by Jane Ashford
“Slipped out.” Chatton looked sheepish.
“Well, see that it doesn’t do so again. But that was good enough for now. Rather effective snarl. See that you practice.” Colonel Patterson turned to Fenella, who had very nearly laughed. “Miss Fairclough, you are furious and determined to defend your home.”
Fenella swung the broom and caught Chatton on the shoulder, rocking him back a step.
“Hold on!” cried the colonel. “You mustn’t actually hit him.”
And then they spent a good deal of time working out how she was to repel the supposed invader with a swipe that looked like a leveler but stopped short of striking him. Chatton had to flinch and fall at just the right moment, so that it appeared he’d been felled by her stroke, when it hadn’t actually touched him.
It was quite difficult, Fenella found. To make a wide swing with the broom and stop short was more tiring than simply flailing about. She was relieved when Colonel Patterson finally said, “Yes, all right. That will do for now.” She started to lower the broom, thinking they were finished, but he continued. “Now, Chatton, you leap up and return to the fray. Miss Fairclough, you try the same trick. But, Chatton, you knock the broom from her hands this time. Thus and thus.” He guided them through the movements. “And then you grasp her arms to keep her from hitting you.”
Roger did as he was told. Fenella’s arms felt slender and supple under the cloth of her gown. Her face was inches away. He hadn’t been so close to her in… Had he ever been so close? She wore a heady flowery scent.
“And now, Miss Fairclough, you spit at him,” said Colonel Patterson.
“Spit?” She looked startled.
“This is a barbarian invader, come to steal everything you have. He’s killed your defenders. Set your church on fire. Now he’s dared to enter your house and laid hands on you.”
Fenella’s blue eyes flamed. She bared her teeth and spit, though to the side rather than in his face.
It might have been funny, but it wasn’t, Roger thought. Had he been an invader, he’d have been taken aback by the fiery spirit she’d revealed. A man might be proud to have such a woman defending his native land. Surprised by an impulse to pull her closer, he went still.
“Good.” Patterson nodded. “Now, this next part is a bit tricky.”
A boy ran into the room. “The monks is calling for ale, Colonel, sir. Saying they was promised a drink for their trouble.”
Patterson scowled. “Stay where you are,” he commanded. “I’ll be back in a moment.” And he followed the boy out the door.
Did Patterson mean he was to keep hold? Roger wondered. Such was the colonel’s influence that he hesitated to let go. But she was so near. The slightest move and her breasts would brush his chest.
Once he’d noted this, Roger could think of nothing else. Except the feel of her under his hands and the brilliance of her gaze. How long had the colonel been gone? It seemed like forever, and yet not long enough. He should say something. The silence was becoming awkward.
“It’s rather like that time you were forced to dance with me,” Fenella said.
“Eh?”
“I’ve been remembering our neighborhood dances for some reason. This was at the Haskins’ ball. Mrs. Haskins pulled you over and made you ask me. You were so angry. You’d wanted to dance with her daughter.”
Roger didn’t remember the incident, though he did recall Sara Haskins. She’d been a lovely girl, the belle of the neighborhood when he was younger. Fenella, on the other hand, was only a vague presence in his youthful memory. A shadowy figure, slipping into view at the edge of a gathering and then forgotten again, utterly different from the way she was now. Had her lips been so full back then? So enticing? Surely he would have noticed if they had been. And yet a woman’s lips didn’t change after she was grown. Did they?
“That was right before our fathers hatched their stupid scheme.”
A tremor went through him at this forthright remark. They’d never discussed the past. When Arabella was alive, the topic was obviously out of bounds. And after her death he and Fenella hadn’t talked at all.
“And I ran for my life,” she added.
“I admired that,” Roger said, words slipping out as they sometimes did, without any advance notice to his brain.
Fenella looked surprised. “My craven flight?”
“More like rebellion.” He’d thought of her more after that dramatic departure than he ever had before. Once she’d shown some defiance, a flare of spirit, he’d even wondered what it would have been like to marry her. Not seriously, of course. He wouldn’t be ordered about like a vassal.
Roger experienced an odd dislocation. In this moment, he resented her long-ago rejection of his charms. Even though he’d done the same, more emphatically. It was confusing. He had to let her go. He did so, and stepped back. Fenella gazed up at him as if he’d done something strange.
Fortunately, Colonel Patterson strode back in. He looked irritated. “All right, Chatton,” he said. “Now you throw Miss Fairclough over your shoulder and carry her through the archway.” He indicated the supposed span of stone with a wide gesture.
“Pick her up?” said Roger. He didn’t want to touch Fenella again, mainly because he very much wanted to do so. “That isn’t proper.”
“You’re a Viking,” replied the colonel dryly. “I don’t think propriety is a consideration.” He turned to Fenella. “You have no objection? I assumed Benson explained the whole to you.”
She shook her head.
“We must leave that bit out,” said Roger.
Patterson looked concerned. “I’ve given my word that the scenarios will be performed exactly as written. They were put together by a pack of historians, you know. Very stern on the subject of accuracy. As bad as headquarters regulations.”
Everyone knew that the colonel’s word was inviolate. Roger looked at Fenella. “Let’s just do it,” she said.
“You don’t mind?” asked Patterson. “It’s only a moment. Through the archway and finished.”
She nodded.
“Good girl.” Patterson gestured like a commander ordering his troops forward.
Roger bent, set his shoulder in Fenella’s midsection, and lifted. His arm went around her knees for balance. Her hip rested against his cheek.
“You’ll have to move faster than that,” said the colonel. “You’re not lifting a fragile piece of porcelain, Chatton. You keep forgetting you’re a ferocious raider. And Miss Fairclough, you should kick and beat your fists. Not too hard, of course. Give the effect, as with the broom.”
Light blows fell on Roger’s back. Feet pumped. Fenella’s frame shook against his shoulder. Was she afraid? No, she was laughing.
The boy ran in again. “The monks found the ale barrel! They’re bunging it open.” He beckoned urgently. With a muttered curse, Patterson hurried out after him.
Roger was left with a lithe, sweet-smelling young lady over his shoulder.
“I must be heavy,” she said. “You can put me down.”
She wasn’t. Roger felt as if he could hold her forever, even though the feel of her body was making his head spin. He set her down. She took a step and stumbled. He steadied her.
“Hanging head down makes one dizzy,” she observed.
“I know.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” He’d felt this strong pull of attraction before, Roger recalled. When she first returned from Scotland to care for her father, there’d been an evening at Chatton. He’d laughed with Fenella over some jest, and the heat had risen between them, intense, surprising. And then he’d glimpsed the avid speculation in his father’s eyes, which made him angry, and he’d gone haring off to London the next day to avoid any revival of the old matchmaking scheme. Yes, and he’d fallen into Mrs. Crenshaw’s toils almost at once. So his disastrous marriage had been Fenella’s faul
t. Everything was Fenella’s fault—from the very inception to Arabella’s last, ill-advised ride.
Except. With her standing before him, pleasant and assured, he had to acknowledge that this was a load of pure rubbish.
Fenella hadn’t sent him to town. And of course she hadn’t been able to keep Arabella from doing whatever she wished. Arabella had been one of the stubbornest people he’d ever encountered. She’d never listened once she made up her mind. He remembered an evening when his wife had stalked out of a dinner party, declaring that she couldn’t bear it a moment longer. In the silence that followed, he’d suspected his neighbors pitied him, which had been humiliating. Roger had told everyone that Arabella was referring to a terrible headache, but he was fairly certain they’d known she meant the dullness of the company. In her opinion. The incident had occurred just a few weeks before her fateful ride in the rain. But it was best not to think of that.
Roger felt the mixture of anger and guilt that had been with him since his wife died. Pain lanced through his stomach. He pressed a hand against it.
“Are you all right?” asked Fenella.
He gave her a curt nod. “We’ll have to come back to this later,” he said. “I have an appointment.” He walked away before anyone could question this lie.
* * *
“Those two have hit it off,” said Arthur as he and his hostess watched Tom and young John Symmes trot through the stone arch that led from Chatton Castle’s courtyard into the countryside. The boys disappeared into the tunnel under the wide wall. Arthur offered his arm, and the two of them moved in the opposite direction, into the walled garden at the back of the castle. A riot of flowers filled this sizable space. The walls met sheer cliffs that fell to the sea.
“I like Tom,” said the earl’s companion, the former Miss Helena Ravelstoke, Dowager Marchioness of Chatton, and an unexpected element of his northern visit.
“Nearly everyone does,” said Arthur.
“Is he an eccentricity?”
“What?”
“I’ve heard that it’s fashionable to have one,” she added. “A quirk. To make one stand out in society.”
“Tom is not that,” replied Arthur. “He is, oddly enough, a friend.”
“That is rather odd for the distinguished Lord Macklin.”
She smiled up at him, and Arthur was once again reminded of a London season more than thirty years ago, when they’d both been young and she’d been dazzling. Helena, as she’d insisted he call her now, had cocked her head in just that way back then. Arthur and his friends had vied with each other to evoke her silvery laugh. He was happy to see that she’d kept her blithe spirit through three decades.
“Tom is a miraculous triumph over his background,” he answered. “Circumstances that might have, should have ground him down or embittered him didn’t. I was struck by his intelligence and good humor when I met him. I found him good company. And I would like to give him the chance he deserves.”
“Chance to do what?”
“That is the question.”
His hostess looked inquiring. She’d raised a rose-colored parasol against the sun, and the tinted shade was kind to her face. Not that it needed a great deal of help, even now. “Send him to school?” she suggested. “Set him to a trade?”
“He would hate those things. He’d be off wandering in a day.” Arthur admired a swath of scarlet poppies as they walked past. “I’ve learned recently that helping is not a simple matter. The impulse is easy. Discovering how to go about it is not.” As he’d found with the young men he’d gathered for dinner in town last spring, Arthur thought. How long ago that seemed, though it was just a few months.
“I don’t quite understand,” she said.
Arthur nodded. He wasn’t certain he did either. “I’ve worked out that help isn’t forcing your ideas or plans onto people. That’s a kind of oppression. Yet simply asking those you’d like to aid what they want may not be enough. Often they don’t really know. Or aren’t able to choose between alternatives.”
“Goodness, how philosophical you’ve become.”
He laughed. “And a dead bore. I beg your pardon.”
“Not at all. I’m quite interested. I can’t even count all the times I’ve been asked to help with some scheme or other that’s meant to ‘better the lot’ of those involved. But I’ve noticed that charitable projects are often just what you said—forcing a plan on people who resent the interference. Even when they appreciate the material assistance. How do you help?”
“By not rushing in with my own notions,” Arthur replied. “By observing and listening. By applying a longer experience of life than…some others.” His efforts had gone well so far, he thought, despite some mistakes.
“I like that.” Her lips curved in a small smile. “I believe I shall adopt your approach.”
“That’s too grand a word for it.”
“And you’re too modest.”
They strolled for a while in silence. Helena pointed out a special rose for him to admire. Then she said, “You didn’t come here to see me, did you?”
For once, Arthur was speechless. He’d been aware of her assumption and had sidestepped the issue with considerable finesse until now.
“I thought when you arrived that you were looking for me. But you weren’t.”
She’d tipped her parasol so he couldn’t see her expression. “I was delighted to see you again after so many years,” he said.
“But not expecting to.”
“I had forgotten you married Chatton,” he admitted. They moved on a few steps before the parasol shifted, and he could see that she looked ruefully regretful. “I’m past the age for flirtation,” he added.
“Oh, Arthur.” She gazed at him like a woman amused by the boy he’d been when they first met. “Why are you here? And don’t try to fob me off with some story about fishing in Scotland.”
He wasn’t sure what to say. The confidences shared at that London dinner were sacrosanct, and it was difficult to explain without revealing them.
“One of your missions to help?”
Helena Ravelstoke hadn’t been this sharp, Arthur thought. Or he hadn’t noticed if she was, his attention being on other elements of her person.
“Never mind. I’ll figure it out. You aren’t the only one who can observe.” She sighed. “I did like the idea that you’d been languishing for me all these years.”
Arthur caught the twinkle in her blue eyes. Relief preceded amusement. “Perhaps we can be friends?” He hadn’t had any female friends when he first knew Helena. At that age, women had seemed too alien, and enflaming, for friendship. But over the years since, he’d made a few.
She smiled. “Yes. Let’s do that.”
They walked on, talking of gardens and what had become of people they both remembered. Helena pointed out her beehives at the far end of the space. As they turned onto a new path, Arthur said, “Who was that young lady at church? The one who offered to kick your son in the face.”
“Ah. Fenella Fairclough.” She sighed.
“You don’t like her?” Arthur had been intrigued by the exchange he’d witnessed. There’d been a palpable spark between the two young people.
“Oh, I’m very fond of her. I’ve often wished she was my daughter-in-law. But it wouldn’t have worked. Though it couldn’t have been worse than—” She bit off the sentence and fell silent.
Arthur’s interest increased. “Shall we sit for a while?” He led her to a shaded bench set on a rise of ground, offering a panoramic view of the sea. “In answer to your earlier question, I recently noted a group of young men who had suffered unfortunate losses in their lives. I’ve set myself the task of helping them, if I can. I have some experience with grief.”
“Grief.” She seemed to examine the word, and then his face. Whatever she found there appeared to satisfy her. “My husban
d was ten years older than me, you know.”
Arthur didn’t see what this had to do with the case. But he’d learned that it was best to let people tell stories in their own way.
“He thought he knew best,” she went on. “About everything, really, and particularly when my opinion was involved.” She gave Arthur a sharp glance. “He was not unkind. And I loved him. But he always saw me as a girl, even when I wasn’t one any longer.”
Arthur nodded to show that he’d heard and understood.
“He hatched this scheme to marry Roger to Fenella. He and her father did, I should say.” She shook her head. “They’d been rather enjoying themselves, arguing over the boundary between their properties. Firing off copies of old deeds and writing scathing letters. Then they came up with the idea of a marital alliance, as if they were kings of rival countries or some such nonsense. I told my husband that Roger wouldn’t stand for it. But Raymond didn’t listen. He decreed that Roger was to go and offer for Fenella. Wouldn’t hear a word Roger said. And I expect Fenella’s father was even worse. Well, I know he was.” She fell silent again.
“So they disobeyed,” Arthur said after a while.
His hostess laughed. “Fenella sneaked off in the middle of the night and ran to her grandmother in Scotland. She knew her father wouldn’t dare hunt her there! My husband gave Roger a thundering scold. There was bad feeling on all sides. Raymond wanted to cut off Roger’s allowance, but I managed to persuade him that would make things worse.”
“A belligerent young sprig with no money is liable to fall into bad hands,” said Arthur.
“Exactly. And so, after a time, the tempest in a teapot subsided. I think all would have been well, perhaps even better than well, if it hadn’t been for Arabella’s mother.”
“Arabella?”
“She was Roger’s wife.”
The one who had died of a lung complaint after an ill-advised ride in the rain, Arthur remembered.
“Arabella was beautiful,” Helena said in an oddly flat voice. “Truly a ravishing creature. And her mother was—is—a very determined woman.” She glanced at Arthur. “I’m speaking as if you are a friend indeed.”
