by Jane Ashford
“I don’t quite understand,” she said.
Arthur nodded. He wasn’t certain he did either. “I’ve worked out that help isn’t forcing your ideas or plans onto people. That’s a kind of oppression. Yet simply asking those you’d like to aid what they want may not be enough. Often they don’t really know. Or aren’t able to choose between alternatives.”
“Goodness, how philosophical you’ve become.”
He laughed. “And a dead bore. I beg your pardon.”
“Not at all. I’m quite interested. I can’t even count all the times I’ve been asked to help with some scheme or other that’s meant to ‘better the lot’ of those involved. But I’ve noticed that charitable projects are often just what you said—forcing a plan on people who resent the interference. Even when they appreciate the material assistance. How do you help?”
“By not rushing in with my own notions,” Arthur replied. “By observing and listening. By applying a longer experience of life than…some others.” His efforts had gone well so far, he thought, despite some mistakes.
“I like that.” Her lips curved in a small smile. “I believe I shall adopt your approach.”
“That’s too grand a word for it.”
“And you’re too modest.”
They strolled for a while in silence. Helena pointed out a special rose for him to admire. Then she said, “You didn’t come here to see me, did you?”
For once, Arthur was speechless. He’d been aware of her assumption and sidestepped the issue with considerable finesse until now.
“I thought when you arrived that you were looking for me. But you weren’t.”
She’d tipped her parasol so he couldn’t see her expression. “I was delighted to see you again after so many years,” he said.
“But not expecting to.”
“I had forgotten you married Chatton,” he admitted. They moved on a few steps before the parasol shifted, and he could see that she looked ruefully regretful. “I’m past the age for flirtation,” he added.
“Oh, Arthur.” She gazed at him like a woman amused by the boy he’d been when they first met. “Why are you here? And don’t try to fob me off with some story about fishing in Scotland.”
He wasn’t sure what to say. The confidences shared at that London dinner were sacrosanct, and it was difficult to explain without revealing them.
“One of your missions to help?”
Helena Ravelstoke hadn’t been this sharp, Arthur thought. Or he hadn’t noticed if she was, his attention being on other elements of her person.
“Never mind. I’ll figure it out. You aren’t the only one who can observe.” She sighed. “I did like the idea that you’d been languishing for me all these years.”
Arthur caught the twinkle in her blue eyes. Relief preceded amusement. “Perhaps we can be friends?” He hadn’t had any female friends when he first knew Helena. At that age, women had seemed too alien, and enflaming, for friendship. But over the years since he’d made a few.
She smiled. “Yes. Let’s do that.”
They walked on, talking of gardens and what had become of people they both remembered. Helena pointed out her beehives at the far end of the space. As they turned onto a new path, Arthur said, “Who was that young lady at church? The one who offered to kick your son in the face.”
“Ah. Fenella Fairclough.” She sighed.
“You don’t like her?” Arthur had been intrigued by the exchange he’d witnessed. There’d been a palpable spark between the two young people.
“Oh, I’m very fond of her. I’ve often wished she was my daughter-in-law. But it wouldn’t have worked. Though it couldn’t have been worse than—” She bit off the sentence and fell silent.
Arthur’s interest increased. “Shall we sit for a while?” He led her to a shaded bench set on a rise of ground, offering a panoramic view of the sea. “In answer to your earlier question, I recently noted a group of young men who had suffered unfortunate losses in their lives. I set myself the task of helping them, if I can. I have some experience of grief.”
“Grief.” She seemed to examine the word, and then his face. Whatever she found there appeared to satisfy her. “My husband was ten years older than I, you know.”
Arthur didn’t see what this had to do with the case. But he’d learned that it was best to let people tell stories in their own way.
“He thought he knew best,” she went on. “About everything, really, and particularly when my opinion was involved.” She gave Arthur a sharp glance. “He was not unkind. And I loved him. But he always saw me as a girl, even when I wasn’t one any longer.”
Arthur nodded to show that he’d heard and understood.
“He hatched this scheme to marry Roger to Fenella. He and her father did, I should say.” She shook her head. “They’d been rather enjoying themselves arguing over the boundary between their properties. Firing off copies of old deeds and writing scathing letters. Then they came up with the idea of a marital alliance, as if they were kings of rival countries or some such nonsense. I told my husband that Roger wouldn’t stand for it. But he didn’t listen. He decreed that Roger was to go and offer for Fenella. Wouldn’t hear a word Roger said. And I expect Fenella’s father was even worse. Well, I know he was.” She fell silent again.
“So they disobeyed,” Arthur said after a while.
His hostess laughed. “Fenella sneaked off in the middle of the night and ran to her grandmother in Scotland. She knew her father wouldn’t dare hunt her there! My husband gave Roger a thundering scold. There was bad feeling on all sides. Raymond wanted to cut off Roger’s allowance, but I managed to persuade him that would make things worse.”
“A belligerent young sprig with no money is liable to fall into bad hands,” said Arthur.
“Exactly. And so, after a time, the tempest in a teapot subsided. I think all would have been well, perhaps even better than well, if it hadn’t been for Arabella’s mother.”
“Arabella?”
“She was Roger’s wife.”
The one who had died of a lung complaint after an ill-advised ride in the rain, Arthur remembered.
“Arabella was beautiful,” Helena said in an oddly flat voice. “Truly a ravishing creature. And her mother was, is, a very determined woman.” She glanced at Arthur. “I’m speaking as if you are a friend indeed.”
“Shall I give my word not to repeat anything you tell me?”
She waved this aside. “It’s nothing so dreadful. Roger was dazzled by the exquisite daughter. No one could blame him. And through the efforts of her mother, he was brought up to scratch, as they say. As a canny mother is meant to do. I don’t know the details, but I’m fairly certain he didn’t intend to marry right then. But he offered, and Arabella accepted.” She sighed again. “I was delighted actually. She had birth and breeding and wealth enough to satisfy my husband. I wanted Roger to be happy. We went down to London for the wedding. And as soon as I met her, I knew. Have you ever felt your spirits sink to the depths all in an instant?”
Arthur nodded encouragement. He sensed that she had needed to say this for a long time.
“It was too late of course. And I don’t know what I could have done. Well, I do know. Nothing. Raymond’s health was failing, and he was beyond pleased to see his son safely married. He thought Arabella a paragon.” She made a wry face. “Most men did.”
“Beauty can be compelling.”
“Oh yes. And so my son contracted an unhappy marriage. I could see that he knew it when they returned here from their wedding journey. But those were Raymond’s last days, you know, and I was distracted.”
“Of course you were.”
She met his eyes. “You know what it’s like to lose the person you’ve lived with, cared for, over many years.”
“I do.”
They shared a moment of silent commu
nion.
“The first time Fenella and Roger met after she came home from Scotland, I saw what a mistake had been made.” She looked distressed.
Arthur waited. When she didn’t go on, he said, “Yes?” It seemed they had reached the crux of the matter.
“Never mind.” She stood up, tilting her parasol to hide her face again. “It’s very warm, isn’t it? We should go inside.”
Arthur had to be satisfied with this, and he rather thought he was.
* * *
“You have no family at all?” John asked Tom. He’d inquired before, but he never tired of hearing about Tom’s fortunate situation. It seemed to John that there could be nothing more liberating than being an orphan with no connections at all.
“Shh,” murmured Tom. The boys lay on a stream bank in the cool shadows of a willow. Tom’s bared right arm hung down into the water, very still. “Here comes a trout. Now watch.”
John leaned very carefully, so as not to alert the fish edging up the shallows, sheltering under the bank and beside rocks. He saw it slide out of sight near Tom’s hand, just the moving tail still visible. Tom’s hand, with fingers turned up, moved by imperceptible inches to that tail. Then it disappeared as he began tickling with his forefinger, gradually running his hand up the fish’s belly. John was nearly lulled himself when Tom suddenly tensed, twisted, and pulled the trout out of the water and onto the grass beside them.
John flinched. He couldn’t help it. “How did you do that?”
“Learnt it from a poacher,” Tom said. “The fish go into a trance, like, when you tickle them.” He threw the flapping, gasping trout back into the stream. “It ain’t legal to take fish though, unless it’s your own stream. You shouldn’t be trying it.” He dried his arm on the grass and rolled down his shirtsleeve.
“I could never.” John’s admiration of his new acquaintance, already vast, swelled further. “Where did you meet a poacher?”
“Just rambling, on the way south from Bristol. Fella nearly took my head off with his club before he saw I weren’t the gamekeeper.”
John was fascinated by Tom’s life history. “That was before you met Lord Macklin.”
“Yep.” Tom turned onto his back and gazed up at the sky through the willow branches. “’Twas the very next day I came across young Geoffrey thinking he was hid in a hollow log and took him back home.”
“To Lord Macklin’s son’s house.”
“His nephew.”
“Right.” John was consumed with envy for Tom’s rootless life. It seemed to him an ideal existence, to have no last name with its weight of expectations, to wander wherever you liked. “Are you still thinking of moving on?” he asked. “Just walking off one day in whatever direction feels interesting?” He’d been transfixed by this idea ever since Tom had mentioned it.
“I expect I will,” replied Tom idly. His attention had been caught by a pair of dragonflies darting over the surface of the water. “Look at the way their wings go,” he said.
John gathered all his hope and courage. “Will you let me come with you?”
“Eh?” Tom turned his head to look at him.
“When you go. Run away. Or, it isn’t really. Running. When you walk off to see the world.” He clasped his hands, then quickly unclasped them. “I want to see all the snakes in the world. Particularly the spitting cobras!”
Tom sat up slowly, moving rather as he had when he captured the trout. He crossed his legs in the grass. “I’d just be rambling about in England,” he answered. “Mebbe Scotland. That’s right close, ain’t it? No cobras, though.”
“But you can go wherever you want!”
Tom shook his head. “I can go where my feet will take me. And where I’m allowed in. That ain’t everywhere, by any means.”
“No one can stop you though.”
“Sure they can. I’ve been chased off and barely missed beatings. I was nearly taken up and put in the workhouse once.” Tom held up a hand before John could protest again. “Also. Seems to me it must cost a deal of money to get over to where these cobras live.”
John slumped, his dreams of unfettered freedom dissolving.
“You’d need one of them scientific expeditions,” Tom continued. “I heard Lord Macklin talking about one of them.”
“You mean like James Cook? I’ve read the chronicles of his voyages. And there’s James Strange and the other fellows in the East India Company.”
“Yeah. Them.”
“I’d love to organize a scientific expedition to catalog snakes in India.”
“Well there’s people that do that, eh?”
“Like the Royal Society, you mean?”
“Sure.” Tom nodded wisely. “You could ask them.”
“They want men with university degrees and fellowships and such.”
“Huh. Are there fellows studying snakes in them universities?”
John sat very still. With a smile, Tom let him be.
Four
Macklin’s company was soothing, Roger thought as they returned from a morning ride the following day. He seemed to sense when one wished to talk and when not. And his conversation was always sensible. Should he ever need advice, Macklin was the man, Roger concluded. Not that he did. He had no pressing problems.
“Isn’t that Miss Fairclough?” his guest said, almost as if disputing Roger’s thought.
Roger looked. Fenella rode ahead of them toward the castle gate, alone, as was her habit. He was surprised. She hadn’t visited Chatton since their falling out. His fault, he acknowledged for the first time.
Her skirts billowed in the wind off the sea, and her horse took offense, sidling and dancing. Roger worried momentarily, but she controlled her mount with casual ease, caught the cloth, and held it down.
“She’s the careless young lady you spoke of at the London dinner?” Macklin asked.
“Careless?”
“The one who urged your wife to venture out in bad weather.”
“Ah.” He’d spoken with extra rancor that night, Roger thought. His feelings had been rubbed raw by his encounter with his in-laws, and he’d been itching for a target. “I don’t think she did, really.”
“Indeed?” Macklin looked interested.
“Arabella had…strong opinions. I expect she did insist on going, as Fen…Miss Fairclough says.”
“I suppose Miss Fairclough might have refused to accompany her, to discourage her from going.”
“Wouldn’t have done any good,” said Roger. Opposing Arabella’s wishes was tantamount to a declaration of war, in her mind, and she fought the ensuing campaign without mercy. He’d learned that the day after his wedding.
“You think not?”
Roger pulled his thoughts back to the present. It didn’t do to remember those battles. If he thought of them, he might feel that brush of gratitude, that absolutely unacceptable tinge of relief at the fact of Arabella’s death. Suppressing all such inclinations, he spurred his horse to catch up with Fenella.
But she’d already gone in when they reached the castle. Her horse was being tended in the stables. Roger found himself hurrying. He discovered Fenella sitting with his mother in her parlor, laughing with her over some shared jest. The sight of them, leaning together in a shaft of sunlight, stopped him on the threshold.
They didn’t look alike. His mother’s willowy frame contrasted with Fenella’s compact curves. Her hair was silvered gold to the younger woman’s reddish tones. Their faces had different lines. And yet they exuded a kinship. The word delightful floated through Roger’s consciousness. Arabella had never sat with his mother, he remembered. She’d made certain that the dowager marchioness moved to the dower house, and their visits had been limited to formal occasions. An unpalatable mixture of emotion washed over him, along with a stab of pain in his midsection.
Macklin came in behind h
im, and Roger moved forward.
“There you are,” said his mother, rising. “How lovely. Come and sit.”
She proceeded to execute a maneuver rather like a dance, and before Roger finished wondering why she’d stood up at all, he found himself seated next to Fenella, while the two older members of the party were settled a little distance away. Perhaps his mother was taking advantage of the opportunity to flirt with Macklin, he thought. He was still a bit worried about her views on the earl’s visit. But when he looked, he found both of them gazing in his direction in an oddly unsettling way. Come to think of it, they didn’t flirt. They talked like old friends, and they were watching him now like kennel masters evaluating a promising puppy. Roger blinked. Where had that ridiculous idea come from?
Fenella held out a small packet wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “I brought you this,” she said.
Roger stared at the gift. He had a sudden sense of the world gone topsy turvey.
“It’s a tonic for dyspepsia,” she continued. “You put a few drops in a glass of water and drink it if you’re feeling ill.”
Under her clear blue gaze, he felt uncomfortably exposed. “Why would you give it to me?”
“You kept clutching your midsection at the rehearsal. And looking pained.”
“It could have been a distaste for the antics they were putting us through.”
She smiled a little. “You’ve done it at church as well.”
Roger was embarrassed. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know of his weakness. It was then that he noticed she was holding the packet so that it was shielded from the others. “Where did you get this?”
“My grandmother is renowned for her skill in the stillroom. People come from all around for her remedies.”
“You sent to Scotland?”
“No, I made it.”
“Yourself?”
“Grandmother taught me.”