Speak Its Name

by Charlie Cochrane;Lee Rowan;Erastes

  I took hold of his cane and moved it gently, but with strength and without mercy, to one side. Our eyes met; I hope I gave him the impression that I was not a man to back down and that he could not rely on his infirmity to bully me. With a deft movement I twisted the cane in his hand and gained possession of it. As I opened the conservatory doors, I turned and threw the article back at him. I admit now, and am a little ashamed of it, that I took a perverse pleasure in seeing how he nearly fell as he attempted to catch it. I left him then, confident that, if he were to follow me into the ladies’ withdrawing room, he would not now continue his harassment.

  A servant found me wandering the corridors and led me into the ladies’ company. All the party was now assembled together again and the conversation stilled somewhat as I entered. I knew I had a scowl on my face and I had to rearrange my features when my father waved from across the room. He was seated in a square with Lady Pelham and her daughter; and there was a convenient empty seat beside him. It was almost enough to make me go back to the balcony, but I had no choice but to march, back straight, hand on sword, into the dragon’s den. Once, incidentally, I was called before Wellesley himself (hence the snippet of information about his aversion to over-sprung carriages) and I had felt less timorous then than I did as I sat beside my father. I assumed what I hoped was a bland but pleasant expression, but it was an expression difficult to maintain at any level when Heyward appeared not long after I had settled myself. I was listening to Lady Pelham telling a tale of her one voyage to India. It was meant to be extremely amusing, with anecdotes of the natives she had met and the substances she was expected to eat and drink and the conditions under which she was expected to live (“my dears, positively horrid”) but I found it boring at best and, having spent a year there myself in T—’s regiment in ‘05, wildly inaccurate.

  Heyward’s expression was no lighter than mine, and he did not take any pains to make it more appropriate to the occasion. He limped through the throng, again ignoring all and being ignored, until he reached our party where Lady Pelham astounded me—having not shown much attentiveness to her nephew before this—by fairly leaping from her seat with a cry of concern.

  “Adam, my dear boy. You look pale. Are you well? You are burning up, I do declare, you should go and rest. Where have you been?”

  The young man pushed her solicitude aside with a grimace, and refusing the space between herself and Miss Pelham he sat between me and my father, there being ample space as we were of no inclination to sit closer than we were.

  “I’m well enough, Aunt. I was outside on the terrace.”

  “In this weather? It’s far too damp for you to be out.” She turned to my father and spoke confidingly for all the good that would do in a crowded room, whilst young Heyward’s face went from a scowl to a look of pure anger. “Sarah, his mother, was a Burroughs before she married. She was so delicate, never well enough for so many pursuits, but spent many years in bed—at one time the doctors thought she would never be able to walk again, but she recovered, although she was never strong. She was my dearest, dearest friend, and although she was never well enough for school, we were tutored together and our families were very close.

  “I can’t tell you what pleasure I felt when my brother asked for her hand. Can you believe that she hesitated? She considered that she wasn’t strong enough to be a soldier’s wife.” She looked pointedly at Miss Pelham, who blushed hotly. “Of course I encouraged her, ‘No one,’ I said to her, ‘will be more solicitous of your health than my dear Adam.’”

  “Perhaps she should have ignored your advice,” Heyward said. Miss Pelham gave the smallest of gasps, but Lady Pelham just smiled indulgently.

  “I for one am very glad she did not. She was proved right, of course, the travelling and... well...,” she gazed fondly at Heyward, “proved her undoing, but I do believe she was the happiest of wives.”

  “For ten months.” The bitterness in Heyward’s voice was unmistakable.

  The older Heyward gave a gruff and very decisive cough. I knew the signs and had that noise come from my relation, I would be duly chastened. “That’s enough,” he said. “Not a fit subject for company.” I was glad he interceded and considered that that would be the end of the matter but Adam Heyward proved himself less cowed by his elders than I. He pushed himself to his feet with a slight grunt of effort and walked out without another word to anyone, leaving a silence in his wake. As he left I couldn’t help but notice his lame foot; one of his boots was specially made, with a thick raised sole. I felt a pang of empathy and a glimmer of why the young man was quite so prickly. He had a club foot.

  The elder Heyward excused himself and stalked out after his grandson. The silence that ensued was thick and heavy, and in the end, it took my father with his usual sledgehammer precision to break it and to turn the conversation to his plans to visit Bath for a few weeks. Lady Pelham seemed quite discomfited by young Heyward’s departure and it took her a minute or two to be able to concentrate on what my father was saying.

  “Are we? Oh... Yes,” she said, her gaze flying to the door as if expecting it to open on her nephew and father.

  To my great surprise, Miss Pelham turned to my father with complete composure and said, “We always go to Bath for the second two weeks in March, and then on to Wensom for the summer.” She spoke as if I knew what Wensom was, but I was not given the opportunity to ask for such clarification.

  “Capital!” my father replied. “We have rooms booked in George Street.” He rose, surprising me, and I hurriedly joined him. “I trust we will see something of you whilst we are there?”

  Lady Pelham smiled, the first time since her nephew had left the room, and said that she would be delighted; I was pleased to note that did seem to mean it, she appeared to be genuinely friendly with my bluff, unforgiving parent.

  It was not late when we emerged onto the pavement, but the rain had started, a cold relentless drizzle. As tempting as home was, I told my father that I would go to my club. I was restless and annoyed in turns and would feel better perhaps after a glass or two of brandy and a round or two of fencing, should there be anyone around to spar with. “Let me find you a cab, sir,” I said, turning away from him. There would be vehicles at the far end of the square, I knew.

  “I’m not senile, Geoffrey.” He growled. “I’ll walk. Do me good. You’ll likely be in at dawn and too drunk to converse sensibly before luncheon, so tell me now. What did you think of her? You’ll take her, what? Of course you will.” His voice echoed around the now damp pavements and I shuddered inwardly at his inability to keep his voice down to anything less than a stentorian roar.

  “Do you wish me to come home now, father?”

  “Don’t change the subject!” My father bellowed. “You can do as you like, you always do, damn you!”

  I clenched my teeth at the injustice of that particular remark. “As for Miss Pelham, I find her pleasant enough. A little shy, but, Father— I’d really rather not discuss it on the street. We’ll both go home and...”

  “No no,” my father said, changing mood as swiftly as a wind shifts direction. He was beaming—no doubt at my declaration that I found the girl pleasant. To my father that would be an assertion that I’d be buying a ring the next day. “Go and enjoy yourself, sow those oats.” Again, I shrunk from his words bellowed in public. “Little enough time for that now—for you’ll make your offer in Bath, yes yes, perfect for an autumn wedding, then. You’ll make your offer in Bath.”

  He turned away, waving at me with a dismissive hand and marched with surprising speed up the wet street and turned the corner, leaving me damp in body and damper in spirit.

  Return to TOC

  Chapter Five

  In which my brothers prove they never change and Heyward tests me in many different ways.

  I had had no idea that my father was planning to relocate to Bath this late in the Season. He had been known to go before, but had usually been more than a little scathing in his disapprobat
ion of the place. “Full of twittering quizzes and old men who take too much pleasure in their own bad health, and even more pleasure in describing it.”

  On the day that he’d made this now infamous statement in Bath itself, it had been as if no one else was speaking and the Pump Rooms stilled into a shocked silence. However, I have to say, it was probably one of the only times that I have thoroughly agreed with my father, as I was not overly fond of the place myself. I’d visited it many times during the war years and found the behaviour of some soldiers—not all, for it would be unfair to tar all my fellows with the same disgraceful brush—to be, if not beyond the Pale, firmly on its outskirts. There seemed to be something about the place, and I don’t know what blend of circumstances brought it about, that encouraged an officer, who was probably of fairly solid stock away from Bath to lose his head when in that city, whether it be for the tables or for the girls, or both.

  It baffled me as to why any self respecting mother would bring her daughter to such a place. Perhaps it was the possibility of the prizes that were on offer that was worth the risk running the gauntlet of the roués and the cads. And it has to be said, that many a dissolute son was the son of this Lord or that one, so perhaps that fact alone allowed certain imperfections to be overlooked.

  I was soon to find, by the flurry of correspondence that my father entered into from the next day onwards that he had had in fact, no plans at all to go to that town, and that he had to pay the over normal rate by several times to persuade a family to leave their lodgings early. There was little point me suggesting that he settle for a lesser address, as once my father had said something, he considered it done. George Street was the address he’d mentioned and therefore George Street was the only place that would do.

  My brothers and their wives dined with us the night before we were to set off, and I couldn’t help but notice the amused glances both Charles and Edward were exchanging every time my father mentioned Bath or the Pelhams. I had little opportunity to catch either of them out of the earshot of my all too astute parent until we were all in the parlour together, but I took Edward aside under cover of showing him some mementoes I had brought back from Waterloo, and quizzed him thoroughly.

  “I’m afraid you have no recourse for mercy, my dear Geoff,” he’d said, clapping me on the shoulder with a grin. “You are hooked and landed. I’ve met the girl once or twice. Cripplingly shy, of course, which is why she’s not been the magnet she should be—with the title an’ all.”

  I stared at him. “Title?”

  Charles joined us, sitting down and pretending to show an interest in what we were pretending to inspect. It was a ruse we’d used over the years, to be circumspect under our father’s eyes, far more effective than trying to be secret elsewhere in the house, for he always discovered us.

  Edward leaned forward, a piece of shattered cannon in his hand, “Charles, our idiot brother says he didn’t know about the fair Miss Pelham’s rare prospects.”

  “Well, he is an idiot, so one shouldn’t be surprised. If it’s not a horse or a gun, he’s not interested in it.”

  “Ride it, or shoot it, or both, eh?”

  Our father called out to us to stop being unsociable and I spoke urgently, irritated by them treating me like an infant. “There’s no time for this, and in case you both have not noticed, I am six years old no longer. What is it I don’t know?”

  Edward stood up and pretended to yawn. “Miss Pelham, as you probably know, has not a penny to her name to speak of.”

  “Yes. I knew that.”

  “So why,” added Charles, “is father of all people, so very desperate to have you marry her?”

  “To be allied to a titled family, of course, it’s what he’s always wanted.”

  “Tut tut, Minimus,” Charles said, patting me patronisingly on the head. “Wrong. There are many Honourable young ladies who are blind enough to have you, incredible as that seems to the saner portion of the population. But no. The Pelham title was written by writ and not by patent.”

  I frowned at him. “Kindly pretend that I have little interest in the peerage, dear Charles, and am completely ignorant of the workings of the aristocracy.”

  “You do not stretch me, dear Minimus. But actually you are forgiven, and you have been busy. It’s a very rare case. Only happened once to my knowledge before. Henrietta of Marlborough inherited her father’s Dukedom and became the Second Duchess of Marlborough. And so it is with your filly. She inherits the title. Has done already, actually. Unlike Henrietta, she doesn’t take the title herself of course, but... If you marry...”

  “When,” interrupted Edward.

  “Forgive me, of course,” Charles continued with exquisite mock manners. “When you marry her...”

  “I’ll be a Count?” I felt myself go pale.

  “Of course not, idiot boy,” Edward said.

  “But your son...”

  “Who no doubt will inherit the pug-face of his father.”

  “Will be a Count...”

  “And God have mercy on the Peers of England,” laughed Edward.

  “And so say all of us,” agreed Charles. He rejoined the ladies, leaving me as stunned as the netted and landed fish he considered I was.

  This, then, I surmised, was the reason for Heyward’s antagonism. He must have thought that I knew—that I was after the shy girl with no fortune merely for the title. It was more galling for the fact that it was true. I caught Edward by the arm as he turned away.

  “What do you know of her cousin?”

  “Heyward?” Edward frowned. “Odd fish. Comes to the club but gets in his cups too often. The old lady and the young are both devoted to him, by all accounts. No accounting for taste—but then they are considering you for a husband. I’ve heard stories about young Heyward. Stories I’d rather not believe. I’d stay clear of him, if you’ll take my advice. Although, I’ve heard that when it comes to Miss Pelham, Heyward’s word is the one that matters.”

  “Her grandfather?”

  “You would think that would be the case, wouldn’t you? But for some reason, it’s young Heyward that holds the power there.”

  The rest of the evening was more enjoyable, I am pleased to say, although I had plenty to ruminate upon; I revenged myself on my brothers by fleecing their pockets at whist, and we parted amicably enough, even if they cast me meaningful looks over father’s shoulder as they said their goodbyes.

  ~

  The next morning was crisp and cool and the wind was bitter. We bundled up against the cold and I for one was grateful for the stone warmers which, placed on the seats and under our boots, managed to alleviate a little of the chill. I had spent too many years in warmer climes; these freezing winds bit deep. I had suggested going by Post coach; it would be days faster, and the company would at least keep us warm, but my father would not hear of it. In this way then we crawled the distance, and arrived, eventually, more sick of each other’s company than I can bear to express.

  Our rooms were better than I had stayed in before in Bath; and I took full advantage of the staff on hand, getting myself clean and sleeping from the afternoon of our arrival until the next morning, after which I felt human again.

  The interminable Bath routine was adopted; we paddled, we bathed. We drank the vile waters. We lunched in the Pump Rooms. We visited in the afternoons. We were seen. I was bored. There were many officers in the town, as was usual, but after one too many evenings redrawing the lines at Waterloo and dissecting every single one of Wellington’s decisions, I found that I was actually looking forward to the Pelhams’ arrival. It might be pleasant for once to discuss more than the recent past. I had kept away from the dancing in the evenings, not only because, as an eligible man with no obvious disfigurements, the Master of Ceremonies would have spread me thin around the young and not-so-young, but also that my father would have been infuriated to see my attention drawn to anyone else. He seemed, from his daily admonishments to me to keep away from temptation (which, it seemed,
did not include cards or wine) to consider me some Lothario who would lay waste to the virgin hordes and do myself out of the opportunity he was planning. This surprised me, for I had never shown the slightest talent for seduction, and indeed had only lain with two women, both Spanish and both ruinously expensive and each a vacuous, damp, disappointment. However, I did not disabuse his opinion of me. I yearned for some reputation, however untrue.

  After a week, a card arrived by messenger to inform us that the Pelhams had settled in and that we might visit that afternoon. All our normal routine was cancelled, visits postponed, the lesser mortals we had planned to visit let down. My father himself supervised the brushing and polishing of my uniform until I feared the fabric would rend under his valet’s enthusiastic hands. Thus shining and ready for the slaughter, I was led into the rooms that Lady Pelham had engaged (smaller than ours, my father noted with some delight.) We were ushered into the drawing room to wait, and suddenly my father remembered he had left his glass in the carriage and dashed out to find a footman, leaving me alone.

  I was not in that happy state for long, however, and I had not entirely expected to be. My father’s tact is negligible and I was expecting Miss Pelham to be ushered in under some pretext or other. My mouth was dry, and I paced the room feeling caged and helpless. It was of course too late for me to show my heels, the time for showing filial rebellion had been a long time ago and long past. To refuse to do my duty now would only lead to anger and a swift eviction from my father’s favour. That I could not manage on my half-pay was plain, but follow my father’s wishes in this matter would mean a large settlement, and consequent freedom: or, at the very least, a different order of captivity.