Lord Darling hopped up on the desk and surveyed the room, as if to further confirm those assessments.
“This does seem rather hopeless,” Cordelia said, only three pages into the book she’d picked up. “Perhaps Iamstupid and have no business attempting to understand Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas.”
“Do not say so, Cordy,” Juliet said. “As a writer myself, I can tell you that these men wrote like this on purpose. They do it to sound smarter than they actually are. Just like Mr. Peabody does at home. They mean to befuddle, thereby tricking you into believing they’ve said something remarkable.”
“Goodness,” Miss Mayton said, “Mr. Peabody. I do not understand half of what that fellow says.”
“Because you are not meant to,” Juliet said. “He hurls out a hurricane of words when three would do, all to make him seem highly intelligent.”
“You might be right, Jules,” Cordelia said. “The last time Viola, Aunt, and I saw him in the village he insisted on stopping us so we very naturally made general conversation as a matter of courtesy. Viola mentioned we were having rather pleasant weather.”
“Oh yes,” Miss Mayton said, “there we were, for a quarter of an hour, hearing about different kinds of clouds on a day there were none in the sky.”
Cordelia nodded. “He walked away looking very pleased with himself. But if Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas worked to make themselves unintelligible, what are we to do?”
“I think we ought to come to our own judgments, just as women have very sensibly been doing since the beginning of time,” Juliet said.
“I see,” Cordelia said. “The question is should a person be able to judge themselves? We might just see whatwethink about it.”
“That does sound a deal more pleasant,” Miss Mayton said, looking rather forlornly at the book in her lap.
Lord Darling seemed to be in complete agreement with this new idea. He let out one of his interesting sounds—sort of a muffled and raspy bleat that sounded as if it were a far off cry for help.
And so, they spent the next hour discussing their ideas regarding people judging themselves, interspersed with passing rather stern and condemning judgments on Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Mr. Peabody, and Lord Harveston.
Chapter Nine
Percival looked overthe pile of books on his desk. Makepeace, though he’d been reluctant to do it, had secured every known novel by the author Richard Roydon.
There wereThe Terrible Goings-on of Montclair Castle, The Awful Happenstances of Grimwood Hall,The Harrowing Homecoming at Harrowbridge Hall, and finally the subject at hand,The Dreadful Doings of Dembric Dale.
None of the books were very long and they seemed rather cheaply produced. The publisher appeared to be a small operation in York. The descriptions were entirely absurd. Aside from the doings in the dale, the rest of them featured a duke and a gentle governess. Harrowbridge Hall even hadtwodukes. The dale had one duke and a gentle governess who was now the duchess, saddled with a father who was wondering if he would be murdered.
From the looks of it, they were all meant to have a gothic flavor to them. Shakespeare, they were not.
“All right, Makepeace,” Percival said, “it will be our task to discover some redeeming qualities in these books.”
“We?” Makepeace said softly, as he poured Percival a coffee.
“I cannot read all of these on my own,” he said. “My head would explode in a hundred bits. No, we must divide and conquer. You takeMontclair CastleandGrimwood Halland I’ll take the other two. Come back with interesting things I might say about them.”
Makepeace picked up the two volumes he’d been assigned, though Percival thought he was being rather dramatic about it—he held them with his arms straight out as if they were two live vipers.
Percival ignored his silent histrionics. Then he ignored the not so silent histrionics that went on in the hall. He very clearly heard Makepeace say to a footman, “I will be in my room, reading these. If you encounter me later and I seem to have lost my wits and can no longer speak in full sentences, tell the doctor I was assaulted by crass writings.”
The poor footman agreed that he would do so, and Makepeace presumably wandered off.
Percival opened the dreadful doings of the dale, feeling he might as well tackle that one first since it was the current favorite amongst the ladies.
The next hour found him rubbing his eyes to be certain he’d read what he thought he did, occasionally snorting, saying things to himself like, “Certainly not, no do not tell me, oh yes that’s where it is going.”
Among his thoughts on the ludicrous situations in the book, it occurred to him to wonder not just who would bother to write it, but who would bother to read it. That did give him pause, as he knew very well who was reading it. His aunt, her friends, and Lady Cordelia.
They saw something in it, but what was it?
He did not know. All he did know was he would have to find something positive to say about it.
There was a soft knock on the door and Makepeace came in looking very stern.
