Carola Dunn (13 page)

“I’ll bring you some cold chicken and veal and ham pie. Lemonade or cider?”

“Lemonade, if you please, kind sir.”

While he was filling a plate for her, Jessica was joined by Nathan and Lucy, and then Lord Ilfracombe sat down on her other side.

“Who won, my lord?” she enquired.

“Miss Crane for superior perspective, Miss Barlow for shading. Miss Forrester for... hmm, let me see.”

Jessica laughed. “I can see that your talents must be most useful to the government, sir.”

Matthew returned, accompanied by a hired waiter bearing a tray who took orders from the others.

“Have I taken your place, Walsingham?” Lord Ilfracombe asked blandly, but he made no effort to move.

Matthew, looking vexed, was forced to find a seat at some little distance, where Annabel Forrester, Kitty Barlow, and Lord Peter soon joined him. Though she enjoyed the earl’s company, Jessica could not help glancing their way now and then. Mr. Walsingham appeared to be quickly consoled for his vexation, for Annabel’s giggle and Kitty’s merry laugh rang out often, and even Lord Peter was heard to utter a snort of amusement.

The waiter made the rounds with a basket of cherries and Jessica helped herself to a handful. The scarlet fruits were crisp and sweet, the crimson richly juicy. She heard Kitty counting cherry stones: “Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor...” and her squeal of dismay as she ended on “beggarman.”

“Waiter, some more cherries for Miss Barlow,” called Matthew.

“Count yours. Miss Franklin,” Lord Ilfracombe suggested with a smile.

“I am not superstitious,” she told him, but surreptitiously, under her breath, she was doing just that. Rich man—no, there was another by the chicken bone; poor man—surely she had eaten more than that. Ah, there were five more hidden under the pile of stems. Beggarman, thief, tinker, tailor, soldier... Soldier!

The waiter came by collecting plates and she quickly handed him hers. She was not in the least superstitious. She was going to marry a rich man, not a soldier.

Bob Barlow was demonstrating to Maria Crane how to start with the end of a cherry stem between one’s lips and gobble one’s way up it until the fruit ended in one’s mouth. He neatly turned it with his tongue and out popped the stem. Kitty took off her hat and hung pairs of cherries over her ears for earrings. Thus inspired, Nathan showed Lucy how to squeeze a stone between one’s fingers and make it shoot away several feet. Entering into the spirit, Matthew suggested a contest between the gentlemen to see who could fire a cherry stone the farthest.

Lord Ilfracombe rose to his feet with a groan. “I believe I am growing too old for picnics,” he said to Jessica, offering his hands to help her rise. “I ought to have sat at the table with the chaperons. Do you care to stroll a little farther along the path?”

“That would be pleasant. I’ll just tell my aunt where I am going.”

She went over to the folding table Mrs. Crane had provided for herself, Mrs. Woodcock, and Miss Tibbett. Lord Alsop had taken his luncheon there, having apparently decided that dignity and comfort were more important for the moment than his pursuit of Lucy. He rose at her approach, his foppish finery even more inappropriate against a background of trees than in the Pump Room.

The ladies all looked morose, as if they had not enjoyed his company. Mrs. Crane cheered up when Jessica congratulated her on the delicious repast.

“I am going for a stroll,” she added, turning to Tibby.

“An excellent notion,” Lord Alsop put in. “Very good for the digestion. Allow me to lend you my arm, Miss Franklin. The path is uneven.”

“Thank you, sir, but Lord Ilfracombe means to escort me. We shall not go far, Aunt Tibby.”

“Not out of sight, Jessica,” said Miss Tibbett firmly. “If you wish to go farther, ask Nathan to go with you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” There was no accounting for Tibby’s sense of propriety, Jessica decided, not for the first time. She would abandon her charge in a crowded ballroom without a blink, yet quibble at her taking a walk with a gentleman of unquestioned respectability and old enough to be her father. Of course. Lord Alsop was also more than old enough to be her father, and she would not trust him an inch.

Making her way back to Lord Ilfracombe, Jessica noticed that though most of the party was now standing, Matthew was still seated on the rug. His disconsolate expression drew her to his side.

“What is wrong?” she asked softly.

He grimaced. “I was caperwitted enough to sit down on the ground, and now I cannot rise without making a cake of myself.”

“If I give you my hands, can you manage it?”

“Probably, but that will look as foolish as struggling up by own efforts.”

She raised her voice. “I do believe that having issued a challenge, you are afraid that your cherry stones will simply drop to the ground. Come, you cannot honourably avoid the contest.” She held out her hands and he took them.

With one heave he was on his feet. Jessica staggered back a step, and he caught her in his arms. For an endless moment she stared up into his face.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his grey eyes warm. Then he released her and continued aloud, with a wry grin, “On the contrary. Miss Franklin, I am so certain of my superior expertise that I am reluctant to put the others to shame.”

She gave him a shy smile and hurried on to join Lord Ilfracombe.

“That was well done. Miss Franklin,” he said approvingly as soon as they had moved away from the others.

Jessica flushed and made a random remark about blaming Boney. She was troubled by Matthew’s willingness to confess his difficulty and accept her help though he dreaded appearing crippled before the others. Right from their first meeting—their first
proper
meeting—he had been sufficiently at ease with her to talk about his wound. She had never heard him mention it in anyone else’s hearing.

“I had not realized that Matthew’s injury was still so troublesome,” the earl was saying, confirming her thoughts. “I wonder whether his uncle knows. Surely he would not... But no matter. Boney is to blame for a great deal, is he not?”

Surely he would not have disinherited him? she wondered. With an effort she turned her attention to his comments on Napoleon’s surrender to Captain Maitland of HMS
Bellerophon.

When they returned to the picnic site, they found that the cherry stone contest had been abandoned.

“Half the stones disappeared in the grass,” Nathan explained, laughing, “and as for the rest, we had endless arguments about which was whose.”

“I know yours went farthest,” Lucy assured him. “Jessica, you should have stayed to watch, it was such fun.”

Her sparkling eyes and happy smile made Jessica look around for Lord Alsop, whose presence would have been enough to spoil her pleasure.

“He’s gone,” said Nathan in a low voice, reading his sister’s mind. “He asked Lucy to go walking but I put a stop to that and he gave up. I never let her out of my sight, you may be sure.’’

And that, thought Jessica, was most satisfactory. Even Lord Alsop had his uses, if only to awake Nathan’s protective instinct.

Nonetheless she was a little worried, wondering whether his lordship might be a dangerous enemy. His expression in the Pump Room, when Nathan prevented Lucy granting him a dance, had been positively malevolent, and if Nathan continued to thwart him he might seek revenge. A duel—no, she recalled his alarm at Matthew’s facetious mention of pistols at dawn. He was a peer, though; perhaps he could use his influence to harm Nathan.

Lord IIfracombe was also a peer, and a much more influential and distinguished one. He had nodded coldly to Lord Alsop on meeting him in the Pump Room, more an acknowledgement of his existence than a greeting.

“I think you are previously acquainted with Lord Alsop, sir?” Jessica asked hesitantly as she walked back into town at the earl’s side.

“Very slightly.” His lordship did not seem inclined to expand on the subject.

“In London?”

“Yes. He has not dared show his face there for some years, however. I was sorry to meet him in Bath and you will do well to avoid him.”

“What did he do?”

“Nothing I care to discuss with a well-bred young lady, Miss Franklin,” said the earl repressively. “I have reserved a box at the theatre on Tuesday next, for
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
May I hope you and your aunt will honour me with your presence?”

Jessica gracefully accepted, subject to Miss Tibbett’s approval, and they went on to talk of plays and players, but not for a moment did she forget Lord Alsop. She decided to ask Matthew to find out for her what Lord IIfracombe refused to disclose.
He
would not try to protect her from the truth only because she was a female.

She glanced back to see where he was, hoping to find an opportunity to make her request. He was flirting with Maria. Suddenly Jessica developed an absorbing interest in the relative merits of tragedy and comedy.

* * * *

Not until later, at the dinner table, did Lord Ilfracombe’s lack of logic strike her. “It’s perfectly ridiculous,” she said to Nathan and Tibby. “He would not tell me why Alsop is banned from London Society, which might be of some use to me. Yet when we spoke of Shakespeare he upheld the superior merit of tragedy, which always seems to be full of murder, mayhem and cuckoldry.”

“Jessica, never say you used that word to his lordship!” Miss Tibbett was shocked.

“Mayhem?”

“No, you know very well which word I mean.”

“Of course I did not, Tibby dear, nor did he speak it aloud. We talked with the utmost propriety of betrayed husbands and unfaithful wives.”

Nathan laughed. “It is ridiculous, is it not? All the same, Jess, if you’re determined to know all the scandal about Alsop, instead of approaching Matthew yourself, I wish you will let me ask Ilfracombe. It sounds as if the baron is a decidedly loose fish.”

Jessica was glad of a quiet evening at home. She settled with a book from the circulating library, but at the end of half an hour she had not the least notion what it was about. Nor had she sorted out her feelings about Matthew Walsingham, though they had occupied her mind exclusively during that period.

How close she had felt to him when he accepted her help in rising from the ground, and how distant when she heard him talking and laughing with Maria or Annabel. She must have imagined that he was especially attracted to her. Or had her recent coolness persuaded him to turn to less fickle damsels?

If so, it was just as well, she tried to convince herself. She did not want to hurt him, but she needed an unquestionably wealthy husband.

Though she made a deliberate effort to consider Lord Ilfracombe in that role, somehow her thoughts kept slipping back to Matthew.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Nathan was delving into a plateful of kedgeree when his sister joined him at the breakfast table the next morning.

“There’s a parcel for you, Jess.” He pointed to the small package beside her place, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

“Miss Pearson’s footman delivered it,” Hayes informed her as he poured her tea.

“What is it?” Nathan asked, mildly interested, between mouthfuls of curried fish and rice.

“How can I tell when I can’t open it?” She struggled with the knot.

“I thought it must be something Lucy said she would send you, a book or some ribbons or the like.”

“No, I’m not expecting anything.”

The butler produced a pair of scissors from his pocket and cut the string. Jessica unwrapped the paper and stared down in surprise at a box, some two inches by six inches, covered in blue velvet. Opening it, she gasped.

“What is it, Jess?”

Wordless, she pushed the box across the table. Nathan’s hand stopped half way to his mouth, but his mouth stayed open. Diamonds and rubies glittered and glowed in the morning sunshine.

Slowly he put down his fork and picked up the bracelet. “The devil!” he said blankly.

Paper rustled as Jessica searched through the wrappings. She found a card. “Mr. Pearson, of course. It just says ‘with gratitude.’ Oh dear.”

“Oh dear? Is that all you can say? This must be worth a fortune!”

“I daresay he bought it wholesale. After all, he was a jeweller.”

Nathan dropped the fiery gems and turned his incredulous gaze on his sister. “He was
what?”

“A jeweller. Well, actually an importer of jewels and precious metals.” Jessica failed to meet his eyes but added with asperity, “Don’t tell me you didn’t know. He makes no attempt to keep it secret.”

“I heard rumours, but I didn’t think... I didn’t believe... Dash it, Jess, if one believed all the tittle-tattle... It’s true? Lucy’s father is a Cit?”

“Did you never wonder why he never accompanies her?”

“I supposed him eccentric, a recluse.” Unable to sit still, he pushed his chair back and went to the window to stare blindly out at the river. “Of course I knew Lucy—Miss Pearson—is deuced fond of him, but we didn’t talk about him. How long have you known?”

“A long time.”

“Why did you not tell me?” he cried in anguish.

“I hoped that by the time you found out you would love Lucy enough not to mind.”

“A tradesman’s daughter! The Franklins have been gentry for centuries.”

“It’s not as if you were a peer—not even landed gentry, strictly speaking.”

“Would you marry a merchant?”

“If I married a merchant I should become no more than a merchant’s wife. If you marry Lucy, she will be Lady Franklin.”

He was not ready for calm consideration. “Another title sold to the highest bidder! I know that was always your plan, but I had a thousand times rather lose Langdale than enter into so dishonourable an affair.”

“If it were only a matter of money! But you cannot deny that you are fond of her.’’

“You don’t understand. Or else the fellow seems to have succeeded in bribing you with diamonds to try to persuade me.”

He wished the harsh words unspoken as she responded in a hurt voice, “I have every intention of returning them. I cannot possibly accept so valuable a present from an acquaintance. Nathan, surely you will not abandon Lucy to Lord Alsop?”