Reckless Angel (28 page)

Henrietta looked horrified. “But that is such tyranny. 'Tis as bad as my parents!”

“But what am I to do, Harry?” Will looked utterly wretched. “I cannot bear to be without her. Just to catch a glimpse of her would be balm, to hear her voice, anything…but this absolute desert is killing me.”

“Well, I do not think it is doing that,” Henrietta said practically, “but 'tis certainly making ye most dreadfully miserable, and I will not permit that.”

Will managed a glimmer of a smile at this energetic statement. “There is nothing to be done, Harry. Lord
and Lady Morris are adamant and Julie cannot defy them.”

“Not openly, I agree,” she said pensively. “But in secret, she could. I will go and visit her this morning. I was intending to anyway, and her parents have always looked with favor upon our friendship so they will give her leave to receive me.”

“What are you thinking, exactly?” Will was well accustomed to his friend's methods and the speed of her decision making. It could make him uneasy, but it also created a flicker of hope. Henrietta rarely failed when she set her heart on something.

“'Tis perfectly simple,” she told him with a happy smile. “You must remove from here without delay, for if ye continue to live here then it stands to reason Lady Morris will not permit Julie to visit me as she was used to do. But she will not forbid my friendship with Julie because she and Lord Morris hold Daniel in such esteem; and when Julie visits me, or we walk together, then you will ‘accidentally,' or do I mean ‘coincidentally,' happen to come along. No one need ever know.” She frowned suddenly, biting her lip. “I think we had better not tell Daniel that y'are forbidden to meet with Julie. He might not like your meeting together here in defiance of her parents. But if he does not know 'tis forbidden, he will think nothing of it. Y'are both my friends and are often in my company.”

Will looked doubtful. “'Tis not honorable, Harry.”

“Why is it not? 'Tis just disobedience and has nothing to do with honor,” she said stoutly. “But if you do not care for it, then you must think of something else, for I cannot. You could wait until you come of age, of course, but that is eighteen months away, and Julie must wait forever. She is the same age as I am. Can you wait that long without ever seeing her or talking to her? And in the meantime, her parents might marry her off to some ancient but suitably noble suitor.”

“Oh, I could not bear it,” Will said, anguished at such a prospect. “Besides, who is to know what is going to happen in this damnable war? I would be with
her, Harry, for whatever time is allotted us.” His voice had lowered, heavy with an unhappiness bordering on despair.

Harry looked at him, her head on one side as she waited for him to reach the right decision.

“If you think 'tis all right—” he began again, hesitantly.

“Of course it is,” she interrupted with vigor. “I will go and visit Julie straightway, and you must find yourself lodgings. I will tell her parents that you have removed from the house now that we are back. 'Twill sound quite reasonable.”

 

Julie received her friend with an enthusiasm that could not mask her low spirits. Henrietta paid punctilious and dutiful respects to Lady Morris, talked of Spain and the strangeness of the Spanish court, sipped an elderberry cordial, mentioned casually that Master Osbert was leaving Sir Daniel's roof for his own, and pretended that she had not noticed Julie's sudden pallor at the mention of his name, or the tightening of Lady Morris's already thin lips.

“Well, I daresay you girls have much to talk about,” Lady Morris said after about half an hour. “I have certain matters to attend to, but I give leave for you to remain with Lady Drummond, Julia, if she is not anxious to be gone.”

“Not at all, madam,” Henrietta said demurely. “I am most grateful for the permission.”

Julie murmured her own gratitude, but she kept her eyes lowered until her mother had left the room.

“God's grace,” said Henrietta in imitation of her husband. “Are ye really kept so close that you must have leave to be alone with a visitor in your parents' house?”

“Oh, 'tis awful, Harry! You do not know what has happened—”

“Oh, yes I do,” she broke in. “Will has told me the whole, and we have come up with a plan.”

Julie listened to Henrietta's forceful presentation of
this plan. “If 'twere ever discovered…” She gasped. “I cannot imagine what would happen.”

“I can,” Harry said a trifle grimly. “But there is risk in all things worthwhile. If you wish me to help you both, I will do so with all my heart. But if ye've not the stomach for it—” She let the sentence hang.

Julie was silent for a minute, her face pale. “I know 'tis wrong to defy one's parents,” she began hesitantly, “but I cannot see why it should be wrong to love someone.”

“It is not. 'Tis your parents who are in error, and in such an instance 'tis not wrong to defy them.” Since this was the maxim by which Henrietta had conducted her life up to now, she pronounced it with utter conviction, and Julie nodded, much comforted.

“But what of Sir Daniel?” she ventured. “What will he say?”

Henrietta shifted uncomfortably on her chair. “Well, I think 'twould be best if he did not know of it. It should be between the three of us. He is a parent, you understand, and a parent of daughters, so I think he might view the matter a little differently.”

“Oh, dear,” Julie whispered. “I do not think I have your courage, Harry.” She sat silent for a minute, then suddenly spoke with resolution. “Yes, I do have. I will do it.”

“Oh, bravo! Now all that remains is for us to receive your mother's permission for you to visit me alone.”

Either Lady Morris felt she could begin to ease the strictness of her daughter's confinement, or she simply felt that Sir Daniel Drummond's wife could only be an unexceptionable companion for Julia, but she gave leave for the visiting and the plan went into action.

Daniel first became aware of something a little odd when he returned home one afternoon and surprised his wife and Will in deep conclave in the parlor. That would not ordinarily have caused him a second's questioning, except that Harry jumped away from Will as her husband entered the room, and two bright flags of color flew in her cheeks.

“Oh, Daniel, you startled me,” she offered in explanation of this peculiar reaction. “D'ye wish for ale, or wine, perhaps? Shall I tell Hilde to bring some?”

“There's both upon the sideboard,” he reminded her on a dry note. “Good day to ye, Will.”

“Good day, sir.” Will stood up a little awkwardly. “I was just leaving.”

“Don't go on my account,” Daniel said. “Take wine with me.”

Will could not refuse the invitation without discourtesy, and a stilted conversation then ensued that puzzled Daniel mightily. Why on earth should these two, with whom he had shared so much intimacy, be behaving as if in the presence of a stranger? The opportune arrival of his children, newly released from the schoolroom, brought some ease as their cheerful prattle took over the conversation, and Will and Henrietta encouraged their chatter until Will could decently take his leave.

“Will you be walking tomorrow, Harry?” Will made the apparently casual inquiry as he went to the door.

“In the afternoon,” she replied as casual as he. “By the sea wall, I believe.”

“Can we come?” Nan piped up.

“Yes, indeed.” Her sister added her own urging. “We have not walked there this age.”

“Not tomorrow,” Henrietta said. “We will go there the next day, if you wish it.”

“But why can we not?” they chorused, unused to being excluded from such excursions.

“Because Henrietta says not, and that should be sufficient,” Daniel put in, inadvertently rescuing Henrietta, who had been desperately searching for a convincing reason. The truth was that she would not permit them to participate in any way in the clandestine meetings of Will and Julia. In many ways, their company would have provided the perfect foil, the perfect image of innocence, to those walks and 'accidental' meetings, but the idea offended her deeply.

“But that's silly,” Lizzie unwisely muttered. “There has to be a proper reason.”

“Your pardon, Lizzie, I did not catch that,” Daniel said pleasantly. “Could you repeat it, please?”

“I do not think she is going to do anything so foolish,” Henrietta said, seizing the child's hand. “Come and say farewell to Will.” She hauled the far from reluctant Lizzie outside. “That was a stupidly impertinent thing to say, wasn't it?”

“But there does have to be a reason,” Lizzie persisted, knowing it was safe to do so with this audience.

“Yes, there does, but 'tis not one I am prepared to vouchsafe,” Henrietta said. “And you will have to accept that, I fear.”

“All right,” Lizzie said after a considering silence. “But I knew there was a reason.” Deciding that it would perhaps be imprudent to return to the parlor immediately, she went upstairs.

Will exchanged a rueful grin with Henrietta as they walked out into the street. “She's very like you, Harry.”

“I know,” she said, strolling with him to the corner. “Unfortunately, the characteristics she shares with me are those that her father does not look upon with a tolerant eye…at least, not with his children,” she amended. “He does not seem to mind them in me.”

“That is fortunate,” Will said, chuckling. “But I daresay he feels 'tis a lost cause.”

“I daresay.”

They both laughed, and Will hugged her. “I will meet you and Julie at the sea wall tomorrow.”

“Aye.” She touched his face lightly. “'Tis good to see you happy again, love.”

Daniel stood in the open front door, watching them, wondering if he were jealous of that spontaneous, easy affection. They were both so young and vital, so sure of each other, had such a shared history. Perhaps it was not unreasonable to experience a lover's pang at the special quality of their relationship. Then Henrietta
turned, saw him standing in the doorway, and gathered up her skirts to run smiling to join him.

“Did ye come looking for me?” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

“You did seem to be taking a powerful long time to bid Will farewell,” he replied, putting an arm around her shoulders, enjoying the pliant warmth of her as she eagerly leaned into his embrace. He banished the lover's pang as a piece of arrant foolishness.

“I just thought to walk a few steps with him. 'Tis a beautiful afternoon. Shall we walk a little?”

“If you wish it,” he acquiesced, turning with her into the square. “What did you do with my impertinent daughter?”

“She went abovestairs. It probably seemed to her the most prudent thing to do in the circumstances.”

Daniel laughed slightly. “Probably it was. But why may they not accompany you on your walk tomorrow?”

She hadn't been expecting the question and could not help the sudden stiffening of her shoulders beneath the embracing arm. “Oh, Julie and I wish to talk secrets,” she said, recovering.

“Ahh.” Daniel found nothing strange in the explanation, but he did wonder what had caused that uncomfortable reaction to his question. “Are they secrets that cannot be shared with your husband?” he ventured.

Color flooded her cheeks. “Why…why should you think…well, perhaps…perhaps they are…but…”

Daniel stopped in the street and turned her to face him. His eyebrows lifted quizzically. “Harry, just what mischief do you brew?”

She put her hands to her burning cheeks and cursed this inability to lie to him convincingly. She had never suffered this difficulty with anyone else. “No mischief.” She gulped. “But they are Julia's secrets.” That at least was the truth and she felt her flush die down.

“I see.” He let the subject drop and they continued
their walk, Henrietta recovering to chat in her customary fashion, to listen to his account of the latest doings at the court, and to question him with sharp intelligence on his own views as to what was going to happen now that the king had made definite plans to sail for Scotland.

“I am not to sail with the king,” Daniel told her. “He would have me remain here for the present. I and others are charged with the organizing of a Royalist army here, ready to sail for England as soon as it is needed.”

“In what way needed?”

“To join with the Scots reformed army in an invasion of England,” he said levelly.

Henrietta shivered but said nothing.

Daniel's arm tightened around her shoulders. “It means our time in Flanders will soon be at an end. We shall breathe English air again.” He looked down at her seriously. “Will you be glad to be home in Kent, elf?”

“I will be glad to have the time to make it my home,” she responded with thoughtful candor. “We were not there many weeks before we went to London, and then we came here almost immediately. And while we were there, I felt it to be your home, not mine.”

“And will that still be so?”

“Nay, 'twill be quite different,” she averred. “Because it is different between us now.”

“Mmmm,” he murmured, “that it is.”

“I think it might be wise for us to retrace our steps,” Henrietta declared. “Just so that we may demonstrate the difference in a degree of privacy.”

And in the seclusion of the bedchamber she offered him such overwhelming evidence of the difference that he forgot the afternoon's oddities. Unfortunately, the amnesia did not last for long.

“O
h, I do beg your pardon, Sir Daniel!” Breathlessly, Will excused himself.

“Think nothing of it,” Daniel replied, recovering from the effects of having been nearly knocked off his feet at his own front door. “Y'are in somewhat of a hurry, I gather.” He regarded the scarlet-faced, redheaded young man with a questioning quirk of an eyebrow. “Were you going in or out?”

“Out, sir. I have been visiting Harry.”

“I rather thought that must be the case,” Daniel said gently. “It generally is. Well, do not let me detain you, my friend, since y'are in such haste.”

Will, much flustered, tried to admit that he was in a hurry whilst disclaiming that Daniel could in any way be detaining him. He managed to tie himself into such knots that his companion stared at him in astonishment. When the young man had finally taken his leave, Daniel went in search of his wife, who might conceivably be able to shed some light on this extraordinary behavior.

He found her in the January-bare garden at the rear of the house, cutting holly. “Just what is the matter with Will, Henrietta?”

She started at the question, dropping the armful of berry-laden foliage to scatter richly at her feet. “I don't know what you could mean, Daniel. Why should anything be the matter with Will?”

“He appears to find the sight of me a trifle unsettling
these days,” he said carefully, bending to pick up the prickly branches. “Which seems strange, considering how often he is in the house. Indeed, I begin to wonder why he bothered to move out.”

Henrietta pinkened. “D'ye object to his presence?”

“No.” Daniel shook his head, carefully filling her arms with the retrieved foliage. “Not in the least. Should I?”

The pink deepened and the brown eyes slipped away from his steady gaze. “Of course not.”

“Henrietta, if something is going on, I think 'twould be politic in you to apprise me of it sooner rather than later,” he said. “Somehow, I have the impression these last weeks that y'are hip deep in mischief again, and it is making me very uneasy.”

“Y'are not suggesting I might be behaving improperly with Will?” she exclaimed, seizing on this absurdity as a convenient way of altering the direction of the conversation.

“You are always in his company,” Daniel replied.

“But he is my friend.”

“That is what is making me uneasy. You wouldn't be trying to help him in some way, by any chance?”

She began to polish a deep green leaf with a gloved finger. “Why should Will need my help?”

“If he has a grain of common sense, he will ensure that he does not,” Daniel replied, looking down on the bent head, resisting the urge to kiss the soft exposed nape, to run his finger along the groove in the slender column of her neck, where curled feathery corn silk-colored tendrils.

“That is not very kind,” she mumbled.

“The truth often isn't.”

“I do not know what you are talking about. I must arrange these before dinner…Julia is here…There is a shoulder of mutton with redcurrant sauce, which I know you like so I hope you have an appetite.” Rattling on in this fashion, she hurried across the garden and back into the house, leaving Daniel even more mystified than ever, and even more uneasy.

He did not really believe that Will and Henrietta were conducting themselves as anything but friends, despite his occasional pang of envy at the special nature of that friendship—a dimension he could never have himself with Harry, based as it was upon such a shared past. But whenever he came upon them together these days, instant constraint sprang up. It had been so since their return from Madrid in September, and the only explanation he could think of was that they shared a secret from which he was excluded. Daniel Drummond did not like that explanation in the least.

Frowning, he followed Henrietta into the house. Nan and Lizzie were engaged in some competition on the stairs. It seemed to involve constant jumping, considerable excitement, and not a little altercation. Irritably, he administered a sharp rebuke that sent them upstairs shooting hurt looks at him over their shoulders.

He turned toward the parlor and paused, his hand on the latch. There was no mistaking the urgent quality to the low voices coming through the oak. He rattled the latch loudly before he lifted it and pushed open the door, saying, “Henrietta, those children are not to be permitted to play in the hall. Where is Mistress Kierston? Ah, I give you good day, Julia.” He bowed to the young woman, who had jumped up from her chair at his entrance and curtsied, blushing. For some reason, the very sight of him these days seemed to put everyone to the blush, Daniel thought humorlessly.

“She's at church. I did not think they were doing any harm,” Henrietta said.

“They were making an unseemly amount of noise.” He walked to the sideboard. “If you do not wish to take charge of them, then they must accompany Mistress Kierston to her devotions. May I pour you a glass of wine, Julia?”

“No…no, I thank you, sir,” Julia murmured uncomfortably. “I was just leaving.”

“But you were to stay for dinner,” Henrietta protested.

“No…no, I cannot, really. But I thank you.” Julia
headed for the door. “Perhaps you could visit me tomorrow, Harry.”

Henrietta accompanied her friend to the front door without demur and offered no excuse for her husband's ill temper. She knew the reason for it, and sharing that knowledge would do nothing for Julia's already fragile equilibrium.

“I am sorry the children were noisy,” she said in an effort to placate Daniel on her return to the parlor. “I did not realize it would annoy you so. But 'twas quite my fault.”

Daniel looked at her over the rim of his wineglass. What on earth had she been whispering about with Julia in such intense fashion? At the moment she looked as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, so demure with her hands clasped in front of her, her head a little to one side, her voice softly anxious.

“What
are
you up to?” he demanded.

Henrietta decided rapidly upon the combination of attack and half truth. “I am not up to anything, but I have told you that Julia has certain…well, certain private matters to talk over with me, and now you have frighted her with your bad temper. 'Twas not at all courteous. And it was not just to be vexed with the girls simply because you were in ill humor.”

Daniel gave up. It was perfectly reasonable for Julia to confide in Henrietta, and they would hardly be confidences that would interest him. The girl was probably in love, or in some parental trouble. And whatever was going on between Master Osbert and Henrietta would presumably be revealed all in good time. Whatever it was could not possibly be too important.

“Just how often does Mistress Kierston go to church these days?” he asked, as if there had been no acrimony in the last minutes.

“Once, sometimes twice, a day,” Henrietta replied, barely missing a beat as the mood inexplicably changed. “Today, there is a preacher come from London and she wished to hear him. I understood him to
be a proponent of hellfire and brimstone, a doctrine that appeals to Mistress Kierston.”

“'Tis not a doctrine she has been successful in imparting to her charges,” Daniel observed with a wry smile. “I will fetch them for dinner.” He went abovestairs and Henrietta, relieved but with the uncomfortable feeling that the relief was only temporary, went into the kitchen to give order to the cook and Hilde.

Daniel came into the dining room, hand in hand with his now-merry daughters, whose sense of grievance had vanished with their father's smiling summons to table. Dinner was a cheerful meal, much enlivened by the absence of the governess, although everyone forbore to comment on this fact. Afterward Henrietta went riding with the girls, allowing their chatter to wash over her as she wrestled with the new problem now facing Will and Julia—the problem that had led to Will's precipitate departure and air of disarray, thus prompting Daniel's uncomfortable questioning.

Lord Morris had been bidden by the king to set sail for Scotland without delay. He was intending to do so within three weeks, and his wife and daughter were to sail with him.

Will was in despair at the news, and Julia had seemed paralyzed. Neither of them thought there was anything they could do to prevent the separation, which left plotting to circumvent it to the considerably more energetic Henrietta. At this point, she could see only two alternatives. Julia could run away and Will return to England with her on the next ship, and they could throw themselves upon the mercy of his parents. Mistress Osbert was a thoroughly pragmatic soul, and would accept the situation after the initial scolding, which would no doubt be fierce. Or Henrietta could persuade Lady Morris to leave Julia with the Drummonds, on the grounds that it would be safer for her, more convenient for the Morrises until the fate of the Royalist cause was settled one way or the other, and Henrietta would love her company.

On the whole, Henrietta favored the first course as
being the most decisive, but suspected that the protagonists would prefer the second for its general lack of decision. It would simply prolong the entrancement of courtship without requiring them to face any hard choices. However, it was their affair, she reminded herself, and her role simply that of facilitator. She would need Daniel's permission to issue the invitation, of course; indeed, the invitation should properly come from him. Lady Morris would certainly consider it so.

“Harry, is that a kestrel? Is it, Harry?” Nan's repetitive piping at last intruded on her reverie, and she looked up into the gray winter sky to where a hawk hovered seemingly immobile over a stubble field.

“Nay, I think 'tis a goshawk,” she said. “'Tis too big for a kestrel, and it has short wings. D'ye mark them?”

Nan squinted earnestly upward, and Henrietta hid her smile. She was such a little figure sitting on her small, barrel-bellied pony, her dark green riding habit a miniature of Henrietta's own; and the bright black eyes of the Drummonds were so like her father's. Would her own child have those eyes, also? Henrietta wondered. Daniel had at last agreed to take no more precautions against conception, and she waited with ever-increasing impatience for the moment when she could tell him she was bearing his child.

“Come, I think we should go home,” she said, suddenly realizing the time. The January evenings closed in abruptly.

At supper, she brought up the subject of Julia's visit. “I should miss her most terribly if she goes, and she does not wish to leave in the least. I am certain, if you issued the invitation, her parents would let her stay with me for a little while. She could travel to England with us, if…when you must go and fight again.” She licked the tip of her finger and picked up breadcrumbs littering the table top, saying in a low voice, “I would draw much comfort from her presence at such a time.”

Daniel was silent for a moment, unsure whether he
wanted to share his wife with Julia. It was bad enough having Will around so much of the time. But that was selfish of him, he decided. She had made no secret of her fears over the prospect of another battle, and they were not fears he would make light of. If Julia's company would give her comfort and strength, then he would not deny it.

“Very well,” he said. “You may take my invitation to Lady Morris in the morning. I will write it tonight.”

But the invitation did not get written that night. An imperative knocking abruptly sounded at the front door, bringing Daniel to his feet with an exclamation of annoyance. “I trust that is not Will again.”

“Of course it is not,” Henrietta said with a touch of indignation as she defended her friend. “He would not come without invitation at this time of night. You know he would not.”

“I suppose I do,” Daniel agreed, going to the dining room door as he heard Hilde struggling with the bolts in the hall. “Why, Connaught, what the devil's amiss to bring you out at this time? Come in and take wine.”

“Thank'ee, Drummond.” William Connaught came into the dining room, his usually ponderous mien enlivened by an air of excitement. “Lady Drummond, I do beg your pardon for disturbing you at supper.”

“Not at all,” Henrietta said politely. “Pray join us. D'ye care for some venison pasty?”

“Nay, I have supped, thank'ee. But I'll be glad of wine.” He sat down and looked around the table with that same portentous air. “Drummond, news has just arrived that the Scots have crowned His Majesty at Scone. 'Tis a direct challenge to Parliament—one they cannot ignore.”

Daniel whistled softly, and Henrietta, feeling suddenly queasy, took a deep gulp of her wine. So, it had come at last—the inevitable that she had prayed would somehow be averted. Her husband would take sword, with so many other husbands and fathers, in a battle that both sides believed they fought for honor and principle, and in the name of God. And she would
watch and wait, not caring who won or lost just so long as this husband and father came away from the field sound of wind and limb.

Daniel glanced across the table at her, reading her thoughts in her pallor and the liquid depths of those big brown eyes. “'Twill be some time, love, before Cromwell can respond to the challenge. We must wait for order from His Majesty.”

She managed a wan smile. “Then I will delay my fears 'till then.”

“I will call upon Lady Morris myself in the morning,” he said, hoping to comfort her.

Henrietta just nodded, feeling as if some natural justice was at work. She had used her fear as an added inducement to persuade Daniel to do what she wished; now it seemed she had received her just deserts, had somehow provoked the ill news. Did Daniel consider it to be ill news? Of course he did not.

Wordlessly, she clung to him when they were at last able to retire; but he had no need of words to tell him what she was feeling. He held her for a long time, imparting the reassurance of his strength until he could feel the peace of acceptance enter her, then he made love to her with slow gentleness, leading her down a long, winding road to oblivion. And then, when he knew her to be truly at peace, he possessed her again with a fierce passion that exorcized the demons of fear…for them both, he realized with a flash of self-knowledge the instant before all possibility of coherent thought was lost to him and the maelstrom engulfed them both.