Petticoat Rebellion (7 page)

“I doubt it is only a flirtation you have in mind with Lord Penfel,”
Kate said. “I noticed you pitching yourself at him.”

“I have been thinking about why he came back to Penfel Hall just now. I daresay he has decided to offer for me. Until I hear from Papa, I shan’t discourage him entirely.”

When Abbie was tucked in her bed, her mind roamed over the doings of her unusual day. It was mostly of Penfel that she thought, wondering at his apparent interest in her, when there were younger, prettier ladies with fat dowries in his house. She did not think he was interested in Susan, though Susan did have some interest in attaching him, if her papa wished it.

Was that why he was making his preference for herself fairly obvious, to discourage Susan? He said he never intentionally harmed anyone, male or female. Was this little flirtation designed to show Susan he was not interested in her, to save her embarrassment and perhaps even heartbreak? If so, that was very considerate of Susan, but what of herself? Did he think she didn’t have any feelings? That because she was older and a schoolmistress, she was sensible enough to realize nothing could come of their flirtation?

This seemed eminently logical, but unfortunately, the human heart was not ruled by logic. There was danger to ladies in this theory of petticoat rebellion.

The ladies from Miss Slatkin’s were accustomed to rising early. At seven-thirty the next morning, Abbie was dressed and ready for the day. She went to see that Spadger was up and about to give the ladies a hand with their toilettes. She found her with Lady Susan, who always expected the lion’s share of attention. Susan stood with her arms out while Spadger slid a deep blue jacket on her and buttoned it. Then she handed Spadger the brush, sat in front of the mirror, and waited for her hair to be attended to.

Spadger glanced up from her brushing and said to Abbie, “I was just telling her ladyship she ought to make a play for Lord Penfel. Ever so handsome, isn’t he? And rich as a nabob as well, to judge by this house. Of course he ain’t a duke, but then there’s more dukes’
daughters than dukes, so her ladyship here won’t have an easy time nabbing one of them great gaffers.”

Lady Susan studied her reflection in the mirror and said pensively, as if talking to herself, “He is the Earl of Penfel, also Baron Rutcliffe, and perhaps Viscount Chance—he is presently heir to his uncle Worley’s earldom, though Worley might yet produce a son. As well as Penfel Hall and his London house and a hunting box in the Cotswolds, he has the Rutcliffe estate, in Cornwall. I would certainly accept an offer, were it not for Lady Eleanor’s turning him off. I fear Papa might think it would look odd for the Duke of Wycliffe’s daughter to accept the leavings of an earl’s daughter. Other than that, Penfel is one of the prime
partis
on the market. Very likely I shall accept him.”

“If he offers, that is to say,”
Spadger added.

“Of course,”
Lady Susan agreed, unoffended. “I wonder why Eleanor jilted him.”

“Outrun the grocer. Pockets to let—temporary like—that’s what I think,”
Spadger said. “I heard belowstairs he’s only let O’Leary put on his show here for the hundred pounds rent it put in his pocket.”

“That is entirely possible,”
Lady Susan said. “The late Lord Penfel did lose heavily upon ‘Change.”

Abbie knew she should not gossip, but with the excuse of looking out for her charge’s interest, she said, “Surely, it is his lechery that makes him ineligible?”

“He is not really a lecher,”
Lady Susan said. “A flirt, of course, but then he is so rich and handsome that all the ladies flirt with him. It is a sort of defense. My oldest brother, Lord Godfel, was the same when he was a bachelor. He is Papa’s heir, you know, so all the ladies were running after him before he married Lady Sylvia Trane. By flirting with them all, he prevented any particular one from thinking she had the inner track.”

“That’s clever, then,”
Spadger said.

Abbie said nothing, but she noticed that this would explain why Penfel had struck up a flirtation with herself, as she had surmised last night.

“Yes,”
Lady Susan agreed, “but there is no getting around Lady Eleanor’s having turned Penfel off, and she, you know, is only the Peevey’s third daughter,”
with ten thousand dowry. And she is not so very pretty, either. I made sure she would have him, for Penfel is a close friend of her brother, Oliver, and the whole family. He spends considerable time visiting at Lewes.”

“It’s a caution,”
Spadger said, and put down the brush. “There we are, then, milady.”
Lady Susan nodded her satisfaction, but did not think to thank Spadger.

Abbie went to see to her other charges. Annabelle sought her advice on what gown she should wear for the morning outing. “Now that I’m away from Slats, I can dress a little more stylishly.”

“What have you brought that you don’t wear at Miss Slatkin’s?”

“Nothing,”
she said. “But if I had something more dashing, I could wear it.”

“Oh, yes.”

They decided on a mauve suit. Kate beckoned Abbie into her room as she left Annabelle’s.

“Miss Fairchild, you sly rogue!”
she said. “Lord Penfel has a
tendre
for you! Is it not exciting? If you marry him and I marry Lord John, we would be sisters-in-law! I should love it of all things.”

Abbie just smiled at her wild imaginings. “It is a little early for you to be speaking of marrying Lord John, Miss Fenshaw. You have not known him for twenty-four hours, and you are only sixteen besides.”

“Have you never heard of love at first sight, Miss
Fairchild?”

“I have read of it in books of fiction.”

“My mama married at sixteen. Of course Papa was
older. Lord John is going on eighteen.”

“Do you know whether he has an estate, or what his fortune is?”

“I don’t give a hoot about that!”

“He has not even begun university yet. It will be years before he thinks of settling down.”

“Oh, I hate being young! I wish I were old, like you. You could marry Lord Penfel tomorrow.”

“Only if he asked me,”
she said, and soon left, nursing that thoughtless “old, like you.”

Spadger cornered her for “a word in private”
before she went belowstairs. “You will have to keep an eye on Miss Fenshaw and Lord John, to see they don’t run amok, for if Lord John is as big a flirt as his brother, there could be trouble brewing in that corner.”

“I am quite aware of it, Spadger.”

While they spoke of Lord John, it was the image of Penfel’s handsome, laughing face that loomed large in Abbie’s thoughts. Too large! She must not let herself become infatuated with him. Lady Susan claimed he was no lecher, but she had not heard the way he laughed with the dancer in the tent. It would keep her busy, overseeing all her charges, with very little help from their hostess.

At eight o’clock, the ladies were at the table for breakfast. Neither Lady Penfel nor her elder son was there, but Lord John and his tutor were waiting for them. Lord John promptly showed Kate to a chair beside him. When Mr. Singleton cast a shy smile on Annabelle and made some incoherent sound as he drew a chair for her beside himself, Abbie began to fear she might have another romance to worry about. And to add to her troubles, Lady Susan looked definitely put out that Lord Penfel was not there to court her.

No audible conversation occurred between Singleton and Annabelle, but at breakfast’s end, he appeared to have offered to show the ladies about the estate, along with Lord John. Lady Susan announced that she would play propriety to allow Miss Fairchild to enjoy the gallery without feeling she was abandoning her duties. After a moment’s consideration, Abbie agreed. The girls considered Lady Susan second only to Slats as a chaperon, and Slats was second only to God. Abbie’s hope was that Lord Penfel would give her the key to the art room.

As she would be giving the girls a tour and dissertation that afternoon, or in the near future at least, she decided to try her hand at copying the Chardin that morning. She brought down her painting materials and easel, and found her way along various marble corridors to the gallery.

Sunlight slanted through tall mullioned windows along one wall of the long hall. Down its center, the parquet floor wore a long blue runner patterned with red flowers and arabesques. Between the windows hung paintings of Penfel ancestors in historical costumes going back for centuries. Brass and marble statues on pedestals varied the decor. The unwindowed wall held a more diverse collection of larger paintings—Flemish, Italian, and French, some of them huge enough to fill a whole wall of a small chamber. They were fine paintings by famous names, but Abbie had lost interest in overly large historical scenes depicting masses of humanity in classical poses. They were too old and too academic for her more modern taste. Da Vinci had never bothered with these grandiose monstrosities. She found more art in a simple Madonna and child than in all of Rubens’s posturings.

Portraiture was her true love. She borrowed a chair from beneath one of the windows and set up her easel in front of the simple Chardin genre painting of the
Girl with Rose.
The long stretch of empty corridor was silent and eerie. No echo from the busier part of the large house reached her. She might have been alone in the world. The only moving thing was the dust motes floating desultorily in the shafts of sunlight from the windows.

She took up her pencil and began sketching the outline of the girl. She was perhaps twelve or thirteen, just at that age where a child becomes a woman. Her brown hair, lightened to blond where the light struck it, was looped high on her head, showing her clean young profile. Marvelous how Chardin had expressed her tender yearning in profile, when one could not see her eyes, or much of her smile. The rose, perhaps, was a symbol of her beauty and innocence. Faces were easy for Abbie. The rose and the girl’s hand more difficult.

Time flew when she was at her easel. She did a quick sketch, then began applying the pigment. An hour passed, another thirty minutes, and the girl’s face and hands were completed to her satisfaction. The rose in her hand, the gown and the background were still to be done. The eerie feeling faded as she concentrated on her work.

She began to paint in the girl’s blue gown. From time to time she glanced to the door from the main hallway, thinking Lord Penfel might seek her out. She had mixed emotions about meeting him again. She was as eager as ever to see the da Vinci cartoons, but she felt some reluctance to cross swords with the flirtatious Lord Penfel. Even then, she admitted to herself, there was a good deal of anticipation mixed with the reluctance. When was she ever likely to meet such a dasher again? “The twelfth of never,”
as her uncle would say, whatever that meant.

Engrossed in her work, she did not hear the soft footfalls on the carpet. Until a shadow fell across her canvas, she did not realize she had company. She looked up, startled and confused, and saw a man peering over her shoulder. She had been expecting Lord Penfel, and the gentleman had some resemblance to him. He was tall, with dark hair, and wore a well-cut blue jacket. It was not an old one, either. The cuffs were neither shiny nor frayed. It was the jacket that caused her confusion, for the last time she had seen Mr. O’Leary, he had been wearing his scarlet uniform.

“Good morning, ma’am,”
he said, smiling and making a graceful bow.

“Good morning,”
she replied, nodding.

“That’s a nice picture you’re doing there,”
he said. A slight lilt of Irish brogue made his speech attractive.

“Thank you.”

“Not minding the school chits today, Miss Fairchild? I mistook you for one of them when I first glimpsed you from the doorway.”
Some trace of laughter in his eyes told her he knew perfectly well who he had come to talk to. It was an oblique compliment, perhaps, a hint that she looked younger than her years.

“Perhaps it is time I began wearing a cap,”
she replied.

“Nay, ‘twould be a shame to cover those pretty curls. They glint like copper in the sunlight.”

She just smiled without replying, and wondered what a circus manager was doing, running tame at Penfel. He could hardly be on such terms of intimacy with the owner that he was a welcome visitor. “Were you at the show last night?”
he asked.

“Yes, we all went. It was very amusing.”

“
‘Tis a tawdry thing, but my own. Since I lost my estate at the card table, I am left to shift for myself in the cruel world. But I shall gain no sympathy from a schoolmistress. Your lot is not an easy one. I’ve tried teaching youngsters myself.”

His accent was good, and his easy manner suggested he had seen better days. The career he had chosen was strange, even infra-dig, but at least he worked for a living. She was ready for a break from her work, and set down her brush to show she welcomed the diversion.

She did not go into details about her own teaching, but said, “You are from Ireland, Mr. O’Leary?”

“That’s right. Was it my name or the brogue that tipped you off?”

“Both.”

“I’m from God’s country, county Wessex. Have you been there at all?”

“No, I should like to go sometime.”

“You’ve been to Italy, I expect? That is where you
artistes
go first.”

“No, how I should love to! I’ve never had the opportunity to travel.”

“It’s very expensive.”

“Yes, there’s the rub, but of course there is a good deal of art from all over the world in England.”

“Oh, aye, the English have always been good at plundering their conquests. Those who have the art don’t appreciate it, though.”

“And are not eager to share it with those who do,”
she added, thinking of her fruitless letters to Lord Penfel.

He began to talk about Ireland in a fond, reminiscent way, with his full share of Irish blarney. He was an amusing rattle. Abbie found herself telling him something about her background. Like Penfel, he was understanding and sympathetic. Even more so, as his experiences were closer to her own. Of course, being a man, he had more freedom.