Love & Folly by Sheila Simonson

Author:Sheila Simonson [Simonson, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Romance, Regency Romance
ISBN: 9781601740663
Publisher: Uncial Press
Published: 2008-10-17T07:00:00+00:00

14

Johnny and Colonel Falk had been pent in the book room for a week, the colonel working away at his history and Johnny bringing correspondence for the Canadian charity up to date. Colonel Falk tossed the letter he had been reading on the table and walked to the book room window. "Emily and her father have come to cuffs over McGrath." He raised the sash and a draught of balmy air disturbed Johnny's papers.

Johnny laid a book on the stack of letters. "McGrath? Is he drinking again?" McGrath had struck Johnny as a hardened toper. Scarcely the manservant for a genteel household.

Falk leaned against the frame of the window, staring down into the Square. The weather was exceptionally fine. "It seems McGrath and Dassett--that's Sir Henry's coachman--have been testing each other's capacity for Blue Ruin belowstairs every night. Sir Henry wants McGrath's head on a platter."

"I daresay you don't like to dismiss McGrath because of his wife." Pegeen McGrath was the children's, nurse.

Falk said coolly, "I don't want to dismiss McGrath because he served me faithfully for thirteen years."

"Oh. Was he your bâtman?"

"More than that." Falk sounded as if he might, for once, launch into reminiscence, but he didn't. After a moment he closed the window, turned, blinking, and came back to the table. His lectern reposed at one end and Johnny sat at the other.

The colonel began to mend his pen, He made an awkward business of it, and Johnny wondered if he ought to help.

Before he could rise, Falk had dipped the pen in the inkwell and struck out a line. "I'll have to think of something for Jerry. Have you had your fill of publick executions?" Johnny had risen at dawn that morning, which was May Day, to witness the execution of Thistlewood and the chief Cato Street conspirators. The colonel had declined to join him.

"I left before the hangman did his work," Johnny confessed.

"Wise man."

"It was shocking--the crowd, I mean. Some of them were respectable people."

Falk's lip curled.

"Well-dressed families," Johnny said indignantly, "men and women and children, gossiping and chatting as if they were at a picnic."

"I hear the more advantageous posts of observation went for half a crown."

"More. Much more."

"It must have been a great consolation to Thistlewood to know his end met with genteel applause. Such is civilisation."

"My father," Johnny offered, "says spectacles of that sort are a salutory deterrent to crime."

Falk frowned. "Have you ever witnessed a flogging?"

"No."

"I was compelled to in India. My colonel marched us out in hollow square and forced us to watch every bloody blow. It made me sick as a cat, and I swore I'd resign my commission sooner than order such a punishment. Fortunately, I was not required to." He scowled at his manuscript. "In my opinion flogging and hanging are no deterrent to hardened offenders. They haven't the imagination to fancy themselves at the gridiron or they wouldn't act brutally in the first place. The others, the bystanders, are merely sickened--except for the ghouls, your respectable men and their respectable families who pay to see wretches suffer.

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