Love's Harbinger (7 page)

“He was expected to marry you!” he shot back fiercely.

Faith took a breath, preparing herself to rise and stalk from the room. Her aunt read the signs and placed a restraining hand on her arm. “Children, children! Such argument is very bad for the digestion. Do try some of this lovely plum preserve, Guy.” He sat like a lead soldier while she placed a blob of the preserve on his plate. “I cannot imagine why we are arguing about titles and gentlemen and commoners. It has nothing to do with our problem. As far as that goes, I am no more than genteel myself. I was born Miss Haversham, you know, Faith, and Sir John was as common as dirt. He was knighted for finally getting elected a Tory, and that is all that allows me to be called Lady Lynne.”

“I am not ashamed of living by my wits,” Guy said as a peace offering.

It was spurned out of hand. “That would account for the paucity of your living accommodations,” Faith said angrily.

Her aunt felt a pronounced desire to shake the girl. As this was ineligible, she decided to give her a more subtle lesson. “As to the Mordain title,” she said spitefully, “you hit the nail on the head, Guy. One of Faith’s female ancestors had the wits to oblige her monarch, and he conferred the earldom on her husband.”

“The first Lord Mordain was an officer in the king’s army!” Faith said.

“That is true, my dear. The king wished him away and sent him off to France.”

Delamar looked down his nose at Faith and remarked blandly, “Now you will accept my opinion that time dilutes the blood.”

She glared at him but refused to acknowledge the hit. “Shall we go now, Auntie? As soon as we have paid for our share of this stop, of course.”

Her aunt smiled appeasingly at Guy, then turned to her troublesome niece. “Run along and have our valises brought down, dear, while we settle up here.”

The settling up consisted of no more than a polite thank you and an apology for her niece’s farouche behavior. To explain it away, she added, “The poor child is pushed beyond reason by this business. She is so desperately in love with Thomas, you must know.”

He regarded her critically. “Yesterday you called it fondness. This accretion of love is sudden,
n'est-ce-pas
?”

Lady Lynne’s real interest was to note that Guy was capable of a French phrase, and in a good accent, too, but as some reply needed to be made, she said, “It was rather more than that, as it turns out. She is a private sort of person and keeps her feelings to herself.”

“She doesn’t keep her dislike under such close wraps.”

“You were rather hard on her, I think. The family name means so much to her. Glory is all that survives, really. The money has been gone for decades.”

“As I understand it, Lord Thomas wasn’t well to grass, either. What did they propose to live on?”

“Love—and a pittance. Unwise, but then she is young. She had an excellent offer from Mr. Morrison, a fellow whose papa runs a brewery, but blue blood and beer do not mix. She preferred Lord Thomas’s poverty.”

“
Chacun à son goût
,” “ he said, and shrugged his shoulders.

“You did not pick up that French accent in Spain, Guy. Wherever did you learn it?”

He gave a derisive smile and said, “In the gutters of Paris. Travel is broadening, they say. It ought to be on the curriculum of ladies’ seminaries; it might yank the chits out of their ignorant self-complacency.”

“It did not sound like gutter French to me, but then I am as ignorant as a swan. I have never been abroad and lay no claim to any decent education whatsoever. What I know, I learned from novels.”

“It is refreshing to hear a lady admit the truth. You have developed at least an understanding of human nature,” he said, and held the door for her.

The two carriages were soon rattling along the road toward Bournemouth. Lady Lynne decided to take her niece to task in hopes of more harmonious stops in the future.

“It was not necessary for you to display your provincial upbringing for Mr. Delamar’s benefit, Faith,” she said sternly. “If you have any hope of finding Thomas, you’d better humor the fellow. You and I wouldn’t have much chance without him. He had a few things to say about your ignorance.”

“I have no interest in Mr. Delamar’s opinion of me, she asserted comprehensively, then looked from the corner of her eyes to hear the details.

“Personal comments are always in poor taste. We’ll have no more jibes at his impoverished background. I begin to think he was not so deprived as I had thought. He speaks very good French at least.”

“He is the one who started it by running down the aristocracy.”

“There’s something to be said for his views, but that is strictly
entre nous
. In public one must pretend to admire tired old blood or you’d never be invited anywhere. It is a pity Guy is so Whiggish. On the other hand, the Whig aristocrats are much more amusing and stylish. I wonder if he has the entrée to polite Whig saloons.”

“Lady Marie Struthers does some reporting for him,” Faith mentioned.

“Marie Struthers! You don’t mean it! Why, she is top of the trees. I daresay he hopes to nab her and establish himself in society.” This was hard news, indeed. Lady Lynne was astute enough to realize her own worn charms would be hopeless against such stiff competition as the incomparable Lady Marie.

Before they had gone a mile, she had hatched a new scheme. If it was an unexceptionable bride Mr. Delamar was after, he might replace Lord Thomas. She did hate to ruin her record for making matches, and upon hearing that Thomas had been the banker for the stolen funds, she assumed him to be guilty. She slid a sly eye at her niece and said, “I slept very poorly last night, Faith. When we stop to change horses, I wonder if you’d mind removing to Guy’s carriage for one stage. It will give me a chance to put my feet up on the other seat and catch a few winks.”

“I’d sooner walk all the way in tight shoes.”

This was entirely the correct response. Lady Lynne was perfectly aware of the antagonism between them and welcomed it. There was nothing so stimulating to the blood as hot argument. How she and John used to battle—and how they made up afterward!

“Walk, then, by all means,” she said, “unless you’d prefer to sit up on the driver’s bench with Nubbins, for I mean to put you out of my bedchamber.”

Chapter Five

Lady Lynne made good her threat. When the two carriages stopped at Horsham to change teams and allow the passengers to refresh themselves, she sent her niece off to buy newspapers while she got Delamar aside and asked him if he would mind having company in his rig. The mischievous sparkle in her eye filled him with foreboding as to her intentions of attaching him, for she had been gay almost to giddiness over lunch to cover up Faith’s silence.

“I would be a poor traveling companion,” he said. “I am writing as we go along. The rag still has to be got out, you know, even if I am not sitting behind my desk.”

The sparkle in her eye turned to steely determination.

“Surely you do not require two banquettes to do your writing?”

“I do my best writing when I am alone. Such a charming companion as yourself, Lady Lynne, would distract me no end.”

She smiled at this graceful put-off and then revealed his error. “If you are that easily distracted, sir, then there is no point in telling you it is my niece who wished to share your coach. It goes without saying her charms exceed my own.”

She noticed the leap of interest in his eyes and the dismay that he had misjudged the situation. In different circumstances, she would have let him stew, but time was limited, so she went on to clinch the matter. “Well, it is mighty uncivil of you, Guy,” she said jokingly. “I am so fatigued with the jostling that I thought I might catch a few winks if I could get my carriage to myself, but your work must take precedence, of course.”

“Never let it be said I robbed a lady of her beauty sleep. I shouldn’t think Lady Faith will overburden me with chatter. Is she generally so untalkative?”

“Not usually, but you need not fear she’ll prose your ear off today. Ah, here she is now!” she exclaimed as Faith returned to the parlor with the newspaper. “You are to go the next lap in Guy’s carriage, my dear. It is all arranged. And you must not pester him with conversation as he is in the throes of writing for his paper.” Then she put her hand on Faith’s arm and led her out before she could publicly vent her objections.

Even before the carriage left the inn yard, Faith opened the paper and began to read it. Indeed she had brought it along for no other reason than to inhibit conversation if her aunt insisted on making her ride with Mr. Delamar. It was the Tory
Times
that she held in front of her. Being much less sly than her aunt, she intended no slur in this choice but only bought the paper her father always had in the house. The only sound within as the carriage drove through the little market town was the scratching of pencil on pad and the rustling of the newspaper. Faith glanced at an old church with perpendicular windows and a shingle spire but found it not worth a comment. At West Horsham, Mr. Delamar lifted his head to observe the redbrick buildings of St. Martin’s Hospital. Not a word had been exchanged between them thus far.

“That is St. Martin’s Hospital,” he mentioned.

She lowered the paper an inch and peered over the top of it. “Oh, yes.”

Before she could raise her paper again, he pointed out a group of schoolboys in the yard. “They look like birds in their blue gowns and yellow stockings. We may be staring at a future prime minister or judge or murderer, depending in large part on what sort of school it is.”

“I thought it was a hospital,” she said.

“No, it is a Blue-Coat school, called St. Martin’s Hospital, as Christ Church is a school called a church. There are historical reasons for the names, but I believe they continue the misnomers to confuse the hapless victims.”

She let the paper settle on her knees. “Did you not care for school, Mr. Delamar? I enjoyed it tremendously.”

“They don’t make you ladies burst your heads learning Latin and Greek.”

“No, we learn useful things like embroidery and poetry,” she replied, taking note of his classical education. She condescended, in the interest of civility, to smile.

Thus encouraged, he decided she was tame enough to take a joke. “I notice you’re reading the Thunderer. That will do you about as much good as your embroidery if it’s information you’re seeking. It earned its nickname by assuming the Olympian prerogative of oracular wisdom, couching its editorials in the royal ‘we,’ as though it were anything more than the Tory opinions of John Walter II.”

“What does your paper’s name signify, Mr. Delamar?”

“A harbinger is a forerunner, one who—and by extension which—announces coming events, as birds and blossoms are harbingers of spring. You will recall my favored position in any endeavor is the forefront. I try, in my paper, to point out what will occur if certain courses are followed.”

She lifted a brow and pinned him with her brilliant eyes. “That would be Tory courses?” she asked.

“They’ve been the party in power for as long as I can remember, catering to the wishes of the aristocracy, the landed gentry, the church, and the established order in general.”

“And are you against established tradition?”

“No, I am against prejudice, particularly when it disguises itself as right and reason. Even our courts, you know, allow every man’s case to be heard. If we permit criminals that right, surely the innocent are due the same. I try to speak for those who are mute due to their lack of a forum. Someone ought to express outrage at such goings-on as the Prince of Wales being paid six hundred and thirty thousand pounds for marrying his German wife, who is a disgrace to the nation; his Oriental fantasy at Brighton costing nearly as much as the Peninsular War; and such details. But I know what side you are on, so I shan’t carp.”

“I hope I am not on the side of ignorance and prejudice,” she said defensively.

“If you at least hope, then you’re not past cure and help, according to Mr. Shakespeare—one of my idols. I treasure him for his insights. Hope, however, is only an inanimate virtue till it inspires you to action. The action I am suggesting, in this roundabout way, is that you try reading my journal.”

With a charming smile, he handed her the latest copy of the
Harbinger
. “I never waste an opportunity to gain a subscriber, you see. When I’m not writing, I’m promoting.”

She accepted the paper and then turned aside to catch the light over her shoulder, for the day was overcast. “It is writing you should be doing now, so I’ll read this and let you get back to work.”

“I look forward to hearing your opinion.”

She turned immediately to Mam’selle Ondit’s column and read again his article on Thomas, which undid any good effect of their talk. He watched her quietly for a moment. His expression was gentle, even yearning, as his eyes flickered over her bent head and her profile. As time passed, he resumed his writing and she read other articles.

She soon found herself adrift in a strange, new, and horrible world. He wrote stories—surely they were just stories, and not true—of whole families in the North and Midlands subjected to terrible deprivation. Husband, wife, and children all toiled long hours in factories or foundries under appalling conditions for a pittance. It seemed the greed of the mill and foundry owners was only half of the problem. The other half involved the corn laws, known to her thus far solely from her father’s conversation and considered an excellent thing.

But in the case of the poor, who had to buy rather than sell, these laws had the effect of raising the price of bread to some astronomical height. She became first interested, then outraged that such a thing could be. England, lately subject to poor harvests, had raised the price of grains; and to prevent people from buying imported grains at a lower price, the government imposed high import tariffs. How was it possible that the politicians, supported by her own father, allowed this dreadful thing to happen? Nay, encouraged it!

Mr. Delamar stole quiet glances at her from time to time as she read. He saw first her frowns of misunderstanding or disbelief and watched as anger gathered on her brow. He sat ready to expatiate further on political matters, but she had no intention of revealing the extent of her ignorance, so when she had finished reading, she just set the paper aside and looked out the window.