Page 6 of His Lordship's True Lady
“Miss Ferguson,” Hessian said as she halted her mare. “Good day.”
Long ago, as a boy quivering to begin his studies at university, Hessian had occasionally accompanied his father to London. He’d known Lily Ferguson then because her uncle and Papa had been acquainted, but the girl Lily Ferguson and this grown version had little in common.
In Hessian’s unerring adolescent opinion, little Lily had been a brat; and in her estimation, he’d doubtless been a rotten, self-important prig. The passage of time had wrought substantial improvements on her side of the balance sheet. For all she was petite, Miss Ferguson made an elegant picture on her mare.
She inclined her head. “My lord, and Miss Daisy. What a pleasant surprise. Shall we enjoy the park together?”
The lady’s greeting to Hessian was cordial, but upon Daisy she bestowed a beaming, conspiratorial smile. To a small child, that smile would hint of tea parties in the nursery, spying from balconies, and cakes smuggled up from the kitchen.
“Daisy, can you greet Miss Ferguson?” For the child who’d nearly leaped from the saddle at the sight of the lady had remained silent.
“Good day, Miss Lily.”
“What is your horse’s name, Daisy?”
The girl squirmed about to peer up at Hessian, but he busied himself with turning the gelding to walk beside Miss Ferguson’s mare.
“Hammurabi.”
“Ah, the lawgiver,” Miss Lily said. “What is his favorite treat?”
After several minutes, Hessian realized that Miss Ferguson was asking questions that required answers other than yes or no, and by virtue of patient silences, she was getting those answers. Daisy’s replies gradually lengthened, until she was explaining to Miss Lily that the tree branches outside her bedroom window made patterns on the curtains in the shape of the dreaded Hydra from her storybooks.
“That cannot be pleasant when you are trying to fall asleep,” Miss Ferguson said. “When next this Hydra tries to prevent your slumbers, you must banish him.”
“But the shadows are there, every night. Even if there isn’t any moon, the torches in the garden make shadows on my curtains. How do I banish shadows?”
Interesting question.
“You open the curtains of course,” Miss Lily replied, “and then you can see that the same old boring trees are in their same old boring places in the garden, night after night. No wonder they delight in dancing when the breeze comes along.”
Daisy looked around at the plane maples towering overhead. “They dance?”
“A minuet, I think, unless a storm is coming, and then it’s more a gigue. Grampion, do the trees dance up in Cumberland?”
“Oh, routinely. They’re almost as lively as debutantes during the first reel of the evening.” And ever so much more soothing to a man’s nerves.
“My mama danced.”
Hessian fumbled about for a response to Daisy’s first mention of either parent.
“My mama loved to dance,” Miss Lily observed. “I’m an indifferent dancer, though a dear, departed friend once told me that dancing improves if a lady stands up with the right fellow.”
“My papa is dead. That means he’s in heaven, except he was put in a box when he died. Does the box go to heaven? Like a package?”
Why did this topic have to come up now, without warning, in public, in conversation with a young lady whose company Hessian found a good deal more bearable than most of her kind?
“Perhaps now is not the time—” Hessian began.
“Daisy, do you remember the story about Moses?” Miss Ferguson asked. “He made the sea step aside so he could take his people to safety?”
“I remember.”
“Well, the sea doesn’t normally have such accommodating manners, does it? Something unexplainable and wonderful was involved, like dragons breathing fire without scorching their tongues. Getting to heaven is something like that. You needn’t drag along the part of you that got sick, and had megrims, and suffered nightmares. The forever part of you slips into heaven like Moses dashing right across the sea.”
“Wonderful, but we can’t explain it,” Daisy said, petting Ham’s withers. “Only good people go to heaven.”
Miss Lily guided her mare around a puddle, and just as the trees overhead were mirrored on the puddle’s surface, insight reflected off of Daisy’s comment.
