Flowers From The Storm (66 page)

“I hired no one,” Maddy said. “I—”

“Don’t think to succeed at making Mr. Durham your scapegoat. Your dirty work he may have done, but I’ll see to it—I’ll see to it personally, Miss Timms—that you suffer all the penalty you deserve, should you push me.”

“Manning,” the other one said, with a plaintive note. “Let me talk to her. Try to understand, Miss—ah—ma’am. We’re awfully upset. We hate dragging this through the mud, but you really ought to think a moment. That’s why we’re here, you see—we don’t want to carry it all the way, but you’re forcing us into such an unpleasant position, with all this spending and these balls and things. Please think about it.”

“What—do ye want me to think about?”

“Cutting your losses, ma’am,” Manning said harshly.

“And ours,” Stoneham added. “Don’t make us go so far as a public hearing. The family name, ma’am!

Have a little pity. Just give him back to us, so that we don’t have to take it to the courts.”

“Where you will lose everything, Miss Timms. Everything, once he’s declared incompetent. And I don’t scruple to say that it is
you
who tell against his wit the heaviest—his marriage to such as you, and the deranged actions he’s taken under your power—dismissing Torbyn—that gun—the tiara—this bungle of debts—this very ball, madam, at such a time! I’ll admit that he might fool the casual eye, but all this will come out in court, and then you’re gone—with nothing. Except perhaps a place on a convict transport.”

“But we don’t want to take it that far,” Stoneham pleaded. “We’re prepared to be generous. Very generous. We’ll do anything to avoid a hearing.”

She shook her head, trying to comprehend. “But—do ye say—you don’t want a hearing?”

“Of course we don’t want a hearing! And we’ll pay you. The tiara, as Manning says. Take that.”

“Why?” She was bewildered.

“Miss Timms, I beg you not to waste our time by playing the dunce,” Manning said. “If you agree not to contest a nullification of the marriage, then we are prepared to let you keep the tiara.”

Maddy sat still, gazing at him. “It can be nullified?”

“Indeed it can. And will be, whether you like it or no. Your only decision is whether or not you wish to be sensible and take what you’re offered, or make us wrest it from you by force.”

“I had not thought…” She stared into space. Her voice dropped. “But—can it be nullified—” She moistened her lips. “After…”

“Ah! The lady blushes,” Manning said unpleasantly. “The more fool you, then. Did you think a consummation would protect you? The marriage was illegally conducted. It was induced by fraud. The duke was not in his right mind. It can be nullified.”

“But you see, you save us going into all that, if you will cooperate,” Stoneham said. “If you will agree to an annulment, say, on the grounds of non-consummation, it’s all much simpler. None of this hearing business.”

“And if you’re breeding, which I may sincerely hope for your sake that you’re not,” Manning added, “a stipend can be privately arranged for the child. It’s better than you will get in the other circumstance.”

She stood up suddenly, walking away from them, from their falsehoods and terms and manipulations.

She saw herself in the cheval mirror and stood looking at the silver, unfamiliar figure there. “Ye would not have a hearing, then,” she said, and the stranger in the mirror seemed much more confident and sophisticated than naive Maddy Timms.

“Are you looking for certain safety from the law, madam?”

She stared at the silver figure, and turned. “If I am to agree to a nullification, I must know that there is to be no hearing. Ever.”

“You have our word on it,” Stoneham said eagerly.

Maddy looked at him and at Manning’s sturdy belligerence. They were not Friends; she could not trust them.

“I’m not decided. I will consider it,” she said. The ball gown swished around her as she turned to leave.

Manning caught her arm. “You haven’t long, madam,” he said. “My patience with this situation is worn quite thin.”

She pulled herself free of him, moving toward the door.

“And don’t think to try to spirit him away again,” Manning said behind her. “I warn you—you’ll catch cold at it this time.”

* * * Christian couldn’t find Maddy. As he worked around a chattering couple by slipping into the recess of the bay window, he paused. He looked down at a man standing below in the light of a streetlamp.

Christian’s hand closed convulsively on the drapes. He flung himself back, ramming into a guest behind him. The man began to apologize, but Christian muttered, pushing away, walking into the crowd.

It was the Ape down there.

Christian was having trouble breathing. He plunged through the guests, ignoring the commotion. At the top of the stairs, he grabbed a footman. “Outside! The man… shaved…”

The servant blinked at him in confusion. “Your Grace?”

“Rid of him!” He gave the man a shove toward the stairs. With a look of uncertainty, the footman bowed. He turned and descended. Christian watched him go out, then pushed back to the window. He looked down.

The liveried servant stood talking to one of the guests’ coachmen. The man shrugged. No one else stood on the walk.

A hand descended on Christian’s shoulder. He jerked and swung around on his assailant in berserk reflex—saw it was a Whip MP and barely controlled his reaction in time. The man smiled and waved his glass of champagne, launching into a voluble discourse on Catholic emancipation. Christian stared at him, unable to master a word. He glanced past the politician and saw the bloodman’s back, familiar Quaker coat, terrible—pausing for an instant by the far door, and then passing on through, lost in the crowd.

The politician hesitated, squinting at Christian. “I say. You look jolly queer, my man. Do you think we had better open this window?”

In the cold dimness of the duke’s stable, a row of eight perfectly-matched shapes marked the hind stockings of the new team. The horses shifted, with alert chinks and deep draughts of air, scenting the intruder as Maddy paused, adjusting from the ball noise and the shadows of the garden court to this deeper darkness.

The material of her dress caught what small light there was, shimmering. She took her skirt up in her hands and walked to the coach at the end of the aisle, then turned and walked back again, trying to be sure, to find the Light and certain answers.

It was only another sign of how far she had strayed, that it was so hard to reach a state of inner calm, to listen for the still, small voice. She had lost the way of it; for a long time, she hadn’t been to Meeting, she hadn’t prayed: she knew she had not even really tried. All those nights of worry had been only that—worry, and misery, and wishing that things were not what they were. All willful stubborn resistance to the Truth.

She did not belong here. She had stayed—why? Richard had begged her to leave, her own elders had hinted that she might return—and still she was here.

Because Jervaulx needed her.

Because they had made the marriage irrevocable.

But he did not need her, and the marriage was not irrevocable.

Gradually the arched windows looking out on the alley took shape. The rumps of the cream ponies made dim pale shapes—beyond them in the row two stalls stood black and empty. As her vision grew sharper, she could see the faint gleam of the town carriage, and the other vehicle beyond that. Something brushed up against her skirt and made her jump, but it was only a cat, purring loudly.

Marriage that was no marriage—a wedding that had been a farce, a trick; quick anger rose in her and she pulled the opal ring from her finger. It had never left London, Fane had admitted—and Maddy remembered, vividly, Jervaulx saying that he’d just given it to the colonel before the ceremony. Lies and falsehoods. Hired yokels, to pound at the door! To make her think he was in danger, to use her, to ruin her life because he thought of no one and nothing but himself.

He had needed her then, that badly.

She stopped at a window and stared out into the mews. The other stables were dark at her level, the only light falling down onto the cobbles in misty squares from the grooms’ quarters on the floors above.

The marriage could be nullified. She might go home. She might even do him a service by it—removing the terrible stain on his sanity of marriage to a Quaker. They promised no hearing, ever, if she left him.

She had felt the hate in Manning—perhaps she would draw it away with her, the way a fox drew the hunters from her young.

She paced the aisle again, past the stolid rumps of the horses. She could not trust those men. She could not take their word. That much Jervaulx’s world—Jervaulx himself— had taught her well.

She remembered the night she had left him here, and grown more uneasy every mile until she had turned her back on her father and returned here to find Jervaulx cornered by them. Surely that disquietude had been the clear voice of God in her heart, telling her what she must do.

If she were not here, his legal wife, what was to stop them from trying that again? But if she was not his legal wife, then what was to stop them anyway?

How could she ever leave him, knowing what they could do, by force or by law or by guile?

How could she stay?

She pressed the ring between her cold hands, and lifted them to her mouth. How had she come to this—that she loved him outside of all reason and right?

Elias Little could tell her. It was because she had run out of the Truth into self-will and carnal temptation.

She had not turned to Friends, she had not listened to Richard’s counsel at the coaching inn, she had always and ever taken the part of a wicked and worldly man.

But he needed her.

But he didn’t.

Outside, a new lamp flared, and the rumbling scrape of a door brought the stable across the way to life.

Voices spilled into the alley, and the wide door stood open to a vacant carriage-house.

A figure that had been invisible sprang into view at the edge of the light and moved into the shadows again, the hooded and shawled outline of a woman. Maddy watched through the window for a moment.

“What d’you want?” one of the grooms called toward the shadow, and got only a muffled negative in reply. “Move along, then,” he said. “Our rig’s back.”

There were always ragged people and beggars in the square; it was one of the painful ironies of this place, something that Maddy had not directly confronted. She felt her failure sharply now, a convenient blindness thrown in high relief against the background of the ball, the laden supper table and the drunken laughter.

Iron hooves echoed in the alley. The returning carriage clattered down the cobblestone, activating a quiet bustle.

Coach lamps reflected against the upstairs window panes while the driver backed and cornered his pair with a seasoned deftness. When the vehicle was angled halfway toward the door, the footman swung down from behind. He took a lamp from its bracket, carrying extra illumination to the grooms who efficiently unharnessed the team.

The frosty puffs of their breath mingled with the horses’ steam. One by one, the grays were led off. The grooms came back to grab the shaft, and with a low call and a running heave, pushed together to roll the carriage in.

The footman made a quick check around the cobblestones with the lamp, throwing brief light on the beggar woman’s silent figure. He didn’t seem to notice her. His breath shone bright for an instant as he turned inside and gripped the door handle. The big barrier rumbled closed.

The alley lay dark and silent, with only the murmur of the party drifting out over the barren cobbles.

Maddy stood at the window. All the heated blood of her pacing had cooled; she shivered even in the shelter of the stable. Though she could not see the beggar, she was powerfully aware of the woman standing invisible in the shadows.

Taking a deep breath, Maddy rubbed her cold arms. She unlatched the stable door and let herself out into the alley.

The woman rose, coming toward her instantly, as if she had been waiting. “What am I to do?” she asked.

Maddy halted, startled at being addressed so boldly. “Art thou hungry?” she asked, standing a few feet away.

The hooded figure came forward. She too stopped, with an equally shocked expression: a girl much younger than Maddy had expected, with fresh plump cheeks and red-rimmed eyes. “Oh,” she said, dropping a quick curtsy. “Forgive me, mum. I didn’t mean—I thought you—I was told to wait here.

Excuse me.” She shrank back toward the dark, clutching her bundle close to herself.

“Art thou hungry?” Maddy asked again. “Wilt thou come into the kitchen?”

“Oh, no, mum! I was told not to come in!”

Maddy moved forward, puzzled. “Thou needn’t fear me. I’m—I am the mistress here. If I say it is all right for thee to come, then it is.”

The girl suddenly stopped her retreat. “Oh, mum—you’re the housekeeper?” she exclaimed in vast relief. She dropped a curtsy again and came close, holding out a note, still clasping the bundle tight against her. “If you please, mum, I was told to go here, and say to His Grace that the parcel from Mrs.