Byron's Child (3 page)

“They will not tell Roland that we have read Voltaire.”

“Of course not,” Jodie assured her. “But why not?”

“Because Voltaire was a freethinker. My brother would be excessively displeased.”

“You mean the infamous Roland censors your reading?”

“He tries.” There was a flash of mischief in Charlotte’s blue eyes, though she continued with dignity, “However, he is my husband. Pray do not speak ill of him to me.”

Jodie warmed to her. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

Giles looked at the baffled faces of the young ladies and he laughed. “She means all right. Okay is an American expression, though by our time it’s spread all over the world.”

For the first time, young Lady Faringdale smiled, her round cheeks dimpling. “American! Of course, that explains a great deal,” she said, then sobered. “I do not wish to seem inhospitable, but how long do you expect to be here? Roland is only away until midday tomorrow.”

“Not a hope,” said Giles flatly. “Even with a slide rule, it’ll take longer than that, if they’ve even been invented. I’ll have to go into Oxford and see if I can find one.”

“Hey, great.” Jodie was enthusiastic. “I can’t wait to see Oxford in 1816.”

“You’d better stay here. The less we wander around the less chance there is that we’ll mess up the time stream irreparably.”

“Giles Faringdale, if you think you can keep me cooped up in this place while you jaunt about the countryside, you’ve got another think coming. I’m the one with an interest in exploring, remember. It could make my career.”

“Mine too. If I can come up with a solid theory.”

“You don’t need to go to Oxford to do that. I’ll go and you stay home. I’m just as capable of buying a slide rule. I’ve got my credit card—oh!” Baffled, Jodie fell silent.

Charlotte, distressed by their argument, quickly intervened. “You cannot go today anyway. We must decide on a story to tell Roland, though I cannot like to deceive him.” She glanced at Giles, who had returned to his formulae and was not listening. “He will have to be a long-lost cousin.”

“From America,” Emily suggested.

“I’m getting chilly,” Jodie said. “Let’s go in the bedroom, folks, and I’ll get dressed. He’ll never miss us.”

Charlotte and Emily were fascinated by her bra and pantyhose, but she steered them ruthlessly back to the subject at hand as she put on a borrowed gown.

“How do we explain my presence?”

“You must be Cousin Giles’s sister.” Charlotte was positive. “For propriety’s sake. If I had known last night, I should never have allowed you to share these apartments.” She cast a reproachful glance at Emily, who blushed.

“It was my fault,” Jodie hastened to take the blame. “You need not worry, he is a perfect gentleman.”

“In some situations, no gentleman is perfect, and in any case it is improper. Yes, you must be brother and sister.”

“We don’t look at all alike.”

“Half-brother and -sister then.”

“Lord Byron!” said Emily in a strangled whisper.

“Pray do not repeat gossip, Emily. If anyone should ask, we shall say that after Cousin Giles’s mother’s death, your father married a Red Indian. That will explain your black hair.”

Jodie collapsed in laughter. “As a matter of fact, I am part Chinese, but I guess Native American will do.”

“Jodie,” mused Charlotte. “That is bound to make people ask questions. We shall introduce you as Judith.” Her firm tone silenced Jodie’s objection. “You lost your luggage on the way from America, and were robbed by a pickpocket in Oxford.” She went on to detail how she would deal with the servants.

“Very ingenious,” Jodie applauded. “A splendid plan.”

Her face pink with pleasure at the compliment, Charlotte asked anxiously, “Do you suppose Cousin Giles will agree?”

“Agree?” said Jodie in astonishment. “He doesn’t have a choice. He opted out of the planning so he’ll just have to put up with whatever we say. He’s a reasonable man.”

“Things must be very different in your time. I would never dare tell Roland what to do, though sometimes I can coax him. I was distressed to hear you disputing with Cousin Giles.”

“You’d better get used to it.” Jodie’s dark eyes held a martial sparkle. “I’m not about to lie around like a doormat for him to wipe his feet on. Let’s go tell him our story.”

Giles was far too involved in his equations to object to anything other than being dragged away from them to change his clothes. Jodie thought he looked great in the late viscount’s knee-breeches and frock coat—he was too tall to borrow from Roland—but Emily shook her head.

“Shockingly old-fashioned,” she said.

Jodie and Giles exchanged a glance and burst out laughing.

“She is right,” Charlotte said. “You must order new clothes when you go into Oxford for your mathematical device.”

“These are fine,” Giles protested. “I can’t repay you, so I don’t want to spend more than I really have to.”

“Jodie, pray tell him he must buy decent raiment,” Charlotte appealed. “Roland never quibbles about paying my bills.”

“You tell him. After all, you are his great-grandmother.”

She blushed but went on gamely, “I cannot allow my husband’s long-lost cousin to wear a coat twenty years out of date and shoes with huge silver buckles.”

Giles threw a mischievous glance at Jodie. “We’ll just say American fashions lag twenty years behind Europe’s.”

“Odious wretch,” Jodie said, recalling the phrase from the Regency romances that had sparked her interest in history. “However, since I am able to wear Emily’s clothes at least one of us shall uphold the honour of America, so if you want to go around looking like Benjamin Franklin, go ahead.”

“Benjamin Franklin!” Giles yelped. “I’ve got much more hair and much less waistline, though an equal interest in lightning.” He turned to Emily. “Is there a lightning rod on the stables?”

“Several. The old stables were burned down in a storm and Roland had a number of lightning rods built into the new stables. There is something special about them; I cannot remember what.”

“I must see them.” He headed for the nursery door.

“Not now!” Jodie called him back. “Charlotte has to get the servants out of the way so that we can arrive again.”

She wondered how anyone so timid towards her husband could possibly rule a houseful of servants, but Charlotte seemed to know what she was doing. She had already trusted her personal maid and Emily’s with part of the story, since they had provided the clothes. To explain her visit to the unused nursery, she had told the housekeeper, Mrs. Briggs, she intended to refurbish it.

Now Jodie and Giles were hidden in a spare chamber, where Emily’s abigail, Dinah, pinned up Jodie’s hair in a respectable coiffure. Meanwhile, Charlotte dispatched the footman to Thame on an invented errand and sent all the housemaids to clean out the nursery. Once they were out of the way, she went to the housekeeper’s room to consult her and the butler about the redecorating.

Emily and Dinah smuggled Giles and Jodie down to the front hall, and Charlotte’s abigail, Matty, went to announce their pretended arrival to her mistress.

~ ~ ~

“They swallowed it hook, line, and sinker,” Jodie whispered to Charlotte as she followed her into the drawing room. “You were splendid. You ought to be on the stage.”

“On the stage!”

“Oh, sorry. I forgot actresses are not respectable. I’m going to have to learn to think before I speak.”

“Yes, do be careful,” said Charlotte worriedly. “Emily and I will do our best to teach you and Cousin Giles how to go on, but we have only a day and a half. I fear Roland and Lord Thorncrest may not be so easily taken in as Potter and Mrs. Briggs. I dread to think what Roland will do if he suspects we are deceiving him, yet I do not dare tell him all.”

Jodie was beginning to dislike the present Lord Faringdale excessively.

Chapter Three

Reminded of the Earl of Thorncrest’s impending arrival, Emily lost her animation. Listlessly she drifted to a sofa and sat drooping. Jodie joined her.

“Why do you not want to marry this Thorncrest?” she asked. “Only because he is a friend of Byron’s?”

“Is that not enough?” Emily glanced at Charlotte, but she was talking to Giles. “They say Lady Caroline Lamb wrote in her diary that Lord Byron is ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know,’” she whispered. “I have heard that he mistreated his wife until she ran away, and that his half-sister is his mistress!”

“That is probably true,” Jodie conceded, “but what has that to do with Lord Thorncrest? He is not a widower, is he?”

“No, he is a single gentleman.”

“Then he cannot be accused of mistreating a wife. Has he a half-sister?”

“I believe not. But I have heard that he is a shocking rake, and besides his manner is so cutting that I am dreadfully afraid of him. He makes me feel a complete ninnyhammer.”

“You have met him then. I thought Roland was forcing you to marry a complete stranger.”

“We went to London for the Little Season last year and I met him there. I cannot imagine why he should wish to marry me, unless for my dowry.”

“Surely your brother would not wed you to a fortune-hunter!”

“No, the earl is wealthy, but my portion would be a splendid addition to any fortune. My great-grandfather, the first viscount, made a great deal of money in the South Sea Bubble, and in a hundred years it has grown considerably.”

Jodie remembered that Giles was, as he had put it, “rather well-off,” sufficiently well-off to refuse a salary for tax reasons. The Faringdales, it seemed, were an unusually thrifty lot, succeeding generations conserving and increasing the family fortune rather than dissipating it.

She glanced around the drawing room. The furnishings were a mixture of styles, from heavy Queen Anne cabinets carved with birds and fruit to the light, spare lines of Sheraton chairs. Jodie recognized several pieces from the museum part of the twentieth-century Waterstock Manor. Nothing had been discarded for the expensive sake of changing fashion, but everything was in excellent condition.

The gown she wore, and Emily’s, and Charlotte’s, though simple, were of good quality, showing no signs of wear. And Charlotte had said that Roland never quibbled over her bills. Whatever his faults, Jodie regretfully acquitted the present Lord Faringdale of meanness. There were plenty of other charges against him.

“Roland cannot literally force you to marry Lord Thorncrest, can he?” she asked Emily. “If he dragged you to the altar, the parson would refuse to conduct the ceremony.”

“He can make my life miserable with his scolding, and it would be horrid for Charlotte, too. He would be bound to think she had supported me if I rebelled. Besides, it is my duty to obey him. I shall have to marry Lord Thorncrest.” Tears welled in Emily’s brown eyes.

“Do not despair yet,” said Jodie bracingly. “You and Charlotte really must learn to stand up to these dictatorial men. It looks as if we are going to be here for a while yet, so I shall give you a few lessons in women’s lib. Okay? I mean, all right?”

“Women’s lib?”

“Well, we’ll stick to assertiveness training. Standing up for your own opinions, and how to say no, that sort of stuff. I expect it would cause a few of Giles’s paradoxes if we went out to fight for the vote.”

His attention caught by his name, Giles heard the last part of Jodie’s sentence. “Fight for the vote? Ye gods, Jodie, you wouldn’t!”

“It seems a pity to pass up the opportunity,” she said innocently. “I’m inclined to believe Dr. Brown’s Conservation of Reality theory.”

“In minor matters, yes, but something like that would have to change the future—our past—in a big way.” Dismayed, Giles ran his fingers through his hair.

“You think I might succeed in winning the vote for women a century early? I’m flattered by your confidence in me. More likely my efforts would fizzle out and not make the slightest difference, but you needn’t worry, I don’t intend to try. I told Emily it would probably cause one of your paradoxes.”

He sighed in relief. “So you were just teasing. I might have guessed. All the same, the longer we stay, the more likely something will go wrong. I must get back to work. Cousin Emily, will you take me to see the lightning rods on the stables? Don’t worry, Jodie,” he forestalled her protest with a grin. “We’ll say that as a fellow-countryman and fellow-scientist of Ben Franklin’s, I’m eager to see how the English have improved upon his invention.”

Emily was glad to be distracted from her woes. As she and Giles left, the elderly butler came in with a tray of refreshments. Jodie eyed the tea and cakes hungrily. Since a snack lunch in Oxford yesterday, if yesterday was the right word, she had eaten nothing but what Emily had managed to smuggle up to them.

However, it was a long time since she had used the chamber pot in the night nursery.

“I don’t suppose there’s a water closet at Waterstock Manor?” she asked Charlotte without much hope. Probably the thrifty Faringdales considered such a luxury an unnecessary extravagance.

“My father-in-law had Burmah water closets installed years ago, two for the family and one for the servants. Shall I show you the way?”

At first glance the water closet looked like a superior outhouse—a polished wooden bench with a hole in it. However, underneath the bench was a porcelain bowl, and overhead hung a metal water tank for flushing just like the one in Jodie’s Oxford digs two hundred years in the future.

Charlotte also showed her the separate bathroom, complete with shower bath. “Just tell Matty or Dinah when you want to bathe, so that the boiler can be stoked,” she said.

“Heavenly!” Remembering last evening, Jodie giggled. “Giles will be thrilled to death. He had no appreciation of the historical significance of the chamber pot.”

They returned to the drawing room and settled down for a comfortable cose.

“I like the way you joke with Cousin Giles,” Charlotte said wistfully, as she poured the tea. “You must have known him a long time.”

Jodie felt her cheeks grow warm. “As a matter of fact, I only met him yesterday. People in our time, especially Americans, tend to be much more free and easy with new acquaintances than here and now. Not that I would have accepted a ride with any man, even in England. I liked him right away, and felt I could trust him.”