Chapter 12
Micha, however indifferent he pretended to be to Thomas, went riding the next day.
Isidore, of course, had taught him, because all freedom, all pleasure, had both its origin and its ending in Isidore.
Isidore, who was nothing now except a habit of thinking, a piece of memory and a half-forgotten dream.
Once, Micha had wondered where Isidore was, what he had done, who he had become, but then he had decided it did not matter.
Not while, poppy-fettered, Micha had dreams instead, though they drowned in daylight, like the shadows of childhood monsters.
He took Bucephalus, not Brimstone. They were both cautious and he went carefully at first, past the village and down twisting country lanes until the world rolled at his feet like a green velvet beast and the sky flared as wide as angels’ wings.
Micha knew better than to push his mount, but he gave Bucephalus his head and soon they were travelling at an easy canter.
While they did not fly as they might once have done, it was a taste of lost things, and it was enough.
The thud of Bucephalus’s hooves was as steady as a second heartbeat, more real, somehow, than his own.
The wind ruffled his hair and swept the surface of his skin, like hands that could not touch him.
He did not think of Isidore and he did not dream of anything.
Creeping through the cracks, like a gleam of pale light, came the suggestion of pleasure.
Somehow, he forgot Thomas’s evasions and lies.
They were whisked away on the wind. And he remembered, instead, his laughter.
His gentleness. The hope in his eyes. His kindness may have come with a price, but it came with other things too.
Like this. A gift Micha would never have thought he wanted.
Perhaps even fallen leaves could soar again sometimes.
Later, after they had gone about as far as Micha dared and turned again for home, he heard the sound of hoofbeats behind him, and a strident voice called out, “I say, tally-ho.”
He peered over his shoulder, and Laura—mounted on an enormous bay hunter—came thundering down the lane after him.
She was dressed in a green riding habit of rather military design and a tall hat with a plume, from which most of her hair had already escaped.
But the air and exercise became her. There was a flush on her sun-freckled cheeks, her eyes were bright, and she seemed far more at ease here than she had at Esther’s.
He slowed Bucephalus to a walk, and she manoeuvred her horse alongside his. He felt an edgy, snappish uncertainty travel through Bucephalus’s body at the sudden closeness of these strangers, but he calmed beneath the touch of Micha’s hands.
Laura touched the brim of her hat. “Fancy meeting you hereabouts.”
“Fancy,” returned Micha dryly.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, all right. Truth is, I saw you from across the field, gave chase, and, well, here we are. Thought you might like a spot of company on your way back to the village. But don’t fret if not—just say the word, and I’ll push off again.”
Micha opened his mouth and then closed it.
He could not entirely resolve how he felt on the matter.
Something about being cordially invited to tell someone to go away rather took the fun out of it.
“Why not?” he said at last, not precisely warmly, but then, he had long lost the habit of friendliness.
“Splendid.” She reined in her stallion so that his long strides would not draw him too far ahead of Bucephalus.
They advanced for a while in this companionable fashion, and Micha wondered—rather fretfully for a man who insisted he had no interest in the opinions of others—whether he was supposed to be responsible for making conversation.
Conversing with men was straightforward, but young women were dangerous and unpredictable, and he had little experience of them.
“How’s the knitting?” he tried, at last.
“Utterly buggered, but nil desperandum.”
“Are you making . . . well . . . anything?”
“Thought I’d try for a scarf. Seemed a fairly simple proposition. I mean, start at one end, stop at the other, but it seems to have gone all over the bloody place.”
Micha made what he hoped was a sympathetic noise and crashed headlong into silence again. What on earth did women like? “That’s a nice . . . outfit?”
“What? This? I say, it’s bloody awful. I absolutely loathe riding sidesaddle.
I actually had a tailor in London run me up some trousers, you know, such as you fellows wear.
Unfortunately, Ada saw me and it gave her such a fright she walked straight into a wall and the doctor had to be called. Complete carnage.”
Micha suspected he had an understanding of “carnage” rather different to the residents of Nettlefield, and he was just hiding a smirk when he caught a glimpse of Laura’s sparkling eyes and realised she was laughing too. “Poor Ada.” He managed a tolerable approximation of sincerity.
“She had a bruise the size of a shilling,” confided Laura. “A shilling. Can you imagine?”
“It hardly bears thinking of.”
“I know.”
Wonderful. Now he needed a different topic.
Clothing had clearly been a false lead. Micha tried to remember if he had ever been fit for company or whether life had simply accommodated his deficiencies by throwing him to the bottom of the pile, where nobody would care about them.
Perhaps he had been in the right profession after all.
His education had included the rudiments of Latin and Greek; his secondary education had taught him what it meant to love, to truly love, another human being.
And, finally, when all other lessons had been lost to time and circumstances, he had learned how to efficiently bring a man to completion.
At no point had he wondered how one talked appropriately to young ladies, nor felt the lack of such knowledge.
“Um,” he said, finally. “Nice horse.”
Laura became suddenly quite animated. “Marvellous, isn’t he? We call him Gulliver.”
“Yes, I can see that. He’s very . . . large.”
“Only thing I ever learned. ‘Ride a really big horse.’”
“I see.” He gave her a confused look. “Is there more to that story? Or is it just a family motto? Uh . . . something . . . ‘Equus magnus’?” (Thomas, he thought, Thomas would know. And Isidore, of course, who flowed through languages like water.)
She gave a wild shout of laughter. “It should be, dash it, it should be. But I used to have this awful governess called Miss Wheezle, one of a long line of awful governesses, actually. They were always coming and going, trying to get me to sit still, be a lady, hold a teacup, embroider a cushion. Who has the time, really? To embroider a cushion. In any case, I managed to get rid of most of ’em, thank God, but Wheezie was like a burr under a saddle blanket.
Couldn’t shift her. Got quite fond of her, in the end, truth be told.
What else can you do with someone like that? ”
Micha tried to sort through this anecdote, in search of its relevance. “And she told you to always ride a really big horse?”
“It was in a book, as a matter of fact. I can remember it almost exactly: ‘The most honourable exercise, that beseemeth the estate of every noble person, is to ride on a great horse.’ And I thought, ‘Why bloody not.’”
Micha surprised himself by grinning. “Why not, indeed?”
“Better than all that Italian rubbish. ‘Be feared, if you can’t be loved, but don’t be hated; try not to employ mercenaries, and always wear your own armour.’”
“Was Miss Wheezle trying to raise you to be a lady or to invade Europe?”
Laura was silent for a moment. “Oh, you don’t know, do you?
I sometimes forget there are people who don’t know everything about everyone else.
” She gestured at the manor house, which was a blur of golden stone against the horizon.
“I’m actually, well, Lady Chalfont. I’m the only child and there’s no entailment, so all this is, well, mine. Bit embarrassing really.”
“Oh good God.”
“Don’t worry about it or anything,” she added, fervently. “We don’t stand on ceremony here in Nettlefield.”
“Yes but—”
“Shush. And that’s an order from your social superior.
” Micha shushed, and Laura went on abruptly: “Listen, you seem like a decent chap. I’m sorry I haven’t been completely square with you.
I mean, about who I am, or why I’m talking to you now.
The thing is, I sort of wanted to ask you something. You know, as a man of the world.”
Micha choked. “As a what?”
She eyed him appraisingly. “You are, though, aren’t you? A man of the world.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he said faintly.
“Oh, you know, lived a bit, had your heart broken, and all that?”
“I suppose . . .”
“Good. Yes. I knew it. So, let’s say, hypothetically you were, say, interested in, you know, some ah, well, in my case, fellow, obviously—let’s say you were me and interested in some fellow, how would you go about making that known? To the fellow?”
“Um.” Micha had even less experience in courting women than talking to them.
She looked at him expectantly. “Well?”
“I think,” he hazarded, “it might be rather a matter for the . . . fellow.”
“What if the fellow was . . . shy? I’m not talking about ravishing . . . the fellow . . . in the bushes, Michael, I just want to find out if he was by any chance interested in me.”
He stared at her blankly. “Who is this fellow?”
“Violet.”
“Violet?”
There was a long silence.
“Um . . . well . . . that’s sort of a nickname, really. It’s what we call, um, Fred.”