Chapter Twenty-One #2
After three days of traveling forward and camping overnight, they reached a river and boarded a boat with a local guide.
From there, they spent ten days drifting down sluggish tributaries and St. John thought he would go mad over the slow progress.
The heat was unbearable and the one time he’d dipped his hand into the river he yanked it out again with a fish attached to it.
The boatman had to club it on the head to get it to dislodge its terrible teeth.
Coming as no surprise to anyone, a festering wound was the result.
Just as he was primed to suggest they get out and walk, as it might be speedier, they merged onto the main channel of the river. Rather than go too slow, now they went too fast. The boatman explained in Portuguese that “there were rains.”
How much could it possibly rain?
He wished he’d never asked that question as he soon found out.
It was not an English rain, as there did not seem to be separate raindrops.
It was a solid blanket of water and did not let up for days.
Each hour that passed seemed to enrage the river further until it was a maelstrom of swirling eddies and tree trunks that had been recently ripped up from their roots flying by their boat.
They were tossed in the most offensive manner possible, and St. John really could not say how they came out of it alive.
He’d thought that must be the worst of it, but Wellcurd had failed to mention that the last five days of the journey must be done on foot through the jungle.
St. John realized that very first night that the jungle was not meant for man to be wandering round in.
He was aware that there were peoples who lived somewhere in it, but he could not for the life of him figure out how or why.
The sounds at night were terrifying and he was haunted by the distant shrieks of unknown animals.
And then, was a jaguar silently watching them until all were asleep?
Would he be dragged off in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again?
During the day, one had to examine every move lest one step on a deadly snake, of which there were many varieties.
Crossing deep streams was problematic, what with the electric eels, caimans, and the previously met piranhas.
The guide, in some effort to cheer them up, told them that the streams they were crossing were probably too shallow for bull sharks to bother with.
Sharks in the jungle. Apparently, there were even frogs lurking about who could take down a man if one were so unlucky as to even touch their skin.
It felt as if the whole place was one murderous lunatic out to kill him. Despite his worry over dying, eventually he felt his spirits rise. Wellcurd told him they were mere hours from the glorious mines.
And then they arrived. St. John had sunk to the jungle floor. There was an encampment with a few desultory men lounging around, and a foreman with a very downtrodden look about him. There were several deep holes in the ground but St. John did not see the sparkle of emeralds, diamonds, and topaz.
Over the years, that mine would produce a handful of emeralds, just enough to keep paying the men to keep digging.
St. John returned to England with a hand that never did work properly after the piranha had got hold of it, and a wife who would harass him with her loud laugh for the rest of his days.
While St. John was busy ruining his life in Brazil, Mr. Wicket left the confines of Grosvenor Square. His debts were now paid and he returned to his lodging. The Crown was eager to reengage his services, and he was eager to get back to doing what he did best.
However, the past years had taught him some hard-won lessons.
Through intense bargaining, he negotiated a much more suitable rate of pay.
It was such that he saved up and bought himself a house in Cheapside.
He would eventually marry a lady who, despite his cadaver-like appearance, found his career quite dashing.
A knock on the door in the middle of the night or a sudden trip of some weeks duration only served to send her romantic imagination soaring.
She did not know particularly what her husband got up to during these forays, but she liked to imagine he was saving the Crown at every turn.
Mostly, he was just slinking around and listening, as he always had done.
Though, he did not wish to disabuse his lady of her grand ideas.
One time, he’d had a nasty fall while getting out of a carriage and developed quite the lump on his forehead.
If his dear wife wished to imagine he’d been in a deadly fisticuffs, who was he to say he hadn’t?
He on occasion spotted one of the Nicolets while they were in Town. However, they never spotted him.
Winsome and Manderbey had a lovely time making their way to Torquay. Before they left Stanwell, they’d stopped in a little bookshop and sought out the most dreadful gothic novel the proprietor had for sale.
The man had never had anybody come in to ask for his worst book, but he was happy to oblige.
He’d been trying to unload The Awful Happenstances of Grimwood Hall by an idiot of a fellow named Richard Roydon for quite some time.
Each time he came close, the would-be buyer read the description and put it back on the shelf.
Why would they not? The duchess was down the well, then not down the well, then in a cave, then inexplicably down the well again.
This sort of pap might play in London, but the ladies of his own town would not be caught reading such drivel.
Manderbey was delighted with it, as it was so badly written that it gave him the opportunity to throw it over his shoulder and leap at his bride before they got further than a page or two.
The Awful Happenstances of Grimwood Hall became an institution of sorts in their marriage.
Over the years, even inquiring into where it was would set something off between them.
The house at Torquay was everything Winsome had imagined.
It sat just above the town on a hill and overlooked the harbor.
She and Manderbey speedily settled into their preferred routine—rising early in the morning for breakfast on the veranda overlooking the sea, long walks along the wharf, stops at Manderbey’s favored tavern where they happily shocked the men inside by commandeering the cozy, leisurely dinners, and long evenings alone with the sea breeze blowing through their bedchamber.
Eventually, though, they could not avoid rejoining the wider world. Word was sent to both the duke and the dowager that the couple had reached Torquay.
Mrs. Right and the staff would return to the Dales to spend their time however they liked. The duke would escort the dowager and Valor to Torquay before continuing on to his friend’s estate for trout fishing.
The dowager found traveling with the duke not as amusing as she might have imagined.
His Grace mostly slept and she was left with Lady Valor and that girl’s dog as her company.
This might not have been the worst thing to happen, but Lady Valor had some kind of diabolical determination to talk about how old the dowager was and what she ought to do about it at every turn.
The dowager was informed that she was drawn to Lady Valor because she was old, though in fact she was not drawn to her at all.
She was continually counseled on aspects of her old age, much of it seeming to come from the girl’s local vicar and centering on the benefits of a lace fichu and avoiding rich dishes and strong drink.
If the little miss imagined the dowager would give up her wine, she was very much mistaken.
In between these diatribes, Lady Valor darkly hinted about something she’d seen on Manderbey’s person, though she would never spell out what it was.
The closest the dowager got to any sort of explanation was “I can still see it in my mind like it was yesterday.” Her rude little dog punctuated these wide-ranging pronouncements with eruptions of the gaseous variety, some of them so overpowering that they managed to wake the duke from his slumbers.
At least the evenings at the various inns where they stopped were more entertaining.
Every day was Captain Cook Day and the duke had composed a poem about it.
The dowager could not say how amusing the innkeepers found it upon discovering the duke had made the whole thing up, but it did pass the time.
After endless days of prattling advice from the youngest Nicolet, the dowager was delighted to see Torquay. She hurried into her cottage and slammed the door.
Her peace was not to last though, as Lady Valor marched over every morning to take her out for a constitutional in the garden, holding her arm as if she were in danger of falling over.
In the evenings, she would return again and walk the dowager over to the main house for dinner and heavily sigh if her plate contained things that were not recommended.
The dowager was left in the uncomfortable situation of feeling as if she’d somehow acquired a governess.
This went on for several months until the duke blessedly returned and took his youngest daughter home with him. The dowager spent several days recovering from the experience.
Once she did recover, the dowager might have imagined that she would hold great sway over her grandson’s wife, but that was not to be.
Winsome was a firm believer in the idea that one must begin as one means to go on and she reined in the dowager’s ideas.
The new marchioness was the most stubborn of the Nicolets and she was steadfast in her protection of her new family.
She understood that someday there would be children, and she must be the setter of tone and the arbiter of habits, not the dowager.
There were some initial skirmishes out of view of Manderbey, but Winsome was easily able to stand up to them.
She was also in agreement with her husband.
The dowager could behave or return home.
The last time the dowager had claimed that if they tried to send her away she would throw herself on the ground and say she was being starved and ignored, Winsome had said, “Well, I do not know who would believe you if you did, but try it out if you like. Also, if you insist on keeping up with all these complaints, I will take up the guitar and play it at all hours.”
This did give the dowager pause, as she very well knew she had no intention of throwing herself on the ground, the servants would not for a moment believe she was starved and ignored, and she had a real aversion to the guitar.
Through Winsome’s steadfastness and well-placed threats, peace was established, as even the most crotchety dowager does not continue to wage a war that cannot be won.
In any case, it was discovered that the dowager was much more agreeable when she respected the might of her opponent. Over time, she and Winsome became great friends and fell into the habit of taking their tea together in the afternoons and reading terrible novels together.
The dowager, being nothing if not determined, hung on to life long enough to see a great-grandchild on the ground.
In two years’ time, Winsome would bring into the world a jolly little boy and his great-grandmother spent the last of her days being entertained by his wide-ranging moods and small accomplishments.
For now, all the Nicolets carried on with the lives they had established.
Due to Valor not yet being old enough to be introduced to society, the duke was given a long-needed reprieve from his endless effort to launch his slew of daughters out of his house.
He and his youngest, along with the intrepid Mrs. Right, retreated to the Dales to wait out the seasons.
In four years’ time, they would descend upon London once more. Nobody involved in it could deny there was a lingering trepidation over the idea of Valor’s turn, least of all Valor herself.
The End.