My Sweet Folly

by Laura Kinsale

  “Well done!” the doctor cried. “An excellent diversion.”

  Lander began laughing. “You’ll end up with a teapot in your lap, sir!”

  “Serve him right,” Folie said darkly. “He’ll end up with it over his head if he doesn’t take care!”

  But Robert only smiled at her, a tender look that sent a shaft of pleasure through her, as sharp as the cutting barb of a moment before. She could not fathom his trick, though clearly he could not accomplish it until she had sat down again, but it was not the teapot legerdemain that disturbed her. It was the trickery he seemed to practice with such ease on her heart.

  “Here, ma’am,” the conjurer said, producing a paper scrawled with strange symbols. “He must practice these hand signals—you’ll oblige me by seeing that he’s mastered them by tonight.”

  “Yes, sir,” Folie said.

  The lighthearted spirit among the men at breakfast had diverted Folie’s mind from danger, but Robert had soon disabused her of any naive hope that things were normal. He vetoed any suggestion that might take her out of doors, even into the back garden, and she was to be at home to no callers whatsoever. She had spent the greater part of the day with a candle in the darkened drawing room, trying to write an announcement and explanatory letter to Melinda that did not sound entirely deranged.

  Now, waiting for them to return from Lord Morier’s annual race-dinner held in honor of the horse he would be running in the Derby, Folie could not keep her attention on anything, not book or letter or London paper. She could only think of watching Robert and Lander leaving, slipping out of the back of the house under cover of darkness, and a loud altercation between the porter and a footman, created by intention at the front door.

  They had not said when they would return. Folie sat on the edge of the chair, chiding herself. Over time she had forgotten some of the key habits of being a wife—one must be sure to inquire after the most mundane information. She promised herself that she would not begin to worry until after midnight, but in fact she began to worry as soon as they left the house. She could not shed the image of Robert pulling a gun from beneath his coat. She knew that he must have it with him now.

  The clock struck half past twelve. Folie peeked between the curtains. The traffic in the street below had lessened through the evening hours—now it had picked up again, guests beginning to return to their homes from the theater or progress to the next ball or late supper.

  Lord Morier’s dinner would become a bachelor party, she told herself. They might not be home until 2 a.m. at the earliest—the gentlemen would sit about and drink and smoke and talk of horses until very late. They might play cards. Lord Morier was a notorious gambler, though he was wealthy enough to afford his losses.

  Folie tried to focus her mind on something innocuous. The Dingley girls. It was certainly an interesting piece of information that Lander had dropped about Lord Morier calling at Cambourne House and finding himself in the nursery. Folie and Melinda had mulled it over at length, although Melinda said she had been so much beside herself that she did not even know His Lordship had called.

  Unfortunately, thinking of the Dingley girls brought her directly to thinking about Sir Howard. Robert had not seemed to take her worries very seriously. Folie remembered how Sir Howard had come here to Cambourne House late one night. She frowned, looking about the room, trying to recollect the details of what he had said, how he had acted. She had not felt well; she only recalled being annoyed that he would not go away. But had he not seemed guilty and distracted? He must have been planning even then to betray Robert to his enemies.

  Yet, he could not have known Folie would write to him. She had not even known she would herself, until she had done it. He must simply have taken advantage of the chance when it came.

  She pulled a piece of paper from the secretary, intending to try to transcribe what she could recall of their conversation. But the more she thought of it, the more it seemed Sir Howard had mostly been mooning about his wife and imagining a flock a gentlemen admirers ready to elope with Lady Dingley.

  How absurd it all was. The man was clearly in love with his wife; his wife was in love with him. And yet, given half a chance, they hardly seemed to keep to the same house—instead dragooning poor innocent bystanders like Folie into conducting their affairs for them. And where did she end up for her trouble? In a prison hulk.

  No matter how hard she tried, she could not quite imagine Sir Howard as a hardened villain, lying to her and fabricating deliberately on that late-night visit. For one thing, she had never known a gentleman to lie about love. Of course, she had not known many gentlemen all that well. Only her elderly uncles and Charles, none of whom had been in any state of visible ardor in all the time she had known them.

  She supposed, when she thought of it, that there was nothing to prevent a man from lying on the topic. Ladies certainly fibbed about love with relish. Out of self-defense, really. Would Folie, for instance, declare her true feelings about Robert to his face? Of course she would not.

  Sitting in the stillness of the empty room, Folie came to a slow realization. It was not something so astonishing, and yet she had not ever directly considered it before. Robert’s strange behavior—his kisses and sudden irritations and faltering, his cutting sarcasm and impulsive tenderness—and last night...last night...

  Folie bit her lip. Why did a lady lie about love? To protect herself. To bluff. To make sure that she did not overplay her hand and end up with nothing. Folie herself had lied—had been lying, to him and to herself, since the day she had received his last letter, declaring to herself that she had no interest in love, that she would never fall in love again, but only cared for practical things. When all along she had kept that secret passion in her heart.

  It seemed an imminently feminine tactic. Everyone knew about it; almost expected it—in fact Folie was not sure, when she thought back, that she had not had a lesson in “a lady’s natural modesty” from her governess that had strongly encouraged her, for her own good, to deliberately obscure her sentiments. And yet somehow gentlemen were supposed to be perfectly straightforward and honorable about their devotion.

  But why should such an expedient be confined to ladies? Why, after all, could Robert not lie quite as well—or as badly—as she?

  She was deep in fascinated speculation on the point when the doorbell gave a muffled ring. Folie jumped up. But she had hardly opened the drawing room door when she saw Robert already coming up the back stairs. He paused, seeing her, and smiled—holding up his hand in a gesture to wait. She heard the front door close, wafting a breath of cool air through the hall. He leaned over the stair rail and beckoned.

  Lander came bounding lightly up the front stairs. They were both grinning like idiots, walking about the passage, opening doors, looking inside each room and closing it again.

  “Up here, mes amis.”

  Folie jerked her head up. She saw a man standing at the head of the next flight of stairs. He wore a sky-blue coat and froths of lace, skintight primrose pantaloons that matched his gloves, and a huge diamond at his throat. His hair was curled and oiled under a prim little tricorne hat. Rouge pinkened his cheeks.

  Folie could smell eau de jasmine from where she stood. His sideburns were so extravagant that they nearly met under his chin. She apprehended, logically, that this was the doctor, but if she had not known he was to be transformed to a French dandy, she would not have recognized him at all.

  Robert shook his head. “I’ll find out where you’re breaking and entering, you old rogue,” he said. “I swear. Come down to the drawing room.”

  The man tripped lightly down the stairs. He swept an extravagant bow before Folie. “Eugene, L’Comte d’Aulaye, madame,” he said, kissing her hand and adding a compliment in French.

  Folie’s French—never very useful in Toot—had grown extremely rusty. “Merci,” she said, with a curtsy. “There, you have exhausted my vocabulary.”

  “That is fortunate, madam,” he said,
“for I just told you that you have married a man born for the gallows.”

  “How gratifying!” she said, as they entered the drawing room. “I presume that he made teapots fly across St. James Street in both directions?’’

  “Port decanters,” Robert said with a smug grin.

  “Oh, good. Perhaps you can coax a tray of sweet biscuits to walk itself up from the kitchen.”

  “I’ll fetch some refreshment,” Lander said, belatedly recalling that he was a butler.

  Folie trimmed a candle for brightness and sat down. “Tell me all about it. I’ve been sitting here clutching my bosom and supposing you were in peril of your life, while you have been commanding brooms to dance the polonaise.”

  “I wish you could have been there!” Robert said. He did not sit down, but walked about the room. He had a buoyancy about him, as if he glowed with a dark, jubilant light.

  Folie could not help smiling. “It went very well, I see.”

  “The great comte could not catch me out, not for all his science,” Robert said. He cast a glance at Aulaye. “Though I had a bad moment when I saw that tablecloth at dinner.”

  The comte shrugged. “They would have taken it away before the port, but I thought it well to spill my claret, just to make sure.”

  Folie had an enlightenment. “Why, did you use the wood to slide things upon?’’ She drew a breath and sat up straight. “Yes! You tilted the table to make the teapot slide! You could not do it while I was leaning on it!”

  “God save us from witty women,” the comte said in amusement.

  “But—but...why did the other things not move, then? And I could not see you lift it—your hands were free.”

  “We must retain some secrets, my love,” Robert said.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Did you do it with your knee?”

  “Really, it was the least part of the evening,” Robert said, glancing at his confederate. “I thought my debate with you upon Indian philosophy was more effective.”

  “Ah, yes,” the comte mused, sitting back and steepling his hands.

  “Only by looking on the world as maya,” Robert intoned solemnly, “as illusion, vanity, deceptive appearance, can we approach the face of the Divine.”

  “Whatever that may mean,” the comte said with disgust. “Give me a rousing demonstration of animal magnetism, if you please.”

  “Animal magnetism—it’s only another word for what the mystics know as kundalini, the power of the serpent that coils at the base of the spine. But what use is to be made of it? Your scientific investigations, your skepticism, your discoveries—that’s quite well, but all this has been known for ten thousand years to the East. It is the use of this power that must concern us—the human potential for evil, the political consequences—most certainly if untaught Europeans are to discover how to wield it before they understand the cost. I shudder to imagine the consequences.”

  Aulaye inclined his head. “A nice detour, sir—away from the skeptical question to the consequences of misusing a power. To suggest political implications...that may make them concentrate a little.”

  Robert chuckled. “My finest moment.”

  “Did anyone seem to show a particular interest?” Lander asked, coming in with a tray of tea and three wineglasses. “Who was there? I saw Effingham and Tom Pethering go in, and the Duke of Kent’s carriage was waiting outside all evening.”

  “There must have been forty at the table,” Robert said. “Morier at the head, Kent on his right, Alvanley on his left—”

  “Write them down,” the comte said. “We’ll go down each side—I think we can recover them all.”

  “I’ll write.” Folie took a seat at the secretary where her pen and ink was still set out. “The Duke of Kent,” she said. “One of the Prince Regent’s brothers? There are so many, I never got them straight.”

  “Number four of seven,” Lander said. “He and the prince are like cats and dogs. Whatever the regent may do or think, Kent will go his length the opposite direction. Does Prinnie show himself a Tory, then Kent goes to the Whigs. Or worse.”

  Robert gave him a long look. “That is interesting.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “What is worse than the Whigs?” Robert mused.

  “The radicals,” Lander and the comte both said at once.

  “Perhaps you should make a note of that, sweet Folly,” Robert said. “Who was seated next to Kent?”

  As Robert and the comte went down the list, Lander added comments and asked questions about the reaction of each man. Folie took a memorandum, nibbling on sesame seed cakes and sipping tea. Late into the night they worked, until she had ten pages of closely written lines, and the clock chimed half past three.

  “Mrs. Cambourne must be wearied to the bone,” the false count declared, draining his wineglass and standing up. “When do you wish me to return?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon will do,” Robert said. “Lander and I will go over this list and single out the most interesting targets.”

  The comte bowed. “Until tomorrow, then. Mrs. Cambourne, I bid you good night.”

  Folie and Robert walked upstairs in companionable conversation. His mind seemed still intent on the evening’s success—he easily answered her question about the next stage of their strategy. To Folie’s surprise, he did not leave her on the landing, but followed her into her bedchamber in the midst of a sentence about the nuisance of gaining an invitation to the regent’s upcoming levee.

  They both paused inside. Folie saw him realize where he was; he hesitated for an instant and then walked forward, sitting down on her dressing table bench. “Have you been to one of the drawing rooms?” he asked casually.

  Folie closed the door. She did not really know what else to do, as he appeared to intend to remain, at least for the moment. “Yes, it was the first charge upon us. So that Melinda would be ‘out’ in Society, you know.”

  “Ah. Of course.” He picked up a small hair comb from her dressing table and made it vanish, opening his empty palm.

  Folie smiled. “You are worse than a child.”

  He closed his fist again, and opened it magically on the comb. “Come here. Give me your hand.”

  She went to him and held out her palm. He placed his fist over it. Something fell into her hand—not the comb— but a tiny carved elephant of ivory.

  “That is for you,” he said.

  Folie touched it. She turned the small piece over and bit her lip. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “I have trunk loads of that rubbish.”

  She held it in her lap, sitting against the edge of the high bed. “Perhaps it’s an enchanted talisman.”

  “No, don’t say that. It’s too easy to lose the boundary between conjuring and enchantment.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe everything has gone so well. It’s as if nothing can go wrong.”

  “Are you worried?”

  “No. Only about you. For me—I don’t know, it’s all rather...” He hesitated. “Lander and the magician—I don’t even know his real name. They’re good men. We work well together. It’s as if...” He seemed to search for words, then opened his hands apologetically. “You know, I’ve never before had anything like this.”

  Folie tilted her head. “Like this?”

  “L’esprit de corps, I suppose,” he said. “That’s what the army calls it.”

  “All this French! My head is spinning.”

  “Comradeship. Pulling together. Good fellows; they depend on you, you depend on them.” He shook his head, as if it bewildered him. “It’s dangerous enough, what we’re up to—but my God, I had not realized...it is fun.” He lifted his face. “In truth, I enjoy it.”

  “You like the danger?”

  “No. Not the danger itself, so much. That is just—spice. The thing that makes it happen. What pulls us together. Tonight, when we all stayed while you wrote out the notes—” He shrugged, turning to look into the cold fireplace. “I liked that.”

  Folie watched him
, saying nothing. It was like watching a wild fox come out of the woods—she did not wish to startle him away by her response. He made a coin appear between his fingers, staring absently into space.

  “I suppose I’ve been rather a solitary fellow in my life,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  He looked up at her, as if that surprised him. Then he grimaced. “I wrote you about it.”

  “Knight errants must be solitary on their journeys.”

  “Ah, Folly.” He sighed deeply. “When do they end, these journeys?”

  Their eyes met and glanced away. Folie felt that they had tread onto quaking ground, that in a moment she would betray her own little secret by blurting out the words to him.

  “They end when you come to a halt, I suppose!” she said brightly. She turned to the bed and slid her hand beneath the cushions. “I’ll keep the elephant under my pillow. Perhaps it’s not enchanted, but one can never be too prudent.” She faced him again, backed against the bed. “Good night, my dear friend.”

  “Yes.” He stood up, looking at the floor and the bed and the dressing table, everywhere but at her. “Good night, Folly. Sleep well.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Robert felt as if he had caught himself in his own snare. He spent his days in mastering tricks and sleight of hand, his evenings in illusion, and his nights burning. Twice he had gone to Folie’s bed, waking her and kissing her—gone that far, and known that if he went any further he would not be able to stop short of completion. So he had left.

  It was supposed to be enticing her. Instead, it seemed to be merely driving him out of his mind. She welcomed his advances and calmly accepted his retreats. She did not complain, she did not grow irritable as he remembered he had done with Phillippa when she had teased him beyond endurance.

  In the daytime, he could put it from his mind, in the same manner he had always put Phillippa away, forgot her while he was free to wander outside the sucking marshes of her will. Folie he did not have to forget in quite that way—in fact he liked having her about him; sitting at the secretary or the breakfast table scribbling down notes, asking questions, and making her whimsical remarks. In the midst of their most serious speculations, she would mutter some odd and entertaining thing, and he and Lander and the conjurer would smile covertly at one another over her bent head.