Cynthia Bailey Pratt (28 page)

“What will you do now?” Jocelyn asked, no longer able to resist the question. She’d wondered about the immediate future from the moment he found the letter he brought from France, now in her grandfather’s hands.

He stopped in the middle of a step and looked down. “Well ... I don’t know! I can’t say I’d thought that far ahead.”

Turning to her, he placed a tender hand on her cheek. Almost idly his thumb edged her lower lip. Words formed in his mouth. Words she did not want to wait to hear. Her eyes closed of their own accord. Swaying toward him, she heard the sound of booted feet along the marble hall.

“Sir!” someone said, close at hand.

Hammond chuckled ruefully as her eyes snapped open. A sergeant in a scarlet uniform stood at attention beside them, extending an envelope. “Orders, I expect,” Hammond said. He read the paper. “Very well, sergeant. I’ll come with you.”

In the single moment they had, Hammond squeezed her hand. “I have to go to London. I’ll see you there.”

Alone, Jocelyn stamped her foot. It was always something! Constables, cousins, commands—the whole roster stood up and answered “Present” whenever she and Hammond stole an instant alone. She was sick of it. The very next time, she swore, he’d not have it so easy. One of them—and she feared it would be her—must make a plain, simple statement about their feelings, or she’d go mad.

Jocelyn and her grandfather returned to Tom’s lodging, ill at ease in each other’s presence. As soon as they entered, Helena bolted away and locked herself in Tom’s room. Jocelyn’s aunt and uncle, not at all put out by this abrupt termination to their conversation, greeted their niece with gentle kindliness. Lord Ashspring undertook to explain Jocelyn’s presence in Oxford to them. He did not mention Mr. Fain, only saying that he requested Jocelyn come to see him in the hopes of making amends to her for his long silence and that Miss Fain and Mr. Fletcher accompanied her for modesty’s sake.

Years of directing the clandestine operations of His Majesty’s government had accustomed him to phlegmatic individuals, but he never knew anyone so calm as his relations by marriage. Mrs. Luckem, who seemed to do most of the talking, said, “I see. Of course, Jocelyn must visit you, as soon as you wish it.”

‘‘If you can spare her, I would have her accompany me now. Mr. Fain has given his sister into my care, temporarily. Mr. Fletcher wishes to take the responsibility permanently as soon as may be convenient.” He was prey to the curious and most disconcerting feeling, one he had not known since his schooldays, that he told lies to someone who knew the entire truth.

* * * *

Helena said one evening during their third week in London, as they sorted through their new clothes, “If it weren’t for Nicholas, I should be the happiest girl in the world!”

The two girls sat in the bedroom they’d shared since their second night in the city. The first night Helena had awakened with a nightmare, sobbing out a confused dream of separation and fear. After that she declared she slept better with someone else in the room. Jocelyn shared her room gladly, for she’d had her own nightmares. Sometimes, even now, she could feel Mr. Fain’s knife at her side and would involuntarily jerk aside. She did not describe her dreams to Helena.

Jocelyn looked away from the mirror, letting her new promenade gown, fine as anything Miriam Swann could boast, fall limply away from her shoulders. “You’re not letting him come between you and Mr. Fletcher, I hope?”

“I am trying not to let him,” Helena said softly. Her hand darted out. “Look at this shawl!” she said, lifting a piece of gauze fine as morning mist. Jocelyn let her change the subject.

Nicholas Fain had been escorted at once to London, though he had not traveled in the same style as his sister and Jocelyn. Newgate Prison awaited him. Helena wanted to go to visit him, but Fletcher and Lord Ashspring had dissuaded her. “Better not to be connected with him, darling,” Mark had said. “This affair’s made a lot of noise in the popular broadsides. You don’t want to be bothered with strangers accusing you of... complicity.”

Jocelyn did her best to keep Helena’s spirits high. They traveled about London, seeing all the “lions,” pleased by nearly all they saw, and almost always unaware of the interested glances they acquired as they wandered, maid in tow. If they did happen to notice, they behaved very coolly until safely past and then giggled and teased, each insisting the other was the object of attention.

Lord Ashspring did his part, insisting that each girl order a new wardrobe, as they had come up to town with virtually nothing. For once Jocelyn had another to do her sewing, and she felt wonderfully guilty at her idleness. At first she enjoyed ringing a bell and having someone come to take her orders but, as she said to her grandfather, “I cannot be idle and be happy.”

By the second week of her arrival, she began to inquire gently into the running of the house. A man tends to overlook the minor details of housekeeping like dust under the stairs and moldy closets that make the difference between a London residence and a comfortable home. The servants were happier. His Lordship’s chef produced much better dishes when he knew Miss Jocelyn would care how they were cooked. The butler felt he had at last someone worthy of his magnificence. His Lordship never even noticed if the footmen’s toes turned out correctly. The only person displeased was the coachman. “This,” he said to anyone who would listen, “is what comes a pickin’ up femayles on t’road.”

Slowly Jocelyn began to feel more at ease in the presence of her grandfather. At first he seemed so cold and stiff with her that she found it difficult to behave with less than complete formality. The two girls would have supper with him in the library after he returned from the War Office. He spoke kindly to Helena, making her talk about a variety of subjects to keep her from thinking about her brother. But when he looked on Jocelyn, his deep-set eyes frowned, and he would be silent.

Late one night, after three weeks had passed, Jocelyn did not feel sleepy. Helena slept soundly. Not wishing to disturb her friend with a lamp, she brought a piece of embroidery downstairs to sit in the library. Lord Ashspring had sent a message before dinner, saying he would be very late. The library was a dark. comfortable room, much like the one in the Luckems’ house, only larger and missing the antique objects. She poked up the fire, always burning to warm her grandfather’s old bones.

Half-hidden in a chair with great curving wings, she sat with her needle, brilliant floss spread over her white muslin knees. Embroidery did not take all her attention, and her thoughts turned inexorably to Hammond. He had never sent any word to her. Slowly she was becoming convinced, almost against her will, that his affection for her had been either illusionary or brought on only by the difficulties and dangers of their days together. She sighed and attempted to focus her mind on the dainty leaves forming under her hand.

Suddenly from behind her, she heard soft, slow footsteps. Her whole body tensed. A voice said, “Jocelyn?” and she jumped up with a little shriek. The threads on her lap drifted off, floating in the air.

Lord Ashspring woofed with surprise. “Damn, child, have you no better sense . . .” He saw her eyes were still huge and that she trembled. “It seems we have each startled the other. Sit down.” He took her by the elbow and pressed her down onto the chair’s cushion. Ringing the bell, he gave orders for two glasses of brandy, one large and another rather smaller.

“Drink that down directly. I know it tastes dreadful, but it will do you much good.” Standing before the fireplace, he sipped his own glass appreciatively with a mental apology to the liquor. He deeply regretted denigrating the fine wine, recently brought over from France, but he knew it would taste worse than medicine to a young girl unused to the flavor.

Jocelyn made a face as the wine burned an acrid path down her throat. However, it did seem to help in getting her too-fast breath under control. “I don’t know what I was thinking of,” she said.

“Hmph! It’s this Fain business, no doubt. I can’t tell you what a fuss is being made. There’s actually some talk about letting him go.”

“Go?”

“They want to give him to the Russians. Let them take care of him. I’m against it.”

“Why?” She leaned forward, looking at her grandfather with an air of grave interest.

“Their methods of punishing criminals are not as civilized as our own. We’ll hang him, but they’d . . .” He closed his lips. “Never mind. What are you doing?” He looked at the embroidery hoop she held out to him. “Very pretty. Your grandmother, my Elizabeth, used to do crewelwork. Great Jacobite flowers to repair the bedhangings at the house.”

“What house?” Jocelyn asked timidly. Though filled with natural curiosity about the rest of her family, especially about her father, of whom she knew almost nothing, she never yet dared to ask her grandfather direct questions about them.

“Our family home is at Acton Burnell, in Shropshire.” He sat down on the chair across the fireplace from Jocelyn.

“Is that where our name comes from?”

“Yes, it’s a corruption. Your father researched the question of how it came to be changed, but his investigations came to nought. He did not have time ...” Lord Ashspring looked at Jocelyn, her face half-shaded, half-illuminated by the flickering firelight. “Sometimes . . .” he said so quietly she almost could not hear him, “sometimes you have his expression. And you laugh like Elizabeth.”

Every evening thereafter, Jocelyn would go to sit near her grandfather as he sat reading in a circle of lamplight. He would read aloud to her, and then they’d discuss the subject at hand. He called her ignorant much of the time, and she supposed she was. On other occasions, especially when she agreed with him. Lord Ashspring would applaud her good sense.

Slowly they came to be more at ease with each other. Often he would mention something about the family she’d never known, and she treasured every word. He never went so far as to regret aloud the wasted years of proud silence, but she knew he sometimes thought it. Jocelyn began to picture for herself a new life, one in which the care of her cousins was replaced by living in her grandfather’s house and being of help to him. Perhaps she could even take part in society in a small way. As the grandchild of a peer, even a recently created one, the wider world would greet her with some attention.

She mentioned these changed dreams to Helena, who looked at her in an odd, sidelong fashion. After a moment she said, “Mr. Hammond has not yet written to you? Did he not say he would?”

“No,” Jocelyn said, trying not to let Helena see that his silence hurt her. “He only said he might call. I imagine he has many things to occupy his attention just now. He’d been out of the country so long.”

“I wonder ... I wonder if it was he Lord Ashspring sent to France.”

“I doubt it.” Lord Ashspring had sent to France to discover who Helena’s real father had been, since it was established that Nicholas Fain’s father was not hers. Jocelyn had told her grandfather that this mystery troubled Helena, as she did not want to marry Mr. Fletcher without knowing the kind of family she came from.

Jocelyn had gone with her friend to visit Mr. Fletcher’s widowed mother, who lived in an elegant but small house in Chiswick not far from Sutton Court and the river. A short, plump, fair woman dressed in a gown of a fashionable cut but in the deepest black, she tended to sigh heavily when speaking of her late husband. Mrs. Fletcher hadn’t any idea, apparently, what her son had been doing during the war nor the circumstances under which he and Miss Fain had met. “Where does your family live, my dear Helena?”

This, of course, was the worst possible question to put to her son’s fiancée. Helena could not say anything without tears. Jocelyn mumbled for her, “Unfortunately, Helena is all alone in the world. My aunt and uncle ... my grandfather Lord Ashspring . . . you understand.” Jocelyn hoped she left the impression that Helena’s family were long-term friends of her own somewhat more illustrious family.

Mrs. Fletcher had been very sweet and tender after that, inviting Helena to stay at her house rather than at Lord Ashspring’s residence. “That’s so very kind, but Jocelyn offered to let me stay until the . . . wedding.” Only Jocelyn was aware that Helena had nearly said “hanging.”

Two days after this meeting Mr. Fletcher suggested with a worried face that they delay posting the banns in his mother’s parish until after the unpleasant epilogue to Mr. Fain’s career was over. Helena agreed very calmly and then spent the rest of the afternoon sobbing in Jocelyn’s arms. “If he doesn’t want to marry me anymore, then he should tell me so. That would only be fair, don’t you think? Don’t you?”

Jocelyn did not know what to think. She sympathized strongly with Helena, who only wished to marry and put her relationship with her stepbrother behind her. Yet at the same time, she could understand Mrs. Fletcher’s reluctance to take into her home and family someone whose background was not a matter for discussion. Jocelyn felt the most sympathy for Mr. Fletcher caught in the middle not only between his mother and his love, but trapped by confused loyalties to his career and Helena.

He couldn’t even formally take up his regimental colors again, as the army found it had more officers than it knew what to do with. The navy was in the same state. The British government decided it was not necessary to keep the massive body of men they’d used as a sword against Napoleon now he was a tiger with every tooth drawn.

Jocelyn noticed Lord Ashspring’s spirits seemed as low as Mr. Fletcher’s. The secretive service to which he belonged was also being broken down. He would often, in their evening sessions, curse the short-sightedness of the Parliament, the Lords of the Admiralty, and the Regent’s advisers. “No one remembers ‘02 when we took the navy down to peacetime standing, only to find it necessary to frantically rearm when Napoleon broke the peace.”

“But we’re safe now,” Jocelyn said.

“Yes, safe enough. Until the next time. Napoleon’s not the only enemy we have to fear.”

Remembering things she’d heard, Jocelyn hazarded a guess. “The Russians?”