But Mark knew what a good sheepdog meant to these men. Not just income, but companionship, friendship, the difference between a hardscrabble life and comfort. It was as if the man had offered him his firstborn child.
“Mr. Taunton, I came to Shepton Mallet to think…to think on an opportunity that presented itself to me. You see, I’ve been asked to join the Commission on the Poor Laws.”
Taunton, for all the dirt he carried, nodded sagely. “That’s…an honor,” he said, his mouth twitching.
Mark rubbed his forehead. “You mean it’s a nuisance. I’m not a proponent of the Poor Laws, and the Commission has bungled the administration worse than Parliament. I’ve no wish to spend my time attending to details like the allotment of gruel at workhouses around the country.”
Taunton drummed his fingers against his knee. “If it’s a mess, mayhap you could clean it up. Happen they could use a good man.”
“I know. It’s the only reason I haven’t turned the offer down flat.”
And people—important people—would listen to him if he said the system was falling to pieces. He could make a difference. He’d been granted a measure of popularity by fate; he had an obligation to use it to do good. He just wished it didn’t sound like such an ever-loving chore.
“But, you see, if I accept the position, I’ll be traveling constantly. I’d have nowhere to keep a dog. Surely, Daisy’s pup deserves better.”
Mark looked across into a face that was slowly shuttering.
“Of course,” Taunton muttered. “You’ll be going into the finest drawing rooms. No room there for a filthy mutt.” His shoulders squared. “Well, perhaps I might be of service some other way.” He looked around the room.
Maybe Mark didn’t think of his mother’s actions as pure charity. But this man—this proud man—undoubtedly did. Mark could as soon have cut the man’s hand off as refuse the offer.
“But my brother,” he heard himself saying. “My elder brother—he’d not lock the animal up in a tiny London parlor. And I know he’d enjoy having an animal around. I was thinking just the other day that I ought to get him one.”
The man looked up, the light returning to his eyes.
“In fact,” Mark promised, “I’m sure he’d want it. And the dog would be happier with him.”
Taunton broke into a broad grin. “It needs a few days yet with its dam. But you’re right. I suppose there’d be more room to romp at Parford Manor.”
“Actually,” Mark started to say, and then realized that he didn’t need to clarify which brother he’d intended the gift for. “Actually, I won’t be visiting him immediately in any event, so a delay is just as well. Thank you. You’ve no idea what this will mean to my brother.”
Taunton gave him a jerk of a nod. “Truthfully, Sir Mark—this scarcely means anything. All these years, I’ve carried the shame of knowing I should have done more. About…about your sister. And you and your brothers. I saw what was happening, when I first came back, but didn’t dare to speak up.”
Mark sat still, not wanting to move. Not wanting to acknowledge by so much as a breath that those words reached any part of him.
Taunton continued, “Only one person in all of Shepton Mallet would have stopped that kind of wrong when it happened. And she was Elizabeth Turner.”
One nod, that was all Mark could manage.
“I always thought that what happened to you and your brothers after she passed on—that was her way of looking out for you, once she found her way round to herself again.”
“Yes.” Mark felt as if he were standing at a great distance from the conversation. “Yes. I suppose it was.” The silence grew after that, and the man took his leave.
After he’d gone, Mark wrapped his arms around himself. Sometimes he thought he was the only one of his mother’s sons who could see her clearly. She’d always been stern and earnest; devout, too. Even before she went mad, she’d had no balance, too much excess. She’d afflicted all her children with Bible verses for names, after all.
She’d seen a great deal of suffering and had thought it her duty to alleviate it. She’d also seen a great deal of sin and had railed against that, too. Mark didn’t remember his father at all, but he remembered his mother. All too well.
She’d let Hope, his elder sister, perish by neglect. She’d beaten Ash. She’d locked Smite in the cellar for…for longer than Mark could truly remember.
But Mark… Mark she’d spared. She’d not felt it necessary to cleanse the devil from his soul. She’d told him once she didn’t need to, because he alone was her son, not his father’s. That she’d seen herself in Mark, that she’d identified in him the same unwieldy imbalance that had torn her to pieces, he kept first and foremost in his mind. Perhaps that was why he’d become who he was. He’d had to prove to himself that his mother’s finest qualities—her compassion, her charity, her goodness—could be married to peace and tranquility. He wanted to prove that he could be good without going mad.
The thought of dedicating his life to the Poor Laws made him feel frenetic and unbalanced. It would be good. It would be righteous. But he didn’t want to do it.
He’d come to Shepton Mallet to find himself. Instead, he’d met Mrs. Farleigh. Mark smiled faintly and thought of her fingers, warm and curling about his. The soft pressure of her lips—he’d have wondered what he’d been thinking when he kissed her, except it was perfectly clear he’d not thought at all.
And now, he didn’t want to do good. He wanted to do it again.
London, the Commission and every gossip rag in the country could wait another week.
LONDON, IT TURNED OUT, had other thoughts.
Three days later, Mark ventured into town. He was on his way to the square to deliver another handful of letters when a familiar voice stopped him.
“Sir Mark!”
Parret was the last man Mark wanted to see at the moment. Still, the tiny man hurried over, his boots clattering over cobblestones. He held his hat to his head with one hand as he ran, lending an odd, undulating appearance to his stride. “Sir Mark. I was hoping—it’s just you and me, out here in the country.” Parret stopped a few feet before him next to the gray stone of the Market Cross, doubling over. His words spilled out between gasps of air.
“Indeed,” Mark said ironically, indicating the people around them.
But Parret appeared gratified. He removed his top hat, revealing a pate covered by a few sparse, carefully combed strings of hair, and wiped beads of sweat off with a yellowing handkerchief of doubtful cleanliness. “Perhaps you might consider an exclusive interview?”
Nigel Parret was nothing if not persistent. Mark would have admired him—or, at a minimum, felt sorry for him—except that the man published the most intrusive articles. On one particular occasion, he’d actually picked through Mark’s household trash and had published a piece in which he had explained, on rather dubious grounds, that Sir Mark preferred leg of lamb to beef.
It happened to have been true…at least, it had been true until Mark was served lamb at every dinner he’d gone to for a fortnight.
And that hadn?
??t been the worst of Parret’s sins. Three months ago, Mark had danced one dance with Lady Eugenia Fitzhaven. She had seemed a sweet girl—emphasis on girl—and he was friends with her father. It had also happened to be the supper dance, and so he’d taken her in to the meal. A hundred men in London had done the same for a hundred ladies throughout town that evening, and nobody had spoken of those conversations again. But Mark was not a hundred men. He was Sir Mark.
Of course, he’d observed the brightness of her eyes, the color of her cheeks. He couldn’t help but notice that she was utterly tongue-tied in his presence. He couldn’t prevent impressionable young girls from imagining themselves in love with him. All he could do was recognize when the infatuation started and do his best not to offer them encouragement. Girlish appreciation had a way of working itself to nothing if he offered a polite distance. It didn’t take long for most ladies to shift their attentions to a source who would appreciate it.