Keeping the Castle

6



THE AMOUNT OF FINANCIAL assistance ladies can properly receive from a gentleman unrelated to them is limited. During the week following the first visit by Lord Boring and his cousin, workers swarmed over the castle: the drawbridge was repaired, the battlement stonework secured, the tapestries mended (save the largest and most dilapidated, which I was mending myself), and the paintings cleaned. This was delightful, but the expense on Lord Boring’s part could barely be justified as reparations for the damage Mr. Fredericks had caused. The drawbridge, for instance, had not been harmed, but it was indeed broken and since so much other work was being done, we allowed the repair to be made. But when the stone mason proposed rebuilding the fireplace in the small sitting room to a more efficient, modern design we felt it necessary to refuse, however regretfully.

Lord Boring and Mr. Fredericks called again, on their own this time, as most of their other visitors had departed. In obedience to a sharp look from His Lordship, Mr. Fredericks remained in his seat and broke nothing save a toy of Alexander’s, a small model of a horse and cart. However, as he spent the rest of the visit repairing it, pulling wire, pins, and other oddments from his pockets and modifying the fixed wheels so that they rotated like those on a real cart, and adding reins and a real horsehair mane and tail, we could not complain. Indeed, Alexander brought him all his other toys, in hopes that he would break them too.

“You must allow us to express our indebtedness for the repairs made to the castle,” I said in a low voice to Lord Boring, bending over my embroidery so as to avoid his eyes, “which have encompassed far more than was injured by Mr. Fredericks.” I halted, wishing that I possessed a tactful tongue. I could have expressed thanks without mentioning Mr. Fredericks—I did not want to sound as if I were reproaching Lord Boring for his friend’s loutish behavior.

“I pray you, speak no more of it to me. I did nothing of any importance,” said Lord Boring, looking rather self-conscious. We both glanced out of the corners of our eyes at Mr. Fredericks, who was running the little cart back and forth on the carpet, testing out the new wheels and entirely oblivious to our embarrassment on his behalf. As His Lordship seemed not to want further thanks, I changed the subject.

“The dog,” I ventured, looking down at the animal in my lap, “is affectionate. Remarkably so, in fact.”

Indeed, the dog had proved to be faithful almost to a fault. He had taken up the attitude that he should accompany me at all times, even on the most private of occasions. When I sat, he was on my lap. When I walked, he was at my heels. If I made any effort to exclude him, he behaved as if I had struck him. His small face became a picture of woe: his soft lips wobbled and his enormous brown eyes bulged tragically at me.

While my stepsisters shared a bed (mostly to keep warm—there were eighteen bedrooms in the castle, some even furnished with beds, so there was no need to share from lack of accommodation), I had been accustomed to sleeping alone since childhood. The dog refused to allow this arrangement to continue: the moment I lay down he would commence pawing at the side of the bed and whining, demanding to be lifted up to join me. Once his desire was achieved he would stretch out, managing (tho’ very small in his person) to take up most of the available space.

Sometimes while I slept he was stricken by an overwhelming compulsion to express his devotion, an urge frustrated by the fact that nearly all of my anatomy was submerged in bedclothes. He would therefore drape himself over my head and sigh into my ear, causing me to dream of being engulfed by an infatuated fur-lined hat. Most mornings I found that I had been cuddled and cosseted right up to the edge of the bed and was on the brink of falling off.

In addition, he snored.

However, as irksome as this may have been, I will confess that on those few occasions when I awoke and did not feel his little body pressed up next to mine, I sat bolt upright feeling quite offended until I had located him on the bed.

At my words Mr. Fredericks looked up from his repairs to my brother’s toy. “Oh, do you like him? He’s from an excellent stud. He ought to be a fine animal when he is grown.”

This being by far the most amiable remark Mr. Fredericks had ever addressed to me, I took care to respond graciously. Apparently he had assisted Lord Boring in the procurement and choice of the puppy—to judge by his behavior one might think he alone was responsible—and when I asked a few questions about proper feeding and handling, he proved well equipped to answer them.

“And what is the puppy’s name?” enquired Lord Boring.

I blushed. I’d thought of calling him “Sidney,” but feared this would be too presuming. And should Lord Boring and I ever find ourselves on intimate enough terms to address one another by our first names it would be quite confusing, as well.

“‘Dog’ is what I mostly call him,” I admitted.

The assembled company began to propose names. Prudence and Charity favored such suggestions as Trouble and Nuisance. I will confess that he did leave a puddle in their room, but as I myself cleaned it up as soon as it was discovered I did not see why they should so dislike him.

“Call him ‘Fido’—meaning faithful, you know—since he is so attached to you,” said Mr. Fredericks in the tone of voice which ends a discussion. “And now, Boring, we must go. Or I must, at any rate. You may wish to waste the entire rest of the afternoon, but I’ve business to attend to. Good-bye, Fido,” he said to the dog, which wagged its tail in reply.

“But—Lord Boring!” I said. “I have not yet heard your suggestion for the dog’s name.”

“Oh, I expect Fredericks is right and you ought to call the little fellow Fido.”

Upon hearing the word Fido, the traitorous dog wagged its tail again.

“There, you see?” said Mr. Fredericks, a sudden smile lighting up his narrow face.

My mother added, “Fido is a lovely name. Good dog, Fido,” and the dog wriggled all over in a paroxysm of delight.

I sighed. Evidently the dog had a name. And it was a name chosen by Mr. Fredericks, rather than by the man who had given him to me.

“Good-bye, Master Alexander,” said Mr. Fredericks, presenting the much improved toy to the boy. “See that you take care of that mare and her equipage,” he admonished, “and don’t haul in too hard on those reins or she’ll bolt on you. Miss Hrrm,” he said to me, “that thread you are using is poor quality; it will break under stress, and if it does not, it will rot in these damp, salty conditions.” He turned to his friend. “Boring, I’ll see about the horses.” Whereupon he got up and left the room without a word to his hostess, or to anyone else.

Lord Boring made his farewells properly, like a gentleman. When they had gone, I could not help but cry out, “Why, oh why does His Lordship suffer the company of that odious man?”

Prudence bridled. “I do not find him so,” she said. “Mr. Fredericks is a fine-looking man.”

I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. Prudence was building hopes of attracting him as a suitor, after all. Tho’ only the son of a shop clerk, he was the grandson of a baron, and that atoned for a great deal. I suppose she felt that the money she would bring to the marriage would be matched by the whiff of nobility, and the right to visit Gudgeon Park on familiar terms. How she would bring herself to forgive Mr. Fredericks’s mother for her rash mésalliance I did not know. In any case, as he had not so much as glanced in her direction, I did not think much of her chances.

“When he smiles, he is very attractive,” agreed my mother. “It was good-natured of him to mend Alexander’s toy.”

“He broke it,” I observed.

“Ah, but not one in a hundred men would have spent the greater part of an hour, and the whole of their visit, on such a fiddling little job with a small child’s toy. Now, if he were trying to win the esteem of the child’s sister, perhaps yes, but . . .” She trailed off, eyeing me doubtfully. Even my mama, partial as she was, could not convince herself that Mr. Fredericks was in love with me, or indeed had noticed my existence, other than as the new owner of a puppy in which he had interested himself. “Truly, Althea,” she went on, “I do not think his heart is bad, only his manner.”

“His manner is quite enough to condemn him in my eyes,” I said. “How he could speak of wasting the rest of the afternoon in our company! And to leave without a proper good-bye to you, Mama! I find him quite insufferable.”

“You would change your mind soon enough if you believed him a man of property,” said Prudence. “If he were a rich man, you’d be only too happy to set your cap at him.”

“I do not deny,” I said after a moment’s reflection, “that I consider it my duty to marry a man of substance to ensure that little Alexander shall inherit this property in due course, and, furthermore, to ensure that my mother and even my stepsisters will always have a home to call their own in the event that they do not marry. But I find that I do have standards, below which I am unwilling to sink. I swear to you that nothing, nothing! could tempt me to marry Mr. Fredericks, even had he all the wealth of the Indies in his pocket.”

And I swept out of the room, the dog Fido trotting close behind.



“How pleasant it is,” said the Marquis of Bumbershook, “to recline at one’s ease in a castle garden in June, while nearby four lovely ladies sit and sew a fine seam.”

Having completed his business in York, the Marquis had returned and ridden over from Gudgeon Park one afternoon to sit with us as we sewed in the central bailey, which is open to the sky and possesses the remains of a rose garden now coming into bloom.

Prudence and Charity were far too overawed by his eminence to say much to him, leaving us in a blissful silence wherein rational discourse was possible. Rather to my surprise, my mother was uncharacteristically silent as well, tho’ His Lordship was as affable and approachable as our good neighbor Sir Quentin. The Marquis and I therefore bore the burden of keeping the talk flowing, but this was no hardship. He seemed to be enjoying the pale sunlight and the brave roses that had, against all odds, struggled out of the thin, chalky soil and flaunted themselves against the stones of the bailey keep.

He had brought a small, cowhide-covered ball for the dog Fido. After some initial suspicion, Fido had grasped the purpose of this item and they began a game of toss and fetch. That is, His Lordship tossed, and Fido restored the ball to him after much racing about and hysterical barking.

I later learned that it was a “golf” ball, stitched and stuffed with feathers for the game of the same name, at which the Marquis was an adept. Had I known how expensive the ball was, I should never have allowed Fido to sink his little teeth into it. However, by the time I did learn the ball’s value, it was too late. He became addicted to the diversion and expected a game of ball every night after dinner for at least half an hour. However, I digress.

Since His Lordship the Marquis was lately come from London, I pressed him for details about the new fashions, books, and plays of the capital. When he spoke of new publications my mother at last lifted her eyes from her work and began to join in. Soon they were engaged in conversation and I was pleased to note, and to observe my mother note, how his every word and expression marked him out as a man of intelligence and cultivation. One would expect polished manners and an extensive knowledge of the world from a man in his position in life, but he was better than that: he was possessed of a superior mind and a liberal nature.

I will not attempt to disguise the fact that I found Lord Boring to be an attractive man, not only in his purse but in his person. But it would not do to be too hasty; here was yet another man who was more than worthy of my consideration.

True, he was a widower more than twenty-five years my senior, and a head shorter than I. But I believed him to admire me, and I liked him very much. No, the concern was that he was far, far too grand for me; mine was an ancient and honorable lineage, but the Marquis was a celebrated member of the ton, on terms of easy familiarity with the Prince Regent’s residence at Carlton House and with the most distinguished houses of Europe. If he did remarry (and thousands of young ladies and their mamas must have exerted themselves to the utmost to achieve this goal, but had in the end been forced to admit defeat), it would be expected that he would choose a woman from one of the great families of England, not an impoverished young girl from the back of beyond in a dilapidated castle by the edge of the North Sea.

How foolish I was to even think of him as anything but a pleasant acquaintance!

And yet . . .

And yet I will admit to another side of the story. He was the last of his line—his wife and young child had died some years ago and he had no close relatives to resent his choice. He was free to marry as he pleased. Therefore, perhaps it was not entirely foolish, I thought as I watched him smiling contentedly around at our little family party.

Ah well, I told myself, it was early days yet.

Life in little Lesser Hoo had become much more interesting of late.