“Didn’t know you needed specs, Miss McCormack,” he said, with a sympathetic glance. “Pity. Ruin a girl’s looks. 'Course you ain’t a young girl any longer.”
“I’m not so old. I’m only twenty-six,” she said, threading her needle.
“Eh? Said you was thirty-nine.”
“I was joking, of course! Don’t tell me you believed it!” she exclaimed, in real chagrin.
“ ‘Course not,” he answered readily. “Certainly didn’t look a day over thirty anyway, till you put them specs on.”
“Thank you. Did you pass a comfortable night?”
“Very. The chicken was dandy. Could have handled two legs. Bowl of smash wouldn’t have gone amiss either. Cake was nice—a good big piece.”
“What exactly is smash?” she asked him.
“Why, turnips boiled and smashed up.”
“I’ll see if Cook has any turnips,” she promised. For an hour they talked the greatest foolishness. Then she went to get wine for them, and was introduced into the intricacies of chewing and finding descriptive phrases to indicate her expertise. Mr. Homberly had long since run out of materials and people to compare the wine to, and had switched to his own area of interest, horses.
“Don’t like to run down your uncle’s cellars, Miss McCormack, but this brew is a very commoner,” he said sadly. “Next thing to a job horse.”
“A very jade,” she agreed. She induced him to practice his few play lines by lavishing praise on his execution. This done, he sent Roper off for cards, and introduced her to the fine art of spotting a Captain Sharp, bent on cheating her at cards. As this diversion had all the charm of novelty, she promised she would return for another lesson. “Meanwhile I shall just finish up these few shirts.”
“What is that you’re always working at?” he asked, and she explained her chore.
“Feel dashed sorry for orphans. Tell you what, Miss Holly, I mean to help you.” She had become Holly during the visit, and occasionally Miss Holly.
“Do you know how to sew?” she asked, only a little surprised, for nothing about this bizarre gentleman could shock her.
“Sew? Not in the least. Don’t know one end of a needle from t’other. That is to say—know one’s sharp—well, know t’other has a hole in it if it comes to that. Know quite a bit about needles, really, but don’t know how to use them. No, I’d like to help the little orphans out. Give them a treat. Some sugarplums, or what have you. Plumcake would be nice, or ices. Except the ices would go down better in the summer.”
“If you want to help, Mr. Homberly...”
“Call me Rex. My friends do.”
“Yes, Rex—there is a better way to help.”
“Anything you say. Up to a pony. Can spare twenty-five pounds very easily.”
“That is generous of you!”
“Ain’t
poor.
Own an abbey. Don’t have a title of course, but own an abbey, with lots of lands and cows and all that. Worth a good penny.” This was said in hopes of her relaying it to Jane.
“If you are speaking of such a large sum I would like your permission to spend it all on one child.”
“That so? That’s a lot of sugarplums,” he pointed out. “For one fella, I mean. Make him sick as a dog.”
“I didn’t mean to buy treats. There is one boy who is crippled. He was born with a deformed foot. Our local doctor is trying to help him. He has put a contraption on the boy—screwed his leg into a wooden frame, which is very painful for Billie. Bill McAuley is his name. It doesn’t seem to be doing a bit of good. I would like to have a London surgeon come down and examine Billie. May I use your money for that?”
Rex surreptitiously wiped a tear from the corner of his eye. He was too overcome to speak for a moment. “You’re a very nice girl,” he said, and sniffled. “’Pon my word, a very kind-hearted girl. I’ll arrange the money as soon as I’m up and about. For that matter, might as well get up, if Miss Proctor is going to be at the play practices all the time.”
“She’ll soon be home.”
“She ever say anything about me?”
It was hard to tell him she never said anything complimentary or romantic, but at least Jane was not mean. She had never spoken ill of him. It was wrong, on the other hand, to encourage him in what was surely a hopeless passion. “Jane is to go to London in the spring, Rex. I don’t think she would be allowed by her parents to make any connection before that time.”
“Know they want a title for her. Lady Dewar said as much. Don’t think she’ll get Dewar, but then he certainly does admire her. Always saying she’s a perfect Juliet, very sweet—all that. Forever singing her praises.”
“She is very sweet.”
“You’re nice too,” Rex said, and smiled wanly.
When Jane was too busy to drop in on him later that afternoon, but went instead into the village to visit a cousin, Holly began to seem even nicer. She was certainly a remarkably good-natured, generous girl, and had a sense of humour too. Without the spectacles, she was seen to be not a bad-looking girl. Every glass of wine or ale, sporting magazine, bowl of nuts, or plate of toast brought increased her beauty.
A solicitous enquiry for his ‘wounds’ lent her an appealing aura. Till Jane popped in for two minutes before dinner, Holly was fast becoming an incomparable, but the two minutes reversed the decision.
By the time Dewar arrived that evening at eight-thirty, Rex was back in love with Juliet. She had got him a bag of sweets in the village, which was about as strong a declaration as he needed to feel she was his. She had offered voluntarily to fetch the jackstraws too, obviously smitten with him.
He could not quite deduce the reason that she deserted him shortly after Dewar entered the room, unless she was trying to make him jealous. Just got up and walked away, with her sticks scattered all over the counterpane. And he had been letting her win too. Dashed hard to lie stock-still, so as not to disturb them. He lay with his ears stretched to overhear her speech to Dewar. It was hardly of a nature to incite him to blind jealousy.
“We got home from the Abbey in half an hour, now that we are allowed to take the short cut,” was all she said. “Evans was at the window, and actually smiled at us. It’s the first time I have ever seen him smile.”
“I have seen him dance,” Dewar replied. “He leapt from the floor and clicked his heels in the air when I took the new lease for him to sign. He sat in the middle of enough guns to stock an army, oiling and priming them up for action.”
Juliet laughed, while Dewar smiled at her fondly, admiring her young beauty. Holly’s first thought was for Rex. Regarding him, she noticed his jealous distress. The other two began discussing some new interpretation of the play.
“Let me take Jane’s hand and finish the game with you,” Holly offered, going to the bedside. Her fingers had been made dexterous by long stitchery. She neatly extricated a stick that had been wedged at a precarious angle under a whole pile of sticks.
“How’d you do that!” Rex challenged. “That’s impossible!”
“Like this,” she answered, repeating her coup with another jackstraw.
“By Jove, Holly, you’re a witch!” he shouted, startled out of his pique by her accomplishment.
Dewar looked up, startled at such plain speaking.
“Holly is a very dab at spillikins, Mr. Homberly,” Jane warned him.
“Only fair,” Holly asserted. “Rex beat me all hollow at piquet this afternoon, now I shall get my own back from him. I think we must place a wager on this game, and let me win a monkey I owe you from cards this afternoon. Is it a monkey I owe you, Rex, or a pony?”
“Only a pony. Told you, Holly, a pony’s twenty-five pounds, a monkey is five hundred. That is, unless you’re playing with a Hun. To them, it’s five pounds, or sometimes fifty, depending on.... Anyway, it’s five hundred pounds here, and you don’t want to be betting a monkey if it’s a pony you mean.”
“Holly, you were surely not gambling for such stakes!” Jane asked.
“Only in fun. We don’t actually pay, but it is more fun if you bet, Rex says.”
“Tell you what, Holly, I’ll give the blunt to your orphans if I lose. But we’ll be playing for shillings, not pounds.”
“I cannot afford even shillings.”
“You won’t have to. You’re beating the trousers off me.”
“Agreed!” she declared, lifting yet another impossible straw free.
“That moved!” Rex charged, narrowing his eyes and leaning forward.
“It only moved because you jiggled your leg. If you would lie still I could get every stick out. I’ve got the hard ones already.”
“By the living jingo, I didn’t move my leg. Not a muscle.”
“You twitched.”
“Did not.”
“You did so.”
“You calling me a liar?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“ ‘Fraid I must call you out then. Challenge you to a duel.”
“Afraid I must refuse.”
“Well, you ain’t no gentleman, Holly.”
“And you, sir, are no lady. Oh, go on then, take a turn.”
An inadvertent twitch sent every straw on the counterpane flying, making extrication so easy for his adversary that the game was over.
Dewar and Jane, hovering at their shoulders, hinted they would not refuse an offer to join the game. “Get your own straws,” Rex said bluntly. “Know what you’re up to, Dew. You want to take on Holly. She’s playing with me.”
“We are clearly not wanted,” Jane said, with a little laugh.
This reminded Rex that the lady, at least, was wanted very much indeed but, unfortunately, she came with the gentleman, so that no headway was made in his romance before Roper shoo’d the ladies out the door prior to preparing his master for bed.
“You have billeted yourself on the Proctors long enough,” Dewar decreed. “I’ll send a carriage for you tomorrow morning.”
Rex looked at him long and hard, with his blue eyes protruding from his face. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.
“I am. Jane will be at the Abbey. You can do nothing to further your suit here all day, and we can both come over in the evening if you wish.”
“No need for you to put yourself out, Dew. Can manage as well without you. Better, in fact.”
“I can relieve you of Miss McCormack’s attention a little—make it easier for you in that way.”
“Not sure I want to be relieved of it. Fact is, half in love with both the ladies. Jane’s prettier; Holly’s nicer. A very nice girl, Holly. I know she likes me, Dew. That’s why I’m in a bit of a pickle, wondering if I should leave. Mean to say, shouldn’t lead her on if I don’t mean to have her and, when Jane is here, I don’t think I do. She’s very sweet on me, Holly. It pains to let me know she’s only twenty-six. Lying actually, I believe. Admitted before she was older, but today she lowered it, after she found out I was twenty-seven myself. And she rushed Jane up older than herself—all a hum. Must be. Not a wrinkle or a crease anywhere on her phiz.”
“Jane is seventeen. Holly was obviously roasting you.”
“Possible. You must have noticed though how she’s always hovering over me, looking after me. Very nice; I like it. Sat talking to me all day, and playing cards, and fetching me ale and wine. Well—stayed away from the play practice just to be with me. You must have noticed how she elbowed Jane aside to take her place at jackstraws. Little things like that. Always throwing her hanky at me. It was her idea that I stay here in the first place, now I think about it. Had an eye on me from day one.”
“She is kind. I think you misconstrue her intentions, however.”
“I don’t. I mentioned Jane this afternoon, and she was at pains to let me know the parents ain’t in favour of an early match. Cut my hopes right down. She’s definitely casting her cap at me, and what I must decide is whether I mean to have her or not. What do you think, Dew?”
“I think you are mad.”
“She ain’t that bad! Believe I aim too high to set my sights on Jane. Altmore is after her. Foxey running mad for her—not that he’d have a look-in any more than myself.
You’re
sweet on her, and….”
“I hope you didn’t say that to anyone in this house!”
“ ‘Course not. May have let it slip to Holly, but…”
“I’m taking you home tonight!” Dewar said, with a grim face.
“Not tonight. I’m tired, Dew. Holly is sending me up a bowl of smash and two chicken legs. Noticed something else too,” he added, smothering a yawn. “She didn’t wear her specs tonight. Had them on this afternoon. Told her they was ugly, and she didn’t wear them tonight, to please me. Didn’t wear the old brown shawl either. Had herself dolled up in a newer one. Not a bad-looking woman, do you think, Dew?”
“She is passably attractive. Her voice is good.”
“Lovely voice. Very soothing,” Rex said and, closing his eyes, smiled fatuously. A soft, snorting sound told his guest he had succumbed to a brief nap, so Dewar left, frowning in confusion.
His mother was still up when he returned home, just finishing a game of cards with her crony, Sir Laurence Digby. After he had left, she turned to her son. “Don’t tell me I am actually to have five minutes of your time all to myself! To what do I owe this unusual honour?”
“To circumstances, Mama. I’m worried about Rex. He has taken the half-cocked notion Holly McCormack is setting her cap at him. Do you think it possible?”
“I shouldn’t think so. I always took Holly for a sane woman. Maybe she’s saner than I think. It would be a good match for her. Rex is well off, and would hardly be a demanding husband.”
“But he’s so…”
He hunched his elegant shoulders and threw up his hands. “What would they possibly have in common? A woman who is half shrew, and a man who is three-quarters a fool.”
“Oh but a fool of a man needs a shrew for a wife. Two fools would deal badly together. Holly is not a shrew exactly. She is accustomed to taking an interest in the villagers because of her late father’s being a minister, you know.”
“I have reason to know she takes a keen interest in the welfare of the villagers.”
“What has she been needling you about, eh?” the dame asked astutely.
He smiled at her. “The things
you
should have needled me about. The orphanage; Evans.”
“I should have done, should I? It comes as news to me. I understood Roots is your overseer when you are away, which is to say ninety-nine percent of the time.”
“What else wants doing in the village? I am becoming a little tired of having my knuckles rapped every time I talk to that woman. She makes me feel like a truant.”