* * *
Lizzie looked out the bedroom window at glasshouses stretching to the stables in the distance. Luggage and servants entered by the doors out of sight beneath her. Gladys bustled about the room, making it appear even smaller.
The bed did not dominate by its size, it was simply that there was so little floor surrounding it. Lizzie kept near the window to let her companion organize the room with brushes, powders, and a few new clothes. Most of her purchases had been locked in the coaches due to a lack of space.
The viscount had made her wait in the hallway while he changed his clothes. Lizzie dressed with Gladys’s aid, before sending her off to enjoy the amenities of the house. Her husband had not waited, but had taken himself off to the nursery to see Sarah. Lizzie had never been lodged so high in what must be a governess’s bedroom or perhaps a maid’s. A footman guarded the private staircase to this part of the house. Instructions to admit them had come from Saint Sirin himself.
Lizzie followed the sound of girlish screams to a large room, luxuriously furnished for a nursery. When she entered, two little girls stopped sounding like penny whistles and ran to the viscount sobbing.
“He flewed out the window!” cried Sarah. One cage sat empty on the table in front of the open window, the other birdcage, still with its occupant, rested on the floor.
Dace perched on a nursery chair to hold the little girls. Their governess watched from the far corner of the room. Lizzie thought it strange she didn’t intervene, until she saw the duke sitting in an easy chair at the edge of the carpet.
The wailing sobs did not abate. Each little girl saw the other cry and howled louder in sympathy. Sarah stood inches taller than the duke’s daughter, healthier by far than the thin, frail child with her father’s drooping eyelid.
Lizzie returned Saint Sirin’s greeting, though she couldn’t hear a word of it over the sobs from the children. He gave an eloquent gesture of despair.
“Crying is not allowed!” the duke warned the little girls. “Stop it at once.” The soft purr of his voice was drowned by the sobs. He clapped his hands.
Sarah dried her tears at the sound and turned to comfort the duke’s daughter. The little girl wailed to the heavens.
“Come here, Jeannie.” The duke carried her to his seat to sit on his knee. “You will make yourself ill. Stop crying.”
The little girl howled her sorrow on her father’s chest. Tears ran in a flood down her thin cheeks. Her delicate features were suffused with pink patches on her white skin. Sobs shook her narrow shoulders.
“All this, over a bird!” The duke patted his daughter’s back. “I’m sure it’s only a green finch with those long feathers glued to its tail. You must stop crying.” Saint Sirin waited in silence. His daughter howled even louder at her inability to obey him while she clutched his cravat. “Hold out your hand, Jeannie. You shall receive two taps for disobedience.”
Sarah tore herself from the viscount’s embrace to rush over to the duke. She put an arm around her friend. “Don’t cry, Jeannie.” The little girl frowned a warning at the duke. She hissed at him, “It was my fault, not Jeannie’s. I opened the cage.”
“Only because I told you to do it,” sobbed Jeannie. “So I could touch him.”
“Stop crying,” ordered the duke. “You are going to make yourself ill, you’ll cry yourself into a fever.”
The little girl wept on, casting piteous glances at her father. “Hold out your hand, Jeannie. I shall not ask you again,” he ordered sternly. The little girl slid from his knee to stand in front of him.
Sarah stood next to her and bravely held out her hand. “It was my fault. Don’t weep, Jeannie, I shall take the taps for you.”
The viscount went to kneel on the carpet beside Sarah. “Can’t advise you to do it, Saint Sirin. Not to either of them. There might be hell to pay.” The casual tone of his voice did not hide the meaning of his warning from the duke.
Saint Sirin’s drooping eyelid twitched. “Then you stop my daughter from weeping herself into a fever. C’est fou!”
It was the first time Lizzie had heard the duke speak French.
“Why are you so sad, Jeannie?” asked the viscount. “Can you tell me?”
“He flewed away,” she sobbed, holding onto her father’s knee while he tried to stem the tears with his handkerchief.
“Birds like to fly,” ventured Dace. “Maybe he’ll be happier living free outside.”
“No,” Jeannie howled. “He doesn’t have any friends here. He’s going to be all alone.” She bent her head and sobbed on her father’s silk britches.
Sarah sobbed with her friend.
Saint Sirin stroked both their heads. “I shall be forced to give you both taps if you don’t stop,” he warned. Neither girl seemed moved by his threat.
Lizzie gave a great lugubrious sigh worthy of Bertram Felmont himself. Everyone turned to look at her. She hitched her skirts up to display her feet. “If you scrunch your toes up, it will help you to stop crying,” she advised. “Scrunch your toes and walk around the room.”
The little girls tottered around the carpet. As if by magic, they both stopped crying.
Saint Sirin raised an eyebrow as he glanced at Lizzie’s ankles. “A useful trick, Lady Felmont. I thank you.” His upper eyelid drooped more than usual and the lower lid twitched.
Lizzie couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. She quite forgave him for being French.
Dace took the little girls by the hand and tottered with them. “Having friends is important, isn’t it?”
Sarah nodded. “I’m going to let my bird go, Jeannie. They can be friends forever, just like us, but they can live free like sparrows do.”
“You’d let your bird go for me?” Jeannie leaned around the viscount’s leg to kiss Sarah on the cheek. “Thank you! Merci!”
Dace helped them carry the cage to the table by the open window. The green bird hesitated at the door of his cage. He whistled loudly.
An answering call echoed from the curtain rod where the lost bird watched the room with bright, black eyes. Dace shut the window before either bird flew out of it.
“My bird! He didn’t fly away!” Shrieks of joy rent the air.
“Why is it females must scream like tin whistles whether pleased or sad?” the duke asked in his soft purr.
Sarah gave him a warning frown, which silenced the duke so effectively that Lizzie had to stifle laughter.
The little girls fell into each others arms. “Jeannie,” said Sarah, “I’m going to give my bird to you, so they can be friends together.”
“Don’t go, Sarah,” whispered Jeannie. “I missed you so much. I don’t have a mother like you do.”
Lizzie felt the tears start in her eyes. She clenched her toes with all her might.
“You can share my mother,” said Sarah, “just like I share your father.”
The viscount stroked Jeannie’s thin cheek. “Felmont’s Folly is not a day’s journey from here. You are welcome to visit us there and you’d like the Priory too, I grew up there.”
“Can Sarah live here as well as there?” asked Jeannie.
The duke gave a slight laugh. “Why don’t we kidnap Lord and Lady Felmont? We can keep them here as our prisoners.” The duke’s sarcastic tone was lost on his daughter.
“Can we?” Jeannie asked innocently. “Or you could marry me a mother.”
“Two taps if you ask that of me again, Jeannie,” he warned with a long suffering sigh.
“There are lots of lovely ladies here,” his daughter replied. When he frowned down at her, she gave him back stare for stare.
Lizzie muffled a giggle at the sight of them, so alike with the drooping eyelid and the haughty expression.
Jeannie blinked first. “Grand-mère says it isn’t healthy for a man.”
“What isn’t healthy?” asked the duke in a sinister voice.
“Having only one daughter,” Jeannie gave a triumphant smile.
The duke reached out to tick
le her waist. “But I have two daughters, don’t I, Sarah?” he asked, holding his arms outstretched to embrace both girls.
The viscount protested, “Fair’s fair, Saint Sirin, if you have two daughters then so do I.” He tugged at their ticklish waists until he tumbled backwards under a heap of giggling girls.
Lizzie knelt beside him to protect his shoulder from an accidental blow and joined in the laughter. “We can be one family, all of us together,” she suggested. “Can’t we, Dace?”
Her husband smiled at her deliberate use of his name.
Lizzie hoped he knew she offered him her friendship. Not her lust or her love. Both of those unfortunate passions she intended to keep hidden in her breast lest the knowledge of them incite him to do his worst. For an eager moment she wondered what his worst might be, before a shudder at the thought of all the horrid deeds her stepfather had boasted of slipped unbidden into her mind.