Carola Dunn (9 page)

 A tap on the door. “Miss Ros, you awake?”

 “Just a moment, Jerry!” She put on her dressing-gown and went to open the door. “What is it?”

 “The post came early, acos they’re extra busy Valentine’s Day.” The footman handed her a letter.

 For a moment hope flared, then she saw Sarah’s writing. “Thank you.” Better than nothing, unless it was to tell her this would be the last.

 Her feet were almost as cold as her heart, so she went back to bed to open it. It was thicker than usual, she realized, her heart beginning to pound. She ripped open the seal.

 Inside was a second sheet, folded in four. On the front, a pie was painted in watercolours, with a verse in shaky handwriting beneath it. Rosabelle’s sight blurred, and it was a moment before she was able to read:

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye,

Just one loving, hopeful heart,

Baked in a pie.

 Through the yellow paint, the outline of a heart was faintly visible. Half laughing, half crying, Rosabelle opened the first fold.

 Another pie, with a slice missing. Above it flew a crimson heart with wings, surrounded by musical notes.

When the pie is opened,

Make sing this heart of mine!

Tell me to expect a call

From my dear Valentine.

Beneath was more wobbling writing,
Dreadful doggerel, bad as the Frost Fair ballads, but penned with love.

* * * *

 Maman made Rosabelle wait until eleven o’clock to call in Russell Square. She went too, for propriety’s sake, and Papa came along, saying, “Never too early to start discussing marriage settlements.”

 “Papa, you wouldn’t!”

 “Not until Mr Dibden mentions the matter,” he assured her with a smile.

 “He’ll be at his business.”

 But he wasn’t. Mr and Mrs Dibden greeted the Macleods, and presented their two daughters. Rosabelle heard scarcely a word. Rufus was not there in the drawing room with his family.

 Mrs Dibden nodded to the younger girl. Sarah took Rosabelle up a pair of stairs, sighing on the way, “Oh, it is more romantic than a novel, I vow. And how very fortunate that today is Valentine’s Day! Here she is,” she announced dramatically, opening a door.

 Bundled in rugs, Rufus lay on a sofa near the window. Rosabelle paused on the threshold, suddenly uncertain, shy as she had never felt with him before.

 “Your face is thinner,” they both said at the same time.

 He grinned, and her shyness vanished. “We shall both have to live upon gingerbread and hot chocolate for a while,” he said with a chuckle, “and perhaps the odd hot pie.”

 “Oh, Rufus!” she cried, and ran to him.

 As she knelt by the sofa, he caught her hand and raised it to his pale, hollow cheek. “I was afraid you were only a Midsummer night’s dream,” he said lovingly, “but when I regained my senses, I knew you couldn’t be. After all, we met at the Frost Fair.”

* * * *

A Maid at your Window

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,

All in the morning betime,

And I a maid at your window,

To be your Valentine.

Shakespeare,
Hamlet

“I cannot go with you.” Philomena delved into the wardrobe for her warmest cloak. “I promised to take Toby to see the wizard.”

“Wizard?” Seated at the dressing table in her elegant green velvet wrapper, her sister seemed more interested in the exact placement of one blond curl.

“Mrs Barleyman says village rumour has it that a wizard has rented Marsh Cottage.”

“Really, Philo, you cannot persuade me that you believe in witches and warlocks,” murmured Aquila, “when you are forever prating about scientific methods of canary breeding. And you spoil that brat abominably.” She studied her face in the looking glass and sighed. “I suppose the vicar’s wife will be shocked if I darken my eyebrows. How I miss Vienna!”

As Philomena stuffed her fur-lined mittens into the pocket of her cloak, she admired her half-sister’s aristocratic profile and English fairness. She herself had inherited her Italian mother’s dark hair, delicate features, and fragile appearance.

“Of course I don’t believe in wizards. I daresay it is some inoffensive old eccentric. But I had rather take Toby for a walk than help with the pageant. All the ladies in the village will be there.”

“Cousin Cressida is no gossip. You need not fear that everyone will be staring at you, waiting for you to betray your origins, as did my wretched aunt. Admittedly, a morning spent making paper flowers for the St Valentine’s Day pageant and taking tea with the vicar is not the acme of excitement, yet what else is there to do, buried as we are in the depths of the country?”

“We should have stayed with your aunt,” said Philo guiltily. “At least there was more society there, even though we were still in full mourning.”

“Out of the question,” Aquila responded with unwonted vigour. “Papa might not have been the most conscientious of parents, but he would never have allowed you to be insulted as you were in that household.”

A violent thumping on the door of the chamber the girls shared announced four-year-old Toby’s arrival. “Aunt Philo, I’m ready. Mama putted on my boots and my coat and said be good. Come on, ‘fore the wizard flies away on his broomstick.”

With a laugh that transformed her rather solemn face, Philo kissed her sister’s cheek and obeyed the summons.

“We must feed the birds before we leave,” she said to the boy as they went downstairs.

“We already did, right after breakfast, ‘member?”

“Not the canaries; the robins and bluetits in the garden. When the weather is so cold, they need feeding as much as the canaries do.”

A burst of liquid song greeted them as they crossed the drawing room and opened the French door into the small conservatory with its wide, south-facing windows. Only a withered palm and several pots of dormant begonias showed its original use. In a pair of spacious cages on a shelf to one side, the female canaries hopped and fluttered, while Metternich and Talleyrand puffed out their yellow chests as they warbled a serenade.

Philomena paused on the step to listen. As always, her heart filled with delight at the joyful sound. Daughter of an opera singer and named for the nightingale, she was sadly mortified by her inability to carry a tune. Breeding canaries was some slight consolation.

Toby was already opening the sack of canary seed that stood in one corner of the room, spilling grain on the slate floor. He had learnt to be gentle and quiet around the birds and could usually be trusted to fill their water dishes without spilling a drop. Today he was impatient.

“Come
on,
Aunt Philo. The wizard will fly away.”

He filled a tin cup with the grain, and they took it outside to replenish the supply on the bird table. Beneath their feet the frosted grass crackled, glittering in the rays of the morning sun.

“Mrs Barleyman says we can get to Marsh Cottage through the back gate, across the field and down the lane,” Philo said.

“I know the way,” Toby told her importantly. “I’ll show you.”

Philomena’s modish grey, fur-collared cloak was more suited to strolling in the Prater in Vienna than to climbing stiles and tramping down a Lincolnshire lane. Fortunately, the overnight freeze had hardened the muddy ruts and even glazed the puddles with a thin layer of ice. Though Marsh Cottage was isolated from the village of Valentine Parva, they were soon close enough to see a trickle of smoke rising from the chimney.

Between leafless hawthorn hedges, the lane ran down a slope to ford a small stream, with a narrow wooden bridge for foot passengers. On the other side, in a dank, overgrown hollow, stood the wattle and lath cottage.

“It’s situation does look aguish, as Mrs Barleyman said, but it’s not really tumbledown,” Philo commented as they stopped, by silent mutual consent, to observe their goal. “Just dilapidated.”

“What’s lapidated mean?” Toby held her hand tightly, his round cheeks pink with cold and anticipation.

“Badly cared for. It needs a coat of whitewash, and the tiles are covered with moss, though there don’t seem to be any holes in the roof, nor broken windows. But the fence has fallen down, and it looks as if the garden has grown wild for years.”

“That’s good, ‘cause there’s lots of bushes for us to hide behind when we look through the windows.”

Philo was struck with the impropriety of their expedition. She had not really intended to do more than view the place from a distance.
I don’t care,
she thought rebelliously. It was all very well for Aquila to be a model of decorum;
her
mother had been their father’s lawful wife. As Aquila’s aunt and cousins had made plain, the offspring of an unmarried Italian opera diva was beyond the pale no matter how well behaved.

“Come on,” she said. “We’ll climb through that gap where the fence has fallen down.”

Philomena’s cloak caught in a tangle of bare rose stems, and Toby reached the diamond-paned window first. He peeped over the sill, then ducked and made hurry-up gestures, mouthing silent words, his eyes sparkling with excitement. She joined him, crouching.

“It’s a
real
wizard,” he whispered. “Look!”

Cautiously she straightened until she could see into the room. Amid a clutter of glass tubes and vessels burned a lilac flame. By its ghostly light a dim figure was visible, moving in the background. A hand reached out, holding a beaker, and poured something over the flame.

A flash of brilliant white light and an earsplitting
crack
made Philo jump and blink. In the afterglow of the explosion, she saw a black face, oddly distorted, that slowly sank from view.

“Stay here!” Philomena cried to the openmouthed Toby. “I must see if he’s hurt.”

The cottage’s front door opened directly into the room. After a momentary hesitation on the threshold, Philo hurried round the equipment-laden table. The wizard was sitting on the floor, his soot-masked expression somewhat dazed.

“Are you all right?” she demanded sharply.

“I think so.” His speech sounded educated. Struggling to his feet, he added, “Only, I don’t seem to be able to see very well.”

She pulled off a glove, reached up, and removed the blackened spectacles from his nose. He grinned, his teeth startlingly white.

“Thank you, Miss...?”

“I am Philomena Ware.”

Despite his filthy blue smock, his bow was gentlemanly. “Thank you, Miss Ware. Allow me to present myself: my name is Robert Mayhew.” Centred in pale circles that had been protected by the glasses, his hazel eyes smiled at her.

“How do you do, Mr Mayhew.” She curtsied, feeling foolish, and wondered how to explain her presence.

Toby’s voice piped up behind her. “What went wrong with your spell, sir?”

Mr Mayhew turned to the small boy. “Nothing,” he said courteously. “It worked very well, but rather more vigorously than I had expected. Are you Miss Ware’s brother?”

“No!” said Toby, outraged. “I haven’t got any sisters. Girls are silly. ‘Cept Aunt Philo, most of the time, and she’s not Miss Ware ‘cause Aunt Aquila is. Aunt Aquila is silly,” he added.

“Toby is a sort of cousin,” Philomena explained hurriedly. “I beg your pardon for intruding, sir. We must go.”

“I want to see the magic stuff,” Toby objected.

“It’s not magic. Mr Mayhew is not a wizard, he is a chemist, are you not, sir?”

“I am indeed, Miss Philo, though I’m surprised that you recognised it. You hoped to see a wizard, did you, Master Toby?”

To Philo’s relief, his voice was full of laughter. It was hard to tell with his features obscured, but she thought he was quite young. He was tall and lean; his hands, with their long, chemical-stained fingers, gave an impression of capable strength.

“What’s a chemist?” Toby asked. “If that big bang wasn’t a spell, what was it?”

“An experimental investigation of the properties of chlorate of potash.”

“Oh. Can you make that purple fire again?”

“Easily. I simply put a bit of potassium in water.” He busied himself among the glassware.

“Pray do not blow yourself up again!” Philo backed towards the wall, pulling Toby with her.

“It’s quite all right. That happened when I added spirits of salt.” The lilac light flared again.

“What’s potass...what you said?” Toby pulled away from Philo, and she followed him to the table, fascinated.

“It’s a new metal, discovered just a few years ago by Sir Humphrey Davy. I am doing some experiments for him.”

“You know Sir Humphrey Davy?” Philo queried eagerly, then flushed as he looked at her in surprise.

“Yes. I worked with him developing the miners’ safety lamp. It’s not a subject that usually engages the attention of young ladies.”

“I read about it because I breed canaries. They are used in mines, too,” she excused herself, “to detect dangerous gases.”

“And Davy’s lamp protects against explosion of those same gases,” he agreed. “So you breed canaries, do you?”

He actually sounded interested!

“I have two pair,” she said shyly. “I did have more, but I had to leave them in Vienna, so most of my breeding charts are useless.”

“Charts, eh? You are going about the matter scientifically, then. Good for you. I should like to see how you keep your records.”

“Really?” She could not be sure whether he meant it; the soot on his face made him inscrutable. As she tried to read his eyes, her gaze locked with his and she was oddly breathless when she went on, “But I ought not... Toby! Don’t touch! We really must be off.”

Mr Mayhew swung round. “No, don’t touch! Potassium can be dangerous all on its own if it’s not handled carefully. I’ll tell you what, Master Toby, I shall prepare an experiment you can do by yourself next time you come to visit me.”

Philo started to protest. “But we cannot—”

“Cor, a real ‘speriment?” Toby interrupted, awed. Then he remembered his manners and bowed. “Thank you, sir. When may we come?”

“Any time. Mornings are best.”