Chapter Twelve

V anessa did not share the glad tidings about the battle at Vitoria. Not even with Lydia. How could she? Lydia would be incredulous. After all this time? Lieutenant Taverston ? She’d want to know why the lieutenant would have written to her.

Never mind the how . It was foolish to imagine Crispin would have had any trouble uncovering her tracks. But why was a reasonable question. He said he wrote to her too. Too. Who else? All the Taverstons? Did he include her as one of them still? In every way that mattered ?

If so, she mattered only to him.

After the initial rush of warmth from his letter receded, Vanessa was left feeling lonelier than before. He remembered her, yes. But he also reminded her of everything that she’d lost.

Regardless, within a few days, word of the battle seeped into Cartmel. Corporal Compton insisted upon a celebration. Sherwood offered the tavern. Everyone attended. Even Vanessa. Even though she didn’t want to dampen the festivities with her mood.

They gathered at dusk to eat, drink, and twirl about. Vanessa didn’t think she had ever been to a party that started at dusk. In London, parties started well after dark and ran into the early hours of the morning. Sometimes until dawn. But the ton never rose before noon. Here they woke at cock’s crow. As if in the army or following the drum.

Although the battle at Vitoria was the excuse, there was very little discussion of the war. Little more than, “Well, certainly, our boys will kick Boney back to France. Just wish they’d get on with it instead of dragging their feet!”

Sherwood preened as he poured out the pints, implying he would have wrapped things up there by now.

To Vanessa’s annoyance, she saw too many nods. Not Lydia’s. Not Corporal Compton’s. Anyone who had been there had not seen foot dragging, but rather courage and dogged persistence.

How dare these people! This party was not honoring Wellington’s victory, or recalling to memory the fallen. Whose deaths, Crispin had waxed lyrically, had meaning—except, apparently not to these men. It was an excuse to drink, that was all.

“The nobs, you know,” Dan Gowe said, wiping spilled froth from his beer onto his smock. “They don’t want it to end. Too much profit in it.”

She thought of Crispin’s unleashed exhilaration. Tempered only by his kindness. And dismissed the words of these men who knew nothing.

Cartmel’s folks didn’t talk of the war, of the victory, but of their crops and the weather, the boot mill, and the damnable Leather Tax. And the nobs, of course. It was the nobs always wanting taxes they did not have to pay. Vanessa heard the man Herve’s name. And the cousin, whose name was Bitter or Blither. Words twisted on the men’s tongues as they grew louder and laughed harder. Bitter had not lost his legs. They remained attached, but useless. Something in his back had snapped when he fell. There had been a contest, Vanessa made out, that Bitter had won by putting away a vast quantity of beer. The men admired him, pitied him, and swilled as if imitating him.

Such false courage they had: easy when death was too busy to come looking for them.

She edged her thigh away from Tam’s, beside her on the bench, a lank-haired farmer who stank of beer and sweat and goat. A sprawler, not a lecher, but still. Oh, she did not wish to be here, seeing this. Feeling this revulsion for her neighbors and their coarseness.

She was not better than them. She knew that. If she hated the rigidity that made her lesser than, she must equally reject notions of her own superiority. And Henry’s.

After all, she’d seen Henry drunk, too. Worse than this. Every soldier received a rum ration. They drank more rum than water. They drank rum in their water. The first few months, he had shared his ration out, trading it for food for them both. Or sometimes he simply gave it away. But that didn’t last. It couldn’t. The things he saw. The things he did…poor, dear Henry who had wanted to be a doctor . She didn’t fault him for the degrading condition she sometimes found him in. He never grabbed her lustfully when he was rum soaked. He’d never raised a hand to her either. She had never, like so many of her friends, needed to hide a blackened eye, split lip, or reddened fingermarks around her neck. Henry had drunk from desperation. She’d understood that. She didn’t understand how these men drank so carelessly.

Jasper could also drink in quantity, carelessly. Why hadn’t that bothered her? Because it was fine cognac or champagne instead of grog? Because he’d never fallen down or threw up? Because when liquor made him amorous, he’d still managed to retain his charm? He’d never seemed drunk. Merely foxed or a trifle disguised or a little bit bosky. All their little euphemisms for lapses without consequence. Jasper would never tumble down a hill, or accidentally discharge his weapon into his own gullet as Henry’s friend Dixon had.

“Dance with me, Mrs. Wardrip,” Jon said, holding out his hand. “You are too pretty for such a long face. This is a party.”

“Oh, no, but—”

“Go along with you,” Lydia urged. “Let Jon try out his new boots.”

Lydia settled her hand on Vanessa’s shoulder, that sustaining hand that had not permitted her to lie down and surrender after the fight she had lost, but rather made her leave a blood-soaked bundle under a bush and march on to Corunna.

“Lovey, Henry is smiling tonight. Our lads are all smiling. Let Henry watch you dance one more time.”

Here again was Lydia the general. Vanessa stood. Yes, she would march on. What else was there? If Cartmel was a mistake, she must learn to live with it. She felt, or imagined she felt, a whisper-breath on her ear. Dance, Vanessa. It was not Henry’s memory whispering. She had never danced with Henry.

What do you know about this stranger, this Jon?

If she was truly tired of living amongst strangers, there was a remedy. A modification of Jasper’s game.

Learn one thing about each of them. One good thing.

Jon? She knew he was a generous man.

“I don’t know the steps. You’ll have to show me.”

*

A week later, Vanessa walked to the Compton’s cottage. Their mill. She was on a mission. The front door was ajar, so she let herself in.

“Good morning, Bitter, you idiot,” she said.

His name was Peter, not Bitter. Everyone called him Bitter because his wife of twenty years, whom he had married at fifteen, was deaf and could say only a few intelligible words. “Bitter” was how she said, “Peter.” He would answer to nothing else.

Except now. Now he answered only to, “Bitter, you idiot.” Apparently, that was how he coped with what he had done. Generous Jon had hired him at first meeting, giving him light work he could do from a chair.

He beamed at her. “Mrs. Wardrip, isn’t it? What can we do for you?”

“I need a pair of boots.”

“I thought as much. For who?”

“Myself.”

His head tilted to the side. “We can do small ones, I suppose. But they’ll be plain.”

“That’s just what I want. To walk about the fields; they don’t have to be pretty.”

She’d seen women wearing boots to match their husbands’. Maybe they were their husbands’.

Bitter glanced down at her feet. “Seems a shame to give up those.”

She was wearing her only remaining decent pair of shoes. Silk slippers. They would not last. They would not have lasted long in London either, not in London’s mucky, uneven streets, had she walked them. But in London, she had hardly ever gone about on foot. That was what the carriage was for. She had done enough walking for a lifetime, sometimes twenty miles in a day—and in ill-fitting boots salvaged from dead men. She’d sworn she would never wear awful, ugly shoes again. She didn’t know what she’d imagined, coming to Cartmel. That it would all be pillowy meadows of grass paved with wildflowers?

“Too frivolous, I’m afraid. I shouldn’t have bought something so fine. I need shoes that will last.”

“Ah.” He chuckled. “So Nan’s right. She says bonnets for finery. High up on the head. Says I’m daft for wanting to make pretty shoes to scuff about in the dust.”

Nan could not have said all that. Nevertheless, she believed Bitter had heard it.

“Perhaps I’ll buy a bonnet next.”

“Climb up onto the box. Let me measure the foot.”

She imagined Jon would have squatted down to measure. But for Bitter, customers stepped up. She stood on the box beside his chair and let him chalk around her feet.

“It’s ten shillings, 2 pence, Mrs. Wardrip.” Then he frowned. “Seems a lot for such tiny feet. Maybe…”

“The work’s the same, isn’t it?”

“Less materials, though.”

“Well.” She wasn’t going to argue to pay the full cost. No one would. But she made no effort to bargain him down.

Will had sold the brooch she sent him and returned to her a staggering sum. She’d gone straight to the market in Paxton Downs, a two-hour walk, and filled her tea caddy. She stocked her larder. Then she went back three days later and asked Mr. Filbert, whose shop seemed the most likely, if he could place an order for her for a few books. She had an idea of how to reignite Charlotte’s enthusiasm. The purchases made no visible dent in the mound of coins stashed in a box under her bed. So it seemed petty to argue over a few pence’s worth of leather.

Bitter pulled at his lip. “I’ll ask Jon what he thinks.”

“I appreciate it. But I need these boots. I’m willing to pay full price.”

“Ha! Promise me you won’t ever go alone to a horse trader.”

She stepped down from the box.

“Two weeks?” he said. Then hemmed and said, “Maybe three. For you, pay on delivery.”

“Why, thank you.” It still surprised her that people were ever expected to pay in advance. She was certain Jasper would think she was inventing such a tale. He paid his people on time, meaning no more than three months late. That was how it was done .

“Wish they were all like you, Mrs. Wardrip. Make my life easier.”

She wished there was a way to make it easier. No matter his good humor, it had to be hard. She stepped to the door.

“Have a good day, Bitter.”

“What?”

“Bitter, you idiot.”

He laughed. “Good day to you, too.”

She had no further business at anyone’s cottage but her own. A cold pot of soup awaited her. It wouldn’t take long to heat it for supper. If she had her new boots, she might wander off into the countryside, pick mushrooms, or gather flowers, but her feet already hurt.

She slowed her steps and let her thoughts drift.

Little Dan had somehow set fire to the Gowes’ chicken coop Sunday morning while Charlotte and Dan were not paying attention. Charlotte had rescued all the birds but one. That, she plucked and cooked—“finished cooking” she explained, relating the story while sipping tea.

Charlotte Gowe was unflappable.

Jasper’s voice: So were the wings on that bird. I have one for you—Dan Gowe is the rare man who looks forward to Sunday morning.

One word, Jasper. That’s the challenge. To distill to the essence.

Hmm. What about this Bitter?

Bitter was sweet. Kind. Good-looking, too. She would say the poor man was cursed, but he wouldn’t agree. He insisted he was blessed. Hadn’t God kept him around to look after Nan?

Jasper: That is diluted, not distilled.

But I can’t think of one word to encompass it all.

Jasper: Admirable?

No. Not quite.

Admired, then.

Yes. Bitter, the idiot, was admired. And what did Jasper think of Sherwood?

Jasper: Laughable? Annoying? Pathetic?

That is three.

Insignificant.

No, that’s too cruel.

Jasper had called Hilyer that once, to his face, so Hazard had said.

Jasper: Coxcomb

Oh, perfect.

She reached her cottage. Tam had repaired the cobbled walk to her door for her. She’d tried to pay him with a plate of biscuits, but he wouldn’t take them. There was nothing wrong with them, she told Jasper in her head. She made very good biscuits. It was simply that he’d had a spare two hours and the men in the church took seriously the command to look after widows. Apparently, God wouldn’t count it if Tam took something in return.

She opened the door and stepped inside, still musing. She didn’t have a word for Tam. Not dutiful. Or pious. Not even good-hearted. Unfortunately, the word lumbering kept coming to mind. She shut the door. The latch fell into place with a thud.

Lonely is mine . Or alone. Not fearful, but still waiting, always, to hear footsteps.

Crispin, piping in: Resilient.

Thank you, but you were not invited to play.

Jasper, searchingly: And what one word have you for the Earl of Iversley?

Could she distill what she knew of Jasper to one word?

Impossible .

And now, the game was not amusing anymore.