Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

So much to do; Fannie and Elizabeth home much too soon from their calls. We could hardly attend to their girls’ mournful report that Lord Christopher was off somewhere on business.

Kit? Business? No, they must have got that wrong.

Rode to Nottingham. Rec’d handsomely by Benedict-luncheon, access to files, his informant’s reports. Notes:

Their local Reform Society met last Friday, great excitement, London delegate Hollis expected when next they convene-ah, that’ll be tonight; I must get a further report… discussion of pistols, places to be obtained; informant speculates a cache of pikes is buried.

Rising set for June 9.

B. to send me copies of tonight’s report.

Rode home through sunset… tomorrow bids fine… hermit’s hut.

[The last words had been crossed out, for he liked to keep his files-and his thoughts-rigidly divided between business and whatever other claptrap might be running through his head.]

It was certainly none of her concern, Peggy Weightman thought, to make judgments on the way Lady Christopher was acting once she were ready to go to bed these nights.

Cheerful, busy all day, when the bedchamber door closed behind her, she became like one of them traveling balloons come down to land when they let the air all out. Pale, passive-well, it was easy to get her tucked into bed anyway, give her a tiny dose to make her sleep, though Peggy doubted she got to sleep so soon, which were definitely none of the business of a chambermaid, even if you couldn’t help but suspect… especially since, as the lady’s eyes got heavier, she got more eager-sometimes angrily so-to be left alone.

Peggy knotted a length of thread-how in the world had the lady torn that pocket anyway? Of course, Lady Christopher might want to be alone with her thoughts of that very kind and pleasant Mr. Bakewell, but Peggy wouldn’t lay money on it. For she did know a bit about a certain particular kind of thing, though in truth Lord Christopher couldn’t hold a candle to her own Tom, neither for countenance nor, of course, for stature.

If so a person could still call him her own Tom. Were he and his employer ever to come to England again? And when he did finally come home, what would he think? For her predicament was becoming more probable every day, and she’d begun to mull over using a solution of tansy and pennyroyal-or (worse perhaps) to give some consideration to the man up in Ripley that her father wanted her to marry.

Perhaps, after all, she didn’t know as much as she thought she did. Perhaps Tom hadn’t cared for her after all. Or never had-not really, not like he’d said, and certainly not as she needed him to. Perhaps, Peggy thought, I’ve been wrong all this time.

And then this morning to have to put up with Nick Merton’s teasing-about the airs she gave herself, according to him, just because she liked to wear pretty clothes. Like she imagined herself some kind of lady, he’d said, instead of proud of where she come from-the true England, he’d said.

The true England, is it, she’d replied, smart enough, and who’s giving himself airs now?

Still, she’d been glad to go the village to get more thread for Miss Grandin’s everlasting gowns.

Only to meet up with the man with the whiskers and brown coat. He’d been in Nottingham, he told her… After asking all those questions again, about everyone around the neighborhood… and then inviting her to go walking with him.

Like walking was what he really meant. Like she were some light kind of creature… though these days sometimes she felt like one. Well, what was to become of her? And she hated the Ripley man her father was so taken with…

Mary had found her sobbing, collapsed in a heap in the corner of her dressing room, the pelisse, with its torn pocket, abandoned on the parquet floor.

“But what is it?” Well, that sounds stupid enough, she told herself. For what else could it possibly be?

“Oh, don’t cry, he’ll come. After all, he must wait for Lady Rowen; she’d be lost without him, you know. He’s a fine, responsible man, Peggy. He’ll come. Lady Rowen is simply taking more time than had been expected.”

But time isn’t really the issue, is it? Or perhaps time is always the issue to a confused girl who fears herself pregnant. Though of course she wouldn’t admit it to her sharp-tongued and demanding employer.

Who was trying her clumsy best, at the moment, to be a comfort. Mary put her arms around the small person on the floor and patted her back until the sobs subsided a bit and the words came clearer.

“Ah, at the coaching inn. You don’t know his name? And he said what? He treated you in which way? But that’s dreadful.”

Even more dreadful-infuriating, really-was the way the man had continued to ask Peggy for information-about a great many things, including her employer. Which could only mean that Kit was paying him to spy on Mary-in the service of the divorce, of course. Except that he’d promised not to do so until after she’d left Beechwood Knolls.

Perhaps he thought his promise didn’t count anymore.

“Leave the pelisse and get a little rest,” she said. “And don’t worry. The man won’t be bothering you again.”

Not if I have anything to say about it, Lord Christopher. Her angry thoughts seemed louder than the bracken crashing under the soles of her walking boots.

She’d confront him at Rowen. In front of his sister-in-law, if need be. He didn’t own the district, any more than the old Eighth Marquess.

He’d made a promise. And she’d see that he stuck to it.

She could have taken the curricle, she supposed, but it felt good to walk. And if you were walking, this path along the stream would get you to Rowen as fast as any other-though it mightn’t seem so if you didn’t understand the design of the grounds, which had been laid out to appear “naturally” meandering, on the way to the hermit’s hut.

The path, at the outskirts of the Rowens’ park, near Beechwood Knolls, had always been dark, mysterious, and overgrown, for what would be the point of a hermit if he were too easily approached? You got to the hut by climbing over a cunningly constructed stile that appeared to be broken. A little way farther, you’d find a well-built cottage, which boasted a good fireplace, a reasonably comfortable bed, glass in the front windows, and a writing table. It needed to; a good estate hermit would have his comforts.

“We advertised in the newspaper.” The marchioness had told the story one long afternoon, when Kit was in Spain and Mary had needed distracting.

“It was Mr. Brown’s idea-a hermit’s hut was just the thing, back in the last century, to add a certain je ne sais quoi to an improved estate. I, of course, was charged with choosing the hermit. You should have seen me, pouring tea for a series of wild-eyed, long-haired gentlemen, doing my lady-of-the-manor best to discern which of them was the most picturesque and poetical.”