Sweet and Twenty (19 page)

“She doesn’t peek through the curtains, and no one gave you the right to call her Aunt Martha. I suppose I must thank my stars I am not abandoned at the Cat’s Paw with Leaky Peg.”

“No, really, I’m not that bad, am I?”

“You’re worse!”
she said, with such a beaming smile that he left with no fear.

* * * *

Tony proved so slow a penman that the list of recipients was limited to Leaky Peg, two local prostitutes, and Tony’s own kitchen maid, but Reising was given to understand these were but a sample of the company in which Lady Marie was to find herself if she had the letters published. The money to pay off the girls had to come out of the party coffers, and Tony was told the story of rampant jealousy in the village to get him to cooperate. He was vastly flattered and wrote up such a load of tripe that Matthew grabbed two spoiled letters to show Lillian, knowing she wouldn’t believe him without the proof.

After spending an extremely busy evening dashing around from tavern to brothel to kitchen, Hudson paid his highly anticipated call on Reising. He was prepared for a regular set-to.

Alistair, who was visiting his whipper-in, was in high glee to see Fellows an even worse fool than he had hitherto suspected. “The man has ruined himself!”
he chortled to Reising. “Look, Leaky Peg! “He is writing mash-notes to Leaky Peg! This beats Lady Marie.”

“I rather think it does,”
Hudson said, folding the letters into his pocket. “Of course, Leaky Peg would most emphatically deny anything of the sort, as would the others, if it were mentioned without Lady Marie’s letters also being published. “He has either written to them all, or to none. It’s up to you.”

“Then he’s written to them all!”
Alistair declared.

Reising frowned at him. “I’ll be in touch,”
he said to Hudson.

“I’ll be waiting at the Cat’s Paw,”
Hudson replied.

“Fellows hasn’t a chance after this!”
Alistair crowed to his manager when Hudson had left them.

“Don’t be a fool!”
Reising told him. “Sir John won’t let us publish now. What we must decide is whether to go ahead without his knowledge or tell him what Hudson has come up with. How badly do you want to get elected?”

“I don’t want to do anything behind Sir John’s back,”
Alistair said at once, shocked at such ungentlemanly conduct, for he was only a novice politician. “Certainly we must tell him exactly what Hudson means to do.”

“I think we must. He has influence. He’s too powerful a man to cross. We’ll dump it in his lap and let him decide.”

Sir John decided without much hesitation that the letters to his wife must be suppressed. He had not greatly favored the idea in the first place, but agreed to it as a last resort to keep patronage within the Tory ranks.

“You’re out of pocket seven hundred and fifty pounds,”
Reising reminded him, hoping against hope to go ahead with the distribution of the letters that were stored in Sir John’s own attic.

“It’s only money. There will be other elections.”
He took the originals of his wife’s letters along with the two boxes of pamphlets and consigned every last scrap of them to the flames. Then he sent a despondent Reising and Alistair away to scour the town for a single low woman with a letter from Fellows for sale. They wouldn’t have had time to get it published in volume in any case, but they wanted to be doing something. They had no luck, and when they had seen Hudson and gone their separate ways to bed, they had tacitly conceded victory on the morrow to Fellows.

At Ashley Hall, Lady Marie received the dressing-down of her life for her loose conduct with every scarecrow and mushroom for miles around. It was the only pleasure Sir
John had for his seven hundred and fifty pounds.

He had lost out on the bridge contract, but he sat for an hour figuring out who would be given the plum of the improved road surfaces that would be done to accommodate the new bridge. A Whig member did not mean a Whig would have the final say so when it was the Tories that were in power, and before retiring he wrote a nice note to several influential gentlemen, inviting them to spend a weekend at Ashley Hall. If all else failed and Fellows actually got the reins in his own hands, well at least he was fond of Lady Marie.

Reising and Alistair knew they had lost the election, but their smiling faces on the day before it took place gave no indication of it. They were in the village as usual, pumping hands, buying drinks and decrying the tolls on the bridge and carrying on very much as usual. Putting a good face on their defeat, as Tony smilingly pointed out to his whipper-in.

The Whig candidate didn’t slacken off his campaigning either, and had in fact a new chore to occupy him—flirting with everyone in the village who wore a skirt. Hudson was happy indeed that this business of romance had not arisen sooner; one day of it was more than enough.

It was of course Fellows believing that all the girls were jealous that led to this folly. Widows, wives, harlots and the visiting nuns from St. Mary’s Priory—
all were treated to his heavy-handed gallantry, till in desperation Hudson steered him to the tavern at the Cat’s Paw. The way he was setting about it, he might yet manage to alienate every vote in the town.

Basingstoke and Allingham rode over in the afternoon, to remain at the abbey overnight and be on hand for the morrow’s voting. Hudson swiftly consigned Basingstoke to the same intellectual level as Tony, and while those two longheaded gentlemen sat together over glasses of ale and complimented themselves on the clever way they had put one over on the Tories, Hudson and Allingham discussed their involvement in the bridge project and the scurrilous behavior of Sir John in planning to use his wife’s letters.

The next morning bright and early, the four were up and dressed in their finest daytime regalia, the whipper-in and his candidate having their ensembles topped off by Saunders’s hats, which near-totally ruined the effect. The three who had votes went immediately to the poll and cast them, while Hudson mentally assigned the votes of the others there to Whig or Tory, as he figured them likely to vote. Alistair and Reising were on hand as well, still putting a good face on their defeat.

The day was as good as a general holiday. Farmers, squires, gentlemen and a good many women swarmed in the main street of Crockett, making it a gay, carnival affair. Gingerbread stands and other stalls for the dispensing of refreshments were set up for, as on any holiday, the revelers wanted a constant supply of food and drink.

Martha Monteith normally would not allow her charges to be in the town on such a day of mischief-making as an election day was certain to be, but as the ladies had seen no more of the two gentlemen than a five-minute call just before dinner the preceding day, she relented and took them into Crockett herself to watch the goings-on.

She was so well pleased when Lord Allingham singled her out for special recognition, walking her to a bench protected from the chill winds by a canopy and procuring her a cup of coffee, that she quite lost track of her charges. Sara nipped immediately over to the Tory camp, but even this desertion was not noticed, and for a quarter of an hour Miss Monteith the younger assured Mr. Alistair that he was certain to win, for his pamphlet was so clever she couldn’t understand a word of it and no one had been throwing potatoes at him for ages and ages. He confessed to her and no other soul in the village that his chances for victory were not great.

“You mean you won’t have to go to London?”
she asked joyfully, and was assured that this was the case. “Oh, I’m so glad,”
she breathed with an ecstatic sigh.

“Did you not want me to win?”
Alistair asked, confused.

“More than anything in the world, but I’m very glad you won’t have to leave Crockett.”

He accepted these contradictory statements with a lover-to-be’s broad understanding, and didn’t even find them silly. Sara was so lovely and charming that he was not completely desolate to be staying at Crockett.

Miss Watters looked in vain for Mr. Hudson. He was nowhere to be seen. Fellows, his eyes alert for any lady he had not yet honored with a kind word, picked her out and strode up to her, smiling.

“I daresay you’ve come to congratulate me, Miss Watters.”

“I hope I have occasion to congratulate you before many hours are out,”
she told him. “Where is Mr. Hudson today? I was sure he would be
here today of all days.”

“I’ve not seen hide nor hair of him. He says there are a good number of brown bags being passed around, Tory bags. He went into the back alley to see if he could find where Reising is hiding them. It ain’t the bags he’s worried about, of course, but what’s in them.”

“What
is
in them?”
Lillian inquired with interest.

“Liquor.”

Lillian looked in the direction of the closest alley.

“You won’t see him there, Miss Watters. He’s gone to represent me at Armstrong’s funeral. One of us had to go. He’ll be back before too long, for he told me to stay here in the village and not do anything foolish. It ain’t over yet, though between you and me and the bedpost, Reising is wasting his blunt in giving away liquor, for half the fellows with brown bags have already voted. Pity old Armstrong went and cocked up his toes before he got around to vote. If I’d thought of it, I’d have had Isaac cast his vote, for he is the old man’s heir and could have done it very likely, only I ain’t at all sure he’s on the list. They’re very snifty about being on the list before they let you vote. However, I think they could have made an exception for my secretary. Isaac has the post, and his uncle is to help out on the farm, so he shan’t be missed there. I gave him the post and didn’t get a thing for it, not a single vote. Matt says it will pay off in the long run, and is writing up a dandy eulogy for Isaac to put into the local paper, telling everyone all about me. Well, he’s not a well set-up chap, young Armstrong, and blind as a bat, but he’ll do well enough for a pencil pusher. I’ll have a deal of correspondence to be scribbled up and can’t be wasting my precious time at that nonsense. I’ll be at meetings and sittings of Parliament and all that.”

“You will be missed in Crockett,”
Lillian said for the sake of civility.

“Aye, they’ll have no one here to handle things for them. It’s a pity, but I don’t mean to be one of those fellows who never darken the door of the House now I am a Member of Parliament. I must be where things are going on, in the halls of power. I have to let them know how wide-awake we are here in Crockett, with the first suspension bridge in England—-the Fellows Bridge—and if they think to go calling it the War Memorial Bridge or the Wellington Bridge or the Waterloo Bridge or anything of the sort, they’re in for a stiff fight, I can tell you. Allingham is beginning to talk up changing the name. He was never too clever, to tell the truth. I never paid any heed to him. Basingstoke is awake on all suits, but Allingham is a bit soft in the head you know.”

He then recalled that he had not complimented Miss Watters or made love to her, and he squared his shoulders to do his duty. “Well, you are looking pretty as a picture today, Miss Watters. Put them all to the blush with that old green hat. Looks very nice on you, ‘pon my word.”

“Thank you,”
she answered in a choked voice. “I am pleased you like my old green hat.”

“It does well enough for an older woman like yourself. Miss Sara, of course, or one of the pretty young chicks, wouldn’t be caught in such a rig, but for an older woman it looks very well. A very nice hat indeed. Saunders couldn’t do better.”

At this point, Mr. Hudson, returned from the funeral, came up to Fellows and Lillian. “Are you making up to my girl, Tony?”
he asked with a quizzing smile.

“Your girl? Matthew, you don’t mean to say you and Miss Watters ... Oh, you’re bamming me! As if you’d look twice at ... Heh heh, all a hum, I daresay. He is always joking, Miss Watters. A regular jokesmith, this chap.”

“Mr. Fellows has just been admiring my old green quiz of a hat,”
Lillian said.

“Stealing a march on me! You want to watch this one; he’s a very devil with the ladies. But you will please to leave the complimenting of Miss Watters to me, Tony.”

“Very happy to, I’m sure,”
he answered ungallantly. “Well, so you’re sparking Miss Sara’s cousin, eh? Politics makes strange bedfellows.”

“Pretty good ones, I think,”
Hudson answered, while Miss Watters’s face turned noticeably red from holding in her mirth.

“As to that, the proof of the pudding is in the eating,”
Fellows said, with a critical look at Lillian.

“There is Miss Ratchett making eyes at you, Tony,”
Hudson said. “She’ll be jealous if she sees you flirting with Miss Watters. The ladies, you know, are all consumed with jealousy. You’d better run along and tell her how pretty she looks in her red bonnet.”

“Yes, by Jove,
there’s
a girl knows how to dress,”
he said, and he dashed off to admire Miss Ratchett and be admired by her.

“I suppose he’s stolen your heart away with his cunning praise,”
Hudson said.

“There ought to be a law against sending such a man as that to Parliament!”
Lillian declared.

“Sharp as a tack.”

“I don’t know how you’ve stood it without murdering him during this entire month.”

“Ah well, politics makes strange bedfellows,”
he said with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “He forgot to tell me that now I have made my bed, I must lie in it.”
He began looking around as though trying to find someone.

“Who is it you are looking for?”
she asked him.

“I’m not looking for anyone. I’ve found you. I was just wondering if there was somewhere we could go.”

Lillian was quite overcome, not only at the words—for it was clearly not just a bench or a tent for a cup of coffee he had in mind—but at the warm tone in which they were spoken and the glowing eyes of the speaker. Although they looked around quite thoroughly, there was no convenient place for them to go to be alone, which, she felt sure was what he had in mind. The town was a perfect wall of people, noise and confusion.