by Sheila Walsh
“Ha! Don’t boggle at plain speaking now, my girl! I am as drunk as a wheelbarrow! I strongly recommend it for inducing clarity of mind!” He leaned forward confidentially. “I know that had I shot that boy twelve months back—killed him, even—I wouldn’t have turned a hair. Child or no, he is a known poacher—a wrongdoer if ever there was one!
“Yet today, when I picked him up, he was just a boy like Jamie—a boy, appallingly undersized with the bones sticking out of him; a boy with none of Jamie’s advantages ... yet game as a pebble for all that!”
The bottle clinked against the glass again. “The realization had a profound effect on me. As a consequence, my head keeper thinks I’ve gone soft in the upper works—and who’s to say he’s not right—because I won’t prosecute!” He rested his head against the chair as though exhausted by the long and rather rambling disclosure.
“Now for God’s sake, leave me!”
Felicity was suddenly very angry. “That I will not!” she cried. “How dare you so belittle yourself! All because of some silly accident. Why, I had by far rather you turned violent and took to throwing things! It would become you better than this maudlin self-indulgence!”
“Would it?” Stayne came to his feet with surprising agility for a man three parts disguised. He seized her wrist and jerked her forward until she lay helpless against his chest His other hand forced her chin upward and she found his eyes heart-stoppingly close, blazing into her own. “Is this violent enough for you?”
She saw quite clearly the faint mark on his temple from the injury she had treated—and the fast-beating pulse close beside it. And then, in a haze of brandy fumes, his mouth came down on hers, hard and demanding, blotting everything out and setting the room spinning...
As abruptly as he had possessed her, he let her go, almost pushing her from him.
Felicity grabbed a nearby chair for support, the blood pounding through her veins, while the Earl stood hunched over the fire, one arm resting along the mantelshelf.
“So much for violence!” The harsh voice shook slightly. “Forgive me. I must disgust you!”
“No, sir.”
He uttered a short, derisive laugh. “Then you are more generous than I deserve. I disgust myself! You had better go.”
Felicity hesitated. “I cannot go, leaving you like this.”
He looked up, disbelieving at first—then he put back his head and laughed. She eyed him anxiously; the wildness had gone, though his eyes were still overbright.
“What an indomitable girl you are!” he gasped. “To what lengths would you go, I wonder, if you deemed it your duty to save me from myself?”
She smiled uncertainly.
“Oh, go along, girl. I am no longer out of my senses, I promise you! And accept my humble apologies, I usually hold my liquor rather better!”
Felicity slept not a wink that night. Her own senses were in a turmoil, hovering between wild elation and depression; in the first pale light of dawn she finally gave a name to the pangs that assailed her—it was love, total and irrevocable!
She wondered if Stayne would be at breakfast, and if so, could she face him with composure? In the event, all her heart-searching availed her little.
“His lordship left for London at first light, Miss Vale,” said Cavanah. “He will be joining Mrs. Delamere there, no doubt.”
11
“It’s Mamma! It’s Mamma! And there are gentlemen with her!” Jamie scrambled down from the window seat in the nursery and rushed toward the door. Mr. Burnett’s quiet voice halted him and desired him to come back and tidy his toys away first.
The instant, if reluctant, obedience to this command brought a smile to Felicity’s lips; in the few short months that Aloysius Burnett had been with them, Jamie was already much steadier.
While she waited for Jamie, she wandered across to the window. The nursery was high up in the West Wing, and through the rain-drenched panes the view was blurred.
There were two post chaises drawn up and several hacks were being led away. Nearby, a group of gentlemen stood in a huddle, swathed in long, enveloping cloaks, with rain dripping from the brims of their beaver hats. Even with the distorted view, however, she was certain that none stood tall enough to be Lord Stayne. She reproved herself for the stab of disappointment.
The house had suddenly come to life. The hall was full of people; they stood around the two fires, shedding wet clothes, all laughing and talking at once.
Amaryllis was radiant; she wore a dress in her favorite deep blue, and an extremely modish poke bonnet of Gros de Naples, with matching ribbons. This she threw carelessly onto a chair and, with a pale, lacy wrap slipping from her shoulders, held out her arms to Jamie, smothering him in kisses until he wriggled free, scarlet with embarrassment. She made a little moue and declared that he had grown beyond everything and that her baby was gone forever!
Then Amaryllis turned her brilliant blue eyes on Felicity.
“Fliss! You are looking a trifle worn. Who can wonder at it, buried here all alone ... and with this incessant rain! Everyone complains of it ... no one can remember a worse summer! The Colchesters, who have recently returned from the Continent, found the weather even worse there, with snow and hailstones and the crops all destroyed!”
Jamie had been watching the procession of baggage and tugged at his mother’s arm. “Did you bring me a present?”
Felicity reproved him, but Amaryllis only laughed. “Yes, darling—lots. Oh, Fliss, just wait until you see all I have brought from Town! Silks and brocades, cambrics and Indian muslins from Layton and Shears in Henrietta Street ... Oh, and a pale yellow crepe that I am determined was just made for you! Now that I am back, I mean to take you in hand, my dear ... I have silk stockings and French gloves and ... oh, so many things.”
“Lord Stayne did not travel back with you?” Felicity despised herself for asking and was well served when Amaryllis laughed casually.
“Good gracious, no! We have scarce seen him! He came once to Almacks, but he stayed only long enough to stand up with me and once with Lucinda, which puffed her mother up no end!”
“But I have brought Uncle Perry,” she continued. “The Barsetts have come, too, and Francis and Lydia Spencer and the Honeysetts ... and there is someone else, too.”
Amaryllis beckoned and a fair, slightly built young man detached himself from one of the groups near the fire. There was something vaguely familiar about his easy stride and splendid military side-whiskers.
“Well now, young Felicity Vale!” he said with a grin.
She grasped the outstretched hand with a cry of pleasure. “Major Tremaine! How very nice!”
“Haven’t I been clever?” said Amaryllis.
“I’ve known this young lady since she was so high.”
“I used to sew on all your buttons,” laughed Felicity. Her eyes had gone instinctively to the empty sleeve pinned to his chest and her heart gave a lurch of dismay. Johnny Tremaine of all people! The regiment’s undisputed Romeo and daredevil.
When Amaryllis left them alone, she touched the sleeve with tentative fingers. “I’m so sorry,” she said impulsively. “I didn’t know.”
“Don’t you fret, my dear girl,” he said cheerfully. “Why, I am already scarcely missing it. Alastair reckons I am becoming insufferably cocksure!”
“How is Colonel Patterson—and Mrs. Patterson?”
“Well enough. They are back in England now. Alastair has secured himself a very comfortable staff appointment ... at Horse Guards, no less! What it is to have influence!” The jibe was devoid of malice, the two men having been firm friends for many years.
“You must give me their direction,” said Felicity.
“With pleasure, though Mollie will be writing to you herself, no doubt, as soon as they are settled. They have taken a house near Islington Spa. She will, no doubt, insist upon your visiting them.”
“Oh, it will be nice to see them ... and the children. How they will have grown!”
; Felicity could not fail to notice as they talked, how his eye followed Amaryllis. It would have been astonishing, she supposed, if Amaryllis had not taken his eye.
“And what will you do now?” she asked gently.
He shrugged, and the laughing gray eyes looked momentarily bleak.
“I’m still with the regiment, but I shall most likely sell out. I doubt there being any great future for a one-armed man. Besides...” He left the sentence unfinished, but his eyes were again on Amaryllis, who was coming toward them with Sir Peregrine and Jamie. “Bye the bye,” he said, bringing his attention back with an effort, “I haven’t said how sorry I am ... about your parents. You had left by the time I had the news. It was a wretched business! So many good lives lost.”
“Yes,” she said simply. “Sometimes I cannot believe it is a whole twelvemonth since...”
The others joined them and no more was said. Sir Peregrine kissed Felicity soundly and asked how she did; then the guests dispersed to their hastily prepared rooms and Felicity was called to the kitchen, at Cavanah’s urgent behest, to reassure Mrs. Hudson that she was more than equal to the task of conjuring a meal for upward of a dozen people with no more than three hours’ notice.
Later in the evening, when Lord and Lady Spencer and the Honeysetts were engaged in a rubber of whist and the rest of the party had gathered around the pianoforte, Sir Peregrine drew Felicity a little to one side.
“I’ve been observing you, child—sitting there in your pretty green dress. You’re looking peaky. Not been having trouble with that oaf, Hardman, again, eh?”
“No,” she said quickly—too quickly. She added a bright smile of reassurance. “No, really—I promise you.”
“Captain Hardman has been away for a large part of the summer,” she told Uncle Perry. “He has been having a lot of trouble at his Shropshire foundries, I believe ... a meeting organized by Bamford and Hunt which got out of hand. The Militia were called in and it all got rather nasty.”
The worry showed in her voice. “But now he is back and in a towering rage to find his barns have been burned.”
“What! It hasn’t spread this far, surely? We heard rumors of uprisings in Essex and Suffolk...”
Sir Peregrine’s voice carried above the conversation. The whist players paused in their play and the pianoforte trailed off on a discord.
“There hasn’t been trouble here—on Stayne’s land?” cried Amaryllis.
“No, no. Only Manor Court farm has suffered so far.”
“Oh—that man!” Amaryllis shrugged and instantly lost interest.
Felicity kept to herself the fear that the burning of the Captain’s barns was not part of the general unrest, but the work of a few local troublemakers taking advantage of an already tense situation. Her fear was heightened by a disquieting suspicion that some of her older boys might have become involved.
“It is a wonder that anything will burn in all this rain,” observed Lizzie Barsett with an out-of-place levity which earned her a quelling frown from her brother.
Tom Barsett, unlike his pretty, dizzy sister, was a stolid, earnest young man. He took his stance rather pompously near the fireplace.
“We have a friend in Cambridgeshire whose farm was attacked not two weeks since—his ricks all but destroyed!”
Lady Spencer dropped her cards with a little cry.
“Well, I think it is quite dweadful,” she complained with a delicate shudder. “The labowing classes are getting out of hand!”
Felicity was aware of a rising anger which she fought hard to contain. “Perhaps that is because some of them are close to starvation” she explained in a tight voice. “The enclosures deprived them of the strips of land where they used to grow a little food, and keep a cow or a pig or two of their own! Now the prices are soaring. They cannot even afford bread! There were near-riots at the bakery in Stapleforth two days ago.”
The atmosphere in the elegant blue and rose drawing room had become charged; Amaryllis was making frantic gestures to Felicity to let the matter drop, but Lord Francis now entered the lists. He was highly displeased to find his game ruined. Furthermore, he resented being preached at by a slip of a girl, who was ill-qualified as he saw it to judge any but the most parochial issues ... and who seemed possessed of the most reactionary views!
“Prices are hitting at everyone, ma’am,” he said in hectoring tones, his face ruddier than usual. “The banks are calling in their money all over the country. Your peasants are not the only sufferers, I assure you!”
“No, but they are least able to bear the brunt.”
“Don’t you believe it, m’dear!” Sir Peregrine was now on ground he knew well. “It’s my opinion that ruin strikes every bit as hard when you’re plump in the pocket—more so, in fact. Why, d’ye know, the Gazette last week was full of bankruptcies! Some of them came as a shock to me, I can tell you.”
Lizzie giggled nervously. “Even Mr. Brummell has been obliged to flee the country.”
“Ah, poor George! Things won’t be the same without him.”
Johnny Tremaine was quietly picking out a tune with one finger on the keyboard of the pianoforte. “Left a mountain of debts behind him, so I heard.”
“I saw him at Almacks once,” said Amaryllis, relieved that the conversation had taken a more comfortable turn. “I’m sure I couldn’t see anything very special about him. He wasn’t half so fine as some.”
“Then you lack discernment, puss, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.” Sir Peregrine took out a very prettily enameled gold snuffbox and offered it around before taking a liberal pinch himself. “Do you recall how he was in his prime, Francis?”
“By Jericho, yes!”
“I mind being at dinner with him,” chuckled Sir Peregrine, now firmly launched into reminiscent vein. “He’d his manservant behind his chair to tell him who was either side of him. That way the Beau was able to converse quite prettily with his neighbors without the slightest danger to the folds of his cravat.”
The anecdote was greeted with delighted laughter and the tensions eased.
Felicity looked around the room and despaired. These well-fed, well-dressed, and, on the whole, harmless paragons of society filled her with a sense of helplessness. How could they even begin to comprehend? Had any one of them, she wondered, the least conception of the kind of poverty—the gnawing hunger which drives men to violence?
She had come pretty close a few times, and so probably had Johnny Tremaine, but at least an army on the march could forage and, if necessary, commandeer food.
Uncle Perry patted her hand. “Your feelings do you credit, child,” he murmured with uncanny perception. “But don’t despair of us completely, I beg you! Human beings, are by nature, selfish, but give us time, m’dear ... give us time. All will be set to rights in time, you’ll see.”
She did see—and smiled a little bleakly, wondering if he realized just how quickly time would run out for some!
A few miles away in the woods of Manor Court, two figures, a man and a boy, moved with practiced stealth, melting into the deepest shadows. The night-black woods held no secrets for these two; their eyes were trained to see as well as any wild cat’s, so that no stirring of life, however infinitesimal, escaped them.
Lanny hadn’t wanted to come, but his pa had talked him around.
“Anything you take yourself, lad, you can keep to take home to your ma. Just so long as you helps me with me traps.”
With things the way they were, the temptation had been too much. But he hadn’t told Ma ... she’d made him promise not to go out any more and he felt bad about breaking his word. It wasn’t as though he got a thrill from it, even ... not the way he used to, though he’d rather die than admit it!
Miss Vale ... she wouldn’t like it, either. She hadn’t ’xactly made him promise ... not the way Ma had ... She said you had to do things right for the right reasons ... not just to please other folk. He’d been going to school pretty regular since that “other business”
... even begun to enjoy it, though you wouldn’t catch him admitting that, either!
Still ... she was all right, was Miss Vale. He got a queer lump in his throat thinking how disappointed she’d be ... not angry ... that wouldn’t be so bad ... just disappointed ... and kind of quiet...
“Hold hard, lad!” Dick Price laid a warning hand on his son’s arm. There were sounds—voices—coming nearer. They passed by uncomfortably close—several big dark shapes—and snatches of conversation drifted across to where they stood.
“... in a regular taking, ’e was! Fair spoilin’ for a fight...”
“...cold, flamin’ rage ... you know how ’e can be! Said it was time some folk learned ... this time he’d handle it hisself...”
“...wants to watch it! That Stayne’s no looby ... More ways to skin a cat...” The voices were fading.
“Wait here,” Lanny’s pa hissed. “I’m going to follow ’em. I want to hear more.”
He was gone with no more than a whisper of sound. Lanny waited, fidgeting a little as time passed. A melancholy owl hooted and presently a hedgehog came snuffling through the undergrowth searching for grubs. It curled into a spiky ball as Lanny picked it up and stuffed it into his pocket. Ma’d need more than one miserable little hedgehog to make her overlook his broken promise, but it was a start When the scream came, it reverberated through the darkness, shattering the still night Lanny was sweating as he ran, slipping on the damp mossy earth and knowing before he got there what he must find. The capricious moon, coming from behind a cloud, shed a cold, dispassionate light through the motionless trees.
His pa lay staring in horror at the bloody pulped remains of what moments before had been his leg, now locked fast in the teeth of a man trap. His gasping sobs seemed scarcely human, and Lanny stood petrified with terror until a sense of urgency overtook him.
He sank to his knees, tearing with hopeless, inadequate fingers at the jaws of the trap, his own fierce sobs mingling with his pa’s.