“Cranklingisn’t even a real word!” Griffin sputtered. She set down her beer and shook her head. “I’m just surprised the authoress didn’t come down the pub herself to hear it performed.”
“Oh, she’d never,” Penelope replied, as the third verse got an even bigger laugh the second time around. “She hates reading her poetry in public. Very much a creature of the pen, our Mrs. Molesey.” She smiled, as a hail of pennies rained down on Nell as she bowed her thanks. “But she knows how to reach an audience.”
The ballad became the hit of the Four Swallows, and before long it could be heard on the lips of shopkeepers, customers, and children going about their business on the Melliton lanes and byways. When asked who’d written it, Nell only smiled and answered: “A lady.” The gossip moved so fast, and caused so much uproar, that three days later Penelope was unsurprised to find her breakfast interrupted by the vicar himself, with his cheeks very flushed and his cravat hastily tied.
“Is that daft Mrs. Molesey up?” he demanded.
Penelope had been about to stand and say a polite good morning, but such a question in such a tone rather made her knees go shaky, and she stayed in her chair. Lord, but would she ever not cringe at a quarrel? “She hasn’t come down yet,” she said soothingly, and gestured at one of the empty chairs. “But if you’d like to join me, Mr. Oliver?”
“I’m afraid I have no appetite, Mrs. Flood,” he sniffed. But he sat down, anyway, and accepted the cup of tea Penelope poured for him. His mouth was flat with displeasure, his face hastily and indifferently shaved. “I assume you’ve heard this scurrilous ditty that’s been making its way through our virtuous town?”
Scurrilous ditty?Penelope bit her lip to keep her mouth from showing her amusement. “I heard Nell sing it, yes—and Miss Coningsby’s nephew has learned all the words by heart, she tells me.”
Mr. Oliver scowled into his teacup. “My poor sister can hardly bear to show her face out of doors, for fear of that devil’s chorus.”
Penelope was not quite quick enough to turn her laugh into a cough.
Mr. Oliver narrowed his eyes.
Penelope quickly stuffed half a piece of toast between her lips, hoping the marmalade would at least give her mouth something better to do.
Mr. Oliver fixed her with his gravest expression. “It verges on slander, Mrs. Flood,” the vicar warned.
The toast went gritty and dry in Penelope’s mouth, marmalade notwithstanding. It scratched her throat as she swallowed it down. “Surely not,” she rasped. “If memory serves, the lyrics are very clear about all the things that the fictional Lady S doesnotindulge in.”
“A nefarious dodge,” the vicar declared.
Penelope was either going to laugh or cry. She wasn’t sure which.
Mr. Oliver set his teacup down and leaned forward, lowering his voice to a confessional mutter. “My sister is considering laying a formal charge against the author. As the local magistrate, I’d be forced to investigate. Possibly even to have the writer arrested. Or—since the writer is hiding behind anonymity—we might arrest the performer.”
Penelope was suddenly painfully aware of the weight of the cutlery in her hands. Silver and pewter—cold, heavy metal. She clutched her fingers around it so the silver wouldn’t fall and make too loud a clatter against her plate.
Mr. Oliver’s voice lowered still further. “It might be best if Mrs. Molesey were to spend some time in London. Getting a few new gowns or trinkets, perhaps, or taking a change of air before the winter snows set in and muddy the roads.”
“You’re sending her away?” Penelope blurted.
“I’m saying she might find the metropolis a more congenial environment at the moment,” Mr. Oliver said. He leaned back, nose and chin high, a tight, false smile twisting his mouth.
It was the same solution he had for every problem, Penelope realized. Send the troublemaker somewhere else. Keep Melliton comfortable. Sending Mr. Turner to London for work, paying to move the Marshes to St. Sepulchre’s workhouse when their harvest failed...
And of course, the conversation that had sent Harry away, semipermanently, and which made it so awkward on the rare times he and John returned home.
Regret burned low in her belly, a sickly ember that never went entirely out.
She had tried to argue with Harry, when her brother had told her what Mr. Oliver had said to him. What he’d implied, rather than saying outright. Penelope had protested that Harry must have been mistaken, that Mr. Oliver had always been so friendly, that he couldn’t be so friendly to Penelope and so cruel to her brother. It didn’t add up. It couldn’t be true.
She knew better now, but it killed her a little that she ought to have known better much earlier.
At the time, Harry had laughed harshly, and then had been on an Arctic-bound ship by the end of the month.
And now it was Joanna Molesey who was to be pushed out. Even though she’d lived here for decades, and was one of the most accomplished poets in the country.
A flare of rebellion licked up within her soul. Isabella would never have stood for this.
Penelope raised her head. “All Joanna wants is the Napoleon snuffbox,” she said. “It’s hers by right, according to Isabella’s will.”
Mr. Oliver spread his hands. “I must be honest with you, Mrs. Flood: the snuffbox is missing.”
