The Bargain

by Jane Ashford

  “Robert!” exclaimed Lord Highgrove.

  A choking sound emerged from the corner, where Lord Alan had taken his seat. He was finding this quite funny, Ariel thought, meeting his sparkling blue gaze. And he apparently had no intention of helping her with the awkward situation. It was just like him. He was probably viewing them all as some sort of experiment—incompatible chemicals put in a container together and allowed to froth and bubble. “There is no reason why I should be involved in Lord Highgrove’s affairs,” she said with determination. “We are not at all acquainted. And while I am most happy to have met him, of course, I wish you will not—”

  “No, no, you don’t understand,” declared Lord Robert. “She can set it to rights between you and Violet,” he told his brother. “She knows just what to do.”

  The viscount’s face was scarlet. His mouth was a tight line. Ariel cast her eyes around the room in search of help. Lord Robert gestured at her, urging her on as if she were a pet reluctant to do its tricks. Lord Alan simply clamped his jaw, very likely suppressing a grin, she thought impatiently. “Really, Lord Robert—” she began.

  “You didn’t see them when they were younger,” he interrupted. “Nat and Violet, well, there was never any question that the match was ideal. We used to tease him about it, didn’t we, Alan?”

  “Alan!” admonished Lord Highgrove.

  Now he was caught, Ariel thought with satisfaction. Both his brothers were looking to him for support, and he couldn’t pretend any longer that he was just a disinterested spectator, watching her flounder. He couldn’t maintain that maddening distance.

  Suddenly her interest sharpened to an almost painful point. What would he do, she wondered, when it was his family turning to him for help? Would he make excuses, find reasons to evade their appeals, tell them their difficulties were all due to the pernicious atmosphere of the haut ton or their own intellectual inadequacies? She examined his handsome face, searching for an answer.

  “We did tease him,” Lord Alan acknowledged quietly. “And Nat endured it with his customary grace and magnanimity.”

  He wasn’t laughing now, Ariel thought. There was real emotion in his expression. She felt a wave of inexpressible, and inexplicable, relief.

  “But now it’s all gone wrong somehow,” Lord Robert continued relentlessly. “And it’s a dam… deuced shame.” He gazed at her like Miss Ames at a school recitation, silently encouraging her.

  Embarrassed for herself, and much more so for the poor viscount, Ariel met the latter’s eyes. They did indeed show humiliation. But there was something else in those blue depths as well, a hint of bewildered desperation, an uncomprehending pain. Ariel couldn’t turn away from it. And yet, what was she to do in this really impossible situation? She glanced at Lord Alan again. But the concern was gone from his eyes, replaced by a challenge, as if he understood her predicament exactly and was daring her to escape it. Ariel cleared her throat. “Uh…” A solution occurred to her. “You may not know that an old friend of yours, Hannah Enderby, is living here with me.”

  “Hannah?” he replied in a somewhat strangled voice. He looked bewildered. “Is she indeed?”

  “If you should ever wish to visit her, you would be most welcome.” If he came, Ariel thought, it would give them an opportunity to talk. If not, then the matter was closed. Let him choose if that was what he wanted.

  He blinked. “Visit.”

  “For a quiet chat,” added Ariel significantly.

  Lord Highgrove appeared to consider this. It took him quite a while. “Ah,” he replied at last. “Perhaps I’ll come by some afternoon and see her.”

  “Splendid,” said Ariel.

  “But you should explain—” attempted Lord Robert.

  “I believe we have an appointment,” Lord Alan interrupted. “We should be on our way.”

  Ariel gave him a grateful look. In return, he smiled at her in a way that made her pulse accelerate alarmingly. He looked approving and impressed, she thought. She had to remind herself that she was very angry with him.

  “We don’t want to keep Aunt Agatha waiting,” he added.

  “Aunt Agatha!” exclaimed Lord Highgrove.

  Lord Robert blanched.

  “Yes indeed.” Lord Alan strolled forward with a wicked glint in his eyes. “We mustn’t keep her waiting. As I recall, Aunt Agatha values punctuality very highly. Do you remember the time Sebastian was late for Christmas dinner and she—”

  “Get your bonnet,” urged Lord Robert in a strangled voice. “Why the deuce did I ever begin this?”

  “I am extremely curious about that myself,” responded Lord Alan. “Why did you?”

  Lord Robert’s reply was a harassed growl.

  “Care to come with us?” Ariel heard Lord Alan saying as she left to get her things.

  Lord Highgrove’s resounding “no” followed her up the stairs.

  ***

  Agatha Jennings lived in a part of town that was not particularly fashionable, though eminently respectable. Her husband, now deceased, had been a well-known scholar, Lord Robert told them during the drive, and he had insisted upon living near the British Museum despite the benighted nature of the neighborhood.

  “What did he study?” wondered Ariel.

  “Akkadian,” was the prompt reply. “I’ve been doing some research of my own,” Robert added in response to Alan’s surprised glance.

  “And what the deuce is Akkadian?” Alan said.

  “Ah, well as to that, I believe it’s some sort of old language, rather like Greek, you know.”

  “No,” responded his brother, “I don’t.” His family had provided him with more surprises in the last few days than he could remember in the whole of his life before this, Alan thought. He had been startled to find that Nathaniel and Violet were experiencing some sort of difficulties. Like the others, he had thought them perfectly matched. But even more astonishing was the idea that Robert had made some sort of study of the Jennings family in advance of their visit. Robert was not known for planning ahead.

  To add to his bewilderment, there was his brothers’ apparent conviction that Ariel Harding could solve their problems. He had already been surprised by Ariel a number of times, but he had not understood the extent of her acquaintance with his family, or the schemes they had been hatching together.

  And what about Robert’s inexplicable insistence upon visiting Aunt Agatha? he asked himself. This mystery, at least, he was determined to solve today. “I am still curious,” he said in conversational tones, “as to why we are paying a visit to Aunt Agatha.”

  Silence met his question. Alan kept his eyes on Robert.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” replied Robert distractedly. “Why I let Ariel talk me into making this visit.”

  “I?”

  “Of all the harebrained, ridiculous starts,” Robert muttered, “this beats them all.”

  Ariel was getting angry, Alan observed. He had never seen her angry when he wasn’t in something of a temper himself. It was a riveting sight. Her hazel eyes positively crackled with energy. The warm peach tone of her skin deepened entrancingly. Her full lips pressed together in a way that made a man ache to… He shook his head to clear it.

  “All of this was arranged for your benefit,” Ariel was saying to Robert. “And at your request, I may add. If you don’t like it, then tell the driver to turn around and go home again.”

  For a moment he looked hopeful. Then his face fell. “Wretchedly impolite,” he concluded.

  “What does it matter?” snapped Ariel. “You haven’t seen the woman in years, and it seems unlikely that you will see her. She doesn’t appear to move in society.”

  Robert brightened again. “That’s true.”

  “And I don’t care a snap of my fingers what Flora Jennings thinks of you,” Ariel finished.

  This sto
pped him. Robert sat back in the corner of the carriage, chewing on his lower lip.

  Alan gazed at his brother, who flushed.

  “Shall I tell the driver to turn back?” wondered Ariel.

  Robert had turned to gaze out the window. Resentment and resolution showed in the set of his shoulders. “No,” he said.

  “But if it is such a bad idea,” she began.

  “Oh, let me be,” he replied.

  At his tone, she subsided. Alan watched her as the anger faded from her features, to be replaced with a touch of embarrassment and some doubt. She had become totally involved in helping Robert, he saw. She certainly didn’t do anything by halves, he thought somewhat wryly. The astonishing thing was that she had convinced his brothers that she really could aid them. “What’s all this about Sebastian?” he asked her quietly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why was he asking you for questions?”

  Ariel visibly hesitated. “I expect you should ask him about that,” she answered finally.

  “I am asking you.”

  “Yes, but it is a rather… confidential matter.”

  The reply that came to Alan’s lips was forestalled by their arrival. The footman had jumped down and was opening the carriage door. Ariel started to climb down.

  “Wait,” exclaimed Robert.

  She stopped and looked back over her shoulder.

  Robert swallowed, gazing at the large redbrick house before them. “Oh, very well,” he said at last. “She can’t eat me.”

  Ariel stepped down. Alan followed, and then his brother. The footman rang the bell, and the door was opened by a stately butler, who welcomed them in solemn, measured accents and led them upstairs.

  “What’s that?” exclaimed Robert.

  Alan, who had been observing the furnishings and finding nothing out of the ordinary among them, looked. On the wall at the head of the staircase hung a flat slab of stone. On it was carved an unusual figure with the head of a man and the body of a lion. Crowned and bearded, it contemplated them with a stony stare.

  “The master brought that back from his travels years ago,” commented the butler with a hint of pride. “He was an authority on the Assyrians, you know.”

  “I thought it was Akkadian,” said Robert a bit desperately.

  “I believe that was their language, sir,” was the reply. “But you must ask Mrs. Jennings. She will know for certain.”

  A rather unusual butler, Alan was thinking as they entered the drawing room and encountered their hostess.

  The woman who rose to greet them was not at all as he remembered, Alan saw. His early impressions of Aunt Agatha tended toward the intimidating. He had expected that she would be about six feet tall and stout, with a prow like an armored battleship and a hatchet face. But their hostess was merely tall for a woman and sturdily built. She was definitely stately, Alan thought, and her nose did tend to the aquiline, but she was far from frightening. In fact, he realized, she bore something of a resemblance to his mother. Wondering if Robert was having the same reaction, he glanced at him. His brother looked like a stuffed owl. Ariel, on the other hand, was examining Aunt Agatha with interest and what appeared to be amusement. When she caught his eye, she raised her eyebrows as if to say, “This is the ogre?”

  “How do you do?” said Alan when it became obvious that no one else was going to speak. “It has been too long since we met.”

  “Around fifteen years,” answered Aunt Agatha with perfect composure. “I confess that I am rather curious about this sudden visit.”

  Forthright, thought Alan, and he felt one corner of his mouth curve upward.

  “I thought just one of you was coming,” the older woman continued. “Which of you…?” She examined them. “You’re Lord Robert,” she decided, guessing correctly.

  Robert simply nodded.

  “And you…?”

  “Alan, ma’am.”

  “Ah.”

  “And may I present Miss Ariel Harding?”

  To his surprise, Ariel dropped a tiny curtsy. “I so admire what your daughter is doing for the street children, Mrs. Jennings,” she said. “My mother was helping her, and when I found out about it, I wanted to meet you as well.”

  She was the very picture of demure admiration, Alan thought, startled. But the story was thin. He didn’t think a woman whose gaze was as sharp as Aunt Agatha’s would swallow it.

  She had been diverted by the name, however. “Harding?” she repeated. “Bess Harding’s daughter?”

  Ariel nodded.

  Their hostess swept them all with a probing stare. “You may as well sit down,” she said and did so herself.

  Ariel sank gracefully onto the sofa opposite, maneuvering Robert onto the cushions at her side with a glance. Alan took an armchair a little apart from the others.

  “How did Miss Jennings get started with her work in London?” Ariel asked.

  “Why not ask her?” responded the older woman.

  That was a facer, Alan thought, watching Ariel to see how she would parry it. She looked embarrassed, and at first he thought that Aunt Agatha had bested her. But then she said, “It is rather a delicate matter.” She cast her eyes down, as if she didn’t know exactly how to proceed. “You see, my mother lent Miss Jennings a large sum of money,” she added finally. “And I did not want your daughter to feel that I was some sort of creditor, come to examine the books.” She raised her lovely hazel eyes. “I am so interested in what she is doing, and I should like to help myself. But I wanted to know a bit more first.”

  Alan gazed at her, transfixed. She really was extraordinary, he thought. She was honest, wholly trustworthy, but still she was like quicksilver, slipping from one incarnation to another before your eyes. Was she the shy eager girl fresh from the schoolroom, or the undaunted seeker of justice who would not be diverted from her quest, or the gorgeous sophisticate who frequented Carlton House receptions? She was all of them, and more, in one unfathomable package. He felt something twist in his chest, a sensation between pain and exaltation. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to ravish her. He wanted to oversee her every move so that she didn’t get herself into trouble. And he wanted to stand back and be surprised over and over by the new facets and abilities she continually revealed. The contradictory convolutions of it were dizzying.

  “You might have said all that to Flora,” declared their hostess, startling Alan out of his daze. “She would have understood perfectly.”

  “Do you think so?” asked Ariel, leaning a little forward. “I wasn’t sure. And I did not wish to offend her.”

  Aunt Agatha did not look completely convinced, Alan thought. But her skepticism was definitely shaken. She pursed her lips. “Flora has always been passionate about causes,” she said at last. “It seems to be her nature.” A small smile softened her austere features. “She began writing letters to our member of Parliament when she was eleven, if I recall correctly. We had a hard winter that year, horridly cold, and she noticed that the children in the streets were freezing.” The smile grew. “We must have bought fifty pairs of warm gloves in those months. Every time Flora went out, she came back with bare hands, having given hers away.”

  Alan took in the reminiscent glow in the older woman’s eyes. How had he ever thought she was frightening? he wondered.

  “She went away to school, and I thought she’d forgotten all about that sort of thing. But when she finished and came back to London, her one thought was to create a place where such children could find refuge.” Their hostess’s mouth turned down. “Of course I am not overly pleased to have her frequenting a back slum. And some of the people she deals with are…” She let out a breath. “But it is… difficult to argue with Flora. She has great force of character.” The smile reappeared. “Her father was just the same.”

  “Akkadian,” Robert blurted out.

&
nbsp; Agatha Jennings’s eyes lit. Her head came up. “You know my husband’s work?” she asked, as if she couldn’t believe it.

  “The Assyrians,” responded Robert, looking as he had the first time he put his pony to a fence. Alan had to swallow a laugh.

  “Henry was one of the foremost experts on cuneiform,” agreed Agatha enthusiastically.

  Robert goggled at her, obviously past the limits of his knowledge.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know that word,” said Ariel, coming to his rescue.

  “The Akkadian language is written in cuneiform,” Agatha informed her. “They are symbols—rather like our alphabet letters—made of combinations of wedge shapes and connecting lines. Cuneiform letters were inscribed on clay tablets while the clay was wet. The scribes used reeds as writing instruments—thus the wedges, you see—and when the clay dried, the tablets became a lasting record. Much sturdier than paper.” She looked at Robert as if for confirmation, and he nodded somewhat desperately.

  “How interesting,” said Ariel politely.

  “Have you read Henry’s articles?” Agatha asked Robert, suddenly completely focused on him. “I had no idea that anyone in the family cared about his ideas.”

  “I… er…” Robert flushed a dull red.

  “I believe what Lord Robert is trying to say,” interposed Ariel sweetly, “is that his knowledge cannot compare with your husband’s, Mrs. Jennings. He doesn’t want to embarrass himself in front of you.”

  That, at least, was quite true, thought Alan, struggling to control his expression.

  “You mustn’t be embarrassed,” Agatha urged in response. “Henry spent his entire life on his studies. Everyone must begin somewhere. The critical thing is the desire to learn.”

  “Lord Robert is terribly keen on learning,” said Ariel.

  Robert rolled his eyes in her direction. He was incapable of speech, Alan decided.

  “If you would care to look over some of Henry’s papers,” suggested Agatha. “He left a great mass of notes, which Flora and I have been slowly putting in order.”

  “What an opportunity for you,” exclaimed Ariel, giving Robert a significant look and receiving a glazed stare in return. “To work alongside Mrs. Jennings and her daughter,” she elucidated. “And to learn from the work of a master.”