Лорен Уиллиг - The Temptation of the Night Jasmine

And then there was Freddy Staines, who might be questioned if only Medmenham would ever leave his side. Staines hadn’t been part of the group the night before, having taken to his bed with an attack of la grippe that Robert suspected more aptly translated to the mother of all hangovers. Once he made his appearance on Christmas morning, he had been impossible to pry away from the rest of the pack. The four of them moved in concert, like a pack of dogs. They had gone together from Girdings to the village church, and then from the village church back to Girdings for the Duchess’s morris dancers, mummers’ plays, and other pseudo-medieval flummery. Robert had left them all in the hall, placing wagers on whether St. George, as played by the village blacksmith, was going to trip over his own spear.

They placed wagers on everything. So far, he had watched them wager on how many times the Vicar would say “um” in the course of his sermon (thirty-two); whether anyone would slip on that icy patch right in front of the steps (yes, but only because Innes crowded them into it, which was accounted a foul); and how many times Turnip Fitzhugh would walk right into the same sprig of mistletoe before remembering to duck (eight and still counting). When they started wagering on whether the Dowager Duchess wore drawers, Robert knew he had to get out. While the others were peering interestedly at the Duchess’s nether regions, he had ducked under that dangling mistletoe, slipped out the door of the hall, and kept right on going. Even a mere two rooms away, the air felt clearer and sweeter, free of the miasma of last night’s port that seemed to seep through the pores of their skin like rot.

Or maybe he was the rotten one. If they were rogues, then wasn’t he doubly so, for using them?

Grimacing, Robert rubbed his head. Life had been much simpler back in the Regiment, knowing one’s task and one’s enemy, knowing that one was fighting for the cause of right, and that it was honor to do so. The extermination of a traitor ought to be an honorable goal as well, but the means of it — the spying, the skulking — made him feel unclean.

Robert turned right, walking briskly through an abandoned music room and an anteroom of uncertain utility. The sound of his own strides echoed after him, pursuing him down the row of linked rooms like a phalanx of angry ancestors. At the end of the row, he came to the gallery, a vast rectangle of a room that stretched across a full half of the West Front of the house, the perfect place to stretch one’s legs on a cold afternoon.

Afternoon sunlight spilled through the long windows, turning the parquet floor the color of fresh honey. Silver threads sparkled in the ice blue upholstery, and even his ancestors in their heavy, gilded frames looked less grim than usual in the frank glow of the late afternoon sun.

Robert’s steps slowed as he realized that someone else had taken advantage of the sunshine and solitude. Halfway down the long room sat Charlotte, curled in a comfortable ball on a padded bench by the window.

There was a book in her lap, of course, tilted to catch the sunlight. She had tucked her feet up beneath her, tucking the long skirt of her green wool dress up around her for warmth. She sat with one cheek leaning against the cool of the windowpane, pulling her hair free from its pins so that it stood up unevenly against the window on one side and snaked down on the other. With the sunlight washing over her, she glowed like one of the illuminated capitals on a medieval manuscript, from the gold of her hair to the deep green of her dress and the rich red of the cover of the book in her pale hands.

She didn’t look up as he ventured nearer, all her attention bent upon the page in front of her.

Robert tilted his head to try to read the title. “ ‘ Evelina ’?”

“What?” Glancing wildly up, Charlotte dropped her book and cracked her head against the glass. “Owwwww.”

Robert winced in sympathy.

“I’m sorry,” he said, bending over to retrieve her book. From the look of the binding, it had been in an advanced state of dilapidation even before taking its latest plunge. Robert smoothed out a bent page, closed the cover, and handed it ceremoniously back to her. “I shouldn’t have startled you.”

“That’s all right,” said Charlotte, holding out one hand to take the book from him as she pressed the other to the back of her head. “I was just . . .”

“Elsewhere?” Robert provided for her.

“Very much so.” Charlotte looked tenderly down at her book with the sort of affection usually reserved for well-loved pets and very small children. “Evelina was just carried off by Sir Clement Willoughby!”

Having no idea who either party was, Robert couldn’t tell whether that was a cause for congratulation or condolence. “Is that good or bad?”

“Very bad,” Charlotte informed him. “But fear not, she manages to free herself from his vile clutches.”

“I am immensely reassured to hear that.” Robert looked quizzically down at her. “I gather you’ve seen this Evelina carried off by Sir What’s-His-Name before?”

“Many times,” Charlotte admitted. She regarded the battered binding critically. “I may need to get a new copy soon.”

Robert rather felt that would be in order.

“Shouldn’t you be watching the mummers?” he asked, with mock reproach.

Wriggling her legs out from under her, Charlotte cast about for an excuse. “I saw them last year?”

“And they’re awful,” said Robert drily.

Charlotte grimaced. “And they’re awful. But they do try so hard.”

“It might be less painful if they tried a little less hard.” Robert held out his hand to help her off the window seat, since she seemed to keep getting tangled in her own skirts. “Having St. George battle both Bonaparte and a group of maddened pygmies was certainly a unique concept.”

“It might have been worse,” said Charlotte, shaking out her skirts, which were sadly wrinkled from her sojourn by the window. There was a crease across one cheek where she must have been leaning against the edge of the drape. She looked flushed and comfortable and adorably rumpled. She shoved a stray wisp of her hair back behind her ear, a move that did little to right the rest of her coiffure. “Last year they had Mr. Pitt fighting off the Saracens with a broomstick.”

“I’m sure he’s capable of it,” said Robert diplomatically. “Should there be any Saracens to fight.”

“I believe they’re called Ottomans now,” said Charlotte. She tucked her book neatly under her arm. “I wonder if any of them still think of us as Normans.”

Robert had to confess that it wasn’t a problem that had ever presented itself to him before. “Were we ever?”

“Well . . .” Charlotte bit down on her lower lip as she considered the question. “Grandmama would like to think so, but I’ve found no documents going further back than the sixteenth century. All of the stories about the Lansdownes at the Battle of Hastings and Agincourt come from an Elizabethan chronicle that purports to tell the history of the family. I rather doubt that it’s entirely accurate.”

She looked at him so expectantly that Robert couldn’t quite bring himself to admit that he’d had no idea that they’d had any ancestors anywhere near Agincourt.

“You don’t believe it, then?” he heard himself asking, as if he had every idea what she were talking about.

“Doesn’t it strike you as more than a little bit suspicious that there aren’t any mentions of us at all before the Tudors? The Elizabethans had a lamentable tendency of making up ancestors,” she added confidingly. “Especially if they hadn’t any.”

“Are you saying we’re nothing but upstarts?”