Page 39 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
Janet entered the hall, breathless and flustered. “He sent me away,” she panted.
“He’s not coming?” Georgie asked, more to himself than to Janet. Bewildered, he looked searchingly around the hall, as if he could lay his eyes on something that would make this scenario better. “You told him the carriage arrived?”
Janet squeezed his arm. “Never you mind him. We’ll get the little lad set up with some tea and cakes, and his lordship will come around.”
Or he won’t, Georgie thought. Or he’ll hide in that tower for the next fortnight. God knew he was capable of it, damn him.
“Quite right,” Georgie said, more for Janet’s benefit than because it was true.
The door swung open without so much as a squeak, since Georgie had the workers rehang it and oil the hinges. As if all the well-oiled hinges in Cornwall could make up for an absent father. John the footman entered, holding the door open for an impossibly small child. He was eight years old, Georgie knew, but he was so thin and little he could have been much younger. Perhaps young gentlemen at pricey schools didn’t have a much better time of it than the apprentices and pickpockets he had been comparing them to the other day.
Simon was pale, a washed-out, porridgey shade that spoke of illness or exhaustion or both. His hair was a colorless hue that reminded Georgie of nothing so much as used bathwater. This unprepossessing specimen was Radnor’s heir, the person for whom Georgie had spent the last ten days working his fingers to the bone. This scrap of a child was listed on the pages of Debrett’s as “Simon Browne, Viscount Sheffield.” For all his confused parentage, he had a courtesy title that was rightly his, and Georgie had instructed the servants to call the child Lord Sheffield, as was his due.
Georgie had envisioned a strapping, hearty lordling. The sort of fellow who would, in a couple of years, pinch housemaids in stairwells and carouse drunkenly in London. It was a type he knew all too well.
As Georgie watched the boy shift awkwardly from foot to foot, he felt a rush of affection sweep over him.
“Lord Sheffield,” he said, the title sounding preposterously overblown for such a wisp of a boy. “I’m George Turner, your father’s secretary. Would you like some cakes?” Georgie had planned to have a footman serve the child and his father tea in the parlor, but he couldn’t very well put the boy into the parlor by his lonesome; besides, Simon looked like he would vanish into the vastness of that grand room.
The child nodded, glancing timidly up at Georgie. “I like cakes,” he said in a thin, overbred accent.
“Of course you do. Janet—this is Janet, the head housemaid, and she’s been looking forward to your coming—will you run ahead and tell Mrs. Ferris that we’ll join her in the kitchens for some of her special cakes?” Janet, bless her, had the presence of mind to smile reassuringly at the lad before leaving. “And this is John, whose job is specially to look after you,” Georgie said with a pointed look at the nearest footman, who he hoped would understand that he had just been assigned a new duty. “Please bring Lord Sheffield’s valise up to the bedchamber across from mine, and make a bed for yourself in the adjoining room.” There was no way this child was going to be consigned to the lordly suite of rooms Georgie had readied. He might still have nightmares. God knew he looked like he did.
Georgie kept up a stream of meaningless chatter as they made their way to the back of the house. He asked about the long journey from school and received single syllables in answer. Good God, how would this child and his father manage a conversation, if neither of them were inclined to actually speak? Georgie would send a note over to the vicar, begging for his company at dinner. Georgie too would take his dinner in the dining parlor, even though he supposed it wasn’t quite the thing for secretaries to dine with the family. Anything would be better than a painfully silent dinner; if nothing else, he and Halliday could blather to one another.
What if Lawrence didn’t even come down for dinner? Georgie refused to consider the possibility. He had specifically told Lawrence that dinner was at six, and even Lawrence couldn’t imagine that it would be acceptable to miss the child’s first dinner at Penkellis. Not that Lawrence had ever given a damn about acceptability. But surely he had to understand the importance to Simon. To Georgie.
No, he would not let his thoughts head down that path. He would not try to divine Radnor’s feelings towards him, not when his own feelings towards Radnor were disastrous enough.
“Oh, I smell the cakes,” Georgie said unnecessarily as they approached the kitchens. “Mrs. Ferris has been baking for days.” And so she had. Equipped with two new maids, she had been every bit as busy as Georgie.
The cook spun around when she heard footsteps in the doorway.
“Oh my stars, you’re the spit of your mother.” She clapped a floury hand to her cheek. “She was a little bird. And to think, you’re only a few years younger than my Jamie, and him twice your size.”
Georgie winced. This was not the line of conversation to pursue with a smallish young man. He knew this, having been a painfully skinny child himself. “Perhaps Lord Sheffield would like some cakes?” he suggested.
The child nodded. “My aunt and cousins call me Simon,” he said, hardly audible. “And Uncle Courtenay calls me Simon in his letters. At school they call me Sheffield, but I . . . ” His voice trailed off, and a flash of something like pain crossed his face.
“Well then, Simon, let’s sit here and eat these cakes, and then we can explore.”
At that last word, the child perked up for the first time since his arrival. Georgie had nearly said “get you settled,” but then remembered that even the quietest eight-year-old would dread the prospect of being settled. Besides, Penkellis was good for nothing if not exploration. There were corners that Georgie hadn’t even seen yet.
“We’re near the sea,” the child said.
“It’s less than a mile,” Mrs. Ferris interjected, setting plates of cakes and hot cups of tea before them.
“I like the sea.”
“Then we’ll walk over to the cliffs today,” Georgie said. “And if you like tall ships, we can take the carriage to Falmouth tomorrow.”
Simon’s mouth curved into the beginnings of a thin smile. “Before Mama died, we lived with Uncle Courtenay in a villa in Italy. We could see the sea from Mama’s bedchamber window.” He seemed to be watching Georgie carefully, waiting for a reaction.
Of course. The child was accustomed to the mention of his dead mother provoking scandal and censure. Georgie was no stranger to having parents whose names could only be mentioned in embarrassed whispers, even years after their death. But Simon’s mother had achieved notoriety on a grand scale by leaving her husband’s home to run off with some kind of artist or poet. The “Uncle Courtenay” Simon mentioned was his mother’s brother, a figure so depraved there had once been a ballad written about his exploits.
“Eat the cakes before they get cold,” Mrs. Ferris admonished. “You could both do with fattening up.”
The cakes were flat, like oatcakes, doused in butter and studded with raisins. There was also a slab of cheese, which Georgie had long since discovered that Mrs. Ferris considered a crucial component of every meal. When she brought over a dish teeming with biscuits, Georgie nearly asked her to desist, but then he noticed that Simon’s plate was empty. He had eaten his cheese and cakes and was cheerfully tucking in to the biscuits. The boy was plainly ravenous. What in God’s name was going on at that school if the child was half-starved?
