The Slightest Provocation

Chapter Sixteen

She didn’t want to get out of bed. “Once I do,” she whispered, “I shall begin making troublesome inquiries about what you’ve been doing and whether it’s something I should approve of.”

“By what right,” he asked, “will you be inquiring?” He said it curiously, rather lazily, his arms still tight around her.

“None,” she said, “except I find I can’t separate out what you do in bed from what you do the rest of the time. Well, perhaps I can today. Make today a special, privileged day.”

“I’m glad,” he said.

“But next time…”

“Do you want there to be a next time?” he asked.

How odd, to be measuring time so stingily. In Curzon Street, they’d had nothing but time.

She kissed him.

“Yes, tomorrow afternoon. For in the morning Jessie and I will be writing out invitations to some local ladies, to discuss a cistern for the village.”

“Cistern?”

“There, you see, you’re curious about what I do as well. It’s natural for a couple…”

Except that they weren’t one anymore. They drew their clothes on silently.

“We dine at half past four today,” she said. “The young people will be returning from the ruins on Rook Hill. I must hurry.”

He tied her stays just a bit too tightly for perfect comfort. She found that she didn’t mind. The pressure would be rather like an extension of his touch.

She turned her neck to kiss him.

He helped her pull the dress down over her head and did up the buttons.

“Saturday, then. And we’ll tell each other a few things then. Unless I can contrive to make you forget what you want to know.”

She laughed. “By all means, contrive away. I shan’t forget. Do your contriving first, though, won’t you. If we argue later, we’ll still be ahead of the game.”

Stopping to dip her hands in clear rushing water, she drank deeply before hurrying away from the cottage. Climbing over the stile that pretended to be broken, hurrying down a footpath, leaving the outskirts of Rowen and entering the precincts of Beechwood Knolls, she felt her other selves joining with her.

Aunt Mary.

Provisional Treasurer of the newly organized Grefford Village Ladies’ Cistern Committee.

Matthew Bakewell’s mistress (however did you manage it, Mary, to be unfaithful to your lover, with your husband of all people? Too complicated. She wouldn’t think of that particular self right now).

The path had turned away from the river; the woods had thinned. The hill was a bit steep, but she managed it all right. Stepping over another stile, she made her way across the meadow to encounter a lonely Lord Ayres gazing poetically out toward the vista, his horse cropping the grass behind him.

“Ah, good afternoon, your lordship,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

And not even very annoyed, on this privileged day, by his callow, violet-eyed presence. It was time, after all, to be Aunt Mary again. Even with her hair in elf locks and sleeves sopping water from the brook. While he was-as she’d come to expect him-all foppish elegance.

“And the expedition? I trust you were properly moved by the spectacle of the Rook Hill ruins?”

He shrugged-trying not to show the boyish pouts and sulks beneath his carefully cultivated demeanor. “The young ladies made very accomplished sketches. When they weren’t surveying the horizon for chance intruders, Miss Elizabeth Grandin in particular.”

Too bad, she thought, that the girls were so pretty-it must make him feel awfully rejected. And she could guess whom Elizabeth had been scanning the horizon for-to show off to Fannie, as a marvel of the neighborhood, and a much better one than a stupid set of fake ruins.

Poor boy, she wanted to be generous to him. “It must have been a bore for you,” she said-adult to adult, which seemed to cheer him a bit.

“A walk in the forest like you’ve had,” he said now, “a simple, contemplative ramble, among the bluebells and butterflies, nightingales, dog roses, and wood anemones, would have suited me far better, and rested my unquiet spirit, don’t you know.”

She might not have been able to keep from laughing were it not for the double infelicity of his phrasing-his own peevishness elevated to unquiet spirit rather canceling out the absurdity of her afternoon recast as a simple, contemplative ramble.

The problem was what she might possibly offer in reply, if Unquiet spirit, my arse was forbidden to her. A simple nod was best, a wistful, respectful softening of her eyes, in deference to his unquiet spirit and the demands it made upon him.

Yes, he liked that. “My father has a similar set of ruins at home,” he told her, “not far from the Chinese bridge the landscape gardener erected when I was a boy.”

She laughed (for he really wasn’t so bad in his way), and he smiled his eagerness to share his contempt for his father’s boorishness. For it seemed he’d decided she was a kindred spirit, or at least a sympathetic one-especially after a wearing day of being ignored by two pretty girls.

“But there’s nothing in our homely British Isles like the Colosseum at twilight. In Rome, you know.”

“Yes, I imagined you must mean the Colosseum in Rome.”

“When I was there,” he told her, “I caught a glimpse of Lord Byron, silhouetted against the pillars. I recognized him immediately, even from a distance, and hurried to pay him my regards and to invite him to dine with me. Very decent he was too, very apologetic that he’d be leaving in just two hours.”

As Byron often did when confronted with eager young devotees. Unless, of course, he was particularly strapped for pocket cash, and in need of a good dinner.

“A pity he couldn’t stay,” she murmured.

“I’d wanted his opinion on some little scribbles of my own.”

Even if penniless and ravenous, Byron would be off when the devotee was a would-be poet.

“Still, he thought we might well bump into one another again. And more than once-after that… do you know, Lady Christopher, that we almost did bump into each other again? Several times, at some particularly poetical venue, I’d arrive to find that he’d just departed-well, the demands upon his time, you know, the exacting standards that genius must answer to…”

The important thing at this moment was how to turn the conversation, or she’d be in for a look at those scribbles herself. Luckily, her bootlace had come loose. She bent, with a tiny sigh, to tie it.

“But you’re tired from your ramble. Would you like to ride up to the house? I could lead you back.”

Which was generous and even rather charming of him, if a bit excessively picturesque. And if Elizabeth’s antiquated relative were to show a bit too much ankle, perched up on his saddle, she couldn’t imagine any harm in it.

“Yes, thank you,” she told him. And he led her back to what turned out to be an excellent dinner-a fine sensible English version, in fact, of the marinated capon dish.

After which she was happy to retire early.

To hum carelessly, as Peggy wrestled unhappily with her stays-for the knot Kit had tied could evidently have held down the rigging of a warship.

And, “No, nothing tonight. I think I’ll sleep quite well without it.”

He’d stayed behind to watch her walk down the footpath. And then to fiddle with his neckcloth, straining to catch his reflection in a windowpane.

She was right. Delicious as the day had been, they wouldn’t be able to continue in this way. Yes, they still enjoyed pretend fancies-and he’d already had some thoughts about the “contrivance” he’d be working up for their next time together.

But he also very much wanted to tell and ask her things. Real things. Trivial things. Cisterns. In the army, he’d known a chap who was an engineer. Interesting to try to explain it to her, though; all quite new.

Was that what happened when you grew up, made a place in the world for yourself?

Years ago when there’d been no other place for them, they’d found each other here in the cottage, away from the world’s gossip, petty rivalries, minor and not so minor injustices. Curious and alert, ignorant and volatile, they’d made a place for themselves where no one knew where to find them. Running, rambling, wrestling-touching, kissing, making love-fleet and changeable as the woodland creatures in the myths.

What, who, were they now?

He shrugged. Time to be getting back; he patted at his waistcoat pockets to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind.

His watch. No longer on the table where he’d left it. Must have gotten knocked off, rolled behind the book that had been peeking out from under the bed. He retrieved the watch and the book too. All the creatures of myth and legend, bound up in a witty, powerful, and thoughtful volume.

Mildewed almost to a brick. But when he did get it open, it opened to the very page.

They’d gotten quite proficient at kissing by that time. Kissing, and in truth, some other things as well. They weren’t children anymore.

Weren’t adults yet either. He needed to make something happen, and so he’d come here early, set the book out on the table.

“Hullo,” she’d said. “Been busy?”

He’d shrugged. “Rather. Bit of a problem with my Latin.”

“Let me see.”

The Tiresius story begins, as Ovid begins so many of his stories, with the gods at celebration. Jupiter is rather in his cups, jesting with his wife, Juno, as to whether…

“But you can construe this perfectly well, Kit. You know that what he’s asking is whether a man or woman gets more pleasure…” Her voice had trailed off.

“You were saying?”

“Voluptus… from making love.”

He’d tricked her into saying it.

“We shouldn’t be talking of such things,” she’d said, even while she’d allowed her wrist to be caught and immobilized.

They’d shared a level, if frightened, stare.

“Yes,” he’d said. “We should. We need to. And to do more than talk. About such things.”

And now, today, it seemed they’d come full circle. Now it was time to talk of everything else.