by M. J. Logue
If anyone had ever sat cross-legged on an unmade bed and traced the cross of hair between any of the Merry Gang's nipples and down his belly, running her fingertips over old scars and solid muscle.
She doubted it, personally.
"Thomazine," Russell said sleepily.
She gave a little sigh of pure pleasure. "Mm?"
"More than a handful's a waste, tibber," he said, put his arm about her waist, buried his face in her loose hair, and fell asleep.
52
It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, right until someone had directed him to the darkest, coldest corner of the great draughty dining room in the company of the least liked, least popular men at His Majesty's court.
(Know your place, Major Russell. This is your place in the world now. Bear it.)
She looked tired, and pale, and very young, and he felt guilty that he had brought her, but there it was.
Lord Crediton was helping her to a further slice of chicken breast, which she didn't want, and her eyes met Russell's across the frigid expanse of glittering tablecloth. She looked as if she might cry, and he wanted, very much, to be at home at Four Ashes with her. Safe. Not slinking around Whitehall, being fed chicken drowned in sickly cream by some fledgling rake. One of the other things he loved about Thomazine, had always loved about her, even when she was tiny, was her essential cleanness. There was a greasy handprint on the glimmering charcoal silk of her sleeve. He wondered, idly, if he ought to kill Crediton for it. It was a temptation.
There was a sharp crack over his knuckles, and he withdrew his simmering gaze from the ill-deserving attentions of Lord Harry Crediton - who was stupid, but amiable, like a slobbering puppy. "Your attention is wandering, Major Russell," a cracked old voice said at his elbow, and he very deliberately tucked some loose hair behind his ear so that the scars on his cheek showed full in the unkind candlelight.
"On the contrary, Lady Endsleigh. My attention is fixed exactly where it should be." He glanced down at her. Not an edifying sight, the old harridan, three inches thick in powder and rouge, and hung about with pearls the size of duck-eggs. "On my wife."
She chuckled. "So there is some blood in you, Major. Despite the rumours."
"Rumour is a lying jade. As ever."
"New-married, then, I take it? Since we've not had the pleasure of your marred face at court this six months and more."
"A little more than a month, madam. I prefer not to discuss my marital affairs with all and sundry."
"Heh, hoity-toity, sir! You were keen enough to discuss your marital affairs when you were tendering your resignation from the Army, young man. Very keen that all and sundry might know you were leaving the business of the defence of the realm to go scampering back to Buckinghamshire and get on with the serious business of begetting some heirs, now the place is your own -" she cackled again. "Well, God bless you both, Major Russell, for I declare you blush like a maiden, so she must be doing you some good." She had dreadful teeth, too, and he wasn't actually sure they were her own, for they seemed somewhat too large and numerous for her withered mouth. Of all women, he should have preferred to be trapped in a broom cupboard with the Castlemaine, who had the advantage of being an honest whore, than with Kitty Endsleigh, who was solicitous and affectionate and had wandering chicken-claws for hands, and a marked partiality for vulnerable young men.
She was kind, though, and he had been glad of her kindness, once, though perhaps not as glad as she might have liked him to be. His gratitude had never gone as far as sharing her bed - although there had been times when he'd been so miserable and so lonely, in his first days on Monck's staff, that he would have, if she'd asked him openly. "Looks like a nice girl, mind," she said, following his gaze. "If you've got any sense, major, you'll get her as far away from this sink as you can, get her bred, and keep her hands full with managing a household and her belly full with nice rosy fat fair-haired babies."
He dropped his eyes and said nothing, because he did like to maintain the illusion that he was a stern and upright gentleman in charge of his own destiny, rather than his wife's fond and rather foolish cavalier and no more in control of his own household than a mayfly. Lady Endsleigh chuckled again. "I take it we won't be seeing much of you, either, sir, when you go to become a turnip in the country." And then she sighed, which was unexpected, and almost dislodged her pearls. "There's not many will say it, major, but I'll miss you at Whitehall, your funny ways. You're honest, and that's rare."
"Too honest," he said, and meant it, and she looked at him thoughtfully and for the first time did not rattle her society-laugh, but simply looked.
"I note you don't ask if I believe the tales, then, sir. Which I don't. There's a lot of bloody fools that do, ain't there? Not the tales that you are a turncoat, which is ludicrous, and nor yet the tales put about by that equally rattle-pated ninny Fairmantle, that you are being groomed for execution by some anonymous black-cloaked ne'er-do-well who seeks your downfall." She snorted. "He over-eggs the pudding, that fool. If he would have the world believe your innocence, he'd do better to keep his blabbing mouth shut, for having him bleat your innocence does you no favours, young man. What a world, Major Russell, what a world we live in where a man is passed over for an excess of honesty, and yet John Mennis, who is a delightful gentleman and an utterly inadequate administrator, remains Controller of the Navy."
"No one has ever suggested that Sir John is dishonest, madam," he said gently.
"No. Well. An old fool, perhaps, but not dishonest, except by omission. Nonetheless. You will be much missed, major, by those who value intelligence and plain dealing. Which is to say, not many." She shot a glance of loathing across the table at Crediton, presently endeavouring to force another morsel of chicken between Thomazine's lips. "What in God's name possessed you to leave that poor little maid sitting next to that one-man boarding party?"
"A lack of alternative? What would you suggest, madam, that I challenge him to a duel? Hardly, at this court. Nothing short of ravishment across the table would shock this party - and that only if the wine were spilled."
She nodded. "I believe you're right, sir. Perhaps I should follow your example, and likewise rusticate. This dreadful place! The end of days, I swear it! First the murders, and then the sweating sickness, and now the Dutch - I swear, sir, damme if those of us who don't die of a fretting leprosy won't be burned in our beds by those infernal Butterboxes, pox on 'em!"
"Ah?" he said, only half-attending, watching Thomazine stiffly take a morsel of chicken from Crediton's fork, followed by a grape from the man's greasy fingers. "That would be a great grief to your family."
She gave him a forlorn look across the table, and he was already half out of his seat. "I must go to her. My poor girl, she is unwell."
Kitty Endsleigh gave a filthy cackle of laughter. “She ain’t unwell, you ninny, no more than women have been since Eve! Leave her be, and stop fussing, Russell!”
53
Thomazine put her head against his shoulder and whimpered, and it was all he could do not to pick her up in his arms and carry her from this hot, stifling, overstuffed room, stinking of sweat and perfume and over-rich food growing cold untasted. "Oh, husband," she murmured piteously, "I beg - take me hence, lest I faint, and disgrace myself in such exalted company -"
Her eyelashes fluttered on her cheek, and she pressed a hand to her mouth delicately. Crediton removed himself and his hovering fork with equal delicacy. "Well, well. How remarkably old-fashioned of you, sir," he sneered. "D'you think I'm not upright enough to take care of your wife?"
He leaned back in his chair, thighs lolling suggestively apart just in case no one had got the joke, and one of his cronies snickered at his elbow.
"On the contrary, sir," Thomazine murmured. "My understanding is that you are not given to remaining so."
Not for the first time, Thankful Russell was grateful for a certain impassivity of expression. It meant that he did not snort into his wife's carefully-coiffed h
air, and that his free hand, which had been feeling towards the hilt of his sword, curled instead around her stiffly boned little waist. "Please, dear," she said against his chest, "I find the heat oppressive, and my stomach is queasy -"
Which shifted Crediton, in his expensive embroidered silk, quicker than the rumours of plague. Poor little Thomazine lolled against Russell so piteously that he was forced to pick her up, tall as she was, and she nestled against him to murmurs of shock and disapproval at their unconventional departure from the party, and for once, he did not care, because she was ill and she was his dear love and he had promised to protect her and cherish her all the days of his life.
This wasn't his life, not any more, even if it ever had been. If Rupert planned to attend - if he had ever planned to attend - there would be other times, because as he ordered their carriage to be brought round, he made a decision. They would go home. He did not care what had happened to Fly. He never had cared what happened to Fly. If the whole of Buckinghamshire thought he'd murdered the godly bitch, it did not matter. What mattered was Thomazine, and home, and -
"You can put me down now," she said, in a perfectly cheerful, happy, healthy voice, and he didn't so much as put her down in the grand marble foyer as drop her onto her feet.
"A remarkable recovery, madam," he said dryly, and she put her hand on his waist and grinned up at him.
"I was very much afraid that our host might do himself an irreparable mischief, if he persisted in trying to fondle my thigh under the table. Of a sort of fork-groin nature. I did not think that would bode well for your future prospects, Russell - your wife having emasculated one of Prince Rupert's drinking companions. And I believe the prince is presently abed with a recurrence of his old fever, and is not likely to put in an appearance this night - or, indeed, for some days hence."
He stared at her.
"If Rupert's not coming," she said gently, "I have no intention of spending more time with that appalling pack of loiter-sacks than I have to, dear. I should rather be at home. With you. I believe we were discussing the matter of vineyards and little foxes, yester'e'en."
"Oh, you clever wench," he said, and he meant it. "But Zee. My employment prospects are husband and, God willing, father. And no more. Those days are done. I am no intriguer, remember? I am dismissed. What ambitions you may be cherishing in that deceptively tricksy head of yours, madam, forget it. I have no intention of taking up a post. Any post. On His Majesty's staff again."
“Of course not, darling.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek, and he was not so daft that he was fooled, though he enjoyed the being kissed. “Crediton is a disgusting creature. I do hate a man in one of those absurd wigs. I should much rather have a good, plain, honest gentleman who wears his own hair –“ she tucked a loose wisp behind his ear, allowing her fingers to drift over his scarred cheek with a tenderness that still undid him. “Horrid man. He was trying to frighten me. Plague, indeed.”
“M’lord, the carriage.”
It was still cold, and he was glad of the stout wool of Thomazine’s plain, countrified cloak, as he settled it about her shoulders. She settled his hat more firmly over his eyes. A fine pair they must have made, each dressing the other, like a pair of children. “Not a night to be keeping men or horses standing,” he observed to the driver, who looked at him in some surprise.
“Sir?”
“Nothing. Aldgate, sir, if you please. Fenchurch Street, near to the church of St Gabriel.”
He thought he might grow to like carriage travel, with his girl sitting opposite him with her feet in his lap and her slippers off, while he rubbed some warmth and some blood back into her poor pinched little toes. He did not look at her, nor she at him, for the last time he had warmed her feet between his hands in a carriage he had ended up losing a hair ribbon, and a certain degree of his naiveté. They both concluded they did not take to fashionable life. Russell would not, in this lifetime or any other, wear high-heeled shoes, no matter what the reigning fashion dictated. It seemed that my lord Crediton was a victim to that particular vanity. “Which must mean he barely comes to your shoulder, husband, in his stockinged feet,” she mused.
“Indeed?” And should he, or should he not, take her stockings off? He could then tuck her poor little feet inside his coat, in the warm –
“Thankful, you are looking very pensive. Perhaps I should re-christen you Thoughtful.”
“Hm?” He kept hold of her foot, but looked up, and she wriggled her toes obligingly. The carriage swayed, the horses’ hooves skittering and slipping on the wet cobbles, and then started to pick up speed.
“You are looking thoughtful. Are you planning some kind of vengeance on my lord Crediton, in which case I –“
He set her feet back down, and leaned forwards. “I am thinking, my tibber, that we could have walked from that house to Fenchurch Street by now. And I am thinking that perhaps I did not put up with your uncle’s poeting all the way through the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, to be murdered by some ungodly ne’er-do-well in a London slum.”
He leaned forward and rapped on the roof of the carriage in an instruction to stop.
It did not stop. Instead, he heard the crack of a whip, and suddenly the carriage lurched as the horses startled into a gallop. Rocking and pitching from side to side at a speed that was almost unthought-of in these city streets, creaking like a ship in a gale. "He does not mean to stop," Thomazine said, and she looked up at him as if he would know how to make it go away. "Thankful - what does he intend should happen to us?"
"I suspect we are being carried off," he said, and smiled at her reassuringly. "Ah well. Over my dead body, tibber." She stared at him, for a second. And then she shook herself, quite briskly, because she was the daughter of a fierce and inventive soldier and she was, he thanked God, the wife of another. Unhooked her skirt, and kilted up her petticoats between her legs, which gave her the faintly comical appearance of a baby in clouts, but which freed her from six yards of clinging heavy silk. Her face was dead white, her eyes enormous.
He lifted the leather screen of the window, and looked out at the rushing night. “I’ve not a clue where we are, tibber. Which means we’re out of the City. Choose your weapons.”
She looked down. Swallowed. Looked up. “Pistols. Russell. Must – “
“You can load and fire?”
“Whose daughter am I?” she said scornfully, and put out her hand for his pistol. His own hand was shaking.
“Tibber. This – “ Her eyes met his. “I love you. Give me your hand. We do this together.”
“As ever,” she said. And smiled, shakily. And put her hand into his, as the door cracked open, swinging wildly on its stiff leather hinges.
54
She thought that he meant that she should hit the cobbles on top of him, and she hadn't, she had twisted like a cat by reflex and they had gone down in a sprawling tangle and for a minute when she heard something crack she thought she was dead, everything gone white in a blinding flash of pain.
And then she could breathe again, and she realised it was a snapped bone in her stays, and it was jabbing into her flank like a dagger, and she was not dead after all, though she feared from Russell's stillness that he might be. And dared not panic, but had started to rifle his clothes, trying to find a heartbeat, blood, a bruise -
"Jesus bloody Christ!" he gasped, sounding so utterly unlike his decent upright self and so much like her father in one of his more temperamental moods, that she giggled, and he rolled over onto his front and tried to get up. "Thomazine, lass, I reckon I've broke my ankle," he added, quite conversationally, and then she thought he might have fainted, because he dropped flat to the wet cobbles with a weird whooping yowl and did not move again.
She knew how he felt, and yet she thought they must, because she could hear the clattering of hooves crashing on into the night, with a slapping that sounded horribly like flesh on flesh as the door swung to and fro on its hinges, fading into the dark. And then hooves on the c
obbles again, echoing between the houses, and between her white underlinen and Russell's pale hair they were sticking out like a pair of sore thumbs, and all she could do as she heard the sound of hooves joined by the rumble of wheels was to drag herself and her limp husband into the shadows between the looming houses, and crouch down, and throw her cloak over the both of them. Disguised as a midden, she thought wildly, and pressed her face into his shoulder, with the broken bone of her stays tearing at her belly and a warm stickiness running down her flank, feeling as if all her bones had been smashed like eggshells.
"Major Russell - ah, Mistress Russell - I do apologise. Most profusely. All a terrible misunderstanding."
Indeed, Thomazine thought, and felt her husband stir underneath her, and clamped her hand over his mouth before he was moved to pass comment. At least he was still breathing. Very fast, and very shallow, and his breath was hot and wet against her hand, but it was constant. "Be still, Thankful," she hissed, and he went limp again. But kissed her palm, in token of his continued awareness.
She could hear a stick tapping on the cobbles. A stick, or the click of high heels. One of them was shivering, and she wasn't sure which of them - she, with her legs and her feet indecently bare and her shift tucked up between her thighs like the worst slut in London, and her bare skin pressed unpleasantly against the rough, gritty, slimy stones of the alley, or Russell, in pain. "I really ought to have made the effort to attend that soiree this evening," that cool voice went on. "I had not realised you wished to discuss a matter with me of such urgency. Mistress Russell, I may offer you a token of my good faith, though I would beg of you, consider an ageing man's infirmity. I knew your father, madam. Knew him and respected him greatly, though I suspect he might not acknowledge the recognition."
