Byron's Child (17 page)

“No, I did.”

“Conspiracy.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“The poor chap didn’t stand a chance. I’m glad Harry will be helped but I must admit to some fellow-feeling for my gullible forefather. A matter of masculine solidarity.”

“I know what you mean. It’s a lousy way to go about it, but in this day and age, and with someone like Roland, it’s really the only way. He had to think it was his own idea, and Charlotte knows just how to go about it.”

“Taking advantage of his affection for her.”

“It’s not the way I’d choose to operate.” She shrugged. “What else is she to do? It would be great if she could tell him, ‘Look, this guy’s helped your great-grandson, he needs a hand, and besides it may be a good investment.’ But she can’t, and it’s not just that Roland is a male chauvinist pig.”

“Hush,” Giles warned, playing louder.

Jodie realized her voice had been rising with her passion. She went on in a soft and reasonable tone. “I can understand how inheriting the title and all that responsibility when he was just out of school could make him obsessed with proving his authority, and at least he’s managed to stay kind and loving. But the whole society is run by and for MCPs. Jeez, I thought it was bad back home! I’m warning you, if we have to stay here I’m going to turn into a raving feminist.”

“I can see the transformation beginning. Believe me, I understand your feelings, but do try to keep them under control until we find out whether we can go home. I wish Harry was not stuck in the Kentish mud.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep my cool, as long as I can let off steam to you now and then. You’ll know if we can go as soon as Harry gets here, will you?”

“We have to compare calculations. That should tell us the whether, then we have to work out the how.”

“Charlotte means to call on Cassandra tomorrow and invite her and Harry to dinner.”

“Whatever I said about her methods, my great-grandmother is a sweetheart.”

“Isn’t she? I only wish I could be certain that she really will be your great—grandmother.”

They both looked across the room at Charlotte. She had every bit of the bloom tradition ascribed to mothers-to-be, pink cheeks, sparkling eyes, and a cheerful smile as she bent over the tiny garment she was sewing. Even the fair curls peeking out from under her lacy cap gleamed with health. It was hard to believe that anything could go wrong, but Jodie’s thoughts flew to Ada Byron’s ignorant doctors thirty years hence, and to Princess Charlotte’s death in childbed next year.

“I don’t like that Dr. Croft,” she said decisively. “I shall see if Cassandra can recommend someone better to Charlotte. It wouldn’t surprise me if, when Cassandra decided to stay here, she looked around for a doctor who would at least be willing to adopt twentieth-century notions of hygiene.”

“An excellent idea,” Giles applauded. He started to play in earnest and drifted away on a tide of music.

As she watched and listened, it dawned on Jodie that she loved him.

His fingers moved over the ivory keys with a touch at once strong and delicate, incisive and tender and impassioned. Jodie shivered. She wanted to feel his hands on her skin. Yet there was more to it than desire. She loved the way he lost himself in what he was doing, whether science or music. His face was dreamy, his blue eyes focussed on an inner vision, his lips—better not to dwell on his lips.

It was hard to believe that only last night those hands had wielded a deadly sword with consummate skill. Back to back they had fought for their lives. That was a bond of friendship that could never be broken.

Nor had he felt his manhood diminished by her ability. She loved him for respecting her intelligence, for listening to her ideas, and taking her seriously even when he disagreed. Admittedly those virtues were thrown into strong relief in contrast to the world they found themselves in. Still, Brad had wanted her to give up her scholarship because he could not go with her. She could not imagine Giles demanding such a sacrifice.

Oh boy, she thought, I must really be in love if I can’t see any faults in the man. This is dangerous.

“Cousin Judith, will you take a hand at pinochle?” Roland requested playfully. “Learning your colonial game has quite destroyed my pleasure in whist, I declare.”

“I should be sorry to think I had destroyed anyone’s pleasure,” she said, glad of the interruption. She joined the others at the card table.

When she went up to her chamber later, Jodie found her book on the bedside table.

“Mr. Giles gave it to me,” Dinah told her, thrusting a warming pan into her bed. “He said not to let the chambermaid see, as if I would. Not that she’d know it were any different, being an ignorant girl. A book’s a book, for all she knows. There, that’ll warm your toes nicely, miss.”

“Thank you, Dinah.”

“My Miss Emily seems right perky tonight. I reckon as something good’s come her way this day?” the abigail hinted.

“She was able to set Lord Thorncrest right on a couple of points,” Jodie obligingly revealed. “They are coming to a better understanding, I believe.”

“Ah, men’s the very devil, begging your pardon, miss. That Frederick for one.” Dinah giggled. She did not look in the least as if she wished to consign the footman to hell. “Can I ask you something, miss?”

“Go ahead.”

“Where you come from, would a lady’s dresser be lowering herself if she walked out with a footman? A right smart footman as’ll be butler some day,” she added quickly.

Jodie was perplexed. She tried to think of the nearest equivalents: a beautician and a waiter? Not really—but she was losing sight of her democratic ideals.

“Lower herself? Heavens no. But can you marry and keep your places?”

“Lor, miss, I’m not thinking to wed yet awhile. ‘Sides, I ‘spect Miss Emily’ll want me to go with her when she’s my lady Thorncrest.”

“I am quite sure she will.”

“I s’pose she might ask his lordship to take Frederick too, but there’s no knowing, is there? If we was to end up in the same household, why then’ll be time enough to think on weddings. If there’s naught else I can do for you, Miss Jodie, I’ll be off to see Miss Emily’s comf’table. And thank you, miss, for advising me.”

Jodie hoped her advice had been sound. She could recite the ranks of the peerage in order of status, but she was much less sure of the lower classes’ pecking order. In spite of “Upstairs, Downstairs,” it was all double-Dutch to a Southern Californian anyway. She wondered how much of the caste system was still around in modern England, whether it would be a shocking mésalliance for a viscount to marry the daughter of an American lawyer and a half-Chinese biology professor.

Whoa, there! she scolded herself. There was no reason to suppose Giles felt anything but a sense of responsibility towards her.

No, he did like her at least. He probably saw her as the younger sister she was pretending to be, a frequently irritating younger sister. Brother and sister—no hope of anything more if they were stuck here in the past. Jodie wanted to go home.

Self-pity would do her no good. She reached for her book. Her place was still marked, with Cassandra’s first letter, the one announcing her presence in 1816. Cassandra had given up her time and her career for Harry Font’s sake. From what little Jodie had seen of them together they seemed a well-matched pair, unlike Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke.

In the short time that the latter couple had lived together, the prim, scholarly miss and the libertine poet who referred to her as his “Princess of Parallelograms” had made each other absolutely miserable. At this very moment, Annabella was busy destroying her husband’s reputation and beginning the long years of self-justification.

Their daughter and Lord Lovelace had started out well. It was impossible to guess how much Lovelace’s increasingly stodgy, stingy personality had contributed to Ada’s unfaithfulness and gambling debts. A need for excitement inherited from her father was partly to blame, and the primitive medicine of the day that prescribed laudanum for all ills.

Jodie read on. Her candle was guttering when at last she put down the biography with a sigh.

A horrible death, with her mother dinning into her that her suffering was payment for her sins—what a dreadful end for the little girl now sleeping peacefully no doubt at her grandmother’s Kirkby Mallory estate in Leicestershire. An unnecessary death in twentieth-century terms, and if Ada had lived in the twentieth century, what might she not have done with her mathematical talents?

The candle flickered out. Jodie fell asleep with that question in her mind and the warm, sweet scent of burning wax in her nostrils.

~ ~ ~

The next morning, the three Faringdale ladies called at Lady Bestor’s little house in Dover Street. Cassandra welcomed them with slightly surprised pleasure.

“I haven’t quite got the hang of this morning call business,” she confessed to Jodie, while Charlotte and Emily exchanged remarks on the weather with the aged aunt. “I guess it’s something of an honour to have Lady Faringdale call on me?”

Jodie frowned in thought, then gave up. “Could be. American widow and rich viscountess. Charlotte’s the dearest creature, though. I hope you’ll want to keep in touch with her, and Emily, when—if Giles and I leave.”

“They know about me?”

“Yes, and you can talk openly about it with Emily but go easy on Charlotte. She prefers not to think about it if she’s not forced to. Emily’s betrothed, Charles Thorncrest, had to be told, too.”

“Jodie,” Charlotte claimed her attention, “only think, Lady Bestor knew Lord Thorncrest when he was a child.”

“And a naughty little boy he was too,” said Aunt Tavie roundly. “Charming, withal, and a good-looking young devil. Still is, by what I hear.”

“Have you met the earl, Mrs. Brown?” Charlotte enquired.

“No, ma’am. I do not go about much in Society,” Cassandra admitted.

“I hope you have no rooted dislike for company, ma’am. Lord Faringdale and I hoped you and Lord Font might join us for dinner one evening.”

“A family party,” Emily added. “Do come.”

“Thank you, I shall be delighted. I cannot speak for Lord Font, though. He is not in town at present.”

“We shall wait until he comes to arrange a date,” Charlotte assured her. “Lady Bestor, may I beg you to honour us with your presence also?”

“Prettily said, young woman,” Aunt Tavie replied. “However, I generally fall asleep round about the time you modern fashionables dine. In my youth it was dinner at three, you know, and none of these skimpy three courses neither. Nine courses was thought a decent dinner. I remember the roast peacocks at the Squire’s, and tureens full of syllabub.”

Charlotte and Emily gave their attention to the old lady’s reminiscences or inventions. Jodie turned back to Cassandra.

“I’m hoping you can help me,” she said. “Charlotte’s breeding—pregnant, I mean.”

“I’m not a medical doctor, I’m afraid.”

“I know. I just wondered whether you’ve found someone here who’s half-way competent. Charlotte’s seen Dr. Croft. He’s very well thought of but I don’t trust him.”

Cassandra hesitated. “There is a man, a friend of Harry’s cousin. I’ve taught him a bit about hygiene, and using nitrous oxide for anesthesia, not that I know much. He’s willing to learn. The trouble is—well, he has a drinking problem. He’s good if you manage to catch him sober but he’s just as likely to be in a stupor.”

“Sh—drat, that doesn’t sound too great.”

“It’s post-traumatic stress syndrome. He was in the Peninsula with Wellington’s army. Not that that’s any comfort to a patient when his hands start shaking.” She shrugged. “The best I can say is that I’ll keep an eye on Lady Faringdale and do what I can for her. I’d worry most about childbed-fever, and I expect one could find a midwife who could be persuaded, or bribed, to be particularly careful about cleanliness.”

“Thank you, I can’t ask for more. Or rather, I can. There’s something else I’d like to know.”

“Shoot.”

“I hope you don’t say that to Harry! This is my question:  What do you think would happen if a person from this time travelled to the future?”

“I don’t know.” Cassandra frowned. “Unfortunately, Giles has pointed out a few flaws in the law of Conservation of Reality, and Harry tends to agree with him. I haven’t had a chance to work on it—I guess I never will, now. If you’d asked me a month ago I’d have said nothing would happen, according to both the math and to my own experience. Now I have to say it depends. No more satisfactory than my doctor, I’m afraid.”

“It’ll do,” said Jodie optimistically.

Charlotte chose that moment to take their leave. Cassandra accompanied them into the entrance hall.

“You are not expecting Lord Font today, I collect,” Jodie said to her as the footman opened the front door.

“Not today. He writes that he intends to come tomorrow without fail.”

“He writes to you daily?”

Cassandra nodded, blushing. Jodie was prepared to wager that Dr. Brown of MIT hadn’t known how to blush before she took up residence in the past.

As the three young ladies settled in the barouche, Charlotte said guiltily, “Oh dear, I do not know what Lady Bestor must think of me. We stayed far too long for a morning call. Only I could see that you wanted to talk to Mrs. Brown, Jodie, and it must be such a comfort to her to know a female who understands her situation. I did not want to interrupt.”

Jodie decided she agreed with Cassandra, she simply did not understand the etiquette of morning calls. If one found congenial company it made no sense to limit one’s visit to a polite quarter of an hour.

“And then,” Charlotte went on with a roguish look at her sister-in-law, “Emily started to question Lady Bestor about Lord Thorncrest’s childhood. Naturally it was impossible to leave until all had been discovered.”

Emily blushed. “I believe her ladyship did not object to my questions,” she said defensively.

“Tell me everything she said,” Jodie ordered.

The recital lasted until they reached home. A message awaited them there that brought further blushes to Emily’s cheeks. Lord Thorncrest begged pardon for the short notice, but would the Faringdales do him the honour of dining at his house that very evening, before the Duke of Devonshire’s ball.