A Lady Without Peer, page 15
The professor had followed every hint, every shred of evidence, and they all confirmed—in his opinion—that the Duke of Buckingham had got hold of the entire work on behalf of James I.
“You won’t find a document that has been missing for two hundred years in the next nine days,” Jane said. “Will you devote the next thirty-five years of your life to the same fruitless cause as you have the last thirty-five?”
The professor buttered another slice of bread, tore it in two, and passed half to Jane. “My career has been distinguished by much scholarship, endless teaching responsibilities, and research into all manner of ancient documents and theories. Why attack the Duke now, Jane? In retirement, I will be more free than ever to track him down.”
“Phineas, the Duke is not a person. We speak of him as if he’s a distant relation who’s wandered off after taking an excess of spirits. Your own daughter wanders off and you take no notice.”
This criticism was pointless. Phineas loved his daughter if he loved anybody, but loving somebody and being able to show that love were not the same in his case.
“I noticed,” the professor said. “You said she’s teaching French to Ramsdale’s sister, hardly a dangerous undertaking. Do you intend to eat that bread?”
Jane passed him the buttered half slice when she wanted to upend her soup in his lap. “Phin, you should be taking Philomena to visit her maternal relations. You will have time now. She’s too old to be presented at court, but titled relations might help her meet an eligible man, might even see their way clear to—”
The professor held up a staying hand—and a half slice of buttered bread. “If you utter the word dowry, I will not answer for the consequences, Jane Dobbs. The exalted marquess well knows Philomena’s circumstances and hasn’t invited her to visit her cousins, much less to drag me into the countryside as her escort.”
“Because you refuse to ask it of him.”
“She doesn’t want to go,” the professor said, taking a bite of the bread. “She’s smitten with the Duke too, though I defy you to explain how a woman can find what trained scholars have been unable to search out after two centuries’ effort. Philomena’s loyal, though, which is more than I can say for some people.”
That was… that was the professor’s version of a tantrum. For him to retire without finding any direct evidence that his precious Duke existed was turning his usually placid nature sour.
“You’re right,” Jane replied, pushing away her lukewarm soup. “Philomena is very loyal to her papa, while I am only her paid companion. She’s approaching thirty, though, and nobody expects a confirmed spinster from a home of humble means to require a companion.”
The professor put down his spoon. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You are actually looking at somebody with whom you’re sharing a meal. I will die secure in the knowledge that miracles occur.”
He had the grace to look abashed. “Jane, I am much distracted of late, I know, and I do apologize, but the Duke… A man who unearths a treasure of that magnitude might aspire to a token of royal favor. He might attract the best tutoring prospects. He might be appointed a librarian or special lecturer, or curator to a significant collection. Without the Duke, I am merely another fading scholar, wearing my nightcap at odd hours and tucking scraps of paper where they do not belong.”
Jane chose to be encouraged that Phineas was discussing his frustrations, but she could not afford to relent so much as one inch where Philomena’s future was concerned.
“You have much to be proud of, not the least of which is your daughter. Can you not take a few months away from your obsession to see her settled?”
“Obsession is an ugly word, Jane.”
“So is pride, Phineas. The Duke has waited two hundred years, wherever he’s lurking. He can wait another few months.”
Jane was angry, but she’d been angry with the professor for years. She’d hoped retirement would inspire him to finally act like a father to his only child, finally make room in his life for something other than scholarship. In Jane’s opinion, that scholarship was merely a desperate quest for recognition from a lot of prosy old windbags who dropped Latin phrases into their conversations like debutantes showing off their French.
“The Duke cannot wait, Jane. You recall Mr. Handley.”
“I have never met anybody named Handley.”
“He’s an apothecary with a shop in Bloomsbury. Makes excellent tisanes for aching joints.”
Aching joints, such as one acquired when one spent long hours gripping a quill pen.
“What of him?”
“He attends monthly dinners with others of his profession, and he heard Mr. Eagan, of Eagan Brothers Emporium in Knightsbridge, bragging about a new source of recipes for love potions, one written in an ancient hand and stolen from an Italian monastery by the plundering French. That could only be the Duke, or a partial copy of the Duke, for our duke devoted an entire volume to the emotional workings of the human heart.”
While the professor lately appeared to have no heart. “Magic potions are nonsense, particularly where amatory matters are concerned. What’s wanted in that case is for two people to have mutual respect and compatibility.”
The professor finished Jane’s ale. “Such a romantic, Jane. In any case, rumors are based on facts, and while Philomena is off pretending to tutor Ramsdale’s sister in French, I will be making a jaunt down to Knightsbridge.”
Jane helped herself to the professor’s ale. “Shall I hold supper for you?”
“Please. I expect Philomena will be back before I am.”
He rose and collected his half slice of buttered bread, though he hadn’t finished his soup. “My compliments to Cook. The soup was a bit bland.”
Delicate. The soup had been delicate. Jane’s nerves were growing delicate. “Philomena said she might not be back until after supper.”
“Of course she’ll be back,” the professor said, picking up his treatise. “Ramsdale’s sister spent two years at a French finishing school, and the earl is fluent in French. Her ladyship has no need of a French tutor, much less one underfoot the livelong day.”
He resumed reading as he left the dining room, muttering under his breath and leaving a trail of crumbs on the carpet.
Jane drank the last of his ale and clung stubbornly to the notion that the conversation had been encouraging, for it had been a conversation. With the professor, that was an accomplishment in itself. He’d also set aside his reading for a good five minutes and noticed the peculiarity of Philomena’s scheduled activities.
He had not, alas, noticed the woman who’d taken over looking after his daughter well over a decade ago.
Not yet.
The will was a puzzle, just barely comprehensible in places, ridiculously satirical in others, and touchingly genuine in still others. Philomena had plowed through eight pages of cramped, slashing prose rife with idiosyncratic abbreviations and odd phrases before Ramsdale interrupted.
“That is enough for the present, Miss Peebles.”
“You’ve taken notes?” His lordship had sat at the reading table, paper, pen, and ink before him, while Philomena had stumbled and lurched through the text from the comfortable chair behind the desk.
Once or twice, Ramsdale had snorted or guffawed, but he’d mostly remained silent.
“I have taken three pages of notes,” he said, capping the silver ink bottle and laying his pen in a matching tray, “but mostly, I have enjoyed hearing my uncle’s voice in your words. Luncheon should be ready, if you’d accompany me to the dining room?”
He rose and approached the desk. Philomena had the thought that he was about to toss her from the library bodily, then realized he expected to hold her chair.
“I hadn’t planned on a midday meal, your lordship, though a tea tray with a few biscuits wouldn’t go amiss. I promise not to get crumbs on your blotter.”
She offered him a smile, lest he think to lecture her into acceding to his wishes. A day offered only so much sunlight, and Philomena needed to make use of every instant. Thus far, Hephaestus had made several references to “that misguided fool, Peebles,” but had said nothing about the Duke.
Philomena hoped Hephaestus would wax eloquent about the volume of the Duke’s manuscript that dealt with the secrets of the human heart— de Motibus Humanis—a topic Hephaestus had publicly declared Lorenzo the Magnificent would never have troubled over.
Why particularly discredit that one aspect of the ducal manuscript, unless—?
The earl braced his hands on the desk and leaned across. “Please join me for lunch, Miss Peebles. The mind grows dull without periodic rest, and I daresay if you’re to make progress this afternoon with Uncle’s specific bequests, then you will need more than a few biscuits to fortify you.”
What magnificent eyes he had. Very… compelling.
“I am a trifle peckish,” Philomena said, which was something of a surprise. “Perhaps you’d send a sandwich along with my tea?”
The earl leaned closer. “Perhaps you’d for once let somebody show you a bit of consideration and take a meal with me?”
How many times had Philomena and Jane made small talk over a beef roast, pretending that Papa hadn’t once again forgotten to join them for his favorite meal?
“I’ll bring this short passage,” she said, picking up the first page of specific bequests. “We can work through it while—”
Ramsdale came closer, so he was nearly nose to nose with Philomena. “How can that brilliant and busy mind of yours fail to grasp the concept of respite, Miss Peebles? Allow me to explicate: respite, from the Latin respicere, to have concern for, to cast one’s thoughts back to; and the Middle French, respetier, to save, show clemency to, or delay. In modern English, to rest from one’s burdens.”
Rather than raise his voice, he’d pitched his little lecture just above a whisper and come closer and closer, until Philomena could see that his eyes were not black, but rather, a sable brown.
He tugged on the page of vellum she held, and Philomena was abruptly aware that she was within breath-mingling distance of an adult male to whom she was not related. She had spent four hours alone with the earl in the library and not given him a thought, so absorbed had she been in her task.
“I’ll join you for luncheon,” she said, surrendering the specific bequests. “But we’ll not linger over the meal, sir. Not when my progress this morning has been slower than I’d anticipated.”
He came around the desk and held her chair. “We’ll not linger over the meal, but we won’t rush either, Miss Peebles.”
He offered his arm, another small surprise. Philomena accepted that courtesy, and wondered why her own father never bothered with such a small gesture of consideration.
Chapter Three
Ramsdale silently scolded himself for being high-handed—his sister Melissa often called him naughty—but Miss Peebles would have sat at that desk translating at sight until the opening of grouse season, left to her own devices.
Of course, she’d be done with Uncle’s will long before that.
“Will Lady Melissa be joining us?” Miss Peebles asked.
The dining parlor table held only two place settings, one at the head, the other at the foot. The silver epergne in the middle of the table was piled two feet high with oranges, limes, and strawberries, and thus neither diner need acknowledge the other.
“Her ladyship will doubtless take a tray above stairs. This time of year, she’s abroad at night more than in the daytime.”
Miss Peebles wandered to the sideboard. “Who would sip gunpowder in solitude when she could enjoy such bounty instead?”
Better an aromatic gunpowder than the dubious sustenance of a musty document. “We will serve ourselves, and you must not worry about the leftover food going to waste. My staff eats prodigiously well.”
Ramsdale gathered up the place setting at the foot of the table and moved it to the right of the head, then carried both plates to the sideboard.
“Have whatever you please and take as much as you please. My late father believed the natural appetites were meant to be indulged joyously.”
Miss Peebles was busy inhaling the steam rising from a cloved ham and appeared not to notice any improper innuendo—though, of course, none had been intended.
She took one of the plates from Ramsdale. “I love a creative use of spices, and cloved ham has long been a favorite. Our cook does try, but Papa seldom notices her efforts.”
Miss Peebles heaped her plate as if preparing to march for a forced march, and started for the foot of the table, then seemed to realize the cutlery had been moved.
“Do you and your sister typically dine twelve feet apart, my lord?”
“No, we do not,” Ramsdale said, serving himself portions of ham, potatoes, and beans. “We typically dine thirty feet apart, on those rare occasions when we share a table.”
The lady took her seat without benefit of his assistance. Ramsdale joined her at the table and poured them both glasses of the Riesling. He was about to sip his wine when he recalled that company manners were appropriate, despite the informality of the meal.
“Perhaps you’d say the blessing?”
Miss Peebles looked pleased with that small honor and launched into a French grace of admirable brevity.
“This ham has a marvelous glaze,” she said. “Might I prevail upon your cook for the recipe?”
“Of course. We make our own honey on the home farm in Sussex, and in all humility, I must admit it’s a superior product.”
“Jane loves to collect recipes, though, of course, her treasures are lost on Papa. I do fancy a hearty German wine.”
The disciplined, focused Miss Peebles became like a girl in a sweetshop when presented with a decent meal. As she waxed appreciative about everything from the buttered potatoes, to the apple tart, to the cheese, Ramsdale gained a picture of a household awash in intellectual sophistication—Miss Dobbs was learning Russian for the novelty alone—but starving for simple pleasures.
Miss Peebles’s chatter between bites revealed a side to Ramsdale’s mentor that flattered no one. The professor apparently ate without tasting his food and ignored his womenfolk at table the better to remain engrossed in his treatises. Birthdays and holidays caught him by surprise, and he tolerated their observation with an absent-minded impatience that never shaded into irritability, but had still made an impression on his only child.
“My upbringing emphasized different priorities from yours,” Ramsdale remarked as he chose some strawberries and an orange from the abundance on the epergne. “We had diversions and recreations, one after the other.”
“One envisions the aristocracy living thus,” Miss Peebles said. “I’d go mad in a week.”
Ramsdale passed her an orange. “I nearly did. Your father grasped my difficulty. I was a bright lad without adequate academic stimulation. I needed a challenge, and he provided it. Perhaps you’d peel that orange, so we can share it.”
She sniffed the fruit and ran her fingers over the rind. “You don’t want a whole one for yourself?”
Did she want the entire orange? Would she admit it if she did?
“I would rather share,” he said, mostly because her brilliant father would never have said that to her. “A few bites will be enough for me. What do you make of the first eight pages of the will?”
As soon as he asked the question, he regretted it. The animation in Miss Peebles’s eyes sharpened with an analytical edge where sheer enjoyment had been previously. She tore into the orange.
“Your uncle knew that document would receive significant scrutiny. My impression thus far is that we’re wading through obfuscation, our senses dulled by arcane prose in prodigious quantity. The specific bequests should be interesting, given that you claim he died in penury.”
Ramsdale missed the other Miss Peebles, the one who marveled over a ham glaze and delighted in a brie flavored with basil. She was interesting, or rather, that she existed in the same person with the dedicated scholar interested him.
“Not penury—my father would not have allowed that, and neither would I—but obscurity. Uncle was brilliant, never forgot anything, and corresponded with acquaintances in half the royal courts of Europe. Papa got the title, though, and the lands and commercial ventures. Uncle envied Papa his status, Papa envied Uncle his brilliance.”
Miss Peebles passed over half of the orange. “Where did the heir to the title fall?”
Through the cracks. “I could not be disloyal to my father, and yet, I had far more in common with Hephaestus. They compromised by sending me off to school as early as possible.”
Though, of course, neither man would have called that decision a compromise, and Ramsdale wouldn’t have either, until that moment.
“Girls are lucky,” Miss Peebles said. “We’re not tossed out into the world at the age of six and expected to become little adults by virtue of overexposure to Latin and sums, and underexposure to fresh air and good food.”
Her father had likely told her that taradiddle, while being unable to afford a good finishing school for her.
“Speaking of fresh air, let’s enjoy a few minutes on the terrace before we return to our labors.” Ramsdale put his half of the orange and the strawberries on a plate and rose.
Miss Peebles cast the sideboard one longing glance and allowed Ramsdale to hold her chair for her.
He led the way to the back terrace, which was awash in roses.
“How beautiful,” Miss Peebles said. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen so many blooming roses.”
“You’ve never been to the botanical gardens?” Ramsdale asked, setting the plate of fruit on the balustrade overlooking the garden.
“Jane says we should go, but Papa is busy.”
Papa was a fool. Phineas Peebles had loomed like a god in Ramsdale’s youth, a brilliant scholar who could make entire worlds come alive through languages and literature.
