A Cousinly Connection

by Sheila Simonson

  "Very true. Er, who is in residence? It's remarkably quiet."

  "The younger children will have breakfasted in the schoolroom. The others are not early risers. I expect Drusilla to be down presently and Felix, if he has had a good night."

  "Why should he not?"

  "He is subject to migraine." She wondered if he knew of Felix's blindness. His lordship was ignorant. Whether he was also indifferent she could not tell. Certainly he was wary.

  "I have a great deal to learn," he said quietly, as if reading her thoughts.

  "Yes." She reached a decision. "I am afraid, my lord, that you may meet with...I will not call it hostility...coolness. Yes. And apprehension. They fear you."

  He stared at her. His eyes, like Maria's, were grey, and very direct.

  Her own dropped before them, and she found herself adding apologetically, "I believe, nay, I know them to have been very much shocked by last summer's tragedy. My aunt is inclined to, er, anticipate ills and, what with the closing of the London house and your long delay in coming..."

  "Yes. I see. Thank you for warning me." He poured another cup of coffee for himself. "I beg your pardon. Coffee?"

  "Thank you. With cream, please." She saw with some revulsion that he drank his black and sugarless. Horrible.

  Catching her repelled gaze, he smiled slightly. "Force of habit."

  "Do you generally read thoughts?"

  "No, but yours is an expressive face." He took a sip. "Quite tolerable, you know. The coffee."

  She flushed again. Her confusion was broken by the unmistakable sound of Felix bumping down the hall. There was time to warn Meriden of his brother's disability, but rather maliciously, she said nothing except, "That will be Felix."

  "Jane? Is it true that the beastly baron has come? Jane?" The boy groped for a chair.

  "I'm right here," she said, resigned, "and so is Lord Meriden."

  "Welcome to Cyprus. Goats and monkeys," said Meriden, "What will you have? Ham?"

  After a chagrined moment, Felix gave a whoop. "Othello! I make Goody read the plays to me for hours. She don't like that one."

  "Not in the female taste, perhaps."

  "I thought it was splendid." Felix made a hideous sound in his throat. "Especially when he strangles her. Urrk."

  "Yes. Very affecting," his brother said. "Ham?"

  "Ham and toast and comb honey. And ale." Felix essayed the last rather defiantly. He was served without comment. When he had wolfed down a large slice of ham which, under Meriden's fascinated gaze, he tore with his fingers, he lifted the tankard of ale and gulped, choking a little. "Phew! I say, do you mean to turn us out into the streets to beg our bread?"

  Aunt Louisa. Jane closed her eyes.

  "Not yet. How old are you, Felix? Sixteen?"

  Felix preened. "Fourteen. I'm tall for my age. Don't you know anything about us?"

  "Not much. If you're fourteen, why are you slopping your food about like a baby?"

  There was a moment of awful stillness in which Jane held her breath and Felix turned purple.

  "I'm blind, you stupid beast Can't you see" Felix picked up his plate like a discus, scattering toast. As he had been known to throw an entire china service on the floor in one of his furies, Jane cringed.

  "That won't do." Meriden had risen unhurriedly. He now grasped the boy's wrist, rescued the plate, and set the other vulnerable pieces out of range. "Come, I asked you a civil question, and you gave me a foolish answer. You have had time, I believe, to accustom yourself to your loss of sight."

  Felix wriggled, snarling.

  Meriden went on, in no way relaxing his grip, "As your hands and intelligence are not impaired, I don't consider you've answered me."

  "You don't know how it is." Felix's face crumpled.

  Meriden was watching him intently, long brown fingers still circling the boy's wrist. He said in a calm voice, "No, that's true, I don't. I can guess, however, how it is with you. A friend of mine was blinded in the assault on Ciudad Rodrigo."

  "No doubt he was noble and selfless, and allowed everyone to bully him," Felix sneered.

  "No. Quite the contrary. He became an insufferable bully himself, a domestic tyrant. Because his family allowed him to."

  "Are you saying I'm a...a domestic tyrant."

  "No, merely childish."

  Felix sniffed.

  "I should judge you to be dextrous." Meriden turned the boy's hand. Though rather plump, it was shapely and well muscled. "Forks and knives and spoons should present no insuperable problem."

  Jane let out her breath in a small sigh.

  "Oh, all right," Felix muttered ungraciously.

  "Good." Meriden stared at his young brother for a moment, considering. "Do you play a musical instrument?"

  "The pianoforte."

  "Bach?"

  "Yes." Something flickered in Felix's face, though his tone remained sullen. "And Haydn and Scarlatti, and whatever anyone will play for me. But they all play so badly."

  "That will have to be remedied."

  "How?" Caution and hope mingled in Felix's expression.

  "By bringing a master to you who can play well. I'm surprized your tutor didn't think of that."

  "There's only the governess, and she don't care for anything but stupid minuets and waltzes. Dancing music," said Felix with contempt.

  "Not everyone understands the art," Jane interposed. "Miss Winchell is perhaps deficient in musical training but otherwise, I believe, a very good kind of woman."

  "She taps her feet and hums." Felix said, indignant.

  Meriden smiled. "Intolerable."

  "Are you musical, sir?"

  "My name is Julian."

  "Very well." Felix flushed. "Are you?"

  "I'm afraid I've not had much opportunity..."

  "I thought so," Felix interrupted. "You're cutting a wheedle."

  "My occupation prevented me from indulging my taste for music as I could have wished," his brother said rather coldly. "I'm thought to perform tolerably on the Spanish guitarra."

  Felix digested that. "Vincent says music ain't a gentleman's pursuit."

  "How very provincial of Vincent." Lord Meriden flashed Jane an amused look. "I have heard that the Elector of Holz-Hanau plays the viol very creditably."

  "Oh, foreigners."

  "How very provincial of you."

  Felix smiled at that. "Would you care to hear me play?" he asked shyly after a moment.

  "Of course."

  "When?"

  Oh, dear, Jane thought.

  "Now, if you like."

  "Really?"

  "Well, perhaps you should finish your meal first."

  Felix contrived to look pathetic. "With knife and fork?"

  "Certainly." Meriden set the plate back in front of Felix. "The forks are generally laid on the left."

  "I know." Felix took up the necessary utensils. By dint of much grimacing and poking, he completed his breakfast.

  The two brothers left a few minutes later, conversing amiably about the rival merits of organ and pianoforte with Felix in the lead. Why shouldn't he be? Jane thought, rather dazed. He's lived here fourteen years. She did not immediately rise from the table. She felt as if she had witnessed the Iron Duke on maneuvers.

  "The first skirmish is not the war, my lord," she muttered to herself and wondered wryly which side of the fray she would find herself on.

  Chapter VIII

  That day Meriden spent above an hour with Felix, made himself known to Miss Goodnight and Miss Winchell, then disappeared. One report had him in the stables, another closeted with Peavey, the estate agent. His lordship did not appear at Cook's excellent nuncheon, disappointing his brothers and sisters and seriously offending Cook. Jane wondered if he had fled. At three o'clock, however, a footman appeared in Lady Meriden's boudoir, where Jane had been calming her aunt's uncertain nerves, with a polite request from his lordship for an interview in an hour.

  Lady Meriden gave a faint shriek, which the foot
man heard with widened eyes. Jane directed him to wait in the hallway. When he had gone she said bracingly, "Come, dear Aunt, this is excellent. A brief word with his lordship and the worst is over."

  At length, she screwed her aunt's courage to the sticking point and sent an appropriate reply. In no time at all, it seemed, the same footman scratched at the door and announced, "Lord Meriden, my lady."

  Aunt Louisa moaned but had no time for further action, for Meriden was bowing over her hand.

  "How do you do, ma'am?"

  "Very ill, I assure you, M-Meriden." She gasped over the title and wept a little into a scented black-bordered handkerchief.

  Jane watched for Meriden's reaction with anticipatory pleasure. Aunt Louisa at her most daunting--and without a deal of preparation, either. True, her ladyship had burnt--or, rather, caused Jane to burn--a pastille of camphor, so that the very air seemed melancholic. All the drapes were drawn. Very few preparations had been required, for the shrouded boudoir was, after all, Aunt Louisa's setting.

  Meriden looked pale and his mouth was set, but he waited without comment for his stepmother to compose herself.

  "I trust they have put you in...his apartments?" Lady Meriden uttered at last.

  "Yes. Thank you." The corners of Meriden's mouth relaxed in an unwilling smile.

  Jane had seen the suffocating splendours of the late baron's rooms several times and almost betrayed herself into an answering grin. Fortunately Aunt Louisa was busy wiping her eyes and did not observe either of them.

  "And my children...you have met them?"

  "Not all of them."

  "Jane! Call Whisset! I shall bring them before you at once."

  "No That is, I shall be very glad to see them, ma'am, but not just at this present. I have met Felix."

  "Ah, my poor Felix. So tragically helpless in a cruel world." She continued in that vein for some time.

  Meriden's lips compressed, but he made no untoward remarks, saying merely that he believed Felix's gift for music was exceptional.

  "You must hear my poor love perform upon the pianoforte some evening, sir."

  "I have heard him," Meriden replied.

  "Oh."

  His lordship took refuge in further polite comments and withdrew shortly thereafter, only asking the favour of another audience the following afternoon when, he trusted, she might feel ready to discuss matters of some concern to them both.

  Lady Meriden acquiesced with a mournful nod. Apparently she felt she had taken the honours of the field. When he had gone, she proposed to go down to dinner--she had kept to her rooms for a week. She said she did not wish to appear backward in small attentions to form.

  Jane looked for great things from dinner, but the meal proved anticlimactic. Perhaps Lord Meriden had been awed by his stepmother, or it might be that he felt unequal to the challenge of five female adversaries, for Miss Goodnight always dined with the family. Felix had eaten in his room--practising with the cutlery, Jane collected. In any case, his lordship appeared somewhat abstracted and did not enter into their constrained small talk, except to reply courteously to direct questions. These were few. Drusilla and Maria were too much afraid of him to speak, and Jane found herself covering the silences with polite inanities.

  "Does Meriden Place please you, sir?" she ventured over the fish.

  "A handsome prospect."

  She had not meant to ask his views of the scenery and suspected he knew it, but the remark supplied Lady Meriden with stimulus for a gentle dissertation on the beauties of the countryside. Because she rarely ventured from her apartments, her comments were rather general. Indeed, she began to sound very much like Minchinhampton's Guide to West Dorset. Jane wondered if her aunt had swotted up for the ordeal. It seemed unlikely. Aunt Louisa was not given to reading.

  A dull dinner--and very long--for Cook outdid herself in the lavish style that had appealed to Jane's corpulent uncle. Remove after remove, with every course; side dish after side dish.

  Meriden made no adverse comment, but Jane observed that he declined most of the proffered delicacies with a polite shake of his head. He indicated that they should be offered to the ladies--at least his manners were not faulty--and tranquilly ate a meal Jane's father should have stigmatised as a trifling snack. Jane might have been amused had not the prospect of soothing Cook's twice-wounded feelings loomed before her.

  Who had given orders for a feast? Jane had not. It was possible that Lady Meriden had, although it seemed more likely that the housekeeper had acted in the absence of direction. But Lord A, it seemed, was not Lord B. Jane resolved to oversee future menus and helped herself to some of the excellent cheese. Drusilla had eaten everything and would probably be ill.

  * * * *

  Next day Jane soothed Cook for the better part of an hour and listened to the housekeeper's apprehensions, too. In the course of her staff work, she collected a rumour that the agent, Peavey, had been sent packing, along with several of his cronies. Thus she went in to her cousins rather troubled. At least they seemed calm.

  True, Felix, his head swelled by a second musical session with his brother that morning, had made the music room forbidden territory to his sisters, the twins, Miss Goodnight, and especially Miss Winchell, and was heard to be practising furiously. The girls were used to Felix's fits, however, and merely took their sewing to Jane's room. Their chatter soon drove her out.

  She had wished for a little privacy, a little leisure to think before the second dread descent of his lordship upon her aunt. However, it was not to be, and she went in to her aunt rather earlier than she desired and once again set the scene, at her ladyship's direction.

  Meriden entered the chamber with less ceremony than he had used the previous day, although he went through the courtesies. He looked surprized to find Jane in attendance.

  "Aunt, I believe his lordship would prefer to speak with you alone." Jane made to withdraw.

  Meriden cast her a grateful smile, but her aunt would have none of it.

  "Sir! You would not deprive me of my prop, my dear niece, my best friend!"

  "Certainly not permanently, ma'am. I had intended to discuss matters concerning the family."

  Jane took a cautious step toward the door.

  "No! Do not!" her aunt wailed. "Jane is family, sir. I can have no secrets from my dear Jane."

  Meriden gave Jane a searching look. She wished herself in Sussex--not for the first time--and coloured to the roots of her hair.

  "Very well," Meriden said shortly. He went over to the nearest window. "Would you object to a little light?" He did not wait for her ladyship's negative shriek, but opened the heavy hangings with a jerk. The watery sunlight did little to brighten Lady Meriden's calculated gloom, but it did enable Jane--and Meriden--to see.

  "I beg your pardon," his lordship said. "Did you speak, ma'am?"

  "No. My poor eyes..."

  "Have you the headache? I find fresh air very helpful." He unlatched the window and pushed it gently outward. "There. Better?"

  Jane was hard put not to laugh. Her aunt had fallen back on the chaise longue uttering feeble protests. Her rooms were always kept closed against the perils of unwholesome air.

  "Now," Meriden said briskly, "I'll come to the point, for you'll not want me to keep you forever, ma'am. Why are Horatio and Arthur not in a preparatory school?"

  Lady Meriden sat upright. "My babies!"

  "No, no, not the baby. The twins. What are they, twelve?"

  "Eleven," Lady Meriden said with a good deal more energy, "and far too young to be sent from their home into a cold world."

  Since Aunt Louisa had caused her stepson to be sent away at a younger age, Jane could not help thinking her aunt had made a tactical blunder. A gleam of amusement in Meriden's eyes made her wonder if he had not been thinking the same thing, but he said nothing.

  Flustered, Lady Meriden fiddled with her vinaigrette. "I need my children about me."

  "You have your daughters, Felix, and the infant--what'
s it's name?"

  "Thomas," Jane supplied dryly.

  "Thank you. Thomas. If I thought two more children material to your comfort, ma'am, I should not suggest removing the twins. I cannot think, however, that they are other than a grave worry to you, for they seem to me to be outside your control--or anyone else's."

  Lady Meriden gaped.

  Meriden went on, "I have spoken with Miss Winchell. It appears that she is a satisfactory governess for Drusilla and Maria and, at least now, for Felix, but she confessed to me that Horatio and Arthur have not been seen in the schoolroom for a week, and that they have made almost no progress..."

  "A week! Good God, sir, where are they?" Lady Meriden struggled to rise.

  "In the stables." Meriden smiled slightly. "My groom has them in charge."

  "Upon my word, your groom!" Lady Meriden's fine eyes flashed. "Your own brothers in the charge of a groom! I daresay I may infer from that your feelings for them."

  "I have very little feeling for them," Meriden said reasonably. "How should I? I have seen them twice and at a considerable distance. However, you may set your mind at rest. Thorpe is reliable and far more likely to influence them to behave civilly than I."

  "How will he do that, I wonder?" Jane murmured.

  "He has a glass eye," his lordship replied gravely, "and promised to take it out if they help him groom my horses."

  "I see. Unexceptionable."

  He smiled.

  "Jane! Have you no proper feeling? How can you smile? Grooming his horses!" Lady Meriden buried her face in her hands.

  Meriden raised his brows.

  Jane gave a small shrug and bent to pat her aunt gently on the shoulder. "Come, Aunt Louisa. Be calm, my dear. He does not plan to leave the twins in Thorpe's care forever. And at least we shall know where they are."

  Her aunt made an inarticulate sound.

  "What?"

  "No doubt you will 'prentice them to a b-blacksmith," she wailed.

  Meriden walked across the room--rather stiffly--and stood for some moments by the open window. When Lady Meriden had again composed herself, he turned back to her.

  "Will you tell me, ma'am, what course you would have me take? I propose to send them to a respectable school in Lyme Regis. Next week, in fact. They must be prepared to enter Eton or Harrow next year, and probably not together. I cannot allow my wards to grow up as ignorant as a pair of savages."