Chapter 13
Arch needed to do something with his hands, his horse or his gun, or he would begin to think himself into an insufferable humour.
Thinking had become a most unproductive occupation of late.
Stuart, Fielding, and Baines were all engaged in actual work: tracing Kendall’s associates, watching taverns, comparing names, routes, pamphlets, debts, and whispers.
They would make lists and reports. They had the sort of tangible progress a man could set upon a table and examine.
Arch, meanwhile, found himself in the intolerable position of awaiting a lady’s pleasure.
He did not phrase it so to anyone else, of course, yet the fact remained that while his friends pursued traitors and radicals through London’s underworld, he waited upon Miss Francesca Vale’s willingness to trust him, speak to him, or place herself in danger and require him to extract her from it.
The difficulty lay in the fact that she was entirely unlike any lady of his acquaintance.
Miss Vale had no wish for attendance, no appetite for sighing devotion, no talent for fluttering her way through obligations while gentlemen arranged the substance of her life in the background.
If left to herself, most likely she would dismiss half the customs of the Season as nonsense and spend her mornings reviewing tenant petitions or manufactory ventilation with greater satisfaction than she would derive from a dozen drives in Hyde Park.
His mother, however, had every expectation of his dancing attendance, and thought that expectation most natural.
Arch had risen with the fixed intention of escaping to Manton’s and spending the better part of the morning with powder, shot, and good sport. He had just reached for his gloves when O’Malley entered the room and held out his hand. “A note from Lady Upton, sir.”
Arch closed his eyes. “Do you think she has set the house on fire,” he asked, “or merely my day?”
O’Malley handed over the folded note. “I could not say, sir.”
Arch broke the seal and read the contents.
There were mothers whose requests retained some modest appearance of being requests.
Lady Upton did not trouble herself with such delicacy.
She expected him at the Park by three o’clock.
Lady Upton wrote, in the airy tone of a woman to whom stable management was merely one more sphere in which gentlemen became tiresome.
Would you be so obliging as to collect Miss Vale on the way?
Below this, as if she had only just remembered the point that mattered most, came the postscript: Do not come resembling a highwayman.
Arch looked up slowly.
O’Malley waited.
“My mother,” Arch said, “wishes me to drive in the Park. I will need the curricle.”
“It is an unseasonably pleasant day for a drive in the Park, sir.”
“That is some small recompense.”
“I will send to Upton House for the curricle at once, sir.”
“I will require your assistance with my neckcloth when you return, if you please.”
None of them kept valets, but O’Malley had served as Renforth’s batman before returning from the war. He was a man of many talents.
Dressing for Manton’s would have required little thought.
A coat one did not mind spoiling, boots fit for use and a neckcloth tied with simple precision.
He was always neat and trim, as any good soldier would be; however, dressing for the Park under his mother’s eye was another matter entirely, and one that offended his principles in ways small but cumulative.
Nevertheless, he was not fool enough to ignore her instructions.
Lady Upton noticed details with the relentlessness of an excellent general, and if he appeared before her looking aught but fashionably put together, she would dispense with her greeting and judge him through sighs alone.
He submitted, therefore, to doing the thing properly.
First, he selected tan-coloured trousers, cut close enough to satisfy fashion without appearing too dandified.
Then he chose a dark navy coat, perfectly fitted and too narrow at the waist for his liking.
His Hessians had been polished to a level that bordered upon satire.
His neckcloth he tied not in his preferred plain military style, but in a more fashionable arrangement that O’Malley, who had learned these matters from some valetry of his own, referred to as “mathematical.” Arch mistrusted any style that required mathematics and knots simultaneously, but he endured it.
When at last he stood before the looking-glass, he regarded his reflection with resigned dislike. He looked, he thought, exactly like the sort of man a mother would send into Hyde Park for matrimonial purposes.
O’Malley spoke from behind him. “Sir,” he said with sardonic serenity, “Lady Upton will be pleased.”
“That is the most discouraging thing you have ever said to me.”
O’Malley bowed.
By the time the curricle drew up before Sir Percival’s house, Arch’s humour had improved only slightly.
His father’s horses, at least, were prime.
The day itself had turned out tolerably fine, with high pale clouds and a brightness in the air that promised no rain.
In consequence, London had come abroad. Carriages rolled; riders displayed themselves.
Nursemaids and children took the healthier air beneath the eye of servants on the green.
It was precisely the sort of afternoon his mother adored, because it placed all walks of society upon a single stage.
A servant admitted him almost before he had knocked. Miss Vale, he was told, would be down directly. Arch waited in the hall, hat in hand, and told himself with some determination that this was no more than duty.
Then Francesca appeared at the turn of the stair, and duty became inconveniently ornamental.
She wore lavender. It was not a colour he would ever have thought to describe, let alone remember, and yet it struck him at once with unexpected force.
The gown was a day dress, simple enough in its construction to be respectable, yet cut with excellent taste, the colour setting off the warmth in her complexion and the brightness of her eyes so perfectly that he felt, for one absurd instant, as though the whole notion of spring had been condensed into the woman now before him.
Her hat was smart rather than extravagant, trimmed with a darker ribbon that drew the eye very precisely towards her neck.
Everything about her was composed, practical, and lovely.
Arch bowed. “Miss Vale.”
“Major Manners,” she said, descending the last few steps. “I am told you have been pressed into service.”
“Your obedient servant.”
A smile touched her mouth. “Then I fear I am an unwelcome duty.”
His mouth twitched with a hint of a smile. “I would never say so.”
She reached the bottom stair and paused just near enough that he caught the faint scent of violets or something like them, though he distrusted himself entirely in floral matters and therefore refused to name it.
“Is all this strictly necessary,” she asked, taking up her gloves from the small table, “to display ourselves in a park?”
“Indeed.”
“How peculiar.”
“You have coined the Season perfectly.”
“Ah, but this is the season before the Season.
Arch laughed before he could prevent it.
That earned him a brief, satisfied look, as if she had set out to summon precisely that sound and was pleased to find herself capable of it.
“You should do that more often.”
He escorted her to the curricle, handed her up, and took his place beside her.
The horses stepped briskly into the street, and for a few moments they drove in companionable silence, which was, Arch thought, one of the strangest developments of the last fortnight.
He had not expected Miss Francesca Vale to become a person with whom silence might be shared rather than endured.
She looked ahead as they drove, one hand resting lightly on the side of the curricle, the other keeping a firm hold upon her bonnet ribbons when the air freshened.
“Had you intended some other occupation for your afternoon?” she asked.
“I had intended to visit Manton’s Shooting Gallery.”
She turned towards him. “You wished to pit your skill?”
“I wished to hit something that would not answer back.”
“That is an alarming confession.”
“It was either that or boxing at Jackson’s Saloon.”
“For shame, that being compelled to escort me has deprived you of this restorative violence,” she remarked with nonchalance.
“’Tis a burden I shall bear.”
“Just pray remember that I did not summon you. Lady Upton did.”
“Has she likewise rearranged your diary?”
“I have come to anticipate her commands.” She laughed softly and looked away again, but not before he saw the expression in her eyes change—lightening, warming, losing for a moment the watchfulness that had become so much a part of her lately. He liked her thus—more than he ought.
The Park, when they reached it, presented exactly the scene he had expected and precisely the one he would have avoided if left to his own devices.
Carriages moved in elegant procession. Riders drew rein where they might best be noticed.
Ladies inclined their heads to one another with measured civility while privately conducting appraisals of gowns, equipage, daughters, and prospects.
Young men loitered in little knots, pretending to have arrived for air and exercise when in truth they had come to be seen.