Page 10 of Love’s Refrain at Roslyn Court (Noble Hearts #2)

Ten

ISAAC

A shaft of light roused him. It crept through the dusty windowpane, slipped between the chinks in the slats on the shutters, and found his eyelid, dancing there until his insensible mind took note and woke him up.

For a moment, Isaac could not recall where he was.

He blinked the room into focus, not quite daring yet to move his head.

It was small, quite dark, with peeling paint and a low ceiling, and the ugliest draperies he had seen in an age.

He crunched his shoulders and wriggled his fingers, which encountered some not-quite-soft fabric, heavy and warm.

Finally making the great effort required, he rotated his head on his neck and struggled upright from his semi-reclined position to better take stock of his circumstances.

He was half-sitting, half-lying, in an old overstuffed chair which had seen better days a good several decades before. The fabric that covered him looked to be an equally antiquated blanket whose warmth made up for its bedraggled state.

How…?

The door was set in the centre of the wall to his side, and a small table and three equally small wooden chairs occupied the middle of the space.

Finally, in the far corner, where the light had not quite reached, was a low, square, box-like object, with a small array of black and white keys like a pianoforte, and?—

The clavichord! Of course. The memories flooded back: the fire, the screams, the smoke, all torturing his thoughts every time he closed his eyes; the need to move, the call of the gardens, and then, as if from a piece of heaven, Sophia walking towards him in the darkness.

He scarcely recalled what she had played for him, in this little building she had once used as a play space, but he had drifted to sleep on the soft cushion of those notes and, bless all the angels who sang in God’s heaven, he had slept.

His neck hurt, and his hip, from the strange angle at which he had been lying, but he felt better than he had in a long time. Every time she played, it seemed, he found real repose.

What time was it? He had not brought his fob watch when he crept from the house at some witching hour of the night, and there was no clock in the little cottage.

The sky was bright but from the angle of the sunbeam that still teased him, the sun was still low.

He could creep back into the house and perhaps beg a bun or something from someone in the kitchens.

The young servant tending the ovens looked up in surprise when he came through the door, but gave him both the time (half-past-six) and a roll fresh from the large iron oven that filled the old hearth.

It was hot and it steamed when he broke into it, and the small pat of butter he cadged melted into the fresh bread in seconds.

He winked his thanks and took his aching bones and the fragrant roll up to his room.

When he entered the breakfast room a good while later, it was with a light heart and a clear head. What a difference those few hours of peaceful sleep had made, and even Sir Neville, sitting as usual with his tea and newspaper, turned to the races, commented on how well he looked.

“Must be the good fresh country air. Good to be back in England, I dare say. No more of that Iberian stuff, all hot and dry. Poor Henry, breathing his last there. Oh, to have him back here as well. But these things we do for King and Country, I dare say. Now, take a look at these two horses, Octavius and Phantom. What do you think? Some tea?”

There was no escaping Lady Poole’s schemes for the day.

At eleven o’clock in the morning, the phaeton was brought around, and Louisa and Isaac were sent off in it, with a pile of blankets, a basket of food, and Sarah the maid on the back.

Isaac suspected that if she had any hope of success in doing so, Lady Poole would have dispensed with the maid.

It was a lovely outing. This, he had to admit.

The arbour had been built at the most picturesque location on the lake, with a charming vista across the water towards the house, perfectly set off by a carefully arranged break in the trees.

The building glowed in the sunlight as it stood upon the gentle rise of land, framed as it was by the foliage and backed by gentle verdant hills.

An artist could not have arranged it better, and Isaac suspected that an artist had been very much involved in creating this scene.

He had heard, once, of a great house whose view across the gardens was marred by the presence of farmhouses on the hills across its lake, and whose owner, in arranging the landscaping, had insisted not on moving the farmhouses, but on moving the hills to obscure them.

It seemed that Sir Neville’s parent had similar funds at his disposal, and it would not have surprised Isaac if some similar magic had been employed here.

Still, the result was lovely.

“Do you draw?” Louisa asked him, when he voiced his appreciation of the scene.

“I… No, I have not that skill. Your brother was singularly gifted. This would make a beautiful painting.”

“He painted it once, before he left home. I have it in my room. Papa wanted to hang it in one of the public rooms, but Mama could not see it without crying. We have spoken, Sophia and I, about moving it to the room she uses as her office, where she tends to the correspondence and accounts.”

This hardly seemed the time to discuss Sophia, since the entire aim of today’s outing was to acquaint Isaac better with Louisa, but she herself had raised the subject.

“Your mother seems to quite rely on her.” That felt a gentler way of suggesting that Lady Poole misused her niece.

Louisa was quick, though, and seemed to know what he meant.

“Mama does put rather too much reliance on Sophia. She quite depends on her as a secretary, and as someone to take care of the more tiresome aspects of managing the house and staff. But Sophia is so very good at it all. And I believe she rather enjoys it. Most of the time, anyway,” she added.

“I can well see that. Miss Bradley seems most competent. She is young, but always seems to know what to do.”

“And yet, sometimes I wish Mama would not be so demanding. Papa, I believe, would be pleased to treat her as another daughter entirely, even though our kinship is on my mother’s side of the family.

But Mama… I do not really understand why she insists on keeping poor Sophia in her place as the poor relation.

I know she has no dowry, and I believe that is Mama’s doing.

I heard her tell a friend once, when I ought not to have been listening, that giving Sophia a home in a comfortable house was more generous than she deserves, and that a dowry would be quite excessive.

” She let out a long breath. “I should not have said that. I am a cruel child to speak meanly of my own mother, but I love Sophia as much as any sister, and I wish she had better prospects. Still, I believe she is satisfied acting as the family’s secretary, and I must be happy with that. ”

She lapsed into silence, her blue eyes drifting over the lake and the lovely view.

“I paint as well, and draw,” Louisa continued after a minute.

“Not as well as Henry did, but I enjoy the activity. It is one of the things I teach the children at the school. I know it is an activity more suited to ladies and gentlemen of leisure than farmers and labourers, but why should they not enjoy something as well? And one never knows when a farmer might have need of an accurate image of a field, for example, or a laundress the skill to create beautiful embroidery to earn some more coin.”

She glared at him, as if daring him to object.

Instead, Isaac smiled. “I quite agree. There is no reason not to do so, especially if the children enjoy it. Do you teach them music as well? I dare say they do not need French.”

“I have no real skill in music, and we have no instruments, although Jeremy… Mr Southam, that is, is teaching one or two of the lads the fiddle. Music is not only the domain of the educated.”

Again, her face dared him to object.

“Will I have the chance to meet this eminent Mr Southam?” he asked instead. “I had a glimpse of him yesterday at the school. I should like to know him.”

At this, Louisa’s face cleared.

“You see what my mother is trying to do,” she said. “Her schemes are not so well disguised. She was not pleased with a guest until she learned he was to be a viscount one day, and now she is set on making you fall in love with me and marry me. Is that not droll?”

It appeared Miss Poole could be quite forthright when it suited her. Isaac liked her for it.

“And I also see that her efforts will be fruitless,” he smiled in reply.

“I have promised your cousin that I shall not breathe a word of your meetings with Mr Southam at the school, for I would by no means stand in the way of your happiness. And, lest you worry, your sister Diane is far too young for me to consider. No, I have no thoughts of marriage at the moment. None at all.” He felt the need to insist upon that last point.

Louisa tilted her head as she looked at him, an odd expression on her face.

Then, with a carefree smile, she called Sarah over to help with the food in their basket.

“Shall we eat?”