FIVE
Alexandra, about to launch a discussion of Aristophanes, found herself interrupted by a goat.
“Oh, I’m awfully sorry!” exclaimed Abigail, jumping from her chair to snatch at the scruffy beast’s leather collar. “No, no, dear. Not the curtain, if you please.”
“Most unappetizing,” sighed Alexandra.
Abigail looked up with an apologetic expression. “It’s milking time, you see. You’ve come to find me, haven’t you, you clever thing? Ouch,” she added, as the goat butted its granite head against her chin.
“Abigail, my dear.” Alexandra placed her finger in the crease of her book and closed the pages together. “I don’t mean to dampen your enthusiasm, but we did not travel a thousand miles to this . . . to this delightfully rustic outpost in order for you to milk goats. We came to study, to elevate our minds.”
“But the poor thing needs milking. Don’t you, darling? Yes? Oh, look, I say, that’s my petticoat . . .”
“I’m sure there are any number of . . . of goat . . . people . . . to perform the task. Or at least one or two.” Alexandra frowned at her sister, who circled about the goat in an awkward pas de deux, attempting to recover her petticoat from the creature’s surly jaws.
“But there aren’t, really. The men are all out sowing the vegetable fields, and poor Morini’s got her hands full with the cheese-making, and Maria and Francesca are turning the rooms out before the priest arrives tomorrow for the Easter blessing . . .”
Alexandra held up her hand. “Enough! I fail to see why . . .”
“Besides,” Abigail went on, freeing her petticoat at last and grasping the goat’s collar with authority, “I like milking goats.”
“But Aristophanes . . .”
“I’ve read the man already. Twice,” Abigail said, over her shoulder. “In the original Greek.”
Alexandra rose to her feet and called after her. “In which case you can perhaps lead our discussion . . .”
But Abigail was already gone, through the gap in the plastered wall by which the goat had exited a moment ago. A fresh gust of breeze filled the room in her wake, smelling of damp new grass and tilled earth, and Alexandra dropped to her seat with a sigh. “You weren’t much help,” she said, turning to where Lady Somerton occupied a rush-seated chair, her book lying open and forgotten in her lap.
“What’s that?” Her cousin raised her dark head.
Alexandra’s eyes rolled upward. “Exactly. Why is it,” she asked nobody in particular, “I’m the only one of us who takes this endeavor at all seriously?”
“I beg your pardon,” Lilibet said, rearranging her book. “I take it all very seriously. Where were we? Why, where’s Abigail gone?”
“Abigail’s busy with her damned goats and cheeses and whatnot, and you’re mooning over Penhallow, and . . .”
“Mooning! Over Penhallow!”
“. . . and we’re reduced to this . . . this ramshackle little room for our discussions . . .” Alexandra waved her hand to encompass the groaning wooden beams, the yellowed plaster crumbling from the walls, the tendril of wisteria curling luxuriously downward from a wide crack in the ceiling.
“It’s a lovely room,” said Lilibet. “It catches all the daytime sun.”
“That’s because there are holes in the roof!” Alexandra thrust a finger in the direction of one particularly offensive example. “And the walls!”
“The holes hardly matter, now that the weather’s turned.”
“That’s not the point!”
Lilibet shrugged her white cotton shoulders. “Would you rather we meet in the hall? Or the dining room?”
Alexandra tossed her book atop the small wooden table next to her chair. “I don’t see why the men were allowed the library. There are no holes in the library walls.”
“But it’s dark and faces north. And it’s in their wing.” Lilibet closed her book, with a little too much eagerness. “That was your idea, don’t you recall? Separate wings.”
“I thought they’d be gone in a fortnight.” She rose from her chair and strode to the entirely superfluous window. The hillside rolled away before her, ancient terraced fields shooting up with the eager new green of cornstalks and grapevines, down to the red-roofed village nestled in the valley below. To her left, she could see the local men in the vegetable gardens, bending and straightening as they tucked the seeds into the newly turned soil; to her right loomed the opposite wing of the castle, where Wallingford and Penhallow and Burke had entrenched their belongings in the few habitable rooms, stubbornly refusing to admit defeat.
“Of course it was an excellent idea,” Lilibet said. “Reasonable and equitable, and saves us the awkwardness of meeting them, except at mealtimes.”
Alexandra turned from the window with a little smile. “Oh, terribly awkward, isn’t it? Terribly awkward that poor old Penhallow is as desperately in love with you as before.”
A blush rose up in Lilibet’s elegant cheeks. “That’s not true. He hardly speaks to me at all.”
“Could there be more damning proof than that? Oh, come now.” Alexandra crossed her arms, enjoying the sight of Lilibet’s confusion. “Don’t be maidenly.”
Lilibet rose to her feet, book clutched between her fingers. “You shouldn’t speak of such things. You shouldn’t accuse me like that.”
“Accuse you?” Alexandra started. “Accuse you of what?”
“He’s nothing to me. I’d never . . . I have a husband, Alex!”
“Good God! Darling, of course I didn’t mean . . .” Alexandra stepped forward and took Lilibet’s shoulders. “I only meant that he admires you. Of course he does. You’re frightfully admirable.”
“I am not.” Lilibet returned Alexandra’s gaze with serene blue eyes. “I am not admirable. If I were admirable, I’d have stayed in England.”
“He’s a beast, Lilibet. A beast.”
Lilibet spoke quietly. “Yes, he is. But he’s also the father of my child.”
She stepped away, the book still clasped in her hands, and left the room.
Alexandra made a movement to follow her, but then some force seemed to press against her limbs, stilling the impulse. She turned again to the window.
A cloud, scudding past the sun, cast the broad panorama in shadow. The men in the garden had stopped work and were passing around a large brown jug, from which each took a long and thirsty draw. Alexandra watched them idly, their easy movements and familiar gestures, and it occurred to her that they’d probably known one another since childhood. Had tilled these fields as their fathers had, and their grandfathers. Had eked existence from this dramatic patch of landscape all their lives, with hard work and simple reward, knowing nothing of rates of return and company shares and the bitter shock of retrenchment.
A movement caught her eye, from the other side of the scene before her: a figure striking forth across the crest of the vineyard terrace with giant, purposeful strides. She knew who it was, of course, even before the sun, slipping at last from behind the covering cloud, lit his bare head in an explosion of burnished red gold.
Without realizing it, she leaned forward against the windowsill, bumping her nose against the mottled glass. For such a tall man, he moved with surprising grace. His long legs ate the ground and his arms swung alongside in perfect cadence, and though she couldn’t see his face from this angle, she knew exactly how it would look: forehead creased in thought, lawn green eyes narrowed, gaze ravaging the ground directly ahead.
“Molto bello, no?” came a voice at her shoulder.
Alexandra jumped away from the window and spun around.
Signorina Morini’s dark eyes sparkled. “You do not think so?” She nodded at the window. “The young English. So tall, so bellissimo. Such eyes, like the young grass, the first green of the spring.”
“I . . . I really don’t know.” Alexandra folded her arms and glanced outside. “He doesn’t speak to me.”
Signorina Morini made a broad shrug. “Ah, that is nothing. This gentleman, he says not much. But he feels”—she pressed her fist against her breast—“he feels much.”
“How do you know that?”
“Gentlemen, I understand. The one who speaks little, feels much.” Her face opened into a smile. “You like him? Signore Burke?”
“Me? I . . . I hardly know him. He’s a scientist,” Alexandra added, as if that might explain everything.
“He is very clever, this Signore Burke. He works all the day in the . . . what is the word? The little . . . house? For the carriages? The one near the lake, in the valley.”
“Does he? How lovely for him.” Alexandra glanced quickly through the window and back again.
Signorina Morini was still smiling. “You like, perhaps, I tell you where to find this little house?”
“I haven’t the slightest interest, I assure you.”
Signorina Morini moved past her to the gap in the wall, in a rush of air that smelled tantalizingly of fresh bread. She stood in the sunshine and pointed her long, sturdy arm down the terraced slope to the valley. “Is down the terraces, so. To the left. You see the trees at the bottom, by the lake. And there is the little house.” She turned back to Alexandra. “Is one time the house of the—oh, these English words—he watches the carriages, the coaches.” Her fingers rubbed helplessly against her thumbs.
“The coachman?”
“Yes! The coach man.” She said it slowly, as two separate words, as if her tongue were testing out the sounds.
“And doesn’t he live there anymore?”
Signorina Morini flicked her fingers. “Is no coach man now. Is only Giacomo. I come to tell you the post is arrive this morning from the village. You have letter, newspaper.” She nodded at the wooden table, where a small pile of correspondence lay next to Aristophanes.
Alexandra squinted at the topmost letter. “Thank you.”
“Is no trouble,” said Signorina Morini. She turned to leave, and then looked back over her shoulder at Alexandra, eyes crinkled with good nature. “There is also letter for Signore Burke, I think. Is a shame the girls are so busy with the cheese and the clean.”
“A dreadful shame. He shan’t receive his letter until he returns.”
Signorina Morini nodded to the gap in the wall. “Down the terraces, to the left. The trees, the lake. No one goes there. Is very quiet.”
“How peaceful for him. Thank you ever so much, signorina.”
“Is nothing, milady.” The housekeeper winked and disappeared through the doorway, leaving the faint scent of baking bread hanging in the air behind her.
Alexandra stared for a moment at the small stack of envelopes on the table. In her earlier life, her married life, the ritual of the twice-daily post had brought her much joy. Letters, invitations, newspapers; even the bills from her dressmaker and her milliner gave her a certain amount of satisfaction, since they were easily settled and reminded her of the comforting material abundance that surrounded her.
No longer.
Buck up, Morley, she told herself. You might as well look. Bad news won’t improve by ignoring it.
A breeze floated in from the garden, verdant and delicate, and Alexandra let it carry her toward the table and the envelopes. A newspaper lay beneath, the Times, which Wallingford had instructed his London solicitor to forward weekly. She picked it up first, sliding it out from under the letters, and scanned the headlines. The usual rubbish, Parliament and Ireland and whatnot. The sort of thing she used to care about, when her own world, her personal world, had been properly secure. Oh, the hours she’d spent arguing cabinet appointments and Commons votes with her political friends, in her well-appointed drawing room, with champagne and dainty sandwiches of thinly sliced ham or watercress or Stilton cheese, delivered on polished salvers by a fleet of tall footmen! Her salons had been legendary. She’d been the queen of them all, the darling, her place assured and her future serene.
Once.
She let the newspaper fall from her fingertips and reached for the topmost letter. She recognized the stationery at once, even the handwriting in which her name and address had been neatly inscribed. She slipped her finger beneath the seal, opened the envelope, and pulled out the paper within.
The bank presented its compliments, and requested a further deposit of funds before additional payments could be honored. It respectfully referred her attention to the size of the overdraft, and remained her obedient servant.
She folded the paper with trembling fingers, tucked it back inside the envelope, and picked up the next letter.
This one was longer and less personal, addressed to the shareholders of the Manchester Machine Works Company, Limited, and describing in woeful detail the Company’s inability to produce a workable prototype this quarter due to an unexpected failure of its patented propulsion device and lack of capital at reasonable rates. The Company enjoined the patience of shareholders, as the Board, headed by its chairman, Mr. William Hartley, had a number of proposals in which it was actively engaged, and high hopes that an investor might be found to fund further development.
The Company thanked her for her faith in the future of mechanized personal transportation, and remained her obedient servant.
This time Alexandra stuffed the paper back in its envelope with considerably more venom. Oh, no doubt William Hartley had any amount of high hopes. He always had, the little fool, her husband’s well-meaning and deeply impractical nephew. How on earth had she been persuaded to allow him trusteeship over the investment of her jointure? She must have been mad!
She slapped the envelope back down on the table. Well, not mad, of course. Simply young and unseasoned and newly engaged to a wealthy man, without a thought in the world that invested money might actually disappear if one weren’t careful. If one paid no attention to business letters and allowed one’s well-intentioned step-nephew to invest almost the entirety of one’s jointure in his newly formed limited liability corporation. The Manchester Machine Works Company! It sounded so stable, so reliable, the sort of enterprise that turned out practical items like sewing machines and . . . and that sort of thing.
Not horseless carriages.
Now she had nothing, or nearly nothing. No more salons, no more elegant house in town, no endless stream of friends who worshipped her every word. She had her title and her twenty-odd thousand useless Manchester Machine Works shares; she had a sister entirely dependent on her, for upkeep and for dowry; she had debts and shame and perhaps fifty more years of life ahead of her, with no idea how to live them.
She had to get her old life back. Because if she wasn’t Lady Morley, leader of London society, then who the devil was she?
And who would give Abigail the future she deserved?
Alexandra turned her head toward the window, to the bright patch of sky hanging above the valley and the lake in the trees below the terraced vineyard. She reached down for the envelopes on the table and sorted through them until her blurred and stinging eyes identified the name of Mr. Phineas Fitzwilliam Burke, R.S.
Horseless carriages. What did she know about damned horseless carriages?
Evidently, she would have to learn.
Taking up the letter in her hand, with the newspaper tucked beneath her arm, she slipped through the gap in the wall and headed down the hillside.