“I can’t wait to see them, Granny.” Livia made as if to stand, but the old lady reached out to her.
“Will you come back, when I am awake? And read to me some more?”
Warmly Livia clasped the frail, slender hand in her own. “Of course I shall.”
“Very well,” said Grandmama. “Perhaps a little Shakespeare next.” She closed her eyes, and was swiftly carried off in sleep.
Given Grandmama’s still-debilitated state, it would have been too much to say that the townhouse was plunged into a frenzy of activity when it became known that the family was decamping to Surmont Hall. However, a new air of bustle, of oncoming change, permeated the place. Although the old lady still lay in state in her vast bed, she assumed command of the move from there, looking, as Gabriel remarked, very much like a French monarch of the previous century, lacking only a towering powdered wig to complete the illusion. The little dog Muffin remained always at her side, occasionally taking exception to certain visitors—for reasons that nobody could ascertain—and once going so far as to bite one of the footmen, Roger, but as he was one of the two servants who declined the invitation to also remove to the Hall, no attempts were made to introduce friendlier relations between them. The other servant was a scullery maid whose entire family dwelled in Bath and who did not care to place herself at such a distance from them.
Grandmama did deign to receive some of her acquaintance as a kind of extended take-leave ceremony (receiving many compliments on her charming new bed-jacket), although she refused far more requests to call than she accepted. Already, it seemed to Livia, her mind stretched ahead to the Hall, and to the multitude of pleasures that lay ahead; her time in Bath was already beginning to fade into the past.
The old lady spent many happy hours deciding which items she wished to bring, and those she intended to leave behind, poring over lists, writing and rewriting them, changing her mind so frequently that only someone with Crenshaw’s superhuman imperturbability could endure it with such fortitude. It fell to him, for better or worse, to superintend the arrangements.
Grandmama also expended considerable thought as to the traveling arrangements.
The majority of the servants would precede the family in rented carriages, accompanied by wagons containing as many of the household goods as could be removed without inconvenience to those remaining behind. Because the pace of the wagons would be so slow, for them it would be a four-day journey. Grandmama intended to complete the family’s trip in only two days, spending the night in Wells. She pronounced herself ready to depart immediately, but Gabriel was doubtful as to her capacity to withstand the rigors of travel, even in her enormous, luxuriously fitted coach; they argued about it at length, until finally they reached a compromise which satisfied neither of them.
“Very well! A week it is,” said the old lady, in the tone of one compelled to walk across a pile of hot coals.
“And while we’re on the subject,” Gabriel went on, a slight acid tinge to his voice, “where do you propose to stay in Wells?”
“I always stop over at the Royal Hart. Naturally we shall stay there.”
“Because you enjoy the fleas?”
“The Royal Hart doesn’t have fleas.”
“They did the last time I stayed there.”
Grandmama sniffed. “Perhaps it was something about your person which attracted them.”
Gabriel scowled, and Livia, sitting in an armchair with Muffin on her lap, brushing his silky white fur, thought how handsome Gabriel looked with his eyes flashing like that. Into her mind came once again an image of a grand empty nursery, and she found herself drifting into a pleasant daydream imagining what the Hall looked like.
It couldn’t look like Ealdor Abbey, that ill-kempt and hulking medieval pile, always damp, always cold, with stupid thick walls of ancient stone. The only other country house she knew was that of the Orrs, but it was of modern construction, built according to precepts of rigid symmetry. Surmont Hall, much older, surely had quite a different design. One of the first places Livia intended to explore was the Picture Galley. Grandmama had described how, as a little girl, she had run up and down its seemingly endless corridor, and as she had gotten older been fascinated by the dozens of portraits which hung there.
Livia wanted to see if there was a painting of Gabriel as a little boy. Did he have baby fat? Chubby legs, adorable pudgy cheeks? She smiled to herself, and wondered if he had been just as strong-willed when he was small.
“You find the ideas of fleas amusing?” Gabriel said to her rather irritably.
Livia blinked. “I beg your pardon?”