Nine Days to Become a Gentleman

Monsieur Fabien Lamotte arrives from Winchester on the second day with a cane, a fiddle case and the expression of a man who has been asked to teach a cart horse ballet.

"This," he says, walking around you in the long gallery, "is the gentleman?"

"This is the gentleman," Evadne says from the window seat.

"He stands like a gate."

"He's been standing in a stable for twelve years. Gates are what he knows."

Lamotte taps your shoulder with his cane. You don't move. He taps it again, harder, and you look down at him, and he sighs from the bottom of his French soul.

"Bon. The shoulders, they go down. The chin, it goes up. You are not waiting to be kicked. You are a man who owns the horse. Yes? Now. Bow."

You bow. Lamotte covers his eyes.

Aunt Hermione Bassington arrives on the third day, summoned by express, in a traveling bonnet with an entire pheasant on it. She is Evadne's mother's sister, widowed twice, round as a teapot and jingling with jet beads, and she looks you over through a lorgnette for a full silent minute.

"Well," she says. "He's very handsome."

"Aunt."

"I'm only saying, my love. If one is going to commit fraud, one may as well commit it with a profile like that." She lowers the glass. "Do you know what to call a duke, young man?"

"Your Grace."

"A duke's younger son?"

You hesitate.

"Lord First Name," she says. "A baronet's wife?"

"I don't know, madam."

"Lady Surname. Never Lady First Name, or the whole room will know you were raised in a barn." She smiles at you, entirely kind. "Which I gather you were. We'll fix it. Sit. Hold this teacup. No. As if it were a bird, not a hammer."

She knows. Of course she knows. Evadne told her the first night, because nobody can run a fraud of this size without a chaperone in on it. What startles you is that she doesn't seem to mind.

"I've met the Duke of Stratherne," she says, when you ask. "I'd rather my niece married a horse. You're the next best thing."

You learn fast because you've always learned fast; nobody ever thought to teach you anything but horses.

By the fifth day you can bow so that Lamotte merely sighs instead of weeping. You know which fork. You know that you never ask a lady about her health, her age or her income, and that you can ask a gentleman about his horses until the sun goes down. You learn the country dances, which are mostly a matter of not walking into people. You learn to say "Northumberland" as if it bores you.

The waltz is another matter.

"Non, non, non." Lamotte stops the fiddle on the seventh day. "You hold her as if she is a sack of oats."

"I'm trying not to hold her at all."

"That," says Lamotte, "is precisely the problem." He waves the bow. "My lady. You show him. I cannot. He will step on my feet and I am old."

The gallery is long and gold with spring afternoon, portraits of dead Ormonds watching from every wall. Aunt Hermione has fallen asleep in a chair by the fire. Evadne crosses the polished boards toward you in a plain blue morning dress with ink on one cuff, and stops very close.

"Right hand," she says. "On my back. Here." She takes your wrist and places it, just below her shoulder blade. Through the muslin she is warm. "Left hand up. Hold mine. Don't crush it, I write with it."

"You write?"

"Everyone writes, Ethan. Letters." Her eyes slide away from yours. "Now. Lamotte, if you please."

The fiddle starts. One two three. She steps back and you follow, and you're stiff, and she says "Breathe," and you breathe, and the second turn is better.

"You're counting," she says.

"Of course I'm counting."

"Stop. Listen to it the way you listen to a horse. It'll tell you where to go."

You stop counting. You listen. And somewhere on the fourth turn the music stops being numbers and becomes something else: her hand in yours, the floor sliding under you, her skirt brushing your boots, her face tipped up and close.

"There," she says, very quietly. "There you are."

The fiddle goes on. You turn her by the window, and the light goes over her hair.

"Do you remember," she says, "the harvest supper? I was fifteen. I came home from Bath for the summer and Mama was in London, and I danced a jig with you in the barn. In front of the whole estate."

"And your mother heard about it by Tuesday."

"And sent me to my aunt in Bath for the rest of the summer. I told her I didn't care. I told her you danced better than any boy at the Assembly Rooms." Her mouth curves. "That was true, you know. You were terrible at it, and you were still better."

"I'm still terrible at it."

"No, Ethan," she says. "You're not."

The music ends. Neither of you lets go for a moment longer than you should. Then Aunt Hermione snores very loudly, and Evadne steps back, and her cheeks are pink, and she says "Again, Monsieur," to Lamotte in a voice like a door closing.

Zebedee Fettle comes up from his cottage on the last evening. He hasn't climbed the hill to the stables in a year, not since his knees, and he does it now with two sticks and a face like thunder.

"London," he says. He stands in the tack room doorway breathing hard. "Davy says you're going to London. In a gentleman's coat."

"For the Season. For her ladyship. I'll be back by July."

"You'll be back in a box, Ethan." He lowers himself onto the bucket Evadne sat on. He's sixty-six and bandy-legged, white whiskers, and he is the only father you've ever had. "I told your mother I'd keep you out of London."

"You never said that."

"Never had to. You never wanted to go." He fishes in his coat and brings out something small wrapped in a handkerchief. "She asked me to give you this when you were grown. I kept putting it off. Seemed like grown was always next year."

You unwrap it. A gold locket, worn thin at the edges. Inside, under glass, a miniature of a young man with dark hair and a sharp, laughing face. Tucked behind it, a narrow gold ring. Inside the ring, in tiny letters: A.H. to A.T. 1789.

"A.T.," you say. "Annis Thursby."

"That's what she called herself."

"And A.H.?"

Zebedee looks at the stove for a long time.

"She had reasons to hide," he says at last. "Good ones. Rich ones. You go to London with that face, lad, and you be careful who looks at it."

"What does that mean?"

But he's already getting up, grunting, sticks scraping, and he won't say another word except "Mind the bay mare's off fore," on his way out.

You sit with the locket open on your palm. The young man in the miniature laughs up at you. You've seen that jaw before. You've shaved it every morning for ten years.

The latch lifts. Molly Crowle, Evadne's maid, slips in with a shawl over her head and a folded note in her hand.

"From her ladyship," she whispers. "She says she'll wait up for the answer. She says, and I quote, don't you dare be polite."

The seal is still soft. You break it.