Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

A troublesome daughter, recently become a beauty: … So tall, like Mama, so graceful and willowy and with Mama’s “goddess excellently bright” quality that none of us three ever quite managed, though I daresay we’re all quite all right in our ways.

I thought of sending her to town, to give the two of us a respite from each other. I might have asked her aunt Lady Grandin to take her, but Philamela’s coming out right now, and Philamela isn’t the prettiest of girls; her mother wouldn’t have wanted such a lovely cousin within eyeshot-bad enough having to hide Phila’s sister, Fannie, when suitors come calling. Maybe we’ll bring her out next year, Betts and Fannie have always been good friends, they’d be charming together and this year we’ll content ourselves with a cozy, merry country time for midsummer.

Or so I try to tell her, when we manage to speak at all. When she’s not running over to Rowen, to make insipid conversation with the young marchioness, who encourages her to be a ninny, I fear.

A host of responsibilities, to her estate:

… When I’m not half distracted by accounts.

And to the neighborhood as well:

… And when I’m not worn out trying to help the people in the village, as Mama would have done and as they rightly expect of me-but hungry children make me weep, the present Marchioness Susanna Stansell does her charitable duties most ineptly, and damn and double damn, Mary, I still miss Arthur so terribly. Two years, I can’t believe it. It’s bloody, sodding awful how much I miss him, Mary…

Her eyes had smarted a bit at that, even while she smiled at Jessie’s awful language. The family joke was that the Penley women needed to withdraw after dinner in order to spare the delicate sensibilities of the gentlemen at table.

I am all right, she thought, and I’m doing the right thing too. The least she could do, to hurry home after lingering too long on the continent. Jessie and Julia had taken care of her when she’d needed it. It was time she did her part for Jessie.

Very kind of Lady Rowen to have remained her friend all these years; profoundly generous to lend her the coach. What good fortune to be making the trip so comfortably, with coachman, footman…

And now this marvelously comfortable bed. A very big one too, for just one person. Which tended to lead one’s thoughts in a certain direction. Besoin d’aimer -the need to love. She’d learned the phrase in France, though it was probably Peggy and Thomas who’d brought it to mind today. One of the strongest of needs, even if people wouldn’t think it of a lady.

Whereas no one would wonder if a gentleman traveling alone might be thinking of more than his supper right about now. He’d be wanting warmth, consolation, diversion. And if none of the maids suited, he’d inquire whether any of the local girls were pretty and in want of a bit of blunt, with a consideration thrown in for the landlord’s recommendation. No need for a gentleman to travel without all the requisite comforts, while Mary would have to depend upon a particular book she’d purchased in Paris.

As always, Peggy had buried Les Bijoux Indiscrets on the bottom of the pile on the nightstand. Perhaps she’d picked up a bit of French on their travels, and had guessed what Monsieur Diderot had meant by a woman’s “indiscreet jewels.”

Or perhaps Thomas had. In any case, it wasn’t a book to read at table-a habit Mary and her sisters all practiced when they ate alone, and to hell with anyone who might deem it vulgar. She picked up Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and put her spectacles in her reticule.

Yawning and stretching, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. It was getting late, her hair still needed brushing, and- besoin d’aimer or not-she also wanted her supper.

The dining room was almost deserted. And Thomas, who usually watched over her while she ate, was nowhere to be seen. She glanced at her pocket watch; the inn’s other patrons would be in bed by now. Perhaps Thomas was on his way up the back stairs, to watch over her things. He must have decided that she’d be safe enough with hardly anyone to bother her down here.

The lights had burned down. With or without spectacles, it was much too dark for reading. But the glassware and linen in front of her were clean, and excellent smells still issued from the kitchen. There’s a last capon on the spit, the serving girl told her. We saved it for you, madame, as Monsieur Thomas requested. It’s fat and crispy, basted with brandy from Calvados, its juices drizzling into a pan of good local onions, turnips, and potatoes.

Will you have some, madame?

She nodded eagerly.

And will you be drinking cider or wine?

Cider, she was about to say, when her eye caught a glint of ruby across the room in the direction of the fireplace. Seated alone at a small table, face and body almost obscured by the shadow of low ceiling beams, a man was holding up a glass of wine, quite as if he were toasting her health.

Ah. Yes. Well.

She could barely make out his features. Surprising, then, the strength of her first impressions: a powerful material solidity, excellent tailoring and very good linen, a taste for mischief and a flair for the theatrical.

Her last night in France.

Ridiculous.

Dangerous.

And thank heaven she hadn’t taken out her spectacles.

He held himself muffled in darkness, wineglass between long, elegantly squared-off fingers, its stem angled so the dark red liquid would catch the firelight.

“Wine,” she told the girl standing at her elbow. “A small pitcher of red wine, s’il vous plait. ”

It would only be polite to return his toast.

And impossible to shy away from his challenge.

She raised her glass, he nodded, and they sipped their quite passable Bordeaux with rectitude and calm conviviality.

Her eyes must have adjusted to the room’s dimness. She could make out a few more details, even in the flickering light of a few low candles.

His chair was tipped back against a plastered wall, but even so, she could see thick black hair curled charmingly over his forehead. The sharp edge of a high, white collar, under a well-tied, almost dandyish cravat.

Perhaps she should have let Peggy brush out her hair. It usually fell into a fetching enough mop of ringlets, but with today’s rain and that awful wind…

The food the serving girl was setting down in front of her looked wonderful. A large leg of the chicken and a slice of the breast as well, hot and glistening from the spit.

She took a bite-oh, Lord, she was sad to be leaving France. The sauce especially, made with apple brandy… she hadn’t realized quite how ravenous she was.

Was he smiling over the rim of his glass?

She’d probably wolf down the food without doing it justice.

On the contrary. She felt herself eating it most extremely slowly and deliberately, under the steady greenish gaze from next to the fireplace.

His eyes were still in shadow. She’d felt their color rather than actually seen it. Lichen on rock, under a brook’s swift-moving water. Winter barely turned to spring.

He must have finished his supper. But he didn’t appear in any hurry, refilling his glass now from the pitcher in front of him and evidently content to watch (certain things, it seemed, remaining quite unchanged. She’d been so interested in the ways he’d changed that she’d quite taken for granted the ways he hadn’t).