Thief of Hearts (18 page)

"How are the four of you enjoying Italy?" she blurted out.

"Tolerably well," answered Mrs. Middaugh, fanning herself. "It's not quite a
moral
country, is it?"

"The enjoyment of any foreign land is in direct proportion to one's ability to control the natives," said Edwin, folding his hands across his highbuttoned waistcoat and crossing his square-toed shoes at the ankles.

After a few seconds, Brodie realized he wasn't joking. "Control the natives, eh?" he prompted blandly.

"Yes, sir. Never pay them what they ask for anything, that's rule number one."

"What's rule number two?"

"Never try to speak their language. Puts you at a disadvantage, and they know it. Force 'em to speak English."

Brodie nodded slowly.

"Have you been to the Cascine yet?" Anna asked quickly, not wanting to hear rule number three, and the conversation took another turn. Brodie explained that he'd been a little under the weather, so they hadn't gotten out much to sightsee yet. As the minutes passed and the Middaughs showed no evidence of having any trouble at all believing he was Nick, he began to relax.

"We saw the Pope and his cortege in Rome," Constantia announced in a bored tone. "And once we took a donkey ride to look at the tombs in the Via Flaminia."

"I used to have a donkey," said Mr. Trout. They were his first words; Brodie had thought he was dozing. He lifted his grizzled neck out of his shoulders like a turtle and got an intent look in his bleary old eyes. Anna stopped herself from looking over her shoulder to see what he was staring at; she suspected it wasn't there. "His name was Charles," he said after a long, long moment. "Name was Charles. Charles was his—"

Mrs. Middaugh's violent throat-clearing made them all jump. "Yes, Papa," she said stridently, and began talking very loud and very fast. Anna and Brodie exchanged a quick, grave glance.

Brodie's mind wandered, became fixated on the mystery of whether the subtle fragrance of roses was coming from the garden or Anna's hair. The bare back of her neck was beautiful to him, a work of art. He thought of touching the small, delicate vertebrae that disappeared into the collar of her dress, of grazing the tiny golden hairs with the backs of his fingers. It was hard to believe that once he'd grabbed this fragile girl by the ankle, wrestled her to the ground, and then
mauled
her. At the time it had struck him as a fine idea, and he still couldn't help thinking that part of it had been her fault. But now it all seemed preposterous. Impossible. What in the world had he been thinking of? Well, that was easy: he hadn't been thinking at all. Another organ besides his brain had been at work. It almost made him feel like the barbarian she thought he was. A man didn't treat a lady like that and Anna was more of a lady than any female he'd ever met. But something in him wanted to peel away the genteel outer layer she wore like a second skin, strip it off her and uncover the woman who lived and breathed under it. She was there, he knew it. He'd seen her twice, touched her. Tasted her. He was beginning to wonder if he was addicted to her.

The women were talking about someone they knew, he missed the name. "It's sad, isn't it," said Mrs. Middaugh, without noticeable sadness, "when a woman of a certain age,
ni jeune, ni jolie
," she laughed lightly, "persists in making a fool of herself. Don't you think so, Mrs. Balfour?"

Anna hummed something.

Not satisfied, Mrs. Middaugh offered proof. "My dear, she made herself
cheap
in Carlisle Park four Sundays ago by riding in a hansom cab with a gentleman." She stabbed a stiff index finger into her knee for emphasis. "A gentleman who was neither her father nor her fiancé.
Unescorted
."

"Goodness," said Anna.

"But, Mother, that's not the worst," said Constantia, with her first display of animation. "When we paid a call on her before the incident in the park, needless to say she served us
black
tea, and she had the gaucheness to show us a photograph album!" She laughed out loud; her mother joined in.

Anna stole a glance at Brodie's intent look of half-hidden bewilderment and murmured something faintly commiserating.

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Middaugh, "what can you expect? She keeps only three servants, cook, housemaid, and parlormaid." She laughed again, and shrugged with humorous hopelessness. "So middle-class!"

"When you were in Rome," blurted Anna, "did you see—"

"Now, that's an interesting thing," Brodie interrupted, "this business of the classes. How would you, Mrs. Middaugh, define 'upper class'?"

Anna squirmed, exquisitely uncomfortable, but Mrs. Middaugh was happy to oblige. It was evidently a topic to which she'd given a good deal of thought. "The upper class?" She simpered with pleasure, closed her feather fan to signal her seriousness, and plunged in. "First, of course, there are the aristocracy and the gentry. Then, on roughly a par, there are the military, the clergy, and the bar. After that, your wealthy merchants, bankers, and Stock Exchange members. And finally, persons engaged in commerce on a large scale. The line is drawn at retailers, with whom one may never associate socially, regardless of personal fortune."

There was a silence following this pronouncement. All the Middaughs smiled at each other approvingly. Brodie stared at them with his chin in his hand, fascinated. Anna became aware that she was blushing. "Well!" she said in an unnaturally high voice. "Shall we go in to dinner?"

"This Irish problem, now, it's not so serious for you, Nick, because your labor force is skilled. But at my place it's becoming a real nuisance."

Brodie nodded politely. "How so, Edwin?" Which of these spoons did he eat his blinking soup with? This one was too small, this one was shaped like a leaf and had a "twig" for a handle, and this one was huge, a man could hardly get it in his mouth. He glanced down the long, candlelit table at Anna. She had her soup spoon poised in midair, brows raised, a very slight, conspiratorial smile in her eyes that warmed him to his bones.

"You can't get Irishmen to work like regular men, for one thing. They're a rowdy lot, hard to train, and impossible to manage."

"But they work cheap."

"They work for what they're worth," Middaugh retorted. "The dock workers are even worse. They live like animals and their slums are a city disgrace."

His wife nodded vigorously. "A
disgrace
."

The waiter was asking Brodie which wine he wanted, the Moselle or the hock. Was there some rule about it, depending on whether he'd eaten the white or the brown soup? Or whether he was a Tory or a Whig? A man or a woman? A Catholic or a Protestant? Anna's plate was too far away, he couldn't tell what color her soup was. Oh, hell. He pointed to a bottle at random. "Yes, but it's hard for the dock workers," he said mildly, sipping. "Their work comes in rushes and they've got to do it under pressure. They've got no steady, permanent jobs, so they have to put up with long periods of idleness and then sudden spurts of heavy labor. It's not an easy life."

Middaugh frowned at him in surprise.

"I wish they'd emigrate to Canada or Australia," said his wife, "if they can't find enough work here. Nobody's making them stay. I can remember when people felt safe in Scotland Road and the Exchange, but no one in his right mind would go there now." She shivered with delicate distaste.

"Do let's talk about something more pleasant."

"It's the natural inferiority of the blood," Middaugh pursued. "But what do you expect? When a race's overall intelligence level isn't much higher than—"

"I can have that beaver dress hat ready for you on Friday week, sir. Will that be satisfactory?"

The Middaughs froze for five full seconds. Then Mrs. Middaugh whispered, "
Papa
," her husband drained his glass in two loud swallows, and Constantia began to giggle into her napkin.

Mr. Trout seemed to be addressing Brodie. "Friday sounds fine," Brodie answered stoutly.

"Excellent. I can see you're a man of taste and style, sir. A good, sound beaver, with no cheap wool mixed in, now, that's a true gentleman's hat. Some would say a silk hat's a respectable hat, but I'm old-fashioned. Anyway, a silk hat's an
Italian
hat, isn't it? I mean to say, it's not English."

"No, sir," agreed Brodie. "Give me an honest English hat any day."

"There you are!"

"Papa, for the lord's sake." Mrs. Middaugh stared hopelessly at her plate.

"Eh? Eh?" The old man blinked at her, confused.

"Please, just be quiet."

Brodie frowned. What the hell was the matter with these people? They were embarrassed, all except Anna. Because the old gent was going a bit hollow in his cathedral? No, it was more than that. What really killed them was that he'd sold hats: he was a
retailer
. Now Mr. Trout was fingering his napkin in quiet puzzlement, glancing around the table under his thick white brows, wondering what he'd done wrong. "I had a silk hat once," Brodie said abruptly and untruthfully. "It was a top hat. I was a lad of eighteen, and it was my first. Say what you will about fur, Mr. Trout, there's something about a tall, black silk hat sitting on top of a young man's head that makes him feel fine."

Mr. Trout beamed. "Well, now! That's true, sir. That's certainly true. That I can't deny."

After a tense and silent minute, Edwin Middaugh returned the conversation to the "Irish question," and Brodie addressed himself to it dutifully. He missed the look Anna sent him; if he'd caught it he wouldn't have understood it. It was a grave compound of surprise, gratitude, and admiration, shining through what looked suspiciously like a tear.

At last dinner was over. Anna rose, the Middaugh ladies with her, and Brodie got up to open the door for them as she'd taught him to do that afternoon. As she passed in front of him he made a quick, private face of exaggerated panic, a moronic baring of the teeth and widening of the eyes that caused her to let out a sudden, unguarded laugh. She changed it to a cough immediately, and no one was the wiser. But her reaction tickled him so much, it gave him the heart to return to the table for the masculine claret, cigars, and conversation that were expected of him.

The gentlemen rejoined the ladies after the requisite fifteen-minute interval, and Anna was thankful. The Middaugh ladies' conversation had never enthralled her, and tonight it seemed particularly vapid. She searched Brodie's face for a sign of nervousness or anxiety, but found nothing except the same rapt puzzlement he'd exhibited earlier. More important, Edwin Middaugh seemed completely at ease in his company. She relaxed a trifle.

"Have you gentlemen been discussing all sorts of weighty subjects that would just confuse us silly females?" Mrs. Middaugh asked playfully.

Her husband took the question to heart. "It's true that a woman's brain is smaller in cubic content, which accounts for why she's not able to reason or generalize or pursue a connected line of thought as well as a man."

Brodie laughed, then broke off when it dawned on him that Edwin was serious.

Anna cleared her throat and started to say something, anything, when Constantia Middaugh suddenly let out a loud, horrified shriek. Everyone jumped and followed her pointing finger. Mr. Trout stared back, blinking sheepishly, as a dark, wet stain spread quickly across the velvet upholstered chair on which he sat.

"Oh! Oh! I'm going to faint! I'm fainting!" promised Miss Middaugh, sinking back against the sofa cushion and covering her eyes.

Edwin jumped to his feet. "Oh, for the love of God," he said angrily.

Mrs. Middaugh clawed through her reticule for her vial of hartshorn while she made soft, semihysterical sounds of shame and distress.

Brodie realized Mr. Trout's family wasn't going to help him. He stood up. "Let's go upstairs, shall we?" he suggested mildly, jovially, touching his arm. "Clean you up a bit, what do you say?"

"Eh? Eh?"

Brodie helped him to stand. The Middaughs turned away as one from the sight of Mr. Trout's soaked trousers, the small puddle on the carpet under his chair. With a gentle arm around his shoulders, Brodie led him from the room. As they passed out of sight, Anna thought she heard him asking the old gentleman a question about hats.

When the Middaughs were gone, Brodie went directly to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff brandy and soda. Next he went into the dining room and retrieved one of the cigars Edwin had left on the table. Anna had no heart to restrain him; if she'd smoked, she imagined she could use a cigar right now herself.

"Let's go outside, Annie. I need some air."

She turned without a word, and they walked out together. The moon was setting behind their backs. Wet grass flicked against their legs. The path wound under trellises, and trailing sprays of something sweet-smelling shook dewdrops on them. Starlight flickered over lilies on the pathsides. They came to a stone summer house, perched on the cliff behind the villa, overlooking the river, and stood in silence while Brodie smoked his cigar and took long draughts of his brandy.

After a few minutes, Anna said tentatively, "Thank you for taking care of Mr. Trout. It was—"

"Forget it." He faced her, his expression impatient. "First of all, just for a start, would you please explain to me what's wrong with showing people a photograph album when they come to visit you?"

"Nothing's wrong with it."

"Then why—"

"Some people think… it shows one isn't much accustomed to society if one amuses visitors during a formal call with albums and… family artistic efforts and pictures and… things."

"Why? What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing! I've just told you."

"Then why—"

"It's a rule of etiquette. That does not necessarily mean it's logical."

She was looking away toward the water; he thought she looked embarrassed. "Do you know what I think?" he asked.

"No." She dreaded to hear it.

"I think the purpose of all these 'rules of etiquette' is to keep the lower classes from getting into the upper. They're like this great shield that divides one class from the other. The stupider the rules are, the more complicated and idiotic, the better, because then the lower class will
never
figure them out." She turned around slowly. Pale moonlight barely illuminated her solemn face. "Well? What do you think?" he persisted when she didn't speak.