A Rogue's Downfall, page 18
He drew a handkerchief from his pocket, dried her face and her eyes with it, and handed it to her. “Blow,” he said.
She drew away from him and blew. And bit her lower lip as he took the handkerchief away from her again and stuffed it back in his pocket.
“Tell me what the nothing consisted of,” he said.
“I smashed all the wine bottles and glasses,” she said.
“Over someone’s head?” he asked. “How spectacular! I am sorry in my heart that I missed the show. Tell me what happened.”
She told him.
“And found yourself in massive disgrace with Her Majesty, I suppose,” he said.
“Yes.” She was regaining her composure as he watched.
“What happened to the one side of your face?” he asked, feeling fury gather like a ball in his stomach. He knew with utter certainty what had happened.
Her face trembled almost out of control again. “She struck me,” she said. “She called me a slut.”
Pistols at dawn. How he itched to be able to challenge the woman to meet him. Right smack between the eyes. That was where he would place the bullet. He would let her shoot first and then make her stand there in frozen terror waiting for him to discharge his own pistol. And he would.
He reached out to set an arm about her slim shoulders and drew her against him again. She did not resist. She was shivering.
“I will avenge that for you, little bird,” he said. “My honor on it. Do you believe I have any honor?”
She did not answer his question. “I suppose I overreacted,” she said. “It was my fault, after all. It is just that I have never been struck in my life. And the face seems a particularly insulting place to be hit. And in public.”
She pulled back from him and smiled at him.
“It does not matter,” she said. I will not be staying here long. I am going to teach in a village school. My home village. I will be among people I know. And I think I will enjoy teaching children. I shall be going soon.”
“What has happened to the young, handsome, virile, prosperous farmer?” he asked. “Has he withdrawn his offer?”
She hesitated for only a moment. “I do not love him,” she said firmly. “I do not believe it is right to marry without love, do you? What a foolish question. You do not believe in love. But for me it is not right. So my future is all settled. My happy future.”
“Is it?” he asked her. “You have been granted the employment?”
“I am just waiting to hear from the parson,” she said. “It is a mere formality. He is bound to say yes. He was a friend of Papa’s.”
Ah. Another impossible dream. Another humble, impossible dream. He smiled at her, picturing her for no fathomable reason seated in a rocking chair, her head bent to the baby suckling contentedly at her breast. The dark-haired baby.
She was fully recovered. “I am all right,” she said. “You had better return to Mrs. Hunter. I am sure she did not enjoy being abandoned at such an interesting moment. She will, I do not doubt, be growing cold. In more ways than one, sir.”
He smiled slowly at her.
“You are going to come to a bad end, you know,” she said. “What if I had been Lady Myron? Or Mrs. Delaney? Or Flossie? Or Nancy?”
He could feel amusement bubbling out of him.
“You think it is funny,” she scolded. “It is not. Someone is going to get hurt. With any luck it will be only you with a broken head.”
“That’s my little bird,” he said appreciatively. “Tongue sharpened at both edges and pointed at the tip. Take my arm. I am going to take you back to the house.”
“Mrs. Hunter—” she began.
“—may go hang for all I care,” he said. “I am taking you back home. It can be either on my arm or slung over my shoulder. The choice is yours.”
“Well, if you put it in that gentlemanly way,” she said, “I shall make my free choice. Your arm, I think.”
“Now,” he said, guiding her around overhanging branches, “let me regale you with my life history, shall I? You told me yours early one morning a week or so ago. I shall return the favor if you think you can bear it.”
And so he did what he had never done with any woman before. He let her into his life.
He did not even fully realize he had done it until he thought about it later, standing at the window of his room in unaccustomed solitude, waiting for everyone else to return from the picnic. He talked without stopping, knowing that despite her spirited efforts to pull herself together, she was in reality very close to collapse and still to a certain extent in shock. She leaned against him as they walked in a manner that would have been provocative in any other woman or under any other circumstances. But he knew that she leaned because her legs were unsteady and her head dizzy.
And so he talked to her and knew that despite her distress she listened. She even asked him some questions about his mother and about his two married sisters and their children, his nieces and nephews.
He took her up to her room when they reached the house after instructing a footman in the hall to have a hot drink and some laudanum sent up to Miss Mangan.
“You will throw them into consternation in the kitchen,” she said. “I do not have maid service.”
Fury knifed into him again. “Well, then,” he said, having taken her to her room and into her room, despite her look of surprised inquiry, “I will perform one service of a maid for you myself. Hand me a brush. Your hair looks rather like a bush after a severe wind storm.”
“What gallantry,” she said, but her eyes looked wary.
“Sit down,” he instructed her, gesturing her to the stool before a dressing table mirror. He drew out the remaining pins from her hair and began to brush it, teasing the brush through the tangles at first. He kept brushing even when her hair was smooth. He could remember doing the same for his mother numerous times as a boy. She had suffered from bad headaches and had always claimed that it was soothing to have someone draw a brush through her hair.
Patricia Mangan had beautiful hair, he noticed. Thick and wavy and shining and waist-length and actually more blond than brown. The style she normally wore it in was doubtless her aunt’s idea. Though perhaps at the parsonage too she had been advised to tame its wantonness.
The hot tea and the laudanum were a long time coming. Flossie gawked when she came flouncing in with them. She left with considerably more respect in her step and with a shiny half guinea in her pocket.
“I really do not need the laudanum,” Patricia said, rising from the stool and turning to him a face that was blushing charmingly.
“But you will take it,” he said. “And you will lock your door after I have left and rest. You will refuse to be roused for the rest of the day. Will that give you time enough to recover?”
She nodded.
“I shall take my leave of you, then, little bird,” he said.
It was something he did by instinct, without the medium of thought. Something he might have done to a sister who had been hurt and whom he had comforted. He cupped her face with his hands, pushing his fingers into the silkiness of her hair, and lowered his head to touch his lips to hers.
Except that with a sister he would have raised his head after the merest touch, not lingered there, feeling the trembling of her lips beneath his own.
Except that a sister would not have looked at him afterward with huge unblinking eyes.
Except that with a sister he would not have stood outside her closed door a few moments later, gulping air, waiting for his knees to reform themselves beneath him so that they might assist his legs in getting him to his own room.
A stupid thing to have done, he told himself. Remarkably stupid.
Life for the next week was not as bad as it might have been. Patricia guessed that her aunt was embarrassed by the memory of her outburst at the picnic— it would doubtless appear ungenteel to her. And so she said nothing to her niece about it. Patricia was left alone to sleep for the rest of that day, and in the days to come she became her aunt’s quiet shadow once more.
No one else paid her any attention with the exception perhaps of Mr. Ware, who went out of his way to avoid her. Not even Mr. Bancroft took any notice of her, for which fact she was profoundly thankful. She was very much afraid for the first day or two that he might make a public scene, demanding that her aunt apologize to her or something horribly mortifying like that.
On the contrary. He appeared to redouble his attentions to Nancy and Mrs. Peabody, sending them into a positive flutter of expectation. If he was still carrying on with Lady Myron or Mrs. Hunter or Mrs. Delaney, there were no outward signs of it during the days following the picnic. He seemed to have put all else aside in order to concentrate on bringing his courtship to happy fruition.
Patricia refused to allow herself to mourn. He had been kind to her. Yes, amazingly for such a man, he had been. And when he had taken her face in his hands and kissed her lips—no man had done that since Patrick had smacked heartily at them the night before he left to join his regiment—he had been giving comfort as if to a child or a younger sister.
Oh, yes, she had no illusions. And so there was no point at all in allowing herself to become heartsick. That she loved him was her own foolishness. It was something she would not fight, because she knew it was something she would keep with her for a long time to come, and his kiss was something she could relive perhaps for the rest of her days. But she would not allow it to upset the quiet equilibrium of her days.
Something else did that. She had a reply from the parson at home. He wished he had known sooner of her interest in teaching the schoolchildren. He had recommended the hiring of a teacher just two months ago, and one had begun her duties just last month. He remembered Miss Mangan with fondness and wished her happiness and God’s blessings on her future.
Oh, yes, it upset her. She had counted upon this new idea of hers so much. She had dreamed of the escape it would bring her and the independence and sense of worth and self-respect. But she would not give up. Now that she had thought seriously of taking employment, she was not going to crawl back into her shell. She would try again—somehow. Perhaps her uncle would help her. He was quiet and totally dominated by his wife, but he was a sensible and a kindly man, she believed. Perhaps he would know how she might come by employment. She would ask him after the guests had gone home.
And then there was the other upset, the one she had thought herself fully prepared for. The betrothal. Nancy to Mr. Bancroft.
Patricia was in the drawing room after dinner two evenings before the party was to end, though she had not been at dinner. There was no space for her at the dining room table while their guests were with them, she had been told three weeks ago. But she had a function in the drawing room. She was seated behind the tea tray, pouring tea.
When the gentlemen joined the ladies after their port, Mr. Bancroft made his way immediately to Nancy’s side and proceeded with the customary gallantries. Patricia, as usual, insisted upon feeling only amused at what she heard. And then, when Mrs. Peabody had joined them and when somehow he had gathered about them almost all the ladies—Patricia had the strange impression that he had maneuvered it so, though she did not know how he had done it—he took Nancy’s hand in his, raised it to his lips, and gazed with warm intensity into her eyes as he spoke.
“I have asked for and been granted a private interview with your father tomorrow morning, Miss Peabody,” he said. “I doubt I shall have a wink of sleep tonight, such is the anxiety of my heart. It is my fondest hope that by this time tomorrow I will be the happiest of men.”
Nancy knew just how to behave. She blushed very prettily, lowered her eyes, opened her fan and fluttered it before her heated face, and answered in a voice that was little more than a whisper—but since everyone was hushed, it carried to the farthest corner of the room.
“I do not know what can be so important that you must speak to Papa in private, sir,” she said. She allowed herself a peep upward. “But you deserve to be happy, I am sure.”
He was returning her hand to his lips when Patricia decided she could be of no further use behind the tea tray. Everyone had been served with a first cup, but someone else must pour the second. With the present steadiness of her hands—or lack thereof—she would doubtless fill the saucers as well as the cups. She slipped quietly from the room.
And lay fully clothed on top of her bedcovers for long hours into the night, staring upward at the canopy, a pillow clasped in her arms.
He had coldly plotted his revenge. No, perhaps not quite coldly. It had never been his way to hurt anyone more than that person deserved to be hurt, though he had never pretended to be either a considerate or a compassionate man. His first idea would have brought too great a humiliation to someone whom he had intended only to embarrass. His desire was to punish the mother, not the daughter.
Until the daughter gave him good cause to be added to his black list, that was.
No one at the dinner table the evening after the picnic mentioned the incident that had happened there. He guessed that the memory of it was an embarrassment to all of them. Indeed, conversation seemed somewhat strained and over-hearty. Calling even a servant a slut in public and slapping her face hard enough to cause swelling was not considered genteel behavior among members of the ton.
He took Nancy Peabody for a stroll out on the terrace after dinner, as he often did.
“Did you hear what happened after you were forced to return to the house with a nosebleed, sir?” she asked him.
“Did I miss something?” he asked. “Beyond a precious hour of your company, that is?”
“Oh, that.” She tittered. “I am sure you must have seen more than enough of me in the past few weeks, sir.”
He returned the expected answer.
And then she proceeded to tell him about the breaking of the wine bottles. His little bird, it seemed, had been sent to lift down the wine basket from the wagon. It must have weighed as much as she did. And she had dropped it after summoning Mr. Ware and demanding that he carry it for her—and then had tried to put the blame on him. Poor Mr. Ware, like the gentleman he was, had been quite prepared to accept responsibility.
“And then when Mama tried to reprimand her gently and smooth over the situation,” Miss Peabody said to his interested ears, “she was impertinent and Mama was forced to be quite sharp with her and send her back to the house. Poor Mama. It quite spoiled her afternoon. And mine too, sir, you may be sure. You would not believe all Mama and I have done for Patricia. Mama has been a second mother to her, and I have been a sister to her despite the fact that her own mama was nothing more than the daughter of a curate who was hardly even a gentleman. But she has returned nothing for all our kindness except sullenness and sometimes open impertinence. Mama is a veritable saint for putting up with her.”
“And you too, Miss Peabody,” he said, patting the arm that was resting on his. “There are not many young ladies who would watch another taken to the bosom of their mama without losing the sweetness of their disposition as a result.”
“Oh, well.” She tittered. “It is not in my nature to feel jealousy, sir. And one must be charitable to indigent relatives.”
He led the conversation into more congenial channels, and they talked about her for the remaining ten minutes of their stroll on the terrace.
He gave her a second chance. Two days later, they all went to church in the morning. He took Nancy up to ride beside him in his curricle. They drove the mile home from church in a slow cavalcade, his curricle behind the barouche that carried Mr. and Mrs. Peabody, Patricia, and Mrs. Delaney.
“I see,” he said, “that your cousin has been forgiven and taken back to your mother’s bosom.”
Patricia Mangan had been granted the honor of carrying Mrs. Peabody’s parasol and her prayer book.
“Oh, yes,” Nancy said, tossing her head so that the feather on her bonnet nodded appealingly. “Mama is too forgiving by half.”
“And you are not?” he asked, looking at her with raised eyebrows.
She perceived her mistake immediately. “Oh, yes.” She laughed. “To my shame I must confess to an excess of sensibility, sir. I am even more tender-hearted than Mama—or so Papa always tells me. But she ought not to have been forgiven, you see. By her carelessness she smashed a dozen bottles of Papa’s best wine and twenty of the finest crystal glasses. And she did not even apologize or shed a single tear. She has never shown any gratitude at all for all we have done for her. I hate ingratitude more than almost any other vice, sir.”
“It is disturbing to know that some of our acts of charity go unobserved and unappreciated by those whose sole function in life should be to make us feel good about ourselves,” he murmured soothingly.
“Yes.” She looked dubious, as if she had not quite grasped his meaning. “I believe she should have been turned off, sir.”
“Even though she has nothing else to go to?” he said.
“Well, that is her problem, is it not?” she said.
“Even if she was to end up on the open road with nowhere to go?” he said. “Or in the nearest town with nothing to do and nothing to sell except... Well, what I was about to say is not for such delicate ears as yours. And of course, you would not really turn her off, would you? You were merely telling me what you would do if you did not have such a tender heart.”
She sighed. “You are right, sir,” she said. “Papa says he does not know how I will manage servants of my own when I find it impossible even to think of disciplining them when they break things or do not do things as they ought to be done.”
Mr. Bancroft turned the conversation again. But he had heard what he needed to hear and what he had fully expected to hear. He had given her two chances and she had squandered both.
