better bred than Master Clinton. Offhand I would say young Hugh was far and away the most satisfying student I’ve ever had.”

  I was dreadfully shocked. “Surely he didn’t attend classes,” I exclaimed.

  “I fear the good people of our region would never tolerate anything so unseemly,” my father replied. “Righteous fathers would have yanked their sons out of school posthaste—there would have been a mass evacuation, I assure you. No, I tutored young Hugh privately, after hours, when everyone assumed I was grading exams. I saw him hanging about the schoolyard one day, looking sullenly but longingly at the fine-scrubbed, fine-dressed young gentlemen trooping out after classes. He must have been eight or nine years old at the time, unkempt and dirty, quite the young ruffian. No shoes, if I recall, a wretched looking specimen indeed.”

  “And?” I prompted.

  “And I noticed him several more times during the weeks that followed and I saw the hunger in his eyes, hunger for knowledge. Late one afternoon I was alone in my classroom—the school was quite empty—and I saw him outside and went out and brought him in.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He kicked my shin.”

  “Sounds just like him,” I said, plopping down on the low round leather stool near the fireplace. I was still holding Captain Johnson’s book on highwaymen, and I cradled it against my nonexistent bosom, watching Father wedge the last book onto a shelf.

  He sighed and moved back over to the desk, idly peering at the piles of paper, seeing instead a dark, dirty little boy with a sullen mouth and brown eyes hungry for knowledge.

  “I sat him down at one of the desks and gave him a severe lecture on behavior and he scowled fiercely and looked as though he might hurl the inkwell at me. Lad reminded me of a cornered animal—I was quite touched, I must confess. When I saw him eyeing the books longingly, I became very brusque and asked if he would be willing to come in every afternoon under the others had gone and help me tidy up the room—sweep the floor, clean the chalkboard, straighten the books and papers. It was a ploy, of course, but I knew the lad was far too proud to accept any kind of charity.”

  “He agreed?”

  “And in return I gave him private lessons. He snuck down the alleyway in back of the school, came in through the back entrance so no one would see him. He tidied up the room while I graded exams, and then we had our lessons.”

  “Could he read and write?”

  “Barely, but he was amazingly quick. Amazingly quick, far outstripping all my other students in curiosity, native intelligence, aptitude. We had a most pleasant relationship for several years, Hugh absorbing learning like a sponge absorbs water. No one ever knew. It was our secret. I grew quite fond of the boy. He was always borrowing books, asking for more. Alas, he had to stop coming a year and a half ago—his duties at Greystone Hall left him no more time for the luxury of learning. He informed me of the fact with no little bitterness. I was sad to see the last of him.”

  I was sad, too, deeply touched by what my father had told me. He shuffled some more papers and sat down at the desk, a wavering ray of sunlight touching his brow, gilding his pale gold hair. He looked older then, weary, almost frail, and I felt a moment of terrible panic at the thought of someday losing him. The panic stabbed me, sharp as a knife, and I bit my lower lip, longing to rush to him and hug him and beg him never to leave me, then he looked at me fondly and smiled and everything was all right again.

  “A pitiful case,” he said, “a pitiful case indeed. Poor Hugh hasn’t had much chance.”

  “It—it must be dreadful to be a bastard,” I said quietly.

  “I shouldn’t imagine it would be pleasant, people being what they are. Ours is a hypocritical age, Pumpkin. A hypocrite is something I trust you’ll never be.”

  I felt guilty then, for I had talked about The Bastard and made fun of him like everyone else. I shifted uncomfortably on the stool, holding the book tightly. Father looked at me with those lovely gray eyes, as though he could read my mind. I looked at the littered floor, studying the crumpled brown paper and bits of twine with apparent fascination, a slow flush tinting my cheeks. Father sighed and shook his head.

  “There’s some question as to whether or not Hugh actually is illegitimate,” he said. “When Lord Meredith first came back from Italy with the boy, everyone assumed he had married the Italian woman. He was treated as a grief-stricken widower by one and all, and then he went to London and met the current Lady Meredith—a lovely thing she was then, cool and patrician and haughty as they come. But lovely, a vision of loveliness. When Lord M. brought her back to Greystone Hall, everything had changed. She was expecting a child, you see, and she wanted her son to inherit. Talk was that she had made his disowning Hugh one of the conditions of her marrying the noble Lord M.”

  “But that—that’s dreadful,” I said hotly. “Disowning his own son, pretending he wasn’t his rightful—”

  “All this was just talk, Pumpkin. No one knows for sure if there was a wedding in Italy or not. Hugh was given the name ‘Bradford’ and when Lady M. gave birth to a son he was declared heir. Hugh, perforce, was a bastard. People forgot all about that hypothetical wedding in Italy, assuming quite naturally that it had never taken place.”

  I found this quite fascinating, a bit confusing as well. Father picked up a paperweight and toyed with it as the sunlight grew dimmer and hazy shadows began to fill the room. I could smell Marie’s cooking and knew I would soon have to go set the table.

  “The baby died a month later,” Father continued. “Lady M. was never able to bear another. Her looks faded fast. Drink had a lot to do with it, I fancy. When his brother and sister-in-law were killed in a boating accident in Cornwall, Lord Meredith brought his young nephew to Greystone Hall. Master Clinton will inherit the estate.”

  “And Hugh sleeps in the stables.”

  “As I said, a pitiful case indeed. The boy is rightfully bitter. Legitimate or no—and he probably isn’t—he has been treated most shamefully, but Lady Meredith took an intense dislike to him from the first—Hugh was three when Lord M. married her. Lord M. never had a great deal of character to begin with, and women—” He hesitated, a delicate frown creasing his b
row. “Beautiful women can exert a—an inordinate amount of influence on a weak man.”

  He fell silent, a curious look in his eyes, and somehow I knew he was thinking of Marie. Marie had been very beautiful when he married her. Had she exerted “an inordinate amount of influence” on him? Had he been forced to abandon dreams, give up plans of scholastic glory? That history he was forever scribbling on—perhaps he could have finished it long ago had he not taken on a wife and two more daughters to support. He turned to stare out the window where a translucent blue-gray haze was filling the gardens, and then he sighed heavily and moved some papers about on his desk. Marie called me from the kitchen, her shrill voice clearly audible through closed doors. I got up and thanked Father for the book and told him I would see him at dinner and moved toward the door.

  “Angie—”

  I turned. “Yes?”

  “What I’ve told you is—between us. There’s no need for anyone else to know I gave young Hugh private tutoring. And Angie—” He frowned again, looking quite stern. “The boy has endured a lot of grief. I don’t ever want to hear you call him ‘The Bastard’ again.”

  “I—I won’t,” I promised.

  “Good. Now off with you. I want to get a little work done before facing the Gabbling Pack.”

  The Pack did indeed gabble during dinner. Solonge went on and on about a perfectly cunning bonnet she had seen with the most fetching green ostrich plumes dripping over the wide brim, it would look perfectly smashing on her, with her eyes, and Janine told her it should be easy enough to acquire, like the locket. Solonge shot her a warning look and Janine smiled lazily, refilling her plate. Marie said it was a shame, a wretched shame her girls had to languish away in a stultifying place like this when we could all be happily ensconced in London, enjoying life. Father could easily get a post there at one of the schools or he could take private students and her girls could get out and meet people. She gave full vent to her bitterness, and Father merely shrugged, immune to her complaints after all this time.

  I helped Marie clear the table and then she joined her daughters in the parlor to complain some more. I could hear her shrill, unhappy voice as I washed the dishes and tidied up the kitchen, a task I really didn’t mind too much. Father was shut up in his study again, scribbling away on his history of the Assyrians, and later, after I fed the tabby, I trudged back up to my attic room to discover that Solonge had already brought the turquoise silk gown up, tossing it carelessly across a chair.