Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

Ignoring the lateness of the hour, she continued her perusal, all the while twisting a lock of her hair over her forehead in a pretty, absentminded way that might have led some people to believe she wasn’t extracting every possible atom of information from the pages spread out in front of her.

“Will he ever come?”

The servants’ rooms upstairs were particularly airless tonight, and Peggy had thrown off her coverlet in despair of getting to sleep at all. If only the rain would come and make things fresh again.

She had an extra candle. Perhaps she could pass the time by doing some sewing. It might make her sleepy; the cloak Lady Christopher had told her she could have would need to be shortened, though Peggy was grateful that it was cut so full in the front.

The only problem was that she’d forgotten to bring it upstairs with her. Still, Lady Christopher often stayed up to read or write in her journal. Peggy would be able to tell from the seam of light below the lady’s door. If she were still up, Peggy doubted her employer would mind the interruption. For even in the midst of her own complicated comings and goings these past days, Lady Christopher had been most unusually kind and understanding. Lighting a candle, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders, Peggy padded out the door of her room to the staircase.

Only a week to wait.

The stairs Peggy had taken were particularly squeaky ones. But Nick Merton, a flight up in the attic, had hardly taken any notice of the noise. Nor was he bothered by the stale, still air he and the other local temporary boys had to breathe, cooped up as they were at the very top of the house. The straw pallet he lay on was quite comfortable-newer and rather larger, if truth be told, than the one Nick shared with his youngest brother at home. In any case, Nick’s own thoughts were far too interesting to admit distraction from stray late-night household rumbles, creaks, and clatterings.

A week and a day, to be more precise.

Nice to have such a full belly. The food was good here too, besides being plentiful. He stretched out his long legs and arms and grinned in the darkness, imagining himself on a raft, buoyed on waves of the breathing (some quiet, some raspier) of the boys asleep on every side of him, floating out somewhere in the middle of the ocean he’d never seen.

A week and a day had a nice round sound to it-oratorical, almost a scriptural ring to it. Nick no longer read the Bible-there were so many other stirring things to read-but when he thought about something really important, he liked to put a ringing cadence to it. Like that excellent speech Mr. Oliver had delivered.

Good man, and there’d be others like him in London, who knew how to act, to call out large numbers of men in a noble cause. Nor was a week and a day really so long to wait-for the moment when everything would change. When the last should finally be first and Albion’s real rulers rise up to claim what was theirs, and when Nick’s dad wouldn’t have to sneak about like a criminal for having spoke his mind, and his mum might get a rest now and then from weaving and the hungry babies still at home.

Not a long wait at all, even if it seemed that way. Because sixteen-year-old Nicholas Merton felt he’d been waiting all his young life for the New World the London delegate had promised him.

My Dear Matthew,

It is with the deepest regret and not a little chagrin that I write to inform you of my changed intentions…

She’d made a fair copy from the original she’d written the night before. Same words, though-which was rather a wonder, given the difference in her state of mind today.

All or nothing; post or burn it. More prudent to burn it, forget whatever fancy had caused her to write it in the first place. Matthew would be a good husband; they’d have exactly the sort of serene, satisfying life she wanted.

Burn it instead of blotting and folding it, as she seemed to be doing, and now sealing and addressing it. She corked the ink bottle and stared up at nothing in particular from over the writing desk resting on the coverlet atop her bent knees. And then, as though searching within herself for anything left unsaid, she closed her eyes and leaned back for a moment against the pillows heaped behind her on the bed.

She opened them again. Nothing to add or emend. She’d post it tomorrow.

Would Matthew be surprised? In truth, he’d probably always suspected how hard it would be for her to break her connection with the husband she couldn’t agree with on anything. He’d probably be less surprised than angry, or perhaps disappointed that she’d known herself so little. No doubt upon reflection he’d decide himself pleased to be well out of it.

A pity. It had been such an agreeable notion to throw her lot in with a man who offered so many solutions to so many of her problems. It simply wasn’t the right notion-especially when you respected the man so heartily. Respected him enough to believe he deserved a wife who wanted him in her bed quite as wildly and passionately as Mary had recently rediscovered it was possible to want someone.

Would Kit be very angry that he wouldn’t be able to look for a new wife as soon as he’d hoped to? Ah, well, at thirty-two, a man’s time was still cheap. While for a woman of thirty-one? (For in retrospect she didn’t know whether to feel regretful or wildly amused at the horrified look on Lord Ayres’s face while she’d sniffled, wiped her eyes, and tried to keep from guffawing at his importunities.)

Still, she had a few more good years in her.

Sorry, Kit. You’ll simply have to wait a little longer to be free of me. Not that long. There’d be another lover sooner or later, an affair of her more typically pleasant, practical, well-managed sort.

She turned her head in the direction of her door. Now that she thought of it, the soft rapping had probably been going on for some time while her distracted mind rejected it as one might slap away a gnat. She called out her apologies and bade her visitor come in.

“It’s only me, your ladyship.” Peggy dipped into a brief curtsy. “Come to see if I might take the russet cloak you promised, for to… to turn up the hem, you know. Beg pardon for the lateness of the hour, but I can’t sleep, you see, ma’am.”

“Nor can I. Of course, when one is waiting… for a rainstorm, sometimes…”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Well, the cloak’s in the press. Of course you may take it.”

But instead, at the sound of the explosion outside, Peggy had thrown herself into Mary’s arms, the two of them huddled together for what had felt like a very long and noisy moment.

Thank heaven she’d corked the ink bottle.

Which of us screamed? Shamefaced, Mary rather suspected it had been herself.

Was that sudden loud popping and cracking noise a fusillade of pistols or muskets?

It wouldn’t be a cannon. No, of course they wouldn’t have a cannon. But what was that flash?

Her stomach clenched with the sudden suspicion that she’d been terribly wrong not to tell Kit about what Nick Merton had said about weapons.

The local revolutionists… she’d been a fool… and if anyone got hurt, it would be her fault…

“What did you say, Peggy?”

“I asked if you supposed it might be fireworks, Lady Christopher. It give me a start at first, but then I remembered what we seen in Rome-do you remember?-and the sound was very like.”