Elisabeth Fairchild (13 page)

“What did you say her name is?” They clamored, their cheer too marked.

“Felicity.”

“Felicity, would you like to play with a lad who is about your age?”

“It is all right that the child should play with Robert, is it not?”

“But of course.” The eldest, Cecelia, forced a smile. “I am sure dear Robert would welcome the company of another child his age. I believe he is in the Old Maid’s Tower.”

“The governess must be shown the way.”
Shown the way, out of the way. Into the old maid’s tower.

Faces lined the walls, richly dressed, lace at their throats, faces that spoke of past wealth, prosperity and power, faces that found them wanting--the illegitimate child and the governess.

Elaine stiffened her spine.
I know my place. My station.

She quietly beckoned Felicity. Together they turned to follow the maid who answered summons of the bell as though afraid to speak, or look upon her mistresses. She bowed her head, and turned her face to the wall as directions were given, and then her soundless black slippers scampered up the stairs ahead of them with unseemly haste, as if in flight, as if in fear, or perhaps, in all fairness, she simply had a great deal of work to do.

T
he lad, Robert, had two great armies of carved ivory and ebony wood chess pieces disposed in fighting position across hills and valleys of green baize. “You will not touch them, if you please,” he said. “For I have been very careful in their arrangement, and I am not at all certain that a girl would know how to go about playing at sieges and battles.”

Too shy to protest, and unused to the company of little boys, Felicity hung back wordlessly.

Elaine eyed the two of them a moment before she asked, “Have you paper and paints? Watercolors? We shall entertain ourselves that way, and you may continue your battles uninterrupted.”

The nanny, an older woman with little real control over her charge, thought that a splendid idea, and went at once to fetch the paints.

Settled at a table, brush in hand, Felicity continued to eye the lad with unabashed curiosity, as the lad made explosive noises and mimicked the sound of trumpet calls, and the anguished cries of the injured and dying, as knights and pawns, rooks and castles fell.

With little hope of distracting Felicity entirely, Elaine suggested, “Perhaps we could paint bits of landscape for our kind host’s battlefield.”

Felicity, who eyed their “kind host” without the slightest evidence of charity or appreciation, brightened with curiosity. “Do you mean something like a grove of trees, or a lake?”

“Precisely. Walls, haystacks, barns or cottages, even a castle if you are feeling ambitious. We shall cut them out and devise a way to make the pictures stand up.”

Elaine did not mention that she and her sisters had long ago built just such a landscape for their dolls, nor that they had been far more enthusiastic playmates than the lad who glanced their way only occasionally. In watching the plight of a child trying to insert herself where she was not wanted, for the first time she fully appreciate her good fortune in having been blessed with loving sisters.

“That sounds splendid,” Felicity said. “The wounded will have cover to retreat to.”

“Care to join us?” Elaine asked the boy, who edged toward them, battle sounds fallen away that he might listen.

“What do you know about retreats, and taking cover?”

“My father is a marksman,” Felicity informed him with a hint of the same belligerence with which she had faced down Mrs. Bundy and her posture perfector.

“Really? What color is his uniform?” He sounded unconvinced.

“Bottle green,” she said. “With a black velvet collar trimmed in black braid.”

“The Experimentals!”

He was awed, and Elaine, who knew so little of this part of her employer’s history found herself listening intently as the lad sat down and took up a paintbrush and did his best to impress them with his knowledge of regiment and rank, battlefield victories and failures.

Thus they got along for the better part of an hour. A landscape of painted trees and a stone barn took shape, and a lake shone blue between two hills of green baize. The children laughed and chattered and got along rather famously despite their stand-offish beginning.

“Where did your father fight?” the lad asked as he put the finishing touches on what appeared to be a castle ruin.

“Vimiero, Vigo, Waterloo,” Lord Wharton’s voice startled them from the doorway. “Perhaps you have heard of them?”

They turned from their paints to find Valentine Wharton lounging against the doorframe. How long had he stood listening?

The children abandoned their paintbrushes and ran to him. “Indeed I wish to wear the colors,” the lad said. “Did you shoot many men, my lord?”

Felicity echoed the lad. “Did you, papa?”

As curious as she was to hear the answer herself, Elaine felt it inappropriate topic for children. She opened her mouth to say as much, but Lord Wharton did not hesitate in his response.

“Regrettably so,” he murmured. “It is what one does in battle. But I will tell you the very worst thing one does in battle if you will show me what you are doing.”

The worst thing in battle?

He glanced at Elaine, as if he could feel the heat of her forbidding stare. As the children led him past her, his lips twisted in a teasing smile, and he winked as if he knew her fears, and would allay them with his customary charm.

Elaine watched with all the brooding attention of a protective hen over a clutch of eggs. Now and then he shot another look her way and smiled a teasing smile.

The children were pleased to show him their blooming, pleased with his every sign of interest as he drew them out in detailing how they had managed to make the pictures stand on wooden legs, and took pleasure in the little island on their painted lake.

All the while Elaine was imagining the worst things soldiers did, the worst picture he might paint for tender young minds.

“But now you must tell us the worst thing one does in battle, my lord,” Robert reminded him.

Felicity went very still.

Elaine felt her jaw tighten.

He picked up a black knight and said, “The worst . . . Undoubtedly the worst thing about battle is the loss . . .”

Loss of limbs? Loss of life? Loss of human decency?

“of all one leaves behind.” His gaze met hers, again, a playful, teasing look. And yet there was sadness. How had she missed this profound depth of sadness in him?

“You see . . .” He cupped his daughter’s chin in the palm of his hand--such a gentle touch. “I might have seen my daughter born, and known her mother had died had I not been with Moore in Copenhagen.”

How intently Felicity listened, how unblinking her regard.

Elaine loosed pent breath in a sigh.

“I might have celebrated her first birthday, or seen her first steps but for the fact that I was on my way from Sweden to Spain.”

Great tears welled in the child’s eyes. Her father handed her his handkerchief, a snow white flag of truce between them. His regret was genuine. Moisture gleamed unspilled in his eyes as his daughter’s tears flowed.

“I might have heard her speak her first words, indeed read her first letters but for the fact that I was following Wellington into Belgium.”

Felicity fell into his arms, weeping upon his shoulder. He held her close, patting her back, murmuring in her ear.

He wins my heart, along with his daughter’s.

Elaine coaxed the lad into a conversation about his ancestors’ roles in distant battles, that Felicity might recover herself. When father and daughter had time enough for the wiping away of all trace of tears, the two joined them.

“Enough of battles, lad,” Valentine said. “Tell Felicity and Miss Deering what the Biddington and Myddulph mottoes are. I think them fine words, well worth remembering.”

Robert Biddington Myddulph drew himself up proudly. “Do you know Latin?” he asked Felicity.

Felicity looked at Elaine uncertainly. “Only a very little,” she said. “Miss Deering has only just begun to teach me.”

“Can you translate
In veritate triumpho
?”

Felicity’s brow puckered. “Something about triumph.”

Very good
, Elaine thought, and waited for Valentine to say something--to notice the child who so desperately wished to win his approval. And when he made no move to do so, she said the words for him. “Very good, Felicity.”

Her praise was lost as the boy Robert said at the same time, with an attitude of superiority, “I triumph in the truth.”

“Wonderful words,” Lord Wharton said, with a smile for the boy.

Can you not see the look of longing in your daughter’s eyes?
Elaine wanted to shout.
You must recognize her intelligence as much as her grief.

“
Sublimiora petamus.
” Hands on hips, the boy uttered the phrase like a challenge.

Felicity threw a desperate look in her direction. “I don’t . . .”

“
Petamus
is to seek,” she said. “Now, can you guess what
Sublimiora
means if you take the first half of the word?”

“Is it something like sublime?” Felicity asked.

“And what does sublime mean?” her father asked, head cocked.

“The exalted,” Felicity said.

His lordship shot a look at Elaine, as if surprised his child should know, as if impressed with a governess’s teaching. “Very good,” he said, the praise meant for both of them.

“Seek the sublime,” Felicity said with a blush of pleasure. Elaine felt the same bloom of pride her student experienced, for there was a hint of the sublime in this moment of truth and growing understanding between father and daughter.

A bittersweet moment. It occurred to her that such moments of pride in her student, in her teaching, might be all of the sublime, left to her.

Watching Lord Wharton leave them to return to a world, once hers, that no longer welcomed her, Elaine’s heart ached. She thought of her father, and mourned her losses.

I
t is time to take a wife, to beget an heir.
Valentine sat amidst the Biddington sisters as the first course was carried in on silver trays, and knew it was true. He must look for a suitable match. Someone of good reputation and excellent family, like these excellent sisters. Someone attractive enough to grace his table. Like Penny. He could not long for her forever. Indeed he had not thought of her for several days.

Curious.

He had not thought the trip could distract him so completely. He had Miss Deering to thank for that. Too much time worrying over the governess left him little opportunity to dwell on the past. Penny. He could not clearly conjure her face to memory in imagining someone to smile at him over the lip of a glass as Miss Deliah Biddington did now.

It is best that I forget her face. Penny. Someone else must insist hot tea arrive at his elbow throughout the meal rather than the butler with his wine carafe. He shook his head, held a hand over his glass, and considered something other than the spirits mellow wash down his throat.

Kisses.
He would think of kisses. The sweet taste of a woman’s willing mouth. He looked at the eldest Miss Biddington.
Not that mouth. No. Another mouth. Another smile.
He would never forget the reluctant bloom of Penny’s all too infrequent smiles. Like Miss Deering. The quirk of her lips never meant to be alluring, and yet he could not stop his eyes from fixing on the plump, plush of her lower lip. An honest mouth. A generous mouth.

He thought of Palmer. Wondered if this was how inappropriate desires began. Over dinner, watching a woman’s lips. Miss Deering tucked away upstairs, with the children. Gone but not forgotten. He must not think of her, vowed to himself he would not think of her. And then, of course, could think of nothing and no one else.

He must look for a woman of interesting conversation, keen wit, a more than adequate intellect. Miss Deering. He shook his head. The boy. It is the lad makes me think this thing. Such pride the ladies take in knowing he carries on the name. Did his own mother once hold such hope for the future? Nothing but chaos and shame had he left in his wake. Even Felicity. Dearest child. Dearest motherless child.

It is time to take a wife. One who understands. One who can love my ill-begotten child.
One who holds hope for her future.

And from into this self-directive again rose thought of Miss Deering, wise, understanding Miss Deering, who loved his daughter almost as much as he.

Elaine sat in the housekeeper’s parlor at a small drum table before the fire, a privilege Mrs. Olive made sure to thank the housekeeper for, not once but many times.

“But of course,” Mrs. Corwen said with a laugh. “You did not think I would relegate you to the heat and noise of the kitchen, did you?”

“Very kind of you to welcome us to your comfortable parlor.”

Laughter and the clink of crystal and china sounded from the formal dining room, just below, an arena Elaine had once thought to have dominion over.

How little thought I gave then to where the housekeeper ate.

She knew better now, the descending order of privilege and authority that had once ruled her father’s house, as much as it did this castle. Gardeners ate in the potting shed, from buckets they carried away from the kitchen, after the kitchen staff ate in the kitchen, but only after the house staff had been served in the great hall at a long wooden table, seated in descending order of power and importance. And this service was commenced only after the housekeeper had been taken a tray in her own private parlor, said tray not to arrive before the sweet and cheese course had been delivered to the master or mistress and their guests in the formal dining room.

And visiting governesses?

Governesses did not belong in the kitchen any more than they belonged in the formal dining room. Elaine was to have been served a tray in her room--a lonely prospect--but when Mrs. Olive was asked if she cared to join the housekeeper of Caxton in her private parlor by the same maidservant who delivered the tray, Elaine asked, “May I join you?”