Feral Park (11 page)

Anna nodded. It was all becoming very clear to her now—very clear indeed.

“You understand now why my parents raised me as they did.”

“I do, sir. It is so that Cowpens Acres would not be taken away from you and your sisters upon the death of your father and passed by that ridiculous in-law entail into the hands of your cousin Charles Quarrels.”

“And never were my now-demised parents to know of the additional benefit to their original scheme by my falling in love with a woman, exactly as a
man
falls in love with a woman, or that I should be blessed even more to give my heart willingly to one who loves
me
as a woman and nothing else. It is all so felicitous an outcome that it brings a smile to my face each time I think of it. But it is also terribly frightening to think of how it may—without careful attendance—go so dreadfully wrong. For that reason I do not scruple to ask you for your kind offices to help me see it through. I should state, as well, that Miss Godby and I have been so long in the narrow society of our mutual affection that we all but ache upon occasion to increase by even a single soul our circle of promoters and assistants. (For you see how reluctantly members of my family support this attachment.) You are the perfect candidate for that circle, to help to transport Felicity and me to a place of ultimate fulfillment, whilst allowing us to reveal our true natures to you alone in comfort and security.” “And you are now convinced as a result of our brief intercourse to-night that
I
am the candidate above all others to be most helpful and most trusted?”

“Indubitably! And may I say that, having reached this belief, a great ease has come over me. For I observe that although you start and gasp to hear things beyond the circumscription of your present ken, yet still you do not shy or run away or remain only in my presence for the odious purpose of aspersing or denigrating me. I will be for ever indebted to you—if for nothing else, your openness to my revelations, and your open-hearted attempt to accept the truth of the person who presently sits beside you. Now to the important particulars: Miss Godby is coming to Payton Parish in se’nday’s time so that your vicar should marry us.”

“Marry you here? In Payton Parish?”

“Yes, the very place. It is no swift Gretna Green elopement we seek—and so residency within the parish must first be established for one of us, and as I have business in Somerset over the next few days, it is Miss Godby who must come hither to live. But the marriage will otherwise be done quickly and then set down on paper, and whilst Miss Godby’s family will be sufficiently incensed by the precipitous nature of the nuptials, we had much better effect the match in
this
manner rather than face the close scrutinies of Lord and Lady Godby in their own domain in the weeks prior to the ceremony. For Lord Godby will look for any reason to dissolve the engagement and prevent his daughter marrying so far beneath herself. There is too much about that daughter that neither I nor my betrothed wish them to discover: including, most certainly, the fact that she has no wish or desire to marry any other man or
any
man, for that matter. Felicity, if I may speak honestly, has a great aversion to men as a species and favours them little as individuals, notwithstanding my attempts to convince her that there are members of my appropriated sex who do not even marginally resemble her execrable father. And should I not have come into her life in the manner in which I have, she would, no doubt, have spent the remainder of that life as a bitter old maid, for no scheme, other than the present one, would have visited itself upon her.”

“So you will leave and return in a few days?”

“Aye. Days that for me will crawl at tortoise-speed, so desirous am I to be reunited with my hobnailed and cigar-smoking angel. Yet, alas, my absence must be so. Two gentlemen from Antigua are coming to Cowpens Acres to seal the purchase from me of some property my family owns there. (You see, we are in agreement, my sisters and me, that slaveholding is an odious occupation, and so we are freeing all of our slaves in the West Indies and I am selling the land upon which they were worked.) I would rather the gentlemen come to Somerset for this purpose than that I should myself sail to the Caribbean and jeopardise through an even longer absence all that is at stake with regard to my and Felicity’s future happiness.”

Anna thought this over and then said, “So Miss Godby comes hither. Where will she stay and how will the both of you prevent her visit raising questions, not only from the gossips in Berryknell and Smithcoat but from Lord and Lady Godby, who would be certain to miss her?”

“As for Lord and Lady Godby, miss her they would not, as they are forsaking Ascot and the Derby this year to take Gilpin’s Lakes Tour through the chief of the summer. To their knowledge, their daughter Felicity will be estivating in town, and letters to this effect will be conveniently posted from there in her absence.”

“But where will she stay that her true presence here in Hampshire County will remain undetected, and how does one establish residency if one is in hiding?”

“My plan is this: that the vicar will be brought into the scheme with regard to the wish of Miss Godby and myself that she should reside here for the legal period, which will not, in fact, be the full fifteen days as required by law, as she cannot come hither until the 12th and it is our desire to be married by Midsummer Eve, but it is no impediment, for he will, if he has truly signed on as our confederate, authenticate the proper residency period with a stroke of the pen based upon the eleven days that she
will
have been here, and in the end will marry us and register us and we will be off to our happily-ever-thereafter!”

“Then you must know something about the vicar which I do not, for I have never understood Mr. Nevers to be so helpful and accommodating with regard to
other
matters that have been brought before him. To speak honestly, the man is either one thing or the other: slothful to the point of near hibernation, or chary of taking any risk whatsoever that might imperil his comfortable living.”

“Ah, but perhaps I
do
know a bit about Mr. Nevers that you do not! For not only have I learnt that he is inordinately fond of small beer and sweetmeats and fine-looking young men, he should also have no aversion to the receipt of large sums of money—as an example: a generous sum from Miss Godby’s personal fortune such as to produce every sort of necessary assistance from his good ecclesiastical offices.”

“You still have not told me where Miss Godby will lodge during the waiting period. Hopefully, you are not looking to me to conceal your betrothed at Feral Park during the residency period, as we have several visitors scheduled to arrive very shortly who would certainly complicate and threaten the scheme.” “I understand and respect your reservations and for that reason I ask that you consult with your friend—one Mrs. Taptoe—on behalf of my intended.” “Ah, yes. Mrs. Taptoe should be most happy to offer subterranean lodgings to Miss Godby. She delights in intrigue.”

“Therefore, you must speak with the gentlewoman as soon as possible. You must also speak to Mr. Nevers and offer him, first, this gift of thirty pounds to certify Felicity’s residency within the parish when the occasion requires it, and then extend a promise of an additional three hundred pounds to come later as compensation for marrying Miss Godby and me happily ever thereafter.” Mr. Dray took from his pocketbook a twenty-pound note and a ten-pound note and placed each within Anna’s hand. Then also from the pocketbook came a promissory letter for the additional sum. “May I entrust you as my go-between and loyal steward of my nuptials?”

“If my services will contribute to your happiness and to the happiness of your Miss Godby, I should do so without even a moment’s hesitation. But may I ask how you would have proceeded had I not been amenable to the plan?” “I should have acted on my own behalf with both the vicar and the amiable Mrs. Taptoe. Fortunately, you have spared me from the chore and I am grateful, for every day which does not send me scuttling about the parish in a clandestine manner is one which keeps suspicion at bay, and suspicion, my dear Miss Peppercorn, is a most menacing creature—an odious threat to my future felicity and to the felicity of my dear Felicity.”

With that, the two friends embraced one another in the moonlight. Should the embrace have been witnessed by one peeping from a window in the Thistlethorn manse, the observer might have been inclined to comment privately upon the inappropriateness of such a coupling between members of opposing sexes; yet Anna felt no assault against propriety whatsoever, for Mr. Dray, though he be called Mr. Dray, would be from this moment forward the charming and amiable and most congenial and warm-hearted
Miss
Dray, who was required by the exigencies of both the circumstance and the heart to plot and conspire only in the most positive application of these words, and who trusted Anna as no one had ever trusted her before. And oh, how she warmed to the thought of being so desperately needed!

“’Tis a joy, dear Anna,” said John Dray in gentle retraction from the embrace, “to have united with you again after all the many years since our happy childhood rencontre. You do not think me forward in calling you ‘dear friend’?”

With a warm smile: “I do not. And I shall call you for ever more exactly the same. And so now, Dear Friend, tell me what it is I am to say to the vicar.”

“Place the money first upon his desk. He will cheer immediately to the sight of it—for I know that most vicars appreciate the worldly things which such sums may afford. Tell him first that the money must secure his absolute discretion about a matter that you wish to discuss with him, and if he is not willing to agree to this, retrieve the bank notes and be off, and we shall think of some other course, but I believe that he will be cooperative. And once you have elucidated the plan for the marriage, he must know for a fact that if even a syllable is breathed that Miss Godby and I are very soon to knot ourselves in his presence and here, no less, in Payton Parish far from Godby Keep, Lord Godby will descend with constables and sheriffs and the hounds and will certainly find some way to have me arrested! And that is without the father even knowing that I have by all laws and statutes no right to marry Miss Godby in the very first place by virtue of my true sex! (And
never, never
, should Mr. Nevers know of
this
perilous particular!) If Lord Godby receives intelligence of the attachment before it is sealed, all will be lost—the connexion and every chance for happiness for Miss Godby and myself. Most tragic of all: Cowpens Acres itself will be most grievously forfeited, this outcome bringing ruination and poverty upon myself and upon my dear, unattached sisters. You see now all that is at stake.”

“I do indeed. Never doubt my full subscription to every effort on your behalf.”

“Even though, as I suspect, the attachment offends your present view of marriage?”

“I know not myself just
what is
my present view of marriage. All I know is that the best marriages, as I have been brought up to believe, are those that weave the participant souls in communal bliss,” (now with a wink of mischief,) “although I have heard, in addition, that some marriages work well which offer generous pecuniary gain to the less romantically inclined. I am well-informed, however, that such does not describe yours with Miss Godby.”

“Thank you, Miss Peppercorn, for that shrewd amendment!” “Tell me, though, from whence comes Miss Godby’s cantankerous disposition?”

“Ah. Well. It is mostly this: my Felicity suffers fools none too gladly. And we live in a kingdom of fools, Miss Peppercorn. Or have you not noticed? Fools with money, fools with power, fools who snoop and judge and make pronouncements about others and then go and do foolish things on their own to make themselves look even more foolish than those they ridicule, and all is hypocrisy in the main. Such realities gall her. They gall me as well, but you see, being outwardly a man, I may bridle and rant as is the privilege of my purported sex, and none will think the less of me for doing it. ’Tis better, I think, to be a man.”

“I do admit, sir, that you play the part well. If I were you, however, I would nonetheless lower the voice a bit more.”

“Sound advice. I cannot afford to give myself away to the wrong one especially with the stakes so high. Let us hope that you figured me out through singular brilliance.”

“You flatter me, sir.”

On the carriage ride home Anna delivered harsh words to her father. “I had asked you, Papa, to discover intelligence which may be used to deter Mr. Quarrels from continuing to market poor Sophia Henshawe to the monkeygawkers. You said that you would consult your source and tell me what he or she knows about the ruthless son
or
the ruthless mother that could be put to good use for us. You have met with the person, and, no doubt, learnt something quite important about the mother. Yet you have chosen not to convey it to me. I am compelled, Papa, to ask for the reason.”

“Dear daughter, what I
said
was that I would do the best that I could and that was all. At all events, it is a most complicated matter and I am quite tired.”

“Then we shall not discuss it to-night?”

“I would rather that we did not.”

Anna turned to the window and looked out into the darkness, which enveloped the carriage. Trees bearing haunting shapes moved past, shrouded in the thick shadow of nightfall. Anna found herself at that moment angrier than she had been for a very long time. Only an hour before, Mr. Dray had drawn her so thoroughly into his confidence that she could not help feeling a close affinity with both him and his desire for future happiness. The responsibility was great and yet her friend believed that she was wholly worthy of the investment. Here, by contrast, sat her father, fatigued by the long and eventful evening, but more likely still, merely indolent in his wish to postpone an address upon a vexing issue. Anna snorted her displeasure, then snorted again.