Twixt Two Equal Armies

by Gail McEwen

  AFTER ARRIVING ON THE CLYNE grounds, Holly entered through the kitchen again and was soon introduced to Hamish, who was sitting at the table with Mrs McLaughlin, devouring a large bowl of soup. She accepted the housekeeper’s invitation to sit for a minute, but she was startled to see the boy’s expression turn from ravenous to fearful as she took her seat.

  “Good heavens, lad. Ye’ll need to learn quick enough not to put so much stock in what his lairdship says,” Mrs McLaughlin snorted. “Miss Tournier is nae anything to be afraid of.”

  Young Hamish found himself flanked by two formidable women and though he was able to manage a shy, thankful smile to the housekeeper as his bowl was once again replenished, Miss Tournier was quite another matter, especially when she asked him what his lordship had said of her to make her seem so frightening.

  At this he had to turn to face the scary schoolmistress, and poor young Hamish suddenly and unexpectedly found himself lost in her deep, brown eyes and he found it impossible to speak anything but the truth — even to protect his new-found friend and benefactor sitting in his comfortable library.

  “He said, miss — he said ye’er quite stern, and that ye hae ‘moods’ and I should flatter ye.”

  Mrs McLaughlin gave another snort that almost resembled a laugh as she left the table. “Aye, ye’d be better keeping your mooth closed and yer eyes open, lad. Now get off with the both o’ yese, I hae work to do.”

  Holly found nothing funny about Hamish’s statement at all, and showed it freely on her face, but, after realising that it was, in fact, not his fault, she spoke to him as gently as she could manage.

  “Hamish, you need to know that his lordship is mistaken. I am neither frightening, nor stern. It’s just that I cannot abide foolishness. Nor can I abide false flattery, so please do not be persuaded to try it through bad advice.”

  Hamish nodded sheepishly, wondering to whom he had done the worse service with his honesty — his lordship or himself — but since Miss Tournier then smiled and asked him to come with her, if he pleased, he decided perhaps he would be allowed to prove himself neither foolish nor insincere.

  Together they walked down the hall and into the library, where they found Lord Baugham idly wandering around and apparently taking stock of the contents. Holly could not help shooting him a dark look before returning to the boy still at her side.

  “Hamish. Before I decide how you can help me, I must know how far you have got in your education. Can you read?”

  “Aye,” he agreed with enthusiasm. “We’el, a wee bit.”

  “Well, you need to practice then. You will, after all, be working with letters and words and texts and our goal will be to make sense of it all.”

  She smiled at him and patted his shoulder before calling across the room, “Lord Baugham, do you have such a thing as a reading primer in this muddle?”

  His lordship turned around at her voice and showed a deceptively innocent and surprised look. “Why, Miss Tournier,” he said sweetly, “I had rather hoped you would be the one to tell me that. And indeed, if I am guilty of such a shocking oversight, you must purchase one on my behalf.”

  Holly was quite unimpressed with his charm. “Well, I rather doubt that you are in need of one at this stage in your life, so I shan’t go to the trouble. I thought perhaps you might have one left, in with your childhood books.”

  “That is a distinct possibility, though you will earn my honest admiration if you are able to find anything of the kind. I have just been looking the situation over again, Miss Tournier, and I think, perhaps, considering the circumstances, you will be within your rights to demand a king’s ransom for your services.”

  “I don’t know why some people persist in bringing up matters that have already been adequately laid to rest,” Holly mumbled to no one in particular as she examined the jumble of titles within her reach.

  Realising his lordship was quite possibly right about her chances of being able to discover any one particular book, she suppressed a sigh and turned to Hamish.

  “Well young sir, I think we do have a very large job ahead of us. Right now I need you to take a careful look around and see if you can spy a blue book about this size,” she indicated with her fingers the thickness of the needed volume. “If you are lucky, it will be very high up and you will have to use this extraordinary ladder to get at it!”

  Lord Baugham stood, leaning on the back of one of the high-winged chairs, and watched his librarian, together with her assistant, start rummaging around the bookcases. The boy was lifting his gaze upwards and Miss Tournier apparently could not resist touching every single volume with her fingertips as she went through them. It was a pretty picture, and since he had detected a distinct surly disposition in his librarian today, he chose to observe the scene for a while before interfering. After a while, when their search had produced no results, he approached them.

  “Perhaps you will have better luck among the Cumbermere books,” he volunteered.

  Still perturbed at what he had told Hamish, Holly simply nodded and crossed the room. The Cumbermere side of the library had somewhat more order to it than the other, that is, the books looked like they had been packed into trunks by the shelf but unpacked and re-shelved by the armload, with no mind given to their proper place in the arrangement. However, about halfway up the far wall toward the corner she spied several clumps of familiar bindings — yes, they were definitely schoolbooks.

  She pointed out the needed book to Hamish and gave him permission, after looking to Lord Baugham for confirmation, for him to use the ladder to fetch it. There was a great rumbling screech as the boy jubilantly pushed it into place, but even louder was his gasp of surprise shortly after scrabbling up the rungs.

  “Is this an adventure book?” he called down holding a slim volume in his hand. “M’laird, may I have a look? You said I could . . . ”

  “An adventure book? What a find!” Baugham exclaimed “Bring it on down here, boy, and let Miss Tournier quiz you on something more interesting than the primer.”

  Holly meant to send him an annoyed look, but when she turned to his lordship she could not help but share in his smile at the boy’s enthusiasm.

  Once he was down, Holly gently pulled the book, The Life and Adventure of the Famous Captain Singleton, from his hands. Directing him to sit next to her on the sofa, she turned to the climactic battle scene and pointed to a word here and there, asking if he could read them. She was pleasantly surprised at his abilities. She indicated a paragraph, “Why don’t you read this passage to me?”

  Baugham had the distinct feeling that his presence was no longer needed, but he stayed anyway, quietly admiring the tableau on his library sofa. Miss Tournier had that soft look that he had seen but rarely, and Hamish was beaming and reading out with vigour:

  But the next question we had among ourselves, was, how we should do to trust them, for we found the people not like those of Madagascar, but fierce, revengeful, and treacherous; for which reason we were sure that we should have no service from them but that of mere slaves; no subjection that would continue any longer than the fear of us was upon them, nor any labour but by violence.

  Holly smiled at the boy. His enthusiasm was greater than his punctuation, but he read well and intelligently nonetheless.

  “Hamish, I am very pleased. You have used your time in school well and have accomplished much more than I had hoped for. I am sure we will work very well together and turn this into a proper library Lord Baugham can be proud of.”

  Listening with pleasure, Baugham recognised that particular passage very well! The book had been his father’s and most probably his Grandfather’s, too, and had been read to shreds by now. He listened to Miss Tournier’s calm voice praising her assistant and smiled.

  “You know,” he interrupted softly, “that’s when he became ‘Captain Bob’ to his men, and I will have you know I forced my mother to call me by that same name for weeks, in the vain hope that the Navy might recognise my qualities at
the tender age of thirteen and take me with them to more exciting places than my draughty old schoolroom. I hope you can be persuaded to stay here, though Hamish.”

  Hamish merely smiled shyly and turned back to the book, but Holly laughed at the image in her head of a young, swashbuckling Lord Baugham insisting on being re-baptised as “Captain Bob.” She looked at him closely, trying to imagine him as a thirteen-year-old boy and he grew slightly uncomfortable under her scrutiny.

  “Ah well, I know you have much to review so I shan’t disturb you any longer. I will be in my study if you need me. Please do not hesitate to ask me anything, although I must admit my knowledge on any inventory subjects is sketchy to say the least. Perhaps you might like tea in a few hours? I shall ask Mrs McLaughlin to be so kind.”

  With that he bowed to both of them and left them to their work.

  Leaving Hamish to finish his exciting battle, Holly took a tablet of paper from the desk and began, as she wandered around the room, to make notes on possible ways to categorise the veritable stew of volumes.

  She soon came to the conclusion that, at least to begin with, everything must be classified by subject — which meant that all the shelves must be emptied, and the books sorted and returned before she could go any further.

  Ready with her plan, she interrupted Hamish from his adventures and they began pulling books down and stacking them on the floor all over the room.

  An hour of furious activity convinced Holly that she had been too ambitious in her plan and that there were many more books in the library than it appeared at first glance. They had not even emptied one wall and there were stacks everywhere. The air was clouded with dust and both herself and Hamish were covered from head to foot. She stood with her hands on her hips, a puzzled expression on her face as she considered her next move.

  “Hamish, if you can make your way across the room, I think we need that window opened,” she said. Dodging furniture and climbing over piles, the boy managed to reach the window and unlatch it.

  The fresh, bracing breeze helped to clear her thinking, and she made her decision. She sat on the floor and began sifting through the piles,

  “Let’s start in small steps, shall we? We’ll sort these we already have down, list them by subject and then move on. So, poetry here and history . . . over there.” She sighed. “It certainly seems we shall need that tea in a few hours, after all . . . ”

  Chapter 20

  The Dreary Work of a Librarian’s Assistant gets its Reward, a Library gets Demolished and Employer and Employees find Much to Talk about

  Hamish looked down at the books he was holding. He shifted them around and leafed through them for the umpteenth time. Miss Tournier was sitting on the floor with her paper and pen, writing on her list with a concentrated air. Every now and then the wind from the opened window caught her loose strands of hair and twirled them about her head. She seemed not pay the slightest notice to it, but got up every now and then to fetch or return a book from another pile. The notices with Natural Science, History, Travels and all the others written out in precise long-hand, fluttered in the breeze as they were stuck between the books. He sighed.

  “Miss Tournier,” he tentatively said casting a shy glance at her.

  “Mm?” was the disappointing answer as she once again scribbled a note and stuck it between two books on the floor.

  “Miss. I dinnae know . . . I hae one here that is about botanic history in Greece and one that is in a language I never saw before. What do I do with them, miss? And this one — what do we do with the ones wantin’ half the pages? I think I saw some loose pages behind the French novels, but this other one here must hae the wrong covers, the pages are all the wrong size and there are something that looks like notes spilling out of the binding . . . ”

  His supervisor gave him a long look and sighed.

  “Is it . . . might it soon be time for tea, miss?” he asked in a hopeful voice, glancing over at Captain Bob on the table.

  IT HAD BEEN A SHORT but satisfying nap in his chair and Lord Baugham languidly stretched his long legs as he opened his eyes again. He glanced at his watch. If he wanted to, he certainly could finish those accounts sent over by Mr Tilman for approval before tea, but he realised he did not. He got up from his chair and walked over to his desk. There was a slight chill in the air and as he shuffled the papers and ledgers together, he made a mental note to attend to the fire both in the study and the library.

  With a few long strides he was out of the door, on his way to the kitchen to request Mrs McLaughlin to bring the tea tray into the library before going into the room itself. What met his eyes caused him to feel a curious mix of astonishment and delight. Among what looked like an ocean of books, papers, leaflets and booklets, two figures were huddled in the middle of the floor. The window had been forced open and a fresh breeze swept across the room.

  Hamish looked up immediately as he entered and scrambled to his feet to greet him. Miss Tournier glanced at him, but at the same time raised a hand as if to silence him while she finished writing something on a sheet of paper resting on a chair. After a brief pause she lifted her head and it almost startled him to note she was smiling. It instantly stuck him that she looked happy, and that realisation made him return her smile generously.

  “Well!” he said looking about him. “I dare say to an uninitiated eye like mine, you are hovering on the brink of disaster, but I can tell you must have some successes to inform me of! Will you tell me how you are coming along if I stay for tea? Mrs McLaughlin will be with us presently.”

  Her assistant’s eager expression and her own stomach made Holly welcome the suggestion. Rising from the floor as gracefully as she could between piles, papers and the fact that she had been sitting in one position so long that her feet were growing numb, she happily accepted his offer.

  “Hamish, I believe the air has cleared enough, shall we close the window? Oh my goodness, you would not believe the dust we loosed upon this room.”

  He curled his mouth into a wry smile and watched her smooth out her skirts.

  “Actually, Miss Tournier, I would.”

  He motioned to his own shoulder with a wiping gesture and watched, amused, as she first looked at him in surprise but then realised his hint. Her eyes then shifted to the dust on her dress and with a small “oh!” she furiously rubbed it with her hand, a most becoming blush spreading over her features.

  “Allow me,” he said and handed her his handkerchief.

  Holly did her best to brush off her dress, suddenly struck by another thought, which produced several sideways glances about the room in order to check for any nearby mirror. No, there were none that would not take acrobatic skill to reach. So she did the only thing she could. Summoning up her sense of humour she addressed his lordship gravely, “Might I ask you to assure me of the fact that my face, most particularly my nose, is free from smudges?”

  He raised his left eyebrow just a smidgen and obviously had great difficulty matching her seriousness. Something tugged at the corners of his mouth and he pressed his lips together to control it, instantly giving him an air of gravity.

  “Certainly!”

  He sent a quick glace towards Hamish, who had quietly ploughed his way through to where Captain Bob was waiting for him, then navigated a bit closer. With one pile of books between them, he leaned in and, narrowing his eyes, studied her face for quite a while, lingering particularly and most tenaciously over her chin, nose and forehead.

  Holly gave him a stern look, not quite appreciating the theatrics as much as he was enjoying them, but determined to keep her countenance.

  “Hm,” he said and held out his hand for his handkerchief. He crumpled it together and carefully reached out to wipe her left temple, contriving to keep his expression perfectly serious, but when he detected a slight flinch as he touched her face, he broke out in a wide grin and his blue eyes sparkled mischievously.

  “There. I believe you are perfectly presentable to have tea with Hamis
h and me now!”

  Handing her the handkerchief once again, he made his way back through the maze of books and opened the door for Mrs McLaughlin.

  Holly wiped her hands and, not knowing what else to do, folded the square neatly and placed it on top of the Natural History pile. Then, lifting her skirts in order to navigate successfully across the room, she set out to clear the papers, pencils and notes from the table so Mrs McLaughlin might set the tray down.

  She picked up a stack of books from one of the chairs and looked around for a place to set them that she could reach, that she would remember, and that would not disrupt her system of organisation. After a moment she spied an empty spot of floor, but with her hands full she could not get to it.

  “Lord Baugham, take these books over there please. Right by the Astronomy pile. And then this pile here,” pointing to the other chair, “will have to go next to Foreign Travels. Mrs McLaughlin, you can put the tray right here.”

  “The Laird preserve us!” cried the housekeeper as she navigated through the room with her burden. She set the tray down on the designated spot and stood with her hands on her hips and a dark frown on her face. It was perfectly obvious she was horrified at the scene before her eyes.

  “The Laird preserve us!” she could only utter for a second time, adding a shaking head. Baugham smiled broadly. “Don’t worry, Mrs McLaughlin. I have a strong suspicion Miss Tournier is in full control of events. And it looks like they’re doing the dusting, too, so don’t you fret!”

  Holly was already sitting down and ready to pour out before she realised she had just ordered Lord Baugham around like he was one of her students. And what’s more, he had done exactly as he was told, with a meek look and without uttering a word. Had she been able to see his eyes, she would have perhaps noted that they had lost none of their sparkle, that he was biting his lip most determinedly and that his shoulders shook slightly as he complied.