Jean sat straighter, listening now to meaning as well as sound. So he would stay at Brecon.
Elizabeth had not been sure.
Elizabeth smiled. "Clanross won't expect you to keep your nose to the grindstone day and night,
Mr. Davies."
"You misunderstand me. I mean my
work
. My poetry," he added when Elizabeth cocked
her head quizzically.
"Do you write sonnets?" Maggie interposed.
Oh, Maggie.
Jean quivered.
He looked at her twin. "Rarely, Lady Margaret. My métier is the ode. And the satirical
ballad, though that, I fear, I pen merely for my own amusement these days."
"Why? Won't anyone buy your ballads?"
Jean went hot, then cold. Maggie had a prosaic soul, Miss Bluestone had been forced to concede
that when the twins were still in her schoolroom, but even Maggie ought to know better than to speak of
buying and selling to a poet.
Davies favoured Jean's twin with a slight, sad smile. "A bookseller, do you mean? They tell me
my poetry is caviar to the general." The sculpted lips took a wry twist. "I don't even think of a commercial
publisher, Lady Margaret. My odes circulate in manuscript. Some friends were kind enough to have a
volume of my political verses published privately, however. That is the safe course these days." His lip
curled again at the word "safe" and he took a sip of sherry as if to counter a bad taste.
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "I take it your sentiments are, er, radical."
"I am a neo-Pantisocrat," he said simply. "Anathema to Liverpool and that lot."
Miss Bluestone leaned forward, her fichu bobbing. "Do you mean, sir, that your work is
seditious?"
The brilliant eyes blazed. "I recognise no nation but humanity, ma'am, and there my loyalties lie.
If that be sedition, well, I am ready to suffer the penalty."
Jean thought he looked magnificent. She let her breath out in a long trembling sigh.
Miss Bluestone blinked.
Cecilia Wharton, who had been nibbling obliviously at a slice of currant cake, broke the silence.
"I like this very well, Elizabeth, upon my word. There is so little I can eat these days without discomfort.
Pray tell Mrs. Smollet I must have the receipt." Mrs. Wharton was in an interesting condition for the third
time and large as a house.
Elizabeth smiled at her. "You shall have it if it's not one of her mother's.
Those
receipts
she refuses to part with. Mr. Davies, I can see that your presence will enliven our company. Perhaps you'll
be kind enough to read us your work one of these evenings. We're all fond of poetry, especially
Jean."
Oh, Elizabeth.
Jean shrank into her bones, but Davies cast her a look so eloquent of hope
and uncertainty that she contrived a smile for him. "I love poetry of all things."
"Wordsworth, I daresay."
What was the right reply? Hang Wordsworth. Jean cleared her throat. "I...often...prefer the
older poets."
He frowned. "Carewe?"
"Herrick, sometimes, and Campion."
His eyes lit. "'Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet. Haste thee, sad notes, fall at her
flying feet...'"
Jean gulped. "Yes indeed. And Spenser."
He set his sherry glass on the tray and leaned toward her. "
The Amoretti
?"
"And
The Faerie Queen
." She groped in her memory. "
The Shepherd's
Calendar
."
"Certainly I'll read for you. It will be a great pleasure," he murmured, and she was sure he spoke
to her alone.
Elizabeth placed her teacup on the tray with a rattle. "Splendid. Jean and Maggie, if you will show
Mr. Davies the library, I'll see to his room. Cecy, Miss Bluestone, I know you too well to stand on
ceremony. Pray make yourselves cozy by the fire. I must just have a word with my housekeeper."
"Don't forget the receipt." Cecilia was cutting herself another slice of the cake.
"To be sure. I'll be with you again in a trice." Elizabeth sounded crisp, almost angry, but in what
cause Jean knew not.
Jean stared, and Elizabeth stared back, unsmiling.
Maggie jumped up. "The book room is gothick, Mr. Davies. You'll love it. Come on,
Jean."
Jean rose and so perforce did Mr. Davies. He took a polite farewell of Miss Bluestone and Mrs.
Wharton, and then they were free of tisanes and currant cake. And of Elizabeth's mood, whatever it might
signify.
Maggie seemed wholly unconscious of Jean's heightened sensibility as the three young people
traversed the long gallery of the library. She was giving Mr. Davies a housekeeper's tour, pointing out
ancestral portraits and bits of classical marble as they went, and her cheerful chatter sounded like the
tweedling of bagpipes to Jean's sensitive ears.
Jean hoped Mr. Davies would not despise her twin. He was being polite, but so attuned was Jean
to his mood she could sense his impatience. For the first time in her life she wished her sister elsewhere.
Her disloyalty clogged her throat so that she could not have spoken to save her life.
When they finally entered the vast gloomy bookroom, even Maggie fell silent.
The architecture of Brecon was Palladian. To seventeenth-century taste had been added
eighteenth-century wealth, and the effects were grand--or grandiose. Marble doorways and vast, richly
ornamented plasterwork ceilings, a recent one by Angelica Kauffman, showed in brilliant contrast to walls
hung in intense silks, green and watered blue and rose. Miles of parquet shone beneath narrow Wilton
carpets. But the library, panelled in dark wood and crammed with bookcases and tables heavy enough to
sink a poet's heart, was a Jacobean throwback.
Though the huge room was skylit and further illumined by tall sash windows, the light came from
the north. The library always seemed dark to Jean and rather menacing. It smelt of leather and ancient snuff
and decaying book glue. The faint scent of decay tickled Jean's nose and made her eyes heavy. Books
jammed the tall shelves and the glass-fronted cases, overflowing onto tables and, indeed, every flat surface.
Thanks to Miss Bluestone Jean was well read, but it seemed to her that the weight of words in the Brecon
library dragged at one's soul.
Davies strode to the refectory table that stood before the hearth and touched the huge globe of the
world that reposed there in its mahogany stand. "A magnificent room."
Jean's apprehension lightened. She felt almost giddy. "It's a large collection. My grandfather
added to it."
"He was a famous collector. Is that Hakluyt?" He moved to the unlit hearth and ran a hand along
the open shelf beside it.
"In the original edition." Jean fished in her reticule for a handkerchief. "Here. You've smudged
your cuff."
He took the square of lawn as if it were the favour of some medieval princess. "Thank you. my
lady. Shall you help me with my book list? I'm a hopelessly impractical fellow in dire need of rescue. Yes, I
think you are going to take pity on me."
"I'd like to be useful." Jean winced at the stiff propriety of her own words but he held her eyes,
returning the crumpled handkerchief. His smile faded to something more intense as, greatly daring, she
tucked it in her bosom.
"I should like it of all things." Jean half whispered.
"Only fancy, Jean, I've found
The Monk
!" Maggie was still near the doorway. "It was
here all the time. What a hum. We needn't have sent to Lincoln after all."
Miss Bluestone had interdicted Mr. Lewis's gothick tale, so Jean and Maggie obtained it from
Piersall's Circulating Library by stealth and took turns reading it to each other. Reading
The Monk
in a whisper late at night by the light of flickering candles had added to their delicious terror. Now Maggie
flipped the pages, announcing the edition was inscribed to their mother by the author. Her voice
squeaked.
"We enjoyed the book when we were younger," Jean heard herself say. They had first read
The Monk
in November. "Do you have a scheme for the library, sir?"
"I'll use the system my tutor worked out for the collection Lord Edgware donated to the Bodley.
Lord Clanross approves."
Jean had no idea what system he was referring to, but it seemed unlikely to include gothick
novels. "Clanross and my sister Elizabeth receive a great many scientific journals."
His nose wrinkled. "I daresay. I shall have them bound."
"You best ask Lizzie first."
Jean jumped.
Maggie had materialised at the poet's elbow. "She likes to have the journals to hand. For her
correspondence, you know."
"I believe Lady Clanross uses a telescope."
"Lizzie," said Maggie, rather pink in the face, "is astronomer. Her instrument is one of the finest
in the nation."
"Indeed," Davies murmured, his eyes heavy-lidded. "I'd like to see it."
Maggie's chin went up. "I daresay she'll show it you if ask her nicely."
Jean wanted to sink into the carpet. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew of Lizzie's spy glass.
Why was Maggie so fierce about it? Mr. Davies had said nothing disparaging.
Jean shifted from one slipper-clad foot to the other. "Clanross says my grandfather had a
catalogue made."
"His lordship gave me a copy, but it was never completed. The collection has doubled since your
grandfather's death." Davies ran his hand through his hair so that it stood up in gold tufts. He smiled
charmingly at Maggie. "It seems I have a heavy task ahead of me. Shall you help, too, Lady
Margaret?"
Jean felt a stab of jealousy.
He turned his gaze back to her and again the smile faded. His eyes bespoke her. "Lady Jean has
already been kind enough to offer her assistance."
Jean trembled.
Maggie said baldly, "To be sure. We've nothing to do until we go to London in April. Cause one
of the footmen to go over the books with an oiled cloth first, however, or we'll all be covered in
dust."
"Yes," said the poet absently.
He held Jean's gaze, and they spoke volumes together without saying a word.
* * * *
"What think you of the poet?" Elizabeth asked.
Miss Bluestone smoothed the cuffs of her sober grey gown. "Mrs. Davies says he is greatly
improved. His father has high hopes of him."
Cecilia Wharton had gone off in her husband's carriage, and the two ladies sat alone in the
withdrawing room over the remains of the interrupted tea. The fire crackled as a gust of wind shook the
windowpanes.
"I can't approve his manners," Elizabeth said bluntly. "He's full of himself."
Miss Bluestone's eyes twinkled. "All young gentlemen of three and twenty are full of
themselves."
Elizabeth's tension eased. "True. At least Johnny Dyott contrives to conceal his
self-absorption."
"But Mr. Dyott is unusual, and several years older than this sprig."
"Johnny unusual?" Elizabeth smiled. "You must find our captive poet commonplace
indeed."
"It's certainly the fashion, to play at being a poet these days. He may have a genuine gift, but I
cannot like his neckcloth."
"Byron has a great deal to answer for." Elizabeth hesitated. "I think Jean is taken with young
Davies."
Miss Bluestone's eyebrows rose. "Indeed? That would not be at all suitable."
Elizabeth shrugged. "Oh, the connexion is respectable enough. And though Jean has her share of
step-mamma's fortune, the boy doesn't strike me as mercenary. I don't fear for Jean's establishment, merely
for her heart."
"She has been losing it regularly these past three years."
"True." Elizabeth spread her hands. "But she was not then of an age to act on her impulses. Now
she fancies herself grown up. She's not up to snuff, Miss Bluestone. I've been remiss. I meant to prepare the
girls, but the past year..." She rose and began to pace before the fire. She had spent the past year recovering
from childbirth. It had not been in her power to give children's balls and breakfasts and musicales suitable to
the entertainment .of very young ladies, and for a sixmonth before the boys' birth she and Tom had been in
Italy. At least the Christmas season had provided Jean and Maggie with a few social encounters.
Miss Bluestone had taken out her workbasket and was mending a lace scarf. "Jean and Margaret
do very well. Do not alarm yourself needlessly, Lady Clanross."
Elizabeth flung herself onto the sofa. "Very well, ma'am. I shan't start at shadows, but I wish
Tom's librarian were a trifle less intense." She looked at Miss Bluestone. "And a trifle less like the statue of
a Greek god."
"You could remove the girls to the Dower House again."
For three years Jean and Margaret had lived under Miss Bluestone's care in the Brecon Dower
House. They had been invited to move to Brecon itself as a token of their new maturity--and to relieve that
modest household of overcrowding. Three other schoolroom misses, Miss Bluestone, and four servants
inhabited Elizabeth old home; and it was not a large house.
"It's kind of you to offer," Elizabeth said with a sigh, "but they would be deeply offended. And
Jean, at least, would perceive my motives. I'll simply have to keep a close eye on them--and the poet.
Thank God for Maggie's common sense."
"You mustn't neglect your telescope, my lady." Miss Bluestone folded the scarf and bestowed it
in the small basket.
Elizabeth smiled at her. "I shan't. The weather is far too cold to permit me to work at it now, but
I do wish Johnny Dyott had not broken his leg.
He
would keep Master Davies in line. Johnny has a
tendre
for Jean."
"And Margaret has a
tendre
for
him
."
Elizabeth stared.
Miss Bluestone inspected the torn flounce of a petticoat.
"Does she indeed?" Elizabeth began to laugh. "Perhaps it's as well Johnny is stuck in Hampshire.
I've no desire to enact
A Midsummer Night's Dream
in my drawing room--Maggie pursuing Johnny,
Johnny pursuing Jean, Jean in love with the poet, and Mr. Davies in love with himself."