Feral Park (34 page)

The other was shouting the same, both men now in a tug and scuffle with two of the tallest boys over ownership of the crutch. Most of the children had retreated a safe distance to laugh amongst themselves at the nakedness of the two young men, it being an incongruous sight even for gipsy children to behold in the broad of day upon a down. But the two boys would not give up the appliance, and the one who got the better hold wrestled it from the men
and
from his companion and took to striking the men hard with it—one upon the arm and the other upon the leg—so very hard, in fact, that the man with the injured leg grabbed his thigh and in a howl of pain collapsed writhing onto the ground. The boy then ran away with his spoils and all of his companions followed close behind.

“There goes the king of the gipsies,” said the first man with a dry chuckle as he massaged his leg upon the grass.

Anna, who now fully realised that she had been rescued by two men who were wearing not so much as a thread of clothing, turned away and fixed her eyes on any thing that did not resemble bare male skin.

“Thank you,” said she in a very small, grateful, yet altogether mortified voice, “yet, I cannot look at either of you, for you are both…”

“Naked as the day we were born,” said the one man, who was, in fact, Tripp!

In her brief glance at his exposed body, Anna had found it to be quite agreeable—as agreeable, in fact, as it had felt to her touch within the woods, and very nearly as agreeable as the muscular, sun-ruddied body of his companion, whose acquaintance she had not heretofore made.

“Now, what shall be said?” mused the other man aloud. “It was a question of either taking the time to dress and perhaps then arriving to find you likewise stripped bare, or flying to your side at the instant of hearing your cry of distress and concerning ourselves with propriety in the aftermath. I suppose we have now reached that part of our drama customarily referred to as ‘the aftermath.’ I am Colin Alford, by-the-bye.”

Anna shook the hand offered to her in a somewhat awkward fashion over her shoulder.

“I am Anna Peppercorn.” Anna’s voice was unsteady both from what she had just borne and from what was also—at present—being endured.

“Yes, I know. Mr. Tripp told me as much as we were flying like wing-footed Mercury to your aid. I am sorry that we did not do a better job of it. My leg has taken a terrible hit. Look at this, Mr. Groom—this beautiful calf. It will be contusy-blue within the hour, and I will not be able to walk for a day at least, let alone to dance. And how is your arm, my dear man?”

“It took a lacing. The gipsy king has a strong arm himself.”

“May I ask,” began Anna, “what it was that you were both doing in the wood without your clothes? Were you yourself robbed by the gipsies?”

“Oh, that is a good one,” said Colin, laughing with a rasp. “No, ma’am, we were not robbed by the gipsies. We were in our natural state by our own choice.”

“We went for a swim, miss,” said Tripp quickly and with less conviction in his voice than Anna would have expected from such a relatively harmless admission.

“And what are
you
doing so far from home, Miss Peppercorn?” asked Colin, “and upon your now-plundered crutch and without any protection from the roving bands of pillaging gipsy imps who occupy these environs?”

“I was on my way to the dwarf cottage to have a word with—Oh, must we converse in the open like this?—the two of you without clothing and me without any means to my own removal?”

There followed a sequence of whispers. Anna supposed that her two rescuers were deciding betwixt themselves what must be done. It was a most knotty situation.

“Then it is decided,” said Colin in a full voice. “Miss Peppercorn, as I anticipate that I shall have some difficulty walking under my own industry, my friend, Mr. Groom, will do us the favour of returning to the abandoned gamekeeper’s cottage where we left our clothes. He will then dress himself and return to us, carrying my togs along with him. After
I
dress, Miss Peppercorn, you and I will wait in our presently incapacitated state for my friend to procure a horse to take me to
my
dwelling and you to your mistress’ house, where, conveniently, you are already headed. Does that plan meet with your approval?”

Anna nodded, thinking that it was a better plan than any that she might devise.

A brief moment later Anna could hear Tripp run off upon his flapping bare feet in the direction of the woods.

“Now, Miss Peppercorn, I fully understand that this is not the best situation in which to make proper acquaintance, but I would rather speak to your back than have the two of us sit here saying absolutely nothing to one another with me naked and you distraught from the attack and mortified by having to commune with a man in my state, even one so well turned of figure as myself. I assure you that I would fain retreat into the woods and spare you from even one more moment of embarrassment were it not for two important facts that discommend this course of action: one—that I do not believe it possible for me to walk at this moment, and two—that I fear that should I leave you here alone, those detestable lilliputian thieves will make a second raid and you will again be hopelessly out-manned and outmaneuvered.”

“Whereas the presence of a naked cripple turns everything to my benefit.”

“It is still better than the alternative. I was told, by-the-bye, that you have wit, and I see now that the source of my information did not mislead.”

“And who was the source of your information, Mr. Alford?”

“My brother Perry, of course.”

“He said that I was witty?”

“He said a good many things about you, each commendable.”

Anna did not reply. She fought the urge to smile and then relented, for Colin could not see it, and then she remembered her predicament and said, “It is difficult to speak to you, Mr. Alford. Perhaps we
should
sit quietly until Tripp returns.”

“You will not have me shut up like a clam, Miss Peppercorn; I refuse it. Now if it will help to relax you, you may picture me dresst up like a uniformed hussar, but I will not be quiet, for it is altogether impossible. I speak even when I dance and even when I am dancing alone in performance. I speak at all times and it is very tiresome to my brothers, no doubt, but I have some compensating good points. Why were you going to Mrs. Taptoe’s house, may I ask?”

“Respectfully, Mr. Alford, I do not believe that to be any of your business.”

“I see. Well, I am not one to pry and so I shall not. My brother Perry, by-the-bye, is sitting at home at this very moment finishing a poem for you, unless, of course, it is finished already, but I doubt that it
should
be, for he has been expending quite a bit of effort upon it and wants it to be perfect. Did you know that you are to be recipient of violent love verses from my brother?”

Anna smiled again. She checked the desire to turn her face to Mr. Alford as she replied, “He said that he would do this. I am flattered that he is doing exactly what he said that he would.”

“And why should he not? As I indicated, he is quite fond of you. Ah, this sun feels lovely upon my bare skin. I shall try to find a way to do this again without the gipsy children about and the mortified Miss Peppercorn in close proximity.”

“If I could be any place else, Mr. Alford, I would be there. Now I wish that I were at home, for when your brother arrives to give me the poem he will find me gone. I thought that he was not coming, you see, or I should never have ventured out. Now that is not true. I
had
to come to-day, for I am on a mission to correct a terrible wrong.”

“What terrible wrong, Miss Peppercorn?”

“I cannot say. I can only tell you how very happy I am to hear that your brother was thinking of me all morning, for I have been thinking of him as well.”

“Some things work out so very well. And some things do not. Mr. Groom— rather,
Tripp
and I were not, as you were told, swimming, for you have, no doubt, noted that neither of us is wet.”

“I had not noticed, Mr. Alford, or perhaps I did.”

“I cannot say that I am as fond of Mr. Tripp as my brother is of you, but I warrant that there is
some
affection there. He is a playful bear whom it is difficult not to warm to—a most handsome creature, as well, possessed of perhaps the most arrestingly pleasing body of any man in the parish, except perhaps that which belongs to myself. But here is the difference between Payton Parish’s two most agreeably sculpted males: my build is sinewy in a lean and wiry sense, while Mr. Groom’s is meaty and muscular. It is all a matter of taste. Which is
your
taste, Miss Peppercorn?”

Anna did not answer. She did not wish to continue this most mortifying conversation about male pulchritude, and yet she was very confused and after a brief silence was given to ask if the two men had disrobed for the purpose of comparing their bodies, one with the other.

“That would be a part of it. The comparison was quite enjoyable, as was the activity which followed.”

“But Tripp would not—I cannot think—” Anna’s words became muddled in her mouth. “But he and I—we—!”

“You and he what?”

“I thought that he was—he kissed me. Five times. In that very woods. He wanted me. And now you tell me—”

“Mr. Tripp wants a good many things, as do most men, I suppose, if they allow themselves. But want
you
? Now, Miss Peppercorn, I admire you for taking such free-spirited liberty with the man—it is my religion, you should know, that we should, each of us, celebrate the beauty in all things, including our most intimate intercourse with one another—but I have spent enough time with our dear Mr. Tripp to realise that his heart will always belong to the brown one—Miss Umber Something.”

“Umbrous Elizabeth.”

“Yes. He speaks of her with great affection even as he and I wrestle upon the floor of the gamekeeper’s lodge, and when our wrestling days are over, she will be the one to grow old at his side in loving, lifelong companionship, even as he revisits warm subsidiary memories of a time in which a gamesome, friskily ruttish dance instructor gave his loins the sort of attention that puts a ready smile upon a man’s face.”

Reeling from mention of a man’s loins, Anna took a moment to compose herself. Then in a soft, self-depreciating voice she said, “Then it is not me at all whom Tripp thinks about in his private moments. It is
you
.”

“Or perhaps it is the pretty girl who sells buns in the bakery, or the handsome blacksmith in the village. Mr. Groom, you see, is very much like me in that he revels in the authority of a very favourable countenance, and exults in his carefree and manful youth, and finally—and this is perhaps the most important thing and applies to Tripp alone—the young man takes profound pride and pleasure in a prodigiously pronounced pizzle—the largest pizzle, in fact, I have ever seen. Did you catch a glimpse of it yourself just a few minutes ago?”

In an under-voice: “Mr. Alford, I can hardly speak.”

“So you did not see it. You turned away too quickly.”

“Mr. Alford, I feel faint.”

“I do not seek to discompose you, Miss Peppercorn.”

“But you are doing so with great success. I did not see
it
. I turned very quickly, as you have just said. I will not say another word on the subject.”

“Then we will close the subject, for there is something else important that I wish to say—that I wish to
ask.
Mr. Groom and I are very much alike in the temperature of our ardour and indeed in our very bear-hold upon life. But here is the difference: I would be much less likely to kiss one so beautiful as yourself as to
dance
with you—an experience which should constitute an ecstasy all of its own. It should be a dance that you will always remember, for perhaps you have not heard: I am very good. But there is something I should like to do in addition to that and perhaps even more than
that
, Miss Peppercorn. I should like to program all the dances at your ball.”

“Oh. Hum. I see no reason why you should not.”

“Do you truly mean it?”

“Why should I not mean it? You may be the dance master of the evening. I do not know how I am to feel with regard to this other matter. Should I be happy for you and Tripp or happy for Umbrous Elizabeth to know that Tripp keeps her foremost within his heart, or to be unhappy for myself that I was nothing more to him than a kiss (or five) on a rainy day with the hair dropping down over our eyes and our faces wet with the rain.”

“Here is the very thing to remember that will cheer you: my brother Perry is taken with you,
most
taken. And he should like nothing better at some point in your association than to take you into the woods himself and kiss you with what I suspect will be even more pronounced violence and passion than you have formerly experienced, and perhaps there may even be some wrestling and rolling upon the floor in the gamekeeper’s lodge if you are so inclined (as I highly recommend the activity); but I think, now, that you are not the sort to be predisposed to such unbound intercourse in absence of a legal marital vow.”

“You are right. I am not. But I apprehend your point.”

“Good. Now we need to do only one thing more to clear the path to your ultimate happiness with my brother, and that is to cure him of a most odious laudanum addiction. Ah, hither comes Mr. Groom. My good man: but where are the rest of our clothes?”