The Courtship - Catherine Coulter [101]
And she cried in the privacy of her bedchamber and cursed the eighteen-year-old girl who had been so stupid as to believe herself in love with such a paltry man.
Spenser was so certain that everything would work out, but she just didn’t see how it could.
In the early evening Lord Prith strode into the drawing room where Helen and Lord Beecham were talking, and announced, “I have a surprise for all of you. Flock, bring it in.”
In walked Flock carrying a silver tray. “It is my newest experiment with champagne.”
“Father, it’s purple.”
“Yes, Nell. I poured some grape juice into the champagne, just to give it that nice healthy color. All of you can try it.”
“Father, Spenser and I are the only ones here, and he doesn’t drink champagne.”
Lord Prith heaved a deep sigh and held up his hand. “We will wait, Flock, until we have a more ample supply of palates.” He sat down and leaned back, smiling at both of them. “Now, have you decided what you will do about Gerard Yorke?”
“We are just beginning our thinking,” Spenser said. “And food will help.”
Flock said from the doorway, “Cook has excellent timing. Dinner is served.”
Over a splendid dinner of pork tenderloin with mushrooms, fish and capers in black butter, innumerable side dishes, including cook’s specialty—eggs au miroir—and redcurrant fool for dessert, they decided that everyone would go to London the next morning. Helen and her father, Flock and Teeny, would stay at the Beecham town house. It was the first time the town house would welcome guests since three years before, when Lord Beecham’s great-aunt Maudette had arrived with her ten best friends, all very old ladies, all of whom tatted and left their work in progress all over the house. Actually, looking back on it, Spenser had enjoyed himself immensely during those chaotic two weeks.
“Flock and I will be ready to leave tomorrow by ten o’clock,” Lord Prith said to Spenser. He added, “Goodness, what with the Sherbrookes hanging about all the time, my little Nellie will be very well chaperoned indeed. Now I won’t have to worry about you taking advantage of her, my boy.”
There was another small bit of dead silence.
“And then,” Lord Beecham said, clearing his throat, “Douglas Sherbrooke and I will go to meet with Sir John Yorke at the Admiralty.”
“Yes,” Helen said, “but you must be alert, Spenser. Sir John is ruthless and shrewd. I know that Gerard was afraid of his father. His father ruled not only him but his entire family with an iron fist. I do want to see what truths you manage to get out of that old curmudgeon.”
Late that night Lord Beecham lay wide awake in his bed thinking about his life. It was at once extraordinarily complicated and very simple and as clear as a spring rain, and he smiled into the darkness. He remembered his words with Lord Prith just before they had all retired. “I have decided that you deserve to stay in the Dancing Bear’s Room, in my town house,” Spenser had said.
“An odd name, my boy. Wherever did that name come from?”
“Well, some fifty years ago, my grandfather had a trained bear and he kept him in the house. In that bedchamber.”
“What was the bear’s name?”
“Guthry, I believe. He did enjoy dancing with my grandfather. I was told that he died shortly after my grandfather did.”
“I hope,” Lord Prith said, “that they were not buried together.”
“I understand that it was discussed, but I don’t believe it happened. But you know, I have learned over the years that nothing in my family is ever what you expect.” Except for his father, he thought, who was a thorough rotter, no doubt about that; but now, Spenser didn’t flinch from it. He just dismissed it. It felt very good. He felt like a house that the ghosts no longer haunted.
As he was nodding off to sleep, Lord Beecham realized that life was fascinating, a thousand years ago and today. Who else had dancing bears hanging about in the past? He wondered now as he had when he’d been a boy, what it would be like to have a bear living in the house.
Beecham Town