“Oh—I—would it indeed, ma’am?” said Jane, rather blankly.
“Miss Trevelyan is a writer,” explained Livia, and Jane, having eyed her new acquaintance with respect and not a little awe, went to sit on the sofa closest to where the tea-tray would, she hoped, shortly be placed. She said to Miss Trevelyan:
“What sort of books do you write, ma’am?”
“History mostly, Miss Kent. Just now I’m on a Tudor jag—all six wives of the monstrous Henry, each with their own book. I’m nearly finished with Anne of Cleves.” Miss Trevelyan sat back down next to Miss Humphrey, who said with fond admiration:
“Sarah’s Anne Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon books were tremendous sellers.”
“Yes, they paid for the new roof,” said Miss Trevelyan, with justifiable pride, “and Jane Seymour fixed the drains. If Anne of Cleves does as well as she ought, you’ll have that extension to the greenhouse you’ve been wanting, my dear Arabella.”
“Oh, that’ll be lovely.” Miss Humphrey smiled at Miss Trevelyan. “I’d love to have a whirl at growing some more winter salads. One does crave something fresh and green when it’s so cold out.”
This was going better than Jane could have hoped. Miss Trevelyan and Miss Humphrey were so nice, and didn’t seem to care one jot about her decidedly odd background. Her trepidations fell away, and she felt her shoulders, held tight with tension, begin to relax. Bravely she said:
“It’s embarrassing to admit, but I always thought her name was Anne of Cloves. And I imagined her walking around the palace smelling so nice.”
“Funny you should say that, Miss Kent,” replied Miss Trevelyan, “as Henry Tudor went about telling everyone that poor Anne smelled bad, which is quite the rich remark coming from a man with a suppurating ulcer on his leg that stank to high heaven.”
“He should have tried a turpentine compress,” Jane said without thinking, then blushed when Miss Trevelyan looked at her with bright curious eyes and said:
“Medical, are you, Miss Kent?”
“Oh no, ma’am. I was quoting from an old—ah—remedy of my great-grandfather’s. He wrote pamphlets filled with such things for a living—we had a whole trunkful of them in our house, and as there wasn’t much else to read, I pored over them again and again. So I’m afraid my brain is quite filled with these remedies.”
“My mother was a great proponent of farina cataplasms,” said Miss Humphrey nostalgically. “She always said there was nothing else so soothing for veinous palpitations.”
“Yes, and she also let those quacks in Bath wrap her feet in vinegar-infused cloths for hours on end,” retorted Miss Trevelyan. “And only consider what happened then.”
“It was rather dreadful, having all her toenails fall off,” Miss Humphrey agreed. “Poor Mama! Yet she never lost her faith in medicine.”
“On a different subject,” said Great-grandmother Henrietta, “I’ve been thinking that as Jane’s education has, through no fault of her own, been sadly neglected, she would benefit from some lessons with Mr. Pressley.”
“Lessons?” echoed Jane in surprise. Well, she would certainly enjoy acquiring some more learning, because if she had been wrong about Anne of Cloves—Cleves—it stood to reason there were probably quite a few more gaps in her understanding of the world. It would be nice, though, if this Mr. Pressley wasn’t like the schoolmaster back in Nantwich, who, it was well known, drank so much that his young students often had to troop over to his favorite tavern, pour a bucket of water over his head, and together convey him back to the schoolhouse, two boys to each limb and one to keep his head from dragging on the ground.
“Yes, lessons in geography, history, science, mathematics, English grammar, and so on, my dear,” answered Great-grandmother. “I’ve sent a note round to the vicarage, and Mr. Pressley says you’re welcome to begin tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Jane said, feeling a little dazed. Great-grandmother clearly wasn’t one to let the grass grow under her feet.
“That’s right, my dear. You’ll certainly be one of his older pupils, but I understand the range of his scholarship is impressive.”
“Oh yes, he’s an Oxford man,” said Miss Trevelyan. “If he hadn’t been a younger son and put to the yoke, you know, I do think he would have been a brilliant scholar.”
“Mr. Pressley doesn’t seem to mind being a vicar,” Livia observed. “He’s so pleasant to talk to. And I always enjoy his sermons.”
“Yes, nice and short,” Miss Trevelyan said approvingly.
“He has only the one pupil at the moment, I believe,” said Miss Humphrey. “The Duke’s son. Dear little Wakefield. He came to visit us the other day, and we had such a nice chat.”
“Speaking of the Duke,” said Livia, “he stopped by to talk to Gabriel, and I invited him to join us for tea. I expect they’ll be here shortly.”
A duke! A thrill ran through Jane from head to toe, and she turned her eyes expectantly to the doorway. Great-grandmother Kent had avidly, if disparagingly, followed any snippet of news that reached Nantwich about the Royal Family and the nobility in general, and so Jane was well positioned to know that dukes were just below the royals in rank and consequence.
Apparently her new relations, the Penhallows, were indeed—as Miss Trevelyan had said—one of England’s oldest and most distinguished families, but how exciting to meet a real live duke! And how grand he must be!
It would be unlikely that he’d sweep into the room clad in, say, an ermine-trimmed velvet cape which would trail behind him by several feet, as that would necessitate having a couple of pages to follow him about to keep it from getting tangled around chair legs, but still, there was bound to be such an air of stately magnificence about him—and grandeur—and quite possibly hauteur. Jane wondered if she should curtsy. And what should she say?
Something noble and lofty and stunningly clever?
For example, something about art? Philosophy? Literature? History?
Unfortunately she didn’t know much about any of those things.
What if the Duke asked her about them? Ideally, he might happen to mention Henry Tudor, and thanks to Miss Trevelyan, Jane now reliably knew something about his wives and the smelly ulcer on his leg.
Sounds of deep voices, out in the hallway, reached Jane’s ears. One of them belonged to Cousin Gabriel, and the other was unknown to her.
Now she could hear footsteps approaching.
They were almost here!
Jane noticed that in her excitement she had been holding her breath, and made herself quietly exhale. She glanced around and saw that nobody else was looking particularly agitated, but maybe (hard as it was to believe) when one spent a lot of time traveling in such elevated circles one got used to being around dukes. Back in Nantwich the thought had never, ever crossed her mind—that one day she would be in the same room as an actual duke.
Cousin Gabriel came into the drawing-room, and with him was a tall, wiry-looking man of about the same age who had a great deal of tawny light-brown hair. He wore a plain dark blue jacket, a carelessly tied neckcloth, dark breeches, and tall, rather scuffed black boots.