Katherine, When She Smiled

by Harmon, Joyce

  “Oh, yes indeed!” she said. “Arthur gives Jenkins a completely free rein in the matter of the library. I’ll have you know that he is very well known and respected among bibi… biblo… oh, you know, book people. The library here at the Court is becoming as famous in its own way as Arthur’s observatory is.”

  “Ah,” said Charles with a mild sense of wonder. “Well, so long as it’s what Arthur wants, then that’s fine.”

  Han looked up from his sketching. “Does Greymere have a library?” he asked.

  “I have no notion,” Charles admitted. “Oh, there will certainly be a room called a library that will hold the family’s books, but that might be nothing more than several generations of stud books.”

  Han nodded, took up his sketch pencil again, and then looked up again, interested. “Does it have a marble hall?” he asked.

  “Once again, I have no idea,” Charles said. “We will have to learn the delights of Greymere together. Why do you ask? Do you want it to have a marble hall?”

  “Yes, indeed!” Han said, scrambling to his feet. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Charles looked over at his mother, and saw that she was smiling broadly. “Run along, dear,” she told him. So he followed Han out into the front hall.

  Once there, the boy sat on the bottom step of the staircase and removed his shoes. Then he stood, took a few running steps, and went sliding across the floor. “You see,” he said with a grin. “It’s like ice skating, only less cold.”

  Han ‘skated’ in stockinged feet across to the door to the servants’ part of the house, turned and skated rapidly the length of the hall. “It’s great fun,” he called out.

  The Dowager had come to the door of the drawing room and was watching with an indulgent smile, but she was moved to protest when Charles sat down on the step and removed his shoes. “Oh, now Charles, you’re too old for such foolishness!”

  “Admit that I was always the best ice skater in the family,” Charles challenged her, and took his own slide across the floor.

  Charles and Han made several skating runs up and down the hall, Charles colliding once with the stair railing. “It’s not precisely like ice skating,” he admitted.

  “You’ll soon have the knack of it,” Han assured him.

  “Boys!” said the Dowager. But she smiled as she said it.

  Several mornings later, Charles looked up from the breakfast ham and said, “So, young Han. Can you be ready to travel tomorrow?”

  Han nodded. “I can be ready any time,” he said.

  “Tomorrow?!” the Dowager asked. “So soon?”

  “I told you when I arrived it would be but a short visit,” Charles reminded her. “I’m eager to take up my new role as a country gentleman.”

  “Oh, very well,” she said with a sigh. “Have you sent notice to your steward?”

  “No,” Charles said. “I saw no need for it.”

  “You’re going to simply appear with no advance notice?”

  “Why not?” Charles was puzzled. “It’s my home, after all, I need no one’s permission. And it’s not as if I’m bringing a large house party. The two of us are easy to care for, surely.”

  The Dowager opened her mouth as if to speak, but then closed it again.

  “What?” Charles asked.

  “Nothing,” said his mother. Privately, she reminded herself that she was done raising her boys. Any refinements would be up to his staff, and eventually to his wife.

  Accordingly, the next morning saw Charles and Han settling into the ducal traveling coach for the trip to Dorset. An overstuffed basket full of all Charles’ favorite foods, presented to them by a tearful cook, ensured that they would not be overcome by hunger on their journey.

  They broached the basket early, and with no women to chide them, began their repast with the delightful little cakes. They then consumed the cold chicken and the meat pies, eventually leaning back, replete.

  “This is the right way to travel,” Charles said with a contented sigh.

  “It’s certainly quite a comfortable coach,” Han admitted.

  “It’s more than the coach,” Charles said. “Best of all is to have only the responsibility to get the two of us delivered to Dorset. No foot soldiers or horses or baggage trains to monitor.”

  Han looked at him curiously. “Did you enjoy being in the army?” he asked.

  Charles was surprised by the question. Most men, and certainly most boys, assumed without question that being in the army was ‘glorious’. He thought carefully before responding. “I wouldn’t call it enjoyment, exactly,” he said at last. “It was a task that needed to be done, and I think I was good at it. But…”

  “But?”

  “But, oh, the mess and the waste!”

  Han nodded solemnly and said, “I know,” and Charles remembered then the boy’s unusual upbringing. The Cooper family had traveled all throughout Europe and the Near East, and Han and his sister had never been in England until they came here after their father died. Han said, “We would sometimes see places where a family had tended an orchard for generations. And then an army came through and chopped the whole thing down for fire wood.” He looked out the window of the traveling coach and said, “England is lucky. It wasn’t touched by the war.”

  “The land wasn’t,” Charles agreed.

  “So what will you do now?” Han asked.

  “I’m going to be a country gentleman,” Charles said. “I’m going to grow things, raise things. Crops, horses, dogs. Slow things. Pleasant things. I’ve had my fill of adventures, I think.”

  “Sounds grand,” Han agreed.

  The coach slowed now as they came to a village, and Charles looked out with interest. “This must be Piddledean,” he said.

  Han looked out his window and said, “It looks very English.”

  As the young men stared at Piddledean, Piddledean stared back. A stout man in an apron ran out of the local public house to gawk as they went by. Women with market baskets looped over their arms stopped their chat in the street to watch silently as they passed.

  Charles, familiar with village life, sat back and said, “That’s given them something to talk about.”

  Several miles later, the carriage turned into a broad drive. “Ah!” said Charles. The drive was long and curved, giving them a view of manor house. It was long and low, built and added onto over the years, wings sprouting back from a solid Tudor block.

  “Looks interesting,” Han said with appreciation.

  “Just let it be comfortable,” Charles offered.

  The coach crunched to a halt. The young men alighted, and stood staring up at the façade. After a long moment, a young man loped around the corner, slicking back his hair and straightening a hastily donned jacket. He bobbed an awkward bow to Charles, and said, “Are you the young lord, then? No one told the stable to be expecting you.”

  Charles nodded. “That I am. And you are?”

  “Bill, me lord. Just Bill from the stable is all. I can see to your ‘osses and get them bags inside. You just step on up, sir.”

  Charles mounted the stairs with Han trailing behind, and briskly deployed the door knocker. The coach moved around the building under Bill’s direction, and eventually, the large door was heaved open.

  A lanky butler in a dusty wig frowned at them like a judge. “And who might you be?” he asked.

  Charles stepped lightly past him, motioning Han to follow. “I might be Charles Ramsey,” he said easily. “And this might be my home. In fact, I am, and it is.” As the old butler drew himself up, Charles added, “You must be Purvis.”

  “That I am, your lordship!” Purvis said. “And right sorry I am about my tone and all.”

  Charles waved a hand. “Understandable,” he began.

  A door opened behind the stairs, and a little round woman entered, almost hidden behind an enormous pile of folded linens. “Purvis, was that the door?” said a voice from behind the linens.

  “It’s Lord Charles, mot
her,” Purvis hissed.

  The little woman gave a scream of alarm and threw up her hands. Sheets rained down all over the hall. “Oh, your lordship! Oh, my sheets!” the housekeeper exclaimed.

  Charles felt awful. Han stepped in, saying smoothly, “It seems our letter about our arrival has gone astray.”

  Charles shook his head. “No, Han. Let’s not begin with a lie.” He turned to the housekeeper and butler. “Mrs. Purvis. Purvis. I’m afraid I sent no advance notice that I would be coming. I see now that was a mistake, and I apologize for that.”

  Mrs. Purvis found a lord who apologized almost more unnerving than a lord who arrives unannounced, but she was as susceptible as any woman to genuine contrition and a rueful smile. When Charles stooped to pick up a sheet, she waved him away. “Oh, leave that, do, my lord. Ruby will help me with this. Purvis, you take his lordship to the morning room. I’m sure he will want some tea after his travels, and we must see that rooms are prepared…”

  She bustled away to the kitchen, where she was soon describing her palpitations and fluttering heart to Mrs. Spelling the cook, who could listen and hastily assembly a substantial tea simultaneously.

  Meanwhile, back in the hall, Purvis pulled himself together and grandly escorted his employer to the morning room. As they passed out of the hall, Han murmured to Charles, “Did you notice the floor?”

  Charles looked back and smiled. The hall was marble.

  FIVE

  Katherine found herself increasingly frustrated as spring turned to summer. She had begun the task of completing Papa’s Mrs. Wilson novel with a complaisant confidence that she did not consider unjustified. For what training in the gothic novel could compare with sharing a household with Helen and Aunt Alice?

  Over the years, the Rose ladies had read all the modern gothic novels, including all of those by Mrs. Wilson. They had formed the habit, once the evening’s reading was completed, of setting the book aside and engaging in a few minutes of pleasurable speculation of what would happen next. After a time, Katherine had been forbidden to take part in this speculation, because her predictions were too acute. She would unmask the villain a hundred or more pages before the hapless heroine did, spot the solution to the mystery, and usually devise several methods out of the heroine’s predicament that were significantly more practical than what the heroine eventually utilized.

  Now when Katherine forgot these strictures and began to make a comment on the book being read, Helen would run out of the room with her hands over her ears, exclaiming, “Not another word, you mean thing!”

  So Katherine considered her knowledge of the gothic to be second to none. When she read Papa’s latest incomplete work, she instantly recognized that Baron de la Tour, so genial, so suave, so apparently concerned, was actually the villain and the secret cause of all Euphonia’s travails. It was equally apparent that Horatio the stable boy was far too brave and noble and handsome to be a mere peasant and could only be the missing prince Alfonso.

  For several weeks, Katherine wrote steadily on her completion of the novel, an hour and more a day. The work went smoothly and Katherine found it almost enjoyable. She was quite pleased with herself as she explained the inexplicable, smoothed out the troubles, and gave the heroine a well-deserved happy ending. Finally, she wrote “The End” and sat back with a sigh of satisfaction.

  The satisfaction did not last long. In fact, almost immediately, Katherine felt a prickle of unease. Her stack of papers seemed too insignificant. Resolutely, she pushed back from the desk, telling herself she would look at the matter with a fresh eye the next day.

  But the next day, things only got worse. With a fresh eye, she saw that she had not been mistaken; the book was indeed too short. She began to reread what she had written, hoping to find areas where she could expand the narrative, only to be confronted with another problem. There was no gentle way to say it – her narrative was boring.

  With growing trepidation, Katherine read on. Things did not improve. All the twists and complications that Papa had set up unspooled easily under Katherine’s ruthless pen. She had made the heroine’s path too easy.

  Turning the final page, Katherine pushed the manuscript away with a sigh. It would all have to be redone. Somehow.

  She left the study and returned to family life, and that had frustrations of its own. Jack was back from school, enjoying the long vacation, and that was satisfactory. She was glad to see him recover his spirits after Papa’s death. But Jack had made a new friend at school, and was full of his friend’s stories and adventures, and Katherine was quite skeptical about this friend.

  That evening after Jack had gone to bed, she brought the subject to her aunt for advice. “Aunt Alice,” she said before her aunt could begin the evening’s reading, “what do you think of this Inky Cooper than Jack is always talking about?”

  “What do you mean, what do I think?” Aunt Alice asked.

  “What an exciting life he’s led!” Helen contributed.

  “But has he really?” Katherine wondered. “That’s my question. Don’t these stories that Jack has been telling us strike you as a little bit, well, fantastical? The family has supposedly traveled everywhere, Europe, the Mediterranean, and all this with a war going on. And to cap it all, we’re told that his sister is a duchess, if you please.”

  Aunt Alice frowned thoughtfully. “Each story individually sounds plausible enough. But now that you mention it, when you consider them all together, it does perhaps stretch credulity.”

  “You mean the boy is lying?” Helen exclaimed.

  “It’s a possibility that occurred to me,” Katherine said.

  “Why would he lie?” Helen objected. “What would he gain?”

  “Oh, to make himself interesting, I suppose,” Katherine answered. “What do you think, Aunt Alice?”

  “It’s certainly a possibility,” her aunt said.

  “Should I suggest that to Jack?” Katherine asked.

  Aunt Alice considered. “Oh, I wouldn’t,” she said at last. “After all, you don’t know that the stories are false. And I doubt if Jack would believe you, not in the first enthusiasm for his new friend.” She smiled suddenly. “Why I remember when I was in school. Long ago, my dears. A new student arrived, and she was an immediate favorite for everyone, students and teachers alike. Like a fairy princess she seemed, so pretty and ethereal. And with such a sad story. Sophia, that was her name. She’s been a lady in waiting, she told us, to Queen Charlotte.”

  “Gracious!” Helen said in admiration.

  “But the other ladies were jealous, Sophia was such a favorite of the queen and so young and pretty. They told lies about her, turned the queen against her, and poor Sophia was dismissed from court.”

  “How awful!” gasped Helen.

  “Only none of that was true, was it?” asked Katherine acutely.

  Aunt Alice chuckled. “Of course it wasn’t true! A fifteen year old lady in waiting? And then to come to Miss Mennon’s school? We weren’t that exclusive, my dears!”

  “What was the true story?” Katherine asked.

  “Nothing so interesting or pathetic,” Aunt Alice said. “Her father was a country gentleman, much like your dear papa. He had remarried and Sophia disliked his new wife and made a nuisance of herself, that’s why she was sent away to school.”

  “So it was all just for attention?” Helen asked.

  “Attention, sympathy, to make herself interesting, I suppose,” Aunt Alice said. “But if you’d have told us that, I doubt if we’d have believed you.”

  “How did you find out?” Katherine wondered.

  “Her father came to visit one day, on his way to London,” Aunt Alice explained. “Someone said something about Sophia’s time at the court, and the astonishment on his face told the whole story.”

  “So I shouldn’t say anything to Jack about his friend’s stories?” Katherine asked.

  “I don’t recommend it,” Aunt Alice answered. “Why I remember Lydia Bell was always s
keptical about Sophia’s sad stories, and said so frequently. We just thought Lydia was a jealous cat and paid no mind.”

  “I shall just have to hold my tongue, then” Katherine said. “But it will be hard.”

  “Don’t worry,” Aunt Alice assured her. “These fabulists are always exposed eventually.”

  “And the stories might even be true,” Helen suggested.

  Katherine laughed at this but conceded, “Indeed they might.”

  The next morning at the breakfast table, Katherine had a notion, so sudden and brilliant that she almost exclaimed aloud. Oh, of course! She looked around the table quickly, but her small gasp had not been noticed. Katherine stirred her tea slowly, returning to her thoughts.

  The heroine’s plan is not supposed to work! This was the notion that sprang to Katherine’s assistance that morning. Of course, the heroine must try to solve or escape from her predicament, one wouldn’t want her to sit around simply waiting to be rescued. But Katherine had given her a plan, and the plan had worked beautifully. She thought back to the earlier Mrs. Wilsons, and realized that not only must the plan fail, but the plan’s failure should put the heroine in even worse straits than before.

  Gleefully, Katherine realized that the failure of the plan would add pages and pages to the narrative. But how to make it fail? Should she make Euphonia more stupid? No, not stupid. Naïve. The poor dear had been raised by unworldly nuns, after all, and should not so easily recognize the duplicity of the villain. That’s it! She would have Euphonia confide in the Baron!

  “Katherine? Katherine!”

  Startled, Katherine looked up to see Helen staring at her in concern. “Where were you?” Helen asked. “I’ve been speaking to you for minutes now.”

  “I’m sorry, my mind was miles away,” Katherine confessed.

  “You’re becoming more like Papa every day,” Helen told her.

  “I wonder if Katherine should give up her work with Papa’s papers?” Aunt Alice suggested. “I can’t think scholarship is at all appropriate for women.”

  “Really, Aunt Alice!” Katherine exclaimed, ruffled. “Do you think I can’t do it?”