Free An Accomplished Woman by Jude Morgan

observer would
have missed was the steadfast warmth, which needed no raking up into a blaze.
Lydia and her father’s relation maintained its closeness by a mutual allowance
of space.
    Unpacking could wait:
first, this.
    Her bedchamber
overlooked the terraced gardens that descended in lazy steps to the river, and
one of the two windows contained a window-seat broad and deep enough for a bed.
Here she sat, legs drawn up, one of her new books placed by her side, unopened:
call it a rehearsal, or appetiser, for the summer to come. She listened.
Heystead, never noisy, was never silent. Even a new chair may give off a creak
a few moments after someone has got up from it: the old Priory made a constant
murmurous reply to its six hundred years of occupancy. She opened the
diamond-paned window and admitted a polleny waft of spring: it met but did not
mingle with the cool dark scents of beeswaxed wood and secretive stone. Very
thinly, like sharp straws stuck into the quiet, came the bleating of sheep from
the meadows on the other side of the river; but there was no song except that
of a blackbird, which did not demand to be listened to.
     
    Dinner was early.
‘Unconscionably early, no doubt, when you are used to town hours,’ her father
said, as they sat down. ‘Which reminds me, is Mary out of love yet?’
    ‘The last sigh was at
Stamford, so I think the cure is complete.’
    ‘I have been unable to
resist looking into that volume of Cyprian — a magnificent thing, and I’m sure
not easily come by. I hope, my dear, you did not waste all your time seeking
out presents for me.’
    ‘I wish I could have brought
you something more — the notes on the Harleian manuscripts you wanted; but I am
afraid the British Museum would not even open its doors to me. Next time I must
ask George to lend me coat and breeches, so I can go en travestie.’
    ‘You might do no better
then: the collection is sadly ill-run. I’m sorry you were put to the trouble,
my dear.’ Dr Templeton poured the wine while Lydia carved the pork: they chose
not to be waited on at table when dining alone. ‘But you had better
entertainment in town than that, I hope.’
    ‘George and Susannah
were all kindness,’ Lydia said, feeling a peculiar restraint in talking of
London, ‘and the children were more or less delightful. You will find them very
much grown when they come to us in August.’ She accepted her wine gratefully.
‘How odd that we always exclaim over children growing, as if in the ordinary
run of things they shrink . . . Oh, you remember I wrote you about the
patriotic songs that must be sung after every theatre performance now?
Well, I braved Drury Lane again last week — Mr Kemble’s Coriolanus, very fine,
he even moved about a little — and for the climax of the evening the
tragedienne reappeared dressed as Britannia and led us in a spirited
composition called “United and Hearty, Have at Bonapartee”. Really I protest —
what is left for the satirical mind to invent, when reality so surpasses it?’
    Watching her father
chuckle with his quiet dry relish, Lydia was caught unawares by a giddy gust of
emotion. For the past two months he had eaten alone in this lofty dining-room:
no conversation, no company but the sad scraping echoes of knife on solitary
plate. Leaving aside every other reason, what sort of daughter would she be if
she were to leave him alone again merely to flit about Bath all summer?
Righteous indignation filled her. Really it was a shocking proposal. Lydia
regarded him with fondness strengthened by her impromptu outrage. A slight,
neatly made man: a fine head, plentiful grey hair plainly dressed above a
prominent brow: features less handsome than strong and decided: lines, many
lines, patient and deep-grooved: intelligence in every one of them.
    ‘We live in strange
times,’ he said. ‘Hard times also, alas. I have given away as much stock and
fodder as I can this spring, and Mr Durrant has done likewise, but what we