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  Would children compensate? She found it impossible to imagine indulging with the vicar in those intimacies necessary to create a family.

  The click of the gate-latch returned her to the present. She swung back to the lamp-lit room.

  “Mama, this is the outside of enough. You know I dare not reveal my authorship.”

  “It would have looked very singular, my love, had we declined to convey Lord Selworth’s proposal. He might have attempted to approach Prometheus in some other way over which we had less control. At the very least his curiosity would be aroused, and by conjecture he might arrive at the truth. He struck me as an intelligent and determined young man.”

  “Pig-headed! As though a hundred others could not help him equally well—a dozen, at any rate. You are right, of course, but I wish you had insisted on writing with the answer instead of encouraging him to stay by inviting him to dinner!”

  Her mother laughed. “I had no choice in the matter once you had abused the Bodger’s fare.”

  “Perhaps that was a mistake,” Pippa admitted with a wry grimace. “You will just have to tell him tomorrow that you have spoken to Prometheus, who desired you to convey a refusal.”

  Mrs Lisle had opened her work-box as soon as the gentlemen left. She was darning a stocking-heel, and her needle flashed back and forth twice before she responded, “Are you so sure you ought to refuse, Pippa?”

  “Yes,” Pippa said promptly. Lord Selworth had succeeded in shaking her composure without even trying. To work with him would be to endure a constant state of uncomfortable ferment. “Even if I agreed, I expect he would change his mind as soon as he discovered Prometheus is a female. And though he may be willing to keep the secret, who can guess whether he is capable of it? Should he let slip only to Mr Chubb—”

  “No fear of Mr Chubb letting the cat out of the bag,” said Kitty, giggling as she glanced up from her hemming. “It was a struggle to extract a single word from him. He is woefully shy.”

  “With ladies, certainly,” Pippa said, “but I daresay he is on easier terms among gentlemen.”

  “Do you think so?” Kitty enquired with interest. “I hope you are right, for he is quite amiable. He was interested in my chickens, or at least kind enough to seem so, and he helped with the tea-tray, though I fancy he had never before set foot in a kitchen! I hate to picture him going through life with his tongue tied in knots.”

  “He had more to say for himself than John Ruddock,” Mrs Lisle pointed out tartly. “What a mooncalf the boy is!”

  “A veritable nodcock,” Pippa agreed, “but we are straying from the point, Mama. I cannot risk telling Lord Selworth that I write the articles, so I must refuse him.”

  “I suppose so, my love. It is a great pity, for if William Cobbett is imprisoned again and forced to stop publishing the Register for a while, the money from Lord Selworth would come in handy.”

  “I doubt he could pay much. Title and fortune do not always coincide. Did you not notice how shabby his clothes are?”

  “Yes,” said her mother thoughtfully, needle poised in mid air. “It is the more admirable that he wishes to spend part of what he has to ensure a serious reception of his ideas for the relief of the truly poor.”

  “The viscount may indeed be all that is admirable. The situation remains unchanged. He will have to contrive without my assistance.”

  “Pippa,” said Kitty, “I do not perfectly understand why you cannot help Lord Selworth without his knowing who you are. That you are Prometheus, I mean. He will be in London, after all, and you here, so you will have to write back and forth. You have only to tell him Prometheus chooses to communicate through you, rather than directly.”

  “He might believe it,” Pippa said doubtfully, “given the present threat to Mr Cobbett.” Her resistance began to crumble. With Lord Selworth at a distance, there was no danger to her peace of mind.

  “I wonder.” Mrs Lisle’s gaze was fixed on an invisible scene. A smile curved her lips. “Yes, it could work. A clever notion, Kitty love, and I see no reason why it should not work even if we were in London.”

  “Mama!” cried her daughters as one.

  Kitty’s eyes sparkled with excited hope. “We are going to London?” she asked.

  “Impossible,” Pippa objected. “Lord Selworth would be bound to discover our whereabouts.”

  “We shall not try to keep it from him. What is important is to give him the impression that Prometheus remains in the country.”

  “Corresponding with his lordship, through me?” Pippa felt a peculiar twist of anticipation. Alarmed, she protested, “But, Mama, he might expect to deal with me in person if we were in Town.”

  “Very likely, my love.”

  “I cannot!”

  “Mama,” Kitty burst out, “can we truly go to London? Is it not horridly expensive?”

  “I have been saving, thanks to your sister’s contributions. Pippa had her Season, and I have always intended that you should, too. I had thought to wait until next Spring—you will be nineteen by then, but better another twelvemonth and another few pounds put by. However....” Mrs Lisle paused dramatically.

  “With what Lord Selworth will pay Pippa, we shall have enough?”

  “We do not know what he will pay,” Pippa reminded her, “and it is not likely to be a great deal.”

  “I have a better notion.” With the air of a fairground conjurer pulling a gold-watch from a yokel’s hatband, Mrs Lisle continued, “We shall not ask Lord Selworth for money. We shall tell him Prometheus is so kind a friend of ours that he wishes to be paid with introductions for you girls into the best Society!”

  Kitty’s face was ecstatic. Pippa could not bear to disappoint her little sister.

  Resigning herself to working with the disturbing Lord Selworth, she merely demurred, “Not for me, Mama. My first Season was a disaster and I do not care to repeat the experience at my advanced age, especially before an audience as critical as the haut ton.”

  “My love, you are much improved in both looks and address since then, and hardly at your last prayers! Still, I do not mean to carp at you. It is for you decide.”

  Kitty protested, “But it will be horridly unfair, Pippa, if you must work to pay for my pleasure.”

  “I enjoy wrestling with ideas and words, dearest,” Pippa assured her, with a smile, “much more than dancing. And very much more than sewing. If you will engage to spare me the wielding of a needle, I shall gladly wield the pen to enable you to take the Ton by storm.”

  Chapter 3

  “She is as kind as she is pretty,” Chubby enthused as they turned their horses’ heads back towards the village.

  “Kind!” Wynn exclaimed. “I hardly think so. She was not at all pleased when her mama invited us to dinner, and her warnings about the inn were obviously designed to drive us away. But as for ‘as kind as she is pretty,’ I daresay you are right, for no one could call Miss Lisle pretty.”

  “Oh, Miss Lisle! It’s Miss Kitty I mean. Didn’t you notice how she went on talking to me even though I couldn’t think of any clever compliments? Not prattling on about hats and gowns, either. She has some very sound ideas on poultry management.”

  Wynn grinned. “Does she, indeed?”

  “And she let me help her with the tea, too, though most young ladies would be ashamed to admit they hadn’t enough servants.”

  “Is Miss Kitty to cook our dinner?” Wynn demanded in mock alarm.

  “I expect she is capable of it, but Sukey, their maid, does that. They have just the one maid, and her husband who is gardener and handyman, and a woman who comes in to do floors and laundry and such.”

  “My dear fellow, you disappoint me,” Wynn teased. “I was ready to allot the laundry to Mrs Lisle and the digging and wood-chopping to Miss Lisle.”

  “Are Mrs Lisle’s hands rough and red?” Chubby asked seriously. “I did not notice that Miss Lisle’s face is weathered at all. You say she is not pretty, but I did not think her ill-favoured.”<
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  “Lord no, she is no antidote. When animated, her face is quite fetching if rather pale, and that simple style of knotting back her hair suits her, but she would not do as the heroine of a romance, you know.”

  “Oh, your heroines must all be diamonds of the first water, though clad in rags!”

  “One must have rags. How is the hero to discern her beauty—or beauties—if not through the holes?”

  “I think,” said Chubby doggedly, “a neat, plain dress don’t hide a girl’s beauty. Miss Kitty looked very well in that yellow woollen thing she was wearing, without laces or furbelows or holes.”

  “I cry pax, old chap. Pax!” Wynn begged, laughing. “Let us stipulate that Miss Catherine Lisle is a very pretty chit, and have done. Here is our inn.”

  The Jolly Bodger was long and low, built of red brick mellowed by age to a rosy hue, criss-crossed by ancient, crooked beams. In the deepening dusk of the cloudy evening, lamplight shone from small, diamond-paned casement windows. A lantern suspended above the inn sign illuminated a faded picture of a man with an axe over his shoulder. A foaming tankard in his other hand presumably represented jollity, as well as advertising the inn’s wares. His expression was indistinguishable.

  “What’s a bodger?” Chubby asked, dismounting.

  “I’ve not the least notion, except that his trade requires an axe. A headsman, no doubt.”

  “An executioner? Hang it all, Wynn, what a grim name for an inn!”

  “As well call it the Happy Hangman or the Gay Gibbet,” Wynn agreed, smothering a smile as he hitched his hired mount to a post. “By Miss Lisle’s description, it sounds like a grim place. Still, I don’t know that that’s what a bodger is,” he added, taking pity on his easily gulled friend. “No doubt Miss Lisle will know. I’ll ask her this evening.”

  “I’ll ask the landlord tonight,” said Chubby, “before we take rooms. Be damned if I’ll be able to sleep with an executioner hanging outside my window!”

  He pushed open the creaking door, over which was written Prop. Chas. Bucket. Wynn followed him, stepping directly into the taproom.

  It was a cosy place, despite walls and ceiling blackened by centuries of tobacco and wood-fire smoke. A cheerful fire burned in the grate, its ruddy gleam reflecting from the well-polished pewter tankards in the calloused hands of the occupants. The tiny windows which would make the room gloomy in summer now kept out the chill February night.

  “It doesn’t look bad,” Wynn observed, the more convinced that Miss Lisle had done her best to drive him away.

  “Ho, landlord!” cried Chubby.

  A small, spare man in an apron came through a door at the back of the room. “Chas Bucket at your service, sir,” he said genially.

  “What’s a bodger?”

  “A bodger, sir?” Mr Bucket asked in surprise. “Why, bless your heart, sir, a bodger’s a chap what goes out in the beech woods to shape the wood rough-hewn, afore it’s took to the cabinet-makers for a-making of chairs and the like.”

  Listening, Wynn wondered why he had proposed to ask Miss Lisle, in particular, for the information. Unaware that it was a local term for a local craftsman, for some reason he had assumed she would know the answer. He could not recall anything she had said to make him suppose her to be both intelligent and well-informed, yet that was the impression he had of her.

  A false impression, possibly. What he could be certain of was her antagonism. She did not want him to work with Prometheus. In fact, she distrusted him and did not want him to discover the writer’s identity.

  She was downright protective of Prometheus. Could the fellow be a suitor she was in love with? Not the vicar, heaven forbid! Surely she could do better than that prosy bore, even if she was not a diamond of the first water.

  With an odd sense of relief, Wynn realized that whatever Prometheus was, his writings proved him no prosy bore. He didn’t like to think of her tied to Postlethwaite for life.

  If Miss Lisle loved Prometheus, no wonder she was reluctant to entrust his safety to a stranger. Wynn had done his best to reassure her. Though she had surrendered, she had remained deucedly cool, not to say frosty. Best avoid the touchy topic at dinner. What he wanted was a nice, neutral subject.

  Bodgers, for instance. Of course, in hindsight, that must be why he had offered to ask her rather than anyone else.

  The landlord was waving at a settle in the inglenook. “Tom Bowyer, there, he’s a bodger, sir. Mayhap he’ll tell you more.”

  Chubby started towards the inglenook. Wynn reached out and hauled him back.

  “All you need to know is that his trade isn’t going to give you nightmares.”

  “I’m interested,” Chubby said indignantly, “and my father will be too, if you let me find out. We don’t have bodgers in our part of the world, though a fair bit of our timber goes to the furniture workshops.”

  “My humble apologies! I didn’t realize you were in pursuit of enlightenment. Off with you, then, and I’ll sort out our accommodations.”

  “Accommodations, sir?” Chas Bucket sounded distinctly dubious.

  “Yes, we’ll need a couple of chambers for the night.”

  “Well, sir, being as how this here do be an inn, not a hedge tavern, I’m bound by law to offer accommodations to any as seeks ‘em. But the fac’ is, we’ve only got the one chamber, sir, and it ain’t fitting for gentlemen. It’s gen’rally carters and drovers what stops here, sir, and that’s the truth.”

  So Miss Lisle had not been cozening him, though it did not mean she had not been anxious to be rid of him. “Let me see it,” Wynn said cautiously.

  “I’ll call the missus.”

  Mrs Bucket was a stout, red-faced woman beneath whom the narrow stairs squawked alarmingly. She panted to the top and flung open the nearest door, standing back to let Wynn see.

  The chamber was just big enough to contain a vast bed, into which four or five drovers or carters might be fitted nose to toes, and a chest. The ceiling sloped down to a window even tinier than those below. Though not tall, Wynn could only stand upright just inside the door—not that it mattered, since that was the only unoccupied bit of floor.

  “‘Tis a good featherbed,” wheezed Mrs Bucket behind him, “and I s’ll put on clean sheets for your worships.”

  Wynn had no desire to ride on several miles to find a better hostelry, then ride back and forth again for dinner, in the dark, on unfamiliar roads, and under a sky threatening rain. He could always send word to Mrs Lisle that he and Chubby would be unable to accept her invitation after all. Yet he found he very much wanted to dine with the Lisles, to talk to Miss Lisle about matters which would not arouse her protective instincts.

  At least the chamber looked reasonably clean, whatever the state of the sheets beneath the counterpane. But, “No washstand.”

  “There do be the pump out back,” the landlady advised him.

  Wynn shivered. “Sixpence for a basin of hot water in the kitchen,” he bargained. “And another sixpence to press our evening clothes.”

  “Lor’ save you, your worship, you don’t need to dress up for scrag end o’ mutton and cold pease pudden fried up.”

  Wynn shuddered as a long forgotten nursery-rhyme returned to haunt him:

  Pease pudding hot,

  Pease pudding cold,

  Pease pudding in the pot

  Nine days old.

  “Thank you, ma’am, but we are to dine with Mrs Lisle,” he said with relief, then another horrid thought struck him. “And we’ll pay extra to have the bed to ourselves.”

  Mrs Bucket chuckled, her vast bosom billowing. “Lor’ save you, sir,” she said again, “I knows better’n to put mucky working men in wi’ gentry. We’ve had gentlemen stay afore, when poor Mr Lisle was alive. ‘Tis late in the day for carters or drovers, but any comes by, there’s allus the hayloft.”

  Coming to an agreement on terms, Wynn followed his hostess down to see the horses stabled, and to retrieve the saddle-bags and his friend.

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  Shivering in her shift, Pippa doubtfully regarded her reflection in the mirror. She had hoped the curls Kitty had laboured over with a hot iron would make her look less intellectual than her usual severe coiffure. They just made her look like someone else, not herself at all.

  “Very pretty, my love,” said her mother, coming into the small chamber, already dressed in her Sunday-best grey silk.

  “I am not trying to look pretty,” Pippa said crossly. “I just want Lord Selworth to believe I am more concerned about my appearance than my mind. But the curl is already coming out.”

  “Perhaps just one more turn,” said Kitty, reaching for the iron leaning on the grate, where glowing embers battled the draught from the ill-fitting window.

  “No, my hair is incurably straight and that is all there is to it. Thank you for your efforts, Kitty dear. I should have known it was useless. I shall just pin it up, as usual.”

  “Thread a ribbon through the braid before you knot it,” Mrs Lisle suggested. “Which gown are you going to wear?”

  “The green Circassian cloth, I suppose. I refuse to freeze for Lord Selworth’s sake.”

  “Enough of this nonsense!” her mother said sharply. “That gown does very well when we are alone, but whatever your opinion of the viscount, you will dress nicely for guests, my girl. There is a good fire in the dining parlour, and you may wear a shawl. Let me see.” She crossed to the old beechwood wardrobe.

  “Oh, the apricot poplin.” Pippa did not own so many dresses as to make the choice difficult. “I have a bit of ribbon to match. I beg your pardon, Mama, for being prickly. Lord Selworth’s interest in Prometheus has ruffled me a trifle.”

  Mrs Lisle gave her a loving smile. “I know, dearest, but truly I believe all will work out for the best. Lord Selworth seems to me too much the gentleman to give away your secret, should he guess it, and Papa would be very proud of your labour on behalf of the unfortunate. Kitty, go and dress now. I shall finish off your sister’s hair, then come to help with your fastenings.”

  While Mama’s nimble fingers braided the satin ribbon into her hair and pinned the plait into her usual topknot, Pippa pondered what she had said.