And he was probably afraid of Miss Trimm.
Elinor sat on the long bench that put her nearest to the fire, leaving the high-backed settle and soft cushions for Jeanne and Mrs. Trimm. The round-faced maid, Kate, circled the room laying the tables with cups and saucers, spoons, and bowls of sugar lumps. Mr. Broadleigh followed Kate, complaining about his ruined account papers till the girl bobbed a curtsey and fled.
“It is sad to consider”—Jeanne slid into the wooden enclosure of the settle—“how many men are fussy idiots. Do you suppose that one has a wife?”
It felt good to laugh. “If he does, she says, ‘Yes, dear,’ and ‘No, dear,’ and dreams of strangling him in his sleep.”
“The perfect marriage, in short.” Jeanne shuffled across so they were close to each other. The ever-present workbag was on her arm, half-finished embroidery peeking out the top. “This is excellent. The good Kate returns with teapots. She placates the Monsieur Broadleigh and comes to us. We will drink tea now and exchange wild speculation about the madman who stalks this inn and is such an enemy of literacy.” To Kate, “We are all thunderstruck, no?”
“Oh, yes, miss. Who’d do such a thing? Those beautiful books. And dear, I daresay.” Kate set the china pot on the table and a pitcher of milk. The pretty, blue-and-white pattern had a look of Delftware. “Mrs. Tharpe—she’s the cook—she has a book her son sent her from London. Cost every penny of three shillings. She’s hid it under her mattress.”
“I have a small volume of Monsieur Milton still. The madman is welcome to it,” Jeanne said. “Though I am sorry about the chemistry text of the young man. Now I will ask you to bring me toast. Only toast. But also some of the jam of great excellence I am sure you have in your cupboards. I am not yet English enough to embark upon anything more ambitious in the morning. I have the greatest respect for those who can face the bacon and the ham in the earliest morning. It argues a remarkable endurance. I will drink tea, because there is no least sign of chocolate and Mademoiselle Pennington shall pour for me in the English manner. We are old chums now, she and I.”
Jeanne’s company was exactly what Elinor needed this morning. She didn’t want to consider all the many possibilities that arose from Jack’s inspection of her notebook.
She turned a pair of cups right way up and poured tea. She would take buttered eggs and toast, please. Yes. That would be enough. She tipped a bit of cream into both cups and agreed with Kate that it was worrisome, all those papers burned. No, she’d never heard of such a thing. She was fair taken aback herself. No, she didn’t think it was Gypsies.
“That’s what your Miss Trimm said.” Kate polished the tray with a corner of her apron. “When I met her in the hall. Said it weren’t Gypsies. It’ll be one of the guests, being daft, most like. Maybe that London gentleman.” London gentlemen were notoriously unpredictable. She left, reminding them the kitchen was all at sixes and sevens and everyone was that upset.
“They will tell tales of this mystery for a hundred years.” Jeanne plumped the cushions behind herself and leaned placidly into their embrace. “It will become a fable to frighten children. I do not think we will be in those stories at all, unless we are murdered in our beds by a madman.”
In the doorway, Timothy Fleet had stopped to blink and pull at his ear, trying to decide whether he’d come into the room or just stand on the threshold.
“Perhaps it is the good young Timothy,” Jeanne said. “Much learning hath made him mad. That is Shakespeare.” She took her cross-stitch out of her bag and unrolled it. Bright threads spilled across the white linen. “I do not like Shakespeare. He does not spell correctly.”
“You’ve started on the flowers.”
“I will use three threads for a while. Red and two pinks. This and this. I will pick up yet another pink on the next row and the design becomes complicated in the extreme. But I skip ahead to work on the interesting parts for a while, since I am not being jolted in the coach. As well, I am tired of making an endless background of white thread and cream-colored thread and also looking out upon white snow. I indulge myself with flowers. And now look. Your mad scholar comes toward us.”
They watched the young man approach.
“Will he talk to us?” Jeanne began stitching. “I think not, but the suspense is almost unendurable.”
He passed close by and went to the fire to warm his hands, standing two feet away. He slipped a glance in Jeanne’s direction now and then. They waited.
Finally he edged over to their table. He ventured that it was a nice day.
Gravely, Jeanne agreed that it was. Outside the many-paned front window, snow fell. Wind picked up more from the branches of trees and threw it at the glass to hit in tiny, soft, individual thumps.
“Except for the snow,” Timothy corrected himself. “Sorry about the snow. I know it’s hard to get around in skirts. I mean to say . . .” He became entangled in a sentence. Trying to break out, he gestured hugely, lost his balance and grabbed the table. Tea slopped into saucers. Spoons rattled. The cream jug wobbled. He overturned the sugar bowl.
Twenty or thirty apologies later, he retreated to a seat in the far corner of the room.
“That is a young man who badly needs a visit to the women of London,” Jeanne said, when he was beyond earshot. “One wishes to mother him. What woman desires a man she must mother?”
“A great truth.” Even when she’d thought Jack was an unworldly scholar, she’d never felt the least impulse to mother him. She retrieved sugar lumps and put them back in the bowl. Why did she immediately think of Jack when Jeanne talked about desiring a man?
“But you do not drink your tea.” Jeanne tasted her own. “It is a time of trouble. We are in a snowstorm, surrounded by madmen. We will be English and drink tea.”
Elinor picked up her cup and wrapped her hands around it, feeling the warmth. This time last year, she and her publisher were counting sales one by one. She’d lived in an attic room and skipped meals to pay for paper and ink. Tea had been an unthinkable indulgence. She would never take the simple pleasure of drinking tea for granted. She lifted her cup and poured some onto the hearthstone behind her as a libation to Mercury, god of travelers.
When she turned back, Jack stood in the doorway. It was a reminder that Mercury was also the god of those who lived by cunning.
“He looks our way.” Jeanne’s eyes were bright and observant. “Excellent. That is a man one feels no least instinct to mother.”
“None whatsoever.”
“It would seem he knows one of us. Not me, I think.”
Jack strolled the length of the room. Slowly. Toward her.
“He is much interested in you, Elinor.” Jeanne found this amusing. “He is also, oh, so serious. And perhaps angry. Will we have the small wager, you and I, over what it is he wishes to set his teeth into this morning? It is perhaps breakfast, but I think it is also you.”
Jack, having taken his time, arrived. She set her cup into her saucer and ignored him.
Jeanne peeped up at him through her eyelashes. “We are discussing the life of a student of chemistry. You see him? He takes only bread this morning, as if he were French. The storm delays us and adds two days or three days to our journey, so he counts his pennies and worries. He must buy himself a new chemistry book, as well. I am very sorry. Sometimes the world is difficult. I am Jeanne Dumont, once of Paris. This is Elinor Pennington. The student of chemistry who must count his pennies is Timothy Fleet.”
“I’ll see to him. I’m Jack Tyler. Hello, Elinor.” Jack chose the short bench across from her and sat himself down. He collected one of the teacups and turned it over, and he was established.
“I didn’t invite you to join us.” She could have saved her breath. One might as well scold the tomcat curled by the fire. One might as well scold the fire.
“If I waited for an invitation from you, I’d be standing here till doomsday.”
“But I am happy that he sits with us,” Jeanne said. “Miss Trimm is
not here to make me proper, so I will flirt with Monsieur Tyler. He will not take me seriously.”
“There.” Jack smiled. “An invitation.”
Jeanne laughed with her eyes. She stuffed her sewing away and shifted her embroidery bag from one side to the other so he might make his elbows comfortable on the table. She poured him tea and lifted the cream jug. She had given him enough? A little more, then. She chose sugar lumps. She stirred his tea with pretty deference. She could have been entertaining a favorite and elderly uncle. In return, he was lightly gallant. They both enjoyed the game.
All of them knew Jack’s attention was fixed on Elinor, not Jeanne. The hard, alert eyes were for Elinor Pennington. The little smile was for Jeanne.
Jack, being charming. She kicked him under the table and he winced.
“I will tell you what is planned for this morning, Monsieur,” Jeanne said brightly. “So you are warned. I have not told Elinor yet. I was waiting until she has eaten and is strong enough to bear the shock.”
“She’s tougher than she looks,” Jack said. “What are we doing?”
“Miss Trimm plans that we go out into the woods at the first small break in the weather. She and I and Miss Pennington and some of the grooms to push a path through the snow. Now you also. We will take Mr. Fleet as well, if he does not hide himself quickly. He does not look strong enough to resist Miss Trimm.”
“Hey ho, to the greenwood let us go. With Miss Trimm wandering in the snow. Why? Or should it be obvious?”
“It is to bring holly to the house, of course. This is an ancient English custom to do, and you should know it very well. She is enamored of a wood across the road full of red berries. One sees it from our window upstairs, though I had not seen it myself until she opened the window and pointed it out. The branches will be full of many small, sharp leaves, which we will put”—Jeanne added more cream to his teacup and used the pitcher to indicate the mantle—“there. It is a pointless thing to do, the bringing of greenery into the house. I did not explain that to her.”
“Wise choice,” Jack said.
“As you say. Holly is a very English twig. One decorates the English pudding with such leaves, but one does not eat them. One also does not—” She saw something on the other side of the room and her eyes lost their laughter.
They shifted to look. It was the fashionable gentleman, Mr. Rossiter, who was so very unhappy with this country inn. Elinor set her cup down in its saucer, next to Jeanne’s. “He’s up early for a London fop.”
“I’m afraid I woke him,” Jack said. “There are some men who do not appreciate voices uplifted in song first thing in the morning.”
Jeanne said, “I will warn you of that man, Elinor. I poke the fun at Miss Trimm, which is not well done of me. But consider this. Twice this morning she has chanced to be between me and Monsieur Rossiter when he would rub himself up against me in passing and pretend it was by accident.” She made a little grimace of distaste. “Because she does this, I will gather any number of prickly branches for her. I only wish I might stuff hollies into the smallclothes of that caboche.”
I can use that. The slave girl Chloe puts burrs in her master’s subligaculum when he goes to visit her rival. She can—
In her poems, Roman senators met their comeuppance at the hands of clever slave girls. Handsome young poets dallied with the wives of fat merchants. True love conquered all.
The real world was full of conceited fools like Rossiter. He was exactly the sort who would buy her books and not read them. He would only look at the pictures.
Rossiter swaggered to their table. “Damned cold in this godforsaken hovel. Morning, girls. You’ve slipped the leash from Miss Trimm, I see. Hoped you would.”
“Find somewhere else to sit, Rossiter,” Jack said evenly.
“And leave you with both pretty ones? I don’t think so, my friend. Make room.”
Rossiter didn’t pull up the empty bench. He leaned over Jeanne, taking hold of the back of the settle behind her. “Let’s squeeze in here and get warm, eh, girl? The old trout isn’t here to spoil the fun.” He let his hand slip down to Jeanne’s shoulder, under her shawl, feeling for bare skin.
Jack shifted his weight and brought his boots in under him. A small, significant motion that signaled violence to come. Elinor recognized the signs and prepared to pull Jeanne out of the path of a fight. Two years ago, at the lowest ebb of fortune, she’d scrubbed floors in a tavern in Whitechapel. It was honest work, and she’d learned to keep out of the way of fights.
Jeanne upended the cream pitcher, right down Rossiter’s silk waistcoat.
“The hell!” He grabbed at his trousers and stumbled back. “You stupid slut. Look what you’ve done. You—”
Jack applied his boot to the man’s buttocks. Rossiter sprawled to his hands and knees on the floorboards. The cream pitcher splashed its last drops on him as it rolled to the floor.
The room went silent. Every head snapped in their direction—Broadleigh, Timothy Fleet, the maid Kate, another maid carrying a pile of napkins, the innkeeper with a tankard of ale.
“How dare you?” Rossiter scrambled to his feet, panting and brushing futilely at his clothes. “You jumped-up clodhopper. I’ll have the magistrate on you for this. Who do you think you are?”
“I know who he is, Mr. Rossiter.” Elinor grabbed his attention with her voice and an upraised hand. “Who are you?”
“You insolent, little tuppence of a governess. When my uncle, Lord Brampten, hears about this, you’ll be lucky to get a job licking chamber pots. My uncle—”
“Lord Brampten’s nephew is twelve years old and studying at Eton.” She said it with absolute and calm authority. She’d heard that tone often enough in Oxford, making some pronouncement or other. The dons might be wrong, but they were never uncertain.
The crackling of the fire was the loudest sound in the room. A huge marmalade tomcat appeared from a corner by the hearth and padded over to lick up the spilled cream.
Rossiter took a step back. And another. And, with that, admitted everything. “You must be mad.”
Jack threw his head back and laughed. A big, deep, genuine laugh. Nothing could have been more devastating.
“You . . . You . . .” Rossiter spat, then spun on his heel. “You’re lucky I was taught to be polite to women. Even women like you.” He stalked away, white-faced and stiff-legged. Fury wrapped in ruined clothes.
Jack said, “And she sweeps the board.”
“She is more than capable of routing five or six of that variety of pig.” Jeanne folded her hands placidly,
“She is,” Jack said. “Nicely done, Elinor. How did you know?”
“Well . . . I didn’t.”
It took a long second. Then Jeanne began to giggle. Jack raised his hands and clapped, slow and deliberate.
He admired that. He liked stripping away lies. Digging up secrets was his life’s work.
And she had secrets to hide. Lies to protect.
Miss Trimm arrived, full of plans to assault the holly trees across the road. The snow had delayed them. They would not reach their destinations. They must celebrate the holiday where they were. The holiday custom of decking the house with evergreen boughs was of considerable antiquity. The ancient Saxons . . .
Chapter 5
“I can’t claim to be an expert on the weather of Lincolnshire. If this were Somerset, I wouldn’t call it a lull.” Jack studied the particular snowy tree he’d chosen, satisfied with it.
“Miss Trimm has declared this is a lull. The weather does not contradict Miss Trimm.” Elinor stood in the snow with her arms full of holly. This was a scratchy and uncomfortable business. Holly does not love humankind. Every so often a little flurry of flakes swirled past her face, emphasizing how temporary the break in the storm was. A pair of crows sat on a high branch, shoulders hunched—if crows had shoulders. Wings hunched, in any case. They looked no better pleased with the weather than she was.
Jack scooped snow into a b
all and hardened it, pressing and turning again and again. “I read that copybook.”
She’d been afraid of that. “I was hoping it had burned to unreadable ashes.”
“I’m glad it didn’t. You write clever verse. I knew it was yours the minute I pulled it out of the fire.”
“The Latin.”
“Your handwriting. Now I know how you earn a living.” He finished the snowball to his satisfaction, tilted his head back, considering distances and angles, and threw, fast and full out. Cascades of snow fell from branch to branch. Thirty feet above them, high in the birch tree, a clump of mistletoe shuddered and hung on. The crows flapped off into the deeper woods. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was.”
“That I’m writing naughty Latin verse.”
“Instead of selling your body? Yes.”
In this path Jack had made for them out to this solitary tall birch, the snow was higher than her knees on either side. She could go forward or back, but there was no room for maneuvering sideways. Maybe that was symbolic. In any case, she spoke frankly. “If I were desperate for money, I suppose I could have become a spy.”
“I didn’t waste time worrying about that.” He threw again and hit mistletoe. Nothing dislodged but more snow. “I have your book wrapped up tight and safe in my baggage. You’ll be able to salvage a good bit of that writing.”
She wasn’t grateful to him. She wouldn’t be grateful.
Jack reached deep into the snow where it was damper and easier to mold and made the next snowball. He threw again. He was a fine, accurate bowler at cricket, unpredictable and strategic. Back in Oxford, she’d watched his matches. If she’d had any sense she’d have learned to distrust him then.
He never gave up. She knew that about him too.
A dozen snowballs later, and a dozen hits in the target of mistletoe, a cluster of green, frozen hard and weighted with ice, broke and tumbled. “Got it,” he said.
Mischief and Mistletoe Page 12