Cry of the Peacock (10 page)

“Home already?” was the question Ruskin put to him. David had some questions of his own, but he held his tongue and watched as Miss Gray arose and moved to stand at the window, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes bright with some emotion. Was it indignation? Guilt? What?

“Everything is all right, I trust?” he asked.

It took her a moment to realize the question had been asked of her. “Yes, of course,” she answered him. “Why shouldn’t it be?”

But that was precisely what he wished most to know. “You’ve not finished playing, I hope.”

“No, she had not,” Ruskin answered for her. “If you had not interrupted…”

Yes, but what, exactly, had he interrupted? “I’m sorry for my intrusion,” he said, apologizing to her rather than to his brother. “It’s just that I’m not used to hearing music in the house. It’s a rare pleasure. I don’t suppose you could be persuaded to continue?”

She considered. He was not certain she would agree. He half expected her to excuse herself. She looked to the door, at him, and then, very briefly, at Ruskin.

He should have left then. It was clear he was not wanted, and yet he could not conscionably do it until he understood what was going on. Whether they were Ruskin’s machinations or Miss Gray’s, some obstacle to their commencement was required. David, in consequence, sat. Ruskin offered him a dark look, but reclaimed his own seat as well.

Reluctantly, Miss Gray resumed her place at the piano. She took a moment to find where she had left off, but at last she continued, slowly, falteringly. Not poorly, but not like before. She made a few mistakes, and with each of them, her face grew redder. He did not know a woman could blush like that. It was becoming, only he regretted the impetus for it. She was uncomfortable, but was it for his presence, or for Ruskin’s, or for the indignity of the insult Ruskin had paid her by his presumptuous fondling?

Ruskin arose, to once more stand very closely beside her. If he touched her again, David would have something to say about it. He didn’t, however. Of course he didn’t. Ruskin didn’t like an audience to his playing either, it seemed. Perhaps David’s presence had a purpose, after all.

As Ruskin drew nearer, Miss Gray’s playing became more studied and less effortless. Her mistakes grew more frequent, her discomposure, in consequence, grew more severe. She fumbled once more and gave up all together.

For a moment or two, all was silent.

She looked as though she were about to cry, and he regretted it. “Your playing is remarkable, Miss Gray,” he said. It was an effort, perhaps an ill-timed one, to restore some portion of her equanimity.

She gave him a narrow look. “It is not, and you know it,” she answered him rather sharply.

He deserved it. He knew he did. What did Ruskin deserve?

She looked to Ruskin then, as if she’d heard the unspoken question and meant to answer it. “I’m afraid it is as I told you,” she said to him, and with a glance at David that included him in her explanation. “I’m not yet ready for an audience. I cannot be trusted to play with success, not even for you.”

“Perhaps it will serve as a lesson to my brother,” he added with a glance in his direction. “He’ll know better than to impose upon you next time.”

So it was David who had imposed? David, and not Ruskin. How like his brother to turn the facts on their ear.

“I’m not sure it was entirely owing to David,” she said. “I was anxious to finish so that you might at last attend to Hetty. Won’t you? If I fulfilled my promise to you, is it not your turn to fulfill yours to me?”

Ruskin looked awkwardly between her and David.

“She’s waiting for you. Do go to her, will you? And if there’s anything I can do—”

“There’s nothing you can do for her, Arabella,” Ruskin said.

“Why is that? She needs work. I know that much already. She might replace Sarah.”

“Replace Sarah?” he said with a derisive laugh. “We have no need of replacing Sarah, and Hetty Summerson would hardly be suitable if we did.”

“I will train her. You will see.”

“We are
not
replacing Sarah.”

He had said it calmly enough, but there was a warning in it that hinted of mounting impatience. Clearly Miss Gray had heard it, too.

“If you insist,” she said, relenting. “Only do help her if you can. Do it for me if you won’t do it for her.”

He did not answer right away, but glanced first at David. “Very well,” he said, though he was clearly not happy to be conceding. “For you, then.” And he left.

Miss Gray remained a moment or two longer, and without a word, followed Ruskin from the room. Leaving David to ponder, and with mounting perplexity, all he had just witnessed.

*   *   *

Abbie, upon quitting the music room, was not quite sure what to do with herself. She was certainly relieved to be on her own for a few minutes, but where to go? What to do? She still hoped to speak to Hetty, if she could manage it, to learn for herself what she needed and what Ruskin might do for her. Perhaps if Abbie were to go out of doors, she might be sure of catching her friend as she came away from the house. There, too, she could sort out that trying scene in the music room. Was she grateful to David or angry with him for his interruption? How far might Ruskin have presumed if he had not entered upon them? And what had David made of what he had witnessed. What
had
he witnessed?

There were no answers to be had, of course, but the questions continued to pester her as she prepared to step outside.

“I apologize if my interruption was truly a hindrance to your playing,” David said, stopping her. “It was not my intention to cause offense. I had heard you playing from outside the room. I did find it remarkable, though I realize my timing was off if I wished to convince you the sentiment was sincere.”

“You do not customarily compliment people on their blundering mistakes, then. Is that what you mean to say?”

“No one is expecting you to be perfect, Miss Gray.”

She looked from the door to him. “That is not the impression I was given. Nor was I under the impression that everyone was quite in harmony in believing it possible. Perhaps it is your sentiments in that vein that you mean to remind me of, after all.”

“I beg your forgiveness, Miss Gray, if you overheard anything that caused you—”

“Forgiveness granted, Mr. Crawford. Now if you will excuse me…” She attempted to move past him, aware that she was leaving him with the impression that she had not forgiven him at all. She was not certain she would ever forgive him of the words he had spoken that day.

“Is something the matter?” he asked her, stopping her once more.

With a sigh, she turned to him. “Of course not.”

“If there’s anything I can do…”

“Why?”

“
Why?
” he echoed, clearly caught off guard by her skeptical tone.

“Yes why?” she asked impatiently, and with her attention still preoccupied by the door she wished to have reached already. “You did not care before today. So why?”

He hesitated for only a minute, but answered with less patience. Somehow it gave his words an odd sense of sincerity, which puzzled her all the more. “Because you appear to have some great weight on your shoulders and I wished to know the cause, if you would tell me.” Had his opinion of her somehow changed in the three or four days since he had declared her mercenary?

She heard steps upon the walk outside, and without answering him, exited the house. “Hetty, wait!”

Hetty stopped, and Abbie ran to catch up with her. She had appeared anxious upon arriving at the house. She was positively distraught now.

“What is it? Tell me, won’t you? What is the matter?”

With tears in her eyes, the girl looked away, drawing her cloak tightly about her.

“You spoke with Mr. Crawford? Was he able to help you?”

A spiteful breath of a laugh escaped her lips. “As if he’d help me, Miss Abbie. No. He’s too proud, he is.”

Abbie was bitterly disappointed by this. “Can I help you, then?”

“I’m sure you mean well, miss. But no one can help me now.”

“Why do you say that, Hetty?”

“You know how it is sometimes… ” Hetty turned to face her then, and releasing the folds of her cloak, allowed it to reveal a heavily swollen belly. “. . . when a girl finds herself in a family way and no man to make it right.”

“Oh, Hetty!”

“Don’t be ashamed of me, Miss Abbie. You can’t be more ashamed of me than I am of myself.”

“Where is he?” Abbie asked now. “Who is he? He must be brought to bear—”

“It’s too late for that, Miss Abbie. He’s gone now. I won’t see him again, and I’ll have to go too.”

“But where will you go?”

“P’raps I’ll find somethin’ in London. I’ve no one else to turn to. Father says I must make my own way now. He’ll not have me, and I don’t blame him. They’ve too many to feed as it is.”

“Oh, Hetty. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right, Miss Abbie. I should’a known better. It’s just some mistakes can’t be undone, you know?”

She did know, but if Hetty was without resources, certainly Abbie was not. “If you can wait a few days… I think I can find a way to help you. Promise you won’t go anywhere until you hear from me.”

Hetty sniffed and looked a little less distraught. “I promise, Miss Abbie.”

“Good,” she said, and kissed her friend on the cheek before sending her on her way.

Abbie returned to the house, and to her room, where she quickly wrote to her sister for the second time that day.

*   *   *

David, with his chin resting in one hand, looked out over his fist and did not see the two men sitting just before him, absorbed in quiet and confidential conversation. He knew they were there, but his mind was on the events of the past four and twenty hours.

He had gone to Town, as asked. He had retrieved the books, as asked. And he had visited Lord Barnwell, as asked. He had not, however, seen Katherine. He would like to think that this was the source of his current frustration. It was not. Perhaps it was owing to the scene played out this afternoon in the music room, where conflicting theories had battled themselves out to provide no answer whatever. Was she the avaricious schemer he had supposed her? She must be, and yet if it was so, why was she resisting Ruskin’s advances? Perhaps this was all part of her game, to lead him on until he was firmly hooked. But the notion, for all he wished to believe in it, did not ring true. There was something going on here he could not quite comprehend. Would time reveal the truth? And how much of it had he to spare?

This last was a question he was presently powerless to answer. His time was not at his own disposal. What he loathed to spare to any unworthy purpose, his father had no qualms about wasting altogether. David had handed the books over, and now sat as an outcast in his father’s study, as Sir Nicholas and Ruskin, heads bent close together, poured over the written testament to all his hard earned success. He had been placed in a corner of the room, not to assist them, but to wait upon them in the event some question should arise that he alone had the answer to. So far there had been little more than silence and the occasional mumbled conversation. There had been much pointing, more whispering, a few calculations double-checked and approved…

At last, Ruskin sat back in his chair and rubbed his sideburns. “There isn’t enough,” he said.

But they’d agreed on that point already.

“I suppose it wouldn’t be wise to borrow from the capital.”

But one never withdrew from one’s capital. And one never borrowed. Never. “If you were to try the machinery investments,” David suggested, “or, better yet, those in enginery, I’m quite confident that within a few months’ time there’d be enough to see us through the construction. If you would only consider what—”

“There must be another way,” Ruskin said, interrupting. “There must be something else, something set aside for a rainy day.”

Sir Nicholas’ attention was still on David, but his look was blank, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. Without a word he arose, and from the drawer of a tall cabinet that stood behind his desk, he withdrew a small, well-worn leather ledger and placed it on the desk.

Ruskin picked it up and thumbed through it. And then stopped. “What is this?”

“It’s a trust.”

David sat forward in his seat, had almost risen from it, but stopped himself at the last minute.

Ruskin examined the first page, and the two after. His eyes suddenly widened. “It’s never been touched?”

“No,” his father answered. “That’s the idea behind a trust.”

“But what is it for?”

Sir Nicholas did not answer this, and so Ruskin continued his examination. “Railway stocks?”

David, his curiosity mounting, slowly rose to his feet.

“They’ve not made much recently, but they have done,” Sir Nicholas answered. “And may do again. They’re still valuable.”

“In the city?” Ruskin asked, uncertainty apparent in his voice. “Just how much more rail can they lay in the city?”

“Do you mean to say we have stock in the Metropolitan?” David asked, his curiosity piqued beyond his endurance to remain silent.