17 Defiance And Obedience

Bertram was barely awake when Bayley shook him.

"Good morning, sir. Your hot water, sir." He spoke in a low whisper, so as not to wake the others.

Bertram groaned. "Is it morning already, Bayley?"

"I'm afraid it is, sir. Your big day. Shall I lay out the burgundy today?"

"Whatever you like, Bayley. No one will care what coat I wear."

"Of course, sir." He coughed discreetly. "I have been given a letter to deliver, sir."

"A letter? Have you? Then you had better hand it over, Bayley."

"It is not for you, sir. It is for Mr Fielding, from Miss Franklyn."

Bertram shot upright in his bed. "Miss Franklyn?"

"Ssh, sir, if you please. The other gentlemen are still fast asleep. Yes, from Miss Franklyn. She said it is an apology, and I am not to wake Mr Fielding specially but—"

"But he will want it at once!" Bertram cried, so loud that some of the others stirred, even as Bayley flapped his hands at him in distress. "Give it to me, Bayley."

The valet produced the missive, and Bertram slid out of the big bed he shared with Medhurst, and rushed across the room to the low cot where Fielding slept.

"Fielding? Fielding! Wake up, man. She is writing to you — Bea has sent you a letter."

To his credit, Fielding was almost instantly alert, his excitement palpable. "A letter? From Miss Franklyn? Give it to me — at once!"

"It is an apology, sir," Bayley said.

Fielding almost visibly deflated. "An apology. Ah." He turned the letter over and over in his hands before abruptly ripping it open.

Bertram watched his face as he read it, the eagerness giving way to a calmer expression, then a smile and a burst of quiet laughter. At the end, he was still smiling, although a little sadly.

"She is very kind," he said, with sorrow in his voice.

Bertram dismissed Bayley with a flick of his head, then said, "What happened? Something must have happened for her to apologise to you."

"I offered for her," Fielding said, with a heavy sigh. "It was madness, of course… so presumptuous of me, and she quite rightly rang a peal over me. No, that is not true, but she showed me just how impertinent I had been. I have been thoroughly ashamed of myself for having the temerity to raise my eyes to such a person, so far above me in every way. And now she has written to me with such kindness… she hopes we shall always be friends, she says. ‘You are all that a man ought to be'… is that not a magnificent compliment? Here, read it and see for yourself. Such a gracious letter!"

"You do not mind? It is not… private?"

"I have no secrets from my good friends," Fielding said.

Bertram read it in haste, looking for… he knew not what. But it was just as Fielding said, a gracious apology and a very firm rejection. Nothing about his lack of a title, only that she did not love him. As gentle a way to be refused as any man could expect. He wondered then what she had said to Walter, when she jilted him. She could hardly have dressed that up in any language that would have spared him pain. She had accepted him because he would be an earl one day, and rejected him the instant he lost that possibility. No, that could not have been gracious at all. Poor Walter!

And here she was, still in pursuit of a title, and nothing else would do. Despite that glorious kiss and the way the memory of it haunted his dreams, at that moment Bertram was not sure he liked Bea very much.

The others had woken by this time, and huddled round Fielding to discuss the letter and his failed offer and what it all meant. Bertram called Bayley back in to dress him, and then took himself to the schoolroom.

She was there, sitting forlornly at her table, her head down, her Latin book closed. Instantly, all his antagonism crumbled into dust. If only there were some way he could comfort her!

"Bea? Quid agitis?"

She looked up and he clearly saw tears on her cheeks. "Valeo," she whispered.

But she was not well at all. "Non ita. Non vales, amica mea." Such inadequate words. Her friend… if only he could be more than her friend.

He passed her his handkerchief, and she murmured, "Gratias."

"Bea, is this about Fielding? Because—"

"Oh, no… not at all. I am very sorry I have made him unhappy, but I could not marry him just because he wants me to."

"No, that would be absurd," Bertram said, smiling. "Your letter was kindly done, and thoughtful of you, especially the part where you said you did not have the proper regard a woman should have for her husband. And nothing about his lack of a title."

She looked up then, her expression serious. "I am beginning to realise — rather belatedly, I am sure you will agree — that a title is not the only measure of worth in a man. There has to be something more… I have to have something more. I have to feel something for a man with whom I plan to spend the rest of my life."

"Such as? Are you talking about love, Bea?" His stomach was surprisingly lively, swirling in the most alarming way at the intimacy of this conversation. Breath was hard to come by.

"I cannot tell you — only that there ought to be something. But that is not why I am miserable this morning."

"Oh." He could not be sure whether relief or disappointment was uppermost in his mind at that moment. More than anything, he wanted to know what was in her mind… in her heart. He had teased her about not having a heart, and she gave a very good impression of a girl who cared for nothing but a title, but if she had feelings, then he would be in an agony of suspense until he knew the direction where those feelings lay. Could it be him, his own heart whispered? But he dared not hope for that.

She was not going to tell him. But if she were not upset about Fielding, what was it that reduced her to tears?

"Mama has forbidden me from learning Latin," she said dolefully. "I am not to addle my brain with book learning, she says."

"Then what are you supposed to do with your time, hem handkerchiefs?"

"Embroidery, tapestry, painting with water colours, netting purses…"

"That sort of thing will addle your brain far more than a bit of Latin. Besides, if you can read Latin, you have the most amazing body of literature at your disposal, and no one could possibly object to that."

"I can read the translations, as I was doing with Horace."

"There are a thousand translations of Horace, all of them inferior to the original. Life would be insupportable without Latin, and the ability to reread the Odes on a regular basis — at least once a year."

"Or to hear them spoken, as you do so well. That first meeting I overheard, when you read out that splendid poem. ‘Donec gratus eram tibi nec quisquam potior bracchia candidae cervici iuvenis dabat.' That one. How does it go on?"

"‘Persarum vigui rege beatior.' Should you like to learn it by heart? I can teach you."

"I am not allowed to open a book."

"No, but I am, and if I were to write it out for you on a piece of paper, you would not need to open a book at all. And I should be very happy to help you with the metre and pronunciation."

"Do you think…? But Mama would not be happy about it."

"Bea, learning poems by heart is something that everyone does… or pieces from Shakespeare or the Bible. Besides, this is only a temporary prohibition. Once you are married, you will be able to spend all day buried in your books, if you want to."

"As you do."

He laughed. "As I do. Just make sure to marry a Latin scholar, who will help you with your deponent verbs and eccentric metres. Now, let me recite the first few lines for you to learn."

Her smile of pleasure should have been its own reward, of course, but his treacherous insides jolted with excitement — he had convinced her to continue their morning lessons, and he had planted the idea that she might take a Latin scholar as her husband. And who better to fill that r?le than Bertram himself?

***

Bea buzzed with excitement, but she was nervous, too. She was not a naturally rebellious person. Thoughtless, sometimes, yes, but she had never deliberately defied her stepmother's orders, and she was very much afraid that learning a Latin poem by heart came perilously close to defiance. But Bertram was not explaining the meaning of the words, only helping her remember them, so it was not precisely learning the language, was it? And recitation was one of a lady's approved accomplishments. She had memorised many poems over the years, some of them in French or Italian, without having the least idea what she was saying, and this was no different. Or so she told herself.

After breakfast, her stepmother planned to keep her out of trouble by making her accompany the duchess on her domestic rounds.

"That way, you will have some idea of all that is involved in the running of a great house such as this, and Landerby is but one of the duke's many estates. Since you will marry into such circles yourself one day, you should be prepared for the responsibilities which will be your lot."

"Very well, Mama, although I believe you have already trained me well in household management."

"Oh, at Highwood we have no more than twenty servants, and not even an under butler. That is nothing at all. At Marshfields, there are more than thirty indoor servants, let alone the gardeners, gamekeepers, dairymaids and so forth. Six just in the kitchens... no, seven. I forgot the pastry cook. I was remiss not to show you the scale of the operation there, to give you an idea. Never mind, we shall begin today, and if we are invited to Marshfields this autumn, we may take advantage of the visit to teach you a little more."

"Yes, Mama," Bea said dispiritedly.

All day she trudged along behind her stepmother and the duchess. They made a strange pair. Lady Esther fizzed with energy, clearly happy to be in her rightful place in society, issuing orders with authority and finding fault with everybody. The servants eyed her warily as she approached, took their reprimands stoically, and glowered after her as she left. The duchess, by contrast, skipped from room to room with a smile and a compliment and a casual, "You will know how best to do it, I am sure." The result was that everyone smiled at her, and she left them all cheerful and willing. It was fortunate, perhaps, that Lady Esther swept into a room first, and the duchess followed in her wake, to smooth over the ruffled feathers. She never countermanded Lady Esther's orders, merely modified them slightly. "Perhaps not quite so much syllabub," she would say. Or, "Only if you have the supplies… or the time… or can spare someone to do it."

At the end of the day, Lady Esther turned to Bea with a smile of triumph. "There now, I hope you have a better idea how to go on."

"Indeed I have, Mama. I have learnt a great deal today. Thank you for allowing me to see you at work."

And her stepmother basked in the supposed compliment, and, fortunately for Bea, never thought to ask precisely what it was that she had learnt. Such a question would have tested Bea's powers of invention to their limit.

The only drawback to spending her day thus engaged was that Bea missed Bertram's presentation to his fellow Latin scholars. She had been looking forward to hearing his lovely voice again, and seeing him striding up and down, the words of men dead for millennia echoing around the room. However, he was one of the first in the saloon before dinner, and she was able to ask him how it had been received.

"Very well, I think," he said, settling on the sofa beside her. "Medhurst was a bit scathing, but then he always is."

"But he is your friend!" she cried, appalled by this seeming betrayal.

Bertram only laughed. "Indeed, we are the best of friends, but that does not mean he will concede to the rightness of my arguments. Nor I to his," he added, eyes twinkling merrily. "Where the Latin poets are concerned, it is hard to find a single point of agreement between us, but that is the fun of such meetings."

"Fun? It is fun to argue?"

"It is the greatest amusement in the world to quarrel gently over the meaning of a single word in a poem written two thousand years ago. There are any number of other matters we could dispute, but we do not. Medhurst thinks riding to hounds is a splendid way to pass a wet day in December. I beg to differ. I believe that the North Riding is the finest place in the world."

"And so it is!"

"Medhurst would take issue with us both, then. He likes the softer, less challenging terrain of the south. And so it goes, but we do not fall out over such matters. We simply shrug and wonder why the other, who seems a reasonable fellow in other ways, could be so bone-headedly wrong."

She laughed, but said wistfully, "I wish I had a friend like that. Or three friends, as you do. Friends who would chaff me gently but not quarrel with me — except over a Latin poem."

"But you do," he said surprised. "You have all four of us as friends."

She sighed. "Yes, but it is not a friend I need, Bertram, it is a husband. Oh, to be mistress of my own establishment, and order my time as I please! I have spent the entire day in the basement with Mama and the duchess…. No, that is not quite true. There was an hour in the attics, too, and I do believe there was an interlude in the linen cupboard. But I must refrain from speaking of that, lest the excitement overwhelm me."

He chuckled. "Dearest Bea, you were not made for domesticity, were you? Let me tell you a secret — servants can manage a house perfectly well, if left to their own devices. My mother does nothing more than order the meals each morning, and look over the accounts now and then, to be sure no one is cheating us. Otherwise, she leaves well alone. If there is anything amiss with the linen cupboard, Mrs Lynch will tell her of it. As for Lady Strong, I am not sure she knows where her linen cupboard is, for she spends every waking hour in her garden."

"Which is much better than terrorising the servants. What does your mama do for a hobby? Her health, of course. She must spend half her days in the still room concocting remedies for every little cough or itch."

"She is not very good at concocting, so she keeps on very good terms with the apothecary," he said in a conspiratorial whisper. "But do not let her know that I have told you that."

"My lips are sealed," she whispered back.

The room had filled up as they talked, and even Mr Fielding was there, with a hesitant little smile for her. The duke's extremely grand butler announced dinner, Bertram offered her his arm, and, with a little burst of pleasure, she allowed him to lead her into dinner and then to sit beside her.

It was an odd thing, but no matter how despondent she became, Bertram always made her feel better. He was such a good friend to her. If only he could be more than a friend, but she had given her word.