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Renforth sat down once more. “And yet, I suspect you will survive.”
“That is to be determined,” Baines muttered. “Efficient women always look at me as though I ought to be taken to the stables and beaten with a switch.”
Baines considered the matter. A crowded northern country house; political unrest with hidden exchanges; Scotland simmering only a few miles beyond the border with a sensible woman already predisposed against him. His spirits rose enormously.
Renforth took a sip of brandy at last. “I give you three days before she sees through you.”
Baines smiled slowly. “Women never see through me.”
The Colonel drank. “That arrogance is precisely why she will.”
An hour later, Baines stood in his bedchamber amid the disorder he privately considered the annoying necessity of packing. A portmanteau lay open upon the bed; shirts, cravats, gloves, waistcoats, and three coats of varying degrees of respectability that O’Malley had arranged in careful stacks which Baines immediately disturbed by adding a volume of scandalous verse, a pistol-case, and a packet of sugared almonds. “One never knows what civilization may be lacking in Northumberland.”
“I believe they possess almonds, sir.”
“But do they possess sugared almonds?”
O’Malley shook his head and continued folding linen.
Baines took up the newspaper again to study. The reports from Scotland sat before him in thick, black columns, full of words such as insurrection, treason, sedition, and unfortunate necessity, that last phrase being among the most sinister in any government’s vocabulary. He lowered the paper.
There had been a time, during the war, when the enemy had been obliging enough to wear recognizable colours and stand beneath flags. Peace had deprived the world of such courtesy. Now danger sat at supper, drank port, danced with widows, borrowed carriages, and sent conversations northward to be sharpened into inflammatory newspaper columns. Baines disliked that very much indeed, which meant, of course, that he must appear not to dislike it at all.
“Pack the blue coat,” he said.
O’Malley paused. “The very blue one, sir?”
“The same.”
“It is not exactly discreet, sir.”
“It is for character.”
“Ah,” said O’Malley, in a tone which suggested character was the enemy of good tailoring.
Baines grinned and crossed to the mirror, arranging his cravat with deliberate care. Major Baines, frivolous, well dressed, unoccupied, charming in proportion to his uselessness, and entirely without political importance. It was an excellent disguise because it was nearly true, and the best lies always borrowed the coat of truth before going out in public.
Before dawn, he went down to the stables to inspect his horse. Lucifer, an Old English Black of variable temper and insufficient respect, lifted his head from the manger and regarded him with the resigned air of one accustomed to inconvenient journeys.
“Do not look at me so,” Baines said, stroking the horse’s neck. “You have been idle longer than I have.”
Lucifer blew warm breath against his sleeve.
“Yes, I know. Northumberland. Rain. Efficient women. We must all bear our trials.”
The groom, who had learned long ago that Major Baines conversed with horses more sensibly than with many men, said nothing as he checked the girth and saddle. Outside, the square remained blue-grey with early morning, the lamps guttering faintly as London prepared to wake into another day of work.
Baines mounted lightly, gathered the reins, and glanced back once at the house. It looked respectable, solemn, and proper behind its wet stone frontage. He rather hoped to return with a little disorder attached to him.
At first light, as ordered, Major Baines rode north.
CHAPTER 2
Judith Finch had long since ceased to believe masculine assurances that matters were entirely under control. Experience at Blackthorn Hall had taught her that such declarations generally preceded broken furniture, wounded dignity, runaway livestock, or occasionally all three simultaneously.
Judith, who had already spent an hour settling accounts with an agitated wine merchant and another quarter-hour persuading a housemaid not to resign over burnt muslin, found this latest grievance especially difficult to endure with Christian patience.
“Miss Finch, I cannot imagine why your cook insists upon preparing fish in the English style,” Lady Dunsmore declared, laying down her fork with tragic significance and an indignant sniff.
