“John Dee,” Lady Janine said in a clear voice.
Naomi gave Isabelle a nervous smile. “Pardon, Auntie? There is no Mr. Dee here. This is — ”
“John Dee,” Lady Janine repeated. She turned her piercing eyes on Isabelle. “What do you know of Doctor Dee, missy?”
Isabelle’s mind hastily whirred through all the books she’d read from her father’s library when nobody had bothered steering her toward appropriate material for a young lady. “He was employed by Queen Elizabeth,” she finally recalled. “He was a natural scientist. A philosopher. He advised Her Majesty.”
“Ha!” Lady Janine crowed. “Pretty good, my girl, pretty good.” She nodded slowly, then quirked a graying brow at Naomi. “Better than you, with all your schooling from the best tutors money could buy.” She snorted. “He was a conjurer. Did you know that?” She pointed a finger at Isabelle.
Isabelle sensed she’d walked onto a stage and she didn’t know the script. “No, ma’am,” she said carefully, “I did not.”
“He was a magician. Said he could summon angels. Did you know that?” She jabbed her finger in the air again.
Isabelle cut a glance to Naomi, whose eyes rolled to the ceiling, as though praying for deliverance from her aunt’s outlandish train of conversation.
Lily wore an openly baffled expression. She turned her widened eyes to Isabelle, silently asking what they’d gotten themselves into.
“No, ma’am,” Isabelle repeated, stifling a grin, “I did not.”
“Good Queen Bess relied on the advice of a man who said the angels gave him a new language. Now I ask you,” Lady Janine’s chin dropped to her chest, and she studied Isabelle and Lily as though over spectacles, although her glasses hung around her neck, apparently forgotten. “Was the man a complete charlatan, duping the most powerful monarch on earth, or did he have mystical powers?”
Isabelle blinked. In the silence that followed, Naomi covered her eyes with a hand. “Oh, Aunt Janine,” she muttered.
“An interesting question,” Isabelle mused. “I shall have to think it over before answering.”
“Queen Elizabeth defeated the Spanish Armada,” Lily ventured.
“Indeed she did,” Aunt Janine said with an approving nod.
“She was mother of the British Empire,” Isabelle added. “She saved England from financial disaster, and protected her throne from interlopers and would-be claimants.”
“With a magician whispering in her ear all the while.” Lady Janine wiggled her fingers in the air next to her left ear. She folded her hands in her lap and cocked her head to one side. “What do you make of that?”
Naomi’s face burned red. Isabelle felt for the girl. Such a discussion, overheard by the wrong ears, could label a young lady a bluestocking. No respectable man wanted a bookish wife.
“I don’t rightly know, my lady,” Isabelle said. “I suppose it could be conjectured that Doctor Dee gave Her Majesty sound advice gleaned from his scientific inquiries, or his probing into spiritualism. However,” she ventured, “it could also be supposed that Queen Elizabeth kept the good doctor at her side precisely because she found his claims ridiculous.”
“A court jester, you mean,” Aunt Janine said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Isabelle answered. “Humor relieves tensions, which is good for clarity of mind.”
Aunt Janine threw her head back and let out great whoops of laughter. “Mercy, you’re a saucy one,” she finally said, dabbing at her eyes. “And Marshall got rid of you?”
Naomi’s eyes went wide. Lily inhaled sharply. Isabelle merely raised an eyebrow. “Yes, my lady, he did.”
Aunt Janine waved a hand. “That one always had more intelligence than sense.”
“He is quite renowned for his good sense,” Isabelle defended quickly. “Everyone says so.”
“Do they?” Aunt Janine’s eyes narrowed on Isabelle’s face. “I’m not so sure.”
Naomi gestured for Isabelle and Lily to sit. “We must get started on the menu,” she said, “if that’s all right with you, Auntie. Cook can whip up most anything, but we have to tell her what to make.” She trailed off, her hands fluttering about her lap like butterflies.
Over the next hour, Isabelle suggested dishes, which Naomi wrote down in her neat hand. Lily had the idea to set up tables on the balcony and dine under the stars. Since it was such a fine, warm day, the evening would support such a supper.