Jennie About to Be (8 page)

Now fittings were interspersed with sittings. Nigel attended when he could; otherwise the children's French governess went with her to the studio. She wore the bronze-colored riding habit, but it was agreed that she could hold the hat in her hand.

“You have a good head,” the artist told her, “and it's natural for you to have it uncovered, as if you are a free spirit which needs to have wild, clean spaces in which to exist. . . . That hat is the silliest bit of frippery I ever saw, by the way.”

He was the first artist she had ever known, a fat, untidy young man who talked easily with her as he worked. He was both unpretentious and unselfconscious. He asked her where in the north she had grown up, and what she told him inspired the background for the figure.

Of her two chaperones she preferred Mademoiselle, who did fine needlework from which she never lifted her eyes, and seemed occupied by her own thoughts. Jennie and the painter rambled on as if she weren't there. When Nigel came, he ranged uneasily about the studio like a restless horse in a box stall, or else he sat and stared unnervingly first at the artist and then at Jennie. At these times the artist didn't talk but whistled all the time under his breath as he worked, and Jennie was so overwrought by Nigel's proximity that she was given to sudden nervous starts and changes of color and temperature.

When it was just herself, the artist, and the Frenchwoman, the studio sessions were the most restful hours of that febrile time of preparation. Nigel and his mother approved the finished work; she was pleased with it and even more pleased when the artist told her she was the best subject he'd had so far.

“I believe you've brought me luck,” he said. “I hope I've done the same for you.”

“I'll bring my children to you to paint,” she promised, laughing. Who needed luck when they had Nigel? “But then you'll be painting Royalty and won't have time for us.”

“Don't be too sure of that,” he warned her. “Just remember your promise.”

Ianthe sent her a lace veil from Switzerland. Sylvia couldn't make the long journey from the north because she was pregnant again, but Sophie came in care of a London lady who was returning home after spending Easter at a house near Pippin Grange. Sophie's gift was a pair of shellwork pictures she'd made herself. She brought a silver bowl from the cousins, and William and Sylvia sent her her father's old set of English poets, all in new leather bindings.

The two young girls were to be Jennie's bridemaids, and the Hampshire baronet would stand up with Nigel. It would be a quiet wedding, with a breakfast afterward at Brunswick Square. The insignificant Earl without coal mines had been sent an invitation as a courtesy, and being in London he had accepted. It took more than that to confound the Highams, who were not impressed by titles, but Charlotte and Sophie were all of a flutter. A baronet and an earl,
too?

“He's a harebrained old nincompoop,” said Nigel. “No, I take that back. Any hare is a positive genius compared to my dissipated and decrepit cousin. Let us pray,” he said piously, “that he passes up the wedding breakfast.”

Except for Sophie and the Highams, Jennie would have no one of her own to see her married. She had a moment of feeling like a virgin being prepared for a sacrificial altar so that her blood would bring in good crops or a total victory over Napoleon.

In that case
, she thought,
they will erect a monument to me, something tasteful in marble, with wreaths and urns and great classical maidens halfdraped. The Prince of Wales will place a wreath on their huge feet
.

“What are you laughing at, Jennie?” Sophie asked. “I came to tell you that Nigel's here. Isn't he beautiful? I love William,”she said loyally, “but Nigel's like Apollo.”

“Don't tell him,” said Jennie. “There are quite enough women now telling him such things. How he's going to cut himself down to one woman's adoration is beyond me.”

She went along the passage to the stairs, Sophie pattering behind her; Charlotte caught up with them, and the two whispered and chuckled, they had become Best Friends overnight. Sophie was a dark, sturdy child, already developing a bust. Beside her Charlotte looked as evanescent as a snowdrop.

Nigel had just come from a review in Hyde Park, and he dominated the foyer in his blue, scarlet, and gold. Derwent had escaped Mrs. Coombes and was wearing the black cocked hat with its red and white plumes; he practically disappearedunder it, and the gauntlets nearly reached his shoulders.

“Why don't they make boots like yours in
my
size?” demanded a fierce treble from inside the hat.

“Don't take offense at this, old man,” said Nigel, “but you're still a bit short for the household cavalry.” He looked up and saw the girls on the stairs.

“Ladies,” he said hollowly, and laid his hand over his heart, “if I was a poetical sort of fella, I'd know exactly what was the thing to say about two bright stars and the moon goddess.”

“I think you do very well as it is,” said Jennie.

They sat alone in the morning room, drinking coffee on the sofa before the fire, and he told her that he was resigning his commission and going to Scotland to become his older half brother's factor.

“I was going to take you there anyway for the honeymoon. Spring in the Highlands, what? Jolly! If the weather is fine, that is. It can be deuced bleak in the rain.” He looked worried, and she put her hand on his fresh-colored cheek.

“Rain or snow, that needn't bother
us
. But is this a sudden decision?”

“Sudden, sudden! Ten days ago. Today was my last review.” He took her hand from his cheek and kissed it. “The Mater said I should tell you at once. But I'm a coward, my angel. What if you had your heart set on being a colonel's lady?”

“Oh, Nigel!” She pulled her hand away. “How
could
you? If that's what you think of me, perhaps we're marrying far too soon. We don't know each other at all.”

He looked stunned, and she relented, but she was thinking she'd been at least half-right. “Tell me about it.”

“The Mater wrote them about the wedding, thinking Christabel would leap at any excuse to come back to London, and in return
I
got this rather confused letter written in old Archie's inimitable style, just the way he talks, telling me there'd been a clash with the old factor and he'd left. Grant's not that old in years, mind you, but he's always been there. Took over from his father. Decent chaps, both of them. ”

“What was the clash about?” Jennie asked.

“I don't know. It was with Christabel, I swear, not Archie. She wanted to raise the rents, perhaps. She has the fortune, so things must go her way ... I don't care!” He was jubilant. “There's a house for us, and the fishing and the stalking are superb. You'll have your own horse to ride. It will make up to you for Pippin Grange.”

“Oh, love,” she whispered. “I can't believe it.
Scotland!
I never wanted to be a colonel's lady, and I'm so happy!” They embraced and kissed. Each time it was harder to separate; now there were voices in the hall, and they parted reluctantly, still holding hands.

In an attempt to be cool she said, “But do you know how to be a factor?”

“I know enough to do what they want me to do.”

“Are they coming to the wedding?”

“Archie says the stramash with Grant has put Christabel under the weather. Her delicate nerves, you know.” He grinned. “She's healthy as a horse, though not as good-looking as the worst of 'em. If anything's upset her, it's this wedding. She knows she's past foaling, but I'd swear she was hoping I'd die a bachelor.”

“She's not going to like me then,” said Jennie. “But there's no law that says everyone has to love Eugenia Hawthorne.”

“Old Archie will. He'll be bowled over. He likes pretty girls, and you'll ornament the ancient pile. By heaven, it's been grim at Linnmore! Christabel has the servants call her Madame instead of Mistress. She's English in everything. She brought her own staff because she won't have Gaelic spoken in the house, and she pays them the earth to suffer the isolation.”

He slapped his thigh. “That reminds me. I'm losing my man along with the commission. There aren't many good ones who want to leave the splendors and the females of London for the Scottish wilderness. I'll pick out a chap there and train him. What about a maid for you?”

“I've never had my own maid, darling. Tell me more about Christabel. She sounds dreadful.”

“Well, if old Archie drops into the Gaelic when he's talking with a groom or a tenant who doesn't speak English, she's on him as if he'd uttered an obscenity or blasphemed the Holy Ghost.”

“I detest her already,” said Jennie. “Do
you
speak Gaelic?”

“I remember a bit from my early childhood, and later I was taken there on some long holidays, to keep me in touch with my heritage, don't you know? But some of the people have a little English.”

“How will you get on with them as factor?”

“Swimmingly! I always did.”

She could believe it. “I want to learn Gaelic,” she said ardently. “I want to be able to talk to the people in their own tongue.”

“Just don't let Christabel know you're doing it,” he said. “She'll have fits. She'd have changed the name of the place if she could, but it looks English enough to suit her. Only she will call it
Linn
more, not Linn
more
. I doubt Archie told her that it's the Gaelic
linn
for ‘pool, ' and
mor
for ‘big. ' You'll see where it comes from.”

“Linn
more
,” she repeated as if it were a mystical incantation. “The Gilchrists of Linn
more
. Will that be us?”

“Yes, and we'll start a new dynasty. How would you like to be a matriarch?”

“Please, Capting, I'd like to be married first, Your Worship.”

S
EVERAL TIMES
Jennie wondered uneasily if she should contribute her sovereigns toward the expense of the wedding. In her rare moments alone she often read Papa's letter, hearing his voice speak the words:

“This is for you to have and to hold, to use as you will. I wish it could be for some startling, inexplicable, wonderful, irregular cause, some bold stroke for a woman to make. In any case, it is not to be fribbled away on fashions, on trips to Bath and Brighton. But if ever you or yours are in need, your father will have put out his hand to help you.”

No
. This was not the time to use the sovereigns. She hadn't asked for anything more than for her and Nigel to be joined by a parson, and a family breakfast afterward. But Aunt Higham was stage-managing the affair, and she was enjoying herself, and Uncle Higham went around these days in a mood of Olympian benevolence. Whether it was because an awkward young girl would soon be off his hands or he was genuinely touched by young love and spring weddings, one accepted without question the gifts of the gods.

Her sovereigns were safe then, and the small quarterly allowance from her mother would also come into her own hands. The only question was whether she should tell Nigel about her gold hoard.

First things first. Get married, get to Scotland and settled in her own house, and then make up her mind.

She dismissed her conscience.

Uncle Higham said Nigel's decision to give up his commission was very sound. “Sheep will be the salvation of Scotland. Wool's always in demand. Like wine, coal, and cotton [a few of the interests which supported his family in comfort in Brunswick Square]. The confounded Americans have lifted the embargo, and there's a monstrous big market waiting.”

Aunt Higham was briefly disappointed, having seen Jennie as a colonel's lady, and good at it if only she could remember to keep her mouth shut. But Nigel came of the landed gentry, and even if the land happened to be in Scotland, she conceded that there were some very fine estates north of the Borders, and Edinburgh was a grand city, she had always understood.

The children were more loudly disappointed, the girls because he would no longer wear a uniform and would not even be married in one. Derwent was furious and would hardly speak to him at first. Nigel won him with an invitation to come to Scotland and learn how to fish for a salmon. “I shall come and fetch you myself,” Nigel promised. “Just as soon as your arms and legs grow a little longer.”

At intervals after that, Derwent, thinking himself unobserved, could be seen getting very red in the face, squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth, in an effort to
grow
.

One night when Sophie came in to kiss Jennie good-night, she burst into tears, and Jennie rocked her in her arms as if she were still five.

“Darling, it's not the end of the world!”

“But it's so far away!” Sophie wailed.

“No farther than Pippin Grange is from London. Well, not too much farther. You travel north instead of south, that's all.”

“But it's so wild up there! The Highlands are nothing like the Borders; they still have wolves and bears. The people don't speak English, and they're savage. They rose against the King!” She braced back, dark eyes staring to impress Jennie with this ultimate horror.

“Some, not all, and it was sixty-three years ago this month,” said Jennie, “and you'll recall that Papa told us the poor devils who thought they were fighting for the true King were so viciously slaughtered that even a good many Englishmen thought it was too much blood altogether.”

“But they hate the English for it! You won't be safe.”

“Nigel's brother's wife is English. So are her servants, and as far as I know, they're bored, not afraid. Darling, I'm going to have a lovely house, with a drawing room and a garden, and I will have my own horse to ride. And I shall have you up for long visits and marry you to a handsome Highland gentleman.” She looked over at Charlotte, curled up in the opposite chair. “There'll be one for you too, Lottie, love.”