Tonight, however, she wanted no mystery at all. No surprises, no adventures. Only an untouched Fannie Grandin.
The bar was mostly deserted. No one but a few men in their cups, one of them telling a long story to the young woman who was stifling a yawn and hoping there’d be something in it for her.
No Fannie, and no Lord Ayres either. She’d have to speak to the landlord. Turning quickly, she tripped over an uneven stone in the floor. Which caused her to bump her hip against a table, mutter an impolite word, and suddenly feel every eye in the room fixed upon her. No silver knife up her sleeve tonight-she backed away carefully, hoping that Kit would be along soon.
Wait. Every eye in the room wasn’t fixed upon her. One head was turned away. The pillar to her left must have blocked her view at first. But just a few steps from where she stood, a head of luxuriant black hair shed its lavender scent and was turned resolutely toward the wall.
She’d eviscerate him.
Grasping each well-tailored shoulder, she found herself overwhelmed by the smell of raw beef commingled most unappetizingly with the lavender. She began to giggle even before quite comprehending what was so wondrously funny.
Lord Ayres turned languidly in his chair, to stare at her with one moist violet eye, the other hidden by bloodstained fingers grasping a large slab of meat, juices thinly trickling into a fold of his cravat.
“Well you might laugh,” he muttered.
Kit had appeared at her elbow. “Raw potato is surprisingly effective,” he told the young man (just a bit too solicitously, in Mary’s opinion), “and rather easier on the linen.”
“And Fannie?” she demanded. “Where’s Fannie, you pomaded ninny?”
Ayres grimaced. “Sleepin’, I daresay. Cool as a cucumber, that one is.”
Kit waited downstairs while the landlord took Mary up to Fannie’s room. They found her sprawled across her bed, seemingly quite absorbed in Debrett’s.
“Thank God you’re safe.” Mary had hoped to hug or in some way to comfort her, but found herself constrained to do so.
“Of course I’m safe,” the girl replied. “It’s been years since I learned that move out of Mendoza’s Modern Art of Boxing, but one doesn’t forget.”
A few tears glimmered on her eyelashes. “You’ll think I’m an utter fool,” she added more quietly.
“No, no. Oh, of course not.”
Except for her book and a silver-handled hairbrush, it didn’t seem she’d unpacked anything. The landlord picked up her valise, rather as though he were afraid of her.
“Is he here with you?” she asked while she buttoned her pelisse.
“Yes.”
“Yes, I expect he would be.”
They waited in silence while Kit brought the carriage around.
Mary unfurled an umbrella to give to Fannie, as the curricle’s small backseat was open to the elements. And when Kit tried to help her in, the girl shook her head and climbed lightly in by herself.
At least the drizzle had eased off a bit.
“I could exchange places with her if you’d like,” Kit said. “She’d be drier up here, and you could comfort her. Of course, you’d have to drive, and I’d be a tight fit back there.”
“I don’t know as I’d be comforting her. She’s chagrined by the strength of her own sentiments, not to speak of having exposed them, though I daresay it’ll be the making of her. Which doesn’t mean we haven’t also acted awful fools. One can’t sneak about as we have-or one shouldn’t anyway, with younger people about. At a certain point, it seems, one needs to do rather better.”
“I expect so,” was all he said.
“I should like to drive, I think,” she said now. “I’m not the most skillful person with the ribbons, but I can keep us on the road.”
She rested her head on his shoulder for a moment before taking the reins from him.
The rain had become more intermittent, the wind tossing the clouds before it. They sang to pass the time, merry songs, sad songs, the heartbreaking one about the weaver who tried to shield his lover from the foggy dew, and the passionate shepherd’s song as well. And gradually, disjointedly, they found themselves telling each other things, odd bits and scraps they’d picked up during their years apart.
“A woman can’t be tested as a man is in battle,” she said. “But while trying to negotiate between pleasure and scandal, one does a bit of self-examination, considers whose opinion is important and whom one is willing to send to the devil.”
He nodded, the faces of a few London gentlemen flashing across his mind’s eye.
“I expect that must have been a useful exercise,” he said. “Well, I might have found it useful anyway, after being in such a confusion of intimidation by people who had certain advantages of unambiguous parentage…”
“And I,” she said, “of not knowing how to help you, and of… of fearing that you’d regretted marrying a brewer’s daughter…”
“A most generous brewer,” he reminded her, “who kept us in such fine style so that we had very little to do but confound our senses with exotic substances and lovemaking…”
She was silent for a moment. “Almost as though we could be alone in London, as we had been at the hermit’s hut-in a private world, with no responsibilities or connections or frighteningly worldly people for me to face.”
“Very romantic,” he said.
“Very much not like a marriage,” she said. “Though one wouldn’t want a marriage to be dull or too responsible or socially connected or proper. I mean it wasn’t all bad…”
“The lovemaking, for example…”
“I think we can agree that the lovemaking…”
“But yes, it was a great befuddlement,” he said, “that one didn’t seem to know how to straighten out, as dearly as one wished to. One wanted to apologize, you know; one does apologize. No, what I mean to say is that I apologize, most heartily, Mary. It’s just that one thing would get tangled up with the next. I mean, there wasn’t any one thing, you know, any single slight or misunderstanding…”
“I do know, Kit. I know exactly. And I’m sorry as well.”
“But let’s sing some more,” she said, after some silent minutes had passed. “Here, take the reins. I’m going to teach you a strange dark one Lord Byron wrote.”
And our days seem as swift, and our moments more sweet,
With thee by my side than with worlds at our feet.
But they should have been approaching Grefford by now. Or at least have seen some landmarks-the road to Silverwye Farm, a familiar stand of giant beeches. It was awfully dark; Oliver and the men of the reform societies had chosen a moonless night for the insurrection that wasn’t going to happen. And with the clouds shifting so quickly, you couldn’t depend on the stars to guide you.
“Do you suppose,” Mary asked, “it could have been that road we passed, going over to the left about an hour ago, when the wind was so blustery, and we were, ah, rather clutching one another for warmth?”
Kit shrugged and flicked his whip over the horse’s left flank.
“But there’s no point going any faster, is there,” she continued (rather reasonably, she thought), “if we don’t know where we’re going?”
He glowered, and she decided that he must agree that they were quite lost.
“And I suppose I don’t dare suggest that you might have asked that old gentleman in the dogcart, whom we passed perhaps half an hour before we came to that turn…”
He gave a low growl of warning.
“No, I thought not. Well, at least the rain has let up for a while…”
Her optimistic utterance (not surprisingly to anyone who’s ever been lost on a dark country road) worked like a wizard’s charm to illuminate the sky with a long, forked flash of lightning, followed by an impressive roll of thunder.
She shrugged her shoulders in apology and tried a timid smile, before pulling her red wool hood around her face as fat raindrops splashed down her cheeks.
Absurd to
argue about it. Though she might have appreciated the slightest recognition on his part of how silly he’d been not to verify the direction.
Instead of that familiar I-know-I’m-wrong-and-don’tyou-dare-tell-me-about-it glint lighting up his eye.
No use arguing. Surely she could rise above it.
The rain beat down harder.
“Would it truly have been such a humiliation merely to ask…?”
But wait. Faint light through the trees. An inn? He turned a sheepish face to her and kissed her.
“Yes, I should have asked directions. But a gentleman doesn’t like to, you know.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
The Anvil Tavern was small, dim, smoky, and a bit hazy from the moisture drying off people’s clothes. The room occupied perhaps a quarter of the area of the bar at the Portleigh Arms-no matter; it was infinitely warmer and drier than outside, and surprisingly crowded. The walls, which had once been whitewashed, seemed almost black near the fireplace, where some men were talking in excited voices. Another group was singing-though Mary couldn’t make out the words. She, Kit, and Fannie crowded around a small table, Fannie with her eyes still turned away from Kit.
“I’ll get us something hot to drink,” he said, and pushed his way into the crush of people.
“I’m an idiot,” Fannie said very softly, when he was out of earshot. “I’ve acted a complete fool. Listening to the two of you sing and squabble and make up…”
“Then you’ve heard,” Mary told her, “what fools we can be as well, with all our years and experience behind us. But at least your aunt Jessica doesn’t know-of your folly, and not even all of mine. Fred and Elizabeth have told her you’re still at the Halseys’…”
There were sudden loud shouts from the crowded space between the bar and the fireplace.
“Liar!”
“Ye know nothin’ about it! They’re waiting for us in London, fifty, seventy thousand, of ’em tomorrow.”
“But, man”-it was Kit’s voice now-“haven’t you heard about him being exposed at Wakefield? I thought all the groups had decided not to go.”
Confused murmuring. She heard the words arrest, meeting, and plot.
Of course, Mary thought, there was bound to be one contingent-or probably more than one, who hasn’t heard about the change in Oliver’s fortunes.
Or perhaps just didn’t want to believe it.
“Rumors, planted to keep us home. Lies. Think of it, boys… A mighty force all together to face the mightiest government on God’s earth. Nothing like it ever before, even at the Bastille. Don’t lose heart, just at the word of…”
“And who’re you anyway, to tell us to go or stay? Speak your name, will ye?”
“Christopher Stansell.”
“He’s the magistrate’s ruddy brother, from Rowen, at Grefford…”
“And he would be telling us to stay home, like women and children safe around the fire, ’cept we don’t have the coal for fire…”
“Don’t have nothing after we finish paying for bread and our rent to your brother, damn ’is eyes, but it’ll be different this time, the London delegate told us…”
“The London delegate was a provocateur, by the name of Oliver or perhaps Hollis, in the employ of the Home Office. It’s a trap. They want you to march. They want you to… hang. Please. The London Committees don’t know about any marchers coming down from the Midlands; the Home Office has been writing to its magistrates…”
“And how the bloody ’ell do you know that?”
She stood up to better hear what they were saying. But there was such a crush of men around him, she could only see the top of his head, his eloquent hands sweeping through the air as he tried to make them understand.
“Morrice… Everyman’s Review… Sidmouth…”
It seemed to her that he’d influenced a few men anyway. She could see some heads shake-disappointed, disgusted, or even relieved.
He was keeping his voice low, calm-as he must have learned to do in Spain and France, when he had men under his command. “I saw the provocateur myself. Twice. In Wakefield, with General Byng’s valet tipping his hat to him… ah, you’ve heard those rumors, have you?”
A few nods.
But more than a few angry demurrals as well.
“We got ter go tonight, while there’s still lads out wantin’ to do it. If we’re lost, we’ll go down in glory, with Brandreth and the boys from Pentrich.”
“We ain’t lost. Don’t believe the Byng story, put out to scare us. But will we be scared, boys?”
Angry demurrals.
Kit’s voice again. “I also saw him in London-I think he was meeting with a functionary of the Home Office.”
And then more urgently, “You must believe me. It’s a plot against you.”
But perhaps he’d already dissuaded all of them that he could. Leaving those who were young, those who were desperate. They’d prepared themselves to act tonight. For an instant, she could see it through their eyes, the ragged grandeur of it, each small group of men marching south and eastward through the rain, meeting up with their fellows in an ever-swelling multitude…
And they wouldn’t even have to walk the whole way, someone was saying, there’d be boats along the Trent to take them to London, for certainly the boatmen would join them in their noble cause, boatmen and bakers too, there’d be cakes and ale, they’d sing the song Brandreth had written for the occasion…
She didn’t think that Mr. Oliver had promised them cakes and ale. His promises had been of unity, of individual voices raised in chorus.
It was an extraordinary fantasy. Heartbreaking, in its way, when you knew it had been created by a paid agent of a government who continued to reject their petitions.
There were still men trying to buy drinks, on credit redeemable after they’d taken the Tower, but it seemed that the landlord was shaking his head.
Even as it seemed that a number of other men had begun to repeat what Kit was saying, repeating news of the mysterious arrests that had recently occurred in the area, and usually in the wake of a visit from the London delegate.
At least they weren’t all going to march tonight.
But what of that small group jostling their way up to Kit’s right? Boys not quite grown to men, but the tallest of them topping Kit by several inches.
Topping him, but reflecting his looks-seeing the two of them together, she realized that she’d been correct. Nick Merton looked not so much like Kit looked now, but very much indeed like he’d once looked. Not just the expression either, but the cast of his features.
The boy drew back his arm. It was hard to see. For a moment she imagined she saw a pistol drawn…
No, not a pistol-he was standing too close to be firing a pistol. He was simply brandishing a furious, raw-boned fist.
A few blows were exchanged. She thought she could see blood. And then Kit falling, ah, in a way she recognized.
She screamed then, perhaps a bit too dramatically, she thought; good thing Fannie was taking her lead. Right, she’d read Mendoza; she also knew that Kit wasn’t really being knocked senseless. But surely one or more of the men standing around Kit would be suspicious, though all the blood pouring from his nose had an impressive effect.
Unless he received a bit of help.
Kit! Christopher! Darling! She pushed her way into the ring of men, dropping to her knees beside him, raising his head into her lap. Oh, what brutes, what strong, horrid brutes, my husband, my darling, my only love-the tears (she hadn’t known she could produce tears at will) streaming down her cheeks, mingling with the blood dripping over his.
She couldn’t find her handkerchief. Fannie gave her a particularly dainty one, trimmed with lace; a barmaid brought a towel that had been used to wipe the counter. The fumes of alcohol rising from it were all for the better, she supposed, though the dirt wasn’t pleasant.
Kit fluttered his eyelids a bit.
Just don’t grin, she tried to communicate to him. Yes, I know
what I called you, and in public too. Well, it’s true. You can gloat about it after we get out of here. Before someone does try to draw a pistol on you.
Where’s the man who did it? she shouted now. Who’s the man who killed a defenseless man who tried to give him good advice, and… and wouldn’t… wouldn’t even…
Nick Merton looked frightened, defiant, a bit proud. You horrible… man, she shouted at him, man seeming to be the word he was most anxious to hear.
A pulse, she shouted now, oh, dear Lord, I feel a pulse.
And yes, the boy did look relieved.
“You’d better go home, Nick Merton,” she told him. “You’ve caused enough damage for one night.”
She couldn’t hear what he and his friends were murmuring. But it didn’t sound quite so defiant as it had. The crowd in the tavern seemed to have divided into two. Some, she could see, would set out undeterred to meet up with the men from Pentrich. But some, already swayed by what Kit had told them, their pride salved by his fall and momentum broken by her performance, had regained their seats or even wandered out the doors and down the dark country road in what seemed to her was the direction of their homes.
Kit had his eyes open now. In truth, he did look rather dazed-from her histrionics, and from something else as well, that she couldn’t quite construe at the moment.
All right, perhaps she’d never called him her only love quite like that before.
And all right, perhaps she’d meant it.
“Help me, Fannie,” she called, and together they did a fair simulation of dragging him to the carriage and hauling him onto the seat.
“I’ll explain later,” she whispered to the girl. “But thank you for helping me save him. And to save some of them as well.”
The Slightest Provocation Page 28