There was a sound that might have been a muffled sob, or possibly laughter. “Your remedy for all ills.”
“It works wonders for me,” he said, lighting a spill from the candle and setting the fire blazing. “There! That is better.”
He moved across to the window seat, no more than half a dozen paces from the fire, for it was a small room, dominated by a large four-poster bed. Pouring brandy into two glasses, he pushed one into her hands and sat on the floor beside her.
“You know, then?” she whispered.
“I know. Mr Payne saw fit to inform the gentlemen. I am very pleased for Mr and Mrs Payne, naturally, but I am so very sorry that you have to suffer another baby in the house.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, then sobbed again.
Silently he passed her his handkerchief. He sipped his brandy, and related the bones of the discussion between Payne and Chamberlain, then, when she still said nothing, he told her of his altercation with Pendleton, and his letter to Florence, and the difficulties of dredging up his Italian after many years. And gradually, as he talked, she stopped crying, and as the brandy took effect, she talked herself, about Oxford and her friends there and a funny thing that had happened when she was a girl.
And so they drank and talked and drank some more and became quite jolly, as the contents of the brandy bottle were gradually depleted.
***
Jamie woke with a start, to find a hammer banging away inside his head. Nearby was a single candle burning low and beginning to gutter, and the fire was reduced to embers. Across the room were strange sounds.
He sat up abruptly, then wished he had not moved, for the whole room spun. With a groan, he lay down again on cool sheets…
That was not right! He was in bed but he was wearing not a single stitch of clothing, not even a nightgown. What was worse, he was quite sure, beyond the slightest doubt, that this was not his bed.
Now the sounds he could hear resolved themselves. Someone was casting up his accounts… no,heraccounts, of course, for it must be Georgie… Mrs Hastings.
Dear God! What had he done?
As soon as the room stopped spinning, he crept out of bed. Clothes were scattered everywhere. He found his shirt and slipped it on, gathered up everything he could find that was his — no spectacles, but he could not see well enough to look for them — and crept away to his own room.
Then he climbed into his own bed, closed his eyes in misery and drifted off to sleep.
7: Painting
When Jamie woke again, he felt much more normal. Very thirsty, but that was easily corrected. His head still pounded, but nothing was spinning and he was tolerably sure that, so long as he kept away from food for a while, his stomach would not rebel. He dressed rather slowly, found his spare spectacles and went downstairs. Breakfast was long over, so he went straight to the study and unlocked the box on his desk where a neat pile of letters awaited him. No one else was there, fortunately, so he rang for some coffee and began mechanically opening the letters.
His mind, sluggish as it was that day, refused to focus on such matters. He could think only of Georgie— And that was another effect of the brandy, he supposed. Somehow during the night they had gone from the polite‘Mr Hammond’and‘Mrs Hastings’to Christian name terms. Well, that was appropriate, since they had ended up in bed together. He assumed they had both been in bed at some point, but he could not remember it at all. He had hazy memories of sitting on the floor with the brandybottle between them, and then… nothing until he woke in the middle of the night.
He could hardly believe it! He, James Hammond, the most respectable and timid of the duke’s household, had seduced a virtuous widow. What on earth had he been thinking? He had not been thinking at all, of course. He had heard of men who stepped off the path of righteousness and then claimed it was the drink, but he never, ever supposed that he would one day be of their number.
What a fool he was! He groaned, and laid his head on his arms.
Pyott came in and Jamie had to force himself to behave normally. Fortunately, Pyott liked the sound of his own voice too well to notice that Jamie was unusually subdued, and after he had recounted some stable gossip, he took his own letters and went away again.
It was sometime later when the door opened again, so softly that he might not have noticed it if he had not been waiting for it.
She slipped in, looking rather sheepish, glancing around the room quickly, as if to reassure herself that they were alone.
“How are you?” he said quietly.
With a low chuckle, she said, “Better than I was! Heavens, I was so sick. Remind me never to drink so much brandy again.”
She reached into her reticule and pulled out his spectacles.
“They’d got kicked under the bed,” she said, with a sudden smile. “At least you have a spare pair. I found a stocking of yours, too, if you have somewhere to stow it safely out of sight. Oh, and the empty brandy bottle! I have locked it away so the maids won’t see it when they come in to clean but—”
“I can deal with that,” he said hastily. “There is a peculiar blue vase with handles on the table at the top of the stairs. If you leave it in there, I shall dispose of it. Mrs Hastings, I—”
She laughed, suddenly. “No, no! We really don’t need to be formal, not after last night.”
