Rondo Allegro (60 page)

Though Anna and Henry were still on opposite sides of the
room, their conversational partners were both distracted as the footmen brought
in fresh punch.

Anna saw Mrs. Squire Elstead take her husband’s arm and walk
him away, leaving Henry alone at last.

Anna moved quickly to Henry’s side. “Are you quite well?
There is punch just bringing in. Shall I fetch you a cup?”

His breath hissed out. The noise had become insupportable;
Squire Elstead’s voice resembled the buzzing of bees, while every barking laugh
stabbed through his nerves as merciless as that first splinter wound. “Anna.”
He lifted a hand, and she touched his fingers. He clasped her hand. “Who is
by?” he murmured.

“There is no one near us,” she whispered.

“My head aches abominably,” he admitted. “Can you get me out
without causing a to-do?”

“Give me a moment.” Anna moved away. How did one summon the
carriage? It was time for her to learn these things.

She avoided the line forming for punch, and made her way to
the side table bearing the plates of little cakes. A silent man in livery stood
behind the table. Anna said to him, “Could you summon our coach to the front,
without raising notice?”

He bowed, caught the eye of a young footman circling about
collecting cups, whispered, and the boy vanished with his tray through a
discreet door.

Unnoticed by anyone, Anna and Henry left the ball and soon
climbed into the carriage, where he sank back. The flickering light of the
lanterns set outside the windows caught the gleam of sweat above the bandage on
his high brow.

Henry grimaced as the coach jerked and began rolling. His
hand groped for hers, and she took his fingers in her gloved hands. “I’m fairly
well scuppered,” he admitted in a husky voice.

“Then we shall get you home,” she promised.

Home
.

The word came out so easily, so naturally. The sensation
behind her ribs was too profound for happiness; it almost hurt, and she was
aware that she could not be happy while Henry was in distress. Tears stung her
eyes, not of grief but a poignant wonder, and she held his hands, and he hers,
as they rode in silence.

When they reached the Manor, Henry stirred. “I survived. A
month ago I could scarcely sit up without reaching for a basin,” he said.
“Riding in a coach throws me back to those evil days. Will you walk me
upstairs?”

Anna said, “Of course.” She nodded her thanks to
John-Coachman, who shut the door and climbed up on the box to return to the
Squire’s house, as Anna and Henry moved slowly inside.

As soon as Perkins’s step was heard, Henry said, “I am in
dire want of a dose.”

“I shall fetch the tincture at once, my lord,” Perkins said.

Henry sank into his chair. “Anna, are you still here?”

“I am.”

“I shall soon be asleep. I detest laudanum. It always seemed
the nostrum for the weak, and it leaves my head foggier than this devilish
crease in my skull. But I find I cannot sleep when this devilish ache is on me.”
He leaned his head back. “I thought I was ready for such an entertainment.
Nothing to do but sit! I would enjoy the musicians, at least, but I had counted
without the noise. Everyone talks above the music, and every clink and clatter . . .”
He pressed one hand to the side of his head.

So that is what that
odd smile is
, Anna was thinking, as Perkins came in with a bottle and a
tiny glass on a tray.
Pain.

“I mean to get these thoughts out before the laudanum
renders me speechless,” Henry said after he swallowed his dose. “I had thought
to talk to Caro and Blythe together, but I had forgotten that though my sisters
would be invited, Penelope would refuse for them both. Perhaps it is as well. A
public gathering is no place for such a conversation.”

He thumbed his eyebrow ridge through his bandage, then
dropped his hands. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

“Very much.”

The laudanum was beginning to dissipate the worst pain, but
his tongue felt thick. “As well, because at week’s end you will be expected to
preside here. The New Year’s ball is an old tradition. My mother enjoys it. I
might put in my appearance, then retire. D’you object?”

“Not at all,” Anna said. “You must do what suits your
constitution best. I find I would very much like to learn how to arrange such a
diversion, and I know your mother and Harriet will show me how to go on.” She
spoke without thinking; she thought about saying something complimentary with
regard to Emily, but the time had passed for it to sound natural. It would be
too awkward, or worse, she might draw attention to an inadvertent lapse that
she had not intended.

So as Perkins helped his master to his feet, she wished
Henry good night and withdrew, shutting the door noiselessly behind her.

o0o

The New Year’s Ball was accounted a great success by all
who fought their way through snowdrifts to attend. Anna was aware that she
could
be enjoying herself, though she
was too aware of a new situation to truly enjoy it. Instead she experienced the
success of seeing people well amused.

The dowager exerted herself to entertain the older guests.
Emily presided with calm assurance over the ballroom—having privately resolved
to permit no one to see her glancing once Henry’s way—and Harriet marshaled the
younger people in an endless series of games that involved quick wits and a
great deal of laughter.

Anna moved about looking serene, safe in the knowledge that
Henry had been seen to his rooms not long after welcoming the last guest.

At midnight she stole upstairs, and finding Henry in the
sitting room, awake and restless, she offered to read from Graineville’s
Le Dernier Homme
, a book Henry had been
given as a parting gift by a French lieutenant who had been a patient in the
hospital near Henry’s chamber. Both had had bandaged eyes; they had struck up
an acquaintanceship, mutually agreeing to lay the war aside until the man was
deemed well enough for a prisoner exchange.

Some pages in, Henry laid two fingers on her wrist. “The
sound of your voice is what I find most pleasing. But this story is devilish
strange. Are you at all entertained?”

She said slowly, “I have read about air balloons, but this
vision of the last living man in some far-distant day traveling to Brazil to
find the only woman, well, my preference is for stories about people in the
world I know.”

Henry let out a soft breath of laughter, and she studied the
glint of gold in the tiny whiskers on his upper lip and along his strong chin,
and suppressed the impulse to stroke them with her thumb. “You can lay that
infernal book aside,” he said, and wished he knew how to court. How to flatter
without sounding like a coxcomb, how to please.

Whenever he thought about how much joy he found in her
presence, his throat tightened, leaving him without any words at all.
I am an idiot.
“It is a relief that you
and I are of the same mind,” he said hoarsely.
I am a coward, an idiot, and a fool.

What could he say, without seeing her face? How would he
know it was right? “I thought it a fine gift, but I wonder now if he wanted to
be rid of the thing. Have we something better?”

Anna said, “Your mother recently bought
The Lay of the Last Minstrel
.”

“I read that while on blockade. I could hear that again. I
like to listen to your voice.”

Anna said ruefully, “I try very hard to emulate my mother’s
pure English, but I am afraid I fail.”

“I wish you might never change,” he said earnestly.

“You are very polite.” She laughed and went to fetch Sir
Walter Scott’s poem, leaving him to sigh and castigate himself as a lackwit and
a poltroon.

o0o

On Twelfth Night, it was Anna and Harriet’s turn to brave
the elements.

The party was hosted by the Rackhams. The oldest gentleman
there, Grandfather Rackham, was chosen as king, and the youngest girl,
Georgiana Colby, as queen. From their bough and ribbon-bedecked thrones the
king and queen commanded the frivolities.

Harriet had completely ignored Robert Colby at the Christmas
ball, feeling that he had returned entirely too above himself. At the New
Year’s ball, he expressed his penitence so adroitly, making her laugh when
recollecting how much trouble they’d found themselves in as children, that she
found herself relenting.

“
We
found
ourselves,” she corrected, mock-solemn. “
You
led us there, being an exalted two years older.”

“And now I have learnt the wisdom of following
you
.” He bowed.

There was no getting around such pretty compliments, and
having Robert there, glancing her way from time to time over the younger
children’s heads, somehow invested with new interest all the old games like
Bullet Pudding, which got their clothes covered with flour as they poked their
noses into their dishes in order to lip up the bullet, and Snap-Dragon, which
involved raisins, parched almonds, and strong spirits.

Mrs. Rackham offered to play her instrument and Robert
begged Harriet’s hand first as they danced the Sir Roger de Coverley.

But the first cloud on her happiness occurred when they all
exchanged partners for the allemande, Harriet with Thomas Rackham.

When they finished and looked about, Harriet caught a
derisive glance from Robert’s eye, which puzzled Harriet.

She shrugged. And Robert turned his shoulder in a deliberate
manner, leaving Harriet looking both puzzled and a little hurt.

Anna had seen the exchange. She caught a few words of a
conversation between Cecily and Jane about French dances in England and France,
and for the first time, deliberately set out to draw all eyes.

“I can show you what they are dancing in France,” she said.
“And even a few steps of the
zarzuela
,
which they dance in Spain!”

Attention switched to her. In the middle of the carpet, she
danced a few measures of the
zarzuela
,
which all the girls wanted instantly to try, Harriet leading them, and so the
bad moment passed.

During the carriage ride home, she thought back to how
enjoyable it had been—almost perfect, except for that moment with Harriet and
Robert Colby, and of course because Henry had not been there to enjoy it with
them.

Then Harriet said in a sleepy voice, “How fun it was,
without Emily looking on and despising us all.”

Anna felt like she ought to demur, but she knew that Harriet
had the right of it. For so calm and quiet a woman, Emily did have a
constraining effect.

She wondered if she ought to say something, but there came a
slow breath from Harriet: she was asleep.

o0o

Over the next couple of weeks, Anna watched Henry carefully
for signs of that peculiar grimace that she now understood as evidence that he
was suffering the headache. She learned not to ask how he was feeling, as the
others often did. Invariably he would reply shortly, “I am fine.”

She knew he did not like admitting to weakness, and he hated
being fussed over. He would sit silently, his lips thinned, as well-meaning
persons offered him their favorite nostrums, or furnished unasked-for histories
of other persons being cured of the head-ache, wounds, or other illnesses, no
matter how unrelated.

She could discern by how high the side of his mouth
tightened the degree of pain he felt. When he looked
so
, she would come to his side, touch his arm, and if he groped for
her hand, she knew he wished to get away.

At those times he required silence. If he could get away
before the pain reached unbearable levels, he liked to be read to out of
The Naval Chronicle
, books of travel,
even plays and novels as long as they were humorous.

In this benignant effort she had the full cooperation of the
dowager, who watched her son anxiously. She, too, soon saw that he hated what
he called “fuss,” that is, questions he did not wish to answer, and a stream of
suggested cures, however well meant.

“To admit to weakness is a failure,” the dowager said to
Anna one morning when they found themselves alone at breakfast, while heavy
clouds moved in slowly outside, low and threatening. “He was always that way.
His father had no truck with his sons claiming illness, as he himself was
rarely ill. Illness, my husband declared, was best left to women.”

Anna exclaimed, “But women are not weak. That is, we do not
possess the physical strength to do battle, or to build monuments, perhaps, but
endurance?”

“Endurance indeed,” the dowager said, with a rare flash of
irony. “When it comes to enduring pain that is infinitely easier than
childbirth, men are the veriest babes in arms.”

Anna thought of those poor creatures lying so patiently in
the orlop, of Sayers and the captain forcing their wounded selves back to duty
until they dropped senseless to the deck. Men knew endurance. Perhaps they
endured for different reasons, and each sex respected best what it knew.

“If only I may know whether my playing to him is pleasing,
or if he sits through it for my sake,” the dowager said worriedly, and in that
Anna understood the real reason for the conversation.

That, at least, she thought she might venture a question
about, but as it happened, Henry had ideas of his own.

He surprised his mother, pleased Anna, and disappointed
Emily the next evening following dinner, when once again he asked if he might
join them directly rather than sit alone.

He found his way to the couch, and sat by Anna’s side.
“Mother, will you object to digging out your old Bach? You will not have known
this, but I am used to playing arrangements of some that I believe are
familiar. I know I heard them growing up. I have been trying to recollect them,
and I might venture to play by memory. Whoever is nearest, will you pull the
bell? Send for my instrument, please.”