How to Cross a Marquess

by Jane Ashford

  Fenella Fairclough entered, followed by her nephew. On this warm day, she wore a simple gown of primrose cambric. She set aside a straw bonnet and a silk parasol, a ray of sun catching her pale-red hair and making it gleam. A pulse of anticipation went through Roger at the idea that he’d soon be lifting her to his shoulder again. She hadn’t lodged any objections to the scene they’d been given. Did that mean she enjoyed it as well? Too much to assume, and yet he found he hoped so.

  Since their conversation outside her father’s room, Roger had strained to remember the encounter she’d described at the Duddo Stones. But try as he might, he got nothing but fragmentary images of the person who’d helped him. He couldn’t make the hazy, fairy-tale figure into Fenella. The fall from his horse must have been a bone-cracker.

  He didn’t remember the sodding-sheep comment at church either. He winced now at the thought of it. What an ass he’d been five years ago! He could remember that, unfortunately. He had an all-too-vivid recollection of his younger self’s sulky arrogance. Which had lasted far longer than it should have. That attitude had brought him down when he’d strutted off to London, thinking he was up to every rig and row in town, and been trapped into marriage like the greenest boy. That had taught him a whole university of painful lessons.

  Colonel Patterson beckoned. Roger moved forward. Fenella came armed with the old broom. “All right,” said the colonel. “Marauding Viking. With the snarl.”

  Roger lunged.

  “And Miss Fairclough, your broom,” commanded Patterson. She swung. Roger flinched and fell. “Better than before,” said the colonel. “Though still lacking ferocity. Inevitable, I suppose.” He sighed like a man who has been given inferior materials to work with. “Now up. Another swipe with the broom, Miss Fairclough. Yes. And you grasp her arms, Chatton.”

  Roger took hold. The cloth of her dress was smooth under his fingers. Her eyes met his from inches away. A lovely color flushed her cheeks.

  “And now you spit at him, Miss Fairclough,” said Colonel Patterson.

  “I forgot.” She managed a half-hearted spit.

  “Weak,” said the colonel. “You did it much better last time.”

  “I could say something to incite you,” murmured Roger, too quietly to be overheard. “Sodding sheep, perhaps.”

  “Beast.”

  “There. Now you can do it.”

  And indeed her second attempt was more convincing. Roger thought he heard a cheer from her young nephew.

  “Right,” the colonel said. “Now over the shoulder and off through the archway.” He sketched the imaginary span of stone with a wide gesture.

  Roger picked her up.

  “Quicker,” said Patterson. “You keep forgetting you’re a desperate raider, Chatton.”

  Light blows fell on Roger’s back from Fenella’s fists. Her feet pumped. The movement of her body under his hands was dizzying.

  Colonel Patterson made a shooing motion. “Go on. Off through the archway. Run if you can. Carefully though. We don’t want accidents.”

  Roger carried his enticing burden a few yards.

  “That’s it.” The colonel waited an instant, then said, “You can put her down now.” Roger did so, sorry their duet hadn’t taken nearly as long this time. “You know the movements,” Patterson added. “Which is more than I can say for some. Just have to put a bit more punch in it, eh? Savage era in our local history. Give it a bit more stick.”

  “Or broom, as the case may be,” said Fenella with a smile.

  “Precisely, Miss Fairclough.”

  Young John Symmes came rushing over to them. “That was tremendous, Aunt Fenella!” he said. “You were as good as a play.”

  Roger thought the boy couldn’t have seen many. He lingered beside Fenella, looking for an excuse to prolong their encounter.

  “Is this the boy for the homily?” asked the colonel.

  Fenella nodded and introduced them.

  “You’ll be listening to the bishop,” Patterson said.

  From this Roger understood that the part of their local saint had been given to the highest-ranking member of the church in the area.

  “Your job is to be silent and humble,” the colonel continued. “You reckon you can do that?”

  John shrugged and nodded.

  “You’ll be wearing a smock slathered with mud. Your hair, too. And no shoes. Have they told you that?”

  Oddly, the boy looked cheered by the idea. He nodded.

  “And about the bucket of water?”

  “Right over my head,” replied John with enthusiasm. “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s it.” Colonel Patterson looked approving. “At the end, you kneel for a blessing. So not very complicated, eh?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No. I don’t think we need to practice that. No one to give a homily anyway. Just be ready on the day, eh?” He turned away to supervise the next bit.

  “There’s Tom,” said Fenella’s nephew. He waved, and the lad ambled over to join them. “Are you taking a part in the play?” John asked him.

  The homely youngster nodded. “One of the Vikings running in the background. I get to wave an ax.”

  “Aren’t you rather young for that?” asked Fenella.

  Tom shrugged. “I wanted a chance to be in a play, and Mr. Benson said some as young as twelve came along in the raiding ships.”

  John looked interested, and Fenella concerned. Roger stepped in to create a diversion. “You’re fond of plays?” he asked Tom. Roger still didn’t know quite what to make of this particular houseguest. But then, he hadn’t given Tom a great deal of thought, his mind being on other things.

  “I am. I been to one in Bristol and then a few in London just lately.”

  “Really?”

  “A…friend of Lord Macklin’s got me in backstage and all. I saw everything.” Tom’s grin was infectious. It was almost enough to distract Roger from his pause before the word friend. Roger wondered if the dignified Lord Macklin had a connection with one of the opera dancers. He couldn’t quite see that, but the arrangement wasn’t uncommon. And you never knew.

  “The painting on the scenery is champion,” Tom continued. “And they have a way of making waves. Looks remarkable like the sea. Men on either side push these rows of carved boards back and forth. It looked real as real from out front.”

  “I don’t think our pageant will measure up to a London theater production,” Fenella said. She was very conscious of Roger at her side. It was as if she could still feel his hands on her. A current of heat seemed to flow from him, as if he was more alive than others in the room. Or as if she was, in his presence.

  “This Lindisfarne place,” said Tom. “You been there?” He looked back and forth from Fenella to Roger. When they both nodded, he said, “I heard the road to it is underwater at high tide.”

  “It is,” said Roger. “You have to take care not to be on it then. And to check the tide times carefully. As well as the weather. There’s a marked path on the causeway.”

  Tom looked intrigued. “Somebody said there’s a walking route over the sand. I’d like to see that.”

  “We should try it!” said John. “We could run ahead of the tide.”

  The excitement in his voice made Fenella uneasy. Perhaps she shouldn’t have involved him in the pageant on Lindisfarne after all. “No,” she said.

  “You have to do it during daylight with someone who has local knowledge,” said Roger, most unhelpfully. “And never during a rising tide, remember.”

  “Don’t encourage him,” said Fenella.

  “I wasn’t. I just said…”

  “Have you walked it?” asked John eagerly.

  Fenella tried to control Roger’s response with a warning look, but of course it didn’t work. He nodded, falsely humble but actually proud, as men so often were ov
er their more reckless exploits.

  “Would you take me across?” John gazed at Roger as if he held the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

  “No,” said Fenella. “Your mother would never permit it.”

  “She wouldn’t know,” John wheedled.

  “She’d find out,” Fenella replied, certain this was true. Greta was like a magpie with information, and she still had friends on the Clough House staff. “Even if she didn’t, I’m aware of her wishes. I forbid it.”

  Her nephew’s face fell into sullen lines. “It’s not fair.”

  Part of Fenella wanted to argue that fairness had nothing to do with it. This was good sense, not injustice. But she knew better than to begin such a dispute.

  “Let’s go and watch the sword fight,” said Tom.

  John perked up at once.

  “It’s from the War of the Roses,” added Tom. “That’s the Lancasters and the Yorks, eh? All killing each other.”

  As he led John away, Fenella wondered where a lad his age had developed the tact of a diplomat, and where one of his purported background had learned English history. She turned to Roger. “You are not to let John persuade you to take him over the causeway,” she said.

  He nodded. “Although I wasn’t much older when I first tried it.”

  “You are not a good example. You were nearly buried alive digging for treasure in the side of a hill.”

  Roger blinked in surprise. “How did you know about that?”

  “Your…gang was the focus of much admiring gossip among the neighborhood children.”

  “We were?”

  “I think you know you were.” She eyed him. “I think you enjoyed it.”

  This won her a sheepish smile. “We brushed through our adventures pretty well.”

  “James Farley broke his arm.”

  “Oh well, yes. He misjudged the strength of a tree branch.”

  “And Alistair Byrne was trampled by one of the heath ponies.”

  “He wasn’t trampled! It was just a kick, and he nearly got onto the pony’s back.”

  “He had a great bruise on the side of his face. I remember it.”

  “You should have seen his ribs!”

  “His mother was furious.”

  “But he almost rode a wild pony. Do you know how difficult that is? We all envied him.”

  Fenella could see it now, but at the time she’d been daunted by some of their exploits, even as she envied them. Wild ponies were not the issue, however. “If John was hurt while under my care, my sister would never forgive me.”

  Roger looked thoughtful. “I suppose not. Greta has no sense of humor. None at all.” He grimaced. “Once, I was setting up a prank in the churchyard. A flapping sheet to simulate a ghost, with a rope I could pull to make it fly away. The vicar—you remember that prig Lynch?—he would have run screaming. But Greta caught me at it and tried to blackmail me.”

  Fenella stared at him. “Blackmail?”

  “She wanted me to dance with some friend of hers twice at an assembly. I forget which, or why actually. Was it to make her beau jealous? At any rate, of course I refused.”

  “You didn’t want to dance with her?” Fenella had never heard this story of her oldest sister.

  He shrugged. “I knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. Greta would have me under her thumb if I gave in. So I said no, and she went to my father and told him the whole. And the prank wasn’t even aimed at her.” He sounded as if this still rankled. “Not a forgiving person, your sister Greta.”

  He didn’t know the half of it. And Fenella didn’t intend to tell him. The torments of her youth were past. “And so you will not lose her son in a quagmire.”

  “The sands around Lindisfarne aren’t a quagmire. Well, except for one or two spots where the currents have hollowed them out.”

  “Spots which John would inevitably fall into.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “He has a genius for mishaps. He’s in exile here because—” Fenella bit off the rest of this sentence. Her nephew had confided the story of the unfortunate kitten. He probably wouldn’t want it shared.

  After a moment, Roger said, “I promise not to aid and abet him.”

  The phrase made Fenella smile. “Thank you.” She met his eyes. Their gaze caught and held, as if some urgent communication needed to get through. This had happened at Chatton Castle after her return from Scotland, she remembered. They’d avoided looking at each other ever since. She turned away.

  “I wish I’d met your Scottish grandmother,” he said. “Did she ever come to visit? I don’t remember it if she did.”

  “She and Papa annoy each other,” Fenella replied, surprised at this change of direction. “My mother always went to see her. Why would you want to meet her?”

  “She must be quite exceptional. You became a different person under her tutelage.”

  Fenella appreciated the admiration in his voice. Perhaps too much. But she also felt a spark of resentment. “She wouldn’t agree. She says you can’t change anyone. You can only encourage their true natures to emerge if they’ve been…muffled.”

  “So she saw your passions simmering under the surface?”

  Fenella flushed. Partly with embarrassment, and partly with a sort of forbidden excitement at this perfectly true assessment. She knew the color was visible on her pale skin. If she’d had any doubt, she could judge by the red tingeing Roger’s cheeks.

  “That didn’t come out right,” he said. “That is, I meant no offense.”

  “I’m not offended.” There was no reason not to look at him, she thought. Except the shadow of Arabella, which still wavered between them. What did they owe her memory?

  A shout from behind made her turn. John was hefting a broadsword that was clearly too heavy for him. He tried to swipe the air. The weapon slashed down and nearly took off the tips of his toes. How did boys survive their youth? Fenella wondered as she hurried over to intervene.

  Roger watched her walk across the village hall and take possession of a sword nearly as long as she was. She returned it to its owner with amused confidence and herded her nephew out. Tom trailed after them.

  He wanted to go with them, Roger thought. He wanted to follow Fenella around, talk to her, listen to her. And more than that. His interest in his lovely neighbor, freed from the internal chains he’d put on it, was growing by leaps and bounds. Did she feel the same? He was going to have to ask her before he let things go much further. He could at least be certain that the current version of Fenella would tell him the truth.

  Roger made his way out of the village hall. The Fairclough party, with Tom, was riding away. Fenella managed her spirited horse with easy grace. Years ago, Roger had overheard her father complaining to his own about the burden of three daughters, and the lack of a son. Fairclough had been ridiculously venomous, he thought now. It was no wonder Fenella had been a timorous girl under that weight of disapproval. At the time, Roger hadn’t paid much attention. It was borne in upon him, yet again, what a heedless, self-centered youth he’d been. Was there any way to make up for that now? He found he was determined to try.

  * * *

  Arthur slipped his arms into the evening coat his valet was holding for him. Clayton smoothed it over his shoulders and brushed a speck of lint from the lapel. “I’d be a sartorial shambles without you, Clayton,” said the earl.

  The valet permitted himself a small smile, which warmed a round face that was pleasant rather than handsome and softened his brown eyes.

  Arthur was grateful for the sharp mind and deep well of common sense behind those eyes. The man had been with the earl for more than twenty years, and Arthur valued his canny insights as much as his personal services. Clayton was a valuable sounding board when the earl was working out a course of action. Arthur reasoned better by talking aloud than through introspe
ction. “What do you hear about Miss Fairclough?” he asked now.

  “She seems to be an interesting young lady, my lord. She took over management of the Fairclough estate when she returned from Scotland, as her father is quite ill. Some are happy about that, and others are complaining.”

  Arthur cocked an eyebrow for more information.

  “I’ve heard it suggested that the latter are a ‘gaumless, shiftless lot.’”

  The phrase made the earl smile. “Lady Chatton thinks well of her.” She’d more or less implied that Roger and Miss Fairclough would do well together, and his host’s manner when Miss Fairclough was present seemed to support that opinion. “I think it’s time for us to hatch a plot, Clayton.”

  Clayton didn’t sigh. He would never lower himself to do so. But he gave the impression of a sigh nonetheless.

  Arthur wondered if his valet was missing the round of house parties that usually occupied their summers. He knew Clayton had cronies among his noble friends’ servitors. “Next year we will be back to our customary routines,” he said. But as soon as he spoke, he wondered if he could make such a promise. He was finding this summer so much more satisfying than the last few. “I think,” Arthur added in all honesty.

  Clayton’s answering nod was noncommittal. It was often difficult to decipher what he really thought, Arthur acknowledged. He’d offered more than once to help Clayton into another, more prestigious profession. The man always said he was happy where he was. “More matchmaking, my lord?” the valet said now.

  “Who would have thought it, eh? But in this case, there may be a complication. Their fathers tried to force them to marry a few years ago.”

  “So I have heard,” replied Clayton. “Mrs. Burke, the housekeeper here, is of the opinion that the previous Lord Chatton ought to have known better.”

  “Because?”

  “The present marquess was not a particularly…obedient child.”

  “And what wild young sprig wants to be told who to marry?”