The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [71]
“There’s nothing else to say, Grandmama. I must return home. I have social duties to perform.”
The old lady let out a long rumble of disgust, banged her stick on the floor one more time, then turned on her heel and stumped off.
Emily escaped while the chance was good.
She did not mention the matter to Jack at all. There was no purpose to be served by it, and the thought of Grandmama coming to live in Ashworth House, no matter how unlikely, would be sufficient to distract his mind totally from the business in hand.
Instead she went straight upstairs and burst into the nursery quarters. She startled the elderly, comfortable nurse sitting in her rocking chair holding the baby, almost asleep. The nursery maid, Susie, dropped the linen she was folding, and Edward abandoned the last of his rice pudding and left the table without permission.
“Mama!” he cried, running to greet her. “Mama! I learned all about King Henry the Sixth today. Do you know he had eight wives and he cut all their heads off. Do you think the Queen will cut Prince Albert’s head off if she gets tired of him?” He stopped in front of her, upright, slender, his face shining with enthusiasm, his fair hair so like hers, falling over his brow. He was dressed in a loose white shirt with a wide collar, and dark striped pants. He jiggled from one foot to the other in excitement. “Wouldn’t that be thrilling?”
“No it wouldn’t,” Emily said in surprise, reaching out her hand to touch him gently. She wanted to take him in her arms and hold him close to her, but she knew he would hate it. He considered it babyish, and submitted to a good-night kiss only under protest. “And it was Henry the Eighth,” she corrected: “He only had six wives, and he only took some of their heads off.”
He looked disappointed. “Oh. What happened to the rest of them?”
“One died, he divorced one, or maybe two, and one outlived him.”
“But—he beheaded the rest?”
“I expect so. What else have you done today?”
“Sums—and geography.”
Miss Roberts, his governess, appeared in the schoolroom doorway. She was a clergyman’s daughter, trim and plain and now nearly thirty years old, too old to hope for marriage. She was obliged to earn her living, and this was an acceptable way to do it. Emily liked her and looked forward to her caring for and teaching Evie in time.
“Good afternoon, Miss Roberts,” she said cheerfully. “Is he learning well?”
“Yes, Mrs. Radley,” Miss Roberts said with a small downward curl of her mouth. “Rather more interested in intrigues and battles than laws and treaties. But I suppose that is natural. I like Queen Elizabeth, myself.”
“So do I,” Emily agreed.
Edward looked from one to the other of them, but he was too well disciplined to interrupt.
“You have not finished your rice pudding,” Miss Roberts told him.
He looked up at her through his eyelashes. “It’ll be cold.”
“And whose fault is that?” she asked.
He considered arguing, regarding her face for a moment, then thought better of it. It was undignified to argue and lose, especially to a woman, and as a young viscount he was very sensitive to his dignity, which was hard enough for a seven-year-old boy surrounded by women to maintain. He walked nonchalantly back to the table, climbed into his chair and picked up the spoon.
Emily met Miss Roberts’s eyes, and they both hid smiles.
Miss Roberts returned to the schoolroom.
The nursery maid departed with the pile of laundry to put it in the night nursery.
Emily turned to the nurse and held out her arms to take the baby.
“She’s just gone to sleep, poor little soul,” the nurse protested. She was a big comfortable woman who had been a wet-nurse in her youth, frequently taking the infants of noble houses into her own home to care for them and breast-feed them for up to the first year of their lives, or even longer, before returning them to their stately nurseries and the care of nannies, nursery maids and eventually governesses and tutors. She liked them best up to the age of about three, although she