Page 25 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
“From what I heard about ‘poor’ Lord Carleton,” Phaedra started to chime in, then stopped herself. It might sound ill-natured to say that Ewan’s father likely had deserved to be murdered. By all reports, Carleton Grantham had been a bad-tempered rakehell, likely to rape a maidservant or to whip a hunting dog to death. As cutting as Ewan’s tongue had been at times, Phaedra had taken some comfort from the fact that he at least had not been as violent as his father.
Armande in any case showed little interest in the subject. He drained his crystal goblet, his mouth pursing as though he found the wine sour. He lapsed into a chilling silence that left poor Mrs. Shelton looking flustered and confused.
Phaedra was far from enjoying the supper party herself. She hailed with relief the arrival of the footman to clear the table for the dessert course. But her relief was short-lived, for now Sir Norris Byram leaned back in his chair and belched loudly. He stole a glance at the rest of the company, his porcine features stretching into the leer of a man contemplating some mischief. Reaching inside his coat pocket, he produced folded up pages from a newspaper.
“Look,” he said, waving it about. “Another issue of the Gazetteer. That rascal Goodfellow is at it again.”
Phaedra choked in the act of taking a sip of wine. Armande turned in her direction, his brow furrowed with concern. He reached toward her, but Phaedra shrank back, muffling her face behind a napkin. The last thing she wished for right now was Armande’s penetrating gaze upon her. Blast Norris Byram. The man had a talent for making a nuisance of himself.
Sawyer Weylin reddened to such an extent Phaedra feared he would have an attack of apoplexy. “How dare you, sir,” he bellowed. “How dare you bring a copy of that rag sheet under my roof!”
Unperturbed, Byram unfolded the paper, his gaze shifting toward Armande with an expression of sly malice. “I thought it might be of interest to one of your guests. His lordship’s name is mentioned not a few times.” Byram shifted in his chair and prepared to hand the paper down the table to Armande.
A flicker of surprise crossed the marquis’s face, but otherwise he extended his hand with a look of indifference. Phaedra had to restrain a wild urge to snatch the newspaper. She could not have explained the feeling, but she suddenly knew she did not want Armande to read what she had written about him. There was still much about the marquis that disconcerted her, roused her suspicions, but she now saw that Robin Goodfellow’s insinuations about Armande were both mean-spirited and cowardly. For the first time, she felt ashamed of her work.
Armande’s fingers closed over the paper and he was about to begin reading the contents. Then suddenly, Sawyer Weylin’s chair scraped back. With a speed astonishing for a man of his girth, he stormed the length of the dining hall and grabbed the paper from Armande’s hands.
At the haughty look Armande bestowed upon him, Sawyer Weylin huffed, “Your pardon, my lord. But I am a member of parliament, the loyal servant of good King George. I can’t permit the works of that treasonous dog Goodfellow to be passed about under my own roof.”
Armande shrugged. “As you wish, sir. I am sure the matter is of no great import to me.”
Weylin proceeded to shred the newspaper to bits and cast it into the empty fireplace grate. Phaedra expelled a deep breath of relief as her grandfather resumed his seat.
“Well, I can always tell his lordship what Goodfellow wrote.” Byram sneered.
Weylin’s fist pounded against the table with a force that made the forks jump. “Hold your tongue! I forbid even the mention of that pernicious rascal’s name in my house.”
Her grandfather looked so fierce that Byram had the good sense to close his mouth. The uneasy silence that settled over the room was broken only by the arrival of dessert. The rich assortment of creams, sugar puffs, iced cakes, and trifle topped with pudding did much to sweeten everyone’s disposition, with the exception of Sawyer Weylin.
Her grandfather proceeded to break his own rule, launching into an invective against Robin Goodfellow that held the writer responsible for everything from the king’s poor health to inciting the American colonists to revolt against the crown.
Phaedra tried to concentrate upon the trifle, driving her fork into the wine-soaked sponge cake and fighting back an urge to break into hysterical laughter.
“Nay, Sawyer,” Jonathan’s quiet voice interrupted her grandfather’s tirade at last. Phaedra’s friend looked so stricken with fear that she regretted having burdened him with her dread secret.
“The Gazetteer did not even start publication until after the revolution had begun,” Jonathan said earnestly. “I am sure the colonists have never even heard of Robin Goodfellow.”
“Aye, they have their own set of rabble-rousers,” Norris Byram agreed.
Her grandfather’s scowl deepened. “That’s what they all are- rabble. Every blasted one of those revolutionaries. A pack of ruffians only fit for the gaol. Destroying property, dumping good tea into the harbor.”
Phaedra rolled her eyes to the ceiling. Her grandfather had been harping upon that incident in Boston for the past four years, with as much rancor as though he were a tea merchant and it had been his own cargo destroyed.
But as ridiculous as his sentiments seemed to Phaedra, he received a chorus of approval from most of the men present. Only Armande appeared uninterested, his long fingers crooked languidly about his wineglass, toying with the stem.
“Ungrateful lot, those colonists. No loyalty. After all the years our army has protected them from savages and the French.” Phaedra listened to the men’s comments with growing irritation, determined to keep her lips sealed. Far wiser to swallow her own opinions, save them for Robin Goodfellow to expound. But when one fool piped up, “and we maintained a fair system of trade for them,” the bounds of her self-control burst.
“Fair,” she echoed with contempt. “You gentlemen certainly have a strange notion of what is fair. We sell our goods to the colonists at outrageous prices, and then we tax their own crafts so they cannot compete. That is supposed to be fair?”
“No one asked your opinion, missy,” Weylin growled.
But Phaedra could not stop herself once she had started. “You talk about the colonists like they were unruly children who needed chastising, but they value the same freedoms you do and are not about to?—”
“Be quiet,” Weylin thundered. “Od’s fish, girl. You don’t have the least idea what you are talking about.”
Sir Norris sniggered. “Lord, but the chit has gotten cheeky since Ewan stuck his spoon in the wall. Poor fellow must be turning in his grave.”
“It is her father’s fault,” Sawyer Weylin said. “Fool let her read too many books. Trying to teach her to think, he said. About as much use for a thinking woman as there is for a talking dog.”
