She thought she might be in for a little lecture on disorder and the need to contain it. But all he said was, “Of course, it rather leaves them where they’d begun, doesn’t it? With nothing settled-the whole affair come to nothing.
“The odd thing,” he continued, “is that the Home Office might have been able to pull it off, if they’d better coordinated what they told their magistrates, saw the whole thing more strategically.”
“If they’d had you working for them?”
“Yes, in fact. Well, it wouldn’t have been easy…”
“You’ve been thinking how you might have managed it.”
“The idea, you see, was to tell a great many people what they wanted to hear. Those in possession of power are likely to believe that any challenge, any change to how things have always been done, might well be an insurrection. In a certain sense I don’t believe Sidmouth or the Committee of Secrecy was lying. Not by their lights anyway. Workingmen speaking their minds, manufacturers who want representation for their districts-it’s all suspicious and frightening. And if the workingmen don’t know how to organize their own insurrection, if they’re waiting for London to tell them how… well, why not send a London delegate to do the job, even if he represents a rather different London from what they think they’re getting? Get the whole thing done quickly and frighten everyone else into quiescence.”
His voice was quiet. “Spies and informants are excellent at telling people what they want to hear. Pretty soon you’ve manufactured a truth as well as an insurrection. Of course, different people want to hear different truths, so things can get unruly. It’s possible that Oliver told Sidmouth what he wanted to hear; the Home Office might have begun with something a great deal more modest in mind. But if they’d had a detail man like me to help them keep their truths straight…”
To which she had no reply, except to kiss him again, rather clumsily on the cheek. He didn’t speak for a few minutes after that.
“You’re very good, Mary, to tolerate me in this infernal, cynical mood. And of course, to have bullied and badgered me into getting my friend back. Not to speak of putting me in the way of seeing Oliver and Sidmouth exposed. I’m in your debt. Ah yes, and then there was last night… Mary?”
“Yes?”
“We shall have to speak about all this-really talk. Very soon.”
“I expect we shall.” She hoped the words hadn’t come out as doleful as she felt. You’re not in my debt, she wanted to protest. It’s not some kind of commercial, legal agreement we have between us.
She held her tongue instead, in most un-Penley-like fashion. For if (as was seeming increasingly likely) they each held a differing view of what had transpired on this journey-well, then, her view of it must be wrong.
A reunion with a friend. A reconsideration of his political position. And a delicious, scandalous night at an inn.
What more, really, had happened?
And how was it, when she could know so well what he was thinking when they were arguing or making love, that she knew so little of his mind right now?
They’d reached a bend in the road, where it forked between Grefford and Beechwood Knolls.
“Beechwood Knolls,” he called out, in response to Mr. Frayne’s inquiry.
“You’ll want to greet your sister and her family, I expect. The one from Glasgow, I mean.”
“Yes, I know which one you mean. Indeed, it’ll be very agreeable to see them…”
She wondered when this annoying intermittent rain had started falling. Better a whomping big storm than this polite drizzle.
A curricle was parked on the side of the road next to the hedge, just before the turn one took to get to the house at Beechwood Knolls.
“Hold on, Frayne,” Kit called. “What’s that? Do you suppose they need any help? They don’t look like they’ve gone into a ditch.”
“It’s some of our young people, I think,” Mary said, “returning from Colonel Halsey’s.”
Indeed, seated in the curricle were a mournful Fred and a furious Elizabeth.
And as for Lord Ayres and Fannie Grandin?
Mr. Frayne was peering down curiously from the box.
“Come into the coach,” Mary said. “Both of you. Immediately. Mr. Frayne will wait here until we’ve finished speaking.”
Her first fearful surmise proved correct. Fannie and Lord Ayres had run away together just today; Fred and Elizabeth had been parked here for an hour, arguing about who was to blame and how to tell Jessica the news. Of the two young people, Fred seemed the more capable of telling the story clearly.
“He’d bought a flash new phaeton and pair, you see, while we were at the Halseys’. Gave everyone a ride this afternoon, each in turn. Fannie was the last; he said he might as well take her home to Beechwood Knolls, as she thought she might be getting a cold. We followed about an hour later…”
“More like two,” Elizabeth interjected, “by the time you’d made your sweet farewells to Miss Halsey…”
“Make it an hour and a quarter.” Fred shrugged. “We brought Miss Kimball in the backseat…”
Mary glanced out the window, for fear that the old lady was still out there.
“You needn’t worry about her.” Elizabeth’s lip curled. “She was having such vapors, we imposed upon good Miss Williams to let her stay the night in Grefford. When we discovered that they’d eloped…”
“Discovered by means of…?”
“A note to me. I found it in the seat of the gig.” The girl opened it and cleared her throat.
“Is that quite necessary?” Fred asked.
“I think it is.”
I haven’t the heart for a Season next year, Betts. The heart I thought I had is quite broken, I feel such a fool… And so I think I’d better marry quickly-someone rich enough, anyway, and get the whole grim business done with. And if your uncle does chance to ask after me…
“What the devil?” Kit exclaimed, at the same time as Mary demanded to know what in the world he’d done to cause this.
“Nothing. I swear it. Explained a bit about Metternich over supper at Cauthorn.”
“Treated her like a rational creature.” Mary sighed. “As though you didn’t know how charming that can be, from a handsome man in evening dress. Oh, dear.”
“And as though you didn’t know”-Elizabeth turned an angry face to her aunt-“how infatuated Lord Ayres was with you.”
“Don’t speak so loudly,” Mary said. “Mr. Frayne is a terrible scandalmonger.”
“All very well,” Kit said, “for you to say at this juncture.”
“It was nothing. He’d be there mooning about in the forest, when I’d be returning from meeting you…”
The intruder in the forest… Fannie getting her heart broken, coming to look for Kit.
“Well, it’s disgusting, is all I can say,” Elizabeth said, “the two of you at your age…”
“What?” It shouldn’t matter, Mary thought, especially in the midst of the crisis like the present one. Shouldn’t, but it did. At your age… how dare the little chit? “Are the two of us so superannuated that we mayn’t be allowed a little married pleasure?”
“Certainly, if you knew how to take it reasonably, like my mama and papa, when he was alive. Well, we could tell-couldn’t we, Fred?-mornings when they’d be gazing foolishly at each other over the breakfast table, even if we were too young quite to understand…” She began to blush, as Fred had been doing for quite some time.
“Still, Betts is right.” He put his arm about his sister’s shoulder. “It was our good fortune to grow up in such a household.”
“As it was mine,” Mary said softly.
But Elizabeth (Gracious, she’s a Penley after all, Mary thought) evidently had a few more opinions on the subject.
“What’s not all right is a couple of a certain age sneaking about and misleading those around them into thinking they’re out of love and… available.”
Kit gave a low whistle, of… agreement, Ma
ry thought.
“Especially when one can’t come near either of them for the contagion of a… well, an erotic sort of mood.”
Fred groaned, but his sister wouldn’t be dissuaded.
“Because Mama was right about you, Aunt Mary, a few months ago when she told Aunt Julia that you remained a spoiled baby, and simply had no idea… what it would really be like…”
The blue-diamond eyes had filled with tears, but Elizabeth sniffled them back.
“… to, to lose someone who’d loved you as no one would ever love you again. Really to lose him and not simply to play at it… poor Mama.”
Had Jessica really said that about her?
She took a long, deep breath.
“Well,” she said, “I shouldn’t have wished to hear it, but it was almost worth it for Elizabeth’s pronouncing her mama right about anything.”
“That’s all very well,” Fred said, “but Fannie and Lord Ayres shouldn’t be running off to marry, just to teach someone a lesson.”
“And Lady Grandin will never forgive a one of us.”
“She won’t need to,” Mary replied. “Nor will she ever know any of this happened.”
“Ah?” Kit raised his eyebrows. “How’s that?”
“Because they won’t marry. Because you and I shall go get them back.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
“Well,” Kit said, “your family’s produced another one, haven’t they? Despite all my sister-in-law’s best efforts.”
They’d taken the curricle, after sending Fred and Elizabeth home to tell Jessie that Fannie had a cold and would be remaining at the Halseys’ for another day or two, with Miss Kimball to nurse her and Lord Ayres to bring them back when she was well again.
“Elizabeth was wise,” Mary said, “to hide Miss Kimball, and Cathy was an excellent, discreet choice. Oh, dear, and now I truly must find a way to help raise funds for a village cistern…”
“Cistern?”
Ah yes, she’d never explained about the cistern. Not too difficult to sum it up, though, for it seemed he’d learned a bit about engineering in the course of his military career.
“I’m no expert.” He’d knit his brow, rather engagingly, she thought. “But I think I know what one would inquire of an expert, and how to frame the questions.”
His face changed just then, in response to a traveler coming in their direction. “Ah, good evening, Mr. Greenlee,” he called.
The carpenter was returning from Grefford astride a small, neat cob, his long legs rather dangling down the horse’s sides. She’d never paid the man much attention-well, why should she? So many people lived and worked on the Stansell estate-but now she remembered Kit’s childhood story about the stallions in the paddock. Clearly a kind man, and rather nice-looking as well now that she noticed. Spare, sinewy, even at his age-she chided herself for the condescending tone of that.
Not a very inquisitive man, though. No bothersome questions about what they might be doing out here in the rain: he simply wished them a pleasant evening and hoped the weather might clear.
“Well, then, Lord Christopher and my lady, I’ll be on my way…” Putting his broad-brimmed hat back on his head, and taking the reins in a long, graceful hand with elegantly squared-off fingers. Callused, of course, from his work, but…
A great many things had come clear in a very short time.
Good night and Godspeed.
And the very same to yourself, Mr. Greenlee.
“Well,” Mary said a few moments later, “if the wishes of our near and dear ones can count for anything…”
She stopped then, blushing for the strangeness of referring to the estate carpenter at Rowen as near and dear.
“It’s all right,” Kit said. “I know.”
“How long have you known?”
“Not very. Only since I came home this time. No one told me; it simply was apparent, as it was to you just then. He’s a very good man, you know, and he’s helped me with little things whenever he’s had the opportunity. One comes to know a certain sort of thing, it seems, when one is ready to know it. And I… I rather like knowing it’s he, odd as it must sound.”
She tried to get another look at the man from over her shoulder. But the road had curved away.
“Though I could have wished to get some of his height,” Kit said now.
“He’s on his way to Rowen. To the dower house, do you think?”
“I believe that’s possible, yes.”
They were silent then, for some time afterward, thinking of the past’s hold on the present-their thoughts then turning to less pleasant future eventualities, if they weren’t able to stop the young couple and turn them back.
They tried two inns just the other side of Grefford, but no one answering to the couple’s description had been seen at either of them-though at the second inn, they did have the dubious pleasure of barging in on another eloping pair. Both times, Kit’s aristocratic preening helped them secure the landlords’ cooperation-thank heaven, Mary thought, even as she wondered what Mr. Greenlee would have thought to see it.
“Ayres won’t drive all night,” Kit said. “They have to be at an inn along the way.”
Mary was less optimistic. “Unless they’ve taken a less direct route, to hinder us from finding them. Perhaps he has a friend he plans to stay with.
“If they do marry,” she said more softly, “I shall never forgive us for having a hand in it.”
“Not very good for us, then.” His voice was equally soft, even as he urged the horse forward along a road that was becoming muddier.
“But at the very least you will have to forgive yourself,” he told her some minutes later. “Not entirely, and never in the very small hours of the morning when you wake-but day by day, to get through it.”
She was silent and so was he, for a time.
“A man died because of me.” His voice betrayed no emotion. “In Spain. And another man lost his leg. Because of me and in some sense because of you too, me being so keen on dying grandly in battle, to prove… I don’t know what anymore… to prove something to you about my greatness of spirit and how much you’d lost by not appreciating me more. To make you mourn me and hate yourself forever.”
His first time actually fighting, he told her. Heedlessly bold in the face of an ambush.
“The time I got that extravagant wound. I never thought I’d be telling you…”
He did so in a very few words, against the dripping rain and rustling trees, how his younger self had charged into combat, stupidly, needlessly, like so many reckless young Englishmen, in duels or on the battlefield. Happened all the time.
Except it shouldn’t happen when the gentleman was an officer, entrusted with responsibility for others. Too bad he’d learned this lesson so belatedly. Half-delirious from his own wound, helpless to stop his ears against the cries, the sawing of bone. He hadn’t started out caring about anyone but himself, but when one heard a man scream like that…
She laid her hand on his forearm. “And afterward?”
“Not much to say,” he told her. “Duty. The dull business of trying to make it right when you never really can. The man who died had four daughters. I’ve tried to help his widow; the hardest thing to bear is her gratitude. And I did try to be a better officer, to remember what’s more important than glory. To get on with things, you know.”
“Yes,” she said, “to get on with things.”
“The Portleigh Arms is up ahead,” he said a while later. “Do you remember?”
An absurd question.
In any case they’d be able to change horses. The place had once had a good stable; it was the best of the local inns for some miles.
“They might have stopped the night here.” Mary essayed to control the quaver in her voice. “Of course,” she continued, “they’d ask for separate bedchambers.”
“As we did,” he said.
For all the separate bedchambers had signified.
Telling her hadn’t b
een so awful as he’d feared. Natural, somehow matter-of-fact. She knows the worst of me now, he thought. And in truth the telling seemed to have freed his mind, to drift among memories of another elopement.
Smiling at each other, downstairs in the bar of the Portleigh Arms. Drinking wine-it hadn’t been good wine; not that they’d have known the difference. Hurrying up the stairs, retreating to their chaste separate bedchambers. Somehow he’d forgotten to bring a dressing gown. Tiptoeing barefoot in his shirt and drawers, down the corridor to her room. Knocking so softly-terrified of being found out, believing as he had that anyone would care.
She’d opened her door at the first rap of his knuckles. Equally terrified, she’d fairly pulled him inside.
They’d stared at each other, he in his shirt, she in a high-necked night rail. Pretty thing, almost nunnish, austere white folds from her shoulders to her very white bare toes curled against the cold of a painted wood floor. So far as he could recall, she’d only worn it that one time, as though-once the vows were pronounced and they were therefore adults-he wouldn’t have found it provocative enough. He’d never asked about it; in future he’d be clearer about what he liked.
If there really were to be a future for them. If that vastly silly other elopement they’d helped set in motion could be stopped. If it truly were possible to get on with things. Together.
They’d reached the Portleigh Arms.
Cursing himself for having ever cast his eye upon the troublesome Miss Grandin, he helped his wife down from the box and kissed her cheek.
She smelled of wet wool. Her short upper lip trembled, and her hair fell into tighter curls than usual on her forehead.
“I’ll see about getting a new horse,” he said, “and then I’ll follow you in.”
She nodded.
“Courage,” he whispered.
But she’d run across the yard and had already pushed the front door open.
Courage, he repeated silently.
She loved coaching inns: a fire in a dim room, the variety of accent and countenance, paths crossing and destinies conjoining, if only for an exchange of compliments or a flirtatious glance over a glass of awful claret. In the mornings people were rushed and rather cross. But at night, especially if she had friends or a footman about, she loved to nod to interesting-looking strangers, wonder about their lives and fortunes, and (keeping a little silver knife tucked in her sleeve) act the woman of mystery.
The Slightest Provocation Page 27