Love & Folly

by Sheila Simonson

  She whisked out the door, and Johnny fell upon the chicken. It was excellent, as usual.

  * * * *

  Richard did indeed return at four and, while his mood was not precisely foul, he did look gloomy. His mother was ill.

  "How is she?" Emily had spent an hour in the nursery and had just retired to the withdrawing room to collect her wits.

  "Sarah says failing."

  "Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry."

  He shrugged. "Anno domini."

  "For the love of God, Richard."

  "Do you want me to mouth conventional phrases? I do not know my mother, Emily, by her choice, and I have no intention of pretending to sentiments I don't feel. I'm sorry she's ill. Robert has the gout. I'm sorry for that, too, but there's nothing I can do to amend either condition."

  Emily blew her nose. "Allow me a conventional sniffle. I liked her grace on the one occasion I met her, and I am very sorry for Sarah's distress."

  "There is that," he agreed wearily. "Sarah sends you her best. She'll call on you when the roads are passable. Has the post come?"

  "Yes. Three for Johnny, one perfumed, another from Tom. Go find out the latest Town gossip."

  "Gossip! Lord Clanross is a leader of the Opposition, ma'am, hot a mere gabblemonger. Show a little respect."

  "He hates it, doesn't he?"

  Richard considered. "Tom regards politicks with the same enthusiasm I feel for three-volume histories. Hatred is too passionate a word."

  Emily said seriously, "Why don't you give it up, my dear? You should be writing what you wish to write."

  Reserve closed Richard's face like a shutter. "Perhaps I'll take up sonnets. 'Fair matron,'" he declaimed, hand on his breast, "'when I gaze upon thy face

  "'Adust with flour like a bannock bun...'"

  "Do I have flour on my nose again?" Distracted Emily made for the kitchen where Mrs. Harry assured her she was neat as wax and did the colonel fancy a bit of cod with the roast veal?

  "Drat the colonel," Emily said crossly. She was worried. Sooner or later Richard would have to sort out his feelings toward his mother. He might pretend indifference, but the anger beneath the mask had been smouldering for twenty-five years. It prevented him meeting her grace halfway. Though Emily understood his reasons, she thought he would find pride a sorry comfort when his mother had gone beyond earthly reconciliation. Richard was on good terms with his half-sister, Sarah, but that was more Sarah's doing than his. Sarah's and Emily's. Emily wished God had given men common sense.

  * * * *

  After dinner, when the children were abed and Richard writing, Emily kept Johnny company for a while.

  "Lady Clanross writ me a long letter," he confided.

  A pity. Emily had rather hoped the perfumed letter was from an amour. "Are her ladyship and her sisters well?"

  Johnny's brow clouded. "Very well, I believe."

  "But...?"

  "Clanross has sent Owen Davies to Brecon," he blurted. "To catalogue the library. You've probably not heard of Davies, sir."

  Richard looked up from his letter. "Can't say I have."

  Johnny drew a breath. "I was at university with him. He's a poet."

  Mercy, thought Emily. How improvident of Tom. "A good poet?"

  "Clever enough," Johnny said glumly. "A mad Radical and full of nonsensical quirks. He was rusticated once for writing a parody of the chancellor's peroration, and he despises what he calls the medieval trappings of rank."

  "Heavens, then what is he doing in the employ of an earl?"

  Richard gave a muffled snort of laughter. "Tom despises the medieval trappings of rank." He bent back to his work.

  "I daresay it suits Tom's sense of humour to keep a Leveller at Brecon," Emily said severely, "but how uncomfortable for Lady Clanross."

  "Her ladyship don't mind that." Johnny wriggled. His leg hurt worse at night for some reason. "Davies can be devilish charming with the ladies. He's a good scholar," he added in a palpable effort to be fair-minded.

  Emily brooded. Charming with the ladies? Perhaps Tom had taken leave of his senses. "And the young ladies are seventeen?"

  "They turn eighteen in May."

  "Lord, I don't envy the countess."

  Johnny looked miserable but said nothing.

  Emily's soft heart melted. "It won't be long before you'll be using a stick, Johnny. A fortnight, the surgeon said."

  "Her. ladyship kindly suggested I convalesce at Brecon."

  I daresay she did. Emily suppressed a smile. Johnny was so obviously safe. The answer to a beleaguered chaperone's prayers.

  "She... They're so young!" Johnny flushed at the revealing pronoun lapse and avoided Emily's eyes.

  Clearly "she" did not refer to Lady Clanross. Emily wondered which of the twins had captured Johnny's fancy, but she forebore to prod further.

  Presently Richard finished the letter he was writing his publisher and joined them. He was never an effusive man, but she was pleased that he contrived to praise Johnny's work on the first volume without sounding unnatural, and that he distracted the younger man from his melancholy by soliciting Johnny's opinion of the field at Malplaquet. Soon they were off on a discussion of troop deployment. Johnny's countenance became almost animated as they quarrelled over the ideal placement of skirmishers. Dull, masculine stuff but safely emotionless. Richard had occasional moments of tact.

  * * * *

  On the eighteenth, Elizabeth received a letter from her husband with an account of the King's funeral.

  ...the day was so cold I shouldn't wonder if half the peerage caught their deaths. The latest mot, unkind but bearing the stamp of truth, concerns the Duke of Clarence. As you know, the Duke of Kent was buried a few days before the king. Clarence is reputed to have said, as Kent's cortege was forming, "We made a bungling business of the queen's funeral. However, we shall have a rehearsal today, so I hope we shall manage the king's better." What it is to have an hereditary monarchy. H.R.H. was right. The business went without a hitch in a procession of frozen royalty and congealed nobility, but it was a damnably long ceremony. I rode with Dunarvon. He looks very ill.

  Your sister Anne keeps me au courant of the latest political gossip. Parliament will dissolve on the first of March (hurrah!) and the new Parliament. will take their seats on the 25th of April (fie!). At least the campaigning won't last forever. I mean to depute everything possible to Featherstonehaugh and Barney Greene. Anne insists that the ministers have talked his new majesty out of a divorce. I hope so. If not, the government will bring a Bill of Pains and Penalties (lovely phrase--sounds as if they mean to put the queen to the rack), and we shall have what amounts to a trial in the Lords. That will mean London for me all summer, so let us hope Anne is right.

  I shall come home alone on the second. Johnny writes that his leg will keep him in Hampshire until mid-March. How does the Poet? How do you, my lady?

  My best love to the boys, Jean, Maggie, Fanny, Georgy, Caro, Miss B, and the telescope--and even better love to you.

  Your funereal spouse,

  Tom

  Assured at the first hasty perusal that she would see Tom within a fortnight, Elizabeth reread the letter. After dinner she read an edited version to her sisters and Owen Davies. She rather thought she had given the poet fuel for political outrage. He looked pensive and excused himself from a hand of whist. To write, probably.

  They were used to Davies's company. Elizabeth was beginning to like him, so long as he didn't read more than three stanzoes at a sitting. She suspected he hid shyness behind his peculiar manners, but he had no small talk and no interest in the natural sciences. Elizabeth had never shone at small talk either and had no interest in political theory, his obsession, so there were often gaps in the conversation.

  Jean seemed content to gaze on her idol in uncharacteristic silence. It was Maggie who filled the silences with light chatter. Elizabeth had cause to be grateful to her little sister. Perhaps Maggie would grow from forthright girlhood to civil womanho
od without going through the silly stage at all: a consummation devoutly to be wished.

  The weather eased briefly, then lowered again with fitful flurries until Friday, when it began to snow in dead earnest. Elizabeth, Jean, and Maggie were standing with the omnipresent poet looking out the withdrawing room windows at swirls of eiderdown. As the snow began to blot out the carefully sculpted landscaping that spread down the long flat slope below the house, a carriage hove into view. So thick was the blown snow that the vehicle had nearly reached the entrance before they made out the Conway arms on the door panels.

  Jean pointed and gave a small shriek, and Elizabeth's heart started hammering. It was only the twenty-sixth. Tom would not come before the second at the earliest. Something must be amiss.

  Maggie squinted. "It's Clanross. He has Captain Greene with him."

  Elizabeth hitched up her shawl and made for the door. "I'll have to give orders," she called over her shoulder.

  She knew she ought to await Tom decorously in the withdrawing room. Her step-mamma's strictures on unseemly displays of affection still held weight with Elizabeth, and, she knew she was setting Jean and Maggie a deplorable example. Still, she wanted to see Tom.

  She flew down the long, marble flight to the vast foyer as the butler and a footman contrived to open the door. Elizabeth did not envy the footman. The wind was blowing direct from Norway As she reached the hall, Tom's man Sims, muffled to the ears, entered on a blast of chill air, followed by Barney and Tom. They were divested of their storm gear in swift order and Tom, spying her, strode over and enveloped her in a large, chilly, and very publick embrace. Tom had never met Elizabeth's late stepmother.

  "What is it, Tom?" Dishevelled but not displeased, she pulled away.

  "I'll explain in a few minutes, my dear. Is Owen Davies about?"

  "Upstairs in the withdrawing room with the girls."

  "Good" Tom sounded grim but turned and began instructing the butler to see to a double ration of rum for the coachman and Sims.

  "Aye, that's the ticket," said Sims. "Cor, I wasn't 'arf glad to see the old pile loom up A close run thing, me lady, but th'major would push on."

  Sims had been Tom's bâtman and was outspoken, but he rarely slipped into calling his master by the old rank these days Elizabeth deduced that he had wanted to stop at Chacton. "Never mind, Sims, you're here in one piece."

  Sims felt his nose. "I ain't so sure, me lady."

  Barney Greene stood shivering behind Tom, Mrs. Smollet bustled out to receive her orders, the footman slammed in laden with portmanteaux, and Fisher tried to hustle Sims to the kitchen for his noggin of rum. It was quite a mob scene but eventually Elizabeth sorted everyone out. She led Tom upstairs, with Barney, still shivering, and the butler trailing behind. Both gentlemen made for the fire when they reached the withdrawing room. Fisher plied them with brandy whilst Owen Davies and the twins watched in wide-eyed silence.

  At last everyone was seated once more and Tom, standing before the fire with one foot on the fender and a glass of brandy in his hand, had their full attention.

  "What is it?" Elizabeth prompted. "What has happened?"

  He frowned down at the glass. "A plot to assassinate the Cabinet was uncovered Thursday. There was a skirmish in Cato Street between the Runners and the conspirators, and the Guards were called out. Some of the ringleaders of the plot escaped, and one at least was killed. Most of them have been rounded up. They meant to blow up Lord Harrowby's house whilst the Cabinet members dined."

  "Good God," Elizabeth muttered into the stunned silence.

  Lord Harrowby's house in Grosvenor Square lay within sight of the Conway town house. Tom had been living in a powder keg. Elizabeth felt sick.

  "How I wish I'd been there!" Owen Davies was very pale.

  Tom regarded him for an unsmiling moment. The poet's eyes dropped. "You may thank your stars you were safe in my book room, Davies. It was a stupid, wrong-headed business, and it has probably set the cause of Reform back ten years."

  Owen bit his lip. "But if it had succeeded..."

  Barney Greene growled in his throat.

  Tom set his glass on the mantel. "Do you fancy you'd have had your revolution? Don't be a fool, Davies. If the ministers had been killed, they'd have been replaced at once, and you may imagine the repression their successors would have exercised in the name of self-defence. It's bad enough as it is. The group was riddled with informers, a practice such conduct justifies. Respectable opinion was against the government after Peterloo. It will now reverse. Mark my words, Englishmen do not like violent threats against Parliament, however unrepresentative it may be. The government are now clapping every known agitator in prison, confiscating pamphlets, and stiffening enforcement of the sedition laws. Publick opinion will support them."

  "Sheep!"

  "If by sheep you mean the Publick, I think they show good sense. Blood in the streets may sound animating in the safe precincts of a college, but there is nothing ennobling about it."

  Davies said between clenched teeth, "Was there not blood in the streets of Manchester?"

  "Yes, and if that colonel of fencibles had had the wit of a peahen he'd never have ordered his men out into the crowd. Don't fancy these fatheads in Cato Street were heroes, Davies. They were fools and knaves and deserve the fate that awaits them."

  The twins had been watching this exchange with their hands clasped in identical attitudes of horror, Jean pale as snow, Maggie flushed.

  "Did you come home to warn Owen?" Jean burst out.

  Tom glanced at Elizabeth and smiled slightly. "I came home because I wanted to come home." He sighed. "And to warn Davies. You would be well advised to lie low for a sixmonth, Davies. That pamphlet your friends published..."

  "It was privately printed," Davies said angrily.

  "Be that as it may, the Runners have come by a copy."

  "Oh, no!" Jean whispered.

  Davies twisted his hands. "How?"

  "I don't know. An informer, perhaps."

  "Not among my friends."

  "Perhaps one of your friends was careless," Tom went on. "You need have no immediate apprehension for your safety, but I'd avoid sending out any work that might be construed as sedition. Including lampoons on Lady Conyngham's girth."

  Davies blushed, as well he might. Prinny's mistresses were all substantial ladies. Hardly an original subject for satire.

  Elizabeth felt a twinge of sympathy. Davies's political poems were full of bloodthirsty images and clarion calls. The association would do Tom no political good at all, but the boy was young. As she watched her sisters, her inclination to sympathy faded. Maggie looked worried. Jean--lips parted, wide eyes fixed on Davies--looked as if she had seen a fearful vision.

  6

  Rumours of the conspiracy to kill the ministers at a banquet shot through the countryside ahead of the worst snowstorm in a decade. It was two days before the mail coach broke through drifts on the London road to bring Winchester reassuring news of the plotters' capture. There was much bustle in the garrison, but it was Emily's opinion that any stray revolutionary would be too cold to move, far less throw bombs.

  The newspapers Richard and Johnny pored over were full of the most alarming ideas. Johnny chafed at his inaction. Emily suspected her husband was saving the more outlandish details of the hysteria for his next satire, which, he said sardonically, would probably see print sometime around mid-century at the rate the government was restricting the press. Prinny--no one could remember to call him King--had offered a thousand-pound reward for the apprehension of a caricaturist.

  That fact and confirmation of the more lurid events of the Cato Street affair came in a letter Tom writ Richard from Brecon. The catalogue of books in the Brecon library went on apace, and Lady Jean and Lady Margaret were assisting the poet in his labours. That announcement galvanised Johnny. Although he had taken only a few tottering steps with the aid of crutches, he announced he was healed and meant to depart for Brecon the next morning. It
took Emily's pleas and his own weakness to convince him that laming himself in the cause of chivalry was an extreme course, and that Clanross's presence at Brecon would keep the poet in bounds.

  As the week-end wore on, Johnny's moods ranged from champing impatience to flat despair, until even Emily, who entered into his feeling with the utmost sympathy, wanted to shake him. He was copying Volume Two with savage speed and considerably less elegance than Volume One.

  On Tuesday, the surgeon replaced Johnny's clumsy splint with a contraption of canvas and whalebone that kept the bone immobile so long as Johnny did not put his full weight on the limb. He learned to manoeuvre on his crutches and dined at table like a Christian. His temper improved, but his desire to leave did not abate.

  So heartened was Emily by her patient's progress that she gave a small dinner party in his honour, with Richard's friends, the Wilbrahams, and their daughter as guests. Miss Wilbraham was an amiable girl, popular with the subalterns in garrison, and Major Wilbraham and his wife, though unfashionable, were easy, unaffected people. Though the gentlemen showed a tendency to lay out battle plans on the napiery, Emily's dinner went smoothly. Afterwards, Miss Wilbraham sang one too many Italian airs. She accompanied herself on the lute and looked classical.

  Emily fancied she had succeeded in diverting Johnny from his obsession with the Brecon ladies for a few hours. She sent him off to his bed, for he looked pale. Then, because McGrath was a trifle elevated, she and Richard saw their guests out. A groom in Sir Robert Wilson's livery strode up with a message as Richard was about to close the door against the icy wind. Emily's heart sank. She took the shivering lad belowstairs for a tot of McGrath's rum, tipped him and sent him off to the hostelry Sir Robert patronised.

  Richard was still in the foyer, frowning at the letter, when she returned.

  She touched his arm. "My dear..."

  "I'll come up shortly, Emily." He spoke with his usual calm, but she felt the tension in his arm.