Flint and Roses (15 page)

He took me very firmly by the hand, very firmly by the waist, and said, his voice equally determined. ‘I have to apologize properly to you, Faith. You were in too much of a huff to listen earlier, and I have been waiting my opportunity ever since.'

And I felt such a winging, soaring delight that I could have wished him to do something really dreadful, so that I could forgive him even more.

‘There's no need, Nicholas.'

‘Of course there is. And you have been looking so distracted—'

‘Oh well—that has nothing to do with it. My mother has had a set-to with Aunt Hannah, and, to tell the truth, I am not certain but I think Jonas Agbrigg may have asked me to marry him.'

‘Good lord, Faith!' he said, quite horrified. ‘Either he has asked you or he hasn't. I hope you are certain as to whether or not you have refused him.'

‘Oh yes, there is no doubt about that. But I believe I have done it awkwardly, and hurt his feelings.'

‘Jonas? Nonsense. He has no feelings to hurt. He's the coldest fish I ever did see. Don't worry about him. It's his pocket, not his feelings, that he worries about, and it's no secret that he's hard-pressed for cash right now, since old Mr. Corey-Manning has decided to retire. The old man has bought himself a house in Bridlington and can't wait to get there, didn't you know? Jonas will have to get the money from somewhere to buy him out, stands to reason, or he could find himself with a new senior partner who may not be to his liking. All it needs is for some energetic fellow to come along, with sons of his own to find places for and Jonas will soon find himself squeezed out.'

‘Won't your father help him?'

‘I reckon he might. But he'll expect Jonas to have something of his own behind him. There's more to it than just the money for the partnership, after all. If Jonas wants to step into Corey-Manning's shoes he'll have Corey-Manning's social position to keep up—which can't be cheap. More than Aunt Hannah can manage, since she'll need every penny she can scrape together to stake herself as mayoress. They can't expect my father to stand it all. He'll listen to a business proposition. I don't doubt, but he's not a charity. He might help, but Jonas will have to do something to help himself, first.'

And, having made our peace, we danced for a while in a comfortable silence, until the music suddenly tailed-off again, a mark of respect for the exit of Sir Giles and Aunt Verity, and a signal that it was supper-time.

‘Thank goodness for that!' Nicholas said. ‘I thought the old man would never come—and I reckon he didn't really want to, if the truth be known. And since we couldn't start supper without him, and then we had to make sure everyone saw he was here—well. I'm starving. Come on, Faith—you'll have supper with me?'

Instant, incredible joy. ‘Oh yes, Nicholas'; and then, remembering my place and his, and that Uncle Joel expected him to earn his keep. ‘But won't your father have arranged—? Shouldn't you be taking Miss Battershaw, or someone?'

‘Not a bit of it. He's so pleased now with Sir Giles that the Battershaws can all go hang. Come on—before the Hobhouses and the Wintertons clear the board—'

Lady Winterton, indeed, was there before us, circling eagle-eyed around the table, making a most thorough inspection of the cold beef, already sliced and tied back into shape again with satin ribbon, prodding an inquisitive fork into the salmon as if she thought—or hoped—it may have been taken illegally from her river, accepting liberal portions of every dish she passed and wondering out loud if it was really necessary to provide so many.

Sir Giles, with Aunt Verity and Uncle Joel, was installed at a table set apart, screened from the common view by the deft hoverings of butler and head parlourmaid, a dish of oyster patties and a well-iced magnum of champagne to hand, his eldest daughter-in-law, Lady Annabel, offering her erstwhile friend Lady Winterton a slight, immensely superior smile as she came to join him.

‘Where is Julian?' snapped Lady Winterton, who always knew the whereabouts of her Francis.

‘Oh, somewhere with Miss Barforth.' Lady Annabel—already basking in the possibility that her father-in-law's bills might now be paid—was quick to reply.

‘I don't fancy eating in this crowd,' Nicholas announced suddenly, apparently displeased by Lady Annabel's self-assurance as much as by the assembly now jostling and snatching around the supper-table. ‘Let's make for the back stairs.' And whispering to a harassed parlourmaid his instructions for a supper-tray, he shouldered away to the door and hurried me along the same passage where I had walked, an hour ago, with Jonas.

I had sat on these back stairs a dozen times before with Blaize and Nicholas and Caroline, all of us huddled together, children long past our bedtime, watching the dinner-party dishes as they came out of the kitchen, scuffling like puppies for the left-over chocolate creams and ices the maids handed up to us. Prudence and I round-eyed with admiration when Blaize and Nicholas once downed the contents of a forgotten claret jug, Celia tearful with fatigue and the fear of discovery.

Yet it was different now, settling my wide, silk skirts—my lovely swan dress—on the shallow steps, Nicholas lounging on the step below. Quite different, in the half-dark, eating our supper from a tray laden with cakes and champagne, both of us knowing full well that our being here was not entirely innocent, since the conventions which ruled our lives quite clearly forbade us to be alone together at all. Discovery might mean no more than a tolerant reprimand. ‘Young lady, you had best go back to your mamma, and we will say no more about it.' But it could also mean accusations of improper behaviour, loss of reputation, and he would not have brought me here unless he was prepared to defend me if the need arose, unless he really found pleasure in my company.

‘You are so changed,' he had said to me in my day-dreams, but now: ‘We are friends again?' he once more enquired, and it sufficed.

‘Yes—although you have twice embroiled me with your father, who terrifies me. Doesn't he terrify you?'

‘He does not. I daresay he would like to, or perhaps he merely thinks that he should. But he does not.'

‘Then you are very brave.'

‘Oh yes—a lion. I wonder how Julian Flood will fare at his hands. My father likes a decent return on his investments, so I reckon young Julian had best watch out.'

‘You're not pleased, are you, that Caroline should want to marry him.'

He shrugged, his face, in concentration and in shadow, quite dark.

‘I've nothing against him—so far as the gentry goes he's right enough, and a sight better than that sickly Winterton. But he
is
gentry and she's not and yes, I have my doubts.'

‘But she'd be so good at the manor, Nicholas.'

‘I'm not denying it. She wants the manor all right, and the title, but I'm not sure she understands all that goes with it. Blaize now, he could marry a duchess and manage all right, but he's not like the rest of us, Caroline looks like a duchess, but she's a Barforth. She likes money, but she understands how it's made and the men who make it, and I'm not sure she'll ever understand the Floods.'

‘They like money too.'

‘Aye, or they'd not be here tonight. But they want it for different reasons. Look—I reckon you know how my father has spent his life building up Lawcroft Mills and Tarn Edge and Low Cross? But he'd sell them tomorrow and go into something else—and so would I—if it was to his advantage. The Floods can't bring themselves to part with one useless acre, just because its been in the family for three hundred years; I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm saying it's different. And Caroline's not like that. She'd try to run that manor like my father runs the mills, and even if she made the Floods a profit I reckon they wouldn't approve of her methods.'

‘They'd take the money, though.'

‘So they would.'

We laughed open-heartedly, two people who understood each other, a hard-headed Law Valley man, shrewd and straightforward, who would not always be easy on his woman, rarely romantic, his well-shod feet at all times firmly rooted to the ground; a Law Valley woman, tougher than she seemed, who understood the demands and hazards of his trade, who wanted the things he wanted and appreciated the skill by which they were obtained.

We were alike. We matched, and as I got slowly to my feet, shaking out my skirts and smoothing my hair with hands that trembled and needed to be occupied. I saw in his face the same narrow-eyed intensity I had seen in Jonas, that spark of awakening and instantly controlled desire that I suppose any man may feel for any presentable woman in a lonely place, but which, far from repelling me as it had done in Jonas, caused my whole body to sway forward, as if it had dissolved in the air between us and was being wafted irrevocably, magically, towards him. And only the fear that is bred into all females who are required to remain virgin—marketable—forced me to pretend that I had stumbled.

‘I should go back now, Nicholas.'

‘Yes,' he said, for although his own virginity was a long-past memory, offered, one supposed, in approved Law Valley fashion, to the ladies of the Theatre Royal, he knew he would have to be very careful, very sure of his ultimate intentions before making the very tiniest assault on mine.

‘I'll take you back. They'll not have missed you, in all the confusion of supper and Sir Giles.'

Yet we had lingered too long, it seemed, for suddenly there was the rustle of a skirt at the far end of the passage, perhaps only the maid come back to fetch her tray, perhaps a stranger who would look askance and go away, perhaps not. I shrank back against the wall, appalled now, when it was too late, by the possibility of discovery and misunderstanding, realizing as so often before that I should have thought of this sooner.

‘Don't worry', Nicholas said, but I think we were both relieved when a voice enquired, ‘So—and just what is going on here?' for it was only Caroline, her white and silver skirts blocking the passageway, her face—when I was calm enough to look at it—no longer aglow with triumph but creased with ill-temper and the need, perhaps, of finding someone to blame.

‘Oh, it's you.' Nicholas said. ‘Thank God for that!'

But clearly something was very much amiss, for instead of laughing and coming to join us on those familiar, friendly back stairs, she continued to stand, hard-faced and glaring—as her father had once done—looking for trouble and almost grateful to find it.

‘I asked you a question,' she said. ‘What are you doing here Nicholas?'

‘Minding my own business, as you should be minding yours.'

‘It is my business,' she snapped. ‘This is my party, and I am responsible for the way it is conducted.'

And even then he was not really concerned, for it was just Caroline on her high-horse, as we had seen her many a time, and she would soon climb down again.

‘Come on. Faith,' he said. ‘Let's find Aunt Elinor.'

But Caroline, suddenly, was a barrier planted before us, refusing even to draw her skirts aside.

‘You'll go nowhere, until I've got to the bottom of this.'

‘Caroline—why the devil must you always interfere?'

‘Don't use foul language to me, Nicholas Barforth.'

‘You've heard worse than that—and from your precious father, too.'

‘You'll leave my father out of this. He's had more than enough to bear from you, And as for you. Faith Aycliffe—'

‘That's enough, Caroline!' Nicholas told her, meaning it; but, placing myself between them—having enough experience of their tempers to know that some form of distraction was required—I said sharply. ‘What about me. Caroline?'

‘Yes, indeed—what about you? I thought I knew you, Faith, but this is the second time you have been caught alone with my brother. Well, the first time I was ready enough to believe your story, but I'm not sure what to think now—'

And swiftly, before Nicholas could answer for me—knowing that once battle commenced between them I would be unable to make myself heard—I said coolly. ‘Well then Caroline, you may think exactly what you please, for if you can do no better than draw these foolish conclusions then you are as great a goose as my sister Celia.'

‘How dare you speak to me like that?' she asked, quite stunned, really wanting to know, and, since it was important to me that Nicholas should realize I could defend myself, that I was no simpering, schoolroom miss only too happy to be compromised, I was ready enough to explain.

‘There's no daring about it, Caroline. You are being quite stupid, and I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you so.'

‘Then I'll give you a reason. You are a guest in my father's house, where certain standards are always maintained, and you have behaved shockingly.'

‘I have done no such thing, and you know very well I have not. Most likely it is Julian Flood who has done something shocking, by the look of you, for why else are you here, dashing up the back stairs—which happens to be the quickest way to your bedroom. And I won't be the scapegoat for it, Caroline, so you'd best go to nanny and have a good cry.'

There was, of course, the possibility that she would hit me, that Nicholas would roughly intervene, that nanny herself would appear and go running for Uncle Joel, who would then thrash Nicholas, a scene I had witnessed more than once while we were growing up. But realizing, even in her outrage, that the repercussions would be different now—that she was, in fact, quite fond of me and knew I was fond of her—she unclenched her reckless Barforth fist and contented herself with the lesser violence of hissing at me. ‘I never thought this of you, Faith, I never thought you'd turn on me. Well, it's envy, I suppose—just envy—and I should be accustomed to that.'

‘My word!' Nicholas said, when she had pushed me aside and mounted the stairs, one imperious step at a time, hoping I had not noticed the tears in her eyes. ‘Who's the lion now?'