Pam Rosenthal - The Slightest Provocation

“Ayres won’t drive all night,” Kit said. “They have to be at an inn along the way.”

Mary was less optimistic. “Unless they’ve taken a less direct route, to hinder us from finding them. Perhaps he has a friend he plans to stay with.

“If they do marry,” she said more softly, “I shall never forgive us for having a hand in it.”

“Not very good for us, then.” His voice was equally soft, even as he urged the horse forward along a road that was becoming muddier.

“But at the very least you will have to forgive yourself,” he told her some minutes later. “Not entirely, and never in the very small hours of the morning when you wake-but day by day, to get through it.”

She was silent and so was he, for a time.

“A man died because of me.” His voice betrayed no emotion. “In Spain. And another man lost his leg. Because of me and in some sense because of you too, me being so keen on dying grandly in battle, to prove… I don’t know what anymore… to prove something to you about my greatness of spirit and how much you’d lost by not appreciating me more. To make you mourn me and hate yourself forever.”

His first time actually fighting, he told her. Heedlessly bold in the face of an ambush.

“The time I got that extravagant wound. I never thought I’d be telling you…”

He did so in a very few words, against the dripping rain and rustling trees, how his younger self had charged into combat, stupidly, needlessly, like so many reckless young Englishmen, in duels or on the battlefield. Happened all the time.

Except it shouldn’t happen when the gentleman was an officer, entrusted with responsibility for others. Too bad he’d learned this lesson so belatedly. Half-delirious from his own wound, helpless to stop his ears against the cries, the sawing of bone. He hadn’t started out caring about anyone but himself, but when one heard a man scream like that…

She laid her hand on his forearm. “And afterward?”

“Not much to say,” he told her. “Duty. The dull business of trying to make it right when you never really can. The man who died had four daughters. I’ve tried to help his widow; the hardest thing to bear is her gratitude. And I did try to be a better officer, to remember what’s more important than glory. To get on with things, you know.”

“Yes,” she said, “to get on with things.”

“The Portleigh Arms is up ahead,” he said a while later. “Do you remember?”

An absurd question.

In any case they’d be able to change horses. The place had once had a good stable; it was the best of the local inns for some miles.

“They might have stopped the night here.” Mary essayed to control the quaver in her voice. “Of course,” she continued, “they’d ask for separate bedchambers.”

“As we did,” he said.

For all the separate bedchambers had signified.

Telling her hadn’t been so awful as he’d feared. Natural, somehow matter-of-fact. She knows the worst of me now, he thought. And in truth the telling seemed to have freed his mind, to drift among memories of another elopement.

Smiling at each other, downstairs in the bar of the Portleigh Arms. Drinking wine-it hadn’t been good wine; not that they’d have known the difference. Hurrying up the stairs, retreating to their chaste separate bedchambers. Somehow he’d forgotten to bring a dressing gown. Tiptoeing barefoot in his shirt and drawers, down the corridor to her room. Knocking so softly-terrified of being found out, believing as he had that anyone would care.

She’d opened her door at the first rap of his knuckles. Equally terrified, she’d fairly pulled him inside.

They’d stared at each other, he in his shirt, she in a high-necked night rail. Pretty thing, almost nunnish, austere white folds from her shoulders to her very white bare toes curled against the cold of a painted wood floor. So far as he could recall, she’d only worn it that one time, as though-once the vows were pronounced and they were therefore adults-he wouldn’t have found it provocative enough. He’d never asked about it; in future he’d be clearer about what he liked.

If there really were to be a future for them. If that vastly silly other elopement they’d helped set in motion could be stopped. If it truly were possible to get on with things. Together.

They’d reached the Portleigh Arms.

Cursing himself for having ever cast his eye upon the troublesome Miss Grandin, he helped his wife down from the box and kissed her cheek.

She smelled of wet wool. Her short upper lip trembled, and her hair fell into tighter curls than usual on her forehead.

“I’ll see about getting a new horse,” he said, “and then I’ll follow you in.”

She nodded.

“Courage,” he whispered.

But she’d run across the yard and had already pushed the front door open.

Courage, he repeated silently.

She loved coaching inns: a fire in a dim room, the variety of accent and countenance, paths crossing and destinies conjoining, if only for an exchange of compliments or a flirtatious glance over a glass of awful claret. In the mornings people were rushed and rather cross. But at night, especially if she had friends or a footman about, she loved to nod to interesting-looking strangers, wonder about their lives and fortunes, and (keeping a little silver knife tucked in her sleeve) act the woman of mystery.

Tonight, however, she wanted no mystery at all. No surprises, no adventures. Only an untouched Fannie Grandin.

The bar was mostly deserted. No one but a few men in their cups, one of them telling a long story to the young woman who was stifling a yawn and hoping there’d be something in it for her.

No Fannie, and no Lord Ayres either. She’d have to speak to the landlord. Turning quickly, she tripped over an uneven stone in the floor. Which caused her to bump her hip against a table, mutter an impolite word, and suddenly feel every eye in the room fixed upon her. No silver knife up her sleeve tonight-she backed away carefully, hoping that Kit would be along soon.

Wait. Every eye in the room wasn’t fixed upon her. One head was turned away. The pillar to her left must have blocked her view at first. But just a few steps from where she stood, a head of luxuriant black hair shed its lavender scent and was turned resolutely toward the wall.

She’d eviscerate him.

Grasping each well-tailored shoulder, she found herself overwhelmed by the smell of raw beef commingled most unappetizingly with the lavender. She began to giggle even before quite comprehending what was so wondrously funny.

Lord Ayres turned languidly in his chair, to stare at her with one moist violet eye, the other hidden by bloodstained fingers grasping a large slab of meat, juices thinly trickling into a fold of his cravat.

“Well you might laugh,” he muttered.

Kit had appeared at her elbow. “Raw potato is surprisingly effective,” he told the young man (just a bit too solicitously, in Mary’s opinion), “and rather easier on the linen.”

“And Fannie?” she demanded. “Where’s Fannie, you pomaded ninny?”

Ayres grimaced. “Sleepin’, I daresay. Cool as a cucumber, that one is.”

Kit waited downstairs while the landlord took Mary up to Fannie’s room. They found her sprawled across her bed, seemingly quite absorbed in Debrett’s.

“Thank God you’re safe.” Mary had hoped to hug or in some way to comfort her, but found herself constrained to do so.