He didn’t even have the solace of her company. When they chanced to be in the same room, she was lost in conversations with this brother or that sister, or was busily trading stories with one old friend or another. When he didn’t see her surrounded by laughing men, he saw her giggling with women, or cuddling a baby, or kneeling to have earnest discussion with a toddler. And not one of those conversations was one he could share.
He hated to be selfish, or at least to be aware that he was, but he sometimes wondered if she remembered he was there at all. Then he reminded himself that he’d brought her to the Fanshawes’ over her objections, hadn’t he? And she’d been molested there. He owed her more than courtesy in this. After all, the most dire thing that could happen to him here was to be bored to death.
And it was only three more days. He paused. Damnation! No, it would be five more days, because they’d come early when they’d escaped from the blasted Fanshawes. He picked up the ancient moth-eaten robes that a generation of his wife’s ancestors had worn at their Christmas pantomime, repressed a shudder, and prepared to be king for a night.
“She was the sweetest babe,” the old woman dressed up as a fortune teller told Jonathan. “Never a cry out of her. Why, didn’t Betty, she who was wet nurse for both Pamela and Eugene, didn’t she say that sweet Pamela could be stuck with a pin and she wouldn’t cry?”
“No, I don’t think so,” the other wizened old woman she was sitting with said. This one was dressed in so many shawls Jonathan couldn’t tell if she was supposed to be a mummy, or was actually an invalid. “It wasn’t Betty who nursed Eugene, Elizabeth,” she said thoughtfully. “It was that Tolliver woman from Frick’s farm.”
“I think not!” the fortune teller said on a laugh. “I’d forget my own name before I’d forget that. It wasn’t that Tolliver woman. She had a wart on her chin. Remember, it frightened young Arthur and made him cry? He said she was a witch, and wasn’t there a fuss when Mary found out about that! She never was one to let the children be impudent to the servants. No, I believe it was Betty. Here, Mary?” she called, snatching out at a nearby shepherdess’s gown. “Wasn’t it Betty who nursed Eugene?”
Pamela’s mother left off talking to one of her daughters. She went over to where her two old aunts were entertaining her new son-in-law.
“Why no,” she said. “It was Mrs. Fairchild, from Hilde-brandt’s farm.”
“So it was!” the fortune teller exclaimed. “She was the one with the mole. Mrs. Tolliver had the crooked teeth. Where is my head? So, she was the one who was Pamela’s nurse too.”
“Oh, no,” Pamela’s mother said. “That was Betty. She nursed Pamela.”
“How fascinating for Rexford,” a slender young gentleman dressed as a devil said with a laugh. “Regaling him with wet-nurse tales. Fie, Mama! Trying to bore your new son-in-law to extinction? Come along, my lord, we’ve some hot punch and a few warm tales for you.”
“Very well,” Pamela’s mama said. “Take him and entertain him royally. But be back for the pantomime, if you please.”
“You must think we’re a pack of regular country bumpkins, a pack of Johnny Raws,” the young man said as he bore Jonathan off to join a group of costumed men standing by a punch bowl in the corner of the room. “I’ll wager they’ve filled your head with baby stories until you’re ready to howl like a babe yourself. Here, gents, I’ve rescued our new relative.”
Jonathan was handed a cup of punch. “More in this than a stick of cinnamon,” Pamela’s father, dressed as a Roman senator, said with a wink. “So, tell us, Rexford. What’s new in London?”
“Town was pretty thin of company with Christmas coming,” Jonathan said, searching for a subject that would interest his host. He scarcely knew the man, but remembered Pamela said he was an ardent sportsman. He himself didn’t hunt, and only fished in order to find solitude. Although he had plans to raise horses now that he was married and ready to live at his country estate, he didn’t wager on them. He cudgeled his brain to think of something that might interest his father-in-law. He did fence, but didn’t think that would fascinate a country squire. He did spar at Gentleman Jackson’s salon! “Ah, yes,” he said, “the latest rumor is that Cribb is going to fight Molyneaux again in the new year.”
“I doubt it!” his father-in-law exclaimed. “Twice was enough, I’d think. At any rate, Molyneaux had his jaw broken by the Champion in September, and I daresay that will take a while to heal. Don’t know if the Moor would care for another taste of that kind of punishment, either.”