“To the barn with Boringdon!” a wiry old crone called out. Others took up the chant. “To the barn with Boringdon! And Jenner!”
The old coachman vainly urged the horses onward. Husky members of the mob grabbed for the bridles of the thrashing beasts, which snorted and whinnied.
“Moo! Mooo! Moooo!”
The terror of the horses fed the mob, and its racket quickly grew vicious. Exuberant yells evolved into malevolent shrieks. “Vaccination kills children! Vaccination kills!”
Warrick, certain the roisterers did not yet connect the well-turned-out Lord Boringdon with the rude caricature sketched on their signs, recognised imminent danger. With recognition, bloody heads might well result. Placards would become cudgels; paving stones, ammunition.
Warrick scrambled up beside the coachman and grabbed the reins. “Use the whip,” he ordered the old fellow.
With both hands firmly grasping the lines, Warrick yowled the piercing whoop heretofore heard only on contested American frontiers. The savage howl, repeated, resounded down the street, instilling horror in horses, rioters, and the few onlookers immobilised by the sudden confrontation. The coachman’s crack of the whip sparked the horses to a gallop. Rioters scurried and scrambled out of the way, dropping signs and poles and caps in the tumult. The fervour of anti-vaccination views was forgotten in favour of survival against horses’ trampling feet and the menace implied in Warrick’s primitive wail.
As the equipage careened around the corner into a more travelled thoroughfare, Warrick braced himself against the dashboard, muscles straining, to spend all his strength reining in the speeding animals.
“Easy. Easy. Whoa,” he called.
The struggle for control demanded intense concentration to avoid the hazards of the avenue. “Whoa. Easy. Easy.”
When he finally brought them to a halt, the coachman quickly dropped from the carriage to calm the lathered horses. A very pale Lord Boringdon slowly climbed down to the street. Leaning his hand against the side of the landau as if his legs offered scant support, he faced Warrick.
“Eysley. My profound gratitude.”
Warrick, breathing deeply, nodded, momentarily unable to speak with much force. Looking back, he saw no sign of the mob. It had vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
Finally he spoke. “Boringdon. It might be wise to consider outriders, at least until Parliament recesses.”
Lord Boringdon nodded his agreement. None of the three men was willing to admit how unnerving the flash of hostility had been. As a small crowd gathered, the trio prepared to complete their journey.
Though Lord Boringdon insisted Warrick use the carriage for his return to the Albany, Warrick as vehemently held to his preference for walking. The day was still beautifully sunny, with a breeze to dissipate the aftermath of knotted stomach and pounding heart. Lord Boringdon drove on to Parliament.
Warrick’s step regained its spring. The energy of the City in pursuit of its usual commercial undertakings revived him. Ahead on the street, a short woman, about his age, offered baked apples for sale. She used a cane as she hobbled about her miniscule territory, retrieving hot apples from the charcoal stove that accompanied her barrow.
“Baking apples, luscious and hot,” she called cheerily.
The smell lured. Warrick bought one, leaving her a guinea, and wondered how society viewed her “physical anomaly.” Did it really matter, as long as her apples satisfied? Would Quintilla be out here, on the street, ten years hence? No. His plan would definitely win her a husband.
A certain relief flooded through Warrick when he reached his rooms. He shed his boots and coat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, loosened his cravat. Sunk in the leather armchair in his study, he prepared to enjoy the still-warm baked apple with a wedge of Cheddar cheese and a glass of wine brought him by his able manservant, Bates.
At that moment, his secretary, cradling a pile of papers, entered the room. Warrick leaned back in the comfortable chair and looked up at the florid face of the canny Scotsman who long ago had pledged his loyalty to the beleaguered young baron. Nearing fifty, the efficient man of business looked more like one who stood at the prow of a ship navigating cold waters of northern firths. He was well-dressed, as befit his responsibilities.
“Ah, Mr. MacAllister. You have papers for me to deal with when I wish only to relax.” Warrick took a sip of his wine and sighed.
“Time to renew the leases at Mowbridge, Baron,” the secretary said in his husky voice.
“Must I leave this chair to sign them?”
Mr. MacAllister silently provided the pen and inkwell to Warrick as he sat.
“Mac.” Warrick sipped the pleasing vintage. “What is the status of smallpox vaccination amongst our people?” At the secretary’s hesitation, Warrick spoke further. “Never mind what it is. What interests me is what it should be. I want instituted immediately a campaign at all facilities in which I have an interest, urging vaccination for all who need it. Vaccination, not inoculation. Use the churches, the bailiffs—kegs of ale—whatever it takes to encourage this action.”
Warrick closed his eyes. Opening them, he grinned at his secretary. “And Mac, pour yourself a glass of this excellent, well-balanced wine.”
“Darling Warrick!” Edwina, Lady Storr, in a blue outfit of military pretensions with brass buttons glittering, barged into the room over the vigorous objections of Bates.
Warrick rose to his feet. “This is against all custom, Edwina. I am not dressed.” He stood in his stocking feet, making no effort to repair his disarray.
Edwina’s eyes raked his fit physique and wondered what would happen if she began to stroke the bare skin at his throat. “You may undress much more and it will not bother me.”
Mr. MacAllister cleared his throat and beckoned to Bates. Both men withdrew.
“Edwina?” Still standing, Warrick looked at his stepsister.
She gazed around the room, taking in its Spartan elegance—a few heavy mahogany pieces inlaid with brass, large maps framed against dark red walls. “Comfortable quarters, though ... compact, unadorned. How like you, Warrick.”
She walked to a door in the wall. “And this door leads to—?”
“The bedroom.”
“Ah. How convenient ... to move from business to pleasure with so little effort.” Her ladyship moved to sit in the Sheraton chair at the desk.
Warrick returned to slump in his leather chair. Wonderful. Edwina. Here. Now. Lord help him. The mob had taken its toll and he lacked the ... the perspicacity to deal with her. Nothing appealed to him but this chair, and the small repast laid out on the table beside him.
Having reconnoitered, Edwina attacked. “Warrick. I remind you of your promise to take Cousin Eunice to Kew Gardens, and tomorrow seems an excellent day for the jaunt, while the good weather holds.”
“Promise?”
Lady Storr at war was not to be deterred. “I distinctly remember your saying you would take us if you did not return to Devon.”
Warrick lacked the stomach for a skirmish—and this would be only a very small surrender. He stood, Edwina following suit.
“I look forward to the jaunt, Edwina.” Warrick bowed.
She smiled in triumph. “Splendid!” She started to go, then halted, almost as an afterthought. “I presume you attend the Shoreham musicale tonight?”
“No. Why?”
“You have been more than unusually social lately. I thought you would be there. In any event, we need an escort to the Shoreham’s this evening, and we shall expect you to call for us at eight. You and Eunice can plan for tomorrow’s outing in between the musical numbers.”
Having discharged her final round of artillery, Edwina charged out the door. “Eight sharp” was her parting salvo.
Warrick shrugged his shoulders. So much for appeasement. He had let his guard down, forgetting how the Woodvilles constantly mistook courtesy for cowardice. He raised his arms to rub the back of his neck. He was tired, so very tired of being required t
o overexercise doubt and suspicion.
Mr. MacAllister entered at Lady Storr’s departure. “Baron. This note, addressed to Mr. Warrick Dhever, arrived while you were with Lady Storr.”
The note, on heavy cream paper, came from Quintilla Davenant. Hesitating to presume on their brief acquaintance, she nevertheless requested his assistance, believing him the most able to aid her in a matter of some urgency.
“Hell’s fire! Has Blumpton struck already?”
Warrick immediately made ready to leave. The now-cold baked apple, the cheese, and more than half the glass of well-balanced wine were abandoned to Bates’s palate.
9
“Diamonds are trump, Quintilla, not hearts,” Lady Mallow squeaked. “You fidget this afternoon. Do you hide a lover under the table?” Her ladyship laughed at her ridiculous accusation, then seriously reexamined the cards she held in her bony, bejewelled fingers. Playing her own version of whist, she tolerated conformity to no other system, including Hoyle’s.
Nevertheless, she accurately described Quintilla, sitting opposite, at the card table by the window. Quintilla, with the best view of the front drive, was positioned to note the instant Warrick Dhever appeared—if he came. Oh, did she impose by asking for his help? Was he at home to receive her message, or was he out—stealing? Stop That! She forced herself to pay attention to the cards. Hearts were trump, then? ... No. Diamonds.
Through the window, she noted the raked gravel drive sparkling in the sunlight of early afternoon. Here inside, the four of them, fashionably garbed in pastel muslins, sat on petit-point-cushioned chairs in the rose room, while two of them intrigued to distort the elegant propriety of the scene. She and Kitty were breaking the law.
Oh, why had Kitty climbed the tree, and having climbed it, why had her eyes spotted the poor wet creature stumbling up from the direction of the river? And then, to go to his aid alone, without seeking the assistance of anyone else! Foolish!
Kitty’s soft voice had pulsated with exuberance as she’d entered Quintilla’s bedchamber, just before Lady Mallow’s arrival. “Tilla! I have had an adventure, and I am hiding someone in the library.”
Stunned at her cousin’s disclosure, delivered without warning, Quintilla could only ask, “Why?”
“Because this is much more exciting than an afternoon playing cards with Lady Mallow,” Kitty averred.
“I mean why have you hidden someone in the library?”
“Because no one will be in there this afternoon, and he is escaping from the British Navy.”
“A deserter!” Quintilla’s hushed voice reflected the dread with which she regarded the magnitude of Kitty’s subterfuge. In a family whose only deceit until now had been hiding birthday surprises, Kitty’s daring was awesome—and traitorous to their Guthrie cousin, who served as a surgeon to this very same navy Kitty now proposed to undermine.
“Not a deserter. An impressed American seaman, kidnapped, who needs money to return home. Tilla, here is your chance to talk to him about America, and when Uncle Guthrie returns home from the hospital, I know he—”
“No!” Quintilla had recovered from her initial shock, and her mind raced with possible solutions to the problem. “Uncle Guthrie is too old—and too respected—and too loyal to cope with such a havey-cavey venture.”
“We must help the lad, Tilla. He is so young, and I promised him.”
“Kitty. We break the law in harbouring him. If we do help, the fewer people who know about our dilemma, the better it will be. How do you know the boy speaks the truth?”
“Well, for one, he talks queerly, like those actors in the play we saw last month at the Lyceum.”
“The Americans?”
“Yes. That one.”
“And how did he come to be in the fields here, where you found him?”
“He was coming downriver in an old battered skiff when a rainstorm last night swamped it, and he almost drowned. He thought to find at the London docks a vessel sailing for the United States, and earn his way home. Do come talk to him, Tilla. You will see how honest he is.”
A knock at the door checked the conspirators. Betty opened it to announce grandly, “Lady Mallow has arrived, and Lady Guthrie requests your presence in the rose room.” Betty’s mistress had not always been Lady Guthrie, and the maid appreciated the knighthood as much as anyone.
“Thank you,” said Quintilla. “Betty, a moment, please. I want a brief message delivered promptly to Mr. Warrick Dhever at the Albany.”
Before Quintilla sat at the small rosewood writing table, she looked meaningfully at Kitty. “It will be your task to keep entertaining talk continually flowing at the card table so that any interruption of play will not be ... regretted.”
Kitty had nodded and hastened from the room.
“Well played, Quintilla!” Lady Mallow cawed.
How? thought Quintilla, regarding the green baize top of the table and the card tricks there, surprisingly lined in a neat row in front of her. She glanced at Kitty, and both looked out the window at the sunlit prospect. Only John Gardener, traversing the lawn encircled by the glistening drive, disturbed the quiet with the thump of his wheelbarrow loaded with rake and shears. Such a beautiful day to be breaking the law.
“Your deal, dear.” Lady Guthrie gently broke Quintilla’s preoccupation.
“Yes. Sorry.” Sorry, Mr. Dhever, but I wish to encourage you further in your life of crime, entangling you so thoroughly, you will never be able to extricate yourself. She saw them all—Kitty, Warrick Dhever, Quintilla Davenant—in the dock at Old Bailey. Was this the way she repaid his kindness to her? What was the penalty for aiding a deserter?
“Whipping us! They are whipping us, Quintilla. We do not play our cards well, this game!” Lady Mallow chided.
Quintilla flinched. Fifty lashes, a hundred lashes for Warrick? She never should have involved him. Tears came to her eyes.
“Oh, Quintilla, I but jested. You do not cry?” Lady Mallow squealed her concern.
Lady Guthrie carefully observed her elder niece as Kitty came to the rescue. “Tilla often has problems when she sits near roses. Her eyes water. She sneezes.” Under the table, Kitty nudged Quintilla’s foot. “Let me carry this bouquet to the other side of the room.”
“Ah-choo!” Quintilla gratefully followed the direction. She had let her imagination travel to ridiculous lengths, and could sympathise now with the troubled Lady Macbeth, who saw daggers before her as she feverishly roamed her lord’s castle.
Quintilla’s eyes again focussed on the vista beyond the widow. No one in sight.
Kitty deposited the offending bouquet by the pianoforte, and paused to look across the garden through the open French doors before returning to the table. Play resumed; cards were dealt. Briefly, possession of adequate trump, and winning, were all that mattered.
Quintilla could concentrate only on what she was doing to Warrick Dhever’s future. Perhaps the impressed seaman would leave the library on his own. Perhaps Warrick would not come. If he did, she must let him know, frankly but subtly, that if he were indeed a thief, the fact would not lessen her regard for him. She was his friend, and she would help him return to a life where crime was not necessary. Sometimes, one is driven to do things by forces one cannot control. Yes, that was what she would mention, subtly, to him.
“I cannot call.” Kitty examined with distaste the cards in her hand. “Did you see the play The Americans, Lady Mallow?”
“The colonies have never interested me.” Lady Mallow’s lips pursed as she carefully analysed her hand of cards in the hope of winning the next game. “Equality for men is simply not sensible.” She glanced at her partner, who smiled at the cards fanned out in her hand.
Quintilla looked up from the cards. Through the window, she saw Warrick Dhever, mounted on a chestnut of shining coat, cantering down the drive. He had come! The dear man had come! It would all work out.
Fear departed, and she surrendered her heart to the approaching figure, bright in the sunlig
ht, who had come in answer to her need. She folded the hand of cards and laid it on the table.
“Excuse me.” Quintilla hurried from the room. She must reach Warrick before anyone saw him, so they could slip unobserved over to the library.
Kitty, prompted by Quintilla’s glowing face, noted Warrick’s imminent arrival and proceeded to follow Quintilla’s orders. “Well, I thought it very entertaining.”
“What, dear?” asked Lady Guthrie.
“The play at the Lyceum. The Americans.”
“Really? As I recall, you squirmed in your chair through the entire performance.”
“Oh, no. I was entertained.” Kitty denied her aunt, and watched through the window as Quintilla stood looking up at the new arrival, now preparing to dismount. What a fine horse he rode!
Lady Mallow turned around in her chair to follow Kitty’s line of vision. “What is the Ice Baron doing here?” Lady Mallow asked her hostess.
“Who?” responded Lady Guthrie.
Lady Mallow spoke positively. “I just saw Warrick Dhever, the Baron Eysley, getting off his horse at your front door.”
Not for the world would Lady Guthrie admit she had not known Warrick Dhever was the Right Honourable the Lord Eysley, sometimes called the Ice Baron. “Are you certain you saw him?”
“Yes.” Lady Mallow would not be denied. “I could not miss that marvelous example of—.” She addressed Kitty directly. “—few are the equal of him.”
“I did find the play entertaining,” Kitty lamely wrung one final comment from the Lyceum’s May production. Following her aunt’s lead, she gave no indication of her astonishment at Lady Mallow’s startling revelation. Never let it be said Kitty Fairfield lacked town bronze. Silently, she cheered. So Tilla had captured the Ice Baron!
But there was Tilla’s commission to execute, so Kitty tried again. “What do you think of Shakespeare?” Keeping the conversation flowing could prove to be a very difficult assignment.
Lady Mallow ignored the babbling young girl in favour of a much more interesting topic. She turned to her contemporary. “Margaret Guthrie. What possible interest does the Ice Baron have in your Quintilla?”
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