Page 6 of It Takes Two to Tumble
“Be that as it may, if there are villains living next door, I do expect my children to stay far away from them.” The captain’s voice managed to achieve another layer of frost across the top. Ben held back a sigh. He wasn’t the kind of person who inspired overt rudeness or provoked much in the way of anger; he was affable, good-natured, kind. Those qualities were very much his stock in trade. And he couldn’t help but be a little hurt that the captain seemed intent to make an enemy of him.
But as he watched, the anger and stiffness drained from Captain Dacre’s face, and Ben remembered that he was a man who had been away at war, lost a wife, and returned to a home that must seem alien. Earlier today, Ben had seen that Dacre was handsome, but Ben could ignore beauty. Now, lit only by the setting sun, Dacre was warm and human and a little bit sad. Ben wanted to reach out to him. Instead he clasped his hands behind his back so he wouldn’t be tempted.
“There was a dormouse in my pocket,” the captain said at length. “And salt in my sugar bowl. I don’t know how they’re managing it.”
Ben felt something inside him sag with relief that they were now conversing like two ordinary people. He could manage conversation. He did not know how to manage the other thing, the heat in his stomach that straddled anger and something else. “Oh, thatisnaughty. The cook won’t like that.”
“I think she’s in on it.” Dacre sighed. “I went down to the kitchen myself to give orders for the children not to be brought supper, and she said I could give all the orders I wanted but the devil takes care of his own.”
Ben bit back a laugh. “I believe that what they’re doing is called guerilla warfare. You’ll never catch them at it. I’m afraid they’re giving you the same treatment they gave their tutors. I’d definitely check my sheets before getting in bed, if I were you,” he advised. “Oh, and shake out your linens before dressing. Spiders in the clothes press.” Ben feared his playful tone was quite wasted on Dacre. “Look,” he said seriously. “Everyone in the house and the village wants your children to keep out of mischief.” On any given Sunday, Ben reckoned half the prayers offered up in St. Aelred’s were for the Dacre children to stop wreaking havoc. “But if you make yourself even more disagreeable than your children, they’ll pick the devil they know.”
“Disagreeable!” Dacre turned to face Ben fully, his arms once again folded across his chest. “All I’m trying to do is make my children understand that they must behave for their tutors or schoolmasters. That’s the bare minimum of what’s required of me as their only parent.”
“You do seem determined to be disagreeable,” Ben said, resolutely mild.
“What would you have me do? Let them run wild?”
“Not precisely. Right now what they need is...” How to put it so he didn’t sound like a sapskull? There were things he could easily say to women and the elderly but which made him feel self-conscious when talking to a man like Dacre. “Love. Affection.” The words came out foreign and stupid, syllables no more meaningful than the bleating of sheep. “They’ve been alone for too long with nobody but one another and I think they’ve forgotten what it’s like for someone else to have their best interests at heart. I agree with you that they’ve been shameless little miscreants, but—”
“There isn’t anybut, Mr. Sedgwick. Children need to learn discipline. It’s the only way they can survive in the world. It’s the only way anyone can survive, unless they have someone running before them, smoothing their paths.” He paused, as if daring Ben to contradict him. “Believe me,” he added in a lower, sadder tone. “I know.”
A cloud must have drifted away from the setting sun, because suddenly Captain Dacre’s eyes were lit by a shaft of sunlight. “Oh!” Ben said. “Your eyes are blue. I hadn’t noticed earlier.”
“Excuse me?” The captain was plainly disconcerted. Well, that was fine because so was Ben. He had never remarked on another man’s eyes before in his life, nor had he planned to, and the fact that the observation slipped out of his mouth without his mind giving leave was somewhat troubling.
“They’re black in your portrait,” Ben said, as if academic attention to detail would somehow save the situation from awkwardness. But there was no escaping the fact: Captain Dacre’s eyes were a pretty blue, and Ben rather wished they weren’t.
He stammered out a barely civil good night, thinking he ought to make an exit before his thoughts proceeded further in a dangerous direction.
Chapter Four
The next day brought Ben a pair of letters. One had been hand delivered from Lindley Priory. It wasn’t from Sir Martin Easterbrook himself; Ben had never merited direct communication with Easterbrook, but after last night he was probably lucky to have this missive from Easterbrook’s man of business. The contents were simple: there was no money for a village school, no money to fix the church roof, no money for the widows’ fund. Ben gathered that after yesterday’s encounter, there might never again be money for any project of Ben’s.
He sighed and threw the crumpled letter into the breakfast room grate.
“It’s June,” said a voice from the door. “There’s no fire. If you’re in the habit of receiving the sort of correspondence that requires burning, you’ll have to do better than that.”
Ben watched in dismay as the captain pulled out a seat at the breakfast table. He had been looking forward to a peaceful breakfast, the children being busy mucking out the stables under the watchful eye of the head groom. “I don’t require my correspondence to be burnt,” Ben protested. “I was upset with it. So I crumpled it up and threw it.” He mimed a throwing gesture, and then felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment.
The captain blinked. “I see.”
Ben could feel the man’s chilly gaze on him. With fumbling fingers, he tore open the other letter, which was from Will, one of his younger brothers. He could barely manage to read it, knowing the captain was watching him intently.
Will had been lurking at the back of his mind these past two days. Years ago, for lack of any better prospects in the world, Will had joined the navy. He had been assigned to a ship with a brutal captain and had narrowly escaped a court martial. Ben didn’t know the details; Will was exceedingly cagey about everything and Ben, out of a possibly misguided attempt to respect Will’s privacy, hadn’t read the official reports. Now Will scraped together a living in London somehow.
“Your correspondence stinks of gin,” the captain pointed out. The infernal man didn’t even have the decency to read a paper during breakfast. Instead he was watching Ben as if Ben were performing in a music hall.
Unfortunately the letter did indeed smell of gin, which could mean that Will was drinking heavily, or could mean that his bedmate was drinking heavily, or could simply mean that the innkeeper at the place where he left his letters had a moment of clumsiness. With Will, one never knew, and one would never find out.
“My correspondent is a testament to the corruptive influence of the navy,” Ben said with as much dignity as he could muster.
The captain chewed a piece of toast. When he swallowed his throat worked in a horribly distracting way. “So now you’re receiving corrupt correspondence. Busy morning, parson.”
“No! I—” Ben shook his head, his face flaming. “Oh, never mind.”
When Ben met the captain, he had thought of Will, had considered the violence of his captain and the way a sweet, absentminded boy had been turned into a jumpy, nervous man who kept his back to the wall and sent incoherent letters that stank of gin. Ben’s instinct had been to do whatever it took to keep that fate from befalling any of the Dacre children.
But now he heard Captain Dacre’s words about discipline and responsibility echoing in his ears. Because what had happened to Will wasn’t entirely the fault of the navy. Some of the blame rightly belonged to their father, who hadn’t raised them so much as turned them loose. The Sedgwick children had been allowed to run wild—or free, as Ben’s father would have put it. All of them had been woefully ill-equipped for any of the usual professions, as Alton Sedgwick’s mind was fit for loftier matters than arranging for his children’s futures. That burden had fallen to his practical, eldest son, and Ben generally feared he had made a hash of the whole thing.
