The Noblest Frailty

by Patricia Veryan

  She stared at him. “But—she’s dead. And even if she wasn’t, I don’t see why you’d want to mess about with her to get me a sittyation.”

  At first puzzled, Devenish eventually comprehended. “Grammar, Josie,” he explained laughingly. “It means your use—or misuse—of English.”

  “Oh.” She flushed scarlet. “All right. Go on, then.”

  “Me? Good God, no! I do not excel in that line myself. But when we reach Tewkesbury—”

  “Tomorrow,” she inserted, pulling a face.

  “Oh, no. I think we can do better than that. If a carter chances by, I shall bribe him into taking on two paying customers.”

  Josie looked regretfully at his jacket, now bereft of two of its three handsome silver buttons. “You shouldn’t have let that tinker gull you out of both them pretty buttons for his bread and cheese. He likely thought you was a proper pigeon for milking. And ’sides, carters isn’t s’posed to give rides.”

  “Listen to Miss Prim.” He grinned. “I doubt your sensibilities will be offended, however, for this road seems to attract very little traffic. Still, if one ventures this way I mean to try him, for I’m in a hurry, Miss Josie. I must get myself hooves or wheels—preferably both—as soon as may be.”

  The child smiled but said nothing, and Devenish’s concern returned to his adored Yolande. Whatever must she have thought of his absence? In view of their earlier disagreement and his confounded temper, it was all too likely she supposed him to have ridden off in a huff. He scowled and thrust his hands deeper into his pockets, and the threat of James Garvey heightened his worries so that he did not notice that the afternoon was growing colder and the skies becoming heavy with clouds. Not until a gust of wind cut chillingly through his fine linen shirt was he recalled to the present. He glanced down and saw the child’s head bowed, and her feet scuffing wearily at the damp surface of the lane. Contrite, he exclaimed, “What a clod I am!” and dropped to one knee, reaching back invitingly. “Come aboard, madam.”

  She looked at his shoulders with longing. “No. Thankee, but you’m tired. And your feet hurt, too. I can tell.”

  “Nonsense,” he lied. “You, m’dear, are in the company of a former military man. Why, when I was in the army we used to tramp about all day long—sometimes half the night!—just to keep our Colonel amused. This is nothing. Come now—don’t dawdle about!”

  He waved his arms imperatively, and with a giggle she ran to clamber onto his back. He stood, his arms cradling her bony legs. She was heavy as a bushel of feathers, poor mite. “Gad!” he groaned. “What a lump!”

  She laughed and said gratefully, “Oh, this is such fun, and I be warmer already!”

  Devenish warned, “You realize, m’dear, that I shall want my own turn at piggyback?”

  Another merry little laugh greeted this sally, but she pointed out that he was not going so fast with her on his back.

  “Remorseless taskmaster!” He broke into a run, but soon had to slow again.

  After a little while, Josie asked, “Be she pretty, your lady?”

  “Very pretty.”

  “Is that why you want to marriage her?”

  He smiled, Yolande’s vivid loveliness very clear before his eyes. “Not entirely. I’ve wanted her for my wife for as long as I can remember. She is kind as well as pretty. And she has a happy nature and a quick, merry laugh. She is generous and charming, and—oh, all the things a man wants in the lady he marries.”

  “Oh.” A thoughtful pause, and then, “Mr. Dev, why does some gents have wifes and some have—”

  He said hastily, “It’s—er, all according to—ah— Well, a gentleman usually—”

  He was reprieved from this quagmire as they came around a bend in the lane and Josie interrupted in a scared voice, “Mr. Dev, what are those people doing?”

  A burst of shouting broke from a group of burly men engaged in dragging a struggling individual across the field a short distance ahead. Devenish halted and moved into the shade of the hedge. They looked a rough lot and he’d no wish for the child to witness a brawl. A roar of laughter arose and, with it, the body of their victim, soaring into the air to fall heavily onto the muddy lane.

  “The deuce!” exclaimed Devenish.

  A bullet head appeared over the top of the hedge as the unfortunate sprawling in the dirt commenced a feeble attempt to rise. “That’ll do fer’ee,” quoth the farmer, grinning from ear to ear. “Next time as ye fix fer to trespass in some ’un’s shed, ye best ask perlite-like, fust!” And to the accompaniment of another roar of laughter, his head was withdrawn and the loud voices began to diminish.

  “Oh, the poor cove!” cried Josie pityingly. She slid from Devenish’s hold and scampered along the lane, her ragged breeches flapping.

  Following, Devenish quickened his pace as the man in the road turned on his side, got one elbow under him, and lifted a blood-streaked fair head.

  “Well I’ll be— Tyndale!” said Devenish.

  “Give us your hanky, Mr. Dev,” Josie demanded, kneeling beside the victim and extending an imperious hand. Receiving this grubby article, she began to wipe carefully at Tyndale’s battered features.

  Her patient managed to sit up, and leaning back on both hands peered blurrily at her. “Dev…?” he said, bewildered.

  “Over here, you clunch.” Devenish bent over him. “Lord, what a mess! Did they run the cows over you?” And, as Josie gently parted his cousins’s thick hair, he added, “The devil! Who did that?”

  “An admirer … in the hotel stable. I thought perhaps you…” Tyndale flinched back from Josie’s busy hands.

  “You would, blast you!” snapped Devenish, considerably irked, and forgetting that he had cherished the same suspicion of his kinsman.

  “Try not to wriggle, please, sir,” said Josie. “There’s a perishing great splinter here.”

  An amused gleam lit Tyndale’s strained eyes, but Devenish groaned, “Josie! For heaven’s sake, child, you must not use such terms.”

  She bit her lip and threw him an anguished look.

  Tyndale asked, rather faintly, “Who is my small angel of mercy?”

  Josie gave a quick, firm tug, and a little whimper of sympathy. Tyndale’s eyes became slightly glassy, and a whiteness under his eyes was intensified, but he made no sound.

  “You’m brave,” she told him, touching his cheek gently. “And I’m new today. I was Tabby, but now I be Josie Storm. When I grows up I going to be Mr. Dev’s—”

  “Abigail!” yelped Devenish, and then fumed, “And remove that damned smirk from your face, or I’ll shove this hunk of wood back in your thick skull! Josie is going to be trained for an abigail is what I mean!”

  “You should not swear,” scolded the “angel of mercy.” “And if I had a friend what was so big and strong and brave, I wouldn’t shout at him like what you does.”

  Devenish scowled. “He ain’t a friend. He’s my cousin.”

  “Cousin! I thought relayatives liked one another.” She added, “I never had no cousins or nothing.”

  Devenish stared at her small, wistful face, flashed an uncomfortable look at the grinning Tyndale, and had the grace to redden. “Enjoy your gloating,” he grunted. “That’s not going to stop, Josie. Give me the handkerchief.”

  She turned away, holding it apart. “I know how!” she declared loftily. “I done it for Akim’s mort when he hit her with a gin bottle.”

  “Did you, by God!” Impressed, Tyndale lowered his head so that she might more easily perform her task.

  She folded the handkerchief, by now considerably the worse for wear, into a diagonal strip, tied it around his brow, then inspected her handiwork critically. “It ain’t high enough,” she admitted, “but at least it will keep the bleedings out of your eyes.”

  Tyndale assured her that it was splendid, and thanked her for her efforts. Devenish slipped a hand under his arm. “Can you stand? Good man. Up with you.”

  Tyndale swayed, but the rain was beginning t
o come down now, the air was chill, and Devenish’s supporting arm enabled him to remain upright until the dizziness passed.

  “He should rest,” said Josie, indignantly.

  “No—thank you, Miss Josie, but—I shall go on nicely,” Tyndale gasped.

  And so on they went.

  The rain proved of short duration. The wind blew the clouds apart and, unexpectedly, the lowering sun shone benignly upon the odd little trio, the two battered young men, and the child, tattered and dirty but, after the fashion of youth, now skipping merrily beside her new friends, her weariness forgotten.

  As Devenish expected, his questioning elicited the information that Tyndale’s capture had been accomplished shortly after his own, the main difference being that his cousin had been more crudely struck down. “I rather fancy,” he growled, “that they had only enough of that revolting ether for me.”

  “Likely you’re right.” Tyndale said slowly, “They seem to have gone to no little pains to separate us. I wonder why.”

  “Perhaps they wanted us to be further delayed in searching for one another. They wasn’t to know we—er, would not give a hoot.”

  Tyndale was briefly silent. “I didn’t mean quite that. I collect you fancy Garvey was behind it?”

  “I don’t fancy, cousin! I know da— er, dashed well he was!”

  “But—why? Do you think he was that desperately smitten with Yolande?”

  “Well, I’d like to know why the devil he would not be! Yolande is—Yolande!”

  “I’ll not argue that point. But did you not mention that he was, until recently, deep in love with another lady?”

  “The Van Lindsay. An accredited Toast. What I may have failed to mention is that rumour has it he’s under the hatches.”

  Tyndale stiffened. “And the Van Lindsay was an heiress? I understood you to say the family was in Dun territory.”

  “True. But there is a grandmama who’s as full of lettuce as she is full of years, and who dotes on the girl.” His eyes grim, Devenish growled, “That hound lost her, so now pursues a lady of greater fortune! There’s no knowing how desperate he may be, but he travels with an expensive set; Carlton House, no less! And if he does mean to snare Yolande, I pose a double threat. Not only am I known to be betrothed to the lady, but I could tell her much that Garvey would prefer she remain unaware of.”

  Tyndale nodded. “It is motive enough, and yet—I still cannot fathom the attacks upon us. At most, Garvey will only buy himself a few days in which to ingratiate himself. He surely realizes you will rumble him, and will tell Yolande when—” He broke off. “By Jupiter! You never think…”

  “That we were supposed to have been dished?” Devenish gave a cynical snort. “I’d not put it past the rogue!” He lengthened his pace. “Now perhaps you can appreciate why I am so anxious to come up with them! Can you walk a shade faster, cousin? I appreciate you ain’t in the habit of marching, but—”

  It was as much as Tyndale could do to set one foot before the other, to conceal which, he said laughingly, “Not like you dashing Hyde Park soldiers, eh?”

  The more infuriated because it was truth, Devenish whirled to face him. “Now, damn your impudence, I’d like to know what you did that was so blasted much more useful!”

  Tyndale shrugged. “Not my war, cousin.”

  “No,” gritted Devenish, contemptuously. “And I can well believe that even if it had been, you’d not risk your precious hide to—”

  Slipping between them, her pointed little face set into a daunting frown, Josie demanded, “Why don’t you both dub your mummers! Blessed if ever I see such a pair of shagbags!” She glared up at Devenish, whose face was a study in disbelief. “You ain’t no better than a windy wallets, and he—” She turned about to fix angry eyes on the startled Tyndale. “He’s too top lofty to admit he’s in queer stirrups!”

  Tyndale laughed unsteadily, but staggered even as he laughed. Jumping to steady him, Devenish fumed, “And you, my girl, should have your mouth washed out! Dammit, Tyndale—if you cannot walk, why in the deuce did you not say so?”

  “Can…” Tyndale muttered. “I’m—just as eager to reach … Yolande as are you. It’s—it’s just … this blasted head, is all.”

  “And those yokels gave you more rough handling. What in the world did you do to rate such treatment?”

  Leaning on him, despite his reluctance to do so, Tyndale tottered on and said wryly, “Well, it was raining, and I came upon a snug toolshed by the road and made myself comfortable. Woke up find a dashed blunderbuss aimed at my head, and the farmer and his sons mad as fire because I’d trespassed.”

  “Mad as fire! It was likely a trap. I was once caught in just such a shabby scheme. They put you to work, I collect?”

  “I never worked so hard in my life! That mean old curmudgeon even berated his daughter for bringing me a drink of water. This afternoon, old Nimms, the farmer, came out and watched me, guzzling at a tankard of ale, and laughing while I dug every weed and rock from the most miserable field you ever saw.

  “What—did they not even give you a crust, or a hunk of cheese?”

  “No, and there was all the time the most mouth-watering smell of the stew his poor wife was cooking. When I asked him if there was some way I could work for a meal, he thought it hilarious, but I finally talked him into allowing me to instruct his sons in fencing.”

  Devenish said a surprised “You fence?”

  “A … er, a little. I told old Nimms I was accounted not paltry in the art, and he said in his crude way that he thought there was little of art in a man’s protecting himself. At all events, I was allowed to go into the kitchen and eat, after which largesse I commenced my first lesson.” He was feeling steadier and relinquished his grip on his cousin. “Thank you. I can go on now.”

  “Good. How did your lesson go on? From the look of those louts I’d have thought they’d scarcely know point from grip!”

  “Very shrewd of you. They didn’t.” Tyndale drawled wryly, “Our problem, it developed, was with communication rather than skill. My fine farmer had apparently not thought I referred to fencing with foils.”

  “With swords? A first lesson? Fella must be queer in his attic!”

  “Not with swords.”

  Devenish frowned. “Then—what the deuce else could—” Comprehension dawned. “Fencing?” He grinned, in huge delight. “No, not really! With—wood?”

  “My good Nimms,” Tyndale sighed, “had once seen a picture of an Italian villa surrounded by an ornate fence he particularly admired. He thought I would know of some simple and inexpensive way to build it, and— Now, blast you, Dev!”

  “Sorry,” wheezed Devenish, wiping his eyes. “So—so when he discovered you’d hoodwinked him, he was—put out, eh?”

  “Hoodwinked him? I didn’t hoodwink the clod! At least, not intentionally. Much chance I had of convincing him of it!”

  “So I should think. What did he say?”

  “That he was going to push my face in the dirt and step on it.”

  “Whereupon,” said Devenish, his hilarity fading, “you attempted to show him the error of his ways?”

  “Correct. The trouble was he had three stalwart sons. No brains, you understand, but muscles—and to spare.”

  “And so…?”

  “And so—they pushed my face into the dirt, and Nimms demanded I admit to being a lying, cheating Captain Sharp. My response, alas, did not please; besides which I had managed to deal him a bloody nose during our little tussle. His sons proceeded to pick me up and run my head against a fence post a few times. So I would know what a fence was, they said. You saw the last act.”

  “Well, I think it was plain horrid!” Josie said indignantly. “Four to one! They was cowards, sir!”

  “Dashed unsporting!” Devenish frowned from his cousin’s rueful smile to the blood that slowly crept down to stain the handkerchief about his head. “They must have known you was already hurt.”

  “From what I saw of the N
imms clan, coz, I rather fancy that would have added spice to their enjoyment.”

  “Would it! Well, it occurs to me that the family honour has been sullied. And we cannot have that, now can we?” Devenish halted, lost in thought, while his companions watched him wonderingly. “Nothing for it,” he said, looking up with a grin. “We must go back.”

  “Back!” echoed Tyndale. “But—why? Even together we couldn’t hope to—”

  “Oh, I do not propose to take on the Nimmses. Not—ah, exactly. After all, they did not play fair, so we have a little more—er—scope.”

  He looked, thought Tyndale, like a small, mischievous boy. “What do you mean to do?” he asked.

  Devenish regretfully inspected his last remaining silver button. “Part with this.” He wrenched it off. “I had meant to use it to bribe a carter. Still, honour must be served. Josie, my elf, do you recall that last village we trudged through? Do you fancy we can reach it by nightfall?”

  She nodded. “If Mr. Craig can walk so far. Oh, what fun it would be! I wonder if the man with the performing bear be there still.”

  Tyndale, whose eyes had widened during this innocent revelation, turned to his cousin. “Devenish, you never mean to…?” he breathed in awe.

  Devenish chuckled. “Don’t I just!”

  * * *

  It was very cold that night and, although it did not rain, the men of the Nimms family were not without optimism as they advanced in a roseate dawn towards the toolshed.

  Edgar, the eldest, was inclined to temper hope with reason, however. “It ain’t likely as we’d catch another noddicock this quick,” he pointed out in a hoarse whisper. “We should’ve never let that big cove go, Pa. He could’ve finished the west field by now.”

  “Ar,” the patriarch agreed. “I were a sight rash there, son. Still, by the time we was done, he wasn’t good fer much. And ye can never tell. With all this ragtag soldiery creeping about the roads, we might— Hey! Look there! The door be shut so tight as any drum. What’d I tell’ee? We do have hired ourselves another volunteer!”

  Exultant, the four big men bore down upon their cunning trap, never dreaming that they were watched by four pairs of eyes, each alight with anticipation.