Wednesday, July 18, 2007

The Domino Effect, Chapter Nine

That evening, Phyl strolled through the gardens, attempting to mentally compose a letter to her mother but unsure as to which was more distracting, the bursts of laughter coming from the lively card game between Mrs. Hartshorne and Mary Catherine on the terrace, or the piano duets played by Mary Alice and Mary Ellen. The true source of her distraction she failed to regard as a distraction, for a distraction, to Phyl, carried unpleasant connotations, and the true cause of her distraction could hardly signify as unpleasant. Does he love me? she repeatedly asked herself, remembering Wallis on the way to the village.

She felt light, like swan’s down lifted by a gentle breeze, letting the invisible current take her where it willed. She no longer had cares or worries, yet she was the same person she had been the day before. She ate, taught, and communed with the Hartshorne family, and she had serious matters to consider. Her mother had reported that her brothers had been traveling back and forth to Oxford, petitioning their mentors for help in finding suitable professions.

“I think you should ask your employer to find something for them to do,” Mama implored in her customary illegible hand, on cheap paper liberally smeared and dotted with ink. Phyl replied, in a far neater hand and on more elegant paper, that the Earl of Blystone and his brother would never consent to work so near to the old home, nor would she encourage them to do so. “The temptation to take back the estate would be too great,” she wrote, again forbidding herself to reveal that she herself worked there. “I know my brothers. They would think of nothing else, and do nothing else except plot against the current owner in a conspiracy that must resolve badly.” She nearly wrote “tragically,” but decided that the hint of death and destruction would tip dear Mama into hysterics. Poor Mama, always expecting the worst, Phyl reflected. Whatever would she say about Mrs. Hartshorne’s affections towards me?

Phyl had wandered to that part of the garden that her father had determined should mimic a meadow in the wild. Tall grass and lavender reached for her knees. Sere brown leaves, forgotten remnants of summers past, crunched beneath her feet. The path ended, smothered by a brightly colored tangle of shrubs and wildflowers that extended towards one of the park’s many copses. This was once her favorite spot in the estate. How often had she come out here, marveling at delicate spring blossoms or drinking in the lovely weight of autumn, when the air was still and everything was bathed in vague, pink-orange twilight.

Certain that nobody could see her she sat, arms around her legs, her chin on her knees, as she had been wont to do. It was astonishing, really, that the garden could look the same but not feel the same. There was no longer any comfort here. The knowledge that her home had been wrested from her unsettled her with the constancy of an ache from a splinter too fine to be removed. She reflected that she should have known her life would be unhappy, for not every moment of her childhood on the estate had been a source of delight. Surely, she hadn’t dreamt the scene of her mother confiding how she would have left her father (for whatever reason, Phyl had long forgotten), and the memory of her father declaring (for another reason that Phyl had long forgotten) how her mother “could be so vicious.” As big and sumptuous as Blystone was, despite the number of out buildings and pleasant pockets among the grounds and gardens, the only sanctuary from the parental tempests that Phyl and her brothers could find was at the home of Mama’s ever-so-clever modiste. “Ma’am,” as everyone called her, would ply them with tea and let them play her pianoforte. Though her son, Philip, treated Ronald and Russell with an awe that prevented him from being at ease in their company, despite their friendly nature and desire to please, her daughter, Penelope, at once took to Phyl. The girls had no doubt they would be friends for life and often plotted how “Pen” could snare Ronald as a husband.

The notion of Ronald as somebody's husband made Phyl wonder what sort of husband Wallis Hartshorne would be. She imagined Wallis as she so frequently saw him in his current, seemingly unattached state: the icon of the perfect son, brother, uncle, friend, playing with the children, joking (albeit it in writing) with siblings and gallantly strolling the grounds with his mother on his arm. She never saw him with a woman not related to him, and she never heard his family speak or speculate about his affairs of the heart. That Wallis was unattached, Phyl was certain. She considered that he never had been married, for women wanted to hear their husbands’ declarations of love, just as men wanted their wives to have money. No, he cannot have serious intentions about me, she concluded. He knows no woman really wants him, as I know no man really wants me.

Twilight drooped lower, snuffing the shards of pink and golden light that moments before had danced low between the trees. Phyl no longer felt like swan’s down dancing on the breeze, unburdened by memories, suspicions, uncertainties. She thought of the horribly round-shouldered woman who sold carrots in the market. Her spirits felt the way the woman looked.

“Psst!”

Was that a hiss or was it really a “Psst!”?

“Miss Phylidda?” the whisper belonged to Elspeth, the freckled girl from the kitchen.

Phyl looked up at her from where she sat.

Bending low, Elspeth whispered further, about someone she and Martin, the valet, had met in town. “Would you remember the other day, when Cook said a man had stopped her in the market, inquiring about the people who live here?”

Phyl often was amused by how the locals called the village town, while town, to her and her family, was London. She spoke without thinking, annoyed at the intrusion to her solitude. “I’m afraid I wasn’t aware of that. What happened?”

“Just as I said, Miss Phylidda. A man chatted up Cook about Mr. Hartshorne and the family. He said he wrote for a newspaper in London and wanted to know if it was true that an American lived at Blystone.”

Ah yes, Phyl thought; she knew the type: Anything for news that would make the paper stand out among the rest. “I doubt there was anything behind it, Elspeth. The gentleman was probably looking for a good story, that’s all. The ton is fascinated by foreigners who live in England.”

“But today it was me and Martin who was stopped. It sounds like the same man.”

“If it was indeed the same man, most likely he’s searching for somebody to give him an introduction. He knows he can’t very well come charging down here like a runaway steeplechaser. The form would be so bad as to be unforgivable.”

“I don’t know, Miss. The things he was asking! It didn’t sound like he wanted an introduction, or that he wanted to write a society story, you know?”

“Why? What was he asking you?”

“Impertinent things, like what kind of an income we thought Mr. Hartshorne had and how he made his money. We sid it weren’t any of his business, but he said we were fools to work for a foreigner and not know anything about him. He said it wasn’t right for so many people to live all together like that and not have a title or a profession to let them live so high.”

”Did he, now! What did he look like?”

“It was nobody I’ve ever seen, Miss. Mind you, I’m not from here. Mr. Hartshorne hired me in London.”

“In town?”

“No, ma’am, in London. I worked for the hotel where he stayed. I heard he needed staff for here, and I didn’t want to live in the city any more.” The girl’s brow crinkled. She leaned forward and asked Phyl, in a tone of dread, “The staff and me, we heard that Mr. H didn’t come by this house rightly. You don’t think he’s been doing something untoward, do you?”

“Untoward?”

Elspeth shrugged. “Thievery. Forgery. Opium. Light skirts. Speculation. Who can tell?”

Phyl laughed, confident in her knowledge and in the knowledge that her knowledge would calm the ingenuous girl! “I do not for an instant believe it’s any of those things. I myself happened to hear that he won Blystone in a bet with the old earl.”

“A bet…” The girl’s voice brightened with enlightenment then slid back into suspicion.“But how can he afford to live here, Miss?”

“The rents, Elspeth! Blystone has tenants. Surely, you could see that.” Phyl gestured broadly, as if to embrace the manor and its park.

Elspeth's eyes followed the gesture. "Of course, Miss Phylidda. How stupid of me!"

Phyl interrupted. “That stranger who accosted you. What did he look like? You never told me.”

“Oh! He—“ Elspeth stopped, mouth agape. Phyl followed the girl’s terrified stare. A young man on horseback, taking advantage of the twilight, had had the gall to ride up to the house and now awaited recognition not by Elspeth or by any other member of the household, but by Phylidda, who recognized the form despite the hat, which she had never before seen him wear. Indeed, Phyl had had no reason to see him in a hat, for she had never seen him outside his home or the print shop.

“Not to worry,” she assured the girl, who succumbed to her fright and folded upon on the turf in an inelegant heap.

“How very convenient,” said Philip, who dismounted and pushed a letter into Phyl’s hand.

“It’s imperative that we speak, my lady. The particulars are on the page. Until tomorrow,” he murmured, and walked the horse back toward the road, vanishing into the darkness.

Phyl hastened to the house, where she recruited a footman to help Elspeth, who was playfully chided for letting herself be overcome by the shadow of a tree in the night.




Saturday, July 14, 2007

The Domino Effect, Chapter Eight

As the weeks passed, Phylidda sent her mother and brothers letters about her life as a governess for a rich American family in the country. She hadn’t nerve enough to state all the facts about Wallis Hartshorne and his curious relationship with their cherished estate. She posted all that to Ma’am. The first narrative she directed to that lady's attention became the first in a series of columns about the Hartshornes, whom she refrained from identifying. The stories, which Phyl chose to write in the guise of “Lady M. Dash,” were a hit. Sales of Lady Athol-Hight’s Society Paper soared.

The Hartshornes apparently knew nothing about their notoriety. Nor did Phyl betray her deep-seated desire to embarrass them as the usurpers of her legacy. They showed Phyl nothing but kindness and consideration, which led her to believe that, to them, she was little more than a blameless, lonely soul in need of protection from the evils of the world. Her schedule was a reasonable arrangement that one would expect to see in a reputable school and assured that neither she nor any of her charges was overworked. If anything, they all were overfed, for meals were unabashed family feasts that required portions fit for persons accustomed to frequent, massive doses of hearty, lethargy-inducing food. Phyl's dresses, too, reflected the Hartshornes’ generosity. She had one for every day of the week. Though each was a thing of practicality--modestly cut of dark fabric, with long sleeves, as befit a woman who spent most of her time with children--each also featured a high, expensive muslin frill at the neck. A scarlet fob at the bodice secured a small, self-winding watch by the Swiss house of Breguet.

As for personal comfort, Phyl's underpinnings were fashioned from the softest cottons and linen, and embellished with dainty lacework. She had a high-ceilinged, well-ventilated room to herself. However, the room was on an upper floor, away from the children. She was surprised to learn that her responsibilities for the children ended along with the school day. “You’re their teacher, not their parent,” Mrs. Hartshorne advised. The information struck Phyl as odd, for she knew few parents who were only too glad to relinquish their round-the-clock duties to nursemaids and governesses.

But perhaps the greatest oddity of Phyl’s new life was her mute employer. From what she could see, perpetually silent Wallis Hartshorne had no wife or children. He had chosen to dwell in a lordly manor with more than two dozen relations who had left the comfort of their homes and accompanied him thousands of miles across the sea not merely to a new life, but to a new country. Their fidelity was rewarded, or perhaps fueled, by the never-ending supply of the most basic requirements of life, provided with no apparent effort by a man who spared no expense for their ease.

Despite his wealth, Wallis Hartshorne was astonishingly thoughtful of his servants and tenants, as well. Often Phyl would spy him in the distant fields, chatting with all manner of staff: shepherds, cattlemen, haymakers, gardeners. Though he rode out on horseback, he dismounted for the meetings. “How very democratic,” Phyl would muse at the sight. “Whatever would young Earl Blystone think?” For Ronald would never deign to present himself before the common folk in so common a position. He always said that to present oneself on horseback was not so much to reinforce the lower class’s lowborn position, but to encourage the lower class to look up, and by physically looking up, to aspire to rise above their squalor and to better themselves.

And what, Phyl wondered, did Wallis Hartshorne himself aspire to? Was it enough for him to live like a lord, benefiting from the years of improvements and cultivation produced by generations of Phyl’s titled forbears? What kind of a man would live off the rightful belongings of another? Every day, Phyl awoke with the determination to ask him what his business was with the place, but every day lapsed not with an opportunity missed, with the preference not to venture upon the subject. Though she had ample opportunity to challenge him--he often met with her to discuss the children’s progress--she refused to trample his benevolence (not to mention her privileged life at the house) with questions that could betray her as an ingrate and have her thrown off the premises. She resolved to rely upon her columns to inspire her readers to question the appearance of the impudent foreigners and restore the Earl to his lands.

As Phyl walked to the village one sunny morning to post her latest column about life with the Americans, a burst of traffic revealed a horseman who turned his mount around as soon as he had passed her and rode back towards her. Dismounting, Wallis tipped his hat to her in what she perceived as a vaguely American pose, and mouthed a greeting. He walked beside her, leading the horse, a strapping bay gelding, by the reins.

Phyl felt as though she had been caught doing something wrong. “I’m posting a letter to a friend I left behind in London,” she lied as Wallis produced the ubiquitous notebook and pencil.

“I’m so sorry!” he wrote. “Had I known you had mail, I’d have brought it myself.”

“Thank you, but it’s a fine day for a walk, don’t you think?”

“Yes! Which is why I chose to ride, ha ha.”

How difficult to convey humor in writing, thought Phyl, smiling more from courtesy than delight.

Wallis failed to notice the smile's lack of spontaneity, for he continued to write. “Is there anything that you need or want, for yourself or for the children?”

”I want for nothing,” said Phyl, hoping she sounded truthful.

“Nothing? Are you certain?”

“I have everything I need, Mr. Hartshorne.”

“I know of no one on this earth who has everything he needs. Surely, there must be something?”

“Notatall. I’m quite happy, thank you. I should like to know something, though--” Phyl held the thought as Wallis respectfully helped her step around a bunny hole. “Pray tell me: Have you always been like this?”

“Like what?” he wrote as soon as he was assured that Phyl could walk without further assistance.

“Unable to speak.”

Wallis crushed a smile. “I’m quite able to speak. I just don’t make the sounds necessary for audible speech.”

Phyl recalled their confrontation on her first night at the house. “Excuse me. I should have asked if you have never been able to speak aloud.”

“It’s a long story, I’m afraid.”

“Ah, but it’s a long walk to the village.”

“Well, it’s not a glorious tale, either. Rather ordinary. Dull. Based on stupidity.”

“Were you a singer? Did you misuse your voice?”

Wallis’s face erupted in a great, nearly noiseless gasp of a laugh. Phyl could not resist laughing along with him. How different he looked when he laughed!

“No, no, no, no, no!” he protested in pencil. “And it wasn’t drink, either, if that’s what you’re thinking!”

The ground being uneven, Phyl leaned close, her hand ever so lightly on Wallis's arm, to see what he wrote. “What was it, then?” she prompted, eagerly looking into his eyes, which she only just realized were shaded by lashes that resembled the fringe on her mother’s black velvet wrap. “Why must men have the best eyelashes?” she mutely agonized.

Grinning with mischievous self-satisfaction, Wallis wrote: “As I said: stupidity. An attack of quinsy when I was a boy. The doctor lanced my vocal chords along with the abcess in my throat. See? Ordinary and dull, as promised.”

Phyl gulped, unable to understand why she now felt so miserable for prying. “I’m so sorry! How awful for you. How awful for your parents!”

“Awful? Never! Once they were a few days removed from the shock of the damage, they were relieved that they’d never again hear me screaming in order to coerce them into giving me whatever I wanted.”

“Your mother! That adorable, little old lady? She was that wretchedly cold-hearted—“

The hectic scribbling smothered Phyl’s disbelief, for she was compelled to rationally follow every syllable formed by the pencil: “Of course, they were horrified! Horrified, incensed, despondent. But not so horrified, incensed and despondent that they forgot to prepare me for a life without a voice. My father was a lawyer. He did what any lawyer would have done: he at once began to groom me for the law, bringing me into his office to work as a clerk. Simultaneously, he sued the doctor. The timing indicated to me that both actions were of equal importance.”

Now here was a revelation. At last, Phyl would know what he did for a living! Deep inside, she fluttered with the excitement that accompanies the joy of unexpected triumph. “You practice law, Mr. Hartshorne?” She struggled to make it sound like a question, not an exclamation of discovery.

He nodded.

“As a solicitor?” She could not imagine him attempting to try a case in court, as a barrister.

“We don’t have the distinctions you have here. Either one tries cases, or not. No matter which, one is still called a lawyer. Or an attorney. Or a counselor.”

“I take it you don’t try cases.”

He dropped his jaw in feigned gasp of horror.

“What?” Phyl giggled nervously, uncertain if she had committed a grievous error.

“I most certainly DO try cases!”

“How?”

He tapped the paper.

“Goodness, I should find all that writing tedious!”

“Sometimes my worthy colleague on the opposing side finds it tedious and settles—rather wisely, I must say--before the first recess.”

And Phyl wisely waited until they had progressed several more paces, so as not to appear too eager and indiscriminate, before asking what had been on her mind for weeks. “Pray, tell me one thing, Mr. Hartshorne. Forgive my frankness, but I feel I’ve been with you long enough to ask: How does an American lawyer come to live in an English manor?”

The reply was quick. “There are many similarities between English and American law. There must be, as the latter is founded upon the former. I believe that one of the likenesses extends to confidentiality. Forgive me if I cannot say more, but please trust that my business here is lawful and appropriate.”

“So the manor really isn’t yours? As people say it is,” Phyl hastened to add, fearing she had overstepped the bounds of good manners.

“Miss Athol-Hight, if the State of New Jersey ever allows women to appear before the Bar, yours would be the first name on the list for the privilege.”

“That’s a lovely way of telling me to mind my own business, is it not?”

“It is, rather, a compliment.”

Wallis’s lack of rancor at her questioning bolstered her courage to press on. “So please tell me this: You brought your entire family to England with you for what amounts to a business trip. Your client must be fabulously wealthy, indeed!”

“You don’t give up, do you?” Wallis wrote, shaking with silent laughter.

“Sadly, no, I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Have you read Shakespeare?”

“I have.”

“Are you familiar with The Merchant of Venice? You may recall that one of the characters is a wise woman named Portia who practices law disguised as a man.”

“Of course...” Phyl wondered where this discussion would lead them.

Wallis squinted towards the slightly distant village, his eyes smudged by deep preoccupation. Some moments later, he wrote: “How fortunate that your first name begins with a P, for I can call you Portia, and write to you as P, and nobody will be the wiser. If you will allow me the pleasure, that is.”

Wallis was several steps away before he realized that Phyl had stopped and was now hidden behind the horse’s hindquarters. Her face, though shadowed by the bonnet’s straw bill, had turned deep claret. Her eyes were downcast. Her perplexity embraced a question: Why did he say that? Was it not enough that he was her employer? Did he mean to be a suitor too? Did he want to take her the way he had taken the estate?

There were only sorrow and concern, not lechery, thievery, nor any other element of criminal intent in Wallis’s face as he bent and turned his eyes to hers, so close their foreheads almost touched. Phylidda saw at once that she had been wrong to suspect the man of such abject villainy. He was no libertine. Nor was he the palest shade of a rake, despite his not being married. Shame spoiled her suspicion and stoked her misery. She willed herself not to cry. Tears leaked, all the same.

“No no, no, no, no,” Wallis mouthed. Briefly, he squeezed her shoulders, then reached for the notebook. Guessing he was about to apologize for the remark—which had been made rather shyly, Phyl noted—she placed her own hands over his, signaling there was no need to write. “I’m sorry,” she mewed. “I’m not accustomed to such attention.”

“No?” Wallis mouthed, eyes wide with soft disbelief.

Phyl remembered Philip in the print shop, with his pompous declarations of admiration, but, really, there was nobody else. There would never be anybody else. Not now, not after what her father and Wallis Hartshorne had done to her family. Phyl cast her answer in a teary whisper. “Never.”

“Why?”

Because I became poor, and no man in his right mind will marry a poor girl, Phyl thought, catching the shape of the word. “I am poor,” she said, then begged, as Wallis formed another “no,” “Please, Mr. Hartshorne, I’m alone, dependent on your charity. You mustn’t take advantage of my position.”

“Never!” he mouthed, with an earnest shake of the head. “Never!” Assured of his sincerity, Phyl released his hands and he wrote:

“Take this notebook. Please! Whatever you think of me at this moment--whatever wrong you imagine me capable of doing now or in the future--remember this: If ever I become cross with you, or speak boorishly to you, or do anything to signify any feeling contrary to the esteem that I have for you, show me these pages, and I will make amends with speed and before anyone who may have witnessed my transgression.”

He held out the booklet to her. At first she refused to take it. “I can’t take that from you! What will you use to communicate?”

“Oh," Wallis said, then thought, then wrote. “Pragmatically, I believe the stationer’s is nearby, so please have no fear of my going without the means to express myself. And there are more of these books at the house. However, so long as you are with me, I feel no need to resort to writing in order to convey my thoughts to someone who does not know me.”

“That’s unspeakably kind of you, Mr. Hartshorne, but may I remind you that you may need to convey some thoughts to me first. How, then—“

“You will know. As surely as I know that you were going to ask, ‘How, then, will I know what you mean to say?’ You will know.”

Once Phyl read the last note, Wallis closed her hands around the booklet with a tenderness that signaled both the end of the discussion and the beginning of something that Phyl could not have foreseen moments before: an understanding between them that transcended the transcription of consonants and vowels, and had, at its source, messages that are best understood in the heart.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

The Domino Effect, Chapter Seven

To the boisterous family that flowed over the grounds with the shameless intrusion of the tide, Wallis Harthsorne was off managing the poor excuse of a farm that signified the former estate of the late Earl of Blystone. But safely out of sight in his study, Wallis studied the charcoal drawing of a young woman.

The medium suggested that the upswept hair and fringe of thready curls about the face were a deep brown, so distantly unlike the lighter, ethereal wisps that flashed red-gold in the sunlight. The girl was paler, too, and more delicate in form and features than the artist had recalled. But no, there was no mistake. On paper and in person, the girl was indeed the old earl’s daughter.

Wallis thought she dressed simply for an earl’s daughter. He had expected someone of her position to attend the ball in silk or satin, perhaps overlaid with a fine, too-translucent tulle, and wickedly low-cut. But the gown she had worn beneath the domino--the same gown she had by necessity donned for breakfast--was a disarmingly modest affair made of soft, white lace over a pink linen underdress. It had a gathered bodice and straight, nearly elbow-length sleeves. A moss-green velvet ribbon defined the high waist. Shoes and gloves of York-tan kid completed the outfit, which was more suited for day than night.

What is she up to?, Wallis wondered, revisiting the way she had hastened from room to room, and how she had jumped away when they collided. Was she thrilled to be home, or was she gathering evidence, made bold by something he had failed to put away?

There was also the matter of her name. Athol-Hight, she said it was, not Fitzmaier, her family name. A Lady Athol-Hight was the publisher of a society paper. Surely, Lady Phylidda had better sense than to masquerade as a scandalmonger! If not, what, then would compel an eighteen-year-old girl to pretend to be something she wasn't? Or was it possible that he was wrong, he really had brought home the wrong girl, after all?

Flushed with the notion that he had invented the major folly of his life, Wallis folded the drawing and, without a word to any of his kin or household help, headed towards the stables with a speed which he hoped would not attract attention. Within minutes he was cantering towards the hills beyond the park and two smocked figures who lounged in the shade of a twisted, outstretched tree, surrounded by round, wooly bodies, their limp, slouch-brimmed hats flopping low against the noontime brightness.

The figures were two rather young men who had their own reasons for escaping attention. Moments earlier, they had observed the adult members of their new employer’s family rolling hoops alongside the children. Gleeful shouts and squeals traveled through the clear spring air sounding more like barks than human sounds.

Bolger, the elder of the two, had rolled his eyes with disgust. “Look at them, carrying on like that! A desecration, if you ask me. What would the old earl say?”

Bolger’s ruddy cheeked associate spoke even as he bit off a chunk of bread. “Never mind the old earl. What would the young earl thay?”

Bolger’s glower deepened till it seemed his entire face were folded in. “I think I know what people would say about the young earl. He’s spineless. He can’t stand up to the usurper.”

“That’s arrogance,” Bolger’s colleague pronounced. ”Besides, do the people around here really care about the young earl? Nobody’s offering to help him get back the estate.”

Bolger shuddered and swiped at his associate’s head as the fellow shoved in more bread without first having swallowed the previous load. “Don’t do that!”

Completely unswayed, his friend simply ducked out of the way and jutted his chin towards the faraway scene. “They thpend an inordinate amount of time with their children, the Americanth.”

“Well, we’re spending an inordinate amount of time playing with what amounts to somebody else’s sheep.”

A whimper of an incipient laugh escaped the colleague’s slender person. “What’s that for?” inquired Bolger, caught between amusement and suspicion.

“You make that thound thooooo loaththome.”

“I make it sound loathsome? You know what people say about shepherds and their sheep.”

Blankness overcame the younger man’s face. Exasperation heightened Bolger’s voice. “Come now, you can’t be that thick! It ain’t humanly possible!”

Chewing, the younger shepherd squinted philosophically towards the treetop. “Actually, it ith humanly pothible. Morally reprehenthible, perhapth, but—“

Bolger restrained himself, an effort that gave him a mild tremor. “I was speaking about the human capacity for intellectual density, of which you seem to be the prime mover!”

Happily, the discussion about man’s moral conduct with animals was lidded by the appearance of the new squire, who, the shepherds grudgingly admitted, cut a fine figure on horseback. Bolger’s friend attempted to stand at Wallis’s approach. Bolger pulled him back down.

Wallis dismounted and approached the shepherds on foot, the reins swaying loosely over his arms. “Mr. Bolger!” he mouthed, giving a small, friendly bow. He looked from Bolger to the second shepherd, arching an eyebrow in the deliberate implication of “And who is this?”

“Master Allen Ham,” Bolger said without missing a beat. His associate coughed, spraying crumbs, but managed to raise his hand in a wordless greeting.

Wallis, the authentic voiceless one among the three, wrote quickly, not at all irked by Bolger’s remaining seated. He presented the note, which he carefully tore from the booklet, with the same easy manner that he had displayed upon approaching the shepherds.

”I believe I’ve found the lady whose likeness matches the portrait you drew for me. I would appreciate it if you could come by the house to confirm my find.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that, sir,” Bolger replied, shooing Master Ham away from peering over his shoulder. “You Americans may feel at liberty to go where you please, regardless of your station in life, but here? Men like us? We don’t belong in that house. It ain’t our place, you see?”

Wallis's pencil flew. “It’s your place if you have business with your employer.”

“Beggin’ your pardon, squire, we’d rather not. It wouldn’t look right. To the other servants.”

After brief and silent consideration, Wallis placed several coins in Bolger's hand, mouthed, "I understand,” and began to walk his horse back towards the house.

Bolger regarded the guineas with a face so tightly screwed with disdain that he looked like another person. He waited until Wallis was well out of earshot before admitting, “I feel filthy. As if I’ve sold her into... slavery.”

“I thought you were going to say ‘prostitution,’” said Master Ham, who had noticed Bolger’s pause between “into” and “slavery.”

“What shall we do with it?”

“The money? Give it to the vicar, I suppose. Perhaps he could direct it to something worthy.”

Bolger snorted. “Yes, the communion wine.” He allowed a moment of befuddled silence to pass before spitting.

Master Ham, who until that instant had exhibited himself as the master of crudity, gasped at the prodigious stream. “What a disgusting emission!”

Bolger shrugged. “Perhaps. Do you know, I’ve always heard of men spitting at something or somebody they disdained. I never understood why. Until now. I confess, it was a marvelous release.”

Master Ham regarded his associate with an expression that wavered between awe and distaste. Nevertheless, he took a deep breath, sat stiffly straight, worked the muscles about his jaw and ejected a volley of moisture that could go no farther than his chin. He grumbled, wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Humph! It did nothing for me.”

“Give it a few days,” replied Bolger in a tone of somber sagacity. “Then you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

Monday, June 25, 2007

The Domino Effect, Chapter Six

Phyl’s sleep was a succession of jagged thoughts and dreams about her home, her family, the solicitous women who had installed her in a guest room with much sympathy and few questions. Despite her distress, she had resolved not to mention her former association with the premises. It was best to keep silent and enjoy this unexpected visit. Had the house not been lost under such baleful circumstances, she could have hoped that a new friendship would allow her many more opportunities to stay there. But such an alliance was impossible, considering the role of the current occupant, a most heinous, unlikely thief.

When the distant shouts of small children finally roused her from her mental wanderings, the sun was high and a note in the stranger’s hand lay on the side table:

”The family is eager to meet you. But if you prefer to remain in your room, please avail yourself of the bell chord, and we will accommodate you with breakfast and whatever else you may need.”

I’ll lay a wager the family is indeed eager, Phyl thought, casting the note aide.

She just as quickly snatched it up. Did he really write “family is eager”? Family are, she muttered, disgusted but hardly surprised, for it was typical of low-born criminals to confuse nouns and number.

Phyl deigned to go down to breakfast, mostly because she preferred not to have anybody come to her, but partly because she was curious.

A chorus of conversation about ordinary things drew her away from the route she was taking to the breakfast room and towards the dining room, which was crammed with card tables in addition to the long ebony table that had been her mother’s pride and joy. Every table, long and small, was filled with diners of every age imaginable.

Lud, it’s an inn! Phyl thought. He’s turned the place into an inn!

Indignation that her home should be consigned to so banal an existence at the hands of the masses nearly brought Phyl to tears. Her complexion went from white to red and back to white again in the brief time it took for every male guest, adult and child, to stop what he was doing and respectfully stand upon seeing her.

Her stranger stepped forward but stood aside, bowing to another man who had also come forward, beaming upon Phyl. The second man was a shorter, plumper, somewhat younger version of the first.

“If you don’t mind, miss, my brother asked me to make introductions. There are so many of us, he’d fear we’d be here all day if he had to write out the names!”

The accent, full of hard “r’s” and drawled vowels, struck Phyl as odd, and she believed she was enjoying an encounter with people to whom English had not come naturally. Imagine her surprise, then, when she realized that the man was advising her of the ladies’ names, and they all began with the rather English-sounding Mary: Mary Ann, Mary Alice, Mary Claire, Mary Katherine, Mary Rose, Mary Elizabeth, Mary Barbara. The eldest woman among them, a rotund, white-haired lady in a frilly day-cap, was just plain Mary by birth but Mrs. Cornelius Wallis Hartshorne the Third by marriage. Clearly, these were not inn-stayers, but a family. An incredibly large, noisy family.

Phyl, who had every assurance she would not remember everybody’s name, could hardly wait until the man had presented every single man, woman, child and infant before asking, in as restrained a tone as her agitation would allow, “You are, I understand by your accent, not from around here?”

Heartened by the good-natured laughter that filled the room, Phyl went further, “From the Netherlands, perhaps?”

“She’s an original, Wal!” a boy shouted as the crowd laughed ever louder.

The old lady summoned Phyl by raising her gnarled finger. “And what did my son say your name was? Phyllis Athlyte? Wallis!”

The crisp enunciation of the name elicited “Yes, Mother?” from no fewer than three of her male offspring. “Boys. They’re so attentive,” Mrs. Hartshorne the Third confided to Phylidda before scolding, “I said Wallis, not Wallis Frederick, Wallis Thomas or Wallis Paul.” Three Wallises went “Ho-ho-ho” as they otherwise shrugged and returned to their tables. Phyl’s rescuer alone remained, standing at his mother’s side like a puppy ready to indulge its mistress, and in so doing, indulge itself. “You haven’t found a governess for all my grands yet, have you?” the lady challenged.

The remaining Wallis mouthed, “No, ma’am,” for, apparently, his mother needed no notes to understand her eldest son.

The woman eyed Phyl with the shrewdness of someone accustomed to sizing up people. “Do you like children, Miss Athlyte?”

Phyl could not stand children, but for the sake of politeness said she did. “However, I should add that I have little—“

“You seem educated. Intelligent. Can you sing? Draw? Dance? Add figures? Speak French?”

Upon hearing Phyl apply the affirmative to each category, Mrs. Hartshorne turned to her son. “This is an accomplished girl, Wallis. You would be out of your mind to send her back to London, where she can get into Lord knows what trouble with those infamous friends of hers. You have a moral duty to hire her.”

Good heavens, she’ll next be telling him he has a moral duty to marry me! Phyl thought. She looked upon Wallis, half expecting him to reason with the woman. Don’t just stand there, say something, she willed him. Pleeeaaaassse say something.

Wallis held his little notebook so Phylidda could read as he wrote, “With pleasure, Mother.”

Though she smiled and pronounced Mr. Hartshorne “too kind,” Phyl could not deny the ice that gripped her fingers along with the fate that twisted her stomach. After a moment she excused herself with a modest curtsy, delicately made her way between the tables and took the stairs towards her room.

Two flights up, she feverishly paced the hall, assured that nobody could hear her through the happy din below. It was madness, utter madness: not merely being in her former home. Agreeing to work as a governess. For the very person who had assured her family’s poverty for the rest of their lives!

She had no business being there. She would walk home, this minute, though it take hours. She would tell her brothers what had happened to her… Her brothers! Ohdearlord, her brothers. Her mother! They all must be worried to death about her. They would never believe she stayed so long at a ball! She had to send a message to them without delay.

In the haste that obliterates all sense of matters that have nothing to do with the cause of that haste, Phylidda dashed from room to room, searching for paper and pen until she ran straight into Wallis. Feeling his coat on her cheek and his hands on her arms, she jumped back, fearing what he would ask her and not knowing what she would tell him. She tried to appear calm, but lacking confidence in her ability as an actress, she instead accidentally manipulated her features into a grimace of disdain that made her host shift his concern from her face to her hands and what possibly lay therein.

Phyl bridled. He thinks I've stolen something, the fool! “I’m not a thief,” she declared through her teeth.

Wincing, with a faraway look in his eyes, Wallis pulled the notepad and pencil from his tail pocket with such difficulty that the pencil dropped and rolled along the carpet. As he bent to retrieve the item, Phyl succumbed to the desire to humiliate him, the real thief who had usurped her home.

An expert dancer, quick upon her feet, she kicked the pencil so it scudded across the room. The act produced on Wallis’s face a look of dismay, hurt, and frustration that made him appear much younger than Phyl had assumed the night before, and not so expedient as she had presumed the moment before. He had, after all, saved her from a woman’s ultimate shame when there was no need for him to become involved. Ashamed of her lack of gratitude and abundance of selfishness, she retrieved the pencil and held it at arm’s length, her eyes lowered in contrition.

Rather than accept the pencil, Wallis took her hand in both of his and studied her fingers. She knew what he was thinking: She had told him she was a dressmaker, yet her fingers were too smooth for somebody who professed to wield needles for hours at a time. His study ended with a face wrought in sorrowful resignation. He leaned so low as to brush Phyl's ear with his breath. Slowly, barely formed words emerged in a craggy whisper: “It would hurt me, beyond measure, to know that you are anything other than the decent, unsullied young woman I meant to help.”

Phyl’s answer was polite but assertive. “I assure you, sir, that in the course of my situation here, you may encounter many witnesses who could attest to my character. Many witnesses,” she repeated, hoping the emphasis on “many” would infer the possibility that his neighbors would know precisely how he came in possession of the estate, and, feeling for Phyl and her family, press him to return it to the rightful owners.

But the hint went unnoticed. Wallis Hartshorne took his pencil and in writing advised Phyl that his mother would help her plan the children’s schedules and send for someone to make a dress more appropriate for her new station in life.

“I can make one myself,” Phyl protested.

Wallis wrote quickly: “I wouldn’t want to spend money on fabric to find out that you can’t.”

“Then we see through each other,” Phyl muttered after Wallis, with a sparkling eye, bowed out and left her to herself.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

The Domino Effect, Chapter Five

Though stunned by the fall, Phyl sensed the man kneeling beside her and fumbling with the clasp on her domino until he was yanked up and backwards. Booted feet and clods of earth flew past her head in a silent scuffle. The man in the domino went down on all fours, then kicked up more turf in a frantic scramble to escape.

A taller, somewhat older man whose figure was not concealed by mask or fancy dress took the miscreant’s place beside Phyl and helped her sit up. His grip was secure, but kind. A horseman’s hands, she thought.

Fireworks exploded, casting the grounds in a pulsing, reddish light that permitted Phyl to perceive that her rescuer, though he retained a head full of long, luxuriant chestnut hair, had enough creases about his eyes and mouth to suggest a mature man anywhere, in her inexperienced estimation, between thirty-four and forty. He reached into a pocket deep in his coattail and withdrew an artist’s pencil and a little booklet in which he wrote quickly. He extended the note in time for Phyl to read in the fading light: “Are you hurt?”

Little thinking of another reason why he would communicate in this fashion, Phyl considered her rescuer was deaf. “I think not,” she shouted, searching in the dark for his eyes, hoping he had light enough to read her lips.

Another burst, this time of green, revealed a fine mouth trembling in an attempt to smother a smile. He wrote quickly: “Please be assured that I can hear you perfectly. There is no need to distress yourself further by raising your voice.”

“So you’re only a mute,” Phyl said softly, still unable to accept the fact that the man could hear. Now breaking into one of the broadest, most good-natured grins that Phyl had ever seen, he issued yet another communique: “May I summon a member of your party?”

“That was a member of my party!”

“Your husband?”

“No! Oh, thank heaven, no.”

“Perhaps, then, it would be best to find your chaperon.”

“Alas, there is no chaperon. Let me explain-please!” Phyl’s despair was such that she placed her hand on the man’s arm to stop him from writing without hearing her out. “Please, listen to me. I have no family in town. I am here on my own, a dressmaker, earning a respectable living, among respectable folk.”

Still, the pencil flew. “Forgive me, madam, if I cannot help but notice this is not a place for respectable young women.”

“You disapprove of the ball? Then allow me to please ask what you yourself were doing here.”

“A stranger tends at times to stumble upon acquaintances that progress beyond what they at first seem. It would appear that the evening’s festivities have been a mistake for both of us.”

“So it would.”

Phyl gave the man her hand, and he steadied her as she stood. The grass beneath her feet felt soft, mushy, uncertain. The hedgy corridor seemed to slope down. Phyl staggered. The man, who, she perceived as tall as a wall, put one hand to her elbow and kept the other above her waist, waiting. Seeing she was stable, he wrote. “May I take you to your home, or to wherever you prefer to go?”

She should have asked to be taken to Penelope’s house, but it was so late, and Penelope would want to know so much, while the unfortunate Philip would want to say so much. Her only recourse was to leave the domino at Ma’am’s door and walk home.

“I can walk to my rooms myself, thank you. The worst is over. That individual would never entertain revisiting me.”

The man wrote that, although he disagreed with her decision, he would gladly walk her to the main road.

Crossing the lawn was an odd trial for Phyl. She could not dispel the feeling of walking downhill on turf packed in tight, uneven mounds, though she knew the lawn was flat and even. Panic twisted her stomach and dried her mouth. “It’s nothing," she told herself. “I’m tired. Shaken. Hungry. I’ll feel better once I reach Ma’am’s.”

Nature, however, had other plans, and within the moment she was praying that nobody from the ton could see her retching behind the tree.

Her escort lifted her as if she weighed no more than a leaf and carried her to one of the carriages that waited on Lady Wilfer’s gravel driveway. With help from the driver, he placed Phyl on the forward-facing seat, then took advantage of the car’s lamplight to scrawl anew: “You shouldn’t be alone. Where are you from?”

She weakly mentioned the borough slightly more than an hour’s drive south of town.

“If not family, do you have friends there?”

She nodded, envisioning the mayor, the vicar and his family, Ronald’s friend Bernard, and so many others, young and old, who had become the happy longings of daydreams.

The man passed a note to the driver and climbed onto the seat opposite Phyl. Feeling too physically miserable and emotionally foul to care what next befell her, she allowed her escort to ply her with brandy from a flask concealed in a box beneath the seat. Warmed and comforted by the drink—and having no doubt that “conversation” with the stranger was impossible, owing to the darkness and the rocking motion of the vehicle—Phyl nestled her head against the back of the plump, leather seat and dozed. She awoke to the familiar silhouette of sycamores lining a lane, and the equally familiar pattern of windows glowing orange in the distance.

Her benefactor had brought her to the estate that she and her mother and brothers had vacated six months ago: the estate which, she had learned only hours before, had been gambled away to a stranger.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

The Domino Effect, Chapter Four

The predictable, conventional, socially acceptable aspect of Lady Wilfer’s ball allowed men and women in masks and dominos or fanciful costumes to dine and dance to the strains of a small string orchestra on the terrace behind the main house, in the warm, crimson glow of high-flaming torches. What happened in the maze beyond the terrace was quite another matter.

The maze, the heart of Lady Wilfer’s gardens, was a nine-foot-high hedgerow sculpted into little rooms and alcoves. In fair weather, the maze was the delight of Her Ladyship’s ten children and the orphans from her favorite charity. At night, however, the place purportedly became a many-faceted hall for gamesters of less-innocent pursuits. Deeply cloaked persons were said to alight from carriages that rolled up to the house with curtains drawn and lamps extinguished. And a former Wilfer maid recalled seeing pale forms writhing in the moonlight as she discreetly searched for a child’s toy horse. “The noises they were making!” Phyl recalled her saying with a shudder. “I could never do something like that in the open. Sound carries, you know.”

It was quite a few days before Phyl realized that the girl’s shame lay not in fulfilling her desires anywhere other than in her bedroom, but in placing herself in a position where the sound from that position entertains a world where ordinary noise has stilled for the day.

Phyl was thankful that she had no interest in that sort of activity. In fact, she reflected, it all seemed rather repulsive. Cradling the warm champagne flute in her hands, discreetly roaming through the crowd, she imagined and re-imagined the white-blue blob of humanity rolling upon the lawn, gathering dirt and grass upon their smooth, gleaming buttocks and within the deep, damp creases of their glistening nether regions. “Disgusting,” she thought, entranced by the sensation of something poking apart her own crevices. Assured that she would never permit herself to be used for somebody’s sordid pleasure, she studied the masqueraders, divining who among them would cast off their clothes in the false privacy of a leafy wall.

A servant appeared at her side. She thought he was extending a tray of refreshments. She saw, instead, that he carried a sealed paper on a small silver plate. “Excuse me, ma’am. This fell from your cape.”

“My cape?” Phyl asked. How could the paper be hers? She carried nothing, not even a reticule.

The servant was most courteous and eager to unite the lady with her property. “Do forgive me, ma’am, if I am mistaken. But it was seen to drop.”

Baffled, Phyl took the letter, sidled closer to the light of a torch, broke the seal, and eyed the unfamiliar hand:

“Word is that a certain earl’s estate was not sold to satisfy his gambling debts. Word is that the estate had been lost to the earl and his family long before his death, the shameful prize of a wager gone awry. If you would like to hear more, dance the allemande with me. Have no fears about appearing in the line by yourself. I will find you.”

Phyl’s head burned, and her knee shook with such severity that she forced herself to walk lest the tremors show through her skirts. Her shock was twofold: First, there was the possibility that her mother had lied about the loss of the estate, and her father really had gambled it away. Second, there was the reality that the writer knew she was at the ball, though she wore a mask and domino, and she had not spoken to anybody other than the servant.

How, then, did the writer know who she was? Nobody except Ma’am and Penelope knew she was there. She had sent word to her mother that she would be delayed at Ma’am’s, finishing a gown needed the next morning for a ceremony related to the Parliament. What the ceremony was, neither she nor Pen had the smallest notion, as the event was the creation of Ma’am herself, who had provided Phyl with both the domino and the means of getting to Lady Wilfer’s.

No, something was horribly wrong. Phyl’s anonymity with Lady Athol-Hight’s Society Paper was the only thing that had saved and assured her position among the ton for the past six months. Discovery would expose her as the daughter of a wastrel. It was bad enough that she had her father’s name. She had no desire to endure the legacy of his reputation.

She hastened along the gravel path that led to the safety of the public road. The sound of quickening footsteps behind her revealed a masked man in a domino. Fearing she was being followed, she turned sharply between two waiting carriages and ran across the lawn to the maze, heedless of who and what she would find amid the prickly green labyrinth.

The place where she had entered brought her to a shrubby corridor. Running, she thought she heard laughter coming from the other side of the hedge. A young woman in a flimsy, white gauze gown darted out of the maze to her left, followed by a panting, sweaty young man who carried coat and breeches over his shoulder.

Knowing without thinking that that particular spot promised a hiding place, Phylidda turned left. She expected another corridor with a hedge-alcove nearby. But the turn proved to be the alcove itself. She bounced back into the corridor she had just abandoned. Her pursuer stood before her.

She started as though intending to run past him on her right. As she anticipated, he reached toward her right. At the same time, she darted left. She was quick, but not quick enough to miss the faint scent of cow he exuded as he moved.

The Gentleman Dairyman! He had arrived at the ball, after all, and it was he who wrote that letter about her father. Too curious not to wonder what he looked like or who he could be, Phylidda shot a glance over her shoulder. At the same time, her foot struck a hedge root, and she fell full-length on her face, her arms straight beside her. As the ground approached, she considered how stupid and vain she was. What was the importance of learning the identity of a dairyman who attended balls when compared to the possibility of being taken by a stranger who would stop at nothing to get what his body demanded? She would have screamed had she not been afraid of being caught in so humiliating a position. In an instant, terrified as she was, she also understood that people who had gone to the maze to enjoy that particular kind of exercise would find her fear laughable.

She had no sensation of landing upon the turf. She trusted that everything she feared would be over by the time she regained her senses.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

The Domino Effect, Chapter Three

As soon as Phyl touched the bell pull, the door opened and a plump, curly-haired girl in a lacy fichu and day cap pulled her into a cool shady foyer and down a long hallway bordered by parlors where Ma’am and her dressmakers met with clients. At the moment the rooms were empty. Distant, muffled voices and giggles, as well as heavy footfall upon the creaking floorboards, gave little doubt that fittings were taking place upstairs.

“Thank goodness you’re here!” whispered the girl, whose name was Penelope. “We were afraid that something had happened to you. Really, Phyl, you must let us send you a hackney!”

“Am I so late?” Phylidda hissed, taken back by the urgency of the reception.

“No, but Philip has received an order for playbills that need to be delivered in time for a performance tonight.”

“Could they not have given somebody else the order?”

“It’s for a Drury Lane theatre. He’d have been mad not to take it!” Penelope’s whisper grew screechy, a blatant hint that Phylidda was mad to suppose any printer would refuse work from a theater located in the entertainment heart of the kingdom.

Leaving the house by way of the back door, the girls crossed a yard grown shaggy with tall grass and wildflowers. Their way appeared to be blocked by a wall of blooming lilac bushes, but Penelope pushed aside a few flowery boughs, and they stepped into a small flagstone yard in front of a crooked, half-timbered building that exuded the scent of damp wood.

The heavy oak door, which had disproportionately large, rugged, iron hinges, opened onto a large room occupied by two printing presses, sloping composition desks, writers' desks and long, plain wooden tables. It seemed to Phyl that every flat surface was covered by piles of papers of varying sizes, from broadsheet to letter to invitation. A merry-faced young man sat at one of the desks, marking a broadsheet, but, upon seeing the girls, he stood and bowed, thoroughly composed and unconscious of the ink that streaked across his nose and cheek.

Phyl pulled the tightly folded paper from her reticule. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t possibly finish. We ran out of ink!”

The unsurprised host gestured to the chair he had just vacated. “Not to worry, my lady, we’ve got enough ink here to sink a ship.”

Penelope shrieked. “Philip! Think what you’re saying!”

Shrewd light streamed from Philip’s chestnut-colored eyes. “Think what I say? That’s odd. Is it not always best to say what one needs to say and communicate something that should be said, rather than merely think it and give rise to misunderstanding or ignorance?”

You are a misunderstanding!”

“Well, at the moment, what has come out of the mouths of both of you has led me to understand nothing!” Phyl said, so secure in what she had meant to write earlier that she had no need to arrange her thoughts as she settled down at the desk and took pen in hand. “I happen to think that what your brother said was rather witty. Goodness!” The disbelief that further spread Pen’s widened eyes and O-shaped mouth made Phylidda giggle. “You look as though you’re thinking that I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. As that is the case, may I recommend speaking out loud and enlightening me.”

Philip lowered his voice, lest the sound carry through walls or windows, or to wherever none of them wished it to go. “I think my sister is hinting at the fact that Uncle Bamford is at war, operating under a letter of marque as we speak—or think, as the case may be.—What!” he responded as Pen shrieked once more.

“You mustn’t say his name. Nobody is supposed to know what he’s doing!”

“Her ladyship is not nobody!”

Phyl’s heart went out to Philip. Though the eldest child and only brother, he was also the mental runt of the litter. Good-hearted, perhaps, but possessed of an honesty inclined to run afoul of common sense. His comments often made her wonder how he been admitted to—and survived—Eton.

Cut by the way Pen was treating her sibling, Phyl looked at Philip hoping for all the world that her expression conveyed both her concern for him and her disapproval of Pen’s behavior. “Philip! Please! How often have I asked you to simply call me by my given name? Really, we’ve all practically grown up together. We’ve known each other far too long for this ‘ladyship’ business.”

“But not to recognize your rank would be to dishonor you, and I could never dishonor you. Please accept my disobedience as the sign of the depth of my esteem for you.”

Another fellow would have blushed to admit such things in front of another person, as Philip admitted in front of his sister. Not this one. Phyl wondered if he had confided his feelings to the flustered Penelope, whose cheeks appeared to have been replaced by two very round, very red apples that grew larger and redder as she addressed her brother. “Really, Philip, your having had the unspeakable fortune of being friends with the Earl of Blystone at Eton hardly qualifies you to set amorous designs upon his sister now that you have no reason to affiliate with him.”

“Now then Pen, I have no doubt that Philip’s actions are as far from notions of courtship as we are from Bombay,” Phyl chided as she wrote.

“Precisely!” avowed Philip. Though his face had grown more scarlet than sunset, he never left Phylidda’s side, but waited patiently as she finished writing her column.

Instead of simply leaving the print shop by way of the front door, Phyl followed Pen back through the rear yard and garden to the modiste’s shop. ”Ma’am,” as everyone called the proprietor, awaited them upstairs, nested on a long chair in a room whose heavy jonquil drapes complimented—or clashed, depending upon one’s taste—with wallpaper that emulated pale pink roses climbing trellises along a background of green and lavender stripes. She was an elderly lady of extravagant proportions, and the layers of white muslin in which she chose to conceal her girths inspired Phyl to recall the picture of a pale baby elephant she had seen in a book about the Indies.

“I have news for you,” Ma’am’s deep, musical voice intoned as a maid poured tea into paper-thin china teacups. “I have it on the most confidential authority that our Gentleman Dairyman could very well be attending Lady Wilfer’s gathering this evening. It’s to be a great surprise, don’t you think?”

Unwilling to embarrass the woman, Phyl thought carefully before speaking. “If it’s to be a surprise, Ma’am, how, then, does anybody know about it?”

“He’s been at everybody’s balls this season! Why not Lady Wilfer’s? Her premises offer the most perfect setting for an intrigue, don’t you think?”

Phyl and Pen gave each other a sidelong glance, trying hard not to widen their eyes at the way Ma’am noisily smacked her lips after loudly sipping her tea. “I’ve never been to Lady Wilfer’s,” Phyl admitted shyly.

“That’s wonderful! She’ll not know who you are. You’ll have the run of the place and be able to speak to everybody.”

“But if she doesn’t know who I am, how am I to be admitted? Surely, I’ve got to present an invitation.”

Ma’am’s imperious nod impelled the maid, a pimply girl in a stained mobcap, to give Phyl a card that had been lying on the table beneath the silver tea set.

Phyl fingered the fine paper, curdling with an odd anxiety. “You’re certain I can get by?”

“I’m certain you can get in. How you get by is entirely up to you.”

“Oh, cheer up, Phylidda!” Ma’am joyously counseled as the girls stood to take their leave. “I know men, and I know balls. Believe me, discovering the identity of an upstart pleb is not a job for decorous Lady Athol-Hight. It is an endeavor for a witty, pretty young thing like yourself. Once you see the setting and the people, Nature will overtake you. You’ll catch that masculine scent and go directly for the kill.”

Sunday, June 10, 2007

The Domino Effect, Chapter Two

The drying pen scratched the paper, turning what had begun as a neatly written sentence into a trail of disjointed black specks. Though Phylidda could complain about finding a hair in her breakfast, she said nothing about the loss of ink. She understood that she must wait until she arrived at the shop to finish writing. She slipped the paper into her reticule, tied on her bonnet, and began walking towards town.

It was a fine morning, bright and fragrant with the young green of blooming May tree leaves. She kept to the side of the wheel-rutted lane, refreshed by the shade that dappled the lawn and letting her feet, in their badly worn slippers, enjoy the luxurious, ankle-deep grass. Every so often a phaeton or curricle would pass by, and she would turn her head, hoping not to be recognized, pretending to admire the bright red roses that peeked amid the hedgerow.

One person she could not hide from: Ronald, who maintained a dignified walk in the presence of a carriage or a pedestrian, but who broke into a trot once the person or vehicle had passed. Phylidda heard him pulling on his jacket as he slowed down beside her. Individual words panted out of him: “Are. You. Posting. A. Letter. To. Bernard?”

Phylidda again turned her head to the hedgerow, believing the bonnet would shield her flaming cheeks from her brother’s curiosity about her relationship with yet another former suitor. “I do wish you would stop introducing me to men who refuse to marry a girl who has no dowry.”

“If they refuse to marry a girl who has no dowry, then they’re not worthy of being your husband.”

“That doesn’t say much about your friends, then, does it?”

“On the contrary, it doesn’t say much about your brother, that he would associate with people like that. I was wrong to introduce you to them. I can’t imagine the hurt and shame I’ve inflicted upon you.”

Phylidda smiled, and together, arm in arm, they walked in the comfortable silence that passes between siblings long confident in the affection they hold for each other.

“What hurts is people not believing that Papa left us so little,” Phyl said softly, as traffic grew heavy .

Ronald muttered as he nodded to an acquaintance across the street. “I’ve an idea.”

“You mean to marry me off to the highest bidder.”

“No, I mean to find a husband for Mother.”

“Ah! You mean to sell her off to the highest bidder! How glaringly expedient. I can’t help but wonder which will prove to be more work for you: finding Mama a husband or finding yourself a position.”

“I’d prefer to do neither, thank you! I want to be home, overseeing the estate."

“I do wish you would stop referring to it as home. It hasn’t been our home for six months.”

“I can hope, can’t I?”

“I wish you wouldn’t. It smacks of delusion.”

“Say that when you’re once again having tea in the orchard or painting pictures of the autumn woods at sunset.”

“That’s enough, Ronnie!” Such was Phyl’s distress at Ronald’s dreams that she suddenly stopped and scowled him in the face. “Nothing good can come of schemes. It’s better if you spent your energy and creativity on finding a decent position. What’s wrong with teaching or tutoring? You’d make a fine teacher. Papa always said as much.”

Annoyed—or was it unnerved?—Ronald twisted his mouth and glared at the pavement. “I’ve no patience with children. And I abhor discipline. If I couldn’t make myself rise in the morning for my own studies, how can I expect it of others?”

“Try.” Phyl squeezed the hand that had remained on her arm. She glanced at an ivy-covered brick house several doors away. A barouche was parked at the curb. Its two horses, tethered to the post, had lowered their heads; their eyes were half closed, a sure indication that their owner was immersed in a lengthy, detailed fitting. “I’ve got to go.”

Ronald grumbled tensely as he walked her to the door. “I don’t know how you can sit for hours on end, sewing dresses day after day, week after week, month after month."

I don’t, she thought as she kissed him goodbye.

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

The Domino Effect, Chapter One

Phylidda gaped at the glistening black thread curled on the side of the egg. Had it truly been beneath the shell--the shell she had just delicately peeled away herself? How on earth did an egg come to have a hair beneath its shell?

“Mama,” she whimpered.

“Don’t study it, Phylidda. Eat!” Lady Blystone grumpily shoveled a heap of rashers onto Ronald’s plate and, from the sides of her compressed mouth, blew wayward strands of graying chestnut hair from around her face.

Ronald reached around his mother and across the table, elaborately forking up the item at issue. “Never mind, Mother, she doesn’t like eggs.”

Lady Blystone paused in front of her only daughter, giving the heavy iron pan a slight but threatening shake. “Don’t be selfish, Phylidda. I’m not raiding the family account to provide you with scones every morning. Either you eat, or you go hungry.”

“But…but… there’s a hair on my… egg…” Phyl’s words faded into a weary whine as Ronald popped the thing into his mouth, hair and all. Goodness, he’ll choke, she thought. She assuaged her fear by convincing herself that she had warned him, after all, and, at 22, he was a man, capable of knowing right from wrong, safe from sorry. His death would be his own responsibility. She would be heartily sorry for that. She would miss him. The passage of the item through his teeth and into his interior went without incident, though he did appear to paw at his cravat ever so slightly. Did the hair offer resistance? Or had he simply knotted the article too tight in his haste for breakfast?

At the head of the table, Phylidda’s younger brother Russell adjusted a broadsheet against the teapot. “Listen to this,” he lisped through a spray of crumbs. “Lady Athol-Hight says a soiree given by Marchioness O was crashed by a gentleman dairyman who carried an invitation but wore a black domino, so nobody could tell who he was.”

Ronald refused to let his struggle with the egg in its dry entirety prevent him from contributing to the morning’s wisdom. “Ridiculouth! If nobody could tell who he wath, how did they know he wath a gentleman dairyman? Path the tea, will you, Phyl? There’th a good girl…”

Phyl did not stop to consider that the teapot was within Ronald’s reach, or that Russell was using it as a prop. She instantly burrowed her hand beneath the paper—ignoring Russell’s indignant “What the...?"—lifted the item by the handle and landed it in front of Ronald, who tapped his cup, silently demanding she pour. “I’m not your maid,” she said primly, studiously applying a slab of butter to her toast.

Instantly, she was surrounded by cries of “Mother!” The person in question placed the pan by the fire with no small show of annoyance.

“If you’re so greatly confident in the meager inheritance that allows you to sit on your arses whilst your dear mama struggles with the household chores, then you most certainly should have no argument about indulging in the hiring of somebody who will pour your tea for you.”

“But that’th what we have you for, Deareth!”

Lady Blystone peeled off the arm Ronald roguishly wrapped around her waist. “It’s unseemly for children to sit idle whilst their aged parent works for them.”

Russell tsked from behind the broadsheet that he now held straight up in front of him, as if it were a protective shrub. “It’s unseemly for a peer to work like somebody below his class. Ethpecially if he thpeakth the way Ronald ith thpeaking.”

Lady Blystone tapped the top of Russell’s head. “I didn’t do anything!” he protested.

“Precisely,” his mother retorted.

Ronald had barely swallowed before blurting, “What would you have uth—I mean us--do?”

“Something honorable. Cultivate land. Breed prize-winning sheep. Grow roses. Experiment with electricity. Ohgoodlord--” Realisation made Her Ladyship raise eyes to heaven and slap her arms against her sides. "What am I saying? You’re Oxford men! You should be able to figure out something!”

The most theatrical among the Blystone family, Ronald also had features that folded into expressions of mirth or sorrow at his slightest whim. Never doubting that his mother’s outburst was as true as snow in July, he took her hand and squashed those features into the semblance of agony that was all his own yet conveyed compassion for his parent. “Dearest, did it ever occur to you that that is precisely what we would be doing, had the estate—“

“Complete with its parks--” Russell piped up.

“--and its stables—“ Ronald continued.

“--and its sheep—“

“--and its cattle—“

“--and its orchards—“

“--and its rents—“

“--and its gardens—“

“--not been sold upon Father’s death to satisfy his debts—“

“--lest we all endure the notoriety of living as slaves to his creditors for the rest of our lives?”

Lady Blystone had followed the volley of phrases like a spectator following a tennis ball, turning her head from one speaker to the other at their respective places on either side of the table. She spoke only when the volley had ended and she was assured of her sons’ attention. And there was no trace of the despair that had inspired her eldest’s display of fervor. “I expect you to do all you can to preserve our place in society.”

Ronald’s compassion-crushed face burst into wide-eyed disbelief. He sat back, dropping his mother’s hand. “You want us to work?”

Russell giggled nervously. “We can’t work, woman! Think what people would say!”

“Think what people already say when their servants report us buying our own food and making our own clothes.”

“The Americans would say we were industri-OUS!” Russell ducked a second assault at the hand of a woman who allowed herself the semblance of having arrived at wit’s end.

“You have no sense of yourselves,” she scolded, exceptionally red in the face. “Remember who you are. Remember who we are! Until you do, and until I see any movement in the direction of doing something to improve our situation—if not to buy back everything we lost-- I’ll thank you to make your own meals and clean your own house!”

In concluding, Lady Blystone dramatically pulled off her apron, threw it on Ronald’s head and stomped from the room, shaking the floorboards.

Though Phylidda crossly whispered “Now see what you’ve done!,” Ronald emerged from under the apron with a look of bemusement. “Almost makes me want to escape to the country and become a drover or something.”

Russell blithely poured curdling cream into his coffee. ”Well, I’ll tell you one thing: I’ll wager that the dairyman who crashed that soiree doesn’t have a mother telling him what to do!”

A Second Challenge Accepted

I've succumbed to my own sense of humor and am writing a real Regency, called The Domino Effect, by the seat of my pants at the same time that I'm writing Nightingale Time, a "faux regency"--a contemp with Regency elements. NT has its own blog. The Domino Effect will appear in this blog. It was inspired by a discussion, on Candice Hern's board, about the article of clothing called the domino. Enjoy, and please feel free to leave a comment or two!

Sunday, April 22, 2007

The Gauntlet Has Been Scooped Up...

...from the virtual ground where it was thrown in good fun, which means that Yours here has accepted the challenge to write a romance called "Nightingale Time." The title comes from a remark I made, on Candice Hern's discussion board, about Keats writing "Ode To a Nightingale" in May, and how I always call this time of year "nightingale time." When I said I thought it sounded like the title of a bad Regency, one of the site's gracious moderators encouraged me to follow through. So there was the gauntlet, and I picked it up on one condition: that I find a hitherto unsuspected angle. The angle, I am pleased to report, has indeed been found, else I wouldn't be subjecting myself to displaying a WIP in public. The novella is a Regency with a twist that surpasses its subtitle and pays stilted homage to Candice's recent body of work.

What is it? Ah, but you need to click on the link to find out...