“Better a doll than a book too complex for your young head,” Mrs. Hume said.
“Mrs. Hume, I was brought into the household to encourage the complexity you decry.”
Mrs. Hume’s snowy face turned pink. “That I should have to suffer such impertinence from a governess . . .”
“She was hired to be a tutor, Mother. Not a governess. She is not being impertinent in explaining the truth.”
Davina gave Mr. Hume a look of gratitude. It could not be easy for him to disagree with his mother, especially about how and why the tutor did not behave like a normal servant.
Face red now, Mrs. Hume excused herself. Her exit would have been dramatic except that her departure could not be abrupt. Afflicted with bad bones like many elderly women, she required aid in standing and a cane to walk, both of which Davina jumped up to supply.
“May I leave too?” Nora asked.
“You may,” Mr. Hume said.
“You can study your Latin verbs,” Davina added. “We will drill tomorrow.”
Nora neither groaned nor objected. A biddable girl, she seemed to enjoy her studies. Davina wondered how long that would last. Soon fashion and young men would turn her head, and common notions of what a girl should know and need not know would influence her.
Davina ate the cook’s stewed fowl. Mr. Hume drank his wine. His long fingers gently held the stem of the goblet as if it was made of crystal instead of pewter. Davina waited for Mr. Hume to broach the topic begging to be addressed.
“Did Brentworth indeed come about the legacy?” he finally asked.
“Yes.” She sometimes regretted informing Mr. Hume of her reason for accepting his offer to serve as tutor to his daughter. She had debated whether to even take the situation. For one thing, she suspected that Mr. Hume, whom she had met socially in Edinburgh, was a little too interested in her in ways she was not interested in him.
At their meeting where she accepted the charge, she had stated her reason.I need to go to London to petition the Crown, and that is where you live much of the year.
Regrettably, Mr. Hume had concluded that the truth might serve other ambitions in addition to any he harbored regarding a romance with her. His interest had expanded to her history, plans and fortune.
“What do you think of him?” he asked.
“Proud. Well aware of his consequence and standing.” She paused. “Intelligent. I was not expecting that. I wrongly assumed he would be lazy, rich, and spoiled, like a character in a satirical print.”
“The English aristocracy is not entirely composed of mental laggards given only to self-indulgence. Mostly, but not totally. I did warn you that Brentworth would be formidable.”
Mr. Hume liked to think he was her adviser in her quest. He had expectations of political gains that were not part of her own goals, and they kept his nose a little too close to her business. For Davina, this mission was entirely personal. She had plans for that property. She wanted to turn that big house into a place where medical help could be given to the rural people her father had cared for when he could. It would be a way of continuing his work, and his memory, as well as giving her own life a purpose it had lost when he passed away.
“Any duke is formidable, sir. This was a superior formidable, however. He reveals nothing.”He would never narrow his eyes like you do when calculating his next move. He would never show his hand.
He nodded in acknowledgment of her perceptions. “Does he know what you are up to?”
“Our conversation in the garden proved he knows all of it. He thinks I am a fraud. That I have made it all up. I should have waited until I had more evidence, I suppose. Only I thought the evidence that my grandfather sent would be all that was needed. Instead, it can’t even be found.”
“Or so they say.”
“If they say it, it is as good as true.” She considered Mr. Hume, who sat there looking sympathetic. “I don’t think I will progress if I wait on Mr. Haversham. I need to present my case to someone else who has the king’s ear. Can you help me obtain an audience with someone close to the king?”
Mr. Hume pondered her request, but she knew his influence probably did not extend that far. Not only was he an MP from Scotland, but also he was known as a radical one who continued to oppose the Union and who spoke out loud and long about the trouble there a few years ago, the so-called Radical War. The court was not likely to do him any favors.
“I can see,” he said. “You must know that I will do whatever I can to help you. We will find a way.” His blue eyes warmed.
His expression made her uncomfortable. Mr. Hume had done nothing untoward since she took up her situation a month ago, although he had begun addressing her by her given name too soon, and been hurt when she requested he desist on the familiarity.
He was not an unattractive man. His fashionably cropped curls held an unusual dark copper hue rarely seen outside Scotland. His eyes could be appealing when they did not express what they did right now. He was not a big, bulky Scot, but rather slender and wiry, so he cut a figure that current fashions favored.
She liked him as a person. She simply wished he did not think about her the way he was thinking this instant.
She excused herself. Once in her chamber she settled at her writing desk and penned a list of all the kinds of evidence it might be worth looking for.
