Private Passions

by Felicia Greene

  ‘Goodness, yes. It would be quite intolerably uncomfortable.’ Selby had apparently appointed himself doctor; Grancourt wondered for a moment if he and the courtesan had some sort of understanding, before dismissing it with a roll of the eyes. ‘I believe you must take a carriage with one of the maids to Weldon. The closest town, where a physician can aid you.’ He looked at Matilda, brow furrowed; Grancourt watched, trying to shake the sense that he was observing some sort of magic show. ‘Do you require a chaperone?’

  Grancourt felt Harding tense beside him. Looking at his older friend, wondering what emotional mess he had managed to stumble into, Grancourt wondered if he could wander away quietly and smoke a cigar without anyone noticing his absence.

  ‘No. I—I require no chaperone.’ Grancourt could swear the woman looked at Harding for a brief instant, before turning back to Selby. ‘A maid will be more than adequate.’

  ‘Of course. Mary—you shall accompany Miss Weatherbrooke to Weldon.’ Maldon gestured to a young maidservant, who looked positively ecstatic to be accompanying the beautiful and scandalous Miss Weatherbrooke anywhere at all. ‘I would travel behind the carriage myself, but there is so much to oversee…’

  ‘Of course. I quite understand.’ As Matilda delicately turned her head, Grancourt saw it; a glint in the eye that had to be pure calculation. ‘But… but who will share a carriage with poor Poppy? I was meant to share one with her.’

  There was the faint but definite suggestion of a trap tightening. Grancourt looked over at Poppy immediately, suspecting the worst, but saw nothing but concern and confusion on the girl’s face.

  ‘Yes. I suppose you are right.’ Maldon was looking at the assembled group, clearly going through a process of elimination. Grancourt, his heart beginning to beat rapidly in his chest, wondered how on earth he could stop him. Selby: too mysterious. Harding: will not want to share a carriage with anyone. Bale: will want to share a carriage with Isabella…

  Grancourt.

  Perfect.

  ‘Grancourt?’ Maldon was using the voice that Grancourt normally didn’t mind; the voice of an old friend, asking a slightly inconvenient favour. Alas, today it rang differently. ‘Do you mind awfully looking after—’

  ‘Fine.’ Grancourt was more than aware his voice was far more hostile than was warranted; thank goodness he was such a miserable bastard from day to day that no-one seemed to have noticed. ‘Fine.’

  He risked a look at Poppy. Her heightened colour, her wide eyes, spoke more eloquently than he ever could.

  ‘I thank you.’ Maldon looked over his shoulder. ‘Hop to it then, the both of you—it appears the coachman is ready.’

  She hasn’t forgotten the kiss, then. Grancourt watched Poppy stumble a little as she turned on the steps. Christ… it’s up to me to forget it.

  Whenever Poppy Maldon had shared a carriage with Matilda Weatherbrooke, the vehicle seemed uncomfortably large. How two ladies were meant to speak properly, and share confidences, in such a spacious place, was something of a mystery… but now, sharing the same carriage with Henry Grancourt, she had never felt quite so confined.

  Her friend really was the most atrocious minx. Poppy could spot a feigned injury at twenty places; for all her innocence in most matters, she had sat out enough dances claiming a headache to spot the signs of falsehood in others. Matilda had no more twisted her ankle than caught a phoenix in her skirts—and for some ridiculous reason, James Selby had fallen for the falsehood.

  Wasn’t that strange, silent man meant to be perceptive? He gave off that air, at least. And Richard had to attempt to master the unfortunate situation, ordering Grancourt to chaperone her… why couldn’t she simply have had the carriage all to herself?

  Richard had decided, accurately, that she would be bored. On any other day, she would have been bored. But sitting opposite Grancourt, who was glaring at her as if she were a spider that had somehow scuttled its way into the carriage, Poppy knew that boredom was horribly far away.

  Gentlemen and ladies were not meant to share carriages, if unmarried. That was a rule only disobeyed if the lady was considered to still be a child, and the man wasn’t treated as any sort of threat. Poppy, her face darkening, now knew that Richard still considered her little more than a baby… and as for Grancourt, well, he looked threatening enough. Even if Poppy never felt anything less than perfectly safe, looking at his glowering face.

  The carriage set off, wheels crunching over the drive, the vehicle settling into its usual homely rattle. Poppy, sitting primly in one corner, pretended to concentrate on the bucolic view of the countryside as she secretly looked at Grancourt out of the corner of her eye.

  He had a handsome face. She had certainly never noticed that before; not consciously, at any rate. A serious face, perhaps a little too darkly drawn in the brows and the firm twist of the mouth, but his eyes were kind, even when they flashed with the fire that Poppy saw now. The fire that she had briefly seen in the moment after the kiss; the kiss that she was still thinking about, even though she knew she should turn her mind to more edifying things.

  Perhaps they should discuss it. Poppy opened her mouth, determined to remain untroubled despite a deepening of Grancourt’s scowl—but stopped, a small cry caught in her throat, as a loud crack of thunder split the sky.

  ‘Those clouds this morning promised us this.’ Grancourt’s voice seemed deliberately bland. We will have a very wet journey to London.’

  ‘The rain is growing terribly strong.’ Poppy looked out of the window at the grey sweep of cloud, the rain hammering into the road until it resembled oxtail soup. ‘Are we not going a little too fast for such conditions?’

  ‘The coachman is not one I recognise. He must be hired from London, up here for the wedding—he will be losing money the longer he stays on this stretch.’ Even though Grancourt’s tone wasn’t comforting in the slightest, Poppy felt soothed all the same. ‘I am keeping an eye on him.’

  ‘And if he does something foolish, and the carriage breaks down?’

  Grancourt’s scowl grew a shade deeper. ‘Then I will have words with him.’

  Words. Poppy wished she had more of them. She never normally had any problems with making conversation; especially with Grancourt, who had listened to an untold amount of her prattling over the years of he and Richard’s friendship. The kiss had not only given her an uncomfortable new level of awareness when it came to his physical appearance, but also a rapid, dispiriting assessment of her own shortcomings as a woman.

  Oh, Lord. Poppy looked longingly out of the window at the bleak, rain-swept landscape. I am to be trapped here, for hours, in a hell of my own making.

  Silent, unforgiving minutes stretched out into first one painful hour, then two. Poppy considered, then discarded, innumerable topics of conversation; the discomfort of the carriage, the beauty of the wedding, the seasonal changes in the countryside… no, none of them would do when faced with Grancourt’s seemingly permanent air of deep grievance.

  The kiss. That was all that really needed discussing. Part of Poppy wished to discuss it with deep, unwavering intensity, while the rest of her shrank away from the subject with a cowardice she found unusual. It would be dreadfully unseemly to discuss it—of course, it was dreadfully unseemly to have kissed him at all…

  Poppy swallowed. The most unseemly thing of all, if she were truly honest with herself, was how much she wanted to try kissing Henry Grancourt again.

  She parted her lips, taking a steadying breath. Grancourt tensed; did he know, somehow, what she was going to say? Once again they were alone, despite the odds being firmly against them being so… they could speak about why she had kissed him, the possible implications, or—or he could brush his fingers against her cheekbones again, curling in her hair, his eyes burning…

  A crack of lightning split the sky; Poppy cried out as the rain grew heavier, thundering down on the roof of the carriage as the coachman swore. The road was becoming a thick, muddy stretch of liquid earth; Poppy st
ared wide-eyed as the carriage began to rock and sway, the horses whinnying in fear as the whip lashed down.

  ‘Oh!’ A violent jerk tipped the carriage to one side; Poppy’s breath was knocked from her chest as she flew sideways. She threw her hands up, expecting to hit the hard side of the carriage—but found Grancourt’s arms instead as he caught her, holding her tightly to him.

  For a moment, the rain dimmed. All Poppy could hear was the rapid beating of Grancourt’s heart.

  ‘Miss Maldon?’ How deep his voice became when he was concerned. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘Yes.’ At heart, Poppy wasn’t sure at all.

  The first sound that Grancourt could distinguish with any real clarity, once he had recovered from the shock of having Poppy in his arms, was the terrified whinnying of the horse and the forceful whipping of the coachman. Disentangling himself from Poppy, hoping against hope that she had neither seen nor felt the sudden, painful hardness of his cock, he climbed out of the sunken carriage with a scowl that could have felled rock.

  ‘Stop whipping that poor creature.’ With a rain-spattered hand, he gripped the handle of the whip before the coachman could pull it away. ‘Or I’ll use this cursed thing on you, jam a bit between your bloody teeth, and make you carry us to London on your odious back.’

  The coachman looked for a moment as if he would protest. Upon looking into Grancourt’s eyes, however, he appeared to think better of it.

  ‘Good.’ Grancourt threw away the whip. ‘Now, help me to retrieve Miss Maldon, then we can try to adjust this infernal vehicle, and—’

  He stopped, mouth falling open, as the coachman began running as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

  Grancourt, fighting the urge to chase the man and drag him back by his hair, assessed his options as the rain splashed down on his head. The other carriages were long gone; none of the other guests would have seen their mishap. He could perform basic repairs on most pieces of horse-riding equipment, but an entire carriage was beyond him… and the only signs of life he had seen on the muddy, featureless track had come from the clump of low-roofed houses he could still see on the horizon.

  One of the swellings had a sign swinging from it. Grancourt, squinting, could make out the word Inn under a crudely-drawn painting of a fox and hound.

  ‘Your Grace?’ Poppy’s voice, frail but courageous, came from the broken carriage. Grancourt turned, overcome with concern once again. ‘What has occurred?’

  ‘Well…’ Grancourt wondered about the most elegant way to phrase the mess they were in, before giving up with a sigh. If Poppy wanted to be spoken to elegantly, she needed a different carriage partner. ‘We’re buggered.’

  Poppy’s head appeared as she half-opened the carriage door; Grancourt stepped forward, ignoring the rain dripping onto his face. ‘Where is the coachman?’

  Grancourt pointed at the rapidly vanishing figure of the coachman on the grey horizon. ‘He has decided to take the scenic route back to London.’

  ‘Oh.’ Poppy swallowed; Grancourt could tell she was attempting to keep calm, and a wave of sentiment made him scowl. ‘Well… we did pass an inn a little while ago, did we not?’

  ‘Yes.’ Grancourt adjusted his pointed finger to take in the drab house with the sign. ‘Distant, but not impossibly so.’ He looked down at the muddy track, aware that his boots were growing dirtier by the minute, before walking back to the carriage. ‘It will be a damp and unpleasant walk.’

  ‘This dress was made last month. Madame DuBasse worked until her fingers bled.’ Poppy closed her eyes, turning up her nose. ‘If you think I am taking a single step into that mud, sir, you are entirely mistaken—oh!’

  She gasped as Grancourt swept her into his arms. Jumping down from the carriage, feeling her hands wreath reflexively around his neck, Grancourt once again found any irritation completely dissolved by desire.

  ‘I do not intend to have a single speck of mud land on your skirts.’ He reached one arm back into the carriage, pulling out a cushion. ‘Hold this over your head. We will make out way to the inn, and—and see what the bloody hell we can do about any of this mess.’

  ‘You really do use indescribably coarse language.’

  ‘Do you wish me to throw you into the road? It will take approximately twenty minutes to walk to the inn.’

  ‘No.’ Poppy’s hands tightened around his neck; Grancourt felt his heart beat faster. ‘No, I do not. And if the alternative to coarse language is threats, then I prefer coarse language.’

  Grancourt managed keep both threats and coarse language to a minimum as he walked, feet squelching in the mud, to the inn; the inn which, although dark and sour-smelling, was at least warm and dry. He walked over the threshold, setting Poppy gently down onto the freshly-swept flagstones as he noted the warmth of the place with a satisfied nod.

  As Poppy began smoothing down her skirts, he hunted in vain for a sign of human life. It would certainly be considered rude to open any door, or rap soundly upon the desk. Grancourt contented himself with pacing up and down like a caged bear until he heard the sound of sturdy footsteps, along with the instantly recognisable sound of an argument in progress.

  ‘Fourteen revellers? Fourteen revellers, all of them in completely unacceptable condition, to arrive within the hour!’ The door closest to Grancourt banged open; a large, stern-faced woman entered, followed by an anxiously pacing man whose bloodshot eyes spoke of either too much wine or too little sleep. ‘When your good friend George tells you of these wonderful ideas, William, you must clap him soundly about the head instead of offering our services with a smile!’

  ‘My dear, think of the good word that will spread. Think of the coin!’ The man seemed completely unaware that Grancourt and Poppy were in the room; he followed the stern woman through the hall, his hands reaching to the heavens. ‘With Maisie sickening for something, and Jeremy running off, and Cook refusing to take meals to the rooms now that Maisie’s sickening, we need to think about keeping these rooms filled and paying until—’

  ‘If you will excuse me.’ Grancourt couldn’t bear hearing nonsense at the best of times, but listening to it when muddy and tired was beyond what any reasonable man could bear. ‘I—’

  ‘Oh, goodness me.’ The stern woman’s face transformed; she bobbed a curtsey as she muttered viciously to the man. ‘William, I thought you told me that Mr. Richardson and his wife were arriving tomorrow?’

  ‘I thought they were.’ William’s face was ashen. ‘Oh Lord, I am in such a muddle—’

  Grancourt frowned. ‘No, I—’

  ‘Mr. Richardson, you must excuse the confused state of us. William—the rooms need sorting for your revellers.’ The stern woman bobbed another curtsey as the man scuttled away, shaking his head confusedly. ‘One room is available—the one that you were to take tomorrow, all clean and ready. All of the others are soon to be taken.’ She looked at Poppy, her eyes flashing a little more warmth. ‘And the lady’s things will be taken up immediately, of course. I’ll call William down.’

  ‘Yes. We have come into some trouble with our carriage. It broke down a little way along the road.’ Grancourt held up a hand. ‘But more importantly, I—’

  ‘A little way along the road! Not a problem at all, sir.’ Yet another curtsey from the woman, her words drowning out Grancourt’s objections. ‘Everything will be right and proper in a moment. Do not worry yourself in the slightest.’

  Grancourt, at this point, was full of preoccupations—none of them at all to do with the state of the coach. He looked at Poppy, standing mutely in the hall with raindrops on her boots, wondering why she wasn’t at least attempting to address the misunderstanding.

  One last attempt had to be made. Drawing himself up to his full, considerable height, Grancourt turned to the stern woman with his most uncompromising air. ‘Madam, with the utmost respect, there has been a terrible—’

  ‘Please, sir. If you wish to have pity on a poor old woman, say no more. I’m sure your day is alread
y spoiled six ways to Sunday thanks to the infernal disorder here.’ To Grancourt’s astonishment, the woman’s eyes were growing rheumy with tears. ‘I promise, sir, by my mother’s hobnails, that everything will be to your satisfaction—or I will drown myself in the water barrel, and be no more trouble to you both!’

  Faced with such abject panic, Grancourt could no more assert himself than he could towards a rabbit with an injured paw. He kept silent, determinedly avoiding Poppy’s eyes as the woman smiled bravely.

  ‘Wonderful, sir.’ She bobbed another curtsey. ‘I’ll make everything right. You’ll see.’

  Grancourt was well aware that it was his job to make everything right. His crucial, necessary job. What confounded him, in the long, tense stretch of time in which luggage was retrieved and linens aired, was why exactly he remained silent.

  He was silent as the luggage was carried to the rooms. He was silent as Poppy made her way upstairs. He was silent was he made his way upstairs, leaving mud in his wake. He was even silent when the stern woman, now improbably wreathed in smiles, told them that she would be taking her leave… and, to his growing astonishment, Poppy remained silent as well.

  They were saving the poor woman’s feelings. They were being noble, standing in the small but perfectly clean bedroom. Why, they were practically saints.

  Weren’t they?

  ‘Well.’ Poppy took a deep breath; Grancourt watched her take off her gloves, the light from the window making her skin and hair gleam. ‘This is something of a pickle.’

  Typical Poppy. Typical understatement, typical gentleness; typical optimism making itself felt. Grancourt had never met a person so thoroughly capable of making everything, however terrible it all was, seem as if it were going to be alright.