The Slightest Provocation

Chapter Twenty-six

He did wish her a good morrow, smiling down on her as she woke to the new day. Lovely to watch her open her eyes, so eager and happy that he could do no less than fall upon her in a long, passionate embrace.

Which soon enough revealed itself as a hearty and dutiful embrace, in truth with very little passion about it. He should have realized just how distracted his attention was by the looming prospect of meeting the person he’d been so angry at for so long. And by the dream of the seventy thousand men, only in last night’s version it had been Morrice whispering to him, saying something he couldn’t remember, and the men were bloodier, and Oliver had looked even taller up there on his podium.

None of which had done much for his performance in bed this morning. Too late to stop, though: his and then Mary’s movements became clumsy and disjunct, the shame of it all quite palpable, the failure (his failure) a humiliation.

Should have known. Shouldn’t have been misled by yesterday’s easy pleasures-both times, and even before, during the morning meeting in the forest, her hands so mischievous, her whispered voice so randy. I expect you’ll manage quite splendidly.… Hell. Forget about England expecting every man to do his duty; it was a woman who really put the pressure on, and a wife was quite the worst. Was it any surprise that he’d wanted to prove himself this morning-to her, to himself, did it matter which?

Nothing to be done about it now.

And nothing to be done either about the communication he’d dispatched to her friend Morrice. Disgusting, the swill that had leaked out from his pen-wrongs on both sides, spineless womanish twaddle. Dutiful little soldier he’d been, to send the bloody thing off to the Misses Raddiford’s house before dinner, so he wouldn’t be tempted to tear it up. Today there’d be no escaping the consequences. Morrice had assuredly read it by now; perhaps he’d even sent his answer.

On the whole, Kit thought, it might be a relief if the man simply refused to see him. A relief or an additional humiliation. He tried to steel himself for either eventuality, even as he found himself plagued by Mary’s efforts at cheery reassurance. Salt in a wound; he scowled and grimaced until she grew equally glum and nasty over a late breakfast of watery coffee, bluish milk, and lumpy porridge, the glassware chipped and smudged in harsh, hazy daylight.

“Well, you needn’t mope about it,” she told him. “Nothing matters that much. To look at you, one would think the sun rose and set by it.”

Thanks, just what I wanted to hear. What a hypocrite she could be: if there existed another woman to whom such things mattered more, he, for one, had yet to make her acquaintance.

At which affectionate juncture, the landlord came by to inquire about how they’d found the bedchamber.

Excellent. Very fine indeed, we slept wondrously well.

Delightful couple we make, Kit thought, nodding and grinning like a pair of condescending monkeys. Though he couldn’t help thinking it a good thing, that acting the hypocrite to the landlord had stopped him from calling Mary a hypocrite to her face.

“Yes, it’s our best.” The landlord beamed and then patted the pocket of his coat. “Ah, but I’d almost forgot the message I’ve got for you, my lord. Brought by just now by the Misses Raddiford’s footman.”

Kit accepted it casually, waiting to open it until the man had taken his leave of them. He tried not to tear the paper while Mary made a noisy, unconcerned show of stirring sugar into her coffee.

“Well, don’t you want to hear what he says?”

“Only if you choose to tell me.”

He hadn’t called her a hypocrite yet anyway. But then, it was still distressingly early in the day. Morrice wouldn’t be coming round to call upon them until two.

Not a badly worded response. Or so it seemed upon his first hurried reading. Difficult to get all its meaning with Mary’s eyes fixed upon him in that brimmingly sympathetic way.

“Perhaps I’ll ride over to Campsall this morning,” he said. “Talk to the man in charge of the militia. General Byng-I knew him in France.”

She nodded too quickly. Bravely even, to demonstrate her understanding that he might want to be away from her for a bit. Lives of saints and martyrs. Until now he’d forgotten that aspect of the wedded state.

But was he sure, she asked now, that he could be back by two?

Of course he was; why the devil wouldn’t he be?

Damn, the little pocket watch told him otherwise.

They dragged themselves up the steep stairs to their bedchamber.

He’d have a smoke instead, he told her; take a walk about the town.

“Oh, and by the way,” he added, “Morrice is bringing his wife with him. Making a domestic affair of it, I guess.”

She smiled, quite as though he’d meant that to be a good thing.

Still, it might be useful to have the other lady about. Give Mary someone to talk to while he and his erstwhile friend said or did whatever the hell two gentlemen were supposed to say or do when both parties had been wrong and time had passed and it wasn’t a question of revenge or reparation. His experience in war and diplomacy didn’t yield many useful examples. Make it up as one went along, he expected.

And where the bloody hell were those cheroots anyway?

She shrugged her shoulders and turned her back.

“Well, why don’t you know?”

He escaped the bedchamber just before whatever it was she’d chosen to toss at him came crashing against the door he’d slammed behind him.

Jittery on tobacco, he marched purposefully about the town, pausing at unpredictable intervals to stare at nothing in particular, one time gazing blankly through the window of a local bookshop until Mary raised her head from whatever she’d been perusing and he had to duck away.

He grew hungry. A pasty from a pork butcher helped clear the foul taste of breakfast from his mouth. He walked more aimlessly now. The time crawled by, only to speed up calamitously around half past one when he lost himself in a tangle of alleyways. Willing himself to get his directions straight, he ran all the way back to the George.

No harm done. The clock tower in the square agreed precisely with his pocket watch; the Morrices weren’t due for another five minutes. He smoothed his waistcoat, caught his breath, straightened his cravat, and grinned at the knowledge that he’d outrun his anxiety.

The street he’d come from adjoined the coaching inn. He’d entered the square across the way from the George. Yes, there was Mary, seated on a bench some fifty yards away from him. The pink of her dress made a pretty splash of color in the dusty, bleached-out light of early afternoon. Perhaps he had been needlessly savage with her.

She raised her head from whatever she was reading; he thought he could see a glint of her spectacles, but it might have been his imagination. He waved and so did she. He had the impression she was smiling. The Morrices would be arriving any minute. Too late to be nervous. And anyway, Mary’d see him through it. Buoyed by this thought, he hurried forward to join her.

Only to find himself amidst a crush of hurrying people, bags and parcels and the bustle of travel.

Leeds, the coachman was calling, the Leeds Charger, boarding here directly. So intent had Kit been on his own affairs that he’d stumbled, first into a knot of disembarking travelers, and then the people clambering to take the vacated places aboard the coach.

“Sorry,” he muttered to anyone who might hear him, perhaps the young man in a green coat, or the taller, stouter gentleman in brown…

Brown coat, reddish beard, Wellington boots bright under a hazy midday sun. Vital, energetic, somehow a bit bigger than life-sized, now at last that Kit was seeing him for himself.

The man who’d flirted with Peggy. The featured player in the theater of Kit’s dreams.

But was this really the first time Kit had seen him in the flesh?

Nonchalantly biding his time until the last moment to board, Mr. Oliver had finally taken a seat by the window. He was looking out now, his eyes scanning the square.

I’ve seen him before. I’m sure of it. But where?

To hell with it. I’ll confront the blackguard myself.

Unfortunately, that proved impossible. For at that moment, Mr. Oliver (or Hollis, or whatever the rabble-rousing London delegate’s name might truly be) was attending on someone else.

A footman in livery had rushed forward to doff his hat to the red-bearded man, addressing him with what looked like great deference, while Kit (and several people around him as well) stared in uncomprehending wonder.

A footman in livery, so humbly respectful to a workingman? Or at least to a man revered by workingmen all over the countryside. A man who’d spent the last fortnight orating and bullying, exhorting them to tear down the established order and take London as well. It was all too contrary. Kit lost a minute while he gaped and tried to puzzle it out; by the time he’d made his way forward, the coach was rolling in a cloud of dust onto the road to Leeds.

The dust settled. And here was Mary, arm in arm with a small, neat lady in a quietly elegant gown, with a lanky, diffident-looking gentleman at her side.

Changed and yet unchanged: a decade ago Morrice had appeared uncomfortably older than his years; now he wore his shy seriousness with ease. Kit took the tremulous hand held out to him, the grasp not as tight as it had been. I ought to be better able to hide my emotion, he thought. No matter. The moment passed willynilly. He and Morrice got through the handshake and a mumbled greeting, even some clumsy, random touches on the arm and shoulder.

“Been so long, too long… Egad, just look at the both of us. Not boys any longer, eh?”

It would go all right. Well, it would have to, Kit told himself, now that he’d been presented to the lady with the blue eyes and decided chin. He knew a reasonable, formidable creature when he saw one; Mrs. Morrice would make sure it went all right.

But what in the world had Oliver been up to, and how would Kit find it out?

Unbearable, to have to go through all the motions of civility right now. A lucky thing that Mrs. Morrice was determined to take the lead. Well, someone had to.

Still, he needed to speak to someone-Mary, or perhaps even Richard-about what he’d just seen transpire at the coaching inn.

“Shall we all take some tea at the George,” Mrs. Morrice was asking, “or go for a drive in the barouche?”

“A ride in the barouche, I think,” Mary said, when it had become clear that Kit and Richard were each too absorbed in their separate thoughts to be able to answer Anna’s question.

Regrettably, though, it would have to be tea in the George’s parlor, at least for Kit and the ladies. For a fellow in what appeared to be a state of extreme agitation had just now approached Richard and expressed an urgent need to speak to him.

“You all won’t mind, will you,” Richard said, “if I have a word with Mr. Dickenson here for a moment before I join you inside?”

Dickenson, who appeared to be some sort of trades-man, nodded apologetically to the group. Anna Morrice returned his greeting with great cordiality.

“A moment only,” Richard said.

“Of course.”

I need only follow Anna’s lead, Mary thought, to negotiate this fascinating reunion. What a marvel she is, getting Kit to talk of pugilism, of all things. Poor dear, he looks so distracted, so very emotional-I can’t imagine how he’d be able to keep hold of himself if she hadn’t chosen his favorite subject.

It seems there’s to be a mill tomorrow, somewhere out in the countryside; Richard’s quite looking forward to it. And although Anna must confess to Lord Christopher that she herself has never seen the attraction of such sport, she affords herself willing to believe that, as Richard says, it’s more scientific than brutal, and very much an exhibition of character.

And Kit is charmed. Richard is quite correct, he tells her; scientific is precisely the word for it. He’s charmed and he’s clearly also hoping that Richard will invite him along tomorrow to see the fighting. Oh yes, he’s telling Anna, it’s a great national institution, pugilism, too easily misunderstood by foreigners and even by some ladies. But if one takes the time to read the principles of the sport, particularly as delineated by the great Mendoza…

Allowing me to take the time to cajole our landlord into getting us a decent tea: cheese (sorry, my lady, no chutney) and sandwiches. I almost ordered scones (but caught a tiny warning signal from Anna; the scones must be dreadful here). So we’ve got sweet buns and (at the landlord’s prompting) a bit more of his splendid Devonshire cream.

But here’s Richard, looking as though he’s been considering something, very seriously and in extremely short order. The same look of resolution Kit adopts from time to time, which usually means there’s consternation ahead.

How intensely Kit is staring at him.

“A most fascinating conversation I’ve been having,” Richard began now. “With Dickenson. Known him for years, a Dewsbury linen draper and a faithful reader of the Review. And”-he paused for emphasis-“a long-time and stalwart friend of liberty.”

Thank heaven, Kit thought, that we’re going to be speaking of something real.

And don’t worry, Mary, I shall be fine.

For Mary, and Mrs. Morrice as well, had clearly found Richard’s opening words to be tactless at the very least-Mrs. Morrice showing her annoyance in the curtness with which she handed Richard his dish of tea. Richard shrugged as he took it from her.

“Yes, thanks. Ah, well, as I was saying. You see, Mr. Dickenson has just informed me that he’s witnessed a most curious occurrence. A man extremely well known, and up until recently held in the highest esteem, by those involved in the great struggle…”

Though he could use a lighter hand, Kit thought, with the rhetoric.

“That same man,” Richard continued, “within just this past half hour, has been unmasked as an agent of government repression, when Dickenson, and some others, saw General Byng’s servant doffing his hat to him.”

Still, it was good that things were finally making sense. No matter how shocking the facts of the matter seemed to be.

He turned to Richard. “And I take it there could be no mistake as to whose servant the man was?”

“None. Dickenson made sure of it.”

“Or to the identity of the highly esteemed man?”

“None there either. Dickenson has already made Oliver’s acquaintance, though he didn’t like to tell me exactly how.”

“It’s all right,” Kit said, “I can guess at that part. Wat’s a magistrate, you know, and I’ve been doing his business for him during his illness. It’s turned a bit complicated of late, though-difficult to get to the larger truths.”

“And you have an interest in the larger truths after all.”

“Rather, yes. And I’ve been lucky to see some interesting events. For I’ve seen Mr. Oliver before, in the company of a Home Office functionary-a man doing rather the sort of work I’d aspired to. Of course, I didn’t know who Oliver was at the time. And then I promptly forgot about it until my recent charming conversation with Mrs. Morrice. They were together at the fives court in London, you see. Of course, it might have been quite innocent; the appeal of pugilism being so widespread among Britons, much as I was telling Mrs. Morrice.”

He paused. “I have no proof of any connection between Oliver and the Home Office. All quite circumstantial. Still…”

The two men were silent for a long moment.

“Magistrate’s business, eh? And Home Office business as well. Gives one quite a breadth of perspective,” Richard said. “Well, I shouldn’t want to ask you to betray any commitments you’ve made, no more than you’d inquire any further about my friend Mr. Dickenson.

“But as to Mr. Oliver’s connections. Well, in fact, he did show up at some meetings last spring, in the company of a Mr. Mitchell, who was arrested soon afterward. People have been inquiring about such things, you see, because there have been more arrests, a number of them this week; just this morning General Byng and his militia broke up a meeting-took a number of men into custody, all but Oliver, don’t you know, who somehow managed to escape. Dickenson knows some fellows who are in an uproar about it.”

Kit nodded. “No doubt the London delegate, as he calls himself, has got another meeting to address tonight at Leeds. Couldn’t have him missing it.”

“It does seem that Byng was protecting him, perhaps under orders. Of course, we can only guess whom Byng is taking his orders from.”

Kit nodded. “It’s a knotty set of problems. Perhaps if either of us had been more of a scholar when we’d had the opportunity… well, why should the government be sending a man out to this part of the country, to try to foment revolution among its angry workingmen? For it is beginning to look that way.”

“Or a certain part of the government. The Home Office perhaps?”

“If you like. Hypothetically speaking.”

“Of course,” Richard said, “hypothetically speaking. Well, you know it wouldn’t be easy to ask Englishmen to give up certain liberties. Right of assembly, no imprisonment without due process of law. Unless there were a threat so large-well, it would have to be something more frightening than petitions for reform, or propertyless men passing Paine and Cobbett from hand to hand…”

“The threat of an uprising.”

Richard shrugged. “A smallish one, I should think, called for a specific date, with soldiers waiting to make arrests. And since no one else was calling for such a thing, I expect it might have had to fall to the government to do so. Hypothetically speaking.”

Kit chewed the last bite of his sandwich rather meditatively. “It would take a great deal of organization. A lot of magistrates to keep in line. Communications always a problem with this sort of thing-it’s a small office, you see.”

Richard laughed. “Well, it won’t fly,” he said. “Dickenson’s on his way to speak to a newspaper editor. The Leeds Mercury, splendid little organ of reform in this part of the country-one might expect a public scandal. And then, of course, my own publication will take it up, from rather a longer focus. Need a good writer, of course, but that’ll come.

“But even before it appears in print, every reform-minded man in the region will have heard the news-through the grapevine, you know, word of mouth. The provocateur is exposed already. The kingdom is safe, I believe, for the nonce.”

“Ahem.” Anna’s voice rang clear and distinct across the tea cart.

“My dear?”

“Mrs. Morrice?”

“Is anyone going to enlighten me as to these wondrous happenings?”

“I shall,” Mary said, “at least to the extent that I’ve followed the conversation. Quite remarkable…” Her voice trailed off, her gaze softening at the sight of Richard and Kit bound together in their endeavor to understand the truth of a matter that meant quite different things to each of them. And-as gentlemen-to keep the discussion all on the plane of the hypothetical.

But it was rather stretching things to ask them to rehearse the broad outlines of the story, when what they really wanted to do was to work away over the fine points, and not around a tea table.

“Go find a public house,” Anna told them. “Hash it out over a couple of pints of ale. Mary will explain it to me in your absence. We shall be entirely capable of digesting the information and amusing ourselves in the bargain, until dinnertime at least.

“For you two will come to dinner, won’t you? I believe you remember the Misses Raddiford, Kit… I may call you Kit, mayn’t I? Their cook sets a plain table, but a very good one. And the ladies have sorely missed Richard’s friend all these long years. ‘The bright-eyed little boy,’ they called you this morning at breakfast, ‘with the lovely manners when he remembered to use them.’ ”