Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

  Penelope appeared to have aged the most. There was a prim set to her mouth, and lines furrowing her brow as she said, “I trust you will forgive us for neglecting to call during the week, Lady Northcote.” Her voice was deep, and Anna could hear the possibility of melody under those flat tones as she went on. “But the family understands our case. Caroline and I are not to be profligate; the carriage we usually hire was either in hire or it rained, and then there was our duty to our brother’s mourning, which may, in the strictest sense, now be regarded as permitting a quiet family gathering.”

  A draft of cold wind blew a few remaining withered leaves across the mossy flagstones. Anna shivered, glad of her sturdy gloves, and Penelope pulled her black knit shawl closer about her as she began to inform them how dreadful the weather had been this past week, and predicted a worsening, as Caro’s bonnet turned.

  Anna could not help glancing in that direction, but all she saw was Dr. Blythe, who talked to an elderly couple, the woman all but hidden in a worn calash, the man wearing a dun-colored coat shiny with age.

  Dr. Blythe glanced their way—at Caro?

  “Come, Caroline,” Penelope said sharply, interrupting herself. How could Anna have thought that voice musical? “You will catch your death standing about in this wind. It is time to depart.”

  The social circle around the family broke up, parishioners bowing and curtseying as the family moved to the carriage.

  Harriet caught up with Anna, smothering a laugh behind her gloved hand. “Penelope would think that Caro still is attached to Dr. Blythe.” She chuckled. “Fancy that! He must be fifty if he’s a day, and she’s nearing it. “

  Anna thought of her father, who had been a year shy of fifty when he met her mother. As a girl she remembered their shared smiles, and his hands when he would pass behind Mama’s chair, how he would caress the back of her neck, or touch her shoulder.

  But she kept her thoughts to herself as Harriet rattled on, “They probably want to talk about the school. Caro teaches the great girls in household arts. Oh, Jupiter! Now that mourning is over Penelope is still going home with us. I ought to have known. Guess who must sit back, which I don’t mind, but not with her sharp elbow in my side, just so she gets out of ordering a Sunday dinner.”

  Large as the coach was, they were a tight fit, Penelope directing Caro and Harriet in the calmest manner to sit with their backs to the horses. Then, with an air of sacrifice, she placed herself in the center of them, leaving the opposite bench to the dowager, Emily, and Anna.

  When they reached The Manor, it had clouded up again. Anna was glad to get to the drawing room, where tea things were in waiting. They got their cups and sat down.

  Penelope said, “Lady Northcote, if you will forgive my asking, how does it come about that the family was not informed of your marriage?”

  Instant silence, into which the dowager uttered a faint protest.

  Anna had been expecting this attack all along. Her only surprise was that they had waited thus far. “You must put that question to Lord Northcote,” she said.

  “But he is not here,” Penelope rejoined, with the assurance of she who stands firmly astride the pinnacle of moral authority. “And you are come among us alone, so suddenly.”

  “I did not know anything about communications he might have made,” Anna said. “He was sent out with the fleet very soon after we were married.”

  “You did not exchange letters?”

  Harriet laughed at the idea of her brother writing billets doux. Penelope sent her a reproachful glare, and she sobered.

  “Once. But then I was obliged to leave Naples, as they were daily expecting attack from the French.”

  “Oh, how dreadful,” the dowager exclaimed.

  “Europe,” Harriet said, “is in a dreadful state. I am surprised anyone can get a letter, or send one, with Boney romping about.”

  “Harriet,” Penelope stated, “if you cannot speak with the delicacy expected of your age and position, you would do well to keep silent.”

  The dowager roused a little at this attack on her daughter. “However it was expressed, Harriet is quite right.” She turned her head, and blinked in Anna’s general direction. “How did you come together again, my dear? You were in Cadiz, before the glorious victory, were you not?”

  “Yes,” Anna said. “Admiral Gravina told me himself that he once was an ally of England. In honor of that, I believe, he somehow made occasion to send me to the British fleet, to be reunited with Captain Dun—with Lord Northcote.”

  The mention of the Spanish admiral appeared to intimidate even Miss Penelope Duncannon. She accepted that with a minute nod, saying after a moment of reflection, “How did you come to be in Cadiz?”

  “I was there,” Anna smiled, “for the opera. The Company Dupree performed.”

  She knew she treaded dangerous ground, but she resented Miss Penelope Duncannon’s minatory tone.

  “Opera,” the dowager repeated on a sigh. “Oh, it has been a very long time since I have seen a performance. There was that beautiful one by Gluck, Orphée et Eurydice—”

  “Opera,” Penelope stated, “ill bears close examination. So much of it is preposterous, when not outright immoral.”

  “I did not care for the recitations, but oh, beautiful music,” the dowager said. “When Orfeo, sung by a woman, you know, finds Eurydice dead—I often wished that arranged for the fortepiano, before my eyes made it impossible to see the music sheets.”

  “A woman dressed up in man’s attire?” Penelope gasped.

  At that moment Diggory arrived to announce that the meal had been laid out in the dining room.

  Penelope made it plain that the subject of opera was as well left behind as she followed behind Anna and Emily, the latter having once again taken Anna’s arm. Emily said in her perfectly modulated voice, “You and I must unite to bring music back to this house. Henry will find that a fine welcome, do you not agree?”

  o0o

  The afternoon passed with excruciating slowness, Penelope holding forth until the dowager slipped away, murmuring about a headache, followed soon by Harriet and Caro. Anna remembered what Harriet had said about the little children, whom Anna had scarcely seen. It seemed an imposition to go without invitation to visit someone else’s children, so she had not yet dared to venture alone to the nursery.

  A bit later on, once again the little girls were brought down to make their curtseys, which brought Harriet and Caro also. Then the girls were banished and everyone else retired to the dining room for the cold meal, after which they pulled on coats, hats, gloves, and shawls to venture out to the coach again. After evening service, the dowager made the offer to the elder Duncannon sisters to carry them back to Whitstead, as they had known she would, and so the evening ended.

  Monday was free of visitors. Anna offered to read to the dowager, who accepted with pleasure. They sat side by side in the morning room, one reading and the other doing tedious hemming in tiny stitches—almost entirely by feel, as she could not see well enough for fancywork—as outside the sleet hissed and roared.

  In the afternoon, the weather cleared. The dowager vanished somewhere with her daughter, and Anna took her book upstairs to her room, where she could sit next to the fire with a shawl about her until it was time to dress for dinner.

  When Parrette came in, she was blowing on a knuckle and wringing her hand. Anna, in the midst of unfastening her gown, stopped. “What happened to your fingers?”

  Parrette scowled at her blotched hands. “I cannot stitch with gloves on, so I use my candle to warm my fingers. And I got impatient day before yesterday. Burned myself stupidly; it is all but healed, except that I splashed hot water on my finger just now, and it hurts again.” She wrung her hand.

  “Candle? Why would you do that?” Anna shivered as she loosened her gown, and the obvious answer struck her. “The servants’ chambers are not well warmed?”

  “They are not warmed at all,” Parrette said grimly. “It is worse in
that attic than on board the ship for space, and no fireplace.”

  “I wonder if my husband knows,” Anna said.

  Parrette wrung her hand a last time, and then threw Anna’s dinner gown over her head, and twitched it into place as Anna shrugged into it. “You could fix it, but I daresay it is better to wait. They have such peculiar customs, here.”

  “I? Fix it? How?”

  Parrette uttered a breathless laugh. “Everyone seems to know it but us. You are a very wealthy woman.”

  “I thought the household was in bad straits.”

  “The household is, but it seems that your husband inherited his own fortune from a relation on his mother’s side, and has never touched it.”

  Anna felt as if someone had struck her on the side of the head. She turned to gaze at Parrette. “Have you been gossiping with the servants?”

  “Yes,” Parrette said. “Do you want to hear it, or not?”

  Anna’s struggle was brief. “Only if it is true. Gossip so often isn’t.”

  “I cannot prove what is true or what isn’t, but they all believe that it was discovering that his second son had inherited a vast amount from some relation that caused the elder Lord Northcote to go off in an apoplexy.”

  “So he had not this wealth when we married?”

  “He had nothing. He was not even given an allowance. Whatever he did he must contrive himself.”

  They contemplated this, having learned something of the complicated affairs concerning meals on board a ship. If the officers had not a private allowance of some kind, they might have to eat the same food as the ship’s crew. And repair their uniforms as they could, or indent for what they could not repair, as their earnings were scant. Captain Duncannon had possessed beautiful silver serving dishes and fine porcelain plates. So all that was relatively recent acquisition? Again, much was explained.

  Anna nodded. “And so his leaving me to the Hamiltons was necessity. But that was then. Now, how are we to address your situation? Shall I order those rooms to be repaired?”

  Parrette tipped her head to one side. “I think you would upset the household entirely, especially if you put that ahead of the many other things that need doing.”

  “But your hands! This is intolerable.”

  “The servants find ways to warmth,” Parrette said. “Yesterday Peg Cassidy invited me to join them over the stable, when you are at dinner. It is very congenial, and warm enough there.”

  Anna said slowly, “The housekeeper did not show me your rooms. And I never thought to ask. Bon! This is a question I will be putting to the captain, when he gets here.” Yet another thing to add to her sense of anticipation, mixed with . . . not dread. There was too much hope, and good memory for that. Brief as it was.

  So much depended upon his reappearance! Anna had supposed it was only she who thought about him, imagined conversations, questions. Expectations. But in their own ways, the entire household seemed to be in a mode of rehearsal, no, of waiting, until the main actor stepped upon the stage.

  Parrette stepped back, gave a short nod, and said, “You’ll do. Better get yourself downstairs.”

  Anna plucked up her shawl and left. Parrette straightened the room, picked up the basket of work waiting outside Anna’s door, and sped along the servants’ hall to the back stairs. Here she met Polly and Peg Cassidy, who were waiting for her.

  Parrette, who had long ago schooled herself to brace for the future, and to never anticipate, as that brought nothing but disappointment, had found herself thinking about the prospective second visit all through the day.

  o0o

  Tuesdays, Anna discovered when the fire was lit in the formal parlor, were understood by the countryside to be their At Home day for morning calls. These calls would be duly returned toward the end of the week.

  However before breakfast was over a heavy, sleeting rain set in. The storm lasted three days, keeping everyone indoors, and on Thursday, when the weather cleared, Anna discovered the dowager gone somewhere with Harriet as driver; not, ordinarily, an event to cause notice, except for Emily’s surprise, indeed, her quick expression of disapprobation before her expression smoothed.

  Anna was not certain what to make of Emily, even without the memory of her husband’s whispering of that name. More often than not Emily’s tone, some of her words, reminded Anna of Therese Rose, which caused an instinctive distrust. Not that Emily was as friendly, or as good company. It was that sense of falsity, of words and tone not quite matching, though outwardly she had been scrupulously civil.

  Further, her musical evenings so far compassed her own performance, with polite-nothing sayings offering the others an opportunity before Anna was requested to accompany Emily’s singing, which occasioned an exclamation from Frederick Elstead that they made a beautiful pair, that someone ought to paint them. Emily simpered, but at no time did she appear to think it necessary to ask Anna if she had another sort of performance in mind besides accompaniment.

  Anna was not quite certain what she ought to say if she did. She sensed that Emily had been regarded as mistress of the household, that she had once led the way in everything. Anna was aware that her own singing far surpassed Emily’s modest talents and training; she sensed that Emily would be put out of countenance. She resolved to let the matter lie until Emily might think of asking her to sing.

  But she wanted to sing again.

  She must simply content herself by singing alone.

  The resumption of social life meant that when the drawing room was heated, Anna became wary of taking up the room for her own purposes. Anyone might come in.

  Then she remembered that long gallery in the other wing. It was equally cold, if not colder, but she had learned in Paris that movement made one warm, and oh, the space!

  She made her way quietly to the deserted gallery, low slants of wintry light splashing the paintings with dull color. As her husband’s ancestors gazed out into infinity over her head, she danced up and down the marble floor. Once her body was warmed, she hummed a note, and cautiously tested the sound. There was an interesting echo, but that would swiftly blur into unbearable murk.

  She therefore took to walking outside in the bitter wind. The ordered garden gave way to a profusion of trees and hedges that surrounded the lake. Once she was out of sight of the house, she ran her scales and sang.

  As her voice echoed among the trees, she was learning to appreciate unexpected moments of grace: the subtle sun rays in the mist, the silvery branches against the sky, the smooth hills accented by hedgerows. England might not be as beautiful as her mother had promised, but it was not after all as dismal as it had appeared on her arrival.

  When she returned from her first walk, she paused to look at the house sheltered beside its hill. It was so peaceful. The wounds of battle were blessedly distant. She could understand what motivated the men of the Aglaea to protect their homeland against the devastation Napoleon Bonaparte caused elsewhere.

  But she could not comprehend the motivations of Bonaparte, seen now and then at the theater in Paris, sitting next to his exquisite wife. Why would he invade England? What use would the properties of an island be when he held already the whole of Europe in his grip?

  o0o

  That Saturday, after her dance practice in the gallery and her morning walk for singing, she returned to find everyone gathered as customary for tea and Cook’s poppy seed cakes. Harriet presided, a proud look on her face as she wore a new gown.

  Anna recognized the stylish lines instantly. Though the garment itself was a plain round gown, suitable for a girl not yet presented, and the color was a subdued pale lavender with little ornamentation, there was no mistaking the fine fit, the pretty line of the yoke in back, the little puff sleeves at the shoulders, framed by a sedate ribbon before lengthening into the long sleeves common in England, especially at this time of year.

  Even more surprising was the expression on Emily’s face, almost affront.

  “You look very well in that new go
wn,” Anna said to Harriet.

  The girl preened. “Is it not fine? Infinitely better than anything that can be got from Miss Reed. Your Duflot is teaching Polly.”

  Emily turned to Anna. “Am I to understand that your woman makes your gowns, Lady Northcote?”

  “She makes most of them, yes,” Anna replied tranquilly.

  Emily bit back an exclamation, remembering that the conjectures about Le Roy and Paris had all come from others. At no time had this foreigner made any such claim herself. She had said nothing about her clothes at all.

  When Anna went upstairs later to dress for dinner, she said to Parrette, “That was a fine gown you made for Harriet. Poor thing, they seem to have neglected her altogether.”

  Parrette made certain the doors were shut, then said in Neapolitan, “When we sit above the stable while you are at dinner, I have been teaching Polly what I know.” She smiled at the thought of those cozy evenings, with the smell of freshly parched coffee beans smothering the odor of horse as John-Coachman made the coffee himself.

  Anna, seeing that smile, was surprised. She had so rarely seen Parrette smile, especially in that way. But then Parrette’s brows twitched into a frown. “Miss Harriet is not the only one neglected. There is but the one man in the garden, until spring, and then the kitchen maids will be expected to do most of the weeding. Miss Harriet thinks she is to go to London in spring, but . . .”

  She let that lapse, and Anna laughed. “I know. When Lord Northcote returns.” The household’s expectation might be almost as intense as her own, though perhaps for different reasons.

  Parrette twitched curls about Anna’s face, stepped back and cocked her head. “Polly wishes to be promoted to lady’s dresser. She’s a quick learner. And a good turn requires another good turn, for Polly put me in the way of meeting the Cassidys, so that I might hear Mass in the Aubignys’ private chapel.”

  Anna exclaimed. “Is there no church? Is hearing Mass against the law in England?”