At Your Pleasure (10 page)

With d’Orléans as regent, France would now be a friend to England, then. So much for the fleet it had promised to support James Stuart! The court at Bar-le-Duc must be in turmoil.

“Aside from that,” Rivenham continued, his regard never leaving her, “it seems the Duke of Atholl is King George’s newest and dearest friend. He swore his loyalty most publicly at a levee last week.”

She felt sicker and sicker. David and all his allies had counted on Atholl’s aid.

“And in lighter news, Mr. Pope is still enjoying unanimous celebration,” Rivenham finished smoothly. “No other auteur can rival his popularity.”

“Bah, Pope,” Lord John said. “Another one of these papist recusants. I say we put them all to a sword. See then if they remain so pious.”

Rivenham looked inclined to ignore this remark. Nora saw no reason not to join his effort. Political conversation was not a safe topic; that much was clear. “I very much enjoyed Mr. Pope’s
Rape of the Lock,
” she said. “But I confess—for I doubt it speaks well of me—that my favorite of his poems remains the first they say he wrote: ‘Happy the man, whose wish and care / A few paternal acres bound . . .’”

Rivenham gave her a wry smile. “‘Content to breathe his native air / In his own ground.’ My lady, I think you would do better to admire poems about wanderers who find contentment in foreign lands, and never dream to return.”

A flush of confusion warmed her. He was alluding to her brother—and delivering warnings in the language of flirtatious, courtly banter.

Lord John did not appear not to have perceived the subtext. “Peasant life? I for one am glad he moved on to more elevated subjects.”

“Oh?” said Rivenham. “Such as a great battle begun by the theft of a lock of hair?”

Lord John rolled his long-lashed eyes. “I refer, of course, to his translation of Homer. I never bothered with
The Rape of the Lock.
”

“Homer? That is new,” Nora said hesitantly.

“Yes,” replied Rivenham. “It would please you, I think. The language is plain but deeply moving.” He glanced speakingly at Lord John. “There are no false ostentations in it.”

Her smile escaped her, widening without her permission. Not only had he hit exactly upon her preferences but he had managed a sly insult to Lord John at the same time. “That does sound lovely.”

But when he kept looking at her, she felt her smile falter.

Of course he knew her preferences: they had shared their love of poetry once, and in his face she saw him remembering it now.

Some magnetic current passed between them. She could not look away. Her pulse began to race.

Rivenham’s expression darkened. He glanced back to the note in his hand, and she felt as though she could breathe again. “Also,” he said, his voice flat, “some hubbub regarding a paper presented at the Royal Academy. An alchemist claims to have produced an incalescence of mercury and another mysterious substance which he will not divulge, the projection resulting in pure silver.”

“But how extraordinary,” she said. “I wonder—may I see the letter?”

Rivenham passed it over. “You still study alchemy, Lady Towe?”

The words seemed to leave him reluctantly. She felt Lord John’s curious gaze cut between them. “Not recently,” she said as she skimmed the relevant passage. Her husband had not liked the pursuit, thinking it too near to witchcraft when practiced by a woman.

The letter held no true details, only a layman’s rough summary. She handed it back.

“Alchemy!” Lord John looked caught between intrigue and disapproval. “What business has a lady in such dealings?”

“Why, I think a lady best suited to it,” she said. The slight sharpness in her voice was for a man now dead, who had not appreciated her logic. “Are not women’s bodies the very crucibles of transubstantiation? They take a seed and make a child of it: what else can that be but alchemy?”

Rivenham laughed. It was a beautiful sound, low and husky, and it brushed along her skin like fingertips, making her shift in her seat. “First blood to the lady, Lord John.”

Lips thinning, the boy inclined his head in acknowledgment.

All at once she could not bear to remain here a moment longer. To have Rivenham laughing at her cleverness, lauding it to another man—to feel, even for a second, this camaraderie and connection—seemed infinitely more dangerous than her explicit purpose.

She rose, and the men rose as well, their courtesy ingrained. “I must resume my business,” she said, “but I wished to invite you both to take supper with me tomorrow. Let it never be said that the Colvilles do not treat their guests with courtesy.”

“If Lady Towe wishes to play the hostess, I see no harm in it. Let her entertain us! God knows I languish in such rustic climes.”

Adrian nodded. For fully an hour now, Lord John had been complaining about his refusal of the marchioness’s invitation.

To explain why he found it suspicious would entail truths he had no interest in sharing. But he felt great skepticism at the prospect of Lady Towe uncovering in herself the desire to preside over an elegant table laid for her brother’s persecutors.

“Ware of poisons,” he murmured, only half in jest.

The boy’s laugh held a derisive edge, which faded when Adrian met his eyes. “Your fancies run wild, Rivenham.”

“No doubt.” Adrian returned his attention to packing the leather bag on the bed. On his return from catching Lady Towe this morning, he had found the great hall filled with farmers who disliked the long arm of the king in their fields—unwilling, on the eve of an uncertain harvest, to sacrifice even a single sheaf of grain to the tramp of careless hooves. Braddock had stood in their midst, sword drawn, threatening them with harm if they did not disperse. These Londoners had no notion of how to reason with men who knew their own dignity and rights and guarded them fiercely.

It would be a fine piece of irony if his own men, with no help from David Colville, sparked an insurrection in the northeast.

The Colville men had ever been careless of their domestic administration. Adrian’s request to their steward for a detailed map of the holdings—one that might suggest routes for his men’s watch that would avoid the
tenantry—had been answered with a blank look. These maps did not exist. He saw no choice for it then but to go to Beddleston. In his library were accurate charts of the whole area, drawn by his brother and himself not seven years before. It was only half a day’s ride, and the prospect of walking his own land also drew him strongly.

He might have sent someone in his stead. But the prospect of a few hours’ distance drew him as well.

He needed to clear his head and restore his equilibrium. A survey of everything he strove to protect would achieve that nicely.

“You may compose sonnets for her if you like,” he said as he buckled the bag shut. “Hold a dance in the gallery, invite all the housemaids. Only keep her inside the damned house, and keep the tenants out. I will be satisfied.”

“An easy task,” Lord John drawled, “if you but let me oversee it. Tenants come armed with pitchforks, not gunpowder and steel. And I am not as accustomed as you to scaring ladies into the wilderness. Even Medusa can be charmed.”

Medusa. That had been the wits’ name for her at court. In a world of courtesies and artifice, her reserve—and her manner of looking a man directly in the eye without smiles or flatteries to soften her regard—had not endeared her to new acquaintances.

“Do not underestimate her,” Adrian said.

Lord John snorted. “Think me a fool?”

A promising question. Adrian considered the boy, who lounged on the sofa in a satin coat, his boots atop a small
mahogany table meant for tea services. Fashionably slim, his face powdered thickly, his wig dressed in full curls, he looked as out of place in the dark environs of Hodderby as a hothouse flower in the kennels. Jeweled rings glittered on his fingers, which he twisted restlessly; at his elbow sat a goblet of canary wine purloined from Hodderby’s stores.

Adrian would give him this: for a man so woefully out of his element, he did a damned good job of making himself comfortable.

In the silence, Lord John’s color had begun to rise. Now he removed his boots and sat up. “Think me a fool?” he demanded again.

Adrian’s turn to snort. A child’s vanity in a grown man’s body made a bad combination. “I think you accustomed to London,” he said, “and London ladies. The marchioness cut no great figure among them, but here she has friends aplenty. The loyalty of every man on these lands is hers, and their pitchforks outnumber our swords ten to one.”

The lad looked truly astonished. “Peasants,” he said. “If they lift their hands to us, they lift them to the king!”

Barstow had done his son a disfavor by sheltering him so wholly. “You are accustomed to the south,” Adrian said. “In these far-flung parts, the king is more legend than fact.”

“That sounds like treason!”

Nearly he laughed. Such callow idealism might be put onstage for money. “You must inform them so,” he said, “if you are unwise enough to find their tines at your throat.”

“They would not dare,” Lord John said. “What? The prospect of such impudence
amuses
you?”

He shrugged. It was not his business to disillusion Barstow’s naïve little fledgling. Life would manage that on its own. “Stay alert,” he said. “That’s what I mean.”

After a moment, Lord John decided to be mollified. He sat back again, drawing deep of his cup. “You will be back by tomorrow night?”

“If not before.” He hefted his saddlebag. “I leave you all twenty men. Were the sentries on their marks?”

“Yes, yes,” the other man said irritably. “I made the rounds of their posts not two hours ago.”

“Good.” Still Adrian hesitated. This unease was baseless, he told himself. There was no cause to expect David Colville until the sennight was out. As for Colville’s tenants, he did not truly adjudge them likely trouble. By and large, they were High Church, and had no deep reason to sympathize with their master’s quarrel.

And yet, as he looked at John Gardiner, his instincts rebelled. To leave this painted piece in command of Hodderby, with full authority over the household, Nora included . . .

Nora
. His mouth twisted. The marchioness was none of his concern.

“I bid you good even,” he said.

Lord John waved his cup in lazy farewell, his rings sparking in the firelight. “Good riding to you.”

Nora had planned on every eventuality but this one: that Rivenham would not come to supper. When she had descended to the parlor and found Lord John awaiting her alone, she remained calm, assuming Rivenham still
lurked somewhere in the house. He would eat his supper eventually, even if not under her supervision—and she trusted her women in the kitchen to make sure he received with it the necessary libation.

It did her no credit, but some dark, wretched part of her had been relishing the prospect of witnessing its effect on him. She had drunk deeply of this poison once for his sake: now, unwittingly, he would do the same for her.

But he did not appear at the table. What a pity he could not join them, she’d remarked to Lord John. Her servants were already taking trays to the rest of his men; where might they find Lord Rivenham?

“Ten miles south,” he’d said with a bored smile. “He has gone to visit his estates.”

Oh! How pleasant for him, she’d replied rather breathlessly. And when would he return?

“I can’t say,” Lord John had replied, but suddenly he had been watching her closely. “Does my lady have some cause for concern?”

She had held her tongue after that, excavating what rusted skills for flirtation she possessed, forcing herself to smile at his condescending remarks. He complimented her gown, a cobalt silk mantua embroidered in gold, then recalled for her, with astonishing accuracy, how many times he had seen her wear it in London, “when that weave was still fashionable.” She sat across from him and batted her lashes as though it was her greatest pleasure to host his insults in her dining room. All the while, as the sun slid lower out the long western windows, her heart beat faster and faster.

Now true darkness was falling, spreading like a bruise across the sky. Was his speech slowing, or was that her imagination? Had he just smothered a yawn? “I heard tell,” Lord John said, blotting his mouth with a napkin, “that your brother and Lord Rivenham were great friends once.”

He should have been unconscious by now. Had she misjudged the dosage? Meconium, the juice of the opium poppy, was a dangerous substance: too much and a man might not wake again. “His lands adjoin ours. In such circumstances, friendship seemed a good policy.”

He studied one of the many rings on his fingers, giving it a thoughtful twist. These rings were a particular affectation of his; she recalled some rumor that he named them after court beauties, and that some silly girl, Lady Mary or Lady Sarah, had wept last spring when she discovered herself demoted from diamond to sapphire. “Yes,” he drawled, “but these Catholics generally keep to themselves.”

The distaste in his voice caught her off guard. She had never heard anybody speak of Rivenham so. Fear and fondness were the more regular tunes. “He conformed many years ago,” she said slowly.

“But not before his great friendship with your brother.”

She felt a new wariness come over her. “What of it? My family is not Catholic.”

“Indeed not. Only that the irony is striking, don’t you agree? Your father and brother are fled to France to kiss the Catholic pretender’s arse, while the old friend who
aims to correct their notions has only recently abandoned his love for the Pope . . .” His malicious smile slackened suddenly, and he rubbed a hand across his forehead.

His insinuation had come clear now, and it amazed her. “You mistrust Lord Rivenham’s loyalties?”

Without the drug in him, his burst of laughter would have cracked against her ears. Instead it trailed limply from his throat, ending in a sharp breath. “You were ever too direct, madam. Nobody in London could call you a
charmer
. . .” He shook his head hard. “Forgive me,” he muttered, a courtier’s mannerly reflex, with no real consideration behind it. “But I feel quite . . .”