The Slightest Provocation

Chapter Five

It isn’t easy, even with the sunlight pouring through the window, for a maid to rouse her mistress from a heavy drugged sleep. Especially a maid who’s moving a bit slowly herself, and who can’t help rubbing her own red and swollen eyes as she assesses the disorder about her.

I should want to give me a good shaking, Mary chided herself, if I were in her place.

The night before was still a bit of a blur. The visions-best, she suspected, that they remain a thrilling, rather wicked blur. But the memory of what they’d said last night would come back, probably sooner than she wanted. Her limbs were heavy; she forced herself to be passive, to move where Peggy prodded her, to keep gentle and limp beneath the towel washing the smell of brandy off her, the strong little hands buttoning her into her clothes.

“You should eat something, my lady.” The girl mumbled the words-or something like them-through pins stuck in her mouth.

She spoke more clearly now that she’d gotten Mary’s fichu tucked and tacked inside the neckline of her dress. “The eggs is very fresh here. Me and Tom, we were, uh, hungry… Well, you should try some eggs. And one o’ them crescent roll things too.”

So it was Tom, now-me and Tom. Lucky pair, Mary thought, to have spent… well, it probably wasn’t accurate to say they’d spent an uneventful night, but she expected it had been less wearing on the emotions than her own. The girl’s face was flushed and rather puffy, her mouth soft and babyish as she turned from her neatly dressed mistress to the bedchamber that smelled (and rather looked) like a public house after a rough brawl.

“Yes, thank you. Perhaps I shall try to eat, Peggy”-turning, waving a vaguely apologetic hand at the detritus and setting off down to the dining room.

The impertinent serving girl from last night’s supper was nowhere to be seen. Which would be no surprise, Mary thought, if Kit’s old patterns had run true. Her drugged sleep shed a protective haze about her; on the other side of it doubtless lay some low, unworthy sentiments. Too bad she wanted the coffee; emotional clarity wouldn’t be pleasant. She accepted a cup from the plainer girl who offered it, and opened the book she’d brought down with her.

“Plus de café, madame?”

“Non, merci.” It must be time to depart. How long, she wondered, had she been scowling from behind her spectacles at the novel in her hand?

But the more important question was how long he’d been staring down at her from just a few feet away. Face livid and unshaven above barely respectable linen, hair wet and combed back from his forehead-he’d been washed down like a racehorse. His valet hovered somewhere behind his elbow, lest he pitch over, as he looked alarmingly likely to do.

What a nice little barrier a pair of spectacles made between oneself and the world. Sliding them just an inch farther down her nose, she gazed at him from above the thin gold wire at the lenses’ upper rims.

“You look ghastly,” she said. “Why aren’t you asleep or… or still with that girl? I’m disappointed; it’s not like you, Kit. I should surely have thought that she…”

“Disappeared quite early,” he told her, “after I’d drunk myself into a state making indecent toasts to you, just before collapsing…”

She could feel the ends of her mouth quivering. He winked; she suppressed a fledgling smile. Don’t press your luck, darling.

“Wait, no-I didn’t collapse on the floor. Almost did, yes, right. But she’s stronger than she looks, a real peasant-propped me up on her shoulder and walked me to the bed, where I rather drifted off, just this side of stupefied and almost enjoying the sensation of being parted from all the coins in my pocket.”

He patted himself around the waistcoat (which looked even more disreputable with its bottom button missing) and croaked out a short attempt at laughter. “Pocket watch too. A gift from you quite possibly. Engraved, as I remember-most charmin’ obscure poetic stuff.”

Had he still been carrying it last night?

“She must have found it rather a humiliation,” he added, “that a nation of such buffoons could have defeated l’empéreur Napoléon.” He shook his head. “Clever fingers on her. Too bad…”

“And so you made your shambling way down here to tell me about it?” Pretending it was a matter of indifference that all he’d given the girl was the contents of his pockets.

“I shambled down here to inform you that I’m coming back to London today. I shall be staying at my mother’s house in Park Lane.”

He swayed rather alarmingly on his feet as he spoke, and winced as the valet put out an arm to steady him. “Well, later today,” he said, “an early afternoon boat, perhaps. I should have liked to accompany you, but Belcher here”-he nodded in the direction of the valet-“is of the opinion I’m not quite up to a choppy voyage across the Channel this morning. Unless you’d like to wait, to accompany me.”

“Back to England today!” She pushed the spectacles back over the bridge of her nose. “But you said…”

“I lied. Well, no, I didn’t, not exactly. I exaggerated-rearranged a few points. There were a great many details to attend to, official ones, rather… Letters of introduction-oh, but I told you that part, didn’t I? Anyway, I got them done quickly. The position I’m after…”

She wouldn’t allow him to draw her into another argument. “Yes. Well. I’m sure we’ll manage to pursue our separate courses in town. Your confreres at White’s, the girls at Mrs. Goadley’s, will all be delighted, I’m sure, to welcome you…”

“The position at the Home Office…” His voice was firm, though his gaze flickered for a moment-defiant, even if half-abashed at his evident need to emphasize it.

“You already told me. You fancy a minor position in one of Lord Liverpool’s government’s smaller ministries.”

“You find it unlikely?” he asked.

“Well, if someone were to ask me who the most ungoverned personage I’d ever met was, I shouldn’t have to think awfully hard about it. Shallow, callow…”

“I’ve been nine years at war, Mary. Give me credit for having learned a little organizational ability, a few things about power and administration and the flow of intelligence…”

“You can barely stand up, and you’ve clearly spent the last few hours with your head over a basin.”

“Fortunately, she was kind enough to leave me with one in reach. Whereas you, Lady Christopher…”

“I slept quite well, thanks.”

“You slept unaided?”

“I took something for headache.”

“My point exactly.”

She’d let him have that one. Still, “You thought you needed only to stride back into view for me to put aside a perfectly well-regulated, carefully constructed, and really quite satisfying…”

“Yes, you keep telling me how satisfying…”

“Must you interrupt me? An extremely satisfying life-as though it would have been a simple business for me these last years, for any woman whose husband left her so suddenly and scandalously…”

“I didn’t think…”

“No, you didn’t.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it without having said anything.

“While in the matter of the Home Office, Kit, you obviously don’t understand…”

“You made it clear enough last night, the veritable encyclopedia of things I don’t understand. No, please, don’t pout. You’ve already proved yourself a woman of action. Look at all the heavy kitchen pottery on that dresser. Here, I’ll get you a pitcher to toss at me.”

She shouldn’t have begun ragging him on about politics. Especially, she thought, after her decorous little speech about their separate courses.

“I must go. The packet boat will be leaving soon. I’ve got quite a bit of traveling before I’m home again in Derbyshire.”

He shrugged. “Dismal place. Just as well that I’ll be too busy to come down. Difficult to avoid each other in such a small, close neighborhood.

“And anyway,” he continued, “we shouldn’t be seen together any longer. Not if you want me to bring suit against your friend Mr. Bakewell. The divorce courts don’t look kindly on collusion.”

So he knew about Matthew.

She tried to push her spectacles higher on her nose, but they were already quite as close to her eyes as they could be. She could see him most clearly as he explained what bringing suit for a divorce would entail.

He should have to sue the man for alienating her affection, then bring suit against her for adultery in ecclesiastical court, and only then petition Parliament for their Act of Divorce.

“If I can afford to do so. It costs about a thousand, you know.”

Again, he stressed the necessity that they not be seen together upon their return to England. If it appeared that he and she had planned this, the government would reject his petition for divorce.

An exceedingly lucid presentation, especially coming from someone who’d spent the night with his head over a basin. His eyes were red, his posture increasingly unsteady, and (when he leaned forward to make a particular fine distinction), the smell of his breath was really quite dreadful.

“Of course, you and your Manchester manufacturer must become demonstrably adulterous. And I shall have to hire spies, you know, to catch you at it.”

Your Manchester manufacturer-reeking and disreputable, he’d still managed a most fastidious, Stansell-like curl of the lip.

She ignored it.

“Spy away,” she said. “He wants us to be able to marry, and he’s willing to bear the scandal. We both are. He’ll be returning to England for Midsummer Eve. Just don’t set your spy on us at Beechwood Knolls, I beg you. I shall be leaving soon after midsummer. Wait and keep my family out of the business.”

“Your servant.” His bow was less than graceful. “My congratulations. He sounds a splendid fellow. Too bad I shall only make his acquaintance indirectly, through the legal process.”

“Yes, it is too bad. But then, you won’t be crossing paths with us very often. You’ll doubtless marry again as well, to a lady of great dash and ton. Who will admire you. And your position in the government.”

But here, mercifully, was Thomas in his newly brushed mulberry Rowen velvet. For the coach was ready, the lady’s things were all packed up (yes, and a very good morning to you, Lord Christopher), and they must, indeed, depart directly.

Which (thank you, Thomas) the lady was altogether eager to do, wishing as she did to put the width of the Channel between herself and his lordship-who had, in any case, already turned away, all shaky, aggrieved, crapulous dignity, and allowed his valet to lead him back upstairs.