Page 16 of A Marriage is Arranged

The object of Louise’s sympathy arrived a few minutes later. The Earl greeted his grandmother with a kiss on the cheek, but to her he bowed and said formally, “I’m sorry not to have been here to welcome you, Louise. I hope everything has met with your approval.”

Her heart had done its usual somersault when he came in and then hearing him use her Christian name for the first time, she hardly knew what she was saying. “No… yes, I mean, everything is perfect. Thank you for inviting me to visit.”

He raised his eyebrows. “This is to be your home, after all,” he replied, somewhat sardonically.

She blushed and looked down in confusion. “Yes… of course. I….”

But thankfully, he seemed to require no more of an answer, for he said in his normal brusque manner, “I am in the habit of lunching here and thought it better than the dining room for an informal meal. But we’d better sit down. Our appointment at the Museum is for three and I should not like to be late.”

He pulled out his grandmother’s chair, while the butler did the same for Louise, and they sat.

“Don’t waste any time, Lisle,” said the Earl. “Bring it in.”

The meal was simple: cold meats and fruit, but everything was of the finest, particularly the fruit .

“Have you these strawberries from Overshott, Gareth?” said her ladyship, shaking sugar over the fruit from a pretty slotted spoon, and although they were quite small, cutting them in half before conveying them to her mouth. “I must say, they have been wonderful this year.” She turned to Louise. “Our place in the country, you know. Gareth will take you there soon. At the end of the summer there will be grapes from the hothouses. We are quite famous for them. I know some people dislike grapes, because of the seeds. But our fruit is large enough to cut in half and take them out. I remember my mother would never eat a grape unless it was seeded and sometimes peeled for her, but we are more self-sufficient these days. I have no trouble with them at all.”

Louise served herself some strawberries and prepared them the same as the Dowager. They were delicious. The Earl sat there absently dipping the berries whole into the sugar and eating them with his fingers. How nice to be a man she thought. I wonder if the day will ever arrive when we women can sit at table eating fruit with our fingers like that ?

Gareth wasn’t looking forward to wasting his afternoon at the British Museum. There was a boxing match he wanted to go to. He was a follower of the Fancy, as it was commonly called, and a keen boxer himself. He had the build for it, combined with considerable talent. Gentleman Jackson, who ran the popular boxing saloon on Bond Street, had more than once told him it was a pity he was a toff, because he could have made his fortune in the ring. When his grandmother had proposed the excursion with Louise he had made excuses, but ironically, it was Diane who changed his mind.

“I saw the future Countess at Véronique’s,” she declared. “La, my lord! One cannot call her a beauty! I wish you very happy, I’m sure!”

“One does not necessarily look for beauty in a wife,” he replied. “There are other qualities that are more desirable.”

“Like being a bluestocking, I collect,” answered she, for in a moment of discontent he had talked about Louise wanting to visit the museum.

He had not denied it, and then felt guilty he had been foolish enough to discuss his future wife with her. In the end it was his sense of guilt that drove him to accompany his future wife.

As it turned out, Louise did not have as much time alone with her future husband that afternoon as she had imagined. They were met at the museum by Joseph Planta, Principal Librarian, who was obviously delighted to give them a comprehensive tour of the old Montagu mansion. The various rooms had been turned into book-lined galleries with cabinets of curiosities down the center. Gareth had not expected to enjoy it, but found himself drawn in, not least by Louise’s reactions to what they saw.

Planta was a bibliophile and took them first to the priceless Cotton Collection. This was the work of three generations of the Cotton family and contained the only remaining examples of many early books and legal documents. These had been saved by family members after the dissolution of the monasteries or from careless storage in private libraries. The first Cotton, a Sir Robert, had decided to catalog the items by the name of the bust mounted atop the bookcase they were housed in. Thus, if you wanted the only copy in existence of the Anglo-Saxon Lindisfarne Gospels, catalogued as Nero D iv , you would find it in the bookcase with a bust of the Roman Emperor Nero on top, on the fourth shelf (D), book four (iv).

Louise found this amusing. “I wonder what mad old Nero would have thought,” she said, “to know that one day a likeness of him would be standing above the Four Gospels. He is well known to have persecuted Christians in his day, but it seems now he stands guard over them!”

They then went to see the famous Elgin Marbles, which were crowded into a space that was really too small for the proper appreciation of them.

“The Greeks obviously didn’t have the same view of women as we do now,” Louise commented as she stood in front of the more than life-size female figures labelled as being Hestia, Dione, and her daughter Aphrodite. “Their large size must indicate how important they were.”

“But they are goddesses,” replied the Earl. “They were thought to have enormous power. I imagine it was thought best to propitiate them.”

“So you think women should only be propitiated if they have enormous power?”

“You are deliberately misinterpreting my words, Miss Grey,” said her fiancé, “but I think I am beginning to recognize your tendency to be provoking.”

Louise turned her wide eyes on him. They were dancing. “If you say so, my lord,” she said demurely.

For her part, she was beginning to see what the Dowager had said was true. The frown on her betrothed’s face was simply how he faced the world. It was because his eyebrows grew together and his brow was so heavy. Most of the time, he wasn’t really frowning at all.

“We are sadly overcrowded here now,” commented Planta, who had paid no attention to this exchange. “I shouldn’t complain, but every British nobleman who acquires anything on his world travels inevitably gives them, or sells them, to us.”

Probably because his wife refuses to have them in the house , thought Louise. Think of the cleaning! And the embarrassment of the maids if they had to dust the statues’ private parts !

But she did not voice this view of the matter, lest she be provoking .

The Earl stayed to dine with his grandmother and his wife-to-be, and found himself quite enjoying it. Between Louise’s descriptions of what they had seen, and his and his grandmother’s recounting of some of the odd objects their friends had in their homes, relics of an ancestor’s wanderings, they passed a pleasant evening.

“So what did her future ladyship have to say about the museum, then?” enquired Diane, putting ironic emphasis on the words, when Gareth saw her later that night.

“She showed the proper appreciation of the objects there,” he answered shortly, annoyed at her tone and the fact that, once again, he was being interrogated about his future wife.

Diane, recognizing his annoyance, said no more.