He smiled. “I will outlive them, will I not?”
George looked at him. “Will you outlive me, sir? I am not yet thirty.”
“I am three-and-twenty.” Mildly. “I believe the odds favor me.”
Bysshe and the others laughed, while George looked cynical and dyspeptic. Used to being the young cavalier, Mary thought. He’s not so young any longer— how much longer will that pretty face last?
“And of course advance of science may turn this debate irrelevant,” Bysshe went on. “Mr. Godwin calculates that with the use of mechanical aids, people may reduce their daily labor to an hour or two, to the general benefit of all.”
“ut you oppose such machines, don’t ye?” George said. “You support the Luddites, I assume?”
“Ay, but— ”
“And the frame-breakers are destroying the machines that have taken their livelihood, aren’t they? So where is your general benefit, then?”
Mary couldn’t hold it in any longer. She slapped her hand down on the table, and George and Bysshe started. “The riots occur because the profits of the looms were not used to benefit the weavers, but to enrich the mill owners! Were the owners to share their profits with the weavers, there would have been no disorder.”
George gave her a civil bow. “Your view of human nature is generous,” he said, “if you expect a mill owner to support the families of those who are not even his employees.”
“It would be for the good of all, wouldn’t it?” Bysshe said. “If he does not want his mills threatened and frames broken.”
“It sounds like extortion wrapped in pretty philosophy.”
“The mill owners will pay one way or another,” Mary pointed out. “They can pay taxes to the government to suppress the Luddites with militia and dragoons, or they can have the goodwill of the people, and let the swords and muskets rust.”
“They will buy the swords every time,” George said. “They are useful in ways other than suppressing disorder, such as securing trade routes and the safety of the nation.” He put on a benevolent face. “You must forgive me, but your view of humanity is too benign. You do not account for the violence and passion that are in the very heart of man, and which institutions such as law and religion are intended to help control. And when science serves the passions, only tragedy can result— when I think of science, I think of the science of Dr. Guillotin.”
“We are fallen,” said Captain Austen. “Eden will never be within our grasp.”
“The passions are a problem, but I think they can be turned to good,” said Bysshe. “That is— ” He gave an apologetic smile. “That is the aim of my current work. To use the means of poetry to channel the passions to a humane and beneficent aim.”
“I offer you my very best wishes,” condescendingly, “but I fear mankind will disappoint you. Passions are— ” George gave Mary an insolent, knowing smile. “— are the downfall of many a fine young virtue.”
Mary considered hitting him in the face. Bysshe seemed not to have noticed George’s look, nor Mary’s reaction. “Mr. Godwin ventured the thought that dreams are the source of many irrational passions,” he mused. “He believes that should we ever find a way of doing without sleep, the passions would fall away.”
“Ay!” barked George. “Through enervation, if nothing else.”
The others laughed. Mary decided she had had enough, and rose.
“I shall withdraw,” she said. “The journey has been fatiguing.”
The gentlemen, Bysshe excepted, rose to their feet. “Good night, Maie,” he said. “I will stay for a while, I think.”
“As you like, Bysshe.” Mary looked at her sister. “Jane? I mean Claire? Will you come with me?”
“Oh, no.” Quickly. “I’m not at all tired.”
Annoyance stiffened Mary’s spine. “As you like,” she said.
George bowed toward her, picked a candle off the table, and offered her an arm. “May I light you up the stair? I should like to apologize for my temerity in contradicting such a charming lady.” He offered his brightest smile. “I think my poor virtue will extend that far, yes?”
She looked at him coldly— she couldn’t think it customary, even in George’s circles, to escort a woman to her bedroom.
Damn it anyway. “My lord,” she said, and put her arm through his.
Jerome Bonaparte made a flying leap from the table and landed on George’s shoulder. It clung to his long auburn hair, screamed, and made a face, and the others laughed. Mary considered the thought of being escorted up to bed by a lord and a monkey, and it improved her humor.
“Goodnight, gentlemen,” Mary said. “Claire.”
The gentlemen reseated themselves and George took Mary up the stairs. They were so narrow and steep that they couldn’t go up abreast; George, with the candle, went first, and Mary, holding his hand, came up behind. Her door was the first up the stairs; she put her hand on the wooden door handle and turned to face her escort. The monkey leered at her from his shoulder.
“I thank you for your company, my lord,” she said. “I fear your journey was a little short.”
“I wished a word with you,” softly, “a little apart from the others.”
Mary stiffened. To her annoyance her heart gave a lurch. “What word is that?” she asked.
His expression was all affability. “I am sensible to the difficulties that you and your sister must be having. Without money in a foreign country, and with your only protector a man— ” He hesitated. Jerome Bonaparte, jealous for his attention, tugged at his hair. “A charming man of noble ideals, surely, but without money.”
“I thank you for your concern, but it is misplaced,” Mary said. “Claire and I are perfectly well.”
“Your health ain’t my worry,” he said. Was he deliberately misunderstanding? Mary wondered in fury. “I worry for your future— you are on an adventure with a man who cannot support you, cannot see you safe home, cannot marry you.”
“Bysshe and I do not wish to marry.” The words caught at her heart. “We are free.”
“And the damage to your reputation in society— ” he began, and came up short when she burst into laughter. He looked severe, while the monkey mocked him from his shoulder. “You may laugh now, Miss Godwin, but there are those who will use this adventure against you. Political enemies of your father at the very least.”
“That isn’t why I was laughing. I am the daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft— I have no reputation! It’s like being the natural daughter of Lucifer and the Scarlet Woman of Babylon. Nothing is expected of us, nothing at all. Society has given us license to do as we please. We were dead to them from birth.”
He gave her a narrow look. “But you have at least a little concern for the proprieties— why else travel pseudonymously?”
Mary looked at him in surprise. “What d’you mean?”
He smiled. “Give me a little credit, Miss Godwin. When you call your sister Jane half the time, and your protector calls you May ... ”
Mary laughed again. “The Maie— Maie for short— is one of Bysshe’s pet names for me. The other is Pecksie.”
“Oh.”
“And Jane is my sister’s given name, which she has always hated. Last year she decided to call herself Clara or Claire— this week it is Claire.”
Jerome Bonaparte began to yank at George’s ear, and George made a face, pulled the monkey from his shoulder, and shook it with mock ferocity. Again he spoke in the cracked Scots dowager’s voice. “Are ye sae donsie wicked, creeture? Tae Elba w’ye!”
Mary burst into laughter again. George gave her a careless grin, then returned the monkey to his shoulder. It sat and regarded Mary with bright, wise eyes.
“Miss Godwin, I am truly concerned for you, believe else of me what you will.”
Mary’s laughter died away. She took the candle from his hand.
“Please, my lord. My sister and I are perfectly safe in Mr. Shelley’s company.”
“You will n
ot accept my protection? I will freely give it.”
“We do not need it. I thank you.”
“Will you not take a loan, then? To see you safe across the Channel? Mr. Shelley may pay me back if he is ever in funds.”
Mary shook her head.
A little of the old insolence returned to George’s expression. “Well. I have done what I could.”
“Good night, Lord Newstead.”
“Good night.”
Mary readied herself for bed and climbed atop the soft mattress. She tried to read her Italian grammar, but the sounds coming up the stairway were a distraction. There was loud conversation, and singing, and then Claire’s fine voice, unaccompanied, rising clear and sweet up the narrow stair.
Torcere, Mary thought, looking fiercely at her book, attorcere, rattorcere, scontorcere, torcere.
Twist. Twist, twist, twist, twist.
Claire finished, and there was loud applause. Bysshe came in shortly afterwards. His eyes sparkled and his color was high. “We were singing,” he said.
“I heard.”
“I hope we didn’t disturb you.” He began to undress.
Mary frowned at her book. “You did.”
“And I argued some more with Byron.” He looked at her and smiled. “Imagine it— if we could convert Byron! Bring one of the most famous men in the world to our views.”
She gave him a look. “I can think of nothing more disastrous to our cause than to have him lead it.”
“Byron’s famous. And he’s a splendid man.” He looked at her with a self-conscious grin. “I have a pair of byrons, you know, back home. I think I have a good turn of ankle, but the things are the very devil to lace. You really need servants for it.”
“He’s Newstead now. Not Byron. I wonder if they’ll have to change the name of the boot?”
“Why would he change his name, d’you suppose? After he’d become famous with it.”
“Wellington became famous as Wellesley.”
“Wellington had to change his name. His brother was already Lord Wellesley.” He approached the bed and smiled down at her. “He likes you.”
“He likes any woman who crosses his path. Or so I understand.”
Bysshe crawled into the bed and put his arm around her, the hand resting warmly on her belly. He smelled of the tobacco he’d been smoking with George. She put her hand atop his, feeling on the third finger the gold wedding ring he still wore. Dissatisfaction crackled through her. “You are free, you know.” He spoke softly into her ear. “You can be with Byron if you wish.”
Mary gave him an irritated look. “I don’t wish to be with Byron. I want to be with you.”
“But you may,” whispering, the hand stroking her belly, “be with Byron if you want.”
Temper flared through Mary. “I don’t want Byron!” she said. “And I don’t want Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, or any of your other friends!”
He seemed a little hurt. “Hogg’s a splendid fellow.”
“Hogg tried to seduce your wife, and he’s tried to seduce me. And I don’t understand how he remains your best friend.”
“Because we agree on everything, and I hold him no malice where his intent was not malicious.” Bysshe gave her a searching look. “I only want you to be free. If we’re not free, our love is chained, chained absolutely, and all ruined. I can’t live that way— I found that out with Harriet.”
She sighed, put her arm around him, drew her fingers through his tangled hair. He rested his head on her shoulder and looked up into her eyes. “I want to be free to be with you,” Mary told him. “Why will that not suit?”
“It suits.” He kissed her cheek. “It suits very well.” He looked up at her happily. “And if Harriet joins us in Brussels, with a little money, then all shall be perfect.”
Mary gazed at him, utterly unable to understand how he could think his wife would join them, or why, for that matter, he thought it a good idea. He misses his little boy, she thought. He wants to be with him.
The thought rang hollow in her mind.
He kissed her again, his hand moving along her belly, touching her lightly. “My golden-haired Maie.” The hand cupped her breast. Her breath hissed inward.
“Careful,” she said. “I’m very tender there.”
“I will be nothing but tenderness.” The kisses reached her lips. “I desire nothing but tenderness for you.”
She turned to him, let his lips brush against hers, then press more firmly. Sensation, a little painful, flushed her breast. His tongue touched hers. Desire rose and she put her arms around him.
The door opened and Claire came in, chattering of George while she undressed. Mood broken, tenderness broken, there was nothing to do but sleep.
*
“Come and look,” Mary said, “here’s a cat eating roses; she’ll turn into a woman, when beasts eat these roses they turn into men and women.” But there was no one in the cottage, only the sound of the wind.
Fear touched her, cold on the back of her neck.
She stepped into the cottage, and suddenly there was something blocking the sun that came through the windows, an enormous figure, monstrous and black and hungry...
Nausea and the sounds of swordplay woke her. A dog was barking maniacally. Mary rose from the bed swiftly and wrapped her shawl around herself. The room was hot and stuffy, and her gorge rose.
She stepped to the window, trying not to vomit, and opened the pane to bring in fresh air.
Coolness touched her cheeks. Below in the courtyard of the inn was Pásmány, the fencing teacher, slashing madly at his pupil, Byron.
Newstead. George, she reminded herself, she would remember he was George. And serve him right.
She dragged welcome morning air into her lungs as the two battled below her. George was in his shirt, planted firmly on his strong, muscular legs, his pretty face set in an expression of intent calculation. Pásmány flung himself at the man, darting in and out, his sword almost fluid in its movement. They were using straight heavy sabers, dangerous even if unsharpened, and no protective equipment at all. A huge black dog, tied to the vermilion wheel of a big dark-blue barouche, barked at the both of them without cease.
Nausea swam over Mary; she closed her eyes and clutched the windowsill. The ringing of the swords suddenly seemed very far away.
“Are they fighting?” Claire’s fingers clutched her shoulder. “Is it a duel? Oh, it’s Byron!”
Mary abandoned the window and groped her way to the bed. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Bysshe blinked muzzily at her from his pillow.
“I must go down and watch,” said Claire. She reached for her clothing and, hopping, managed to dress without missing a second of the action outside. She grabbed a hairbrush on her way out the door and was arranging her hair on the run even before the door slammed behind her.
“Whatever is happening?” Bysshe murmured. She reached blindly for his hand and clutched it.
“Bysshe,” she gasped. “I am with child. I must be.”
“I shouldn’t think so.” Calmly. “We’ve been using every precaution.” He touched her cheek. His hand was cool. “It’s the travel and excitement. Perhaps a bad egg.”
Nausea blackened her vision and bent her double. Sweat fell in stately rhythm from her forehead to the floor. “This can’t be a bad egg,” she said. “Not day after day.”
“Poor Maie.” He nestled behind her, stroked her back and shoulders. “Perhaps there is a flaw in the theory,” he said. “Time will tell.”
No turning back, Mary thought. She had wanted there to be no turning back, to burn every bridge behind her, commit herself totally, as her mother had, to her beliefs. And now she’d succeeded— she and Bysshe were linked forever, linked by the child in her womb. Even if they parted, if— free, as they both wished to be— he abandoned this union, there would still be that link, those bridges burnt, her mother’s defiant inheritance fulfilled...
Perhaps there is a flaw in the theory. She wanted to laugh and cry
at once.
Bysshe stroked her, his thoughts his own, and outside the martial clangor went on and on.
*
It was some time before she could dress and go down to the common rooms. The sabre practice had ended, and Bysshe and Claire were already breaking their fast with Somerset, Smith, and Captain Austen. The thought of breakfast made Mary ill, so she wandered outside into the courtyard, where the two breathless swordsmen, towels draped around their necks, were sitting on a bench drinking water, with a tin dipper, from an old wooden bucket. The huge black dog barked, foaming, as she stepped out of the inn, and the two men, seeing her, rose.
“Please sit, gentlemen,” she said, waving them back to their bench; she walked across the courtyard to the big open gate and stepped outside. She leaned against the whitewashed stone wall and took deep breaths of the country air. Sweet-smelling wildflowers grew in the verges of the highway. Prosperous-looking villagers nodded pleasantly as they passed about their errands.
“Looking for your haunted house, Miss Godwin?”
George’s inevitable voice grated on her ears. She looked at him over her shoulder. “My intention was simply to enjoy the morning.”
“I hope I’m not spoiling it.”
Reluctant courtesy rescued him from her own riposting tongue.
“How was the Emperor’s bed?” she said finally.
He stepped out into the road. “I believe I slept better than he did, and longer.” He smiled at her. “No ghosts walked.”
“But you still fought a battle after your sleep.”
“A far, far better one. Waterloo was not something I would care to experience more than once.”
“I shouldn’t care to experience it even the first time.”
“Well. You’re female, of course.” All offhand, unaware of her rising hackles. He looked up and down the highway.
“D’ye know, this is the first time I’ve seen this road in peace. I first rode it north during the retreat from Quatre Bras, a miserable rainy night, and then there was the chase south after Boney the night of Waterloo, then later the advance with the army to Paris...” He shook his head. “It’s a pleasant road, ain’t it? Much better without the armies.”
Wall, Stone, Craft Page 3
