Never Land the First Fish

Chapter Twenty-Three, Part 3

"Miss Kilbrierry?"

Emily looked up from the book she was reading in a secluded corner of the garden, and scrambled in the recesses of her mind for the name of the young woman who had invaded her refuge.

So many of the family and friends who thronged the house seemed to be like this one—an English rose still with the dew on it. This girl, she thought, was a daughter of a visiting cousin, and not yet out of the schoolroom. "Miss Redepenning," she ventured. "Did you need me for something?"

The girl smiled. "Please call me Clara. If you call Miss Redepenning in this throng, you will garner a score of answers."

Emily chuckled. "True." The young lady was refreshingly friendly.

Clara sat beside her at the other end of the bench. "You have found a lovely spot. I must remember it for when the family becomes too much." She cast her eyes skyward and heaved a sigh. "Which is often. I am sorry to disturb you, but my Aunt Anne sent me with an invitation. She would like you to take tea with her at three this afternoon, in Uncle Rede's room. Uncle Rede wishes to inspect you, I expect, since Cousin Maddox wants to marry you."

She clapped a hand to her mouth, wincing. "I should not have said that, should I? Papa says what you and Maddox do is your own business." She winced again. "Oh dear. I did it again. Mama says I need to think before I speak, but I only remember after I have spoken. I do apologise, Miss Kilbrierry."

For letting Emily know that her relationship with Maddox was being discussed and judged? Or for letting her know at least one of Maddox's relatives did not consider it to be his business? "Do not trouble yourself, Clara. I already knew that my relationship with Lord Maddox would concern the family."

"Not all of us," Clara assured her. "Some of us think you are lovely, even if you are a theatrical performer and older than he is." Clara covered her mouth again, and gave Emily a helpless look. Emily hoped that 'Mama's' advice bore fruit before this child had to make her debut. Her frankness was likely to get her into real difficulty in so-called polite Society.

Emily was tempted to use Clara's compulsive truth-telling to her own advantage, and a question about Maddox's brothers and sisters hovered on her tongue, but she suppressed the urge. Instead, she asked Clara about her home in Essex, and her brothers and sisters. Before long, the girl was confiding a wish to be a balloonist, of all things, "Like Cousin Maddox. But Father and Mama say I need to wait. They want me to have at least two Seasons. Can you imagine me at a London Ball? When I get nervous, I can't stop talking, and I say anything that comes into my head, which makes me more nervous, and then..." she waved a hand in a helpless gesture, "...you've seen."

Emily understood nervousness. "I have some techniques I use to calm myself before I perform," she said. "Would you like me to teach you?"

Clara was eager, and they spent the next half hour talking about breathing techniques and thoughts to focus on to take the mind off whatever the person feared.

"I suppose I should go inside," Clara said, after they'd tried deep breathing for a few minutes. "My mother will be wondering where I have gone. And anyway, I am hungry. Can we do this again tomorrow?"

"Very well," Emily agreed, "But I would like you to practice for the rest of the day when you are in company. When you feel yourself getting nervous, take a deep breath and imagine yourself back in this garden, or one of the other things we talked about."

They walked inside together, where Emily's company was claimed by Maddox and Clara was swept off into a group of chattering cousins. It was the most casual meal of the day, with food set out on a long side table in the Great Hall, as if it were supper at a ball. People could sit at any of the tables scattered around the room, and Maddox was heading for one with Lord and Lady Longford when Clara called for him to bring Miss Kilbrierry to join her group, who had requisitioned a large round table and were full of questions about Maddox's travels.

"Miss Kilbrierry, you have travelled widely too, have you not?" Clara asked. That turned the course of the questions, and in no time, Emily and Maddox were comparing their impressions of places they had both visited—Italy, France, New York, Vienna, Spain.

The meal passed quickly, and Emily noted that Clara was relaxed in this familiar company, seldom needing to concentrate on her breathing and never embarrassing herself with a thoughtless exposure of her inner thoughts. She would point that out to the girl tomorrow.

Before she was ready, the clock chimed for the quarter hour before three, when Emily was present herself to the Earl and Countess. Time for her own deep breathing. Maddox walked her to the door and knocked for them to be allowed entry.

Emily had expected a hastily converted room, with parlour furniture pushed to one side to allow for the earl's bed. Instead, the entire room had clearly been emptied and reconfigured as a bed chamber. The bed was large, and must have been deconstructed and rebuilt within the room. It had been placed near the window, which was wide open, with sun streaming in on this fine day.

The man propped up on pillows in the bed had clearly once been as tall and as broad as any of his sons, but illness had shrunk him. Even so, gaunt as he was, with one side of his face slack and his eyes half lidded, he had presence. Emily curtsied almost without volition, turning to include the matron who watched them from a comfortable chair placed next to the bed, where she was on her husband's living side and within reach of his hand.

"Mother, Father, may I present Miss Emily Kilbrierry, daughter of Baron Rookscombe," Maddox said.