Love's a Stage (21 page)

What remained of the evening was fortunately not so hideous as Frances had earlier pictured in her imagination, for which Landry’s cheerful control was much responsible. Nothing could have been more ingenious than the provisions he had made for her comfort. He had explored the other buildings in the home farm; the local tenant farmers were apparently using the buildings for storage, and he was lucky enough to find a cache of root vegetables, apples, and cider, and made for them a passable meal of boiled potatoes and cider hot in the jug, consumed while kneeling in front of the small homey hearth; the potatoes were eaten with their fingers and the cider drunk from the jug, swapped back and forth in turns. The adventure seemed to appeal to Landry’s sense of humor. He took their situation in such good part that a casual bystander would have been pardoned for thinking that the excursion had been deliberately arranged for his entertainment. Here was no citified dandy at a loss without his valet and butler!

To anyone unacquainted with Frances, it might have seemed odd that the kinder Lord Landry was to her, the more withdrawn and monosyllabic she became. His goodness to her began, quite unaccountably, to pile in her mind. Not only had he helped her when she had first arrived in London, he had rescued her from Chez la Princesse and, without a single question, gotten her a part in the Drury Lane Theatre. Perhaps these hadn’t entailed any special effort on his part, but what of his timely dispatch of Mr. St. Pips at the card tables? Perhaps his many chivalries had not been devoid of self-interest, but then, he had never made the slightest attempt to deceive her on that score. It was inevitable that Frances should begin to draw parallels with her ungrateful and dishonest conduct in their relationship, in one breath condemning his kisses and in the next responding to them like a tulip trying to cup the dew. A timid self-query as to why his kisses filled her with such heady sensations had only a single, irrefutable answer: Frances Atherton, parson’s daughter, was in love with the renowned Lord Landry. It seemed incredible, but there it was. She wasn’t sure where she had erred, or how she could have been so stupid as to have let it happen. If only she could go back to her first day in London and avoid any action that might lead to their acquaintance—but what good was hindsight? Two months ago she might have scoffed at the plight of a lovelorn miss languishing over a handsome rake. Now she was wiser. Folly on folly, and it was all hopeless, too. To her, love must only mean marriage, while he had made it clear that it meant the opposite to him.

For a long time after their gypsy’s dinner she sat quietly staring into the fire, heartsore. She wasn’t sure later when she had closed her eyes. When she opened them again it was later, much later. The fire was low and she was covered by two warm, clean-smelling horse blankets. Under her cheek she felt the soft grain of fine wool cloth. Raising drowsily on her elbow, she found it was Landry’s coat, smoothly folded. In the first waking moment she had thought herself in the bed she shared with her sister Pamela on Beachy Hill; then her sleepy, groping mind had recalled her to an unwilling reality. The little ewe lying at her feet gave a snort in its sleep.

Instinct made her sit up and look for Lord Landry. He was standing by the window, one curved hand gracefully resting on the frame, the other at his hip. His stance was so relaxed that it never occurred to her that he was spending the night watchful for her sake. Deserted ruins in these troubled times served often as havens for vagabonds. Some were honest men unable to find employment, but others were of a sort that had left more than one body behind them on the move. Perhaps his acute senses felt her gaze on him. Perhaps he had only turned to see what made her stir. He came across the roof and bent on his knees beside her. A single eyelash had fallen to her cheek, and he brushed it gently away with the soft stroke of a finger. After a moment, he said:

“You called me David.”

“I—did I?”

“Yes.” The fire crackled and sang peacefully in the hearth, dancing orange and pale-blue flames flickering as a small log burned through to the middle and collapsed in a mound of glowing coals. He turned to look into the fire, the reflection bringing into relief the hollows behind his cheekbones. “Did you ever look at a fire to see shapes in the flames?”

“Yes.” Her voice was drowsy. “I’m not very good at it, though. All I ever see are castles and Chinese dragons.”

“You must concentrate. That—in the corner”—he leaned slightly, indicating the direction her vision should take—“is a dog. Carrying a parcel. Wearing a top hat. Go back to sleep, Frances.”

She chuckled sleepily and made no protest as he laid her down. “Looks like a castle to me.”

As he walked back to the window, she said, “Do you think we should go looking for an inn?”

“It’s still raining.”

“What if it rains forty days and forty nights?” she asked dreamily.

“We’d begin to blanch at the sight of potatoes.”

There was a long silence. Just as he was beginning to believe she’d fallen asleep, she said, “Poor Captain Zephyr. He’ll be distressed about the balloon.”

“He’ll be glad we’re alive.”

She cuddled further under the blankets. “D’you know where I meant to be tonight? Fowleby Place.”

“Were you going to tell the butler Mother Blanchard sent you?”

“Climb over the wall with one of Richard’s grappling irons.” Her voice was faint.

“Good God. Did Richard know about that?”

“No.”

“Someday—perhaps—you’ll explain to me what all that’s about.”

“Someday . . . perhaps . . .” Her voice trailed away, and the rhythm of her breathing told him that she had gone to sleep, but it was a long time before he turned back to the window.

The velvet lullaby of night faded into the cold, prosaic morning. Frances awoke to a crow’s harsh caw that came from opaque gray mist outside the window. Landry came to sit beside her, cross-legged like a schoolboy, and pared an apple for her with a penknife he had found abandoned in a corner. A night’s lost sleep showed little on him. There was a faint trace of blond beard at the line of his jaw, however, and his clothes, like hers, had not come through the previous day unscathed. She was not accustomed to seeing him otherwise than impeccably groomed, and the intimacy of their shared dishevelment increased her awareness of what had passed between them the night before.

He made a number of suggestions to her. They should find an inn, try to return to London. It was unusual for her that she agreed to everything without comment. He accepted her embarrassment with the same amused tolerance with which he had met her quaint independence, her parson’s-daughter manners. In the yard by the stables there was, underneath a ruined awning, a crumbling well. Landry drew water in a leaking wooden bucket for Frances to drink and splash on her face, and, the sheep tagging after them like children on a picnic, they began their walking journey down the stony road. He smiled and shrugged as she pointed ruefully to a patch of blue silk flapping in a tree.

Years of disuse had whittled the country lane down to a stony footpath flanked by running ditches that were full of water dark with clay from the newly plowed fields. The wind sighed through faraway belts of conifers, started a mill-sail into a slow spin, and set to waving the knee-high grass of the hedgerow, where budding dog daisies and yellow kingcups nodded. The air was scented with sweet violets and wet grass.

The nearest village was a four-mile tramp, and by the time the first thatched cottage came into distant view, Frances had long since abandoned her attempt to keep her hem hitched above the muddy lane. Only Landry, with a hidden grin of pity, and a fat black pig rutting in a roadside turnip patch watched her while she attempted to make herself respectable by stuffing her snarled curls under the bedraggled bonnet and brushed at her rain-spotted and wrinkled mantle. It was a fruitless effort, and as they approached the tiny plastered inn with its tulip-planted windowboxes, Landry said:

“Better let me do the talking.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth when he realized they had been a grave mistake. Frances turned on her heels to face him.

“
You
do the talking?”

“Our story may sound a little off, so I’ll make up some satisfying tale . . .”

“Do you mean to say—” Frances’ gold-dusted hazel eyes flashed with indignation for the first time since he had been with her in the stable. “—that you will bespeak a lie, Lord Landry? I find lying abhorrent under all circumstances!”

“Under
all
circumstances?” he remarked unwisely. “Miss Brightcastle?”

She blushed painfully as she remembered the numerous occasions she had lied at the theater and at Chez la Princesse, and wondered aloud why it was that Lord Landry felt impelled to belabor every inconsistency of her character when there might be a deficiency or two in his own that needed attention, then marched into the inn, followed at a leisurely pace by Lord Landry.

Normally the inn’s cozy public room would be empty at this early hour, but Mr. Odiham’s prized Suffolk Punch had foaled a fine colt last night, and a group of his friends had joined to celebrate with him, taking ale before they went to the fields. The host, one Mr. Monson, whose sense of propriety was exceeded only by his ample girth, was irritated to be interrupted in the middle of a florid toast to the new colt when Frances stepped through the door. The omens for the interview were ill from the beginning. The sheep slipped through the door after her and gamboled exuberantly across the well-scrubbed wood floor with muddy hooves before they could be caught and thrust outside. When she introduced herself to the landlord as Miss Atherton, that worthy had replied scathingly that he begged her pardon, he had thought to be confronting Little Bo Peep. By the time Frances had described herself as the victim of a runaway balloon and admitted under cross-examination to having come from Wrenleigh, where she had spent the night among the ruins, it was obvious that she would receive no sympathy from her hostile, snickering audience.

Landry, in the meantime, had taken a relaxed posture against the doorframe, grinning sardonically. The host turned to him and demanded:

“Ho! And what has the lady’s husband to say about this?”

Landry achieved a knowing leer, and replied, “I find lying abhorrent under all circumstances. I’m not the lady’s husband.”

They were put from the house in a trice.

The next inn was located at a crossroad three mucky miles further along the lane. Frances had been resolutely mute since leaving Mr. Monson’s establishment and was forced to listen in frigid silence while Lord Landry introduced her to the innkeeper’s wife as his bride, Mrs. Prudence Whiterose. Landry sketched the story of attacking highwaymen who had stolen their baggage, their money, and even (the cold-blooded knaves!) Madame’s wedding ring! By the time Landry had done, he had woven the tale so skillfully that Frances almost believed it herself. She muttered:

“I don’t wonder you can write
fiction.
”

“Pardon me?” inquired the innkeeper’s wife, looking in a kind way at the shy bride.

Landry glanced at Frances with exactly the right combination of simulated embarrassment and manly pride before bending to whisper a brief word in the ear of the innkeeper’s wife.

Chapter Ten

Sunshine pierced the window of Miss Sophie Isles’ parlor like a solid gold beam on Tuesday afternoon as that lady talked with her niece. Aunt Sophie was respectably prepared to be among the audience on the opening night of Lord Landry’s new play
Marie,
predicted to be one of the season’s great events. Her brown hair was caught up in a poppy-colored turban, and she wore an evening gown of matching color decorated at the bodice with crystalized gauze dotted with glass beads. An objective scan of her niece revealed the high color in the poor girl’s cheeks to almost match the shade of Miss Isles’ evening dress. It was an attractive, if pitiful, effect, and left Miss Sophie wondering if Frances would go through with her onstage appearance this evening.

Frances was costumed for the farce in a stomacher-front gown printed in coral chintz on white. As the part required, Frances had, with Henrietta’s help, arranged her hair in curls accented with a dainty branch of silk cherry blossoms.

“Considering everything, I think you’ve survived in good form,” remarked Aunt Sophie, making delicate adjustments to the elbows of her long net gloves. “What did that innkeeper’s wife give you to eat?”

“Ham with pork pies,” said Frances with a shudder, “and baked whiting, buttered spinach, eggs, and a Sutherland pudding. It was humiliating, Aunt Sophie! She watched every mouthful I took and said in a motherly way that I mustn’t forget I was eating for two! Then she asked if she ought to send for the midwife to have me examined
just in case
. I wish now that I’d said yes! That would have exposed Lord Landry and his odious lies. And as for his introducing me as Mrs. Whiterose . . .” Frances struggled to find words that could express her degree of chagrin.

“Was for your own good that he
did
lie,” said Aunt Sophie, in a fair-minded way. “If it ever gets about that you spent the night with Lord Landry, you’d have to move to America and change your name.”

“I wish, dear Aunt Sophie,” said Frances tersely, “that you would not keep referring to my ballooning accident as ‘the night you spent with Lord Landry.’ I’ve told you, we didn’t
do
anything.”

Her aunt looked sympathetic. “I wasn’t born last Wednesday, niece. You can unlace your stays around me.”

Frances sought again the handkerchief she had only recently abandoned and applied it briefly to her misty eyes. “Very well. The truth is that we didn’t do
everything
. But I . . . we . . .” It was a moment before she was able to go on. Finally she said miserably, “If I am ruined, it’s no more than I deserve.”

“I can’t agree. Landry’s such a dazzler that if you held yourself off from him you ought to win a medal for chastity. Besides,” Miss Isles added in a practical spirit, “the story of your adventure is in safe hands. I admit that when Richard Rivington came here Sunday night to bring back the parrot and tell me what happened, I did suffer a qualm or two. You must know, though, that Rivington and his father showed the nicest discretion in their handling of the matter! None of the teams were hitched, so they couldn’t chase the balloon directly, but they were not such fools as to raise a general alarm. ‘Never fear,’ young Rivington told me, ‘David will find some way to put that balloon down safely. But it could happen that we might not find them tonight, so it would be best not to let it become general knowledge.’”