Part 37 (2/2)
Rafferdy looked up from his tea. ”He is well. He cannot get about so well as he used to, of course, but he is well.”
Endures, he might have said, rather than is well. It was as if he was holding on for something. However, this little amount of news appeared to satisfy her. She traded the fan for her puff of a dog, fussed with the ribbons atop its head, and expounded on the awful weather in the city and how there was no telling what sort of wretched humors were rising off the river.
”But it must be worse for those closest to the Anbyrn, I am sure,” Mrs. Baydon said.
”No, I am sure that cannot be,” Lady Marsdel said. ”It is the very nature of the most noxious vapors to rise upward. Which means we are at the greatest risk of breathing them here in the New Quarter.”
”I agree with her ladys.h.i.+p,” Rafferdy said, standing and moving to the window. He looked toward the Citadel and the twin spires that surmounted the Halls of a.s.sembly. ”Indeed, I am quite sure the atmosphere grows more poisonous the higher up one goes in Invarel.”
”I am sure you are right!” Lady Marsdel said. ”Yet I can only suppose you are making some sort of joke, Mr. Rafferdy, as you always do.”
He turned from the window. ”No, not in the least. I agree, it is unusually hot in the city, and if you feel you are suffering any ill effects from the weather, I urge you to depart for your house at Farland Park. Your health is not something to put at risk, your ladys.h.i.+p.”
She could not argue with this. All the same, she regarded him down the length of her nose. ”I say, you've grown very serious in your absence, Mr. Rafferdy.”
”If so, can you claim you are disappointed? I was previously given the impression that everyone wished me to be more serious.”
”What I wish, Mr. Rafferdy, is to be provided with engaging company, and you have provided very little so far.”
”Then perhaps it was a mistake to invite me. I shall go at once.”
The dog was removed, the fan returned and snapped open. ”I shan't let you off that easily, Mr. Rafferdy. Return to your seat, and I do not care if it is the latest fas.h.i.+on to be grim-make yourself lively!”
Rafferdy bowed and returned to the table; her first command at least he could obey.
”It seems everyone is serious these days,” Lord Baydon said, his hands clasped over the expanse of his waistcoat. ”I suppose it's only natural. Young people always do the opposite of what I expect them to do. I imagine they must want only to frolic and go to b.a.l.l.s, and so necessarily they slouch about and speak in glum detail about diseases and politics.”
Mr. Baydon set down his copy of The Comet. ”I suppose that statement is directed at me.”
”Being my only child, you are chief among the young people I know. But I have observed this same seriousness in others.”
”And why should we not be serious?” Mr. Baydon said, tapping a finger against the broadsheet. PLOT TO SET FIRE TO a.s.sEMBLY SENDS THREE TO GALLOWS, read the headline. ”When some are serious in their desire to harm the very foundations of our civilization, the rest of us must be serious in our resolve to stop them. What else can we do to alleviate this situation?”
”Stop reading the broadsheets, for one,” Rafferdy said.
This won a frown from Mr. Baydon, but Lady Marsdel cried, ”Hear, hear, Mr. Rafferdy. It's the fault of those awful newspapers that we have all these bandits and rebels running this way and that. If the broadsheets stopped publis.h.i.+ng so many articles telling people what they don't have, they might find themselves content with what they do have and not seize upon this foolish desire to stir things up.”
Rafferdy nodded in her direction. ”Ignorance is bliss, you mean to say. You may well be right. However, I would also say that it is natural for a man to wish to improve his lot.”
”Rubbish. There is nothing natural about it. True contentment comes from knowing one's place in the world, Mr. Rafferdy. Mark my words-wanting something different can lead only to misery.”
He thought of the people he had driven from the grounds of Asterlane, of their dull, silent faces and their bawling children. ”What if one's place is a miserable one?”
”What misery could your place possibly cause you, Mr. Rafferdy? I am sure there are many who would readily trade with you.”
Of that he had no doubt.
After this, Lord Baydon began an exposition on his firm belief that everyone was worried about the current state of affairs for no reason at all and that everything should work out pleasantly for everyone in the end. As he spoke, Rafferdy rose and returned to the window, gazing outside. A minute later, Mrs. Baydon came to join him.
”Well, that certainly enlivened things,” she murmured. ”Though I'm not sure that's the sort of entertainment my aunt was hoping for.”
”It was not my intention to entertain,” he replied in a low voice.
”On the contrary, Mr. Rafferdy, it's always your intention to entertain. Though I will say my aunt is right-you do have a more sober air about you. You still make jests, but they are not so light as before. Not that I would say this new demeanor doesn't become you. I used to think you only really good-looking when you smiled, but your face has changed. I've never seen you look so well. Seriousness suits you.” She leaned against the windowsill and gazed out. ”Still, it couldn't harm you to laugh a bit. Why don't you go to a party? I'm sure you have a mountain of invitations waiting.”
”What reason is there for me to go to a party?”
”What reason do you think? To have a pleasant time, to enjoy yourself. Besides, you never know when you might meet someone.”
”I am quite certain that the only person I would wish to meet will never be at any of the parties for which I've received invitations.”
She bit her lip and glanced at him. Across the room, Lord Baydon rambled on. These were the best of times, he declared; they should all laugh next year to think they had complained when they looked back to see how grand everything really was.
”So you no longer attempt to disguise it, then,” Mrs. Baydon said to him. ”You cared for Miss Lockwell.”
He returned her gaze. What need had he to dissemble when circ.u.mstance had removed any possibility of impropriety-indeed, any chance at all of ever seeing her again? ”I do care for her. I will make no apology for it-save if I were to ever make it to her.”
”But you cannot really mean that. Her family is so low!”
”And what of Miss Everaud's family, which was purported to be so high?”
She flinched at these words, and he could not say that had not been his intention. It had been over two months since his engagement to Miss Everaud, entered into at the encouragement of his father, had been broken off at the urging of the same.
The particulars were still unknown to Rafferdy. There had been intimations about Lord Everaud, soon echoed by rumor, and finally given form in an article in The Messenger. Even then, exactly what had happened was not clear. There was talk of money being sent to the Princ.i.p.alities, not as part of any legal kind of trade, and of communications delivered by Murghese couriers bearing a seal in the shape of a hawk.
While no charges were filed, opinion convicted more certainly than any evidence that could be presented in a court. Immediately upon publication of the article, the Everauds retreated from society in Invarel and returned to their home in the south of Altania. Now they were gone from there, to where no one could say for certain, though most believed they had fled across the sea. It was whispered that Miss Everaud was already married to a Murghese prince and now went about clad head to toe in veils.
There was real anguish on her face. ”Mr. Rafferdy, you must know that I...that is, if I had known, if I had even suspected, I never would have-”
”I know, Mrs. Baydon,” he said, softening his tone. ”You are and ever have been my friend. But I have your aunt to judge me, and she does so quite well on her own. I do not think she requires your a.s.sistance.”
She smiled, as he had intended, but then a sigh escaped her. She looked again out the window, touching the gold locket at her throat. ”I will not deny that she is worthy of you, if not her relations. And liking someone can never be wrong, not when the object is so deserving in every way of being liked. I truly enjoyed Miss Lockwell's company. I think we might have been-no, I will say that we were-friends.” She looked at him again. ”Yet surely you know...for you two to ever be together...it would have to be a very different world than this one. You must concede it is true, Mr. Rafferdy.”
He glanced back at the table, where Mr. Baydon had resumed reading his broadsheet, and saw the large words printed beneath the headline. 'A New Altania Comes,' Traitor Warns From Gallows.
”Yes, on that point I agree with you,” he said.
He led Mrs. Baydon back to the table, and after that he spent the rest of the afternoon attempting to entertain her ladys.h.i.+p.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
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