Kitty Bennet's Diary (Pride and Prejudice Chronicles) (19 page)

I assembled the swords—I made two of them—while sitting beside the freckled boy’s bed, and he watched with growing interest.  Though he tried to disguise it by maintaining the scowl.  At last I finished them, and I handed one with a flourish to the boy, keeping one for myself.  “There you are.  One for me and one for you.  Now, what is your name?”

The boy gripped the makeshift hilt—awkwardly, but I did not try to help or correct him.  “Will,” he said.  In a slightly less surly tone than before.

“Will?”  I shook my head.  “No, no.  That will never do.  That is not a proper pirate name at all.  You had better be … let me see,
Black-hearted William
.  And I will be Captain Kate.  Now then, Black-hearted William.”  I saluted his blade lightly with mine.  “Let us see what you can do with this weapon.  I warn you, I will not give over my ship to you without a bloodthirsty fight.”

Will’s mouth actually curved into a small smile at that.  And then—with a look of fierce concentration—he raised his sword as far as he was able and struck my blade with his own.  I pretended to reel backwards—

Well, I will not record all the details of our fight.  But, so long as I was obliging enough to stay well within his range, Will managed remarkably well for a boy confined to bed and restricted by a brace on his back.  The battle ended with my allowing myself to be stabbed to the heart and dying a gruesome death on the floor beside Will’s bed. 

Will let out a laugh and a crow of triumph, and I sat up, laughing as well.  And then a pair of clerical-black trousers moved into my field of view and brought me back to earth with a practically palpable thud.

Though at least this time I was not surprised by Mr. Dalton’s sudden appearance.  I have practically come to expect him to appear like the genie from the bottle whenever I am behaving less than decorously.

Besides, I could not be sorry for the playacting.  Not when I looked at Will’s face and saw it alight, still, with laughter.  Mr. Dalton was smiling, too, as he offered me his hand to help me to my feet.

  “Ah, my first mate—come to save his wounded captain,” I said as I accepted Mr. Dalton’s hand.  I turned to Will, who was still grinning at me from his bed.  I set my sword down, propped against his bedside.  “You may have won this round,” I said, “but do not think by any means that this fight is over.  I shall be back to reclaim my ship from you, Black-hearted William, never fear.”

We shook hands.  And Mr. Dalton fell into step beside me as I walked back down the ward’s central aisle.

“Do you know,” he said, when we were out of earshot, “that is the first time I have seen young Will back there smile—much less laugh—since I have been coming here.”

I glanced back at Will’s bed.  “Sick or healthy, I suspect all boys love to play at pirates and swords.”  And then I lowered my voice and asked, “What is the matter with him?  His back—was it an accident?”

Mr. Dalton shook his head.  “No.  He has a congenital palsy that has settled in his legs and spine.  The physicians do not know the cause.  Though it seems to be growing worse with time.”

“Is there no cure?”

“No.  None, even if there were money to pay for his treatment—which his family certainly does not have.”  Mr. Dalton’s smile had faded and his face was bleak as he glanced back at Will’s bed.  “Will there is one of ten children.  His family never comes to visit him any more.  His mother has not been in these two months, at least.”

“That’s horrible!” I said.   So violently that the nearby nurse looked round.

“Life is hard in these parts of the city.”  Mr. Dalton’s voice was sober.  “Will’s parents have already buried three of his younger siblings.  One cannot entirely blame his mother for wishing to protect herself against further heartbreak by cutting Will off before she is forced to watch him waste slowly away.”

I looked back at Will’s bed again.  All our sword battling must have tired him; his eyes were beginning to droop closed.

I
could
in fact blame his mother—or rather, a strong part of me wanted to.  But then I had never found myself in her situation, with nine healthy children to support and one dying child.

I said, “Well, I shall come and see him again.  I did just promise him a re-match, after all.”  I glanced up at Mr. Dalton and added, “Though I warn you, I shall expect you to do more than just stand by and laugh at me next time.  As my first mate, you had better be prepared to raise a sword as well.”

“I stand ready to defend my captain to the death,” Mr. Dalton said gravely.  And then we both laughed.

It was at that moment that we were interrupted by the joint entrance of his sister and Miranda Pettigrew.  Miranda—naturally—made straight for Mr. Dalton.  Pausing only to direct an extremely unfriendly glance in my direction before she poutingly told him that he had absolutely
promised
to win her a prize in the game of horseshoes.

Miss Dalton—with what looked to me like patent relief—abandoned her brother to Miranda.  Not that I could entirely blame her for that; after five minutes in Miranda’s company, I invariably start longing for escape, as well.  Miss Dalton took my arm, drawing me further up the ward.  Her dark eyes were wide and amazed.   “Good Heaven,” she said in an undertone.  “What on earth did you do to make Lance laugh like that?  He has always been such a sober, serious-minded fellow.  Even before—”  Her voice caught slightly.  “Even before Percy died.”

That surprised me.  Mr. Dalton is often grave in his manner, I suppose.  But he has never seemed overly so to me.  Today was not the first time I had seen him moved into unguarded laughter, at any rate.  There was the other night in Vauxhall Gardens, as well.

I stamped on that thought before it could take root, though, and glanced backwards.  I could not hear what Mr. Dalton was saying in response to Miranda’s overtures.  But he was smiling at her.  I said, “I think you credit me over-much.  I am sure Miss Pettigrew is far more skilled at drawing smiles from your brother than I am.”

Miss Dalton turned to follow the direction of my gaze.  And then she snorted.  “If my brother presents me with Miss Miranda Pettigrew for a sister-in-law, I shall cheerfully murder him with my bare hands.  But he will not,” she added, her tone one of complete certainty.  “He is kind to her—Lance is never anything
but
kind.  But I know my brother, and he has absolutely no interest in girls of her type and never has.  You certainly have no reason to fear her as a rival.”

I felt my jaw drop—even as the blood simultaneously spilled upwards into my cheeks.  “Miss Dalton, I have not … that is, you are entirely mistaken about … I assure you that there is nothing whatever of that kind between your brother and me …” I stammered.

Miss Dalton interrupted me, though.  “Oh, please do call me Gwen—everyone does.”  She looked over my shoulder towards her brother again.  She shook her head and said, speaking half to herself, “I still cannot quite get over the shock of seeing him in a clergyman’s collar.  If anyone had told me a year ago that Lance of all people would enter the church, I should have laughed.  But he
is
a good man—even if I am the one to say so.”

A thousand questions crowded into my head—the first of which concerning Miss Dalton’s implication that her brother had not originally been intended for a career in the church. 

But before I could gather wits enough to ask any of them, Gwen startled me completely by drawing me into a swift hug.  “I
do
like you,” she whispered.  “And if you can succeed in making my brother happy again—in persuading him that the entire weight of the world does not in fact rest on his shoulders—I promise that I shall love you forever.”

It is three o’clock in the morning.  Again.  This seems to have become my preferred time of day for writing in my diary.  However, in the first place, I am not sleeping—again.  And in the second place, I never did set down an account of my fortune-telling session with Mrs. Hurst—which was after all the entire purpose of my last entry. 

To begin where I left off, before I could even stammer another response to Gwen’s words, she moved on to say, “But what I
really
came to tell you was this: your Mrs. Hurst has at last been persuaded by some of her friends that she must have her fortune told before the end of the fete.  She is waiting—not especially patiently—for Madame Marianna’s return.”

That news (almost) wiped away all thoughts of Mr. Dalton.  I felt a qualm of fear slither through me.  If the scheme was to succeed at all—and at that moment it seemed wildly improbable that it should—everything depended on me.  And what if I failed Jane?  What if I could not play my part with enough assurance to convince Mrs. Hurst?  What if she only laughed?

At that point, however, I gave myself a hard mental shake and told myself that I was being absurd.  If I could stay in Brussels last summer while Napoleon’s troops advanced—and with no idea of whether our army would win or lose the battle to come—then surely I could face a small, conceited little teapot-tyrant like Louisa Hurst.

Without letting myself pause—or look back again at Mr. Dalton and Miranda—I marched back to the ward where the fete was being held, slipped back into the tent the same way I had come out, and swathed myself again in Madame Marianna’s shawls.

I had to suffer through three other women coming into the tent in search of fortunes before finally Louisa Hurst appeared; I promised them dark, handsome strangers and glittering jewels and anything else I could think of in my fever of impatience to get them out of there and on their way.  But then at long last Louisa Hurst ducked under the flap of the tent and—with a disdainful sniff—deposited herself in the chair opposite mine. 

It was not only the sniff; her entire demeanour was one of scornful disdain.  Which I was in fact rather grateful for, since it made me feel angry—enough so that I forgot entirely to be nervous or afraid.

I drew in a breath and snapped—in Madame Marianna’s heavily accented voice—“You may leave.  I have no time for telling the fortunes of those who do not believe.”

That was a risk, of course.  There was a chance that Mrs. Hurst would simply take me at my word and stalk out, mortally affronted.  But I was gambling on her being of a contrary enough nature to feel utterly determined to do anything she was told she could not.

And of course she would never allow anyone whom she regarded as being of an inferior station—such as a mere gypsy fortune-teller—to order her about.

She planted herself more firmly in the chair and fished in her reticule for a coin, saying, “I trust my money is as good as anyone else’s?”  She slapped a half-sovereign down on the table in front of me.  “I desire to have my fortune told.”  She sniffed again.  “I was
told
you were rather clever and amusing.”

I had succeeded in making her stay, but she clearly still did not believe in Madame Marianna’s ‘gift’.  I made a great show of reluctantly accepting the coin and—gingerly—biting it to prove its authenticity while I thought.  And then I took her hand, peering down from beneath my shawls at the lines on her palm.  “I see that you come from a respectable family in the north country.  Your family’s fortune was acquired in trade—a fact which you do your best to forget and disclaim.  You have one brother and two … no, only one sister.  Both married.  You do not like your brother’s wife.  And you are jealous of your sister’s good fortune in finding a husband who loves her as she does him.  You are married to a man of more fashion than fortune, who lives only to eat, drink, and play at cards.  You ought I think to stop his eating so much rich food.  I can see”—I squinted down at her palm again—“that such habits as his will lead to gout if he does not take care.”  I let out a high-pitched old-womanish cackle of laughter.  “You think he is little fun to be married to now, imagine what he will be in ten years—bald and fat and sitting by the fire with his sore foot tied up in rags.”

I confess that I rather enjoyed the opportunity to say all the rude things I had previously been able only to think about Louisa Hurst.  She looked more than a little shaken when I had done.  But she rallied, drawing herself up and said, “
That
is scarcely a fortune.  And you might have heard all that from any of the guests here.”

I also noticed that she did not contradict my statement that she disliked her brother’s wife.  I rattled my bracelets as though affronted and said, “You want any more, you will have to pay.”

This time, Mrs. Hurst did not hesitate, only dug in her reticule for another shilling and tossed it down.  “There.  Now tell me my fortune.”

I accepted the coin, took Mrs. Hurst’s hand once again—and then fell silent, rocking back and forth a little in my chair.

“Well?” she said impatiently, when I did not speak.  “What is it?  What do you see?”

I drew in my breath with a hiss, lowering my voice to a hoarse whisper.  “I see darkness.  A black misfortune that shades your future as a cloud does the sun.”

I flatter myself that I did manage to sound quite sinister—an added benefit of having had a good deal of practice at acting the role of villain in my cousins’ games of knights and bandits.

Mrs. Hurst’s hand tensed in mine.  But I held fast to her fingers and went on, “You stole something of great value.  What, I cannot see, but you took it with deceit and lies.  Have a care—for such sins cast long shadows.  And this sin of yours will shadow your future with evil and ill-luck until you give back what was never rightfully yours.” 

When I finished, Mrs. Hurst’s prominent eyes were large and round in her pale face, and her bosom heaved as she breathed in short gasps.  Then, without another word, she yanked her hand out of mine and stumbled back out through the front flap of the tent.

I was not able to see the second act of the scheme; I had to remain in the tent and finish out my time as Madame Marianna.  But Georgiana assured me afterward that it went splendidly well.  She contrived to jog Mrs. Hurst’s elbow while she was partaking of the fete’s refreshments—making her spill a cup full of hot spiced wine all down the front of her gown.  And then Georgiana exclaimed, “Oh no, I do apologise.  Your lovely gown ruined.  Oh, how terribly
unlucky
!”