His Lordship's Last Wager

by Miranda Davis

  Seelye bought ale, savory meat pasties, and freshly roasted potatoes for Percy and himself and a half-dozen fresh fish for Bibendum from the town’s wharves in passing.

  Plimpton made a point to tell him, “You gentlemen can eat hearty right off the docks along the way. I’ll point out my favorites, if you wish. An’ you’ll eat at the Black Bear in Devizes to be sure. Plenty of time for a proper sit-down when we get there.”

  At sunset, they moored the Invictus at a quiet spot west of Woolhampton. The Plimptons would stay at a canal-side inn a few miles back and return at dawn with a fresh horse.

  “I’ll keep watch tonight,” Seelye told Percy.

  “Who’d be that barmy, eh?” Plimpton exclaimed. To Jacob, he said, “He’s worried someone’ll make off with the bear.”

  The Plimptons had a good laugh and left for town with the horse.

  After the clopping hooves and voices faded in the distance, Jane’s warning came to mind: ‘Bibendum will grow restless without exercise.’

  No one wanted a fidgety bear.

  “Time for a walk,” he said to bring Percy to his feet.

  The crate’s door faced the bow with plenty of space to open it and let Bibendum out.

  “Remind me,” Percy asked, “do I curl up and play dead or fight back?”

  “Bears are as likely to eat carrion as kill their own supper,” he said, untying ropes that blocked the doorway.

  “I’ll jump in the water.”

  “Only chest deep here.”

  “I’ll squat,” his unhappy friend retorted.

  “He’s a bear. He can swim.”

  Percy looked disgruntled. “Why don’t I manage the door whilst you manage the bear.”

  The two men glared at each other. Their silence amplified the rustling tall grass, the murmuring water, and the tense thrum of human brinksmanship.

  “Fine,” Seelye snapped.

  Percy climbed onto the crate roof and unlatched the door from above.

  In the fading light, Seelye peeked inside. Bibendum blinked from his moss-covered pallet. He rose to his paws and stepped gingerly into the open space on deck. His pointy upper lip signaled dissatisfaction more eloquently than his whiny moans. That is, until he caught scent of Seelye and ‘Mmmmm’ed his relief before greeting him enthusiastically in the way of bears.

  Seelye suffered this stoically and unmuzzled the bear to offer him a fish from his supply. The rest of Bibendum’s dinner would be served as reward for returning to the crate.

  The bear swung his big head back and forth to explore the deck, sniffing at his crate and coils of rope. To be companionable, Seelye joined him in his scrutiny of the narrow boat. After each new discovery, Bibendum looked back at him as if to say, ‘What is this?’ or ‘Come smell over here.’

  “See? He’s enjoying himself.”

  “Very sweet,” Percy said from where he sprawled atop the crate.

  Bibendum’s behavior reassured Seelye the bear bore him no ill-will after the tooth drawing. He pocketed a few horehound drops and stepped ashore.

  The ursine passenger wished to follow. He approached the gunwale with upper lip pointed and leaned over it. The boat dipped and he shrank back with a moan of distress. Seelye coaxed him with happy talk till finally Bibendum gathered himself and hopped to the grassy bank. Once there, he shook from stubby tail to head. And he looked intently at Seelye.

  Great with success, he praised Bibendum heartily then turned to boast: “And Jane said I couldn’t manage him on my own. Walked him in Hyde Park, didn’t I? Managed to get him this far with your help, haven’t I?”

  “Very impressive. You do seem to have a knack for it,” Percy said, lying out of reach with his chin resting on folded arms.

  “Always have had a way with dangerous creatures,” Seelye said. “Only consider how I’ve handled Lady Jane.” He continued to gloat in this vein until Percy stopped paying attention and lifted himself to his elbows.

  “Seelye, d’you want him wandering off like that?”

  He swung round. “Damnation!” And started after the bear only to stop and scramble back aboard. He ran into the cabin where he yanked on his boots, snatched up the leash, and leapt ashore to catch up to the furry ingrate.

  Having caught scent of something enticing, Bibendum ambled from the towpath up a hill. On its crest in the distance stood a handsome country house, windows ablaze and gravel drive lined with carriages.

  “Come on, help me,” he called to Percy, even as he sprinted after the waddling fugitive.

  “How?” Percy called back, staying where he was.

  “I don’t know, damn you, but give me a hand!”

  Seelye closed the distance to Bibendum and dreaded what might happen if whoever lived there looked out to find a bear grub-and-slug-hunting in his formal garden. And he cursed himself roundly for forgetting to leash the creature. Not that he could stop a bear that didn’t want to stop. The drag of 14 stone might slow the beast, but not enough to bring him to a halt.

  He caught up to Bibendum at the edge of light thrown by tall torches burning along the drive.

  “Is that a—” cried a man alighting from his carriage not twenty yards away. His eyes started from his head. He stumbled backward then sprinted toward the manor house’s open door. “Maxfield, look!” he cried and jostled the host aside in his mad rush to safety.

  “No need for panic,” Seelye called out.

  The host, a well-to-do squire, swung round to take in the confusion outside and barked, “You there, what’s that you’ve got?” He descended the front steps and strode down the drive to squint into the shadows. “Is that—” He tripped over his own feet. “What the devil—?”

  “Not a bear, sir.” Percy said, suddenly beside Seelye. “A performing bear. Very tame. Just out for a stroll.”

  “I’ll tether him so,” Seelye called, clipped the leash to Bibendum’s collar, and dug in his heels. “Then off we go, with my sincere apologies.”

  The bear raised his nose to inhale the satisfying scents in the air and towed Seelye, boot heels churning turf, toward the promise of a banquet.

  Silhouettes of huddled guests populated tall windows on the ground floor. Anxious faces peered out of carriage glasses. Horses pranced in their traces and nickered nervously.

  Still, Jane’s damnable bear couldn’t be stopped or redirected.

  “Bibendum,” Seelye said. “Eh, eh eh!”

  The bear slowed to look over his shoulder at Seelye before he swung back to the smells wafting from the manor’s yawning doorway. He dragged Seelye forward a few more yards.

  Percy ran to put himself between the house and Seelye and the bear. “We’ll just nip along,” he reassured the crowd, hands raised in a placating gesture.

  “At once, varmint. Or I’ll shoot you all. Can’t you see it’s terrifying the cattle?”

  True enough, carriage horses whinnied and reared. Frantic grooms and coachmen struggled to keep carriages from locking wheels and causing more injurious panic among equine and human onlookers. Ladies in some of the carriages screeched.

  “We’re going now,” Seelye called out, with Bibendum finally in check. “Again, sincerest apologies.”

  “Only think, good sir,” Percy added, “thanks to us, you’ll be known as the host of Woolhampton’s most unforgettable soirée.”

  “That is it!” Maxfield ran back to the door and yelled, “Fetch my blunderbuss, Mrs. Cutty.”

  “Run!” Percy said under his breath.

  Seelye rummaged in his trouser pocket for horehound drops and thanked the Lord one was still there after his cross country sprint.

  “Bi-ben-dum,” he sang and smacked his lips.

  The bear looked up at him.

  Seelye licked the drop and rubbed it all over his mouth and leaned close to Bibendum’s nose.

  “Give us a sniff.”

  While the bear considered, the squire reappeared on the front steps, juggling blunderbuss, powder horn and shot bag. In his haste, he spi
lled as much gunpowder as he poured down its barrel.

  “I’m warning you, remove that monster this instant or I’ll shoot the lot of you,” the squire shouted, but his shaking hands fumbled with the paper wad. He wasted more time trying to tamp it home. “Blast this ramrod,” the shaken man roared. His shot pouch gave him a good deal of trouble, too.

  If the good squire had been a soldier, the bear would’ve been shot twice in the time the man wasted preparing his first.

  As it was, Bibendum touched Seelye’s sweetened mouth with his own pointed upper lip while the squire fumbled and cursed. Seelye held out the sticky drop and the bear finally turned away from the hornet’s nest boiling over in the manor’s gravel drive.

  “Hold your fire, please,” Seelye said loud enough to be heard but not so loud as to startle Bibendum.

  He drew the bear away from the torchlight, downhill toward the enveloping darkness.

  “All’s well, carry on,” Percy called out, walking backward. He placed himself as rear guard to discourage potshots during their retreat. “Good evening to you all.”

  Farther and farther from the commotion they hurried, urging the bear to waddle faster. Seelye made a game of it, trotting ahead, swooping close to let the bear lick the drop or his sticky fingers, before jogging ahead again, farther from the torchlight, the frantic horses, the bellowing host and his primed blunderbuss.

  “That is just what I deserve for trusting you,” Seelye reproached the bear. His nerves jangled, he nearly admitted aloud he wished Jane had come to keep the creature in line but stopped himself in time.

  Bibendum was his responsibility now. He gave his word and it was up to him to see the bear safely to sanctuary. He must do better. He would do better from now on.

  Percy strode up alongside bear and man.

  “What now? He needs walks. Won’t do to keep him cooped up and unhappy.”

  “I’ll see that Mr. Plimpton moors the boat near uninhabited places from here out. And I’ll walk him late at night and before dawn. Twice a day will have to do.”

  It was full dark by the time they locked Bibendum back in the crate. Percy retired below deck.

  Seelye tossed fish in through the bars on the crate’s windows and said, “Good night, you rascal.” After which, he took a deep breath to relax.

  “Oh, Seelye!” Percy poked his head up out of the hatch. “Perhaps you’d like to address another emergency while you’re having a run of luck.”

  Stooping into the cabin, he stopped dead in his tracks.

  Jane dumped an armload of his kit on the floor and disappeared back into the berth.

  When she reappeared, she said, “Hello, Lord Seelye.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m removing your things. I require this little room,” she said.

  “But you must leave, Jane, so our things may stay where they were.”

  “Don’t be silly, I can’t go anywhere tonight and you can’t make me.”

  “Oh, can’t I?”

  She looked startled, but his satisfaction was short-lived. When he stepped forward, she stepped back into the berth and swung the door closed with a crack. The bolt, which he hadn’t realized the door had, shot home.

  “Now you’ve done it,” Percy said. “My clean clothes are still in there. I’ve sweat through what I’m wearing.” He fixed Seelye with an aggrieved, I-have-been-chasing-your-bear look.

  “Good night, gentlemen,” she said through the door.

  He heard her smug satisfaction and replied, “Fine. Stay in there and starve. If you’re fool enough to come out for food or water, I shall deal with you.”

  He heard indistinct muttering, making out the words ‘pig-headed’ and ‘disobliging.’ This did not endear her to him.

  Percy stripped off his sweat-soaked shirt and rubbed himself down. Next, he claimed the arm chair and the other for his feet. He settled his greatcoat over himself and scowled in a way that dared Seelye to object.

  For his part, he snatched up his good clothes and tossed them onto the table then pried off his mud-caked boots and set them against the wall. He lay down on the hard wood floor in what he wore and bent his arm for a makeshift pillow.

  “Would someone pig-headed and disobliging do any of this? Not bloody likely,” he grumbled. “Don’t worry, Percy. We’ll starve her out.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  Chapter 26

  In which our hero disciplines our heroine the way our heroine disciplines strays.

  At dawn, the Plimptons returned to the boat with a fresh horse and learned of Jane, with no explanation beyond Percy’s eye-roll and Seelye’s terse, “She’s a member of the family from a dwindling, lunatic branch.”

  Once underway, Seelye told the skipper, “Make haste to the next town. I’ll arrange my sister-in-law’s return to London from there. In the meantime, I’d appreciate your discretion.”

  Plimpton nodded. “Reach Thatcham noon-ish, I’d say. An’ that’s all I’ll say.”

  By happy chance, the market town was the closest place to offload one inconvenience while hauling another to Bristol, according to Percy, who was not best pleased with her ladyship after a night spent upright in a chair.

  His friend’s displeasure pleased Seelye. For should he fail to persuade Jane to go, he could count on Percy to convince her. The man had a singularly hypnotic effect on females, although exerting his influence through a wooden door had yet to be tested.

  Seelye stalked through the small sitting room and pounded on the locked berth door.

  “When we reach Thatcham, Jane, you will wait in a respectable inn’s private parlor with me while Mr. Percy arranges a stage coach, mail coach, dog cart, ox cart, gig or lumberbus to haul you back to London. Is that understood?”

  Jane made mutinous noises inside.

  “Eh! Eh! Eh!” he interrupted with the same loud syllables she used to bring unruly rescues to heel. Her silence was ominous.

  She stood on the other side of the door. He imagined her cheeks flushed, slim hands balled into fists, blue eyes flashing fire. Pity he couldn’t see her for himself. Pity, too, she had to go. She could be good, if capricious, company. Not that unpredictability made her bad company, merely dangerous company.

  “All I ask is that you let me go to Bristol with Bibendum,” she said. “I know caution is necessary. To embark in London was out of the question. And perhaps even Reading was too crowded. But I don’t know a soul in Woolhampton.”

  “We’ll be in Wiltshire shortly, where countless people could recognize you, Jane.”

  “I’ll do whatever I must to stay. I’ll alter my appearance. I’ll cut my hair.”

  “You will not,” Seelye said to the door emphatically.

  “It’s only hair and worth the sacrifice. For once in my life, Seelye, I want to do something extraordinary. Men do remarkable things all the time. They can explore the world or go to war and return conquering heroes. But can a female hope to have a few days of adventure, the merest taste of real freedom? No. It’s just not fair.”

  Too distracted by the prospect of a self-shorn Jane he’d have to explain away, he missed the meat of what she said. He heard her, though it did not immediately register during his panic. Had it sunk in, he might’ve said something else.

  “It is not ‘just hair, Jane,’” he blurted out. It was not run-of-the-mill guinea gold but pale as whipped honey, with a sheen more glorious than damask silk. “It’s one of the things that’s most—” he thought extraordinary but said, “tolerable about you.”

  Although she made no sound, he heard her obstinancy.

  “Astonish me, Jane. Be reasonable.”

  “I won’t go. Not yet.”

  “In that case, welcome aboard the flyboat Oubliette. Empty your chamber pot out the porthole as far as you can, if you please.”

  A strangled gasp rewarded him before he left the cabin.

  Plimpton winked and said, “If she weren’t family, sir, I’d have mistook you for
man an’ wife. Like cats an’ dogs, you two, but affectionate all the same.”

  “Just so. Affectionate cats and dogs,” Percy said in a cloying way that drained the dregs of Seelye’s patience.

  His friend never seemed so irksome as at that moment. He’d never annoyed Seelye when they went to Bath to witness Ainsworth’s wallow in lovesick pathos. He was a boon companion when the tongue-tied duke made a cake of himself over his little apothecary. And when Clun grew so tetchy about his Amazon, Percy and he shared many a laugh at the baron’s expense.

  Here and now, however, Seelye understood just how obnoxious George Percy could be.

  A few hours later, Seelye went back to the berth door, scratching at his cheek’s itchy stubble. No calm reasoning swayed Jane; no threats cowed her into submission.

  Too late, he learned Thatcham was not on the canal but a mile north. He and Percy puzzled over Jane’s eviction and transfer there.

  “If we cannot persuade her to go,” Percy said, “we must see that she blends in.”

  “The lady goes,” Seelye told him sternly. “I’ll walk to Thatcham and find a suitable companion for the mail coach to London. A chaise and four would be faster, but I haven’t the fifty guineas to hire one. Have you?”

  “Not nearly that much.”

  “One of her blasted ear bobs could buy a post chaise and team,” Seelye said. “Hell, that bear crate’s as nice as my lodgings in Gower Street.”

  “Nicer,” Percy murmured.

  “My point is I don’t doubt she’s brought her own blunt.”

  “She may have the money but will she spend it?”

  “I don’t give a tinker’s damn if she’s willing. I’ll hold her up by her heels and shake the coins out of her if I must. She goes back. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Till you manage that, she stays out of sight through villages. Agreed?”

  “No issue there. She’s locked herself in. Tell her she leaves when we reach the road to Thatcham, will you?”

  “Not on speaking terms?”

  Seelye grunted.

  “And if she refuses?”

  “We break down the door,” Seelye said, “and you keep me from strangling her. Though I could plead insanity at trial, everyone knows how maddening she is.”