The Good Men

Chapter 14

From the first-floor window, Emilia and her aunt watched John and Dan pound towards the porticoed entrance below them. She'd spent her life watching the outside world through such windows, looking down from her sitting room on the estate workers going about their duties, observing the street bustle of Brighton, London, Bath from the family carriages. This though was – an education.

The first time Emilia visited the tenanted farm above Coomb House with her father, they'd come across Mr Crane in the yard. She'd been ten, eleven maybe. The farmer had greeted them with a knife in one hand, a Southdown ewe in the other. The plunge of the blade, the kicking hooves, the blood fountain – such images were not quickly forgotten. On the ride home her father had slowed to her side, had explained the realities of life. And when the rack of mutton had appeared on their table that Sunday, Emilia found she had lost none of her appetite.

The fight she'd just witnessed was another of those realities. Another though that would not be easily forgotten. Men in her world argued, sometimes fought, usually over some perceived slight. The cause may have been absurd, the satisfaction demanded ridiculous. Still, there was a formality about it. An order. Honour.

What she'd witnessed was just – vicious. Rule less. Hobbesian. The menace, the flashing violence, the readiness with which one man raised a weapon at another.

Barbarous, yes. Yet she had to admit the scene had provoked a primitive thrill, deep in her stomach. The gladiatorial spectacle. Nature in the raw. A world away from the curtseys and scrapes and pretensions of the rooms behind her. And something else. An interest. Unconsciously, and to her surprise, she'd found herself rooting for the two unarmed, bedraggled soldiers.

A lightning fork crackled out at sea. Closer now. With it came the rain. The first few spots tapped the glass, trickles on the pane.

Emilia traced a drop with her finger. "Ten guineas they escape," she said.

Lady Hetherington eyed the three Revenue Guards, their determined pursuit. "You had better hope they don't, my dear, or your father will not be pleased."

The air through the part open window had turned chill. Emilia shivered. She poked her head out in time to catch the red flash of John and Dan's uniforms leaping the low white steps and disappearing into the building beneath her. She slid the window closed. Then hurried from the dining room.

The foyer was empty at least. The guests, John supposed, all occupied in the ballroom above. He'd hoped there was a back exit out of the Assembly Rooms, but the phalanx of servants coming from the darkened rear changed that plan. He turned for the broad, curling staircase. Up, taking the steps two at a time, sucking in mouthfuls of hot, close air as they climbed, the lush sapphire carpet deadening their footfalls.

John was almost at the top when the makeshift glue that had held his boot sole to the uppers gave way. The toe end flapped loose, the hanging leather catching on the stair edge. John sprawled onto the landing, arriving at the feet of an ancient lord in a powdered wig and embroidered frock coat, a man of his time, an alien in this. One translucent, blue-veined hand grasped the bannister as he steadied himself for the long journey down.

John sprang to his feet and proffered a deep bow. "Be careful of the men behind us, your worshipfulness," he whispered. "French, I believe."

John and Dan squeezed past the astonished aristocrat. Now where? Tall, panelled doors almost as high as the Smithsons' cottage led off from the landing. Behind one double set came the first notes of a lively cotillion. The ballroom, evidently. The open door of another showed a card room.

John moved towards the third. It swung open. Through it emerged the vision he'd seen in the carriage on the street. The Marquess of Halham's daughter, according to Tom. Emeralds glistened at her neck. Her cheeks and the skin above the scooped line of her dress were flushed. But it was her eyes that stopped John in his tracks. A brilliant green, more splendid than the jewels that adorned her. Harder too. They held him with – what was it – amusement? Relish even. A juicy anecdote to be recounted at some future soiree to the shudder and delight of her glittering friends. Like the rider watching the fox in its desperate flight from the hounds.