The Slightest Provocation

Chapter Nineteen

“We should have done the reading first.” Mary adjusted the gold wire of her spectacles down over the bridge of her nose.

“Indeed we should’ve,” Kit agreed. “I’ve never made love to a lady in spectacles, and I’m findin’ it deuced difficult, Lady Christopher, to restrain myself…”

Allowing herself a final giggle or two, she picked up the portfolio of spy correspondence from the bedside table.

“… from grabbing the papers out of your hand and ravishing you in your current fetching state.

“Ravishing you once again,” he added.

“I need to concentrate,” she told him. “Go stir the fire. Oh, and after we finish, I’ve a document to show you as well.”

She drew the quilt up over her naked breasts. He watched until they were quite hidden, then shrugged his shoulders and slid out of bed. Just as well to turn his thoughts away from her and whatever she’d make of the papers she was reading-not to speak of whatever document she’d mentioned. Anyway, the room could do with a bit more heat. For even on a warm day like this one, the cottage tended toward dankness, situated as it was in so overgrown a part of the forest.

But the fire could wait until he dealt with the room’s rather distressing state of disarray. Though he couldn’t suppress a small, rueful smile at the mess they’d made, hurling themselves at one another, tugging and peeling at their clothing in a frenzy not to waste precious time.

He’d learned to tidy up after himself a bit while living in primitive conditions in Spain. Not that he liked doing it; he doubted that anybody liked doing it. And Mary, it was clear, had never for a moment considered applying herself to the matter of physical order. But now that he’d managed to assemble the rest of what he’d been wearing, where the bloody hell was his other stocking?

Of course, where else should it be? Strewn over the book on the table, as though marking some phantom reader’s place, the book still open to the eternal question of whether a man or a woman got more pleasure from lovemaking. Damned if he knew the answer: probably it came out about equal if you played fair. At least he hoped so (not that he was complaining), though Ovid had it that the female sex was privileged in this area. But a poet wouldn’t know more than the next man. Idly, Kit wondered whether every man cherished a secret unspoken fear that his lady was getting the better end of the bargain.

The floorboards nearest the cottage door were caked with mud they’d tracked in. He or she might try sweeping it, he supposed. With a broom-the slightly decayed specimen standing in the corner would answer for it. And damn, his stocking was stained with mildew from the old book he couldn’t bear to throw away.

For though it might seem a romantic idyll, their meeting secretly in such a picturesque setting (gurgle of swift rushing water, doves cooing against the rustle of wind in the trees), and though at one time this cottage had actually been a sort of paradise for them (being the first bed and the first roof they’d shared), the truth was that these days (well, at his advanced age, at any rate) the arrangement left something to be desired.

Come live with me and be my love-an old lyric she’d liked to sing, words and cadence coming echoing back now from behind his thoughts. Pastoral, a shepherd’s love song: giddy swain wooing his lady with promises of beds of roses, food served al fresco on silver plates, and absolutely no messes to worry about. Poetry, in a word.

While reality was quite a different matter, especially if you were accustomed to having servants clean up after you. Astonishing, Kit thought, how smelly a linen sheet could become and in how short a time, at least when subjected to such excellent usage as this one had been getting. The odor had been piquant at first; at this moment one might call it earthy. Give him and Mary an additional sweaty day or so of pounding each other so delightfully, and the only thing one could honestly call it would be stinking.

It scanned well enough, warbled softly (so as not to disturb her) in his middling tenor while he sprinkled wood shavings around the boards he’d placed in the fireplace. Perhaps she’d be able to think of a clever last line. Later, after they’d settled the affairs of the nation.

Squatting naked at the hearthside, he fanned the low flames up toward the kindling. Too bad he hadn’t brought that second quilt with him today, not to speak of the sheet he’d cadged, just before the girls from Beechwood Knolls had come calling. Very kind of them, he thought, to show such solicitude for Wat and Susanna. But they were young and inquisitive and would naturally have wondered at his carrying a bulky package of linen under his arm; as things stood, he’d had to chart a complicated journey for himself among connecting footpaths to give the impression of heading in the direction of farm rather than forest.

He shivered, blowing on the fire and on his hands too. Sneaking a look at her over his shoulder-why was she rearranging his neatly sorted papers? She looked thoughtful: picking up various of them, spreading them out in her lap and comparing them. Anyway, he needn’t be so circumspect with his glances; she was so clearly intent on what she was doing as to have no attention whatsoever left for him. Using up the whole damn bed too. And what was taking her so long?

Warm orange glow, pleasing whoosh of air and soft, low roar of flame: the last of the ash wood he’d brought from Mr. Greenlee’s workshop finally caught fire. Kit basked in his moment of pride and primitive wonder (passionate shepherd, noble savage cozy and contented in his hut with his woman). Of course, he’d need to fetch more wood if they were to spend any additional time here. Which would rather depend upon whatever she was making of those papers he’d shared with her. Noble savage’s quiet, compliant helpmate, bed partner, and skilled gatherer of acorns (for they’d have to eat something, wouldn’t they?). He grinned at how singularly inapt his fancy was when applied to the lady with gold spectacles, brow knit in concentration, and beautiful round breasts once again visible as the quilt slipped down around her.

He spread out his hands in front of the flames. First things first: his hands weren’t the part of him that most needed warming. He rose and turned to face her, sighing and arching his back for the pleasure of toasting his arse against the excellent little blaze he’d brought forth (and perhaps, he thought, for the pleasure of showing himself to her, scars and all). She looked up, smiled in a rather abstracted manner (the fire’s glare bounced off her spectacles; he wasn’t sure she’d seen him at all), and turned her head back downward again.

To hell with it-he was coming back to bed. Surely she couldn’t need all that space just for a few pieces of paper. Anyway, it wouldn’t kill her to finish reading while he curled up beside her-even if she would groan and complain about his feet being cold, and his hands too, if he clasped them around her waist.

Yes, much better, with his hands around her middle, thighs pressed up against her leg, belly curved around her bum, and his cock-happy to be somewhere soft and warm-briskly waking up from its hibernation. Not-it seemed-that she was taking much notice, intent as she was on whatever specious argument she was doubtless preparing to toss in his face.

Nonsense. There was absolutely no need to worry. The truth was all on his side. Facts were facts, Traynor’s accounts confirmed by Benedict’s.

But it seemed she was finally finishing up. High time too: she was gathering up the papers, sorting them back into the order he kept them in. She laid the portfolios down on the rickety bedstand now and turned onto her side to face him. He let his hands slide around to the small of her back; she sighed and snuggled closer, drawing the quilt tightly about them and grazing her breasts against his chest.

“Gracious,” she murmured, “it’s quite a different thing, seeing you close up with my spectacles on. It seems I’ve been missing quite a bit…”

He’d have none of her blandishments. Fascinating as it might be to wonder what aspects of his face or body she could see through those lenses that she hadn’t seen before…

He lifted his head onto his elbow.

“The letters.” His voice a bit strident now, even to his own ears. Come on, Mary. I need-I deserve-to know what you think. Even if it wasn’t the most prideful way to ask it of her.

“Yes, well…”

“Well, tell me, dammit. I’m correct, am I not? And I’ve been correct too. I’ve been right all along to be attending to the seriousness of this situation.”

She nodded, slowly and a bit abstractedly. “Yes,” she whispered, “you have.” She bit the corner of her lip.

He wouldn’t crow over it; it was enough of a victory to have her coming around to his way of seeing things. And (who could say?) as events unfolded, perhaps even Morrice might be brought around to understand…

“Of course,” she continued-softly, so that he had to lean forward to make out what she was saying, “there’s no evidence that they’re gathering large stores of weapons. A pistol here and there, I shouldn’t wonder…”

“But there’s no evidence that they aren’t.”

“Yes, I expect you’re right about that as well.”

As well-she might have proclaimed him Prime Minister and Archbishop of Canterbury. You’re right as well-perhaps he could get her to put her signature to it; never before had she capitulated so readily in an argument. He relaxed his head onto the pillow and drew her closer. A celebration was in order.

“Though surely”-her voice was muffled and yet insistent-“you’ve realized that there’s only one London delegate and not two. Rather odd, it seems to me, even if I can’t see how to assign any significance to it…”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes shone, very large and keen, behind the ovals of her spectacles.

“You mean you didn’t see that this Hollis and this Oliver are clearly the same man? Ah, I should have kept the relevant papers out to show you, but I thought for certain that you’d notice for yourself…”

Bloody little know-it-all of a bluestocking, even without the pigtails and pinafore. Yes, now that he’d sat up and had a look for himself-yes, she was quite correct. And no, he’d completely missed the singularity of it. For if you compared the informers’ descriptions of the two rabble-rousers from London, they readily coalesced into one tall, well-spoken, red-bearded man in Wellingtons and a brown coat. Same one who’d flirted with Peggy, and same one whom Kit had begun to imagine he knew personally.

“You see”-she pointed to certain passages in the documents-“the meetings are set for different nights, here and in Nottingham.”

Except for the last set of meetings, when Hollis (or should one call him Oliver?) had made a brief but rousing speech at midnight in Nottingham and then hurried on to Grefford to deliver the same set of remarks to Williams and company, down the lane beyond the foundry, in the dimly lit and dangerous hours before dawn.

“It would take him just about that long, don’t you agree, to walk from Nottingham to Grefford, though chances are he would have begged a ride on a wagon or cart.”

Kit shrugged. “I expect you’re right. He does seem very much the itinerant.”

“Both occasions when Peggy encountered him,” Mary said, “he had just disembarked from some public coach or another. And it’s rather striking, don’t you think,” she continued, her eyes wide and thoughtful, “that he doesn’t appear to be afraid to travel in broad daylight.”

What is she suggesting? But he knew her well enough to know that she was merely speculating on the possibilities. Unluckily for him, she didn’t seem to have any agenda at all.

Wait, why unlucky? It would only be unlucky-her knowing so much of his business-if he were to persist in seeing her as an adversary and not (why, he wondered, did he find this so bloody damn difficult?) as an aide-an associate, a confederate.

A colleague? Well, colleague might be taking it a bit far.

“An interesting point,” he told her. “But not, as you say, one that yields much significance. Except perhaps to show that your… um, I mean the London Committees are thrifty, and have sent only one representative to this part of the Midlands. Perhaps he’s simply the best man they’ve got, and in excessively high demand.”

“He’s continuing on toward Manchester, it seems.”

“Nonetheless. The fact remains that he represents the London Committees-who are busy preparing for an insurrection.”

She nodded, winced a bit. “Yes, except…”

Just let it go, she thought. Allow him to get on with things for once, can’t you?

For it did seem clear that something was going to transpire. The reports, the words she’d overheard from Nick Merton… everything seemed to point to some sort of conspiracy.

Stupid to rehearse the feeble truth-that the thing simply didn’t feel right to her. Stupid, useless… especially when his arm around her felt so exactly and precisely right, clasped tight about her waist, his body so firm against hers, in their cozy cocoon of warm, if slightly ripe-smelling, air. A part of him rather more than firm, in truth-especially after she’d afforded that he’d been right about a few things.

Couldn’t she let the trivial demurrals go? What was she trying to prove anyway?

“It feels… inaccurate to me. I don’t understand what’s happening, but there’s something else-something rather singular.”

An anticlimax. Their limbs disentangling, cold air rushing into the widening gap between them. Neither of them even had the heart to throw anything at the other.

She expected that it was a lucky thing that he’d tidied up-made it easier, at any rate, to find her clothing.

“It’s all right.” His voice was leaden. “I’ll lace you. You needn’t go home to dinner looking like something out of a naughty engraving.”

Neither of them, she thought dully, had ever found much amusement in naughtiness, their shared sensibility running more to the conundrums of power and the mysteries of intimacy than to silly cartoons of portly people with their huge breasts and arses hanging out. For all the good, finally, that sensibility had done them. And not that it mattered anymore.

Except that it did matter. It mattered terribly.

And so, he thought, that’s the end of it. For if she were to persist in maintaining her illusions, her stupid, radical, bloody pastoral faith in the stout, simple, loyal workingmen of quaint, unchanging, picturesque Grefford… if she couldn’t trust him enough… if she weren’t willing to face reality with him at his side…

But what was she canting about now? Probably complaining that he was pulling the laces too tightly. As no doubt he was (he gave an extra, spiteful little tug, but she didn’t seem to notice).

“You do understand, don’t you,” she was saying,

“that I fully accept the Grefford part of the evidence. I think there will be men marching in the direction of Nottingham. It’s the London part I’m having difficulty with.”

Oh, Lord, she wasn’t going to suggest…?

“Is this really necessary, Mary? You’ve already said your piece. Thanks for your… attention, but…”

In for a penny, in for a pound, she told herself.

She turned to face him.

“No, listen to me. I would have said it more readily, but I knew how you’d respond-and I was a bit… intimidated, I expect. The London Committees-well, Richard told me…”

His mouth was contorted, eyes distended. For a moment she imagined that she’d be turned to stone if she continued to stare back at him while he was so angry.

She chose a spot on the wall and trained her gaze upon it.

“… that he ceased attending his London Hampden Club meetings because the entire reform society apparatus had become so distressingly defunct. Just a few nice old gentlemen in attendance, and they all think it’s still 1789. They have no connections with the workingmen in the country; most times they get together, they nod off to sleep over their port, reading Thomas Paine to one another. Of course, they might dream of summoning seventy thousand men, just as well as they might dream of seven men actually showing up for one of their suppers.”

His voice was flat. “Well, one way or another, and even without the assistance of one R. R. Morrice, your old gentlemen have managed to connect themselves to an awful lot of workingmen throughout the countryside. Or would you deny that, Mary, on the basis of the evidence I’ve shown you?”

“I didn’t say there aren’t a lot of angry workingmen.”

“Then what are you trying to say?”

“I’m not sure. I’d rather want to ask Richard’s opinion on the matter.”

Well, she hadn’t turned to stone, and she’d said what she’d needed to. She congratulated herself that she’d stayed calm. And would continue so, even if she did feel herself a bit fearful of the way his hands had clenched and his jaw trembled. But although she’d slapped him once or twice over the years, he’d never struck her and she knew he never would.

“I don’t want you to tell Morrice about this,” he said quietly.

“Of course I shan’t. I wasn’t proposing to do so. I think you should tell him. Find out what he thinks. Listen, Kit. He’s the only person you or I know who can shed some light on this business of the London Committees. And he’s nearby, in Wakefield, staying with his aunts.”

“How do you know he’s not in favor of this insurrection?”

“Because he believes in reform, which is quite a different thing. Yes, he has a few romantic fancies. But you haven’t seen him in a decade. He lives a comfortable life with a good wine cellar. He…”

“No. Absolutely not. I’m charged with obeying orders. I shouldn’t have told you any of this.”

It was a very solidly built cottage (as one would expect, it being constructed according to the designs of the great Capability Brown). And so nothing broke or shattered or was even knocked from its place, when he quit the room and gave the door a great thundering slam behind him.

Nothing to do, she thought, but take the path home to Beechwood Knolls.

Odd, how calm she felt, to be parting like this. Or maybe it wasn’t odd at all; maybe it made perfect sense. After all, they weren’t parting. Well, that was her problem, wasn’t it, to keep forgetting that they were already parted-separated and soon to be more than that; this just-ended interlude merely a long final farewell, an indulgence, a very long kiss good-bye.

Nothing had changed between them. The letter brought along with her could be sent without her having to show it to him.

If it weren’t that she were also right, dammit. There was something singular about the elusive Mr. Oliver, about the whole unfolding situation. Surely, when he thought more soberly on it-tomorrow, perhaps…

Not a chance. Tomorrow he’d be just as unwilling to talk to Richard as he was today. A pity that the only person they knew who might be able to explicate the situation was the person Kit would be least able to face.

It wasn’t her concern any longer. She’d done what she could to help him. She was tired of the whole affair. And certainly of plots and informers.

Listen to the birds, she told herself. Fill your head with the rustle of trees. Or with someone else’s words-stray phrases from a play she loved, about lovers and madmen, their “seething brains… shaping fantasies that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends.”

A comfort to take distraction from such wit and beauty in words.

Or so it might have been, if she hadn’t just now caught sight of Lord Ayres waving delightedly at her as she made her way over the stile.

Had he really chosen this most inopportune of moments for a poetic tête-à-tête?

Worse, it seemed. He’d chosen exactly this moment, on this oppressive afternoon, to protest that he adored her, that he’d never met such a woman as she, that she was driving him mad with passionate desire.

But, but… this is so unexpected, sir. Her voice was faint, though he wouldn’t notice that. The words were right, anyway; so unexpected was just the sort of flirtatious, encouraging banality he would have been hoping for.

Ah yes, he burbled, precisely so-he couldn’t have said it better himself; how unexpected, how astonishing and delightful. How magical in a word, wouldn’t she agree-that notwithstanding the disparities in their ages (she couldn’t help noting that his passion was not so great as to ignore this disparity) their spirits had come together as from a higher etc., etc., etc. (but she always lost track of a man’s words when his spirit entered into the proceedings).

“And to learn, my dearest, beautiful Mary, that you can feel it too…” (If she remained so distressingly tongue-tied, she thought, she might simply have to slap him.) He seemed to have grasped both her hands during that last effusively delivered phrase of his as he began pouring out his longings and sufferings of the past few days, when his extraordinary respect for her had caused him to refrain (thank heaven for small favors anyway) from following her into the forest.

But certainly (he cleared his throat here), she wouldn’t take it amiss if he were to visit her late tonight.

Which, she realized-upon blessedly solitary reconsideration later in her bedchamber-would have been the perfect moment for her to slap him in a fit of outraged propriety.

Instead of continuing to blink in stunned disbelief at this poor sprig with his violet eyes, hyacinthine curls, and dreadful ear for language.

If she had her wits about her, she would have realized that a slap was exactly what he wanted. At least in lieu of the kiss he wasn’t going to get, a slap would have been rather a mark of honor for this ardent ninny of a would-be lover, all grasping hands and raging amourpropre. But she hadn’t had her wits about her, and so she’d done something infinitely worse.

She’d laughed at him.

Well, not merely at him, though of course he wouldn’t be able to see that. She’d laughed at him and herself and even at Kit, in all their tragically vulnerable pride and absurd comic egoism. She’d laughed helplessly and rather hysterically, her eyes first brimming and then overflowing with tears, nose and cheeks growing red and raw as she wrested her hands from his to cast about for the handkerchief that, needless to say, was nowhere to be found. Things tended to get so moist between her and Kit-her handkerchief was doubtless somewhere among the tumbled bed linen at the cottage.

She’d laughed so long and hard that poor Lord Ayres must have wondered if he’d driven her to a lunatic, apoplectic, or even an epileptic fit. But as she got hold of herself, sighing and dabbing at her eyes with the handkerchief he’d finally thought to lend her, she could see his growing assurance that she was perfectly and regrettably all right. Though considerably less attractive, with her red eyes and roughened, tearstained cheeks, than he’d imagined she might be in a state of heightened emotion-the disparity between their ages was considerably harder to ignore than he’d previously supposed.

And so he’d scowled, turned away, swung into his saddle, and spurred his horse toward Beechwood Knolls-no chance, she thought, of an offer today, to lead her homeward on horseback.

He’d appeared quite calm at dinner, however, and paid Elizabeth such modest and agreeable compliments that the girl couldn’t help but respond-rather to Mary’s surprise. But all in all it was an unusually quiet meal, except for Fred’s chatter about the fireworks he’d bought. Even Fannie Grandin seemed lacking in vivacity and oddly drained and abstracted, causing Mary to wonder if she too were suffering from the disagreeable effects of the day’s humidity.