Speak Its Name: A Trilogy (19 page)

Again, he made me silent; I was not practised in drawing room banter, but my surprise must have showed on my face.

“I see I have offended you, and yet I did not mean that for a moment.” His mouth quirked up at one corner, as if he were permanently privy to secrets of which I was woefully unaware, and he was unsure of whether he would or should divulge them. It was an expression that I rather liked, and I found myself smiling in spite of the growing discombobulation.

“If you think that, Heyward,” I countered, “you are mistaken, for you have given me no reason for offence. If my brothers have spoken of me, then I hold you in no malice for your intention. Siblings with such a disparity of age as we are cannot be expected to ever like each other. I am to them, I am certain, little more than the brat who broke their belongings.”

His smile widened and he pounded his free hand against the mantlepiece in applause. “Were you ever such a terror?”

“I imagine so,” I said, wondering why I was speaking of something I’d not talked of before to a man I hardly knew. “I little remember, but I am certain there must be many instances when an infant can irritate the smooth passage of a young man’s life.” I was pricked and interested in why he had set against me, but his mocking and mildly smug behaviour had determined me that I would not ask him. The annoyance that raged in my breast for his teasing would normally have had me striding away, but something kept me near him. It could have one of many reasons; he was my host, although in lesser standing than Lady Pelham; my father’s censure at causing a commotion would not be small; Heyward was a cripple, and it would have looked poorly had I given him a harsh word and stepped away, only to find myself ignored in another part of the room, but if I were to speak the truth, it was simply that I wanted to know his reasons, and in spite of my lack of pretty words, I wondered if I might be able to draw him out.

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In which I find myself at odds with the grain and the grape.

I found my new found aspiration denied, as dinner was announced before we could speak another word to each other; and before I could rally my thoughts for another battle of wits, my father had arrived with Miss Pelham on his arm. I was duly attached, and I had no recourse but to bow deeply, support the girl and follow my father and that young lady’s mother through into the dining room.

I was seated at my hostess’ right hand with Miss Pelham on my other side, as I had anticipated. The treadmill had begun; the great crushing wheel jolted slowly and moved another inch towards my impending betrothal. I could hardly have failed to realise my father’s intention; all I needed to do now was find the girl unobjectionable and the matter, my father had assured me, was as good as settled. The good graces of the Pelham ladies had been his favoured topic of conversation since my settling at his house, and his hints, never subtle and sugar-coated at the best of times, had become more leaden as each day passed.

Oh, he repeated daily, Miss Pelham was everything a man could desire in a wife. Accomplished and graceful. Her standing as a paragon of maidenly virtue and desirability was described to me so often that I was forming suspicions in my mind as to some hidden faults. The more my father praised her, the more my mind found reasons to set against her.

If she was said to be fair, then I felt that she must be plainer than my gunnery sergeant. If her figure was described as elegant, then I envisaged her as unattractively skinny as a pikestaff, or else a walrus draped in muslin. Even as I sat beside her, grateful that her resemblance to my sergeant, or indeed any walrus, was in fact rather remote—I wondered if perhaps she hid horrors in places that none but a husband might ever discover them.

She was not quite the Aphrodite that my father had taken such pains to describe, but she was unobjectionable and certainly, on first examination, I could find no obvious reasons why I should not obey my father, despite the fact that I found the idea of marriage entombing.

Her hair was a shade darker than her cousin’s. I am a plain man of few words and am unable to compare it to the particular shade of a bird’s wing or some such but it was brown and it suited her well enough. Her features were regular, apart from her mouth, which was a trifle large. Her eyes were of a similar dark brown to her cousin’s, dark enough to look ebony, but they seemed to lack Heyward’s fire, and were indeed rarely lifted and so rarely seen. And as I waited for her to be seated, I surmised that, as to her manner of comportment, she was unlikely to be deformed in the various ways I had imagined.

“Did you enjoy your drive this afternoon, Miss Pelham?” I inquired, noting that her cheeks flared into colour immediately as though I had asked her to accompany me to Ranelagh alone.

“Emily dislikes the brougham,” Lady Pelham said, her voice cutting across the table, encouraging all others to listen, and giving her daughter no chance to answer. “She says it gives her
mal-de-mer
.” As I turned to listen, I was once again reminded of a ship in full sail, bearing down on its enemy with no manner of slowing before full cannons were discharged. It was rather disconcerting.

I tried again, directly addressing the young lady. “I understand that with these new springs that that malady is not uncommon. I have heard in fact that Lord Wellesley himself finds himself as unwell in a carriage than ever he is at sea.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said her mamma. “It’s just that she won’t look up at the horizon. She convinces herself that she will be ill and so she becomes ill as a consequence. As for myself,” she continued, as if addressing an entire theatre and not just a dinner table, “I don’t allow myself such idle fancies. Too imaginative, these girls today—don’t you think so, Colonel?”

My father agreed wholeheartedly and started to recount a tale of my childhood that I would not relate even here. I could feel the colour rising in my face, and it was with not a little gratitude that I heard Heyward’s voice interrupt my father’s, proving him to be a braver man than I.

“I admit, Aunt, that your driver does not take the care he should, but I have suggested before that Emily needs to face forward. It is most disconcerting for her not to see where she is going, but only where she has gone.” His eyes skimmed the table, smiling his encouragement at Emily, who smiled shyly back at him, unseen by her mamma. His eyes then met mine and remained fixed on mine as his aunt replied.

“I sit forward, Adam, as you well know. How would it look to others if I did not see them early enough to acknowledge them? Within a week I would have no friends at all.” She gave a brittle laugh and continued to talk to my father.

Young Heyward lifted his soup spoon and spoke quietly as if to the dish in front of him, his eyes cast down. “Then Emily shall have my seat next to you, and I shall ride in her place.” The table had begun to chatter and it seemed that I, alone of all the table, with the exception of Miss Pelham, who looked more discomfited than ever, and Lady Pelham, who had unaccountably gone white, was paying any attention.

Heyward’s words, however, had deflected the general attention from my conversation with Miss Pelham, and as the conversation continued, I was able to lean down to her and reassure her, for she looked terrified at the sudden attention. “I think that will help,” I said to her. “And your mother is right; you should look up when in motion.”

She nodded, and after a long pause, when I was about to speak again, she said, “I’m obliged to you, sir.”

It was about as much as I received from her for the entire meal. Her natural shyness made my incapacity for small talk appear that I was the most garrulous man alive, and trapped between Miss and Lady Pelham, I had no alternative but to persevere. My father’s eye, too, was upon me for much of the time so I struggled on, as lost in the morass of feminine small talk as ever I had been in my life.

From time to time I noticed Heyward’s attention directed our way, but the one time I caught his eye, he looked away. He had a smirk on his face that fired my temper, and as he turned to the lady beside him and whispered in her ear, I was sure he was laughing at me and my pathetic attempts at gallantry.

I think the dinner in all took several years and I was surprised, when I stood to acknowledge the ladies leaving and I caught sight of myself in the mantlepiece mirror, that I had not aged, that my hair was not greying around the temples. I felt exhausted with the effort of attempting to woo Miss Pelham, and as I slumped back into my chair, I felt that my endeavours had been in vain. It was quite obvious to me that the young lady had found my attentions positively unwelcome.

Heyward, my father and myself were the only gentlemen left at our end of the table. I half expected my father to join me and to critique my progress or lack of it, but I adjudged that even he would not be so indelicate as that. I was pleased to be found correct, as he stood and joined a group of military sorts at the other end, including the elderly man with the impressive moustaches I had noticed earlier.

“That’s my grandfather,” a voice said and I was pulled out of my reverie on how one grew moustaches of that luxury to find Heyward’s attention focused once more upon me. “And Emily’s, of course. You’ll have him to impress if you are serious in your suit.” He leaned forward a little, and I wondered again at the expression in his face. “There’s not a penny in the Pelham name, as you no doubt are aware.”

I didn’t, and I felt myself colouring like a schoolboy. Was there anyone who did not know of my father’s intentions? I clenched my teeth and fought for a glib answer, but nothing came.

“However,” Heyward continued, “I can understand your sudden interest. You aren’t the first. I doubt you have the stamina, to be frank, so I doubt you’ll be the last.” I had no idea as to his meaning. I was not minded to cross-examine him in public and I was almost grateful when he changed the subject. “A truly appalling meal,” he continued as he yawned and stretched. He drained the remainder of his wine and looked pointedly at the port, sitting untouched in front of me. I helped myself and pushed the decanter across to him. He gave me a mock salute and said: “My aunt outdid herself. The soup was made with fox, by the smell of it, the fish was hard, the veal undercooked and the beef inedible. What say you? I would
most
value your opinion of the cook.” He leaned forward and knitted his fingers together, resting his chin on the backs of his hands.

I hesitated. I knew this young man not at all, and he had already shown more than a propensity for challenging conversation. I had not found any of the courses to be any better or any worse than many other dinners had in large gatherings; certainly nothing I had eaten bore resemblance to his description. Was he attempting to make me slander the hostess? His teasing irritated me, and I was surprised at myself. I’d dealt with brash young subalterns and jumped-up lieutenants for years, it galled me to be so incommoded by this...(and I found myself becoming my father as I thought the word)...
civilian
.

Swallowing my annoyance, I took a cigar, handed it to a footman to clip, took it back, lit it and leant back, scowling. My father’s voice drifted up the table, deep in discussion with Miss Pelham’s grandfather and I felt my future closing around me like a marble sepulchre.

The cigar smoke went deep into my lungs. In moments, I felt like the warmth was draining from my skin. A headache began to throb at my temple, and when the port arrived around with me again I pushed it toward young Heyward without taking any more of it, disgusted to notice that my right hand was shaking.

I took another pull on the cigar and felt my innards churn. I dropped the vile thing into the ashtray and poured my port over it. The stench of the sodden tobacco smelled like French mud. Gritting my jaw, I pushed my chair back and nodded tersely toward the elder Mr. Heyward. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen,” I said, hardly able to open my lips to speak, lest I disgrace myself, “I have a desire to see the garden.”

“Use the pot, boy,” my father said. “Don’t go pissing into our hostess’s roses.” This, unsurprisingly, received an enormous guffaw from the young bucks around the table, and I kept my face immobile as I pushed past a footman holding out the blue and white china article. I could hear my father apologising for me as I made my way out through the door and into the hall; some calumny about my always being delicate, unable to hold my drink “Bad thing for a soldier, but a good sign for a prospective husband, eh?” I didn’t hear Mr. Heyward’s reply.

I was directed through the conservatory to the garden and once alone, I gulped in the cool spring air and gradually came to myself, the nausea going more slowly than it had arrived. I was ashamed at my lack of control; but I should have remembered that whilst white wine had little effect on me, and indeed my fame to be able to drink the stuff by the pint was renowned within my regiment, large quantities of red combined with tobacco had often caused me unwarranted headache and illness. It had taken the distractions of the evening to make me forget how much I was consuming and the white variety had been less in evidence than its red cousin.

I took advantage of the cool and the dark to fly in the face of my father’s instructions and I relieved myself in a dark corner of the garden, hidden from the house by myriad bushes. Thus lightened, I made my way back to the balcony only to find that I had been followed. The unmistakable slimness and cane-wielding silhouette of Adam Heyward waited for me at the top of the steps. A sense of something like irritation swept through my frame for being thusly pursued, but now, perhaps, I thought I might get to the bottom of his intense and sudden interest in me.

“Ill met by moonlight,” he said, irritating me still further with his pretentiousness. He seemed intent on aggravating me, and I wondered if it was a ploy to deflect my suit, however feeble that might be. “I would have joined you, but I find the steps difficult.”

I felt a further warmth at his words, and wondered at his ability to produce wave after wave of emotion in me; no man, other than my father, had been able to nettle me more. Now the wretch was making me somehow guilty that he had not been able to traverse the stairs. As I reached the top, I had half a mind to pitch him down to the bottom of them.