Chapter 2

They were then only passengers in a common vehicle.

—Edmund Burke, Two Letters addressed to a Member of the Present Parliament (1796)

The Henley Coach rattled into the busy yard of the Angel Inn in the early evening and discharged its burden of the exhausted, dusty and disheartened.

A young man seated in the coffee room glanced up, as he had at each new vehicle to turn from the High Street into the yard. On the three previous occasions he soon returned to his newspaper, but this time his attention was caught and held by a large party of ladies and children, all dressed in varying degrees of black or black trim despite the warmth of the day.

Curiosity piqued, he had not long to wait before, in the constant comings and goings at the busy inn doors, a firm but sweet voice reached his ears. "—Of carriages ordered by Lord Dere of Perryfield?"

"You too, miss? Not yet, I'm afeared," answered the innkeeper. "But if you care to wait within, there is another gentleman in the coffee room also on the watch for his lordship's coach."

The next instant a small young lady with dark hair appeared beside the host, her gaze following the man's pointing finger and surprising the watching young man before he could look away. For a lingering moment they studied each other, fascinated. Her rosy lips parted in uncertainty, but before he could nod or otherwise acknowledge her, the bell of the door jingled, and she turned away.

Adela (for it was she) found herself a little breathless. She should not have stared. The man was undeniably attractive, with his waving red-brown hair, intent look, and well-formed person. She had not noticed at first the shabby state of his clothing or how his coat pulled at his shoulders as if tailored for a narrower man. Whoever he was, whether Lord Dere's steward or lawyer or man of business, she had no intention of thrusting an acquaintance on him, nor of waiting awkwardly in the same coffee room. But before she could slip out, every other Barstow crowded through the door, pushing her further and further within. The clamor of voices grew, but Adela replied first to her mother. "No. No carriage yet, madam, but doubtless it will be along shortly. We had better wait in the yard, there being so many of us—" (Not to mention, if they remained in the coffee room, Maria and Gordy would surely beg that something be purchased in the way of refreshment, and they had already spent too much at Shillingford.)

"Della," cried Gordon now, winding a coaxing arm about her and lifting round green eyes, "there is a man outside with a box of kittens. Hadn't we better take one as a friend for Poppet?"

"We ourselves are Poppet's friends, Gordy."

"But a small friend! And suppose Iffley Cottage is overrun by mice."

From the way her mother put her hands on the boy's shoulders, Adela knew Mrs. Barstow had already told him he might choose one if Adela said he might. And indeed, little Gordon's winning looks and manner usually secured him everything he asked for from the women of his family, even more so with the recent loss of the older Barstow men.

"Suppose there is already a housecat at the cottage," Adela persisted. "Wouldn't seven new tenants and a dog be difficult enough for him and the servants, without adding a new cat?"

"But Della, you told us before we left Twyford that new places and new sights and new acquaintances made life an adventure, and that surprises were half the fun of it."

Adela lifted dubious brows. If she had said such a thing to her younger siblings (and she likely had), of them all, the absconded Jane had been the one to understand her most literally. Wherever she was, Jane's life was now nothing but new places and new sights and new acquaintances.

"Only do come see, Adela!" urged her youngest sister, appearing on the other side of Gordon and clasping pleading hands. "There is the most cunning one with a little mask of black and brown spots."

Sighing in defeat, Adela followed her siblings out to the innyard, finding her mother's arm wound through hers.

"Thank you, darling," Mrs. Barstow murmured. "I think the gambols of a kitten might cheer us, and it will cost us nothing. We can feed it scraps." Adela noted with sadness that her mother appeared to have aged in the two days since Jane's disappearance, but perhaps the same could be said of herself, for the fatigues of the journey had not profited any of them.

The kitten was exactly as Maria described, and it regarded Adela with impossibly round eyes. Irresistible. When Maria and Gordon could not agree on a name, Frances christened it Outlaw, "Because her mask makes her look like the most adorable little robber!" and her younger siblings agreed to it, if only because they need not then yield to each other.

Outlaw purred and blinked in Gordon's arms and all was well until the boy unlatched Poppet's wicker basket to perform introductions. The white lapdog sprang up eagerly, expecting a treat, only to be confronted with a hissing, arching ball of golden fur. Poppet's tender little black nose was swiped at, provoking yelps more of astonishment than pain, and when Gordon leaned forward to reassure him, Outlaw gave a yowl of her own, frantically wriggling from Gordy's grip and tumbling to the ground. Maria and Frances lunged for the kitten, knocking each other's bonnets awry, but Outlaw eluded them both and scrambled to safety up the nearest buttress, which happened to be the leg of the young man emerging from the inn.

With an oath, the involuntary prop danced and spun in a circle, uncertain what manner of clawed demon had ambushed him. The kitten screeched and clung on, climbing higher and drawing additional vivid exclamations from the young man while the witnesses struggled to smother horrified laughter.

Perhaps three long seconds later, Adela roused herself to hurry over, apologies bubbling to her lips. "Sir! We beg your pardon," she gasped, seizing Outlaw by her tiny scruff to lift her off. But the kitten's scratchy little claws were firmly embedded, obliging Adela to give a mighty tug. While this effort successfully detached Outlaw from her victim, the kitten's claws took with them the hem of the gentleman's neckcloth, unwinding several of the neat folds.

"Dear me," Adela muttered, seeing the now dangling ends of the neckcloth and the bareness of the man's throat. "I do, do apologize." Without thinking, and almost dazed with panic, she made matters worse by snatching at the loose material and attempting to stuff it back in the remaining knots and folds.

"Stop—do stop—" he commanded, raising an elbow to prevent her flustered hand from chopping him in the Adam's apple.

Adela obeyed at once, scarlet with mortification, her guilty hand falling back to her side while the other clutched Outlaw so tightly even the kitten's squeal could not escape.

"Lord Dere's coach!" bellowed the ostler.

Without a second look at the stricken Adela, the young man left her, striding to meet the handsome vehicle and flicking his fingers at one of the jack-boys to fetch his valise. To the footman hopping down he said, "To Perryfield?"

"Perryfield?" echoed the footman, "oh, aye, after we unload you all at Iffley Cottage."

"But I don't want to go to Iffley Cottage."

"Did you say Iffley Cottage?" piped up Adela, scurrying over. "That's us. The Barstows. His lordship wrote that he would send his coach to meet us and convey us to Iffley Cottage. Will this be the only vehicle? There are seven of us, you see, though of course the baby and my brother may sit upon our laps, and my youngest sister as well, if need be."

Gordon began to protest this babyish treatment, but she waved him to silence.

"Then in you go," said the footman, opening the door and unfolding the steps while another bustled to take up the luggage Adela indicated. But when the first servant assisted Mrs. Barstow and Sarah to climb in and turned back for Frances, he noticed the young man still standing like a post in the yard and frowned at him, perplexed. "Are you certain you aren't with these ones, sir?"

"Of course I'm certain! I'm not a member of their party—we don't even know each other."

"But who are you, then, if you aren't with them that are going to Iffley?" the footman persisted, for all the world as if the young man would change his mind, if he only gave it careful thought.

"I'm Weatherill. Gerard Weatherill. The new tutor at Perryfield. Is another carriage being sent to fetch me, then?"

The footman's mouth popped open. He glanced at his counterpart, who stared back, equally perplexed. "Mr. Weatherill the new tutor? But—his lordship said you were coming tomorrow."

"And yet here I am," answered Mr. Weatherill dryly. "There's clearly been some miscommunication."

"That's right." The first footman consulted the second. "Anyone say anything to you, Ogle, about the tutor coming today?"

"Not a word, Harker. And Mrs. Markham Dere said tomorrow. She told Mrs. Robson this morning that the schoolroom and tutor's bedchamber had to be ready by end of today, against Mr. Weatherill's arrival tomor—"

"Nevertheless, here I am, " Weatherill interrupted, with some asperity, though his impatience fought with a temptation to laugh. First the ferocious kitten, followed by the interfering young lady's ministrations, and now this? "Seeing as you cannot do otherwise than return to Perryfield once you have conveyed this—other family—to Iffley, and seeing as I am, in fact, standing before you, would it be possible for me to ride up with the coachman?"

But a tutor to the heir of Perryfield being higher in rank than the coachman Fishwick, Harker's eyes widened at this potential lèse-majesté , and again the interfering young lady interfered.

"Pardon me again, sir," said Adela, her hand on the coach door, every other Barstow having situated himself within, "you would be welcome to share this coach—to sit inside with us, that is—if you would not mind the detour to Iffley. We are not introduced, but I daresay we would have been very shortly, even if not for this muddle. The coach muddle, I mean, not the kitten muddle. Because if you are indeed the new tutor at Perryfield, I believe my brother here—Master Gordon Barstow—will be the second of your pupils."

Hearing his name, Gordy poked his head out the open door. "What was that, Della?"

"This gentleman, Gordy," she replied. "Mr. Gerard Weatherill, was it? He will tutor you and Lord Dere's great-nephew Peter at Perryfield. Please, Mr. Weatherill, won't you accept a ride with us? I do feel very badly about your neckcloth and Outlaw's—the kitten's, that is—inexcusable conduct."

After a hesitation, he nodded, earning a wide smile from her before she took Harker's hand to climb in.

Despite the elegance and fine features of the coach—with its japanned and silver-trimmed exterior, the baron's coat of arms and crests picked out beautifully in red and white, and its Wilton carpets, Morocco leather, mahogany blinds, and spring curtains within—it was made to hold six passengers at most, and as they crowded in, Weatherill had to stuff down another urge to laugh.

"We're like a drift of young pigs being brought to market," Miss Barstow said, as if she read his thoughts. "Though pigs never traveled in such style. Frances, you put Poppet's basket on your lap, and Maria, you had better hold Outlaw so Gordon can sit on me. There, Mr. Weatherill—you may squeeze beside my mother Mrs. Barstow. And this is my sister-in-law Mrs. Sebastian Barstow, my sisters Miss Frances and Miss Maria—Frances has our dog Poppet in that basket—and Gordon you know. And I," she finished, settling her little brother more comfortably, "am Miss Barstow."

"A pleasure," Weatherill murmured, nodding to each in turn as the coach jerked into motion. And he found he meant his words. Upon closer inspection these Barstows were a fine, healthy family, the grown ladies uncommonly handsome. He wondered whom they were mourning but had to content himself with saying, "Have you traveled far, Mrs. Barstow?"

"Some thirty miles as the crow flies, but longer by the coaches. We set out early this morning from Twyford in Berkshire."

"Twyford to Reading, Reading to Henley, Henley to Shillingford, Shillingford to Oxford," said Frances, regarding him over the dog's basket. She was a colt-like girl of perhaps fifteen who was all arms and legs and eyes.

"Don't forget Nettlebed," spoke up Maria, leaning around her mother to peep at him. She had brown eyes like her oldest sister, and Weatherill guessed her to be less than ten. "Henley to Nettlebed to Shillingford to Oxford."

"But we didn't change coaches after Henley, we only made stops," put in Gordon from his sister's lap as he fiddled with the Venetian blind. "So really it was Twyford to Reading, Reading to Henley, Henley to Oxford."

"Stops do signify," countered Frances, "because once one climbs down, does it really matter whether one climbs back into the same coach or a different one?"

"What about you, sir?" Adela asked, to cut short their bickering. She removed Gordy's hand from the blind and gave him a furtive poke to make him sit still.

To her surprise, a shadow crossed the tutor's features and the leather squeaked as he sat back. He busied himself with tucking in the ruined ends of his neckcloth. "London. I come from—that is, I came from London."

Her candid brow knit. Was there a difference? She supposed there was. If he hailed from London, then he had also come from there. But if he merely came to Oxford by way of London, why then he might have come from nearly anywhere in the kingdom, as countless coaches converged on the capital and dispersed from there.

In any case, his reticence discouraged further questions on the matter, and they would have been back at the starting point, if not for Gordon.

"Were you a tutor there, in London?" the boy asked, then looking over his shoulder and adding unhelpfully, "What?" when Adela poked him again.

"Don't pry, " Maria scolded, also unhelpfully. But she sat in the corner opposite Adela and could not be got at.

"Not a tutor," Weatherill answered. "A—an assistant schoolmaster of sorts. At a—charity school."

His guarded tone (and Adela's physical reproofs) must have penetrated even Gordon's boyish unawareness because he did not follow this response with more questions, and a little silence fell, unbroken for some minutes until Frances opened the blind on her side and Mrs. Barstow said, "I wonder how much farther to Iffley. It has been so long since I was in Oxfordshire that I can't recall, though I believe Perryfield lies just outside the village."

As they were all newcomers to the place, no one had information to offer, but his mother's remark jogged Gordon into speech again.

"Have you met your other pupil Peter Dere already, sir? Because I haven't. None of us have. He's a year younger than I, Della says."

"I have not yet had that pleasure," Mr. Weatherill replied. He had got hold of himself by this point and banished the shadow from his countenance.

"We were trying to determine what relation he is to me," the boy continued. "For Lord Dere is Mama's cousin—first cousin—and he is Peter Dere's great-uncle. So would he be my second cousin or third?"

Weatherill considered, one of his fingers tapping a bar of the silver-plated trim. "Let me see…well, Peter Dere's grandfather, as a brother of Lord Dere, would have been a first cousin of Mrs. Barstow as well. His son, Peter Dere's father and Lord Dere's nephew, would have been her first cousin once removed, which makes Peter Dere her first cousin twice removed."

"But what does that make me and Peter?" Gordon insisted.

The corner of the tutor's mouth twitched. "I haven't the faintest idea."

There was a pause, and then his audience burst out laughing, as much from amusement as relief, to see his peculiar mood pass.

"And you call yourself a tutor!" teased Adela when their mirth died away.

"I'm afraid I do, though my proficiency only extends to the usual subjects. Greek, Latin, geography, mathematics, and so forth. Genealogy is not in my line."

"Mr. Weatherill," began Mrs. Barstow in her soft voice, "allow me to say how glad I am you will be teaching Gordon. His father, my late husband, planned to begin his instruction last year, but his failing health prevented it."

"You mean Mr. Barstow intended on teaching Gordon himself?" asked Weatherill, noting, Ah ha, the mourning is for the father, then.

"Oh, yes. My husband was a clergyman and used to take on pupils, as well as teaching my older son Sebastian before he went to sea." A little sigh escaped her.

"Allow me to offer my condolences," he said politely. Then, thinking to spare the older woman further scrutiny, he nodded to Mrs. Sebastian Barstow on the opposite seat. "These can be wearing times, for families of naval men." To his alarm and discomfiture, however, Mrs. Sebastian Barstow flushed scarlet and hung her head, pressing her cheek to the child in her arms.

"What…have I said?" he wondered. "I should not have mentioned anxiety, perhaps."

Knowing precisely what Sarah was undergoing because her own throat had tightened, Adela blurted, "It is not that. It is—unfortunately—my brother Sebastian was mortally wounded in the Action of 31 March off Malta. He—is no more." It had been early May before the family learned of it, and all that time that he was dead, all those days, they had been nursing Mr. Barstow through his final decline and taking comfort in how Baby Bash grew in strength and delightfulness.

"I am very sorry for it. And sorry for—touching—twice—upon such a tender spot." His words were barely audible, and if in his mortification he could have hurled himself from the moving coach without adding to the party's inconvenience, he would gladly have done it.

"You could not have known," Adela excused him at once. "And—and we had better grow used to discussing it, for we will have to say as much, over and over, to all we meet here." In saying this she looked at each family member in turn, speaking more to them than to him, but he was glad to be pardoned in any case.

And not a moment too soon, for the appearance of the Tree Inn's great elm marked the beginning of Church Way, from which lanes branched downward toward the river.

Welcoming the distraction, the Barstows leaned to peer through the slats of the blinds, Mrs. Barstow murmuring to Maria, "Take a firm hold of Outlaw, darling, for we are nearly there. Lord Dere said in his letter that Iffley Cottage stands very near the parsonage."