HUGH
When Ann came down the Belle Terre’s main staircase late Saturday afternoon, I was struck again by my wife’s sheer feminine perfection. Desire hummed happily around the edges of my awareness, for in Ann’s lovely form and exquisite features, the Creator had fashioned a special woman.
In Mayfair drawing rooms, Ann’s complexion would be the envy of every woman who beheld her, even as those same women would murmur that red was such an unfortunate hair color. Ann’s hair had been the first of her features to catch my notice—that, and her contralto singing voice.
When I’d later come upon her and her first husband in the midst of a blazing row, her facility with a scold had also made an impression. One did not have to be fluent in Gaelic to appreciate a virtuosic berating in that language.
My wife was passionate, or she had been. Dressed for an outing to the village green, she was every inch the genteel lady too. She wore an emerald walking dress trimmed with lavender, though such was her inherent dignity that she might well have been wearing ermine robes. As I bowed over her hand, I realized that my appreciation for Ann had lately been lacking a certain postscript.
Violet Belmaine was both ladylike and passionate, but I no longer automatically compared the two women. Ann was not different from Violet. Ann was simply Ann, and Violet was simply Violet. I wished Violet well, I prayed for her happiness, and should Lord Dunkeld displease his prospective wife, I would take the marquess to task at the first indication from her ladyship that my meddling was needed.
I prayed nightly for the good health of her ladyship and the baby, though I tried to think of the child as… hers. Not mine. Not mine in the paternal sense. Mine to love in the privacy of my heart. Mine to fret over and take pride in from afar, but not mine.
As regards her ladyship and my wife, my heart had come around some fundamental corner, such that Violet was more a fixture of past joys than present regrets or longings. Or perhaps, weeks spent taking meals with Ann, watching her devotion to Fiona, and listening to her humming over a bit of mending or flower arranging had brought me around that corner.
I also had memories of shared intimacy with Ann, old, sometimes awkward memories, but precious nonetheless.
“Will I do?” she asked, smoothing a gloved hand over her skirts.
“Splendidly. Will I?” I executed a slow pirouette and endured her perusal with some trepidation. Ann was kind, but also relentlessly honest.
“The season is late for roses,” she said, touching the blossom on my lapel. “Where did you find this one?”
“Behind the stable at the edge of the woods. A volunteer from discarded prunings, would be my guess. Shall we be off?”
I offered my arm, and even in so small a gesture, the tattered nature of our marriage was in evidence. Ann hesitated, then wrapped her hand about my sleeve. Not for the first time, I wondered if her wariness about touching me was a symptom of antipathy toward me or the result of some misfortune during our separation.
She had been a prisoner of war, after a fashion, and she’d given birth. Childbed made many a woman rethink her enthusiasm for sexual congress, as well it should. I shuddered to contemplate Ann’s treatment by the guerrillas who’d taken her captive and the French and British military authorities through whose hands she’d also passed.
When and whether we discussed that chapter of her life was up to her.
“Thaddeus Freeman claims these hound races are a subject of controversy,” Ann said when I’d handed her up into the gig. “The men start drinking and brawling, and the wagering can get out of hand.”
When had she and Freeman had that discussion? “We will depart the moment you tell me we should leave, Ann. My objective is to do a bit of socializing and allow the neighbors to inspect us. This is not an assembly, where we would be expected to dance, and not a church social, where speeches and prayers clutter up an otherwise uninspired meal.”
“A place to start,” she said, gaze on the rolling pastures bathed in slanting sunbeams. “I have longed for a place to start.”
Whatever did that mean? Following that thought came another. Why don’t you ask her?
“When you and Fiona dwelled in Scotland, were you living with family?”
“Family dwelled with us. I occupied the Perthshire farm, which is technically yours as a result of our marriage. I wondered when the London lawyers would see me turned out. My cousins did the farming and sent off the annual rent, and when the solicitors returned it, I considered that you might have willed that property back to me and thus to my family. I promised myself I would get the whole matter sorted later, before Fiona came of age.”
On my great list of matters that Ann and I had to sort, the Perthshire property had not figured at all. To Ann, her farm was likely near the top.
“Were you happy there?”
“Fiona was. That child would go barefoot from Beltane to Michaelmas if I allowed it. I was mostly worried that some cow or horse would step on her toes.”
Her first husband had died of sepsis after a similar mishap. “I can deed the property to your cousins, if you like, or leave it in trust for you or Fiona.” I had revised my will such that Ann and Fiona would be very comfortably provided for. Ann was Scottish, though, and had spent more time in Spain than in England. Did she want that farm as insurance against the day when our marriage finished unraveling?
“Let’s leave legal discussion for another time, Hugh. The evening is too pretty, and I am too nervous, to think of such matters now.”
The horse trotted along, and I considered that I had asked one marginally challenging question. Ann had replied honestly—Fiona loved the farm, Ann loved Fiona. I decided to attempt to double my earnings.
“Why nervous, Ann?”
“I do not care for crowds. In Scotland, I knew everybody and was related to half the village. Here…”
“Right,” I said. “They are strangers, and English strangers. I will make a bargain with you. If you do not abandon me to the company of these strangers, I will keep similar watch over you. Are we agreed?” I had meant the offer in jest, but Ann was too perceptive not to sense the real misgiving beneath my good cheer.
“They wronged you, Hugh, not the other way ’round.”
“All that aside, this is an English village, and I am more the outsider than you are. Besides, I like showing off my pretty wife.”
My flattery fell flat. Ann was pretty, and she was my wife, which left the showing-off part as the reason her slight smile disappeared.
“And I will show off my handsome husband,” she said, rather grimly. “Squire Freeman is apparently disappointed in love. Selene Faraday has gone to Edinburgh, where all is culture and learning.”
“He needs a wife and children to confound him.”
“Confound?”
“Love is a code not easily deciphered. A wife and children would fascinate him. He is happiest when faced with hard puzzles.” Lady Violet also delighted in puzzles. Who stole the widow’s brooch? Where had an errant bridegroom got off to? Why was an estate suffering endless petty vandalism?
I, by contrast, wanted a settled, orderly life in which to woo my wife and delight in my daughter. I would not miss the puzzles and intrigues that seemed to abound in Lady Violet’s presence. Sorting culprits and clues had preserved her ladyship from an inchoate bout of melancholia. My interest had been in Violet, not in the culprits or the clues.
“Children might confound a father,” Ann said, “but for the mother, they are a rather different proposition.”
“Was Fiona’s birth difficult?”
“She did not want to be born, according to the midwife. I took months to recover.” Ann became fascinated with the horse’s muscular quarters as we trotted along. “I wished you could have been with me.”
The next time, I will be. Except… we had miles and miles of ground to traverse before siblings for Fiona were even a remote possibility.
“I am sorry I wasn’t there, and if I haven’t said it before, Ann, I am grateful to you for bringing Fiona into this world and into my life.”
Had I not chosen to make that declaration when both of my hands were on the reins, and the village green coming into view, I might have attempted to punctuate my words with a kiss to Ann’s cheek. Because my timing was lamentably off, I was left to gaze at the same horse’s backside that so absorbed Ann’s attention.
“Fiona adores you,” Ann said. “That’s… that’s good, I think.”
A ringing endorsement of my skills as a father that was not. “But?”
“But whoever said it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all wasn’t going about the loving properly. For Fiona to lose you would… We cannot allow that, Hugh. Whatever happens between us, Fiona must not suffer for it.”
“I would never intentionally visit suffering on you or Fiona.”
And just like that, our first foray into a real discussion concluded with Ann feeling doubtless as frustrated and bewildered as I did. Whatever happens between us acknowledged chasms and precipices I would frankly rather ignore.
I found a place to tie up the horse at the edge of the churchyard and assisted Ann to alight.
“Don’t forget the hamper,” she said. “I brought pies for the dessert table.”
I had not even known that such a gathering would have a dessert table. I fetched the hamper and wondered when, if ever, I would feel competent, at home, and at ease, much less all three, in the company of my wife.
We crossed the road and navigated the rope lanes that formed the raceway. I surveyed the crowded green for a friendly face—for any familiar face. Freeman stood on the steps of the posting inn in conversation with the vicar’s wife. Miss Thetis Faraday, sister to the scholarly Selene, was similarly engaged with Mr. Cooper, the vicar. Johann Rutherford beamed good cheer in all directions from the door of his dry-goods shop, and a cluster of men stood smoking cigars outside the smithy.
My gaze landed on Dervid Grant, a tankard of ale in his hand as he slouched against one of the enormous oaks shading the green.
“Grant should not be here,” I said.
“Maybe Mrs. Grant wanted him out of the house,” Ann replied. “There’s Miss Fletcher, and she will want to know how the mother and baby are faring.”
I had ascertained earlier in the day that Mrs. Grant’s milk had come in, an occasion for both relief and significant pain. She’d known what steps to take for the pain and what steps not to take. Patent remedies, spirits, laudanum, and the like would result in a colicky baby, assuming Mrs. Grant could afford such indulgences.
Miss Fletcher was among the throng inspecting the hounds who occupied a row of what appeared to be lambing pens in the center of the green. I passed over the hamper to Mrs. Faraday, the top pie wrangler, and accompanied Ann to greet Miss Fletcher.
“The pups are eager to run,” Miss Fletcher said when the civilities had been observed. “Old Hector knows the drill, and the youngsters take their cues from him. Plato will be the rabbit hound, though in years long past, he was the favorite.”
I liked dogs, but hardly knew a harrier from a spaniel. Old Hector, though, apparently adored Miss Fletcher. He was a sizable foxhound, sturdier than many of the other canines present, and he eagerly licked at Miss Fletcher’s bare fingers.
“He’s the favorite now?” Ann asked. “Looks a bit heavy for extended bursts of speed.”
“Hector has a good deep chest, and he is wise,” Miss Fletcher replied. “He paces the pack until they begin to flag, and then he simply outruns them. But you’re right, he’s not as lightly built as, say, young Richmond.”
“I do not understand the English,” I said. “They name their canines and equines after gods and philosophers or dukes and heroes, while naming their children John, Susan, and Orville.”
Miss Fletcher and Ann both looked at me in some confusion, then Miss Fletcher smiled. “You jest so subtly, monsieur, that your humor nearly passed me by. I, for one, am happy to be named after a flower, while my mother—”
A shout went up from the steps of the posting inn as the publican created a racket by banging on a metal triangle with a soup ladle.
“The first heat will start shortly,” Miss Fletcher said, bustling along the lambing pens. “We’ll want to get a spot place at the finish line. Have you placed your bets?”
“We’ll just watch for now,” Ann said as the crowd shifted to gather along the rope lanes so the thickest knot of people formed at the base of one of the oaks. As we moved, partly following Miss Fletcher and partly as a result of the crowd moving us, Ann’s grip on my arm became quite firm.
“I’ll meet you at the gig if we get separated,” I said.
Ann’s reply was to take a snug hold of my hand. “I will not lose you.”
Those few words held a hint of the old Ann, the one who’d marched across Spain, made short rations suffice, and faced widowhood and worse without flinching.
We stood side by side in the jostling crowd as the rabbit hound was released—the beast who’d run ahead and stir all the others into giving chase, apparently. As the first group of competitors made their circuit, the noise on the green grew deafening, particularly considering how humble the entertainment was. The expressions on my neighbors’ faces suggested we were watching the St. Leger Stakes with vast fortunes riding on the outcome, not Old Hector and Richmond flapping and bounding their way around the St. Ivo’s village green.
Neither Hector nor Richmond prevailed, as it happened. A younger animal, Lionheart, crossed the finish line a length ahead of the other five contenders. Dervid Grant picked him up in his arms and got a thorough face-licking in return.
Which explained Grant’s presence in the village.
Somebody started up a hip-hip-hooray chorus. General merriment ensued—as well as general grumbling—along with an exodus in the direction of the publican’s barrels, brought outside for the occasion. Some rotund fellow eager for his post-race libation jostled into Ann and offered a beery apology.
I was left holding hands with my wife, an agreeable development, until Ann leaned near. “I must leave, Hugh. Please take me home now.”
“But, Ann…” We had just arrived.
“You promised.”
The physician in me gave the husband a swift kick dans son derrière. Ann was pale, anxious, and having difficulty drawing a breath.
“Inhale normally,” I said, slipping an arm around her waist. “Don’t gulp the air. Try to remain calm. We are but a few steps from the gig, and I can carry you if need be.”
“I’m sorry,” Ann muttered wheezily. “Hugh, I’m sorry.”
Sorry for what? “Crowds are unpleasant,” I replied, using my best calm-physician voice. “The evening is warm. Would you like to sit for a moment on the church steps, or shall we depart?”
“Home,” Ann said. “Please, home.”
I hoisted her over the ropes of the racing lane and deposited her on the bench of the gig. Her color had improved, and her inhalations were quieter by the time I’d unhitched the horse and joined her in the vehicle.
As we rounded the green, we passed the posting inn, where a circle of revelers had formed around two men who were loudly disputing the race results.
“The wrong dog won, apparently,” Ann said, her voice rasping as if she’d been crying.
The victor had been slight, but small dogs could be fast. “What set you off?” I asked.
“I don’t like crowds.”
My wife, whom I regarded as an honest woman, had just handed me a polite falsehood. “What’s the real reason, Ann? If we are to go on as a couple, we must be truthful with each other. I don’t care for crowds, and I hate the sound of thunder.”
“The artillery,” she said. “I’m none too fond of thunder either. But in this case… it was just the crowd, Hugh. I told you I don’t care for crowds. I’m sorry.”
We drove the rest of the way to Belle Terre in silence as the sun sank toward the western horizon. I did not like that Ann was withholding information from me, and I positively loathed her repeated apologies.
What precisely was she apologizing for?
We nonetheless observed our usual routine later that night, with Ann climbing beneath the covers of the four-poster and me retiring to the lumpy rack that now passed for my bed.
“No laws protect an animal from abuse,” Thaddeus Freeman said, “so I told Nigel Bellamy to arrest Donnie Vaughn for disorderly conduct, though I doubt our new magistrate will heed my guidance. I gave Richmond into Miss Fletcher’s temporary keeping, because the beating Vaughn gave him left him in wretched shape.”
Freeman had ambushed me in the churchyard, and because I was remaining at Ann’s side like the proverbial loyal hound, she heard this exchange. Freeman had kept his voice down, though, and waited until Ann and I were nearly at our gig before accosting us. The unfortunate canine was apparently a sensitive topic.
“What has this to do with me?” I asked.
Ann, looking prim and lovely in a blue merino walking dress, answered the question. “Mr. Freeman wants you to look in on the dog.”
“I am a physician, not a veterinarian.”
“We have neither in these surrounds,” Freeman countered, “and the hound is suffering.”
Ann gazed at me with a quiet sense of entreaty. She would not castigate me for refusing to examine a dog, but I would lose yet still more standing in her eyes if I declined Freeman’s request.
“What is this hound to you, Freeman?”
“A mute beast, helpless to defend himself against his owner’s drunken violence. I am not the magistrate any longer, but I still have pretensions to gentlemanliness. Miss Fletcher will be devastated if the dog dies, and she and her mother have been through enough.”
Ann’s hand rested on my arm as lightly as sunshine.
“Madame and I will call upon Miss Fletcher and her mother,” I said, “but Richmond will still have an idiot for an owner if he survives. What can be done about that?”
Freeman tipped his hat to Thetis Faraday. His expression was genuinely cordial, his smile friendly. I was reminded that Freeman was intimately acquainted with code work and ciphers. Did he hide the truth of his emotions as effectively as he’d hidden Wellington’s orders?
“I agree with my husband,” Ann said. “The race was fairly close. Richmond is a young hound, and the old favorite also lost. This implies the winner was a surprise all around. For Richmond’s owner to pummel the beast will only make the poor dog less able to run in subsequent contests.”
“Vaughn was drunk when he took after the hound. He loves that dog, but he lost a fair amount of money on the race, as did several others.”
“While Dervid Grant,” I said, “who desperately needs the funds, came into some luck for a change. I will have a look at the unfortunate beast, Freeman, but don’t bruit that about.”
I handed Ann up into the gig and would have gone around to the other side to join her on the bench, but Freeman had more to say.
“Vaughn was understandably upset, and so is Old Hector’s owner.”
“Both men lost money,” I retorted. “This is exactly how wagering works. Perhaps you can explain that to your neighbors, Freeman, for I am reduced to treating their beasts.”
“Dreyfuss is a steady sort,” Freeman said. “He would never treat Old Hector ill, and he admitted neither Richmond nor Hector were running at their best.”
I wanted nothing so much as to leave the blasted village and go for a long ride in my enormous, overgrown woods. The squires and their families were no longer making free with that part of my estate, though I did find the occasional farmwife or stray boy on my bridle paths. The poorest families had my permission to harvest what bounty they could from the woods—short of poaching, of course—and yet, it was getting too late for berries and still too early for nuts.
I’d have the woods to myself, and my conscience.
“Dreyfuss knows better than to make public accusations,” Freeman went on, “but he suspects the race was fixed. Hector should have been in fine form, but he was slow off the mark. Richmond might have given Hector a run for his money, but Richmond came in third.”
I did not care about any of this.
“Does Dervid Grant own Lionheart?” Ann asked.
“He does. Arden Donohue won a fair sum on the dog too.”
The Donohues were also among the very poorest of the parish, eking out an existence one step ahead of starvation. I was treating the younger Grant daughters for rickets with regular doses of cod liver oil, and they—despite protesting the means—were slowly improving.
Ann gave Freeman the sort of inspection that should have made him squirm. “What aren’t you saying, Mr. Freeman? You excel at the sort of deep stratagems that put my husband in the thick of trouble, and I will not allow you to do so ever again.”
Her tone had been civil, but had I been Freeman, I would have taken a few prudent steps back. That Ann would remonstrate with Freeman surprised me. This was the same woman who’d gone to pieces the previous evening simply because of a lively crowd.
Or had something else provoked Ann’s fit of panic?
“I am being overly cautious,” Freeman said, “thinking like a magistrate when that burden is no longer mine to carry, but Nigel Bellamy has asked me to keep an eye on the situation.”
“You enjoyed being magistrate,” I said, climbing into the gig and taking up the reins. “Liked all the petty squabbles and competing interests that go with keeping the rural peace. Answer my wife’s question. What’s afoot, Freeman?”
“If the race was rigged,” Freeman said, “suspicion will fall on those who benefited the most.”
Ann’s gloved hands were fisted in her lap. “When a wealthy man’s young hound prevails,” she said, “that is good luck. A poor man won, and another poor man benefited—among others—so we must accuse them of foul play. Need I remind you, Squire, who exactly was poaching in my husband’s woods?”
The woods were not my woods, they were our woods—Ann’s and mine—but my wife had made the obvious point.
Freeman gave a short shrill whistle, and a gray gelding lipping grass near the smithy raised his head, then began to amble in our direction.
“The race was very likely not rigged,” Freeman said. “Hector is getting on. Maybe Richmond is too young to have as much bottom as his owner accords him. Lionheart had a lucky night and will likely not be able to repeat his performance. Vaughn is demanding a rematch, and Dreyfuss is up for it.”
“But Richmond is out of the running,” Ann said.
“Dreyfuss has agreed to split any winnings with Vaughn if the rematch is held and Hector prevails.”
“A dog race cannot be rigged,” I said. “It’s not as if jockeys sit atop each dog, subtly impeding its speed or allowing it to get trapped behind a slower competitor. The hounds ran freely.”
Freeman’s horse came up to him and nuzzled his arm.
“Can you tell if a dog has been drugged, St. Sevier?”
I was torn between intrigue and insult. Now I was not only a veterinarian, but also some sort of diviner of canine mysteries.
“Perhaps, if the symptoms mirror those presenting in humans, but only while the poison is active. Twelve hours later, the toxin might well be out of the patient’s—dog’s—system and impossible to detect.”
“What would make a hound slightly slower than usual?” Freeman asked.
“I am a doctor,” I said in my slowest, most distinct English. “I treat humans and have no idea what might marginally impede a canine’s gross motor locomotion.” Somnifera was the first drug that came to mind, also known as winter cherry, which I knew to be effective on horses. Had we an herbwoman, I might have consulted her regarding other possibilities.
“If my husband,” Ann said, “who enjoys an embarrassment of medical training, has no idea how to drug a dog, why would you think Dervid Grant has that knowledge?”
“Grant’s father was a gamekeeper who took to drink. No telling what his son picked up from the old man, and Grant is in desperate need of funds, as is Donohue for that matter. I will thank you for looking in on the hound, and please give my regards to Miss Fletcher and her mother.”
He took up his girth a few holes, swung into the saddle, and offered Ann a nod in parting.
“I don’t like him,” Ann said. “His abominable treatment of you aside, I do not like that man. He has a knowing air, and what is there to know in St. Ivo’s, for pity’s sake?”
I knew something. I knew that whatever else was true, Ann was protective of me. She was protective of the Grants and the Donohues, too, and was willing to speak up on their behalf. That was another glimmer of the old Ann, the Ann who’d ordered me to take naps and eat regularly, the Ann who’d been intrepid enough to attempt a journey to the coast of Spain without benefit of my escort.
“I respect Freeman,” I said, “but I am not pleased with the direction of his thoughts.”
I gave the horse leave to walk on and resigned myself to calling upon Miss Fletcher, her mother, and the damned dog.