Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

“Discovered by means of…?”

“A note to me. I found it in the seat of the gig.” The girl opened it and cleared her throat.

“Is that quite necessary?” Fred asked.

“ I think it is.”

I haven’t the heart for a Season next year, Betts. The heart I thought I had is quite broken, I feel such a fool… And so I think I’d better marry quickly-someone rich enough, anyway, and get the whole grim business done with. And if your uncle does chance to ask after me…

“What the devil?” Kit exclaimed, at the same time as Mary demanded to know what in the world he’d done to cause this.

“Nothing. I swear it. Explained a bit about Metternich over supper at Cauthorn.”

“Treated her like a rational creature.” Mary sighed. “As though you didn’t know how charming that can be, from a handsome man in evening dress. Oh, dear.”

“And as though you didn’t know”-Elizabeth turned an angry face to her aunt-“how infatuated Lord Ayres was with you. ”

“Don’t speak so loudly,” Mary said. “Mr. Frayne is a terrible scandalmonger.”

“All very well,” Kit said, “for you to say at this juncture.”

“It was nothing. He’d be there mooning about in the forest, when I’d be returning from meeting you…”

The intruder in the forest… Fannie getting her heart broken, coming to look for Kit.

“Well, it’s disgusting, is all I can say,” Elizabeth said, “the two of you at your age…”

“What?” It shouldn’t matter, Mary thought, especially in the midst of the crisis like the present one. Shouldn’t, but it did. At your age … how dare the little chit? “Are the two of us so superannuated that we mayn’t be allowed a little married pleasure?”

“Certainly, if you knew how to take it reasonably, like my mama and papa, when he was alive. Well, we could tell-couldn’t we, Fred?-mornings when they’d be gazing foolishly at each other over the breakfast table, even if we were too young quite to understand…” She began to blush, as Fred had been doing for quite some time.

“Still, Betts is right.” He put his arm about his sister’s shoulder. “It was our good fortune to grow up in such a household.”

“As it was mine,” Mary said softly.

But Elizabeth ( Gracious, she’s a Penley after all, Mary thought) evidently had a few more opinions on the subject.

“What’s not all right is a couple of a certain age sneaking about and misleading those around them into thinking they’re out of love and… available.”

Kit gave a low whistle, of… agreement, Mary thought.

“Especially when one can’t come near either of them for the contagion of a… well, an erotic sort of mood.”

Fred groaned, but his sister wouldn’t be dissuaded.

“Because Mama was right about you, Aunt Mary, a few months ago when she told Aunt Julia that you remained a spoiled baby, and simply had no idea… what it would really be like…”

The blue-diamond eyes had filled with tears, but Elizabeth sniffled them back.

“… to, to lose someone who’d loved you as no one would ever love you again. Really to lose him and not simply to play at it… poor Mama.”

Had Jessica really said that about her?

She took a long, deep breath.

“Well,” she said, “I shouldn’t have wished to hear it, but it was almost worth it for Elizabeth’s pronouncing her mama right about anything. ”

“That’s all very well,” Fred said, “but Fannie and Lord Ayres shouldn’t be running off to marry, just to teach someone a lesson.”

“And Lady Grandin will never forgive a one of us.”

“She won’t need to,” Mary replied. “Nor will she ever know any of this happened.”

“Ah?” Kit raised his eyebrows. “How’s that?”

“Because they won’t marry. Because you and I shall go get them back.”

“Well,” Kit said, “your family’s produced another one, haven’t they? Despite all my sister-in-law’s best efforts.”

They’d taken the curricle, after sending Fred and Elizabeth home to tell Jessie that Fannie had a cold and would be remaining at the Halseys’ for another day or two, with Miss Kimball to nurse her and Lord Ayres to bring them back when she was well again.

“Elizabeth was wise,” Mary said, “to hide Miss Kimball, and Cathy was an excellent, discreet choice. Oh, dear, and now I truly must find a way to help raise funds for a village cistern…”

“Cistern?”

Ah yes, she’d never explained about the cistern. Not too difficult to sum it up, though, for it seemed he’d learned a bit about engineering in the course of his military career.

“I’m no expert.” He’d knit his brow, rather engagingly, she thought. “But I think I know what one would inquire of an expert, and how to frame the questions.”

His face changed just then, in response to a traveler coming in their direction. “Ah, good evening, Mr. Greenlee,” he called.

The carpenter was returning from Grefford astride a small, neat cob, his long legs rather dangling down the horse’s sides. She’d never paid the man much attention-well, why should she? So many people lived and worked on the Stansell estate-but now she remembered Kit’s childhood story about the stallions in the paddock. Clearly a kind man, and rather nice-looking as well now that she noticed. Spare, sinewy, even at his age-she chided herself for the condescending tone of that.

Not a very inquisitive man, though. No bothersome questions about what they might be doing out here in the rain: he simply wished them a pleasant evening and hoped the weather might clear.

“Well, then, Lord Christopher and my lady, I’ll be on my way…” Putting his broad-brimmed hat back on his head, and taking the reins in a long, graceful hand with elegantly squared-off fingers. Callused, of course, from his work, but…

A great many things had come clear in a very short time.

Good night and Godspeed.

And the very same to yourself, Mr. Greenlee.

“Well,” Mary said a few moments later, “if the wishes of our near and dear ones can count for anything…”

She stopped then, blushing for the strangeness of referring to the estate carpenter at Rowen as near and dear .

“It’s all right,” Kit said. “I know.”

“How long have you known?”

“Not very. Only since I came home this time. No one told me; it simply was apparent, as it was to you just then. He’s a very good man, you know, and he’s helped me with little things whenever he’s had the opportunity. One comes to know a certain sort of thing, it seems, when one is ready to know it. And I… I rather like knowing it’s he, odd as it must sound.”

She tried to get another look at the man from over her shoulder. But the road had curved away.

“Though I could have wished to get some of his height,” Kit said now.

“He’s on his way to Rowen. To the dower house, do you think?”

“I believe that’s possible, yes.”

They were silent then, for some time afterward, thinking of the past’s hold on the present-their thoughts then turning to less pleasant future eventualities, if they weren’t able to stop the young couple and turn them back.

They tried two inns just the other side of Grefford, but no one answering to the couple’s description had been seen at either of them-though at the second inn, they did have the dubious pleasure of barging in on another eloping pair. Both times, Kit’s aristocratic preening helped them secure the landlords’ cooperation-thank heaven, Mary thought, even as she wondered what Mr. Greenlee would have thought to see it.