Flirtation & Folly

by Elizabeth Rasche

  “And live miserably ever after.”

  He glared at her now. “You apparently do not understand honour, Miss Mowbrey.”

  “Perhaps not.” She disagreed with him, but she did not see how she could change his mind, and now she was beginning to mistrust her own intentions. How much of her desire to see him give up the pursuit of Hearn Hall was to see him happy, and how much of it was selfishness—an insistence he be happy in her way? So far, she thought she had been a relatively unbiased friend, but it was hopeless to deny that her friendship for Mr Hearn had shifted into deeper feelings on her part.

  The shadow of a carriage fell over them as a heaving coach lurched to a stop nearby. Marianne could hear Captain Pulteney’s voice haranguing the driver.

  “No, no, this will never do for a lady. Have them send ’round something without dust matting everything, at the very least!” The captain hopped out of the carriage and motioned the driver off, directing a glare after him. When he turned and saw Mr Hearn and Marianne in front of him, he gave an awkward laugh. “Just trying out something from the posting station. I was thinking of getting up a picnic.”

  Marianne did not believe him in the least. At another time, she might have politely accepted the lie, but all her frustration in trying to protect Belinda swamped over her. “A picnic? Perhaps you will fetch Lady Angela to join us,” she said, acid in her tone.

  The captain spluttered, “Now, that story about Lady Angela is a wicked falsehood, Miss Mowbrey. I had nothing to do with her.” He recovered his aplomb, assuming an expression of suave surety.

  “Perhaps you are hiring a coach to carry off another lady,” Marianne said. Mr Hearn looked perplexed, but the captain’s eyes narrowed.

  “If you are offering, Miss Mowbrey,” Captain Pulteney said, forcing a smile which did not reach his eyes, “I fear you are neither pretty enough nor rich enough to tempt me. It would not be a proper capture for a soldier.”

  It was not like him to be rude, and Marianne became all the more suspicious. “I was not thinking of myself,” she said coldly.

  The captain shifted his feet, averting his gaze. In the end he simply made a quick bow and went on his way. Mr Hearn watched him go with the same dim puzzlement in his eyes.

  “What on earth was that about?” he asked, when the captain had crossed the street and entered the inn. “You think he has designs upon someone?”

  “He and Belinda are always flirting. I have tried talking sense into her, but I fear—ˮ She bit her lip.

  Mr Hearn studied the worry in her face, the fatigue in her demeanour, the clenched fists. His gaze returned to the inn door through which the captain had disappeared. “I think I understand.”

  A crack of early morning sunlight sliced through the curtains into the Mowbrey sisters’ bedroom, but that thin bar of mote-filled light was enough to illuminate the room and throw Marianne into unease. Belinda was not there. Usually Marianne rose hours before her sister, who preferred to miss breakfast altogether rather than sacrifice one moment of lazy lounging. The emptiness of her side of the bed felt almost palpable to Marianne. Birds chirruped outside as if nothing were the matter, as if the summer day was proceeding exactly as it should, and one even landed on the open windowsill to bob a head in seeming goodwill. Marianne’s lunge for her clothing startled it into flight.

  It may mean nothing. Belinda hated arising early, but she might have done it this once for some special—entirely innocent!—reason. The distant gurgle of a carriage through loose rocks made Marianne stick her head through the window. She could spy a coach in the distance, kicking up gravel as the driver urged the horses to hurry. Who was leaving at this hour? Perhaps Lord Sweetser had to dash off to do something ‘unpleasantly parliamentary.’ It might not be related at all. But she hurried even faster with her clothing.

  Downstairs, Lady Sweetser was already taking a cup of chocolate as she settled her commands for the day. Miss Stokes sat beside her and jotted down a few notes for the day’s campaign. The warm smile she gave Marianne was an indication that she thought it a coup to be assisting Lady Sweetser while Marianne lay in bed. Miss Stokes’s affection to Marianne seemed precisely attuned to her progress in securing a place as Lady Sweetser’s companion.

  Today, Marianne had no leisure to feel annoyed, rushing over to Lady Sweetser as if the woman were her salvation. “Lady Sweetser, have you seen Belinda this morning?”

  “At this hour?” Lady Sweetser looked mystified. “Dear Belinda does not care to rise early.”

  “She is not in bed, and I cannot find her.”

  “Perhaps she went for a walk outside to see the sunrise.” Lady Sweetser stirred her cup with an indifference that seemed cruel to Marianne.

  “But Belinda hates the countryside, and she hates rising early.”

  “Perhaps she did it to please Lucy,” Lady Sweetser said. “She knows Lucy must be humoured a bit.”

  Marianne doubted Belinda would go to such lengths to please Lady Lucy, but she hurried outside and scoured the shrubbery and the cobbled walks with her gaze. There was no one. Her heart clenched. If Belinda and Captain Pulteney had been in the carriage, there was no time to be lost.

  Just as she turned to go back inside, Miss Stokes met her. For once, she looked the part of a concerned friend. “You did not find her?”

  “No.” Marianne tried to keep the curtness from her tone.

  “I asked Lucy’s maid. She says Lucy is still asleep.” Miss Stokes hesitated. “I fear to sound…suspicious, but—ˮ

  Marianne looked into her eyes miserably. “I fear it, too. I must tell Lady Sweetser.”

  Miss Stokes led her back into the breakfast-room. Her steps still held the studied, graceful aplomb that Marianne had envied for so long, but now all she could do was contrast it with Belinda’s own grace. Where Miss Stokes was collected and measured, Belinda bounded and alighted with the unthinking grace of some woodland creature. Belinda seemed so careless, and yet so charming! Where would it end for her?

  Lady Sweetser was cheerfully admonishing Sultan for some undesirable canine liberties he had taken, but stopped short when she saw Marianne’s grieved face. “Did you find Belinda?”

  “I do not think she is here.” Marianne quickly outlined her suspicions: the penchant for Captain Pulteney, his acquisition of a carriage for a lady, Belinda’s disappearance, a carriage departing in the early morning. “I fear they may have eloped, Lady Sweetser.” She prayed Belinda would have at least the sense to insist upon marriage.

  “Heavens! That is dreadful news, my dear.” The situation must be dire indeed for Lady Sweetser to speak to Marianne with such affection.

  “Can you send his lordship after them?” Miss Stokes asked. “There is still time to catch them. If they are going all the way to Gretna Green, they will have luggage, and they will have to stop to change horses. A single rider might catch them.”

  “But they do not want to be caught. I disapprove of Belinda’s choice, but we have no right to prevent it.”

  “You cannot mean that!” Marianne’s temper was held by a thread, and she felt inclined to snap it. Only the pressure of Miss Stokes’s hand gave Marianne the presence of mind to lower her tone. “Belinda is your guest and is under your care, my lady. Please, at least ask Lord Sweetser if he will go.”

  Lady Sweetser sighed, but she agreed. It took her only a few minutes to return with the disagreeable answer: Lord Sweetser regretted the circumstance, but felt as the two parties were both adults, he had no choice but to leave them to their own unfortunate decision. Marianne struggled to hold back a torrent of invective and rushed out onto the front lawn.

  The early morning light had ruddied into mid-morning, and now the day’s heat sank down and snuffed out the little breezes that had stirred the dew earlier. A rider was passing along the village road beyond the front gates of Sweetser Park, and when Marianne saw who it was, she picked up her skirts and ran. “Mr Hearn!” With a goodly measure of shouting and chasing, she managed to flag him
down.

  “What on earth is it, Miss Mowbrey?”

  She related the situation, and to her immense relief his brow darkened as he realised where things stood. “And no one has gone after them?” he asked, his tone impatient.

  “No.” She knew she did not need to ask; the determination on his face already made it clear he would make his own pursuit.

  “Will you pass a message to the doctor? I was just heading to the inn to see Lowes, and now, of course—ˮ

  “I will tell him you are not able to come.” She looked at him and felt waves of something strong pass through her. Love seemed like too petty a word for it. She supposed he could see it in her eyes, and she could only hope he knew it was something that had grown in time, and was not merely the result of a mad dash across the Sweetser’s lawn to seek her sister’s rescuer.

  He nodded. Scarcely a heartbeat later his horse was cantering forward, leaving Marianne to make her own dust trail of hurry to the village.

  Compared to the hot dustiness of the village, the inn’s dark interior felt positively dank. A maid showed Marianne to the village doctor, who was rummaging through a bag in the hallway outside Mr Lowes’s room. He took in Marianne’s appearance with a surprise that showed he was familiar with Lady Sweetser’s fear of illness and restrictions on guests. Marianne explained that Mr Hearn had had an emergency that prevented his visit. Although she had spoken in a low tone, the door to Mr Lowes’s room was open, and the ailing man cried out, “Is that Hearn? Send him in already.”

  The doctor stepped into the room and murmured something to his patient, but Mr Lowes’s voice rose with distress. “Not coming? I am dying, and he cannot spare me a moment?”

  Marianne listened with a building agony. Mr Lowes would not listen to the doctor’s reassurances. He would blame Mr Hearn, and perhaps resent his absence to the end of his life. And Mr Hearn would lose any chance of persuading the man to sell him Hearn Hall. Of course, she would have difficulty enough begging Lady Sweetser’s forgiveness for entering the inn at all, given the woman’s unreasonable terror of illness. If she entered the sick-room—well, she doubted she would even be permitted back to Sweetser Park.

  “He was on his way here, Mr Lowes,” she called into the room, standing far enough back from the doorway to remain unseen, and hoping to compromise with fate. “But there was an emergency.”

  “Very likely, Miss Mowbrey! I have no doubt you would tell any pretty story you could to excuse him.”

  Apparently, fate would not be placated. Marianne sighed and entered the room. She tugged off her bonnet and hoped that the anxiety in her face would convince Mr Lowes when simple words could not. The doctor was taking Mr Lowes’s pulse. By the concentration in his face, the task was not easy—his pulse was thready, weak.

  “Do not agitate him,” he whispered to Marianne. “And do not stay too long.” It could have been a simple warning not to tire the patient, but Marianne read far more in the doctor’s tired gaze. Mr Lowes did not have long to live, and the doctor did not want the poor man’s time wasted.

  “Why, what has happened?” Mr Lowes asked. His dark eyes had hollowed back in sunken caves ringed with sallow skin. His hair, always perfectly coiffed before, lay lank and loose on the pillow.

  “I had a family emergency, and I begged Mr Hearn to help me with it. He was on his way here, but he agreed to help. He asked me to explain his absence here.”

  “A family emergency? Is it Belinda? For God’s sake, Miss Mowbrey, has something happened to her?”

  Marianne silently cursed her ineptness. The doctor was frowning at her. “I did not say it was Belinda. It is a family matter—ˮ

  “And she is the only family you have here. Has she taken the fever? Did she try to see me?” Lowes shifted his shoulders, trying to sit up. “If I am at fault in any way—ˮ

  “Belinda is not the slightest bit ill, I assure you,” she said hastily. “I am sure she is well.”

  “Ah, no one will tell a dying man the truth!” Mr Lowes’s frustration was painful to see. His sunken eyes pleaded with Marianne while the doctor’s stern gaze admonished her not to upset him. Mr Lowes did not seem to notice the doctor’s disapproval. “If you are afraid I might reveal your secrets, Miss Mowbrey, I think I may safely promise to carry them to the grave.”

  The dark humour flashed and then disappeared as Mr Lowes’s anxiety grew. “For God’s sake, tell me what has happened! Did Hearn go off to amuse himself, or is there real trouble?”

  Marianne could not help but pity the man. Had anyone spoken honestly with him, without the misleading sheen of politeness that clouded so many interactions in London society? She had had the friendship of Mr Hearn to rely upon. He had been true and open with her, and she with him. Mr Lowes had probably had no one his whole life. She flinched at the doctor’s shake of his head, but she could not cast aside her conviction that the dying man needed the truth. “I fear Belinda and Captain Pulteney have run off together, Mr Lowes. You may have heard the rumours of how Captain Pulteney treated Lady Angela. I fear he may do the same to Belinda. Mr Hearn agreed to try and catch them, and bring Belinda back.”

  Mr Lowes’s breath wheezed in and out, hitching uncomfortably as he took in the truth. “My poor Belinda,” he said at last. The tone of his voice was hopeless, as if giving up his hopes of winning her for himself. That he could have continued to harbour any such hopes on his deathbed seemed inexpressibly sad. “I suppose even without this, she would never have chosen me.”

  “She never gave you any real encouragement, Mr Lowes, only idle flirting.”

  “I know.” His wheezing breath hitched again. “I was a fool, her fool. Still, the thought of her being used by that damnable captain—ˮ

  “I think all will be well. We must put our trust in God. There is still a great deal of hope that Mr Hearn will catch them before it is too late.” She thought he took comfort from the words, but he seemed to dismiss the subject as if it no longer concerned him.

  “I understand, Miss Mowbrey.”

  “You will not—hold it against Mr Hearn?”

  The dark humour returned. “Do you mean, shall I forgive him everything and sell him Hearn Hall ’ere I die? I would not get your hopes up for that, Miss Mowbrey.”

  Marianne saw the sheen of moisture on his eyes, and she could not tell whether it was a hint of tears or some rheum from the fever.

  “Did you know he apologised to me? He admitted he mistreated me when we were boys. He showed contrition. At least, I think he showed it.” The filmy eyes fixed on her. “How can I ever be sure? It is in his interest to placate me. He wants Hearn Hall more than anything.”

  “He would not lie.”

  “Everyone lies to a dying man. Except you, I suppose.” Again the dark humour suffused his sallow face. “I will never know how much of it he meant and how much was an attempt to please the man who owns Hearn Hall. But you will know, Miss Mowbrey. After I die, you will know whether Hearn was truly sorry for tormenting an orphan boy or whether it was all talk. I envy you that.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “No, but you will.” Mr Lowes considered her, while the doctor rummaged in his bag for an implement. “I suppose you are willing to tell hard truths. Perhaps, if you vouch for his sincerity, I should believe you.”

  “He truly regrets the way he treated you. He does, Mr Lowes.” Marianne tried to convey every ounce of sincerity she had. If she could convince Mr Lowes of the truth, she would have done Mr Hearn a service, even if it was too late for him to regain Hearn Hall. He had sacrificed his last moments with Mr Lowes to help Marianne. If he had been here, perhaps Mr Lowes would have relented and sold him Hearn Hall, or even bequeathed it to him. Marianne had to do the best she could for him in his absence.

  “Perhaps he does regret it.” Mr Lowes sighed and sank further down into the pillows, and the doctor took that as his cue.

  “That is quite enough, Miss Mowbrey. I would speak with you outside. We will let the gentleman rest.�
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  The doctor led her into the hallway and carefully closed the door behind him before turning, face livid with outrage. The amount of self-control he must have possessed in the sick-room shocked her, and she found herself trembling at his wrath.

  “Have you no sense of decency? The man is dying.” Despite his anger, the doctor kept his voice low enough not to carry—another marvel of discretion. “Why did you bring in all your family troubles upon him?”

  “I was merely telling him the truth. He wanted to know. You saw.”

  “What he wants and what is good for him are two very different things! You may have hastened his death by hours, Miss Mowbrey. Be sure that I will inform Lord and Lady Sweetser of your infamous conduct today. They will be as appalled as I am.”

  “It was an act of friendship.” Marianne saw that nothing she could say would make him understand. From the point of view of a doctor—not unnaturally—prolonging the life of a man, however certain the ultimate end was believed to be, was worth far more than any gesture of friendship toward him. Somehow I think the opinion of a doctor on my moral character will be very persuasive to Lady Sweetser even if it is not his area of expertise. It seemed Miss Stokes would become Lady Sweetser’s new companion after all.

  Although she knew better than to try to pass beyond the Sweetser Park gates, Marianne decided to roam just outside them, sure that if Mr Hearn discovered anything, he would attempt to find her at Sweetser Park. She hoped to find a servant who could carry a message to Lady Sweetser, to explain the morning’s tribulations and make some effort to defend herself for visiting Mr Lowes. But when she arrived at the sweeping iron arches and the green glints of bending leaves where the park gates met the forest, Marianne discovered neither Mr Hearn nor any servant—only Belinda and Mr Nabbles strolling arm-in-arm.