Chapter 14

“I’ve just had the most terrible thought.”

Sir Horley gazed across the carriage at his companion. “After so many days stuck in an undulating box, I am having many terrible thoughts.”

“No, but”—Belle’s eyes were stricken—“I’ve had a truly terrible thought.”

“Tell me?”

“Am I going to have to spend the rest of my life as Lady Comewithers?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Casting her head against the squabs, Belle gave vent to a piteous moan.

“Do your best not to predecease me,” Sir Horley offered, attempting consolation. “And then remarry someone of superior rank.”

“That is quite the long game.”

“You should probably have taken that into consideration before eloping with me.”

Belle smiled a little shyly. “I’m glad we’re eloping instead of taking turns to abduct each other.”

“As am I. Although you must admit, as elopements go, we have put in rather a poor showing.”

“Do you think?”

“I think we are probably one of the worst elopements in history.”

“When I made that claim, you said I was being vainglorious.”

“Then let us be vainglorious together. We are one of the worst elopements in history.”

“Emotionally or logistically?”

“Both.”

It took a special kind of contrariness to argue against something you yourself had previously argued, but Belle rose to the occasion. “What about Lydia and Mr. Wickham?”

“They are disqualified, my dear, on grounds of being fictional.”

“The Earl of Rochester and Elizabeth Malet?”

Sir Horley shrugged. “He wrote her some pretty letters, did he not?”

“Yes, but he also spent two years in the tower, fell in love with another woman, and then died of the pox.”

“I suppose I can guarantee at least one of those will not happen.”

“I would ideally like you to guarantee all three.”

“In which case”—he smiled teasingly at her across the carriage—“I shall do my best to avoid treason also.”

“And you can avoid the pox with a little care. There are protective sheaths one can wear. And stay clear of any partners with open sores or lesions.”

“Well, that’s disappointing.” It was Sir Horley’s driest voice. “I choose partners almost exclusively on the basis of their open sores or lesions.”

“Also,” Belle went on helpfully, “if you squeeze the tip of the member, and find the discharge unpleasant, either in texture or aroma—”

“Belle?”

“Yes?”

“It is a long way to Scotland. Please stop talking about unpleasant discharge.”

She looked chastened. “It’s taking my mind off being Lady Comewithers.”

“Comewithers is an ancient and noble name. It alludes to the unshakeable bond betwixt a knight and his loyal steed, such that the pair become as one—”

“That doesn’t sound legal.”

“As one,” finished Sir Horley huffily, “on the field of battle.”

There was a pause. “Is any of that true?”

“Probably not. Who gives a fuck?”

Another pause. “You have been struck by notable misfortune in the field of nomenclature, Sir Horley.”

“What are you insinuating, Little Miss Belligerent?”

Belle’s eyes slid away from his. “Nothing.”

“Are you taking issue with Horley now? It’s from the Old English, meaning horny wood . Nothing more respectable. Although now I’m saying that out loud, I’m beginning to see your point.”

“Oh my God,” cried Belle. “You’ve made it worse . I previously thought it was mildly regrettable. Now it is positively cursed. I cannot spend our life together addressing you as Sir Horley .”

“Well, no, that would be absurd. Why don’t we begin with Horley .”

“It sounds wrong without the Sir , though. Unbalanced.”

He made a noise that strongly implied she was being unreasonable. “It’s just my name, Belle. My aunt insisted upon it.”

“Your aunt hates you.”

“I’m sure she didn’t at the time. I was, after all, a baby. Nobody can hate a baby.”

Belle wrinkled her nose sceptically. “She strikes me as a woman with a keenly honed sense of loathing. You don’t even have a diminutive.”

“You’re being absurd. Of course I do. You can just call me Hor—oh dear God, no you can’t.”

“See.”

“Lee, then?” he suggested, with the air of someone discovering lampreys in their garden pond. “Lee is a diminutive.”

“Lee sounds like someone selling potatoes.”

“That is a very specific impression, Belle, and probably quite unfair to Lees.”

“Even so,” she said firmly, “you are not a Lee.”

“Would it help if I sold more potatoes?”

The carriage kept rolling. Travel like this was such a strange combination of discomfort and tedium, each of them conspiring to prevent the alleviation of the other. Sir Horley glanced idly at the scenery, which was quite beautiful—middle England being a little more rugged than the south, its rise and fall brushed purple here and there with heather—and continued to feel both tedium and discomfort.

“Could I call you something else?” Belle asked, abruptly. “If that does not feel presumptuous or rejecting?”

“Something else?”

“Another name.”

“Another name?” he repeated, bemused. “What, like Fuckface or Beryl?”

She nodded. “Exactly like Fuckface or Beryl. They were just the names I was thinking of. ‘It is either Fuckface or Beryl,’ I said to myself.”

“I take it you do not wish to call me either Fuckface or Beryl?”

“No. And I am beginning to think I have grossly over-stepped as usual. Of course I will call you Sir—I will call you Horley, if you are attached to it.”

“I used to be fairly neutral about it,” Sir Horley murmured. “But now you’ve lain into it for the best part of a mile, I’ve rather changed my mind. Shall we consider Fuckface or Beryl?”

Which was when Belle saw fit to blurt out, “May I call you Rufus?”

It was a good job he was sitting because otherwise Sir Horley would have fallen. He had not heard the name in years, nor really thought of it. And yet it struck him now with a peculiar force—like seeing a stranger across the road, having dreamed of them once. “Where ...” His mouth was desert dry. “That’s ... that’s my father’s name.”

“I did not know that.”

“God knows why he bothered. When he gave me fuck all else a father should.”

Belle was getting that keen-eyed Tarleton look again. “Do you not think it means something that he did, though?”

“No” was the only answer he felt able to return. Because, for a while, especially when he was young, he had thought it might. Had clung to the possibility, in fact, until nothing had piled upon nothing and too many years had passed.

“I’m sorry,” said Belle quickly and, for once, not pushing. “I ... I just thought it suited you. Because of the red hair and everything. Is that a family trait also?”

“If so, it is one that long faded into abeyance. No”—he shrugged—“the hair is an aberrance, the name a relic, and it’s rather odd you produced it out of nowhere.”

“Oh, I didn’t. Your aunt bellowed it at you while you were attempting to flee her in a drunken stupor.”

He half smiled, pretending amusement, something he had once been better at. “Well, doesn’t that sound just like us?”

“Perhaps it’s best I learn to call you Horley.”

“No,” he said swiftly, surprising himself. “Call me Rufus.”

“I do under—” Belle began. “Wait. Really?”

“No, I’m toying with your emotions. Yes. Why not?”

She squeezed her clenched fists together gleefully. “Oh, I’m so happy. I like it for you so much better than Sir Horley.”

“Who knows.” Rufus shrugged. “Perhaps I may like myself a little better too.”

He did not like himself better. He verily despised himself for this entire enterprise.

“How much further?” he ask-groan-wailed.

“The same as last time, minus ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes? Whose godforsaken idea was it”—he twisted his neck, until it cracked like it was snapping off his shoulders—“to put Scotland so far fucking north?”

“The Scots?” suggested Belle. “The Romans? William the Conqueror?”

“This is no judgement on your company, my dear, but if I have to spend another day, nay another minute, in this carriage, I am going to kill myself with my shoe.”

Belle blinked. “I am so glad we are such calm, reasonable people with no tendencies towards unnecessary theatricality.”

“Belle, I’m dying . My entire body feels like Satan’s own cravat.”

“There will be an inn we can stop at in an hour or two.”

“It used to bring me comfort,” said Rufus mournfully, “when we stopped at inns. But I’ve since realised that they are merely a taunting delay in the inevitable return to a carriage.”

“Think what adventures may await us, though. This next one might have a bath. Or only a moderate quantity of bedbugs.”

He sighed. “Are you never daunted?”

“All the time. But on the last occasion I was truly daunted, I shot someone, so it is probably best I continue to moderate it.”

“You did not throw a trifle at me because you were daunted?”

“I was a little daunted,” Belle conceded. “But I think I was mostly frustrated.”

“It does not reflect well on Valentine that he, ah, daunted you so severely.”

“Most people believe it does not reflect well on me that I shot him.”

“It can reflect poorly on both of you.”

That made her laugh. “How very egalitarian of you.”

She was giving every impression of being amused, but there was also something strained about it. And this was not, he realised, the first time she had spoken of the incident with that kind of brittle lightness. Not even the first time on this trip. “I hope you don’t blame yourself overmuch for what happened?”

“What is overmuch in the context of a pistol discharged into someone else?”

“I’m not sure Valentine has given it a thought since.”

Her lips pressed into a hard line. “I still wish I hadn’t done it. I know it is what spirited heroines do in books, but I did not feel very spirited at the time.”

Rufus had been present for some of that particular melodrama, partially by design. Not being more than acquainted with most of the involved parties, he had treated it as little more than a source of diversion to him. Not wholly benign diversion. “How did you feel?” he asked, as though paying attention now could compensate for his former detachment.

She spread her hands in a gesture of ambivalence. “It’s hard to say. Everything was happening very fast. It was dark, and Valentine was furious and chasing me through a wood. He got me trapped against a tree or something and ...” Breaking off, slightly breathless, she seemed to become aware of how quickly she was speaking. “I don’t think he would have hurt me. But I do remember thinking he could , and that I would be able to do nothing to prevent it, and that, in one way or another, it was always going to be like that, so ... well, I panicked and shot him.”

“My own behaviour does not currently merit scrutiny,” he murmured, “but there is perhaps an object lesson here about chasing women through dark woods. Truthfully, I think it was magnanimous in the extreme that you forgave Valentine for all that nonsense.”

“On the contrary”—returning to cheerfulness with a visible effort, she grinned in a way that flashed the points of her canines—“I am bearing an eternal grudge. From novels, one would think it might be exciting to be chased around the country by a duke hell-bent on marrying you, but the reality leaves much to be desired.”

“With all due respect, you seemed to be rather enjoying it at the time.”

“Well, I was in my Heroine Era.”

This was so typically Tarletonian: an idea that made sense only to Belle, delivered with absolute conviction. “What the fuck, dear heart, is a heroine era?”

“Oh, you know. A time of life characterised by hope and delusion equally.”

“And what era are you in presently?”

“Probably my Still-Trying-to-Work-It-Out Era. My Eat-All-the-Cheese Era. My Entirely-Out-of-Fucks Era?”

“I may live in those, er, eras. But I shall aspire to a Heroine Era.”

“You would make a marvellous heroine, Rufus,” declared Belle. “Far better than I did.”

“Alas.” Rufus put his hand to his heart with a flourish. “I go in want of a hero.”

“It is not a hero that defines a heroine.”

He shrugged. “I would still like one.”

“Then I’m sure a hero can be found.”

“I have not succeeded thus far.”

“Have you genuinely been looking?”

“Perhaps not,” Rufus admitted. “I’ve more sort of been fucking anyone who looked at me with a passingly kind eye. Sometimes not even with that.”

“Ah.” Belle nodded sympathetically. “I have also been in that era.”

“You know not everything has to be an era? Sometimes they’re just a series of bad choices.”

“Doesn’t it give things a certain grandeur, though?”

He laughed a touch sardonically. “Nothing can give my sex life grandeur. Besides, if I am in any era at all, it is my Stuck-in-a-Carriage Era. Are we nearly there yet?”

“Nearly to Scotland?”

“Nearly to anywhere.”

“No more than we were before.”

Rufus slumped sideways like he’d taken a mortal wound. “God almighty.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Belle, otherwise unsympathetic, “we could play a game to pass the time more pleasantly?”

“Our resources are quite limited in that regard. ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with C .’ Oh, let me guess. It’s still the fucking carriage.”

Tilting her head, Belle regarded him coolly. “Maybe I was wrong about you and Bonny. You are reminding me rather strongly of him right now.”

“Except it’s adorable when he does it.”

“No, no.” Belle sounded very certain. “It’s annoying from both of you.”

With an effort of will, Rufus returned to a reasonable approximation of a sitting position. While he felt no less wretched than he had mere moments ago, he had been recalled to his duties as a travelling companion. Certainly he was never going to be a good one—long journeys brought out the worst of him, too much time for regret and self-reflection—but he could probably avoid being so abysmally awful that Belle would throw the anvil at him at Gretna Green. “What would you like to play?”

“How about the way we used to entertain ourselves at boring balls?”

“By leaving? I’m not sure that’s an option.”

“No.” She flicked impatient fingertips in his direction. “The ... the game. You know, the game .”

“You mean,” he asked, “when we used to sit in a corner, watching the people who walked past, and deciding what they’d be like to sleep with?”

“Exactly.”

“You know that game was quite wrong of us.”

Another finger flick. “Of course I do. That’s why it was so fun .”

Rufus was tempted. Admittedly, he would probably have been tempted by a piece of fluff just then. “How would it even work in the middle of the countryside? Are we going to assess the sheep to see which are giving us bedroom eyes?”

“Admittedly, we can’t rely on sheer numbers the way we usually would. But I have seen other travellers on the road. How about we simply divide them between us: the first we pass will be my potential partner, the next yours, and so on.”

“I can’t quite believe I’m agreeing to this,” said Rufus. “But fine.”

He was rewarded by a gleeful noise from Belle. And they both leaned forward so they could scrutinise the view for hypothetical lovers. Across the course of many minutes, they beheld nothing but grass, farmland, the occasional tree or knot of trees, at one point the shimmer of a lake upon the horizon. It was not, in all honesty, causing the journey to pass any quicker, but at least it was giving them something to do.

Finally, Belle spotted a figure in the distance.

“Look,” she cried, “there is a person for me.”

Rufus, whose eyesight was quite sharp, twitched a brow. “I wish you the happiest of liaisons.”

A few minutes later, the carriage rolled past a stooped old man, eighty if he was a day, with a stick in one hand and a basket of cabbages in the other.

Rufus’s brow twitched again.

“I have realised,” Belle said, frowning, “that this game feels significantly less acceptable when it involves innocent members of the public going about their day rather than our richest, most influential acquaintances indulging their personal vanity.”

“Interesting you should discover your social conscience when on the hook for a dalliance with an octogenarian.”

The glance Belle directed at him was scathing before she returned her attention to the window and the elderly gentleman who was already falling into the distance. “I notice his strong gnarled hands and bright yet gentle eyes and find myself quite taken with him, for such qualities transcend time and class. Unfortunately, he has been married to his true love these past sixty years and therefore does not return my interest. He shares his recipe for cabbage stew instead.”

“What a charming encounter for you both,” murmured Rufus, oddly moved, in spite of himself.

“Indeed.”

It was a little while before they passed a second traveller. Another man, perhaps making his way home like the first had been, except he was considerably younger, stripped to the waist and carrying a scythe with the nonchalance of long familiarity. The setting sun gleamed upon the ridges of his abdomen and the hard muscles of his shoulders, strewing gold through the abundant curls of his chest hair.

Rufus shrugged. “We fuck like wild rabbits and are equally satisfied by the experience.”

“He’s carrying an exceptionally large implement,” Belle noted. “Maybe that implies inadequacy in other areas.”

“Do not reflect your own vulgar tastes onto mine.”

Her eyes widened in teasing outrage. “How dare you.”

“It is only those of limited imagination and inflexible mind who assume the only satisfactory member is a sizeable one. Smaller varieties have their advantages too. Less demanding on the throat. Expressively mobile during one’s more forceful thrusts.”

“I ...” Belle looked briefly lost for words, which was quite an accomplishment. “Our friendship is such an educational experience.”

“Forgive me. I should have not spoken so indecorously.”

“Oh no, please be as indecorous as you wish. While one may assume I am being sarcastic at least seventy-three percent of the time, I was sincere on this occasion. I have not previously given much consideration to the underappreciated pleasures of the more petite phallus. But that is because I am inclined to believe the bulk of consideration to phalluses is given by those already possessed of them. To the rest of us, they are no great matter.”

“If you say so,” returned Rufus, unconvinced. And then, glancing at the road ahead, “Look—someone approaches.”

“Some two,” said Belle. “Quick, we need fresh rules for twosomes.”

“The one closest to the carriage is yours, the other mine.”

“Agreed.”

As they drew closer to what turned out to be a pair of ladies, Belle’s expression grew distinctly smug. Both women had their beauties, but the one allocated to Belle was clearly more conventionally radiant—with a face straight from a portrait, and hair an even brighter gold than Belle’s. Discreetly Rufus drew down the window sash that they might catch a little of the conversation.

“... wildflowers,” the beauty was saying, at sufficient intensity and volume to be heard with some clarity. “Can you believe it? They’re just plants from the ground.”

Her companion was shorter, less idealistically proportioned, and touched by several scatterings of freckles that were not to fashionable taste, but otherwise quite charming. “Are not all flowers plants from the ground?”

“Urgh,” declared the beauty. “No wonder I have always found them so paltry a gift. Jewels would be so much better.”

“Such a convention would also preclude all but the wealthiest paying court to you.”

“Yes? And?”

Her friend sighed. “As a general rule, dearest, accepting expensive gifts is the province of ladies inclined to be liberal with their favours.”

“That would not be a problem for me. I am illiberal by nature.”

Somehow her companion did not comment on this. “I meant ladies who ... work in ... ladies who—”

The beauty waved a hand airily. “Oh, you lost me at work .”

“Well,” said Rufus.

The triumph that had blossomed briefly upon Belle’s face was now distinctly wilted. She let out a little huff. “I am shallow enough to make the attempt. She re-iterates her distaste of labour of any kind, complains throughout, and neither of us are left with any great esteem for the other. You?”

“I come clean about preferring men exclusively, she is wholly understanding, and I strongly encourage her to reconsider her choice of intimates. We become the greatest of friends.”

“How great?” demanded Belle, unexpectedly.

Rufus glanced at her in some confusion. “Six great? What are you even asking?”

“Is she as great a friend to you as ... well. I am.”

“Belle.” He wasn’t sure whether to laugh and decided not to. “Are you jealous of my fictional relationship with a young lady I have no knowledge of and shall likely never see again?”

“I don’t know. Possibly? Now we are discussing the matter, it does not seem wholly reasonable of me.”

There was something strange happening to Rufus’s heart. He normally conceived it as hard and gnarled, like a peach pit. Now it was as soft as the peach itself. “I ... I’m flattered, Bellflower. I do not think anyone has ever felt jealous over me in my entire life.”

“It’s a Tarleton trait, I’m afraid. We are possessive in our way. And I don’t think it’s necessarily something to be celebrated.”

“Is wanting to possess something not a sign that you value it?”

“But also that you seek to control it. I have experienced enough of that for myself; I would never wish to do it to anyone else.”

Impulsively, he reached for her hand. “I am to be your husband, Belle. Possess me a little. I shall tell you if it ever feels constricting.”

“Well”—her look was typically ironic, but her colour was heightened—“you are a very lovely man to possess.”

Now it was his turn to be flustered. “Ah yes. A veritable catch for anyone.”

“Do you doubt it?” She gave one of those quizzical little head tilts of hers. “You are handsome—”

“Passable,” he corrected her quickly.

“Kind,” she offered.

“Hardly.”

“Thoughtful.”

“When?”

“Entertaining.”

“Speaking of which”—it was the clumsiest of segues, but he could do no better—“should we not return to the game?”

Belle scowled. “I’m rather out of sorts with it. I did not think it was the sort of game it was possible to lose, but I am most assuredly losing at it.”

“There, there,” he said consolingly. “We are bound to encounter a morally reprehensible person for me sooner or later.”

Belle was still scowling. “Then let’s hope sooner. Your turn.”

The next traveller they encountered seemed to be a blacksmith. He was stripped to the waist, his hammer resting casually against his shoulder. The setting sun gleamed upon the ridges of his abdomen and the hard muscles of his shoulders, strewing gold through the abundant curls of his chest hair.

Doing his best not to laugh, Rufus said, “We fuck like wild rabbits and are equally satisfied by the experience.”

“Gah” was Belle’s rejoinder. And, some minutes later, “I am being punished by the universe.”

This wasn’t helping Rufus’s attempts to treat the situation with the gravity Belle clearly felt it deserved. “I think people are just proceeding with their lives. I don’t think it’s personal.”

“Well, it feels personal,” retorted Belle.

The carriage had slowed to negotiate a crossroads.

“The next person we encounter,” she went on, “had better be ...”

For some reason the carriage had drawn to a full halt.

“. . . absolutely fucking delightful or—”

The muzzle of a pistol appeared at the window. Followed by the masked face of a highwayman. For a moment, his gaze seemed to waver between the two of them, before he announced somewhat querulously:

“Your money or your life?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Belle.