“But I’m no longer just myself, Mrs. Priddie. I’m now married.” And, he thought, a smile blazing, he wasn’t above much of anything, particularly when it came to Mary Rose and where he touched her. Tysen very slowly dropped his arms. He turned to Mrs. Priddie. “Let’s show Mary Rose her new bedchamber.”
Mrs. Priddie harrumphed again. Both cats—Ellis, so long and skinny that he seemed to be wrapped around fat Monroe, with his yellow eyes and fur blacker than a sinner’s dreams—were on top of Tysen’s bed. Ellis cracked an eye open, saw Tysen, and yowled once, then twice, unwound himself from Monroe and leapt. Tysen, used to this, caught the cat in mid-flight and simply brought him to his shoulder. “Have you been a saintly cat, Ellis?”
The cat was purring so loudly that Mary Rose, who had never before heard the like, just stood there staring at him.
“He stole a pork chop right off the kitchen table, Reverend Sherbrooke.”
“Well yes, Mrs. Priddie, he is fast, isn’t he?” He rubbed the cat’s stomach, hugged him, then finally set him back down beside Monroe, who was just looking at everyone, not even twitching a whisker.
“Monroe doesn’t do much,” Tysen said, and petted the cat in long strokes down its back. The cat stretched out, and Tysen continued to pat him until Ellis, jealous, swatted at Tysen’s hand.
“Just wait until we’re in bed with them,” he said to Mary Rose, and Mrs. Priddie harrumphed yet again.
“I can’t wait,” Mary Rose said, and Ellis looked at her, then stretched his neck toward her. She gave him a light pat. Ellis jumped back onto Tysen’s shoulder.
23
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.
MAX SHERBROOKE, STANDING straight and tall, his shoulders back, said firmly, “Girls do not speak Latin.”
“This girl does,” Mary Rose said easily.
“Even if a girl were able to repeat the words, she would have no comprehension of what she was saying.”
Mary Rose raised an eyebrow at that pompous pronouncement from a boy who had blue eyes—Sherbrooke blue eyes—just like his father’s and Sinjun’s and Leo’s and Meggie’s, and a very stubborn chin. The boy would break hearts when he grew into manhood. She stroked her fingers over her chin. “Hmmm. Do I perhaps hear the antiquated Mr. Harbottle speaking?”
“Certainly not,” Max said, frowning just a bit, “ although he does not hesitate, even on good days, to point out the weakness of the female sex.”
“Why do you have such a low opinion of the female brain, Max?”
“Yes,” Tysen said pleasantly, coming into the very dark drawing room with its soon-to-be burned draperies, “tell us where you got this asinine notion.”
“You said—” Max, pinned by his father’s stare, managed to squirm just a bit. “Well, perhaps it isn’t precisely what you said, sir, but I’ve never believed that you thought any girl, with the exception of Meggie, of course—”
“Of course.”
“Well, that any girl could do much of anything except have babies and—”
“Yes, you’re quite right, Max. I’ve never said anything so absurd, or believed such a thing either. Now, you’d best just stop right where you are. If you were to continue, I fear that your new mother would shoot you.”
Max was staring hard at his father. “Leo said something about how you were different, but I thought he’d just been standing on his head too long. I don’t know, Papa, but—” Max stopped talking, stared at that smile on his father’s face.
Max continued to stare at his father. Mary Rose knew she wasn’t their mother, and she wished Tysen wouldn’t call her that, particularly now, particularly when they looked at her and wished her back in Scotland. But she managed to laugh, fanning her hands in front of her. “Max, please, none of this is important. Here we are arguing about Latin and which sex can or cannot speak it—a very dead language that is excessively common, after all, and a language that is very likely not nearly as interesting as the Egyptian hieroglyphics, don’t you think?”
“Don’t tell me you can speak hieroglyphics,” Max said, raising an eyebrow identical to his father’s.
“Er, no. Not really. Actually, you don’t speak them, you read them, but no one can just yet. I’ve been reading about the studies done on the Rosetta stone. That perhaps it holds the key to translating the hieroglyphs. A Mr. Young is currently working on deciphering them.”
Max moved a step closer to her, a heartening sign. “I have heard that the symbols are simply pictures, that there is no alphabet. Mr. Harbottle believes it is all heathen in any case, and therefore who cares?”
Tysen decided at that moment that Mr. Ellias Harbottle would not ever again open his mouth around Max. To think he was paying the man for lessons. Why hadn’t he ever realized before that Harbottle was indoctrinating his son with such rubbish? Actually, maybe he should turn Meggie loose on Mr. Harbottle.
“No one is certain yet,” Mary Rose said mildly. “Not about them being heathen, but about the hieroglyphs being an alphabet and an actual language or just pictures. Since your father knows most of the scholars at Oxford, however, when something definitive is discovered, he will find out about it very quickly. Then he will tell us.”
“Yes,” Max said slowly, staring at his father. “You will know, won’t you, sir? It’s a serious sort of thing, very scholarly. Perhaps there are even some religious aspects to it, so it should be of interest to you.”
“Do you possibly believe it could be more interesting than you are, Max?” Tysen said, and his son blinked at him.
“I’m not at all sure, Papa,” Max said, giving his father a confused look. Then he did a little skip, his Sherbrooke blue eyes alight with excitement. “Just imagine looking at all those symbols and drawings and actually reading them! I believe I will go to see Mr. Harbottle and tell him it’s important that we know about everything, heathen or not.”
And Max left the room, humming softly, a sign, Tysen knew, that he was deep in thought. He had to find another tutor for his son, but able scholars were scarce.
Tysen said to Mary Rose, “You at least deflected him, Mary Rose. Well done. I don’t think Mr. Harbottle is a particularly positive influence on my sons. I hadn’t realized.” He frowned a moment, then replaced it with a smile, cocking his head to the side.
“Oh, goodness, Meggie does it just the same way,” Mary Rose said, charmed.
“What?”
“The way you just tilted your head.”
“Yes, but now I have something important to say. I had never realized that your name sounds all soft and spongy. Isn’t that what Leo said? Not that you were eavesdropping, of course.”
She sighed. “I shouldn’t have listened, I know, but I just couldn’t help myself. And no, I hadn’t thought either that I sounded soft and spongy.”
“I know this is only your first day here,” he said, coming to catch her hands up in his, “actually, only your fourth hour here, but it appears that everyone in Glenclose-on-Rowan knows that the vicar has taken a new wife. Mrs. Flavobonne probably told Mrs. Padworthy, and even though she’s probably older than those stones on the Salisbury Plain, she can get around. The good Lord knows what else is being said. Mrs. Priddie just informed me that many of the ladies are on their way here, bringing cakes and biscuits and scones, since you’re Scottish. I can’t imagine that their husbands are pleased with their sudden defection at what is almost dinnertime.”
“Oh, dear,” Mary Rose said. “How much time do I have?”
“About five minutes.”
The vicar met the dozen ladies who streamed through the vicarage front door and congregated in the entrance hall, clutching their plates and dishes to their respective bosoms.
When they were all assembled, finally, in the drawing room, and Mrs. Priddie had relieved them of their offerings, Tysen said, “Ladies, please let me present to y
ou my wife, Mary Rose Sherbrooke.”
Mary Rose stepped into the drawing room. Meggie slithered in behind her, staying behind the ladies’ backs. She sent Mary Rose a little wave, then leaned against the window.
“I am delighted to meet you,” Mary Rose said, and gave what she hoped was an enthusiastic smile. “It is so kind of you to come so quickly to welcome me. All the food you have brought smells delightful. Please sit down. I should like to meet each of you.”
Tysen left some ten minutes later, having downed a bite of scone that left the taste of flour heavy in his mouth, and certain that everything would be all right. Some of the ladies he didn’t trust an inch, but they seemed to be behaving themselves. It was Miss Glenda Strapthorpe, though, who worried him. Perhaps he should have mentioned her to Mary Rose. He was aware that the ladies were eyeing him a bit strangely by the time he quit the drawing room. Well, he supposed he had laughed, perhaps even grinned a bit. Several of the ladies had looked at him as if he’d grown another ear. He hadn’t changed that much, had he?
He hadn’t allowed himself to worry about how Mary Rose would deal with the members of the town and his congregation. Actually, truth be told, he hadn’t thought about much of anything since he’d made love to his bride on their wedding night. That was about all he could think of. His own pleasure at seeing that wonderful look of astonishment in her beautiful eyes when she yelled that first time, still had him feeling like the most accomplished lover in all of England, perhaps even as excellent as his brothers. He hadn’t been able to have her since they’d left Sinjun and Colin’s house in Edinburgh, for Meggie had slept in their bedchamber every night on the way back home. It had been difficult, lying there, Mary Rose not three inches from him, and not being able to do a thing because Meggie was on a cot two feet away from their bed. He’d wanted to weep by the third night. He had the feeling that his new wife wanted to weep too. That was a wonderful thing.
Now they were home, and he could have her this very night. Maybe he could have her twice this very night. Surely God wouldn’t think that too self-indulgent. He looked around his study, stuffed to the ceiling with more books than he could read in two lifetimes, most of them so hideously boring that it would be better to have a dead brain in order to get through them. But this was his home, this was where he wrote the words he spoke to his congregation each Sunday, words of God’s expectations of his noble creation, God’s punishments meted out fairly but harshly, and God’s continual demands of His disciples.
He sat at his desk. There was not a speck of dust. It was as if he’d never been gone. Except for the large pile of correspondence, neatly stacked. He began reading.
Thirty minutes later, Meggie, panting, her face pale, stuck her head into Tysen’s study. “Papa, it’s Mrs. Bittley. She’s being so mushy nice, you know how she can be. I’m afraid she’s just preparing herself to take Mary Rose apart.”
Tysen was at the drawing room door in under thirty seconds. He paused a moment next to the partially open door, listening.
Mrs. Bittley, Squire Bittley’s shrew of a wife who’d been a fixture for as many years as Tysen had been on this earth, was standing in the middle of the drawing room, her bosom overpowering in deep purple, a purple feather sticking out of the sausage curls behind her ears, and she was facing Mary Rose, a muffin in one hand. “How delightful for you, a foreigner just to our north, to be married to our own dear vicar, an Englishman to his bones.”
“Yes, very delightful for me, Mrs. Bittley. Thank you for remarking on it. Mrs. Markham, would you like another cup of tea?”
“No, Mrs. Sherbrooke—how difficult it is to say that name when you—a perfect stranger—and not even a perfect English stranger—are very suddenly and so very unexpectedly wearing it.”
Mary Rose just smiled at the very thin woman who was so fair her hair looked nearly white in the dim afternoon light. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow there would be light in this room. She would have it painted a pale yellow, perhaps. She stopped herself. She had to remember that this was just barely her home. She turned her attention to Mrs. Markham and said easily, “I suspect you were a bit surprised for a while to hear yourself called Mrs. Markham when you first married your husband, were you not?”
“That is neither here nor there,” said Mrs. Bittley. “You have admitted that you are Scottish, have admitted that you are a foreigner.”
“It is not something one can readily hide, don’t you think?”
Mrs. Padworthy, an ancient old woman, tiny and stooped, waved a veined hand. “Now, Mrs. Bittley, haven’t I told you that I have always liked the Scottish people? They bring such exotic music to the world with that wheezing bagpipe, a strange-looking thing that sounds like a gutted cow, don’t you think? And all those quaint combinations of colors in their endlessly clever plaids, so popular amongst them—at least they did until they went against God’s rightful king and we had to plant our boots on their necks. Wasn’t the last time in 1745?”
“Ah, ladies, I trust you are enjoying your visit with my wife. Mrs. Bittley, won’t you be seated? Mrs. Padworthy, how is your dear husband? Well, I trust?”
The thin mouth thinned even more. “He is nearly dead, Vicar. I expect him to be breathing his last by the time I arrive home. You did not ask about him before.”
“We will pray that he lasts a while longer,” Tysen said. “Ah, yes, Mrs. Bittley, I see a chair just over there. Meggie was just telling me that I should disclose to you, since you are all my very good friends and have only my best interests at heart, exactly how I went to Scotland and came home with a bride.”
“You went to Scotland, Vicar,” said Mrs. Padworthy, “because you inherited a Scottish title and a castle that likely is so old it is in ruins and smells of damp. You are now Lord Barthwick. That is why you went. You didn’t go there for any other reason at all.”
He smiled at all of them, each one in turn. “True. However, I found, quite simply, that when I met Mary Rose I knew—yes, ladies, I knew all the way to my very soul—that she was special. It took me a very long time to convince her to marry me and live here with me in England. Her arguments were sound: she didn’t know anything about the English, for to her, you see, we are all foreigners, with different beliefs and manners, perhaps we even commit different sins, although she and I did not discuss any specifics.
“I assured her that everyone here would be delighted to meet her, to welcome her, to befriend her, for the English were a sunny-tempered race, very important since it rains here so very much, a gracious people, a kindly people. Ah, here I am going on and on and it isn’t Sunday, and thus this is not a sermon, just a devout plea from my heart for your understanding. Forgive me for disturbing you, ladies. I will remove myself and let you continue getting to know each other.”
He gave each of them an austere smile, the sort of Sunday smile, Mary Rose thought, that was aimed at people who were seriously considering committing major sins.
“This is very unlike you, Vicar,” Mrs. Padworthy said. “I shall tell my husband about your very lax conduct if he is still breathing when I return home. We will see what he has to say about all this.”
“But only if he is still breathing,” Tysen said, smiled at all the ladies again, and left the drawing room. Mary Rose could swear that she heard Meggie’s voice just outside the door. Actually, she wanted to run after him and leap on him and kiss him until he was silly with it.
She drew a deep breath and said, “Ladies, I very much admire my husband. He is a wonderful man.”
Mrs. Bittley said after a moment, very much aware that the other ladies were no longer quite so ready to hurl themselves into the attack, “It did not take the vicar all that long a time to convince you to marry him. He wasn’t gone for any time at all. It was very quickly done, too quickly done. Evidently you did something quite severe to him. He isn’t what he was. We will have to study this. There is a mystery here. We will all hope that your English will improve when you have lived here a while.”
/> “Or perhaps,” said Mary Rose, “some of you will begin to speak with the soft lilt of Scotland, perhaps a bit less bite and clip in your speech. What do you think?”
Mrs. Bittley harrumphed. Mary Rose wondered if she and Mrs. Priddie were related.
Mrs. Tate, the very young, quite pretty wife of the local blacksmith, Teddie Tate, cocked her head to one side, her lovely black hair sliding across her cheek, and said, “I believe I would like lessons in a lilt. What do you think, Glenda? You haven’t said anything at all. Come, tell us, what do you think about learning to lilt?”
Glenda Strapthorpe, just turned nineteen and well aware that she was the prettiest young lady in these parts, actually, in many other parts as well, turned her lovely pale face toward Mary Rose. “I believe a lilt would sound terribly common, Bethie. Mayhap vulgar. Rather like red hair, I think.”
Bethie Tate wasn’t certain what to do with that, and so she said quickly, “Mrs. Sherbrooke, do tell us about Kildrummy Castle. Just imagine, Reverend Sherbrooke is now Lord Barthwick. I wonder what his brother, the earl of Northcliffe, thinks about that.”
24
Northcliffe Hall
Near New Romney
THE EARL OF Northcliffe, Douglas Sherbrooke, was reading Tysen’s short note at that moment. He finished reading and looked blankly toward the fireplace, which was quite empty since it was warm out today. He read it again, then one more time.
“I don’t believe this,” he said, and looked up to see his son Jason peering around his estate room door.
“What don’t you believe, Papa?”
“Come on in, Jason. It’s time for your chess lesson, isn’t it? It’s a letter from your uncle Tysen. He’s gotten married. She is Scottish and her name is Mary Rose. He, er, sounds quite happy, very lighthearted, indeed. Quite unlike himself, actually. He writes about how Meggie dressed like a boy and played his tiger all the way to Edinburgh. He said he nearly expired on the spot when she was unmasked, so to speak. I wonder why he didn’t write of this when he wrote before to take Oliver away from me.”
The Scottish Bride Page 25
