by Jane Ashford
So did this portrait help her? Mary stared at it and willed it to tell her what steps to take about John. This was his friend. They had formed a connection working together. Out of all those employed in the Foreign Office, John had singled out this one man. What did that say about him? She stared and pondered and racked her brain. But she hadn’t found an answer to these questions when the time came around to walk across the square to Eleanor Lanford’s for tea.
The inside of her neighbor’s house matched Mary’s expectations. Like its owner, it was quietly elegant and rich without undue opulence. The old woman awaited her in a chintz-hung parlor at the front overlooking the sodden garden. Roses in the wallpaper countered the dismal weather. A lovely young woman with golden hair and bright green eyes stood beside her. “Mary Bexley, this is my granddaughter Caroline.”
The young woman looked surprised.
Eleanor cocked an eyebrow at her. “Did you wish me to say Lady Caroline Lanford, eldest daughter of the Earl of St. Clair?” she inquired.
“People usually do,” the other remarked.
“I am not ‘usually.’”
“I know, Grandmamma. That is why I’m so delighted to be here.” Caroline dropped a tiny curtsy. “Pleased to meet you, Mary Bexley. And since I am introduced as Caroline I hope you will use my name.” She opened her arms in an expansive gesture. “Let us throw formality to the four winds.”
Mary returned the curtsy. She could trace some resemblance to Eleanor in Caroline’s oval face and sublimely regular features. The twinkle in the old woman’s eyes escalated into mischief in her young relative’s gaze, however. They sat down, and Eleanor poured tea and offered tidbits.
“I suppose Grandmamma has told you that I am in disgrace,” Caroline continued blithely.
“Disgrace?”
“You didn’t tell?” Caroline gave her grandmother a roguish look.
“My dear, I am not a gossip.”
“Or perhaps you wished to keep my transgressions a secret from your friends?” Caroline’s eyes sparkled, and Mary wondered what sort of disgrace could make her so lively.
Eleanor did not rise to her bait. She merely waved a hand as if to say, do as you like.
“My family thinks I am being subjected to quite a dire punishment,” Caroline went on, “to be sent here so ‘out of the world’ for the whole hunting season. If I’d known that was the penalty, I’d have misbehaved far sooner.”
“You did,” commented Eleanor dryly. “Just not quite so outrageously.”
Caroline grinned. She had dimples. “I must tell her. It was such a coup.”
Despite her confident manner, Caroline clearly waited for her grandmother’s permission to speak, which came in a nod.
The younger woman turned to Mary again. “I trained one of the ratter’s ferrets to drop acorns on Papa’s stuffy guests at the dinner table.” Smiling, she waited for a reaction.
Mary tried to picture it. “Acorns? Ferrets?”
Caroline leaned a little forward. “Ferrets are quite clever, you know. They love games. Some of them, anyway. So I taught the smartest one to bring acorns from the big oak outside the dining room window along the picture rail near the ceiling and toss them onto the table.” She paused as if waiting for applause. “One landed in the Duke of Portland’s soup with such a splash that his shirtfront was soaked. He was livid.”
“He has a limited sense of humor, as I recall,” put in Eleanor.
Caroline giggled. “Another one dropped down the front of Lady Serence’s gown. She has quite the embonpoint, as you know, Grandmamma. I thought Lord Ferring was going to dive in after it, but he stopped himself just in time. Felix laughed so hard he snorted soup out his nose.” She glanced at Mary. “My brother,” she explained.
“Your father didn’t find it so amusing,” said Eleanor.
“Well, he couldn’t admit it, nor could Mama.”
Mary was picturing the scene. A grand dinner party with flowers and silver and a fleet of servants; a small animal running along the picture rail tossing acorns. The resulting mayhem. How had she ever thought up such a scheme?
“It is astonishing how hard you will work to set up a prank and how little effort you expend on anything else,” Eleanor told her granddaughter.
Caroline showed her dimples again. “Now everyone’s terrified I’ll kick up some sort of scandal in my second season,” she said to Mary. “So they’ve sent me here to contemplate my sins and repent. And for Grandmamma to talk some sense into me, of course. As if she would.”
“Oh, I shall,” responded Eleanor.
Caroline looked briefly dismayed.
“My kind of sense.”
Mary realized that she would very much like to hear this. She said so.
“That I should do as I please,” suggested Caroline. “Isn’t that what you’ve done, coming to live ‘way out’ here?”
“After a lifetime of doing my duty, I came here, yes,” said Eleanor.
Caroline’s face fell. “You aren’t really going to tell me to get hold of myself and do my duty to the family, are you?”
Eleanor looked out the window, her face remote. “I’m going to tell you something much more difficult. Discover your passion and embrace it, Caroline.”
“But I have…”
“Pranks are not a passion. They are a diversion.” Her tone was so definitive that her granddaughter was silenced. “If you allow yourself to be diverted—by what others see as your duty or anything else—you will end up filled with regret.”
“As you are?” Caroline wondered.
“By no means!” The snap in Eleanor’s voice set both young women back. “Children were my passion. I longed to be a mother from my earliest years. An admirable mother, who gave her offspring what they needed in all ways. The choices I made were guided by that desire.”
“And you had Papa and my uncle and aunts,” said Caroline.
The old woman nodded. “Fine people whom I love dearly.”
Mary noticed that she didn’t mention her husband. Had she loved him dearly, too?
“I have regrets, of course. No one goes through life without some regrets. But I am not filled with them.” Eleanor’s expression softened. “And once I’d launched my children successfully—happily—into the world, I did as I pleased.” She gestured around the cozy room in this “remote” neighborhood. “Who stops me?”
“Nobody,” acknowledged her granddaughter with feeling.
Eleanor nodded. “Look at Mary,” she continued. “She has great artistic talent, and she has cultivated it.”
Mary wasn’t entirely comfortable being held up as an example. “I draw a bit…”
“We both know it is far more than that,” said Eleanor.
Mary met her penetrating gaze and bowed her head in acknowledgment. She was surprised by the flood of gratitude that followed. Drawing was her passion, she acknowledged. But what exactly did it mean—to embrace it?
Caroline was too involved in her own thoughts to notice this silent exchange. “That’s all very well if you have a talent,” she said. “I haven’t. Or…my talent is for pranks. For shaking people up.” She brightened. “Isn’t that a good thing? Society is so staid and dull.”
Eleanor raised skeptical eyebrows.
“Well, parts of it,” amended her granddaughter defensively.
Caroline could see high society that way because she’d been born into the midst of it, Mary thought. Perhaps you had to be a secure part of something in order to mock it.
“What shall my passion be?” Caroline mused, her attention firmly on herself.
“You don’t choose it like a new bonnet,” replied her grandmother. “It finds you.”
The girl bit her lower lip, frowning. “That’s all very well to say, Grandmamma. But I know scores of people who clearly have none. You may have alwa
ys known what you wanted, but you are quite…special. Perhaps I’m not.”
“You are my granddaughter,” declared Eleanor imperiously.
Caroline laughed. “And thus obliged to be special?”
“You are intelligent, courageous. You have enough spirit for three girls. You will find your way, my dear.”
Her granddaughter jumped up and kissed her cheek. “How I love you, Grandmamma!”
Mary observed the obvious bond between the two women with a pang of envy.
* * *
When John arrived home that evening, the parlor off the entryway was empty. A small fire burned in the grate, but there was no Mary sitting before it, her hands busy with some sewing project. He was startled at how much he missed that sight; he’d become accustomed to her greeting as he came in, to the air of tranquil domesticity she created, antidote to any upheavals he’d endured at his work. Searching, he went upstairs and found her in the room she’d chosen for her own use. She stood before a table scattered with painting materials, lost in thought. “There you are.”
“Oh, John. I lost track of the time.” She turned as he stepped farther into the room. He hadn’t really been in here since she’d arrived in London, and he saw now that she’d made the space truly her own. There were colorful hangings, a comfortable armchair by the fireplace, and interesting little objects scattered from mantelpiece to windowsill. The long table under the front window was crowded with sketchbooks, watercolor paints, one jar of brushes and another of pencils, a pretty pottery bowl for water, and a small wooden case for transporting these items. Though the surface was crammed full, it seemed quite an organized clutter. The room felt at once cozy and sharply individual. It seemed to John like a glimpse inside his wife’s personality.
He took another step and saw around Mary to a portrait resting on a tabletop easel—William Conolly to the life. The face was so familiar and so well done that it pulled him closer. “That’s very good, Mary.” The painting caught his colleague’s quirk of a smile and alert intelligence. “I’d forgotten that you like to draw. You did me on our wedding trip, I remember.”
Mary blinked and looked self-conscious. Recalling the last time their honeymoon had been mentioned, John half-turned away. Wanting some occupation for his hands, he picked up a sketchbook from the table. Mary’s hand twitched, then fell back to her side. Opening it at random, John came upon a drawing of an older woman, a stranger.
“That’s our neighbor,” Mary said. “The one Mr. Conolly knew, the dowager countess. She’s very kind. She invited me to tea today. I met her granddaughter. Caroline. Lady Caroline Lanford, I should say. She’s quite a lively person. Caroline. Not Eleanor. She insists I call her Eleanor, although I know it is not…”
She was babbling. “Is something wrong?” John asked. Belatedly he wondered if he was intruding in her private sanctuary. Did she expect he would ask permission to enter a room in his own house?
Mary took a breath. “I…I’m not accustomed to showing my drawings.”
John gazed at the image of Conolly. “But they’re quite lifelike.” He tried to be encouraging. “No need to be shy.”
“My mother always thought I wasted far too much time with my paints.”
Her voice was hurried, breathless. John didn’t understand it. “Well, but young ladies are meant to have accomplishments, are they not?” he said heartily.
“Accomplishments.”
She said the word as if it was some sort of insult, which made no sense; he’d praised her blasted painting.
“Like playing the pianoforte or the harp,” Mary added. “But not seriously, of course.”
He had no idea what she was getting at. The decorative pursuits of young ladies weren’t serious. Wasn’t that the whole point? They were designed to make life more gracious and…pretty. His wife moved a step closer, and he caught a hint of the sweet scent she always wore—violets. Thoughts of art and accomplishments fizzled and scattered and disappeared from his brain.
“My drawings…I see things in them sometimes. Insights? I was thinking it could be helpful…”
John was transfixed by the way her cheeks had reddened, like living roses. He scarcely heard the words or noticed her tentative tone and diffident gesture. A glossy brown curl had fallen across her forehead as she gazed at him so earnestly. His hand came up of its own accord and pushed the curl back. It lingered. His fingertips brushed her cheek.
Mary stopped talking, lips tantalizingly parted. She met his eyes and held them for what seemed like forever. “What I said yesterday, when we…”
John’s hand dropped. “There is no need to discuss…”
“But I didn’t mean… I said the wrong thing. I was just so surprised.”
“Surprised?”
“At how amazing, how splendid it was.” She moved, and John found he had a fragrant armful of wife.
Her arms came up and around his neck and tightened. Without a thought he pulled her closer. This kiss was as intoxicating as the last, as different, indeed, as it was possible to be from the tentative clumsiness of their honeymoon. She’d been right about that.
John pushed this thought aside as Mary’s lips parted under his. Blood began to pound in his veins. He let his hands roam over her and brought his fingers up to cup a curve of breast. Her small moan as he teased it thrilled him. There were ways, he’d learned on his travels, to drive a woman distracted. He was newly inspired to try them all.
“Mr. Bexley! Sir!” John raised his head and discovered Arthur Windly standing in the half-open doorway.
Drat the boy, couldn’t he see that he was emphatically not wanted in this moment? “Go away…”
Arthur hopped from foot to foot as if the floor were covered with hot coals. “The kitchen’s on fire!” he cried.
“What?” said Mary and John simultaneously.
They ran, John with an eye out for whatever might be useful against a fire. He snagged his greatcoat from a chair in the entryway and raced on. Arthur was right behind him, babbling, “It weren’t me. I didn’t touch that chimney or the stove or nothing. I was scrubbing a great dirty pot in the scullery. I didn’t even see how it…”
Mary was directly behind Arthur as they hurtled down the last stair. She stopped so suddenly that she almost toppled over, as the scene in the basement kitchen was terrifying. Mrs. Tanner stood well back from the big old fireplace, wringing her hands and watching flames run along the soot on the inside of the chimney and dart out into the room. Her screech when she saw them arrive was earsplitting. Kate had a broom and was beating at the tongues of flame on the hearth, without much effect. The acrid smell of burning filled the room, along with puffs of black smoke. A lick of flame burst out and threatened the walls, and Mary nearly shrieked herself.
Before she could move John had snatched up a large pot from the woodstove. He lunged right inside the fireplace and heaved its contents upward in a wide spray. Soup—was it soup?—splashed over the bricks, dousing some of the fire. The pipe running up the chimney from the stove hissed and steamed.
Arthur grabbed a second pot and thrust it toward John. Mary thought this one contained mashed potatoes. John waved it away and began beating at the remaining flames with a cloth he’d found somewhere. He leaned further into the chimney and reached up, thumping at the accumulated soot, bringing down a shower of black fragments and more smoke. “Watch out!” Mary cried, terrified he’d be burned.
He showed no sign of hearing. He kept on long after Mary could see any sign of flames, reaching higher, ducking when he loosened more flakes of soot, blinking it out of his eyes and leaning in again. Finally, he stood back, breathing hard, and let the scorched and blackened cloth drop to the brick floor.
Mary hurried over to him, but he held up both hands to forestall her. John’s face, hands, and shirtfront were coated with soot. His hair was black now rather than brown. His greatcoat—th
e cloth he had been using, as she saw now—was ruined. “Is it out?” Mary said.
He nodded, then bent, putting his hands on his knees.
“I couldn’t even think, and you just…you leapt in and saved the house.”
“There was no time to summon help,” he said.
Chimney fires could easily destroy a dwelling. Indeed, they often did in London. Mary started to shake. “You could have been badly burned!”
John straightened and, amazingly, grinned at her, his teeth a startling white against his sooty features. “I wasn’t. Only a trifle scorched.” He looked positively energized by the emergency.
“What are you doing, you wretched boy?” exclaimed Mrs. Tanner.
Balancing the pot he still held in one hand, Arthur had jerked open the oven door and tossed the mashed potatoes inside. When he turned to find everyone staring at him, he said, “I saw smoke coming out.”
“My roast was burning,” wailed the cook. “And now you’ve covered it with the potatoes. A proper mess you’ve made, which you will be cleaning up, you young devil. And the dinner all spoiled.”
Arthur ignored her. “That was beyond anything great!” He gazed at John with hero worship shining in his eyes.
Mary surveyed the streaks of soot twisting up the whitewashed walls, the soup pooled in the hearth, and the hissing, dripping stove. The place smelled dreadful. She took deep breaths to still her trembling. “The chimneys should have been swept before this place was leased,” she said.
“Be sure I’ll be speaking to them about that,” said John. “I was told the house had been completely refurbished after the last tenant.” After a final look up the chimney, he strode into the scullery and put his head under the pump.
“My kitchen!” Mrs. Tanner threw up her hands and gave way to hysterics.
Kate moved to put an arm around her mother. Her rare show of sympathy seemed to encourage rather than assuage the wailing, however. John finished scrubbing at his face and hands and hair and edged toward the stairs. “I must change out of this shirt,” he said. The cook’s noisy weeping seemed to affect him far more than a potentially lethal fire.