Lady Roma's Romance (8 page)

“No, thank heavens. What it must be to have not one devotee left to you.”

Though she knew Dina hadn’t thought about Elliot when she’d said it, Roma decided not to tease her anymore. It was, indeed, dreadful to feel that no one noticed how she did her hair or whether she was ill. Well,
Pigeon
always noticed, but it wasn’t the same. At least Elliot would guess that she’d altered in some way if she prompted him.

Dina put her fan to her chin in the way that meant she was thinking. Roma saw her cousin’s eyes flickering under their smooth white lids as she categorized and sorted the men present. That one was too old. Another had been cosseted by his mother from birth. A fortune hunter, discretely corseted, bowed with a creak as he passed. This one was too recently widowed, another too young, yet a third had thirteen sons....

Roma put her hand on Dina’s and pressed lightly. “No, Dina.”

“Certainly not. Even if you were at your last prayers, I wouldn’t inflict those children on you. Perfect hellions and their father without a penny that doesn’t go toward feeding them, clothing them, and their education.”

“I meant . . . don’t trouble yourself to find me a husband.”

“Why, I don’t know what you mean,” Dina said, belatedly.

“When I am ready to marry, no doubt Providence will provide me with a suitable mate.”

“I didn’t realize you had such faith,” Dina answered with a sniff.

Roma did not tell her that she would rather trust unseen heavenly intervention than her relations to find a man she could imagine herself marrying. She fully realized that compared to many other girls, her position in this matter was enviable. She had no need to marry in order to keep herself from poverty, her father showed no wish to have her gone, nor had she any particular yearning for her own hearth, home, and children.

On the other hand, to be an ornament merely to her father’s house for the rest of her life wouldn’t satisfy her either emotionally or intellectually. “I’ll tell you what, Dina. When the time comes, I may ask you to be the instrument of Providence.”

Dina brightened and opened her mouth.

“But not yet.”

Lord Yarborough walked in a crowd wherever he went. He could hardly take one step, especially in the south of England, without feeling jostled by ghosts. Julius Caesar was there and his lesser relation, Claudius. But not all his specters were of such high lineage. Lord Yarborough was as apt to be fascinated by the lowest pot thrower or meanest foot soldier as the great names of history. They had all come here, some for plunder only, others to stay, carrying the image and ideals of Rome with them. Even when Rome’s greatness perished, they stayed on, mingling their blood with the natives’, leaving traces of their glory buried everywhere they had dwelt.

Bath especially thronged with phantoms. His father had been staying in Bath when they’d taken down the Abbey House and discovered the Roman bath that had hidden there through the long centuries. He’d often described to his son in after years the way rough stone coffins of lesser men had rested on the thick brick pillars of the ancient bath and how coins from Saxon kings had been found only a few feet above the far more sophisticated architecture of Rome.

Lord Yarborough recalled with an inward laugh how he’d pictured history like one of the great layered cakes the household pastry chef would make for special birthdays and at Christmastide, small charms and trinkets scattered through the layers. Perhaps the fascination had started then, but it had been cemented on his wedding journey to Italy.

The joy of discovering his bride had taken second place to the sheer giddiness he felt on beholding Rome herself for the first time. She was battered and worn, dirty and shorn of the worship once granted her by even her meanest citizen. Yet to him, infatuated, willing to garnish her in imagination with all the beauty she once possessed, she carried all the dignity and splendor of her most glorious hours.

As he turned the corner into Hot Bath Street, drawn once more by the small display of locally discovered antiquities, Lord Yarborough sighed for those lost days. Gilda, poor soul, had never resented his passion for all things Roman, a passion so much stronger than any she’d ever inspired.

They had married young, too young perhaps, urged into the match by their parents. He had a title which must be protected and passed on. That duty had been drummed into him for as long as he could recall. Gilda had acknowledged that duty as well. Lord Yarborough winced away from the memory of her deathbed, when she’d clung to his hand, begging him to forgive her for dying and leaving him only a daughter.

He thought instead about the unknown geniuses of Roman engineering who had invented plumbing such as modern man had only just begun to create anew. Bath had thrived in those days before fading into a centuries-long sleep. How fortunate to live in these latter days of her second glory! With light steps, he trotted up to the front door of a small house and tugged vigorously at the bell. Handing in his card to the boy who opened for him, he was welcomed almost at once by the curator.

“You’ve changed things about rather since I was here last,” Lord Yarborough said, craning his neck for a glimpse of the room beyond.

“Yes, my lord. Those coins are new and that bronze. A householder in John’s Street knocked a hole in his cellar floor and discovered them. As they had no value in themselves, he donated them to us, happily.”

“Fortunate man. Pray provide me with his address. I will send him a token of my regard. Such actions must be encouraged. I cannot bear to think how many beautiful things have been destroyed for their mere material value.”

The curator, rather a monk-like figure with his brown coat and balding head, nodded and smiled. “With the widening of streets going forth almost daily, we have great hopes of more discoveries.”

“You’ll keep me informed?”

“Naturally, my lord.” He leaned forward to whisper behind his hand. “I have some hopes in that direction myself. I am negotiating with the owner of my house to let me undertake some investigation in the cellars. It was originally part of the Abbey, and, as you know, the monks sometimes covered up some interesting objects.”

“Excellent. I hope the owner sees reason.”

“I think she will,” the curator said, rubbing his hands together dryly. “A widow is susceptible to certain blandishments, you know.”

“No breach of promise, now,” Lord Yarborough admonished, well aware of the lengths that a true collector was willing to go in order to obtain a rarity.

The curator chuckled. “Not until I’ve found something good at any rate.” He cocked an ear toward the rooms at the back of the house. “If your lordship will pardon me ... I’m mixing up a batch of plaster of Paris.”

“Certainly, certainly,” Lord Yarborough said absently, his attention fixing on the new finds. “I know my way about.”

“I shall be glad to hear your lordship’s views, especially on the new pottery shards. Lincoln says they are ‘Samian’ ware; I have my doubt.”

Lord Yarborough wasn’t impressed by the coins; they were all familiar faces to him. The patina of the broken bronze vessel was all greenish black, yet despite the corrosion he could make out the head of some animal on the side of the curving piece, a bull perhaps? He knew well that the worship of Mithras, a Persian god, had been popular with soldiers. Could this be ... ?

Breaking in upon his thoughts, he heard a female voice from another room. It was so unexpected that he was drawn from his contemplation of the bronze. For an instant, he thought that perhaps Roma had come in search of him. True, he had not mentioned to her where he was going, but he knew, with a wry smile, that deducing his whereabouts would present no great challenge. He always came here after his return to Bath, to investigate and criticize any new finds.

“If you are entirely certain I shall be in no one’s way . . .,” the young lady said.

“There’s no one here but his lordship,” the curator said. “He’ll pay you no mind.”

“His lordship?”

“The Earl of Yarborough.”

Was there a slight feminine gasp of surprise?

“He’s a well-known authority on Roman ruins and remains.”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I know.”

Lord Yarborough had begun to lean forward to hear that voice, soft and low-pitched as it was. He tried to focus once more upon the bronze. Upon second glance, he decided that the animal mask was that of a deer, not a bull.

“Ah, the little statue,” the curator said. “A very fine find. Not complete, of course.”

“No. But I don’t mind that,” the young lady answered.

His increasing curiosity drew him away from the glass-enclosed tables toward the next room just as the curator offered to bring the lady a stool.

“Thank you. You are very kind.”

He heard the floppy shuffle of the curator and realized for the first time in all his years of coming here that the man was wearing and had always worn loose house slippers. Something of the smile this thought created was still lingering in his expression when he came around the corner. He saw the back of an attractive young woman standing before a broken statuette, a sketching book held open in the crook of her right arm. With a stick of charcoal she drew in quick, light strokes the semblance of the broken statuette, head, arms, and legs miraculously regenerated by her imagination.

“That’s incredibly good,” he exclaimed involuntarily.

The young woman shivered all over in startlement, then as though a spell had been cast over her by his voice, froze where the shiver had passed, immobile as the statue itself.

Lord Yarborough hardly noticed, except to murmur a conventional regret that he’d startled her. “You’ve caught the whole look of the thing,” he said. “The .. . the sweep, if I can put it so.”

“The sweep?” she said, though her lips hardly moved.

“I’m sure that’s not what you artists would call it, but I mean ...” He tried a gesture, a turning curve of his hand, then laughed a little at his own inability. “Well, I don’t know quite what I mean, but you’ve made it live again, haven’t you? That’s a great talent.”

Then she moved again, laying down her drawing, and Lord Yarborough noticed her former immobility only by contrast with the soft grace of her movements. She turned to look at him, and her pale blue eyes widened. “Lord Yarborough, isn’t it?”

To the best of his remembrance, he’d never seen her before. She had a small face with rather round, pink cheeks like a porcelain doll’s. Her lashes were quite long, almost in danger of entangling in the fringe of straight blond hair combed over her pale forehead.

Fortunately, he’d been in this situation before. Though he could recall without effort the names of even obscure emperors whose reigns had been brief and bloody, he rarely caught and even more seldom remembered the names of living people. “Ah, yes, by Jove. Very pleasant to see you again. Your—er—family is keeping well, I trust”

“Mother finds herself troubled with the gout,” she said. “Thus our visit to Bath. My sisters are visiting us. You and Lady Roma are well?”

“Oh, Roma’s never ill. Remarkable constitution.” Was she a friend of Roma’s? There’d been quite a parade of girls visiting Yarborough Hall after Roma had left that school—Mrs. Who’sit’s Academy for Young Ladies—several of whom had frightened his lordship with their mother-inspired flirtations. He did not imagine that his rather hawkish features and too-thin frame had created storms of passion in adolescent souls. He’d been glad when a rash of marriages had thinned their ranks. He couldn’t be certain, but he’d felt dimly that Roma had been glad as well.

Yet somehow this young woman seemed older than Roma, though by no means old. Just a vague impression of maturity lingered.

“I hope the waters are doing you good, Lord Yarborough.”

Really remarkably pretty eyes she had. Not a deep blue but well set and shaped. He found himself denying that he had any need at all for the healing waters of Bath. “No, indeed. It is the antiquities that draw me hither.
You
as well, I see,” he added, with a nod toward the statue.

“Everyone must have a hobbyhorse to ride,” she said dismissively.

Lord Yarborough felt moved to protest, but the slip-slap of house slippers on wooden floors forestalled him. The curator set down a three-legged stool and stood beaming at the girl as though he’d performed some heroic service and now expected her to exclaim over the dragon’s head he’d delivered. “And I was wondering if you’d care for a cup of tea, miss. I’ve just put the kettle on. And you, too, your lordship.”

“Thank you. I should be most appreciative,” she said, impressing Lord Yarborough with her graciousness.

“Yes, yes, indeed,” he said hurriedly, wanting the curator to depart so they could continue their converse. He dimly realized he was passing up a chance to discuss Rome in favor of a chat about art, yet somehow it didn’t seem like so great a sacrifice.

He noticed that even after the curator had departed once more—frustratingly still calling her “miss”—that she made no motion toward her uncompleted work. “Won’t you go on?” he said with an encouraging gesture.

“Oh, no,” she said, a becoming pink increasing in her cheeks. “I couldn’t, not with anyone watching me.”

“Ah, yes. I quite understand. Still, ah, it’s only me, you know.”

“But you are a great authority on Roman works,” she said. “Though I should not mind the criticism of one so knowledgeable, I confess that the slightest breath of disapproval ...” She seemed to run out of breath before she ran out of sentence.

“But, my dear young lady, what an impertinence on my part
to
presume to criticize the work of an artist! You are the only judge of what is pleasing to your eyes.”

He saw tears come into those soft eyes and was horrified. Without thinking of what he did, he immediately reached out to cover her hands with his own. “My dear, what have I said to distress you so? It was never my intention ...”

Despite the moisture clinging to her lashes, she gave an enchanting gurgle of laughter. “Oh, no, no,” she said, her hands turning under his. “It’s only ... I come from a large family, my lord, and no one takes my painting seriously. My sisters all say, ‘oh, Sabina is only messing about with her paints; she won’t mind if we interrupt.’ My brothers think it great fun to steal away my paints or draw mustaches and beards . . ,” Perhaps she noticed Lord Yarborough’s frown, for she gave a little gasp and drew her hands away.