A Yuletide Treasure (9 page)

He chuckled. “There was some little preparation involved, of course. I didn’t run down the drive without so much as a florin or a clean shirt. Perhaps next time I shall try that.”

“What did your parents think of your leaving home? How old were you?” She stopped. “I don’t mean to be inquisitive.”

“Why not? If you don’t ask questions, how will you learn?”

“Socrates?”

“Perhaps. It only makes sense, but I can’t prove it.” He observed her in silence for a moment. “You know Socrates?”

“Not firsthand. Very little of my knowledge comes firsthand. I don’t read Greek or Latin, so I only know the ancient philosophers through what others have written about them. Several of my friends at home know them well, however.”

“Female friends?” he asked.

Camilla shook her head slightly. “Several gentlemen of my neighborhood have formed the habit of stopping by several times a month at my mother’s house. They discuss lofty subjects.”

“Sounds like the Royal Society.”

“With this exception—women are not even permitted to listen at the Royal Society.”

“Nor to speak?” He raised one eyebrow loftily.

Camilla was forced to laugh. “Not very often, perhaps. They would be distressed to discover how little of their discourse I... I understand.”

“Now, why do I believe,” he began, sitting back against the cushion, “that you intended to say not how little you understand but how little you agree with them.”

“Perhaps, but it isn’t very grammatical or polite to say so.” Camilla turned her face toward Dr. March and Tinarose. Sir Philip saw entirely too much with his parti-colored eyes.

“You say these young men come to your mother’s house several times a month. Why? Haven’t they any of their own to go to?”

“Several.”

“Yet they come to your mother’s house. There must be some powerful inducement there.”

“Oh, there is,” she said, turning her gaze upon him again. She smiled secretly to see him taken aback and was pleased to know that he had already a high enough opinion of her demureness to be surprised by her seeming immodesty. She let him hang upon his regret for a moment. “My mother bakes the most delicious
beignet de pommes
on earth. Not even you, widely traveled though you are, have ever tasted better.”

“Can you make them?”

“I haven’t her lightness of touch with the pastry.”

“I think your touch is sufficiently light for anything.”

The look that passed between them then was not measurable in anything but heartbeats, the oldest form of timekeeping and the most accurate when it came to gauging feelings. Sir Philip’s eyes were telling her that the physical admiration he’d known in the coach had already deepened into an acknowledgment of pleasure in her company and conversation. Camilla could not prevent a warmer feeling blossoming in her own breast. She felt that she’d met a friend.

For all that, a chilly feeling arose with the consciousness that she had already cracked, if not broken, several of her mother’s most dearly held and most often reiterated rules. Perhaps it was “fast” to be too friendly even when every feeling encouraged her to ripen this friendship. Therefore, it was Camilla who looked away first

Then Lady LaCorte came in, and the instant blackening of her face when she saw Sir Philip and Camilla
tête-à-tête
informed
Camilla that she’d made an enemy.

At dinner, Camilla saw several servants she’d not realized the manor house possessed. There was a frigidly correct butler whose name seemed, however unlikely, to be Samson. Mavis did not serve, but an older maid whose quiet urging to “take another chop, do,” proclaimed her to be one of Mrs. Duke’s children.

Since the numbers were uneven and they only used half the large table, Camilla sat alone on one side, while Sir Philip and Lady LaCorte bracketed her at the head and foot. Tinarose sat next to the doctor on the other side.

In the golden glow of the many-branched candelabra, Dr. March glowed like a highly polished bronze statue. His thoughts and words were those of a man of science while his appetite was that of a young man who’d taken unaccustomed exercise in winter.

“I have been meaning to learn to ride, but there never seemed to be enough time now that I’m living here. There certainly was no time while I was training.”

“Of course, you lived in town then, didn’t you?” Tinarose said, making excuses.

“Edinburgh,” he said. “They have horses there, but they also have very hard streets.”

“Hard streets?”

“You know. Cobblestones and the like. I couldn’t see learning to ride there. All the falling off.”

‘You should learn to ride while the snow is still thick upon the ground. It will be safer for you.”

“I found it no less distressing,” he said, glancing with a half laugh at Sir Philip.

“Oh, come. It was only the once, and you landed in a large snowbank. Believe me, I didn’t get off nearly so gently when I learned. It was during the longest drought in years. The ground was like a sheet of iron. As I remember well,” he added with a reminiscent grimace.

“Yes, but how old were you?”

“Six, I think. It was the year before I went to school.”

“Ah,” the doctor said. Turning to Tinarose, he leaned toward her confidentially. “The young, Miss LaCorte, being more flexible may take a toss without harm. We who are older cannot so easily recoup from such a shock.”

At first, Tinarose’s eyes flickered in pained surprise when he seemed to refer to her as young. But the latter half of his comment, grouping her in the “older” category with him, made her smile hopefully and nod her complete agreement.

Camilla glanced at the black and silent figure at the end of the table. Lady LaCorte showed animation only whenever Sir Philip spoke to Camilla. Her own daughter’s lively interest in the doctor seemed to escape her notice.

As a good guest, Camilla tried to divide her attention evenly between her hostess and her host. She attempted to develop topics of interest to whichever of them she was speaking. Yet even while discussing the virulent weather with Sir Philip and praising the excellence of the dinner to Lady LaCorte, Camilla’s mind busied itself with the mystery of the Manor. It could not be that Lady LaCorte had transferred her affections so quickly from her husband to her brother-in-law.

Not because such matters were beyond the scope of the human heart in even less time than the length of Lady LaCorte’s widowhood, but she gave no sign of even being fond of Sir Philip. She lapsed into silence more often than she spoke, staring off at the dark corners of the room where the candlelight could not quite reach.

So if it was not love and its accompanying jealousy that plagued Lady LaCorte, what was the fount of her dislike for Camilla? Mere natural antipathy? The whim of a pregnant woman? All well and good, but what about the others? Surely the servants could not be so completely under her sway that they’d dislike someone on her orders?

Having lived with her mother for her entire life with often no more service than that offered by one maid who obliged by the day and spent the nights at her parents’ farm, Camilla had not enough experience of master-servant relationships to know how far a mistress’s influence might extend. But considering that the servants had disliked her long before Lady LaCorte could have heard of her presence, Camilla was still confused. She resolved to watch and wait.

“You said you like to read, Miss Twainsbury,” Dr. March said. “What is your field of study?”

“No field, sir, or all of them.”

“Ah, novels,” the doctor said, looking wise or, at any rate, arch. “A young woman’s
Thousand and One Nights.”

“My mother does not approve of novels.”

A slight sound of malicious humor came from Lady LaCorte’s end of the table. “Wise creature, your mother. I don’t approve of them either. They pretend to be moral works, but they excite unnatural passions in young persons. Better to read a morally improving work.”

Camilla caught the whisper of an undercurrent that she did not understand. Something in Sir Philip’s expression, seen uncertainly in the glow of the flickering candles, made her believe his sister-in-law was somehow twitting him.

“At least so my mother believes,” Camilla said. “So to please her, I read a great deal of history.”

“History?” Tinarose so far forgot herself as to groan.

“That sounds safe enough,” young Dr. March pronounced.

Sir Philip nodded, encouraging her to go on.

“Is it any safer than novels?” she asked rhetorically. “I haven’t found it to be so. I took up history because my mother forbade me to read novels. Yet what did I find in history but the same passions that make novels so exciting.”

“But it’s all so dry,” Tinarose said. “Our governess, Miss Grayle, makes us read all the most dreary things. Dates and battles and tonnage moved from the principle ports.”

“You have to look past that,” her uncle said. “That’s only a kind of fog history wraps herself in. Once you make an effort to see more clearly, history begins to fascinate. Think of all the human passions found in history. Violence, ambition, a kind of lust that sends men mad at times. Not to mention arranged marriages, murders, and mysteries. Who killed the Princes in the Tower? Why was Darnley murdered ... or was it a royal execution? Was Lucrezia Borgia truly as black as she is painted?”

Camilla laughed and added her own set of fascinations. “Why did Shakespeare leave Stratford? Is the Dauphin still alive somewhere? And as for our own times—was Byng guilty? How did Napoleon escape from Elba?”

‘There’s not much doubt about Byng,” Dr. March said. “But I’ve always wondered about Dr. Dee. And the Comte Saint-Germain. Were they charlatans? Or did they know things about the universe the rest of us can hardly guess.”

Sir Philip seemed to have no doubts. “Definitely charlatans, if the kings of their kind,” he said. “But how did they work their magic? They easily persuaded kings and queens that they had gifts of prophecy and could turn base metal into shining gold.”

“It may be revolutionary to say it,” Camilla said, “but I’m not sure royalty is known for their intellectual gifts.”

Even Lady LaCorte chuckled while the gentlemen laughed. Only Tinarose looked shocked and that only slightly. “You
have
studied history,” Sir Philip said, chuckling.

When at home, through some excess of courage, she’d been tempted into making a comment during a philosophical discussion, her visitors would always agree with her. It left her feeling as if her comments were not worthy of argument. Eventually, on her mother’s advice, she’d learned to sit in silence, letting even the most crashing fallacies pass over her head. Mrs. Twainsbury was of the firm opinion that intellectual pursuits were not within a woman’s province and that no sensible man would wish them to become so.

Certainly she never would have dared to comment in such a way that could be considered openly seditious. Yet among these strangers, she felt not only secure enough to do so, but encouraged to participate to the height of her abilities.

“I make exceptions,” Camilla said. “Queen Elizabeth certainly had intellectual gifts.”

“Greater than Mary, Queen of Scots, anyway,” Sir Philip said. “I know women tend to make her story out to be romantic—”

“Not just women.” Even more daring, Camilla interrupted. “My father thought she was beyond reproach. I always felt she was a silly creature. Why didn’t she learn to be more moderate in her actions instead of continually stirring up trouble for herself?”

The doctor nodded wisely. “That’s a question I can apply to half a dozen people I know very well.”

“Which one is Mary, Queen of Scots?” Tinarose asked, with a shy glance at her mother. “There’ve been so many Marys.”

The doctor began to explain the delicate relationship between Queen Elizabeth and her cousin, the once-Queen of France and mother of the man who united England and Scotland. Camilla somehow believed that Tinarose would not forget this history lesson anytime soon. She had not yet met the LaCorte’s governess, but the woman could not possibly compete with the words of a terribly attractive man.

When Samson took a moment of his mistress’s time to hold her in whispered conversation, Camilla turned to Sir Philip. “I hope I did not speak out of turn just now.”

“Is there such a thing? After all, this isn’t Almack’s. Just a simple country dinner.”

“Be that as it may, I did interrupt you. Also, my mother does not like me to speak in company. She says it is unbecoming in the young to speak in the presence of those older and wiser.”

“She presumes wisdom: I don’t.” His voice was rather a growl. Camilla drew back, giving him a sideways glance, doubtfully. “I beg your pardon,” he said, noticing her reaction. “Only some people achieve wisdom with years. Many others remain just as filled with folly, pride, and self-importance as any green youngster.”

“Would you say that you are like that?”

“I hope not.”

“Then, I should indeed apologize for interrupting you.”

“That puts us back where we began.”

“Not at all. Before I apologized as a matter of form, in deference to your greater age and position. Now that you have proved yourself worthy of my respect, I apologize without reserve. Wholeheartedly, in fact.”

Though he smiled at her wit, she saw something of displeasure in his eyes. “I’m not that old,” he said. “You make me sound like a hoary-bearded grandfather, complete with bad leg and ear trumpet. I’m not even thirty, not until April. Though to someone as young as yourself—”

“I’m twenty-one,” she said, interrupting again. Realizing she’d risen to his bait, she the more willingly gave her attention to Dr. March when he claimed his turn to speak to Sir Philip.

“I was just telling Miss LaCorte about that cold winter we spent in Paris.”

“Yes
,
I remember your hospitality very well. You kindly gave me the bed while you slept rolled up in two blankets on the sofa. Kindness itself,” he added. “Until the roof started to leak. Ice-cold water. But it was colder by far in Badajoz, or so you told me.”