I noticed that Paton had taken some pains to make this visit pleasant. He had notified Mrs. Maherne of our arrival, which showed some forethought. But why had we come here, if not to meet some family or friend?
He ushered me into the parlor, a cozy little nook with low ceiling, a horsehair sofa set against one wall, a shelf of books against the other, and the blazing grate. He drew two stuffed chairs close to it and made a great fuss about my comfort. Did I want a shawl? No, I would be fine by the grate. Damme, there was no shawl. A blanket, perhaps, to put around my shoulders? He must find a coat for me to use on the return trip.
“Is there no one else in the cottage except Mrs. Maherne?” I asked. “Perhaps I ought not to stay...”
“There is no need to fear for the proprieties. Mrs. Maherne is a perfectly honorable chaperone. She used to keep house for the vicar,” he assured me.
When the coffee arrived, Paton settled down to watch my performance. I made sure to hold the pot a judicious foot above the cup, to show my confidence. It was not necessary to toast bread over the embers. Sandwiches and plum cake accompanied the coffee. The fire would not be fit for making toast for an hour in any case, for the flames leapt up the chimney in a way that raised a fear for the thatched roof.
We ate a few sandwiches and soon settled back with our coffee, gazing into the fire. “Why did you choose to come here, Paton?” I asked.
“I have been wanting to be with you like this, alone, so that we might come to know each other,” he explained.
“It is very cozy, is it not?”
“The cottage is untenanted at the moment,” he said, and looked at me with brightly eager eyes. “Now, don’t pour the scalding coffee on me, Miss Nesbitt, but I am going to make a suggestion that may surprise you. I would like you to live here. It is not a mansion, but it is better than that little space under the eaves where you presently reside. Autumn does not show the place to best advantage, but in spring and summer it is charming, with a little garden in the back.”
“Live here? Oh, I could not. Thank you, Paton, but really, it is more than I could afford at present.”
He looked thunderstruck. “Good God, I’m not trying to
rent
it! I want you to have the place, rent free, with the housekeeper thrown in.”
It was my turn to be thunderstruck. “I couldn’t accept such a favor. I hardly know you.”
He grasped my hand and squeezed it. “That is easily remedied, Miss Nesbitt. We could begin by dispensing with the Miss. I don’t even know your name,” he said, and scowled at this absurdity.
“Emma.”
“Emma Nesbitt,” he said, trying it like a connoisseur savoring a vintage port. “It has a—friendly sound. May I call you Emma?”
“It is a little early for us to be ...”
“But then, who will know?” he asked, and smiled intimately. “I doubt that Mrs. Speers will be scandalized. She calls Madame de Stael Anne Louise, on what I take to be a very minimal acquaintance.”
“None actually, but it was Miss Potter I was thinking of.”
“A high stickler, is she?”
“Toplofty as the devil.” I laughed. “But I can always handle her. She scolds that it is my leaving home that accounts for my waywardness, and no doubt she is right. I little thought, when I left Nesbitt Hall, that I would find myself at such a party as the one where we met, Paton.”
“And to think, I very nearly went to a concert instead. Had the music been anything but another recital of Handel, we would not have met. Do you think fate is trying to tell us something?” he asked flirtatiously.
I tossed my shoulders impertinently. “I pay no heed to that tyrant. I mean to arrange my own fate, thank you.”
“With a little help from myself, I hope. You will take the cottage?”
It was nothing new under the sun for a wealthy nobleman to sponsor the arts. What bothered me was that Paton was young and handsome, I a single lady. It was open to misconstruction. “You know very well I cannot, though it is kind of you to patronize the arts in this way. We do not have a carriage, you see, and would be stuck in the country,” I added as a sop.
“My aunt has a chaise she never uses. We’ll hire a team.”
I gave him a saucy smile. “What did you have in mind?” It was the cream ponies I referred to.
Paton hesitated a moment, then decided not to recognize my hint. “A pair of bloods, in any shade you wish.” There was a moment of embarrassing silence. “The cottage is not so very far from Bath. You notice we made the trip in an hour,” he said, adroitly changing the subject.
“Let us settle this once and for all, Paton. I have not the least intention of accepting charity from you or anyone else.”
“It is not charity! The place is standing idle.”
“Then rent it to someone—someone other than me. I have no wish to live in the country.”
He listened, and appeared sad but soon came up with another idea. “How about London? As you enjoy city life, you would like London better than Bath.”
“Bath will do for the nonce. Why should I go to London?” I thought he must have an apartment or house available there too.
“Bath is an odd destination for a lady who has decided to defy convention. I would have thought London a likelier home for such a dasher as you, Emma.”
“You may well ask why a carefully reared lady ran away from home to live in a hovel and earn her own livelihood in Bath! I was a little frightened to tackle London on my own, you see. I am a provincial spirit at heart, and Bath is less wicked. Also, Mr. Pepper produces his
Ladies’ Journal
there.”
He nodded. “I’m glad you chose Bath. I gather from your writing that the situation at home was intolerable. You are obviously not a lady to be hampered by convention.”
“You really did read my essay, then?”
“Carefully. I was shocked. Is it all true?”
“Every word.”
“It seems incredible that a father would be so hard on his only daughter,” he said, shaking his head.
“He had been reading
Smile,”
I replied through thin lips.
“That accounts for your snipe at Rousseau the evening we met. I hope you do not leap from the specific to the general. Not all gentlemen are bounders.”
“I did not say so, or imply it. I wrote only of my own plight, and my own solution. I would not like to give the impression I am an anarchist,” I added. “Mr. Pepper feels I am the logical successor to Mary Wollstonecraft.”
“I assumed she was your inspiration. It is unfortunate that no one took up the torch she lit. She and her husband, William Godwin, like you, totally rejected Rousseau’s ‘Contract Theory.’“
“Yes, of course,” I said vaguely. I had seen something called
Du Contrat Social
in the library at home, and would have felt on firmer ground if I had read it.
“Tell me, as a disenfranchised and discontented young lady, which of Godwin’s four bugbears concerns you more? Do you agree with him on all four points?”
Paton was obviously not talking about north, south, east, and west. I was slipping into deep and dangerous water here. I knew only that my new-found heroine, Mary Wollstonecraft, had married William Godwin, a dissenting minister. What could the question mean? “I seldom agree with Rousseau on anything,” I said evasively. “That tends to put me in Godwin’s camp, I suppose.”
“Yet strangely enough, Mary Wollstonecraft urged ladies to acquire that same education that Godwin despised for men.”
Education was one of the four points, then. I latched on to it for dear life. “Oh, not the same education, surely. Merely to develop the mind for its job in life. An illiterate wife makes a sorry life’s companion. And in any case, I am not totally familiar with Godwin’s views,” I admitted.
“He claims that between the four of them: the educational system, the government, religion, and the social order, society makes unthinking slaves of men. He would have every man a rational man, choosing his own morality.”
“Good gracious, he sounds a dangerous fellow. I wonder the government didn’t clamp him in irons. I dare say he was against paying his taxes. That should have made a good pretext for incarceration.”
“He had some powerful allies. But really, it is more your philosophy on the social order and religion that I am interested to hear.”
“Oh, I don’t write philosophy. I don’t want to be too clever for anyone to understand me.”
“Perhaps you underestimate your audience’s intelligence. In any case, I wish you would tell me about it. I would like to try to understand how you think.”
This philosophical sort of conversation was totally new to me, and interesting. It was the kind of discussion I had hoped to encounter at that literary soiree. “So far as religion goes, I am a Christian, Paton. Wanting some equality with men does not make me a witch, you know. If it is the social contract that gives men all the influence and money, then I am against that.”
“What do you mean by a Christian?”
I frowned in perplexity. “What everyone else means. I believe in Christ, and the tenets of Christianity, the Ten Commandments. I do not believe in killing or stealing. Just what sort of farouche creature do you take me for, that you are asking these questions?”
The only possibility I could think of was that he feared I was too outré to present to his friends and family. Perhaps he feared that I would go around pressing them not to pay their taxes, or skip church on Sunday.
“Godwin did not believe in the sacraments—baptism, marriage, and so on,” he said. The curious way he looked at me seemed to anticipate an earth-shattering view.
“That is news to me. He married Mary Wollstonecraft. She had enough education to insist upon it, you see. Had she been as ignorant as men would like, Godwin would probably have tried his hand at seducing her.”
“She permitted herself to be seduced, despite her education,” he parried with a brightly curious smile. “It was the coming arrival of a child that precipitated the marriage.”
I blushed like a blue cow. “Then they can neither of them have had the courage of their convictions—fortunately for the child. You seem very well informed on this couple, Paton. Were you one of Godwin’s freethinkers?”
“He engaged my heart, to some extent, but not my mind. I dislike jail, and always make a point to pay my taxes. That is not to say I can’t understand another’s point of view. I succumbed to a university education without complaint, and even took some pleasure from it. I support the church,” he added vaguely.
“Then you may be acquitted of Godwin’s four heresies, for you go along with the church, the universities, and by implication, the government.”
‘That is only three,” he pointed out.
“I know you would never be caught out in a social indiscretion.” This deep conversation left me little time for tangential thoughts, such as Angelina.
Paton’s conscious expression and arch smile alerted me what he was thinking, though he did not come right out and admit his scarlet life. “A bachelor is granted a wide degree of latitude without incurring society’s wrath,” he said.
It stung like a nettle, and I decided to give him a notion of my feelings on the matter. “Yes, a bachelor’s improprieties are tolerated, but let a spinster go an inch out of line and she is ruined forever, cast into the abyss.”
He gave me a searching look. “We are speaking of sexual improprities, I take it?”
My cheeks flushed at such broad talk, and I said vaguely, “Well—yes, in part.” He nodded warmly. “Not that I mean to say I have run amok in that respect!”
“No, no! We are speaking generalities only. It is true men do judge more harshly in such matters. Ladies, unlike gentlemen, are expected to be perfectly innocent before marriage. Those who have stumbled can expect love and cherishing, but not a gold ring. It is unfair, but a fact.” He examined me closely. I felt an apology in his look, an apology for Angelina, and rushed on to reassure him that I was as capable of forgiveness as anyone.
“So long as a man’s diversions cease with marriage, a lady in love, being temporarily insane, will usually forgive his past,” I said encouragingly.
Something in my speech made him uncomfortable. I don’t know what it was, for I felt I had been generous in my view, but the cozy atmosphere cooled noticeably. Paton continued perfectly polite, but no longer warm.
“More coffee?” I suggested, lifting the pot with gracefully curved wrist.
Paton pulled out his watch. “We had best be getting you home, Miss Nesbitt, before darkness falls.”
I stared in surprise and dismay. Surely it was a slip of the tongue that had lowered me back to Miss Nesbitt. Our outing had already lasted a long time though, and we still had the drive home to accomplish.
“Yes indeed. Miss Potter will be wondering what happened to me.”
“I’ll just have a word with the housekeeper,” he said, and disappeared into the kitchen, to return a moment later with his curled beaver already in place. “All set?”
There was no mention of a coat or blanket for me, and in the new air of constraint around us, I did not like to remind him. We went out into a cruelly punishing wind. Paton’s concern was all for his nags.
“I should have brought a blanket, as there’s no stable here. I hope this pair of bloods haven’t taken a chill.”
He patted their flanks a moment, then lent me his hand for the ascent, but in a detached way, as though I were a maiden aunt. He hopped aboard himself, whipped up the horses, and we were off. The force of the wind was felt more keenly as we drove into it. If I didn’t come down with pneumonia, I would feel fortunate.
It was just as we pulled into Corsham that the leaden clouds began to spit down a desultory, cold rain.
“That’s all we needed,” he said grimly.
You would think we had spent an afternoon amongst savage Indians, or on the rack. Driving an open carriage to a miserable cottage in the country had not been my idea.
My patience broke, and I said, “You had best pull into the inn, or we’ll catch our death of cold. I’m frozen to the bone already.”
“It’s a pity you hadn’t worn a pelisse,” he murmured.
“If I had known you meant to drive an open carriage and travel out into the wilds, I would have.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Miss Nesbitt. That was thoughtless of me. I’ll stop and give you my coat, till we reach the inn, and rest there till this rain lets up.”