Conscientious Objection

[MISS CHARLOTTE DELAFORD]

{Tag: Nicholas Goulding}

The Lockwoods were at Hadleigh.

The thought alone was enough to put all the horrid first pages of every novel written to shame. Nothing could be more detestable to Charlotte than her brother-in-law and while it was not within her to actually hate her sister, the fact that Mrs Lockwood felt an indispensable need to bring the gentleman into their home went a very long way towards achieving it. Charlotte could hear her own contemptible thoughts, her own callous emotion, but as Mr Lockwood announced over the luncheon table that he believed felicity in marriage unachievable without the baring of an heir - before continuing to slight Maria’s failure to do so as a cruel lack of faithfulness on her part – Miss Delaford could not control herself. It was foul enough that he should say so, knowing full well that the truth gave her sister much pain, but that he should do so in her presence and with her parents and siblings looking on was absolutely unacceptable. Charlotte had only ceased in sharing this truth in virulent and colourful expression when her father’s voice had descended through the fog to tell her that it was ’Enough.’

She had left the table at once, Imogen looking down at her greens as though she had just seen someone murdered and James’s face taught behind a fist that tried to conceal itself as a manner of his leaning on an elbow. Mr Delaford was furious, that much was to his good credit, but Charlotte felt her blood begin to boil as soon as her back was turned and she heard the slight muttering about ‘lamentable behaviour’ as Mr Lockwood returned to his roast. Were they all to be bound without word of protest to this insufferable man for all time? Simply by virtue of his ascending soon to some Baronet or other? Certainly, Maria might well one day be Lady Lockwood, but was it compensation enough for the slow degradation of a soul?

The thought made the walls of Hadleigh infinitely smaller and Charlotte felt that if she did not retreat soon, she might well expire under the oppression of the foul lordship that had descended on them. While it was not entirely proper for a girl to be on her own through the countryside, it was not quite so forbidden as it was in London, and especially on the grounds of her father’s estate, so Charlotte set herself immediately on the idea of a walk. She had stepped but five meters from the door, however, when she heard the undeniable whinny of a friend neglected.

Oh how much better would she be served this day by a ride?

It seemed mere minutes had passed by the time she had returned for her spencer jacket and riding boots and made her way out to the stables; the boys rather alarmed that she had not made her intention to ride this afternoon known and moved with surprising alacrity to ready Lavinia for her, on account of the dark cloud that was about the face that was usually so amiable and keen for a joke. As she mounted with a curt nod of thanks and frustrated growl, which urged her spritely grey into a canter outright, they were left with nothing to answer the query in their nervous eyes.

The wind that rushed past Charlotte in full gallop was like a purge to strip away all that had tainted her and as the grounds that were so familiar to her whipped past, she gave herself over to the relief. She was underdressed for a ride, her full habit not ready in time, but she cared little as she lost herself in the mere sensation of moving forward. How she wished the same could be said for the circumstance in which she now found herself. How could none see how very toxic this whole business of marriage and position was and how murderous to the true intent of the institution? Was she so very strange to question it?

Lavinia charged ahead, loosed only to speed and less and less direction as her mistress disappeared into her thoughts and while the estate to which Hadleigh was affixed was large, it was certainly not endless and, without any realization on Charlotte’s behalf, the pair passed the boundaries of it and continued into forests only marginally less familiar. It was not until Charlotte spied something in her path – nay, someone – that her senses seemed to return to her and she pulled back on the reigns with violent awareness before she quite ran the poor person over!

As Lavinia ground to a halt, her rider barely keeping her seat, mud spewed upward from the ground as it gave way, adding to that which was already about Charlotte’s face and loosening hair, and adrenaline mixed with the pooling agitation in her gut to produce a profoundly vicious censure.

“Do you not know better than to cut across a field marked for country riding?! I might have killed you!”

She had barely looked at her near-victim, let alone her surrounds. Had she done so, she might have noted that it was she who was out of place and that he was most definitely about to point it out.

[Mr Nicholas Goulding]

Being a creature of habit meant that any deviation from the norm was, by necessity, the very work of the Devil himself. Any change was seen as a temptation to fall from the ready grace of knowing what came next; any spontaneous action to be considered cause for repentance. Nicholas Goulding was a man who had kept to his traditions all his life. They had been his father’s traditions before him, and his grandfather’s traditions before that. An eager advocate for leaving well enough alone, he had simply carried on as usual after his late father had departed, maintaining the lifestyle he had been bred into and keeping like clockwork to the routine that would likely walk arm in arm with him to his grave like an old friend.

No… if life wasn’t broken, then Goulding would not be the man to tinker with it. This philosophy applied to every particular of his existence. The same servants ran Haye Park under his watchful eye, only vacating under the most dire of circumstances. The same tenants worked the land surrounding the estate, unless something drastic prevented it from being so. There was very little change to the domestic humdrum of his situation, and he was deliriously happy to know that he could rise on any given morning and know exactly what he could reasonably expect from the day stretching out ahead of him. He largely kept to himself, even at social gatherings, and generally only ventured out at all under the careful pressing of his much more amiable friend. Convention was the very key to happiness in his mind, and as such ought not be meddled with.

For instance, it was not the usual thing for him to be out after he had taken his ride, yet here he strode across the Park’s fallow field closest to the Meryton township. The late afternoon sunshine had all but melted into murky twilight; a few stubborn rays clung to the tops of the trees in the pretty woods than ran almost the entire length of the Park itself. The field sloped down away from them in the general direction of the house, and it was down this embankment he now walked, his stride marked with the air of a man on a mission. He was returning from one of the aforementioned tenants on the fringe-field on the other side of the woods; a man who ran a small smithy operation from the stables attached to his cottage. The Gouldings had been getting their horses shod by Tom Stapleton’s family for as long as Nicholas could remember; the latest one to be attended to had been left there this very evening. The infringing twilight he returned to the Park in was so much the better, for he had not wished to be seen about at this time and on foot.

But deviousness -- whether for good of for ill -- rarely goes unobserved.

He did not see the horse until it was almost upon him, and a high autumn breeze had kept the sound of its approach from warning him in time. He started as soon as he did notice them; his arms came up automatically to shield his head and he slid a little on the wet, muddy grass of the slope itself. Having no time in which to register identity of horse or rider, Nicholas steadied himself as best he could before scrambling quickly back up the bank so as to avoid further injury, should the horse decide to spook. If the light had not prevented him from marking the mare (whom he knew to be a gentle creature) the ringing of her rider’s voice in his ears could not be ignored.

“Why, Miss Delaford!” he cried, in a tone that might as well have changed his words to ‘I ought to have known it would be you attempting to murder me’. “Though the light is nearly gone, I should know your docile sweetness of temperament anywhere.” He stood for a moment, shrugging his coat back onto his shoulders as was a habit of his and allowing the tightness of his fist around the riding crop he carried to loosen, now that he was relatively certain he was not about to be killed. One of his eyebrows was raised in dubious consideration of his not wanting to be caught out about his business, and the irony of that very desire being thwarted so thoroughly by the one person who was certain to make light of him for it.

Nicholas took a deep breath, exhaling loudly as he looked about him. Last year, he had sown barley in this field. A fine crop has presented itself, worked by the men on his estate and even a few in town who could not find work at the Hadleigh orchard or elsewhere. When the harvest had come, they had shared in the profits of the sale. This year it was bare, and a crop to the west of the house was being tilled. Next year, they would run the sheep where they stood now. It had been done that way for as long as he remembered, and a great many people found comfort in that cycle. The year after that, when no crops were sown, they would sell the wool from the sheep. The look he threw around their surroundings now plainly spoke of his intention to say something rather cheeky.

“I beg your pardon -- I confess I had not realised that this field was for riding in! If I were you, I should let the owner of the land know immediately and inform him of his error in not making it plainer. Though you may be sorry you had, when he decides to charge you a toll for compacting such excellent farming soil.”

[MISS CHARLOTTE DELAFORD]

There was nothing like to pull Charlotte from her dreary outlook than the sudden and shocking realisation that she was to be unfavorably compared in her own estimation with the Curmudgeon from High Dudgeon. That she should be seen in so vulnerable a state by any other person was tolerable enough, for she cared little for the repercussions of idle chatter when the Ton new nothing of the facts, that she should be caught in such fashion by this gentleman, however, held within it an inherent sense of loss that was utterly intolerable. Her body went rigid at the sound of her name uttered in the manner to which she had become quite accustomed of late and she turned her head with sudden determination as Lavinia circled the spot whence she had stopped in an effort to properly discharge herself of the life built into the gallop, suddenly without outlet, prancing as though in an arena rather than on the free expanse of the land.

Charlotte finally fixed her fiery gaze on her victim – so recently altered into a potential harm – as he completed his insincere and, unsurprisingly fictitious felicity at seeing her there. She, of course, ought not have been able to fault him given the series of events that had preceded – especially in her wish to be jovial with him to avoid the unflattering comparison already mentioned -, but she did not spare any discontent at his use of the world ‘docile’ and jumped to proceed in unleashing a little more of that virulence she had been forced to so unfairly bend into undue constraint. It was no use, however, for Mr Goulding had – in a way that was so very like him – continued to speak over his first so as to prevent her from making any proper retort. Thus, it too was constrained merely to an intake of breath and yet another cap.

It maddened her all the more.

And besides – all righteous outrage permitting – it was he that was not where he ought to have been! There was a moment of fleeting curiosity at the thought, why on earth should the gentleman be here and walking? Did he not pride himself on his routine and was not that routine that walking – to refrain from being a rather vulgar indulgence – was to be constrained to the morning? The instinct to query him, challenge him once again, was distracted by his breath and his exhalation, so accompanied by a wicked smile that she knew all too well to be attached to an uncomfortable feeling in her gut of unpleasantness to follow.

How right she was! Yet, how wrong in the form, for she had expected the source of discontent to be the injustice of what he was to say. As it was, the true horror was in his being utterly correct. Her brows crinkled at his assertion that she ought to take her grievance up with the owner of her land – really! Her own father could be relied upon to – she looked about her. Perhaps there was an injustice to be pondered here, but it was not of Mr Goulding’s making. She should have looked upward to enquire a Heavenly answer, but for her focus on remaining on the front foot. Lavinia pawed at the growned as though to mimic the grip of Charlotte’s hands on the reigns. She looked back at the gentleman on the ground beneath her gaze, no less encouraged by her error, but suddenly unseated in her ability to carry it out. At that moment, the horrific of her predicament settled and her empty anger at him was deflated.

“Forgive me,” she began in a way that might have issued a slack jaw from a beloved brother, even as it tightened hers, “I should most definitely be sorry, particularly since I had not expected there to be a gentleman in all Hertfordshire so petty as to be so set on threatening it.”

Thus followed the remark that might have sent that same brother to a calmer sense of all being right with the world and illustrated Charlotte’s search for any other matter on which she could pick fault with him. If she could not set one arrogant specimen in his place, then she most certainly would accept another target.

[Mr Nicholas Goulding]

Whatever he had expected their interactions might be upon such an unconventional meeting, it had not been this. While their typical discourse was always of a rather argumentative nature, it was true, he never set out to deliberately wound her. Upset? Yes. Aggravate? Undoubtedly. Frustrate? To be certain! But damaging her had never been his intention, as good a job as he did to hide such a weakness in his character. His words but a moment before had been delivered in the general spirit of their friendship; it had been their way for as long as he could remember, and it had never occurred to him to set aside the immature barbs of their childhood once they had crossed the invisible barrier into adulthood. And, he consoled himself, if it had ever occurred to her then she hid it rather well herself.

But the forgiveness she asked of him was uttered entirely devoid of the usual cheek with which she might have begged it of him, and that in itself was enough to cause him to suspect all was not right with her. Her next words were then dealt as though they were sparks from a a forge such as the very one he had just left; evidence of a slow, seething fire drawing from a fuel deep within her. Though he had witnessed her cutting wit and been the target of her pointed retorts more oft then not he had never seen the like of her temper as it was now. For a long moment he simply looked up at her through the growing darkness, taking stock of her in a way which he had never done before. A man with a keen eye, he liked to think part of his shrewdness in business was born of knowing those he went into partnership with. He had never seen this side of Charlotte Delaford, and that told him -- in one very unsettling moment -- that though he had known her all her life, he didn’t know her near as well as he had thought he had.

The frown that creased his brow, then, was one of genuine concern and not the usual expression that heralded his usual spouting of hot-aired opinions. His green eyes traversed her face, still recognisable in the dimming light though for how long was anyone’s guess. As summer faded into autumn the days would grow inevitably shorter, his rides would take place earlier. It seemed something akin to fate which had seen her riding so far afield from Hadleigh without knowing, and his own reason for being abroad at this time of evening was just as ludicrous as her having lost her way. Unthinkingly he reached out to grasp Lavinia’s bridle by the cheek-strap, pulling her head closer to him as she attempted one last prance. His other hand came up to stroke the creature’s finely arched neck, though his regard was all for her mistress.

“Are you alright?” he asked her seriously.

[MISS CHARLOTTE DELAFORD]

The irony that she should hope to have a role dramatically filled by the other in this scenario passed by Charlotte rather like a river overflowing its banks. High emotion could not be relied upon to be logical in this instance and certainly her wish to have something against which she might collide must by its very nature compel her to being extraordinarily contrary. That Mr Goulding failed to fulfill this basic task for her only went further towards earning him the edge of her cutting discontent. She ought to have noticed that it was he – so unusually about at this time – that had found her in what could only be called distress, though she would undoubtedly rail against that as well. She ought to have been struck by the startling difference in his approach to her in light of it.

She ought to have done a great many things; but Charlotte had never been particularly successful at doing what she ought.

So, instead, Miss Delaford scoffed at the kindness offered to her in the approaching Summer’s eve, in a manner that would have earned the rarest of things had her brother been privy to it – a true expression of his disappointment in her. She was not generally given to meanness, her tendency for honesty largely capped by a genuine heart, and it was most undeserved by this gentleman who – while he could not deny his guilt in plaguing her constantly – had offered her far more in this moment than he would have to many others amongst their acquaintance.

Indeed, had James seen it, he might have had a great deal to say on the matter.

As it was, her scoff – an instinctual reaction beyond anything truthful – was followed swiftly by a hesitation as he approached her with a look that unsettled her all the more. When she did speak, it was on the heels of an uncertainty quickly hidden and all the more spiteful for it. “Oh, I am perfectly well, though it is an odd thing indeed for such a huntsman to so suddenly show interest in the well-being of its prey,” it was a strange occurrence, rather a truthful enquiry beneath the tide of her misplaced anger, “was it not mere seconds ago that you accused me of trespass?”

She would hear her words later in the moment and admit to a strangeness to hersalf that added to the mixing of surreality about his action, a certain lack of understanding as the words left her mouth – only enhanced by the lack of understanding surrounding an encounter she could so frequently rely upon to be what it always was. It unnerved her all the more. “In fact,” she struck again, expressing her set disappointment at his gesture in light of what she had expected from him, “that you should show anything but a thinly-veiled disdain has me thoroughly perplexed! What business has a gentleman such as yourself with such a question?”

[Mr Nicholas Goulding]

Were he the kind of foppish young dolt who went about offering his compliments to every undeserving sort of person he clapped eyes on -- or professing to be concerned with the wellbeing of others when he was only furthering his own advances -- then Nicholas might have been able to better please the lady dealing down her judgement of him. As it happened, he only ever offered those compliments he could not unequivocally avoid, and he felt no need to mask his preferences for pleasing only himself by pretending to be thoughtful. Anyone might be offended by his begrudgingly offered appreciation, therefore, but anyone who knew not the value implicit in his true regard for them might not have known the man himself very well at all.

His expression did not shift for several moments as she scoffed and spoke down to him, nor did he move away from his position of duty by the head of her mount. At first, he almost interpreted the beginnings of her words as the same kind of jest that normally mandated how their discourse typically unfolded, but the space of one breath, as it fogged into the chilly air before him, brought a cloudy kind of clarity that he could neither deny nor be thankful for. All was not right with her, and as he examined her features from this closer angle he knew (with some new instinct perhaps born of a need to be more sensitive if not more caring towards those of the fairer sex as he now had one of his own about to protect) that she was not likely to weaken herself by speaking of it in his presence.

All of this ran through his mind with a whirring blue not dissimilar to children at play by a riverbank; her next left him feeling as though he had been knocked into the water unexpectedly. He felt weighed down by the soaked-through liabilities of his supposed familiarity with her, and he found that there was nothing to which he could cleave in order to save himself. The sheer coldness of her last left him feeling as though he needed to gasp for breath, because as she finally fell silent he could feel the wave of his own temper rising and he truly did not know whether either of them had fortitude enough to prevail against the storm that now threatened. His hands both clenched as he felt his blood run high, before he allowed it to boil over. He released her bridle and stepped back away from her in an action that was so very sudden that Lavinia started, tossing her head up sharply.

“What business indeed?” he began in an almost measured tone that betrayed the fury lurking beneath his demeanour. “I believe you have misinterpreted my intention. Am I right in assuming that there must be some drastic reasoning behind your carelessly riding about the countryside in the evenings unescorted? Or have you finally accepted your true calling as a Banshee, and are come to caterwaul my death at me?” He paused, seeming to recall the original thread of his objective. “I only meant to enquire after your health as your brother is my particular friend. I believe that if his sister has taken to committing dubious acts of lunacy, he should like to hear of it!”

[MISS CHARLOTTE DELAFORD]

Charlotte had expected all manner of response from him – had hoped even for something varied and uncertain to take her mind from lesser things – but she had not expected, at all, that he should make a silent study of her in the wake of her assessment of his unusual expression. While Lavinia had stopped her pawing at the ground and ceased her uneasy shifting of her weight, the very nervous spirit of the animal seemed to seize upon her rider, eliciting a most unpleasant feeling of strangeness within her own skin. There was something amiss about how her unleashing made her feel. She knew very well what ought to have shivered up her spine – how many times had she felt the very same in such conversation with him? – what she did not consider was this growing weight in her stomach. It would pass soon enough at the words he would unravel for her.

Though neither did Mr Goulding act as he ought in her eyes.

As he released the bridle and Lavinia’s head reared in an instant, Charlotte could not help the sharp breath that took itself in in surprise. She blinked at the movement, which seemed so much more devastating suddenly than words and – though but a second before she would not have had anything from him but argument – she found herself violently unseated by his actually leaving her standing solitary in the midst of her wild escape. He might have made mention of all the vile things in the world if he had not moved and she would likely have forgiven him, but this! His words were all but irrelevant to her as they tumbled out of him and she – for she could not have stayed up if James had tied her there with hardened twine – all but tumbled from her mount. She slid down, almost as an extension of his leaving her and followed him with a fitting rage.

“Lunacy!” she cried, aghast, allowing his own piercing remarks finally to affect her, of all the things – “Whatever my reasons for so dubiously seeking out one solitary minute, I would have thought that you of all might understand the desire for’t! Are not you the gentleman who seeks one all the day?”

While she was ever quick to regain her love for company, it should be nice to so easily rid herself of the press of all opinions save her own – so that she may believe in fullness again that she was a subject and not an object of the world. Of course, to own to’t would be foolish indeed, though the reason she felt so was a mystery that would die with the ages. No, she never would allow him to believe she envied him anything. She advanced, leaving Lavinia to remain planted in his field, growing yet more anxious at the sound of raised voices. She ignored what he said of her brother, rolling that suggestion beneath the wave of what she was now expounding and completely unsure why she was suddenly so set on uttering it.

“No, I cannot be a Banshee, for if I heralded death, I should no doubt see you welcoming such a rest from the horrid tedium of life!”

[Mr Nicholas Goulding]

“Certainly I should!” cried he, his temper coaxed into an argument he had been willing to pass over in favour of true regard for her only moments before. “No solitary minute could be as sweet as the impenetrable silence of that finality! Could a man be blamed for wanting respite from such infernal wanderings as one is subjected to in life? Damned to traverse this mortal existence without map nor compass to guide him?” He scoffed, holding one had out to her with his palm pressed against the air that separated them, as though to lend it his strength in keeping her at bay. A humourless laugh was his salvation in the end as he turned from her on his heel, intent on stalking away to find any sanctuary from the rebuff she had so brutally delivered to his tentatively exercised shred of kindness.

However, no sooner had he turned his back on her as literally as he had figuratively the moment he had released her horse, he realised that he could not be satisfied without setting her down. Having known her for as long as he had -- indeed, from her very debut into this harsh world -- he had seen how she had gone on unchecked in her discovery of it. Though well aware of the express wishes of her parents (in particular, those belonging to her mother) she did just as she pleased without a care. Despite his insufferably gentle prodding of her morals, her brother’s designs for her future held no sway over the stubbornness of her mind. Her elder sister was too malleable to be any kind of real model for her; her younger too impressionable. What choice did he have, but to be the person who would put her in her place when such an office was required?

He rounded on her, the sodden grass giving way under his boot and for a moment he thought that he might fall by virtue of the anger that hummed within him and took over nearly all of his sensibilities. Now, in this moment there would be no silence. There was no one but God to witness what would pass between them, and on such level terms he did not feel bound by restrictions of friendship with her brother nor the conventions of the society that shackled them. Such freedom was implicit in his looks as he came closer to her, so that he might fully deliver the import of his words through the growing darkness. He stopped just short of her, eyes flashing as he fought to gain enough control of his feelings to be able to talk sense enough to satisfy his conscience.

He cared nothing for the state of hers. That was between the lady herself and God.

“Do not seek to reduce me to the same kind of creature as you are, Madam,” he told her. “For no matter how desperately I keep my own company, I should not be such so ungrateful as to slight true kindness, were I to be lucky enough to be offered it.” His eyes looked between hers for a long moment, almost as though he longed to say something else, and so he did. If she were ever aware of how much it had cost him in terms of swallowing his pride against the better judgement of knowing the nature of their relationship in order to offer a sentiment which he had not offered anyone in his life, with the exception of her good brother and now his ward, she might have been more sensible for it. But she did not know, and nor would she if he ever had his way. Once the light of his experimental adventure into the real use of his dubious heart had been extinguished, it would never be renewed.

“Though I can see that I was grievously in error, in thinking that you were in need of assistance. I ought to have known that you are invincible, and mean to singlehandedly conquer the world! Neither sense nor propriety nor basic manners will lessen your stride, and no matter the recoil, you will laugh in the face of it all!” He flexed his jaw, but found that even the most heated of desires to leave it at that would not be heeded. “As you have no need for my assistance, this wretched philistine--” he pointed at his chest, “--shall leave you to your righteous cause. I pray for your glorious success, as I make my way homeward for a brandy and toast.”

He did not bow, nor take his leave of her, because-- though he had likely ensured that she would never speak with him again -- some part of him hoped against hope that she would see sense and curtail her rebellious, self-destructiveness.

[MISS CHARLOTTE DELAFORD]

We are rarely, if ever, in charge of the washes of time. Were we, we might better master its waters and sail on smoother tides. Indeed, were we merely able to read its charts, it would stand us in greater stead for the journey, for then we should not be tossed or pitched, but avoid the swells with the prowess of keen sailors. It was this very conundrum that had seized upon Miss Delaford and – dare one even suggest – Mr Goulding, very suddenly in the throes of a mid-evening squall they had not perceived off of the bow in life’s apparent doldrums. Had they ushered the weather in, or even noticed it beforehand, they might have avoided the clash, but as it was, they were tied to time’s beating waves.

It was time’s undoubted failure, for had what had been said been reserved for the proper time it might not, then, have burrowed so deeply into all the places it was not yet welcome; rather like a guest arriving months ahead of his invitation. They were, neither of them, ready for it; each of them utterly underprepared both for what must come to alter on each side and still yet for what it must mean that the other should be in possession of such affixed facts. For instead of being able to gently quell the uncertainties of a gentleman that professed to prefer death to life’s hidden paths, Charlotte could only take to her usual curiosity and make it perverse in this instance as she wondered almost impersonally what should make a man feel such a thing. She did not spare time to wonder what made Nicholas Goulding feel it, her query clinging to the fleetingly philosophical rather than tending to the deeply unsettling grief that reared up in her chest at his declaration.

Her eyes but blinked the passing shock at his outstretched hand, betraying her concern for a mere second until she began to attempt to reel in the effect. She was so set on being angry, she was offset for a moment by the desperate want to make him change his mind, make him feel the very depths of life that made it so terribly vital. Had he turned to leave her then, he might have left her with far more to think on than his oncoming lesson would rally in a thousand years.

As it was, they were bound to the continued failings of time.

Defence – indeed it must be more rightly be described as the utmost offence – cut her heart short and returned her to her earlier shield of violent discontent. It should have been difficult to withstand the attack of the unintentional, but the fact that her opponent was so well-versed in her failings had the effect of visiting upon her the utmost brutality. His taunt on true kindness struck her especially, for there is nothing that rattles so much as a cold remark that is pointedly true. What was she to do if she could not fault it? She could not have stopped to understand the pertinence of such hurt in all the most particular places, for she was so desperately in need of manning the ramparts. She stumbled at the lance, tossed so cleanly over the walls of her guard, air literally expelled from her lungs while she was left reeling for a moment as he turned his back on her in the most uncaring fashion. This was not at all the thing she had hoped for in a fight.

She affixed herself in a moment, to righting it.

While she had been inclined to allow him to leave her but a moment before, now she simply could not! Her feet found new purchase as she did, stalking after him within seconds with a revitalized anger. Should she not conquer the world? Was that not in every man’s bones? “Now, that I can better understand. How very like you,” she bit after him, dark and much quieter than her voice had previously allowed, “to descend in all your grandiose wisdom – full of bitter criticism – to humbly correct the mere mortals imprisoned below and then to ascend again with feet swifter than Hermes himself to the safety of the little enclave of your disdain. Heaven forbid you should stay to hear reply and be challenged in such assured opinions.” She paused, waiting for her words to turn him about, “For in absence of your fear, should I not celebrate the lifting of my spirits to a higher hope? Or do you merely scoff at my demands of my life because you have so few of your own?”

[Mr Nicholas Goulding]

He questioned himself as soon as he had left her side.

Unhelpful observations about the ungentleman-like way he planned to leave her – alone – in a field on nightfall came immediately to mind, try though he might to brush them aside like flimsy cobwebs sticking to his face as he navigated a path as yet unconquered. His conscience (oh yes, he did indeed possess one, though it was rarely used and quite creaky in its machinations) needled him as to the improper way he had just addressed her, no matter what justifications he could so readily call to his aid. And there, beneath it all the way a damned soul lingers in purgatory, was the very same concern for her person that had led him foolishly down this road to begin with! He had already begun to berate himself when she had come after him, and he would continue to school himself in such matters long after their conversation had finally wound itself down.

Where her rebuke ought to have censured him and made him feel even more unmanned, it only served the exact opposite purpose; he took her railing against him as a sign that she knew he was right, and meant to set her own mind at ease. For the span of a few moments he took pleasure in the liberty of ignoring her as though he meant to carry on to the house, no matter what abuse (or blunt objects) she might conjure to throw at his back. He had no rebuttal to offer in response to her sarcastic claims of his magnanimity; he believed she ought to mark his words, lest they be a prediction of her end. Eventually it was her last that stopped him in his tracks, just as she had maddeningly known it would.

He had done with this. He could not leave her to her own devices; she was too far gone in histrionics to be able to think clearly enough to see to her own wellbeing. Leaving her would also put him in an awkward position as regards his friend; he would be doing Delaford a disservice not to see to the safety of his sister. However, as honourable as his intentions may have been in attending to her, it would forever be his methods that would see Nicholas maintaining that precarious position as his own worst enemy. He stopped so suddenly that if she were close to him, she might have bumped into him unexpectedly. His temper was thoroughly up now, and he did not trust himself to speak any further on any matter with a woman such as she. With an air of a man who would brook no refusal, he set his jaw.

He walked back to Lavinia and took the poor creature’s reins in one hand, tucking his crop up under the very same arm. He then marched the horse forward, and as he passed Charlotte his free arm reached out to grasp hers. The touch was not gentle, nor was it a request; he demanded to be followed and the shortness of his breath could be heard upon the air as he struggled to regain his composure. Beginning again for the house, he resolved that there was little else to be done on the matter this evening, and he prayed to God that the morning would see some kind of light shed on the situation.

[MISS CHARLOTTE DELAFORD]

Charlotte very nearly did bump into him, her headlong charge into the flow of this afternoon’s events halted by his sudden presence for a second time. While her feet trod backward momentarily to counteract her forward motion and maintain her balance, there was absolutely no other sign of retreat about her. She had expected his barrage to be ongoing and had already prepared for a second wave to his attack with an upwardly tilted chin and a singular, hitched brow raising a challenge in advance. The tension between them rose palpably with the signs of his anger tightening about his jaw and Charlotte took to isolating those parts of his countenance that all too often betrayed his mind and what lay within it – though, if she were perfectly honest, her success must be relegated to happenstance more than proper perception, since he was so little used to giving himself away.

This instance proved to be a fine example as he defied her assumption of him and said nothing at all! Everything within her wished to cry out how utterly cruel it was! Merely stepping passed her, he plunged her into an unwelcome confusion, forcing her to clutch all the more at false signs of interpretation. Try as she might, however, she could not make him out and her failure was maddening. Words of protest placed themselves about her mouth as he took a hold of her Lavinia – what right again had he to so liberally possess a thing that was so wholly hers? – but they were ill-formed in her striving to make sense of it all. His crop under his arm gave an air of decisiveness and, though Charlotte could not properly understand why, it unsettled her into an unsteady silence as one in unholy anticipation.

And how she was rewarded with horrific justification!

For as she stood, watching him in his strangeness – huffing about as though it was he who had been all but running to follow a moment before – his intent turned towards her and, though she had only just concluded in her portrait of Lavinia as the most personal of creatures, condescended to take a hold of Charlotte in like manner! Suddenly, her relationship to her beast become wholly unpalatable as his fingers closed around her arm in presumptuous and utterly dehumanizing contempt. She could scarce believe it, never having been thus treated and it was an afternoon not only for unusual honesty and meanness of spirit, then, but also of entirely unheard-of pauses of shocked silence.

What could be said to such an act?

Her eyes grew wild and she was but steps into his aggressive will when her spirit finally reared up in rebellion, pulling her decisively from his clutches and driving the full force of her final break from propriety into him as she stared with outrage complete. How dare he handle her so? How dare he impose himself so far beyond his right? Further even than his earlier words! “You forget yourself!” It was such a very strange exclamation – especially for two who had so recently been childhood friends – “I would thank you to remember that I am neither your ward nor your property! I know not by what authority you seek to school me so soundly in the intricate failings of my character, but I neither know by what authority you seek to take command over me like some licentious brigand and I can assure you that it is infinitely more repugnant to me! I should take care with your entitlements, Mr Goulding, you may yet find yourself in territory punishable.”

The irony that she used society’s boundaries to defend herself in this regard – or indeed the virtue of the rules in place for protection from such arrogance – did not strike her at all, neither moving her to reflection on it, nor offering a purpose for this empty collapse of their rapport as it had been; and it was merely the profound hurt that remained in place. For though he had always treated her with an outward display of antagonism, at least it had always been theirs, and though he had showered her notions and actions with disdain, it had always been done on a footing that allowed her the liberty to return the action in kind! He did not think for her, he thought for himself and challenged her to react. He did not dictate her actions, he dictated only his own response to them. He did not fashion her, he allowed her space to be as she was and reserved the same right for himself and she had respected him for it!

But now –

In one swift movement, he had not only spoken contrary to that mysterious arrangement as it had been in her mind, but obliterated it with his unspeaking and entitled hand. Her words could never be enough and she tore Lavinia’s reigns from his fingers. Did he mean simply to drag her to her proper place and then graciously forgive her her sentimentality and hysteria? She could not and would not abide such a thing. She stood for a moment, wondering if more need be said on the matter, her telling face doing its job as it was so spectacularly trained to do; every inch of her violation apparent on it.

Then there, just as suddenly as her anger had flared, her zest was spent and the rabid exhaustion of argument descended on her and she could no more respond to him than she could stand where she was very much longer. The toll of her high expression was taken on her and her eyes closed with the sweeping sudden expenditure. She leaned on Lavinia’s bridle, the grey’s head dropping slightly and eliciting a concerned snort as her nose gently nudged at her rider. It seemed to rouse Charlotte – awash with an involuntary calm – and she looked up at Mr Goulding with enigmatic coolness.

“I think,” her voice was calm, though quivering slightly with the surge of her earlier reaction, “I had best take my leave of you, sir.” Though it held every appearance of civility, her address of him indicated a shift in something monumental, but though she had made her intent quite clear, she made no move to follow through on it, her hand passing the reigns to the other as she leaned suddenly against Lavinia’s shoulder.

[Mr Nicholas Goulding]

Her struggle was so predictable that he felt he could have almost set his watch by it. He made as though to catch hold of her again though restrained himself – barely - at her insistence that he took undue liberties. In the end there was little else for him to do but stand and be accosted by her misguided opinions, and he did so as though the fiercest tides the ocean could summon could crash against him and he would remain resolute. He had not been moved by her ill-founded protestations regarding life and the unfairness of it for her when they had been children. He was not likely to take up the habit now that she was mostly grown and ought to know better. That he was more repugnant to her typically would have been cause for celebration, as he sought to vex her daily and by every means possible. That he did not rejoice in this instance was, perhaps, a mark of the dissolution of their friendship.

The truth of it was that no punishment devisable by her or those she thought would seek to make him sorry for his actions could truly achieve its aim. He was so wholly governed by himself that even the long arm of the law did not trouble him overmuch; if he were ever told he was to hang by his neck until dead he would turn about the finality of the sentence and strive to meet the gallows on his own terms. He released the reins to her grip, his mouth far too dry to be of much use creating more words that she would neither hear nor heed. He could not decipher what she wanted from him, for make no mistake he did not think she had ridden this close to Haye Park without really knowing she did so.

If there had been more light, perhaps he would have noticed her sudden wilting a touch sooner. He might have seen the colour leave her cheeks, or note the way she was more stooped than she ought to have been as she bent close to her horse. He made to move and steady her involuntarily; once he caught wind of what his subconscious mind had almost committed his body to completing he immediately put a stop to it by clasping his hands behind his back. He did hear a slight waver in her voice; the encroaching twilight could not hide all of the things that would give her away. In the silence that reigned supreme following her declaration of intending to leave, Nick sighed heavily.

He was not a stupid man. Life might have been made infinitely easier for him if he had been. He knew he had let his temper and pride get the best of him this evening, and though he was not sorry for a thing he had said or done, he was sorry that he felt they must be said and done were she to become a sensible and respectable young woman. Whatever else she may think of him –he, too, could feel the changing in the atmosphere between them once she had done with her attempted dismissal – he was concerned for her. That his concern should manifest itself in the ugliest manner possible was only part and parcel of his general ineptitude as a logical member of society.

The fact remained, however, that he knew when to fold despite earlier evidence to the contrary. The more he pushed her now, the more he pushed her back onto her horse and into the night. As he would only be forced to dash back to the Park and saddle his horse so that he could follow her (and as he really wanted that brandy now), it would never do. He could call her bluff, but she was fool enough not to back down and then he would still be going for his horse. In short, there was little else for him to do except to lean in the general direction of the one thing that he absolutely loathed doing above all others.

Apologise.

He searched his mind, trying to pluck the least offensive words from his hear from a veritable chorus that longed to slip out and wound her further. “I believe we are neither of us ourselves this evening. It is for that particular reason that I wish you would walk with me to the house.” He levelled a steady gaze as her. As passionate and angry as he had been prior to this moment he, too, had now managed to stow his emotions. She could not have made it plainer that she wanted nothing more to do with him, and at present he could not wish for any furtherance of their acquaintance either. But for the sake of her brother and for the – albeit strange – friendship that had lasted between them until this night, he could not allow any real harm to come to her.

“I can send you home in the carriage; you are too distraught to ride.”

[MISS CHARLOTTE DELAFORD]

As she rested against Lavinia – steadfast as she could be in the face of the injustice of her suddenly failing strength – Charlotte felt the inevitability of her acquiescence to his harshly demonstrated wish. Before he vocalized it further, she knew she would have to follow after Mr Goulding to the Park and seek some other manner of returning home to Hadleigh. Were she to ride – she did not wish to think on it, for the admission was far too wounding a weapon, more wounding perhaps than the rest of this vicious conversation. Of things she could feel at this juncture, weakness could absolutely not be one of them. It inflamed her smarting pride all the more, but she was lacking in the vehemence, suddenly, to turn the flame to its own scorching as she had done before.

When he uttered what she knew, it drew the last of her venom into her eyes, meeting the steady gaze that seemed to seer with that finality of which they had spoken but a moment before and indeed it felt as though something had well and truly died. As he expressed his wish, she wanted nothing more than to be walking in the opposite direction to him for all her life – taking out all the bile that she had in store for her contemptible brother-in-law and placing it squarely at this gentleman’s feet. Now that he had so spectacularly proven himself to be worthy of her malevolence, she did not withhold one iota of it. Then, her hand gripped unknowingly tightly to Lavinia’s reigns at the thought.

As he concluded, highlighting the terrible reality of her situation, she stood resolute for so long as she could.

“I – I fear I may have exhausted Lavinia in the journey here,” she still could not admit that it was her failing that drove them to this – indeed any of it – and stumbled to excuse, “I should be grateful for a place to rest her until I am able to see her home.” Thus kindness she could accept for her mare, but not for herself, “I shall send word to Hadleigh, you need not trouble yourself further.”

Further than what, exactly, was something to which she did not allude.

With that, she made to lead Lavinia passed him, walking between the two with her head tucked tellingly low as she tried to avoid further contact with him. Though, oft where will interfered, providence held alternative intention and as she was about to pass him, her resolution wilted all the more and she was forced to reach out a hand and take a hold of his arm, or allow her constitution to fail her and take with it the remainder of her pride in the fall. Her breath drew in swiftly as she tried to steady herself, a lightness of head settling in earnest and driving the darkness more swiftly around her. She halted, breathed and prayed for standing strength. She could absolutely not bear it if she were to faint and give credence to every weak notion that was believed about her sex.

It was a valiant effort against the effects of a full gallop over miles of land, inadequately dressed for the ride and overflowing with high spirit. She did not thank him as she stood there, relying on his kindness, and she might have thought later that that, more than any of the factors listed, was the reason her knees gave way in time and she was forced to lean against him in full, even as she was no longer conscious to perceive it.

Quite contrary to every wish and prayer.