by Carla Kelly
“Lady Bagshott was reminding me of that fact only last week.” He inched closer to her, and Onyx resisted the urge to slide further away. “She says marriage is my duty. As the worthy example for my entire parish, Miss Hamilton, I must marry.”
He cleared his throat again, and she closed her eyes. The reverend giggled. “You are a woman of such becoming modesty, Miss Hamilton! Such a virtue makes me able to overlook your decidedly unfortunate origins and your total lack of monetary expectations.”
When Andrew Littletree said nothing else, Onyx opened her eyes. He was still there. No amount of wishing had changed that. When he still said nothing, but only continued clearing his throat, she said, “Sir, is there something in particular you wish to say to me?”
She recalled the vicar to himself. He divested himself of her hands and clutched the front of his black frock coat again, turning slightly so he was in silhouette against the morning sun. When he had arranged himself in what he must have considered a matrimonial tableau, he spoke.
“Miss Hamilton, will you make me the happiest man … and do yourself a great honor … by marrying me?”
She looked at him in silence, watching the way his Adam's apple bobbed up and down, noting the flecks of dandruff in his thinning hair and the raw little nicks where he had cut himself shaving that morning. Every day, she thought, for the rest of my life, I will wake up and see that face on the other pillow. The thought was daunting, and words failed her.
But he was speaking again, made bold by his initiative, and secure in the knowledge that both might and right were on his side, not to mention the Church, and probably God.
“My dear Miss Hamilton, Sir Matthew has already told me how grateful you will be for my offer, and he has given his full approval. What more could you ask?”
What more, indeed? “Very well, sir, I will marry you,” she replied in a voice not like her own.
The vicar did not notice the strain in her voice. He captured one of her hands again, a hand now as cold as his own, and carried it to his lips. “Do not think I am overly bold, Miss Hamilton, if I seal this agreement with a kiss.” He touched her hand to his lips, and she closed her eyes again and sighed.
He mistook the message. Quickly he lowered her hand to her lap. “Oh, my dear, I did not mean to make you overwrought! I feared it would be thus! I will remember to keep my affections within proper bounds, indeed I will!”
He was speaking louder now, and Onyx patted his hand, fearful that someone in the hallway outside would overhear this silliness. “Really, sir, do not be alarmed. I was merely … overcome with your generous proposal for a moment.”
But the vicar was warming to his subject and would not be silenced. He wagged a warning finger at his betrothed. “Miss Hamilton, there can be no place for passion in marriage to a clergyman. You must remember yourself.”
She swallowed. “I will, sir. I promise. It was merely the excitement of the occasion …”
He rose then and pulled her to her feet. “Very well, Miss Hamilton. Lady Bagshott tells me that ours should be an early marriage, one this summer, if possible. She feels that my parish will benefit by our good example, particularly during the fall harvest, when winnowers and reapers sometimes forget themselves in the haying fields.”
Onyx could not follow his logic. Hers was a clear mind, a direct mind, one unacquainted with the twists and turns of a brain made foggy with overmuch contemplation on the Divine and too much deep breathing of incense.
“We will be married from Chalcott, of course.” He peered at her, as if to detect some disagreement, and saw none. “It is to be our home, thanks to the generosity of my patroness Lady Bagshott, and her brother, your own dear Sir Matthew, who has been so condescending in this matter.”
She waited for him to continue. He looked at her and smiled at what he saw, someone with a scrupulous mind, a pretty but not too pretty face, someone highly conformable and of gentle demeanor. In short, a woman who, with proper admonition, would do him credit.
He cleared his throat. “Miss Hamilton, I did not think it a wise idea to seal our engagement with a ring.”
If Onyx was disappointed, she did not show it. She had only one goal in life right now, one aim that propelled her toward the door: to get away before she burst into tears, or laughter, whichever came first.
“Such a vulgar display as a ring is not the thing for the wife of a man of the cloth. Not the thing, indeed! I would not sully the beauty of your hands with something as frivolous as a bauble.” The vicar looked with pointed displeasure at Gerald's colorful ring on her right hand.
She paid him no mind but continued on her stately way to the door. She was slightly ahead of him. He cleared his throat again, and the hairs rose on the back of her neck. I could grow weary of that even before the wedding, she thought as she composed her face into a smile and turned around.
He came to her quickly and took her hand again, holding it against his chest, where she could feel his heart leaping about like a rabbit in a trap. “My dear, before we must leave the comfort of this charming room and venture into the glare of your family's approbation, may I not … kiss you?”
Dutifully she leaned forward. His lips were wet on hers and seemed to have no life of their own. I have just been kissed by a cod, she thought. The notion was so diverting that only the greatest force of will kept her from laughter.
The vicar seemed satisfied. He wiped his lips, straightened his neckcloth, and opened the door with a flourish.
If Wellington's army and all his Spanish and Portuguese allies had been bivouacked in the hall, Onyx Hamilton could not have been more surprised by the sight that greeted her. Was it possible that the Daggett family employed so many servants? What could possibly have drawn most of them to the corridor that afternoon? Did the walls need scrubbing? Were the draperies out of adjustment? Was there a great need for the windows to be cleaned? That tiny crack by the casement replastered?
And there were Lady Daggett and Sir Matthew standing by the large windows that gave out onto the Bedford countryside. Certainly Onyx had spent many an afternoon curled up in the window seat looking across the fields toward the river, but Sir Matthew had never been inclined to pause there before this moment. Whatever Lady Daggett was showing him seemed to have his full attention. This, in itself, was odd. Nothing ever claimed Sir Matthew Daggett's full attention except his quarterly ’Change reports and the miseries of others.
The only person missing was Amethyst, and that oversight was soon remedied. Even as Onyx and the vicar stood in the doorway of the Yellow Parlor, she heard the front door slam and soon saw Amethyst Daggett hurrying up the stairs.
She was dressed in her riding habit and carried her crop. Everyone else was still intent on continuing the charade, but Amethyst took one look at Onyx and the vicar and threw herself into Onyx's arms.
“Oh, Onyx, I am so glad! Just think! Soon you will be Mrs. Littletree! What a marvelous thing, don't you think?”
Like the vicar, Amethyst did not mean a question to be answered. Even as Onyx opened her mouth to reply, Amethyst whirled around and hurled herself at her stepfather. “Oh, Papa, am I to be maid of honor?”
As this was a more important question, Amethyst did pause for a reply, looking up at Sir Matthew, who was forced to end his little performance at the window and regard the happy couple over his adopted daughter's tangle of blonde hair.
“Congratulations to you both,” he said. “Surely this is a great day for the family. The first wedding.” His words were promising enough, but all animation died there. “As for you, puss, I think you will not be a maid of honor. This will be a rather simple wedding, as, I am sure you realize, propriety dictates.”
Amethyst began to pout as she tinkered with the silver buttons on her stepfather's waistcoat. Tears welled up in her amethyst-colored eyes and slid along her long eyelashes, where they hung like dew.
Onyx looked away. She had watched Amethyst practice that spectacle in the privacy of her room unti
l it was perfected to an art. Now would come the little sniff, then the catch in the throat.
Amethyst did not fail. Sir Matthew was blancmange in his step-daughter's hands; he capitulated after the little sniff. “Now, now, puss, don't start in! Maybe Onyx can have one attendant at her wedding. Come on, my darling, and let me show you that little frippery I picked up for you in the city.”
Amethyst sniffed back what emotion there might have been behind the tears that no longer threatened to fall and went down the stairs, arm-in-arm with her father. The servants melted back to their various posts throughout the house, and that left the happy couple with Lady Daggett. She came to them with arms outstretched. She kissed Onyx carefully on the cheek and twinkled her eyes at the vicar, who blushed and tugged at his collar.
“How happy I am for this moment, and such a surprise!”
Onyx scrupulously overlooked that little piece of fiction.
“Thank you, Mama … I mean, Lady Daggett.”
“How this would have pleased my poor dear Reverend Hamilton,” Lady Daggett continued, and then dismissed her first husband from her mind. Turning to the vicar: “Sir Matthew tells me that you have plans for Onyx this summer, even before the wedding.”
“Oh, indeed, Lady Daggett. Sir Matthew has given me permission to spirit her away to Chalcott.”
This was news to Onyx. “And what, sir, would be the purpose of that?” she asked.
“Miss Hamilton, it falls to you the happy pleasure of setting the vicarage to rights before our upcoming nuptials.”
“Oh?”
He turned to Onyx and looked her in the eyes, perhaps for the first time since their tête-à-tête had begun in the Yellow Parlor. “Lady Chalcott has said she will spare no expense to renovate the vicarage, but, Miss Hamilton, it has fallen into sad repair since the death of Reverend Palmerston. What with that nasty bit of unpleasantness in Spain, it has been impossible to find anyone else until now.”
“Should you not supervise this task?” she asked.
“Oh. I cannot! I am leaving immediately for Cambridge. Do you not recall that I am sitting for a series of lectures on homiletics?” He paused then and struck another pose, as if the mere mention of sermonizing moved his limbs of their own accord. “Lady Bagshott felt it would be a very improving thing.”
“I cannot doubt that,” Onyx murmured.
“She is so condescending,” he went on, “so concerned with the welfare of others. She has even consented to allow you to take your meals with her for as long as the repairs of the vicarage take.”
“How good of her,” said Onyx rather grimly. “I am sure I do not know what to say.”
He looked at her. “Yes, that is a problem you must learn to deal with, Miss Hamilton. Sometimes your conversation is so brief, I wonder if you are attending to all that goes on.” He patted her hand. “You will learn, my dear, I am sure, how to be a proper wife for a vicar, to say and do what is expected of you.” He struck another pose. “You, Onyx Hamilton, will be an example for the entire parish.”
Some demon within goaded her on. “Such a responsibility, sir! I wonder that you should consider me capable of learning proper behavior.”
The vicar was not well acquainted with sarcasm. “I shall teach you, my dear, as will Lady Bagshott, I am sure.”
There was no tiny pause that Lady Daggett could not fill. “My dear sir, Onyx is a dutiful and conformable girl. She will be everything that you require. Won't you, dear?”
The look she gave Onyx was the equivalent of a swift kick under the table.
There ended the interview. With a bow to Lady Daggett and cod's lips on Onyx's cheek, the Reverend Andrew Littletree took himself off, descending the stairs with such majesty that Onyx was forced to turn her little laugh into a coughing fit.
Lady Daggett eyed her charge. “Onyx, you must learn to school your tongue and follow the admirable example of my daughter, Amethyst, who is a delight to all who know her.”
“Yes, Mama … I mean, Lady Daggett.”
“It is high time you were no longer a millstone about Sir Matthew. I was beginning to despair.”
Lady Daggett turned to follow the vicar down the stairs. She looked back at Onyx. “Reverend Littletree means for you to be off as soon as possible. Apparently there is much work to be done at the vicarage.” She paused as if waiting for a comment. “Don't you have anything to say, Onyx?”
Onyx could feel the tears welling up behind her eyelids, feel the familiar pain in her chest that she had fought so hard to ignore for the past two years, but Onyx Hamilton was a stubborn person, as stubborn as her brother, Gerald, had been.
“No, Lady Daggett, I have nothing to say. Everyone has already said everything for me. If you'll excuse me now, I'll go pack.”
By walking fast, she made it to her room before the tears started to fall.
HE HORSE THAT TOOK MAJOR BERESFORD out of Dover wasn't much of a horse, but there was nothing else left in the stables. He knew the nag would get him as far as London, where they could part company, probably under mutual consent.
“I've eaten better horses than you,” he said out loud to the beast as it sauntered along under leaden skies. “Cooked on a green stick over a fire. Raw during a siege.”
Spring was late in coming this year. It was nearly June, but the hawthorn buds were just beginning to blossom. When he stopped to eat the bread and cheese the landlord had slapped together for him, he noticed lilies of the valley hiding along the fence row and smelled, but could not locate, lilacs in bloom somewhere.
What a change it was from hectare after hectare of olive trees that appeared dead even when they were alive, and windmills with tattered sails, exhausted from the effort of turning round and round. Here there were no denuded areas, no rubble and craters that were the autograph of an army with serious intentions. Here summer was struggling to come, and nothing more. It was enough.
As he rode farther and farther away from the coast, he felt that the weight of Spain should lift from his shoulders. For four years he had planned for this to happen, but it was not so. The tune he hummed was Spanish; he quit humming. He could not dismiss his thoughts so easily.
And so Major Jack Beresford remembered battles fought, horses eaten, friends dead. After being held captive a few hours by his memories, he no longer noticed the countryside. He was in Spain again.
By early afternoon of the next day, he arrived in London. Jack had never spent much time there; he had always been glad enough to leave the social schedule to Adrian and Emily. London was dingier and busier than he remembered, and again he felt the deep, almost overpowering longing to keep riding toward home until he either got there or dropped from the effort.
“But such an effort requires a better horse,” he said, “or at least one that is a more adroit conversationalist, if we are to survive this journey in relative good humor.”
Jack had to ask directions several times and rely on the reconnoitering skills he had honed in Beau Wellington's service, but before the tall buildings had completely buried the narrow streets in afternoon shadows, he found himself in front of Herkabee and Marsh, the family solicitors. A better horse demanded more money than the Spanish coins that jingled in his pockets.
The porter refused him admittance. Despite his irritation, Jack Beresford's whimsical humor overcame the moment. In his borrowed uniform, he knew what he looked like to the man: an out-of-work veteran scrounging around respectable establishments for something to eat. He had already noticed several such men in ragged uniforms on London's streets.
He rattled the coins in his pockets, but the porter just ignored him.
“I need to speak to Alistair Herkabee,” Jack insisted.
“What you need, and I don't mind saying it, is a visit to the guard of the watch. Move along, now.”
It seemed to be good advice but, under the circumstances, was less than adequate. The major probably would have been standing there until after closing hours if Alistair Herkabee himself had not
suddenly appeared in the doorway to usher out a well-favored client. The solicitor looked at Major Beresford, and then looked again. The slight smile on the solicitor's face grew and spread as the porter glanced from one man to the other in dismay.
Herkabee held out his hand to the major. “It would seem, sir, that you have returned from the wars at last.”
Jack shook his hand. “I have. I'm n-not going back.”
“Good. Come in, man, and let me know how I can serve you.”
When he emerged from the building an hour later, the Spanish coin had been replaced by good English money, enough to get an amiable horse, new clothes, lodging for a year if he wanted it, and sufficient capital to “drop a bundle at White's like a proper gentleman again,” according to Alistair Herkabee, “and get drunk as a lord.”
As Major Jack Beresford's plans included only the first item on Herkabee's list, he murmured his appreciation again to the solicitor, who followed him out the door and onto the street. He mounted his hack and headed immediately for Tattersall's, which proved to be closed. Beresford yanked off his forage cap and slapped it against the door. As he turned and leaned against the door, hat in hand, someone dropped a coin in it. He looked up, amusement chasing away his anger, into the face of Marshall Tidwell, a former classmate at Harrow and, from the looks of his high collar, intricate tie, and pants a color reminiscent of an overdone biscuit, a Bond Street beau. He stared at the dandy, then took the coin out and bit it.
“Sound money, sir,” he growled, falling into his best North Country accent. Tidwell had no idea who he was. “Any m-more where that come from, gov?” He lurched away from the wall and the dandy leapt backward into the street, forgetting all dignity in his desire to get away, much to the delight of a carter sitting on a nearby wagon.
Beresford took another step toward him, and Tidwell readied himself for instant flight.
“Wait a minute, Tides, don't you know who I am?”
It was Tidwell's Harrow nickname. The dandy paused and turned his head slowly, not so much because he was afraid as because with his tight neckcloth a rapid movement would have strangled him. What Tidwell saw did nothing to encourage him: a soldier, rather tall, with brown eyes, brown skin that spoke of a foreign clime, and auburn hair much too long for the dictates of Dame Fashion. There was some expression in the soldier's eyes that brought back rowdy evenings, but not until Beresford smiled did Tidwell extend his hand.