Katie MacAlister: The Trouble With Harry

Harry wished he was dead. Well, perhaps death was an exaggeration, although St. Peter alone knew how long he’d be able to stand up to this sort of continued torture.

“And then what happens?” His tormentor stared at him with eyes that were very familiar to him, eyes that he saw every morning in his shaving mirror, a mixture of brown, grey, and green that was pleasant enough on him, but when surrounded by the lush brown eyelashes of his inquisitor looked particularly charming. And innocent. And innocuous…something the possessor of the eyes was most decidedly not. “Well? Then what happens? Aren’t you going to tell me?”

Harry ran his finger between his neckcloth and his neck, tugging on the cloth to loosen its constricting grasp on his windpipe, wishing for the fifteenth time in the last ten minutes that he had been able to escape capture.

“I want to know!”

Or found another victim to throw to the one who held him prisoner.

“You have to tell me!”

Perhaps death wasn’t such a wild thought after all. Surely if he were to die at that exact moment, he would be admitted into heaven. Surely St. Peter would look upon the deeds he had done for the benefit of others, deeds such as spending fifteen years working as a spy for the Home Office, and grant him asylum. Surely he wouldn’t be turned away from his rightful reward, damned to eternal torment, left to an eternity of hell such as he was in now, a hell dominated by—

“Papa! Then…what…happened?”

Harry sighed and pushed his spectacles high onto the bridge of his nose, bowing his head in acknowledgment of defeat. “After the hen and the rooster are…er…married, they will naturally wish to produce chicks.”

“You already said that,” his thirteen-year-old inquisitor said with the narrowed eyes and impatient tone of one who is through being reasonable. “What happens after that? And what do chickens have to do with my unpleasantness?”

“It’s the process of producing offspring that is related to your unpleasantness. When a mother hen wishes to have chicks, she and the rooster must…er…perhaps chickens aren’t the best example to explain the situation.”

Lady India Haversham, eldest daughter of the Marquis Rosse, tapped her fingers on the table at her side, and glared at her father. “You said you were going to explain the unpleasantness! George says I’m not going to die despite the fact that I’m bleeding, and that it’s a very special time for girls, although I do not see what’s special about having pains in my stomach, and you said you’d tell me and now you’re talking about bees and flowers, and chickens, and fish in the river. What do they have to do with me ?”

No, Harry decided as he looked at the earnest, if stormy, eyes of his oldest child, death was distinctly preferable to having to explain the whys and hows of reproduction — particularly the female’s role in reproduction, with a specific emphasis on their monthly indispositions — to India. He decided that although he had been three times commended by the prime minister for bravery, he was at heart a coward, because he simply could not stand the torture any longer.

“Ask Gertie. She’ll explain it all to you,” he said hastily as he jumped up from a narrow pink chair and fled the sunny room given over to his children, shamelessly ignoring the cries of “Papa! You said you’d tell me!”

“You haven’t seen me,” Harry said as he raced through a small, windowless room that served as an antechamber to his estate office. “You haven’t seen me, you don’t know where I am, in fact, you might just decry knowledge of me altogether. It’s safer that way. Throw the bolt on the door, would you, Temple? And perhaps you should put a chair in front of it. Or the desk. I wouldn’t put it past the little devils to find a way in with only the door bolted.”

Templeton Harris, secretary and man of affairs, pursed his lips as his noble employer raced into the adjacent room.

“What was it this time, sir?” Temple asked as he followed Harry. Weak sunlight filtered through the dingy windows, lighting motes of dust sent dancing in the air by Harry’s rush through the room. “Did McTavish present you with another of his finds? Has Lord Marston decided he wishes to become a blacksmith rather than inherit your title? Are the twins trying to fly from the stable roof again?”

Harry shuddered visibly as he gulped down a healthy swig of brandy. “Nothing so benign. India wished to know certain facts. Woman things .”

Temple’s pale blue eyes widened considerably. “But…but Lady India is only a child. Surely such concepts are beyond her?”

Harry took a deep, shaky breath and leaned toward a window thick with grime. Using his elbow he cleaned a small patch, just enough to peer out into the wilderness that once was a garden. “She might be a child to our minds, Temple, but according to nature, she’s trembling on the brink of womanhood.”

“Oh, those sorts of woman things.”

Harry held out the empty brandy snifter silently, and just as silently Temple poured a judicious amount of smoky amber liquid into it. “Have one yourself. It’s not every day a man can say his daughter has…er…trembled.”

Temple poured himself a small amount and silently toasted his employer.

“I can remember when she was born,” Harry said, as he stared out through the clean patch of glass, enjoying the burn of the brandy as it warmed its way down his throat. “Beatrice was disappointed that she was a girl, but I thought she was perfect with her tiny little nose, and a mop of brown curls, and eyes that used to watch me so seriously. It was like she was an angel, sent down to grace our lives, a ray of light, a beam of sunshine, a joy to behold.” He took another deep breath as three quicksilver shadows flickered across the dirty window, the high, carefree laughter of children up to some devilment trailing after them. Harry flung himself backward, against the wall, clutching his glass with fingers gone white with strain. “And then she grew up and had her woman’s time, and demanded that I explain everything to her. What’s next, Temple, I ask you, what’s next?”

Temple set his glass down in the same spot it had previously occupied, and wiped his fingers on his handkerchief, trying not to grimace at the dust and decay rampant in the room. It disturbed his tidy nature immensely to know that the room had not seen a maid’s hand since they had arrived some three weeks before. “I assume, my lord, that as Lady Anne is now eight years old, in some five years’ time she will be demanding the very same information. Would you not allow a maid to just clean around your books? I can promise you that none of your important papers or items will be touched during the cleaning process. Indeed, I would be happy to tend to the cleaning myself if you would just give me leave—”

Harry, caught up in the hellish thought of having to repeat with his youngest daughter the scene he’d just — barely — escaped, shook his head. “No. This is my room, the one room in the whole house that is my sanctuary. No one but you is permitted in it, not the children, not the maids, no one. I must have someplace that is wholly mine, Temple, somewhere sacred, somewhere that I can just be myself.”

Temple glanced around the room. He knew the contents well enough, he’d had to carry in the boxes of Harry’s books, his estate papers, the small bureau of curios, the horribly muddied watercolors that graced the walls. “Perhaps if I had the curtains washed—”

“No,” Harry repeated, sliding a quick glance toward the window before daring to cross the room to a large rosewood desk covered in papers, scattered quills, stands of ink, books, a large statue of Pan, and other assorted items too numerous to catalog. “I have something else for you to do than wash my curtains.”