by Jane Ashford
“Garn!”
“I never meant it to get near the kitten! Indeed, I don’t know how it escaped my cage. I promise you the wire mesh was quite sturdy.”
Tom nodded. “What happened to him?”
“Who?”
“The snake.”
“Oh. One of the gardeners killed it. With a hoe. Chopped it into four pieces.” John felt a lingering sadness at this summary execution.
“Huh.”
There was no sign of withdrawal on Tom’s homely face. John’s relief made him brave. He drew in a breath and took the risk. “What’s Lord Macklin?” he asked.
“What d’you mean?”
“What’s his rank?”
“Ah. He’s an earl.”
John’s mind worked. “If I told Wrayle that you’re here with an earl, perhaps his ward, he’d likely give me permission to go for a walk. Wrayle’s a dreadful snob.”
“I ain’t his ward,” replied Tom. He seemed to dislike the idea.
“No.” Disappointment threatened to engulf John. “But Lord Macklin is feeding and housing you, isn’t he?”
“For the present.”
“And you’re not a servant. He doesn’t pay you wages?”
“No. Didn’t want ’em.”
“So you’re practically his ward. Let me tell Wrayle.” John didn’t wish to beg, but he found this was terribly important.
“Well.” Tom pursed his lips. “I suppose it’s all right.”
“I’ll speak to him when we get back.” John’s spirits soared. “Perhaps we could go walking tomorrow?”
Tom nodded. “I’ll come ’round and fetch you.”
Three
Fenella hadn’t meant to attend the rehearsal for the Lindisfarne pageant. She’d determined to send her regrets to Harold Benson, pleading a press of duties and the exigencies of her father’s illness. However, a note from the man in charge of the performance had put paid to that idea. If she’d known Colonel Patterson was supervising, she would have made her refusal clear to Mr. Benson at the first mention, Fenella thought. Now it was too late. The colonel, a hero of Waterloo and scion of an ancient noble family, was expecting her, and one did not go back on a promise to him. The idea of seeing disappointment in the upright old man’s eyes when they next met made Fenella shudder.
She’d told herself that Chatton wouldn’t appear, and so this whole scheme would come to nothing. But there he was, walking toward her across the wooden floor of the village hall—rangy, frowning, with his red hair agleam in a ray of sunshine, automatically the center of attention even in this crowded room. She’d seen him more often in the last week than in months before that, and his renewed presence was reviving memories at an increasing pace.
The heir to Chatton Castle had been a wild boy, careening over the countryside with his cronies, brandishing wooden swords and makeshift shields, racing their ponies along the beach. Fenella, burdened by her father’s criticisms and hemmed in by her mother’s rules, had envied them their loud heedless freedom. She’d watched them from out-of-the-way corners at children’s parties, not knowing what to say. She’d fumbled for conversation when they were older and thrown together at neighborhood assemblies. Not that she’d often been asked to dance. And then came their fathers’ disastrous attempt to marry them off, which broke her life in two. Fortunately, Fenella thought. She was grateful for her time in Scotland and her grandmother’s insistence that she “grow a spine,” as the old lady had put it. She was glad she’d risen to that challenge, happy with the woman she’d become.
“I wasn’t going to do this,” Chatton said when he reached her, echoing her thoughts. “But then I heard from Patterson.”
Fenella nodded.
“And as my mother immediately pointed out, one does not say no to the colonel.”
“I feel as if I’ve enlisted.”
Chatton laughed. “Or been taken up by Harold Benson’s one-man press gang.”
“If he’d said it was Colonel Patterson.”
“I imagine he’s careful not to.” He smiled at Fenella, as he hadn’t in a long time. “I was surprised Patterson took on this job. At least we know the thing will run efficiently.”
This statement was amply confirmed as they watched a bit of rehearsal. The colonel had lined up a group of local men and informed them that they were a procession of monks moving to the sound of a harp and chanting. They were to walk meditatively, with their hands in the sleeves of their monks’ robes and their heads bent in the hoods. Since there were as yet no robes, and no harp or chanting, this proved problematic. Also, the colonel once or twice strayed into a parade ground roar that caused two of the men to snap to attention and salute.
“I always think of Colonel Patterson as a large man,” Fenella murmured. “But he isn’t.” Indeed, he was shorter than most of his amateur actors, but so upright and energetic that he seemed bigger. A lined face and white hair didn’t matter in such a dominating personality, she thought. His plain blue coat, riding breeches, and boots gave the impression of a uniform.
“You feel as if he’s carrying a swagger stick,” said Chatton. “Even though he isn’t.”
“I wonder what happens if someone doesn’t follow his orders?” Fenella replied.
“I don’t think we want to find out.”
They exchanged a look that held more sympathy than they’d shared before. She was surprised at how gratifying this felt.
The time came for their scene. The colonel allowed a moment for greetings, shaking Chatton’s hand and offering Fenella a nod and a glance from twinkling gray eyes. Then Fenella was given a much-used broom from the back of the hall and told to imagine that she was standing under a stone archway in the ruins of the old abbey on Lindisfarne. “Rush up to her like a marauding Viking,” the colonel said to Chatton.
He trotted over.
“A Viking,” repeated the colonel. “Bent on looting. Bristling with weapons. More than likely spattered with the blood of murdered monks.”
Chatton blinked. He tried it again.
“You aren’t at a tea party!” growled Colonel Patterson. “Have you heard the phrase ravening horde? You’re part of one.”
The marquess bit his lower lip, whether in chagrin or to keep from laughing Fenella couldn’t tell. He backed up, gathered himself, and essayed another rush, baring his teeth and shouting, “Charge!”
“Charge?” echoed the colonel.
“Slipped out.” Chatton looked sheepish.
“Well, see that it doesn’t do so again. But that was good enough for now. Rather effective snarl. See that you practice.” Colonel Patterson turned to Fenella, who had very nearly laughed. “Miss Fairclough, you are furious and determined to defend your home.”
Fenella swung the broom and caught Chatton on the shoulder, rocking him back a step.
“Hold on!” cried the colonel. “You mustn’t actually hit him.”
And then they spent a good deal of time working out how she was to repel the supposed invader with a swipe that looked like a leveler but stopped short of striking him. Chatton had to flinch and fall at just the right moment, so that it appeared he’d been felled by her stroke, when it hadn’t actually touched him.
It was quite difficult, Fenella found. To make a wide swing with the broom and stop short was more tiring than simply flailing about. She was relieved when Colonel Patterson finally said, “Yes, all right. That will do for now.” She started to lower the broom, thinking they were finished, but he continued. “Now Chatton, you leap up and return to the fray. Miss Fairclough, you try the same trick. But Chatton, you knock the broom from her hands this time. Thus and thus.” He guided them through the movements. “And then you grasp her arms to keep her from hitting you.”
Roger did as he was told. Fenella’s arms felt slender and supple under the cloth of her gown. Her face was inches away. He
hadn’t been so close to her in… Had he ever been so close? She wore a heady flowery scent.
“And now Miss Fairclough, you spit at him,” said Colonel Patterson.
“Spit?” She looked startled.
“This is a barbarian invader, come to steal everything you have. He’s killed your defenders. Set your church on fire. Now he’s dared to enter your house and laid hands on you.”
Fenella’s blue eyes flamed. She bared her teeth and spit, though to the side rather than in his face.
It might have been funny, but it wasn’t, Roger thought. Had he been an invader, he’d have been taken aback by the fiery spirit she’d revealed. A man might be proud to have such a woman defending his native land. Surprised by an impulse to pull her closer, he went still.
“Good.” Patterson nodded. “Now, this next part is a bit tricky.”
A boy ran into the room. “The monks is calling for ale, colonel, sir. Saying they was promised a drink for their trouble.”
Patterson scowled. “Stay where you are,” he commanded. “I’ll be back in a moment.” And he followed the boy out the door.
Did Patterson mean he was to keep hold, Roger wondered? Such was the colonel’s influence that he hesitated to let go. But she was so near. The slightest move and her breasts would brush his chest.
Once he’d noted this Roger could think of nothing else. Except the feel of her under his hands and the brilliance of her gaze. How long had the colonel been gone? It seemed like forever, and yet not long enough. He should say something. The silence was becoming awkward.
“It’s rather like that time you were forced to dance with me,” Fenella said.
“Eh?”
“I’ve been remembering our neighborhood dances for some reason. This was at the Haskins’ ball. Mrs. Haskins pulled you over and made you ask me. You were so angry. You’d wanted to dance with her daughter.”
Roger didn’t remember the incident, though he did recall Sara Haskins. She’d been a lovely girl, the belle of the neighborhood when he was younger. Fenella, on the other hand, was only a vague presence in his youthful memory. A shadowy figure, slipping into view at the edge of a gathering and then forgotten again, utterly different from the way she was now. Had her lips been so full back then? So enticing? Surely he would have noticed if they had been. And yet a woman’s lips didn’t change after she was grown. Did they?
“That was right before our fathers hatched their stupid scheme.”
A tremor went through him at this forthright remark. They’d never discussed the past. When Arabella was alive the topic was obviously out of bounds. And after her death they hadn’t talked at all.
“And I ran for my life,” she added.
“I admired that,” Roger said, words slipping out as they sometimes did, without any advance notice to his brain.
Fenella looked surprised. “My craven flight?”
“More like rebellion.” He’d thought of her more after that dramatic departure than he ever had before. Once she’d shown some defiance, a flare of spirit, he’d even wondered what it would have been like to marry her. Not seriously, of course. He wouldn’t be ordered about like a vassal.
Roger experienced an odd dislocation. In this moment, he resented her long ago rejection of his charms. Even though he’d done the same, more emphatically. It was confusing. He had to let her go. He did so, and stepped back. Fenella gazed up at him as if he’d done something strange.
Fortunately, Colonel Patterson strode back in. He looked irritated. “All right, Chatton,” he said. “Now you throw Miss Fairclough over your shoulder and carry her through the archway.” He indicated the supposed span of stone with a wide gesture.
“Pick her up?” said Roger. He didn’t want to touch Fenella again, mainly because he very much wanted to do so. “That isn’t proper.”
“You’re a Viking,” replied the colonel dryly. “I don’t think propriety is a consideration.” He turned to Fenella. “You have no objection? I assumed Benson explained the whole to you.”
She shook her head.
“We must leave that bit out,” said Roger.
Patterson looked concerned. “I’ve given my word that the scenarios will be performed exactly as written. They were put together by a pack of historians, you know. Very stern on the subject of accuracy. As bad as headquarters regulations.”
Everyone knew that the colonel’s word was inviolate. Roger looked at Fenella. “Let’s just do it,” she said.
“You don’t mind?” asked Patterson. “It’s only a moment. Through the archway and finished.”
She nodded.
“Good girl.” Patterson gestured like a commander ordering his troops forward.
Roger bent, set his shoulder in Fenella’s midsection, and lifted. His arm went around her knees for balance. Her hip rested against his cheek.
“You’ll have to move faster than that,” said the colonel. “You’re not lifting a fragile piece of porcelain, Chatton. You keep forgetting you’re a ferocious raider. And Miss Fairclough, you should kick and beat your fists. Not too hard, of course. Give the effect, as with the broom.”
Light blows fell on Roger’s back. Feet pumped. Fenella’s frame shook against his shoulder. Was she afraid? No, she was laughing.
The boy ran in again. “The monks found the ale barrel! They’re bunging it open.” He beckoned urgently. With a muttered curse, Patterson hurried out after him.
Roger was left with a lithe, sweet-smelling young lady over his shoulder.
“I must be heavy,” she said. “You can put me down.”
She wasn’t. Roger felt as if he could hold her forever, even though the feel of her body was making his head spin. He set her down. She took a step and stumbled. He steadied her.
“Hanging head down makes one dizzy,” she observed.
“I know.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He’d felt this strong pull of attraction before, Roger recalled. When she first returned from Scotland to care for her father, there’d been an evening at Chatton. He’d laughed with Fenella over some jest, and the heat had risen between them, intense, surprising. And then he’d glimpsed the avid speculation in his father’s eyes, which made him angry, and he’d gone haring off to London the next day to avoid any revival of the old matchmaking scheme. Yes, and he’d fallen into Mrs. Crenshaw’s toils almost at once. So his disastrous marriage had been Fenella’s fault. Everything was Fenella’s fault from the very inception to Arabella’s last ill-advised ride.
Except. With her standing before him, pleasant and assured, he had to acknowledge that this was a load of pure rubbish.
Fenella hadn’t sent him to town. And of course she hadn’t been able to keep Arabella from doing whatever she wished. Arabella had been one of the stubbornest people he’d ever encountered. She’d never listened once she made up her mind. He remembered an evening when his wife had stalked out of a dinner party, declaring that she couldn’t bear it a moment longer. In the silence that followed, he’d suspected his neighbors pitied him, which had been humiliating. Roger had told everyone that Arabella was referring to a terrible headache, but he was fairly certain they’d known she meant the dullness of the company. In her opinion. The incident had occurred just a few weeks before her fateful ride in the rain. But it was best not to think of that.
Roger felt the mixture of anger and guilt that had been with him since his wife died. Pain lanced through his stomach. He pressed a hand against it.
“Are you all right?” asked Fenella.
He gave her a curt nod. “We’ll have to come back to this later,” he said. “I have an appointment.” He walked away before anyone could question this lie.
* * *
“Those two have hit it off,” said Arthur as he and his hostess watched Tom and young John Symmes trot through the stone arch that led from Chatton
Castle’s courtyard into the countryside. The boys disappeared into the tunnel under the wide wall. Arthur offered his arm, and the two of them moved in the opposite direction, into the walled garden at the back of the castle. A riot of flowers filled this sizable space. The walls met sheer cliffs that fell to the sea.
“I like Tom,” said the earl’s companion, the former Miss Helena Ravelstoke, dowager Marchioness of Chatton, and an unexpected element of his northern visit.
“Nearly everyone does,” said Arthur.
“Is he an eccentricity?”
“What?”
“I’ve heard that it’s fashionable to have one,” she added. “A quirk. To make one stand out in society.”
“Tom is not that,” replied Arthur. “He is, oddly enough, a friend.”
“That is rather odd for the distinguished Lord Macklin.”
She smiled up at him, and Arthur was once again reminded of a London season more than thirty years ago, when they’d both been young and she’d been dazzling. Helena, as she’d insisted he call her now, had cocked her head in just that way back then. Arthur and his friends had vied with each other to evoke her silvery laugh. He was happy to see that she’d kept her blithe spirit through three decades. “Tom is a miraculous triumph over his background,” he answered. “Circumstances that might have, should have, ground him down or embittered him, didn’t. I was struck by his intelligence and good humor when I met him. I found him good company. And I would like to give him the chance he deserves.”
“Chance to do what?”
“That is the question.”
His hostess looked inquiring. She’d raised a rose-colored parasol against the sun, and the tinted shade was kind to her face. Not that it needed a great deal of help, even now. “Send him to school?” she suggested. “Set him to a trade?”
“He would hate those things. He’d be off wandering in a day.” Arthur admired a swath of scarlet poppies as they walked past. “I’ve learned recently that helping is not a simple matter. The impulse is easy. Discovering how to go about it is not.” As he’d found with the young men he’d gathered for dinner in town last spring, Arthur thought. How long ago that seemed, though it was just a few months.