Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

And as one wished one could manage one’s dreams.

For the quaint yet oddly disturbing dream he’d had last night had come back to haunt him. He’d found himself in a large, crowded room-or was it a street?-surrounded by Britons of all sort. Somehow, he knew that there were seventy thousand men present, most of whom appeared to be bleeding. (There’s violence already-Lord Sidmouth had suddenly appeared, whispered this to him, and disappeared back into the crowd.) But even as they bled, it seemed that all seventy thousand men were pointing, whispering, and laughing at Lord Kit, while Mr. Oliver stood on a podium and delivered a Latin oration.

Absurd. Meaningless.

But if one must dream…

For he’d also had some very pleasant ones last night. Think of those. Ah yes, as he slid onto the padded and tufted blue velvet upholstery. Dreams and memories too of past carriage journeys, the more recherché positions one could assume, as they had assumed during some well-remembered rides. (Times during the first year of their marriage, when the Curzon Street furniture had become too tame for them.) The positions worked better, though, with the help of extra carriage robes and cushions, particularly for tired knees on the jolting floor of the coach.

Good, excellent-Belcher had already laid the cushions and neatly folded blankets on the backward-facing seat.

Yes, let’s go, tell Frayne I’m ready. The valet nodded. Kit leaned back; Belcher climbed up to take his seat next to Frayne. The carriage jolted slightly and started down the avenue.

But he still wasn’t quite at his ease. Because they hadn’t undertaken this journey merely for its erotic possibilities. The aim of this journey was a serious one.

To find out more about the dangers threatening his nation-from a man he’d sworn never to speak to again.

Still, Mary was right. He owed it to himself to speak to Morrice. Could the London radicals really call out such large numbers of men?

And if Morrice appeared to be lying, if he really was as vile and low a person as Kit had been trying to convince himself he was for the last nine years…

Well, nothing would be lost, would it?

Except, perhaps, a sneaking hidden hope he’d barely admitted to himself of a possible reconciliation. Ah, well, if such a thing were impossible, better to know now.

Just get all the information. Understand the situation. Easier that way to follow orders. No doubt in the end he’d do exactly as he’d been told. Wait until the moment arose, then call out the militia, suppress the rebellion, arrest the Williamses and the Mertons, the Turners and the Watsons and the Weightmans (no surprise how well he knew their names by now).

Difficult but necessary. Banal, ordinary, clear, and inescapable as the day. Duty wasn’t a problem.

It was honor that presented more of a challenge. Honor and its Janus face, betrayal.

He’d promised Mary that he’d confront the man who’d betrayed him.

They passed through the gates of the park at Rowen. The gamekeeper saluted him from the side of his lodge.

He’d promised her… Not in so many words-but wasn’t that the curse and the blessing of loving an intelligent woman? He knew, and she knew, and she also knew that he knew that she knew… Yes, all right, enough of that -each and both of them knew perfectly well what he’d promised her.

Which was to confront all the betrayers in the case. Including the betraying little wretch that had been his younger self.

… Cheating and lying, whoring and not touching me for weeks… ignoring Richard just as you’d been ignoring me…

Yes, quite possibly one could count some of that as a betrayal of those one loved. A betrayal of oneself too, not to speak of the friend he’d… oh, all right, he had loved his friend Richard, even if it wasn’t so easy to use the word about a boyhood companion.

Betrayals all round. How cruel their younger selves had been.

Perhaps, he thought, we owe a debt of honor to our poor, flawed, frightened and deluded younger selves, to become the people we should have been, if only we could have.

The carriage had entered the gates at Beechwood Knolls.

Stupid name, the old marquess had sometimes muttered, Beechwood bloody Knolls. Even if it were merely a brewer’s holiday villa, purchased a scant three generations ago, one ought give it a more venerable name.

Never mind (as Kit had been astonished to learn, when Mary had taken him to be introduced to her parents) that they liked it just as it was.

“Well, it’s not exactly a country house.” Mrs. Penley had had an enchanting smile, and an intimate, confiding way of taking the arm Kit offered, even while he’d felt her husband glowering at his back when they went in to dinner. “Even with the wings and ells we’ve added onto it, it’s really only a house in the country, you see.”

He’d been charmed, but not convinced.

What a humorless young dunce I was, Kit thought: serious, ponderous, proud, and yet absurdly impatient, and about all the wrong things. Though hardly alone in that-damn it, Mary hadn’t had the patience either to listen to him, nights he’d spent wondering who his real father was and simultaneously fearing it above all things. Which anxieties, he supposed, hadn’t helped him stand up to the idiots at White’s.

The real wonder, it seemed to him now, was that they’d come as far as they had-that they’d be traveling together and stopping at an inn tonight, openly, as Lord and Lady Christopher. Still, given their past-and the unclarity of their present-he could only shudder at what the outcome of this journey might be.

The Rowen carriage had passed beyond the hedge. He could see the house in its entirety now-simple, rambling, inviting, and comforting as usual.

A comfort as well, her silhouette against the grayish bark of the giant tree as she rose to greet him. Looking far prettier (as the coach came nearer) than in last night’s dreams, or even than she had this morning.

Or was that how love worked itself out over time? Did familiarity have its own charms? Or was he simply growing old, staid, and avuncular as the young people at the assembly last night had made him feel?

Not old at all. And he’d prove it too.

Which led him nearly to tumble out of the carriage in his haste to grab her up, hand her in, get away and onto the road as soon as they could.

As though he could have cut short Mrs. Grandin’s polite inquiries as to his family’s comings and goings- because of course Elizabeth had reported Gerry and Georgy’s attendance at the assembly. And then one had to make all the happily optimistic responses (thank heaven he could speak them truly) to Mary’s sister’s well-meaning hopes for the present marquess’s health.

Neighborly. Civilized. And in Kit’s current state of confusion, nearly unbearable, until at long last her things were packed, she seated, their final good-byes made, he and she side by side, surrounded by all that padded and tufted velvet, Mary seeming every bit as befuddled as he.

Quite as though she hadn’t pawed so deliciously at him this morning, she now appeared shy and oddly formal. The few inches of space between their bodies might have been the Channel at Dover.

Most distressingly, she was quite uncharacteristically tongue-tied. Which didn’t do much for his own loquacity.

“Your sister is looking well,” he managed finally.

She nodded, evidently grateful that he’d thought of anything at all to say.