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Aha!Mabel thought inwardly, puffing up at her success. “Well,” she said softly, “what Jacob Tucker may not realize, Pip, is that our nursery is not simply a nursery.”
“It’s not?” Pippa said with a scrunched nose, tilting her head to the side and infusing Mabel’s heart with a rush of love for her younger sister.
“Of course it is not.” Mabel placed a hand to her heart to drive her point home. “Is it not where Giulia teaches your lessons?”
“It is.”
“And is it not where we have our very grown-up tea?”
“I suppose.”
“Then, you see, it is not just a nursery, Pippa Jane. It is a schoolroom and a very dignified parlor on occasion.”
“I suppose that is true,” Pippa said, standing a little taller, no doubt from Mabel’s use of their cousin Charles’s pet name for the little girl.
“Then run along and don’t keep Hope waiting. A lady is never late, Pip.”
“Right, and I am a lady.”
“You most certainly are,” Mabel replied through her grin as she watched the little lady turn and run toward the nursery and her maid who waited there. Well, she was only seven. There was plenty of time to teach her that ladies don’t run in the corridors. Or sling mud at their sisters. Or throw rocks at the neighborhood boys.
Mabel’s smile faltered at that last one. She had to remember to call on Mrs. Tucker the following day with her apologies. And perhaps a basket of muffins. Yes, Mrs. Tucker had seemed to like the blueberry muffins last time—that would be just the thing to smooth over the uncomfortable conversation.
“Where is Mabel?” a gravelly voice hollered from the parlor, followed shortly by a couple of thumps from the heavy cane Gram used to move from room to room.
“I am sure she will be here shortly,” Giulia’s voice soothed. “She was saying goodbye to Pippa when I came down.”
“Grinding pepper?” Gram yelled. “Why was she grinding pepper? That’s what the kitchen maids are for.”
“I am here!” Mabel said as she flew into the room, trading a knowing smile with Giulia before approaching her elderly grandmother and placing a kiss on her wrinkled cheek. The old woman sat in her customary chair near the fire that she insisted must always be lit to warm her chilled bones, no matter how warm it was outside. The tall, wingback chair was a deep chocolate, infused with gold embroidery, and was well worn from years of daily use. When Gram was not holed up in her room for one malady or another, she was camped out in that chair.
“Has Carson announced dinner yet?” Mabel asked, her volume slightly louder as she addressed her near deaf grandmother.
Gram stared, unblinking, and Mabel found herself noting the wrinkles that folded skin over her eyes. Did that make it more difficult for Gram to see? She took note of the pinched lips and offered a smile as dignified as her posture before holding out a hand.
Gram batted Mabel’s hand away and used her cane and the armrest to propel herself to a standing position. Gram’s once tall frame was now condensed by the unseemly hunch in her back, but she remained as regal and dignified as ever as she led the mismatched group into dinner.
Mabel hung back to follow alongside Giulia and accepted the smaller woman’s arm as she strung it through her own. Where Mabel was extremely tall for a woman, rivaling many men as well as towering over every female she knew, Giulia was the exact opposite, a petite woman whose compassionate heart made up for what she lacked in height.
“I heard you had a bit of a battle against Pippa today. Something involving cannons and lots of mud?” The mirth dancing in Giulia’s chocolate-colored eyes was infectious, and Mabel found a smile turning up her lips in response.
“I would prefer to describe it as an ambush,” she responded flatly.
“Oh, dear,” Giulia said, giggling. Her hand came up to rest on her heart as she laughed, and Mabel found it hard not to laugh as well. It may have been irritating at the time, but now that she was warm and dry and quite a bit cleaner, she found the humor in Pippa’s antics as well.
“That little one sure keeps us on our toes,” Giulia said.
“That she does,” Mabel agreed.
They took their seats on either side of Gram as Carson began serving dinner, along with Peter and Jeffrey, the two footmen that rivaled Mabel in height. She shook out her napkin and laid it across her lap as her mind trailed to the many men in her life and how she scaled them based on how tall they were in comparison to her. Most were about the same as she, if not an inch or two taller, but not nearly enough to make her feel dainty or feminine, as one young man blatantly pointed out long ago. A mocking laugh swirled in her stomach, for ‘dainty’ was not a word used to describe her. It fit Giulia perfectly, and Pippa on occasion, but no, Mabel would never be able to claim that description. No matter how much she longed to.
“Mabel, your brother has written,” Gram yelled, though she only sat an arm’s length away.
“And what did Charles have to say?” Mabel asked. Charles Fremont was her cousin, but as they were raised as siblings, she never corrected Gram.
“He inquired after my health, the dear boy.”
“Oh, how kind of him.”
