Jay drew breath raggedly and leaned on his sword. Slowly his terror eased. His face hurt like fire: he was sure his nose must be broken. But as he looked at the man crumpled on the ground at his feet he felt nothing but satisfaction.
23
LIZZIE DID NOT SLEEP THAT NIGHT.
Jay had told her there might be trouble, and she sat in their bedroom waiting for him, with a novel open but unread on her knee. He came home in the early hours with blood and dirt all over him and a bandage on his nose. She was so pleased to see him alive that she threw her arms around him and hugged him, ruining her white silk robe.
She woke the servants and ordered hot water, and he told her the story of the riot bit by bit as she helped him out of his filthy uniform and washed his bruised body and got him a clean nightshirt.
Later, when they were lying side by side in the big four-poster bed, she said tentatively: “Do you think McAsh will be hanged?”
“I certainly hope so,” Jay said, touching his bandage with a careful finger. “We have witnesses to say he incited the crowd to riot and personally attacked officers. I can’t imagine a judge giving him a light sentence in the present climate. If he had influential friends to plead for him it would be a different matter.”
She frowned. “I never thought of him as a particularly violent man. Insubordinate, disobedient, insolent, arrogant—but not savage.”
Jay looked smug. “You may be right. But things were arranged so that he had no choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sir Philip Armstrong paid a clandestine visit to the warehouse to speak to me and Father. He told us he wanted McAsh arrested for rioting. He practically told us to make it happen. So Lennox and I arranged a riot.”
Lizzie was shocked. It made her feel even worse to think that Mack had been deliberately provoked. “And is Sir Philip pleased with what you’ve done?”
“He is. And Colonel Cranbrough was impressed by the way I handled the riot. I can resign my commission and leave the army with an unimpeachable reputation.”
Jay made love to her then, but she was too troubled to enjoy his caresses. Normally she liked to romp around the bed, rolling him over and getting on top sometimes, changing positions, kissing and talking and laughing; and naturally he noticed that she was different. When it was over he said: “You’re very quiet.”
She thought of an excuse. “I was afraid of hurting you.”
He accepted that and a few moments later he was asleep. Lizzie lay awake. It was the second time she had been shocked by her husband’s attitude to justice—and both occasions had involved Lennox. Jay was not vicious, she was sure; but he could be led into evil by others, particularly strong-minded men such as Lennox. She was glad they were leaving England in a month’s time. Once they set sail, they would never see Lennox again.
Still she could not sleep. There was a cold, leaden feeling in the pit of her stomach. Mack McAsh was going to be hanged. She had been revolted to watch the hanging of total strangers the morning she had gone to Tyburn Cross in disguise. The thought of the same thing happening to her childhood friend was unbearable.
Mack was not her problem, she told herself. He had run away, broken the law, gone on strike and taken part in a riot. He had done all he could to get into trouble: it was not her responsibility to rescue him now. Her duty was to the husband she had married.
It was all true, but still she could not sleep.
When the light of dawn began to show around the edges of the curtains, she got up. She decided to begin packing for the voyage, and when the servants appeared she told them to fetch the waterproof trunks she had bought and start filling them with her wedding presents: table linen, cutlery, china and glassware, cooking pots and kitchen knives.
Jay woke up aching and bad tempered. He drank a shot of brandy for breakfast and went off to his regiment. Lizzie’s mother, who was still living at the Jamissons’ house, called on Lizzie soon after Jay left, and the two of them went to the bedroom and began folding Lizzie’s stockings and petticoats and handkerchiefs.
“What ship will you travel on?” Mother asked.
“The Rosebud. She’s a Jamisson vessel.”
“And when you reach Virginia—how will you get to the plantation?”
“Oceangoing ships can sail up the Rappahannock River all the way to Fredericksburg, which is only ten miles from Mockjack Hall.” Lizzie could see that her mother was anxious about her undertaking a long sea voyage. “Don’t worry, Mother, there are no pirates anymore.”
“You must take your own fresh water and keep the barrel in your cabin—don’t share with the crew. I’ll make up a medicine chest for you in case of sickness.”
“Thank you, Mother.” Because of the cramped quarters, contaminated food and stale water Lizzie was much more likely to die of some shipboard illness than be attacked by pirates.
“How long will it take?”
“Six or seven weeks.” Lizzie knew that was a minimum: if the ship was blown off course, the voyage could stretch to three months. Then the chance of sickness was much greater. However, she and Jay were young and strong and healthy, and they would survive. And it would be an adventure!
She could hardly wait to see America. It was a whole new continent and everything would be different: the birds, the trees, the food, the air, the people. She tingled whenever she thought about it.
She had been living in London for four months, and she disliked it more every day. Polite society bored her to death. She and Jay often dined with other officers and their wives, but the officers talked of card games and incompetent generals and the women were interested only in hats and servants. Lizzie found it impossible to make small talk, but if she spoke her mind she always shocked them.
Once or twice a week she and Jay dined at Grosvenor Square. There at least the conversation was about something reaclass="underline" business, politics, and the wave of strikes and disturbances that had washed over London this spring. But the Jamissons’ view of events was completely one-sided. Sir George would rail against the workingmen, Robert would forecast disaster, and Jay would propose a clampdown by the military. No one, not even Alicia, had the imagination to see the conflict from the point of view of the other side. Lizzie did not think the workingmen were right to strike, of course, but she believed they had reasons that seemed strong to them. That possibility was never admitted around the highly polished dining table at Grosvenor Square.
“I expect you’ll be glad to go back to Hallim House,” Lizzie said to her mother.
Mother nodded. “The Jamissons are very kind, but I miss my home, humble though it is.”
Lizzie was putting her favorite books into a trunk: Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, Roderick Random—all stories of adventure—when a footman knocked and said that Caspar Gordonson was downstairs.
She asked the man to repeat the visitor’s name, because she could hardly believe Gordonson would dare to call on any member of the Jamisson family. She should have refused to see him, she knew: he had encouraged and supported the strike that was damaging her father-in-law’s business. But curiosity got the better of her, as ever, and she told the footman to show him into the drawing room.
However, she had no intention of making him welcome. “You’ve caused a great deal of trouble,” she said as she walked in.
To her surprise he was not the aggressive know-it-all bully she had expected, but an untidy, shortsighted man with a high-pitched voice and the manner of an absent-minded schoolteacher. “I’m sure I didn’t mean to,” he said. “That is … I did, of course … but not to you personally.”