poets and spies 15

 

Chapter 15

 

Jack was beyond delighted when Daphne brought him his dinner on a tray. She blushed.

“I need to apologise,” she said.

“You have nothing to apologise for; I was indelicate in my delight in sharing understanding,” said Jack.

“I shouldn’t have been so... Francine would call it ‘preceptress disease,’” said Daphne. “You know, unwed ladies of uncertain age who have given up all hope, and so find anything to do with... with intimacy frightening.”

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t want to be a governess. I want to be married and have my own children, and I want a husband who cares about what I want as well as what he wants. I’d like to marry well enough to thumb my nose at my stepmother, who wants me kept down.  She has her children, my half-siblings, and she doesn’t want reminders that she’s only four years older than I am, and that I’m the only child of Papa’s first marriage. I don’t really care about being anything like a countess so long as I am free. I considered David Peacock, you know; he seems a good sort of man, and I’m used enough to hard work, I’d make a good farmer’s wife, you know.”

“It seems a waste of your brains.”                                                                                               

“The Peacock boys have bettered themselves, don’t underestimate them,” said Daphne.  “But I couldn’t help it, when I saw a beautiful young god across the salon... but he belonged to someone else.”

“You felt it too?”

“Yes.” She blushed. “But l... lust isn’t enough.”

“How eminently sensible!”

“Francine,” said Daphne. “We discussed love and lust hypothetically at school, and she waved her hands and said something like, ‘eh bien, mes amies, lust, oh it makes the blood sing and the pulse race, and you have a beautiful young man, but if that is all you have, what will you then do with him when he is forty, and has a paunch and is thin on top?’ because Francine is very practical.”

Jack laughed.

“I am vain enough to fight gaining a paunch and my family usually has a good head of hair. But I will go grey and gain wrinkles some years in advance of you. I am something of a sportsman, but I am also a closet poet, and  I like to read. I like the theatre, but I genuinely enjoy being in the country, where I tend to live much like a country squire. Alice hated it; called it being ‘immolated in a muddy hole.’”

“I like living in the country,” said Daphne. “Are you proposing, and if so, is it as wife, or mistress?”

“What, you would expect me to suggest making a young lady into my mistress?” Jack was startled.

“I have no great family and I am no catch as a wife to an earl,” said Daphne. “They say mistresses have more fun; I should think the ones who have most fun are wives who are treated also as mistresses, because they have no worries about being discarded and poor. I would want a legal document if I was your mistress, to have a pension of three hundred a year if you discarded me.”

“A mean amount. But you have thought it out.”

“I... I want to touch you and I want you to explain the more... well, you know which poems. But I’m not stupid enough to think I can aspire to marrying you, so I need... safeguards. A woman who has lost her looks is a leaf tossed in the wind, at the mercy of the world’s cruel  wintery blast. I know it’s mercenary; but... but it is a big step.” She finished on a whisper.

“Come here,” said Jack.

She went to him; and though he only had one good arm to put round her, he pulled her on top of him. And then he kissed her, rolling her over with his injured arm on top so his hand could caress her without moving too much.

Daphne surrendered to  his kiss, wriggling happily against him, one hand sliding into his blond hair, the other on his chest.  When he lifted his lips from hers, she growled at him.

“A wife who is treated like a mistress suits me very well,” he said. “Oh, Miss Kempe! What is your first name? Nobody has ever told me.”

“Daphne,” said Daphne.

“What, a shrub to be mother of my little shrubs? You are fond of them, I think?”

“I adore them,” said Daphne. “Are you sure you want to marry me?”

“Oh, yes, I’m not going to let you go; you are intelligent, enter into my interests, and you bubble with passion. Though we might get married quietly, here, and forget to send a notice to the paper so we can pretend you are my mistress.” His eyes sparkled with mischief.

“Oh, what a most excellent prank!” said Daphne.

“I need to see your father,” said Jack.

“I should write first,” said Daphne. “If I say I have received an offer of marriage from my friend’s husband’s brother, my stepmother will assume you to be the sort of bucolic she assumes Mr. Brierly to be. If she had any idea who you are, she’d take steps to collect me and make sure I never saw you again, you know.”

“She could try; I am not going to let that happen, however! But Stoat, a bucolic? I can imagine his outrage, and him groping for a quizzing glass,” laughed Jack. “Oh, you can say I own some land in Hertfordshire, and run sheep.”

“I shall,” said Daphne. “But you have a wounded arm, and you are using it too much! You should lie still while I kiss you, now I know how.”

“Oho, you would like to take the lead? Well, why not?” he rolled back onto his back, and she sat over him, blushing, and brushed his lips with hers.

His dinner tray, on the commode, was entirely forgotten.

 

oOoOo

 

Stoat negotiated rapidly with the farmer who had possession of horses, and soon had acquired a couple of good riding beasts. Francine had no fears of riding astride, and they cantered off. Stoat was inspired to stop at the coaching inn.

“My friends!” he said. “I am looking for my cousin, who owes me money, and moreover I suspect him of trying to cheat at a wager; he is a sallow fellow, with dark hair, and he affects the English look with a coat he bought from a smuggler.”

“Oh, him!” the landlord spat. “So that was what he was agitated about, that it was imperative to know when the calèche would be here. And he was relieved not to wait long.”

“Oh, the cheat! The villain! You mean he has left already?” cried Stoat.

“Aye, two hours since,” said the landlord.

“Well! I was to race him to Paris as we both have business there, but we were to set  off together,” said Stoat.  “I pray you, what inns are the overnight stops for the calèche?” the calèche stopped overnight instead of going night and day alike like the stagecoach or the mailcoach. 

Furnished with the information about the overnight stops, Stoat left a vail which would be generous for a prosperous grocer, and went out to mount up.

“He has two hours start on us,” he said. “And though I want to push on and get ahead, I don’t want to push the horses too hard. The calèche after all will have changes of horses regularly, as it’s a government-run transport.  They’ll be able to sustain a speed of eight miles an hour;  and reasonably speaking on these nags, we won’t go a lot faster.”

“They are not bad animals, I think,” said Francine.

“Sweetness, they are not bad animals, but they have not been exercised regularly, or had their stamina maintained. They are too old to be likely to throw out splints, but we don’t want them dropping dead of apoplexy for being pushed too hard. Or developing cramps, or dying for sweating too hard and not being sufficiently hydrated. We shall have to stop and buy them bran and give them a wet bran mash with honey and salt, to keep them going.”

“I am sorry; I had no idea,” said Francine. “Me, I only ride the beasts, I do not know what makes them go.”

“A lot of tender care, actually,” said Stoat. “Horses are unbelievably delicate.”

“I know about needing to cool them,” said Francine, “And to be gentle with their mouths.”

“Which is more than many know, and in most circumstances is all you need to know,” said Stoat. “But these beasts have been allowed to get out of condition, and as you can see, they are reluctant to canter.”

“But that man did not warn us, we might have been people who would make them gallop!” said Francine.

“Quite,” said Stoat. “And I’ll see if we can’t take the poor beasts with us when we go.”

“Good; cruelty to dumb beasts is not proper nor respectable,” said Francine.

“I doubt we will catch up before the calèche stops for the night,” said Stoat. “At this point we have a problem. As, indeed, at all points hereon if we stop the calèche. Collet is surrounded by people who will not like to see another man killed.”

“But he is in English clothes; will they question it if you pretend to be whatever the French have instead of Bow Street Runners?”

“Not as easy as when the Committee for Public Safety was so feared, but... it might work,” said Stoat. “When we stop to feed the nags, I’ll see if I can construct a document. Few enough of them will have seen a warrant for arrest or a policeman’s warrant of identity, and I know the basic form and enough formulaic phrases. I even have an official seal on my fobs.”

“Bon, that will do nicely. You have the bearing and sheer gall to carry it out.” She considered. “There is, somewhere, a pun in there on Gallic and gall, but I cannot think it through at the moment, my brains are being jarred worse than my backside is, for this wretched beast refusing to go at anything faster than a trot.”

“You know to rise and fall, at least.”

“I have watched men at the trot. I am not unobservant. I am not happy with M. Collet, for it is not an accustomed movement, and everything is going to hurt, tomorrow.”

“I am sorry, love.”

“I do not blame you, my Stoat, I blame Collet. And I will not weep for him. He is interrupting our marital bed, and that is unforgiveable.”

“Totally,” said Stoat, with a straight face.

What was amusing was that most Frenchmen would nod solemnly in agreement with  Francine; l’amour was sacred.

 

They stopped to feed the horses at a ramshackle looking inn, in a village which appeared not to have a name, and Stoat was content to order food for the horses and for his companion and himself and to sit in the shadows to construct some papers which should pass muster when they caught up with Collet. The odd food stain would not matter, but would indeed add verisimilitude. Francine was glad just to be off a horse, and wished only that the chairs were not so hard. She sat on her satchel.

“Sorry, little one,” said Stoat. “Shall I hire a room for you to rest, and go on alone?”

“I will not be a liability,” said Francine. “Me, I am hardy. Did not I manage to drive, and drive, and drive, in pursuit of poor Romilda, when my wrists were breaking, but breaking from the effort? I have the fortitude to be an English heroine, as good as any in any novel, yes, and better than those who scream and faint to give the hero something to do. Me, if I wrote a novel, I would make it so that the heroine does not know what hysterics are, and make her a good foil for her hero. But some of them can endure, and mon Dieu! How loudly some of them do their enduring! But me, I suffer, but in silence. Have I made one word of complaint?”

“No, my sweet, you are stoic and uncomplaining, and I adore you,” said Stoat. “But a man is permitted to worry when he sees his wife is in some pain and suffering, and to offer her succour.”

“Vraiment,” said Francine. “And his wife appreciates such courtesy, but though she longs for nothing so much as to sink into a goose-feather bed, and preferably in his loving arms, the good wife is nonetheless more dutiful than this, and manages not to sigh after a cushion for her so-abused arse.”

“Sweetness!” said Stoat.

They applied themselves to a simple, but nourishing, meal of chicken stew, with plenty of onion and turnip to pad it out, and a piece of black bread with a scrape of butter on it. The wine was red, rough and undistinguished.

“Adequate,” said Francine, somewhat revived “But they would have been better to have fed the wine to the chicken, to revive it before butchering it.  But if that was cassoulet de poulet aux fines herbes as he said, I am a Hottentot.  Certainly, the pullet involved was more of an old crone of a fowl. But it was well enough cooked.”

Stoat laughed, and went to settle up. Some negotiation led to him presenting a feather pillow to Francine to ride on.

“My hero!” said Francine. “I will express my gratitude when we can be together properly.”

“I hope it helps,” said Stoat.

“Me, I will not cease to resent Collet, but I will do so from a position of less discomfort,” said Francine.

 

 

Francine was certainly ready to curse Collet in English, French, and Latin by the time they reached the large village of Brecqueflori, a pretty village set on the side of a hill, which the road climbed. There was an estaminet as well as the coaching inn. Here they left their horses, having paid for them to be fed and watered, not a usual service offered by an estaminet, but Stoat bribed the proprietor well, and to bring them on to the inn when they were satisfied. 

He flashed his forged documents.

“I am about to arrest a dangerous criminal, citizen,” he said. “Your co-operation is appreciated, and I know you will do nothing to impede my official business.”

The implied threat made the accompanying thanks more credible.

They drank a glass of unmemorable wine, and strolled over to the inn. Under cover of darkness, Francine slipped a cold hand into her husband’s hand. He squeezed it reassuringly.  Killing a man in what would be cold blood was never easy; but Collet had shot the unsuspecting earl, and planned to finish him off.

And Stoat was certain that he had more blood on his hands than that of his harmless brother.