“You’re in for it now, Mary! Miss Archer, the vile little wretch has tied our bonnet strings together.”
“And got them all sticky with lemon drops too! Just wait, imp, until I get my hands on you.”
She’d stuck out her tongue-it must have been a nasty bright, sugary yellow-from the safety of the far corner of the carriage.
“I want a story,” she’d declared. “I’ve been crying for one ever since we came through Leicester. And all you big, stupid things want to talk about is the silly oafs you’re going to marry.”
Mama always had stories for long journeys. Mary had begged to ride with Mama and Papa in the other carriage, or failing that, in one of the wagons following behind, the servants perched atop trunks of clothing and crates of household goods. But she couldn’t be allowed to travel like a gypsy. And her incessant fussing would have been a bother to Mama, who was very delicate these days.
Something wasn’t quite right about the baby due to be born this fall; the doctor had advised Mama and Papa to repair to the country for the remainder of the pregnancy. Mary imagined the selfish little thing thrashing about instead of lying quiet and curled up like the babies in the illustrated volume she’d found in Papa’s library. Impatient with its own too-long journey, the creature was probably fidgeting as uncontrollably as she was. Well, too bad for it. Too bad for him, as everyone wished it to be.
He’d occasioned too much inconvenience already, just because of the hope of his being a boy. It was Mama’s last chance to give Papa a son to inherit the brewery, and Papa was beside himself with anxiety, having never entirely recovered from the death of the boy twins who’d preceded Mary into the world.
Not that anyone had actually told her any of this. She’d pieced together what she knew from every clue she could find-and probably from a few made-up details as well. From servants’ gossip, the expressions on big people’s faces and what they said when they thought she wasn’t listening. The same way Kit had learned that the marquess wasn’t really his father. There are always ways for a too-inquisitive child to find out more than he or she is meant to know.
How old had she been when he’d told her about the mystery of his origins?
Fourteen? Fifteen?
Had he kissed her yet? No, of course not, because it had been she who’d first kissed him. Not directly after he’d said it. The next day, rather-she’d stayed up all night planning it, tossing about in an agony of delicious anticipation. How exciting it must be to know oneself the secret issue of illicit desire; how thrilling to feel such a desire oneself.
Or was she already feeling it?
Was desire what she felt for Kit?
After she’d kissed him, she’d known that it was-the knowledge only serving to make her life more perplexing during the year that followed, especially when she’d sneak out to meet him, during his school holidays.
At night, she’d scribble certain words with a drawing crayon, on the final pages of the journal that she’d kept in a locked box under her bed, along with a book of obscure sonnets. Words like carnality, concupiscence, greed, heat, fervor, wantonness, weakness, longing, thirst, and finally and most frighteningly, lust.
Tearing out the pages and burning them, the morning after she’d written that last word. But it was no help, for she’d already, involuntarily, committed the list to memory.
Sundays, she’d screw her eyes shut rather than peek at him in the Rowen pew across the aisle, lest the vicar catch a glimpse of her and divine her culpable state.
His holidays ended and him safely returned to school, she’d haunt their secret places, trying to puzzle it out.
But none of what she’d felt had really made sense to her until they’d finally gone to bed together.
And since Calais it made less sense than ever.
The coach lurched to a stop, as though to punctuate her thoughts and illustrate their futility.
Esslynne. A passenger took his leave from the top of the coach, and some fellows hauled a stout lady up to take his place.
Mary rubbed her eyes and straightened her traveling cloak. Esslynne had traditionally marked the last leg of the Penleys’ journeys between London and Beechwood Knolls. In an hour or so they’d enter the vast extent of the marquess’s lands, and in another hour the verges of their own much smaller property would slip into view.
But at ten years of age, the advent of Esslynne had only proved to her that the journey would never end. And would only grow more unendurable, for their governess had pronounced Mary too old to be told stories.
“You’re an extremely capable reader. Here, I’ve brought your copy of Original Stories from Real Life. And if that doesn’t interest you, remember that there’s your Latin exercise still to be done today.”
On a traveling day? But she wouldn’t dare stick out her tongue at Miss Archer. Definitely no Latin, though, at least for as long as she could put it off. Sullenly, she opened the book she’d been handed, a set of moral tales about two insipid sisters who liked nothing better than to distribute their pocket money among the poor.
Even her own sisters were more interesting than that, whinge as they might about the vexations of being the second family in the neighborhood and never invited to a ball at Rowen. Of course, they agreed, Papa had been in the right about the poaching incident. But couldn’t he even try to make it up with the marquess? For almost a decade had passed. And it would be such fun to know the dowager marchioness, who was as beautiful as Mama but much more fascinating.
“Her new muslins are the latest thing, more elegant than what most of Mayfair is wearing but so simple and comfortable, one could wear the lightest stays…”
At which point Julia had whispered something to Jessica, and Jessica had gasped and giggled in response.
Id-jits.
Mary had turned back to her book with renewed disgust for her sisters, pride in Papa’s strength of character, and a child’s fierce hatred for the cruel and murderous Stansells.
Everyone in the neighborhood knew about the disputed estate boundary, and how Mr. Penley’s claim had quite bollixed the marquess’s case against a man accused of poaching game. The grouse having been bagged upon the contested tract of land, the poacher went free-causing the marquess to rage that his neighbor was a traitorous Jacobin, and to forbid his wife and children to speak to any of the Penleys.
Indecent that a brewer should be so rich, he’d shouted. Disgusting that the ancient laws of property had fallen into such disrespect. No wonder the country was going to the devil.
Mary had been a baby at the time, and Kit a very little boy. But it had made a strong impression on him. Helpless with fury, his lordship was, he’d told Mary after they’d become friends. Unbearable to be bested by a man of lesser station, you see.
She did see, now that it was too late for it to matter anymore. She gazed aimlessly out the window, at the misty-moist green fields bordered by thorn and horn-beam, elms and giant beeches casting long late-afternoon shadows as the coach swayed against the bends in the road.
The coach was stifling, the motion of the coach more jolting as the roads became more primitive and rural. She closed her eyes to ward off dizziness, and woke with a start at Grefford, to Jessica’s fair, pretty face smiling in at her through the coach window.
The prettiness grown a bit faded: widowhood was difficult for her sister. Jessie looked tired and a bit dazed, as though still not believing that her charming, buoyant husband had succumbed to the influenza. For (leaving aside the episode of the kitchen maid) Arthur Grandin had continued kindhearted, good-natured, and as delighted to have fallen in love with a brewer’s educated daughter as with a duchess. Jessica’s marriage portion was just what he’d needed to complement his own sparse income and excellent pedigree; he’d accepted his happy fortune as his due, and so had everyone who knew him.
Of course, there’d been no question of a baronet’s son managing a brewery. Jeremy MacNeill would have done splendidly, but Jeremy had inherited far too many bus
iness interests of his own. So Papa had sold out his shares, invested the proceeds in superbly reliable securities for his daughters, and retired into his gardens, his library, and a lingering melancholy after that last baby (it had been a boy) was born dead, sometime around Mary’s eleventh birthday, which had slipped by with very little notice.
Enough memories. Among hugs and kisses, laughter, and a few tears, she and her sister passed arm in arm out of the inn yard to the little High Street, deeply rutted and perhaps a bit shabbier than when last she’d seen it. Probably from the long, wet winter they’d had, or was it simply the effect of the shadows, the deepening violet sky?
A haggard, rather frantic-looking workman pitched himself by her and Jessica, nearly jamming into them, quite as though he hadn’t noticed them walking toward the Grandin carriage.
Now that’s a rude mechanical-the joke had barely taken shape in her mind when her eye became distracted by a most exquisite creature making her slouched, languid way toward them-willowy and graceful, pitiless and perfect, with huge, brilliant eyes rolling in exasperation and-ah yes, Mary was beginning to understand, utter mortification at the sound of every entirely commonplace word Jessica uttered.
Betts? She swallowed the name back. Jessie had been right-the girl had become a beauty. Mary felt herself unwillingly and unaccountably intimidated, awed as though in the presence of royalty.
“E-Elizabeth?”
Did royalty suffer itself to be hugged? Just barely, it seemed.
“Hullo, Aunt Mary.” Pulling away and making for the carriage, where Peggy, a footman, and Jessica’s coachman were loading Mary’s things.
“Another quarrel this morning,” Jessica whispered, quite as though the girl weren’t watching, her narrowed eyes sending blue-diamond sparks in their direction. “About her new gown for Midsummer Night. I’ll tell you about it later.”
As they set off, Mary just had time to wave to Cathy Williams, briskly leading the stout lady down the High Street. The Grandin carriage would be turning in the opposite direction, through the market square…
“She must be the school’s new cook,” Jessica said. “Which is a blessing, for Cathy’s been doing it herself these weeks, and the word about the village is that her scholars aren’t enjoying it.”
I’ll turn away from the window, Mary thought, shut my eyes if necessary, when we pass the spot where he’d swung himself up on his horse…
A local boy had been holding both horses’ reins, young Lord Christopher and his older brother Lord William having ridden together into the village. The village boy’s face was a study in sullen confusion: annoyed to be pulled from an ongoing game to mind the marquess’s sons’ horses, yet proud despite himself to have been the one asked to do it.
Kit would have been thirteen; by then Mary would have had a proper twelfth-birthday party, to make up for her lonely, unsatisfactory eleventh. Mama would have been doing charitable errands, leaving Mary to distribute her leftover birthday sweetmeats among the girls and boys playing in the square.
He hadn’t noticed her, though she’d been standing quite close by. Well, why should he? After an hour with the village children, she’d be as dusty and unkempt as they were. And anyway, the Stansells and the Penleys were enemies.
Head high, reins held carelessly in a long, strong hand (not a boy’s hand at all, she remembered thinking), Kit had ridden away with a haughty expression on his face, even as the village boy had begun salving his self-respect by muttering curses. Too softly spoken to be heard by the young gentlemen on horseback, they were nonetheless quite awful and entertaining curses, about parentage and bad women-far worse and much more fascinating than anything Mary or her sisters would dare to say.
She’d gasped and giggled at the clods of earth (and worse) that he and his mates were throwing, now that Kit and his brother had gotten far enough away not to see. Good, she’d thought, that conceited Stansell boy deserves it.
“Good,” she’d called out, along with a few of the other children. “Good,” and “Throw ’em another, Peter. Throw ’em a good ’un!”
Her mother had come to fetch her just then; she had to wave good-bye to the children, sad to leave their play and oddly conscience-stricken, as though she’d witnessed-or even participated in-something she shouldn’t. Which had been a new sort of experience for her, because until then she’d liked nothing better than to learn something forbidden and mysterious, depending as she did upon just such surreptitiously gathered knowledge for her understanding of the world.
“… To add to the disarray,” Jessica was saying, “there’s a new laundry maid and I’m not sure she understood how I wanted her to iron the petticoats.” Putting her head out the window, she called to the coachman, “Can you go a bit faster, Mr. Dodge?”
Another fit of eye rolling on Elizabeth’s part.
“He can’t, Mama. Not until he gets that wheel fixed-don’t you remember?”
“She’s right.” Jessie smiled apologetically at Mary, conciliatingly at her daughter. “We’re still a bit at sixes and sevens with our vehicles, I’m afraid. It was one of the ways my old steward used to cheat me. He and the coachman were in league; repairs were shoddy, parts weren’t replaced.”
“And as you can see,” she told Mary over a late supper in her little parlor, “it’s not as though our Miss Elizabeth doesn’t know the details of managing things. She knows better than I do, as she demonstrates every day, just civilly enough that one can’t quite accuse her of pertness. It’s her particular pleasure to point out how much better a job, of everything, they do at Rowen. But to lift a finger to help…”
“She didn’t seem awfully pleased to see me. I confess it’s made me a bit peevish.”
“Well, she’s rather divided the world into friends and enemies. And any friend of mine…”
The laundry had been done satisfactorily. Jessica liked to mend the most delicate pieces herself; they brought a sweet green smell into the chamber. Mary took a deep, happy breath.
“I never have such clean linen as when I’m here.”
Jessica laughed. “Wasn’t that Brummell’s first principle? That no one could be a gentleman without plenty of country washing?”
“Or a lady, I expect,” Mary said, “though Brummell didn’t seem to think there was any art to being a lady.”
“It hasn’t been so easy, even to do a good laundry, with all the rain we’ve had. Still, today was lovely and it’s good luck you came when everything’s so fresh. You’ll sleep well tonight on the sheets we’ve put on your bed… Mary?”
“Yes, sorry… I must have drifted off for a moment.”
Her sister only nodded, it being clear that both of them were remembering the time when Jessica, who’d been home for a visit with Arthur and the children, had helped Mary tell a lie about the sheet she’d stolen.
“But I’ve forgotten the news,” Jessica said now, “that has set the countryside on its ear.”
“Not more machine breaking? Angry meetings?”
Jessica shook her head.
But if Richard were right, the government’s repression had driven the men to meet in secret. Better not to bring up that possibility, Mary thought. Not just yet anyway.
“Even so,” her sister continued, “there’s a good deal of grumbling, even rudeness, as you saw-well, what would one expect when there’s not enough employment? We’ll be improving things a little bit anyway, by hiring some of the young people as occasional help for our house party.
“But the news is that Kit’s brother the Ninth Marquess has had a second fit of apoplexy, just day before yesterday. It seems he’ll live; he speaks very little, though they’re hopeful of him getting some of that back-they’ve got him in an invalid chair. His son Gerald is on the continent; I should think they’ve summoned him.
“I shall have to call, of course. Not quite yet, though; let the young marchioness recover from the initial shock of it. Still, it’s awkward while you’re here. Not that anyone will mention your presenc
e-the Stansells are quite masterful at not mentioning things, and even I shall hold my tongue in the matter of your visit. But you won’t mind too much if I go, will you, Mary?”
“Oh, dear. Yes. No. I mean, of course you should call.”
For a moment, she wondered if Kit would be coming down. Surely not; he’d want to be in London. And anyway, he knew that she was here.
Her face had given her away.
“You’ve seen him. And you haven’t told me.” Jessica’s gaze was as insistent, her voice as implacable, as about a stolen bedsheet a great many years ago.
“Tomorrow. After we meet with your nice new steward, and then the man who’ll be assessing the state of the water closets. I quite tremble at the possibilities, don’t you? Oh, and you didn’t finish your story about Fred and his school prank. Well, at least you’ve got one steady, dependable child out of your three. Julia writes that Joshua has taken wonderfully to business-Papa would have been proud of his namesake. And I’ve quite forgotten to go see Mrs. Ottinger down in the kitchen-do you think she’ll forgive me if I wait until tomorrow? Such a long day, I must go to bed… the coach… the ride…”
“Tell me now. Tell me everything.”
But she didn’t. Not really, and certainly not everything.
“We had a glass of wine,” she said, which was true in its way.
“We spoke a bit,” she added. “He didn’t apologize. He was the same arrogant, irresponsible boy we all remember. And then he went away and got himself quite horribly drunk over it.” None of which was a lie-more a matter of judicious elision.
“Poor Mary,” Jessica said. “But I must say, I’m a bit surprised. One would have thought that after such a successful military career… his brother the marquess spoke so proudly of him-quite a new thing from him, as you can imagine-which led me rather to hope…”
Everyone, it seemed, was hoping for something.
The Slightest Provocation Page 9