Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

Absurd to have felt those twinges of envy, of a couple of servants’ evident happiness. Absurd, self-indulgent… ignore it, Mary. Orangey light was flickering through the coach windows-from hearth fires, in houses along the road. They must be approaching the inn.

Peggy yawned and rubbed her eyes with round little fists reddened from the rain. She looked very young, as indeed she was: eighteen, hardly older than Betts, Mary’s niece at home.

While Thomas must be nearly a decade older, well over six feet tall, and quite excessively handsome; he’d doubtless cut quite a swath during his own employer’s tour across Europe. He did seem to care for Peggy, though. Would he continue to do so if she became pregnant? In the event, of course, Mary would do what she could to help. But it was a pity to leave it all to fate-and even worse to trust to nature.

“You can’t do a thing about it.” Her sister Jessica had said this years ago, when Mary and Kit had first been married and Mary had consulted her two older sisters about a wayward scullery maid.

“Jessie’s right.” Julia was two years younger than Jessica, equally opinionated, and particularly voluble in the Scots intonations she’d adapted since her marriage. “We’ve both tried to teach them, and so did Mama. Of course, nothing’s entirely trustworthy, but they and their young men think it’s indecent even to try to improve their chances against nature. ‘Them things is just for hoors, Mrs. MacNeill,’ was what my chambermaid told me when I broached the subject with her. And then, remembering the contents of my nightstand, she added, ‘Well, hoors and eddicated ladies, I guess, beggin’ yer pardon, Mum.’ Which showed me my place quickly enough.”

“Only be sure that Kit’s keeping his … eyes to himself,” Jessica had added. She’d blushed-they all knew about Arthur’s misadventure with a maid, during Jessie’s difficult recovery from a miscarriage some years past. The affair was completely smoothed over, but Mary had rushed to hug her eldest sister nonetheless-the exuberant gesture, she thought now, rather sullied by a youthful, callow presumption that such a thing could never happen to her .

Jessie had laughed and generously returned the hug. “Not that Kit could have eyes- or anything else-for any woman in the world besides you.”

The light through the coach windows had turned a bright, smoky yellow-gas lamps, she supposed, to mark the inn. They’d arrived without her noticing it.

Calls of greeting mingled with the admiring whistles and halloos such a fine traveling coach inevitably called forth. Torches and lanterns guided their way through the porte cochere and through the yard to the inn’s front door. Glare and rattle and cry made a pleasant diversion from her echoing thoughts and memories.

Mr. Frayne brought the horses up smartly, Thomas leaped down from beside the coachman to hand Mary out, and Peggy gathered up the jumbled objects strewn around the seats and floor during their filthy, exhausting, but-thank heaven-now completed day on the highway.

Her last night on French soil.

Of course, he hadn’t made much effort to see her either-they’d missed each other in more than one capital city. Missed or avoided-she’d heard talk of an Austrian baroness. Perhaps she should have lingered a bit longer with the Shelley party. Or better still, with her companion in Milan. Not that he’d necessarily be paying attention. But (in the event that he were ) just to show him that she could …

Defiantly, she lifted her chin against that last notion. Shaking Thomas’s hand from her arm and hurrying with light steps toward the inn’s front door, she held her head so high and her back so straight that no one watching would have thought her anything but entirely confident and rather haughty, if a bit disheveled.

And almost beautiful, the dark-haired gentleman observed silently, from among the inn yard’s shadows.

Almost, but not quite. Too energetic, perhaps. The brown eyes too bright, set too wide above her cheeks.

Alighting onto the cobbles-the swirl of snuff-colored skirt, white petticoat, and dark red cloak affording him a precious moment’s glimpse of muddy boot and slender ankle-her movements were too quick for any classical notion of beauty.

Too quick, too willful, too complicated, and yet too lacking in mystery. Just see her marching across the yard with that ridiculously endearing little triangle of torn white cloth fluttering behind her.

It reminded him of a bit of stage business-comic soubrette brought low by her unmentionables. Or a white flag of surrender fluttering over a battlefield. Surrender easier to go after than forgiveness.

He lit a cheroot, from a torch stuck in the inn yard wall. Foolishly, he’d thought she’d be arriving much earlier. The weather… he should have known better; a soldier should always take account of changes in the weather.

The coachman had gone inside now, to get some supper for himself. It would be a while until she came down to eat; she’d be needing a good wash, perhaps a rest, and doubtless some repair work in the petticoat area. He’d grown finicky about matters of dress during his service in Paris and at the Viennese court. And so he was surprised to discover that-at least in the little matter of the petticoat-he rather hoped she’d leave things as they were.

Peggy was clever with a needle; she’d quickly stitched up the torn hem after helping Mary scrub away the worst of the grime and dressing her in dry stockings, clean shoes, a fresh gown of pale green chambray, and a soft India shawl around her shoulders.

“But I can brush my own hair,” Mary told her now, “after I lie down for a little rest.”

The inn was as charming and comfortable as Lady Rowen had pronounced it, the landlord affecting the requisite astonishment to hear them drive up: sacre bleu, and after such a day of rain and wind. But it was all for the best; in good weather, his establishment was often full up to the garrets. He’d shrugged his shoulders admiringly (the gesture gone a bit stale with repeated use, but English tourists would expect a soupçon of Gallicism from him). You English with your très formidable coachmen, spitting through their teeth like fierce beasts. Eh, bien, no wonder they have such a mortal hand with the horses.

Still clucking over the charming barbarity of the occupying nation, he’d led them up the stairs to a simple chamber, walls freshly whitewashed and lace curtains swaying at the half-opened window. A young woman brought clean hot water and a bar of lavender-scented soap. Thomas did a splendid job of banking up the fire. Her books and portable writing desk were near to hand.

Stretching her neck and curving her back like a pampered housecat, Mary cast a greedy eye over a high, wide bedstead and thick feather bed. Just a little rest, she thought-a little stillness and serenity in which to anticipate a good meal- and it will be as though today’s spell of bad humor never happened.

“Yes, dear, I’m sure I’m all right,” she told Peggy now. “Run downstairs and have your supper. If you hurry, you can catch up with Thomas. Just make sure he’s told the kitchen to save some food for me.”

The girl didn’t need to be told twice. A brilliant smile, a lightning-quick curtsy, and she scampered down the back staircase, while Mary propped herself up against the pillows and cast her eyes over Jessica’s latest meandering, cross-written, and much-underlined letter.