“My lady,” Mr.Perry said to Louisa, looking with horror at the pianoforte that had just recently filled the room with dissonance and discord, “I will call in a tuner and rectify the matter at once!”
“Oh, yes,” Louisa said, grasping at the straw her butler held out, “certainly it must be tuned.”
“I am afraid, Mr. Perry,” Georgiana said, “that there is no tuner on God’s green earth who can make me sound any better.”
As far as Louisa could tell, it was just now dawning on her butler that the fault of the racket was not to be laid at the instrument’s door. He seemed mightily confused, as his mistress had made the point, repeatedly, that the girl who was coming would be an angel on the pianoforte. Louisa had been entirely convinced of it.
Perry nodded, set down the cakes, and fled the room.
“I am certain you are disappointed,” Georgiana said, leaving the pianoforte and coming back to the sofa.
“Oh no, not at all,” Louisa said. She wasverydisappointed, as it happened, but she would not for the world wish to bruise the girl’s feelings.
On the other hand, she could not let this development get out. Lady Heathway would crow about it endlessly.
“I only think, my dear,” Louisa said, “that perhaps you will not wish to play in public just yet. Some of my friends come on the morrow to be introduced to you and you might refuse to play, no matter how urgent the insistence. And then on other days, you could practice! When nobody is about.”
Georgiana nodded. “Of course I will, I will do as you wish. You have been so kind to me, how could I refuse? I am sure I can get better if I practice.”
Louisa nodded enthusiastically. It was as if she were a drowning sailor and somebody had thrown her a rope—she grasped the idea with both hands and held on tight. “Of course you will. My goodness, you will be expert in no time at all. In any event,” she said, “not all girls favor playing. They might be better at other things. Do you sing, I wonder?”
“In church, but not loudly as it would disturb the congregation.”
“Well then, I suppose your needlework is something to behold?”
Georgiana bit her lip. “Nobody would behold it willingly, not even myself.”
“Oh dear,” Louisa said, quite at a loss. “Drawing, perhaps?”
Georgiana shook her head.
“Netting a purse? Painting a fire screen? Knitting? Feather work? Papier mâché? Growing orchids?”
The girl had shaken her head at all of them. What had the baron had her doing all day? What would Penelope say when she became apprised of the circumstance?
A sudden, and a hopeful, idea came to her. “Now, I know you are an expert in one thing in particular. Do not be modest about it, your father told me you really are an accomplished horsewoman.”
Georgiana nodded. “I do not deny it.”
“There, you see?” Louisa said. “We will show ourselves in the park. I will ride in the carriage and you will ride a horse alongside and you will look exceedingly fetching in the riding habit I’ve ordered made.”
Louisa found herself rather relieved to have hit upon something the girl was accomplished at. She must simply play up that aspect and change the subject if Penelope or the duchess brought up music or embroidery work. Or any other possible thing.
Goodness. Becoming a mother to a girl was turning out more complicated than she had expected.
*
Mr. Aldous Perry,longstanding butler to Lord and Lady Mendleton, was determined that his staff catch no hint of his trepidation regarding Miss Wilcox.
All along, he’d thought it a rather harebrained idea! The ladies had thrown together a society and they were determined to ensconce young women from who knew where in their very houses. It would have been preferable had another of the ladies tried out the idea before it was laid athisdoorstep. Let Lady Heathway, that unrepentant harridan, conduct the experiment. Let Lady Heathway bring in a girl to assault her own pianoforte.
But of course, it had been Lady Mendleton who’d jumped in headfirst.
Still, it was not his role to pronounce judgment on the mistress or her way of going about things. Did he comment when yet another flea-bitten mongrel arrived at the estate’s doors? Did he rail against it when some unqualified person was taken on as a servant and he was left to manage the idiot? Did he throw up his hands when a housekeeper was hired who couldn’t keep house for a family of mice and spent most of her time dipping into the sherry? Did he allow his eyes to roll when Mrs. Ripperton claimed the London air would kill her? Did he allow himself to say: “Not if I kill you first?” Did he at all betray his feelings when their good, old English cook retired anda Frenchmanwas brought in? Did he not keep himself expressionless when he spooned a sauce with a name nobody could pronounce?
Espagnole, indeed.
No, he met all these challenges suitably stone-faced, and he would do just the same with Miss Wilcox.
