by Rose Lerner
Louisa jerked her arm away. “I do not give-I do not care what Sir Jasper prefers!”
Penelope could not help thinking that her own vulgar family had never made such an awkward display. She thought of her mother’s endless matchmaking. It had irked her, of course, but-why hadn’t it bothered her the way Lady Bedlow’s bothered Louisa? The girl looked like a cornered fox. And there were shadows under her eyes.
When the gentlemen finally did return, Nev came at once to Penelope-Penelope took resigned note of how her heart jumped when he did-but his first words were, “Louisa looks miserable. What’s my mother been saying?”
“She is miserable,” Penelope whispered. “You had better go to her, or Sir Jasper will do it first, and I can’t answer for the consequences.”
It struck Penelope again, with a pang, how many more social graces Nev possessed than herself. Within two minutes he had maneuvered things so that Louisa was playing the harpsichord and she and Nev were singing a version of “No John No” that was a good deal less scandalous than the version Penelope had learned from her mother.
Sir Jasper came and sat by Penelope. “I have been hearing great things about your work to improve Loweston.”
Never had Penelope felt so undeserving of praise. She flushed. “I wish I could do ten times more. Our people have suffered from the conditions there far more than we ever could.”
“I saw your invalid today. It was very kind of you to take her in. Her mother is friends with yours, I collect?”
As afraid as Penelope was of what Sir Jasper might have guessed, her first thought was still to deny the more plausible explanation, the friendship between her mother and poor Mrs. Raeburn. She despised herself even as she said, “They knew each other a little growing up. Miss Raeburn’s mother works for my father now.” Never say ‘brewery.’
“Miss Raeburn must have worked very hard to rise from such a background to be one of the lights of the London stage.”
Penelope felt cold. “I am sure she did. I quite admired her in Twelfth Night.”
Sir Jasper frowned. He leaned toward her. “I should not say this, but I have been touched by your efforts for the district. I do not like to see you play the fool. Miss Raeburn’s name has been linked with your husband’s. I am morally certain they have been intimately connected.”
Penelope stared at him, wishing she had worn long sleeves and faintly wondering at his bringing up such a subject with her at all. I know, she wanted to scream. I know. What kind of idiot do you take me for? Of course, that would have been shocking; she had to pretend to have no knowledge of any such thing. She had to pray that Sir Jasper would be discreet. Yet she was damned if she would thank him for his officiousness. “What a gentleman does when he is not at home is nothing to do with his wife.”
Where had that sprung from? She sounded like an obedient little aristocratic wife, conniving at her own humiliation. What would she have said, if she had really not known? Probably the same thing. She was like that: a steady girl. The thought goaded her into an almost sarcastic, “But it was so very kind of you to pay her a visit. Did you know her in London too?”
“Oh, I wasn’t there to see her,” Sir Jasper said. “I must seem a regular old woman to you! No, that was my pretext, but I was there on quite another account. I had received word from your vicar that Jack Bailey’s injury matched that inflicted by a mantrap, and I wished to see if he might be any connection to your poaching gang before I called in the constable.” He smiled at her. “I daresay he has been taken up by now.”
Fourteen
Penelope really felt faint. She could not believe her own blindness. No wonder Bailey had not wanted to show the nurse. How worried Mrs. Bailey must have been about her husband, to insist! In the midst of her own troubles, the woman had found a kind word for Penelope, and Penelope, like the worst sort of fool, had betrayed her to that snake Snively-
“Pray excuse me,” she said through numb lips. “I must-I must speak to my husband.”
He made a fine show of remorse. “My dear Lady Bedlow, you look quite dreadful! It was wrong of me to tell you about Miss Raeburn. You are taking it much too hard.”
“I am fine.” As if she were expected to hear that one of her people was to be arrested on her information with perfect equanimity! And she must pretend that her shock was caused by the news of her husband’s infidelity, because aiding poachers was surely a bigger scandal. She shuddered. “Please-my husband-”
Sir Jasper placed a restraining hand upon her arm. She nearly threw it off, like a restive mare. “I beg of you, Lady Bedlow, do not say what you may regret. Anyone can see that Lord Bedlow is very fond of you. You were right in your first reaction, though I suppose it does not come natural to you. In our set, keeping a mistress is really not uncommon, no matter how devoted the husband.”
She bit her tongue to keep from laughing. Yes, there was something so bourgeois about a faithful husband! His sympathy was repulsive. And how dare he continue to talk to her of such things openly, as if she were a-a common trollop?
She realized she had borrowed that phrase from Lady Bedlow, that dreadful morning in the breakfast room. The thought filled her with a kind of disgust.
Penelope had wanted to be one of these people all her life, but now she thought, Well, and I am common. As common as Miss Raeburn and the Baileys. Let Sir Jasper despise her. It was better than his respect. She drew herself up. “I promise you I shall not cause a scene. Only I should like to go home.”
She thought she caught a gleam in his eye, almost of satisfaction. At once she chided herself for indulging morbid fancies. Because Sir Jasper was offensive and a Tory, it did not follow that he was malicious. Indeed, he was everything that was tactful and solicitous in pulling Nev aside and telling him that she had been taken ill.
Nev was at once more solicitous and less tactful-in a moment he was at her side, asking what was wrong, did she have a fever, feeling her forehead when she said no, though she did not think he would be able to tell a fever by that method anyway.
“I’m fine,” she repeated over and over. “I just want to lie down.” She waited in a fever of impatience as they drove to the Dower House to let down Lady Bedlow and Louisa. Louisa was concerned for Penelope’s health. Lady Bedlow pretended to be, but it was clear that she felt Penelope had been taken ill on purpose to deny Sir Jasper the chance to win over Louisa. Clear to Penelope, anyway. Nev wasn’t listening to his mother; his eyes were fixed on Penelope’s face, and every time the carriage jolted he cursed under his breath.
It was touching, and yet she knew it was because of Miss Wray. If Nev’s mistress were not prostrate with fever, he would never be this concerned over a slight headache. Still, Penelope was weak-willed; she leaned into him and let him stroke her hair.
When they had let off Louisa and Lady Bedlow, he turned to her, his arm tightening around her shoulders. “What’s wrong? You aren’t fine, don’t tell me you’re fine-”
That too, was because of Miss Wray, who had said she was fine and was dying. She shook him off. “I’m all right. We must go to the Baileys’. I’ve been a fool-the constable is coming for Jack, his leg is from a mantrap and I told Mr. Snively-”
“You! I felt sorry for you, I kept your secret-I didn’t tell a soul about the girl calling for his lordship day and night-and you turned us in! What will become of my children?” Mrs. Bailey turned away from Penelope and sat down hard in one of the rush-bottomed chairs, burying her face in her hands. “What will become of my children?” The children in question stood in a little knot, silent and fearful.
“We’re too late?” Penelope said stupidly, though she had known it from the moment she had seen Mrs. Bailey’s white, wild face. “He’s been taken?”
Mrs. Bailey burst out weeping. “They’ll send him to Australia. I’ll be all alone like Aggie Cusher.”
Penelope was used to thinking herself good in a crisis, but she had never before been the cause of the crisis. She stood frozen, trying to think
. To throw in their sympathies altogether with Mrs. Bailey was impossible; it would be all round the country in a moment that the Bedlows aided and abetted poachers. Nev would be a pariah, and was it illegal? But neither could they abandon the Baileys. Penelope tried to think of a middle course.
Nev sat in the other chair and offered Mrs. Bailey his handkerchief. “Penelope, why don’t you make Mrs. Bailey some tea?” Penelope did not quite trust Nev to deal with this, and still she was grateful to give over thinking and begin the simple preparations, filling the ancient kettle and measuring out the tea leaves as best she could with a tin cup.
“Mrs. Bailey, you must calm yourself,” Nev said. “You’re frightening the children.”
Mrs. Bailey blew her nose, took a few last gasping sobs, and made a pitiful attempt at a smile. The little Baileys did not look reassured. “Why don’t you go into Miss Raeburn’s room and join Annie?” she said hoarsely. “This is grown folk’s business.”
The children filed out, silently. Mrs. Bailey blew her nose again, saw the embroidered monogram, and started. She looked at Penelope, tending the kettle. “She oughtn’t to be waiting on me, it isn’t right.”
“Don’t worry about that now,” Nev said. “A cup of tea will do you good, and we need your help if we’re to find a way out of this for Jack.”
“What do you care?” Mrs. Bailey didn’t sound angry anymore, just confused. “It’s her who turned Jack in.”
“You may hate me for my stupidity,” Penelope said quietly, “but I promise you it was that, not malice. I did not recognize-they don’t have traps in town. I told Mr. Snively because I thought he might raise Jack’s allowance.”
Mrs. Bailey closed her eyes. “You meant well, anyway.”
“Mrs. Bailey, you must be honest with me,” Nev said. “Jack’s leg was caught in a trap, was it not?”
Mrs. Bailey nodded. “No one who’d ever seen a trap could look at that leg and not know. I thought-the nurse was from town and she was going away and his leg was doing so bad, I didn’t want him to lose it, I didn’t want him to die. He told me not to show her, and I insisted-I sent him to his death-”
“You mustn’t blame yourself. You did what you thought was best, because you love him and you were afraid.”
Penelope marveled at the conviction and sympathy in Nev’s voice. How did he always seem to know what to say? And how could Mrs. Bailey help but be comforted?
Mrs. Bailey couldn’t. She nodded, looking a little calmer.
“Listen to me carefully.” Nev took Mrs. Bailey’s hand. “Think before you answer. Is it possible that Jack was caught in the trap while in the woods for some innocent purpose, in broad daylight, and was simply afraid to tell anyone?”
Penelope caught her breath. Nev had found the middle course she had not been able to hit.
For the first time, there was hope in Mrs. Bailey’s eyes. “Yes,” she said cautiously. “Yes-we thought suspicion might fall on him. He was only-only-”
“I am sure he was only going to visit a friend at Greygloss.” He said it so very plausibly. Nev, Penelope realized with a shock, was a good liar. She had thought it so easy to read him at the start of their acquaintance-had he simply never bothered with concealment? Had he chosen to be honest with her?
Or, she thought with a sudden painful jolt, had all of it been a lie? The endearing candor, the kiss, I still wouldn’t offer for you if I didn’t feel we could rub along tolerably well together-had he been sweet-talking a plain, gullible heiress into doing exactly as he wished? Had he been surprised at how easy it was?
She pushed the thought away as unworthy of both of them, but it was too near her deepest anxieties to vanish entirely. She could feel it hovering at the back of her mind like a malevolent bat.
“Yes, that’s it precisely.” Mrs. Bailey’s hands trembled with relief as she took the cup of tea Penelope offered her.
“Very well,” Nev said. “I doubt I can get you in to see Jack today, but tomorrow morning we’ll go to the jail and you can speak with him and tend to his leg. Mr. Garrett is sure to know of some legal colleague of his father’s who’ll take the case. With some luck we will see Jack out of this whole.”
Mrs. Bailey grasped his hand and kissed it. “Thank you. Thank you!”
“I would do as much for any of my people who were in difficulties unjustly,” Nev said. “You can thank me by keeping Jack out of trouble in future.”
Mrs. Bailey would have kept them there half the night with tearful protestations of gratitude if Nev had not bundled them out the door by main force.
“You were splendid,” Penelope said as they walked home. Credit where credit was due, even if her emotions were in a miserable whirl. “Really splendid. I couldn’t think what to say, and you-”
“I had to do something. You were so upset.”
It was so far from what she had expected him to say that for a moment she was speechless. “Surely-surely you would have helped her anyway.”
Nev shrugged. “Jack Bailey knew the risks when he broke the law. I would have tried to help, but I doubt I would have gone so far.”
Penelope felt at once guilty and pleased, and guilty for feeling pleased.
Sir Jasper watched the constable’s deputies disperse like a pack of hounds in search of a scent. He smiled, thinking of the foxes they would be bringing back with them. He had been too pessimistic; the district was not spiraling out of his control at all.
He was so pleased that when he heard the clatter of an approaching cart and saw that it was the Bedlows with Mrs. Bailey in tow, he even greeted them with enthusiasm. “This is the biggest breakthrough we’ve had in years! You should be very proud, Lady Bedlow.”
“What-what do you mean?” the countess asked.
“The beggar’s talked! He’s given us names, places-we’ll have the whole gang!” It hadn’t even been that difficult. Sir Jasper had merely explained the situation to Bailey: on the one hand, languishing in jail with room-and-board fees piling up, then being sent to the Assizes and a quick hanging, with his wife and children left to fend for themselves in a cruel world; on the other, going home to his fond family that very afternoon.
The Bedlows did not seem to realize what great news this was. Bedlow actually laughed. “Come now, Sir Jasper, you’ve frightened the poor man into giving false information! His wife assures me that he was merely passing through the woods on an ill-advised shortcut to the home of one of your laborers, and when he was injured, was afraid to speak for fear of being suspected.”
“And you believe her?” Sir Jasper listened incredulously as the man rambled on, assuring him of Bailey’s long history of loyal labor and honesty. The new earl was even more gullible than his father.
He looked at the Cit countess to see how she was taking her husband’s idiocy, but she simply looked white and miserable. Still sulking about her husband’s actress, then. Sir Jasper smiled. At this rate they’d be separated by Michaelmas, and without his father-in-law’s pocketbook to back him, Lord Bedlow would be begging Sir Jasper to take Loweston-and his sister-off his hands by the New Year.
“I’m sorry, Lord Bedlow,” he interrupted, “but he was honest enough about where to find their store of arms, nets and snares, and the pitch they used to blacken their faces. I’m afraid there is no question of his guilt.”
Mrs. Bailey’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, he didn’t peach! He wouldn’t!”
The look on Bedlow’s face was extremely gratifying. “I suppose you had the right of it, Sir Jasper,” he said finally. “I ought not to be so credulous, yet surely it is better to err on the side of caution in these cases. The penalties are so harsh, and the crime-”
“The crime is black,” Sir Jasper said. “Good God, have you no thought for your wife and family? You would give armed men license to roam the countryside?”
“They would not need guns if being taken did not mean assured transportation.”
“The thieving blackguards must be stopped somehow, or they will
tear the foundations of English society up by its roots!” Sir Jasper had thought, at first, that it would be all right to let Lord Bedlow keep Loweston. But the young puppy had quickly proven to be dangerously susceptible to the histrionics and sedition of his laborers. They wanted to see it all go up in flames, everything Sir Jasper had worked for his whole life-
He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply, clearing the scent of the dirty Seine from his nostrils. It was all right. He had things well in hand.
“We will never agree on that point,” Bedlow said. “In the meantime, I will arrange for a barrister to represent my people. I know you will treat them with fairness. Do you think you might tell me who has been accused?”
“I prefer to keep that information private until I am assured they are in custody,” Sir Jasper said. “Mrs. Bailey, you won’t mind waiting here? It should only be an hour or two, and then I shall be happy to return your husband to you.”
The Bedlows waited too, arranging themselves on a low wall near the jail. Sir Jasper couldn’t think why; they both looked dull and anxious, and barely spoke to each other.
Sir Jasper’s interference was probably unnecessary. They would have drifted apart on their own, and as for heirs-he found it hard to imagine that governessy countess even allowing her husband his conjugal rights, although the memory of them giggling and glowing in the doorway, that day after the rainstorm, gave Sir Jasper a touch of unease. He comforted himself with the thought that she was so thin and pale, she was more than likely barren. Mary had had that same fragile look, after the last miscarriage.
At length all seven members of the Loweston gang were brought to the little jail. The last one, Sir Jasper saw with annoyance, provoked an absolute firestorm of misplaced sentiment in the Bedlows.
