The Frog Earl (12 page)

Simon drew himself up and replied with a haughty disdain worthy of Gerald, “I was not aware of any flaws in Miss Lassiter's complexion.”

“No, no, of course not,” stammered the baronet. “Speaking generally, don't you know. Any number of ladies ought to wear a veil.” He suddenly recalled some urgent message to be delivered to his mother, and took himself off.

Harriet Cooper joined Simon. “I could not help overhearing you just now, sir,” she said. “It was splendid of you to come to Mimi's defense.”

“I doubt she would thank me, ma'am. She believes herself capable of fighting all her own battles, I suspect.”

“Oh yes, and other people's too. For the most part she is right, for she is as dauntless as she is kind and generous. But though Mrs. Forbes has been with her for several years, and she has been in England for over a year now, I sometimes wonder if she quite understands English Society.”

“You're thinking of her dress tonight?”

“Oh no, that is a deliberate effort to... well, it is deliberate, I assure you, and odd but unexceptionable. No, I was thinking how utterly undisturbed she was when...” Harriet flushed slightly, “...when Mr. Pell put his arms around her by the mere the other day.”

Simon laughed. “I never thought of that. The battle with the fish absorbed my attention, I suppose.”

Her blush deepened. “I assure you, sir, I should have been quite overset by such... by such...”

“... an embrace,” he finished for her. “Yes, I do see what you mean. But after all, she had her revenge, first by releasing the fish, and then by breaking her rod over him.”

Gerald had come up in time to hear his last words. “I gather the Pells are not to join us tonight,” he said, “whether taking fright at an evening of culture, or still piqued by the pike, I cannot guess. I have just made the acquaintance of your sister Judith, Miss Cooper. You and she are to sing a duet, I collect?”

They embarked on a conversation about music which quickly took Simon out of his depth. He looked around the room, noting that Mr. Blake and the Reverend Lloyd had arrived, but his mind was on Harriet's disclosure of her feelings about Mimi. He couldn't believe the vicar's daughter was in league with the colonel to involve him, yet the effect was the same: both had confided their misgivings in such a way as to amount to a silent plea to him to help.

He must be looking particularly trustworthy tonight, he thought wryly. Perhaps it was the combination of a superior valet with inferior clothes. He could blame it all on Henry.

Waring approached with a tray of glasses. Simon took one and looked around the room again as he sipped a fine Madeira.

Mimi was talking to Judith Cooper, a plump, bashful-looking blond a few years younger than Harriet. Judith shook her head vigorously, yellow ringlets flying, and Mimi went to consult Mrs. Forbes. She moved with a fluid grace that reminded Simon of Gerald. She had the carriage of a princess, but her escapades scarce fitted her to be a viscountess. Gerald had referred to her as a tiresome child, Simon recalled.

He had a feeling that her Indian costume was not the only surprise she had in store for this evening.

At that moment she clapped her hands. “Everyone is here. If you will all find yourselves seats, I shall ask Sophia to begin our concert.”

Miss Marbury swept forward to take her place at the harpsichord, clearly accepting this invitation as her due.

“I shall play a suite by Couperin,” she announced.

Simon sat down on a blue brocade sofa against the wall, and Mimi, having seen the rest of her guests seated, came to join him. The metallic tinkle of the harpsichord began.

And went on, and on, and on. Simon shifted restlessly.

Mimi caught his eye. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I wanted to start with Harriet and Judith singing a nice short duet, but Judith was too shy. Do you dislike music?”

“Not in general,” he whispered back, “but I confess to preferring the pianoforte to the harpsichord.”

“So do I. Mrs. Forbes wanted to buy one but Papa said that as I do not play, a harpsichord would take up less space. I believe he regrets it.”

Simon glanced at the colonel's grimly patient expression and grinned. Gerald looked as if he might expire from boredom at any moment. In fact, of all the audience only the performer's mama and Mr. Blake the lawyer appeared entranced.

“Blake seems to be enjoying it,” he pointed out sotto voce.

“He told me that `Baroque music most perfectly encapsulates the laws of musical composition,' whatever that means. ‘Music is the highest art and unsurpassed pinnacle of expression of Western civilization.’”

It was difficult to tell when she spoke in an undertone, but Simon gained the impression that there was a certain scorn in Mimi's voice.

Lady Marbury's glare silenced them both. Fortunately, the Couperin suite ended soon after. Before Sophia could launch into an encore scarcely justified by the unenthusiastic applause, Mimi jumped up and asked Harriet and Judith to sing.

The sisters came forward hand in hand, one in pale yellow and one in pink. Beside Mimi, they looked very English with their fair hair and rosy cheeks. At least that was how they struck Simon, a world traveler familiar with all the varied races of mankind. To others, he realized as he noted one or two unguarded expressions, they simply made Mimi look more foreign.

Was that what she wanted, or was it one of the undesired and undesirable consequences her father and her friend had spoken of?

She was smiling as she returned to his side. “This will be much nicer,” she assured him.

The unaccompanied English folk songs were indeed charming. They sang “The Ash Grove” and “Come You Not from Newcastle,” Judith in a rather breathless contralto, Harriet's voice a pure and true soprano. Remembering Gerald's scorn for amateur singers, Simon glanced at his cousin, to find him looking interested for the first time that evening.

After the two songs, Judith retired to her father's side and Mrs. Cooper sat down at the harpsichord. Simon groaned softly. Mimi frowned at him.

“This won't be at all like Sophia's,” she hissed. “I've heard Harriet practicing.”

Simon had to agree with her when Harriet's voice joined her mother's accompaniment in the glorious strains of Mozart's “Exsultate, Jubilate.” Gerald actually sat up straight, as if he was afraid to miss a note, and at the end the applause was lengthy and heartfelt. Mr. Blake called for an encore.

Harriet, blushing with pleasure, curtsied deeply and then held up her hand for silence. “Thank you all, but I shall not sing an encore. It is Mimi's turn now.”

As Mimi stood up, a footman placed a large embroidered cushion on the floor in front of the harpsichord. There was a murmur of curiosity from the audience. Then the butler appeared with a long, narrow, many-stringed instrument borne carefully in both hands. Mimi knelt on the cushion, and he handed it to her. It had a round sound box at one end, and a fretted neck that reached a foot or two above her head. Recognizing it, Simon racked his brain for the name.

The limpid, mellow tones as she tuned it reminded him: it was a sitar.

“I shall play an evening raga,” Mimi said, a faraway look in her eyes. “It is based on a song about the love of the god Krishna for the milkmaid Radha.”

Simon heard a hiss of indrawn breath and saw Mr. Lloyd lean toward Mr. Cooper, his round face red with indignation. His lips formed the words “heathen immorality.” Mr. Cooper shook his head.

Mimi's slender brown fingers rippled across the strings, calling forth a strange series of notes, an incomplete, unfamiliar scale. Mr. Blake, proponent of music as the pinnacle of Western civilization, frowned. Simon was sure he had already decided that Eastern music was by definition primitive. He was not going to make any effort to understand an idiom unknown to him.

Gerald, on the other hand, looked fascinated. Simon glanced around the rest of the audience, but already the shivering harmonies and complex rhythms were pulling him back in memory to sultry evenings spent wandering through the streets of Bombay. The lure of the mysterious East was strong in him. He should never have left the navy while there was so much of the world yet to be seen.

The last notes faded into silence. The listeners stirred uncertainly, applauded still more uncertainly. Simon went to help Mimi to her feet.

“That was too short,” he said.

She smiled. “After all, my purpose was to startle, not to bore them.”

Gerald came up to examine the sitar. He asked some technical question about the number of strings.

“I don't know, my lord,” Mimi confessed. “I just play it as a young English lady plays the harp or harpsichord, without any claim to true virtuosity.”

“Then I shall never know which of the sounds you produced were intentional and which accidental. Nonetheless, it was an interesting experience.”

“It sounded authentic to me,” Simon said.

“I defer to your expertise,” Gerald assured him ironically.

Waring announced that a buffet supper was served in the dining room, and the guests made their way thither. Simon was not in the least surprised when the aroma of a score of spices met his nostrils. His mouth watered.

“Biriani, korma, pulao, bhaji, paratha,” he recited. “Now there no expertise is needed. I'll eat whatever's put before me.”

“Not a great variety,” said Mimi regretfully. “Mrs. Forbes had one or two receipts, and my maid recalled a few more. But I cannot vouch for their authenticity either, since I couldn't find all the right spices even in Chester. Besides, Cook was in high fidgets at being asked to make them. There are a number of English dishes too, for the less adventurous.”

The three of them were last to reach the dining room, just in time to hear Sophia Marbury's disapproving voice.

“Just a roll and butter, thank you. I do not care to... Why, Mama, how odd! Someone has decorated the table with cow parsley.”

“Queen Anne's lace,” corrected Mrs. Forbes anxiously.

“And pot marigolds,” Lady Marbury pointed out to her daughter. “Extraordinary!”

“Calendulas,” chorused Mrs. Cooper and Lady Thompson.

Mimi threw them a grateful glance, but Simon could tell she was hiding a smile. “In the holy city of Benares,” she announced, “devout pilgrims float garlands of marigolds down the sacred River Ganges in honor of the gods.”

“Pagan superstition!” Shocked, Mr. Lloyd turned to Harriet and offered to serve her from the vast array of dishes on the sideboard.

“An original bouquet,” said Gerald dryly.

Simon caught Mimi's eye. It must have been the spirit of mischief there that prompted him to ask, “And the cow parsley?”

“Why, Mr. Hurst, I thought you knew,” she said. “In India, cows are sacred, too.”

Chapter 11

“And Mr. Lloyd told me much might be forgiven anyone brought up in such unfortunate circumstances,” said Mimi indignantly, closing her dripping umbrella and dropping it in the umbrella stand. “So I described the splendors of my grandfather's palace in glorious detail.”

“`Unfortunate' is scarcely the word,” Harriet agreed. “Come into the parlor. Mama is teaching the girls in the dining room. What was Mr. Lloyd's reaction to that?”

“His little eyes glistened with greed and he said he meant unfortunate in a spiritual sense. If I would only allow him to guide me, he was sure he could persuade me of the superiority of the Church of England over the benighted idolatry of Hinduism.”

“I daresay he would say the same if you were a Papist. Papa believes all faiths are worthy of respect.”

“I'm sorry, Harriet, I did think my Indian evening was bound to drive both him and Mr. Blake into your arms,” Mimi said, plumping down into the sagging seat of an aged armchair. “And with any luck Sir Wilfred, too, but he actually admired my sari. You're not mending again! I can't darn, or mend tears. Give me something easy to do, like a split seam.”

“Are you sure?” Harriet sorted through the overflowing basket and produced a small pink garment. “Here is a pinafore of Sally's. She burst the seam, so it is to be handed on to Prue. Poor Prue! The youngest never has any new clothes.”

“I know you are still wearing out Maria's petticoats though she has been married three years.”

“No, Judith is tall enough at last! I shall have a new petticoat for the Chester assembly. Sir Wilfred may have admired your sari, but he also told me my gown was exceedingly becoming.”

“I knew those ribbons would be perfect for it. You can't wear that to the ball, though. Just let me think.” Her needle slowed to a halt as she mentally searched her wardrobe.

“I shall wear the pink tamboured muslin I inherited from Maria,” Harriet said firmly, and changed the subject. “Your Indian evening was by no means a failure. Mr. Blake called yesterday.”

“He did? Splendid! Tell me all about it.”

“He complimented my singing, and then explained in excessive detail just how Indian music fails to follow the laws of musical composition. I told him I expect they have their own laws, and he was quite put out of countenance.”

“He came up to the Hall, too. He stayed fifteen minutes and thanked us for an interesting evening. He managed to avoid the word `music' the entire time. Lord Litton, on the other hand, asked me to play the sitar again for him some time. Mr. Hurst was with him—he helped me change the tadpoles' water. They said they were on their way to the vicarage when they left. Did you see them?”

“Yes. His lordship had business with Papa, but afterward he sat with Mama and me for at least a quarter of an hour. He is amazingly approachable for a nobleman. I wish...” She sighed and left the thought unfinished. “He was most civil.”

“And Mr. Hurst?”

“He is truly amiable, as you said. Mama and Papa like him too. I believe I should like to be married to him.”

Mimi quashed the unpleasant sinking feeling in her middle and said briskly, “Then I must try harder to bring it about. The trouble is, none of the efforts I have made to upset the others seem to disturb him in the least. Perhaps I shall think of something to do at Lady Thompson's picnic. Have you received your invitation yet?”