The Battling Bluestocking (16 page)

Feeling the rush of warmth in her face again, Jessica stared at him speechlessly.
Talk of snags in the water
, she thought. General Potterby’s voice startled her, but realizing that he was speaking to her, she turned, trying desperately to compose both her countenance and her emotions.

“You have such becoming color in your cheeks, my dear,” the old gentleman said benignly.

Hearing a choking cough from Sir Brian didn’t help matters at all. Jessica smiled at the general and managed a murmur that sounded like an expression of gratitude, but she realized a moment later that she needn’t have worried that the general might notice anything out of the ordinary, for he merely wanted to know if her aunt was really changing her ways and getting back into the social whirl.

“Why, yes, I believe she means to go on as she has begun the Season, sir,” Jessica replied, her voice nearly steady again.

“Excellent, excellent. High time Susan caught herself a husband. Been saying that for thirty years. Thought I’d be saying it for thirty more. Maybe not, though,” he mused, shooting a speculative look across the table at Lady Susan, who was now speaking animatedly to the gentleman on her right. “Maybe not.”

“Oh, but I don’t think…” Jessica broke off, realizing that the old gentleman wasn’t listening to her. A moment later, Lady Gordon arose from the table, signaling that it was time to leave the gentlemen to their port, and Jessica followed the others, feeling as if she had escaped from more than one snag in the past ten minutes.

The rest of the evening passed harmlessly enough, with no further opportunity for private speech with Sir Brian, but Jessica found her thoughts returning constantly to various things he had said, as well as to what Janet St. Erth had told her. She wondered if she had become a trifle rigid in her thinking, if she truly did demand that the people she cared about think as she did. Surely not. Surely she could accept dissent from her friends. But a simple difference of opinion and a commitment of any kind to a man whose very way of life was in opposition to all she believed…

Her thoughts had a tendency to become confused at that point. No commitment had been requested of her, so what on earth, she asked herself, was she thinking of? Although Sir Brian had once told her she was exactly the sort of woman he had been searching for all his life, he had never actually indicated a wish to marry her. To be sure, he had seemed—before he left Cornwall, at least—to be working himself up to such a declaration. But her responses then had been anything but encouraging. And since they had been in London, though she had given every sign of being willing now to accept his advances, and though that very night at dinner he had as much as admitted recognizing that she held at least a tenderness for him, he had quite failed to take advantage of the situation. If, in fact, he had not been merely trifling with her and still wished to affix her interest, that was all very well and good—at least, she had no objection to such an attempt on his part—but if he
were
to ask her to marry him, how could she possibly give an affirmative reply, knowing that she would be marrying a man who…

Here again, her thoughts consistently took a confused twist. Who what? she would ask herself. What did she really know about what he thought? She certainly knew nothing about the way in which he conducted his affairs. Or only what she had imagined from what she knew about coal mining and slavery. Had she perhaps been unjust to assume that he was the embodiment of the wicked men she had learned about over the years?

With all these thoughts in mind, she tossed and turned in her bed that night, and it was with circles under her lovely gray eyes that she faced her aunt over the breakfast table the following morning.

“Shall you accompany me to King’s Bench today, my dear? The defense is speaking its piece, you know, and Mr. Hatchard can use any amount of moral support.”

“I’m afraid not, Aunt Susan,” Jessica replied, stifling a yawn. “I didn’t sleep well last night, and I fear I should be poor company.”

Her aunt accepted her at her word and soon went away, leaving Jessica with one of her favorite romances to read. But since the heroine seemed particularly stupid and the hero particularly misunderstood, for once, Miss Sutton-Drew found little solace in her favorite pastime.

So it was that when Andrew Liskeard called to inquire whether Miss Jessica might not favor him with her company on a ride through Hyde Park, she decided that a breath of fresh air was just exactly what she needed. Besides, a little voice deep inside whispered, Andrew undoubtedly knew a good deal about the workings of Sir Brian’s mind.

I
N THE TIME THAT
it took her to change into her habit, Jessica’s horse was brought around from the stables, which faced onto Little Brook Street, and she and Andrew were soon riding down Brook Street and through Grosvenor Square, where Andrew was able to point out Sir Brian’s house in the first block of Charles Street. It was a mere fifteen minutes more to Park Lane and the northeast entrance to Hyde Park.

While they rode through the streets of Mayfair, their mounts required their constant attention, so what conversation there was was desultory. But upon entering the park, where they could simply allow their horses to wander along from one path to another without much thought, Jessica set herself to draw Andrew into speaking about his uncle by asking him to tell her more about Shaldon Park.

The young man followed her lead without hesitation, explaining that he had lived with his uncle for some eight years or so, since the death of his own parents in an influenza epidemic.

“There wasn’t anyone on my father’s side to take charge of me, and he had named Uncle Brian my trustee, so I came along to him. Of course, I was usually at school, you know, but I spend holidays at Shaldon Park, trotting about after him while he looked over the mines and rode about the estate.”

“It must have been difficult for you, losing both your parents so suddenly like that,” Jessica sympathized.

“Lord, yes. I was a handful, all right and tight. You should hear some of the tales Uncle Brian can tell. But he understood. Probably better than most men would have—young men, anyway—for you must know that he was only twenty-four or so when it happened. But he had been in my position himself, for his father died when he was nineteen, and though he hadn’t had an uncle to take charge of his affairs, he understood what I was feeling.”

“Had he no one? What of his mother?”

“Oh, she was about, of course, but she’s a bit flighty and not the sort a fellow can depend upon. Shouldn’t speak so of one’s great-aunt, I expect, but she was quite overcome by my great-uncle’s death—he simply fell dead one night while he was preparing for bed, you know. Hadn’t even reached his fiftieth birthday yet. Bit of a shock to the poor lady’s sensibilities.”

“I should think it would be.”

“Yes, well, she stayed at Shaldon Park for less than a year before returning to her own folk in Yorkshire. She visits occasionally, but I don’t think she cares much for Cornwall. Says it’s too damp and windy for her liking.”

“And you, Andrew, do you like Cornwall?”

His eyes lit up, and his mouth quirked into a self-conscious little grin. “I think I must love it as much as my uncle does. Of course, my own estates are there, too—on the River Fowey, between Brown Willy and Bath’s Plot. That’s north of Shaldon Park, you know. And east, too, of course. On the edge of Bodmin Moor.”

He spoke proudly, and that alone told her much of the way his uncle had raised him. She knew the area he spoke of, knew too that Bodmin Moor, like most of the higher moors of Cornwall, was more likely to boast vast, infertile wastelands of peaty bogs, wild grasses, and sedges than the fertile, flower-filled lushness that characterized Shaldon Park. Still, those moors, dotted by the castlelike tors of granite that seemed to surge upward everywhere, had their own wild, picturesque beauty, and if Andrew had learned to appreciate it without coveting green lushness instead, that was all to the good. Then it occurred to her that he was no doubt Sir Brian’s heir. Perhaps it had never entered his head that he might not have both properties.

“I expect he’s taught you all he knows of mining and sugar planting,” she suggested blandly.

“Why on earth would he, when I’ve scant interest in such things? There are two stone quarries on my land, but most of my tenants are small-acreage farmers and sheep-herders. He’s caused me to learn a deal of what I need to know about wintering sheep, shearing, and such like stuff, for he’s taken me along to sit in on his talks with my bailiff whenever it’s been possible for him to do so. Let his own sons—when he’s got some—learn about tin and copper and sugar when they’re old enough to attend to his teaching.”

“Tin and copper? I thought he mined coal,” Jessica said absently, her mind on Sir Brian’s sons.

“Lord, no.” He stared at her. “There’s no coal mining that I know about in Cornwall. Lead, copper, zinc, tin—that sort of stuff. But coal is mined in the Midlands and the North—Newcastle and Manchester, places like that.”

Jessica’ gave a helpless little shake of her head and cast him a rueful smile. “My lamentable ignorance of geography again, I expect. One hears so much from Aunt Susan and her friends about the horrors of the coal mines that one just naturally thinks of coal when one thinks of mining. Still and all, a mine is a mine. No doubt the danger and the exploitation are the same in all of them.”

“I never paid enough heed to the details to deny that,” Andrew said, glancing at her quizzically, “but I’d wager every groat I’ve got that Uncle Brian’s mines are safe and his people well cared for.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt for a moment that his intentions in that direction are better than most,” Jessica said, remembering what Janet St. Erth had said about his intervention on Hayle’s behalf, “but that doesn’t mean that his mines are not dangerous or that he doesn’t exploit women and small children in exactly the same way that any other mine owner does. He has certainly never denied that when I’ve laid the accusation at his door.”

Andrew shot her that quizzical look again, but he said nothing further, and some moments later they met some friends of his who fell in beside them, and their private conversation came to a necessary halt. As they rode back along Brook Street some time later, Jessica found her thoughts returning once again to Sir Brian. She tried to imagine him as a nineteen-year-old youth whose father had just died unexpectedly, leaving him vast estates to care for. It was not easy to picture the confident Sir Brian in any light other than the one in which she presently saw him, but she decided he must have felt alone and abandoned at the time. No doubt there had been someone to assist him, a banker or a man of affairs. There generally was, in her experience, someone of that sort around at such times, particularly when the property involved was as extensive as Sir Brian’s seemed to be. Nevertheless, it could not have been the same as having someone at hand who truly cared about him. Surely Andrew had been luckier, having Sir Brian to help him over the difficult time after his parents’ deaths. Sir Brian, she thought fondly, would be very comforting to have around during a critical time such as that must have been.

When they arrived back in Hanover Square, Jessica invited Andrew to step inside for a bit of refreshment.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he replied, helping her from the saddle and turning his reins over to her groom.

They went up the stone steps together, but the tall front door opened before they reached it. Bates took a step toward them, his normally benign expression a good deal distressed.

“Oh, Miss Jessica, what a to-do! I don’t know what her ladyship can be thinking about. Truly I don’t. Good afternoon, Mr. Liskeard. I beg your pardon for blurting such stuff, Miss Jessica, but—”

“I told him, Miss Jessica,” stated Mrs. Birdlip righteously, appearing behind the butler, alternately wringing her hands, then wiping them upon the skirts of her black bombazine dress. “I told him just how it would be if he didn’t keep an eye on that shifty fellow. But would he listen?” Then she, too, seemed to become aware for the first time of Andrew’s presence, and colored with confusion, apologizing for speaking out of turn.

“It’s quite all right,” Jessica interposed reassuringly when the butler looked likely to defend himself against the housekeeper’s accusations. “Mr. Liskeard must be counted nearly one of the family by now, as both of you must know. What’s toward?”

“It was that dreadful sweep, Miss Jessica,” began the housekeeper as they stepped into the hall. “Just as I had suspicioned, he was not the least to be trusted.”

Bates shut the door before asserting his authority by casting a quelling glance at Mrs. Birdlip, who fell immediately silent. “It is as she says, Miss Jessica,” he said then in a subdued tone. “’Twas all my doing, I fear, but the man promised on his mother’s soul that he used naught but those modern machines to accomplish his business. I swear, I had not the slightest inkling that he meant to bring that boy along with him.”

“Merciful heavens!” Jessica breathed.

“A climbing boy!” Andrew exclaimed, grasping the gist as quickly as Jessica had. “Next you will say that Lady Susan walked in upon them whilst the sweep was still at his work.”

“Indeed, she did,” said Mrs. Birdlip, nodding her gray head fervently.

Bates nodded. “It was disastrous. I have never seen her ladyship in such a taking. The fellow had somehow smuggled the poor boy into the house without anyone’s being the wiser, and they were in the yellow bedchamber on the second floor when her ladyship returned from King’s Bench. Evidently the fellow was actually brutalizing the child when she walked in upon them. Oh, Miss Jessica, it was dreadful.”

“The poor little boy.” Jessica shook her head in sympathy.

“I wasn’t thinking of the boy, miss. ’Twas her ladyship. Lost her dignity entirely, and nearly brought the house down around our ears, if I may be so bold as to put the matter in such a common way.”

“That disgusting man,” put in Mrs. Birdlip, “a standing there in all his dirt bellowing at her poor ladyship that he didn’t care what people said about not wanting boys used. Said they always complain their chimneys wasn’t cleaned proper with only the machines and such.”