Like the innkeeper, the lady seemed mightily curious about them. She kept turning to look at Peregrine. Though he had his back to her as they rode and he said as little as possible, he grew increasingly uneasy. As soon as they reached Reading, he was wild to get away from them.
Luckily, Olivia had noticed or sensed trouble of some kind, and when the couple offered to treat them to tea and biscuits, she suddenly remembered errands that couldn’t be postponed.
It was midafternoon, and Reading was bustling. It was easy enough to lose their brand-new friends in the crowd.
Olivia led Peregrine to a large group gathered in front of a bench from which a grizzled peddler sold trimmings, laces, buttons, and other such articles indispensable to the feminine sex.
“We must do something about you,” Olivia told Peregrine in a low voice. “You look too aristocratic.” She squinted at him critically. “It’s the profile. We shall have to find you a large cap—or perhaps a scarf would be better. We could wrap up your face and pretend you have the toothache.”
Without appearing to push, she somehow made her way to the front of the crowd, towing Peregrine along.
A large woman was haggling with the peddler over a length of lace.
“Oh, my,” said Olivia, “I can hardly believe my eyes. Is that the Santiamondo lace—made only in the one small village in Spain—and the pattern passed down through one family? But where did you get it?” she asked the peddler. “You can’t find that lace in London for love or money, you know, because it’s all the rage with the ladies. The Duchess of Trenton wore it to a ball at Carlton House. I read about it in the newspaper. She wore Santiamondo lace, and her famous diamonds.”
The woman snatched up the lace, thrust the coins into the peddler’s hands, and hurried away.
The peddler looked at Olivia. She looked back at him.
Another customer asked about a ribbon. Olivia spouted off some piece of nonsense about the ribbon. Every button and bauble had a story. By late afternoon, little stock remained.
When the peddler took down his bench and packed up everything in his cart, Peregrine and Olivia helped him. He invited them to dine with him.
They ate at an inn frequented by other peddlers and itinerants. The place was dark and smoky, the food plain and overcooked, but Peregrine was too fascinated by the company to notice.
He had never been in the midst of such people before.
He could barely understand some of them. It was like visiting a foreign country.
The peddler’s name was Gaffy Tipton. “Now, I know you’re no boy,” he said, pointing his pipe at Olivia. “What I don’t know is why you was so helpful.”
She crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward and said in a low voice, “My brother and me, we’re going to Bristol to seek our fortune. It’s a good ways from here, though, and all we got is three shillings. We don’t know any trades, except that I used to help a pawnbroker sometimes, and I know about dress trimmings and such. I know the names of all the great nobs, and I read about the parties and operas and plays they go to. I come and helped you today to show what I can do. I heard someone say you always come on Saturdays from Bristol. If you’d let us go back with you, we’d make ourselves useful.”
Gaffy looked at Peregrine.
“He’s very shy,” she said.
“Is he now?” said Gaffy skeptically.
“I’m a good liar but we don’t neither of us steal,” she said. “If you let us go with you, I can be a girl again. If we go with you, people won’t trouble us.”
Peregrine blinked. It had never occurred to him that she might be worried about their safety. It had not occurred to him, either, that she could be as effective even when she told almost the whole truth.
After staring at Peregrine for an aggravatingly long time, the peddler said, “All right, then. I’ll take you.”
BENEDICT CLIMBED INTO the carriage beside Bathsheba. “Bristol, then?” he said.
“As you said before, we cannot know whether they are ahead of us, behind us, beside us, or right under our noses,” she said. “We cannot even be certain we’re traveling the same road. The one thing we do know is that they’re headed for Throgmorton.”
“It is a gamble,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “But whatever we do is a gamble, and they will be at risk whatever we do.”
“Bristol, then,” he said, and gave the horses office to start.
AT THIS SAME moment, Rupert Carsington stood in the vestibule of his brother Benedict’s town house.
“Not at home?” he said to the butler, Marrows. “Has he left for Edinburgh already?”
“No, sir,” said Marrows in the completely noncommittal manner butlers had to master before they learnt anything else.
“Urgent government business got in the way, most likely,” Rupert said. “Well, no matter. I can see him anytime. I wanted to take my leave of the boy.”
“Lord Lisle is not at home, either, sir,” said Marrows.
“Really,” said Rupert.
“Yes, sir.”
“Where are they?”
“I cannot say, sir.”
“Yes, you can, Marrows. I don’t doubt you could say a great deal. But it seems you’d rather I blunder about the house looking for clues.”
“Sir, I cannot say where they are,” Marrows said.
Rupert walked past him into the hall.
“Sir, I do not know where they are,” Marrows said. His voice held a faint note of panic.
“Do you not?” said Rupert. “That’s interesting.” He continued on to Benedict’s study. “Maybe Gregson can clear up the mystery.”
Men who became secretaries to titled persons were usually gentlemen of good family and limited means. Unlike the butler, Gregson could regard himself as one of his lordship’s confidants. Unlike the butler, too, Gregson would not consider his position to require an impassive countenance and a stubborn determination to give no visitor, even a family member, any information of any kind whatsoever about anything.
Gregson sat at his lordship’s desk, which was not its usual well-ordered self. At the moment it more closely resembled Rupert’s desk. Letters, cards, and invitations lay carelessly strewn about. A stack of apparently untouched correspondence stood at the secretary’s elbow.
“What’s got into His Perfectionship, I wonder?” Rupert said as he entered.
“Sir.” Gregson stood.
“Sit.” Rupert waved at the chair.
The man remained standing.
Rupert shrugged and walked across the room to look out of the window. “What the devil is that back there?” he said. “Is my brother going to tear up the garden at last and put in a bowling green as I recommended?”
“There was some damage in the area near the back gate,” said Gregson.
“Intruders?”
“Lord Rathbourne.”
“My brother did that?”
“This is what the servants say. I did not witness the—er—”
“Demolition?”
“Thank you, sir. I did not witness the demolition.”
“My brother wrecked the garden,” Rupert said thoughtfully. “This grows more interesting by the minute. Any idea what’s become of him?”
“I am not at all sure,” Gregson said. “His lordship has been behaving rather oddly of late. As you know, he is scrupulous about keeping me apprised of his appointments. But late yesterday afternoon he departed without a word to anybody. It seems he took the footman Thomas with him. It is vastly puzzling. I was sure Thomas had gone out some hours earlier with Lord Lisle—to a drawing lesson, I believe. But no one has seen Lord Lisle since then.”
“So Rathbourne found Lisle a drawing instructor, after all,” Rupert said.
“Oh, yes, indeed, sir. Lord Lisle has been taking instruction from . . .” Gregson drew toward him a ledger and flipped the page. “Here it is. The instructor is a B. Wingate, care of Popham Print Sellers.” He gave an address in one of Holborn??
?s more dismal neighborhoods.
“B. Wingate,” Rupert said, careful to keep his countenance blank. He had no trouble recalling the evening Peregrine had uttered the famous name at Hargate House.
Benedict thought himself the coolest of customers, but both Rupert and their mother had sensed something in the air.
Gregson, the innocent, had no idea who B. Wingate was, or he would have loyally protected his employer.
Not wishing to distress the man, Rupert returned his gaze to the scene outside and choked back a whoop of laughter.
Lord Perfect had answered the siren’s call.
Wait until I tell Alistair, Rupert thought. Wait until . . .
It was then he realized he’d better not tell anybody.
Lord Hargate had ears everywhere, and he would not find the matter amusing.
His countenance sober, Rupert turned away from the window. “Gregson, I thank you for being so helpful,” he said. “I must ask you, however, on my brother’s behalf, to be as unhelpful as possible to everyone else.”
The secretary looked alarmed. “Sir, I am sure I did not intend—”
“Rathbourne has been under a strain recently,” Rupert said. “That would explain why he forgot to inform you. This Wingate is connected to a government matter. Highly secret. That’s all I know. But if anyone else asks, I must beg you to know nothing at all about B. Wingate or my brother behaving strangely. A great deal may be at stake. Governments might topple. No telling. Best to play it safe and know nothing.”
“But sir, if Lord Hargate inquires about Lord Rathbourne—”
“In that case, Gregson,” said Rupert, “I should develop an incapacitating and highly contagious disease, if I were you.”
Chapter 13
“I HAD NOT REALIZED IT WAS SO FAR,” Bathsheba said as they passed through the Walcot tollgate.
Though she knew Rathbourne had driven as fast as the horses were capable of traveling, night had long since fallen. Ahead sprawled the town of Bath, famed for its healing waters. Bristol lay another half dozen miles or more to the northwest, and Throgmorton “some ways from there,” according to the tollgate keeper. When pressed, he could not say whether it was five or ten miles.
“Whatever it is, it might add another two hours to our journey, depending on the state of the country roads,” Rathbourne said. “We had better stop in Bath. We might enjoy a proper night’s rest and set out fresh in the morning.”
“And when we reach Throgmorton, then what?”
“Ask me tomorrow,” he said.
“I cannot wait until tomorrow,” she said. “We need a plan of action. We cannot simply set up camp at the gates and wait for Olivia and Lord Lisle to turn up. What are the chances of their entering in the normal way?”
“We have plenty of time to discuss what can and can’t be done,” he said.
“I’ve been discussing it with myself,” she said. “For most of the last several hours I’ve counted milestones and tried to sort out courses of action in an orderly manner, the way you do.”
“Is that how you occupied yourself?” he said. “What a boring way to spend the journey. And what an appalling waste of time. Why did you not ask me to sort it out?”
Because she could not get into the habit of letting him solve her problems for her, she thought.
“You seemed preoccupied,” she said. “I did not wish to disturb your meditations.”
He shot her a surprised glance.
“I did not think you needed to be entertained,” she said. “I do not need to talk constantly. I am happy to have a quiet time for thinking. Such times do not come often. And I wanted to work it out for myself.”
“You are too accommodating,” he said. “I am in the habit of traveling alone. I was not ignoring you. You are impossible to ignore. But I let myself become lost in thought. I wish you had reminded me to say something now and again to pass the time.”
“I was not bored,” she said. “I had a good deal to think about.”
There was a short silence, then, “I am not the most attentive of men,” he said.
“You have a great deal on your mind,” she said. “Especially at present.”
“I am not attentive,” he repeated impatiently. “I finally recognized that . . . though it took me long enough. A valuable insight—and what use do I make of it? I have spent all this time with you—more time, I think, than I have spent in constant company with any woman since I was an infant. Yet now, when the last thing I want is to waste our remaining time together, I fall into old habits.”
“It is not your duty to entertain me,” she said. “You must watch the road and—”
“You wondered how my wife could be a stranger,” he cut in, his voice taut. “This is how. Lack of conversation. Lack of—gad, I hardly know. I treated her like a handsome piece of furniture—she, a Dalmay. She needed to swim in an ocean of feeling. She needed attention. Small wonder she turned elsewhere.”
Bathsheba was too surprised at the outburst to speak. She could only stare at him. His handsome profile was set in hard lines.
“It was not a man,” he said. “Not in the way you think, at any rate. She fell under the spell of an evangelical preacher. He persuaded her—and a great many other misguided creatures—to bring salvation to the poor. They did this by handing out Bibles and preaching at people who regarded them as a joke or an insult. I have dealt with the poor, Bathsheba. They need a great deal, but I do not believe they feel any great want for aristocratic females dressed in the latest stare of fashion telling them they are proud, vain, and licentious.”
She longed to touch him, to lay her hand on his arm. She could not. It was nighttime, but this was not a lonely stretch of road. This was a main thoroughfare through England’s most famous watering place.
“I was mistaken,” she said. “Perhaps she was emotional, after all.”
“I wish she had thrown something at me,” he said. “But I had no idea of the extent and depth of her—her passion for the cause. I hardly knew what she was up to. I didn’t ask. I dismissed it as a typically muddled feminine whim. I should have put a stop to it. Instead, I now and again stirred myself to make sardonic observations that went over her head. Then I went on about my so much more important business and forgot about it.”
“You didn’t love her,” she said.
“That is no excuse,” he said angrily. “I married her. I was responsible for her. She was my oldest friend’s sister, plague take me—and I ignored her. Thanks to my neglect, she went into the back-slums prophesying hellfire and damnation, and came out with a fever that killed her in three days.”
“Jack rode a horse he was warned against,” she said. “The beast threw him. It took him three months to die.”
“It is not the same,” he said.
“Because he was a man and she was a woman?” she said.
“Your marriage was a success, though all the world condemned it,” he said. “Mine was a failure, though everyone applauded it.”
“It takes two,” she said, reminding him of what he’d said after the first time they made love. “Some unwise marriages do turn out well, for the participants, at any rate. Any number of arranged marriages turn out well, too. Why should not a marriage based on duty? A marriage of convenience? A political marriage? You are not unreachable, Rathbourne.”
“Not for you,” he growled. “But you are different.”
“The difference is, I grew up learning to make do,” she said. “You and Lady Rathbourne did not. I do not say you bear no responsibility. You should have made more of an effort. But so should she have done. Men are difficult creatures, yet a great many women—even the silliest, weakest-willed women—do manage to train them eventually.”
A short, shocked silence.
Then he laughed, and she felt the bottled-up rage and grief dissipate.
“You wicked woman,” he said. “I open up my heart to you. I reveal my secret shame—and you make a joke of it.”
“You nee
d a joke,” she said. “You paint too black a picture of your marriage. A great many women would be thrilled to have husbands who ignore them. It is preferable to being humiliated or abandoned or beaten. You were not the perfect husband, yet I should calculate that you were far from the worst.”
“Merely mediocre,” he said. “That is a great comfort.”
“That is the trouble with believing you are the center of the universe,” she said.
“I do not—”
“You are like the king of your own small country,” she said. “Because you use your power for good, you are weighted down with cares. It is hard work to be a paragon. And because you are perfect, your mistakes cause you far more anguish than they would do ordinary, fallible persons. You need a joke. You need a Touchstone.”
“A touchstone?”
“From As You Like It,” she said. “The jester.”
He threw her a glance. “I see. And you have appointed yourself to the position.”
That and others, she thought. Companion, lover, and fool. Oh, above all, fool.
“Yes, my lord,” she said. “And you must allow me to speak freely. That is the special privilege of the court jester, your majesty.”
“As though I could stop your saying what you liked, or doing what you liked,” he said. “Yet I will request that you not address me as ‘your majesty’ nor yet ‘my lord.’ For this once in my life I need not be ‘my lord.’ For once I needn’t be anybody in particular. I must have a new name for this stage of the journey. I shall be . . .” He considered. “Mr. Dashwood.”
“I shall be Miss Dashwood,” she said. “Your sister.”
“No, you will not,” he said. “You do not want a separate room at the inn.”
“You do not know what I want,” she said.
“Yes, I do. And so will everyone else. No one will believe we are sister and brother.”
“They believed it before,” she said.
He turned into the courtyard of an unprepossessing inn.
“That was before,” he said. “Now it is impossible for you to conceal your lustful feelings for me.”