Chapter 19

I must dissemble,

And speak a language foreign to my heart.

— Joseph Addison , Cato, I.ii (1713)

"Good afternoon, Lord Dere," Adela called, striding forward to meet the crisis, heart pounding.

"Miss Barstow, Miss Frances. What a pleasure." Removing his hat, he bent his still-slender person in a gracious bow.

"Taking a walk, I see," Adela said lamely.

"Very fine day for one," croaked Frances in support. "I am amazed Mrs. Dere does not join you."

Chuckling, he replied, "It is just as well because she would scold me for ‘rooting in the grass for insects.'" Gently he tapped a pocket in his greatcoat and winked at them.

Oh, mercy, thought Frances, he's got one in there, and Della is going to jump and screech, and this will all go off .

But there Frances underestimated her sister, for Adela searched her soul and found that, in such an emergency, insects counted for nothing. Indeed, with a magnificent toss of her head worthy of Saint George charging the dragon, Adela said, "What luck, sir! We came to thank you for the books you sent to my mother—indeed, I bear a note from her to that effect—" (in her agitation she thrust it at him ungracefully, as a creditor might an overdue bill) "—but now, if you might spare a moment, how I would love to see what you have found and—and how you might classify it in your collection."

Delight lit his features. "Would you, Miss Barstow? Then do come along with me to the library, and I will show you."

Frances' hand stole into her sister's to comfort her as they followed the baron into the house, but Adela only shook it off and wriggled her fingers, mouthing, Play the pianoforte .

"Lord Dere!" bellowed Frances instantly. "If you would excuse me, I would like to practice on the instrument a little while. Unless I see Mrs. Dere, that is. In fact—if you see Mrs. Dere, sir, could you send her to me in the drawing room?"

"A little music would be just the thing, Miss Frances. The house has been so quiet with the boys gone to the rectory."

With one last encouraging look, Frances retreated to the drawing room, leaving Adela and Lord Dere to continue to the library.

And Adela could not help herself: "Have you…heard anything from Mr. Weatherill?"

"Not a word, I'm afraid." He drew out one of his hideous specimen trays and inspected it. "Would you put this on the table, my dear, while I fetch the pins?"

Accepting the tray of horrors, Adela beamed down upon them as if she had never been entrusted with anything so charming. "Gordy likes Mr. Terry well enough," she ventured, "but he doesn't come home bubbling over with what he has learned. There is no ‘Mr. Terry said this' and ‘Mr. Terry told us that,' as there so often was with Mr. Weatherill."

"Little Peter misses him too," he agreed, as the sound of scales carried to their ears. "And I know my niece regrets his absence. I will tell you a little secret, Miss Barstow, which will certainly get me into trouble, should Mrs. Dere learn of it."

"S-secret?" Heavens! Had he already learnt of Mr. Weatherill's scandalous origins? And if he had and made no objection to them, might she be excused from the task she had set herself?

He held the box of pins to his ear and shook it as he joined Adela at the table. "I gave him an advance on his wages," said the baron with a mischievous grin.

"Oh." Was that all? Adela almost sagged with disappointment.

"You disapprove? I know Mrs. Dere will. She will say, ‘Uncle, that is the second advance the man has received in only two months' work, and now goodness knows when he will ever return!' She gave him a little shortly after he came, you see, because she wanted him to make a more worthy appearance," he added, when Adela said nothing. "My niece has firm opinions— very firm opinions—on the honor due to a baron's family, and poor Mr. Weatherill's shabbiness quite offended her. And I have learned it is easier to keep the peace than to make a fuss. But how I rattle on! We had a task before us. Let us see to this little fellow I pocketed."

Adela could have shouted, Confound the little fellow you pocketed! but she fixed the imitation of a smile to her face as one might nail a sign to a post, while the kindly baron proceeded to go on and on about how one might easily mistake Elasmucha grisea for Elasmostethus interstinctus , and see how he already had several birch shield bugs, male and female, here and here, but this was the first ‘parent bug' he had caught in all these years, just imagine!

She could wait no longer.

What more confirmation of her course did she need? Lord Dere had as much as stated that Mrs. Dere ruled the roost at Perryfield, and each passing second brought the doom of both the Barstows and Mr. Weatherill nearer!

"Sir," she blurted, just as he expertly pierced the unfortunate Elasmucha grisea through its thorax, slightly to the right of center. "Words fail to express how dependent so many less fortunate ones are on your unstinting kindness. Your generosity. Your willingness to—"

In alarm at this unexpected broadside of gratitude, Lord Dere wheeled back, bending the pin in his grip.

"Oh, dear!" cried Adela, springing forward with outstretched hand. She nearly, nearly touched the impaled insect, only to recoil at the last instant, but fortunately the baron was too occupied in trying to straighten the pin to notice.

"Miss Barstow," he addressed his tray of the family Acanthosomatidae, "I believe I asked you not to refer again to your supposed debts to me. Your mother is my cousin, and your family has brought a welcome liveliness to Iffley and Perryfield, so there is no need for these continuing thanks—"

But Adela could not risk being silenced. "Yes, I know you don't like it, sir, but if you knew how easily we might have slipped into the abyss of poverty and disgrace—how easily we still might slip, you would understand why—"

"What do you mean, ‘still'?" he interrupted, looking up at last, his mild blue eyes sharpening. "Is there some need of your family's going unmet? Some lurking threat you and your mother have not shared with me?"

"Not a money need, no—I refer to—that is—the unmet need I referred to was only—a-a-a-a need of—the heart," stammered Adela.

It was impossible to turn any more scarlet than she now turned, without actually bursting into flame, and Adela half wished it would happen. For if she combusted, though she might leave burn marks on the carpet, she and Lord Dere would be miraculously delivered from this mortifying situation.

He clearly was not the least bit in love with her, nor did her hint appear to fill him with anything save dismay. Indeed, the man stared at her as if she had run mad. Slowly, slowly, he released the pin between his fingers and pushed the tray some inches away. Adela noted dimly that Frances had stopped playing. Was that because Mrs. Dere had come into the drawing room, or was her sister simply choosing her next piece of music?

In any event, she was running out of time. It was no difficulty to let tears well up, distressed as she was, and to let those tears then spill over was as easy as falling down the stairs.

"Miss Barstow," he breathed, when he managed to get his voice working, "I have been a fortunate man. Which means I have never experienced desperation, as you Barstows seem to have, with your painful losses and your—financial woes. I am glad—even grateful—myself, that I could be useful to you all. But you must not mistake gratitude for—for—er—ahem!" With a bark he succeeded in clearing some obstruction from his throat. "That is to say—let us speak no more of it—any of it—from this hour onward."

"Oh, Lord Dere, if only that were possible," Adela wailed. "If only my heart had not been so affected by…what has transpired that I feel—I feel—I feel—I feel all might still be lost to me if-if-ifeverIwerepartedfromyou." This last came out in a rush, like the eruption of rock fragments with which Mount Vesuvius had bombarded unfortunates below, when Adela was Frances' age. And like those ill-fated victims must have, the baron threw up his arms in horror.

"Miss Barstow!"

"Because—what if we—what if I , that is—were to lose your favor?" she hurried onward. "What would become of my—heart?"

"You surely can't mean that you—you—"

"I do mean it, sir! That I—I— oh !" Being unable or unwilling to say precisely what she meant (or didn't mean), Adela took a deep breath, like a diver preparing to plunge into icy waters far below. She screwed up her features, clenched her fists, and flung herself at him.

Having never in all his years been pursued with such violence, the baron was wholly unprepared for Adela's assault, and when he shrank aside, instinctively hunching over his precious specimen tray, it was not a deliberate lapse in chivalry on his part. That is, Lord Dere did not choose for Adela to fly through the space between them with no waiting arms to receive her. He did not choose for her to crumple in a heap at his feet; it was simply what happened.

But once she was on the actual floor, a loosened comb slipping from her hair and her fingers scrabbling at his boots in an attempt to drag herself up, he did what any man similarly circumstanced would do, dumbstruck or not: he bent down to assist her. Grasping her by the upper arms, he tried to lift the flailing girl up, and had he been twenty or thirty years younger, the effort would not have gone amiss, but as it was, amiss was precisely where it went. Over they pitched, Adela landing flat on her backside and Lord Dere atop her.

For one wretched sliver of eternity they lay there, aghast, and so deep was their humiliation that they might have gone on thus to the last trumpet, if the more familiar sounds of voices and footsteps in the passage had not reached their ears.

Madly and silently, both Adela and the baron scrambled to untangle themselves, with the unlucky consequence that she kneed him in a vulnerable location and reduced him to moaning immobility.

The door opened.

"I thought they were here," Frances Barstow's puzzled voice floated above them. "Lord Dere was going to add an insect to his collection."

"There is the tray on the table, indeed," came Gerard Weatherill's reply.

Mr. Weatherill? Mr. Weatherill!

Adela's eyes sought the baron's. I'm sorry , she mouthed. Please forgive me.

Grimly, he gave her a nod, before slowly and carefully extricating himself to rise to his feet and face the newcomers. "Here I am," he said.

"Uncle!" shrieked Mrs. Dere, hastening toward him, "Did you fall? Or have a fit?" The question was hardly out of her mouth before it was swallowed in a second shriek when she saw Adela pushing herself to a sitting position. "Miss Barstow! What on earth?"

A half century later, Adela would tell a favorite granddaughter the story of that afternoon with tears of laughter in her eyes, but as it was unfolding there was nothing remotely amusing about the incident. Nothing remotely amusing about standing up to face a shocked Mrs. Dere and a returned Mr. Weatherill. A patch covered one of his eyes and his old clothing looked, if possible, worse than she had ever seen it, being now mended and patched in several places with mismatched cloth. But it was his pallor and the accusation in his remaining eye which turned her to stone and sewed shut her lips.

"Miss Barstow fell down," said Lord Dere, as if such acts of clumsiness were everyday occurrences for her. "You are welcome back to Perryfield, Mr. Weatherill. I hope your father has made a thorough recovery."

The tutor's lips parted, but no reply emerged. He gave a short nod.

Of them all, Frances was the only one who did not gawp as if she had been clouted over the head. Indeed, she raised her eyebrows wonderingly at her sister, as if to say, Well done, you!

Mrs. Dere gave an audible swallow. "But—how did you come to be on the floor, sir? Did she trip you?"

His answering chuckle sounded only slightly forced. "Nothing of the kind. It was my own awkwardness." Briefly he shut his eyes, and Adela saw his chest rise and fall in a noiseless sigh. Then he said ever so calmly, "It has been many years, and I suppose I was out of practice in expressing my ardor."

"Your… ardor ?" Mrs. Dere made another unladylike gulp.

"Yes." Another of those stilted chuckles. "But I hope you will congratulate us. Miss Barstow and me, that is to say. She has just accepted me and made me the happiest of men."

The next thing she knew, Adela was lying on the library sofa, opening her eyes to the coffered ceiling while Frances and one of the footmen leaned over her.

"This can't become a habit," she muttered. But then another part of her muzzy head observed, "This is only the second time in your life you've fainted, Adela Barstow, and even your enemies would agree that, on both occasions, the circumstances were most trying."

"Ah," came the baron's voice. The footman's head receded, to be replaced by that of Lord Dere. "Some cordial for Miss Barstow and my niece, Wood."

"Did I…imagine it?" whispered Adela in her sister's ear as Frances helped her to sit up.

"I'm afraid not," Frances hissed back.

No, she had not. For there sprawled Mrs. Markham Dere in the armchair opposite, only herself coming to, while another footman fanned her. And there stood Mr. Weatherill, like one turned to stone, looking at the tray of shield bugs on the table. Looking at nothing.

"Please, Weatherill," says Lord Dere, "be seated. That was a little to-do, but now that the ladies are reviving, we may sit and talk like well-mannered people."

"Sir." With unwilling steps, Weatherill chose a chair, running a finger along the ugly seams of the patch at his knee.

The baron lowered himself beside Adela on the sofa. Not so near that he touched her, or even her skirts, but beside her all the same. Well, she reproved herself, wasn't this what you wanted? And just in the nick of time, for here is Mr. Weatherill's secret about to be blazoned. They had better keep the fan handy for Mrs. Dere.

"You must distract us for a few minutes," Lord Dere commanded affably. "You say your father is doing better, Mr. Weatherill, but, if you will pardon me for saying so, you seem to be somewhat the worse for wear."

"Yes," rejoined Frances. "Whatever happened to your eye, Mr. Weatherill? I hope it is…still there, under your patch?"

"It is. I—ran into something. The patch is merely to spare all of you the colorful consequences."

His answer made something flare inside Adela, and with incredulity she identified it as anger.

Anger?

Anger! Here she had literally thrown herself at Lord Dere in order to save Mr. Weatherill, and instead of feeling relief that he could no longer be harmed by the revelation of his scandalous history, she felt resentment. It was contrary; it was nonsensical; but there it was. Because he continues to hedge and dodge and hide! What in heaven's name did he run into, that it blacked his eye and tore his trousers?

Her new betrothed therefore pleased her unwittingly when he said, "Weatherill, I believe I speak for all present when I say we are glad to see you again for another reason: you may settle a question which has absorbed Iffley in your absence. Do you happen to know whether your former mentor is the ‘anonymous Oxford scholar' who authored the wildly popular new book Antiquities of Egypt ?"

"Your Mr. Keele," said Adela, addressing his scuffed boots. (She need not have bothered, for he had not looked in her direction since the baron made his announcement.)

Weatherill's straightened, his visible eye flicking between the baron and Mrs. Dere. "It is," he answered warily. "I did not see him while I was in London, but a mutual acquaintance said as much."

"Too bad about not seeing him," said Lord Dere with a smile. "As soon as the Oxford set in Iffley made the connection, they asked us to use our connection with you to secure a coveted copy. Alas. But good for Keele, and good for you, Weatherill."

As quickly as it had come, Adela's anger left her, pushed aside by alarm on Mr. Weatherill's behalf. He didn't yet know! He had no idea he stood on the edge of a precipice. How could she begrudge him his evasiveness, when so soon he would be exposed?

Mrs. Dere, at least, had other fish to fry. Pushing aside the footman with the fan and refusing Wood's proffered lemonade with a vehement shake of the head, she addressed her uncle in trembling tones. "Uncle, this chit-chat is all very well, and I am as glad to have Peter's tutor back as any, but I must insist we return to your astonishing announcement."

"If you like, Alice," he said gently. "I thought it best to let the notion sink in your mind first."

"That will certainly take some time, sir," his niece allowed. "Not that I count it a marvel, that any lady you apply to would be greatly flattered, but—I had thought you content to remain a bachelor—"

"If you will excuse me," Weatherill muttered, rising, "I will unpack and make myself presentable."

"And Frances and I will go now," said Adela, shooting to her feet. "I would like to be the one to tell Mama and my siblings, sir, of our—our—ahem—our engagement." (Adela nearly choked on the word).

"Of course, Miss Barstow." He did not look eager to be left alone to face his niece, but Adela was too flustered herself for surplus sympathy, and with a jerk of a curtsy she made her escape, Frances and Weatherill not far behind.