Love & Folly (23 page)

"He'll drink himself into the gutter in a week."

"I think not, but if he does at least he'll know he had the choice."

"And what of Peggy and the children. Don't they count?"

He softened. "I know it's hard. Pegeen needn't go at once. Jerry means her to stay here until he
has established himself, but she will go sooner or later. He's her man..."

"And she'll see it as her duty. Very well, but it's not fair and I don't like it."

His eyes were dark. "I don't like it either and perhaps Peggy won't, but Jerry must have his
chance."

Emily stalked off to nurse Sally. She found Peggy McGrath at her usual station and asked the
woman bluntly if she knew of McGrath's intent. Though Peggy exclaimed and repined and shed a number of
loquacious Irish tears, it was clear that she had known of the horrible plan for days and that she meant to
follow her husband home to her native turf.

Emily had learnt to value Peggy McGrath in the years since the woman had first come to her with
Amy and Tommy. She had thought Peggy returned her regard. She knew the nurse was attached to the
children.

"How can you bear to leave them?"

"Sure, and it's a hard thing," Peggy mourned.

Sally nuzzled Emily's breast like a piglet and made quite a rude noise. "But the children--"

"Ah, the poor darlings."

"Peggy," Emily cried, "how can you? You don't have to go."

Peggy's eyes widened in honest shock. "If I didn't, McGrath'd kill me for sure, the ould divil.
Besides, he's me husband, missus."

It was no use.

In her agitation over the McGraths, Emily half-forgot Lady Clanross's letter. Richard reminded
her of it that evening when they had escaped from the withdrawing room and her father.

"Do you want to visit Brecon?"

"I don't know. Do you?" Emily had ripped off her earbobs and was unpinning her hair.

"I must go, at least for a short stay. Tom wants me to look at some letters with an eye to editing
them."

"Leaving
me
behind." Emily was still feeling surly.

"It's as you choose, Emily." He hesitated. "If you'd rather not go, I can take the three oldest with
me."

Emily turned and stared at him.

He had removed his neckcloth and coat and sat on the bed in shirtsleeves. "Lady Clanross has a
sister Amy's age, and I mean to continue working with Tommy."

"What of Matt?"

"There are bound to be horses. Tom says the lake is stocked." He undid the buttons of his shirt
and pulled it over his head, muttering muffled words.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said, it's time Matt saw a bit of the world."

The words worked in Emily's brain.

"Besides," he added, "I'd be in his black books forever if I left him behind."

"That's true."

He yanked the nightshirt over his head.

"I suppose you are trying, in your underhand way, to suggest that I, too, ought to see more of the
world than my own corner of Hampshire."

"'Thus we with windlasses and with assays of bias, by indirections find directions out,'" Richard
quoted. He was quoting a great deal lately. Emily wondered why.

"I like Hampshire."

"It has its charms."

Emily's suspicion eased and she began to laugh. "Oh, very well, Richard. At least I shall escape
Papa at his harvesttime worst. Must I read up on the moons of Jupiter before I meet Lady Clanross?"

"I found her conversable in plain English," Richard said seriously.

* * * *

The, rapport Johnny had reestablished with Maggie was a tender plant. He meant to cultivate it.
He had not made her an offer of marriage. He thought that might frighten her. Colonel Falk
notwithstanding, he wasn't sure he ought to be so bold so soon.

He was now in no doubt of his own feelings. He wanted to marry the ninth Earl of Clanross's fifth
daughter. That was that. Every hour spent in her company deepened his conviction.

Though her headaches had miraculously vanished, Maggie was still shaken by her ordeal. She had
not Jean's resiliency. Johnny found the cropped hair especially touching--perhaps because he associated it
with illness. The short curls gave Maggie an elfin air he found irresistible. She looked so delicate a strong
gust of wind might pick her up and blow her over the beeches into another country, faeryland
perhaps.

He knew he was being fanciful. His imagination was alive with phantasies. He dreamt often and in
brilliant colour, and more than once found his attention wandering from a letter he ought to be copying to
daylight visions of Maggie in a rose-covered cottage with prattling infants at her knee.

Those visions led him to sober reflection on the future. He had a modest income from the
Consols his godmother had left him and Clanross paid him a handsome wage. When he married, his father
had promised to settle five hundred pounds a year on him--if his father were not so offended as to cut him
off with a shilling. He had not heard from his father.

He would have to find another source of income. He liked politicks but it might be years before a
seat fell vacant. In any case, members were not paid. Whilst he waited for opportunity to knock, he must
gain practical experience of the art and persuade Clanross that his interest was not a passing fancy. He
thought of Owen's odes and Colonel Falk's history and wondered if he might not take up writing,
too--political writing.

It was a difficult time to be a writer on political subjects, but Johnny thought closely reasoned,
moderately expressed opinion must find a publisher. Probably the editors would be grateful to read a piece
of prose that did not indulge in satirical exaggeration. Such extravagance was foreign to Johnny's
temper.

In the weeks before the Brecon party were set to return to London for the levee, Johnny began to
work on a temperate, well-reasoned plea for reform of Parliament. He would send it to the
Quarterly
Review
. A friend from his Oxford days was the son of one of the editors.

His efforts at composition did not detract from his careful courtship. Maggie was delighted to
listen to him, eager to read what he had writ. And explaining himself to Maggie helped him clarify his ideas.
He was happy to instruct her when her comprehension faltered, but she understood a great deal. She came
of a political family, after all. Her father had been a prominent Whig.

* * * *

"Johnny and Maggie are smelling of April and May," Elizabeth said.

"Is that bad?" Tom laid the letter he had been reading aside.

"I don't know. I hope they haven't come to a secret understanding. No, Johnny wouldn't be so
lost to propriety." Elizabeth paced the carpet of their private drawing room. "At least Jean is biddable these
days."

"Now that I do find suspicious."

"Oh, dear..." Elizabeth caught the twinkle in his eyes and plumped onto the sofa beside him. "Am
I fuss-budgeting?"

"I think you're making yourself more anxious than you need to."

"Perhaps," Elizabeth said darkly. "Perhaps not. I wish Owen in Timbuktu."

"I can send him to the Lothian house. Those books need to be catalogued, too."

"That's true, but he's making progress here."

"He's a good scholar with a genuine love of books," Tom said gently. "And his poetry has some
merit."

"Hang his poetry. If you must be a patron of the arts," she grumbled, "take up painters. Or
musicians. I know a worthy violinist."

"Bald and sixty?"

"Fat and forty with a wife and seven hopeful children."

"I'll leave the musicians to you. The truth is," he added ruefully, "I feel I should follow your
father's example but I haven't his education. That exhibit we saw last autumn..."

"The historical painters?"

He nodded. "I remember one battle scene. Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham, I think it was. I
stared at it and kept telling myself it was great art, but all the while I was seeing little puffballs of smoke
issuing from misplaced cannons and thinking that the company in the middle distance would be chewed up
in the first barrage."

Elizabeth laughed. "But you admired that sea battle of Mr. Turner's."

"It was very like. I felt the
mal de mer
coming on."

"You don't have to do everything Papa did, Tom."

"God forbid, but if men of wealth don't use their wealth to some purpose, what good is it?"

"Patronise the sciences, then."

"You can't want another telescope!"

Elizabeth acknowledged the hit. She was amused and rather touched by Tom's confession. She had
grown up in a milieu of wealth and took its benefits for granted most of the time. She knew Tom did not.
Though she honoured his sense of duty, she couldn't help reflecting that her father had not made his
position such a
chore
. Certainly he had enjoyed his political duties more than Tom did.

"Does Barney have news of the divorce bill?" she asked, for Tom's letter had come from town.
"Anne sent an account of the queen's triumphal entry into London, with Alderman Wood at her side,
forsooth, and the Mob pulling her carriage through the City. What a scene!"

Tom shrugged. "Someone is advising the queen shrewdly."

"Brougham?"

"I daresay. Barney writes of disaffection among the Guards. One regiment wore the queen's
colours on duty. The government are fools to pursue the bill. All the discontented factions in the country
have taken up the queen's cause. It's a focus for them."

"Should you not rejoice?"

"The whole business is a waste of time," he said irritably. "I feel no urge to defend the queen's
hypothetical honour. If I thought the Opposition would gain a leader from the trial I'd accept the prospect,
but such sordid revelations as we're bound to hear can only throw up a storm of muck."

"Will the streets be safe for the levee?"

He frowned. "The Mob resent Prinny's extravagance and there may be demonstrations.
However, the mood in town seems good-natured enough at the moment."

"And your reputation as a Radical will insure our safety."

"Do you dislike my opinions, Elizabeth?"

"No, I'm with you." She glanced at him. He slouched in his corner of the sofa, brooding.
"Perhaps the Mob will take our horses from the shafts and pull us to Carlton House in triumph."

He met her eyes and his mouth relaxed in a smile. "Your sisters would relish that."

The morning of the levee dawned clear and warm. Maggie and Jean rose well before the
chambermaid entered with their hot water. Maggie could scarcely contain her impatience. Jean dawdled.
Even so, they reached the breakfast table so early Clanross was still drinking coffee.

His friend, Colonel Falk, who had come up to town again on legal business, was reading
The
Times
. He set it aside and both men rose as the girls entered.

Clanross inspected them. "You look as if you may be able to withstand the rigours of the
day."

Jean made a face and took the chair he held for her. Waite, the butler, summoned by some
obscure instinct, had come in. He held a chair for Maggie. Colonel Falk gave them an abstracted smile and
returned to his newspaper.

When the girls had been served and their tea poured, Maggie said, "I shall wear your brooch
today, Clanross."

"I'm honoured, my lady." He smiled at her. "Have you got the hang of walking about with a train
yet? Devilish contraptions, trains. I tripped on mine and nearly fell at Black Rod's feet during the opening of
Parliament."

"They've done away with hoops," Jean offered around a bite of toast. "Elizabeth said hers caught
on a whatnot table and knocked an ormolu vase to the floor. It fell at the Princess Sophia's feet. Lizzie was
mortified."

"Not for long, I'll wager." Clanross took a sip of coffee. He drank it black and sugarless, a
barbarism Maggie had found fascinating when she first saw it. She had tried black coffee once.

She sipped her sweet bohea. "Johnny means to make his bow, too, you know."

"So I've heard," Clanross said gravely.

Colonel Falk set the paper down. "Will Dyott have to wear a train and ostrich plumes,
too?"

Maggie knew when she was being twitted. She took a dignified sip of tea. "When Clanross was
presented to his majesty at the pavilion he only had to wear knee breeches."

The colonel's eyebrows twisted. "I wish I might have seen him."

Clanross grinned.

Maggie tried to explain through a fit of giggles that Clanross had been otherwise conventionally
attired. "Were you presented, sir?"

"Only to Bungy Louie."

Clanross looked at his friend with raised eyehrows.

"The king of the French, I should say. He was on his way to Paris, so it was a hasty affair, lasted a
mere three hours."

Jean had been spreading marmalade on her toast. She paused with the knife in midair. "Three
hours!"

"Waiting," Colonel Falk explained. "The audience itself lasted five minutes."

A blob of the compote dropped onto the cloth. Jean daubed at it with her napkin. "I hope we
need not stand about for three hours waiting."

"I daresay you must," Clanross said sympathetically. "However, I'm told Canton House is full of
remarkable
objets d'art
and there will be a great many other people to quiz."

"All the ladies will be dressed alike," Jean said gloomily. "White with blue trains and ostrich
plumes. Tedious."

"Don't balk at the gate, Jean. Elizabeth will disinherit you." Clanross spoke with fervour.

Jean wrinkled her nose. "Oh, I'll go through with it. But it seems a dreadful waste of time."

Colonel Falk looked up from his paper. "Ah, there you are, Dyott. I hear you mean to kiss our
noble monarch's hand."

"Um, yes." Johnny blinked sleepily from the door way. Maggie smiled at him and he smiled
back.

"What news, sir?" He poured himself a cup of tea.

"Macassar oil." Colonel Falk was rereading an article on the front page of
The
Times
.