A Duke for Christmas (18 page)

She would sit in the library, close to the fire, sewing lace caps for the baby while Sophie copied out the poems. There were forty-seven in all. Fifteen or so would probably be cut before publication. Though they had some good images or phrases, the overall quality was not Broderick’s best. The seven poems with strange titles were an interesting mix. Three were splendid. The other four, including “Walk Sunset Down,” seemed a trifle trite, as if they were imitations of another’s work rather than the pure product of Broderick’s mind.

She came across the one that was about her and her wedding day. Dominic had argued for its inclusion, but Sophie still hesitated over sharing that poem with the world. It brought everything back so clearly. The perfume of an evening in an English spring had filled the air, the moonlight and the trees seeming to whisper sweet conspiracies to one another. Dominic—that is—
Broderick
had kissed her with such tender emotion, such breathless yearning...

“Sophie?” Maris said, breaking in upon her thoughts. “Sophie? You’ve been sitting there for five minutes with your pen in the air. The ink must have dried hard by now.”

“I’m sorry. My thoughts were a million miles away. Did you say something?”

“No. I was only afraid you’d gone off in an apoplexy with me sitting right here. What were you thinking of? Broderick?”

“Yes. Broderick.”

Maris finished basting the ribbon around the edge of the cape and began feather-boning it. “I did like him, you know. I could see why a well-read young lady would fall in love with him. He did have a way with him. The way he’d look at you during a dinner party as if you were the most intelligent and beautiful woman he’d ever met. Of course, he’d look the same way at the woman sitting on his other side, but there’s no doubt it was flattering while it lasted.”

“Did he do that? I hadn’t noticed.” Surely, she must have noticed at some point that Broderick had, like Henry V,
“largesse universal, like the sun, his liberal eye doth give to every one.” There had been those girls, when she’d first met him in Yorkshire, who had hung upon his every word, even as she herself was guilty. He had declared them children and swore he gave no thought to them. If she had doubted him, his attitude was so noble in forgiving her that her jealousies had been quieted by shame.

“He did choose me in the end,” Sophie said.

“Yes, he did,” Maris agreed with a soft smile. “Mother and I wondered why.”

“Thank you very much, indeed.” She feigned indignation.

“Now, you know I didn’t mean it that way. You were very lovely.”

“A pity I’ve gone down so quickly. A mere three years and I’m an antidote.” But she quite failed to keep the laughter out of her voice.

“There, I knew you weren’t angry,” Maris said with a pleased sigh. “It’s only that we wondered whether Broderick had designs on your fortune.”

“Fortune? Of course not. I have none to be coveted. Are you feeling quite yourself, Maris?”

“Didn’t he meet you while you were visiting Uncle Shirley? A very wealthy man with no heirs. What could be more logical than that he should leave his fortune to us? And there is Kenton. You know what sort of a man he is—generous, thoughtful, caring. Would he let his wife’s sister’s family go into debtor’s prison?”

“I see.” Sophie reflected for a moment. “No, you misjudge Broderick. Money meant nothing to him. As long as he had enough to buy a coffee at the Gaffe Greco when it suited him and a few pence for a new goose quill, he was a happy man. He married me because he loved me; when he loved me no longer, he left me. That’s the way he was. If I went on loving him a little longer than was sensible, that was too bad. He felt sorry for me, but one does not return to a wife out of pity.”

“Then he was immoral, and I thought him only grasping.”

“He was a poet,” Sophie said and returned to her work.

An hour later, after Maris had retired for her afternoon nap, Sophie finished the last line of a poem and paused to read it over. Every word must be exactly as Broderick wrote it. She’d heard too many poets complain that their copyists had been careless, turning rooks into books and haste to waste.

Her mother came in, somewhat flustered. “Here’s a fine thing. Tremlow’s just informed me that someone has stolen half a ham out of the kitchen. Half a ham!”

“How did they manage that?”

“The kitchen was left empty for a few minutes when Mrs. Lemon went down to the cellar. She’d brought up the ham for tonight’s dinner but had forgotten that she needed a new jar of that fancy French mustard Kenton is so partial to. When she came back, the ham was gone.”

“Could Tip have taken it? He’s a good dog, but the best of us can be tempted.”

“I beg your pardon, madam,” Tremlow said, entering with tread so stately one instinctively glanced behind him for the sweep of an ermine robe. “I have ascertained that Tip is asleep on the master’s dressing gown in his room. There is no trace of ham bone, either visually or olfactorially. I believe this to be the work of a human agency.”

“Have any of the stable lads been especially hungry lately, Tremlow?”

“Not to my knowledge, madam. I shall, of course, investigate. I wonder, however, if you would condescend to ask the young Italian girls if they have seen it.”

“Oh, I’m sure they wouldn’t steal a ham, but I shall ask them if they saw anything suspicious in the kitchen.”

Mrs. Lindel asked a question. “Were there any footprints in the snow?”

“The walkway was swept with unusual care this morning by young Elden. Naturally, I do not wish to reprimand the boy for his zeal, though I could have wished this morning saw him sweeping in his more indolent fashion.”

Sophie felt a certain reluctance to ask the Ferrara girls about the ham. She had never heard a word against either of them and, in their small Roman neighborhood, she would. Whatever gossip Dominic promised was as nothing compared with the epic quality of the gossiping women in her former neighborhood.

She knocked on their door, determined to exercise the utmost in tact. However, her resolution proved useless. No one answered her rapping.

Sophie tried the handle. The door opened. Peering into the room, she saw that it was indeed empty of people. Two beds, one rather larger than the other, stood against the far wall, matching crucifixes hanging over the iron-frame heads. A white china ewer and basin stood on a dark oaken stand with a small tilting mirror on top. A small fireplace showed banked coals. The curtains were open over the little windows, showing the tops of the trees at the edge of the garden. The wind was blowing, sending a fine silt of blown snow flying like magic sparkles through the air.

The room was no different than a thousand other servants’ quarters, only as comfortable as necessary. Perhaps Finchley could be considered as dull compared to Rome, where the very walls breathed long history and every step outside could lead to adventure.

Sophie felt a stab of guilt that she had not taken more care of the girls since returning home, so caught up in her own questions about her future. It wasn’t right. Though their parents had insisted their daughters accompany her, she had accepted the responsibility. Though her mother and the upper servants had taken on the role of teaching them how to go on in England, ultimately their adjustment was her duty.

She went down to the lower level of the house. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Lemon ...”

“Mrs. Banner? What may I do for you?”

“Have you seen the Ferrara girls? Mr. Tremlow thought they were in their room, but they’re not.”

“Aren’t they, indeed? I confess I find it difficult to make out what they’re saying, but I thought that’s where they were going.”

Sophie pressed her hands together, palm to palm. “About this missing ham, Mrs. Lemon ...”

“A fine ham, well-smoked, from Gilling’s farm, not half cut. I could have done wonderful things with that ham.” She seemed to mourn culinary wonders that would now never be conjured from her kitchen.

“What do you think happened to it?”

“I think the same ruffian who broke into the library came in here. Some nasty tramp looking for whatever he could steal. An objet de art, one of them silver statues, a ham, it’s all the same. Lucky we weren’t all murdered in our beds.”

“I suppose that’s true.”

“I’m sleeping with the big cleaver under my pillow,” Mrs. Lemon said with ferocious pride.

Considering how Mrs. Lemon fainted at the very sound of the word “blood,” Sophie doubted if she could actually use a cleaver on an intruder, even if she did use one on dinner.

“I’m sure that’s a good idea,” Sophie said reassuringly. “But I’ll have a word with Lord Danesby. Maybe he can have the stable lads guard the house.”

“It’ll be a bitter cold night, ma’am. I’d better start tea and hot soup. Split pea ‘n’... no, that won’t do. Maybe a nice chicken stew.” She began ticking off ingredients on her fingers.

Sophie, beginning to grow concerned, went looking for Tremlow. “I can’t find the Ferrara girls. Do you know where they’ve gone to?”

This time, she had no difficulty reading his feelings. She could tell he didn’t know as soon as she asked. The knowledge that he did not know something about his own household rocked him. “I will find out, madam.”

Kenton agreed that measures should be taken to secure the house, though he obviously didn’t believe a stolen ham merited so much security. He felt so even less when Mrs. Lindel professed that she’d forgotten that the Ferrara girls had asked permission to go for a walk into the village. “They said they wanted something, but Lucia didn’t seem to know the word for it.”

Sophie didn’t like to criticize her mother, but no one else spoke. “You let them go alone?”

“They are not alone. They have each other and Finchley is hardly a sink of iniquity.”

Sophie admitted the justice of this. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous. So much has happened so quickly, I can’t keep pace with events.”

“Perhaps you are still accustoming yourself to being at home. Also, you have worked so hard on these poems. Why don’t you lie down for a little? I will bring you a cup of my special herb tea.”

Not even three years had dimmed her memories of her mother’s “special tea.” She could tell from Kenton’s expression that he had had a dose of it at least once.

“Actually,” she said hastily, “I think I will finish what I have to do. I’d like this to go to the post tomorrow and I still have the letter to the publishers I must write.”

But when she was alone, she didn’t immediately take up her pen. She felt restless and out of sorts and had not Maris’s good excuse for these feelings. Focusing on writing praise of her late husband’s work was an activity which engendered no enthusiasm. It required a close and focused examination of her true feelings. If Dominic had been there, she could have used him for a sounding board, however unfair such a role might be for a man who confessed to want her for his wife.

Sophie tossed down her pen and resolved to go for a walk herself. She could always claim that she went to smooth the Ferrara sisters’ path in Finchley.

The weather had warmed, despite the breeze that flapped at the skirt of her heaviest dress and Maris’s fur-lined pelisse. Yet the bracingly cold wind seemed to sweep the cobwebs from her brain. She began to walk more quickly, her arms swinging freely. Her mother was wrong. She didn’t need more rest, she needed more exercise, more freedom. And yet, even as she exerted herself, she felt as though someone walked beside her. Not the ghost of her husband, crying at her shoulder, bidding her to remember or to forgive. This shade was taller, kinder, and more joyful. But Sophie refused to look for this phantom. She wanted to walk her own way, not chained anymore to her own betraying wishes.

Sophie stopped into Mr. Harley’s shop, the only source in Finchley for those thousands of necessities of great use but not valuable enough to be specially ordered from the metropolis. Since Kenton’s marriage, he’d begun to carry a “choicer” line of goods and to wear a cherry-red damask waistcoat, a gold chain stretched across an increasing waistline. The mingled fragrances of spice, toilet water, and apples swept Sophie back to her childhood, when the rare penny would be spent on boiled sweets.

Mr. Harley came trotting around his counter as Sophie entered. “Miss Sophie! Miss Sophie! Mother,” he called, looking over his shoulder into the back of the shop, “Mother, it’s Miss Sophie!”

She hadn’t expected such a daughter’s welcome. True, Mr. Harley had traded with her family for years and Mrs. Harley had taught her to knit when no one else had been able to drill the rudiments into her head.

Mr. Harley seized her gloved hands. “How do you do?”

“Very well, thank you. I’m very glad to be home. I have missed Finchley very much.”

“Certainly Finchley has missed you,” he said, beaming like a stout lighthouse.

Mrs. Harley came out from the rear of the shop, flicking aside the curtain that separated the public and private venues. “There you are. Father and I were just wondering when we’d see you. You weren’t in church.”

“No, I’m afraid I overslept.”

“There now, isn’t that just what we said, Father? Young people need their rest. Would you like a cup of tea? I baked yesterday,” she said in the tone of the serpent in the Garden.

“Thank you, but no. I only came in to ask if you had...”

“Hungary Water?” Mr. Harley said eagerly. “Florida Water? Essence of Persia?”

“Nothing, thank you. I came to ask if you had seen two young girls, blond, pretty ... they speak very little English.”

The Harleys exchanged a glance. “No, not today,” he said. “They came in two days ago to buy some basilicum powder and an ounce of pipe tobacco ... Mr. Tremlow’s kind.”

“Two days ago?”

“Didn’t they have permission?” Mrs. Harley said, clicking her tongue chidingly. “They seemed like such nice girls, even though I couldn’t understand hardly a word. They took tea.”

“No, they didn’t have permission to come to the village. I’m sure no harm was done. They aren’t used to the restrictions of good service.” She paused a moment. “They didn’t come in again today?”

“No, Miss Sophie. That was the only time I’ve seen them,” Mr. Harley said.