All for Love by Jane Aiken Hodge

plan to have a parcel of slaves smuggled north out of Florida blown to the Spanish authorities. Though I don’t know what else he expected when he talked about it all over town before he left. I heard of it from a dozen sources and I have no doubt that you had it from the man himself. How else could so devoted a cavalier have explained his expected absence from your party? I suppose he was invited, by the way?’
    ‘Good God, how should I remember?’ They were back in their seats, the curtain was rising for the farce, she had no further chance to ask about that significant exchange of glances between the two men. Probably she was refining too much upon it. It was true that southern gentlemen had an appalling reputation for fighting duels over the merest trivialities, but Hyde was not like that. He was civilised.
    Their seats had been chosen near one of the entrances, so that they were able to slip out while the house was still ringing with applause as much for Mr. Jay’s theatre as for the performance itself, which, in so far as she had noticed it, Juliet had thought indifferent enough. ‘I cheated, I’m afraid.’ Hyde led her over to his sulky which was waiting in the lane behind the theatre. ‘Thank you, Satan, I’ll drive.’ He laughed, as he helped her up. ‘Avoiding Scarbrough’s red carpet as best I may. But as host and hostess it strikes me that we have a duty to be there first.’
    ‘A good many other people seem to have cheated too.’ The square and the roads round it were thronged with carriages.
    ‘Yes. I thought that carpet one of Scarbrough’s wilder ideas. I wish he had less imagination and more bottom, that man. I am sometimes afraid that he may come to grief.’ And then, quickly. ‘I should not have said that. For God’s sake forget it, and, for mine, mention it to no one.’
    ‘Of course not.’ Lucky for him, she thought, that it was to her, not to Josephine, that he had made this rash confidence. ‘But Hyde,’ she went on. ‘Your affairs are so mixed up with his. What about the steamship, the Savannah ?’
    ‘Oh, I’m not too anxious about that,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I don’t see how she can fail to be a money-spinner. Besides, my dear, you must remember that I am not merely a man of business. I have Winchelsea behind me. Which reminds me,’ they were entering Oglethorpe Square now. ‘I have been away from there altogether too long. Will it suit your book, my love, if we plan to move there tomorrow, or at latest the day after?’
    ‘What?’ Plans fell around her ears like castles of cards. ‘So soon?’
    ‘It’s three weeks to the day until Christmas.’ He slowed the horses outside the brilliantly lighted entrance to the house. ‘The first Christmas I shall have celebrated at Winchelsea since 1814. Can you not understand how I long to be there? And to have you there at my side,’ he added, as he jumped down to anticipate the servant who had come forward to help her alight. He took her arm to lead her up the curving stairway to the front door. ‘Say you will accompany me tomorrow? Please?’
    It was, extraordinarily, a word she had never heard him use before. His arm in hers was another kind of plea, one she would not quite let herself understand. No time to be thinking about that. No time even to wonder how in the world she and Josephine would make the exchange which was due any day now, if she had been carried off to Winchelsea. Moses, the old butler, was waiting for them in the lighted doorway, beaming all over his face. ‘You’re as good as your word, sir; you said you’d be first, and first you is.’
    ‘Well?’ Hyde smiled at Moses but held her back just for a moment.
    ‘Of course, if you wish it.’ What else could she say.
    ‘Good.’ He led her into the lighted hall. ‘Naturally we are first, Moses. Is all ready? But I know I need not ask.’ And then, to Juliet. ‘Up with you quick, my dear, and take off your cloak. Our guests are beginning to arrive