Married to a Perfect Stranger (20 page)

“Friend of mine was at that party, gawking at some drawing of yours.” George let out an aggrieved sigh. “Why in God's name were you drawing before all those people? Idiotic thing to do. Pushing yourself forward.”

Mary found that her throat had gone rather dry.

George frowned at her. “And if you had to draw…which of course you did
not
. What sort of featherbrained chit makes an unflattering picture of…?”

“Enough!” snapped John.

His brother drew back, looking startled.

“You will not speak to Mary in that tone.”

George bridled. “Someone needs to. She seems to have made you a laughingstock, if not an absolute pariah. If Mama had realized that she's as hopeless as you—or worse!—when it comes to…”

“She is not!”

Mary's heart swelled at the outrage in John's face. He was defending her even though he had said some of these same things about her drawing.

“What's got into you?” George said.

“A sense of justice?”

“What? Don't begin spouting some sort of nonsense. I've come all the way over here to save you from your own folly.”

“And what do you imagine you can do?” said John.

Under his brother's cool inquiry, George sputtered. “Give you a sense of your…tell you what Mama says…talk some sense into your dratted wife.”

“Enough!” The command in his voice silenced George. “I will say it again. You will
not
speak of Mary in that way.”

Mary blinked back tears. No one had ever defended her so fiercely or so completely.

“Ever,” added John. He frowned at his brother. “Moreover, your ‘help' is not required. Nor is Frederick's, nor Mama's, nor Roger's from halfway across the world, for that matter. I will take care of this myself.”

“Really?” George retrieved his customary condescension. “The way you did when you fell off the barn roof? Or when you…”

“Will you
stop
talking to me of things that happened when I was a child? All of you seem to be…obsessed with the past. Did I need your help at school? Did I need it when I took up my position at the Foreign Office? Did I need it on a voyage halfway around the world? No, I did not!”

Mary was so proud of him that she thought her heart might burst.

“You'll be sorry for flinging my offer back in my face like this,” snapped George.

“Indeed? And what is your grand plan to make all right?”

“Well…” George obviously had no idea.

“Are you going to fetch a ladder? Or simply rant at me about my shortcomings? And laugh yourselves sick, of course. That's always a great deal of help.”

“John, what the devil is wrong with you? I was only…”

“You—all of you—may leave the ordering of my affairs to me from now on.”

“Really? What's
your
plan then? If you have one.” George's face had gone crimson with anger by this time.

“There's no need for you to know that,” John replied.

“No need or no chance. Because you haven't the least notion what to do. You're hopeless, the pair of you.”

“Mary, get George's coat,” replied John.

“Are you throwing me out?” His older brother was incredulous.

“This conversation is fruitless.”

“You are not the best judge of what is…”

“This is
my
house. I fear it is not a convenient time for a visit.”

Mary brought George's things. Practically steaming from the ears, he snatched them and stamped out of the parlor. A moment later, the front door slammed.

John let out a long breath. “I've never spoken to any of my family in that way.”

“And it's due to me.” Mary felt as if another black mark had been ticked up against her, even though George's attitude was undoubtedly insufferable.

“Yes.”

He might have denied it, she thought. Or said more than that one stark word. “I'm sorry.”

“When he attacked you, I could see how unreasonable he was being.” John shook his head. “I suppose I'm used to being the family goat. But when George turned it on you, it was so clear…” He nodded as if acknowledging some obvious fact. “I should have spoken up long ago. I can't imagine now why I didn't.” He moved his shoulders as if easing into a coat that fit him to perfection. “I could have been a bit more temperate…”

“I don't think George would have heard anything quieter,” Mary suggested.

“No.” John stood even straighter than usual. “I must say it felt rather…good.” He met Mary's eyes and grinned. “Quite…extraordinarily good.”

She smiled back, delighted.

“I daresay I shall have to apologize…”

“Not until your family admits that you are extremely intelligent and very well able to manage…anything,” Mary insisted.

“That could be quite a long time,” he said, still smiling.

“Well, they are great fools then.”

John put an arm around her and led her back to the sofa. “I shan't be in a hurry to recant,” he admitted as they sat down. “Now if only I had the plan I claimed just now.”

“We could make one together.” Filled with relief at his willingness to talk about it, Mary rushed on. “Eleanor…our neighbor, the dowager countess, is going to speak to Lady Castlereagh as soon as she's back in town. They are friends. She will have some influence.”

“That is kind of her,” John acknowledged.

Mary gathered her determination and went further. “It's even more than that, because Eleanor understands about my drawing. She said it's because it happens to her also, that drawings reveal things without her…purposefully setting them down.”

“Reveal?” said John.

He looked puzzled but not annoyed as he had the last time she'd tried to tell him. Mary strove to call up Eleanor's words. She'd said it so well. “I learn and ‘speak' with my hands. It's simply…a different way of dealing with information.”

“I don't understand.”

Mary groped for the right phrases. She so desperately wanted him to understand. “You get so much from reading,” she tried.

“Of course.”

“But it is not ‘of course' for me,” she told him, leaning forward in her urgency. “It is quite difficult. Sometimes…nothing goes into my mind from a printed page.”

He frowned as if trying to imagine such a thing.

“But when I begin to draw…my hands know what to do…somehow…without my thinking about it. They express what…I might have noticed or sensed but have not understood.”

John was still frowning but not angrily. “Are you talking about a kind of…intuition? Comprehending things without reasoning them through?”

“Yes, only it happens in a drawing.”

He gazed at her. “Like an idea that just pops into your head out of nowhere…”

“Or shows in a picture without my planning it.”

“It seems rather…odd.” But he said the word as if he was trying to take in the thought, not as a criticism.

“So, that is what occurred when I drew Lady Castlereagh,” Mary finished, to make certain he saw the whole.

“You can't help it?” he asked.

Mary quailed inside. It seemed she'd been urged to “help it” for most of her life. She shook her head.

John seemed bemused. “Well, perhaps our kind neighbor can explain that to her ladyship.” He didn't sound convinced.

Was he skeptical about Eleanor's ability to explain or about what she had told him about herself? Mary wasn't certain. She longed to ask but wasn't sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“Meanwhile, I shall continue to search for information in Limehouse. There are indications that I may be onto something important.”

“You'll find it, and the Foreign Office will see what a prize they have in you,” Mary said.

“Indeed.”

Was he humoring her? “Both our ideas will work,” Mary insisted. “And things will go back to the way they were. Or…they will be even better. Your brothers will treat you with respect…”

“Don't ask for the moon.” John laughed.

“Why not?” she demanded. She wanted so much, more than she could say just now.

“Never give up?”

“Never!”

Still laughing, he kissed her.

When John arrived at the office the next morning, he was surprised to find William Conolly entertaining a group of colleagues, including Fordyce, in the corridor outside their room. The gathering wasn't unprecedented. Foreign Office staff sometimes lingered in clusters and chatted before settling to work. It could be an efficient way of connecting important facts that originated in different departments. But in his present circumstances, it was a bit uncomfortable, and he wished Conolly had found a different place to hold forth. But there his friend leaned, against the wall near their doorway; as always, he seemed polished and at ease.

“Indeed,” Conolly was saying as John passed, “Lady Castlereagh is very proud of her menagerie.”

John suppressed a wince at the lady's name and walked through to his desk. As he reached for a report to begin reading, Conolly's voice floated in.

“FO staff stationed abroad often send animals home to her,” he said. “I heard she was vastly pleased with the tiger some chaps shipped from India a few years ago.”

“That's the one that roars at everybody and tries to bite,” said Fordyce. Whatever the topic and however ill-informed he might be, he always tried to sound as if he had special knowledge.

“How else is a tiger supposed to behave?” replied Conolly. “You wouldn't want a tiger that's tame as a pussycat. What's the point? I heard some lads in New Spain sent over an armadillo.”

“What the devil is an armadillo?” asked one of his listeners.

“It's Spanish for ‘little armored one,'” offered another.

“That fits,” Conolly responded. “I think the thing's rather like a badger in chain mail. Ugly. But both the Castlereaghs were pleased with it, I believe. Jeffries insists the gift of an exotic creature is the way to their hearts.”

John listened more closely as Conolly laughed to show this was a joke. He knew that laugh, and William's whole tone, come to think of it. His friend was up to something.

“I've heard her ladyship is longing for some special sort of monkey,” Conolly added. He appeared in the office doorway, turning away from his audience. “Well, best get to work, hadn't we?” He came into the office and settled at his desk.

“What was that all about?” John asked.

“I'll tell you tonight.”

“What's tonight?” John wondered.

“You'll see.”

“Are you planning some prank? Involving Lady Castlereagh? This hardly seems a time to stir things up further…”

“Don't worry,” interrupted Conolly with an airy gesture. “Would I do anything you didn't like?”

“Yes!”

Conolly put a hand to his chest. “You wound me. When have I ever…?”

“You put that sign on our door…”

“You were supposed to be out that afternoon,” his friend protested. “You told me you would be.”

“And Weeks came by while
you
were out—to ‘Uniform Supply,' as evidenced by your grand sign—and asked me for his Foreign Office dress uniform.”

Conolly struggled with a smile. “It was his first day on the job.”

“So you simply had to give him a false chit for a powder blue coat and scarlet pantaloons.” John felt his own lips turning upward.

“He actually
believed
we would all wear a rig like that on formal occasions.” Conolly spread his hands, marveling.

“I can see how that would be irresistible.” John had to smile.

“There you are then.”

“What are you up to, William? With everything that's happened lately, you must tell me.”

But Conolly wouldn't be drawn, no matter how John pressed him. His only response was a mysterious smile. Experience had taught John to view that particular expression with caution.

When the workday ended and John drew on his greatcoat, Conolly was right beside him. He walked with him out of the building and over to the livery where John stabled his horse during the day. “What are you doing?” John asked.

“Coming home with you” was the jaunty reply.

John stopped in the middle of the street. “Why? What's going on?”

Conolly laid a hand on his arm. “As soon as we get there. Trust me, John.”

“Do I have an alternative?”

Conolly's laugh was so lighthearted that John had to join in.

At his house, John found Lady Caroline Lanford sitting with Mary in the parlor. One look at Mary's face told him she was as bewildered as he. John sent Kate off with their coats and closed the parlor door. “All right,” he said. “Confess. What have you done, Conolly?”

“Is there some bad news?” asked Mary.

“Not at all,” Conolly assured her.

“Then why…?”

“We have been discussing a variety of plans,” Conolly went on. John frowned at him.

“You and John?” Mary said.

“Lady Caroline and I,” was the reply.

“We are going to get revenge on Edmund Fordyce,” said Caroline, green eyes sparkling.

“Revenge?” Mary leaned back on the sofa.

“We're not entirely sure how as yet,” Conolly admitted. “That's why we have called a council.”

“Council?” John looked from his colleague to his guest and back again.

“We've been thinking it should involve animals.”

“Because they offer such tempting opportunities,” added Caroline with an impish smile.

“Like the ferrets?” Mary said.

“Ferrets?” John wondered if he was going a bit mad under the strain of the past week. “Why are you always linking Lady Caroline and ferrets?”

“Caroline trained a ferret to drop acorns on stuffy people at the dinner table,” said Mary.

“What?” He could not have heard correctly.

“One went down a high-nosed lady's dress,” Mary added.

“A ferret?” He struggled to picture it.

“An acorn.” Mary laughed.

“Oh! If I had trained him to retrieve them…” began Lady Caroline.

John frowned at them both. “We are not introducing ferrets into…anywhere.”

“No, no,” replied Caroline. “Although…”

The sly expression on the girl's pretty face seemed ominous.

“…but no,” she continued. “Ferrets are too common. Too English. All the animals in the Castlereaghs' menagerie are exotics.”

“Menag…oh, she was talking about that at the party.” Mary grimaced at the memory of that event. “She spoke about a…mockingbird that wouldn't sing. What is a mockingbird?”

“Any bird that overhears this ridiculous conversation,” said John.

Lady Caroline wrinkled her nose at him. “Don't be stuffy. We've been trying to think of the perfect scheme. Fordyce is a toady at heart, so…”

“So we thought we would give him an irresistible opportunity to ingratiate himself with the Castlereaghs and make sure that it goes badly wrong,” said Conolly.

“Perhaps with a monkey,” Caroline added meditatively.

“A…monkey.” John sat back and stared at them. His guests smiled winningly in response. Mary looked uncertain. “What in God's name would you do with a monkey?”

“Well, that is the question,” Caroline replied with an encouraging nod. “That's what we've gathered to figure out.”

“Don't we have enough trouble already?” John wondered. He'd never become directly involved in one of Conolly's schemes.

“I suppose monkeys can be quite…trainable?” said Mary.

“Did you hear me?”

“Of course,” said Caroline to Mary, as if she hadn't. “Haven't you see them in their cunning little hats and jackets collecting coins for their masters?” She nodded reminiscently. “That's why we've nearly settled on a monkey. I was thinking of a crocodile, but it would be harder to procure. And Mr. Conolly said it wouldn't…”

“There will be no monkeys or crocodiles or elephants or creatures of any kind,” John declared. His brain reeled with visions of chaos. “Fordyce isn't worth the trouble you might get into.”

“No one will know who did it,” Caroline said. As if it might be a reassurance, she added, “Mr. Conolly and I are quite good at pranks. Did you know that he once…?”

“Do you want to see me thrown out of the Foreign Office once and for all?” At last the room went quiet. They were all looking at him. John felt his cheeks redden. “We have been the subject of quite enough…attention,” he continued. He saw Mary's wince and regretted it, but he needed them to understand. “We are not going to manufacture another opportunity to be…singled out for criticism. Purposely.”

Caroline's chin came up. Suddenly, she looked every inch the aristocrat. “You can't stop us from doing whatever we please.”

“Caroline,” said Mary. “If John does not wish you to…”

Conolly gazed at John. “Have my pranks ever truly damaged anyone, Bexley?”

John hesitated. The victims he could bring to mind had all seen the jest in the end. Even he, with his superfluous chair, had laughed. “Reynolds,” he remembered.

Conolly nodded. “Ah, yes, Reynolds, who meant to…um…take advantage of that émigré girl who'd come for help in finding her parents.”

Reynolds was a blackguard, John admitted silently. He'd more than deserved to be…curbed.

“We only mean to give Edmund Fordyce the
opportunity
to behave badly,” Caroline wheedled. “He needn't do so. It is his free choice.”

John's mind was a muddle. The impulse to risk warred with the fear of failure. A desire for justice clamored against the caution that had been drilled into him in his childhood. And through this churning indecision, he kept seeing the look on Mary's face when Lady Castlereagh snatched her drawing away from Fordyce. If Mary was involved in a scheme of revenge against Fordyce and he found out, he would turn on her like a poisonous snake. “No. I want to make a serious effort to come about from this recent…setback. Not indulge in…high jinks.”

“How can you be so tedious…?”

Conolly interrupted Caroline's protest. “I understand.” When Caroline started to argue, he held her eyes until she subsided. “I will escort you to your grandmother's house,” he added. He took her arm and practically dragged her away.

When they'd gone, John and Mary sat down to a belated dinner. They ate in silence for a while, and then John said, “We have made our own plans. Fordyce is…a creeping nothing. He isn't worth a thought.”

Mary nodded. “Although the thought of wiping that smug look off his face is tempting.”

“He'll be quite downcast if I succeed.”

Mary nodded. She looked wistful, but as John saw it, Conolly—and still worse the unpredictable Lady Caroline—threatened to bring her more pain, not less. It simply wasn't worth the risk.

* * *

After dinner, John went up to his study for a while. Mary drifted into the front parlor, but she couldn't sit still. After poking the coals of the fire, straightening perfectly orderly cushions, and staring with loathing at her basket of mending, she gave up and went to her sitting room studio. So often in her life drawing had made her feel better. It had also made her feel many other things, of course. Drawing was her solace and her bane, her gift and her burden. She turned to it now, closing the curtains over dark windows, lighting lamps, sitting at the long table before her easel, holding a pencil, and waiting.

At first it seemed that inspiration had closed up shop for the day. Her hand did not move. To encourage the flow, Mary doodled along the edge of the paper—a flower, a bucket, a series of interlocking triangles. The next image turned into a monkey, creatures she'd seen only in pictures. She remembered the long limbs and tail, though, the projecting jaw and liquid eyes. Her monkey squatted in the corner of the page, hands on its knees.

When finished it was a creditable likeness of the breed, even charming, she thought. However, it had none of the resonance of her human portraits. Mary wasn't certain whether this was because her talent was limited to people or because she had no
particular
monkey in mind. They must have some individual characteristics. And one would never draw a generic “human being.” She
had
once produced a portrait of Petra's cat that plumbed the depths of Tomasina's arrogance.

Her pencil moved on, outlining the little monkey in another pose. Then bold strokes swept into the center of the page, heralding a larger image. Wiry frame and furry tail, hands so like a person's—only this monkey's face emerged differently. It came out as a distorted version of Edmund Fordyce's long countenance. Mary's lips curved as her hand moved faster and added details. The man's hooded eyes fit right in; she went ahead and made them blue with a bit of chalk. Fordyce's sneering mouth appeared, lengthened into a simian snout. She gave the figure ears, flattened against the sides of the skull, and some incongruous tufts of yellow hair. With a soft laugh, she added shadows to a squashed nose, a furtive hunch to sinuous shoulders.

When she was done, she had a face and figure that screamed of low cunning and sly malice. She'd never done anything like this before—and it was an insult to the breed of monkeys—but she was thoroughly enjoying herself. She rubbed out some lines with her fingertips and began to sketch in a little costume, like the ones Caroline had mentioned. Soon, this version of Edmund Fordyce wore a frogged jacket and pipe-stem trousers; he held out a little cylindrical hat, begging for pennies.

“Mary?” called John's voice from outside the room. There was a knock at the door, and then he was looking around it. “There you are.” He came in, holding a sheet of paper. “I found this…” He spotted the drawing on her small easel, and his eyes widened.

Mary put down her pencil and waited.

John took a step closer. His lips parted in astonishment. Then they curved up at the corners. His penetrating blue eyes started to sparkle. And he laughed.