Dangerous to Know

by Christina Boyd (ed)

  I gave no answer; the truth was already understood.

  Carver was silent and pensive for only a moment. His chair scraped a shrieking protest as he shoved backwards, stood, and tossed his napkin onto the table. He said nothing as he quit the room.

  * * *

  “I took him down several times, you know, in my way.” —Isabella Thorpe to Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey, Chapter XVI.

  ONE YEAR LATER

  It was on behalf of both Henry and my father that I journeyed to Wiltshire. My father, of course, knew what I was about but Henry would not know a word of it until it was done.

  My father had, at one time found a great deal to admire in Miss Catherine Morland. He met her in somewhat exalted company and was informed—mistakenly so, we later learnt—she was an heiress. She and Henry had already formed some attachment and the general forwarded it wholeheartedly, indeed almost shamelessly—until he learnt the truth of her. She was no more than a sweet girl of modest means from a large family of little consequence in Wiltshire and as such, she was nothing worth knowing for him.

  My father’s approval of her was immediately rescinded and he ordered her from our home, where she had been staying as the guest of my sister. Not his finest hour, to be sure, but it was done and no use thinking of it more.

  But Henry, stubborn, foolish Henry, would not be swayed from her. He went to her at Wiltshire, said some pretty things I am sure, and an understanding was reached between them. However, her parents, wise people, forwarded one obstacle to what would be otherwise perfect bliss: her parents would not consent until my father did too.

  My father had no intention of consenting to any such thing but this did not stop Henry from endlessly plaguing him. “I cannot hear more of this,” the general said to me one fine morning. “Enough repining over Catherine Morland!”

  “It was rather disagreeable of him to mention her while you ate,” I said. “Rather makes a man’s stomach turn to hear such talk of romance and lovers while there is meat on the table.”

  “Indeed,” said my father. We were strolling along a favoured path around Northanger just then and he was quiet for a while, no doubt waiting for me to suggest what was in both of our minds.

  “I could go to Wiltshire,” I said at last.

  “My boy.” The general offered me a rare, proud smile. “You do know just how these things are best managed.”

  I expected to make a short business of it. Miss Morland was young, both in age and in understanding. She was a wide-eyed innocent and yet, her time at Northanger Abbey had shown she enjoyed the thrill of danger. Henry had, no doubt, appealed to the better part of her nature. I would appeal to the baser part of her character, one which she likely had no idea even existed.

  My call to her, on my arrival at Fullerton, shocked her. Plainly she hoped for news of Henry and was just as clearly dismayed to receive none. I told her I had business in the area and thought it proper to pay my respects to her, and she was suitably cheered.

  I saw the question in her eyes when I lingered longer than was necessary, and it was a question magnified during my second call. I made sure to give some very pretty compliments that time, not only to her but her mother and sister as well. I saw by their blushes and smiles that my words had the intended effect.

  We walked out, Miss Morland and I, on the occasion of my fourth call to Fullerton. With her mother and sisters away from home, it seemed an ideal time for my visit; an ideal time to see if she would succumb to me and come with me back to the inn where I stayed.

  I offered my arm and drew her as near as she would be drawn and we walked for some time in a little silence. She began then to speak on a subject well known to us both but tedious to me: my brother. Henry was, in her estimation, the most charming of men, the most witty, the most gentleman-like; her effusions knew no end it seemed.

  At last I interrupted her. “Yes, my brother is all that is good and pure in this world; however, I must observe that Henry owes much to me for that particular understanding of his character.”

  She turned a pretty smile to me. “How so?”

  I glanced about me—yes, a perfect spot. I led her into a small place of seclusion from the path. She followed obediently, only a few bemused glances up towards my face on the way.

  Once I had her where I wished her, I leant in. “A saint’s glory is made far more evident by the presence of a sinner, is it not so?”

  “I… Why, yes, I suppose it is.”

  I slowly allowed the back of one finger to trace her arm from her shoulder to her elbow, thrilled to see she did not pull away. “Perhaps Henry would not look nearly so good,” I murmured, “if I were not so very wicked.”

  She pulled back a little and her mouth, that pretty little rosebud, formed a perfect o. “But I do not think you so very wicked.”

  “Yes, indeed I am—but I daresay it is your fault.”

  “My fault?”

  “Just so.” I leant in close to her allowing my glance to stray to her bosom, shockingly ample given her slight figure. “Since the very first moment I set my eyes on you, I found myself having very wicked thoughts indeed.”

  A blush rose from her delightful bosom to her cheeks and she murmured my name, turning her eyes to the side.

  I spoke into her ear, her curls dancing about with my whispered words. “Just for a little while, would it not be diverting to laugh with the sinner instead of cry for the saint?”

  She drew back, tilting her head as she examined me. I could see her wondering at the extent of my fraternal loyalty, deciding if she could possibly have us both. This would be even easier than I ever thought it could be. “No one would ever need to know,” said I, with my most charming smile.

  And then one tear, fat and round, made its way down her cheek. Alarm stiffened my back and I was immediately upright, my burgeoning ardor killed immediately. “What is it?”

  The tears were slow but they began to come steadily. I offered my handkerchief, glancing around us to be sure we were not observed. “No need to cry, madam,” I said to no avail as she dabbed uselessly at her tears. How could she cry already? I had not done a thing yet!

  “Surely you do not, even now, weep for Henry?”

  “Henry?” she asked, with a small choking sob. “No, not Henry. No, it is you!—oh, my dear Captain Til—Frederick! May I call you that? After all we shall be family.”

  “Call me what you wish,” I said, thoroughly baffled. “But why should you cry on my account?”

  “When I think of the pain, the hollow agonies you must have suffered to have brought you to this low, my grief can scarcely be contained. Oh, do anything! Do anything at all but continue on in this manner!”

  Her vehemence startled me but it was nothing to the shock I felt as she threw her arms around me and embraced me tight, laying her damp cheek against my chest.

  “I neither require nor deserve such sympathetic— Oof!” I grunted as she gave me a particularly fervent squeeze. Damnation but the girl had some strength in her! I twisted a bit to remove myself but it could not be done. “What are you at Miss Morland?”

  She pulled away once she had finished wringing the life from me and smiled at me the way one might smile at a pet who had performed some little trick. “You came here to seduce me, did you not?”

  “I… well…” An unusual sensation plagued me; it took a moment for me to recognise it as shame.

  “Never mind. We do not need anyone to know. It will be our first secret together, just like true brother and sister, sharing confidences!”

  “We are not sharing confidences,” I protested to deaf ears.

  “But truly dear brother—”

  “I am not your brother.”

  “You must not seek to destroy the bond of fraternal affection between you and Henry! Has he not grievances enough right now?”

  “Once Henry understood why—”

  “But in truth, my greatest concern is for you.”

  “Me?”

  “Wh
en I consider your loneliness, I ache with it. Dearest Frederick, do find someone to love, I implore you.”

  Her eyes were filled with compassion and I gaped at her, understanding seeping into me. “Do you mean to say—do you pity me?”

  Her hands, clasped together, pressed against her heart. “I have thought on this much during these dreadful, long days of waiting. Your father and his coldness!”

  “My father is a brave and accomplished—”

  “Such cruelty must be the result of years of being alone and unloved! The human soul is not meant for solitude. We crave affection and love just as our bodies require food and drink!”

  “My father has friends,” I protested weakly. “Clubs. That sort of—”

  “But as much as I fear for him, I am ten-fold so for you. The general did once love and was loved in return. Was it not so?”

  “Erm… Well, yes, but that is not—”

  “But you! Oh, my dear Frederick, it surely is the most important thing in this world. ’Tis true, my love is making me miserable now but I have been to the highest height and I shall suffer the lowest low, all for my dear Henry. For I truly do love him with all that I am, and if I must cry a decade for every day I have known him, it will be worth it.”

  She was nearly angelic as she beamed at me and I realised her goodness had conquered me. This was, undoubtedly, the most grievously failed attempt at a seduction there ever was. Miss Catherine Morland would not be tempted away. My brother had somehow managed to find himself a worthy dame.

  I made a last effort to win her.

  “You must understand,” I told her. “My father is not likely to be moved. It is more likely that you will grow wings and learn to fly than it is that you shall end as Mrs. Tilney.”

  With great solemnity, she said, “I shall not believe it.”

  “’Tis true.”

  She shook her head, those damnable curls bouncing about her head. At that moment, she somehow managed to look both a great deal younger and a good bit older than her eighteen years.

  “I have been told that your parents will not give consent if my father does not and my father shall not, I assure you.”

  “Love shall triumph,” she said. “I am certain of it. But do, Frederick, do let it have its way with you too, else you shall end in a most frightfully embittered state.”

  With that, I was awarded another damp kiss on the cheek, and then she was gone.

  * * *

  “Frederick too, who always wore his heart so proudly, who found no woman good enough to be loved!” —Eleanor Tilney to Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney, Northanger Abbey, Chapter XXV.

  As it was, Catherine was correct on one score. Love did prevail, eventually, over my father. In a fit of delight over my sister’s marriage to a viscount, my father told Henry he could “be a fool if he liked it!” They were married within a twelve-month of their initial meeting and all parties were soon settled into marital bliss.

  Love prevailed over them but I should be damned if it would prevail over me. I still held my heart proud as ever. I still occupied myself in gambling and fights and women of easy virtue.

  But in the darker hours I had to admit it to myself—Catherine affected me. Of course, nothing like thinking love was a true object, nothing that silly. It was the way she looked at me that troubled me most.

  I had seen men before, aged men who had once been handsome young bucks. But no matter how handsome or virile or well-formed you are, Time will exact its punishment and nothing, in my estimation, is as execrable as some bald, droopy-jowled, corseted would-be Lothario. Was this how I was seen? Had I become already a pitiable object of derision? The notion sent a shudder through me. Surely Catherine was mistaken.

  My fears plagued me in a particularly grievous way one night at a ball. I was dancing with Lady Harriet Botwright, some child fresh from school who chattered on about how much she liked Bath while we danced, when the pattern took me away and I found myself hand in hand with an enchantress in a rose-colored gown. I knew her, if it took me a moment to recall her. “Miss Rose Gibson!”

  She rolled her eyes and frowned at me. “Miss Rosalind Gibbs.”

  “How charming to see you.” And it was, indeed, good to see her. She was a handsome woman, a bit more mature than the usual crowd of maidenly just-from-school ladies who attended these sorts of parties. She had just the sort of figure I always admired: more lean than was the fashion but with a few womanly curves nevertheless. Good to see that the years since our last meeting had not deposited any unnecessary padding on her frame although her eyes fairly glittered with spite when I told her so.

  “I will thank you,” she said with considerable hauteur, “to refrain from examining my figure.”

  With that, the pattern removed her and I was again consigned to the girl I partnered.

  When that duty was done, I paused a moment, considering, Miss Gibbs across the room. Naturally I remembered her—she was the sort of woman one never did forget—but I could not immediately recall the association.

  Ah yes. She had once belonged to Carver.

  Carver was happily married by now, to an excessively wealthy woman, so there was no ill will between him and I but alas, Miss Gibbs had not fared so well. The last I knew she was in some distant county somewhere, under the care of a spinster aunt with rumours in abundance throughout the ton. Dear thing was not quite ruined but nearly so. Brave of her to come back to the dragon’s lair. I nodded my approval at her and she scowled at me in reply, turning her back to me thereafter.

  “You are right to despise me,” I said with what I believed was beguiling humility when I saw her next. “But I suppose you never think of me.”

  “Oh, but I do,” she said. We were at another ball, this one given by Lady Dalrymple in her excessively large house in Laura Place. Miss Gibbs wore a gown of palest green with a pink sash, and I liked it very well. “I think of you often.”

  “Do you?” The thought pleased me.

  “Mostly how much I might like to kill you.” She smiled sweetly. “Poison is too good for you I think, unless it produced some particularly vile dysentery first. I favour some medieval torture for you: the rack or removal of your fingernails to begin.”

  “Ouch!” I leant in with a smile. “Come now. You would not have liked to be wife to that simpering fool Carver now, would you? He is already quite fat with contentment. I daresay in another year neither of us should know him.”

  “I would like,” she said, “to have my reputation back.” And with a final severe look, she stalked off, leaving me dangling after her like a fool. I wished I had asked her to dance even as I persuaded myself she had become a bit of a harridan.

  Strangely, I found her entering my thoughts over the next days. I looked for her all over, dinner parties, a concert, coffee houses, and the Crescent, but she was nowhere to be found. Her absence stoked my desire to find her.

  At last, I saw her again at the assembly rooms during a public ball, standing by the refreshment table in a lovely rose-coloured gown trimmed in gold. It was a gown which bespoke the fortune of the wearer.

  Miss Gibbs watched me approach her, but I played with her a little. I pretended my interest was in the cake beside her, taking it up and then, almost as if I had just noticed her, offering a bow and a smirk. She did not smile in return nor did she speak.

  I summoned my most charming smile. “We meet again.”

  “So we do.”

  “And how do you do?”

  She shrugged. “How are you?”

  “Splendid in every way,” said I.

  Every possible avenue of conversation deserted me after those banal pleasantries had been uttered. I stood like a gaping green lad having his first conversation with a lady. No subject seemed safe or important enough to waste time discussing. I forestalled the need to speak with a bite of cake, grimacing at the sweetness.

  My countenance drew her interest. “Now that is a face! What displeases you, sir?”

  “This cake
.” I drew deep from the punch glass. “Too sweet by half.”

  “Too sweet! Who could ever complain about a cake being too sweet?”

  “I am not one of these people who needs an excess of sweets,” I told her. “Give me fruit and a piece of cheese, and it is good enough for me.”

  “Then why did you take a piece?”

  “Everyone else likes it so much,” I told her, “I cannot help feeling I must be missing something.”

  At this, she laughed, showing perfect, pearly white teeth for a moment too long before remembering to be demure and clapping her hand over her mouth. I did not mind; I rather liked the idea that I made her forget herself.

  “I must not be amused by you,” she said. “Not when I am so determined to despise you.”

  “Despise me! And when we were once on such…well, I suppose I must say they were intimate terms.” My grin was miscalculated; she looked like she wished to hit me. She turned, clearly intending to leave me but I cried out, “Wait.”

  She turned back. “What?”

  “That was certainly an ill-judged remark and I do beg your pardon.”

  She said nothing, merely stared at me with eyes that were quite the colour of bluebells in the spring. Though it was not my custom to care much about a lady’s eyes, I found hers to be rather fascinating. Such blue! And fringed by thick lashes, they were really quite perfect.

  “Dance with me.”

  “With you? No. Dancing with you before was the first step in what proved to be the destruction of my life, so you will pardon me if I say I am not inclined to do it again.”

  “Please?” Was this truly me, begging a lady to dance with me? Gad but this woman already made me go against all that I believed in!

  “People will talk.”

  “So, let them. I am sure it is nothing to me.”

  “That is easy for you to say. You did as you did and went about your merry way. I…” She drifted off, looking past me at nothing. A shadow came into those blue eyes that I so admired.

  A few moments later, she shook herself. “Ah, well, but what does it matter? I am reviled, the subject of malicious conversation in every drawing room already; why not give them something new to buzz about?”