by Edith Layton
“All you have to do, my dear,” Mr. Jeffers said in bewilderment at her militant tone, “is to sign a paper giving me that right, as your man at law. It is not necessary for a young girl to travel upon the Continent at this dangerous time. I am here,” he said with a broad satisfied smile, “expressly for that purpose.”
“But I shall go,” Jessica said coldly. “It makes sense for me to go. For Red Jack surely distrusted anyone else. Oh, Ollie, can’t you see the sense it makes?” she cried, looking beseechingly at Sir Selby.
Mr. Jeffers began to go on about how difficult it would be for a lady to travel in the places that he must frequent, while Lady Grantham drowned out his protests by speaking loudly to the general company about how foolish it would be for a young chit to go haring off to the Continent in search of a mare’s nest. She was in full spate about the danger of Bonaparte leaving his island kingdom for another go at the English and painting vivid word pictures of murderous Frenchies and sneaking Spaniards when she paused to hear her old friend, Sir Selby, say in reply to Jessica’s heated plaints, “Oh, well, Jess, I suppose you have the right of it. And Red Jack wouldn’t want you to be a pudding heart. But I would have to go with you, for I wouldn’t forgive myself if anything befell you. And you’re right, I do know the turf, as a matter of fact. I even know old MacKenzie, fine fellow he is, too. But you’d have to give me time to get my affairs in order.”
“But I’m ready to set out within the week,” Mr. Jeffers protested, aghast at a possible delay and possible complications on his journeys.
Lady Grantham arose quietly and walked to her nephew’s side. She noted that he was already white about the lips. But still she bent and whispered briefly in his ear. He rose and nodded; then, with icy aplomb, she interrupted the argument between Jessica and Mr. Jeffers.
“Mr. Jeffers,” she said loudly, “Selby, would you both come with me for a moment? I believe my nephew desires some private converse with Miss Eastwood. Jessica,” Lady Grantham said with a tinge of warning in her voice, “I suggest you hear what Alex has to say before you say another word. We shall await you in the rose salon.”
Without a further syllable, Lady Grantham, by the sheer force of her personality, commanded the startled Mr. Jeffers and the surprised Sir Selby from the room with her. Jessica stood in confusion, looking at the papers Mr. Jeffers had left strewn upon the table in his haste to obey his imperious hostess. It was suddenly silent in the room and she looked up to find herself the object of as direct and pitiless an angry gaze us she had ever encountered. Instead of quailing, her natural courage and her anger at having been so summarily ordered to attention caused her to glare angrily back at the tall gentleman standing before her.
“That,” Lord Leith said frigidly, letting each word fall and drop and echo before he added another, “was as selfish a piece of business as I have ever seen.”
“Indeed it was,” Jessica said, relieved at finding him in agreement with her. “Can you imagine that the fellow wished to leave me out of the entire business, as if I were a witless calf?”
“Indeed?” Lord Leith said in a dangerous low voice. “I had thought that only a witless calf, as you so succinctly and correctly put it, would force an old fellow like Selby out of his deserved retirement and ease and send him jaunting about Europe like a fellow half his years. And send him to that folly by playing on his insane commitment to an old comrade-in-arms. Have your wits gone begging, girl?” he thundered, now rounding upon her as she shrank back from the blazing fury in his eyes. “Do you think he quit himself of his career only because he came into a title? Why, the fellow is old enough to be your father’s father. Did you never see how junior a partner your father was to him, or that your father himself was no mere lad? He himself should have sold out years before the wars put paid to his career.”
Jessica had been at first genuinely shocked at his accusation, and then momentarily shamed at the truth he spoke, which she had never perceived. But then she had heard words of disapproval directed at her father, and all reason fled. She wheeled upon her attacker and cried, “He was a soldier! And a soldier never quits when there is need of him. And if Ollie wants to come with me, if Ollie thinks he can, why are you so ready to bundle him into an old man’s slippers? So that your aunt may have an escort to all her London frolics? Because they are so much more important than my future?”
The tall gentleman stared at the wild creature before him. She was shaking with rage and her eyes glistened with unshed tears of fury. Her intensity stirred him to step toward her. But then, he recollected himself and began rather more calmly, “See here, Jessica. I meant no disrespect to your father. I only meant to say that Selby is too old for such larks, and it’s unfair of you to ask him to accompany you—one, when there is someone your father already entrusted with the task, and two, when you know that Ollie’s sense of duty must make him agree, even though it might be uncomfortable or even dangerous for him to do so.”
Jessica rapidly acknowledged the truth in his words, but only to herself. For, like so many people, she did not enjoy being told that she was in the wrong, and being Jessica, she could not easily back down from the heights her rage had sent her towering off to.
“Then,” she said, quickly raising her chin, “he need not go with me. I can go by myself. With Mr. Jeffers, by myself, I mean.”
“And what,” Lord Leith asked sarcastically, “do you think your dear Ollie will say to that?”
“Aha,” cried Jessica, quite unfairly, even to her own ears. “Then you fear he will ask you to go in his stead and you don’t wish to inconvenience yourself.”
As this thought had not occurred to the gentleman, but as it was quite logically just what Sir Selby would expect of him, Lord Leith felt defensive and so roared back, “There is no need for a young female to go jaunting off to the Continent on such a sheer pretense. And no sane one would expect to do so.”
“There!” Jessica said, with grim satisfaction, tears of anger brimming her eyes. “There we have it! For if I were a young man, it would not be at all out of the way for me to accompany my man of law to secure my own fortune.”
“But you are not, however much you may pretend to be so, a young man,” Lord Leith shouted.
“And how I wish I were, so that I could show you a thing or two,” Jessica countered in an attempt to startle the tall implacable figure before her and only succeeding in losing all her control. She grew even angrier at the tear that coursed out of hiding from the corner of her eye.
Lord Leith was transfixed to immobility by guilt and by the conflicting desires to either tenderly brush away that tear with hand or lips, or cause her to shed several more; he knew what would happen if he dared to even gently touch that flushed cheek. But he only sneered and said with a touch of spite that shocked him to the core as he uttered it.
“And how I wish you could as well. But you are safe enough from me in your woman’s skirts, even though you are hardly fit to wear them.”
“Forget my skirts,” Jessica challenged him.
“And if I did,” he said angrily, goaded beyond discretion, “I think you might learn at last how pleasurable it is to be a woman.”
Lady Grantham, Sir Selby, and Mr. Jeffers, seated uneasily in the rose salon, had long since given up any attempt at concealing their interest in the muted sounds of battle that came from the direction of the small salon, thus it was that they greeted Thomas Preston when the butler announced him, with an absent, distracted air. And soon there were four persons craning their ears to hear the far-off deep masculine rumbles and the occasional high shrill of a woman’s voice.
“The young people,” Mr. Jeffers said at length in an attempt to state the unstatable, “are having a disagreement.”
That remark caused all present to turn and stare at him until he fell to contemplating his fingertips.
They were startled to some degree when the sounds of a fragile object shattering reached their ears. Lady Grantham only nodded knowledgeably, “I hav
e only Limoges and Wedgwood in there. Nothing of any consequence.”
After a longish silence, the door to the small salon opened. Jessica walked calmly across the hall to where the others waited. She was ashen and her eyes were red-rimmed, but she held her head high, and simply said, “I have decided that it makes no sense for me to accompany you, Mr. Jeffers. Please advise me as soon as you discover anything. I have a bit of the headache, ma’am, and desire to go to my room. Godspeed, Mr. Jeffers, and good luck. Oh, hello, Tom, I’ll speak with you later, I hope.”
And having delivered herself of this message, she curtsied and, head held regally, ascended the staircase to her room.
As the assembled quartet recovered themselves and waited for one of their number to find the presence of mind to utter something acceptably noncommittal, Lord Leith appeared in the doorway. A thundercloud sat upon his high brow and his gray gaze was shuttered. He spoke coldly, through clenched teeth.
“Good morning. I fear I have let the hours go by without noticing, but I have a pressing appointment the other side of town. I’ll take my leave now. And, oh, Aunt, my regrets. In my haste to leave and in my clumsiness, I overset a vase on the mantel. I’ll send a replacement.”
“The Meissen vase,” Lady Grantham said thoughtfully. “I’d forgotten that one.”
“Just so,” her nephew agreed. “Your servant, ma’am. Good day, Selby. Mr. Jeffers, good hunting. Hail and farewell, Mr. Preston.”
“Well,” Mr. Jeffers commented into the silence that came after Lord Leith’s departure, “I think I shall take my leave now as well. I’ll write, of course, as soon as I get word of what Captain Eastwood’s legacy precisely constitutes. And,” he added more feelingly to Lady Grantham, “I shall try to perform that task with all possible haste.”
It was only a little while later, after Sir Selby and Tom Preston had strolled off together and Lady Grantham had sat motionless in deep thought in her sitting room, that she rang her bell and requested her maid to invite Miss Eastwood to take tea with her. It was shortly after that that the two sat quietly at a deal table in the same small salon that had echoed to so much wrath a while earlier. Now all was calm, every last shard of the ill-fated vase had been swept away.
Jessica was pale, but composed, and as she accepted her teacup from Lady Grantham, she said in a small voice, “In my excitement at hearing the news this morning I fear I overset a handsome vase of yours, my Lady. I shall be sure to purchase you another to replace it.”
“No need,” her hostess said airily, “for Alex has already confessed to oversetting it himself and he shall take care of it.”
“Oh, shall he?” Jessica said with a heightened look in her eyes, but then she recollected herself and subsided meekly again.
“If I had known how heated your discussion would become,” Lady Grantham said mildly, “I should have put you in the ballroom. It’s in disuse just now. Everything’s in slipcovers and there’s not a breakable object left in it.”
“Oh, ma’am,” Jessica said suddenly, putting down her teacup, much to her hostess’s relief, for she had noticed how much that delicate object had trembled in her guest’s hand, “I am so sorry. It was quite unconscionable. But have never gotten so angry in all my life. No, I recall that the chandler’s son took a sweet from me when I was eight and I shied a candlestick at him. But never since then, I swear it. I confess I seized up the vase, but then the enormity of my action struck me and I dropped it in horror. It would have been both cowardly and dishonorable to strike an unarmed man,” Jessica concluded with only a trace of her usual spirit.
“But Alex could have availed himself of other bits of crockery to defend himself with,” Lady Grantham said smoothly.
“It is very kind of you to jest, ma’am,” Jessica grieved, “but it was undoubtedly bad of me to so lose control and I urn heartily sorry for it.”
“And Leith never loses his temper,” Lady Grantham said obliviously. “It must have been the weather, so lowering to the spirits.”
“No,” Jessica said miserably, “it is my fault, and I apologize. And shall to him as well.”
“It’s not at all a bad thing,” the elder lady mused as she picked up a strawberry tartlet. “Alex has been so serene since he returned. Too complacent. Swift water carries one over bumpy places, but it’s time he left the shallows of his life.” She was so pleased by her poetical phrasing that she sat and munched her sweet and seemed not to notice how downcast her guest had become.
“You know,” Lady Grantham ruminated, “it is very bad Ton to display unladylike anger. But then, I am not at all sure that to be completely human is very good Ton, so I, of course, forgive you.” She smiled, her angular features taking on the elfin look that had so enchanted the departed William and the young Ollie all those years ago.
“And then again,” she added slyly, “one knows, of course, that those persons one cares the most deeply for incite the highest passions of every sort.” But seeing no response to this daring suggestion, she went on more prosaically, finishing off the tart and picking up a sugared nut cake, “Then, too, I suspect you have a bit of your father’s temper to contend with. You two must have been a sight when you set at each other.”
“Oh, no,” Jessica breathed. “Why, Father and I never disagreed.”
“You didn’t?” Lady Grantham asked in surprise. “Why, then, child, you must be a saint. For your father was the most provocative fellow.”
“Oh, no.” Jessica laughed weakly. “You musn’t believe all the stories Ollie tells.”
“It has nothing to do with those tales,” Lady Grantham said placidly, attacking her nut cake with concentration. “Why, I confess, each time I met him, he seemed to deliberately try to set my back up. He thrived on altercation.”
“You knew him?” Jessica asked in astonishment.
“Of course I did, my dear,” Lady Grantham answered, puzzled at Jessica’s surprise, “didn’t you know? No? Well, of course I did. Each time he came to town he put up with Selby. The two of them would veer about the town, raising cain. I knew him, after a bit, almost as well as I knew Selby. But, I confess, we never did get on well. He had, you know, no use for women.”
Jessica’s thoughts tumbled about her. She said in dazed fashion, “But he never mentioned coming to London at all. I never guessed. I thought that he came home and then went straightaway back to his unit. How often,” she asked suddenly, “Did you see him?”
“At least several weeks each year,” Lady Grantham said lightly, and then chanced a look at Jessica’s stricken face. “Oh, my dear, I am so sorry. I thought you knew. But then, a grown man would find little to keep him in the country long. Having no wife at home, I mean. And however much he disliked our gender, he did not live as a monk. He did not care for females, but he never gave them up. That is to say ... How very difficult,” Lady Grantham breathed to herself.
But her guest scarcely heard. She had only seen Red Jack at brief intervals, she had always thought of those stolen weeks as his only surcease from war, she had never guessed that he would have been in the country and would not have come to see her. Or that he would have left her, lost and longing for him, while he cavorted in London.
“It makes no matter,” Jessica said brightly, although her hostess noted her lower lip trembling. “You are quite right, there was nothing at home but several thousand sheep and, of course, me.”
“My dear,” Lady Grantham said, putting down her cup and turning to Jessica, “such is the nature of men. Oh, dear, that is not at all what I wished to say. Not all men, of course. My own William was as constant as the Northern Star, and your father, of course, had no need to be constant, having no one to be constant to. Good Lord, I am making little sense. What I think,” she said bracingly, “is that you should stay at home today and quite forget that little shopping expedition we had planned. I’ll take your maid, Amy, with me, as she knows your requirements and sizes. And you just stay at home and rest. And then we’ll have a nice long coze when you�
��re more easy in your mind.”
Jessica nodded her agreement, still lost in her own thoughts, but as her hostess began to rise, Jessica suddenly remembered and said, “But, ma’am, Thomas Preston said he would call again today.”
“I should be back by then,” Lady Grantham said imperturbably. “And if I am not, simply leave the door to the salon open and have our butler, Bartholomew, within calling distance. For propriety’s sake, you know. Although I understand that Thomas is as family as you, still there are the conventions to attend to.”
After Lady Grantham left, Jessica sank in thought, rising every so often to complete useless circuits of the room. So when, after only a little while, which seemed to have spun out into an eternity, Thomas Preston was announced, she flew to her feet to await him.
When she saw his face, not dangerous at all now, but dear and familiar and bearing a look of such concern, she quite forgot herself. She was no longer the grown-up Jessica Eastwood, but rather little Jess, Red Jack’s shadow, seeing an old and trusted friend. She gave one sob and cast herself into his waiting arms.
He stroked her hair and hushed her incipient storm of tears. There was nothing of the lover about him, nothing of the vital attractive male she had half-feared at their good-bye at home. He was only Tom Preston now, her father’s favorite, and now her father’s stand-in.
“Why, Jess,” he said softly, “whatever is the matter? Tell me, please. Whatever has overset you so?”
But as she did not fully know herself, she said nothing, and only stayed there, close in his arms, feeling that here at last, for the moment, was surcease from all her confusion.
And he held her close and smiled to himself as he rested his cheek against her glowing hair and inhaled the honeysuckle fragrance of it, and he soothed her and told her that all was well now, for he was there.
9
