Page 18 of A Devilish Element
“No, indeed. He did not work. He was a gentleman.”
This resulted in a tense silence, followed by several uncomfortable coughs. “Maybe you could give us a full account of it after dinner,” Linfield suggested.
More dismissal. “I’m afraid it would make for a very brief story, my lord. I was on hand, and able to attend to the wound, which healed in time. Though it is true, I dug the pistol ball from his thigh. I did not, however, attend him during his convalescence as he had removed himself to one of his estates some miles from where I was staying.”
“It’s true,” Jem confirmed, offering her an encouraging smile. His smile, unlike the garrulous ones of the other men, did reach his eyes. “Witnessed the whole thing. It was most extraordinary. She patched the other blood’s finger too, that Pennerley had shot right off.” Eliza raised her napkin to hide her own bemusement at Jem’s referring to Joshua Rushdale as a blood. He was more accurately a sparrow. Small amongst the aristocracy he associated with, dressed in his nankeen breeches and brown and buff coats and waistkits. Not that she minded his drab plumage, for it was born of practicality. Joshua, like Eliza, was a worker not an idler. Those around her last summer had laughed over her willingness to engage with him, but actually, he was fascinating. He hadn’t Jem’s sparkling intellect, but he was good humoured and passionate about progress, learned, kind, and… lonely. That latter point had been all too obvious.
She still had his finger bone. She wasn’t sure why she’d kept it. As a reminder, she supposed, back when she thought he would write. It had both perplexed and disappointed her when he hadn’t. Perhaps he felt sheepish about his actions. It’d been he who’d demanded satisfaction from Pennerley. He who’d shot a marquis over his sister’s involvement with the man. It had all been poorly done, with ghastly performances made on all fronts, but Joshua she at least understood. He was no villain, simply a man put in an impossible situation, trying to do the right thing. She wondered if he and Jem still maintained correspondence. Bella, his sister, the now Marchioness of Pennerley, often wrote to Eliza’s sister Caroline, but she rarely mentioned Joshua in her epistles. They were focused on merrymaking, lasciviousness, and derring-do.
“You never mentioned Pennerley’s leg,” Jane accused, as they retreated into the drawing room after the meal was through, leaving the gentlemen to their snuff and port.
“I did, but you balked at hearing the details of it.” She did not point out that Jane had kept back secrets of her own, not with Henrietta within hearing distance. It wasn’t that she mistrusted the other woman, only that she wanted to drag the whole story out of Jane, and she didn’t think she’d do so with extra ears listening in.
“Yes, but you saved a man’s leg with your doctoring. And not just any man’s.”
“’Twas a leg like any other, not different by virtue of being attached to a marquis.”
It continued to astonish her that Pennerley’s leg afforded her such notoriety. His wasn’t the only leg wound she’d ever treated, nor the only pistol ball wound, but to the high born of the land, the leg of a marquis was far more precious than an ordinary person’s, which was wholly back to front if you thought about it. A marquis could function perfectly without his appendages. He had servants to do his bidding, and means with which to sustain such help.
Not that she begrudged Pennerley his leg. It was only that the farmers, the miners, and village folk she went among, they depended on their mobility. If they didn’t work, they didn’t eat. The loss of a limb to them was far more devastating. Consequently, they were far more likely to crow about the fevers she’d spared their children, the crooked limbs she’d straightened with splints, or the sight she’d helped return to their ancients, rather than the miraculous recovery of some nob who’d got into a pointless argument and hence shot as a result.
“If you are going to converse about such things, I will say goodnight. Since, if the previous ghastly cold nights are anything to go by, the men will be at their drinking forever and a day.” Henrietta shot a backwards glance at the dining room, then beckoned one of the footmen to light her way.
“We can take the teapot up to my sitting room, if you’d prefer,” Jane suggested. The drawing room was mostly shadows, save for the glow around the fireplace. The two lit candelabras were wholly inadequate for such a large, and drafty room.
“Let’s just drink up quickly and then retire.” Eliza had the sense that the gentlemen wouldn’t miss them, even if they arrived in a timely fashion. Moreover, she had questions aplenty, now that she’d encountered Linfield. He and Jane… Well, it all seemed… It seemed very untoward and awkward if she was being wholly honest. They were distinctly uncomfortable in one another’s presence, and as like as chalk and cheese in every regard that one could think might make them a suitable match. Their families—for that’s who had to be behind the pairing—surely weren’t blind to that fact. What had persuaded them to pursue such a wretchedly ill-suited match?
Money, she supposed. Was that not always the heart of such matters?
“I thought,” Jane said, looking as if she might carry off the teapot. “That it might be fun if we bedded together tonight. Exactly as we were wont to do at school.”
Fun was not precisely how Eliza recalled those times, stuck within the cold confines of the school’s heartless, echoic chambers. They had clung together then for warmth, for what meagre comfort they could scrounge from one another, but it seemed Jane’s memories had become frayed at the edges. “’Tis a sweet notion, but will Linfield not object to having his bride stolen away from him?”
All the lightness in Jane vanished with a hiss. She folded in on herself, hands settling primly on her lap, gaze frosting over. Eliza stretched an arm out to reach her, shocked by the transformation. Jane’s hand was icy, like she’d wandered for hours in the bitterest wind, or spent an afternoon moulding snowballs with un-gloved hands. Immediately, Eliza set to rubbing some life back into her flesh. “I think you had better tell me how you came to be married,” she said.
Jane’s gaze shifted to the fireplace, so that the flames danced in the ink of her pupils. Un-spilled tears clung to her eyelashes.
“Jane?”
She scrunched her skirt in her fist. “There’s nothing to say. One wedding is the same as any other.”
“That is clearly untrue. Jane…please. I’m no fool. What possessed you? You implied it was a choice, not forced upon you. But it’s plain as day that you’re hopelessly ill-suited—”
She tore her hand away from Eliza’s hold. “Don’t say that. How can you or anyone else know that? You don’t know him. You barely know anything of my life these last years.”
“Then tell me! I know that your letters seemed full of joy. You seemed happy. Are you saying it has all been make-believe, that these last years have been wretched?”
“Not wretched, no.” Jane clasped her hands tightly and brought them to her brow, shaking her head as if to deny all that had passed. “I was happy.” She looked up, eyes alight. “My time in Scarborough was pure joy. I would not undo it, but it has left me pitiful, Eliza. I have left my heart there, and this place… It makes all seem so gloomy.”
Cedarton certainly seemed weighed by its history.
“Then why so hasty a marriage? Why not wait and become better acquainted?”
There was no disguising Jane’s wince, though she attempted to hide it by pouring tea, and fussing over milk and sugar. Eliza had almost lost hope of receiving a reply when Jane lowered her cup into its saucer with a decisive clatter. “A delay wouldn’t have suited either of us. It was all rather now or never, and anyway, it is done now, so there’s no point in chewing it over. I’m sure once we’re better acquainted, we’ll learn to rattle along together well enough. It’s early days. We’ve yet to reach a quarter.”
Eliza steepled her fingers before her lips. None of that sounded remotely appealing. “He’s not the sort of man I expected you to marry.” She had always imagined mousy Jane Morley would settle for a quiet, studious fellow, perhaps a parson or a country squire, not an aristocratic scapegrace. Many was the man who had a few boisterous incidents in his past. It allegedly added colour to their characters, but it was not the sum of who they were. From what she’d observed of Linfield so far, profligate and Corinthian manners was all that existed, hence there was little to recommend him as a lifelong companion, and surely Jane saw that too. Although, either way, the marriage was made. It would have to be borne. “Does he make any attempt to better get to know you, Jane?”
Jane cradled her cup, then made a performance of taking multiple sips of hot tea, but she couldn’t quite maintain her poise, and slumped into melancholic misery. “It would be an outright lie to say he tries. We spend no time at all together. Not during the day, or the evening. It is only at dinner that we eat together. He either takes breakfast in his rooms or rises with the crows. Luncheon,” She shook her head. “I don’t even know if he eats such a thing, or if he’s content to subsist on merely liquid sustenance.”
