Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

Because he’d heard about her. Englishmen abroad knew each other’s business. Impressive, how she’d managed to please herself and still maintain a margin of respectability. All but the narrowest people seemed to accept her.

All very well for them. The bargain Kit had finally struck with himself was to rage against her infidelities (as he called them- his affairs of course being only affairs) on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while reserving the majority of the week (four days was the majority, was it not?) for a measure of toleration, and to congratulate himself on his liberality in this, late at night, with the baroness curled against his flank in satisfied slumber.

A game. An abstraction. He hadn’t actually seen her yet, even while they’d both been resident in Paris. His duties had taken most of his attention, his responsibilities shifting to what one might call intelligence (though she’d likely call it delivering secret messages to Britain’s despotic allies). Call it what you would; it had been his job to help keep the information flowing. He’d enjoyed it, even while planning for his future.

Military discipline had done him good, but he’d had enough of it and he wanted to come home. Obtaining the letter of introduction to Lord Sidmouth had been a good first step.

And then he did see her.

In the course of his work, as it happened, in the lobby of the Théâtre des Variétés. He’d been in evening dress, fading into the crowd, ready to retrieve a message from the bewhiskered gentleman, and-as invisibly as possible and at exactly eleven minutes after nine-to brush against the blond dandy in the black moire neckcloth, passing the folded piece of paper along to him.

After which his time would be his own. The baroness was at home in the Faubourg St-Germain.

The crowd in the lobby was beginning to thin. He’d already completed the first part of his assignment; it would be more difficult to do the second part discreetly.

Or so he’d been thinking when she appeared. He’d almost taken her for an illusion, an apparition stirred into being by fleeting memory. If an apparition could be breathless and distracted, an illusion so patently annoyed at itself for being late.

There’d been nothing apparitional about her hurried steps across the marble floor. The rose pink evening cape fluttering over pale ivory silk, pink-and-green-striped bandeau holding a sprig of lily of the valley in her hair, had all been wonderfully matter-of-fact and palpable. A light drizzle was falling outside; tiny drops of moisture clung to her curls like scattered sequins.

Under their dusting of rouge and powder, her cheeks were less plump than he remembered; he thought he might have discerned a touch of weariness. But her peremptoriness was exactly what he would have expected. He’d found it hard to keep from smiling, harder still to wrest his eyes from the swirling cape, stop himself from trying to ascertain the changes time had wrought upon the body beneath it. He couldn’t see very much; he found he didn’t care. She was Mary still and Mary completely.

Odd that it had happened in the line of duty. Though you could argue that it was only on duty that he hadn’t been free to avoid the theaters, restaurants, and parks that were always so irritatingly thronged with British tourists.

She’d entered the lobby at eight minutes past nine and disappeared by the time he’d handed over his message. She must have run upstairs to join her companions. A few white blossoms, too small to shed their scent, lay scattered on the stairway carpet.

He’d wanted to scoop them up in his fingers. Alas, he’d been obliged to maintain his invisibility. Which it seemed he’d done quite adequately. Well, she hadn’t seen him, had she? Which was just as well for the discharging of his duty. Shocking, to think of the disruption any display of recognition would have effected in the flow of critical information between England and the other forces of order and legitimacy in Europe.

He’d continued to follow his orders. To leave the theater and to make a tour of some of Paris’s darkest and most circuitous alleys until absolutely certain he hadn’t been followed.

After which he’d proceeded to the baroness’s apartments, to explain that he wouldn’t be visiting her anymore because he’d fallen back in love with his wife. She’d laughed, cried, slapped him, and informed him he was no gentleman to invent so crude and fantastical a story. If he’d tired of her, well, c’est la vie. But he shouldn’t insult her by telling fairy tales.

Following her advice, he said very little when he resigned his commission the next day. Keeping the fairy tales to himself, it seemed, in the service of a bloody stupid romantic scenario of instant reconciliation at a remote country inn.

Just see what that got you.

His tea was cold. The fire had burnt down in the grate. His irritating, peremptory, irresistible wife wanted nothing to do with him, and could still spout radical claptrap like a Jacobin. Doubtless she thought him as inflexible and autocratic as the old Eighth Marquess, not to speak of wild and stupid… The most ungoverned personage …

Which was neither true nor to the point.

He blinked, pleasantly surprised to hear himself think that. Nice to know that his thoughts weren’t all self-belittling ones. That he had a few things to be proud of, chief among them having earned the respect of the common soldiers under his command. Not immediately, sad to say-but he wouldn’t think about that right now.

Still, he’d been a good soldier, and now he’d like to be a good civilian. Work for the good of the public order, for everyone’s good, including hers. Was that really so terrible?

Amazing, even now, how much he cared about her good opinion. Not that it would make much difference, when she had a lover who was willing to be sued as an adulterer, so keen was the man on releasing her from their marriage. She must be pretty keen on Bakewell herself.

And it seems I’ve agreed to set the divorce engine in motion. Set informants on her, as a magistrate might upon the rebellious men in his district.

Damn her for goading him into agreeing to it.

For he could hardly have admitted to a measure of affection that she manifestly didn’t feel.

Even if they could still make each other laugh. Finish each other’s sentences. Make each other respond in other wonderful ways as well. One time only. Damn.

He ducked his head back under the pillow, hearing once more the sighs-hell, the screams-he’d drawn from her. Remembering what he’d intended they’d be doing next. Imagining things they’d never done that they might have tried…

Instead of sniping at and insulting one another for an hour. Raking up old memories. Morrice. That half-wit of an actress. Apology evidently not a possibility; where would one even begin?

Leave it alone. What did it matter? If they’d managed to apologize, they would have found themselves butting heads on… oh, trivial matters, like the proper way to govern the English nation.

One’s thoughts did seem to go around in circles when the lady in question had a brain as well as a body to be reckoned with.

When the lady… but he could remember further back, to an implacable young girl in pigtails and pinafore who’d caused a certain angry thirteen-year-old boy to boast and to puff himself up most absurdly.

Much (to his shame) as he had when he’d shambled down the stairs to remind her that he had a letter of introduction from Wellington. To insist that she hear the part he’d memorized and most wanted to repeat, informing Lord Sidmouth that the Home Office could do a lot worse than to take on Major Lord Christopher Stansell.