The Slightest Provocation Read online

  The Slightest Provocation

  Pam Rosenthal

  As children of feuding Derbyshire landowners, Mary Penley and Kit Stansell eloped against their families' wishes. But neither their ardor nor their marriage could survive their own restless natures. Nine years later, Kit is a rising star in the military while Mary has made her way in a raffish, intellectual society of poets and reformers. A chance meeting re-ignites their passion, but still they have very different values. Yet when Kit uncovers a political conspiracy that threatens all of England, they agree to put their differences aside. Amid danger and disillusionment, Kit and Mary rediscover the bonds that are stronger than time, the selves who have never really parted-and the love that is their destiny.

  Pam Rosenthal

  The Slightest Provocation

  Copyright © Pam Rosenthal, 2006

  For Michael, by my troth

  Prologue

  1771, 1817

  In March 1771, a son was born to Emilia and Walter Stansell, the Marchioness and Marquess of Rowen, at Rowen Castle, near the village of Grefford, in the southeast corner of Derbyshire.

  A very pretty boy, the marchioness thought. And very like his lordship. She traced the infant’s cheek with a timid finger. He wasn’t sleeping as peacefully as he had been a few minutes earlier. Ignorant of babies as she was, it seemed clear enough to her that he’d soon be awake.

  The birth had been quick, and rather less dreadful than she’d been led to expect. Her husband was delighted. Not that he’d ever been anything but excruciatingly nice to her during the ten months of their marriage, but this time his smile had seemed genuine.

  And now the baby was awake, mewling piteously and waving a shapeless little fist in the air. Poor little thing, he looked hungry. No one had told her anything about feeding a baby. But then, no one had told her much of anything since she’d been wed and packed off to be Lady Rowen of Derbyshire. She’d quickly become pregnant; the only other time she’d seen her husband so happy was on the morning she’d announced her condition to him.

  “Capital, Emilia.” He’d taken her on his lap and kissed her forehead. “Well done,” he told her.

  She’d wanted to protest that in sad truth, she hadn’t done much of anything. But instead she put her arms around his neck and clung to him. Feeling rather like a little girl than the lady she knew she could be, she told herself that everything would be all right now.

  She still told herself that sometimes, but less often.

  Still, it was impossible to be unhappy with this lovely little boy in her arms. Look, he was hungry; his mouth was moving like a kitten’s. She felt the most remarkable sensation in her breasts, which had grown hard, and moist at their tips.

  “But what are you doing, your ladyship?” She’d never liked the housekeeper at Rowen.

  “He’s hungry… Aren’t you, pet… little Wat, little kitten…” How soft his cheek was, how vulnerable his smooth little pink gums, and what an interesting feeling in her breasts-the need to love and care for someone became palpable reality, a piquant tugging at her flesh.

  “His lordship has engaged a wet nurse for Viscount Sherwynne.”

  She must mean the baby, Emilia thought, as the housekeeper tugged at the bell rope.

  A nice-enough-looking girl entered the room, curtsied to Emilia, and stared at the Belgian lace on her pretty bedgown. She appeared rather less interested in the baby; but then, Emilia thought, she was probably quite familiar enough with babies already. Her breasts were bigger than Emilia’s, her hands looked capable, and the little viscount seemed happy enough once he was sucking.

  The milk and her tears dried up, and her menses started again a few weeks later. This was why she wasn’t to nurse the child, she was told-for his lordship wanted another son, to ensure the continuance of the marquisate, and as soon as possible.

  How simple things were, Emilia thought. She remembered a joke she’d overheard, about how the London Marriage Mart wasn’t much different from the Smithfield market for livestock. It was true after all; people had probably said of her that she’d been bought like a broodmare.

  She tensed her shoulders now at the familiar polite knock on the door of her bedchamber. His lordship would be visiting her almost every night, until she was indisputably with child again.

  But on this particular night, before she opened her legs, Emilia wrested a bargain from her husband.

  “As soon as I’ve given you another boy, you will never touch me again,” she told him. “For you don’t really like me that way. I used to feel very bad about it, but now I’ve stopped caring so much.

  “Because I’ve got to care about myself-well, if I don’t, Walter, who will?” Much later, she’d be amused to learn that a great sage had first enunciated that question, as a universal statement of the human condition. More exciting, though, to come upon it as she had, propelled into the glittering darkness of philosophy by force of her desires.

  The excitement had emboldened her-not only to say what she had, but (which seemed even more daring) to call her husband by his Christian name. He was thirty-five years old, just short of twice her age, and before now she’d always called him your lordship.

  “It’s not that I couldn’t enjoy having you in my bed,” she continued. “I think I could have, you know, if you’d liked me.”

  Eyes wary, he waited quietly to hear what else she had to say.

  Her stomach twisted, for until that moment she’d cherished the faintest of hopes that he’d protest that she’d simply been imagining things. Ah, well. She took a deep breath and continued.

  “Just know, Walter, that there will be other men, and if there are other children, you will give them your name. I’ve heard the gossip, after all. I’m not the only noblewoman in England in this fix. I shall manage as well as many ladies, and perhaps rather better than some have done.”

  No doubt she was still addled by the exigencies of giving birth: postpartum depression, a modern reader might call it. Whatever the reason for it, her boldness might have spelled disaster, if a chance phrase had not turned the tide in Emilia’s favor.

  For when she had referred to the gossip, she’d only meant the stories everyone repeated, about certain great ladies and their lovers. The ever-cautious marquess, however, had taken her words to mean that she’d somehow found out about the highly inappropriate personage he did, in fact, like very much in bed.

  He masked his fear with a show of affability. For he could be quite affable, though you wouldn’t have thought so if you’d first learned of him from his nearest country neighbor, the wealthy brewer Joshua Penley.

  But we will hear more of Mr. Penley later.

  In any event, the marquess decided that there was nothing to be done about it. He’d have to trust his wife with his secret. He felt oddly confident that he could, for in truth, she was an unusually reasonable and level-headed young woman. Excellent at her duties: she’d overseen the estate carpenter’s restoration of some precious ancient paneling; this year she’d be supervising Mr. Brown, the landscape gardener. Had a touch for charity and good works too: the tenants and cottagers had quickly grown fond of her. Most important, she’d given him a fine, healthy heir. But babies were fragile. The marquess feared for the continuance of his line.

  If she can produce another Stansell son, her husband thought, there isn’t much more I need ask of her. Just another boy, to ensure the orderly and legitimate progression of inheritance.

  He didn’t relish the thought of forcing himself upon her. Why not promise her a little future pleasure then, to take as she would, quite as he would continue to do? Because lovely as she was-small and slender, with fascinating green eyes and a luxuriance of silky black curls spilled on the pil
low-the unavoidable truth was that he didn’t like her that way.

  He did insist, though, that when the time came she cuckold him with a gentleman (or if she must, more than one) of unexceptionable status.

  And she-silently reminding herself that nature maintains its own aristocracy of value and virtue-had no difficulty promising this, if he would give her authority over the hiring and firing of the upper servants. Life would be easier and better, she thought, if she had people about her whom she could trust.

  After which promise she bent her rosebud lips into a smile with just a twist of bitterness at its corner, graciously lifted her thin lawn nightdress, and parted her legs…

  … Nine months later to the day presenting him with baby William, who looked every bit as much like his lordship as little Walter, though Will turned out kinder and a bit more intelligent than his brother Wat.

  The couple honored their promises to each other, more or less, over the years. Emilia kept her husband’s secret-after she’d finally guessed it, with some amusement-rather better than she’d kept her own. For there had been a lapse: one mysterious attachment on the marchioness’s part had been cause for discussion among the gentlemen in their clubs and ladies in their drawing rooms (with some consequent unpleasantness at Rowen). Emilia had to take some rather extreme measures in order to divert the world’s attention-but on the whole she managed it quite well.

  And so, as Belle, Kit, and Georgy followed their less exuberantly conceived brothers into the world, the marquess gave them his name without protest. Without much affection, it was true, but then, he had very little affection for anyone except that inappropriate personage he continued to love until he died, sometime after his second son, Will, was killed in Spain.

  Emilia-now the dowager marchioness, and resident in Paris since the autumn after Waterloo-doesn’t usually devote much thought to her late husband. But this morning she’s entertained a caller whose presence has brought back the events of almost half a century ago. So many years gone by, she thinks, just fancy what a story it would make.

  She’s still beautiful: a bit plumper, the luxuriant black curls striped with silver, cut shorter and caught up in a becoming Grecian knot. Her smile, above a decidedly more rounded chin, takes an ironical curve as she thinks of her first sweet baby rather comically grown to the stodgy Ninth Marquess. She raises her chin, remembering her moment of bravery, the depth of her need. Do all stories begin at a moment of great need? But Emilia doesn’t know about all stories. Only her own.

  She thinks of other stories, ended too quickly or never really begun. Of her other children: Will, buried in Spain; beautiful, proper Belle, all but buried in Mayfair (at least to Emilia’s mind); Georgy, a charming rake, rather as one would expect.

  While as for Kit, her third and most troublesome son, now there’s a story: people in the countryside still like to talk about how the third Stansell boy ran away with Joshua Penley’s youngest daughter, Mary. Kit has survived the war-thank heaven for that-and with some distinction too. But Kit had been a fighter since childhood-his elopement made the marquess angrier than anything Emilia ever managed to do. Emilia isn’t surprised by Kit’s success in military affairs. What continues to plague her is his difficulty at love.

  She’s always liked Mary. She liked Mrs. Penley as well; in fact, Emilia had confided a few interesting things to her, a decade ago upon the occasion of the young people’s elopement. Not that the two women were ever friends. A pity, but such a thing would have been impossible.

  Ah yes, Mary’s call this morning has brought it all back, and most particularly the story of Kit and Mary, the sadness of their marriage ending in separation. Still, Emilia hasn’t given up all hope. It had been agreeable to be able to do the young woman a favor this morning. Emilia herself will be returning quite soon to England. The story isn’t over yet.

  Chapter One

  NORMANDY, MAY 1817

  The road was smoother here, winding closer to the city gates. The borrowed traveling carriage wasn’t jolting so fiercely on its springs; Lady Rowen’s coachman had managed to coax the exhausted horses into a gentle trot. Peggy, the maid, had fallen asleep on the backward-facing seat, head lolling against blue velvet, mouth slightly agape, apple cheeks glowing from the day’s rain and wind.

  A Dutch painting.

  Mary Stansell, née Penley, congratulated herself on the justness of her observation. Oh yes, very much a Dutch painting, all earthly flesh, rich textile, and pure, transcendent light.

  She smiled at her own cleverness. And then she frowned uncertainly.

  Did the Dutch do moonlight? In truth she had no idea; she’d seen so many paintings this year that they blurred in her memory.

  The clouds had lifted. Mary wiped her breath from the glass to stare up at the moon shedding its beams through the coach’s window. After a beastly hard day of travel, the pale illumination made a pleasing composition from a muddle of objects on the floor-baskets, books, and parcels; maid’s and mistress’s muddy boots; and (hell and botheration!) a ragged strip of muslin trailing from beneath Mary’s skirts.

  She’d stepped through the hem of her petticoat; poor Peggy would have to stitch it up when they arrived at the inn.

  Her mouth twisted. Poor Peggy indeed.

  No, that was unfair. It was hardly the maid’s fault that they were short of fresh linen; it hadn’t been Peggy’s idea to wait so long, and then to quit Paris so suddenly, with no time to send the last bundle to the laundress. The girl had done what she could to keep things nice along the journey’s way. And she was certainly entitled to an innocent flirtation.

  If innocent was what one might properly call the curve that had suddenly and completely reshaped Peggy’s soft baby lips. Mary watched in fascination as a flush started somewhere at the base of the plump neck, rosy bright pink spreading upward now, beneath the freckled cheeks’ surface. Blissfully unaware of moonlight and mistress both, her young chambermaid was in the thrall of a delightfully wicked dream.

  Or was Mary simply imagining it, projecting, as though by magic lantern, her own unruly desires onto the screen of Peggy’s wide, guileless countenance?

  It was a diverting notion. Because she’d had it on no less authority than Mr. Shelley that she was sadly deficient in imagination. He’d told her as much last summer, when she’d declined to continue traveling with him and the rest of his household.

  Ah, but you see, he’d protested, we are not merely a household. Warming to his subject, eyes sparkling beneath his wide brow, pale schoolboy curls stirred by the wind off the Swiss mountain lake, he spoke of idealism, a leap into mankind’s future, the imagination’s mortal reach beyond the bounds of petty conventional morality-with himself, his beautiful beloved Miss Godwin, and Miss Godwin’s rather earthier stepsister, at the center of their new bold Eden.

  Tactfully, she’d swallowed back the response that had at first sprung to her lips: that it hardly took imagination to see who had the most to gain from all this rampant idealism. Checking her words was a hard-won skill; a decade ago she might have delivered a rebuke stinging enough to redden the young genius’s pretty ears. Since then, however, she’d learned the art of gentle refusal, the helpless shrug and self-deprecating smile. I’m sadly bound to my obligations, sir; just think of all the precious letters of introduction I’ve got, expeditions arranged, sights and monuments to visit.

  As you like, madam, he’d replied. A brief pause to recover his equilibrium, and he’d launched into an elaborate disquisition on poetic spirit and inner vision-capabilities, he feared, that were rather beyond her petty limitations.

  It had been a stimulating lecture, though she might have gotten equally good conversation if she’d stopped back with Miss Godwin. Still, she listened obligingly, while the wind off the lake turned chilly and the light of the poet’s intellect bade fair to burn deep into the night. He might have chosen a gentler way to frame his argument. He probably would have, if she’d been better able to hide her amusement.

&nbs
p; Give me another decade, she thought now, and I’ll master the extra measure of control. No need to ask for the decade, of course; it would come whether she liked it or not. And by the time it did come, by the time she was forty…

  But she’d just had a birthday; she was thirty-one now, and (as though to illustrate the passing of time) had recently acquired a pair of small, gold-rimmed, oval reading spectacles. There had been letters of birthday congratulation from England, and one from Matthew Bakewell in France; he was studying the wonders of Jacquard weaving in Lyon. Too delicate to ask whether she’d finally seen her estranged husband, he’d simply written how much he missed her company, was counting the days to Midsummer Eve when they’d be together, and looked forward, finally, to a resolution of their complicated situation.

  After nine years of separation from Kit Stansell, she wanted some resolution as well. Something simple and settled, with a man as fine as Matthew.

  Just be happy with Miss Godwin, she’d exhorted young Shelley. Leave aside the fantasies of communal love, and for God’s sake get rid of the stepsister.

  Leave aside all the fantasies. And the memories as well.

  A gentle snore bubbled from Peggy’s open lips. The coach swayed, righted itself on its springs, and turned onto a smaller road. The inn was close by the city gates; they couldn’t have too much farther to travel.

  On the whole, Mary thought, Percy Shelley had been quite correct in his assessment of her. She loved poetry, liked poets, and was clever enough with words herself, but the poetic temperament was as little her forte as the ironic was his.

  Irony, a penchant for exaggerated self-scrutiny, perhaps, and a small skill at observation-as if it would take any skill to discern what was going on between Peggy and Lady Rowen’s handsome footman, Thomas.