His Lordship's Last Wager

by Miranda Davis

  “Clubbed foot,” another whispered knowledgeably.

  “If you’ll excuse us,” he said. He hoisted Jane to her feet and limped her to a corner.

  “This is insupportable. I detest romantical claptrap. Worse, it’s bad ton to impersonate someone, Jane, especially someone about whom there clings the whiff of incest.”

  “Is that what your beaver hat smells of, my lord?” she asked pertly.

  He scowled at her without effect.

  “Can’t you sign what they give you with a ‘B’ truthfully?”

  Seelye turned to survey the ladies of Limpley Stoke gazing back at him.

  “Jane, do something.”

  She patted him on the chest and moved into the crowd, clapping her hands, “Eh, eh eh! Ladies, if I may.”

  A hush fell. Caps and bonnets turned her way.

  “You’ll understand, his lordship is tired and hoping for tea without fuss.”

  Bonnets and caps turned his way. He shrugged apologetically.

  “So—” Jane glanced at him before saying, “if you’ll line up quietly and be patient, he’ll oblige each of you in turn.”

  The crowd erupted in applause and Seelye hobbled back to the table a broken man.

  Addressing the happy horde, he said, “There’s no dearth of things to write on, I see, but what am I to write with?”

  One lady rushed off to fetch him an ink standish.

  The tea parlor’s mistress scurried up, curtseyed, and offered him a quill. “I’ll never dress it again, if you’d deign to use mine,” she told him.

  “God help me,” he grumbled.

  He looked at the quill the way a martyr at the stake regards a lit faggot. And Jane wished she could sketch as skillfully as Seelye.

  Thus did “B” do penance one ink stroke at a time for humoring her and the literary ladies of Limpley Stoke. Jane read over his shoulder as he wrote in a rare copy of Hours of Idleness, ‘Hardly worth reading, B.’

  The book’s owner read his inscription and chortled, “How droll! Everyone, look what he’s written.”

  Ladies craned their necks to read what she showed them.

  For the next, he scribbled in her copy of The Corsair, ‘A waste of paper and ink. You’re a hen wit, affectionately, B.’

  This thrilled the recipient even more.

  And so it went, with Seelye criticizing Byron’s work and tweaking his admirers for liking it. There came copies of Giaour, Bride of Abydos, Siege of Corinth, and many more of Childe Harold. At his best, he punned on Horace, referring to the cantos as ‘Arse Poetica.’

  In time, he seemed to enjoy the exercise. He addressed nodcocks, niddiwits, ninnyhammers, featherbrains, prattle-boxes, peahens, widgeons, goose caps, jingle brains and chuckleheads. But after a few too many repetitions, she could see he was bored with stock phrases. He brushed the pen across his lips while pondering the problem. In a blink, he found fresh inspiration and teased ‘pretty curd brains,’ ‘porridge pates,’ ‘paper skulls,’ ‘whistlewits,’ and ‘clunch-munchkins’ to Byron’s readers’ rapturous delight.

  It was all Jane could do to keep her countenance during the exercise.

  One of the last in line was a shy young girl who offered up her Childe Harold. Being the man he was, Seelye couldn’t bring himself to do unto her as he’d done unto those old enough to know better. His inscription began, ‘To the shyest of angels—’

  Jane heard her disappointed “Oh.”

  With a sigh, he finished, ‘—who fell to earth. On her head. Best wishes, B.’

  The girl favored him with a seraphic smile before hurrying off to show the others.

  Jane turned away to hide her amusement.

  Eventually, the tea parlor emptied.

  “Well done, my lord,” Jane said with fresh appreciation of his good nature. “You’ve earned your tea.”

  “And all the Sally Lunns,” he said, flexing his cramped writing hand. “First my ankle, now my hand, you won’t be satisfied till I am completely crippled.”

  “La, you’re such a quiz,” she said and served him tea. She also passed him the plate heaped with fresh-baked Bath buns.

  She returned to the narrow boat with Seelye in silence. His ankle seemed to trouble him at every step. When he hopped aboard, she remained on the bank.

  The crew busied themselves. Mr. Plimpton mentioned they would tie up at Warleigh Wood east of Bath that evening and pass through the city at first light.

  Seelye held out his hand. “Come on then.”

  “Those ladies were thrilled to think Byron walked among them—” she said, refusing to board. “Are you very angry with me?”

  “Somewhat, not very,” he said and wriggled his fingers. “Take my hand, Pest, or you’ll rip your flounce.” He waited impatiently. “Enough,” he said and seized her slim waist in both hands to lift her bodily aboard.

  She felt her cheeks burn when he set her down. Not knowing where to look, she scurried off to change clothes below.

  * * *

  The Invictus made good time to the Dundas Aqueduct. Seelye bade the Plimptons stop midway across and called to Jane to share the sensation of floating across another valley in midair. She reappeared but sat in the bow and stared forward like a wooden figurehead.

  Once the boat reached the other side, Seelye took his turn below to change.

  First, he studied the maps in the cabin. The River Avon flirted with the canal through Wiltshire and Somerset until they converged in Bath. From there, the river’s strong current would convey them to Bristol by the afternoon.

  She would leave him then.

  Reading the map did not distract him from the tumult in his mind. Sweeping Jane off her feet left him feeling—if not looking—as pink as she. How lithe and strong she was! How soft! He’d wanted to let her slide down his body and encircle her in his arms. He wanted to possess her, to have and hold her forever.

  Stop that.

  He changed his clothes and sat at the table to sketch scenes from the tea shop while the memories were sharp. He chuckled and drew mementos of another unforgettable day with Jane.

  When at last he looked up, the room was dim. The narrow boat floated to a halt. After dark, Bibendum would have his evening walk.

  Seelye went on deck in time to watch the darkness fall. At his request, Jacob lit an oil lamp amidships before the Plimptons led the horse away.

  He limped around the crate to find Jane.

  “Heavens, you look grim,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m in no mood for a lecture, Lord Seelye.” She went to slip past him.

  “‘She walks in beauty,’” he recited from memory, “‘like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies.’”

  The lamplight illuminated her face, her expression was a mystery.

  “‘And all that’s best of dark and bright, meet in her aspect and her eyes,’ Not bad, that one.” He shouldn’t have spoken. All his good and proper intentions were about to go to pieces. How was he to break the spell cast by words of love?

  “Does that mean you forgive me?” she asked quietly, standing too close. She held her breath and waited.

  “Haven’t decided,” he said. He wanted so much to do what he mustn’t. “Depends on the damage you’ve done.”

  “Can I put it to rights?”

  A simple question, the answer obvious and far too complicated. So he gathered her to him, gently, carefully, and brushed his lips lightly against hers before whispering, “Too late.”

  Chapter 36

  In which our heroine gets her wish and wishes she hadn’t.

  After Limpley Stoke, the narrow boat moored for the evening at Warleigh Wood east of Bath.

  She expected to hear chapter and verse about her misdeeds as soon as Seelye joined her on deck. He left her breathless instead. He quoted the most beautiful lines Byron had written in praise of a woman—to her. And he kissed her.

  Then he left abruptly to walk the bear.

  Bibendum blinked in the flickering lamplight whe
n he emerged from his crate and bustled eagerly after Seelye onto the bank.

  The two taciturn males ambled away. She followed them in a state of befuddlement.

  Mumbling to himself in Bear, Bibendum rooted around and snacked with great gusto on grasses and grubs upon which he happened. All the while, Seelye limped and grumbled at him to “make use of the great, roofless house of easement” so they could retire for the night.

  The bear no longer took exception to Seelye’s dyspeptic tone. He knew, just as she did, the tall man’s exasperation required no snarled rebuff.

  Eventually, Bibendum availed himself of the wooded convenience to many muttered hosannas. And Seelye followed her advice to wander for a quarter hour more so the bear would not associate defecating with the end of fun and withhold his scat to prolong the next outing. Back in the crate, Bibendum had his fish dinner.

  Jane retired to the cabin and found Seelye’s sketchbook open on the table. She chuckled over his drawings of teatime in Limpley Stoke. Pages were filled with observations from the afternoon. The drawings were gently satirical, much like the man himself. Their humor reassured her. He might grumble and declaim to the heavens, but he, too, had found it amusing.

  She sat down and turned to earlier pages to see the landscapes he’d drawn in the Vale of Pewsey. What she found startled her more than Seelye’s familiarity with Byron’s poetry.

  He’d drawn her—or rather, a lovely, mischievous woman with ankles scandalously displayed. She had explicitly permitted only one sketch, in which she looked directly at him, but there were many more. She drowsed in one. In others, she looked at him askance, stood at the Avoncliff Aqueduct overlook, read her book, walked with Bibendum, and laughed without a bonnet to contain her fraying braid.

  The affection implicit in these drawings confused her. He was often on edge and sarcastic, sometimes quarrelsome. Then, without warning, he’d relent and praise her. Or embrace her in the night. But then, Seelye wasn’t the first man to kiss her simply because the opportunity presented itself. She couldn’t be sure what it meant, if anything.

  Best not to care.

  Unfortunately, thinking that and doing it were worlds apart. She closed his journal and went to bed, though not to sleep. Staring up at the paneled ceiling of the berth, Jane replayed the conversations she’d had with Seelye about love and marriage. He spoke of honor as if he had none.

  Something undermined his sense of worth. It happened during the war, and from his vehemence on the subject, she concluded it happened at Maguilla.

  Early the next morning, Seelye returned with Bibendum from their pre-dawn walk. She joined him on deck. In the morning stillness, she brought up Clun’s rescue again.

  “I’ve already told you the gist of it,” he said and scuttled sideways around the crate like a crab.

  “You’re limping less,” she said, “I’m glad your ankle improved overnight.”

  “Some wounds heal.”

  He grabbed up and folded the rough blanket he slept in each night.

  “How did you manage it?”

  “Not now, not yet. You’d rather not know details, Jane, and I’d much prefer not to tell you.”

  He made for the hatch to the cabin. She followed him.

  “It won’t matter to me.” She ducked into the small room. “I’m proud of you. Nothing you say will change that.”

  He stopped with his back to her. When he turned to face her, she stumbled back. His hard-eyed stare frightened her.

  “Are you so certain?” he asked. “Say, for argument’s sake, I did tell you how I saved my friend and you hated me for it. Will you do as I say, whatever you think of me?”

  He waited, everything in his manner a challenge.

  “Marry this Season, is that what you mean?” She felt blindly behind herself for a chair and sat. “My, you are anxious to make me someone else’s problem.” Her eyes stung with unshed tears but she rallied. She always rallied. “Very well. I will, so long as George approves.”

  “That’s settled. Now, prepare to despise me,” he said, “for I killed an unarmed civilian in cold blood. I snuck up behind him and just like that—” he snapped his fingers “—I stabbed him in the back.”

  “Did you,” she said.

  “Then I stole the man’s horse and cart. So far, that makes me a murderer and horse thief. Want more?” he asked. “Do you want to hear how I scavenged the battlefield for remains?”

  “I want to hear it all, Seelye.”

  The anger radiating from him frightened her. She braced herself when he opened his mouth.

  Seelye told her about Maguilla in an unfamiliar drone. He explained the circumstances of the skirmish, missing Clun at muster, remaining after the retreat to find him in the hands of a scavenger. Without any emotion, he described sneaking up to spit this man on his saber.

  He fell silent, shoulders slumped.

  “Go on, I’m listening.”

  So he told her the rest as if reliving the experience as it unfolded, voicing his thoughts as they occurred.

  The day was blazing hot, he recalled, yet the half-naked Welshman shivered. Clun’s pallor and clammy skin frightened him as much as his thready pulse.

  “You see, shock killed as many men as the wounds themselves.”

  He tore off his own jacket to wrap around him. And confessed his panic to her, or so he called it. Jane hoped this was more self-deprecation but couldn’t be sure.

  The French had left to harry the British. There was no way to know how far they’d have to retreat. Only one thing was certain, the two of them were behind the new enemy line.

  “It’s a dangerous place to be in the best of circumstances,” he said, “but far worse with a wounded man. If the French found us, they’d let Clun die or kill him outright. If we somehow evaded them and stumbled upon our own camp after nightfall, like as not, we’d be shot by jumpy sentries. Fortunately, days are long in June.”

  “I have never felt so dull-witted in all my life, Jane.” He had to cudgel his brain to save his friend. But it took time to digest the facts of his surroundings. “Slowly, thankfully, my thoughts became purposeful.”

  “There was no escaping on horseback. The blasted man outweighed me by four stone at least.”

  He reasoned that he couldn’t lift Clun over his horse’s saddle by himself much less make a dash through the French line riding tandem. That would’ve lamed his mount.

  “But there was the dead man’s horse and cart.”

  He told her about the cloud of flies and the stench of the cartload in terms so vivid that Jane felt queasy. The man he killed had collected the remains of horses, mules and men, probably intending to render what he’d gathered.

  She shuddered involuntarily.

  “Revolting, I know, but it gave me an idea.”

  He stripped his victim to change into the man’s filthy clothes and low boots. He slipped his watch into the grubby pocket of the dead man’s coat. Well-made English over-the-knee boots were a dead giveaway to the French. He tucked these out of sight under the cart seat. There, he discovered a blanket, a bucket, and a coil of fraying rope. He tied his horse to the cart and set its saddle and shearling pad aside. And he stripped off Clun’s boots.

  He was smeared with blood, so Seelye sought its source and staunched it with linen ripped from his shirt. It was a sluggish gunshot wound below Clun’s ribcage, but his ribs weren’t broken.

  Rope was the godsend. He looped it under Clun’s arms as a harness and passed the other end through the cart seat’s iron fittings and tied it to the closest tree. He drove the nag forward till the rope tightened and Clun came off the ground inch by inch, up and into the gore.

  “Hauling him up that way scraped his back raw, but better that than dead.”

  He lay the blanket and pad over his body before propping the saddle over his chest. As a final thought, he placed the bucket over Clun’s head like a knight’s helmet to keep the flies away. Then he drove off in the cart.

  “Did you
elude the French?” she asked.

  “Ran into a foot patrol on the dirt road to Badajoz. I hated seeing the shako caps and the blue coats. They had the fantassin insignia on their sleeves. But I kept my face blank and prayed they’d let us pass. The stink made them anxious to see the back of me.”

  “They let you by because you smelled?” Jane asked in disbelief.

  “They weren’t that anxious.”

  “What happened? Did they see Clun?”

  “I had buried him up to the bucket in remains, Jane, whatever I could sling into the cart from the field before I left. When I was through, he looked and smelled like another corpse.”

  He explained that one Frenchman thrust out his chest and demanded he stop to let his men search the cart, though his subordinates looked nauseated at the idea. Seelye unconsciously assumed the different voices involved.

  “I replied like a simpleton in the local Spanish dialect. ‘For what, sir? You see what I have.’ And that’s when we all heard it, a groan amplified in a bucket,” Seelye told her. “The sergeant screamed at me, ‘One lives, curse your soul. You’d better pray he wears the red.’”

  Seelye’s accent and inflection were spot on as a snotty Frenchman.

  “‘I heard a dead man’s fart,’ I whined back. ‘Nothing lives for long in there, señors, messieurs, yes?’”

  He mangled the French just as she imagined a flustered Spaniard would in distress.

  “The sergeant pulled me from the cart and backhanded me across the mouth.”

  Seelye pantomimed tearing a cap from his head and pressed a shaking hand to his heart.

  “I started babbling in a mix of French and Spanish, ‘By the Holy Virgin, you kill already this dead. No French. No French, Englishmen très morte, yes? Dead, farting English. Only English. H-how could I leave them, captain? A thousand sorries. I have no French. I not this bring the master, he beating me.’”

  He pantomimed first whipping, then flinching and ducking with arms raised. Seelye’s gestures and expressions helped her see the scene.

  “‘Imbecile! I should beat you now and let your master beat you later for an empty cart,’ he snarled at me, but the stench kept him from hitting me again or making good on his threat.” And Seelye said he kept pleading “until the sergeant was as disgusted by my groveling as my cartload.”