Love & Folly (9 page)

Emily fancied she had succeeded in diverting Johnny from his obsession with the Brecon ladies for
a few hours. She sent him off to his bed, for he looked pale. Then, because McGrath was a trifle elevated,
she and Richard saw their guests out. A groom in Sir Robert Wilson's livery strode up with a message as
Richard was about to close the door against the icy wind. Emily's heart sank. She took the shivering lad
belowstairs for a tot of McGrath's rum, tipped him and sent him off to the hostelry Sir Robert
patronised.

Richard was still in the foyer, frowning at the letter, when she returned.

She touched his arm. "My dear..."

"I'll come up shortly, Emily." He spoke with his usual calm, but she felt the tension in his
arm.

"I'll give Mrs. Harry my orders and await you upstairs." When she went to their bedchamber, she
donned her nightclothes and sat for a time at her vanity, brushing her short curls and trying not to think the
worst.

The Dowager Duchess of Newsham had suffered grave illness twice since Emily married Richard.
Both times Richard's half sister, Lady Sarah, had tried to effect a reconciliation between her mother and
Richard, who was the fruit of the dowager's affair with Lord Powys. Both times Richard had refused to visit
the ailing woman. His obduracy puzzled Emily as much as it appalled her, for he was not a spiteful man.
Although his half brother, the present Duke of Newsham, had done Richard great harm, Richard had taken
no steps to avenge himself, even when an opportunity presented. Why he should rebuff the dowager so
coldly, when he treated the duke with forebearance, Emily could not imagine.

Emily had thought her grace charming, and she knew the duchess felt some interest in Richard's
well being and considerable concern for her grandchildren. After Harry's christening three years earlier,
Emily had writ her unacknowledged mother-in-law a note describing the child, who was named for her
own father. She sent it off without considering Richard's reaction. When she told him what she had done he
was furious.

"Don't you see how your letter could be construed?" he'd demanded.

Emily began to lose
her
temper. "Enlighten me."

"The duchess comes of a powerful family--the Tyrells, I mean, not the Ffoukes. Your little note
will look as if you are currying favour for your son."

Emily gaped. "Your mind is poisoned."

"That may be, but I've good reason to know how that order of society conducts itself to
importunate outsiders. Harry does not need the duchess's patronage."

"I see." She drew a breath. "If that's how you feel, I'm sorry, Richard. I meant no such
thing."

"I know you didn't," he said gruffly.

They did not discuss the matter again, but though Emily could see a certain warped logic in his
viewpoint, she was unconvinced. The Dowager Duchess of Newsham, however exalted her rank, had a
grandparent's interest in grandchildren. Emily's own father doated on his grandchildren, including his infant
namesake, and she did not see why the dowager should be immune to the universal fascination with the
future.

Now sitting at her dressing table, Emily brooded over the puzzle of unmotherly mothers and
unfilial sons. When the chill in the air penetrated her thick robe, she added a reckless shovel of seacoal to
the fire instead of climbing into bed. She had no intention of retiring until Richard chose to explain the
letter.

She fetched a volume of poetry from her nightstand and composed herself to read, but the words
floated on the page and the candle flame flickered in the draughts. Finally, when she had reread Mr.
Coleridge's apostrophe to Mont Blanc for the fifth time she heard her husband's footsteps in the hail.

She turned as he entered. "What is it, Richard?"

"Another summons."

"Then she's alive." Relief surged through her.

"Yes. Or was when Sarah writ."

"I'm glad."

"Will you advise me? I don't know what's right." He made a clumsy gesture.

She turned back to the mirror, puzzled, trying to think what she might say. She toyed with her
brush. "Right in general or right for you, Richard?"

"I don't know." He drew a ragged breath. "Sarah is a sentimentalist. I assume..."

Light dawned. Emily sat up straight, her eyes on his reflected face. "You assume Sarah has
badgered your mother into sending for you."

He rubbed his forehead. "I may be wrong but I've no reason to think otherwise." His eyes were
dark with very old pain.

She drew a deep breath. "You should go to her, Richard."

"Very well. Robert's carriage is waiting at the Mitre." He looked up at her and spoke more
naturally. "He sent from London. The duchess is at his town house, it seems. I'll leave at noon. I might as
well take Dyott with me."

"What of the copying?"

"Dyott wants to leave us. The election, I daresay."

"Oh Richard,
not
the election. He is brooding over the younger ladies at Brecon and
their resident Poet. He has forgot the election." She was relieved when Richard's mouth quirked in a
smile.

He came to her and touched her nape, rubbing the warm skin. "I'm glad you see these things,
Emily. I don't." He kissed her cheek. "Come to bed. It's very late."

* * * *

The carriage jounced over a frozen rut and Johnny's death grip on the strap tightened.

"Hurt?" Colonel Falk leaned forward and flipped the travelling rug back over Johnny's
outstretched legs.

"It's bearable." Johnny's breath came in a gasp of steam. The air was icy. He was sitting sidewise
on the well-padded seat with both legs across it. Though the position was more comfortable than facing
forward with bent knees, it rendered every jolt perilous. He felt he might roll off onto the floor at any
moment, his leg hurt abominably, and his arm ached from gripping the strap. The motion of the carriage
was beginning to make him queasy.

"Shall I direct the coachman to drive slower?"

"No, thank you, sir." Johnny swiped at his damp brow with his free hand.

Colonel Falk leaned back against the squabs and resumed his frowning contemplation of the frigid
landscape. He had been silent for the most part since their journey began, and if his mother were ill it was
no wonder.

Nevertheless Johnny felt impelled to apologise. "I'm sorry to leave you with so much copying
undone, sir."

Falk shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

"Shall you include a map of the action before Maastricht?" The carriage heaved. Johnny grabbed
for the strap.

"I may chuck the whole thing."

Johnny stared but Colonel Falk was still looking out the window. "After all that work?"

Falk turned with apparent reluctance. "No amount of labour is going to redeem the book, Dyott.
It's rubbish."

"You keep saying that. I don't see it. I've read far worse."

Perversely, the direct contradiction seemed to cheer Falk. "That's hardly a commendation. You're
right, though. I exaggerate. It's a clear enough account with no particular merit other than clarity. I've come
close to publishing work I was ashamed of before, but this is the first time I've hated what I was writing
whilst I was writing it." He pulled the flaps of his greatcoat over his knees and regarded Johnny with
quizzical hazel eyes. "Tom said you were with his company."

The change of subject startled Johnny. "Er, only for a sixmonth. I kept falling ill." In the
Peninsula, Johnny had succumbed to ague, dysentery, boils, ague, pleurisy, and ague, in that order. He had
passed the Vittoria campaign groaning in the baggage train.

"You must have joined after Tom exchanged from the Rifles or I'd remember you."

"It was 1813."

"If you were in the field half a year you know how to value military glory."

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's a load of misery and a pack of lies," Falk said with the air of a dominie who has a slow scholar
on his hands. "History compounds the lies."

Johnny felt as if he were being tossed in a blanket. Surely Falk understood glory? He was a hero of
Waterloo.

"Historians are liars?"

Falk smiled. "All writers are liars. Historians just don't admit it."

Johnny brooded. The coach swayed. When Colonel Falk continued to regard him quizzically,
Johnny muttered, "I don't agree. The truth exists and a writer should at least try to find it."

"You may be right, but how?"

"I don't know! I'm not a writer. And where is the profit in bootless philosophizing?" Johnny burst
out, goaded beyond his usual deference to his elders.

Falk cocked an eyebrow. "For five minutes at least you forgot the pain in your leg, so it can't have
been a dead loss."

Johnny stared. "That's true, sir, but I now have a pain in my head as well."

Colonel Falk laughed. "I beg your pardon, Dyott. I'm a vile physician, am I not? I daresay I shall
finish my three-volume lie. My overdraught admits of no other solution. Your labour will not go for
nothing. Do you mean to canvas for Tom's candidates? Emily tells me you've an interest in Reform."

Relieved, Johnny spoke of the election and his desire to enter the world of Whig politicks. Falk
refrained from further Berkeleyan questioning and Johnny forgot his resentment.

At Clapham they changed horses. It was dark and snowing again when the carriage pulled into
Grosvenor Square and halted before the Conway house. From the number of windows alight with candles,
Johnny supposed Clanross had returned from Brecon. The butler answered the coachman's imperious
knocking. When Johnny had winced his way out of the carriage, he entered once more into the light of
common sense. He made his farewells with more haste than courtesy and stumped upstairs on his
crutches.

He went to bed at eight after tucking into a snug dinner. Clanross and Barney Greene had gone
off to separate political dinners and neither was expected until late, so Johnny retired with a clear
conscience. He slept for several hours, then drowsed as the ache in his leg dictated. The bell clock on the
mantel had chimed eleven when he heard a soft knock at his door.

"Come in," he called sleepily.

Clanross entered, shielding a candle. "I thought you might be wakeful. Waite says you appeared
at the door this afternoon in a private carriage. Why the devil did you risk crocking your leg up? There's
nothing urgent for you here."

Johnny rose on one elbow, nightcap awry. "Colonel Falk had the use of a carriage--someone
named Wilson sent it--so he thought I might as well come to town with him."

"Wilson..."

"I believe Colonel Falk's mother is ill."

Clanross set the candle on the mantel and sank into the chair beside the hearth. "The duchess died
this morning."

Johnny's jaw dropped. "Duchess?"

"The Dowager Duchess of Newsham," Clanross said precisely. "Richard's mother. If she sent for
him he arrived too late."

"But..." Johnny's head whirled.

"I daresay you. know nothing of that ancient scandal--why should you? Richard would not speak
of it." He stared at the toes of his pumps--he was still rigged out for a formal dinner. "Blast! Sir Robert
Wilson's carriage. Then Richard is probably stopping with his sister in Cavendish Square. I'll call on him in
the morning." He rose and stood looking down at Johnny. "What am I going to do with you?"

Johnny swallowed his confusion. "Lady Clanross said I might convalesce at Brecon. If you don't
dislike it, my lord."

Clanross's eyes narrowed. "Brecon? Excellent." A smile tugged at his mouth. "You can keep a
weather eye on the seditious librarian."

"But the election..."

"Anyone may go about polling freeholders. You, my man, can keep Lady Jean and Lady Margaret
in check, a far more difficult task."

"But..."

"Prevent them from setting up a liberty pole on the village green, Dyott, or building bombs in the
wine cellar, that sort of thing. On no account is Lady Clanross's telescope platform to be used as a rallying
point for rickburners."

"I shall do my possible." Johnny's spirits rose.

Clanross took the candle. "Good night. Rest the leg for a few days, and I'll send you to Brecon in
the carriage."

'When his town carriage pulled up before Sir Robert Wilson's portico next morning, Tom saw
that the hatchments were already in place. A black crepe bow hung on the door. He directed his man to
take a turn of the Square. When he knocked, Wilson's butler answered at once.

Tom handed the man his card. "Pray convey my condolences to Lady Wilson and your master. I'd
like a word with Colonel Falk, if he's up." It was half past nine, too early for such a call.

"I believe Colonel Falk is at work in the library." The man took Tom's hat and greatcoat. "If you
will be so kind as to wait in the blue salon, my lord--"

"Show me to the book room," Tom interrupted. "Richard won't stand on ceremony."

The butler looked doubtful but led Tom up an elegant flight of stairs and down a long darkened
corridor. In the distance a housemaid scurried from sight. The man entered a half-open door. "Lord
Clanross to see you; sir." Tom was at the butler's heels.

Richard stood at a sort of
prie dieu
. He had apparently been writing or copying. He
abandoned his pen and held out his good hand. "I thought you were snowbound in Lincolnshire. Mind the
ink."

Tom clasped his friend's hand with both his own. "I came...that is, I'm sorry, Richard."

"Thank you," Richard said without expression.

The butler made a discreet noise. Both men had forgot his presence. "Do you desire me to bring
coffee or tea, sir?"

"Coffee." Richard nodded his dismissal. "Thank you."

When the door closed, Richard gestured to an armchair and pulled another for himself. Both men
sat.

"I fear you must have come too late," Tom ventured.

"We were both too late." Richard rubbed the chair arm. "The duchess and I."

Tom searched his friend's face. It was haggard but composed, the eyes veiled. "I wish you will
come to me."