Chapter Five #2
The couple stopped, and then broke into a run, the man shouting back, “Pel, by all that is holy! What are you doing here?”
Marge—for it was Mima’s sister—was laughing as Lord Clayton dragged her along, and clasping her hat with her other hand.
Pel dismounted, so Mima did likewise. When he opened his arms to his brother and enfolded him in a hug, thumping him on the back, Mima tentatively offered her own arms to her sister. She was surprised to receive a firm embrace and a kiss on the cheek.
“Mima, I am so pleased to see you,” Marge said.
She was, to put it kindly, somewhat disheveled.
Her clothes appeared to have been slept in for days, her hair had not seen a comb in the same time, and dirt smudged her cheeks and begrimed her gown.
Wherever she had been, she had not been provided with washing water and soap.
How she still managed to be beguilingly lovely, Mima had no idea.
“But what are you doing here?” Marge demanded, “and in company with Lord Pelham Townswell!” She arched one eyebrow, looking at Pel, who was holding his brother at arm’s length, grinning. “You are Lord Pelham, I assume?” she asked.
“Marge, this is my brother Pel,” said Lord Clayton. “He’s a good egg, even if he is a bit too serious.”
“And this is my sister, Lady Jemima,” said Marge, not at all discomforted by her current state.
Lord Clayton, equally rumpled and just as self-possessed, bowed politely. “Lady Jemima,” he said. “Or may I call you ‘Mima’, as your sister does?”
Whether she wanted to see their reaction, or to lay claim to her husband, at whom her sister was unabashedly staring, Mima replied, “My name is more properly ‘Lady Pelham’, but since you are now my brother, you may call me ‘Mima’.”
The reaction was all she could have wished. Lord Clayton’s jaw dropped, and so did Marge’s. Marge recovered her voice first. “Oh, Mima. I am so sorry. I did not think Papa would really make you marry in my place.”
Chagrin chased irritation and, as Pel put his arm around her waist, gave way to amusement. “In fact, as it has turned out, Pel and I suit one another very well,” she said.
“In fact,” Pel corrected gently, “we are becoming a love match. Who would have thought?”
Marge’s eyes widened, as she looked from one to the other. Clay, on the other hand, gave a bark of laughter. “Oh, this is too precious. Didn’t I tell you, darling Marge, that your Mima sounded perfect for my brother? Take that, Norcross and Edwin Thoroughgood!”
Sure enough, once the pair of them told their stories, those two schemers were at the heart of the kidnap and many other attempts to destroy the peace.
The tale took some time to tell, and had to be repeated when they were reunited with their fathers and as many of the searchers as could cram themselves into Norcross’s large dining room.
Apparently, Norcross had tempted Clay to accompany him with a story of a boxing match, and Mima’s mother had persuaded Marge to leave the tower with a promise to take her away where her father could not find her.
“Then she put me in a carriage with Uncle Edwin, and he took me to an old cottage down that lane,” she waved a hand back the way that she and Clay had come.
“He said I would need to stay for several days so he could arrange for me to be taken to London to make my debut.” Her voice vibrating with indignation, she added, “and then he locked me in one of the bedchambers.”
Clay’s story was very similar, except that Norcross had not bothered with any soothing story, but had just ordered his footmen to overpower Clay and lock him in another of the bedchambers.
“We were guarded,” Clay explained. “When they brought me food and drink, and changed my chamber pot, they would never talk to me, and one would always keep a pistol aimed at me while the others carried the tray and the necessaries.”
“But we found a chink in the wall between our rooms,” Marge said, “and Clay managed to make it large enough for us to see one another and to talk.”
Mima tried to imagine the first conversation her sister and Pel’s brother had had once each discovered the identity of the other. Imagine being locked up with the person your father was trying to force you to marry! Did either of them wonder if one or both peers was behind their abduction?
Apparently not, for Clay was explaining, “Norcross said that we would be released once the feud started up again, but I overheard one of the guards tell the others that the families were not fighting, and we might need to be killed to get the reaction his masters wanted.”
Marge took up the tale. “We decided we had better escape, but before we could think of a way, the guards all left. Our windows overlooked the front gate, and we both saw them walking out into the lane and running off. Except that one came back and unlocked our doors, so we think he should not be punished like the others, do you not agree?”
“Neither of us knew quite where we were,” Clay said, before anyone could answer. “We decided to head off in the opposite direction to the guards and ask for directions. And we met you.”
“And if you please, your lordships,” Clay added, on the second recitation in front of the fathers, “Marge and I would like to be married after all. I know that Mima and Pel have satisfied the conditions in the agreement, but after all, two marriages must be better than one.”
*
“So that is the end of it, my love,” Pel said, two weeks later. “Clay and Marge are married, and even the hottest-headed young people and the crabbiest elders have accepted that the feud is over. Norcross has fled overseas and so have your mother and your uncle.”
“And Papa has agreed to let us have the estate on the boundary,” Mima said.
“The one that Norcross had promised Uncle Edwin for betraying his sister’s family.
” They had discovered correspondence between the two conspirators in Edwin Thoroughgood’s room that laid out the whole plan, and disclosed Thoroughgood’s motive in turning traitor.
“A home and lands of our own,” said Pel, with a happy sigh. “That, my dearest, warrants a kiss.”
A kiss, as usually happened when they had sufficient privacy, led to other things, and it was some time before either of them had any interest in amiable conversation.
As they lay entwined, Mima commented, “Brant intends to propose to your cousin Juliana.”
Pel chuckled. “He will not be the last to bind the two families closer together. Just think. A month ago, all the people on my side of the river hated the Ruthermonds and those on your side hated the Townswells.”
“True,” Mima agreed. “But do they not say that love drives out hate?”
“Love…” quoted Pel, from Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, in which a feud between families ended after the lovers fared far less fortunately that he and his darling wife. “A madness most discreet, a choking gall, and a preserving sweet.”
“If it is madness,” observed Mima, “then let us never be sane. Nor do I care for gall. But a sweetness that preserves? Yes indeed, my dearest love. In the sweetness of love, may our lives be long and happy.”
The End