Twixt Two Equal Armies (10 page)

Baugham told him about the effigy in the local Presbyterian chapel. “Sir Robert Ramsey. I haven’t seen it myself, but Mrs McLaughlin tells me it is a fine piece, bronze I believe, and quite the destination for sight-seers from Edinburgh in the summertime. She does not approve of their audacity in picnicking on the church lawn.”

After that, more silence. The evening passed with nothing specific decided upon, but Darcy nevertheless expressed — several times — that he had not travelled so far simply to stare at dusty stag heads above fireplaces or sit in cramped quarters unless the weather absolutely made it necessary.

“And I cannot believe you find any enjoyment in staying cooped up here either,” he said sternly. “Just because your boredom enticed you into playing inappropriate parlour games in London, there will be no cure for that in sitting inside all day.”

Baugham protested he certainly did not sit inside all day — quite the opposite as his very absence when his friend had seen fit to arrive had proven.

“But neither can I see how mingling with tiresome provincials at every opportunity can afford me any more enjoyment than I already find very well on my own. I did not acquire this place to enjoy effigies in local churches or admire fat cows at country fairs!”

O
LD
M
R
P
EMBROKE WAS WEARING
a Turkish fez perched on his head. His bushy hair spilled out on all sides and he proudly displayed, to a very entertained Elizabeth, his wife’s ingenious use of hatpins to keep it safe from falling off.

“This is my party hat,” he cheerfully explained, “and it is reserved for occasions when familiarity and ease mingle with excruciating intellectual sharpness, conspiring together against my poor fuzzled head.”

“Or when there is real danger Sir John will singe your eyebrows off,” his wife interjected. “As you may gather, the fez is an essential accessory when we travel to Rosefarm.”

After Elizabeth enthusiastically agreed, Mr Pembroke smiled at her paternally. “It is too bad, my dear Miss Bennet, that you could not have timed your visit to Rosefarm for earlier this summer. My son, Mr Jonathan Pembroke, always comes to spend part of the summer season here with our good friends, and I am sure he would have been delighted to make your acquaintance. Although,” he conceded as he looked around, “I doubt poor Rosefarm Cottage could accommodate
two
extended visits at once. Mrs Pembroke and I have always regretted that we could not offer the Tourniers a more spacious residence, but it seems to have served them well through the years and they have made it a very comfortable home.”

“And hospitable too,” chimed in Mrs Pembroke. Then she turned to her husband, “But you forget, my dear, that Jonathan has plans to break his journey here in a few weeks’ time.

“He always enjoys his stays here, whether they are brief or long,” she added to Elizabeth. “So you will have the chance to meet him after all. I declare, I am sure he won’t know which way to turn, with two such pretty young ladies in the parlour to attend to.”

Elizabeth smiled. “He needn’t be uneasy on that account; neither my cousin nor myself require much attending.”

Across the room, Holly picked up an empty platter that had been full of food just a few minutes before, sighing over the appetite of her mother’s friends. She had thought they could get by very well on some of the leftovers until Sunday, but apparently wit and conversation did not prosper on an empty stomach. Now it seemed highly unlikely there would be any leftovers at all except for the stewed cabbage. Well, maybe one could make soup of it. Or hide it in some form of pie crust . . .

The sight of Sir John beside her cheered her, and he smiled as she caught his eye. “So my dear,
has
Mrs Higgins been sent away?”

“Well, you had better come and help me set things up in the kitchen then,” Sir John continued when she nodded and gently took her arm to steer her away from her chores. “Ah,” he smiled as he spotted a young man in the crowded parlour. “Here is a colleague of mine I would like you to meet as well. Dr McKenna!” he called across the room. “This is the young lady I have been telling you about.”

Dr McKenna was a large, well-built man with broad shoulders, a long frame and an open, friendly countenance, a physician by profession and an aspiring geologist by choice. Holly gave him a smile and greeting when he came over and they all three went into the empty kitchen together. When they returned a few moments later, Holly’s cheeks were a bright red and her eyes sparkled with excitement. She shot out of the door with Sir John and the doctor following slowly and likewise smiling behind her, and almost ran up to her mother.

“Oh Maman!” she said and clutched her mother’s hand, quite interrupting her argument with Mr Kershaw. “Sir John has made me such a wonderful offer!”

“Really?” her mother asked. “And does his wife know about this?”

Holly blushed, but Sir John came to her rescue.

“Of course she does,” he said cheerfully. “I would never make such an offer without consulting her first.”

“Well, I am glad to hear it,” Mrs Tournier said with a mischievous glint in her eye. “One can look forward to a perfect marriage of words and image then?”

Holly met her mother’s eye and they both smiled.

“Well, I shall certainly do my utmost to fulfil my obligations,” Holly said and felt as if she was floating slightly above the ground with happiness. A commission! Colour plates to Sir John’s Treatise on Heat! And compensation equalling her entire income for one term at Hockdown School! “Thank you so much, Sir John, you will never regret giving me this opportunity, I promise you.”

Both Sir John and Dr McKenna laughed, and the doctor piped up. “And I can promise you, Miss Tournier, that once I am fortunate enough to obtain funding for my own treatise, you will be the only artist I consider to illustrate it.” Holly looked at him in surprise. “Well, if Sir John trusts you with his work, I can only conclude that your abilities are excellent,” he explained. “And . . . if it allows me to make you as happy as you appear to be tonight, it must be worth any compensation.”

She thanked him kindly and even sent a friendly smile to Mr Grant, who was perched behind the sofa regarding Dr McKenna with slight suspicion and her with a possessive eye.

Elizabeth stood at the other side of the room and the cousins’ eyes met. Her cousin gave her a proud and happy look and Holly answered her with a contented smile. Then they laughed a little before returning to their own circles of conversation.

Mr Grant, who had been suffering cruelly while Holly had been privately sequestered with the gentlemen in the kitchen and conversing so happily afterwards, came up and, taking advantage of the next lull in conversation, positioned himself in between her and her friends.

“Is this true what I have overheard,” Mr Grant heedlessly blurted out. “You are home for an extended stay?” At her hesitant nod, he plunged on. “Why, that is very good news indeed! And may I hope that, perhaps, this circumstance is in some way a favourable reflection on my offer — ”

“Mr Grant,” Holly interrupted hastily. “Please. Such personal matters should not be . . . this is not really the time or the place to discuss . . . I fear I have been neglecting our other guests for too long already and Sir John’s proposition is really all I can contemplate right now.” She knew with all her stammering she was not making herself clear and that her excuses were not helping her cause at all, but all she could do was continue. “I have only just arrived home, you understand, and I am sure that Maman will not wish me . . . nor am I in any rush to . . . please, it must wait. Surely you are in no particular hurry?”

“Hurry,” muttered Mr Grant, “oh, no! No, I am, of course, fully content with — well, it is a very nice evening. And you are right. Of course.”

Holly watched as Mr Grant took a step back. The look on his face told her that her attempt at forestalling his questions had somehow given him the wrong impression and now he was proceeding on a false hope she would hear yet another proposal from him at a more convenient time. She despaired that she would ever learn to handle a difficult situation without somehow turning it into an even bigger problem.

“ . . . which, you must agree, is exactly why Lord Sidmouth’s position defies all common sense,” Mrs Tournier, having turned back to her discussion, said in an uncharacteristically patient voice to her companion. Undoubtedly he would have answered her in the same vein, because even though the tone was light, there was passion in their eyes and heightened colour to their cheeks that betrayed an earnest debate. That was not to be, however, for Mr Grant sat down beside her with a heavy sigh and dramatically put one hand up to his brow.

“
In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?”
he declared to Mrs Tournier with another sigh.

His hostess regarded him in silence.

“I trust, Mr Grant,” she finally said with pursed lips, “you do not mean to imply that my dinner has given you indigestion.”

Mr Grant gave a start and apologised for his ill-timed use of Mr Blake’s sentiments.

“I was merely . . . Mrs Tournier . . . it is that your daughter, she is exceptionally lovely tonight and she did favour me . . . but perhaps I am too hasty in my hopes . . . Mrs Tournier . . . ”

Mrs Tournier could bear it no longer. She stood up and addressed her daughter in a strong voice that carried over the room and left no room for interpretation.

“Holly! Mr Grant suffers from indigestion; time to set up Sir John’s tubes and valves and what not!”

T
HE EVENING DRAGGED ON INTERMINABLY,
and the competition between the days-old newspaper and the increasing drowsiness that threatened to overcome Lord Baugham was interrupted by an explosive sigh from across the room and the sound of books sliding and hitting the floor.

He dropped his newspaper slowly and fixed a narrow gaze upon his friend. “Having troubles, Darcy?”

By that time Darcy had gathered the books again and drained the last drops from his glass of port. He shot an irritable look at his lordship and asked, seemingly out of nowhere. “How can you live like this?”

Baugham knit his brows together, “Now what sort of a damn-fool question is that, Darcy?”

“A desperate one; this library of yours is a disgrace! I cannot find a single thing I should care to spend any of my far from valuable time on, and what I do find is covered with dust and so mistreated the pages disintegrate if I so much as breathe on them.”

Darcy demonstratively wiped his hands on his handkerchief and then dropped it on a side table.

“I should have brought my own,” he muttered, not quite out of ear shot.

“Yes, well, perhaps you should have brought your own,” his friend simultaneously muttered from his chair.

“However that may be, my friend,” Darcy paused and opened one of the books he was holding. “you cannot deny that these are a disgrace. Look! The first twenty pages have been cut out.” He then opened another one and pulled a face as a few pages came loose from the binding. “This one says, ‘Happy thirteenth birthday to my dear nephew, David,’ signed by an ‘Uncle Horace’ Not a very precious gift, it seems.”

Now it was Baugham’s turn to sigh heavily, and feel uncharacteristically peevish at Darcy’s digging around through his old books. True, his library was a shameful mess, and true, the books were sitting, lying, balancing and perching perilously here and there openly on the shelf, but he had never intended
this
library to be anything but a private sanctuary and not a showcase for avid collectors. Why should he have to explain to Darcy that the copy of
Treasure Island
he regarded with such a disdainful expression was indeed an exceedingly precious gift? A book that had been read to pieces, and had been a friend and means of escape during his boyhood years. That this and many other such gifts from his uncle had been lovingly transported to the library of the one place he felt most at home? He dropped his newspaper with a snap.

“I have a perfectly fine collection in London that serves my needs most adequately. You cannot go around expecting Pemberley standards just because you are bored.”

“Surely there is something between ‘Pemberley standards’ and . . . this? Surely it would be kinder to let these . . . volumes die a dignified death on the grate rather than keep them here, abused and wretched for all to see?”

By this time the paper had gone back up and Baugham muttered behind it. “If I should ever want advice, or
anything
, from somebody who was never invited in the first place.”

Darcy pretended not to hear. “If this is all your father left you with, why leave it out like this for you to be reminded? Clear it out! Take up the responsibility to your name! Clean up your library!”

“If you consider what my father left me,” Baugham said, “this little bit of library is very far down on the list of family disgraces. I, however, don’t care to dwell upon the legacy of the sixth Earl while I am here at Clyne.”

“With this mess about you, it is a wonder you can avoid it. Yet what about the responsibilities of the seventh?” Darcy persisted. “Have you not taken into account the legacy you will leave for the eighth Earl of Cumbermere?” His voice was steady, but there was a sly smile on his face.