by Amy Lake
“Indeed,” said Miss Perrin.
“And you, Miss Asherwood? Do you approve the evening’s selection of songs?”
Young women of society were supposed to have a refined taste in music, but Dido and Aeneas was beyond Elizabeth’s ken. “Her voice is quite pretty,” she hazarded.
Blakeley laughed. “Faint praise!” he accused her.
Miss Asherwood colored. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You are correct. I . . . sometimes fear I am tone deaf. I wish to appreciate the songs, but I do not always succeed.”
“And yet you are here,” said Lord Blakeley. He was smiling.
There was no answer to that.
After another minute or two Miss Perrin claimed an acquaintance across the room.
“Lizzie, it’s Marybeth—I haven’t seen her for an age.” And she left.
Lord Blakeley took Miss Asherwood’s arm. They began a slow circle of the room, as were other couples. Elizabeth felt exposed, on display.
“I am happy to see you again,” said Lord Blakeley. He was looking straight ahead.
“Oh . . . thank you,” said Lizzie. Her fingers were on Lord Blakeley’s arm, pressed against his side. She seemed to be aware of each breath he took.
“I hope you have been well.”
“Quite well. And you?”
“Very well, thank you.” A hesitation. “And . . . your aunt?”
“She is in good health,” replied Miss Asherwood, wondering when she had told him about Miss Cavendish.
“I am glad to hear it.”
He’s as nervous as I am, thought Elizabeth suddenly. Then—don’t be ridiculous. A rake is never nervous around women. But this was not the same man who had taken her into his arms under the Marquess of Derwell’s arbor.
And yet he is the same, she thought, confusedly. Strong. And safe.
Elizabeth remembered that she should be asking him about Marguerite.
“Do you suppose Monsieur Rabaillat has received my letter?” she asked Lord Blakeley.
For a moment he did not seem to understand.
“Ah. Ah, yes, I believe he should have done, by now.”
“But you have no reply?”
“Not . . . as yet.”
“You will tell me at once?” she asked, stopping and placing her other hand on Lord Blakeley’s arm. She felt him go very still.
“Of course.”
His lordship seemed to be struggling with something.
“Would you do me the honor of driving out with me tomorrow?” he said, finally. “I was going to suggest the old Marylebone Park.”
Miss Asherwood’s head, which had been a bit muzzy from the punch, cleared at once. She thought quickly. Would Pivens allow her to go out on a drive with Lord Blakeley? Could he forbid it? It had never come down to a question of forbidding between her and the butler but, on the other hand, Elizabeth had never before done anything that truly pushed the boundaries.
Except for the visit to Saint Ann’s Lane, of course. A drive in the park with an acknowledged rake was propriety itself compared to that.
She made her decision. “I am staying at Miss Perrin’s house for the next few days,” she informed his lordship. “You may call for me there.”
Lord Blakeley smiled, and his eyes held the hint of a laugh. “Excellent,” he replied.
* * *
Chapter 27
A Drive in Marylebone Park
Penny said nothing upon hearing the news that Elizabeth was to spend the night. But when they were returning from the musicale, alone in the Asherwood coach, she gave Lizzie a long, speaking look.
“What?”
“A drive in the park?” said Penelope.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing is wrong with that, if you were being courted by the gentleman. There are a number of young men of the ton who would be happy to take you driving in the park—and Marylebone!—but they’ve always assumed you were unavailable.”
“People go driving without . . . without it being a courtship,” protested Lizzie.
“Yes, sometimes. But it’s a sign—”
“A sign of what?”
Penny gave up. “Just don’t be foolish, Lizzie.”
Miss Asherwood sighed. “Too late.”
* * * *
Marylebone Park, which was to be renamed Regent’s Park in a few years, was at that time still occupied by tenant farmers, a piece of rural England nearly within the town. It was not a common destination for London society, at least not for those members who wanted to see and be seen, but was available for those who might want a quieter setting. Elizabeth had been there once before, with Lord Winthrop, shortly before the death of her father.
She remembered the distinct smell of the hay fields, so different from the grass and fountains of Hyde Park. And she remembered how happy she was that she and Geoffrey were to be affianced.
She had put him off for most of the previous year, claiming that nineteen was too young. Geoffrey had been patient, but by that time he was beginning to make more pointed remarks on the subject.
“Your father, I am sure, would like to see you settled—”
Before he dies. Lord Winthrop broke off awkwardly, and sent an apologetic look to Miss Asherwood.
“It’s all right,” said Elizabeth. She had taken Geoffrey’s hand and squeezed it, and Geoffrey had taken advantage of the moment to lean over and press his lips against her forehead. And she had been nearly ready to say yes.
What happened to me? wondered Miss Asherwood. How was I ready to become engaged a year ago, and not now? As schoolgirls, she and Penny always imagined themselves grown up to become married women, and as everyone knew that it was a disgrace to reach the age of twenty-five, say, without a husband, their plans took on a serious edge while they were still in their teens.
She discussed this with Penny, as they brushed out and plaited each other’s hair in preparation for bed.
“I have the answer,” said Penelope. “But you will not like it.”
Miss Asherwood turned around to stare at her friend. “What?”
“You aren’t in love with Lord Winthrop.”
Elizabeth thought about this. “I was never in love with Geoffrey, I suppose,” she replied. “It didn’t seem to matter. You and I always said that it didn’t matter. Love is a feeling. One cannot base one’s life on a mere feeling.”
“Heavens,” said Penelope, “did we really say that?”
“We did.”
“In all of our seventeen-year-old wisdom, I suppose.”
“Can we really have grown less mature in the meantime?”
“We?” Penny arched her eyebrows.
Elizabeth laughed. “All right, then. Me.”
“The problem, my dear Lizzie, is not that you don’t love Geoffrey. It is that you are in love with someone else.”
Later that night, lying in bed in the Perrins' best guestroom—a bed which was adequate, but which Mrs. Talliaferro would have found sadly lacking in pillows—Miss Asherwood considered the question of being in love. With Lord Blakeley.
She had not admitted it, to Penny. But she had not denied it either.
What was it like, to be in love? Her mind was unprepared to consider some of the more intimate possibilities of being a couple, but she knew that she felt things when she was in the company of Peregrine Blakeley—things that she had not felt before.
He will not marry you.
Why not? asked a stubborn voice. Why should he not marry me?
Then she thought about Lord Winthrop, and a wave of guilt engulfed her. She was as bad as the worst coquette, to be encouraging one gentleman while still involved with another. Geoffrey had no idea that not becoming engaged was even a possibility, Lizzie was sure. What could she possibly tell him?
The truth, Penny would say.
Easy for her.
Before she fell asleep, Miss Asherwood thought not about marrying Lord Blakeley, or about not marrying Lord Winthrop, but about being alone. The idea of never see
ing Geoffrey again saddened her. The idea of never seeing Peregrine Blakeley struck black despair into her heart.
* * * *
Lord Blakeley called promptly at four of the afternoon, as promised. The Perrins’ butler, who had been given instructions on the event, called Penny to the door. Penelope led his lordship to the salon, where Miss Asherwood had been pacing to and fro for the better part of twenty minutes. Elizabeth froze in place as the door opened, then sat down on the nearest armchair, and assumed a pleasant, relaxed expression.
“Ah, Lord Blakeley,” she said, standing up to curtsey.
Lord Blakeley bowed. “Miss Asherwood.”
“Well,” said Penelope. “I’m sure you will enjoy yourselves. ’Tis a beautiful day.”
Marylebone Park was in the northern environs of London. Lord Blakeley showed no hint of tension as he drove his team to Brook Street, past Hanover Square, and eventually onto Portland Street. After the Portland Chapel there were only fields on either side; eventually they crossed New Road, and passed through the turnstile into the park. Elizabeth noted the old cow sheds and then, a little ways in, an old public-house under the sign of the ‘Queen’s Head and Artichoke’.
“I’ve always thought that was an odd sort of name,” she commented to Lord Blakeley. “Which queen, do you suppose?”
“Elizabeth, I believe,” he replied. “The story runs that one of her gardeners built the house, and hence, the artichoke.”
“Ah.”
They drove deeper into the park. Miss Asherwood had already decided against asking Lord Blakeley about the letter to Monsieur Rabaillat. If he had a reply he would tell her, and she had no wish to become a pest on the subject.
But his lordship brought it up himself.
“I’ve had no reply from France as yet,” he told her. “But that is to be expected. I should say that by next week we will receive some word.”
“I am glad,” said Elizabeth. “I have been a little worried.”
She could feel him hesitate. “You said you had received another letter.”
Elizabeth sighed. “But my sister is so young. I remember myself at that age—”
He chuckled.
“—and I will feel better when I hear that she is in Dover.”
Blakeley nodded. “Then we must take the situation to heart.”
Elizabeth turned toward him in a rush of gratitude, and surprised a look of calculation—or was it doubt?—on Lord Blakeley’s face. It was gone so swiftly that she might have imagined it. A little embarrassed, she cast around for a change in subject.
“What is causing this turmoil in France?” she asked Blakeley. “Why was the king so hated? You’ve spent so much time there, and with your work in the Foreign Office as well— You must have a better idea than most of us.”
He thought about this for a minute. “Expectations,” he said, finally.
“Expectations?”
“Most people have them. Of their lives, where they fit in. Society tells us to expect certain things.”
“Such as?”
He drew a deep breath. “The ability to buy bread to feed one’s family.”
“And . . . they cannot?”
“The winters have been cold, and the harvests have failed—”
Miss Asherwood nodded; she had heard this.
“—and the French peasants are taxed beyond reason.”
“Taxes,” said Elizabeth, thoughtfully. “Like the Americans complained, of us?”
“The particulars are different, but yes, in principle.”
Elizabeth had discussed the subject of the Colonies, and their revolution, with Penny, but she had been otherwise hindered by her lack of detailed knowledge of the event, the result of a general unwillingness on the part of those individuals who did know to talk of such matters in front of a young lady.
“Much too serious for such a pretty miss!” was a comment she had heard more than once, and she had often envied Penny the heated discussions that—as her friend described—were occasionally heard around the Perrin dining room table.
But Lord Blakeley seemed to have no such reluctance. He described, in succinct but clear detail, the finances of the French government—which had been in catastrophic disarray for years—and the attempts of said government to raise the needed funds.
“The position of tax collector can, in some cases, be inherited,” he told Miss Asherwood.
“Inherited!”
“You can imagine the potential for abuse.”
Elizabeth asked questions, and Lord Blakeley went on to describe the system of taille and vingtième, and the disinclination of the French to substitute potatoes—which would grow in colder weather—for their beloved bread.
“I shouldn’t blame them,” commented Miss Asherwood.
“Indeed.”
Talk, she now realized, talk in the sense of an exchange of ideas and frank opinion, was exhilarating. She felt as if the drive could go on for hours, and they would never run out of things to say. And all the time, still, she was aware of him as . . . a man. And she longed, with an intensity that almost frightened her, to once again feel his kiss against her lips.
At some point—afterwards she could never remember how the subject came up, although she recalled exactly where they were at the time, just passing through the small hamlet of St. John’s Wood—Elizabeth took the opportunity to ask Lord Blakeley about his childhood, some of which, she remembered, had been spent in France.
And then, without hesitation, as if he had only waited for the right moment to begin, Lord Blakeley told Miss Asherwood the story of his youngest cousin Fanchone, and a fine summer day in the woods of Normandy.
* * *
Chapter 28
Fanchone
Fanchone Desmarais was eight years old to Lord Blakeley’s thirteen that year. She was small for her age, but she held her own well in the rough play of childhood, especially against her brothers. A scrapper, the English would call her.
All the cousins got along well, even Gillet and Herve, who were the most likely culprits when there was trouble, only a fraction of which ever reached the ears of their mother.
“The twins had caused a ruckus of one kind or another; afterwards no-one wanted to talk about it, and I never learned the whole story. But I do know that they played a trick on one of the local boys, and he had sworn to get even.
“Gillet and Herve were mostly harmless, but this child was a bully. He decided that he would kidnap Fanchone—”
Elizabeth drew in a quick breath.
“—and hold her for ransom. We were all frantic. It was a prank, but even so, Fanchone was missing and this was not something that we could keep from Aunt Silvie for long.”
“Oh, the poor child.”
“As it turns out, the bully may have been the poor child. He’d hidden her in a tree house, tied and gagged. But Fanchone wriggled out of the bindings–and sat and waited for him to come back. With a large stick in her hands.”
Elizabeth smiled, imagining the young girl.
“If she’d only climbed down at once—” Lord Blakeley broke off.
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
“At any rate, the boy returned, with Fanchone lying in wait. As soon as he got up into the tree house, she attacked him. There was a lot of screaming and yelling, which we heard—” He laughed a little. “They probably heard Fanchone in Dover. Anyway, by the time the rest of us figured out where they were, the fight was over.”
“Ah.”
“The last we saw of the bully was his back. He was running hellbent for home, sobbing as I believe.”
“So all was well?”
“Except that during the fight, at the end, they had both fallen out of the tree house. It was only seven or eight feet from the ground, and I’m sure Fanchone had jumped farther on previous occasions. But she went out backwards, and twisted, and she broke her ankle when they hit.”
Miss Asherwood grimaced in sympathy.
“We saw her fa
lling, but we were too far away—” He stopped again. “It was a bad break. The wound became infected.”
Elizabeth closed her eyes. A broken ankle was bad enough. An infected break was a death sentence.
“Fanchone lived for two weeks, and in all that time she never complained. Never made a sound. At the end she was unconscious, thank God.”
“I’m so sorry.” Lizzie felt tears come to her eyes.
“Gillet and Herve never got over it. Nobody blamed either one, exactly, but there was something about the two of them, together, that made it worse. You’d think that it would mean the responsibility was shared, but I guess it doesn’t work that way. They couldn’t hide from each other. They looked at the other person, and the guilt was double.
“And I felt, myself—”
“Good heavens, you didn’t blame yourself?”
“I did. I knew that the twins had started the fight, in a way. But this boy had been terrorizing the children of the neighborhood for years, and everybody knew it, and no-one stepped in.
“I was the oldest. I decided that I would never look away from a bully again.”
Lord Blakeley said a few more things, words of pain that touched Elizabeth to the bone. Then the images of a summer day in France slowly faded, and the sights and smells of Marylebone Park returned.
“I am sorry,” said Elizabeth.
“Yes.”
“Is your aunt still alive?”
“She died some years ago.”
They rode in silence for a long time, with Miss Asherwood unable to think of anything else to say.
“I am sorry,” said Lord Blakeley, finally. “’Tis hardly a fit subject for an afternoon’s drive in the park.”
“Please, do not apologize,” she replied. “That is not the sort of scar that entirely heals.”
“Some say that children get over these things.”
“I suppose you get over them in the sense that you do not think of them as often as the years go on. But—” Elizabeth shrugged.
“Exactly.”
She thought of her mother. In the beginning Elizabeth slept and woke with the pain of Lady Asherwood’s death, and the amount of it did not seem to change from day to day, or month to month. Eventually, it did lessen, but Lizzie knew this did not mean it was gone. Occasionally the hurt would resurface, unexpectedly, and she would feel it almost as a blow.