A Lady Without Peer, page 16
With maturity had come a more realistic view of Peebles: brilliant, but also burdened with ambition, and the narrow focus ambition required. The professor meant nobody any harm, but he’d taught in part because he loved to show off his knowledge, not because he’d loved to teach.
The disappointment Ramsdale felt in his former teacher should not have been so keen.
“I’ll take you to see the gardens,” he said, “once we find whatever Hephaestus was hiding. Have a strawberry.”
He held up the plate, and Miss Peebles inspected all eight choices before selecting the most perfectly ripe berry.
“You have been unforthcoming about your motives, my lord. I am seeking the Duke, or any part of the ducal treatise, in order to safeguard my father’s reputation, add to his security in old age, and delight the scholarly world. What of you?”
She bit off half the strawberry and held the other half in her fingers. The sight was deucedly distracting.
“Your father showed me how to navigate the path between my papa’s demands and my uncle’s expectations. I could have a lively interest in learning and be an earl’s heir. That was a far better solution than turning into the sort of scapegrace lordling I’d have become otherwise. Have another berry.”
“You owe my father?”
“I do, and I always pay my debts.”
She chose a second berry. “You have no interest in the actual information that The Duke’s Book of Knowledge contains?”
Ramsdale took the least-ripe fruit for himself. “Tisanes for easing grief? Elixirs to stir the animal spirits? Medieval love potions? I am a peer of the realm, Miss Peebles. I do not want for companionship from the gentler sex and hardly need alchemical aids to inspire the ladies to notice me.”
She dusted her hands and marched off toward the house. “We’d best be getting back to work, my lord. For you, finding the Duke might be a matter of settling a debt, but for me, finding that manuscript looms as a quest, and I cannot achieve my objective while admiring your roses.”
They were Melissa’s roses. Ramsdale left the plate of fruit behind and followed Miss Peebles to the door.
“There’s another reason why the Duke’s tisanes and potions have no interest for me in and of themselves.”
Miss Peebles acquired that testy-governess expression again. “You don’t believe in the tenderness of emotion that characterizes the human heart? Don’t believe in love?”
“I believe in many varieties of love,” Ramsdale replied, “but if the challenge at hand is stirring a young lady’s passion, I prefer to attend to the business myself, using the old-fashioned persuasive powers available to any man of sound mind and willing body.”
She regarded him as if he’d switched to a language she could not easily follow.
A demonstration was in order. Ramsdale reached past Miss Peebles’s elbow and plucked a pink rosebud from the nearest bush. He treated himself to a whiff of its fragrance, offered it to her, then held the door and followed her back to the library.
Words had meanings, and those meanings might be varied and subtle, but they remained mostly constant in a given age. Philomena’s definition of the Earl of Ramsdale was shifting by the hour, and that bothered her.
He was self-absorbed, arrogant, inconsiderate, and enamored of the privileges of his station—that’s how earls went on. They did not trouble over boyhood loyalties, did not insist on small courtesies, and did not engage in whimsical gestures involving spinsters and roses.
And yet… Ramsdale had and he did.
He also showed relentless focus when it came to the task of translating Hephaestus’s will. By the time the afternoon sun was slanting toward evening, they’d muddled through the entire will.
The specific bequests had been interesting.
To my niece, Melissa, I bequeath five years to enjoy her widowhood before she allows some handsome nitwit with an enormous glass house to coerce her back into the bonds of matrimony.
To my long-suffering housekeeper, Mrs. Bland, I bequeath the privilege of tossing all of the rubbish that had such sentimental value to me—my old slippers, my nightcap, a lock of fur from my Muffin, may he rest in feline peace.
Ramsdale had sat at the reading table, scratching down a note here and there or sitting for long periods in silence as Philomena did her best to render Hephaestus’s commentary into English.
“He paid attention,” Ramsdale said when Philomena had finished. “He was not the distracted curmudgeon he wanted people to think he was.”
A King James Bible sat on the table on a raised reading stand. The book was enormous and had probably been in the family since the Duke had last been seen. The earl idly swiped at the dust that had collected on the leather cover.
“What do you make of his bequest to you?” Philomena asked.
“Read it again.”
The list of specific bequests went on for pages. She had to hunt to find the lines tucked between the life of ease and comfort left to a beloved cat—Muffin’s granddaughter, Crumpet—courtesy of that responsibility passing to a neighbor, and a case of piles bequeathed to a retired professor of theology who’d since died of an apoplexy.
“‘To my nephew, dear Seton, a bright boy whose potential has been cut short by the dubious burden of an earldom, which will do the lad no good, but some things cannot be helped, I leave the honor of recording my demise in the family Bible, which tome yet rests among good friends I have not visited nearly enough, thanks to the parsimony and stubbornness of the late earl. Seton, you have your father’s ability to overlook the treasures immediately beneath your nose, and please do not blame the dimensions of that proboscis on my side of the family, because your Danforth relations must clearly take the blame. In this particular, I wish your resemblance to the late earl were not so marked.’”
Whatever did that mean? Antecedents and pronouns in both the original and the translation were garbled, and Hephaestus had used abbreviations to ensure they remained so. Was it Ramsdale’s nose that Hephaestus found regrettable, or a tendency to miss what was to be found immediately beneath that nose?
“I cannot fathom what he was about,” Ramsdale said, rising and stretching. “Nor do I think further effort today will be productive. I’ll study my notes tonight, and we can resume in the morning.”
He moved to the sideboard and regarded his reflection in the mirror above it.
Philomena abandoned the desk to stand at Ramsdale’s elbow. “I like your nose.”
In the mirror, his gaze shifted from his reflection to Philomena’s, who was turning pink before her own eyes.
“I’m rather fond of my nose,” Ramsdale said. “At least when the roses are in bloom. Might you elaborate on your observation?”
Was he teasing her? Fishing for flattery? Philomena lacked the social sophistication to decide which, but she could be honest.
“Your nose has character,” she said. “It’s not a genteel feature. Somebody broke it at least once. Here.” She traced her finger over the slight bump on the slope that divided the planes of his face. “I expect that hurt.”
“The wound to my pride was severe. I walked into a door while reading Catullus. I was fourteen years old, and the concept of a thousand kisses was both intimidating and fascinating. How long would it take to bestow a thousand kisses?”
“Years, I should think, if the kissing were done properly.” Oh, she had not said that. Had not, had not, had not.
Had too. As a slow smile took possession of the earl’s expression, Philomena wasn’t sorry.
His lordship’s smile was merry and conspiratorial and shifted his mien from stern to piratical. He became not merely handsome—most men were handsome at some point in their lives—but attractive. Hard to look away from. Hard to move away from.
Philomena didn’t even try. She remained beside him, smiling back at him stupidly in the mirror.
“I knew you had hidden depths,” Ramsdale said, the smile acquiring a tinge of puzzlement.
“Perhaps we all do. I’ll see myself out.” The sun would be up for some time, and Philomena was not Lady Melissa, to be escorted at all hours when setting foot outside her own doorstep.
There went the last of Ramsdale’s smile. “You will do no such thing.”
“You said we were through for the day, my lord.”
“So we are, but you will not travel the streets alone when I am available to remedy that sorry plan. Shall you take your rose with you?”
He plucked the pink blossom from the porcelain bud vase in which it had sat for the afternoon. The rose was only half-open, and the spicy fragrance had come to Philomena on every breeze teasing its way past the windows.
“The blossom is better off here,” Philomena said. “That rose belongs in a Sèvres vase, surrounded by learned treatises, velvet upholstery, and Mr. Gainsborough’s talent.”
Ramsdale sniffed the rose and took out a monogrammed handkerchief.
“Mr. Gainsborough was to my father’s taste more than mine, though I do like his equine portraits.” He took the vase over to the dust bin and dumped the water over his handkerchief, then wrapped the wet handkerchief around Philomena’s rose.
“The blossom should travel well enough if we don’t stand about here, arguing over a simple courtesy,” he said.
And thus Philomena walked home in the lovely summer sunset on the arm of an earl, who carried for her the single lovely rose. She realized as her own garden gate came into view that Ramsdale was being gallant, as men of his ilk were supposed to be—when it suited them. The title of earl, by definition, did include a certain mannerliness toward the ladies, even a lady of humble station.
Which meant the definition that no longer functioned must be the definition of Philomena herself, for she was most assuredly not the sort of woman to stroll along on the arm of a titled lord, conversing easily about bequests, Latin abbreviations, and the joys of translating a language that had no definite articles.
Jack and Harry Eagan had learned the apothecary’s trade from their father, in whose memory they raised a glass of brandy every Saturday evening as they counted the week’s earnings.
Mama had been the family’s commercial genius, though, and they recalled her in their prayers each day at supper. She’d been the one to insist her grandson Jack Junior be sent off to Cambridge and her other grandson Harry Junior to Oxford. The expenses had nigh bankrupted their papas, but the lads had acquired polish, connections, and a smattering of natural science that gilded advertisements and product descriptions with credibility.
Mama had also pointed out that ladies preferred the counsel of other ladies when purchasing a tisane for Certain Ailments, and thus the Eagan wives were usually on hand to help customers of the female persuasion.
In her later years, Mama had noticed that each social Season resulted in a crop of young ladies eager to employ any means to secure a good match. She’d watched as those young ladies had become increasingly desperate with the passing weeks, until—by early summer—they would have burned their best bonnets and sworn allegiance to the Fiend’s housecat if the result was a titled husband.
The Eagans were all red-haired, slight, and energetic, which Mama attributed to having fiery humors, as evidenced by their coloring. Jack Eagan thought the red hair was indicative of quick wits, and Jack’s hair was the reddest of them all.
“Poor dears,” Harry said, closing the door after another lady’s maid had been sent on her way clutching a bag of fragrant dried weeds. “As badly as they want to speak their vows, you’d think the young men of England would oblige them.”
“Young men are fools,” Jack replied, for that was the expected response and what dear Mama would have called an eternal verity.
“You were a fool,” Harry said, twisting the lock on the shop door. “You should not have mentioned that King’s Encyclopedia business at dinner the other night.”
“Duke’s Book of Knowledge, and it were Hal Junior who suggested we find it.”
Hal Junior had gone to Oxford, which he tried without success to lord over his cousin. Jack Junior had grasped the potential to turn the language of science into coin, while Hal had learned to hold his drink.
“Nobody finds what’s been lost for two hundred years,” Harry said. “That’s not a believable tale. We’re more likely to find the king’s common sense hiding under a toadstool.”
“A good tale is only half believable,” Jack retorted, “like a rumor on ’Change.” He took a rag from beneath the counter and began polishing the shop’s wooden surfaces. Harry would do the glass jars and windows, and thus the shop would be neat and tidy for tomorrow’s customers.
“But you shouldn’t have told that tale to the other chemists and apothecaries,” Harry said, starting on the jars of teas and tisanes. The patent remedies were dusted once a week, on Mondays. Fewer people drank to excess on the Sabbath, hence demand for relief slackened early in the week.
“The other fellows will come up with their own schemes,” Jack said, “and old manuscripts will be all the rage before the king’s birthday. I do so love the smell of this shop, Brother.”
Harry paused in his polishing to survey shelves of jars and bottles, treatises, sachets, soaps, elixirs, teas, pomades, fragrances, and recipe collections. Every product was guaranteed to enhance health or well-being in some regard.
“The smell of a successful family enterprise,” Harry said, inhaling audibly. “But if all the other chemists have their old manuscripts, then ours won’t be special.”
Harry was a hard worker, and he took the welfare of the customers to heart. Jack was thus left to deal with more practical matters, such as parting those customers from as much of their coin as possible.
“You are worried about The Duke’s Book of Knowledge because of that rumpled old fellow who came in here earlier asking about it,” Jack said. “That fellow was none other than Professor Phineas Peebles himself.”
Harry used his elbow to shine up the glass lid of a large jar labeled Fine English Lavender, though a small quantity of grass clippings might have strayed among those contents.
“What’s a professor to me, Jack Eagan?”
“He’s our pot of gold. Your own son studied under Peebles at university, and it’s from Peebles that Hal Junior learned of The Duke’s Book of Knowledge. The manuscript is famous, among them as studies manuscripts. Peebles has got wind of our tale, and he’ll spread the word, and our shop will soon be the most popular apothecary in London.”
Popular being a genteel version of profitable.
Harry repositioned a series of jars sitting on a table in the center of the shop, so they were lined up in exact rows.
“How does one old gent make our shop popular? He didn’t buy anything, best as I recall, but took up a good twenty minutes poking about and asking questions.”
The next part of the discussion had to be handled delicately, for Harry had inherited Papa’s logical mind—logical, Mama had said, as if logic ever moved any faster than a funeral procession.
“Our Elixir of Aphrodite’s Joy will be the one everybody buys,” Jack said, “because it was discovered by a woman.”
“Have you been nipping from the Godfrey’s Cordial, Jackie, my lad?”
Lovely stuff, the cordial. It had doubtless soothed the nerves of many a frustrated wife.
“Peebles has a daughter—Hal Junior noticed her, said she’s her father’s right hand. She reads over everything the professor has published, lives for all that Greek-ish nonsense.”
“Galen was Greek. Don’t you be insulting our Galen.”
Galen’s Goodbody Elixir was a perennial favorite with the housemaids and stable boys.
“And the duke fellow,” Jack went on, “who had this manuscript writ down was from Florence. The Florentines were powerful clever people, and the professor’s daughter is clever too, says Hal Junior.”
“He was probably sweet on her.”
Hal Junior was sweet on anything in skirts, bless the boy. “So we put it about that the professor’s own daughter dreamed that she’d find the recipe beneath the tallest tree on the Lover’s Walk at Vauxhall, put there for her by the goddess Aphrodite, to be shared with every unmarried woman of good name in the most important city in the civilized world.”
Harry started on the shop window, though most of the smudges and dirt would be on the outside. He cleaned the outside in the morning, the better to greet everybody who happened by and the better to show off the merchandise throughout the day.
In winter, a window cleaned at sunset would be dingy by dawn.
All of these small touches of genius Mama had devised, and Jack abruptly missed his dame. She would have seen the potential in The Duke’s Book of Knowledge, and she would have concocted a better story than some goddess cavorting among the soiled doves of a London night.
Harry spit on his rag and went after a long streak. “You say Hal Junior studied under this Peebles fellow?”
“Your own dear boy, and Peebles is obsessed with this manuscript. Nobody has seen so much as a page of it since Good King James took the throne long, long ago.”
Harry finished with the long streak, and the window sparkled in the evening sunshine.
“Seems to me that Cupid might have left something beneath that tree for the gents,” Harry said. “Nothing sorrier than a young man’s pangs of unrequited love.”
Never underestimate the power of a logical mind. Mama had been right about that too.
“Just so,” Jack said, fraternal affection warming his heart. “Gifts from the deities of old to the lovelorn of today, bequeathed to a scholar’s plain-faced spinster daughter.”
Harry tossed the rag in the air and caught it. “Is she plain-faced? Not like Hal Junior to pay a plain-faced girl much mind.”
“She’s a scholar’s daughter,” Jack said, taking a pencil and paper from beneath the counter. “They are always plain-faced. We need product descriptions, Brother. Even the gods benefit from effective advertising.”
Harry got out the brandy—stored in a bottle labeled Hungarian Nerve Tonic—and poured two full glasses. Advertising was thirsty work.
