Cynthia Bailey Pratt (7 page)

Putting her thoughts into pleasant words, Jocelyn said, “It’s very good of you to drive me home, Miriam.”

“Nonsense.” The blonde leaned closer again, her pagoda-shaped parasol waving over their heads. “To tell you truthfully, I am grateful to have the excuse to stay out. I can’t tell you what a trial it has been trapped at home with that awful old woman. Just when everything is happening in London!”

For the journey home Miriam Swann talked animatedly about her present existence, so dull after the myriad delights of vast, ever-changing London, especially now as every day brought notables arriving for the great Peace Celebration. Miriam mentioned the Czar or his staff with every third breath and told quite a funny story about the Prince Regent calling on the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg at Pulteney’s Hotel before she was even dressed, so eager was he to greet his guests.

Jocelyn nodded and smiled, trying to keep track of the names of people with whom she was unacquainted. “It sounds very exciting,” she said, feeling quite content that Miriam should be the one to deal with London society.

“Oh, it is. And here am I, fastened onto Mrs. Swann because she’s taken it into her head that she’s dying at last. It doesn’t seem to slow her up much, however. I expect to be long cold in my grave before she’s done with
her
life.”

The stylish barouche made the turn between the trees into the Luckems’ short drive. “I must call on you soon, Jocelyn. I know you think it terribly remiss of me not to have done it before now. You would forgive me if only you knew how difficult my mother-in-law can be.”

“I understand you have much on your mind. Is your husband visiting with you?”

“Dear Bartlett! He did come down for a time, but he found it necessary to go back to Town last week. I shouldn’t be half so dull if he were here.”

Nor so eager to see me, Jocelyn thought. “Please come,” she said. “If Mrs. Swann is well enough, perhaps you both can take tea tomorrow after church.”

“Oh, I am sure she will recover from her frets if something so pleasant is offered her. I, of course, should like it above all things. And ...” Miriam whispered as Jocelyn took the footman’s hand to step down. “And I’ll be able to tell you all about the knife. I’m sure to know everything by then.”

“Oh, yes,” Jocelyn said thinly. “By all means.”

She waved farewell as Miriam poked the coachman and he started the horse. Miriam waved her parasol gaily above her head as she passed by.

The inside of the house seemed very dark and cold after the brightness of the sun. Jocelyn sat slowly down upon the steps and, heedless of her hat brim, leaned her head against the ornate newel post. Fear hung inside her breast like a large stone, weighting down her heart. She seemed to hear Miriam saying, “The wound must have been a mortal one....”

Perhaps Hammond was dead. She seemed to see his pale face and bit her lip.

The front door was hurled open, and Arnold raced in, catching the door behind him so it closed with a thunderous bang. He sprinted halfway down the hall before he realized what he’d seen. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded, clumping back. “Are you sick?”

“No, dear. I’m perfectly well.”

“You’ve still got your hat on.” If Arnold knew one thing about women, it was that they were always taking
off
hats and putting them on.

Eagerly he said, “Did you hear about the knife they found? Mr. Quigg said they did. All bloody. I wish I’d found it. Like Macbeth or somebody.” Mr. Fletcher only recently ventured to expose Arnold to Shakespeare’s darker plays, having found the romantic comedies stirred only loud disgust.

Jocelyn lifted her slow arms, untying the ribbons to take off her bonnet. She hung it on the newel post. “Yes, I’ve heard about it.”

“Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle toward my hand?” Arnold declaimed, flinging his hands about in what he considered an appropriately theatrical style.

“Arnold!” Jocelyn snapped suddenly. “You’ve been out. Where did you go?”

“Just into the garden. You said I might. I was helping Mr. Quigg with planting. We were mixing manure and soil.”

“I can believe it. Go and get ready for a bath. I’ll bring up the water.”

“What for?”

“You’re filthy. You’ve got mud all over your feet, and you’ve tracked it up the hall. Why didn’t you rinse them outside? Sometimes you’re little better than a goose.”

Arnold turned red with anger. “You’ve been nothing but prickles since last night! What’s wrong with you?” His feet, not in the least muffled by their heavy coating of mud, thundered up the stairs.

“Arnold,” Jocelyn called before he’d turned the corner on the landing.

“Oh . . . what?” he asked, most reluctantly.

Jocelyn rose and stepped up until her eyes were level with his knees. He was terribly dirty, but she had no reason to talk to him as if he were a bad boy. He couldn’t know that the story of the mysterious knife made her feel as if it were twisting inside her.

She rummaged in her basket for the small bag of sweets she’d bought him and pitched it up to him. He reached out lazily and caught it, though she’d thrown it badly. Arnold stuffed his mouth at once and only belatedly mumbled his thanks.

“Not too many before dinner,” Jocelyn said.

Swallowing, he said, “Jocelyn, I’ve been thinking about something. I’ve decided you are right about my staying in the covers for a while.”

“Did something happen while I was out?” she asked in sudden anxiety.

“Oh, no. Nothing. You never know, though. Tomorrow I guess I’ll just stay in my room, studying my classics.”

Jocelyn smiled as she realized what this sweet reasonableness lead to. “That’s very noble of you, Arnold. However, I’m afraid you will have to come to church.” - “But—Constable Regin! He might see me then . . .” He pointed dramatically into the distance. “Off to gaol!”

“Constable Regin is a Dissenter, as you very well know. You’ll be quite safe on Sundays until your parents come home to make all right. Now, go and get ready for your bath.”

Chapter Four

Sunshine filled the church from above, glancing off the gold embroidery on the red plush altar cloth and burnishing the old wood panels. As fishermen and fanners, the citizens of Libermore kept the clear glass of the Roundheads, preferring to see how the weather did than colored bits of glass. The children, though, found it difficult to sit still when they could see the blue sky of a perfect spring day beyond the church walls.

Arnold felt especially vexed. With incredible patience he waited through the first day of restricted bounds. In the back of his mind, however, lived a plan for escape. He hoped to salvage some pan of the day if Mr. Fain didn’t make a long sermon. He was disappointed. Not having a watch, he couldn’t say how long it went on. The vicar seemed to drone on as long as during the Christmas service, when Arnold had been eager to get home to open his gifts.

Swinging his feet, the hard pew numbing his hind end, Arnold stared at Mr. Fain, silver-haired and kindly looking. He thought hard, boyish thoughts while listening to the vicar going on and on about a deaf adder or something. Arnold knew perfectly well that snakes don’t have ears.

Couldn’t Mr. Fain feel all his parishioners willing him to get it over with? Arnold always knew when people wanted him to be quiet, though sometimes he ignored them. Was Mr. Fain ignoring them? Looking up at the vicar in the pulpit, Arnold toyed for half the sermon with a pleasing fantasy of some civic-minded person sawing at the carved canopy’s supports and the resulting sight of Mr. Fain crushed to a formless mass.

Mr. Fain, unaware of his imminent peril, wound up his sermon at last. The gassy sound of the old organ, inadequately pumped, breathed out, and the adults reached for their hymnals. Feeling his cousin’s gaze, Arnold turned his head toward her.
He could not see her face, for his view was obstructed by the deep well of her bonnet. For once he agreed with Granville. It was an ugly thing to put on one’s head.

He peered at the hymnal she shared with him. Good. It was one of the louder hymns. Arnold enjoyed singing. He could make a lot of noise without anyone telling him to hush.

Most members of the congregation liked the Luckems, though they knew Arnold of old as a young limb of Satan. Their glances were fond. Jocelyn would have been comforted to know how many people kept a careful watch over her while her aunt and uncle were away. Most of their hearts held at least a measure of pity. They doubted that Libermore would ever see Jocelyn Burnwell stand in front of the church as a bride.

In the dimness at the rear of the old stone building, one person saw her as attractive, even if he shared Arnold’s opinion of her hat. He watched her idly for a few minutes, admiring the delicacy of her body and her grace as she knelt and rose during the service. Soon though, as if he felt uneasy about noticing a young woman on holy ground, he took to studying the vicar with an intensity that suggested he was a man interested in his soul.

He, in turn, was observed by the females in the small church, marked down as an unaccompanied, and therefore unmarried, man. A heavy woman held possessively on to his arm, but they knew her. She’d been whispering at him for the last half hour. When the service let out, they’d have a chance at him. Disappointingly, he slipped away, full of the freshest gossip, before the hymnals were passed.

The gossips were concerned with two topics to the eclipse of all others. The first and most exciting subject was the story of the bloody knife and the magistrate’s investigation. The other item began with pitying glances at Mrs. Hodges, pale and worried in the middle pew. Several of the kinder women approached her after the service to offer what comfort they could in good conscience give. The best that could be done was to reassure Mrs. Hodges that news of her husband, whether drunk or imprisoned, would soon reach her.

After church, when Arnold ran whooping away to meet with his friends, Jocelyn paused to speak to Mr. Fain and his half-sister, Helena. The vicar’s face was all but unlined, in contrast to the thick silver hair that topped his long frame. His manner of bending low to catch every word spoken to him was very nattering, and the older ladies were much pleased by his distinguishing attentions. His sermons tended to be mild and unenthusiastic, although very learned.

Though other members of the congregation were competing for his attention, he smiled at Jocelyn. “Miss Burnwell, it pleases me much to see that you do not permit your cousins too much liberty. Boys should be hardly schooled to fit them for the difficulties that lie in every man’s way.” He took her hand and patted it. “If you require any aid with them in Mr. Luckem’s absence, I trust you will come to me.”

Jocelyn replied in some surprise, “Yes. Yes, I will.”

The vicar said one word more. “What a charming, maidenly bonnet you are wearing. Just the sort of thing a young lady should wear.” Mr. Fain smiled and then turned aside to greet Miriam’s mother-in-law, Mrs. Alastair Swann, dressed in spotless, gleaming white, as was her unvarying habit.

Helena Fain took Jocelyn’s arm and walked with her down the church steps onto the green sward. “My brother is in a good mood this morning,” she said. “He praised my eggs and admired your bonnet. He must have had pleasant dreams.”

“He must have been joking. How could anyone like this bonnet? Even I don’t like it—I only wear it.”

Plainly dressed and smoothly coiffed, Helena wore neither bonnet nor hat, living as she did directly behind the church and busy throughout the service playing the organ. The sun struck golden highlights from her chestnut hair and revealed the clarity of her skin. Her lavender dress with raised spots brought out the blue of her eyes so that they shone in their setting of thick dark lashes.

Helena Fain was Jocelyn’s closest friend. Her half-brother had held the living at Libermore for nearly two years. She had arrived only six months before from a school for young ladies near Brighton. Born in France, she had been left destitute in neutral Switzerland at the death of her mother. Mr. Fain paid for her passage to England and her education. At eighteen, almost two years younger than Jocelyn, she possessed so much more knowledge of the world that she sometimes made Jocelyn feel like the younger girl. Mr. Fain was forty-three.

Helena pulled, Jocelyn farther away from the people coming down the church steps. “Speaking of your bonnet,” she said rather loudly, “is that the new style of tying ribbons? You’ll have to teach me.”

In a whisper she said, “I must talk with you.” Helena looked over Jocelyn’s shoulder. The vicar, his hair shining like plate in the sunlight, still stood beside Mrs. Swann, surrounded by an admiring circle.

Jocelyn followed the direction of her friend’s glance only to see Grim Cocker staring at the pair of them. He leaned against one of the gravestones by the church steps. Pointedly, she turned with Helena so that he could not see their faces.

“What is wrong?” Jocelyn asked. “You’re all a-tremble.”

Before Helena could speak again, Miriam Swann approached, beautifully and fashionably dressed in a pale yellow silk gown, elaborate frills emerging at her breast and wrists. She’d curled her hair into all-over ringlets, which were peeking out beneath the tied-down brim of her hat of smooth straw lined with light green. “Don’t forget we’re coming to tea, Jocelyn,” she said in her high laughing voice.

Jocelyn smiled warmly. “I’ve not forgotten. Your mother-in-law is accompanying you, I hope.”

Miriam looked disgustedly at the church’s squat Norman tower at the mention of her husband’s mother, but her voice held a pleasure that seemed sincere. “Oh, yes. She is so anxious to see you again. We’ll be along after a quick prayer at the late Mr. Swann’s graveside.”

Miriam put up her parasol against the sun. “Are you coming too, Miss Fain?” Before she could answer, Miriam’s mother-in-law called her. With a droll look and a wriggle of her shoulders, she walked away.

“Jocelyn,” Helena said hurriedly, lowering her voice. “Do you have everything you need for your tea? I have some biscuits that are very fresh. ...”

“Thank you,” Jocelyn said, puzzled by her friend’s secretive manner. She knew that Helena and her half-brother did not get on, though Helena felt grateful for his goodness to her. Yet, she had never behaved so strangely before, not even when she and Mr. Fain argued over the silly things people who are not used to each other quarrel over.