Carla Kelly (7 page)

Sally tunneled deeper into her handkerchief; Robert merely looked around. Lord Ragsdale sighed and tried again. “Your parents have solicited us to see that you, Robert, are located at Oxford, and that you, Sally participate in some part of the London Season.”

Neither relative said anything. Lord Ragsdale paced away from the window and then back again. “I know there are several excellent, if provincial, colleges in America.” He looked at Sally. “And I suspect that Virginia society is lively enough to provide for a spring's entertainment. I must ask myself, then, why you have inflicted yourself upon us.”

“Really, John,” his mother murmured as Sally began to sniffle again.

“Yes, really,” he insisted and paced some more. “Can it be possible that you are no longer welcome at home, Robert?” Lord Ragsdale asked. “Could it be that you have ruined your family?”

A long silence followed, but Lord Ragsdale did not leap into the void. He walked back to the window and looked out, waiting for an answer
. And I will wait until the end of time
, he thought grimly.
We may all grow old in this room.

“I really don't think it is as bad as all that,” Robert said at last, his tone sulky. His mouth opened to say more, but Sally leaped to her feet and hurried to the window to face her cousin.

“It is worse than that,” she said, her voice low and fierce. “Robert's gaming debts have mortgaged our home right to the attics. Papa has had to sell half his slaves, and the next two tobacco crops are already lost to repay Robert's creditors.”

Lord Ragsdale whistled in spite of himself. “My word, Robert,” he exclaimed. “Can't you resist a wager?”

Once started, Sally was ready to contribute in abundance. “He cannot!” she exclaimed, deeply in earnest, tears forgotten now. “There are whole counties where Robert dare not show his face.” Her own face clouded over again. “And no one will even consider a marriage arrangement for me with Robert ready to sponge.”

She looked so sad that Lord Ragsdale put his arm around her shoulders, drew her close to him, and provided her with his handkerchief. “I appreciate your candor, Sally,” he said when he could be heard over her tears.

Sally looked at him, her wide blue eyes so like his mother's. “What will you do to us?” she asked.

He smiled at her. “Exactly what your parents wished, my dear.”

He leveled a less pleasant look in Robert's direction. “You, cousin, will go to Oxford. And if I hear of a single card being turned, you will be on your way to Spain, to serve in the ranks. I know a colonel of foot who will have you flogged regularly if I ask him to.”

“Oh, cousin!” Robert exclaimed, getting slowly to his feet. “I am sure that if you will let me bargain with Emma's indenture one more time I can …”

“Don't you ever learn?” Lord Ragsdale shouted, oblivious to what the other clients of the Norman and Saxon might think. “She belongs to me now, and I am more careful of my property! Sally, we will attempt to provide you with a come out of some sort. There must be someone of my acquaintance who prefers a pretty face to a large income.” He released Sally and turned to his mother. “And now, my dear, if you will fork over some of the ready, I will spring us from this inn.”

She handed him some money and then patted his arm. “Well done, John,” Lady Ragsdale said in a low voice.

“Someone had to do something,” he said pointedly. He started for the door and then turned suddenly and shook his finger at Robert. “I mean what I say about serving in the ranks, you idiot!” He yanked open the door, looked at Emma standing there so quietly beside it, and pulled her out into the hall with him, slamming the door behind him.

“I want a word with you, Emma Costello,” he snapped.

She said nothing but pulled her hand from his and clasped them in front of her. She looked him directly in the eye, something servants never did, and he found himself unable to bear her level scrutiny.

“Dash it, Emma,” he whispered furiously. “Why did you allow Robert to take you downstairs last night? Why didn't you wake my mother or pound on my door? He could have sold you to one of those ugly customers. Don't you care?”

She was a long time answering him. The servant looked down at her hands, her eyes lowered, and he noticed how absurdly long her eyelashes were. He was standing close enough to see that her skin was as beautiful up close as across a room, and with the most disarming freckles on her nose. She wore no scent but the honest odor of soap. Finally she looked at him.

“I did not dream that you would raise a hand to stop him, my lord,” she replied.

Almost bereft of speech, he stared back. “You … you think I would have allowed him to
sell
you?” he demanded, his voice rising to a higher pitch not heard since his younger years.

“I was sure of it,” she said, her voice soft.

If she had calculated for six months or more to devise a way to cut him to the marrow, she could not have hit upon a better plan. He stared at her another moment and felt shame wash over him like a sudden cold spray. It was the most alarming thing anyone had ever said to him, and it came from a servant. He regarded her another moment, and the thought struck him that she was probably right.

“Oh, Emma” was all he could say.

“With your permission, sir, I'll go back inside and help the ladies pack.”

He nodded and walked down the hall to his own room. He turned at the door, his hand on the knob, and glanced back at the servant, who had not moved. She regarded him in silence another moment and then went back into his mother's room, closing the door quietly behind her.

Lord Ragsdale thought the ride to Oxford would never end. He felt the loss of his horse sorely. A restless person by nature, he chafed at the inactivity of sitting still in a carriage. If he could have paced inside, he would have. As it was, he was forced to endure Sally's snufflings into a long succession of handkerchiefs and her occasional frightened glances in his direction. Robert sulked in his corner, suffering a hangover of monstrous proportions, brought on by bad rum, drunk in immoderate quantities. He opened his mouth several times to speak, but nothing ever came out.

Lady Ragsdale seemed to enjoy the ride. She settled comfortably into the opposite corner, her nose deep in a novel. The only sound in the carriage beyond Sally's sniffles was the regular slitting and turning of pages. Emma Costello stared out the window, occupied with her own thoughts. Her face was blank of all expression, the perfect servant's face.

Except that I know you have not always been a servant
, he thought as he watched her. As the miles and hours dragged by, he remembered a fairy tale from the nursery about a princess forced into servitude by a wicked maid.
Absurd
, he thought, wishing that he could fling open the carriage door and trot alongside.
Ireland has nothing but a cursed population that stinks and breeds. I wonder how soon I can get rid of her
, he thought.

As they approached Oxford, Emma Costello claimed his attention again. Sally and Robert were both asleep, leaning against each other, but Emma sat forward and grasped a strap by the window, surprised into exclamation. He glanced over idly to see what was capturing her notice.

“It is Magdalen Tower,” he said, following her gaze.
Come, come, John
, he thought,
try for a little conversation, even if she is Irish.
“You should see it in high summer, with the trees all leafed out.” There. That was a respectable volley of dialogue.
I can't have her thinking I am a dog of a fellow.

Emma nodded, her eyes still on the scene before her. “I thought it would look like that,” she murmured.

He smiled at her, feeling the hypocrite because of his dislike, and unable to resist the vantage point of superiority. “I had no idea that Magdalen was a subject for the servants’ hall in America.”

It was a shabby remark, and he knew it. She looked him in the eye, and he felt the urge to squirm again under her scrutiny.

“My father went there,” she commented and directed her gaze to the window again, effectively shutting him out of all further conversation.

Lord Ragsdale felt himself blushing.
By all that's imaginable, I have been set down
, he thought in amazement. His embarrassment worsened when he noticed that his mother watched him over the top of her spectacles, her eyes merry. He glared at her, and to his further discomfort, she winked at him.

“That's enough,” he said, his voice too loud. He rolled down the glass and leaned out the window. “Stop the coach.”

The carriage stopped. His mother watched in amusement, her finger marking the place in the book. Emma's emerald green eyes measured him up and down and found him wanting.

He flung himself out of the carriage. “I will walk to Grand-mama's,” he told his mother.

“Very well, John,” she said. “Take your time.”

He swore out loud as the carriage left him, and stood there a moment, wondering why he was walking and not Emma.

Lord Ragsdale took his time getting to his grandmother's house. At first he walked fast in his anger, but as his rapid stride carried him along through narrow, favorite streets, he found himself slowing down, glancing about even as though his friends from former years might reappear to walk with him, to commiserate, to cajole, to suggest alternatives to duty, to demand that he share notes or a pint. He sighed and stood still, staring up at Magdalen Tower, almost like Emma. “To remind me that life had a purpose once,” he said out loud.

Others were passing by. He reminded himself also that at Oxford no one stared at people who talked out loud to themselves. The colleges cherished their eccentrics, and even after ten years and more, he felt himself under that same protective umbrella. It was a pleasant thought, and oddly soothing. He strolled along more slowly now. True, he could not recall what the purpose of life was anymore, but at least it was a comfort to be there.

He thought about lifting a pint at Walsingham's again, but the moment passed. Instead, he let himself into the Brasenose Quadrangle and walked about until he pronounced himself ready to face his grandmother.
I wonder that anyone ever leaves Oxford
, he thought as he sauntered along the outer corridor, his eyes on the dark beams close overhead. He stopped, the first smile of the day on his face. There it was. He reached up and traced “John Staples,” carved at the end of his second year. The smile left his face.
I was different then
, he considered.
I was better.

USK WAS APPROACHING WHEN LORD Ragsdale arrived at his Grandmama Whiteacre's house. He stood for a long time outside the building, admiring the stonework as he always did. The facade had been quarried from the same rock works as many of Oxford's buildings, and it glowed with that same otherworldly honey color of late afternoon. But the ivy was dead on the stones now, drooping in the drizzle that had begun as he crossed the Isis and hurried past her neighbor's homes.

He never could think of the place as a home, no matter how hard he tried. There was none of the rest within that he ever associated with his own home. “And precious little of that on Curzon Street either, nowadays,” he mused out loud. He wished he understood what had happened to his own home. True, Lady Ragsdale kept it beautiful and timely as always, but he felt no peace there anymore. And there was none here.