It Takes Two to Tangle

Six

“Too bad you remembered to cover the carpet this time.” Emily sighed from the doorway of the morning room. “I could use some guilt ammunition.”

Henry turned to look at his sister-in-law, more relieved than annoyed by the interruption. His latest effort at painting—this time with watercolors—was not going nearly as well as had this afternoon’s writing lesson. “Emily. You’re plotting something again?”

“I’m always plotting something.” She trailed into the room and stood beside him, lowering her pointed chin to fix him with the full force of her bright eyes. A vivid green touched with blue; nearly the same shade as Caro’s.

There was a pigment for creating just such a color. Paris Green, Henry had heard it called. It was a new formula, no more than a year old. Derived from copper and arsenic, and remarkably dangerous to work with, as so many of the richest colors were.

“Aren’t you going to ask what I’m plotting?” Her eyes narrowed.

He set down his brush and turned to sit on the edge of the baroque table they’d painted a few days before. “Aren’t you going to tell me what you’re plotting?” he mimicked. “I can tell you want to. You’re all swelled up like a pufferfish.”

“I’m—” She looked down the smooth line of her alizarin-red gown. “I am not. Hal, you’re as bad as my boys.”

He grinned. “No one could ever be as bad as your boys.” He loved his nephews deeply, but they were an exhausting pair.

“True, true,” Emily granted. “This is the plan: since you’ve decided to stay in London, Jemmy and I are planning a ball for you.”

Henry lurched, then scrabbled at the edge of the small table to steady himself. “A ball. You’re planning a ball for me.”

“Yes.” Emily looked pleased. “The ton is marriage-mad during the final gasps of the season. It’s gasping longer than usual this year, for everyone’s staying through Prinny’s birthday. I am sure that, with a ball in your honor, we can draw all the attention to you that you deserve.”

Henry looked down at his right arm, waiting for a movement that never came. A constant reminder of Quatre Bras, of his failure. “I already have what I deserve.”

Emily began to pace; he could hear the rustle and shush of her skirts as she paced around the dimming confines of the morning room. “You won’t have what you deserve until you’re as happy as you were before you left. If your brother and I can do anything to help, we will. And that includes finding you a wife. And that includes hosting a ball for you.”

Henry continued to stare at his arm. Bundled in a coat sleeve, it looked almost normal, except for its eerie stillness. “It’s not up to you to remake my life, Emily.”

The sound of her pacing stopped, and Henry looked up. She was facing the mural of Odysseus, blinking hard. “I really ought to have this painted over with something more pleasant. Perhaps a pastoral scene.”

“It’ll still be there, even if you paint it over,” Henry murmured.

Emily pressed her lips together. “It doesn’t matter what’s below, as long as one can recreate the surface anew.”

Her voice fell, and she added low, “Please, Hal. Let us do this. We must do something.”

He knew that desperate feeling well enough. The need to escape the present, to change it in some way. That slippery discontent had almost pushed him all the way to Winter Cottage.

But there was one unavoidable flaw in Emily’s plan. A flaw that unpinned his knees, made him want to sit down on the cloth-covered floor.

“I can’t…” He swallowed, hating to have to say the words. He jerked his head toward his right shoulder, and Emily’s face softened with understanding.

“Dear Hal,” she said, walking back to his side. “We shall open the ball with a traditional minuet. You need hardly use your arms at all. And after that first dance, you may use your arms however you wish.”

She winked at him roguishly, then patted his cheek, her smile lopsided. “I hope you know that we only want your happiness.”

“I know,” Henry replied. His insides had not yet returned to order. His stomach was twisting, his heart thumping. He was to open a ball—he, with one arm, dancing before the whole ton.

Jem and Emily had never thrown him a ball in all the years before the war. They had always wanted his happiness, but they’d never felt the need to intercede with such a heavy hand. Another reminder that the world didn’t see him as it once had.

For good or ill, just as Frances had said.

Somehow, he would have to make sure it was the former.

“Now that you’re acquainted with my scheme,” Emily wheedled, “do tell me about your painting. Is it some sort of jungle creature?”

Actually, it was a first attempt at a human. But considering the elegant brutality of the ton… “Yes, it is,” Henry answered with a sigh.

“Delightful! And might I paint Aunt Matilda’s table some more?”

***

When Bart Crosby called an hour later, Henry was more than ready to leave behind his snarled-up painting and Emily’s persistent discussion of the ball’s details. He followed Bart down the front steps of Tallant House, where waited the new curricle of which he’d heard so much.

The small open carriage was a graceful, glossy rocker perched atop high spoked wheels. Its reins were held by a tiger in a snug coat and immaculate buckskin breeches; a boy so small that he looked unable to hold the horses if they should bolt. But the two fine grays, matched to the very blaze and stockings, stood with a calm that spoke to Lady Crosby’s—and her son’s—light and skillful hand with horseflesh.

The whole affair seemed precarious and fragile; Henry thought he could have pulled it himself without much effort. It looked far more hazardous than the sturdy gun carriages and supply wagons that had rolled next to Henry for hundreds of miles and hundreds of days.

Bart tapped a crop in the palm of one gloved hand, waiting for the verdict.

“It’s just as fine as you described it,” Henry said, knowing he’d given the right answer when Bart grinned.

“I wanted a phaeton,” Bart excused in a quiet voice, so the wide-eyed tiger would not overhear, “but, well, you know how mothers are. Always sure a fellow’s going to overturn and break his neck. Ah—beg pardon, Hal. You know. About your mother.” He swatted his crop against his thigh, marking the pale dun nap of his buckskin breeches.

“There’s no need to apologize,” Henry said. “The loss of my mother is hardly a fresh one. Besides, your mother has an excellent eye. I am sure this is very modish.”

“Modish isn’t the word, old fellow,” Bart said with a waggle of his dark brows. “It’s all the crack. Don’t you know?”

No, he didn’t. He felt a heavy, sliding awareness that he had missed out on a great deal.

He shook it off and summoned a smile. “So even modish words are modish now. Well, well. Such is life in the beau monde.”

“Where do you want to go?” Bart asked. “We can go anywhere you like.” He rubbed the neck of the near horse, which whickered and bobbed its finely molded head.

“What sort of places do you go? I don’t know what’s all the crack this season.” This cant sounded odd on Henry’s lips, as wrong as if he’d lisped in a Catalan accent or tried a Scottish burr. But Bart grinned again.

“That’s the spirit, Hal. Let me think. There’s Jackson’s, for one, but I don’t know if you could spar with your… er…”

Henry rescued him before he could apologize again. “No, not Jackson’s. What else?”

“Shooting or fencing. But… er…”

“Maybe another day,” Henry said in a voice as mild and smooth as butter. “If my brother were with us, we could go to Gunter’s for an ice. Jem is fiendishly fond of sweets.”

“And what about you? What are you fond of nowadays?”

Blinking, Henry took a moment to reply. “I…oh. Many things?” It ought not to have sounded like a question.

Bart whisked his crop one more time, then swung himself up into his polished carriage with the ease of a man born to driving. The well-oiled springs made not a sound as Bart shifted into position and took up the reins. “Hop in, Hal,” he said. “We’ll find somewhere that suits you.”

He sounded so sure of himself that Henry almost believed him. With a heave and a tug and a quick catch from Bart, Henry settled his unbalanced body into the high, rickety perch of the curricle.

And off they headed to someplace that would suit him. Though where such a place might be in a London of fencing and boxing and all the crack, he couldn’t imagine right now.

***

Bart Crosby was a quiet fellow, and therefore the world did not regard him much. With a voluble mother and three still more voluble sisters, it was a wonder he had ever learned to talk at all.

It was not a wonder that Bart was not sure what to say right now. He would usually have offered to turn the reins over to Hal. But his oldest friend had only one arm now, and there were two spirited horses. The math did not add up.

Bart took great comfort in the steadiness of routine. Every spring, he came to London. Every autumn, he brought a passel of friends to Lincolnshire to shoot at his country estate.

Over the years, change had inevitably come. Bart’s sisters had each married and left the ancestral home, which Bart found very bearable. Then his father had died, which was a shattering loss. His parents had ruled the world as Bart knew it, and now Bart was expected to step into his father’s place and serve as a baronet.

Sir Bartlett, everyone should be calling him now. The idea was laughable, even to himself. He was still just plain “Bart” or “Crosby” to both friends and strangers. Maybe because his mother had continued to run things as she saw fit, just as she had when Bart’s father was alive.

Since the years of their boyhood, Hal was the only one who had ever trusted Bart to make up his own mind. Where do you want to go? Hal would ask. We’ll go anywhere you like.

It became a game, to listen at doorways and gather clues from their elders. London seemed full of places with odd and wondrous names. Boodle’s. Jermyn Street. Hatchards. The Star and Garter.

And so would begin one of their adventures. Hal always knew where to find their quarry. He and Bart would slip out of Tallant House and run through the streets of London, their feet crunching on stone macadam or raising puffs of dust. Sometimes they wore no shoes, and every scratch, every cuff, every time someone shook a fist at the two dirty ragamuffins felt like a victory. They were in disguise. They were not young scions of the gentry; they were simply free.

“Do you remember how we used to knock on the windows of Boodle’s?” The question slipped out, unleashed by Bart’s reminiscing.

Bart wrapped the reins once more about his hands, as if taking hold of himself. His grays tossed their heads in protest but slowed to a walk. Pall Mall was two walls of brick and stone rising on either side of a clutter of foot traffic and carriages. Hard to believe that he and Hal had once run through here. No taller than the curricle wheels, they could easily have been crushed by a careless driver. But Hal had always let him choose where to go. It was wonderful, such trust.

Bart darted a look at his friend. Hal was sitting very straight on the padded curricle seat, squinting at some huge building. “Sorry, Bart. What was that you said?”

“Nothing.” Bart chucked and turned the horses onto St. James’s Street. This plan might not work. He hadn’t known where to go, so he went where they always used to go. Where, as boys, they’d thought all men went. A square formed by four bustling streets of clubs, grand houses, cigar stores, bookshops. It seemed the beating heart of the city once.

Hal seemed to wake up in his seat. “Boodle’s. Yes, you’re right.” He leaned forward, looking for the familiar brown-brick building, the dramatic white arch of its huge central window. Lit at night by a massive chandelier, its brightness was a beacon, drawing small boys to make mischief.

Hal laughed, a short, startled exhale that little resembled his old explosions of mirth. Before the war, no one could laugh like Hal. His laugh was hearty and deep; it made the world want to laugh with him.

It made Bart sad to hear Hal laugh now.

But Hal looked pleased. “How angry Jem used to get when we’d hang over the iron railing and rap on the window. Do you remember how I used to steal his malacca cane to do it?”

“Salt in the wound, Hal. Gad, he was proud of that thing. A swordstick, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, yes.” Hal settled back against the padded seat. “He had it made when our father died and he became Tallant. Something about the title meaning ‘good with a sword.’ I believe it was granted in the long-lost past for heroism in battle.”

“I don’t remember your brother ever being much good with a sword. Probably because we were always stealing it from him.”

“Poor Jem. He always was a good brother, you know. He deserved better than such teasing from me. A man should be able to sit down with friends without being tormented.” Hal’s posture grew taut; Bart could tell from the way the seat shifted.

“They were just boys’ pranks, Hal. Nothing more.” Bart glanced at his friend, trying to read Hal’s expression. Either it was blank or Bart was out of practice.

“Oh, I know. Did you know that Wellington’s a member of Boodle’s?” Hal sounded strange, and the smile he gave Bart was strange too. Bart wanted to sigh as they drew past Boodle’s and turned onto Piccadilly.

Here was Hatchards, tall and gray, where they’d once bought horrifying novels, telling the bemused clerk they were for Bart’s sisters.

And next to it… “Fortnum’s,” Hal said. They had never run here, never had the slightest interest in a store where no pranks could be played, nothing bawdy bought. But the adult Hal had had much to do with Fortnum’s, which had fed the army for years.

It seemed there was nowhere Bart could drive that would allow them both to think nothing had changed.

And why should there be? Everything had changed. Bart was the one asking, Where do you want to go? And Hal didn’t trust Bart anymore. Bart could tell from the too-hearty cheer of his voice, nothing like real cheer at all.

When Bart was a boy, a youth, the Middlebrooks were everything he had wanted to be: friendly, confident, and clever. Bart never had succeeded in becoming what he wished. But this Hal in the curricle—he wasn’t that sort of man either anymore. He seemed but a portrait of his old self, baked brittle in an oven and cracked all over.

Which reminded Bart of something that might jolt Hal out of his reverie. “Hal, I can make the circuit back to Pall Mall. We could stop in at the British Institution and look at the new paintings.”

“The British Institution?” Hal was caught; he leaned forward eagerly. “Yes, excellent idea. Let’s go there. Though I thought you hated it?” He cut his eyes at Bart, his mouth curving.

Clever Hal. Bart had always hated the British Institution. He had hated every endless afternoon he’d ever spent in its quiet pinkish-walled rooms, waiting as Hal studied painting after painting and the promised “just one hour” inevitably turned into three or four.

Pink, to Bart, would always be the color of tedium.

But Hal wanted to go. He’d given an answer at last. And that must mean he trusted Bart, at least a little.

Maybe not everything had changed.

“We’ll go anywhere you like,” Bart said dutifully, diplomatically, and chucked his horses into a trot back toward Pall Mall.

***

Henry came back to Tallant House more tired than he had expected to be, and more hot and more… well, more glad.

The drive hadn’t started well. As they’d driven down Pall Mall the first time, Henry had noticed only two things. Cumberland House, a stretching Palladian mansion that seemed to loom up into the sky and stare at Henry as he passed by its seven bays of windows. Here squatted the Board of Ordnance, the army’s mapmakers, the ones who ensured that weapons and powder got to soldiers—or didn’t.

And the Guards’ Club, as inconspicuous as the other building was eye-catching. It was a narrow town house, quoined and pilastered in tasteful style, home to a new club that the other officers in the Foot Guards looked forward to joining someday. Henry had turned his back on it when he sold his commission, yet here it was, in his face.

But Bart, good man, had opened Henry’s eyes to the other buildings. Years, he had lived in this square of Town, and he’d run down these streets, and he’d loved London. Everything he’d loved about the city—its noise, its life, its vitality—was still here.

Visiting the British Institution had been painful yet sweet, like looking on the picture of a beloved dead relative. Henry knew he could never set up an easel within its galleries again, copying paintings with eager energy. He would never win the coveted prize awarded to the artist who could create a fitting companion to the Old Masters.

But he still had eyes in his head. He could look and wonder and admire. He could study color and scrutinize brushstrokes.

And he could still prod Bart through room after room and watch his old friend try to stifle jaw-cracking yawns.

Yes, he was glad he had gone out. And when the fastidious Sowerberry gave Henry a letter after helping him off with his dusty, too-warm coat, Henry was glad he’d come back. A letter from Caro today was the essential extra that made everything just as it should be. A letter would help him capture this skittish optimism and cage it within himself.

Henry took the stairs to his bedchamber two at a time, leaping up them as if Caro herself would be waiting in his bed. Once he was alone, he cracked open the seal with a hand that felt cold. He was disappointed when he saw how short the note was.

Dear Henry,

Thank you for your reply to me. I know it must have cost you a great deal of effort, and I value it accordingly.

I have been thinking over my last letter, wondering if I did right to persuade you to stay in Town when you might have desired to leave. But I cannot regret doing so, for I’ve gotten my way, and that means I shall see more of you.

I have learned that your sister is hosting a ball for you in two weeks’ time. I should be honored if we could dance together. Once again, you see, I am trying to persuade you, but I hope not against your wishes. We shall find out, once we are holding each other close.

Your friend

Well. It was short, but it was everything it needed to be. He stretched out on the floor for a while after that letter arrived, grounding himself on the Brussels carpet of his bedchamber.

The last time he’d been in Brussels itself, he’d been anything but grounded. He had forgotten the troubles of war for an evening by flirting his way through a ball. The night before Quatre Bras, as it turned out. Hours of dancing turned into hours of marching turned into hours of pain.

But not every ball led to battle. Not every dance led to destruction. Sometimes they were simply meant for pleasure.

He leaned his head back against the side of his bed, remembering his younger self. The scandalous whirl of a Continental waltz, the winding pattern of a London country-dance. The tight thrum of wanting through his body and blood. He had lost the simple joy of it over time, but soon he could have it all again. He need only wait for the ball and for the chance to clasp a woman in his arms.

Arm. One arm.

But even remembering that the number of his working upper limbs had been decreased from plural to singular did not lessen his resolve. He would do everything to make this ball—and himself—a success. Even if he could hardly dance anymore, he would find the joys left to him. Caro would help him do it.

I would be honored, he wrote back, his printing still clumsy and slow. You may have any dance you desire.

Maybe he could have something he desired too. He had the hope of it, and he would promise anything just for the pleasure of having hope again.