At this surprising change of tack, she gave a slight shake of her head. “A hanging? No.”
“Well, I have. Executions are a common enough occurrence in London. When Lord Lansdowne asked for my support on the judicial reform bill, he suggested I attend one. He thought it might prove instructive.”
She waited for him to go on. “And did it?”
“In a way.”
“Who was it? A murderer?”
“No. He was a young man of respectable family, a clerk who had fallen into penury.”
“His family must not have been all that respectable. None of the respectable people I know are in danger of being hanged.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised what respectable people are capable of.” Ayersley did not even glance at her. “For instance, as a person of consequence, I found myself accepting a privileged view of the proceedings. A box seat, in a manner of speaking—a decision for which I have yet to forgive myself.”
“You witnessed the execution up close?”
He nodded, his mouth curving down grimly. “I could hardly credit the size of the crowd. Thousands of people. When the condemned man appeared with his hands bound in front of him, the entire throng surged forward.”
“I expect they were curious,” she said, picturing the scene.
“Yes, that seems to be human nature—a fascination with the morbid. Perhaps it was also human nature that made the prisoner strive so mightily to put on a good show for them. He kept his chin up as he climbed the scaffold. Unfortunately, I was near enough to see his knees were shaking.”
There was a dark look on the earl’s face she had never seen before. She would have liked to take it as proof she’d been right to brand him too serious, but the more somber he grew, the more she wished she could take back her earlier thoughtlessness.
“The strangest carnival atmosphere prevailed,” Ayersley said. “Hawkers selling spurious versions of the condemned man’s confession, boys eating ices, men laughing raucously. On the gallows, the poor wretch launched into his final speech. I don’t know what I expected him to say—exhortations to learn from his example, I suppose. But as close as I was, I couldn’t hear him. The crowd was too loud. They cheered when the noose was placed around his neck. Then the executioner slipped a hood over the condemned man’s head.”
“At least—at least no one could see his face when it happened,” Roxana said, striving for something heartening to say.
“Thank goodness for small mercies. The gallows didn’t afford fall enough, so when the platform dropped and the rope went taut, the man’s neck failed to break. He thrashed like a rabbit in a snare for several interminable minutes, until at last he strangled to death. I had a lengthy opportunity to watch a human life ending before my very eyes.”
“Good heavens…”
“I had steeled myself for the actual execution,” the earl continued, darting a quick glance at her. “It requires little imagination, after all, to envision a man dangling at the end of a rope. But I’d no notion what happens to a body once it’s hanged—appalling, degrading things. Things I could not even bring myself to name later, when Lansdowne asked me about the hanging. Things I certainly shall not describe to a lady. The crowd jeered all the while.”
She shuddered.
“They left him on the gallows for the better part of an hour. The dead body swung back and forth in the air, pitifully, while a few of the lower creatures in the crowd threw stones and dirt at it.” Ayersley’s hands tightened on the ribbons. “The executed man was a husband and a father, aged twenty-seven. He had a son about the same age as Harry, and two daughters even younger. Would you care to know his crime? He had forged another man’s signature on a ten-pound bank draft. Ten pounds. That was the price of his life.”
Roxana was speechless with horror. Finally she gathered the presence of mind to say, “How…horrible.” The word seemed woefully inadequate.
“I hope I never see another such execution in my life,” Ayersley said in a low but determined voice. “Judicial reform might not make for diverting dancing conversation, but I believe I can make a difference. So, you see, sometimes I can’t help being tiresome.”
Roxana looked down at her hands, too chastened even to apologize. She’d always assumed Ayersley’s work in Parliament was well-intentioned but largely meaningless. After all, Tories had been championing stability for generations. Whigs, equally fixed in their roles, argued for reform. Who would have thought Ayersley was so passionate about his work?
Ayersley, passionate? The incongruity of the thought almost made her laugh. A more mild-mannered man had never walked the earth—the dull dog, George called him. Yet Ayersley’s tightly contained outrage just now had been unmistakable.
How strange he should have taken the condemned man’s fate so personally. George never spoke of death that way. George had told her his war stories, and he’d seen many men die—faceless enemies with no background or purpose, minor characters in the saga of battle. Sometimes brother officers died, too, but to George, the occasional death of a comrade was a swift, glorious end to a hero’s life. He never mentioned fear, pain, twisted bodies, orphaned children. Had he been protecting her when he spoke so stirringly of war—or was it that he’d never really stopped to examine the tragedy taking place around him?
No, that was foolish of her. George was a soldier. It was not insensitivity if he turned a blind eye to such things. It was what he had to do, as an officer and an example to his men. He had simply learned to accept the loss of life, while Ayersley was—well, not a coward to be sure, but an ordinary person like her. A country-bred soul. Someone who could not boast of having ice water in his veins.
It was a disquieting thought—that she had more in common with the unsmiling young gentleman sitting next to her than she did with her own husband-to-be.
Chapter Four
Once he saw a youth blushing, and addressed him, “Courage, my boy! that is the complexion of virtue.”
—Diogenes Laertius
The days that followed were miserable. There was only rain, rain, and more rain. It finally cleared on the third day, leaving the roads little but coffee-colored mud and flooded ruts. It was no wonder the Langleys’ footman wore a look of astonishment when Alex appeared on the doorstep at Riddlefield, his hands behind his back.
The footman ushered him into the drawing room. Little Harry was sitting cross-legged on the rug, playing with tin soldiers, while the ladies had evidently been trimming bonnets. They were still engaged in clearing away scissors, ribbons and a clutch of feathers as he entered.
“Lady Langley,” he said with a bow in her direction, keeping his hands behind his back. “Miss Langley, Harry. I’ve come for two reasons. The first is to deliver this.” With a smile, he produced the setter pup he’d brought. “It’s for you, Harry.”
The boy’s face split into an astonished grin. “For me? Really?”
“Yes, really. I have your mother’s permission to give it to you.”
Harry shot to his feet and gathered the puppy up in his arms. It wriggled higher and licked his face. He looked back and forth from Alex to his mother with an expression of happy astonishment. “He’s truly mine? Oh, thank you!”
“She,” Alex corrected him. He gave Miss Langley a conspiratorial smile to let her know he hadn’t forgotten their conversation about Shadow, Tom’s dog with the embarrassing tendency to ravish visitors’ legs. “Your puppy is a female, Harry. And you’re most welcome.”
Miss Langley smiled. In the three days since Alex had driven her home in his curricle, he’d been regretting the way he’d handled matters, taking her artless remarks so to heart he’d ended up proving just how dreary and humorless he could be. Now he smiled back, and her own smile widened until the dimples appeared in her cheeks.
Her little brother set his new pet on the rug. The puppy gamboled about, begging to be picked up again.
Lady Langley watched with a look of amusement. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more
adorable creature.”
Harry glanced up at Alex. “Does she have a name?”
“I’ve left the privilege of naming her to you—though perhaps you might give your puppy a name with some virtuous association.”
“Yes, that’s an excellent idea,” Miss Langley said at once, throwing Alex a speaking glance to show she was likewise remembering Shadow. “Who was famed for her virtue? Queen Bess? Lucretia, before she was dishonored?”
“She doesn’t look like a Lucretia to me,” her mother said, eying the puppy. “Mary, the mother of Jesus?”
Miss Langley laughed. “Mama, he can hardly name a dog ‘Mary, the mother of Jesus.’”
Alex regarded the puppy thoughtfully. “Perhaps something mythological. Penelope? Artemis?”
“Yes!” Miss Langley said. “Artemis—or her Roman name, Diana. She was the virgin goddess of the hunt. That seems fitting for a gun dog, don’t you think?”
“Diana.” Lady Langley weighed the name. “What do you think, Harry?”
Harry never tore his eyes away from the little setter. “Dinah? I like it.”
“No, not Dinah.” Miss Langley stretched a hand down to tickle the puppy behind the ears. “Diana. Dinah is from the Bible.”
Alex nodded. “Yes, indeed. The wronged daughter of Jacob. Her brothers were driven to slaughter the Shechemites, I believe, after Shechem dealt with her as with a harlot.”
Lady Langley frowned. “Oh, Ayersley, what a dreadful story.”
“It’s in the Bible, ma’am,” he said with mock-piety, and caught Miss Langley hiding a giggle.
“Dinah,” Harry said again. “Her name is Dinah.”
There was no use campaigning for something more classical, or arguing that the name belonged not to a pillar of virtue, but to a fallen woman. Young Harry had made up his mind. Dinah it was.
Lady Langley looked at Alex. “Now didn’t you say you had two reasons for calling today, Ayersley?”
He watched boy and dog play together on the rug, clearly smitten with each other. “Yes, indeed, though I have no illusions the second will meet with so enthusiastic a reception as the first. I’ve come to deliver an invitation.”
Lady Langley perked up. “You’re giving a party?”
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a rectangle of cream-colored paper. “Not just any party.” He handed her the card. “A ball, to be held on the fifth of August.”
Miss Langley peered over her mother’s shoulder, examining the invitation with her.
“I haven’t forgotten my promise to you, you see, and I have reason to believe that by the fifth, my mother will have recovered sufficiently to play hostess. I shouldn’t consider the party complete without you ladies.”
Lady Langley nodded her satisfaction. “I wouldn’t dream of missing it.”
“I mean to ask Major Wyatt, too, of course,” Alex added for Miss Langley’s benefit.
“Thank you, Ayersley.” She looked up from the invitation, smiling. “I’d love to come.”
* * *
“Harry, it’s not ripe if you have to pull that hard,” Roxana said as her brother tore another blackberry free, the cane bending with his efforts. “It should just drop into your hand.”
Her abigail stood a few yards away. “Come and see all the ones over here, Master Harry. There are ever so many you could reach.”
They were berry picking, the three of them, just inside the low stone wall that marked the perimeter of Riddlefield. In the hope of keeping the thorns from scratching her, Roxana was wearing her oldest garden gloves and a spencer that was much too warm for the July heat. To make matters worse, the brambles kept catching at her bonnet and pulling it askew.
She had just righted her bonnet yet again when the clip-clop of hooves drew her attention to the road on the other side of the waist-high wall. A gentleman she did not recognize approached atop a neat bay horse. His eyes fixed on her as he drew closer.
The rider tipped his bell-crowned hat as he passed, regarding her all the while. He had gone on only a little farther when he stopped and turned his horse about to face her again. “I do beg your pardon,” he said, removing his hat completely and addressing her in the accents of a gentleman, “but could you tell me if I’m headed in the right direction to find Mr. Gould?”
Perhaps if she lived in Town, Roxana might have refrained from speaking to a man who had not been properly introduced. But she’d lived all her life in the country, where everyone knew who she was and treated her with the same friendly respect. Besides, the gentleman looked perfectly unobjectionable. “That depends. Do you mean Mr. Gould the butcher, or Mr. Gould the farmer?”
The gentleman cast a rueful look at her. “How careless of me. I never stopped to consider there might be more than one. Is it the farmer I should see if I wish to engage musicians?”
“Yes, he plays the fiddle with a troupe from Chesterfield. I doubt Mr. Gould the butcher could manage it, for he’s missing most of two fingers.”
“I definitely want the ten-fingered Mr. Gould, then.”
“In that case, follow this road until you come to the cottage with the green gate. Turn left, and Mr. Gould’s farm is at the end of the lane. You can’t miss it, Mr.…”
“Dean. Oliver Dean, at your service.”
He looked to be about thirty or so, and impressed her as intelligent. Perhaps it was the way he combed his wavy light-brown hair back neatly from a high forehead, or the orderly appearance he presented, with his spectacles and slightly citified riding clothes. He had an observant air, with warm hazel eyes in a pleasant face.
“You wouldn’t by any chance happen to be the Earl of Ayersley’s private secretary, would you?” Roxana asked.
His brows flashed higher in a look of surprise. “As a matter of fact, I am. But how did you know that?”
“I supposed you must be staying somewhere close by, or you would have gone to Derby or Sheffield to engage musicians. And I knew—careful, Harry, if you reach in that far you’re going to get scratched. Excuse me, Mr. Dean. As I was saying, I knew the earl was expecting his secretary. The neighborhood was most interested to learn he’d sent for you, for he hasn’t spent much time in Derbyshire these past few years.”
Mr. Dean’s eyes lingered on Roxana’s face. “I must say, if I were Lord Ayersley, I would find it difficult to stay away from this part of the country.”
Was he flirting with her? The way he was leaning over the saddle certainly suggested more than mere civility. But perhaps she was flattering herself, for she could not present a very pretty picture in her faded blue spencer and berry-stained gloves, her curls straggling free of her bonnet. No doubt she looked more like a simple farmer’s daughter than a lady. “Do you hail from London, Mr. Dean?”
“Actually, I come from Wiltshire, though these days I go where his lordship’s business takes me. Is that your little boy, eating more berries than he’s adding to his pail?”
“Mine?” She glanced over her shoulder at Harry. “Goodness, no. I’m not married. Harry is my little brother.”
Mr. Dean’s smile grew wider and warmer still. “Ah, so that explains the resemblance.”
“It was his idea to come berry picking, though I’m quite sure he’ll give up the instant he’s eaten his fill.”
“I remember taking much the same approach when I was a boy.” Mr. Dean’s horse tossed its head restively, and he patted its neck. “Perhaps I might mention to Lord Ayersley that I met one of his neighbors today, if you would not mind giving me your name…?”
He was regarding her with such rapt attention, Roxana wondered if it was for his own sake rather than the earl’s that he wanted her name. Should she mention George? No, it was probably conceited of her to suppose it made any difference to Ayersley’s secretary whether she was engaged or not. Besides, she could always work George into the conversation later.
“Well, I live here, at Riddlefield.” She gestured in the general direction of the house. “And I’m Miss Langley.”
Her pronouncement had a remarkable effect on Mr. Dean. He had been leaning in with a relaxed, attentive air. When she gave him her name, however, his face went blank and he sat bolt upright in the saddle. “Indeed? In that case, I do hope you’ll overlook my having addressed you without an introduction.” Inclining his head, he said, “A great pleasure to meet you. Good day.”
He put his hat back on, turned his horse about and continued up the road.
Roxana stared after him in consternation as the distance between them widened. Whatever had she said to make him switch so abruptly from friendly smiles to brusque detachment?
But she knew what she’d said. Her name.
She picked up her pail again with a feeling of dull hurt. She’d thought Ayersley had forgiven her for her thoughtless words in his curricle and perhaps even begun to warm to her a little, but it appeared she’d been wrong.
What damning things had the earl told his secretary about her, that she should deserve such instant dismissal?
* * *
It was the third day since his secretary’s arrival and they were dining alone, Alex’s mother having taken her dinner in her room. Alex had just made some remark on the war with America when Oliver said out of the blue, “By the way, I met Sir Thomas Langley’s sister today.”
Alex had been about to take another bite of roast beef, but at this he paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “Did you?” he said as casually he could.
“Yes, on the grounds outside her family’s house. A remarkably lovely girl.”
Alex applied himself to cutting up his beef. “Yes, I believe she’s the acknowledged beauty of these parts.”
“I can see why.” Across from him, Oliver removed his spectacles and held them up to the candlelight with a critical frown. “It’s odd, Lord Ayersley, but in all the times I’ve heard you and Sir Thomas discussing your neighbors here, I don’t believe you’ve ever mentioned her.”
“Haven’t I? Well, it’s probably because Sir Thomas does enough talking for both of us.” Careful to keep his tone neutral, he leveled a look at his secretary. “I suppose she told you she’s engaged to be married.”
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