Crossed Quills (5 page)

 Her disgust with herself lightened by Mama’s order of priority, Pippa warned, “Lord Selworth may not be willing to pay with an introduction into Society.”

 “We can but ask,” Mrs Lisle said serenely.

 “Not until tomorrow, remember. We have not had time to ‘consult Prometheus.’“

 “Darling,” said Mrs Lisle, a twinkle in her eye, “though you are the acknowledged intellectual of the family, I hope I am neither featherwitted nor in my dotage!”

 With that she swept out, leaving her abashed daughter to dress.

 The apricot poplin, a silk and worsted weave, was actually quite warm, as well as pretty enough to make up, almost, for the lack of curls and Pippa’s pale complexion. Mama and Kitty were skillful dress-makers. The high neckline and the cuffs of the long sleeves were trimmed with Honiton lace. Another strip of lace circled the hem of the skirt, between two rows of satin ribbon a shade darker than the poplin, a left-over length of which was braided into Pippa’s hair. The same ribbon circled the high waist, tying just below her bosom in a bow with long, fluttering ends.

 Her bosom drew her scrutiny. All too aware of her scrawny figure, Pippa rarely bothered to use the looking-glass except to make sure she was tidy—and that not as often as Mama would wish. She had been known to greet callers with a spot of ink on her chin or sleeve.

 Now she discovered she did have a bosom! Mama was right, her looks had improved while she was not watching. Her clavicles no longer ridged the bodice, nor did her hip-bones protrude when she smoothed down her skirt. Turning, she peered over her shoulder and saw no sign of jutting shoulderblades.

 She swung back to study her face. Not only had her chin no inkspot, it was not pointed like an imp’s but gently rounded, as were her once sharp cheek-bones. Even her nose was less like a beak.

 Pippa realized she had not really noticed herself in years, merely seeing a fleeting image she vaguely recognized as herself. She would never be as pretty as Kitty, she thought, but neither was she woefully plain. Perhaps Mr Postlethwaite was not so utterly lacking in taste as she had supposed!

 Perhaps Lord Selworth might....She cut off the wistful thought before it completed itself in her mind, and started again. Perhaps she could make Lord Selworth believe she was a commonplace young lady too concerned with her appearance to have room in her head for politics. She opened a drawer and took out the carved ivory rose pendant and earrings Papa had given her for her eighteenth birthday.

* * * *

 “And do you share your father’s political opinions, Miss Lisle?” Lord Selworth enquired politely, passing the bowl of leek soup Mama had ladled from the tureen.

 “La, sir,” Pippa trilled, with an attempt at a simper, “is it not a daughter’s duty to embrace her father’s principles, whether or not she understands them?”

 Lord Selworth blinked. Had she laid it on rather too rare and thick?

 Accepting his own bowl of soup, the viscount said, “I regret to see anyone espouse views she, or he, doesn’t understand. Do you not agree, ma’am?” he asked Mrs Lisle.

 “In general,” she said, “but where understanding fails, it is surely preferable for a daughter to be guided by a father she respects.”

 “Gentlemen know best,” Pippa said inanely, then immediately wished she had not voiced a dogma so at odds with her own beliefs, even for the sake of misleading Lord Selworth.

 He took her to task at once. “Desolated as I am to contradict a lady, gentlemen as a class cannot possibly know best, or they would all agree, which is very far from the truth!”

 Pippa had to laugh. “As my father’s daughter, I cannot fail to be aware of that truth. Papa throve on controversy. I find it conceivable that some of his stated views, if not his principles, were founded upon a desire to contradict.”

 “Hardly an example one would wish to hold up to one’s daughters,” said Mrs Lisle dryly, with a warning glance. “You have more than one younger sister, I collect, Lord Selworth, besides Mrs Debenham?”

 “Three half-sisters, ma’am, and four half-brothers. I own, the spirit of contradiction needs no reinforcement in them, boys or girls,” he said with a rueful smile.

 “Your mother has her hands full!”

 “She has been too much occupied with the youngest, and with keeping house, to check them, and my stepfather is too gentle. Fortunately, I’m now able to provide a governess for the girls and to send the older boys to school.”

 “You do not care to have your brothers at home?” Pippa asked reproachfully.

 “Oh, I shouldn’t mind it now that I have a house and grounds extensive enough to contain their energies. You cannot imagine the turmoil created by a large and lively family in a small rectory. Nine children, remember, including Bina and me. Not two sedate young ladies like you and Miss Kitty.”

 Pippa was not sure she appreciated being called sedate, but she admitted, “I can imagine one might come to long for peace and quiet.”

 Lord Selworth grinned. “To say the least! Not that I would have you suppose my brothers and sisters are really mischievous. They are likeable enough, only in need of discipline.”

 “Can you not provide it? If the eldest Miss Warren is to make her début this Spring, you must be much older than the others.”

 “A veritable greybeard, in fact!” He took pity on her confusion. “You are right, I’m ten years older than Millie. But while I have some influence over my siblings, it would be unconscionable in me to usurp my stepfather’s place.”

 “Whatever your opinion of his tutelage, or lack thereof. Yes, I do see your difficulty.”

 “So I feel school is the best place for my brothers. I went to school,” Lord Selworth said cheerfully. “It was my father’s wish, and he left just funds enough for the purpose. Not Eton or Harrow or Winchester, but a respectable academy. I’m sending the boys there, and I doubt they’ll suffer for it. Chubby, did attending Tuke House blight your life?”

 Mr Chubb had fallen silent, having, in response to Kitty’s query about the inn, regaled her with every scrap of information he had gathered on the subject of bodgers. He looked up from his soup and said, “Blight? No. Dashed good soup, ma’am. Leeks from your own garden?”

 “Yes. The receipt is one collected by Kitty. Whenever we eat anything particularly good at someone else’s house, she makes a point of requesting the receipt.”

 “Dashed good notion. Don’t suppose you’d let me have it for my mother’s cook, Miss Kitty?” Mr Chubb turned bright red. “The leek soup, not the whole collection,” he clarified in a hurried mumble. “Don’t want to impose.”

 “I shall be happy to copy it out for you, sir,” Kitty said soothingly.

 “Dashed kind. Leeks grow well at home. No blight.”

 “Are you interested in gardening, Mr Chubb?” Kitty asked as Sukey removed the soup-plates. “Sukey’s husband takes care of the kitchen garden, but Pippa and I grow flowers.”

 Pippa seized upon the subject, which could not possibly lead Lord Selworth to see her as intellectual. Though Mr Chubb was more conversant with edible crops than flowers, the three found common ground in a discussion of blights, insect pests and weeds.

 As they ate fricasseed chicken with carrots and parsnips, the talk moved on to the depredations of rabbits and wood-pigeons.

 “Shoot ‘em,” said Mr Chubb.

 “It is the only way to keep them down,” Kitty agreed.

 “Pigeon pie.”

 “Rabbit stew. I have an excellent receipt. It is a nuisance digging out the shot, though.”

 Pippa, while she enjoyed pigeon pie and rabbit stew, not only had no interest in cookery but did not like to think of the poor creatures having to be shot first. She would have dropped out of the conversation, but Mama and Lord Selworth were discussing Papa’s career. If she listened more closely to them, she would be tempted to put her oar in, at the risk of revealing her knowledge of politics.

 Instead, she said to Mr Chubb, “Do you marl your soil? Ours is so chalky, it is not necessary.”

 His response led to other soil amendments. Pippa sought a polite circumlocution—suitable for the dinner table—for manure, only to have Kitty and Mr Chubb argue unabashedly over the relative merits of fowl droppings and cattle muck.

 Conscious of Lord Selworth lending an amused ear, Pippa wished her mother would call Kitty to order. Trying to conceal her intellectual abilities was one thing; joining in a debate on the grosser aspects of rural economy was quite another. However, either Mrs Lisle did not hear her younger daughter, or she chose not to reprove her for fear of embarrassing Mr Chubb, guilty of the same fault.

 Pippa had to acknowledge that the bashful gentleman might well be driven back into his shell, never to reemerge.

 Mrs Lisle started to reminisce about her husband’s first election. Since Pippa had been an infant at the time, she felt safe in transferring her attention to the familiar story. Mr Lisle had lost, but he had fought hard and his efforts had drawn the notice of the wealthy patrons who made future wins possible.

 With a struggle, Pippa managed not to inveigh against the corrupt electoral system. Lord Selworth said it for her.

 “Wealth ought not to be necessary. As long as the present system holds sway, the poor will never be properly represented in Parliament, their grievances will never be heard by—”

 “Here, old chap,” Mr Chubb intervened, “spare us the speeches at the dinner table, there’s a good fellow. Preaching to the converted, dash it. I say, ma’am, I’ve been telling Miss Kitty she ought to get a milch-cow.”

 Indulgently, Mrs Lisle encouraged him to give his reasons.

 Pippa turned to Lord Selworth. “Have you considered, sir, that as well as taking your own seat in the Lords, you might help a like-minded commoner into Parliament?”

 “Why no, I hadn’t.”

 His arrested look, surprised and interested, made her flush. Wishing she had not spoken, she added hastily, “I don’t wish to presume. Of course, I know nothing of your means, and you have a large family to support. Seven younger children, you said? What are their names?”

 He followed her lead, and she dared to hope she had distracted him. It was a temporary reprieve, however. She had given her assent to Mama’s plan, but how on earth was she to help Lord Selworth write his speech without giving herself away?

Chapter 4

 “Dashed pleasant evening!” said Chubby as they hurried back along the dark lane to the Jolly Bodger, through a chilly drizzle. “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed myself more.”

 “I don’t know when I’ve heard you talk so much,” Wynn teased, “at least not among womenfolk.”

 “Did I talk too much?” his friend asked anxiously.

 “Lord, no! Two whole sentences would amount to more than usual.”

 “It’s just that Miss Kitty is dashed easy to talk to. She’s interested in the same sort of things I am.”

 Wynn wondered if Kitty Lisle was not more polite and kind than interested, but he would not dream of saying so. “It was a delightful evening,” he agreed. “Singing glees is one free amusement my family often indulges in—with mixed results, I confess. I didn’t know you sang.”

 “Used to sing in the church choir,” Chubby confessed. “Miss Kitty has a capital voice, and she plays the spinet devilish neatly, don’t she?”

 “Miss Lisle sings well too, even if she did refuse to play on the grounds that no criminal can be forced to give evidence against himself! She puzzles me.”

 “Miss Lisle? Nice girl. No, nice young lady. Mrs Debenham’s age, ain’t she? Practically on the shelf, poor thing.”

 “Hardly,” said Wynn with some asperity. “Didn’t you see the vicar casting sheep’s eyes at her this afternoon?”

 “Did he? Well, but a vicar, you know. I daresay he’s looking for a housekeeper and someone to help with parish work. Nothing puzzling about that. Stands to reason, a girl wouldn’t take a parson if she could catch anything better.”

 Amused as much by Chubby’s tortuous thought process as by his conclusions, Wynn said lightly, “I can’t agree with that, you know. My mother and my stepfather are quite devoted to each other.”

 The lantern over the inn sign illuminated Chubby’s pink, horrified face. “I say, old chap, forgive me! Quite forgot Mr Warren’s in orders.”

 “My dear fellow, I shan’t call you out. Don’t give it another thought. I just wanted to set you straight.” He pushed open the door. “Let’s have a nightcap, and a game of piquet if Bucket can provide cards.”

 A greasy pack with no seven of diamonds amused them for an hour or so. Until they lay in bed, a scrawny feather bolster between them, and Chubby snuffed the candle, Wynn did not spare another thought for Miss Lisle. Then he reverted to his puzzlement.

 Most of the time, she seemed much like any other young lady of his acquaintance. True, she had not set her cap at him, a practice he had grown used to in the few months since his accession to the viscountcy had made him a matrimonial prize. But though pursued by damsels from miles around Kymford, he was not so set up in his own conceit as to expect every female of marriageable—or near marriageable—age to swoon at his feet. It was possible, just barely possible, that Miss Lisle preferred Mr Postlethwaite, though more likely that Prometheus was her beloved.

 However, it was not her preference in suitors which puzzled Wynn. It was the surprisingly penetrating remarks she made from time to time. Coming from an otherwise unremarkable young woman, these flashes of erudition stood out like pearls of wisdom in a bucketful of oystershells.

 No doubt she was merely repeating parrot-fashion what she had learnt from her father, Wynn thought sleepily. Mrs Lisle said Pippa used to copy out his scribbling in a fair hand, so she could have absorbed and repeated his ideas without truly understanding. That must be the answer.

 She understood enough to make appropriate use of what she had learnt, though. And enough to be aware of the danger to Radical writers in the present political climate.

 Wynn hoped he had convinced her he was to be trusted. Not through him would her lover come to harm, if he decided to help. Mrs Lisle had told Wynn on parting that Prometheus had been informed of his request. A response should be forthcoming by midday tomorrow.