“Turtle! Lobster! Bertram, how many times must I tell you that any kind of shellfish is injurious to the health? Oysters, perhaps — I might allow that oysters are harmless, but turtle! Lobster!”
Julia and Penelope took one of his arms apiece and towed him up the steps and into the house, with the beaming Emily in their wake. “Never mind the lobster, Mama. He is only teasing you. Whatwewant to know is whether he is betrothed to Bea Franklyn yet.”
“Of course not,” Bertram said, with an uneasy laugh. After all, he had in fact proposed to Bea just three days earlier. If shehad accepted him… His heart lurched in sudden delight at the thought. But it would have been so awkward! After all he had said, and all the jokes about Bea’s forwardness, to have come home and confessed that she had caught him in her web after all, and he had walked into it willingly… joyfully… No, it would have been too difficult. It was better this way, for now he had all the time in the world to change her mind about marriage.
“Then why are you going to see her tomorrow morning?” Julia said. “You have seen her every day for a month, you travelled home with her and now you are rushing off to see her the very next day. That sounds very close to a betrothal to me.”
In the entrance hall, with the servants hovering nearby, Bertram was silent, but when they entered the drawing room, he said, “Miss Franklyn is learning Latin, and I am helping with the irregular verbs.”
“Bertram is too clever to be ensnared by Bea Franklyn,” said his father. “But where is Catullus? I thought Whyte was to be travelling with you.”
“He took a different route, and failed to meet up with us at Bawtry, so I suppose he encountered some minor mishap.”
“That is a valuable horse he has in his charge,” he said, frowning.
“He knows that well enough, Father,” Bertram said. “He has met with some delay along the way, undoubtedly, but he cannot be far behind us. It is no great distance from Landerby, after all. Mr Franklyn thinks there is no cause for alarm just yet.”
“Still, if Whyte is not here by Monday, I shall send Morton out to make enquiries at the turnpikes and staging inns.”
And that was all the allowance the ladies would make for horses, for they had news of far greater import to deliver — Winnie Strong’s mysterious suitor had arrived from London, had proposed and been accepted.
“Such a fine man!” Penelope said, almost bouncing with excitement. “Handsome and tremendously fashionable, and he has four thousand a year, and an estate in Oxfordshire. And Winnie all but an old maid, too. Is it not wonderful?”
“It is,” Bertram said. “I am very happy for her, for no one deserves a good match better than Winnie.”
There were visitors in the house, Bertram discovered. A widowed friend of his mother’s, a Mrs Vaughn, an insipid woman with nothing to say for herself, and two friends of Julia’s, the Miss Pailthorpes, who had all too much to say for themselves, and very loudly. With so much news to exchange, the evening passed in animated discussion of all the doings of the North Riding, or the small part of it that surrounded Westwick Heights, and questions about the distinguished occupants at Landerby Manor, and not another word was said about Bea Franklyn.
***
Bea was happy. In fact, she could not recall a happier time since they had left the old house and set out to become gentry. Even her betrothal to Walter had been more a matter of relief, that after all her efforts he had finally succumbed to the inevitable, and she was not, after all, to suffer the ignominy of a rebuff.
Now there was no more worrying whether she was to be nothing but a dried-up spinster. Who cared whether she ever married or not, for she was going to be a Latin scholar like Bertram and his friends, and read Virgil and Horace and the war-minded Julius Caesar instead of sewing stupid roses onto handkerchiefs.
Papa threw himself with enthusiasm into the project. The library was reorganised to accommodate two desks, one in frontof each window, so that Papa could act as chaperon while Bertram was present. He usually spent the morning hours in his more modest study in the old part of the house, but he would watch over the lessons in the library.
“I might even learn something myself,” he said, winking at her.
A shelf was cleared for Latin books, although it was depressingly empty.
“I am only sorry that I have no books of my own to contribute,” Papa said, “but I never learnt more Latin than was necessary for my work, and not from books. I shall write to the booksellers in York and see what they can suggest, Bertram will bring you some of his books, and Mr Dewar may have some suitable works.”
“Oh, I forgot about him,” Bea said excitedly. “A clergyman is bound to have lots of Latin books.”
“Perhaps, but he is not wealthy enough to have many.”
Bea sighed. “Such a pity I could not keep the duke’s primer! That was lovely to work with.”
“We shall obtain another primer for you,” her father said. “I like this new enthusiasm, Bea. Will it last, do you think?”
“Oh, yes! When I set my mind to something, I keep going.”
He laughed. “That is true enough. Ah, is that a rider approaching? Your tutor, perhaps, arriving exactly to time.”
Bea bounced from her chair and rushed to the window, waving vigorously. “It is Bertram! He is going straight round to the stables. He has a bag over his shoulder, so he’s brought me something to read. I can’t wait to get started. May I go and meet him?”
“No, you will wait for him here like the lady you are,” her father said, but his smile took the sting from his words. “Hobbs will show him in here. And slow down your speech a little. You are slipping into Newcastle again.”
“May I go to the stairs to—?”
