A Heart Too Proud

by Laura London

“I can be thankful for that. I’d really be in the stew if Mrs. Goodbody discovered that I’d been making improper advances toward you.” Lord Dearborne looked totally unrepentant, though his eyes were softened by an amusement that was seductively tender. I swallowed angrily and continued walking in silence.

  We came out of the orchard onto a daisy-covered hillside dotted with sun-warmed boulders. I turned to Lord Dearborne again. My voice sounded strange to my ears as I said:

  “Is this some game you like to play, seducing country girls in the afternoon? Pray, what do you do with your mornings?”

  “Seduce city girls. No, don’t run away from me now.” I had made a movement away from him, but his arm had shot out to imprison my wrist ruthlessly. “What you’d really like to do is to stay here and tell me what an unconscionable libertine I am. Come, why hold back?”

  “Because I don’t want to fight with you. How can I fight with you when you’re so much better at this than I am? When I like people, then I want to be friends with them. And when I don’t like them, then I try to understand why. But you… make these complicated approaches filled with innuendos and subtleties that I can’t understand and you arouse feelings in me that I don’t understand either. All I know is that it’s not gentlemanly of you to deliberately try to—well, confuse me in that way when you don’t care a pin about me and I’ll probably end up being hurt.”

  “Listen, infant, if I wasn’t ‘gentlemanly,’ you would have been deflowered a month ago.”

  I am not a great lover of missish behavior, but I must admit that at that moment it would have been nice to faint. I felt the blood come blistering hot to my cheeks.

  “For pity’s sake…” It was a miserable bleat and must have touched him for his face lost some of its grimness. His hands, friendly now, pushed me carefully down to sit on a convenient boulder.

  “Pet, I’m sorry. That was ill-said of me. I make a much better guardian for lively youths than beautiful innocents.” His voice sounded not unkind; even, to my surprise, a little rueful. “I’m very conscious that if I had encouraged you to trust me you would have taken my advice and not left Barfrestly unprotected on the afternoon that you were struck. It’s hardly your own fault that you don’t inspire paternal sentiments in me and there is no reason why you should suffer for it.” He paused, glancing up the hillside. “Look up there. Your intrepid sister is gathering another armful of plants. I hope to God that she learned to distinguish burnweed this morning!”

  For a few moments we sat listening to the light wind whispering through the nodding daisies. A nesting warbler ventured a few bars of tuneful song.

  “Elizabeth, was the man that you followed through Mudbury the same man that you saw in the church crypt at Dyle?”

  Somehow, the question didn’t surprise me. I knew that Christopher confided most things in Lord Dearborne, and would probably have told him about the incident in Dyle. The marquis looked fully capable of putting two and two together.

  “Yes, he was the same man. That’s why I followed him. I was afraid that he was coming to Mudbury to hush me up so that I couldn’t identify him. Everyone says that the smugglers are very ruthless and will murder you without so much as a by-your-leave.”

  A grin played around the corners of Lord Dearborne’s mouth. “So naturally, seeing such a dangerous character, you set off in hot pursuit? Why did you call him Monsieur Sacre Bleu?”

  “That’s what he said. When I bumped into him in the crypt, he swore ‘Sacre bleu.’ ” I made my voice low and guttural and repeated the curse. “He said it just like that. Do you want to know what I think?” He nodded a respectful assent. “I think that he was French. And what’s more, I think that he has something to do with spying for Napoleon because it’s said that the smugglers sometimes abet the spies. Henri’s death, Monsieur Sacre Bleu and the bomb at the play—I think they’re tied together in some way.”

  “Um, you may be right. I’ll pass the information on to the War Department.”

  “You’re laughing at me now. I think this is a very serious situation.”

  “Exactly, my indomitable infant. Which is why the less you have to do with the whole thing the better.”

  Christa came down the hill to sit nearby, and began braiding daisies into a crown which she soon arranged into my hair.

  “You know what else I think? I think that you’ve heard of Monsieur Sacre Bleu before, because you didn’t seem too surprised when I described him to you after I was hit on the head. Furthermore, the reason that he came to Mudbury wasn’t to kill me because he would have done it when I was lying there unconscious if he had wanted to. Which means—”

  “Which means you should regard one knock on the head as a warning to refrain from meddling in what you have shrewdly divined to be a very serious business.” Lord Dearborne sighed. “It’s hard to believe that such a stubborn disposition could lodge in such a sweet little body. Only conceive of my feelings upon discovering you unconscious in the spinny.”

  “You probably thought ‘Aha, an excellent opportunity for some wenching,’ ” I said as sternly as I could. I slid down to sit at the base of the boulder and curled my knees up under me. “You think that because you are the ‘male authority’ (as Kit would say), that you can selfishly keep all the mystery to yourself?”

  “Tantaene animis coelestibus irae?” quoted the marquis with a grin.

  “Do you think you can flummox me with a little schoolboy Latin? ‘In heavenly minds can such resentments dwell?’ ” I translated, scornfully. “Yes, they can, except that my mind isn’t heavenly in the least. And I am still worried about Christopher. He says that he’s not in danger, but I don’t know if I can believe him. You both seem convinced that I am unable to bear the full force of the truth.”

  “Elizabeth, why is it so impossible for you to place a little faith in my ability to protect you and Kit? You’ll be perfectly safe as long as you go nowhere without an escort.” He paused to pluck off a caterpillar that had ventured onto the hem of my gown. “I lay the whole problem directly at the door of Mudbury’s vicar. He should have spent less time filling you with the exciting adventures of Jason and Odysseus and more time on the virtues of obedience. Did you never learn the parable of Pandora’s box? I only want to protect you, Elizabeth.”

  I felt my old companion, the resentment gargoyle, dig his claws tightly into my shoulder. Before you came to Barfrestly, Milord, I never needed any protection.

  Chapter Ten

  London, London! It was evening when we arrived and the town twinkled with a million lights. The streets were filled with an astounding array of coaches, wagons, and light sporting vehicles. The chairmen carried flambeaus which lit their faces eerily as they threaded their way through crowds of pedestrians and hawkers with portable stalls. I saw one girl pushing a tipsy cart filled with pots of blooming flowers “all a-blowin’ and all a-growin’.” The dignified men in plush breeches, tailed coats, and powdered wigs were footmen, or so Christopher informed us. He wasn’t so forthcoming with information about an old lady in a long duffle coat with a group of dressed-up young ladies in tow who stood talking to a group of sailors on one street corner. “Shocking,” I heard Mrs. Goodbody pronounce, though I saw Christopher hide a smile when Christa guessed they might all be in a “school of some kind.”

  It seemed incredible to me that there could be such a broad expanse of buildings and people. The same space in Kent would have covered many villages, marsh, thousands of acres of farmland, and a forest or two. But here were just rows of houses and mobs of people, all looking worried and hurried, rushing here and there, and none of them seeming to mind a whit the foul state of the air they were breathing. It made my eyes water.

  The whole experience of driving into London made the possibilities of riots, wars, starvation, and disease so much more real. The walls were covered with posters lampooning people I had only heard about in a very distant fashion, people like “Prinny,” whom I had known only as the Prince Regent and “Boney” Na
poleon Bonaparte. I had heard how unemployment was a problem, and now I understood. How could there ever be enough jobs to go around among so many people? Indeed, I did see more than a few thin, dirty, and shabbily dressed. And though there were houses row upon row, Christopher told me that he had read once in a republican leaflet that as many as twenty thousand Londoners were without any shelter whatever and slept under bridges and in parks. Some poor families lived in a single room. Families even shared rooms. Christa and Caro were reading out of a guidebook.

  “Listen to this, Elizabeth. It says ‘a man who saunters about the capital with pockets on the outside of his coat deserves no pity.’ What does that mean?”

  “He’s talking about pickpockets,” said Christopher. “They take things right from your pockets while you’re not looking if you’re not careful.”

  “Why do they do that?” asked Christa.

  “I suppose because they don’t have anything of their own,” said Christopher simply. “You have to watch out for them all. This includes street thugs, footpads, housebreakers, and counterfeiters. And I do hope to frighten you. Even where we will be staying, at the marquis’s house in Mayfair, you are never to go out alone, even in the daytime, without being accompanied by at least a footman or a maid. That is the rule for anyone living in London.”

  The twins were awed by that last bit of information, but I thought it to be one more of the marquis’s surveillance rules.

  We were now entering a different area of the city, in which streets were not as crowded, and the atmosphere seemed more sedate. People were moving at not such a rapid pace and the houses were larger and better kept.

  “What area is this, Kit?” I asked.

  “This is Mayfair. We are getting closer to Uncle Nicky’s humble quarters.”

  The carriage finally stopped in a well-kept square lined with genteel mansions whose windows winked candlelight. We stepped down from the carriage into a spacious forecourt and could glimpse the handsome facade of Lorne House through a beautiful row of plane trees. Mrs. Goodbody looked approvingly up at the trees, murmuring reassuringly to us that if London had such trees then it couldn’t be all bad. I needed all the reassurance that I could get because the thought of crossing His Lordship’s elegant threshold made me feel like a mule at the milliner’s. Just as I was playing about with the idea of crawling back to hide in the coach, the highly finished hardwood door in the mansion’s porched entrance flew open and a tall girl wreathed in smiles and jade taffeta came gliding into the graveled courtyard. She dispensed loving hugs to Christopher and Lord Dearborne, who received the embrace in a surprisingly fatherly spirit. Even before I heard Lord Dearborne introducing her to Mrs. Goodbody, I realized that this was Lady Anne Crawford, Christopher’s fashionable sister. Their family resemblance was strongest in their manners, which were frank, positive, and unaffectedly friendly. Lady Anne had Christopher’s soft sable-colored eyes and shining brown hair. But here the resemblance ended. In Lady Anne, Christopher’s classical features were replaced by a wide stretch of mouth and a tiny button nose that seemed totally inadequate for all that girl. Actually, since she’s closer to thirty, perhaps “girl” is undignified. But so she strikes one. She took my hands in a kindly grip as we were introduced, continuing with the vivacious chatter that she had begun.

  “Christopher, you told me she was a beauty, but there are degrees, you wretch. You should have warned me that I was about to be presented with the task of chaperoning Venus come to earth!” she said. She turned to me. “My dear child, I don’t know if you’re going to love London or not, but I can quite safely guarantee that London is going to love you!” With this lavish assessment, she swept us into the house with promises of tea, bathing water, and restful bedchambers. We crossed the marble floor of a graceful entrance hall, and climbed the central staircase to the first floor. My sisters leaned perilously over the flow of wrought-iron handrail, the better to view the subdued design in the stained glass fanlight set over the main doorway.

  My bedroom matched the tone of the rest of Lorne House, graciously luxurious with an exquisite lightness of detail. The walls were hung in Wedgewood blue and cream damask, and the colors appeared again throughout the room. After my little cot, surely I would be lost in the lovely canopied bed hung in blistered satin! The rest of the room was furnished richly but sparsely, giving an airy, spacious feeling. Even my fantasies of life in a marquis’s mansion had not been audacious enough to imagine this.

  The greatest hit with the twins turned out to be a little room adjoining their chamber, which someone had discreetly decided to name a water closet. I must say it is a marvelous invention, though I have never heard of such a thing before and if you don’t have one, I can heartily recommend its installation!

  Also, to my amazement, a friendly lady’s maid came to help me prepare for dinner. Imagine, Elizabeth Cordell with a real lady’s maid! She helped me to choose a clinging gown of watered bisque silk that she promised was just the thing for “informal” dining, and coaxed my hair into a casual tumble of dancing curls.

  “Ooo, miss, don’t you look something like!” she enthused. Never before had I looked quite so fashionable. I was so excited that I gave the little maid a swift hug which almost prostrated her from shock.

  I was to await Lady Anne’s escort to the dining parlor, but decided immediately against so tame a course. Slowly, and giving myself monstrous airs, I descended the stairway to the first floor. Smiling and inclining my head graciously, I curtseyed deeply to the well-kept portraits that lined the walls. Men in Elizabethan ruffs, powdered wigs, and sparkling jewels stared haughtily back at me, with the vivid blue eyes of the marquis.

  Curiously, like an inquisitive mouse, I poked my head into one high-ceilinged reception room after the next. Shining velvet and satin draperies, glinting crystal, and islands of exotic carpets set off the delicately carved and graceful furniture. It was like a place out of a dream.

  The double doors to the grand salon on the first floor stood open and I ventured cautiously inside, hardly able to believe that I would not be ejected as an intruder at any moment. Crossing the high-polish parquetry floor (much too lovely to be walked on), I came to the huge bay windows that overlooked the square, now twinkling with a hundred candlelit windows. I felt rather dwarfed by all this magnificence. Lord Dearborne came in to join me, the perfect foil for his exquisite surroundings.

  “I was admiring the view, Milord,” I offered nervously.

  “Yes, the view is enchanting this evening.” The smile that swept me was lazily appreciative. “Were you shocked by your first glimpse of the wicked pace of London life?”

  “The bustle in the streets, you mean? It made me dizzy but it’s so peaceful here that it might be an evening at Barfrestly. Except that here is rather more… incredible. It’s like a palace,” I confided shyly. His smile was, for once, quite kind. I felt my self-confidence increase accordingly. “I’ve had so much excitement at Barfrestly lately that London may well be dull in comparison. I’ve been here several hours already without one person trying to knock me on the head, blow me up, or toss me across the front of their saddle,” I said, for a little practice at repartee.

  “If London gets too dull, let me know and I’ll try to arrange some excitement for you,” promised Lord Dearborne, giving me a look that demonstrated that it is better to practice one’s repartee with less dangerous partners.

  Lady Anne joined us then, and Christopher. I had been dreading my first dinner in this exalted company. My sisters were dining in their room tonight with an early bedtime, and Mrs. Goodbody ate belowstairs with the marquis’s servants. At first I was upset by the notion of taking my meals away from her, but when I suggested that I could eat downstairs too, she vetoed the idea with such horror that I dared not mention it again.

  “After all the years I have suffered, seeing you denied your true station in life, I’m not going to have you saying anything so silly! Lordy me, whatever would your poor mama say? ’Tis like a wis
h come true, seeing you in your rightful company,” Mrs. Goodbody had lectured.

  I remembered an anecdote Christopher had told me about the great Beau Brummell, who is quite the most fashionable man in England. Once, at a dinner party, he had asked a footman to name him his neighboring diners rather than trouble himself to turn his head to discover their identities on his own. Thankfully, I was to discover that affectation due more to avoid the disarrangement of the fastidious beau’s neckwear than to the formality prevailing at the supper tables of the haute monde.

  Lady Anne was the liveliest lady imaginable, and alternately teased her brother, shared the latest political gossip with Lord Dearborne, and upon hearing that I was interested in classical studies, announced that she would take me to see Lord Elgin’s marbles on the very next afternoon, though “Nicky disapproves dreadfully of the method of their acquisition.”

  “Yes, do take her, Anne. I daresay she will regard them as sacred relics,” said Christopher, leaning over to tap me on the nose. “Better enjoy your leisure while you can, ’Lizbeth, I daresay m’sister has a million devilish places to drag us to thereafter!”

  “Don’t I just!” sparkled Lady Anne. “I’ve only two weeks left before I join my husband in Europe; we’ll be gone for four whole months. ’Tis an eternity, I assure you. So I’ve to pack four months of socializing into a scanty fortnight and that takes a deal of ingenuity. Oh, Elizabeth, there are so many people that I want you to meet and not near enough time. Don’t worry, though, for as soon as we are back from Europe we will install in my dear John’s house on St. James Square. A mammoth pile I promise you, but the most modish of locations! And you will come and stay with us for an extended visit. No, no, my dear, don’t refuse me. Indeed, I would have had you come the moment I learned of your existence from Christopher, but all is at sixes and sevens with us with John suddenly being given that foreign assignment. He left last week for Amsterdam, John that is, and I was so delighted when Nicky sent to ask me to stay here. Ah, speaking of devilish places,” Lady Anne continued with a sly glance at the marquis, “Kit, my love, tomorrow night we go to Lady Catherine Doran’s for a ball. It will be a dreadful squeeze, I know, but all the world comes.”