Love & Folly (11 page)

After the tea things had been cleared away, Nurse brought in the babies and Davis excused
himself. Johnny watched the poet's graceful exit with resentment. Davies did everything gracefully.
Johnny's stiff leg and the embarrassing loose trousers made him feel like a Mohawk.

He admired the Heir and Dickon, who had sprouted new teeth since the New Year, and watched
glumly as Jean and Maggie romped with their nephews. Nymphs and cupids. It was a charming scene spoilt
only by Johnny's sense of being left out. Why had he not made a push to attach Lady Jean's interest before
he left?

He knew why not. She was too young. He was her equal on paper, perhaps, being respectably
descended, but in fact her birth and fortune placed her well above his touch. And she was his employer's
ward and sister. Clanross would surely feel resentment if Johnny took advantage of the association with
Jean and Maggie his work had made possible. They were the daughters of an earl and could look higher than
the younger son of a dean. Now if the government were to make his father a bishop...

"An amusing thought? Penny for it," Lady Clanross said amiably.

Johnny felt himself flush. "I was watching Dickon," he lied. "Have you been able to use your
telescope, ma'am?"

"No, it's been too cold for my blood. However, the thaw has set in. Perhaps I'll have time for an
evening or two of stargazing before we go to town. I was used to begin my systematic observations in
March. Johnny, I wonder if I may have a word with you before dinner. Come to my dressing room."

"Certainly, my lady." He eyed her curiously but she had returned her attention to her sons who
were performing a sort of
pas de deux
on the withdrawing room carpet.

* * * *

A starched-up abigail showed Johnny into Lady Clanross's dressing room half an hour before they
ought to have descended for dinner. Though great ladies had been receiving gentlemen in their private
suites for ages, Johnny felt some discomfort at his intrusion.

Lady Clanross wore a gown of wine-coloured velvet, cut rather high, with vandyked sleeves that
showed a froth of Belgian lace at the wrist. Her maid was dressing her hair. "Thank you, Dobbins." Her
ladyship untied the strings of the short muslin cape that had protected her gown whilst her hair was being
done.

The abigail gave the glossy chestnut curls a final, critical touch with the comb and twitched the
muslin off. "Your jewellery, madam."

"Ah, what does it matter? The garnet set." Lady Clanross gave an impatient wave of her hand.
"Johnny, I am glad you've come, and I daresay I don't have to point out why."

"Er..."

The maid placed a rather old-fashioned garnet necklace about her mistress's neck and gave a
sniff.

"Yes, thank you, Dobbins. You may go."

The abigail whisked from the room, every muscle alert with disdain.

Lady Clanross sighed. "She keeps trying to turn me into a fashionable lady. I sympathise with her,
but what can I do? The leopard cannot change her spots. For heaven's sake, sit down, Johnny. I don't want
you to damage your leg out of mere politeness."

Johnny, who by then felt exceedingly uncomfortable, sat on the nearest chair.

"Jean has taken a fancy to Owen Davies. I have no objection to that so long as she doesn't throw
her cap over the windmill and do something foolish."

Johnny had every objection to Lady Jean's
tendre
, but he couldn't very well say so.

Lady Clanross watched him in her pier glass. "She is very young."

He cleared his throat. "Yes."

"I'd like you to keep an eye on her."

Johnny felt his discomfort turn to righteous wrath. "It is no part of my work to be spying on Lady
Jean, ma'am."

Lady Clanross turned to face him, her eyes narrowed. After a moment, she said slowly, "I beg
your pardon, Johnny. I expressed myself incautiously."

"But that's what you want me to do."

She frowned. "I wish I could deny it absolutely. I'm responsible for Jean's conduct--and Maggie's,
of course. They are young and necessarily naive. Your friend, Davies..."

"Owen Davies and I were up at Oxford together," Johnny said precisely. "We did not sit in one
another's pockets."

"Yes, I see."

He wondered what she saw.

Finally, she went on, "Well, I've no desire to turn you into an informer. Nevertheless, Jean is
vulnerable because she's seventeen and gently reared. Her disposition is adventurous. I sympathise with
that. My own temperament is neither tame nor conventional. Still, you will allow that a young lady must
stay within very strict bounds or she's made to pay--as a young man would not be--for quite natural excesses
of high spirits."

"Well, yes, but--"

"Do you suppose young ladies find the constrictions they live under agreeable?"

Johnny felt his anger leak away. "No, but Lady Jean--"

"Jean," said her sister dispassionately, "would have rowed Bonnie Prince Charlie across the Irish
Sea in an open boat if she had been born a hundred years ago. That is her natural inclination, and not for the
sake of his bonny blue eyes. For the sake of sheer adventure."

"But Owen is not Charles Stewart."

"And Jean is not a fool. I know. But she is looking for a hero, and I rather think she has found one.
I'd be criminally negligent if I didn't take precautions."

Johnny let out a breath that was compounded of pure frustration. "Owen isn't a bounder."

"If he had been he would have departed weeks ago, Clanross or no Clanross. Owen is an idealist,
and like most idealists he's willing to sacrifice himself and everyone about him to his goals. I don't think Jean
should be his burnt offering."

"If you put it that way," Johnny said sullenly.

"If I put it that way it's because I'm thinking of Jean's future, not his. I don't know what her future
may be, but it shouldn't include social ostracism at seventeen."

"You have all the heavy guns, Lady Clanross."

A smile touched her mouth. "Do you see me as a division of artillery?"

Thrown into confusion, Johnny could only stare.

She turned back to her looking glass, patted her coiffure, and rose. "I don't want to turn you into
a spy, Johnny. Tom gave you lashings of work, I daresay--"

"I have a great deal of correspondence to catch up on."

"Splendid. I thought you might take your work to the book room. You needn't report to me or
betray confidences. I am counting on your mere presence to moderate Jean's transports."

That was a lowering thought. "You want a chaperon."

"If that is a more acceptable term than spy, so be it."

Their eyes locked.

"Very well," Johnny said heavily. "I'll take my letters to the book room, ma'am. I understand
your apprehension."

"I'm sorry, Johnny, and I thank you."

He struggled to his feet. "There's not much Owen can do here in a political way. London's the
centre of conspiracies these days." He cleared his throat. "Ma'am."

"What is it?"

He said stiffly, feeling as if he had descended to a very low level of discourse but compelled to
speak, nevertheless, by his upbringing, "I must apologise for my informal costume."

She regarded his loose trousers gravely. "I think you may take your forgiveness for
granted."

"I should not like to appear slack."

She smoothed the flounces on her sleeves, avoiding his eyes. "My stepmother was a very high
stickler. She always refused to admit men in pantaloons to her salon. Knee breeches, preferably black
silk--that was her style--and she desired her guests to powder their hair. I am far less nice in my tastes. I think
you look very well in trousers."

"It's the contraption the surgeon rigged in place of the splint. If I wear knee breeches or
pantaloons I look as if I have gout."

She gave him a gamine grin that reminded him of Lady Jean. "No one could possibly accuse you of
being goutish, Johnny. Maggie said you looked dashing."

He blushed but he was not entirely displeased.

By the time she received a letter from her husband informing her that he was coming back to
Winchester at last, Emily was in the high fidgets.

Richard writ that there was a legacy. She had expected no less. Something to put by for the
children's education. Very thoughtful of her grace. Perhaps Richard would now think better of his mother.
How
Richard was thinking of his mother was the crux of Emily's suspense, next to which learning
the details of the legacy paled to insignificance.

Since she had first heard of Richard's unhappy childhood, Emily had felt his ambivalence.
Richard's father, Lord Powys, had been killed by his mother's husband, the Duke of Newsham, in a duel
that took place three months before Richard was born. Powys's family had made no move to acknowledge
the boy. He had grown up belonging nowhere. It was a wonder he had made himself into so definite a
personality.

It was not surprising that Richard wanted to live apart from his family. He kept even his sister
Sarah, who was fond of him, at arm's length. As far as Emily could tell, he had tried to avoid thinking of the
duchess at all. Emily fancied he could not be entirely indifferent, and she hoped he had not tried to fool
himself about so primal a feeling as that of a son for a mother.

She heard the coachman's rap and Phillida's quick scuffle as the maid answered the door. Impatient
as she had been, Emily sat frozen in her place. She was not sure she knew what to say now Richard was
come. She set her teacup down and gave herself a shake. Foolishness. He was her husband, and she loved
him. She would say what was right.

By the time she reached the foyer, he had dispatched Sir Robert's servants and was asking Phillida
about the children.

"Richard." Emily felt her throat close.

He frowned up at her with the same uncertainty in his eyes she had seen when she first agreed to
marry him.

She ran to him. "Oh, my dear, I'm so glad you're home."

He held her tight for a long moment as if to be sure she were solid. When she finally pulled back,
she was weeping a little, but she directed the gawping Phillida to bring another cup to the drawing room
and led her husband upstairs.

Richard drank a cup of tea and heard a full report of the children's accomplishments in his
absence, and he began to look less harried. He said little beyond what he had already writ.

Presently Emily's stock of anecdotes ran down, and she looked at him. "Well, Richard, how is it
with you?"

He rubbed his forehead. "Well enough. Sarah is feeling more like herself. She sends you her
love."

"I'm glad of it," she said mechanically.
Blast Sarah.

He toyed with the cup. "Emily, there is no way I can delay telling you this any longer. My mother
left me a great deal of property. I'm afraid it is going to change things."

"She what?"

"A fortune," he said in tones that were a little too dispassionate.

A veil of red dropped before Emily's eyes. She had not believed that an angry person literally saw
red. "Damn her!" She burst into tears.

Emily was not given to nerve storms or, indeed, to cursing. Even as she wept her outburst
puzzled her. A shocking thing to have said. Richard comforted her, and she let herself be soothed, and
apologised when she found her voice. The outward signs of her fury abated. She blew her nose and tidied
her gown.

They went upstairs to the nursery and saw the babies. Tommy read his father two stories when he
had stopped frisking about asking for gifts from town. Amy came home from her day school and was kissed
and catechised. A large and very beautiful globe of the world was borne upstairs by McGrath, who
grumbled and smelt of gin.

Richard was a gift-giver by temperament. What he chose was almost always the very thing, as far
as his children were concerned. Emily thought it a kind of native tact. She wished his mother had been
imbued with it. Her anger flared again, and again she bit it back.

Eventually they left the children and Peggy McGrath to the globe and dinner, and retired to dress
for their own meal, which they took rather early now Johnny was gone.

They dined in fragile silence. Emily's fury smouldered. It was she who had always tried to
conciliate, to interpret the duchess charitably to Richard. Now she felt no charity at all.

It was not that she objected to wealth
per se
. She was not so quixotic. It would be a
blessing not to have to pinch and scrape to assure Tommy's future. The duchess might have achieved that
end by leaving Richard a few thousand pounds. That would not been insulting. But a fortune...

Richard was not careless with words. If he said fortune he meant fortune. Their lives must be
changed by such wealth--out of all compass. Emily feared what the changes would be, but most of all she
feared for Richard's peace of mind.

To a remarkable degree for a man of his blood, Richard Falk was a self-made man. He had been
cut off from the Ffouke family and his mother at twelve and shoved into the army at fifteen. Anything he
achieved thereafter had been by his own efforts, for he heard nothing from his mother and had nothing of
her, except, ironically, a statement that he was illegitimate, in the years that followed. He made his own life
apart.

Now, when he could have no human relationship with his mother, she had chosen to shower him
with favour--and favour of the sort he would find most baffling. Richard's experience of great wealth had
been wholly negative. He was no Leveller and did not despise the modest prosperity of Emily's family, but
he had excellent reason to mistrust the power of wealth. His half brother, Newsham, had used it to
persecute him.

And so, wholly unprepared, Richard had had similar wealth thrust upon him. Emily thought he
must be frightened and oppressed, and she was powerless to comfort him.

They retired early in near silence and lay for a time side by side. Finally Emily said, "I'm civil
now. I think you'd better explain."