Rondo Allegro

by Sherwood Smith

  “And then?” Parrette asked, her eyes wide. “And then?”

  John looked into her anxious face, and understood the real question. “And then, I truly believe, should anyone accuse his wife of being a French spy, the baron is going to laugh. The navy has a summary way of dealing with spies.”

  Parrette closed her eyes, the tension going out of her shoulders. “I know that much! It is the other, the fact that she earned her wages singing in an opera company. Not low musicians, pah! But she did earn a wage. It is not what a fine lady can be forgiven for doing.”

  John said, “Yes, that is the rule of what is called good society.” He gazed into the fire. “I do not claim to know his lordship as well now as I did when he was a boy, but I would venture to suggest he will be less grieved by the tidings that she was a paid singer in a French opera company than by the fact that she could not bring herself to confide in him.”

  “That is my fault.” Parrette clasped her hands tightly. “Ought I to tell her, then?”

  John considered a while longer. “I believe your instinct is right to wait, at least a little while. Give them their time of happiness, one might say, their honeymoon.”

  “Yes,” Parrette said. “Yes. Thank you.”

  She looked up, aware of John standing a little ways away, and she recollected herself. Suddenly self-conscious, she felt another blush burning up from her collarbones, pulled her shawl tighter, and whirled away. “I am sorry to disturb you, Monsieur Cassidy. Thank you.”

  “It’s glad I am you confided in me, Mrs. Duflot,” he said mildly. “Good night. God and Mary and Patrick be with you.”

  Parrette muttered a blessing in French, and fled.

  o0o

  For Henry, everything had changed.

  He had promised himself he would never again set foot in Yorkshire. He had sworn never to marry. He certainly would never have wished to grope about the world blinded, and yet here he was, walking about the ancestral home whose smells and sounds brought back so many memories from his boyhood, by the side of the woman whose touch he could not get enough of, whose voice held the power to soothe the pain in his head.

  With the flourishing of happiness came an increase in energy, and a sense of purpose. As the days flew by, the affairs of the estate required Henry to learn a way of thinking that was completely unfamiliar. There was a set of new terms to put his mind to, having to do with land and its seasons, but after all, it proved to be no more difficult than the mastery of the thousands of terms involved with the standing rigging, the running rigging, and the navigation of a ship.

  The smiling, obsequious steward who bowed and flattered every time he saw Henry, bowed a little less each time the new baron summoned him to the Manor to answer to the complaints tenants had been making repeatedly, or to explain figures that did not add up.

  Anna sat by her husband, calmly reading off lists that had been half-buried, which built a grim picture.

  With his words stripped of the flattery and prevarication, it became apparent that this steward had been hired to wring what he could from the land, without putting a penny back. As soon as Henry, who distrusted the man’s smooth, oily voice, heard all the reasons why there must be no change—they must continue on as before—he interrupted the steward’s excuses.

  “As well you are not a naval man. I know how to address humbug when it’s offered to me on my own quarterdeck. The matter is simple. If you are not equal to accomplishing what I ask, then take yourself off.”

  The man flushed, bowed jerkily, and left.

  As soon as the library door closed, Henry thumbed his eye sockets and said ruefully, “That sounded a magnificent coup d’oeil, but that leaves us more awkwardly situated than before. I am now a steward short, yet the problems remain.” He sighed. “Well, Rackham offered to function as sea-daddy. Aubigny as well. I had better take my hat in my hand and apply to one or both of them, like a scrub of a middie.”

  They took the carriage out the next morning, and this first attempt to gain knowledge failed because he brought Anna, dressed in her fashionable pelisse and a smart hat.

  Mr. Rackham, as pleasant as his wife, treated the visit as a social call. He could not be brought to discuss the details of land stewardship before a lady. To him it was not comme il faut, and the habits of politeness were ingrained. They went away having enjoyed the conversation, at the cost of Henry being as unenlightened as before.

  He mulled this problem for a night, and the next morning, as Polly laid the fire in her bedroom, he said to Anna, whose head lay on his shoulder, “I know what I must do. I’ll call on Bradshaw. As I recollect there’s a parcel of sons, and if the next one down is as smart as my midshipman, I will take him to clerk if he’s willing.”

  Anna smiled; Henry’s hand drifted up her side to cup her face. “You’re smiling,” he said. “I can hear the alteration in your breathing.”

  “No, no. That is, I think it a prodigious good idea.”

  “Prodigious! Never change, Anna. But you deflect me. I must know why you smile.”

  She gave in to a chuckle. “I only wonder what names these other boys have been given.”

  “Names?” he repeated.

  “Your Mr. Bradshaw was named Beverley. And his brother at the shop wears the name Endymion.”

  “Was he? I know the mids among ’em had a variety of nicknames. If I recollect, he was Stoat, a fact I probably would not share with his doting family. Beverley. Endymion! Poor devil!”

  And at the end of a long day, when they were alone again, Henry kissed her, then said, “Hippolyte, Odysseus, and Lancelot.”

  There was a hesitation—for her day had also been filled with activity—but then she recollected their conversation that morning, and uttered a low, delicious laugh. He joined her.

  Then he said, “Odysseus, who writes a fair hand and can drive, begins work tomorrow. He begged me to call him Bradshaw, but if I must differentiate him from his father or brothers, to use William, which was his grandfather’s name.”

  o0o

  Henry’s new secretary, grateful for his narrow escape from being put to clerk to an attorney, was a lively young man much like his brother. He settled enthusiastically into his new position.

  Mr. Rackham, presented with an unexceptional secretary accompanying the new baron, began to initiate them both into the intricacies of land management.

  Over the month of February, which offered a succession storms followed by relatively mild days, Lord Northcote and his secretary were seen all over the parish, visiting tenants and fellow landlords. While Henry was busy with estate affairs, Anna fell into a rhythm of her own: there were regular calls and callers, the informal dance parties at the Rackhams’, and social events from dinners to balls. She also learned to drive the gig, a low, sturdy cart hitched to a single horse.

  She continued teaching Eleanor to sing, which developed into lessons in Italian, the language of music. Justina showed a surprising aptitude for ballet, and they danced up and down the gallery together. She, too, wished to prepare a special performance with which to dazzle the rest of the family as a surprise.

  So the lessons continued, though Anna had all but ceased to sing herself. There was so very much to do, and to think about. In a scarce few weeks the physician would arrive to oversee Henry’s bandage removal. What if Henry’s sight was restored?

  Naturally she must want that for him, because he wanted it so badly. Yet her thoughts continued in a discomforting channel. He would not truly be seeing her, in the sense that there still remained the secret of her professional life. Every time she gave a slight answer to a question that might lead to dangerous ground, or avoided the subject entirely, guilt diminished the pleasure she otherwise felt in her days.

  o0o

  One Sunday morning late in February, snow softly fell on the pony trap wheeling down the white road from the Aubignys’ chapel in the early morning light. Peg had stayed behind, nursing a sore throat, so Parrette and John-Coachman attended Mass alon
e.

  They rode in companionable silence for a time, until he said slowly, “We both have a son at sea.”

  Parrette was surprised at this statement of the obvious. They had been talking about their sons, and sharing their worries about the long silences and the known dangers, for weeks. “Yes,” she said.

  “And we were each married the once, you and I.”

  She glanced up at his profile, which she could not help thinking was much finer than any of those statues she had looked upon in Italy.

  “But yes,” she said.

  “And it’s glad I am that your husband is no longer on this Earth, or I might have to seek him out to teach him a lesson in manners.” The deep voice became more Irish.

  “But that was long ago,” she pointed out. “And me, I am sorry that your wife is no longer on Earth, because she sounds like an excellent woman.”

  “And so she was, so she was, God and Mary bless her.” He lifted the reins briefly as the horses’ ears twitched. But it was nothing but a snow bird bursting from a hedge, sending a white shower along the edge of the road. “I dreamed about her last night. Do ye want to hear my dream?”

  Parrette discovered her heart beating fast. “I would.”

  “I dreamed she looked down upon me from Heaven, and gave me the eye. ‘Look for happiness while ye can,’ she said. ‘Ye’ll be here soon enough, now.’ Do you feel the same way I do, Parrette Duflot? Any day you come to us over the stable is a day for celebrating. And when you are not there, I’m thinking about you.”

  When Parrette was fourteen and thought herself giddy with love, it had proved to be no love at all. But she had learned something about love since then. “John Cassidy, you know the reason I cannot say yes as yet. Once Anna finds her way to telling my lord everything, and they are understanding one another, then I will know I have kept my promise. And I can look to myself. Can you wait?”

  His slow smile turned her way. “I can wait,” he said.

  Parrette returned to the house, her emotions in such turmoil she felt like a girl again. It was not at all a pleasant sensation. She liked to think ahead, to be prepared for anything. She was mistress of herself, with a good brain and a deft hand. And yet, ever since coming to this house, she had come to see that it was not enough anymore.

  Tell Anna, or wait for Anna to trust the baron on her own, before the poisonous widow could do it for her?

  I will wait a bit longer, she decided when she crossed the slushy stable yard toward the house.

  Her mood was not improved to discover Polly weeping softly in the cold, narrow stairway leading up to the servants’ quarters, where Parrette headed to get rid of her coat and hat. “What is wrong?”

  In answer Polly held up the new gown they had labored over. It was a delicate muslin with a gauze overdress, figured with tiny flowers. Polly had embroidered tiny gold centers to each flower, and a line of laurel leaves around the neck and the gather at the sleeves. It was one of their triumphs—and here it was, ripped all down the front, the material pulled awry at the high waist. Harriet had obviously been romping in it, and stepped on the hem. Or someone else had stepped on it.

  “Tiens! It is not ruined, this dress. The gauze along the top? Yes. But look. We can cut here and here, and drape it so, and make it over into a half-dress. High in front, long in back. I saw a picture just like, in one of the magazines. Come. You must get ready for church. You know Noll drives very slowly, and you do not want to be late. I will get started while you are gone.”

  Parrette scowled as she took the gown from Polly. She had trained Anna to take care of her clothes, and during their Paris days, the dancers had appreciated her work, treating their gowns as rare and precious as money was so scarce.

  She liked Harriet, but disapproved of her heedlessness, which seemed to have worsened ever since she found out she was to go to London.

  o0o

  Parrette was right about the heedlessness, but wrong about the reason. Harriet sat in church scowling at the faded blue light in the windows. She was cold, and wanted winter to be over. And how could Anna say that sound was so beautiful in this church? Did that simply mean you could hear Dr. Blythe from the back? The hymns just sounded like people singing, some as croaking as old frogs.

  Anyway, she didn’t want to hear Bible verses from Corinthians. Those Corinthians were long gone, and they never had a problem like Robert Colby. She was certain she could feel him staring now. Why did he have to come back to Barford Magna at all if he was going to be fun one day, and disagreeable the next?

  After church, she dodged around Caro, who was walking slowly with Henry, and she pretended she didn’t hear Penelope’s sharp, “Harriet, pray slow down. Where are your manners?”

  Penelope was standing near the rector like a watchdog, probably judging everyone who came out of church, as if she had taken St. Peter’s place at the heavenly gates. Only who’d want into any heaven that Pen approved of?

  Harriet looked for Cicely or Jane, so they could talk over the disaster at the Ashburns’ soiree the night before. Where were they?

  “Harriet.”

  She spun around, then crossed her arms when she saw Robert. He had always been tall, but now he looked taller than ever, with those high shirt points, and those huge gold buttons on his coat. “I wanted to apologize,” he began.

  “You ruined my gown,” she snapped. “Ruined it!”

  “It was an accident,” he said miserably, all the words he had carefully planned fleeing from his head. What could he say? You couldn’t offer satisfaction to a girl.

  “It was stupid,” she shot back in a fierce whisper. Both were aware of the rest of the congregation talking a few paces away.

  She stepped behind one of the tree trunks to screen herself from Pen, at least, and when he followed, she said, “You were stupid. Why do you hate Tom Rackham all of a sudden, when you were in each other’s pockets before you went off to university? He’s not good enough for your exalted self, now you are come down from Oxford?”

  “He acts as if he was the richest dog on the turf,” Robert muttered.

  “Tom?” Harriet repeated. “Tom hasn’t changed. You have. You walk around looking as if you have a stomach ailment, and you think you have to claim all a person’s dances, and—”

  “Stomach ailment?” His surly expression altered to astonishment. Then he flushed. In his mirror, he looked rather like one of those dangerous and brooding fellows in the German novels.

  “You have ruined all our fun, with your spooney quarrel,” Harriet went on. “Everyone is taking sides, or refusing straight out to come when you are invited. Did you really think that everyone was sick, or afraid of slipping on ice, when the company was so thin at the Rackhams’ the other evening? Everything was wonderful before you came back, and you turned all the boys into spooneys.”

  He pressed his lips together and bowed jerkily. “I will remove myself from your presence,” he said awfully.

  Her anger vanished. “Robert,” she said, catching him by the arm.

  He stopped, looking down at her wide eyes. His heartbeat thundered in his ears.

  “Make it up with Tom, please?” Harriet said.

  “Why is Tom so all-fired important? Are you attached?”

  “No!” She stepped back, irritated. “How did you get that idea into your head?”

  “I apologize.” He bowed stiffly, and was about to speak again when they both heard his sister Georgiana calling him. “I must go. May I . . . may I call on you?”

  Harriet gazed at him in exasperation. What maggot had got into his head now? He was used to ride over whenever he wanted, usually with Tom, sometimes with Bartholomew Ashburn as well. What did they do to him at Oxford? “Of course you may. Don’t keep your family waiting.”

  Harriet turned away before he could respond, and made her way toward the row of carriages. Her mood worsened when she spied Penelope tugging at Caro’s ugly old carriage cloak, her breath clouding as she scolded her sister up into the sha
bby one-horse trap that Penelope had hired from the Pig. Harriet paused to watch Penelope take her place, head high as if she were in a tumbril on the way to the guillotine.

  “I feel for Caro,” Harriet said, seeing Anna close by. What a contrast she was to her half-sisters’ shabbiness, in her bottle-green pelisse with its fur lining, her hat matching with a green feather curving down next to her cheek, and her beautiful smile.

  Harriet sighed, wishing she could look that stylish. Even though she was acquiring the right clothes, she could not get the way of moving about so well. Every time she tried before a mirror, she looked like someone had thrust a stick down her neck.

  “I hate the way Pen keeps Caro on short commons, just because she’s the worst skinflint alive,” she muttered as she climbed into the carriage. “She enjoys being a skinflint. But I know Caro doesn’t. She won’t stand up to her, though. Cannot bear loud voices.”

  Anna had also seen Henry walking about with Dr. Blythe, and once the two had stopped, both glancing Caro’s way as she talked to the dowager. She trusted that was a hopeful sign, but said nothing as the carriage door opened and Emily entered, a now-familiar pucker between her fine brows. It would soon become a line, Anna thought, as Emily said, “It is so embarrassing, Penelope hiring that dogcart that a grocer’s boy would not deign to drive. Of course she gives no thought to how it must make the family look.”

  She settled herself, hands crushed in her muff, then added, “If I thought Henry might listen to me, I would ask him to buy them a carriage. Lady Northcote, you might perform this office, as he listens to you.”

  Harriet eyed her, sensing undercurrents she could not define. But she had little interest in what Emily thought.

  The dowager arrived with Henry, and they were soon on their way back to the Manor.

  34

  A thaw over the next day meant the formal drawing room fire was lit in expectation of the customary Tuesday callers. Anna resigned herself to duty in spite of a disinclination for sitting downstairs. But when she looked into the room with its inviting fire, she discovered she was alone.