Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

As well -she might have proclaimed him Prime Minister and Archbishop of Canterbury. You’re right as well -perhaps he could get her to put her signature to it; never before had she capitulated so readily in an argument. He relaxed his head onto the pillow and drew her closer. A celebration was in order.

“Though surely”-her voice was muffled and yet insistent-“you’ve realized that there’s only one London delegate and not two. Rather odd, it seems to me, even if I can’t see how to assign any significance to it…”

“What do you mean?”

Her eyes shone, very large and keen, behind the ovals of her spectacles.

“You mean you didn’t see that this Hollis and this Oliver are clearly the same man? Ah, I should have kept the relevant papers out to show you, but I thought for certain that you’d notice for yourself…”

Bloody little know-it-all of a bluestocking, even without the pigtails and pinafore. Yes, now that he’d sat up and had a look for himself-yes, she was quite correct. And no, he’d completely missed the singularity of it. For if you compared the informers’ descriptions of the two rabble-rousers from London, they readily coalesced into one tall, well-spoken, red-bearded man in Wellingtons and a brown coat. Same one who’d flirted with Peggy, and same one whom Kit had begun to imagine he knew personally.

“You see”-she pointed to certain passages in the documents-“the meetings are set for different nights, here and in Nottingham.”

Except for the last set of meetings, when Hollis (or should one call him Oliver?) had made a brief but rousing speech at midnight in Nottingham and then hurried on to Grefford to deliver the same set of remarks to Williams and company, down the lane beyond the foundry, in the dimly lit and dangerous hours before dawn.

“It would take him just about that long, don’t you agree, to walk from Nottingham to Grefford, though chances are he would have begged a ride on a wagon or cart.”

Kit shrugged. “I expect you’re right. He does seem very much the itinerant.”

“Both occasions when Peggy encountered him,” Mary said, “he had just disembarked from some public coach or another. And it’s rather striking, don’t you think,” she continued, her eyes wide and thoughtful, “that he doesn’t appear to be afraid to travel in broad daylight.”

What is she suggesting? But he knew her well enough to know that she was merely speculating on the possibilities. Unluckily for him, she didn’t seem to have any agenda at all.

Wait, why unlucky ? It would only be unlucky-her knowing so much of his business-if he were to persist in seeing her as an adversary and not (why, he wondered, did he find this so bloody damn difficult?) as an aide-an associate, a confederate.

A colleague? Well, colleague might be taking it a bit far.

“An interesting point,” he told her. “But not, as you say, one that yields much significance. Except perhaps to show that your… um, I mean the London Committees are thrifty, and have sent only one representative to this part of the Midlands. Perhaps he’s simply the best man they’ve got, and in excessively high demand.”

“He’s continuing on toward Manchester, it seems.”

“Nonetheless. The fact remains that he represents the London Committees-who are busy preparing for an insurrection.”

She nodded, winced a bit. “Yes, except…”

Just let it go, she thought. Allow him to get on with things for once, can’t you?

For it did seem clear that something was going to transpire. The reports, the words she’d overheard from Nick Merton… everything seemed to point to some sort of conspiracy.

Stupid to rehearse the feeble truth-that the thing simply didn’t feel right to her. Stupid, useless… especially when his arm around her felt so exactly and precisely right, clasped tight about her waist, his body so firm against hers, in their cozy cocoon of warm, if slightly ripe-smelling, air. A part of him rather more than firm, in truth-especially after she’d afforded that he’d been right about a few things.

Couldn’t she let the trivial demurrals go? What was she trying to prove anyway?

“It feels… inaccurate to me. I don’t understand what’s happening, but there’s something else-something rather singular.”

An anticlimax. Their limbs disentangling, cold air rushing into the widening gap between them. Neither of them even had the heart to throw anything at the other.

She expected that it was a lucky thing that he’d tidied up-made it easier, at any rate, to find her clothing.

“It’s all right.” His voice was leaden. “I’ll lace you. You needn’t go home to dinner looking like something out of a naughty engraving.”

Neither of them, she thought dully, had ever found much amusement in naughtiness, their shared sensibility running more to the conundrums of power and the mysteries of intimacy than to silly cartoons of portly people with their huge breasts and arses hanging out. For all the good, finally, that sensibility had done them. And not that it mattered anymore.

Except that it did matter. It mattered terribly.

And so, he thought, that’s the end of it. For if she were to persist in maintaining her illusions, her stupid, radical, bloody pastoral faith in the stout, simple, loyal workingmen of quaint, unchanging, picturesque Grefford… if she couldn’t trust him enough… if she weren’t willing to face reality with him at his side…

But what was she canting about now? Probably complaining that he was pulling the laces too tightly. As no doubt he was (he gave an extra, spiteful little tug, but she didn’t seem to notice).

“You do understand, don’t you,” she was saying,

“that I fully accept the Grefford part of the evidence. I think there will be men marching in the direction of Nottingham. It’s the London part I’m having difficulty with.”

Oh, Lord, she wasn’t going to suggest…?

“Is this really necessary, Mary? You’ve already said your piece. Thanks for your… attention, but…”

In for a penny, in for a pound, she told herself.

She turned to face him.

“No, listen to me. I would have said it more readily, but I knew how you’d respond-and I was a bit… intimidated, I expect. The London Committees-well, Richard told me…”

His mouth was contorted, eyes distended. For a moment she imagined that she’d be turned to stone if she continued to stare back at him while he was so angry.

She chose a spot on the wall and trained her gaze upon it.

“… that he ceased attending his London Hampden Club meetings because the entire reform society apparatus had become so distressingly defunct. Just a few nice old gentlemen in attendance, and they all think it’s still 1789. They have no connections with the workingmen in the country; most times they get together, they nod off to sleep over their port, reading Thomas Paine to one another. Of course, they might dream of summoning seventy thousand men, just as well as they might dream of seven men actually showing up for one of their suppers.”

His voice was flat. “Well, one way or another, and even without the assistance of one R. R. Morrice, your old gentlemen have managed to connect themselves to an awful lot of workingmen throughout the countryside. Or would you deny that, Mary, on the basis of the evidence I’ve shown you?”