The Slightest Provocation

by Pam Rosenthal

  “You already told me. You fancy a minor position in one of Lord Liverpool’s government’s smaller ministries.”

  “You find it unlikely?” he asked.

  “Well, if someone were to ask me who the most ungoverned personage I’d ever met was, I shouldn’t have to think awfully hard about it. Shallow, callow…”

  “I’ve been nine years at war, Mary. Give me credit for having learned a little organizational ability, a few things about power and administration and the flow of intelligence…”

  “You can barely stand up, and you’ve clearly spent the last few hours with your head over a basin.”

  “Fortunately, she was kind enough to leave me with one in reach. Whereas you, Lady Christopher…”

  “I slept quite well, thanks.”

  “You slept unaided?”

  “I took something for headache.”

  “My point exactly.”

  She’d let him have that one. Still, “You thought you needed only to stride back into view for me to put aside a perfectly well-regulated, carefully constructed, and really quite satisfying…”

  “Yes, you keep telling me how satisfying…”

  “Must you interrupt me? An extremely satisfying life-as though it would have been a simple business for me these last years, for any woman whose husband left her so suddenly and scandalously…”

  “I didn’t think…”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it without having said anything.

  “While in the matter of the Home Office, Kit, you obviously don’t understand…”

  “You made it clear enough last night, the veritable encyclopedia of things I don’t understand. No, please, don’t pout. You’ve already proved yourself a woman of action. Look at all the heavy kitchen pottery on that dresser. Here, I’ll get you a pitcher to toss at me.”

  She shouldn’t have begun ragging him on about politics. Especially, she thought, after her decorous little speech about their separate courses.

  “I must go. The packet boat will be leaving soon. I’ve got quite a bit of traveling before I’m home again in Derbyshire.”

  He shrugged. “Dismal place. Just as well that I’ll be too busy to come down. Difficult to avoid each other in such a small, close neighborhood.

  “And anyway,” he continued, “we shouldn’t be seen together any longer. Not if you want me to bring suit against your friend Mr. Bakewell. The divorce courts don’t look kindly on collusion.”

  So he knew about Matthew.

  She tried to push her spectacles higher on her nose, but they were already quite as close to her eyes as they could be. She could see him most clearly as he explained what bringing suit for a divorce would entail.

  He should have to sue the man for alienating her affection, then bring suit against her for adultery in ecclesiastical court, and only then petition Parliament for their Act of Divorce.

  “If I can afford to do so. It costs about a thousand, you know.”

  Again, he stressed the necessity that they not be seen together upon their return to England. If it appeared that he and she had planned this, the government would reject his petition for divorce.

  An exceedingly lucid presentation, especially coming from someone who’d spent the night with his head over a basin. His eyes were red, his posture increasingly unsteady, and (when he leaned forward to make a particular fine distinction), the smell of his breath was really quite dreadful.

  “Of course, you and your Manchester manufacturer must become demonstrably adulterous. And I shall have to hire spies, you know, to catch you at it.”

  Your Manchester manufacturer-reeking and disreputable, he’d still managed a most fastidious, Stansell-like curl of the lip.

  She ignored it.

  “Spy away,” she said. “He wants us to be able to marry, and he’s willing to bear the scandal. We both are. He’ll be returning to England for Midsummer Eve. Just don’t set your spy on us at Beechwood Knolls, I beg you. I shall be leaving soon after midsummer. Wait and keep my family out of the business.”

  “Your servant.” His bow was less than graceful. “My congratulations. He sounds a splendid fellow. Too bad I shall only make his acquaintance indirectly, through the legal process.”

  “Yes, it is too bad. But then, you won’t be crossing paths with us very often. You’ll doubtless marry again as well, to a lady of great dash and ton. Who will admire you. And your position in the government.”

  But here, mercifully, was Thomas in his newly brushed mulberry Rowen velvet. For the coach was ready, the lady’s things were all packed up (yes, and a very good morning to you, Lord Christopher), and they must, indeed, depart directly.

  Which (thank you, Thomas) the lady was altogether eager to do, wishing as she did to put the width of the Channel between herself and his lordship-who had, in any case, already turned away, all shaky, aggrieved, crapulous dignity, and allowed his valet to lead him back upstairs.

  Chapter Six

  LONDON, LATER THAT WEEK

  “I’m hardly surprised.” Richard Raddiford Mor rice’s northern voice made a soft rumble against the cluttered room’s bookshelves, paneling, and purple drapery at the windows.

  “For the two of you would wait until the last possible moment,” he continued, “to build up the suspense, set the level of histrionics as impossibly high as you could manage. Your final night on the continent-quite banal, really, Mary.” His steel pen glinted in the lamplight above a sheaf of papers, held with a slightly unsteady hand.

  Mary groaned from the depths of a plush armchair in the room’s far corner. “You’ve been writing your newspaper’s theater criticism of late, Richard.”

  “To my shame. But for the next issue I’ll be taking on a new chap to do it. Young and eager, far better educated at his dissenting academy than Kit and I at Oxford-got more learning in him, for that matter, than Kit, I, and a goodly percentage of the House of Lords taken together…”

  “But in the main,” she continued, “you’re quite correct. We were worse than histrionic. We were stupid, impatient, and less tolerant of one another than ever. Without even our youth to excuse us.”

  For a few minutes, the only sound in the dimly lit room was the low fire’s crackle.

  “Still, it’s the only thing.” Richard’s response seemed to come from a distance away. “Divorce, I mean. Both of you starting your lives afresh-it’s what you need. Though I must confess that I’d rather hoped otherwise.”

  “You’re very forgiving,” Mary said.

  “I’d like Kit to forgive me as well,” Richard replied.

  She’d made Richard’s acquaintance soon after her marriage. Kit had sometimes spoken of a friend and protector at Eton. But their paths had diverged at university, Richard passing his examinations in the undistinguished fashion befitting his station while Kit got sent down for dueling and riotous behavior. Bumping into each other in London, however-Richard setting up at the Albany just when Kit and Mary had taken the house in Curzon Street-the two had enthusiastically resumed their friendship and Kit had invited Richard to dine with them at home.

  She hadn’t been eager to have a guest before they’d gotten the furniture in proper order (though in truth, they never really got the furniture in order). But Richard professed to find it refreshingly informal. He brought a Meissen clock for the mantelpiece, played with their dog, praised the turtle soup, and in all ways made them feel quite the clever pair for having run away together.

  He’d shared his reminiscences as well. Lord Kit had gathered a certain notoriety at school, Richard said, for never crying when he was caned-and given how many times he’d been caned… well, he must have set some sort of record, for the lower forms anyway. And so I was obliged to make him my fag, send him on errands and so forth, just to keep him out of the way of fighting and mischief.

  Kit had bowed modestly, and Richard had winked. He’s good at errands, he said; don’t hesitate to set him fetching and carry
ing, Mary. And who would have expected-he raised his glass, sentimental or perhaps just tipsy-that such a skinny, scrappy little chap would go get himself such a trump of a wife.

  After which the three of them were often seen in town together. A bit timid with members of the opposite sex, Richard hadn’t seemed to mind when Mary and Kit would begin making eyes at each other around three in the morning, to disappear soon after. Anyway, he’d soon be going home to Yorkshire, to become squire and magistrate, master of the hunt, and husband to the nice enough young woman everyone expected him to marry.

  It hadn’t worked out that way. Aimlessly at first, he’d begun a course of reading, his lodgings cluttered and later choked with pamphlets and periodicals from obscure bookshops, broadsheets picked up along the street.

  Well, one can’t play and carouse all the time, can one? he’d asked.

  One can try, Kit had said, drawing Mary closer to him. She laughed and kissed his cheek, and Richard had laughed too.

  No, really, Kit had insisted. Better to carouse than bury one’s nose in poisonous screeds that wish you and me and our families dead or at least starving.

  Why not?

  In his modest way, Richard had been remarkably logical-minded. If you were going to frequent dangerous neighborhoods in the hours before dawn, he asked, why not also entertain some dangerous ideas? As for reading, best to try something that would shake you up a bit, make you think about your place in the world and how others saw you.

  Which is all very well for Richard, Kit had commented to Mary later that evening. Because Richard’s never felt a moment’s real doubt about anything.

  How somber he’d looked. When just a moment before he’d been so charming, pulling off her stocking with his teeth and running his tongue from her knee to her instep; it was all she could do not to nudge his head back downward.

  But no matter how seductively she kissed, stroked, and nuzzled at him, her senses heightened but also befuddled by the opium they’d been eating-it seemed that he would talk, about the things nobody talked about.

  He’d stared into space. Richard, he said, has never had to wonder about himself or his origins, or… anything.

  His place in the world, he’d added, in a very low voice.

  It doesn’t matter, she might have replied.

  She might have winced, with the guilty knowledge that marrying her hadn’t done much for his place in the world. Or perhaps she’d laughed. Isn’t the world agreeable enough? You’ve got the Stansell name, there’s plenty of money settled on us, and you’ve got me wanting you, at this very moment, more than I can fairly stand.

  But most likely she’d made a small moue of impatient desire.

  The opium set a strict order to one’s wants. And uppermost among hers right then had been the absolute necessity that he remove her other stocking, the pink silk being so constricting against her skin and the color so… well, so jarring and out of place against the more subtle and gorgeous hues of his and her naked flesh in the lamplight, the stocking being the only item of clothing either of them was wearing at the moment.

  Please, darling?

  And so he’d shrugged, dipped his head downward, and proceeded with the serious business of making elegant, complicated love to his very demanding wife.

  Even as Richard continued scandalizing his fellows at White’s with dangerous ideas. Pamphlets gave way to slender and then thicker books; he allowed his club membership to lapse at the time (as he confessed much later) he’d come to fancy himself in love with Mary.

  Which also had been when Kit had almost stopped coming home at night, and Mary became quite frantic and in need of all the attention and affection she could get.

  What a relief, she’d thought, to have Richard to pour out her rages and fears to. What a comfort to confide in someone who knew Kit as well as she did.

  And what a pleasure that there was someone who obviously still found her pretty. For she was only twenty-one and she was still pretty, even if her bloody damn husband preferred to spend his nights with garishly painted doxies and had got a nasty inflammation for his troubles.

  Could it really be taking such a long time to heal?

  She’d wept and wailed, drenching her handkerchief and quite ruining Richard’s coat, her head against his shoulder and the rest of her body shuddering in his arms.

  Until her sobs subsided, and he and she drew back to opposite ends of the settee, each staring at the other as they smoothed hair and straightened disordered garments.

  Richard didn’t call for the week after that. Good, she thought, for she wouldn’t be inviting him. Even better if she took a holiday. She’d go to Glasgow as soon as her nephews got over whatever illness Julia had written was keeping them bedridden and wrapped in flannel this time.

  She congratulated herself upon these excellent resolutions until the day when Kit didn’t come home at all. Half past one in the afternoon: she’d been weeping and wringing her hands since shortly after midnight.

  No use continuing to agonize over his safety. He was probably passed out in a gutter somewhere-or sleeping off his inebriation in the arms of… but even thinking the name of his soi-disant actress felt like grasping a fistful of nettles.

  Kit deserved to feel as miserable as she did. Not that he actually would be hurt; well, how could he be? He was never home anymore. And not that she’d want to hurt him-but if he did saunter in, well, she’d like to see the look on his face when he saw what she was capable of, in her own bed and with someone who admired and appreciated her.

  Though of course she hadn’t liked it at all when, in the way of a folk tale’s wishes coming horribly, literally true, he’d strolled upstairs with torn coat, dirty, grinning face, and scuffed boots. She could remember all too well his words in the hall as he’d approached, “And so I says, ‘Please, sir…’ ” doubtless the beginning of a wickedly entertaining tale of fisticuffs and night wardens, just before he reached the bedroom door and did, indeed, get his eyeful of what she was capable of.

  Even now, she could hardly bear the memory of how his words and grin had melted away, mouth fallen open, unshaven cheeks caved in and red-rimmed eyes like ice, before he stumbled backward and disappeared from her sight, and she began pushing at Richard and screaming and pleading for Kit to come back.

  She could summon up Richard’s image with equal clarity; how young, how pale and frightened he’d looked without his shirt and neckcloth. But they’d all been young, at least until that moment. It rather robs you of your first youth, to comprehend how cruel it is to use someone you don’t love, to take revenge on someone you do.

  They’d also been too young-or at least Kit and Richard had been-to grasp the absurdity of dueling over it. Too proud of what they’d called their honor, too stupidly enamored of their reputations; it still sickened her to know that one of them might have killed the other out on Hampstead Heath, while she sobbed and hiccupped, and Jessica patted and hugged her and gave her doses to make her sleep.

  And when Kit did come home again-the only time she’d seen him until Calais-they’d been too furiously incoherent to do anything but hurl invectives and some rather good porcelain at each other. The Meissen clock had been reduced to shards, powder, and a few crazily spinning gearwheels beneath their feet, while their little dog yelped piteously from behind the fire screen.

  Richard’s right hand still trembled from where Kit’s bullet had torn the nerves in his forearm. He was clumsy at attaching his papers together, and many of the pins had fallen onto the Turkey carpet.

  “We all wronged one another,” she said now. “But you must cease hoping. Kit will gather evidence on me, prepare a case, sue Matthew for ‘alienating my affections,’ and then we’ll finally be free of each other. As though my affections were anyone’s to alienate but my own…”

  Their laughter gave way to the rustle of the fire and the scratching of pen on paper, many sheets of it strewn about, some held together with pins that winked under the lamps. A few pages were splashed
with tea, Richard having coughed and spluttered in dismay at Mary’s announcement that Kit wanted to work for the Home Office.

  No matter, he’d told her-the pages were just early proofs. He’d been making his first corrections for the next issue of Everyman’s Review while Mary replied to the letters she’d found waiting for her at his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

  She hadn’t provided a great deal of detail about Calais. But Richard wouldn’t have needed much, knowing Kit as he did, and continuing to love him-though a gentleman might not have expressed it that way.

  Bless him for remaining such a good friend to her. And bless his wife, Anna, for having become her friend as well.

  The three of them had enjoyed a gay supper upon her arrival last night. Finishing off several bottles of good claret, they’d laughed, gossiped, and interrupted one another for hours, speaking of art and history, Mary’s travels and the affairs of the nation. A satisfying, wide-ranging conversation, and yet constructed with some art to exclude any reminder of long-ago events at Curzon Street.

  Astonishing how meticulous we can be, Mary reflected, who profess our shared contempt for petty social convention. But Anna was the true artist among them.

  The offhand announcement, over this morning’s muffins and marmalade, of a shopping expedition in Bond Street, and would Mary care to accompany her?

  The bright nod in Mary’s direction, coffee cup clinking against gold-rimmed saucer for emphasis.

  The significant pause: chin raised, cornflower-blue eyes so coolly communicative of their owner’s wishes that Mary had no choice but to plead exhaustion and the necessity of catching up on her correspondence.

  “Yes, of course. How foolish of me. Well, I’ll leave you to Richard. You two can shut yourselves up in his dreary study with your papers and some strong tea. Just finish it up quickly, will you, so we all can go for a drive later.”

  Brava, Anna. And bravo to Richard for finding himself such a perfect mate.