Love & Folly

by Sheila Simonson

  "Richard." Emily felt her throat close.

  He frowned up at her with the same uncertainty in his eyes she had seen when she first agreed to marry him.

  She ran to him. "Oh, my dear, I'm so glad you're home."

  He held her tight for a long moment as if to be sure she were solid. When she finally pulled back, she was weeping a little, but she directed the gawping Phillida to bring another cup to the drawing room and led her husband upstairs.

  Richard drank a cup of tea and heard a full report of the children's accomplishments in his absence, and he began to look less harried. He said little beyond what he had already writ.

  Presently Emily's stock of anecdotes ran down, and she looked at him. "Well, Richard, how is it with you?"

  He rubbed his forehead. "Well enough. Sarah is feeling more like herself. She sends you her love."

  "I'm glad of it," she said mechanically. Blast Sarah.

  He toyed with the cup. "Emily, there is no way I can delay telling you this any longer. My mother left me a great deal of property. I'm afraid it is going to change things."

  "She what?"

  "A fortune," he said in tones that were a little too dispassionate.

  A veil of red dropped before Emily's eyes. She had not believed that an angry person literally saw red. "Damn her!" She burst into tears.

  Emily was not given to nerve storms or, indeed, to cursing. Even as she wept her outburst puzzled her. A shocking thing to have said. Richard comforted her, and she let herself be soothed, and apologised when she found her voice. The outward signs of her fury abated. She blew her nose and tidied her gown.

  They went upstairs to the nursery and saw the babies. Tommy read his father two stories when he had stopped frisking about asking for gifts from town. Amy came home from her day school and was kissed and catechised. A large and very beautiful globe of the world was borne upstairs by McGrath, who grumbled and smelt of gin.

  Richard was a gift-giver by temperament. What he chose was almost always the very thing, as far as his children were concerned. Emily thought it a kind of native tact. She wished his mother had been imbued with it. Her anger flared again, and again she bit it back.

  Eventually they left the children and Peggy McGrath to the globe and dinner, and retired to dress for their own meal, which they took rather early now Johnny was gone.

  They dined in fragile silence. Emily's fury smouldered. It was she who had always tried to conciliate, to interpret the duchess charitably to Richard. Now she felt no charity at all.

  It was not that she objected to wealth per se. She was not so quixotic. It would be a blessing not to have to pinch and scrape to assure Tommy's future. The duchess might have achieved that end by leaving Richard a few thousand pounds. That would not been insulting. But a fortune...

  Richard was not careless with words. If he said fortune he meant fortune. Their lives must be changed by such wealth--out of all compass. Emily feared what the changes would be, but most of all she feared for Richard's peace of mind.

  To a remarkable degree for a man of his blood, Richard Falk was a self-made man. He had been cut off from the Ffouke family and his mother at twelve and shoved into the army at fifteen. Anything he achieved thereafter had been by his own efforts, for he heard nothing from his mother and had nothing of her, except, ironically, a statement that he was illegitimate, in the years that followed. He made his own life apart.

  Now, when he could have no human relationship with his mother, she had chosen to shower him with favour--and favour of the sort he would find most baffling. Richard's experience of great wealth had been wholly negative. He was no Leveller and did not despise the modest prosperity of Emily's family, but he had excellent reason to mistrust the power of wealth. His half brother, Newsham, had used it to persecute him.

  And so, wholly unprepared, Richard had had similar wealth thrust upon him. Emily thought he must be frightened and oppressed, and she was powerless to comfort him.

  They retired early in near silence and lay for a time side by side. Finally Emily said, "I'm civil now. I think you'd better explain."

  She did not interrupt as he outlined the nature of the estate the duchess had bequeathed him. He spoke dryly, almost like a man of law.

  When he finished she lay staring at the canopy, turning the bizarre legacy over in her mind. "It's far too much."

  "Yes. I directed her grace's man of business--he is now my man of business--to seek probate. As the will is publick record, or will be shortly, you may expect speculation from your acquaintances and importunities from tradesmen when the news reaches Winchester."

  He sounded grim.

  "My father..."

  "I must write Sir Henry. Perhaps you ought to go to him for a time, Emily."

  "And leave you here alone? I should say not!" She propped herself on one elbow and squinted at him in the darkness. "I wonder you would suggest such a thing."

  He gave a muffled snort of laughter and pulled her to him. "Ah, God, Emily, promise me you won't change."

  She touched his face. "Why should I? I married you for better or worse, as I recall."

  "You do understand that wealth of this order is not an unmixed blessing?"

  "The idea freezes my marrow. I'm a plain country woman."

  He kissed her fingers. "A countrywoman perhaps. Plain, no. I didn't bring you a gift, Emily. It wasn't for lack of thought."

  "You may buy me a blue velvet bonnet. With swansdown trim.".

  He laughed shakily. "I love you."

  "Two blue velvet bonnets." She wriggled against him. "And I shall buy you a stickpin with an amber head to match your eyes. There, we've disposed of your wealth. I'm glad you're home, Richard. I turn crotchety and notional the minute you go out the door. It is probably advancing age."

  He was able to reassure her that there was life in her old bones yet.

  The idea that she was now the wife of a very wealthy man began to sink in gradually over the next few days.

  * * * *

  It rained for a week, thawing the last patches of snow that had lain like pale shadows under the Brecon beeches. Now a freshening March wind dried the footpaths and everyone could escape the prison of the house. The four young people went for a walk--only as far as the lake because the sky promised blustering showers--but the air that whipped against Maggie's cheeks held out a hint of spring warmth.

  She matched her steps to Johnny Dyott's slow pace, though her impulse was to run like a colt down to the lakeside. Jean and Owen had already gained the water's edge where tame ducks bobbed among the reeds. Jean's Irish setter and Maggie's red bitch, Una, frisked and yipped at the ducks. It was a day for running wild.

  "Shall you ride tomorrow, Maggie?" Jean, optimistic of good weather, was planning a horseback tour of the grounds, so Johnny's question sounded wistful to Maggie. The surgeon had forbidden him to ride.

  She tore her gaze from her sister and the poet, and smiled at him. "I thought to, but I'm no horsewoman. Perhaps Jem will ride off Joybell's quirks before I have to mount her."

  "Joybell." Johnny shook his head.

  Maggie flushed. "At the time it seemed like the right name. We had just come here from Scotland, Jean and I. We were only thirteen and, well, joyful. Glad to be here," she added, anxious to clarify herself. "And not in fusty Lochnald with Kitty. Elizabeth said we might name our mounts." She grinned. "I daresay my choice involved a touch of magic."

  "Like calling the fates the kindly ones?" Johnny leaned on his stick. "Are you afraid of horses?"

  "No, but I am afraid of falling off."

  He laughed, and they resumed their slow progress. "I take it your sister has no such apprehensions."

  "No, and she can drive the gig like a coachman, too. Jean is much braver than me." Maggie swallowed the lump in her throat. It was beginning to wear on her that both gentlemen found Jean interesting. Maggie had no desire for the poet's homage, but she wished she could do something--leap a three-barred gate, perhaps--to merit Johnny'
s interest. But Joybell would balk at the gate. And so would I, Maggie reflected ruefully.

  A gust of wind tossed the black ribbands of her bonnet. Johnny clutched at his hat brim. Jean and the poet had already reached the arch of the graceful bridge that spanned the lake at its narrowest point. They were deep in conversation. The poet's fair hair ruffled in the wind and he was gesturing with his right hand. Reciting again?

  Yipping and panting, the two red setters left off teasing the ducks and bounded back up the slope. Maggie took a breath. "No! Down, Una. Bad dog, Tom!"

  "Why is he called Tom?"

  "Clanross gave us the dogs for our fifteenth birthday, so Jean called hers after him. That was when she was in love with Clanross," Maggie said absently. Then she heard her words. She bit her lip and wished she hadn't mentioned her twin's calf love. She felt too comfortable talking to Johnny.

  Johnny said nothing.

  Maggie watched the two dogs whirl off, chasing each other across the spongy turf. After a moment, she bent and flicked mud from the skirt of her grey pelisse. "You heard from my brother-in-law yesterday, didn't you? How does the election go?"

  Johnny swung into motion. "Well enough, except in Minchampton. They've been polling three days and that seat is hotly contested." He reached a stone bench at the lakeside and sank onto it. "I wish I might help with the canvassing."

  "I wish you might, too," Maggie said with shameless untruth. She was glad he was at Brecon. "Do you mean to try for a parliamentary career some day?"

  He gave a short laugh. "I'd like to."

  "Why should you not?"

  "I've no experience." He dug the tip of his stick into the damp gravel. "Clanross did say he would find something for me on the hustings, but that was before I broke my blasted shin."

  Maggie sat beside him. "There will be other elections."

  "Not for years," Johnny said glumly. "I'm twenty-five and no farther along than I was when I came down from Oxford."

  "Surely that's not..." Maggie bit her lip again. What did she know of politicks? He would be thinking her a thrusting sort of female.

  "Not what, Maggie?"

  She faced him, hot with embarrassment. "Not entirely true. You have Clanross's interest."

  "But I'm his private secretary. Barney Greene deals with political matters."

  "That's true now, but in a year or so things will be different. Mr. Greene talks of retiring to his manor, and I daresay there will be a by-election, and..."

  Johnny was smiling at her. "You have it all planned out."

  "I'm s-sorry, Johnny. It's just that I'm interested."

  "That's kind of you, Lady Margaret."

  She looked away, sure she had offended him. He had been calling her Maggie all morning.

  Jean and Owen had crossed the length of the bridge and were now coming back. They stopped again in mid-span, and the poet flung out his arm in a gesture that embraced the grounds and the house, and all he surveyed, probably.

  "I wonder what he is declaiming now?" Johnny murmured.

  "He is writing an anthem for the ploughmen of England."

  Johnny made a rude noise in his throat.

  "It's very stirring." Maggie felt obliged to champion her sister's beloved. "So far. He has completed stanzo three."

  "Good luck to him."

  "Do you not like poetry?"

  "I like it well enough. I used to write it. I was up at Oxford with a chap who wrote wild inflammatory verse. He and Owen egged one another on. Then old Shelley was sent down for writing an atheistical pamphlet or some such nonsense."

  "Why was it nonsense? Was it badly written?"

  After a pause, Johnny said, "I daresay I'm envious. It's been years since I felt so strongly in a cause."

  Maggie cocked her head at him. "You speak as if you were as old as Barney Greene."

  He didn't smile. "Sometimes I think I am."

  "When did you feel that way?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "As Owen feels and your atheistical friend."

  He jabbed at the gravel. "When I was sixteen I was wild to defeat Napoleon. Preferably in single combat."

  "You went out to the Peninsula, did you not? That must have been an adventure."

  He gave a snort. "Oh, yes, a grand adventure. My father thought I was too young, but I pleaded and threatened to enlist in a line regiment, so he bought me a pair of colours. I thought I'd be a colonel in no time, all medals and sidewhiskers."

  Maggie smiled.

  He looked at her and his mouth twitched. "I was a cawker. I went to the Peninsula before my seventeenth birthday. I spent the entire voyage seasick at the rail of the ship. I should have read that as an omen."

  "Clanross claims he is always seasick."

  "Not on land," Johnny rejoined. "I fell ill the day we disembarked, and I stayed ill off and on the entire six months I was with the regiment. I was no use to anyone."

  "You couldn't help that," Maggie said reasonably. "I daresay you tried to do your duty."

  "Oh, yes, I tried." He gave a sigh. "In the end--after Vittoria--my colonel told me to take myself home. I never so much as drew my sword on duty."

  "You were in my brother's company, were you not?"

  "Yes, and he was all that was kind, but there's no room on campaign for malingering seventeen-year-old ensigns."

  "Malingering!"

  He grimaced. "I felt like a Belem Ranger. That's what the troops called men who were always reporting in sick. The main hospital was in Belem. So I sailed for home with my tail between my legs like a whipped cur. And sold out, and went to university as I ought to have done in the first place. My father was right. He usually is."

  "I think you had to try," Maggie ventured.

  "Perhaps." He stood up. "I believe Davies has finally run out of strophes. Shall we rejoin your sister?" He pointed with his stick. Jean gave a wave from the near end of the bridge. Her cheeks were bright from the brisk wind.

  Maggie rose. The ornamental bench was rather clammy. "You had to try," she repeated, stubborn in Johnny's defence. She brushed at the damp spot on her pelisse.

  He glanced at her, frowning a little. "Yes. And I'm not sorry I did, but I've lost my enthusiasm for causes. And that would make me a doubtful asset in Parliament."

  "Not if you did your duty. My sister Anne's husband is a member of Parliament. He works very hard. Anne says he does a great deal of good, and he doesn't write revolutionary verse."

  Johnny laughed. "That's encouraging. Your sister is a famous political hostess, is she not? Clanross once took me to her salon."

  "Anne loves politicks. Elizabeth calls her the Muse of the Radicals."

  He was still. "Should you like to be a famous hostess, Maggie?"

  Maggie felt her cheeks go hot. "Jean would do much better than I."

  "Now what is this? I daresay you would do splendidly. You oughtn't to defer to Lady Jean in everything, you know."

  "If that isn't a case of the pot calling the kettle black! You've spent the past half hour telling me how you can't do things. You can take up politicks. You can stand for Parliament," Maggie cried, vexed. "You can do anything you put your mind to. After all, you taught me to dance!"

  Johnny laughed aloud. "And if I can do that I can do anything?"

  Maggie knew her face was as red as her hair. "I think so."

  He shifted the stick to his left hand. "Let us make a pact, Lady Margaret. If you won't always be telling me how much braver and cleverer your sister is, I shan't say my political hopes are a lost cause." He held out his gloved hand.

  "Done." They shook hands solemnly.

  "What are you doing? Laying a bet?" Jean had come within hailing distance. "Wait till you hear what Owen has writ!"

  "Have you finished your anthem, Owen?" Maggie retied her mourning ribbands. "Do say it for us."

  The poet's green eyes flashed. "So Dyott may compare me unfavourably to Byron? No, I thank you. I like an appreciative audience."

  Johnny's lip curl
ed. "Do you mean a captive audience?"

  "By God!"

  Johnny raised an eyebrow.

  The poet turned away grumbling under his breath. Jean glowered. Maggie knew they would all hear the poem after dinner.

  In the interests of peace, she intervened. "Isn't that rain I feel on my face? Let's go in." An obliging gust spattered them with raindrops. She led the way thankfully.

  9

  "Papa!" Emily hoped her dismay was not writ on her face.

  "Answering your own door again, eh? Very bad Ton, Emma."

  "I'm sorry, Papa. I was in the hall."

  Sir Henry Mayne removed his round hat, shook the rain from it, and gave Emily a hearty kiss on the cheek. "Well, slyboots, where's the heir?"

  Emily took his hat, gloves, and sopping greatcoat and handed them to Phillida who had lurched into the foyer with her usual grace. "The heir?" Emily echoed, stalling for time. "If you mean Matthew, he is at his school."

  "Matthew? What the devil has young Matt to do with anything?" Sir Henry rubbed his hands. "I mean your husband, my gel, and well you know it."

  "Richard is at work on his history. Pray come up to the withdrawing room, Papa. You must be starved with cold."

  "Not at all. Spring in the air."

  "But your horses--"

  "Left the carriage at the Mitre. Took a room there."

  "You might have had the guest chamber here. Mr. Dyott has gone up to Town and we've room to spare."

  Sir Henry rocked back on his sturdy bootheels. "Nonsense. In this poky house?" It had not suited him to see his daughter reduced to living in a town, and he made no bones about despising the house. "Doesn't Richard write in that chamber?"

  "Well, yes, but--"

  "No need to put him to the trouble of moving his gear. I'll be snug enough at the Mitre."

  Emily grasped the newell. "I shan't insist that you sleep here, but you will take dinner."

  Sir Henry followed her. "Certainly. Mean to have a strait talk with your husband."

  "Phillida, refreshment for Sir Henry, if you please." The maid curtseyed from the foot of the stair. She. was goggle-eyed with curiosity.