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How did it feel, Fenella wondered, to have the defiant daughter in charge of his sickroom? What if she’d accepted one of the offers of marriage she’d received in Scotland? Where would he be then? But they never discussed such things. They were not a family who spoke of their feelings, she thought as she entered his room. Before her stay with Grandmamma, she’d hardly recognized what her feelings were. “Hello Papa,” she said.
“Where have you been?”
“Out riding.”
“Enjoying yourself, eh? Using my horses. With no thought for me lying neglected here.”
In fact, Fenella’s mount was her own, a gift from her grandmother, though the mare was eating the estate’s fodder, of course. “On the contrary, I made certain Simpson was with you.”
“That doddering excuse for a valet! I sent him away.”
Simpson had been with her father for as long as Fenella could remember. He was probably hovering behind the dressing room door right now in case he might be needed. Her father really was the most difficult of patients. “Shall I read to you?” she asked.
“Pah!” He shoved at his coverlet. “I want to be up out of this damned bed.” He tried to rise, and re-discovered the weakness in his right side, which he forgot from one day to the next. The drag of his arm and leg kept him from the outdoor pursuits he loved. And the vagueness of his mind made other favorite amusements, like cards, vastly frustrating for all involved. The doctor had said that he would probably never recover from the bout of apoplexy that had felled him. Fenella didn’t blame him for cursing. But that didn’t make tending him any easier.
Her father fell back onto the pillows. “Why does no one come to see me?” he asked. “Chatton might stop by, I would think, knowing I’m ill.”
Well aware that he was referring to the current marquess’s father, and indeed to a time before they’d fallen out, Fenella didn’t know what to say. The first time he’d complained of this, she’d told him his old friend-foe was dead. But he never remembered.
“Or Pierson,” her father added. “Many’s the good turn I’ve done him. He might spare me half an hour’s visit.”
It would be good for him to see familiar faces, Fenella thought. But the Piersons had moved to Kent years ago. Her father had no friends left nearby. She’d send for the vicar again. His conversation could soothe, when it didn’t infuriate.
“But I’ve onlyyou,” he went on. “If you’d been a son, as you weresupposedto be, I wouldn’t be laid low like this. And no one to come after me on the estate.”
Resisting the urge to argue with him, Fenella went to change her dress and then discover where Simpson was lurking so that they could discuss what to do.
* * *
When he reached home, Roger found his mother entertaining a visitor to Chatton Castle. Their neighbor Harold Benson was sitting with her in the small drawing room that overlooked the sea. Benson, short and round and bald, always reminded Roger of the drawings of Humpty Dumpty in children’s picture books. Now, he jumped up and offered a bow, proving that he did bend in the middle.
“Roger, just in time!” said his mother. “We are talking about the historical pageant on Lindisfarne at the end of August. I’ve been telling Mr. Benson that of course we will do all we can to help.”
If his mother had had a coat of arms, that might have been the motto engraved upon it, Roger thought. Her impulse was always to help. The problem was that the consequent obligations piled up until she was hard pressed to fulfill them all, and then she bounced from one to another like a fly trapped by a closed window, buzzing with anxiety. Waving Benson back to his chair, Roger sat down beside her, wondering if he could keep her from going distracted over this pageant. A happy smile lit her face. Fair-haired and slender, her features scarcely lined, she didn’t look her fifty years of age.
“It’s to be bigger than I realized,” she went on. “With Romans and Vikings and Saxons. And monks, of course.”
“Isn’t that a poor place to hold a festival?” asked Roger. “The road out to Lindisfarne is underwater at high tide.”
“There’s a well marked path,” said Benson. “People only need to take care and mind the tides. And the holy isle has been the scene of a positive panorama of British history.” Benson was an avid scholar, their local expert on just about everything. Particularly in his own opinion. On his small neat estate just south of Roger’s lands, Benson inhabited a house overrun by books.
Roger’s mother clasped her hands. “There will be a special presentation of speeches fromMacbethby a leading London actress. Only think!”
Their visitor’s plump cheeks creased with distaste, making him look like a dyspeptic chipmunk. “Very dramatic, I’m sure. Of course Shakespeare got that story wrong in almost every respect. The chronicles give no hint of such machinations. Macbeth was an unexceptional king of Scotland. And nothing at all is known about his wife!”
“What day is it to be?” asked Roger before Benson could launch into a lecture on medieval politics north of the border.
“The last day of August,” answered Roger’s mother.
“I’m glad it’s all going smoothly,” said Roger, hoping to plant the notion in her mind that not too much help was needed.
“Ah,” said Benson.
The concern he packed into that brief syllable told Roger that the bad news was coming.
“We do have rather a problem over who is to portray Saint Cuthbert. Such an important figure in our local religious traditions, you know.”
“I’d think some vicar or bishop would be pleased to do so,” said Roger.
