all you do for Nettie. I will call again next week and expect to hear my poem.”
Aunt made no move to accompany him into the chilly hallway. “If you are alive next week. Do you dislike the French countryside so much, Orion? You could take Nettie to live with you in Champagne or Provence, and she would have no need of silly English poems.”
Wordsworth was sentimental, not silly. “I delight in the French countryside, but the market for my wine is here.” His boys were here, Jeanette was here. His parents were buried in England on the Surrey property where he’d been raised.
“Deschamps is biding with his cousin, Mullineau,” Tante Lucille said, “the cloth merchant. Deschamps rides out on fine mornings and frequents La Retraite of an evening. You will be careful, Orion. If you can be neither intelligent nor sensible, you will at least be careful.”
“I am always careful.” He took his leave, using the walk home to mentally rehearse his discussion with Jeanette. How to explain Nettie, and more to the point, how to explain his failure to mention her to Jeanette previously?
Upon arriving home, Rye took up his daily battle with the ledgers in his study, the fire’s feeble efforts to dispel the chill abetted by a decent glass of brandy. Rather than pour another, Rye bestirred himself to build up the fire.
He’d added half a bucket of coal, poked some air into the flames, and was replacing the hearth screen before he noticed that his cavalry sword no longer hung in its assigned place over the mantel.
No matter. He kept the thing on display as a reproach and a warning, not because he cherished it as a memento. He’d killed with that sword and intended to finish out his days without ever killing again. If Mrs. Murphy had taken it down to give it a dusting, she’d soon have it back up again.
He resumed his tallying and came to the same conclusion he usually did: Without substantial new custom, his best vintages were destined to spend the next several years gathering dust at his expense.
“Another invitation?” Horace asked.
Meli would reproach the butler later for bringing the note to her at the breakfast table. “Ann’s duties do not permit her to call on me this morning.”
Ann further promised to send along the menu and recipes for Deidre Walters’s buffet by the end of the day—and that assurance was none of Horace’s concern. Deidre’s youngest was enthralled with the harp, and nothing would do but half of Mayfair must delight in the girl’s talent while her mama cooed and clapped after each piece.
And because Miss Walters’s talent wasn’t likely to impress the audience all that much, Deidre wanted stellar offerings on the buffet at the interlude.
“I thought Wednesday was Ann’s half day,” Horace said, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “Half days are for walking in the park and calling upon acquaintances. Shopping for bonnets and gloves. What at the Coventry could possibly come between a young lady and her opportunities to shop?”
Why would Horace recall Ann’s half day? But then, his mind worked like that. He had the memory of a homely spinster keeping track of social slights, a talent that had served him well when negotiating myriad military procedures and rules.
“You are correct,” Meli replied. “Today is Ann’s half day, but she has taken on an apprentice, a girl from Colonel Orion Goddard’s household. Ann has some errands to run with her new protégé. Will you attend the Walters’s musicale with me?”
Horace paused with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. “Goddard’s household hasn’t any females, other than a daily housekeeper and a maid-of-all-work. Perhaps he’s taken to foisting his émigré connections off on his in-laws. Who is this protégé?”
And this was the inconvenient side of marriage to a man who recalled details and expected his every question to be respectfully answered.
But then, familiarity with the exact make-up of a former direct report’s household went beyond recalling a stray detail.
“I hardly know who she is.” Meli used the honey whisk to trail a skein of sweetness into her tea, though what she truly longed for was a slosh of brandy to settle her nerves. “The Walters’s musicale is next Thursday, and while I understand that you are no great fan of the harp, you do have a good opinion of Captain Walters. His baby sister will entertain us.”
“Walters married the Glenville girl.” Horace refolded his newspaper and pressed it flat beside his plate. “Flighty thing, but