Here Comes a Candle by Jane Aiken Hodge

Author:Jane Aiken Hodge
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

TEN

They made good time on the way home, returning to Penrose just as the shadows were lengthening and the day’s sounds dying toward dusk. Sarah had fallen asleep with her head in Kate’s lap, and Jonathan picked her up gently so as not to wake her. “Put the carriage away, Job,” he said, “and have the boy get out my horse. I’m riding to Boston tonight.”

“Yassuh, Mr. Jonathan, but I’ll gladly drive you if you’d liever.”

“No, thanks. The ride will do me good after sitting in the carriage all day.”

“You’ll take something to eat before you go?” Kate asked, and then wished she had not.

“No, thank you. I’ve no doubt there will be a supper for me in Boston. Arabella keeps open house these days.” And indeed, when he rode into the Tontine Crescent soon after eight o’clock, it was to see flares burning at the door of his house and a carriage in the act of setting down guests.

Arabella greeted him with her usual cool aplomb, almost as if he had been another guest. “Jonathan! I hardly expected you so late.”

“And not dressed for a party either. You must forgive me.”

“Oh, it’s nothing; just a few friends and a little music.” But the house was decorated throughout with flowers from the Botanical Gardens and the “few friends” kept on coming until there must have been thirty or forty of them in the two big rooms that could be thrown together on the main floor.

Downstairs, Jonathan found the usual lavish spread of buffet food for the gentlemen, and found too an old Harvard friend of his already sampling the lobster and pink champagne.

“Josiah, you’re the very man I hoped to see.” Jonathan refilled his friend’s glass and helped himself more modestly to porter.

“Delighted to hear it, Jon. What can I do for you?” He was in that happy state when sobriety is just ebbing away, and nothing much matters.

“You know everyone in town, Josh: tell me about an Englishman—a prisoner of war called Manningham.”

“Charles Manningham?” Josiah swept the now crowded room with his wide half-focused stare. “Must be upstairs still-—devil of a ladies’ man! Handsome, I reckon, if you like them long-haired and stinking of scent. Well—you know the English. Good family, to hear him talk, but short on the dollars—you know the kind of thing—take a lift in your hackney—take just about anything, if you ask me, and not much giving. Not much sign of getting his exchange, either, and going back to the fighting. Well, can’t say I blame him for that: nothing elegant about what’s going on up there at Niagara: I reckon he’s had enough. Besides—he’s got ... interests here. Plenty of them. No need for you to worry, Jon—” This was the formidable frankness of the near-drunk. “It’s marriage he’s after, and the more dollars the better.”

“I see. And will he succeed, do you think?”

“Bound to, if he can just hang on here long enough. Far as I can see, the girls are all mad for him: ‘Such an air,’ you know, ‘such manners.

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