Rondo Allegro (67 page)

It was time for her to grip his hands. “I promised to keep
it secret.”

“What could possibly be the reason?”

“Because I grew up knowing that the English of good society
have very strict rules. One of those is that one must never earn one’s living
in a trade.” The words she had never thought to speak came quickly now. “I was
in Cadiz not as a guest, but we were hired to perform before the commanders of
the Combined Fleet.”

He did not draw back in horror, but bent his head, his
profile intent. “Is
that
how you came
to Gravina’s notice?”

“In a sense. I was a soubrette in the Company Dupree of
Paris. We had to travel to Spain when our theater burned down. In Cadiz,
someone in our company told the French that I was married to an English sea
captain. The reasons are immaterial now, but Admiral Villeneuve himself
arrested me as an English spy. I was removed from his governance on the orders
of Admiral Gravina. I think he recognized that I was not a spy.”

“Married to an English captain sailing under Nelson’s
combined fleet,” Henry said, and uttered a laugh. “Collingwood thought you were
a spy, too, for completely different reasons! He ordered me to keep you on
board—something I am eternally grateful for now.”

He kissed her, his lips missing her face and landing near
her ear. They both breathed a laugh, his unsteady, hers breathless.

“I so very much wanted to tell you,” she said at length.
“But everything I have seen supports what I was taught. There is a divide
between what is perceived as genteel society and what is not genteel.”

He laughed again, almost giddy. “There are those who will
tell you that the word
genteel
is not
genteel. Those truly well bred would never let it pass their lips. Never mind
that. I see why you did not trust me. My father and brother certainly were in
agreement about the niceties and expectations of rank, and my mother probably
is as well, as much as so gentle a spirit can be.”

He shook his head. “I might have been the same, had I not
compounded with men of impeccable lineage who were wafted to the top of command
at far too young an age, due entirely to their interests, and not to their
abilities. While some officers I trust most are sprung from humble beginnings.
Which you are not. I distinctly remember that duke that Jones waved in my
face.”

“The duke is on one side, but I believe my mother’s mother
was a housekeeper,” she said. “I think my mother was always ashamed of her own
mother. She was so very, very adamant that I must speak well, move well, and
never transgress the rules of society, or I would be forever ruined.”

“To a great extent it is true,” he said. “Except when it
isn’t. All but the worst snobs appreciate talent, in whatever form it comes.
Richard Sheridan, the playwright? You might not know of him, but English
society does. He’s the son of an Irish actor, but you will find him at the best
houses in London. He is one of the Prince of Wales’ set, and he’s served as a
Member of Parliament. Whatever else is testified about him—and there is plenty
of scandal, I’m afraid—no one flings either his birth, or the fact that he
started life earning his living, in his teeth.”

“Is it not different for women?”

“In the main, but there are exceptions for those who lead
exemplary lives. As you did.”

“I don’t know how you could know that,” she murmured as he
nuzzled her neck.

He laughed, his breath tickling her ear. “The fact that you
can say that is testament enough. But Anna, I would be the worst kind of
blackguard if I claimed to love music, and yet kept your great talent hidden in
my house. I wanted to take you to London to hear a concert. Would you like to
give a concert? My grandmother Dangeau would like nothing better than to hire a
theater, and invite a select audience. She is always patronizing musicians.”

Anna had to take a moment to breathe. Never had she expected
this moment. At length she said, “I thank you. Henry, I am good, but I am not
great. I sound best in small chambers such as this church. At any vast theater,
my voice is lost. Moreover, I have learned that I much prefer to sing when I
wish, and not because I must. I care nothing for celebrity; my pleasure is in
excellence, whether I sing for myself, or for an audience.”

“I hope you will sing for us,” he said tentatively. “Though
I cannot promise you the audience you deserve, not everyone loving music
equally. Colby is a capital man on the hunting field, but he would not know
Catalani from a crow. But however, the Aubignys are both people of discerning
taste, the Rackhams I know would get immense pleasure, and even Elstead likes
music, when he can get it.”

Henry paused, recollected where they were, and that his
secretary was no doubt tired of driving his pair round and round. “We must go.”

“Yes,” she said.

He rose, tucked her hand under his, and as they walked out,
said, “I have a capital piece of news for you. I brought Caro here myself, and
she and Blythe have plighted their troth just now. It is twenty years in
coming, but at all events, that is better than forty.”

Anna expressed all the delight that he had expected she
would, which brought them to their respective equipages. She climbed into the
gig, choosing to forgo her call. Dr. Blythe, newly betrothed, would have enough
to do, and Anna would not wait a moment longer to tell the faithful Parrette
what had happened.

She drove back at a brisk trot, and the moment she got
inside, she sent Ned to find Parrette. When Parrette entered Anna’s bedroom,
she took one look at Anna’s smile, her glowing cheeks and bright gaze, and
clasped her hands.

Anna told her in three sentences what had happened.
Parrette, the determined, steel-willed maid, then took Anna utterly by
surprise. She flung her apron over her head, sat down on the nearest footstool,
and wept.

“Parrette, Parrette.” Anna dropped to her knees by her side.
“What have I done? What have I said?”

Down came the apron. “Nothing!” Black eyes snapped above her
ruddy cheeks. “It is my happiness, a thing I never thought to have.” In a few
words, she revealed her own secret.

“John-Coachman?” Anna exclaimed. “Oh, but that is wonderful!
Why did you not say anything before?”

“Because more important to me was keeping my promise to your
mother. Which I believe now I can say, truly, I have done.”

Parrette’s eyes filled with tears again.

Anna patted her work-worn hands tenderly, and said, “What
will you do? Do you wish to retire as a maid and become his wife? Oh, and I owe
you years and years of wages. You remember I am now wealthy! Henry had agreed
that if there is ever peace with Bonaparte I can try to find Helene, and the
others, and perhaps do something for them. But you must come first. Do you
still desire to set up your shop?”

Parrette wiped her eyes. “You owe me nothing. Everything I
did I began for your mother, but then you became the daughter I never had. As
for a shop, I have thought about it. If the dressmaker Miss Reed decides to
retire, and I think she ought, as she has been behind the mode for a generation
at the least, then I might buy her shop with my savings. I could take Susan
with me, as she has the cleverest fingers in the house. She is wasted as an
upper housemaid. But there is enough to do before that happens.” She glanced
with meaning at Anna’s waist.

Anna laughed, then hiccoughed. “Oh.” She pressed her
handkerchief to her lips. “Perhaps some barley-water. . .”

Caro’s secret fear was due only in part to the expectation
of her sister’s reaction, but also that she would become, in the phrase, ‘The brags of life are but a nine days wonder.’ However,
her betrothal was scarcely a nine hours wonder.

Penelope Duncannon had made herself as unpopular as the
rector was popular. Everyone sincerely wished for the rector’s happiness, and
if there were a few good but quietly disappointed women who had hitherto been
trying their best to catch his kindly blue eye, all were united in agreeing
that Miss Caroline Duncannon would make an excellent pastoral wife. In her
quiet way, she was very nearly as well-thought-of as her husband-to-be.

The news spread quickly, once Mrs. Squire Elstead got hold
of it, and in spite of her funning about Hymenia’s saffron robes adorning
graybeards and spinsters, the good will of the hearers caused the news to sink
into acceptance by the next day.

For those at the Manor, there was a dinner and a ball to go
to, and then at last came the evening that Henry had anticipated, without
telling his wife all his reasons. Two days before the physician was due to
arrive to consult about his bandaged eyes, a sleet storm rose to a gale,
keeping the family inside.

After dinner, as usual, the dowager marched with alacrity to
the instrument, to play with an air of triumph the Beethoven that she had
mastered at last. Henry listened with keen appreciation, applauded heartily,
then said, “Emily? Are you going to sing?”

Emily had not sung for some weeks, ever since the storm that
had kept her away; she had given up trying to get them into spending the
evening in a more modish manner. She had also noticed that after the dowager
played, though sometimes Henry joined her, and the dowager invariably asked
Mary Elstead to sit down to her harp, no one had requested her to sing.

Pleased enough by this sign of interest, she rose. “What do
you wish to hear?”

“Anything. What is your best air?”

She brought out the sheet music to one of her Scots songs, a
pretty one that she prided herself on. The dowager, still at the instrument,
firmly resettled her spectacles upon her nose with a slight air of challenge.
“I can play that.”

Emily gave a faint shrug, and when the introduction was
over, performed well, she thought, embellishing the chorus with extra trills.

At the end Henry clapped, but instead of asking her for
another, he said, “Anna? How about you? It seems no one has ever asked you to
sing, and I think we might repair that error.”

Anna had begun to suspect what was in his mind. In truth she
felt ambivalent. But she had known that this moment was inevitable, and so it
may as well be now.

Harriet exclaimed, “Capital! You’ve been teaching Eleanor
this age. It is about time we heard
you
.”

The dowager added her voice. “That would give us a great
deal of pleasure.”

“Something from Mozart,” Henry said promptly.

“Mozart!” Harriet repeated. “Ask her for something easy.
Mozart is vastly difficult.”

“Mozart,” Henry said firmly.

The dowager began to expostulate that she had no music for
Mozart adaptations of arias, but Anna thanked her, reached past her to press a
chord, straightened up, and gave them ‘Dove Sono’ from
Le Nozze de Figaro
.

Henry drew a breath of sheer pleasure as Anna’s voice flowed
over them like molten gold. No, like the shimmer of light on water. No, angels’
celestial choirs? Faugh! All he could think of were threadbare phrases that did
nothing to embrace the extraordinary beauty of her voice, much less his pride
in her.

At the end, the dowager fanned herself. “Bless me,” she
said, eyes wide with amazement. “Bless me, who would have thought . . .”

Harriet bounced up, her brown curls tumbling over one ear.
“Anna! That was a
trump!
Why did you
not tell us you could sing like
that?
”

Emily sat silently, controlling her fury as she took in
Henry’s smug smile. He had to have made that suggestion out of malice; she knew
very well there was no comparison between her singing and that foreign
creature’s. Just as well she had kept the foreign creature’s secret. He was
clearly besotted.

She forced herself to applaud, and then said rather dryly,
“From now on you must lead the way, Lady Northcote. As you do in all things.”

Anna’s sensitive ear caught the mortification that Emily
tried to hide. She said seriously, “I take as much pleasure in listening as I
do in performing.” That much was true, and got her gracefully past having to
offer compliments on Emily’s singing that she suspected would only prompt the
others to make abhorrent comparisons. Though she did not care for Emily, she
acknowledged that it was no fault of hers that she had never had Maestro
Paisiello in her life.

Her words were intended as a peace-making gesture, but they
fell far short of their office. Emily only heard the odious complacency of
triumph.

o0o

Emily kept herself away from the family for the next day,
as she struggled to control her emotions. She was aware that the main of her
anger was aimed at Henry. Indeed, sometimes her sensations were more like hate
than love.

Even so, she was curious enough to remain at home the day
the physician was expected. He had already arrived at the inn in High Street
the evening before, everyone in the parish knew by now.

At ten o’clock the hired gig was seen on the drive, brown
mud splashing behind the wheels. Diggory opened the door to a stout man in a
black physician’s coat and a smart physician’s bob wig.

“Good day, good day,” said Dr. MacAdam, a cheerful man with
a red face. “Lord Northcote! I apprehend you have followed my instructions?”

“My man Perkins saw to that,” Henry said, Anna at his side.
“Lions ain’t in it, as they say. Elephants!”

“Excellent. And this is your fine family, eh? Shall we all
proceed to your drawing room? I take it we will have good light. I must have
light.”

The family trailed behind as Henry and Anna walked into the
drawing room after the physician. He bade Henry sit on a stool near the window,
and before he touched the bandages, he asked a great many questions.

Satisfied that the headaches were all but gone, and most of
the attendant symptoms, he said, “Pray keep your eyes closed, my lord. I must
watch the action of the pupils, so we will proceed with one eye at a time.”