Love & Folly

by Sheila Simonson

  Tom closed the door behind him. "Sorry. I'm off to the City. Do you need a ride to the Middle Temple?"

  "Not this morning, thanks."

  "What the devil is that contraption?" He peered at the lectern. "You look as if you meant to deliver a sermon."

  Richard set his pen aside. "Lady Clanross found me scrunched over the escritoire the other day and decided I ought to compose standing upright. So she rummaged in the attics and came up with this. It does the trick very neatly. You're married to a woman of resource."

  Tom inspected the lectern. "I wish I might have seen Elizabeth sweeping through the attics. The lumber up there has probably not been disturbed since the reign of George II."

  "It was kind of her ladyship to think of it. I'm working faster now. How are your equally resourceful sisters-in-law?"

  "Maggie still keeps to her bed. I understand you lavished Walter Scott's latest on them. Is it wise to reward felonious misconduct with three-volume novels?" He pulled a chair and sat on it backwards.

  Richard looked mildly guilty. "I thought Lady Jean seemed downhearted at dinner the evening of the great debacle. Do you object?"

  Tom raised his eyebrows. "I? No, though I hope the twins conduct their next adventure in a less publick arena. I wonder why they aimed for the stews of Soho? Can they know...?"

  "Nonsense. They're innocent as a pair of downy ducks."

  "Then I fear for the nation when they feather out." He squinted at his friend who was leaning on the lectern. "I think you're taken with them."

  Richard flushed. "They remind me of Isabel."

  "I see." Doña Isabel was Richard's first wife.

  "She was not much older than they when I wed her."

  Or very much older when she died, Tom reflected. He had admired Doña Isabel. "Do you think of her often?"

  "Every time I see her face in Tommy or her spirit in Amy," Richard said quietly. Both men fell silent, remembering.

  "What a long time ago it seems," Tom said at last. "How do your legal affairs progress?"

  Richard grimaced. "Slower than a commissary's waggon. My solicitor holds out hope of avoiding a chancery suit."

  "At what cost?"

  "At whatever cost. I cannot keep Emily in limbo forever." Richard's mouth eased in a slight smile. "Not that Mayne Hall is the antechamber of Hell, but she can't be comfortable sparring with her father all the time."

  "Bring her to Brecon," Tom said impulsively. "Oh, not just yet. In the summer, when you've finished your history. I'd like to show Emily an estate in the neighbourhood."

  Richard looked doubtful.

  "If you don't find a place for her, your father-in-law will."

  Richard grinned. "He has already found four. 'Not a day's ride from home,'" he quoted in palpable imitation of a gruff country squire, "'and everything handsome about them.'"

  Tom laughed. "Then spirit Emily off to Lincolnshire. She'll like Hazeldell--that's the estate I mean to show her--and your Harry and Sally may bump noses with my boys in the nursery."

  "A brigade of infantry," Richard mused. "It's a thought, Tom, but I'd not like to burden Lady Clanross. She has her hands full as it is."

  Tom rose. "She does, but as you pointed out she is a woman of infinite resource."

  As he rode to the City through the noisy but no longer riotous streets, Tom wondered what he had wrought. Elizabeth would be working at her telescope. She always did so in summer, and he disliked interrupting her scientific endeavours. Thrusting total strangers upon her would not be a kindness, given her uneasiness about the girls. But he thought Elizabeth would take to Emily Falk, and Emily, he was sure, would find the twins enormously entertaining. Both sets.

  14

  Johnny and Colonel Falk had been pent in the book room for a week, the colonel working away at his history and Johnny bringing correspondence for the Canadian charity up to date. Colonel Falk tossed the letter he had been reading on the table and walked to the book room window. "Emily and her father have come to cuffs over McGrath." He raised the sash and a draught of balmy air disturbed Johnny's papers.

  Johnny laid a book on the stack of letters. "McGrath? Is he drinking again?" McGrath had struck Johnny as a hardened toper. Scarcely the manservant for a genteel household.

  Falk leaned against the frame of the window, staring down into the Square. The weather was exceptionally fine. "It seems McGrath and Dassett--that's Sir Henry's coachman--have been testing each other's capacity for Blue Ruin belowstairs every night. Sir Henry wants McGrath's head on a platter."

  "I daresay you don't like to dismiss McGrath because of his wife." Pegeen McGrath was the children's, nurse.

  Falk said coolly, "I don't want to dismiss McGrath because he served me faithfully for thirteen years."

  "Oh. Was he your bâtman?"

  "More than that." Falk sounded as if he might, for once, launch into reminiscence, but he didn't. After a moment he closed the window, turned, blinking, and came back to the table. His lectern reposed at one end and Johnny sat at the other.

  The colonel began to mend his pen, He made an awkward business of it, and Johnny wondered if he ought to help.

  Before he could rise, Falk had dipped the pen in the inkwell and struck out a line. "I'll have to think of something for Jerry. Have you had your fill of publick executions?" Johnny had risen at dawn that morning, which was May Day, to witness the execution of Thistlewood and the chief Cato Street conspirators. The colonel had declined to join him.

  "I left before the hangman did his work," Johnny confessed.

  "Wise man."

  "It was shocking--the crowd, I mean. Some of them were respectable people."

  Falk's lip curled.

  "Well-dressed families," Johnny said indignantly, "men and women and children, gossiping and chatting as if they were at a picnic."

  "I hear the more advantageous posts of observation went for half a crown."

  "More. Much more."

  "It must have been a great consolation to Thistlewood to know his end met with genteel applause. Such is civilisation."

  "My father," Johnny offered, "says spectacles of that sort are a salutory deterrent to crime."

  Falk frowned. "Have you ever witnessed a flogging?"

  "No."

  "I was compelled to in India. My colonel marched us out in hollow square and forced us to watch every bloody blow. It made me sick as a cat, and I swore I'd resign my commission sooner than order such a punishment. Fortunately, I was not required to." He scowled at his manuscript. "In my opinion flogging and hanging are no deterrent to hardened offenders. They haven't the imagination to fancy themselves at the gridiron or they wouldn't act brutally in the first place. The others, the bystanders, are merely sickened--except for the ghouls, your respectable men and their respectable families who pay to see wretches suffer. That's a kind of sickness, too."

  Johnny felt he had to defend his father's opinion. "But the crime was so appalling!"

  "The intent was appalling," Falk said precisely. "The crime did not take place."

  "But they... Thistlewood resisted arrest."

  "Would you not, if you knew you would infallibly be hanged and beheaded?"

  There was no answer to that. Johnny drew a letter from the pile before him. For a time both men worked in silence. Colonel Falk was finally the end of volume three. Heavy tomes interleafed with slips of paper covered in notes littered his end of the table.

  Johnny penned four letters of thanks and set up a meeting in July between Clanross and a retired sergeant who could not find employment. The man had three children and his wife was expecting a fourth. They subsisted on a pension of six shillings a week. It occurred to Johnny to wonder if they might not starve before July.

  Surely not. The letter had been written by the man's neighbour, a barber-surgeon. The sergeant had friends.

  "Blast!" Falk threw down his pen. "I've no head for this today. Come for a walk, Dyott. I'm sick of my own company."

  Johnny did not have to
be persuaded. He sealed the letters, which already had Clanross's frank, and rose from his seat, shrugging into the coat he had thrown over the chair-back.

  The May air moved with enough breeze to dispel the usual London haze. The two men walked in silence. Colonel Falk had the loose stride of an infantryman used to covering twenty miles in a day's march. Johnny tried to keep up. When they had traipsed through the park--it was not a fashionable hour to be strolling along the Serpentine--they headed back to Grosvenor Square by way of upper Brook Street. Within sight of the Conway town house Falk halted.

  "There's a coffeehouse in Audley Street where I catch up on the newspapers. Do you care to take a cup?"

  Johnny's leg was aching. He was ready to sit down and not choosy where. He nodded. His own coffee house, a club of sorts, lay in Bond Street, and he was a member of Brooks's, too, but that was too far off.

  The coffeehouse proved quietly unfashionable. Colonel Falk read The Times rapidly, toying with his coffee cup. Johnny was content to sip and rest his leg. Beyond the plain windows, the street was almost empty. A pair of dandies minced by, one in lavender, the other in fawn inexpressibles. Half a dozen carriages and a high perch phaeton drawn by a team of matched bays rattled by. Johnny watched the horses out of sight.

  Colonel Falk laid the paper on the small table and took a sip of the thick black coffee. "I was surprised when you didn't join the party at Brecon, Dyott. Gratified," he added hastily. "Relieved. Grateful. If you'd gone off, I'd be neck-deep in begging letters. Still, I rather expected you to see the young ladies safely home."

  Johnny felt his cheeks go hot. "Do you think I should have?"

  "Only if you meant to fix your interest with Lady Margaret," Falk said in dulcet tones.

  Johnny stared. In the course of the riot, as the girls were swept away by the crowd, he had realized his preference was for Maggie, not Jean. The idea was still so new it startled him. "How the devil did you know? Am I so obviously doating?"

  "No. I had the advantage of Emily's acute eye. She told me you were taken with one of the twins. I wondered which, so I watched. It's no concern of mine, Dyott, but I must say you have excellent taste. They are charming young women, high-couraged as a pair of Arab colts."

  "And such speaking eyes!"

  "And such flaming hair!" The mockery was kindly. "I'm bound to say I still can't tell one from the other."

  "Oh... There's a world of difference." Johnny could have explained how unlike Maggie was to Jean, but it would have taken him the rest of the afternoon. He fiddled with the newspaper. "I daresay you think me presumptuous to hope."

  The colonel's eyebrows rose. "Hope is never presumptuous."

  "But she... Lady Margaret is the daughter of an earl."

  "You can't imagine Tom would object to the connexion." He finished his coffee.

  "But Lady Clanross."

  Falk said slowly, "I don't know her ladyship at all well, but she doesn't strike me as foolishly ambitious for her sisters. Why the diffidence, Dyott? You're well born, well educated, and reasonably prosperous, and you cut a good figure. What more could a young lady wish for?"

  Johnny groaned. "Sonnets."

  Falk grinned. "I thought Lady Jean was the one smitten with the poet."

  "She is. But any young girl wants romance. I think I have Mag-- Lady Margaret's friendship. Or I thought I did until I found they'd gone off to a clandestine assignation." Gloom, never far off these days, swept over Johnny again. Maggie's failure of trust had jolted him awake. Her lack of confidence in him had stunned and hurt him to a degree that caused him to examine his own feelings. He needed Maggie's trust.

  Falk made a clucking noise with his tongue. "Assignation. What a word."

  "It was clandestine behaviour."

  "They wanted adventure. What could be more natural?"

  "Perhaps you're right, but I thought Maggie trusted me!" Johnny burst out, too distressed to notice the impropriety of referring to his lady without her style.

  "If she had told you of her plans you would have. prevented them. And her loyalty to her sister is surely admirable."

  "Perhaps," Johnny grudged. He took a sip of cold coffee.

  "Why don't you buy a seat on the next mail coach and try for an explanation? Faint heart never won a fair lady."

  "I couldn't," Johnny muttered. "I'd look a fool."

  "Nothing ventured nothing gained. I seem to be expressing myself in adages today. That doesn't augur well for the next chapter. I'd best stop before I say the course of true love never did run smooth." He rose. "Leg rested?"

  Johnny nodded and stood up, too. He felt some resentment that Falk should be reading his mind so easily. On the other hand, it was a relief to speak of his, feelings.

  Outside in the bright sunlight his mood lightened. After all, the colonel had not despised his pretentions. They strolled toward Grosvenor Square.

  Falk chuckled. "I'm a fine one to be spurring you into action. I was so pigeon-livered I had to wait for Emily to propose to me."

  Johnny stared. "She didn't!"

  "Indeed she did. She blushed like a Spanish sunrise, bless her, but she got the words out." He was back at his loping stride again. Johnny had to quick-march to catch up. He tried to imagine the sweetly conventional Emily Falk proposing marriage to her mad satirist, but his fancy failed him.

  When they entered the house, they found the second post had come. Johnny had a letter from his father demanding to know, absolutely and finally, when Johnny meant to take Holy Orders. A living worth two thousand pounds a year had fallen vacant near Grantham.

  Johnny's other epistle was from Lady Clanross. She asked him to come to Brecon for the twins' birthday celebration. They were still sunk in gloom, Maggie particularly. And their eighteenth anniversary ought to be a festive occasion. Would he bring the packet of sheet musick she had forgot? She remained his obliged servant, Elizabeth Conway.

  Johnny would. He wrote her at once, and that evening he went to the book room, took out his new steel pen, and composed a careful, filial letter to his father explaining his decision not to enter the church. Afterward he felt so much better he tried his hand at a sonnet. It was not half bad.

  * * * *

  "Johnny writes he will come in time for the dinner party." Elizabeth leaned forward and patted the new mare's neck. Her favourite mount, Josephine, had had to be put out to pasture and Elizabeth wasn't yet sure of Andromeda. That was the mare's name.

  Tom held Paloma to a walk. Maggie, Jean, and the poet on a borrowed Pegasus, had gone on ahead. "Do you think Maggie's headaches are owing to the injury or to Johnny's absence?"

  "A bit of both." Elizabeth's smile faded as she caught sight of the rest of the party at the far end of the avenue of beeches. They had dismounted by the pavilion and Owen was reciting again. She could tell by the gestures. Maggie appeared to be examining the deep red of a rhododendron bloom, but Jean was listening to him in the attitude of an acolyte.

  "It will wear off."

  "Jean's infatuation? I hope it may. Her other fancies were shorter lived, except when she was in love with you." She shot him a sidelong glance.

  He grinned. "I think you're trying to put me to the blush."

  "Impossible!"

  "Wasp!"

  They laughed. "Race you?" Elizabeth challenged.

  His eyes gleamed and he settled his round hat more firmly over his brow. "You're on, my lady."

  Paloma was still Paloma and outdistanced the new mare easily. Tom had dismounted by the time Elizabeth reached the pavilion. The younger people gaped at their headlong elders.

  "Andromeda is a slug," Elizabeth announced, a trifle breathless. She slid to the ground and Jean took her reins. "Shall I give her to Maggie?"

  Jean smiled.

  Maggie made a face. "I'm faithful to Joybell till death us do part. Keep your beastly slug."

  That showed some spirit. Maggie was still pale, but the cropped hair suited her and a delicate pink tinged her cheeks. Perhaps she was recove
ring. Elizabeth gave her a sisterly grin.

  After a moment Maggie smiled, too.

  Tom had been leading Paloma round the pavilion. Paloma, a very black dove indeed, was inclined to be hot in hand. She had been known to lash out at the end of a ten mile run; however, she looked calm enough at the moment. The girls' mounts and Owen's nag swished their tails as Tom tied Paloma to the railing. She munched a clump of harebells.

  Owen watched the proceedings with the air of one who had been interrupted.

  "I hope your georgics are doing well," Elizabeth said politely.

  He shrugged. "Well enough, considering my heart is not in pastoral scenes. I wish I might go to London."

  There was no answer to that and Elizabeth made none.

  Tom said, "Richard Falk writes that he has finished his history. He is gone down to Hampshire."

  "Then Johnny's alone in London." Maggie bit her lip.

  "Not for long," Elizabeth said cheerfully. "He'll be here for the birthday celebration." She had meant to leave Johnny's coming as a surprise, but Maggie wanted cheering now.

  She glanced at the girl. Maggie clasped her hands and looked agitated.

  Jean said, "It's good of him to go to the trouble. I hope you don't mean to ask the little girls to dine with us."

  "I thought you would prefer to take tea with our sisters and keep the dinner party strictly grown-up."

  Jean nodded. "And dancing afterward?"

  "If you like. Miss Bluestone will play for you, I'm sure. Willoughby and Bella have agreed to come, and the Whartons."

  "Lord, Cecy Wharton can't dance in her state."

  Elizabeth frowned at her. "True, but it doesn't become you to say so, Jean. Is there anyone else you'd like me to ask?"

  "Let's keep the numbers small," Maggie muttered. "May we go back? I have the headache."

  Elizabeth's heart sank. Perhaps Johnny Dyott wasn't the cure for Maggie's megrims after all.

  Maggie's reception of the news that Johnny was coming back to Brecon baffled her twin, too.

  Jean had been terrified by her sister's injury and concerned when recurring headaches kept Maggie abed half the time. As the details of the riot receded from Jean's memory, however, she was inclined to feel that the risk she and Maggie had run was well worth the prize.