Dukes and Devilry

by Felicia Greene

  He smiled. A small hint of a smile, a faint curl of the lip, but a smile all the same. Agnes, on the point of swooning, wondered if there was some covert, hidden way he could see her desire, written on her body as evidently as her blush.

  He would come to her. She would go to him. Something had to be done; the spark would blaze into life, here and now, surely… and then Susan’s voice sounded sharply through the trees, and Agnes was wrenched back to reality with a sigh of pure pain.

  ‘Agnes! Cut those branches. We must ensure that the lawns are in good condition; the guests may wish to dance on it, if the storms come later than expected.’

  Agnes looked back at Isaac. He had already turned away, the afternoon sun golden on his bare, broad back.

  That night, as the house slept and the Longwater gardens rustled with hidden life, Agnes ran to the cherry tree. Her feet sodden from the dew-laden grass, the air thick with the perfume of the cherry tree’s blossoming branches, she lay the letter at the foot of the tree—and stopped.

  It didn’t feel safe, leaving it among the tree roots. An animal could take it, or the dew could seep into the paper and spoil the writing. Picking the envelope back up, Agnes pushed it into the hollow that lay deep in the trunk.

  There. She nodded, satisfied; the starlight made the white envelope gleam, nestled in its hollow. It would be safe there, ready for Isaac to read; ready for him to understand that whatever he felt, she felt a thousand times over.

  As she made her way back to her bed, Agnes felt giddy. She had finally been brave… surely, for this excess of courage, the universe could do nothing but reward her.

  The universe often rewarded bravery. Alas, it often punished forgetfulness—and Agnes had forgotten that Susan Colborne would be taking her early morning walk.

  Susan Colborne rarely noticed things. Noticing too many things was a recipe for nervous exhaustion, and she had realised from an early age that she lacked the capacity to maintain interest in what a vast number of people seemingly enjoyed concentrating on; dresses, amusements, and travel being only a few examples. A small world was a manageable one—which is why, when she saw Agnes’ envelope stuffed tightly into the hole in the cherry tree in the middle of her early morning walk, she briefly felt a wave of uncontrollable panic.

  She had always felt like this. Things out of order, out of place, were almost unbearable; she had retired to her bed more than once over chairs left in incorrect rooms, or vases. Approaching the trunk of the cherry, fighting a jolt of nausea, Susan examined the letter with narrow, accusatory eyes.

  Anyone who could so casually disturb the peace and tidiness of Longwater without express permission was to be treated with extreme caution. With a tightly-pinched thumb and finger, Susan withdrew the letter from the trunk with a shudder of disgust.

  A part of her wished to take the letter to the house immediately; Anne, her brother’s wife, would know what to do. She could read people in the same way that Susan could read gardens, understanding all of the complex processes beneath the earth that made things rise to the surface. But that would mean breaking the pattern of her walk—and the thought of doing things out-of-order was almost more horrible than the fact of the letter itself.

  She looked closely at the handwriting on the letter. It was no hand she recognised; Susan corresponded with many people, finding the silence of ink and paper infinitely more comforting than the vagaries of speech. With a sharp sigh, and a reflexive look at the river in order to count the line of stones along the eastern bank, she dropped the offending envelope into her basket of flower-heads and seeds.

  Susan hated surprises. She had an almost bodily revulsion to things occurring in a muddle, or all-at-once, or differently than she had expected. The death of her husband had been a crisis of such magnitude partly because there were so many routines that suddenly had to be altered; so many precise, neatly-considered steps that now no-longer mattered, or were foolish when done alone.

  The only addition to her tightly-kept routine, begun recently after much encouragement from the Hereford sisters, had been maintaining a regular correspondence with Oliver Whitstable. Oliver, the father of one of Henrietta’s friends, possessed gardens almost as splendid as those of Longwater—and Susan, much to her surprise, had thoroughly enjoyed every letter that the man had sent. Instead of wasting paper and ink on foolish diversions, Mr. Whitstable kept to the crucial details; the flora and fauna at Rowhaven, the reproductive habits of large mammals, and the progress of the exotic plants Lydia Hereford and her husband had brought back with them on their voyage to the Neerhoven Isles.

  Every letter, as it turned out, was something of a treasure. There was always something new to learn—and something to disagree with, which was more amusing than anything else. And Mr. Whitstable, most importantly, would never inconvenience a cherry tree by leaving one of his letters inside it.

  ‘Honestly.’ Susan tutted to herself as she neatly tucked the letter into her coat. She would have to complete her morning walk before doing anything about her discovery; breaking such a long-held tradition was something that she would never contemplate, let alone seriously consider. ‘Something will have to be done.’

  Agnes never slept well the night before a ball. When she finally dragged herself out of bed, bleary-eyed and vengeful as the Longwater cockerel crowed its last warning, she knew that the day would be somewhat trying. There would be endless dressing, servants running through the house with armfuls of flowers and cakes… oh, perhaps it would be better to feign illness, but Anne had grown wise to her every trick.

  She did, at least, need to show her face to her sisters, even if the hour for breakfast had long passed. Her first desire was, of course, to go to the river—go to the cherry tree, and see if the letter had been taken—but decorum dictated that bread must be broken in company first.

  As she padded down the stairs, she couldn’t help but notice a distinct lack of noise. She could normally hear Lydia’s strident tones from the upper floor; strange, then, that there was no trace of her now. Not just Lydia; no Henrietta, either, or Anne… why, there weren’t even the voices of Andrew Balfour and Richard Westlake, although Agnes supposed they would already be outdoors.

  She nodded graciously as the butler passed her in the hall. Wilkinson was new, and normally quite friendly; this morning, however, Agnes watched the man practically sprint away from her as if she were on fire.

  Something is wrong. Very wrong.

  Trying to ignore the sudden flutter of alarm in her chest, Agnes made her way to the drawing room. Looking about her, wondering why the entire house suddenly seemed so full of whispers, she reached to open the door—and jumped back with a small cry as the door opened by itself.

  ‘Agnes! You are awake.’ Anne smiled at her; Agnes briefly felt a rush of relief. There was nothing wrong then; everything was and would be perfectly well… but why was Anne’s smile so strained?

  ‘Come in, dear.’ Anne patted her shoulder, one hand resting on her swollen stomach. Agnes looked at her sister’s worried eyes, her cautious expression, and felt a new thrill of foreboding. Was something wrong with Anne’s baby? ‘Let us take a little tea.’

  Warily, in the manner of a cat exploring a new space, Agnes walked into the drawing room. Lydia and Henrietta were seated at the tea-table, their somewhat brittle smiles only increasing the air of danger that threaded through the room like blood in water.

  They knew something. Agnes didn’t know what, or how much, but she sat in her chair as gingerly as someone expecting an earthquake.

  ‘Now, we’ll have no beating about the bush, Agnes.’ Anne spoke calmly as she filled an empty teacup; Agnes took it, not daring to drink. ‘A letter came into Susan Colborne’s possession early this morning—she found it in the gardens. We believe you know who wrote it, and who it was written to.’

  Agnes’ world shrank to a still, screaming point. Her hands gripped the cup; she forced herself to relax, knowing that she would snap the handle if she wasn’t careful
. Avoiding the concerned gazes of her sisters, trying not to gnaw at her lip, she felt a blush rising with a sick sense of inevitability.

  They couldn’t know everything. Not unless Isaac had confessed; not unless they had found her green folio, with all of the flowers he had given her carefully pressed and annotated. Agnes, with the cunning that came from desperation, decided to examine exactly what her sisters thought they knew.

  ‘Forgive me.’ She attempted to arrange her features into something resembling a normal reaction to such news. The world had been tilted abruptly on its head; she had to assemble all the facts before she could respond. ‘What… precisely… are you attempting to imply?’

  ‘Oh, Agnes, must we perform every step of this exhausting dance?’ Lydia leaned closer, her face drawn with concern. ‘From what Susan has unearthed, the situation seems evident enough. In your own surreptitious way, you have begun a romantic entanglement with Charles Mountview!’

  Charles Mountview?

  Charles Mountview… Charles Mountview…

  No. Agnes had never heard the name before in her life.

  ‘I blame myself. I should have known.’ Henrietta threw herself back in her chair with an impatient huff, examining her nails. ‘You have been spending an inordinate amount of time in the gardens lately—I would have followed you, but marriage has curtailed my worst excesses.’ She sighed. ‘More’s the pity.’

  ‘Oh, now. I must admit, I’m rather tickled by the prospect of you being involved in something so clandestine.’ Anne smiled gently, even though her eyes showed a wary concern. ‘It was terribly shrewd of you, arranging a meeting-place that appears on both your usual afternoon walk, and the hunting route the earl has requested to use this past week. That must be why his horses have made such a terrible mess of the lawns.’

  ‘But please, Agnes, do not expect that we will all believe this sprung from nothing!’ Lydia sighed, clearly exasperated. ‘Where did this clandestine communication begin? I have been racking my brains, trying to remember a point at which both you and the earl have been in the same place. It could not have been the night at the theatre, because you had a headache—perhaps the new showing at the gallery, although I cannot recall you leaving my side for more than a moment—’

  ‘No. You are correct.’ Agnes spoke quickly, feeling her blush rising steadily as she looked at the worried faces of her sisters. ‘It was the gallery. His… Charles, and I… we met there.’

  On the face of it, this seemed like an absurd decision. Perhaps the worst decision that Agnes had ever made; feigning a passionate correspondence with a gentleman she hadn’t known existed. But with every second that the lie held, Isaac was safe… and oh, Agnes would not be able to live with herself if her own foolishness put Isaac’s employment at risk.

  ‘Oh, Agnes… I feel a most tremendous urge to shake your shoulders, and demand you tell us everything. Why on earth you chose to keep your own counsel regarding this, I cannot imagine—Charles Mountview seems like a perfectly good match for you.’ Anne sighed. ‘But there is far too much to do today, preparing for the ball. If it were any other day, I would lock the four of us in the study and demand to hear every particular worth repeating.’

  ‘But do not fear.’ Henrietta smiled, looking at Lydia. ‘We may have managed to arrange a way of bringing all this into the light, without attracting the least bit of scandal.’

  ‘Oh?’ Agnes tried to look curious, even as she felt her heart sinking to her shoes. What on earth could they possibly have done?

  ‘The earl was, of course, always invited. It would have been dreadfully rude to give him the run of the woods for a week, and then not invite him.’ Anne smiled. ‘But once it became clear who your letter was for, I sent a letter of my own—a letter asking, with perfect decorum and the correct amount of cheerfulness—that his first dance be danced with you, as a special favour to the lady of the house.’ She gently patted Agnes’ shoulder. ‘Being lady of the house normally involves so much more work than play. I must thank you for the opportunity to play a little.’

  Agnes nodded as her stomach curdled. ‘I… thank you.’

  ‘No need to thank us.’ Lydia nodded. ‘We are here to protect one another, should one of us do something foolish when something wiser is also possible. I have burned the letter, by the way.’ She smiled. ‘And I fear you will have to apologise to Susan—she was most annoyed at it being left in the cherry tree.’

  ‘Wait until tomorrow. All can wait until tomorrow—today, all is preparation for tonight.’ Henrietta sighed contentedly. ‘We must think of how best to wear our gowns, how to wear our hair, how much rouge can be applied without anyone noticing that we are wearing rouge—oh, all of the petty details that make up a truly marvellous series of hours.’

  ‘All the while deciding how quickly we can make the earl propose.’ Lydia winked at Agnes, who felt it like a sword across her neck. ‘Why, who knows? It could happen tonight!’

  As her sisters began to chatter around her, the tension in the room dissolving into an air of knowing practicality, Agnes sat rigid in her chair. She knew she was blushing; the flush in her cheeks was not embarrassment, an emotion she knew all too well—rather, it was terror.

  She had been foolish. Foolish, greedy; exaggerated in the expression of her emotions, which was something she had never thought was possible. She had been impetuous, leaving that letter; far better to have left it earlier, or later, or not to have left it at all.

  Now, thanks to her immoderate desires, she was to be matched with a man she had never met. She was to dance with him, in public, with her sisters smugly sure that this was the best thing for her—oh, could anything be worse?

  The truth would be worse. Isaac would be exposed; she would rather die than have that. Rather dance with a strange man… and there was no opportunity to vanish today, now that her sisters believed they knew everything. She was trapped in the house, forced to prepare for a ball she already hated, and be made ready to dance with a perfect stranger.

  ‘Do not worry, Agnes. We will always protect you—even when you take pains to leave yourself unprotected.’ Anne pulled her into a hug. ‘Now, all you have to be is excited.’

  Excited. Agnes listened to the wild beating of her heart, the sick trembling in her limbs, and let out a pathetic burst of laughter. That is what terror is, then. Excitement, once removed.

  She hadn’t come back to the cherry tree. She hadn’t come back there, and neither had she left anything in the hole in the trunk. Isaac Anderson, silently clipping hedges alongside Susan Colborne as she pointed out errors in the topiary, knew that he was panicking more than was healthy.

  He hadn’t meant to fall in love with Agnes Hereford. Of course he hadn’t meant to fall in love with her; what man would deliberately condemn himself to a life of unrequited ardour? But he had handed the peony to Agnes, like a fool, and hadn’t ceased thinking of her since.

  Isaac gritted his teeth, trying to concentrate on Susan’s words—but his thoughts came on swift, seductive wings, tormenting him, leading him onto ever-more pained fantasies.

  How did one fall desperately in love with a woman both below one’s age and above one’s station, without speaking more than a few words to her? Horribly simple, really; one simply had to be him, Isaac Anderson, still haunted by battlefield screams and the scars on his skin, searching desperately for the peace, grace and sweetness that fighting had taken from him. Longwater had been his peace; he could barely believe it when Susan Colborne had offered him employment based on little more than his dependable physique, and apparent willingness to learn.

  Isaac, astonished by the green splendour surrounding him, had learned. He had learned the myriad needs and ways of a great variety of plants; whether they needed a firm hand or gentle coaxing, whether they needed full sunlight or dark wetlands. He had chopped and built and pruned and watered and cared; cared for each bloom, each shoot, each small animal that had made its way to his ivy-covered cottage at the edge of the Longwater woods
. He had unpicked every hastily-stitched mental wound from his days in the regiment, examining the scars that no longer served him, discarding them with as much gentleness as he could… and he had grown taciturn, and irritable, and lonely for a sentiment stronger than friendship.

  Seven long years had passed since he had arrived in Longwater; seven years of working, forgetting, healing. And just when he had begun to feel restless—begun to long for more than his work, and his evening reading, and his trips to Bath to drink with old friends—he had seen Agnes Hereford, offered her a peony, and kept the rose that had fallen from her hair.

  He still had the mud-stained rose, its silk petals fading as the bloom sat on his desk. He knew it was strange to keep it; Isaac had never considered himself a sentimental man, before Longwater had softened him, but keeping a silk rose from a strange woman’s hair was a step beyond. So was the feeling that had assailed him when he had first looked at Agnes; a kind of awe, as if he were looking at something too precious and delicate to be viewed by mortal eyes.

  That should have been it. The end of it. But Isaac, with a stubbornness that had always been his fateful flaw, had determined to find out as much as he reasonably could about the woman with the rose in her hair.

  ‘Isaac? You almost clipped a budding twig.’ Susan’s voice, rightfully reproachful, intruded upon Isaac’s private thoughts. ‘Are you feeling unwell, or can you be trusted to complete the work?’

  Isaac forced himself to inhabit the present, full of regret at having disappointed Susan. She had always been a firm but fair mistress; eccentric, to be sure, but set in her ways with a strength that Isaac could appreciate. He straightened up, holding the clippers more firmly. ‘I can work, ma’am.’

  ‘Good.’ Susan walked a little way ahead. ‘Continue.’