by Rose Lerner
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Nick said. “How do you all do?”
They assured him they were very well, except for Mrs. Humphrey, who announced, “I feel rather faint. It’s been a long time since breakfast.”
Mrs. Sparks popped up off the chest. “Oh yes, the ham.”
Nick reached for his stick and pulled himself to his feet, wondering if the creaking in his leg was audible to everyone or just him. Damn Mrs. Humphrey anyway.
“Flirt,” Miss Knight muttered.
Mrs. Sparks flushed. “I haven’t enough bread for everyone, but if you don’t mind waiting while I run to the bakery—”
“Fetch mine from the kitchen, dear,” Mrs. Pengilly said. “And bring up the jar of mustard, won’t you?”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Sparks said, not meeting any eyes at the revelation that she couldn’t afford mustard. “I’ll be right back. Pour Mr. Dymond some tea, won’t one of you?” She whisked away down the stairs.
Everyone looked at Miss Knight, who didn’t move. Mrs. Honeysett smiled brightly. “Milk or sugar, Mr. Dymond?”
“Both, thank you.”
Miss Knight sniffed, as if his preference in tea were a sign of weakness. Mrs. Honeysett’s smile broadened nervously. “Please convey our greetings and support to thy brother.”
Nick was always surprised at how deep party loyalty ran in these provincial towns. Of course Mrs. Sparks’s friends were Orange-and-Purple. He leaned down and took his tea from Mrs. Honeysett, holding the saucer awkwardly in one hand. “Thank you.”
There was a short silence, broken only by the rattling of his cup.
“My leg is rather troubling me today,” he said at last, seeing no alternative. “Sitting is easier than standing, but changing from one to the other is the worst. Mrs. Sparks will be back at any moment.”
“Have you tried wrapping it in red flannel?” Mrs. Pengilly asked. “My Harry’s knee was shattered by an angry horse, and he used to swear by red flannel when the pain was bad. But it must be red, mind.”
“Did you get that at Badajoz?” Mrs. Humphrey asked him, pronouncing the J in the English fashion. There was no reason anyone should know how to say it, and yet it always irked Nick.
“Yes.” He tried to think of something to follow that with.
Miss Starling offered timidly, “I prefer willow bark for aches and pains. But it’s most effective in a hot bath.”
Miss Honeysett shook her head. “Our maid used to be a lace-worker and has the most terrible pain in her wrists, and nothing will do for her but sticking them in a bucket of ice water.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Mrs. Humphrey said. “A man can’t fit his whole leg in a bucket. But crushing the ice and putting it in a bag, with a paper on which the verse has been written in which Christ heals the lame, is a sure remedy.”
Miss Honeysett pushed her thick glasses up her nose. “Sacrilege.”
“My valet likes to alternate hot water bottles and ice,” Nick said tentatively. “It does seem to help.”
So, when Mrs. Sparks returned with the bread and a small clay jar that Nick supposed to be mustard, they were enthusiastically swapping remedies.
She fetched a knife and some plates from her cupboard with great haste, and sat down to carve. Nick eased himself gratefully back onto the settle and drank his tea.
Mrs. Sparks was a conscientious hostess, making sure everyone had a large enough slice of ham, cutting Mrs. Pengilly’s bread for her when her hands shook on the knife, and generally managing everyone to within an inch of their lives.
“Thee’ll be a splendid mother,” Martha Honeysett said with a smile. Mrs. Sparks froze. “I always thought it a shame thee was so set on not marrying again. Doesn’t thee think it a shame, Dorothea?”
Miss Honeysett shrugged. “Marry in haste, repent at leisure, my mother always said.”
“My mother always says that if you haven’t anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” Miss Knight snapped.
Mrs. Pengilly leaned across and said in her loudest whisper to Mrs. Honeysett, “That girl must have her courses, she’s been out of sorts all morning.”
Miss Knight’s face flamed, her chalk grinding audibly against her ruler. Mrs. Sparks glared at her landlady.
“So tell me what you ladies are working on,” Nick interjected.
“We’ve brought our old clothes and scrap bags, and we’re each making a quilt to sell at the Gooding Day auction,” Mrs. Honeysett said. “The proceeds go to the poor old women and widows of the town.”
Where would he be at Christmastime? He could come to the auction, if he liked; his family would doubtless be in attendance. But Mrs. Sparks would be married.
“I’m going to make two,” Miss Starling said. “Since I’m just doing plain hexagons while you’re all doing such lovely patterns.”
“Maybe you should do hexagons, Fee.” Miss Knight took a pair of scissors and began to cut her red worsted into identically sized diamonds. “It would be easier.”
Mrs. Sparks smiled. “You don’t appreciate my artistry?”
There was a pause. Then Miss Knight’s lips curved, her sly smile the mirror of her sister’s. “The human form is notoriously difficult,” she said innocently.
Mrs. Sparks laughed and reached for a piece of newspaper, her eyes meeting Nick’s. Covetousness went through him like a shock. He wanted a home and good company. He wanted to belong here. “Helen is making a complicated and perfectly symmetrical star-shaped pattern out of hundreds of six-inch by two-inch diamonds,” she told him as she cut out a—a top hat, he thought, and pinned it in place on a sheet. “I’m doing four scenes from Belinda. See, this is the duel between Lady Delacour and Mrs. Luttridge.”
He squinted, prepared to say something polite about a jumble of cut-out newspaper—and the pattern snapped into focus. It was charming and lively and full of personality, and he could tell which figure was which. “It’s splendid. You must sew tiny buttons onto their coats.”
“Now that is clever.” She smiled. “I know they aren’t perfectly in proportion, but I need the quilt to tell a story if it’s to hold my attention until it’s done.”
“Last year she did scenes from Otranto.” Mrs. Honeysett grinned at her. “It was beautiful, of course, but we were terrified it wouldn’t sell.”
Mrs. Sparks’s eyes met his, glinting with laughter. “Conrad being crushed by the giant helmet was a little gory.” A room full of her friends, and she chose him to share her amusement. It wasn’t fair, that he should like her more with every word she spoke.
“People like a novelty.” Mrs. Pengilly struggled to manage her scissors with arthritic fingers. Mrs. Sparks laid her own quilt by to help her. “I could do it myself just last year,” the old woman said in frustration.
“I know,” Mrs. Sparks said.
Mrs. Humphrey carefully snipped the sleeves off an old dress. “Scenes from Byron would fetch more.”
“Yes, but Phoebe doesn’t like Byron. Unaccountable woman.” Mrs. Honeysett gave her friend a teasing poke.
To his surprise, Mrs. Sparks glanced at him and blushed. “Maybe I was too hasty,” she said haltingly. “It’s the worst sort of snobbery to condemn a book without reading it, merely because it’s popular.”
“She tried to get it from the library on Monday, only we haven’t enough copies,” Miss Knight revealed.
Mrs. Sparks’s blush deepened, and she bent her head low over her work. Monday. Not long after their first meeting. “I would be happy to loan you my own,” Nick said.
“I’ll wager he’s got the real thing, on nice paper,” Mrs. Pengilly said. “Not these provincial printers’ copies, full of errors in the typesetting.”
Mrs. Sparks set down the scissors with a clack. “Not in Jack’s.”
“Maybe not,” Mrs. Honeysett said, “but Mr. Sparks is only publishing one page a week, inserted in the Intelligencer. Thee couldn’t expect us to wait until he’d got through it.”
Nick had come for a
reason—but there were ham sandwiches and a roomful of Byron readers, and his leg could use some rest. They asked him a great deal about Spain, since it was the setting of Canto I, but he found he rather liked talking about it when the focus wasn’t on his own supposedly heroic experience. It was another half an hour before he said reluctantly, “Mrs. Sparks, might I speak with you for a moment on election business?”
She set aside Mrs. Pengilly’s pattern. “Of course.” She glanced at her bedroom door, hesitated, and said, “We can talk in the kitchen. Excuse us, everyone.”
Mrs. Humphrey had mostly stayed out of the conversation once she had realized Nick wasn’t going to talk about battles, but now she gave him a hard look and said to Mrs. Sparks, “Don’t give up your independence unless the money is very good indeed.”
There was a very awkward silence.
“Really, Mrs. Humphrey,” Mrs. Honeysett said with a glance of pure dislike. “Thee makes it sound some sort of sordid exchange. Phoebe is merely accepting help setting up a new household.”
“Indeed.” Miss Honeysett’s eyes were skeptical behind her glasses. “Marriage is a sacrament. Remember the moneylenders in the temple.”
“I’ve always wondered”—Mrs. Pengilly’s voice followed them down the stairs—“why were they selling doves? As pets, or to eat? I suppose they’d make as fine a pie as pigeons.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Don’t mind Mrs. Humphrey,” Mrs. Sparks said. “She’s a dreadful woman.”
“She seemed to have your best interests at heart,” Nick said.
Mrs. Sparks snorted. “Do you know she goes through the clothes we bring and selects the least worn sections for her own quilt? She isn’t even making it for herself. There is something almost comically mean in pettiness with nothing to gain.” She took a seat at the kitchen table. They’d done laundry in here a scant week ago. He hadn’t known her yet, but he’d liked her already. It wasn’t fair, that she wasn’t a gentlewoman and that they couldn’t be friends.
Or lovers, he thought traitorously, taking a chair. Sitting didn’t help the ache in his leg. It would stop hurting when it was good and ready, hot water bottles and Biblical verses notwithstanding. Life wasn’t fair, and anyway who was to say he deserved better?
“It isn’t fair,” she said, echoing his thoughts. “You walk in here and an hour later, you’re getting along with my friends better than I do.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, startled.
“I’m not. You have a silver tongue.”
“I’m just friendly.”
She took up the poker and jabbed at the fire. “Maybe that’s all it is. Maybe I’m not friendly.”
“They’re your friends. They were only being polite to me. You can’t really be angry with me because I got on with your friends.”
She shook her head. “I get along with you better than I do with them, too. I daren’t confide in any of them about Helen, and you—I thought it was because you were just passing through. Like talking out loud to a bird on the windowsill.” She glanced at him, looking embarrassed. “Wait. Other people do that, don’t they? Talk to birds?”
“I don’t know. I do sometimes, though.”
She pointed at him accusingly. “There you go again. You make people feel comfortable. As if you understand them. It’s not fair.”
She made him sound like his family. He wasn’t like them. But—people did confide in him, didn’t they? He’d never had dinner alone at an inn or taken a sea journey when someone or other hadn’t regaled him with their whole history. He’d thought he must just have that sort of face. “That isn’t why you confided in me,” he said, suddenly angry. “We share something. You know we do.”
She chewed at the corner of her lip in frustration. It was a tic she shared with her sister. “Maybe that’s what isn’t fair,” she said at last.
She was angry for the same reason he was: that this couldn’t go anywhere. He was a bird on the windowsill. He hated this feeling, this shut-out, gnawing envy he’d felt all his life. All around him were boats on their way somewhere, while he drifted rudderless. Until he’d joined the army and been given a purpose.
He’d tried to give himself a purpose last night, and he’d already failed in it. “My silver tongue was no good against Mr. Jessop.”
She sighed. Her perfect breasts, pillowed on her perfect round arms and dainty hands, rose and fell. “What did he say?”
Nick recounted the conversation and passed her the five pounds for Jeffrey. Mrs. Sparks pocketed it with only the shortest of lingering glances at the crisp bill and wrinkled her nose. “‘I’d respect him more if he stood on his principles’! Who condemns a man for trying to compromise with him?”
“Mr. Jessop didn’t seem much for compromising.”
“He’s a stubborn old son-of-a-bitch,” Mrs. Sparks said darkly. “Pardon my language.”
“Pardoned.”
“Did you know he voted against the first three Slave Trade Bills?”
“I did know,” Nick said. “My mother told us all about it at the time.”
“Of course.” She looked at him uncertainly. “Did she ever talk to you about my father?”
He nodded. “She said he was well liked. That he was good with words, and that his jokes were funny.” He hesitated, but told her, “She said he was stubborn. And I believe nearly all our conversations during the last election contained some mention of how much she wished he were still with us.”
He had thought it the most callous, self-serving way to consider a dead man—as a great loss to the Orange-and-Purples—but Mrs. Sparks smiled proudly. “He was splendid at shoring up waverers. He made everyone feel so sure, and safe.” Her smile faded. “I wish he were here.”
“I would have liked to meet him.”
“He would have liked you.” She gazed out the window, distracted. “He would have known what I ought to do about Jack and Miss Jessop.”
He heard the note of self-recrimination in her voice. “I think what you really mean is that you’re angry with yourself for not knowing.” She shrugged. “It’s a sticky situation. You aren’t obliged to be omnipotent, you know.”
She turned back to look at him, mouth curving reluctantly. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
She ignored him, thinking. “Listen, if Mr. Jessop won’t budge, there’s no need for Jack to keep up his neutrality. I’ll pass along Miss Jessop’s message and money to him. I’ll tell him how earnestly you tried to help. Then—Tuesday is press day. I’m going to go and help Jack. If you turn up, you can talk to him about his votes, and about printing the Orange-and-Purple circulars again, and all that.”
It was exactly what he was supposed to want, so he smiled and said, “Thank you, I’d love to.” But he wished they hadn’t become voter and patron again quite so soon.
Once the committee had packed up their work and left, Phoebe forced herself to spend some time writing. The story about Ann wouldn’t conclude. She decided it had become too personal, and wrote three pages of a new Improving Tale about a young wife who didn’t show proper consideration for those less fortunate.
You’re just giving up on Ann and her baby, then?
It was laughable to feel guilty about abandoning a product of her own imagination. Really, she ought to just let both of them die in that ditch; it was the properest ending for an Improving Tale. Authors did it all the time. Phoebe had never been able to. She always felt obscurely that she had created them and that therefore their happiness was her responsibility.
You aren’t obliged to be omnipotent, Mr. Dymond had said. Was she so stuffed with pride that she really believed she could solve any problem? That if she failed at anything, it was a fault in her nature and not mere human fallibility?
She had always felt that her father could solve any problem. She had known that if she needed him, he would move heaven and earth for her.
She’d wanted to live up to his example, to make other people fe
el as safe and loved as he had made her feel. Because—she saw it now—she had been so lost without him. She couldn’t bear to feel so helpless, or for anyone else to feel that way. She had wanted to fill the hole he left in the world.
It was natural for a child to view her father as omnipotent. But only God really was. Maybe what helped people was just the knowing you’d do the best you could for them.
It had been her father’s love, not his power, that had made her feel so warm and happy. But it was her love she’d been keeping wrapped up tight in her heart all this time. It was her love that Helen and Jack and Will had wanted. And she hadn’t known how to give it to them, ever since she’d been unable to keep her child safe.
She didn’t understand what was changing. She didn’t understand how Mr. Dymond made her want to love again, made her feel all at once as if she had love to give, as if her love was worth having. She’d known him a week, for heaven’s sake!
He was right, though. They shared something, and she knew it. But it didn’t matter. She had an appointment with Mr. Moon in a few hours. Any love she had to give to a man, she’d be giving to him, or to Mr. Fairclough.
At the moment she almost felt as if she could do it.
She felt less optimistic after her visit to the Honey Moon. Mr. Moon had let her into the back of the closed shop with a smile, but he showed little interest in The Newgate Calendar despite the many gruesome descriptions of shocking crimes (though he had asked to borrow it for Betsy, who apparently combed the papers every week for good murders). Phoebe had barely managed to swallow his chocolate puffs. If she didn’t find another Whig soon, she’d have to marry Mr. Fairclough.
The thought wasn’t quite as distressing as it should have been, especially when she thought about his daughter.
On the way home, she knocked on the printing office’s shutters to pass on Miss Jessop’s message and money, and tell Jack about Mr. Dymond’s conference with Jessop. He was very interested in the message, but took the news with surprising lack of discouragement. “I like Nicholas Dymond” was all he said, sounding distracted as he circled something in pencil on the proof of page two of the Intelligencer. “Looks like he’d blow over in a stiff wind, but he’s got ballast. I wish he were running instead of Mr. Anthony.”
