Penelope really felt faint. She could not believe her own blindness. No wonder Bailey had not wanted to show the nurse. How worried Mrs. Bailey must have been about her husband, to insist! In the midst of her own troubles, the woman had found a kind word for Penelope, and Penelope, like the worst sort of fool, had betrayed her to that snake Snively-
“Pray excuse me,” she said through numb lips. “I must-I must speak to my husband.”
He made a fine show of remorse. “My dear Lady Bedlow, you look quite dreadful! It was wrong of me to tell you about Miss Raeburn. You are taking it much too hard.”
“I am fine.” As if she were expected to hear that one of her people was to be arrested on her information with perfect equanimity! And she must pretend that her shock was caused by the news of her husband’s infidelity, because aiding poachers was surely a bigger scandal. She shuddered. “Please-my husband-”
Sir Jasper placed a restraining hand upon her arm. She nearly threw it off, like a restive mare. “I beg of you, Lady Bedlow, do not say what you may regret. Anyone can see that Lord Bedlow is very fond of you. You were right in your first reaction, though I suppose it does not come natural to you. In our set, keeping a mistress is really not uncommon, no matter how devoted the husband.”
She bit her tongue to keep from laughing. Yes, there was something so bourgeois about a faithful husband! His sympathy was repulsive. And how dare he continue to talk to her of such things openly, as if she were a-a common trollop?
She realized she had borrowed that phrase from Lady Bedlow, that dreadful morning in the breakfast room. The thought filled her with a kind of disgust.
Penelope had wanted to be one of these people all her life, but now she thought, Well, and I am common. As common as Miss Raeburn and the Baileys. Let Sir Jasper despise her. It was better than his respect. She drew herself up. “I promise you I shall not cause a scene. Only I should like to go home.”
She thought she caught a gleam in his eye, almost of satisfaction. At once she chided herself for indulging morbid fancies. Because Sir Jasper was offensive and a Tory, it did not follow that he was malicious. Indeed, he was everything that was tactful and solicitous in pulling Nev aside and telling him that she had been taken ill.
Nev was at once more solicitous and less tactful-in a moment he was at her side, asking what was wrong, did she have a fever, feeling her forehead when she said no, though she did not think he would be able to tell a fever by that method anyway.
“I’m fine,” she repeated over and over. “I just want to lie down.” She waited in a fever of impatience as they drove to the Dower House to let down Lady Bedlow and Louisa. Louisa was concerned for Penelope’s health. Lady Bedlow pretended to be, but it was clear that she felt Penelope had been taken ill on purpose to deny Sir Jasper the chance to win over Louisa. Clear to Penelope, anyway. Nev wasn’t listening to his mother; his eyes were fixed on Penelope’s face, and every time the carriage jolted he cursed under his breath.
It was touching, and yet she knew it was because of Miss Wray. If Nev’s mistress were not prostrate with fever, he would never be this concerned over a slight headache. Still, Penelope was weak-willed; she leaned into him and let him stroke her hair.
When they had let off Louisa and Lady Bedlow, he turned to her, his arm tightening around her shoulders. “What’s wrong? You aren’t fine, don’t tell me you’re fine-”
That too, was because of Miss Wray, who had said she was fine and was dying. She shook him off. “I’m all right. We must go to the Baileys’. I’ve been a fool-the constable is coming for Jack, his leg is from a mantrap and I told Mr. Snively-”
“You! I felt sorry for you, I kept your secret-I didn’t tell a soul about the girl calling for his lordship day and night-and you turned us in! What will become of my children?” Mrs. Bailey turned away from Penelope and sat down hard in one of the rush-bottomed chairs, burying her face in her hands. “What will become of my children?” The children in question stood in a little knot, silent and fearful.
“We’re too late?” Penelope said stupidly, though she had known it from the moment she had seen Mrs. Bailey’s white, wild face. “He’s been taken?”
Mrs. Bailey burst out weeping. “They’ll send him to Australia. I’ll be all alone like Aggie Cusher.”
Penelope was used to thinking herself good in a crisis, but she had never before been the cause of the crisis. She stood frozen, trying to think. To throw in their sympathies altogether with Mrs. Bailey was impossible; it would be all round the country in a moment that the Bedlows aided and abetted poachers. Nev would be a pariah, and was it illegal? But neither could they abandon the Baileys. Penelope tried to think of a middle course.
Nev sat in the other chair and offered Mrs. Bailey his handkerchief. “Penelope, why don’t you make Mrs. Bailey some tea?” Penelope did not quite trust Nev to deal with this, and still she was grateful to give over thinking and begin the simple preparations, filling the ancient kettle and measuring out the tea leaves as best she could with a tin cup.
“Mrs. Bailey, you must calm yourself,” Nev said. “You’re frightening the children.”
Mrs. Bailey blew her nose, took a few last gasping sobs, and made a pitiful attempt at a smile. The little Baileys did not look reassured. “Why don’t you go into Miss Raeburn’s room and join Annie?” she said hoarsely. “This is grown folk’s business.”
The children filed out, silently. Mrs. Bailey blew her nose again, saw the embroidered monogram, and started. She looked at Penelope, tending the kettle. “She oughtn’t to be waiting on me, it isn’t right.”
“Don’t worry about that now,” Nev said. “A cup of tea will do you good, and we need your help if we’re to find a way out of this for Jack.”
“What do you care?” Mrs. Bailey didn’t sound angry anymore, just confused. “It’s her who turned Jack in.”
“You may hate me for my stupidity,” Penelope said quietly, “but I promise you it was that, not malice. I did not recognize-they don’t have traps in town. I told Mr. Snively because I thought he might raise Jack’s allowance.”
Mrs. Bailey closed her eyes. “You meant well, anyway.”
“Mrs. Bailey, you must be honest with me,” Nev said. “Jack’s leg was caught in a trap, was it not?”
Mrs. Bailey nodded. “No one who’d ever seen a trap could look at that leg and not know. I thought-the nurse was from town and she was going away and his leg was doing so bad, I didn’t want him to lose it, I didn’t want him to die. He told me not to show her, and I insisted-I sent him to his death-”
“You mustn’t blame yourself. You did what you thought was best, because you love him and you were afraid.”
Penelope marveled at the conviction and sympathy in Nev’s voice. How did he always seem to know what to say? And how could Mrs. Bailey help but be comforted?
Mrs. Bailey couldn’t. She nodded, looking a little calmer.
“Listen to me carefully.” Nev took Mrs. Bailey’s hand. “Think before you answer. Is it possible that Jack was caught in the trap while in the woods for some innocent purpose, in broad daylight, and was simply afraid to tell anyone?”
Penelope caught her breath. Nev had found the middle course she had not been able to hit.
For the first time, there was hope in Mrs. Bailey’s eyes. “Yes,” she said cautiously. “Yes-we thought suspicion might fall on him. He was only-only-”
“I am sure he was only going to visit a friend at Greygloss.” He said it so very plausibly. Nev, Penelope realized with a shock, was a good liar. She had thought it so easy to read him at the start of their acquaintance-had he simply never bothered with concealment? Had he chosen to be honest with her?
Or, she thought with a sudden painful jolt, had all of it been a lie? The endearing candor, the kiss, I still wouldn’t offer for you if I didn’t feel we could rub along tolerably well together-had he been sweet-talking a plain, gullible heiress into doing exactly as he wished? Had he been surprised at how easy it was?
She pushed the thought away as unworthy of both of them, but it was too near her deepest anxieties to vanish entirely. She could feel it hovering at the back of her mind like a malevolent bat.
“Yes, that’s it precisely.” Mrs. Bailey’s hands trembled with relief as she took the cup of tea Penelope offered her.
“Very well,” Nev said. “I doubt I can get you in to see Jack today, but tomorrow morning we’ll go to the jail and you can speak with him and tend to his leg. Mr. Garrett is sure to know of some legal colleague of his father’s who’ll take the case. With some luck we will see Jack out of this whole.”
Mrs. Bailey grasped his hand and kissed it. “Thank you. Thank you!”
“I would do as much for any of my people who were in difficulties unjustly,” Nev said. “You can thank me by keeping Jack out of trouble in future.”
Mrs. Bailey would have kept them there half the night with tearful protestations of gratitude if Nev had not bundled them out the door by main force.
“You were splendid,” Penelope said as they walked home. Credit where credit was due, even if her emotions were in a miserable whirl. “Really splendid. I couldn’t think what to say, and you-”
“I had to do something. You were so upset.”
It was so far from what she had expected him to say that for a moment she was speechless. “Surely-surely you would have helped her anyway.”
Nev shrugged. “Jack Bailey knew the risks when he broke the law. I would have tried to help, but I doubt I would have gone so far.”
Penelope felt at once guilty and pleased, and guilty for feeling pleased.
Sir Jasper watched the constable’s deputies disperse like a pack of hounds in search of a scent. He smiled, thinking of the foxes they would be bringing back with them. He had been too pessimistic; the district was not spiraling out of his control at all.
He was so pleased that when he heard the clatter of an approaching cart and saw that it was the Bedlows with Mrs. Bailey in tow, he even greeted them with enthusiasm. “This is the biggest breakthrough we’ve had in years! You should be very proud, Lady Bedlow.”
“What-what do you mean?” the countess asked.
“The beggar’s talked! He’s given us names, places-we’ll have the whole gang!” It hadn’t even been that difficult. Sir Jasper had merely explained the situation to Bailey: on the one hand, languishing in jail with room-and-board fees piling up, then being sent to the Assizes and a quick hanging, with his wife and children left to fend for themselves in a cruel world; on the other, going home to his fond family that very afternoon.
The Bedlows did not seem to realize what great news this was. Bedlow actually laughed. “Come now, Sir Jasper, you’ve frightened the poor man into giving false information! His wife assures me that he was merely passing through the woods on an ill-advised shortcut to the home of one of your laborers, and when he was injured, was afraid to speak for fear of being suspected.”
“And you believe her?” Sir Jasper listened incredulously as the man rambled on, assuring him of Bailey’s long history of loyal labor and honesty. The new earl was even more gullible than his father.
He looked at the Cit countess to see how she was taking her husband’s idiocy, but she simply looked white and miserable. Still sulking about her husband’s actress, then. Sir Jasper smiled. At this rate they’d be separated by Michaelmas, and without his father-in-law’s pocketbook to back him, Lord Bedlow would be begging Sir Jasper to take Loweston-and his sister-off his hands by the New Year.
“I’m sorry, Lord Bedlow,” he interrupted, “but he was honest enough about where to find their store of arms, nets and snares, and the pitch they used to blacken their faces. I’m afraid there is no question of his guilt.”
Mrs. Bailey’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, he didn’t peach! He wouldn’t!”
The look on Bedlow’s face was extremely gratifying. “I suppose you had the right of it, Sir Jasper,” he said finally. “I ought not to be so credulous, yet surely it is better to err on the side of caution in these cases. The penalties are so harsh, and the crime-”
“The crime is black,” Sir Jasper said. “Good God, have you no thought for your wife and family? You would give armed men license to roam the countryside?”
“They would not need guns if being taken did not mean assured transportation.”
“The thieving blackguards must be stopped somehow, or they will tear the foundations of English society up by its roots!” Sir Jasper had thought, at first, that it would be all right to let Lord Bedlow keep Loweston. But the young puppy had quickly proven to be dangerously susceptible to the histrionics and sedition of his laborers. They wanted to see it all go up in flames, everything Sir Jasper had worked for his whole life-
He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply, clearing the scent of the dirty Seine from his nostrils. It was all right. He had things well in hand.
“We will never agree on that point,” Bedlow said. “In the meantime, I will arrange for a barrister to represent my people. I know you will treat them with fairness. Do you think you might tell me who has been accused?”
“I prefer to keep that information private until I am assured they are in custody,” Sir Jasper said. “Mrs. Bailey, you won’t mind waiting here? It should only be an hour or two, and then I shall be happy to return your husband to you.”
The Bedlows waited too, arranging themselves on a low wall near the jail. Sir Jasper couldn’t think why; they both looked dull and anxious, and barely spoke to each other.
Sir Jasper’s interference was probably unnecessary. They would have drifted apart on their own, and as for heirs-he found it hard to imagine that governessy countess even allowing her husband his conjugal rights, although the memory of them giggling and glowing in the doorway, that day after the rainstorm, gave Sir Jasper a touch of unease. He comforted himself with the thought that she was so thin and pale, she was more than likely barren. Mary had had that same fragile look, after the last miscarriage.
At length all seven members of the Loweston gang were brought to the little jail. The last one, Sir Jasper saw with annoyance, provoked an absolute firestorm of misplaced sentiment in the Bedlows.
“Sir Jasper, please, she’s only a girl!” The countess’s distress made her common little face even more unattractive.
“A girl who is evidently hell-bent on following in her radical father’s footsteps,” Sir Jasper said as Josie Cusher was led past them, fighting and glaring and generally behaving like the disagreeably pert piece of trash that she was. “Do you wish me to circumvent the law? Perhaps her fate will persuade back to the path of righteousness other children whose feet have begun to stray.”
He signaled the constable to release Jack Bailey. The man came out on his crutch, his head bent and his shoulders sagging. Sir Jasper didn’t blame him; a gentleman would never have betrayed his word in that fashion, and although Jack Bailey was not a gentleman, he seemed instinctively to feel that he had done something shameful.
Mrs. Bailey hastened forward to help him. “Oh, Jack! It was wrong to do it, but the children will be glad to see you.”
Aaron Smith opened the Cushers’ door as soon as they knocked. “Your lordship, your ladyship.” He nodded his head respectfully. “Is there news?”
“Good morning, Aaron,” Nev said. “Not yet. Is Agnes home?”
“Aaron, is that Lord Bedlow?” Agnes Cusher rushed to the door with red, swollen eyes. She clutched at Nev’s arm, and Penelope saw that she had been twisting her lavender satin ribbon, Josie’s gift, in her hands. It was ragged. “Please, your lordship, you won’t let them send my girl away? My little Josie-” Her voice broke. She did not look at Penelope.
“We are doing what we can,” Nev said. “But I don’t know that it will do any good if she is really guilty. Agnes, tell me-was she part of the gang?”
“She helped them with little things-making nets, carrying messages to the men who work for the butchers in London. She-she went into the woods once or twice, because she’s small and handy. I didn’t want her to do it, but how could I stop her? Joe was gone and we would have starved-the baby would have died-” She twined the strip of satin around her palm until her hand turned white.
“It wasn’t your fault, Aggie.” Aaron reached out and covered her hands with his. “It’s not your fault.”
Penelope looked for Kit. The boy had been crying too-he was sitting in the corner now, staring. She went over to kneel by him. “Good morning, Kit.”
“Kit, don’t bother her ladyship,” Agnes said.
Penelope looked up, surprised. “He isn’t bothering me. I just-”
“Kit, come here.” And Kit went past Penelope to his mother, who picked him up and held him tight.
Penelope stood, brushing the dirt from her gown. They all knew that Jack Bailey was arrested on her information then. They all hated her.
“Aggie,” Aaron said in a low tone. “She’s overset, your ladyship. Don’t hold it against Josie.”
“I wouldn’t,” Penelope said, more sharply than she meant to. “Of course I won’t.”
He looked at her carefully. “Good.”
She bristled, but-he seemed to believe her, at least.
“As I said,” Nev told them evenly, “we will do everything we can for Josie. Are you doing all right for money?”
Aaron’s eyes were on Agnes. “I’ll take care of them.”
It was at Harry Spratt’s house that the worst blow was struck. Young Helen Spratt opened the door dry-eyed and seemingly collected, but it took only a few sentences for her fevered state of mind to become clear. “I’d like to kill Jack Bailey,” she raged. Penelope remembered the taciturn laborers of their early visits, and marveled at how stress stripped away the discretion and reverence. “I’d like to murder that old son-of-a-bitch. You were coming to free him, and he couldn’t be a man for another hour? My Harry would never have peached on him. They all risked everything to save the bugger from that trap. It was Jack Bailey that recruited the half of them, anyway! We were always hungry after the commons were enclosed, but Harry thought we’d get by honest until Jack told him how easy it was, how safe, how sure! And there didn’t seem to be no harm-there’s plenty of game for us all, and if rich folk in London want to pay us for a few rabbits, who does it hurt? When the baby was sick, we could buy him some milk! It seemed so little to take, when we had to get rid of our cow-”
It was inane, but Penelope grasped on the one thing she didn’t understand, just as an excuse to not hear the horrible sound of Helen Spratt’s misery and anger for a few seconds. “Why did you have to get rid of your cow?”
Helen stared at Penelope as if she’d been dropped on her head as a baby. “You can’t go on the parish if you’ve got a cow. We had a pig too, and some geese.”
“But if you were doing so well, why did you want to go on the parish?” Penelope asked.
“You can’t get a job around here if you aren’t on the parish. That’s how it works. Mr. Snively gives us our dole, and Tom Kedge pays him for the men’s work. Mr. Kedge won’t hire you if you aren’t on the parish. It’s cheaper for him, see, so he gives Snively a little something to grease the wheels, and it’s all sunshine and daisies for everyone.”
Penelope rocked backwards. Why hadn’t anyone told her this before? How many of the farmers had had to give up what little they had, just to keep their jobs?
“Is this true?” Nev said. “Why didn’t anyone tell us?”
Helen nodded. “It’s God’s own truth.” She didn’t answer the second question. Penelope supposed she thought the answer was obvious. Why would anyone tell them?
“We will certainly investigate this further,” Nev said. “Thank you for bringing it to our attention. But we came to tell you that we’re doing everything we can for Harry, and in the meantime you must stay strong and not lose hope.”
Helen just shook her head. “Harry’s never coming home again.”
Nev was hiding in the library. He had been reassuring and masterful all morning, and he could not do it one moment longer. His boots were discarded on the floor, he was using his folded coat as a cushion from the stone embrasure of the window seat, his waistcoat was unbuttoned, and he was a third of the way through the first volume of Chronicles of an Illustrious House; or the Peer, the Lawyer, and the Hunchback.
So of course Penelope must walk in and find him. He swung his feet onto the floor hastily, trying to smooth his hair and hide the book at the same time, and she actually smiled. It was the first time he’d seen her smile in days, he realized with a shock.
“What are you reading?” She was still standing in the doorway with her hand on the frame.
There was no point in lying. He held up the book. “Minerva Press. I lied about it being Louisa who reads them.”
Her eyebrows flew up and her mouth opened with a sort of incredulous amusement, as if she could not wait to begin mocking him. He was conscious of an overwhelming desire to kiss her, coupled with a despairing conviction that he would always look the fool in front of her. “I read Farmer’s Tour through the East of England last week. I just-I can’t be serious all the time, Penelope.”
She flinched away. “Am I such a killjoy?”
“No.” Why must he always make things worse? And she wasn’t. There had been very little of joy between them in recent days, it seemed, but he was sure it wasn’t because of her. She was-sweet and sly, and she surprised him with how happy she could be, over the smallest things. “No, Penny, come here.”
Her mouth had folded sadly in on itself, but she came, and she let him pull her down till they were both stretched along the window seat, her back to his chest and her head on his shoulder. He ignored the hard wall at his back and breathed in the scent of her. “I never meant that. I only meant-I know I could never do what you and Percy do. I get restless, trying to read and make plans and manage money. I-”
He could feel her turn thoughtful. “What have you been doing instead?”
“Well…” He felt suddenly embarrassed. “I got bored, so I’ve been visiting Tom Kedge and the laborers. And-”
“That day you came home sunburned. Where were you?”
He felt silly and caught-out, like a little boy trying on his father’s clothes. “I helped harvest the wheat on the home farm.”
“I hate doing all that.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “I hate trying to be friendly to people and standing outside in the hot sun. I’d rather stay in an office all day looking at books and talking with a friend.”
Nev was startled by this view of things.
Penelope tilted her head. “You did well in school. Didn’t you study?”
“I never did very well in mathematics. Percy coached me for the Tripos-that’s the Cambridge mathematics examination-and I barely passed even so. I did much better in Latin and music. I like books so long as there are things happening. Farming equipment-”
“-is dull.” But she didn’t sound disapproving, just amused. “Didn’t you ever tag along when Percy helped his father in his office?”
“Of course. At first. I wanted to do whatever Percy did. And Mr. Garrett was always willing to explain things to me. Even farming equipment doesn’t seem so dull to an eight-year-old boy.” He shrugged. “My father found me there one day, entering receipts into one of the ledgers, and explained that gentlemen didn’t interest themselves in petty financial details.”
Penelope swallowed. “I never know what to say to things like that.” She tried to laugh. “Because on the one hand, that leads to bankruptcy, and on the other, it’s true, and I’m not a lady.”
“Why does it bother you so much? You spend so much time trying to be a lady, and-”
She tensed in his arms. “And failing?”
“No. And missing chances to be happy.”
She was silent for a few moments, and he wondered if he had gone too far. Then she pushed out of his arms. He froze, but she didn’t storm off-she just sat on the edge of the window seat and didn’t look at him or touch him, as if-as if she had to have her defenses about her, to say this. “I can’t even imagine what it would be like, not to try to be a lady,” she said. “I’ve been trying ever since my first day of school. You-you might not understand this because you’ve always been a gentleman. But my mother scrubbed floors for a living, once. I would meet people who had been her friends, and they had no teeth. They didn’t know how to read. I was a fat, freckled little girl, and I sounded like any street urchin in London when I opened my mouth. You’ve no notion how it feels, to go to the opera with your mother in your prettiest dresses, and a beautiful thin blonde girl sweeps by on the arm of a man you’re sure must be a lord, and she says in the most perfect English, ‘La, look at those people! What mushrooms!’ ” Penelope sighed, and made a hopeless gesture, as if what she was trying to explain was too basic to put into words. “Oh, I don’t know, Nev. I know those sound like a child’s reasons. They are a child’s reasons, but I don’t-I don’t know how not to care.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, but he wanted suddenly to tell her something else. “I missed you, when you didn’t come to dinner these past weeks.”
“Did you really?” A pleased, uncertain smile spread over her face.
“Desperately.”
She beamed at him. “I’m so sorry. I never imagined you would care in the least.” There it was, that sudden simple joy he never expected from her. It was in every line of her face, and affection burst through his veins like drunkenness. “Nev?” she asked, and he would have given her anything. “Will you read to me?”
He blinked. “You want me to read to you?”
She nodded. “You-you’re good at it.”
She had only heard him read aloud once-Byron, at her parents’ house. She didn’t even like Byron. He had supposed she was thinking him the most frivolous fellow alive, and instead she had liked it. For the first time in days, Nev felt that life was full of pleasant surprises. He grinned at her. “Let me dig up our copy of Malory.”
When he had found it, he returned to the window seat. He glanced at her to see where she wanted to sit; to his surprise she crawled between his legs again and settled there. So he rested the book on her lap and his chin on her shoulder and began to read. She was soft and warm and laughed in all the right places, and when he bent and kissed her hair she made a contented humming sound in the back of her throat.
When Penelope asked for Tom Kedge’s books and the Poor Law Authority’s, they were given over to her with a blithe confidence that made her half suspect the whole story was an ugly rumor concocted by the laborers. But it only took her and Mr. Garrett an hour or two to see that it was true, or mostly true. Kedge’s salary payments were made exclusively to the Poor Authority, which confirmed that he hired only Authority workers. That was bad enough, but Mr. Snively recorded those same payments in the Authority ledgers as rather smaller, which meant either that he was indeed receiving bribes or that he was embezzling.
But they could not accuse Kedge of graft without proof. Penelope and Mr. Garrett calculated that it would cost Kedge an extra two hundred pounds a year to pay a fair wage. Surely if they lowered his rent by a hundred and fifty pounds to compensate, that would be more than fair.
Mr. Garrett agreed to discuss the matter with Kedge first; perhaps that way, he would not feel threatened.
Nev was surprised but not too concerned when a servant came to tell him that he was wanted in Mr. Garrett’s office. But when he neared the office and heard raised voices, he started to worry.
“Then you had better tell Lord Bedlow at once,” Percy was saying, “because I will certainly not-”
“You weaselly rascal! Don’t take that high-and-mighty tone with me!”
They both stopped talking when Nev entered the room, but Percy’s white face and the vindictive malice in Kedge’s eyes were impossible to hide.
“Lord Bedlow,” Percy began, “Mr. Kedge has flatly refused to consider your proposal. When I persisted, he tried to blackmail me-”
Kedge interrupted him again. “Your lordship, you cannot be serious about this plan to raise wages so high! Your father would never have asked it of me.”
“My father was an excellent man,” Nev said, “but he would never have asked economy of anyone, least of all himself. That is partly why the district has been brought so low.”
Mr. Kedge drew himself up, all twenty stone of him. “Your father was a great man, and he deserves more respect from you. I deserve more from you. I kept this place going in ’16, I bought up the land and planted the hedgerows when no one else would! I have lived here, boy and man, for nigh on fifty years. And now you’ve a mind to tell me how to run my farm, when you’ve bothered about Loweston for less than two months!”
Perhaps at another time Nev would have felt the justice of that. Now he felt nothing but rage. He opened his mouth to remind Kedge just who was tenant and who was lord.
Percy was before him. “Mr. Kedge, you forget yourself! I asked his lordship to step in so that we might have done with this melodrama, not so that you could insult him. If Lord Bedlow had come into the title years ago, we would not be in this mess now.”
Nev stared at Percy.
Kedge took a step back. “Indeed, my lord, I am sorry. Forgive me my impertinence. I’ve been loyal to the Bedlows for fifty years, and I ain’t fixing to change.”
“That is very good of you,” Nev said without much sincerity. “Perhaps now you can tell me what the devil is going on.”
But Kedge was warming to his theme. “There’s some in this district as think their bread is buttered on the other side. Some as seem to have forgotten their lord and begun looking to Sir Jasper. That rat Snively, for instance, running to Sir Jasper with every bit of gossip he hears. I’m not that type. You know what I mean, don’t you, Mr. Garrett?”
Percy didn’t look at Kedge. His eyes were fixed on Nev. “Nev, I’m so sorry-”
“Mr. Garrett makes a fine show of loyalty. But he isn’t so very loyal when you aren’t watching. Everyone knows Sir Jasper is sweet on Lady Louisa. Well, he’d hardly be so eager to make a match of it if he knew what she’d been up to with the steward, would he?”
“You had better come out and say what you mean,” Percy said.
“If you please. I saw the two of them at your grandfather’s ruin, my lord, kissing and sighing. But I kept my mouth shut, because I’m a Loweston man.”
“Forgive me if I am not more grateful that instead of coming to me, you chose to try to blackmail my steward into working against my interests,” Nev said coldly. His thoughts seemed to come from far away. “Get out. We will resume this discussion at a later date.”
Kedge got up smugly and began moving toward the door.
“And we will resume it.”
“Just remember. As long as I’m a Loweston man, Sir Jasper doesn’t know. If I stop being one…”
“For God’s sake, get out!” Percy said.
When Kedge was gone they stood there, staring at one another. “Is it true?” Nev barely recognized his own voice.
“Yes,” Percy said, and Nev barely recognized his voice either. “I’m sorry, Nev, I am, but I love her-”
“Oh, Christ.” Nev wondered if there had ever been a time when this news would have made him happy. Even in the midst of his horror and disbelief, he was obscurely ashamed to think that there might not have been. “Here I’ve been worrying about you and Penelope, and all the time you’ve been sneaking around with Louisa-”
Percy stared. “Me and Penelope? Nev, Penelope is your wife!”
“Louisa’s my baby sister. You had no problem seducing her.”
“I didn’t seduce her. I wouldn’t have-it was only a few kisses.”
That was a relief, at any rate. Nev did not feel relieved. “One would be enough to ruin her.”
“I know.” Percy looked away. “Christ, I know. I never meant for this to happen, but she was so unhappy. So very unhappy. I thought there could be no harm in spending time with her, and then-I want to marry her, Nev. I will marry her, if you’ll agree to it. I may not be what she deserves, but I’m what she wants, and that’s good enough for me.”
Nev felt a stab of guilt that he had not found time to deal with Louisa’s unhappiness, and then sharp unreasonable anger that Percy had. “It’s not good enough for me, damn it! She’s seventeen, Percy. Seventeen. She hasn’t got the foggiest notion of what she wants or what it will mean to be married to you. She’s just a kid, and if it comes out she’s been meeting with you alone, she’ll be ruined! She doesn’t understand what that means, but you do! What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t thinking. I just knew-she was the one for me. She always has been, I think. I couldn’t say no.”
“Are you suggesting that my sister was the instigator in this?” Nev said in a low, dangerous voice.
Percy almost smiled. “Come off it, Nev, of course she was. Louisa’s been waiting her whole life to plot an assignation.”
Of course she had. Poor irrepressible Louisa. Unlike Penelope, she had never learned not to rebel against things she could not change. Nev had wanted so badly to keep it that way, but now-“And you were right on the spot to take advantage of it, weren’t you? How do you propose to keep her, Percy? I know you never wanted to be a steward. Were you planning to take her to your lodgings and feed her off what you could win at piquet? I daresay Louisa would think it a grand adventure-at first.”
Percy flushed, a sure sign he was about to lose his temper. “Nev, please. Of course not. I never did want to be a steward, but-I’ll be honest. I’m here because when you left, I didn’t get invited so many places. People started to look at me askance. The whole thing was a house of cards, and it fell apart. But I’ve tried stewarding now, and I like it all right. We’re not kids anymore. I’m willing to settle down. I’ve been doing some translations, and that’s bringing in some money. I’d never spend a penny of Louisa’s principal, and the interest would make sure we did all right-”
“You want Louisa to live on two or three hundred a year? Why do you think I fought so hard to save Loweston and her dowry, if not so that she could make a good match and never have to worry about money again?” Nev remembered those few weeks before Penelope agreed to marry him-his grim visions of Louisa in shabby lodgings and a made-over dress, cajoling duns and hoarding tallow candle-ends, all her happy glow and piratical daydreams and enormous cherry-trimmed bonnets brushed away like the bloom on a butterfly’s wing. That was why he had worked so hard to save Loweston, for her and his mother.
And now through his own fault it was all for nothing. He should never have been such friends with Percy; he should never have let Penelope hire him. He should have seen Louisa was unhappy so she wouldn’t seize on this; he should have been paying attention and found out what was going on before Kedge. “That money was to find her a husband who could take care of her, not to go to some damn fortune hunter who-”
But that was the limit of Percy’s forbearance. “How dare you? You canting hypocrite!” he said through clenched teeth. “When a month before your marriage you were gossiping about your bride-to-be’s dowry with your mistress!”
Nev opened his mouth to make a hot retort-and saw Penelope standing in the doorway. If he lived to be a hundred, he would never forget the frozen, humiliated look on her face.
“I-” she began, and stopped. “I heard that Mr. Kedge was gone and I wanted to know how it went. I-I’ll just be going-” Her voice broke, and she turned and fled down the corridor.
Nev ran to the doorway. “Penelope!” he shouted after her retreating back. “Penelope, wait!”
“Oh, God,” Percy said, aghast. “I didn’t see her, I never would have-I know the two of you-”
Nev turned back and looked at his best friend of almost fifteen years. “Get out of my house. Tonight. And don’t ever go near my sister again.” Then he ran after Penelope. He could hear her footsteps on the marble floor of the entrance hall a ways off. Then they stopped. He sprinted after her and stopped short in the doorway of the great hall.
She was wrapped up in the arms of a greatcoated stranger.
He walked towards them more slowly. “Penelope?”
She turned but didn’t quite disentangle herself from the stranger. Her face was streaked with tears, but underneath it was glowing. She smiled at him as if she couldn’t stop. “Lord Bedlow, may I present Edward Macaulay.”