Page 51

Rash Lover speak what pleasure hath

Thy Spring in such an Aftermath?

As soon as the callers were gone, Mary threw herself across the sofa, resting her face on the cushion and staring into the fire.

“Why didn’t you go with them, Horace?” she demanded. “I know you wanted to.”

“We must talk, Mary,” he sighed. “Did you tell them that was you in Iffley, or did they guess it when they saw Blodgett?”

“I think only the young ladies guessed it.” A giggle escaped her, in spite of her sulkiness. “The dear old man was simply confused.”

“But you did not talk of it?”

“No.” Sitting up, she studied him. “They don’t seem the sort of people who will tell anyone, for your sake, if not for mine.”

“No. I don’t suppose they will.” He ran tired hands down his face. It was enough that they knew it. That she knew it. But he could still explain it away, possibly, if she would only hear him—and if Mary did not play the aces in her hand.

“You like her, don’t you, Horace? Mrs. Sebastian. The widowed one who was married to your friend.”

There was nothing to be gained by denying it. Someone who knew him as long as Mary had would not be fooled.

“I do.”

“I suspected it, when I was there, in Iffley. That there was…something between you. And I couldn’t think why, when you used to love me, and you and I were so alike, I thought.”

“We did used to be more alike,” he conceded. Or, at least, he used to be more like her. More reckless. More devil-may-care. It seemed a long time ago.

“You were so full of fun and mischief!” She smiled dreamily, remembering. “And I had a new adventure in mind, Horace, which the old you would have loved, but which the new, tiresome Horace you have become would likely not have approved. Can you guess what it was?”

“Did it have something to do with the linens you were purportedly making for Harry Barbary?” he asked grimly. “I did hear you say ‘you’ wouldn’t be needing them now.”

“That’s it!” she shrieked in delight. “How great minds do think alike. Yes. I thought, once Harry was fetched home, I would go in his place. I would see the world! I have no doubt I could do anything a young boy was expected to do, and when I grew tired of it, I would simply put my dress back on and desert.”

There were so many, many problems with her scheme—twice as many as he had ever tried to scare Harry with!—that Langworthy was at a loss where to begin.

“What—how on earth—did you not consider—”

Again he passed his hands over his face, this time in sheer amazement. If he and Mary had once been so much alike, did that mean he too had once been so utterly brainless ?

Mercy. What next?

Inwardly shaking his head, he gave up. Let it be enough that her ridiculous plan was thwarted.

“If this was your intention, Mary, why did you act so eager for Harry to go?”

“I was throwing everyone off the scent, naturally,” she plumed herself. “I even said I was making the clothing a little too big, so Harry could grow into them, when really it was to fit me.”

But after a moment, her self-satisfaction faded, her shoulders sagging. “But so much for that. He will go, and you will go, and I will remain. And I suppose you will marry that Mrs. Sebastian person, and I will—I will do nothing for the rest of my life and grow old and ugly and be loved by nobody.”

“Mary.” Though she had wronged him so painfully, and though he still did not know if he could repair the damage done by her Iffley escapade, he could not sustain his anger. Because she was a child, he realized. Almost as much a child as Harry Barbary.

“Mary, listen to me. You have a great deal to look forward to. As we speak, gentlemen are pouring into Portsmouth. Everywhere you turn you will see new faces and meet new people. Dashing officers, and not the sad creatures on half pay such as I have been. Already there is activity, and soon there will be assemblies and battles and news of prizes taken. I would not be surprised if you accepted and jilted a dozen men before I see you again, and I will only have the satisfaction of having been the first.”

To his relief, she laughed. There were tears in it, but it was a laugh all the same. “Why do you not start me off again, then?” she asked, dabbing at the corner of her eye with the heel of her hand. “Could we not be engaged once more?”

When he hesitated, her features gathered in a little pout, and her voice lost its playfulness.

“I could make you do it, you know. I could shout from the rooftops that I was the root of your little scandal in Iffley, the reason you had to leave so abruptly. And then you would have to save me, in order to save yourself. Save my reputation, at the cost of your own. That Mrs. Sebastian wouldn’t think much of you, then. ”

There they were. The aces he had been waiting for.

He nodded, knowing he would have to choose his words carefully.

“Mrs. Sebastian and her sister-in-law Miss Barstow have already penetrated your secret, you said earlier. And as you also observed—and I would agree with you—they don’t seem the sort to tell tales.

Which means, if the story were to get abroad, it must be your own doing, and what girl would choose to destroy her own reputation?

Half the fun of your pranks, I suspect, is the fear of being discovered.

But if you were, in fact, discovered, that fun would end.

You would be left only with the consequences.

And however unjust it may be, it is also true that a man’s reputation, once lost, is not beyond revival… as a woman’s is.”

In answer to this she scowled, her bosom swelling in vexation.

Had they been ten years younger, she might have pelted him with the nearest convenient object.

As it was, her little hands did clench and unclench.

“ She has a spotless reputation, I suppose. Mrs. Sebastian, whom you are going to marry.”

Unable to prevent a short chuckle he answered, “She has at least lived a quieter life.”

“Then you admit it, Horace?” she pressed. “You will marry her?”

“If she’ll have me, yes.”

His former beloved’s features screwed up in a grimace. “She’ll have you, all right. I could tell straight off that she aspired to you. Set her cap for you and her heart on you. And you think I am overbold.”

“If she was so resolved, she had a peculiar way of showing it,” he retorted, goaded at last. “Because she refused me when I asked her.”

Mary’s mouth fell open—there was no other way to put it. Fell open and stayed open. “You—asked her? You—you went from me to her ?”

Again her hands clenched fitfully, and with a rueful smile he tapped the back of one of them. “Oh, Mary. Leave it be. We have been good friends. Let us continue so. I don’t think you’ve been in love with me for a very long time, and why should you want me now, dull as I am?”

“You are dull,” she returned, though he was glad to see a grin tugging at her lips.

“Dull and staid and still as poor as you ever were. But I know the second I let you go with my blessing, you will make commander and then captain and then admiral and take a hundred prizes and be made Lord High ThisandThat, and I will gnash my teeth in chagrin!”

“If that’s all it will take, won’t you please do it?” he teased. “I might act on commission for you and return you a percentage.”

Her grin widened, and he leaned closer to make her meet his eyes. “Come. Shall we lay this dead engagement of ours to rest and part friends?”

The wind was brisk on the saluting platform which overlooked Spithead.

They had been there an hour already, but Harry and Lord Dere’s interest showed no signs of flagging.

The Gazelle must be pointed out (no easy matter with so many ships readied and awaiting orders) and distinguished from its neighbors, and Harry must share every ounce of knowledge already imparted to him.

For Mr. Langworthy’s sake Sarah could also have listened for another hour, but Frances wound an arm through hers and walked her further along the wall.

“I can’t wait any longer to discuss it,” she apologized. “Because what do you think of Miss Pence and Blodgett? In all Mrs. Dere’s conjectures, she never hit upon this explanation! Nor did I, for that matter.”

“Nor I,” said Sarah. Catching at her flapping bonnet ribbons, she occupied herself with retying them, so she need not look at Frances.

“But it answers one question,” she rejoined.

“The one about whether they were kissing or fighting. As they were formerly engaged, I suppose it might have been kissing and then fighting, or else kissing and then…grappling with each other.”

Frances sighed. “Yes. How very disturbing. I really do like Mr. Langworthy—not only for Sebastian’s sake, but also for his own.

And I wish he weren’t so entangled with such a one.

One who dressed as a boy! Posed as a servant!

Endangered herself and him! If she could have known the suspicions it aroused and the trouble she landed him in—and to what end?

All to spy on him? To win him back?” She took hold of Sarah’s arm again.

“Do you suppose it has worked, and she has succeeded? But if she had, wouldn’t they have made an announcement when we were there? ”

“We were rather busy settling Harry’s fate,” answered Sarah shortly.

“It was hardly the time for celebrations. If it helps matters any, Mr. Langworthy did say to me in the passage that he would like to speak with me. To explain himself, I imagine. And I said yes, of course, because I have to give him Mrs. Barstow’s message. ”

“Mm.” Releasing her, Frances leaned her elbows on the platform’s stone wall. “If Miss Pence came all the way to Iffley in such an elaborate disguise to catch him again, I don’t expect she would be keen on allowing him another visit when they are married. Poor Mama.”

Poor Mrs. Gordon Barstow, indeed.

And poor Mrs. Sebastian Barstow.

“Isn’t it odd,” continued Frances, “to think that Sebastian and Mr. Langworthy should marry such different people? To hear Mr. Langworthy tells stories, they were as alike as two peas, but Sebastian chose you—rational and sensible and dear —and Mr. Langworthy prefers that shocking creature—”

“Sebastian thought Mr. Langworthy should marry me,” Sarah blurted.

She had not meant to say it—not at all—never—under any circumstances, and yet out it popped.

Later she would think it was because secrets never shrank for being kept; they only grew.

Grew, and grew heavier. And that afternoon in Portsmouth, after such a morning and after standing so long on the platform, she simply could no longer support its weight.

“What do you mean?” puzzled Frances. “Sebastian told you that?”

Sarah shook her head. “No. I didn’t know. It was Mr. Langworthy who told me when he first came. He said Sebastian had written to him after he was wounded and…asked him to…take care of Bash and me and—marry me, if—if—he happened not to marry Miss Pence.”

“My goodness!” Frances breathed. “Only imagine.” She turned an unseeing gaze out toward the ships floating in the sheltered anchorage, and some minutes passed before she ventured, “Then…did you—have a good laugh about it? I mean, he didn’t ask you, did he, even though Miss Pence had jilted him?”

Sarah had gone too far for retreat now, even if she wanted to, and the story was soon told, leaving Frances dumbfounded and reviewing all that had gone before through this new lens.

“I wish—” Sarah began again when her companion still said nothing, “—I wish now I had given him a different answer.”

“Indeed, so do I. You would have made him a far better wife than Miss Pence. But I don’t see how you could have given him any other answer, Sarah. You had only just met him, and I remember you weren’t predisposed to like him.”

“No…”

“Mama would be very sorry to learn of this, however. Of how near we came to making him part of the family.”

“You mustn’t tell her yet, Frances!” urged Sarah. “We will announce his renewed engagement first, and then, when that is got over, I will tell her all. To tell her now would only sadden her.”

Squeezing her hand in agreement, Frances looked like she might say more, but then she shook her head. She gave Sarah a kiss meant to express all that could not be said, and then the two of them rejoined the others.