Jennie About to Be (6 page)

The new riding habit was finished: bronze kerseymere almost the color of her eyes, with a velvet collar and three rows of small gilt buttons crossed with bronze silk cord. The narrow-brimmed white beaver hat with its short white feather was especially admired by all the children; even Derwent wanted to try it on.

The shoemaker had sewn boots of russet Spanish leather for her, and her gloves matched.

“Oh Jennie, you're so
elegant
,” Charlotte said. Yes, she
was
elegant, at least in the cheval glass in Aunt Higham's room. And she knew that on a horse she would be as much at ease as any of those girls she admired and envied. But would he remember his offer of the fine little mare?

He remembered.

I
T WAS
the first time they'd ever been really alone, though it was in a flow of riders and drivers. They walked their horses along the edge of the stream and talked; he asked her many questions about herself and seemed enthralled by life at Pippin Grange. He said he wished he could have known her father, but someday perhaps he would know her sisters. She asked about him; he was Scottish, but his father had died when he was small, and his much older half brother had become master of the estate. His mother later married an Englishman, so he had been brought up as an English boy in the Hampshire countryside. His stepfather was dead now, and his mother lived in London, in a house overlooking Hyde Park.

“Great old girl. Bless my soul!” Transparent astonishment. “We're almost there! Shall we go and make her give us some coffee?”

“We'll scent her drawing room with horse.”

“The Mater won't turn a hair. Attar of roses to her. Before she was thrown by a horse and broke her hip, she was never off 'em. Augustus his name was. Great brute of a hunter. She never blamed him. First thing she said was ‘Is he all right?' ”

“And was he?”

“He was, and is. But he put an end to her riding days. That's why she goes into the country only over Easter and Christmas. I've a younger half brother now, who's the baronet. Only nineteen, but he's dashed good at it. Takes his responsibilities seriously.” He laughed as if at a tremendous joke.

“My older half brother is master of estates in Scotland, my younger half brother is squire of a good part of Hampshire, and here
I
am. Enough to turn a fella's hair gray before its time, ain't it?”

He's about to tell me he's betrothed to an heiress
, Jennie thought. Instead he said, “Here's the Mater's front door.” His blue eyes were as innocent as the children's.

The ever-present urchin popped up as if he'd been lying in ambush in the areaway, called Nigel Capting, and said he would mind the horses for a penny.

“Right, old chap,” said Nigel, helping Jennie down.

“ 'Oo's the lidy?”

For an instant Jennie thought he meant her, but he was stroking the mare's nose as she dipped a willing head down to him.

“Juno,” Nigel answered seriously, as if to an equal. “She belongs to the Major.”

“Pretty little fing. Clever, too.”

“She's a poppet,” Nigel agreed.

As they went up the steps, Jennie murmured, “Friends?”

“Old friends. His brother was here first, with Dickon tottering behind him, just out of the cradle.”

“Where is the brother now?”

“Transported to a better world,” said Nigel solemnly. Jennie took a quick breath, and he said in a hurry, “Oh, not dead!” Reassuringly, he cupped her elbow in his big hand and pressed it. “The Major took him into his stables. Thinks he has possibilities as a jockey. So Dickon hopes for higher things.”

“Shall you—”

He shook his head. “I have no stables. I'm the landless one, remember. But Dickon will survive, if he lives to grow up. His sort will likely own half of London one day. They think they do already.”

As he lifted the horse-head knocker and let it fall, he added, “He has a meal each day in the kitchen. The Mater's orders. She has a number of friends, and she'll place the imp with one of them. ”

She'd suspected that Nigel never read a book if he could help it; at least such a hint never came into his conversation; how often did it get into anyone's conversation around here, with Aunt Higham forever warning her not to sound like a bluestocking? But this practical kindness and concern, especially after the winter tragedy of Tamsin, were an affirmation that depths existed and that there were more to be discovered and explored, if she should be lucky enough to have the chance. She doubted it.

“Oh, Captain Gilchrist!” The elderly parlormaid demonstrated the usual feminine reaction to Nigel's appearance.

“Good morning, Gertrude, my love. Is my mother at home?”

She took his hat and gloves as if receiving the crown jewels. “Lady Geoffrey is reading in the library, sir.”

That sounded encouraging, but Jennie reminded herself that the Mater might merely be reading the Stud Book. She was not reading at all when they entered the library but was standing before the fireplace, awaiting them. She was a tall, stout woman, tightly stayed, wearing a dark blue gown with a high frill at her strong throat and a lace cap over her still-bright hair.

Nigel got his golden fleece, his blue eyes, and his fine color from her. She stood erect and didn't lean perceptibly on her ivory-headed stick. She must have been as magnificent on her big hunter as Nigel was on Victor.

“Well, Nigel,” she said resonantly.

“I've brought her to meet you, Mama. Miss Eugenia Hawthorne.' Jennie was propelled gently forward and for a blinding moment suffered a brief return of the prizeheifer illusion. Lady Geoffrey held out her hand.

“I'm so happy to meet you, child. How cold your fingers are! Come and sit by the fire. Nigel, ring for Gertrude.”

“No need, she's hovering so as not to miss a word. Aren't you, Gertrude?” he called. There was an agitated rustling from the foyer.

“Madeira and chocolate, Gertrude,” said his mother with equanimity. “This lass needs to be warmed up.” There was a trace of Scots here, just enough to leaven the southern accent which had always sounded so affected to Jennie.

“I'm not cold, really,” she protested. “It's mild out, but—”

“She's terrified of you, Mama,” said Nigel. He led Jennie to a tapestried fauteuil and put her in it. His mother lowered herself into the opposite one.

“I don't see why she should be. I'm not terrified of
her
, and I must admit
entre nous
, child, I
have
been terrified by some of my son's presentations.” Laughter boomed up from that impressive bosom. “My dear, it's not an inspection. You're not being trotted back and forth like a filly to show me your gait and conformation.”

“I felt more like a heifer,” said Jennie, which set Lady Geoffrey off again, and she struck her cane on the floor.

“You're not so demure as I thought. Spirit, Nigel! She has spirit, I can see it in the set of her jaw and the light in her eye, and she'll need it! What do they call you, child? Not Eugenia, I hope.”

“Jennie.” She could hardly credit this conversation. It
was
an inspection, no matter what they said, and she didn't know whether she was overjoyed or humiliated or would end up as she'd expected, the victim of someone else's entertainment.

The scene was overlooked from above the mantel by the portrait of a man in a peer's robes. He was aloof without being offensively superior about it.

“Take off that ridiculous chapeau so I can see your hair,” said Lady Geoffrey.

Jennie stared back, tempted to disobey, but Nigel, who stood between them with his back to the fire, suddenly chuckled, and the whole scene turned comic. She removed the white beaver hat, looked at it with distaste, and Nigel took it from her.

“Ah, that's better!” said his mother. “What a lovely bay color. Does it curl of its own or do you frizz it?”

“It's my own curl,” said Jennie.

“
Good
! Men hate the sight of curl papers, or should.” She touched the thick chignon at the back of her head below her cap. “Staight as a stick mine always was, to my mother's and my nurse's despair, and I endured the torture because I was helpless. But I can assure you I didn't endure
silently
.” She was laughing again. “As soon as I was engaged, I said, no more of this idiocy, my husband must take me as God made me. If he wanted to marry curls, he should have taken that little nincompoop Sarah Flowers. But we were both Scots and sensible, so it worked out well, curls or no.”

The decanter and the chocolate pot were brought in, and the tray was placed on a taboret by her chair. Eyes downcast but managing to take in a good deal, Gertrude left as silently and swiftly as if on wheels. Nigel poured wine for his mother and himself, and Lady Geoffrey poured steaming chocolate into flowered French porcelain for Jennie.

“I know something about you, Miss Hawthorne,” she said composedly. “I have my sources of information, as your aunt and uncle must have theirs.”

It was rather a relief not to worry any more about what one should
feel
; the swift gush of anger had taken care of it. She would not make a scene, but she would see that both Nigel and his mother knew exactly how she felt. She looked up at Nigel, intending that her long, deliberate gaze should tell him of her pride.

He winked at her. Did he mean that she should simply humor an eccentric parent? Be secretly amused, and they'd laugh together as they rode back through the park? She accepted the chocolate and quickly took a sip which nearly scalded her into muteness.

“Nigel,” said his mother, “has always done exactly as he pleased. If he brought you here because I asked him to, it's a mere formality, the surface observance of an ancient ritual. Whether I approve or disapprove of you, it makes no difference to Nigel.”

Nigel, looking whimsically unconcerned, sipped his wine under his stepfather's portrait, while the late baronet stared over the blond head into great distances, as if trying to discern his wife taking fences on Augustus.

“And it makes no difference to
me
”—Nigel's mother went tranquilly on—“if Nigel chooses to marry a nobody from Northumberland with no connections to speak of, and no money. Let it be on his own head.”

Jennie found herself on her feet. “I should like to leave now, if you please,” she said to Nigel.

“Put the cup down first,” he advised, not moving away from the mantel. She set it on the tray beside the pot, keeping her face turned away from both him and his mother.

“Good day, Lady Geoffrey,” she said with frigid courtesy. “Good day, Captain Gilchrist. You will find the mare in my uncle's stable.”

She turned to walk out. If perfect love cast out fear, so did perfect rage.

“
Jennie
.” He had never called her that before. His big hands clasped her shoulders and turned her around. She gazed stolidly at his chest, waiting to be released.

“May I call you Jennie, too?” his mother asked winningly. “Bring her back, Nigel, so I can apologize properly.”

“I need no apologies,” Jennie said. “I need nothing at all from either of you. I would like to make it clear that I never did expect anything. All I desire now is my absence from here as quickly as possible.”

Nigel, keeping an arm about her shoulders, walked her back to the hearth, but she stood like a wooden doll and hoped she looked like one; they should not guess how deeply they had wounded her.

“Jennie, I went too far perhaps”—Lady Geoffrey went on in that winning voice—“but you're out in the great world now, not in the safe arms of Pippin Grange. Yes, I know about your home, and I know what it is to be thrust out of it. It happened to me. The old castle where I grew up was wretchedly cold and wet ten months of the year, but why do I always remember it in sunshine? Because it was there that I knew the pure happiness of a blessed childhood.” She wasn't smiling now, and the Scots accent was strong. “No one ever told me how it would end. That it
had
to end. My one brother died while he was fishing in the loch, and my father died with most of his Highland regiment at Quebec. My mother and my sisters and I were driven out of our home. Oh, very nicely, you understand. We weren't chased away like tinkers or gypsies, with the keepers threatening to set the dogs on us. My father, by dying in battle, had brought honor to his family, so the hero's widow was offered a house. Far from the castle, I may add,” she said dryly. “Far enough from the western Highlands so my sisters and I couldn't ride our ponies on the ancestral lands.”

Jennie swallowed. “I am so sorry,” she said.

“Well, it was a long time ago, and if we hadn't been driven away from there, I'd never have met Ian Gilchrist and had this bonny son.” She looked up at Nigel with a teasing yet proud smile, and he returned it. “Mind you, I was no great catch if a man was looking for money. Ian had already succeeded to Linnmore, so I became mistress of a big house, as big houses go in the Highlands. He had already a son from his first marriage, and an infernally healthy son Archie was, so I knew that my boy's chances of becoming the Laird of Linnmore were very slight. It didn't matter. Ian and I made each other happy.” She became reflective, gazing past Nigel's legs into the fire. “Yes, we were happy. But I was dispossessed again when Ian died. Archie was fair enough, we always got on well, and I could have stayed mistress at Linnmore House until he married. But an uncle who'd been left his guardian, and who had named me as the Nobody”—she gave Jennie a mischievous grin—“decided he should move in to take better charge of Archie's affairs. Won't you sit down now, Jennie, and drink your chocolate? I'll add some hot to it.”

Jennie sat down. Nigel poured more wine. “I carried my little son to London, to an aunt—”