Cry of the Peacock (32 page)

Around them there was the cheering of the crowd that had stopped to watch, the crash and smack of blows being delivered and received, of groans and yells and oaths. Here there was only Abbie breathing hard and clinging to him. And then a great crash and the door shut hard against David as he, still holding tightly to Abbie, tried to keep it and Benderby from crushing them, or tossing them both onto the carriage floor. They were safe still, save for his hand which was pinned between the door’s handle and the man James held against it.

For a moment all was still, if not quiet—the band had started up again and the crowds were returning from the pavilion and were growing louder by the second. At last the pressure of the door released. David tried to free his hand, and did so, just in time to catch the door as it came crashing against them again. The door gave way beneath the pressure. The wood split and splintered, the window shattered as Benderby’s head collided with it. Abbie stifled a scream as he held her all the tighter. Perhaps too tightly. But as the air filled with glass and debris and utter chaos, there was no safer place for her to be.

The whistling of constables could be heard through the crowd. The noise was positively deafening. The band, a marching one, passed by, and David could hear nothing besides the clamoring and blaring. He could only feel arms wrapped tightly about him, hands clinging, a head pressed hard against his chest. Slowly the noise faded, the pressure of the door released, and still he remained.

“Is it over?” she asked and made no move to free herself.

“I think so.” It was time to let her go, but she fit there so perfectly. Like she belonged. Katherine was all odd points and awkward angles, but Abbie… Abbie was…Ruskin’s. David drew himself away.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“Yes, but you are not.” She raised a hand to his head and lowered it again to show him a blood-stained finger. He withdrew a handkerchief and gently, carefully wiped her hand clean before pressing the cloth to his head where the shattering window had grazed him.

“And your hand!” she observed next.

He glanced at it, bloody and bruising. “It’s nothing,” he said and hid it in his pocket.

“Where is James? Is he hurt?”

David turned to see him pacing a spot of earth about ten feet from the carriage, dabbing at a split lip and breathing hard. Two constables held Benderby, while a third asked questions of James.

“He’s perfectly well,” he assured her, and with her safety now secured, he drew her away from the ruined carriage. Only to come face to face with Ruskin.

“David Ransom Crawford! What the
devil
is going on here?” Ruskin demanded, mad as a bull, and charging toward them. Was it the scene of barely escaped danger that enraged him so, or was it jealousy, pure and simple, that had him so irate? “You have some explaining to do!”

Abbie’s hand was still on David’s arm. Ruskin, seeing it, took Abbie by the other arm and drew her toward him. She did not seem inclined to go. She looked to David, and then to Ruskin, and then back at David again as if begging him to spare her any further conflict.

“We w
ill
discuss this,” David said, “but now is not the time,” and he moved to the curb, where he signaled for a cab. He had meant to place her inside and send her on her way. He wished to remain, to speak with James, to make sure his brother was truly all right, and that the rest of his party, too, had managed to get away from the celebrations safely. It was not to be, however. For Ruskin entered to sit beside Abbie. It was his right, he supposed, but David was not prepared to relinquish his self-appointed charge of her so readily. He had failed her once today. He would not do it again.

Ruskin gave the directions—home—and the journey was made in near silence, while David watched Abbie growing paler and more distraught by the moment.

“Where are Katherine and Miss Mariana?” Ruskin asked him.

“I sent them on already,” David answered.

“But you kept Arabella with you? What were you thinking?”

“It’s not his fault,” Abbie said from her corner of the carriage. “I wanted to stay.”

“I should have made you go,” David answered softly.

“I thought I could help.”

“This
is
your fault,” Ruskin said to David. “I blame you. Do you have any idea what might have happened?”

“Actually, I do,” David answered, reminded of the danger by his throbbing hand and by shimmer of moisture on Abbie’s pale cheek.

“Are you really such an idiot that you would willingly place her in danger? Did you think you had something to prove?”

“Stop,” Abbie said, though it was hardly louder than a whisper.

“I was wrong, I admit it,” David answered his brother, “but that danger never should have existed at all. What does it mean when our laborers follow us to Town, Ruskin? What does it mean when they deliver threats? When they talk of striking!”

“There is no talk of strike. I told you, I’ve smoothed everything over.”

David looked at Ruskin doubtfully. “I knew there was trouble at home,” he said at last, “but I had no idea you had bungled it as badly as this. If it weren’t for your meddling—”

“Stop!” She shouted it this time, and the brothers fell silent.

“Meddling?” Ruskin said at last. He could never let a thing go until he’d wrung all the life out of it. “How dare you accuse
me
of—”

“I won’t discuss it anymore,” David insisted and tried to sound calm. “Not here. Not now.”

“We’ll discuss it when and where and how I—”

“For heaven’s sake, Ruskin! Can you not see she is upset? Does it mean nothing to you?”

Ruskin looked to Abbie and his anger appeared to dissipate.

But David new his brother well. Ruskin did not overcome his grievances, he merely set them aside to deal with later. David watched him as he took Abbie’s hand in his own.

“Arabella. I’m so sorry,” Ruskin said, but neither was she prepared to be so easily mollified.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “Not now. I can’t bear it.” She closed her eyes and the tears fell in earnest.

David found he must look away, and dabbed at the cut on his head. It had dried now. He rubbed at his neck and tried to relieve some of the tension. It would not abate. He needed air and space. Room to breathe. What he wouldn’t give to get down and walk the rest of the way, to have a few minutes to himself to clear his head. He glanced in Abbie’s direction to find her just averting her gaze from him. No. He would remain. As much as it troubled him to be in Ruskin’s presence just now, and perhaps hers as well, he would remain.

At last they arrived. David alighted and helped Abbie down, then reluctantly released her to Ruskin, who walked her to the door.

Mariana met them there. “What happened?” she asked of him, clearly alarmed.

“Later,” David said. “She needs to rest now.”

“Of course,” Mariana answered, and he watched as she drew Abbie away and guided her toward her room.

A hand was upon his arm. He turned to find Katherine, who had apparently been waiting for him. “You reached home without incident?” he asked her.

“Yes. What happened?”

He told her.

“Oh the poor dear,” she said. “But why did you let her stay?”

He sighed, but it relieved none of the weight he felt. “I don’t know. She thought she could help. Of course it was no use. I was a fool.”

Katherine looked at him a moment, examining him. “Are you injured? I think you are!”

“It’s nothing.” He drew her hand away from the cut that was no more than a scratch on his temple. She had not seen his hand, and he didn’t intend she should.

“You look quite shaken,” she said.

“I suppose I am.”

Katherine, in answer, perhaps as remedy, held him tightly. He let her. She was his, after all. He had a right to this. It was a comfort, or should be. So why did the idea leave him feeling so numb? His hand throbbed. He flexed it behind her back and was grateful to feel something.

“I quite forgive her, you know,” Katherine said. “I was angry with her. I was…disappointed. But it will be well. I spoke with Mariana on the way home. She made me see my mistake.”

“You once more believe in her, do you?”

“I do. I always have. Well… Perhaps I doubted for a minute. But you? Do you doubt her still?”

“I don’t,” he answered quite honestly and wondered if it were wise to be so just now.

Katherine drew away from him, only far enough to look at his face. “Then we must help her,” she said. “That was what you were doing on the train, was it not? Encouraging her to think well of her investments?”

“You know about that?”

“Yes. I know it all. And you must help her to it. You must help her see that she has a duty to accept Ruskin.”

“I hardly think duty a sufficient reason to marry.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, Katherine. I don’t. If you did not love me so well, you might understand it.”

“Or you me?”

He hesitated for only an instant. “Yes, of course.”

“And yet you do understand.”

“Only because I’ve watched her reluctance grow with every new difficulty she has been forced to face. I do want to help her, Katherine, but I’m not sure this is the way.”

“There is no other way.”

This stopped him for a minute. “Do you know that too, Katherine?” he asked and feared her answer.

But she didn’t answer. Not directly at any rate. “When she realizes how happy she will be, and all the good things that are to be hers… You won’t help her to see it?”

“For ten minutes, Katherine, can we not think about them?”

“Of course,” she answered, and enfolded herself once more in his arms. “Of course.”

A
LL LOOKED UP when Mariana entered the drawing room that evening. She had dined with Abbie in her room, and had waited for her to fall asleep before coming down.

The gentlemen stood.

“How is she?” Ruskin asked.

“Resting now. She’ll be well enough, by and by.”

“Come,” Katherine said, and drew Mariana to her. “Poor dear. What a shock she must have had.”

“Yes, it was,” Mariana answered. It was simpler to answer so, though it was not quite the truth. It wasn’t shock as much as guilt that Abbie suffered from. She blamed herself. She had placed herself in danger, and others too. And she was disappointed that her well-meaning intentions, once again, had proved entirely futile. She believed in her heart that she knew how to help the people of Holdaway, and that she could do it, but at every opportunity she found herself checked. Was it for her own lack of understanding that she continued to fail in her endeavors? Or was it something else? Was it circumstance? Or was it possible that Ruskin’s efforts were running in conflict with her own?

These thoughts had conspired to bring her very low this evening. And yet there was something more. Something Abbie was holding back. If Mariana had come to get to the bottom of her sister’s struggles, they were only mounting, while Abbie grew more reticent, rather than more open. Mariana, too, was feeling frustrated.

“If only she had not stayed behind,” Katherine said. “I cannot believe you did not make her go, David. What were you thinking?”

“I’m not sure I
was
thinking. I regret it more than I can say.”

“That is something,” Lady Crawford said. “As if it were even possible to speak to a man such as Benderby!”

“I did think her capable of doing it, foolish though it may now seem.”

“Foolish, indeed! I hope you have learned a lesson.”

“What can I say?” David answered. “I was wrong, and I apologize.”

Lady Crawford said nothing more. She was angry to the point of tears, and for more reasons than one. James had yet to return, and while the atmosphere was full of shock over what had happened, anxiety for his safe arrival was heavy as well. At least Lady Barnwell had stayed to console her friend. No one else, it seemed, could do it so well.

“She is grateful you were there, Mr. Crawford,” Mariana offered to David. “And for James’ intervention, of course. My sister does not blame you.”

“If only I had sent her on. I should have sent her on.”

“My sister can be very stubborn when she has determined upon something. I doubt you could have made her leave if she did not wish to do it.”

David received this with a grateful bow of his head, but said nothing more.

“I should have been there,” Ruskin said, awaking, somewhat, from his thoughtful stupor, and coming to stand before her. He and Sir Nicholas had resigned themselves to silently pacing the room. “I should have been the one to deal with Benderby, and to protect her.” He apparently felt himself cheated of an opportunity.

Mariana made no attempt to answer him. Yes, he should have been, but she suspected that if he had it would have turned out no better. She suspected, as well, that the blame, in actuality, fell upon him, and that, just perhaps, he knew it.

The room fell once more into tense quiet as Sir Nicholas continued his pacing. Ruskin did not join him now, but occupied himself in staring blindly through the window out onto the street without. Lady Barnwell continued consoling her friend, but Lady Crawford was silent and sullen as she wrung the handkerchief in her lap.

“Does anyone mind if I play something?” Mariana asked and nodded toward the piano. She did not play as well as Abbie, but she must ease the tension silence somehow.

“Oh, yes. Please do,” Lady Crawford answered, though a little belatedly. “Some music will cheer us all, I think.”

She sat, and began to play. Katherine joined her, and offered to turn the pages.

Sir Nicholas took Katherine’s place beside David. He wished to know every detail of the afternoon’s events. David recounted them, while Mariana listened. As Abbie had blamed herself, so did David blame himself.  But neither of them had created the situation that had been thrust upon them. Of course Abbie thought she could reason with Benderby, but that man, as had already been proved by Hetty’s dealings with him, was beyond reasoning with. At least he was in the law’s hands now. And what of the workers? Was there really a strike looming? Sir Nicholas thought not, that Benderby’s information was erroneously, or perhaps falsely given.

Sir Nicholas was equally willing to take the blame. If he had not permitted them to go alone… If he had not admonished David to encourage her to look well upon the investments from which she might soon benefit, then none of this would have happened.

Is that what David had been doing, then? Encouraging her to appreciate what Ruskin could give her? Well, if that was the aim, it was certainly not the result. Abbie might blame herself in words, but certainly she suspected, as Mariana did, that Benderby’s grievances had begun with Ruskin’s failings.

“You know, it seems a pity to me…” Mariana heard the voice behind her. It was whispered, but Lady Barnwell’s voice was nevertheless the loudest in the room, “that you could not have chosen the younger sister for your project, Margaret.”

Mariana stopped suddenly and closed the piano’s lid—loudly. She stood.

“Excuse me,” she said to Lady Crawford, and to those whose attention she had arrested—which was everyone. “I should never have left my sister’s side,” she said, and meant it in several ways at once.

*   *   *

“Well!” Lady Barnwell said when Mariana had gone. “You cannot say that spirit does not run in the family. I fear the sister will prove an obstacle to your aims, Margaret.”

David, who had been doing his utmost to ignore their self-absorbed banter, looked up at this, but his attention was drawn from them to the door as it opened again, and a rather disheveled and exhausted James appeared.

“Oh, James!” his mother said, rising to greet him. “You are alive!”

“Yes, mother,” he answered sardonically, “I managed to survive it. I’m perfectly well, really.”

“Look at your face!” she said and proceeded to dab his scraped cheek with a tear soaked handkerchief. James freed himself from his mother’s coddling and approached his father and David, who had stood upon his entrance.

“Is he dealt with then?” David asked him, anxious to hear that it was so.

“He has slipped our hands, I’m afraid.”

“What?”

“He somehow managed to escape the constables and dashed off into the crowd. He’s got away.”

“What was his purpose? Do you know that, James?” Sir Nicholas demanded.

James glanced at the ladies, and then back at his father. “This is perhaps a conversation best suited for another room.”

Sir Nicholas nodded and led the way out again, Ruskin following. David intended to join them, of course, but James put out a hand to stay him. They would speak later, but just now—was it possible?—Ruskin was in for a railing.

*   *   *

“Well?” Ruskin demanded the moment the doors were closed.

“Well…” James began and hesitated, but at last went on. There was nothing for it, after all. “The short of it is, he’s out for revenge.”

“On Miss Gray?” Ruskin asked. His obtuseness was infuriating.

“No, you idiot! She was simply unfortunate enough to be in the way.”

“She never should have been there!” Ruskin said. “If David hadn’t—”

“She wanted to help, Ruskin! And she might have done, too, only–” James stopped and threw his hat onto a chair.

“Go on.”

“Let me go back just a bit. The Summerson girl who came to us for help… Do you remember?”

“She did come to us for help,” Sir Nicholas said when Ruskin made no reply. “I spoke to her. I asked her to come again, but she did not.”

“She did, though,” James returned, “and the help you promised, Benderby’s last month’s pay, Ruskin refused to give her.”

Sir Nicholas, looking slightly confused, turned to Ruskin. “Is this true?”

Ruskin did not answer.

“With Benderby gone,” James continued, “and new housing to think of, the foul summer and a child on the way, Mr. Summerson got it into his head that we owed them. Benderby, sacked, had not quite disappeared, and so the two men formed a plan to extract what they felt they’d been denied. In the meantime, Benderby wants to get his hands on Miss Summerson. It seems he considers her his property, and he means to have her back. I believe he would marry her, but… Well, that’s a tough sentence to lay on anyone.”

“But she’s with Miss Mariana now, isn’t that so?” Ruskin asked.

“Yes,” James answered cautiously. “By some means, through them, I believe, she has come into a little money, and Miss Summerson, like a good daughter, has sent a portion of it off to her family, which means Summerson is somewhat placated, while Benderby grows all the more desperate. Money, it seems, isn’t what Benderby’s after. He wants what he deems is his, and he is determined to take it by any means necessary.”

“Let him try!” Ruskin said, while Sir Nicholas took a seat and rubbed at his greying hair.

James was indignant. “It’s good of you to be so obliging, Ruskin. He certainly has tried today, hasn’t he? And he’s not done yet, unless I’m very much mistaken.”

“The trouble at home is owing to him, then?” Sir Nicholas asked, looking up as his head still rested in one hand.

“He’s perhaps adding fuel to a smoldering fire. The conflagration was already in the making. I take it you did not approve of my plans for the allotments?” James asked of his father.

It was Ruskin who answered. “They were twice the common size!”

“Yes, well, considering they’ll have to start again, I thought it the least we could do. Considering it’s land we’ve never touched for any other purpose, is it really so very great a concession?”

“It sets a bad precedent.”

“I suppose being a gentleman of honor sets a bad precedent?”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that requiring they move from their homes into new ones, however much improved, is not much of a favor if you mean to raise the rents beyond what they are able to pay. They might have been persuaded to do it were they nearer, had they been allowed the time necessary to prepare their gardens for the winter. They’ve the prospect of losing everything now, and they can’t afford what you’ve given them in exchange. I’m not sure you can fix this, Ruskin.”

“There is nothing to fix, as I see it. They are unhappy. They are unhappy whatever we do. What is it you suggest?”

James managed, by the greatest of efforts, to keep his temper and went on. “If you want to avoid a strike—”

“There will be no strike!”

“Very well…” James said and glanced to his father. He could read nothing from his stoic face. “You can lower the rents, to begin with. You can restore the allotments. You might even go so far as to give them a communal garden, as I had suggested before.”

“We can’t lower the rents,” Ruskin answered, predictably unbudging.

“I think you must. You had very well better!”

Ruskin offered James no reply for this. His father remained silent. It was not a good sign.

“Can you tell me why you won’t?” James asked him. “Or why you can’t, as you say?”

Ruskin looked to his father, who looked to James. “It’s possible we might manage it,” Sir Nicholas said, “if our plans in Town were to fall into place.”

“Meaning?” James asked, and feared the answer.

“The first quarter’s payment on the loan is due the end of December.”

“So?”

“So…one way, or another…we must have the money to pay it.”

James could feel his temple throbbing. “Meaning, I suppose, that Miss Gray must make up her mind to accept you.”

“All I need is her promise,” Ruskin answered, “and the terms will be extended. So long as she doesn’t delay…”

“If she refuses you altogether, what then?”

“She won’t. She can’t.”

“I’m not sure I want to know how you can be so sure.”

“I will simply have to convince her. Whatever it takes.”

“And if you can’t convince her?”

“There is no can’t!” Ruskin’s voice thundered and shook the room.

All was silence after this.

“You’re back to University, I think,” Ruskin reminded him.

Returning to Oxford was the last thing on his mind at present. He had other ideas in mind. “If I were to go back to the estate,” James answered, though rather cautiously, “it’s possible, I could be of some use to you there.”

Ruskin offered another knowing and very determined look to his father.

“I want you at University,” Sir Nicholas said. “We can have no distractions right now.”

“Distractions? How am I a distraction?  You don’t think I have some personal interest in Miss Gray do you?”

“Perhaps in the future you will be more supportive of our plans,” Ruskin said.