An Early Engagement (18 page)

It was no surprise, therefore, when she accepted Bobo’s offer to try out the paces of a spirited new gelding.

* * * *

After his last misstep, Morgan was forced to attend three prayer meetings to get back into Ingrid’s good graces, if not the Lord’s, and to get back on her list of household expenses. He had no choice. There were no more jewels to be put on tick; Arcott would yield nothing until after harvest time; and that nipfarthing Baxley would not answer his letters. Moreover, the kitchen cat had died after eating some of Ingrid’s breakfast gruel that tasted “off.”

“Get ye hence, Satan! Do not place temptation in front of me.”

No chance of that. The crone on the hard pew in the row ahead had the widest-spreading—

“Renounce the greed, renounce the avarice, renounce the temptation to value the pence and shillings over prayer and salvation.”

Easy for Brother Blessed. He hadn’t tried paying the cents-per-centers off with an appeal to their immortal souls. “Pray on the Almighty’s time,” they said. “Pay up on ours.”

“Sloth is a sin. The devil spins among the idle like a great poisonous spider, ready to capture souls and suck their life’s blood from them till they hang like empty husks in the web of everlasting hell.”

Hmm. But where could one find a poisonous spider? Morgan did not suppose you just went off to the woods and started digging. Too much work. No, there must be places where one could procure a black widow. He’d have to look into it.

“And like the serpent said to Eve ...”

Or a snake. Morgan didn’t like the creepy things himself, but if he could manage to get an asp into Ingrid’s bed ... This Brother Blessed wasn’t half bad.

“And I say pluck the devil from you, like a thorn in the flesh! Repeat with me, brothers and sisters, Satan, get ye hence!”

* * * *

“Here, Bobo, get ye hence.”

“Huh?”

“Go on, already, take the horse over to Lady Stokely’s. She’s waiting for you for that picnic to Richmond.”

“She don’t like me.”

“Of course not, you looby. No one likes you.”

“Miss Nadine likes me.”

Morgan couldn’t understand that, but got a deal of satisfaction to think of that arrogant Earl of Stokely’s own sister ending up with Bobo. The chit didn’t have much of a dowry, but if she was willing to have the gapeseed, Morgan was happy to help, getting back at Stokely in the bargain. He feared the man, he feared hell, too, but he feared debtor’s prison more than either of them. He had decided long ago that if he would be damned for the thought as well as the deed, he may as well get on with it, for he had thoughts aplenty. He may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Hell, he could be hanged for a wolf if he managed it, with Bobo’s help.

“Here, if you want that Nadine chit, you have to get on Emilyann’s good side, you know, so she will convince Stokely to approve your suit.”

“Huh?”

Morgan tore at his hair, the bay gelding skittered around, eyes rolling, ears back. “Just take the horse to m’niece. Say you won it in a card game and you think it’s too much horse for you. Maybe for her, too. She never could resist a challenge so she’ll take it on the ride.”

“But, Da, I don’t want to ride all the way to Richmond. You know I get light-headed from bein’ tossed around in the saddle too long.”

“You got light-headed from being born, dolt.” He thought a moment, then added, “They are bound to have a picnic hamper along. Wouldn’t set out without nuncheon. Cold chicken, likely, and Scotch eggs, cider, and cheese, maybe some of those tarts.”

“That’s all right, then. They’ve got a fine chef, though I don’t see why we have to go all the way to Richmond when Nadine don’t mind sittin’ in the kitchen watchin’ Cook roll out dough and stuff.”

Morgan shoved the gelding’s reins and a bag of sugar cubes into Bobo’s pudgy hands. “Here, don’t try to think. Just give it some sugar to keep it quiet till you get to the Stokelys’. The nag’s already got a sidesaddle on, so Emilyann won’t have time to think about it. And don’t mention my name.”

Bobo gingerly fed the restless gelding two cubes, then crammed five into his own mouth with horse-slobbered fingers before mounting his own steed, a sleepy, swaybacked chestnut. He rode off in stretched buckskins and lavender waistcoat, leading the fractious bay with its lady’s saddle and, under the blanket, Brother Blessed’s thorn in the flesh.

* * * *

Why not? Emilyann asked herself. The bay was fidgety, in a sweat already. They both needed a good run, she decided. Jake was resting with a headache that morning, a loose window shutter having blown down and struck him last night on his way home from the Black Dog. And Smoky had not ordered her to stay off any rawboned brutes. He hadn’t seen the need.

She grinned, whispered sweetly in the bay’s ear, and rubbed its forehead. “We’ll do fine, sweetheart,” she told the gelding, checking the girth and tightening it a notch. Her groom, one of the new men Jake had found, stepped back as the horse sidled and crow-hopped. Emilyann laughed happily and mounted from the stable block.

She sat lightly in the sidesaddle and held the bay in close check until they were out of the city proper and had met up with the rest of their group, mostly Nadine’s young friends and their beaux. The grooms followed a little behind with the hampers. And the chaperone, the proper married woman the matrons had entrusted with their precious chicks, decided to set a faster pace.

Emilyann touched the gelding with her heel and it was off like a flash, her laughter echoing back to the horrified group. When she tried to pull in, however, to wait for the others to catch up, the bay decided that although the discomfort could not be outrun, it might be dislodged. The horse reared. Emilyann shortened the reins. It bucked. She grabbed for its mane. Then the gelding did a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, all feet in the air, and so was Lady Stokely.

The dismayed grooms had dumped the hampers to ride to her assistance, and the young people set their horses to a gallop to reach her quickly, Bobo bouncing along. When they reached her, Emilyann already had the reins in hand and the saddle unbuckled, just waiting for a leg up.

“This fellow needs to learn some manners,” she told an ashen-faced Nadine. “And I cannot do it in a sidesaddle. Deathly contraption anyway.” She left the blanket on, as a sop to convention.

“But, Em,” Nadine wailed, “our vouchers to Almack’s!”

Emilyann looked at her sister-in-law and grinned. “You hate the place anyway, remember? Stale toast and lemonade, that’s all they serve. Don’t worry, maybe I’ll break my neck.”

She got on and stayed on, her hands wrapped in the gelding’s hair, her legs firmly clamped to its sides, wide skirts of her habit raised to show a stretch of stocking above the riding boots. They left the others far behind in a mad dash through hedges and spinneys and streamlets. The gelding never settled down, however, not even when its flanks were heaving and both horse and rider were drenched in sweat. The horse stayed frantic, and Emilyann finally gave it up rather than founder the animal. The beast was incorrigible; it just was never going to be a good ride. She climbed off at a farmstead and tied the reins to a rail, pulled off the blanket to rub the horse down while waiting for her party.

What a fool she had been—again. Hell and damnation! “You poor darling,” she crooned to the horse, tears streaming down her dirty cheeks.

The riding party was ruined, of course. The food was spilled, the girls were tittering about Emilyann’s daring, and Bobo was still casting up his accounts behind a shed. Emilyann was no sight for an inn, so she thankfully accepted the farmer’s wife’s offer of cider and fresh-baked bread before herding her group back to town.

They left Bobo behind, his ears ringing, to lead the bay with a cob the farmer was willing to rent. Emilyann sat stone-faced on the swaybacked chestnut and Nadine whimpered. Emilyann could not tell if the girl was missing Bobo or the scattered hampers, and did not care. “And if I ever see you talking to him again, I’ll box your ears, too.”

* * * *

“So what if she forbade you the house, you gossoon, there’s parties and theater and the park. She can’t keep the girl from you entirely.”

Morgan and Bobo were in the library at Arcott House, sharing a bottle of Blue Ruin that Morgan had smuggled into the house under a sheaf of hymns, Ingrid was upstairs resting after a trying morning in which the suit of armor in the foyer had fallen on her, the valiant knight’s spiked mace quite destroying her new black shawl.

“But Da, they had such nice teas at Stockton House. ‘Sides, she says you’re never to call there again either.”

That was nothing new, except that his niece did not know Stokely’s orders. Morgan had already had the door slammed in his face twice over there by that uppity butler and a bunch of footmen who looked more like boxers than servants. No matter, he had no more reason to call on Emilyann; she couldn’t be increasing, not after that ride. Morgan lifted his glass in a toast to the gelding.

“And she says she’s goin’ to write to Stokely.”

The whiskey tasted like sawdust and spit. Brother Blessed would be proud of the way Morgan prayed for the saints to preserve him from the devil.

Emilyann wrote to Smoky only about the ride. There was no reason to fret him with foolish suspicions, so she just said what a delightful outing it had been, the most fun she’d had in ages, and how she missed the country. And him.

Then came Waterloo. It was a smashing victory or a crushing defeat, no one knew which. Emilyann and Morgan Arcott both avidly scanned the casualty lists, but there was no news of Smoky. Then word started to come back to England of the actual battle, and Major Lord Stokely’s name was mentioned often. He’d left headquarters when there was no one else to send command decisions to Marshal Blucher and the Prussians. He’d borrowed a horse from the Twelfth Cavalry when his was lost, and he’d rallied a battalion of Scots’ Greys until a junior officer was found to take charge. He had been seen at Quatre Bras, and again helping to fix a cannon position—and not since.

Emilyann haunted the War Office, battalion headquarters, and even Prinny’s councillors’ chambers, seeking word, but no one knew where Smoky was. One general patted her hand, like telling a child her puppy would come home when it got hungry. The others looked at her with sympathy, their averted eyes declaring her a widow before the official pronouncement. She wouldn’t believe it.

She also would not take part in the delirium of the new, this-time-final victory celebrations, not in the face of such grievous losses, such grieving uncertainty. The ton rallied back to London from their estates, and the fugitives from the revelry in Brussels joined the new galas in town. Emilyann questioned them when she could: yes, Stokely had been at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball on the eve of the battle, no, he had not danced, and no, they had not seen him since. Shocking disarray there, you know, casualties all over, none of the amenities. Nothing like home. Another cup of tea, dear?

So she stopped going out. Fireworks and illuminations held no attractions; there was no one she wanted to dance with at the balls; military reviews only reminded her of how handsome Smoky looked in his regimentals. She should have told him, dear Lord, she should have showed him how much she loved him. Perhaps she would be carrying his child by now, a piece of him to hold if— No, he was coming back.

Geoff wrote, cheerfully insisting Stokely would turn up. He always did. And Nadine went her own way, under the wing of one or another of her friends’ mothers, declaring that since they had not heard any bad news, why borrow trouble. If Bobo was at all of the same functions, Emilyann decided, so be it. Perhaps his real personality would emerge and Nadine would be as affronted as the rest of the world. Emilyann always found that Bobo grew on you, like mold.

Curiously, it was Aunt Ingrid who brought Emilyann comfort. Her prayers did not seem so absurd anymore, and her belief that they would be answered was reassuring. She would sit quietly while Emilyann brooded, reading her religious tracts or embroidering a new altar cloth. She accompanied her niece on the calls to government offices, and insisted Emilyann go for outings in the park for fresh air and come down for tea, lest she waste away with worrying.

The two women became so close, in fact, that one day Emilyann was tempted to ask Ingrid about her suspicions.

“Don’t you think that a lot of, ah, peculiar accidents happen to you, Aunt?”

Ingrid was holding her head at an odd angle. The window in her room had flown open in the night somehow, and chilled her neck into an uncomfortable position. As she told the younger woman, it was a miracle she did not get influenza. “What’s that, dear? What kind of things?”

“Oh, things like that locknut coming off the carriage chassis, or the canopy falling down off your bed while you were in it. Remember last year when the stair rail had been greased?”

Ingrid set another stitch. “The servants these days aren’t to be trusted, you know. I told that footman precisely how to rehang the chandelier, but no, it fell the very next day, as soon as I slammed the front door.”

“But other people don’t have so many of these odd occurrences, Aunt Ingrid.”

“The Lord is testing me, dear. Like Job. And my faith protects me.”

“What about the fire at your prayer meeting? If belief was such good protection, how could a fire start there of all places?”

“But, dear, I told you there was no real fire. Someone must have mistaken wisps from the incense burners for smoke. Of course those of us in the front pews did not know it at the time, and there was a regrettable panic until Brother Blessed recalled us to our faith. The Lord would guard His flock, he said, and so we prayed. As I mentioned, there was only the one casualty from the first rush to the doors. Your uncle should be up and about again in a few weeks, the doctor says.”

Emmy grinned, the first time in days. “Perhaps I should go to the lending library and fetch him some books to occupy his mind. Improving works, of course.”

Ingrid’s face cracked, like a chunk of granite splitting— goodness, the woman actually knew how to smile—and she echoed: “Of course.”