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James forced a thin smile and turned his attention to toasting a piece of bread over the fire.
‘You never did finish telling me about Wiltshire,’ Lady Thorburn said.
That was because as he had begun to relate his misadventure in the marsh, she had interrupted to scold him once again, claiming that he had nearly lost his horse to the big because of his godlessness.
James kept his eyes on his bread, stuck to a thin iron poker which he held over the flames. ‘Nothing much to tell.’
‘What I don’t understand is why you went at all,’ she said.
Oh Devil it.
His mother would find something to object to no matter how he answered. If he told her it was for Stonehenge, he would be berated for his interest in the work of heathen savages. If he told her it was for the canal, he would be condemned for his low pursuit of profit.
‘Simply a change of scenery, my lady. I wished to have a good long ride.’
‘Going all the way to Wiltshire! I daresay you got your wish.’
‘Indeed, I suppose ’twas farther afield than one really might need.’
‘I should say so. It does explain why you were away for so long.’
‘Yes, although I stayed a touch longer than I had planned, because of the incident at the marsh. And I took tea after.’
The words were out of his mouth before he thought, and he could have boxed his own ears for the mistake.
‘You took tea? With whom?’
James pretended to be taken up with preventing his toast from burning.
Lady Thorburn was not misdirected, however. ‘It cannot have been Pembroke. Or Kimberley or Somerset. I have seen them all in London recently.’
‘True enough,’ James said, buttering his toast.
‘Well, who was it, then? Why, not Chichester, perhaps? Or Cottenham? Is he at Priory Manor these days?’
It crossed James’s mind to lie and say it was one of these latter, but he knew he could be certain of one thing: his mother wrote dozens of letters each week, and shewouldsay something in each of them about his alleged visit with whichever name he chose now.
‘No one of consequence, Mother.’
‘No one of consequence? What can you mean by that? Surely it was a peer?’
‘No, Mother, it was not.’
Lady Thorburn paled. ‘You took tea with a gentleman?’
‘Would that be so very terrible?’ James asked with a sigh.
His mother frowned. ‘Under certain circumstances, perhaps not...what reason did you have?’
‘’Twasn’t a gentleman in any case, Mother. I took tea at a local farmhouse, if you must know.’ His irritation was overcoming the caution he usually employed when conversing with the marchioness.
Silence. He glanced up from the toast then and realized he had made an even graver mistake than mentioning the tea at all.
I should have claimed it was with some gentleman involved with the canal.
But then I might have had to explain my investment.
Oh, really, this is impossible! A fellow should not have to mince words to avoid being harried by his mother!
