Twixt Two Equal Armies (35 page)

However, Holly had more important matters to think over and, despite her wicked intentions, the long walk was welcome for the opportunity to do so in peace. As unpleasant as she anticipated it would be, her trip to Edinburgh with Mr Pembroke was settled. There she would deliver her finished work to Sir John and bring home a very welcome remuneration. He would be more than pleased with them, she knew, and she was sure she could enlist his help in obtaining introductions to other scholars and scientists who might be in search of an illustrator. She also had plans to look up Dr McKenna, remembering his promise to engage her as soon as his funding materialised. She was certain that something fruitful would come of her efforts. Edinburgh was bustling with discovery, knowledge and the brightest minds of the time — where else was opportunity to be found if not in such a place?

She was, however, not nearly as sanguine about informing her mother of her planned journey, or her means of travel. She would tell her tomorrow, Holly decided, giving her as little time as possible to fret and stew.

At last she found herself at the pool and to her dismay she realised that she had left her basket behind in her hurry to get out of the house. She gathered as many plants as she could carry back herself and sat on the bank to braid it into a bundle, but the stems were wet and muddy; her hands were numb from the cold and her fingers were clumsy. Just then she spied a discarded length of fishing line she thought she might use to tie it off instead, tangled in the rushes along the bank and she climbed down to grab it.

If only her arms had been an inch or two longer, she would have been able to reach it without stretching so precariously far out over the water. She had just brushed it with her fingertips when the inevitable happened. She lost her balance and, before she felt herself sliding down the muddy and wet slope towards the river on her rear with her skirts folding up in the mud and dirt underneath her, she had the most undignified collision with the ground.

The oaths Miss Tournier yelped while sliding downwards, just barely managing to halt her progress by clutching onto a few wilted tufts of grass and digging her heels into the wet riverbank before more of her was bound for the ice cold water, were definitely not of the approved variety for a young genteel women, but they were in French so she at least sounded quite sophisticated to her rural surroundings. She did not feel so, however, when she crawled up on the bank again on her hands and knees muttering the same obscenities between her teeth.

“Home,” she muttered. “I have no choice, I must go home directly. Oh . . .
Maudit
!”

Having been vulgar enough to forget her anger and feel rather audacious instead, she calmed down and scrambled to her feet, sighing and shaking her wet skirts. The shortest way, she decided. Her toes were already losing their feeling in the soaked boots.

B
AUGHAM DROVE HIS HORSE HARD
over the fields and kept his eyes fixed as far ahead as possible. It had been an unmitigated disaster! What misguided, foolish, insane notion had convinced him he needed to risk his perfectly organised life at Clyne for tea and conversation at Rosefarm Cottage? He intensely regretted having set foot in that house today. Well, ever, really! Fair enough, the game they were welcome to and Mrs Tournier’s face as he forgot himself from Mr Pembroke’s fiddling with his tea had been rewarding, but other than that . . .

Baugham felt like pounding his head against something hard. How dim-witted was it permissible to behave in the face of, admittedly, hazardous provocation? What had that imbecile said? He was leaving the day after tomorrow. Well, he would return after that to apologise to Mrs Tournier.

That damn, stupid, infuriating, selfish pup . . .

And where was Miss Tournier — the usual terrorising guardian of the sugar bowl — in all of this? Not that her presence could have made any difference to the dreadful overall experience, but she might have saved him from losing his temper and being forced to take matters into his own hands. Out walking? For the better part of the day?! How selfish! In fact, wasn’t she obliged to rather stay home and help her mother withstand that cretin in the parlour than skip around the countryside like a schoolgirl? There might be visitors — like him! What about their acute pain in being subjected to such company without a moderating force present? And at the expense of newspapers and partridges! Really, it was most inconsiderate!

H
OLLY WAS COLD TO THE
bone and no amount of rapid walking would warm her up, it seemed. Her gloves had fallen and were lost forever, but despite that fact, she stubbornly held the scraggly, but hard won, bundle of vegetation tightly to her chest, which in turn made her cloak all the more muddy and cold. Her hood came untied and fell back from the wind, her hair escaping and blowing into her eyes and face; her ears burned, her head ached, but she was too clenched against the cold to be able to contemplate stopping to tie it back again — if she could even get her numb fingers to move well enough to work the strings. All her attention and energy was focused inwardly as she concentrated on moving her stiff and frozen feet forward one step after the next, so she did not hear the sound of the galloping horse as it rapidly came toward her. All she could see was the few feet of lane in front of her and all she could think of was the fire in Mrs Higgins’ kitchen.

In the middle of most unkind thoughts about daughters taking selfish long walks at the expense of suffering mothers and innocent gentleman visitors, Baugham spotted a familiar figure coming out of the woods.
His
woods!

“But of course!” he said through clenched teeth and approached her. “Miss Tournier!” he called, not in greeting but in demanding tones. “I wonder,” he said cynically, noticing the distinctly miscoloured back of her clinging skirts, “did you find the water in my river very wet?”

She looked up in disbelief, not only that he should come upon her once again in the same embarrassing predicament, and worse, but that he should speak of it in such a callous manner. Of all the insensitive, self-centred . . . the French oaths threatened to bubble out again, but she swallowed them down. She could not quite swallow the sentiment that accompanied them.

“I beg your pardon, sir. Do you worry that I carry too much of it away with me?”

“Not at all, I assure you. Only that you perhaps carry it away a bit too often.”

“In that case, you are right. I can see where it would be doing you a great deal more good were it still in the river rather than soaking my boots and skirts. You must forgive my selfishness.”

She tried to stomp away, but the brief pause had already stiffened her muscles and the short steps she could manage caused a searing pain in her frozen feet.

“Oh really!” Baugham said impatiently, but not without appearing to feel some pity for her situation. “That won’t do! You’ll be frozen through before you get over the field.”

He jumped down and reached out his hand to her in an impatient gesture to help her into the abandoned saddle. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you you’d be better off at home, where you could be of real use and out of danger in such weather and at this hour?”

The look this observation earned him made him step back instinctively. He had seen that expression before and on several occasions it had been followed by a hard slap to a cheek. Fortunately for him, Miss Tournier did not seem willing to let go of the muddy bundle clutched so tightly to her chest. Instead, she turned her shoulder away from his offered hand with a jerk.

“As a matter of fact, no!” she sputtered. “No one has had the effrontery to so openly contradict the teachings of my parents that I may know and follow my own mind!”

“I beg your pardon,” Baugham continued with his eyes hard as steel and devoid of any emotion. His voice grew icy and his demeanour impossibly stiff and remote as he fixed his eyes on his horse that fidgeted nervously in the presence of such unbridled hostility between the two. “I seem to be labouring under a misapprehension regarding your sensibilities. I was under the impression that directness and even rudeness was a sign of affection and respect in your family.”

Her eyes narrowed into angry slits, fueled as much by embarrassment as anger, she snapped, “My lord, your misapprehension is grave indeed if it leads you to presume that you have either the ability or the right to make judgements on the basis of a few week’s acquaintance! How dare you presume to possess such knowledge concerning my family?”

“Why, I believe about as much as you have to presume anything about me, Miss Tournier! But then I suppose people aspiring to pretensions of intelligence and reason claim the privilege of demanding civil and polite discourse from others while they feel free to practice prejudiced assumptions based on fancy and their own conceit. But you are right. I could not make that general claim about all your family. Your mother can at least give as good as she gets!

“Now will you be so good as to reclaim some of that professed reason, accept my assistance and get on the horse! No doubt you can see the sense in proceeding lest you should freeze to death for the sake of pride and a tantrum.”

“I do not ride, sir,” she replied coolly, a perfect picture of affronted dignity. “Nor do I throw tantrums. Now, if
you
will be so good as to let me be on my way, I should like to get home where I can be of some
use
.”

B
AUGHAM SWALLOWED HARD.
H
E NEEDED
a moment to master this. Why did he spiral into a mindless rage every time she looked at him with those defiant eyes, shooting daggers and lightning at him?
Now then,
he told himself silently,
keep to the issue at hand. Get this impossible, soaked, stubborn, blazing, bothersome, infuriating woman home! And then go and finish it by cutting logs or something in the privacy of your own home.

“Do not refuse me my right to be of use in my turn,” he said after a deep breath, “I will see you home and if you do not mind, I shall be infinitely grateful if these are the last words we exchange today. But get on the horse!”

Her anger was temporarily replaced with a look of disbelief. “Are you
ordering
me around, my lord? You might be an earl and used to having your own way, but I am
not
your underling to be commanded!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he sputtered, “I am doing no such . . . oh, for the love of . . . ” He stopped and took a deep breath to compose himself and his temper. “
Please
, Miss Tournier, allow me to help you onto my horse and let me see you home safely.”

“I suppose,” she said, “that, however unnecessary it is, I do not have the power stop you if you feel you must. No more than you have the power to get me up on that horse. I will walk. Follow if you must.”

She whirled around as well and set out down the road. He fought a brief but overwhelming urge to sweep her up and deposit her bodily in the saddle. But he mastered himself and simply stayed beside her, grim and silent, leading his horse and breathing disapproval with every step.

Holly, on the other hand, once the conversation had ceased, quickly returned to her inward focus of cold hands, cold feet, chill wind and one step after the next. The walk to Rosefarm felt interminably long, and only once was it interrupted by Lord Baugham repeating his assertion that she had much better ride than walk. That was enough to spur her on the rest of the way, and once the cottage was in view she quickened her pace and scarcely took the trouble to give him a perfunctory nod before she rushed to the kitchen door. Home. Warmth. Fire.

Baugham watched the door close behind her, cutting off Mrs Higgins’ surprised exclamations mid-stream. He mounted his poor, confused horse, tightened his collar against the cold wind and once again galloped for home.
Troublesome
, he dismissed them all,
nothing but a troublesome family.
He had been right and Darcy had been wrong. Utterly and completely. One last visit of apology and he need never be bothered with them again.

Chapter 16

A Very Unpopular and Frustrating Trip is Taken

Rosefarm Cottage was quiet, the inhabitants having retired to their respective rooms early again, but the mother and the daughter of the house were definitely not asleep. Mrs Tournier lay in her bed, her pillows fluffed and towering up behind her head and shoulders just the way she liked it, her hands folded on top of the blankets. Her candle was snuffed out and she was ready to leave another day behind her. But she could not. In the silence of the house, she could hear her daughter’s soft steps in her room, no doubt preparing for tomorrow’s departure. Mrs Tournier clenched her fists at the thought and tugged at her sheets in frustration.

She closed her eyes and tried to breathe slowly. “Oh Jean,” she finally sighed. “I am so angry; all I can see and think about is her.”

She realised that in order for her to successfully conjure up her departed husband’s face, she needed to calm down. She twirled her wedding ring like a talisman and then rubbed the locket with his picture in a secret ritual. “She’s pacing around there right now, preparing to go to Edinburgh with that . . . man,” she said dryly. At that thought, her resentment threatened to destroy the faint image she had been able to summon and almost reverted to her daughter again.