“Very good, your lordship,” the ancient replied, and shuffled off toward the bellpull.
C.J. thought she had detected the slight arch of a bushy eyebrow. “I suppose he is bred—I mean trained—to ignore the eccentricities of the aristocracy, his betters,” she snorted. “Goodness, what a world!” The prospect of so elderly a man still having to work for a living appalled her. Davis should be retired in comfort somewhere with a decanter of good port and a sizable pension.
“Davis was majordomo when Aunt Augusta celebrated her first season in Bath,” the earl explained. “A spaniel could not be more faithful to a family.”
“We are not discussing a dog, Percy!”
“The English class system has been ingrained for centuries, Miss Welles, and everyone knows and accepts his place with alacrity. That is the way of the world.”
“Your world,” C.J. corrected. “Accepting that I am superior to another human being simply because of an accident of birth does not rest easy in my conscience.”
“This sceptered isle is far more advanced than other nations, Lady Cassandra,” Darlington replied, using what he believed to be her proper aristocratic title. “The heathen Americans practice slavery! There’s your barbarism right there! Here in England, those of the servant classes receive a wage for their labor. They are not the property of another human being.”
C.J. recalled vividly her experiences at Laura Place and what Mary had warned her was the fate of recalcitrant servants or runaways.
Before she could reconsider censoring the words that tumbled from her mouth, she had practically mounted a soapbox. “It is regretful that the freedom of some—namely white male landowners—was wrested from King George at great expense to others. I believe slavery should be abolished entirely, but the very principles upon which America was founded are based on the premise that ‘all men are created equal,’ one that is deliberately antithetical to the structure of English society. Your—our—servants are supposed to be free men and women in the sense that they are not enslaved; but many are indentured, which has ever been the case in England. Should a servant misbehave in the eyes of his or her employer, to quote Shakespeare, ‘who shall ’scape whipping?’ How dare the English consider themselves a civilized nation when the little Mary Sykeses are beaten and battered and bruised by the Eloisa Wickhams for the crime of spilling a cup of tea? You may find the class system not only necessary, but the natural order of things. I find it intolerable.”
The force of her argument nearly reduced C.J. to tears. But she was fired up about the injustices she had witnessed in this era and by the hypocrisy, or the blindness, of many of the upper crust to the plight of the working classes. Certainly the experience of being arrested, then possibly deported to a penal colony for fourteen years for stealing an apple, did much to form her opinions on the subject.
Darlington studied her for a few moments. Such an uncommon woman, however difficult she could be on occasion. All the fibers of her being trembled and glowed with her every passion. “Boadicea on the warpath,” he said, not unadmiringly. “But you quoted Shakespeare quite out of context, Miss Welles, unless of course you intended to imply that the whipped servants in question were always receiving an undue punishment, rather than their ‘just desserts.’ ” The corners of his mouth curled upward into a warm smile. “Is there such a chasm between us, Cassandra?” he asked softly, slipping his arm about her slender waist.
She looked up into his eyes. “I own that it would be a grave error for either one of us to pretend that we believe the same things in this regard.”
“I believe that a man owes a duty to honor his word, to protect his family, and to treat other men with the same respect and deference he would wish for himself.”
C.J. smiled. “And women? But you are changing the subject, your lordship.”
He seemed momentarily puzzled. “Women? More so,” he replied, as he gazed into her dark eyes. The earl decided it would be the better part of diplomacy to discuss something else. “Shall I show you how I spent my childhood, Miss Welles?”
She nodded, and he led her through a set of heavy wooden doors into a long, rectangular salon lined on three sides with shelves of books spanning the height of the room. The fourth wall was decorated with a fresco depicting young women disrobing at the edge of what appeared to be a Roman-style bath. C.J. approached it to gain a better inspection.
“Rather appropriate, I suppose,” she noted, coloring slightly at the notion that the earl should spend so much time in this room, presided over by these naked, nubile graces. “The mural would be out of place in the modern world anywhere but in Bath.”
“Actually, it is not a Roman bath that is illustrated here,” Darlington explained. “The fresco is Greek, depicting a Dionysian mystery cult. It is believed to have been painted around the year 50 B.C. My parents had it installed during one of their infrequent return visits to England.”
“What does Lady Oliver think of such things?”
“To my mind, it is none of her concern, and her opinion, good or bad, does not signify. Suffice it to say that although it was my father, and not I, who was the amateur archaeologist, after a certain unfortunate event in my mother’s young adult life, nothing she ever did would have shocked Aunt Augusta. Now, look up and make a wish.”
The ceiling was painted a deep teal color and upon the resplendent blue-green ground the entire heavens, with the constellations fashioned in fine gold leaf, were laid out. C.J. found no words to express
