#general kirigan does not picnic

[jomiddlemarch]

Know your own happiness, part IV

“You were right about the folly, Miss Starr,” General Kirigan said. “I believe I heard Sir Christopher tumbling about in his grave.”

“That might only have been Farmer Morrow’s wagon. He tried to cheat the wheelwright and paid a heavy price,” Alina said. “Or rather, a noisy one.”

General Kirigan smiled, a smile Alina admitted to herself was neither patronizing nor smug, but simply an expression of unadulterated and unembarrassed amusement in response to her quip. A smile which was altogether too appealing and nothing she would have expected when she’d first seen him, his black traveling cape and closely trimmed dark beard giving him the air of a privateer or even worse, a Frenchman.

“Besides the unfortunate blight of atrocious architecture, it was quite pleasant,” he said. “The grounds here are extensive and well-managed, though I don’t mind saying I prefer a less manicured environment to ride in.”

“I was right then, you are a Romantic,” Alina said, her hands busy with her knitting needles. She was perhaps the slightest bit too effusive, for her ball of yarn began to roll away and it was only the General’s swift action that kept it from reaching the hearth. He offered it to her as solemnly as if it were a full parure of emeralds and sapphires instead of the oatmeal wool she was using to knit a jersey for her brother Mal, who’d written of the cold on the open water. He wasn’t given to complaints, so she knew it must be bitter and her stockings could last without darning a little longer.

“I’m not sure that is accurate, but I cannot entirely object,” he said.

“I would have thought you’d protest,” Alina said and he shook his head.

“I had a dream, which was not all a dream./ The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars/ Did wander darkling in the eternal space…” he recited, Lord Byron’s harrowing words uttered with the easy cadence of someone who’d repeated them so often they were known not just by heart but by soul.

“Swift as a spirit hastening to his task /Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth /Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask/ Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth…” she countered neatly with ebullient Shelley, making sure not to drop a stitch in the cable. General Kirigan’s smile only became brighter while the expression in his eyes was one she could hardly describe to herself.

“Miss Starr, will you come riding with me?” he asked quickly. Was it merely an impulse or had he rushed through the question expecting her to decline?

“You’d have a much better time with any of the other ladies,” Alina said. “Even Miss Anne is a better horsewoman than I am and I’m sure the Honorable Miss Airlie would be delighted to join you.”

“I didn’t ask your opinion of who might be the better equestrienne,” he said. “Only if you would come with me.”

“Everyone else has planned to go to on a carriage ride and have a picnic luncheon,” Alina said.

“General Kirigan doesn’t picnic,” he said, with a raised eyebrow. “We may ride after they leave and be back before they return. Picnic luncheons are tedious affairs—let Lord Nicholas and the stalwart Theodore joust with the ants while the young ladies cry out and wave their handkerchiefs in winsome alarm.”

“I don’t have a riding habit,” she said.

“Miss Eugenia is not far off your figure, if you will excuse the impertinent observation, and she cannot need hers today,” he said. “I’m sure Sukey would fetch it for you and supervise its laundering if you feel you must conceal the loan from your cousin.”

Alina bit her tongue before explaining it was not Eugenia’s pique she feared but her mother’s ire, especially if she discovered Alina had gone off, alone, with the catch of the house-party; it was not that Eugenia’s mother would consider Alina to be the object of General Kirigan’s pursuit or affections, but rather that she derailed him from giving his attention to Eugenia or even Zenobia, who might speak well of the family if she managed to engage herself to the General during the Gregory Hall house-party, and invite Eugenia and Maria to any number of splendid events where they might meet an eminent bridegroom of their own. She would have to brazen it out if Eugenia’s mother demanded to know why Alina had agreed to the General’s offer and not coaxed him to join the picnic and brazening out, other than with the General, was not her forte, but it was a bright, sunny day and she would otherwise spend it knitting, mending, and straightening up Maria’s room which made the pigsty look like a picture of utter decorum.

“All right,” she said. “But I did warn you I’m not a very good rider and we must be back before the others.”

“Like Cendrillon,” he said.

“Perrault and Byron, you are widely read indeed, General Kirigan,” Alina said.

“Until I made your acquaintance, I had found books to make the most stimulating and soothing company and they don’t balk at late nights or early wakings,” he said. Alina was somewhat taken aback by his disclosure of sleepless nights and nodded slightly.

“I have not had to contend with your same predicament, but I too have known books to be more reliable, insightful and amiable than most of those surrounding me, even my dear brother Mal when he is ashore,” she said, setting down her knitting and preparing to rise. “But you already knew that, as we’ve spoken of it before.”

As she stood, he did with admirable alacrity, another unusual experience for one who left and entered rooms without any general recognition.

“I’ll only be a few minutes,” Alina said.

“I’ll be waiting,” he answered.

“I’ve never been here before,” Alina said, looking at the old fountain with its scrim of moss obscuring the carving around the lip of the basin, the willows in a half-circle and the low stone bench set just far enough away to sit and dream to the plash of the water. The fountain was empty of everything except some white petals and it was quiet enough for the birdsong to be louder than anything else for the wind beginning to pick up.

“It’s a hidden gem, quite the opposite of the folly,” General Kirigan said. “I shouldn’t think anyone has been here in at least a decade, if not longer.”

“But you found it,” Alina said. The two horses, his colossal stallion and Eugenia’s far less imposing roan mare Dido, were loosely tethered and cropping the grass while General Kirigan leaned near enough the fountain to stain his immaculate breeches with lichen. She felt a little awkward in Eugenia’s elegant blue habit with its froth of lace at the throat and cuffs and almost wished to be back in her plain grey muslin.

“I lived in this neighborhood when I was a boy,” he said.

“No one’s mentioned that,” Alina remarked. It would have been talked about endlessly by Eugenia’s mother if she’d known but all anyone had said was that General Kirigan had met Eugenia’s father in London a few years earlier and was too splendid a personage to question about his reason for arriving at Gregory Hall.

“I must beg you to keep in in confidence, Miss Starr,” he said.

“I’m not a gossip,” she said, perhaps a bit more sharply than he deserved. He had begged after all.

“I didn’t mean to imply anything of the sort. Only that I don’t enjoy discussing that time and if it should get bruited about, I would expect to be hounded, very politely, mind you, but with infinite tenacity, by the ladies, about how I spent my time here, the health and disposition of my relations, and so on,” he said.

“And it would be so terrible to have to revisit that time?” Alina asked. “You did choose to come to Gregory Hall and I know for a fact that you didn’t receive an invitation because I was the one who wrote them all out.”

“You have a very clear hand, very charming,” he said. “I saw the letter to Harte.”

“Did you make wishes at the fountain, when you were a boy?” she said, deciding to speak aloud the words that would haunt her at night if she didn’t utter them, no matter how dark his eyes were or how oddly vulnerable the angle of his bent neck.

“All the time, though I never had a coin to through in. And I wished, how ardently, that I could be anything other than who I was,” he said, answering the question she would not have dared to ask. “To have any other name, to be any other boy, poor, friendless, unknown.”

“No one could suspect it of you now, sir,” Alina said. “To find you wealthy, sought-after, renowned. It is quite the accomplishment.”

“And yet, I remember that feeling better than what I had for tea yesterday, that yearning,” he said and there was no hint of disguise in his tone, no cool distance from the emotion he described. “Do you ever wish to be other than you are, Miss Starr?”

“Surely I shan’t be caught out so easily,” she said. “For if I admit to it in the slightest degree, you will only offer me your hand and name again, a transformation far easier than the one you must have performed for yourself, and thus far more perilous.”

“I wasn’t trying to trick you,” he said softly. “I only wondered if anyone as fine as you could ever have felt as I did.”

“How could I not?” she replied, just as quietly. “For my soul is pinned to me as a butterfly to the page, no matter how I might long to fly.”

Whatever Aleksander might have said next was lost in a sudden gust of wind and then the low, groaning sound of thunder not too far off.

“We should return to Gregory Hall,” she said. “Before it begins to rain in earnest.”

It was too late. They were too late, rather, to escape the storm that swept away the enameled blue sky, dashing it to pieces like one of Eugenia’s mamma’s prized pearlware cups knocked to the floor. General Kirigan hurried to help Alina onto Dido, so quick his hands barely seem to grasp her waist though she felt them, warm and sure, and then he leapt upon his own horse and they began to gallop across the fields, the rain rapidly soaking through Eugenia’s borrowed habit. General Kirigan took care to pace his more powerful stallion to Dido’s speed but nothing he could have done would have prevented the mare from missing her footing on a slippery patch, rearing, and throwing Alina off. Alina wished she might have said it was only her pride that was injured, but somehow she managed to land directly on her left ankle and though she did not weigh much, it was enough to make her cry out.

“Bloody hell, Al—Miss Starr! Are you hurt? You’re hurt,” he exclaimed, dismounting and coming to her side in the blink of an eye, heedless of the rain, the muddy turf, her entirely ignominious appearance.

“It’s nothing—”

“That’s the first lie you’ve ever told me and I insist it be the last,” he said, scrutinizing her intently, from the sodden plume of her hat to the way she’d curled around her foot. “That damned horse has ridden off to Gregory Hall—you’ll ride with me and then we’ll send for the doctor and pray you don’t become ill—”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” she said, trying to heave herself into an upright position and crying out again at the sharp pang, then suddenly silent as General Kirigan picked her up and carried her to his patiently waiting stallion, his arms strong and yet gentle around her, her face nestled against his chest.

“Up you go,” he said, settling her at the front of his saddle and then coming up behind her without any evidence of any particular effort. He took up the reins with one hand, leaving his other arm wrapped around her. “If I keep you close, I can let Mantus go at full speed and we’ll be out of the rain sooner. I mean only to keep you safe, not to take liberties with your person.”

Alina knew she should make a witty retort, counter him neatly in some way that emphasized the boundaries between them, but she was wet and cold and growing wetter and colder, her ankle throbbed horribly and it would be excruciating to get her boot off without cutting it off and General Kirigan’s posture and tone spoke only of respect and care; if she suspected she would still be safe in a looser embrace, if she could still have heard him without his lips so near to her temple, his breath soft on her cheek, she could hardly quibble and couldn’t find it in herself to rue it.

“All right,” she agreed. “Do what you will—”

“Only what I must, Miss Starr,” he answered.

Evidently, that required carrying her through the front door of Gregory Hall in his shirtsleeves, both of them soaking wet, and all the way up the stairs to her bedroom, calling for hot tea and broth and brandy heated with a poker, the doctor and not the apothecary, and a fire to be laid in Miss Starr’s room, no matter what her usual accommodations were. Alina could only be thankful the picnicking party had not returned, the staff who watched General Kirigan’s imperious procession through the house were few, and that for once, she would be completely and properly warm. She told herself it had nothing to do with the look in General Kirigan’s eyes and she almost believed it was the truth.