A Woman's Estate

by Roberta Gellis

  “My dear Lady Lydden,” the solicitor exclaimed, “of course you are free to live at Rutupiae Hall or in any of the other houses, including the town house—Lydden House—in London. And naturally the staff must be under your direction, although…er…I hope that…ah…you will not wish to make too many changes. As to ordering…oh dear…er…garments for Lord Lydden, I…such matters are generally left to the valet. And the servants’ wages would be attended to by the bailiff, the butler and the housekeeper, depending—”

  “Mr. Deedes,” Abigail said, controlling herself with an effort, “I have no intention, I assure you, of turning Rutupiae Hall upside down or, indeed, of making any changes until I am fully familiar with the place and the servants. These questions were only meant as examples. I wish to know in general, on the one hand, what I am free to do on my own and what expenditures it is fitting for me to authorize—in my son’s name, of course—and, on the other hand, for what actions or expenditures I must seek Sir Arthur’s or your authority. In other words, I wish to hear the gist of the articles of the late Lord Lydden’s will that apply when the heir is a minor.”

  Mr. Deedes blinked. Abigail’s voice was still gentle, but there was a force behind it that made him more nervous than Hilda Lydden’s tirades. “The articles of the will?” he repeated.

  “Yes,” Abigail said, so exasperated that she completely forgot her intention of discovering what she needed to know without antagonizing the solicitor. “In fact, if there is no specific legal prohibition, I would like to have a copy of the whole will to read and study.”

  “But surely,” Mr. Deedes protested faintly, “there is no need for your ladyship to trouble herself with such a complex document. I assure you that your ladyship’s needs and those of Lord Lydden and his sister will be provided for amply. And this is a dreadful season to be in London—so hot and oppressive. Will you not allow me to arrange transport for you to Rutupiae Hall? Sir Arthur will explain to you—”

  “I cannot see why Sir Arthur should be required to travel heaven knows how far—”

  “Ah, how thoughtful you are!” Mr. Deedes cried with the enthusiasm of relief. “But it is no distance at all. Stonar Magna—that is Sir Arthur’s most important country seat—is no more than ten minutes’ walk from Rutupiae Hall. Sir Arthur is your nearest neighbor. How stupid of me not to realize that you did not know and to fail to mention it. No wonder you have been in so much doubt about these little details, thinking it might be days or weeks before Sir Arthur could be made aware of any difficulty. No, no, he will be instantly able to help you.”

  “I see,” she remarked in a colorless voice.

  Abigail had forced herself to speak calmly, but she was growing alarmed. She did not like the resistance Deedes was showing to discussing the will with her, nor his anxiety to hurry her off into the country where somehow relatives Francis had never mentioned were established in the house he had spoken of frequently and where this Sir Arthur lived so conveniently close. She was alone with two young children in a country where no one knew her. Who would care if they should all disappear?

  A wave of panic swept over Abigail, receding only when she recalled that she was not friendless. She did have a friend in England, Alexander Baring, nor was he a negligible person. Alexander Baring was the head of the great banking house of Baring Brothers and a Member of Parliament. She had met him at the home of Commodore Nicholson, Albert Gallatin’s father-in-law, who also lived on Williams Street, and had later several times entertained him and his American-born wife. Baring was a kind and courteous man and had offered to facilitate her orders and payments to French and English booksellers by doing the foreign banking necessary for her bookshop, despite the fact that ordinarily such small accounts were more of a nuisance than a profit. And over the years, their correspondence had contained many personal friendly notes amid the business matters.

  “Will that suit you, Lady Lydden?”

  Abigail became aware that Mr. Deedes had been expounding some plan while her mind had first recoiled in fear and then found an answer. She shook her head. “I cannot commit myself,” she replied, curving her lips into a smile. “We only arrived in London late yesterday and I came to you immediately, but I must first inform my friend Mr. Alexander Baring that I am here in England. I am afraid that my letter to him, which went at the same time as the one I wrote to you, has also been lost. Mr. Baring has shown me much kindness, and it would be extremely rude for me to leave the city without informing him of my arrival.”

  Mr. Deedes’ face immediately displayed relief and pleasure. “How fortunate!” he exclaimed. “I happen to know that Mr. Baring is still in town—you do mean Mr. Alexander Baring of Baring Brothers, do you not?”

  Abigail nodded, her smile warming as she realized that her fears must have been bred out of anxiety. Mr. Deedes could not have any nefarious purposes if he was so delighted at her friendship with Alexander Baring. And, indeed, on the following afternoon when she was invited to tea with Mr. Baring and his wife, Anne Louisa, she discovered that her suspicions of both Mr. Deedes and Sir Arthur St. Eyre were totally unfounded.

  “No, no,” Baring said, smiling, when she asked if Sir Arthur were the kind of executor who would plague her, particularly about Victor’s upbringing. “I don’t know him very well, although he’s a fellow M.P. and a fellow Whig—though heaven knows he seems to spend more time attacking the party than supporting it—but I’m sure that he will be more than happy to leave you to your own devices. He’s a bachelor, no children of his own, and I shouldn’t think he has much interest in them.”

  “I’m glad of that,” Abigail said, sighing with relief. “I know that Victor will have a lot to learn—and so will I—but I don’t want anyone sneering at him.”

  Anne Baring laughed. “I don’t think anyone will sneer at Victor, Abby. Boys are much the same whether—”

  A loud crash from somewhere outside the open windows of the small drawing room in which they were sitting interrupted her. Abigail jumped at the noise, but her hostess merely shrugged her shoulders and then laughed again when guilty whispers drifted in.

  “I suspect mine are teaching yours cricket,” Anne sighed, “and that must have been one of the windows in the servants’ hall that was broken. How fortunate that William should be home convalescing from measles.”

  Abigail started to apologize, but Anne laughed again and shook her head and then grew serious, coming back to what she felt was more important. “Really, it is just as well that Francis’ father did not survive very much longer. If Victor had come to England five or six years from now, it would have been more difficult for him.”

  “Francis did teach Victor to ride and was starting to teach him to handle a gun,” Abigail offered. “But, of course there was no land, and I-I felt that all in all it was better for Victor to be in school, even though he missed some of what Francis could teach him—”

  “I agree with you completely,” Baring broke in kindly, to spare her the embarrassment of admitting that she dared not allow her son too much contact with his father, lest Victor pick up the notion that Francis’ bad habits were to be emulated. “But give the boy a few months to run free on the estate before you send him off to school again, if that is what you decide to do. But I must warn you that there are only a few suitable schools, and it is not always easy to obtain a place. There Sir Arthur might be helpful, and I will do what I can too, of course. However, there are excellent private tutors available if you prefer that Victor be educated at home.”

  “I don’t know,” Abigail confessed.

  “My goodness,” Anne protested, “Abby’s only just arrived, and I imagine she had a great deal to do and to think about besides Victor’s schooling.”

  “Of course,” Baring agreed, smiling at his wife and then turning to Abigail, “and with Gallatin tied to the Treasury Department in Washington, everything must have fallen on your shoulders, my dear. In a way it is very fortunate that you were not able to come
any sooner. Your arrival at the end of the London Season will give you a chance to become acquainted with our ways—not that your own are not charming, but—”

  “‘When in Rome, do as the Romans’,“ Abigail interrupted, smiling. “I have every intention of obeying that excellent maxim and never saying ‘But in America, we do such and so, and it is much better that way’, even if I must bite my tongue quite in half to keep it still.”

  Both Baring and his wife burst out laughing. “Do you find our ways that awful?” he asked, while Anne cried, “Oh, I know just what you mean.”

  Abigail laughed, too. “And I agree completely with Alexander, although he was too tactful to say it outright, that the best place for me is in the country where I can grow accustomed, with the least wear and tear on my nerves and reputation.”

  “That is not what I meant at all,” Baring protested, shaking his head at Abigail’s provocative sniff. “I meant that you will have a chance to meet the county families—”

  “Especially those who do not come to London and cannot recount your faux pas,” Anne put in mischievously. “Alex made me practice on them, too.”

  “You,” her husband said with awful emphasis, “practiced on my innocent family—and enchanted them so completely that they never had the heart to correct you at all.”

  “Oh!” Abigail exclaimed. “I have discovered that Francis had a family, too. I cannot imagine why he never spoke of them.”

  “Nor can I,” Baring replied, but with a tone of reserve in his voice that made Abigail raise her brows questioningly. Instead of responding to her unspoken query, he continued, “Do not spend all your time at Rutupiae Hall. There are several other estates, and it would be just as well to live for at least a few weeks at each so that everyone will come to know you and Victor.”

  “I am willing enough to do it,” Abigail said a trifle tartly, “if I can ever find out where they are and which ones I have a right to use and manage.”

  Baring smiled at her. “I will obtain a copy of the will for you from Somerset House. Don’t think too harshly of Deedes. I have had dealings with him before, and he is a very clever man of business—perfectly honest, too. He is just terrified of women, I suspect because he manages property for so many helpless and unreasonable widows. He is not accustomed to dealing with a lady who will understand business. Just go ahead and manage the property in your own inimitable way, my dear. Fortunately I was Lydden’s banker, so you can draw on me for any sum you need. I will see that it is cleared with Deedes.”

  “But might that not cause some conflict with Sir Arthur if he is to be held responsible for countersigning the bills?” Abigail asked. “You remember how I had to send every order for payment down to Philadelphia—and then when the capitol was moved, down to Washington—to be signed by Albert. We tried having him sign the bottom of some blank sheets, but that had to be abandoned because Francis found them—” She stopped abruptly as a look of deep sympathy came on Anne’s face.

  “Sir Arthur will pay no attention unless Deedes thinks some expenditure is extravagant,” Baring said, glancing swiftly and warningly at his wife. “In that case, Sir Arthur would, I am afraid, have the right to refuse payment, although I have not seen the will, of course, and cannot be sure what arrangements have been made. But I am not concerned about you outrunning the piper, my dear. Unless he is forced to take a hand, I assure you, Sir Arthur will, most gratefully, ignore you.”

  Abigail smiled brilliantly. “He could not do me a greater favor,” she began, but had no time to make any further remarks because the Baring sons, trailed by Victor and Daphne, burst into the room and began to justify the accident to the window.

  Victor was almost as tall and broad as William, who was two years older, with real muscle rather than baby fat showing under his sweat-wet shirt, but his neck had not yet thickened into the strong column it would be in manhood. There was just a hint of the baby neck, frail and vulnerable, between the broad shoulders and the tensely held head. That neck called to Abigail to gather him into her arms and defend him—although his stance and forward-thrust chin showed he knew he was in trouble and that he was determined not to ask for help. The chin was hers, and the determination. Everything else was Lydden, the fair hair, the bright, light-blue eyes, the handsome regularity of feature.

  The tale, told by William, the eldest Baring boy, began with a rather vague excuse, which Victor interrupted. “Beg pardon,” he said sturdily, “but it was me, sir. I’m not a very good bat yet.”

  Alexander Baring cleared his throat, struggling to hide a combination of amusement and pleasure, for it was clear that his son had offered to shoulder the blame for his guest and Victor was too well taught to accept such an arrangement. But before he could find the proper combination of words to warn, reprimand and praise all at once, Daphne had stepped up beside her brother and taken Victor’s hand.

  “Oh, please,” she said, “it wasn’t Victor, it was me, sir. I begged so hard for a turn that the boys let me, but the bat was so heavy that it turned in my hand and the ball went all awry. I am very sorry.”

  Daphne’s large blue eyes, like Abigail’s in shape but much lighter and gentler, looked up appealingly. She did not seem at all the type of little girl that would wish to swing a bat, still being round and soft, puppy-plump. Her hair was darker than her brother’s and already beginning to show the trace of red that would give her a match in maturity to her mother’s magnificent mane, but her features were still childishly unformed—except for the chin, which matched Victor’s to a T and would have explained, had Baring noticed it, both the desire to play cricket with the boys and the unwillingness to hide behind them.

  Baring choked, the boys all glared at Daphne, and Abigail and Anne burst out laughing. It was quite clear that the boys expected to be punished more severely for allowing Daphne to commit an “impropriety” than for breaking the window, whereas Daphne had mistaken their confession for an act of protectiveness and was determined not to allow them to suffer for their generosity. Unable to maintain his gravity, Baring also laughed.

  “Well,” he said indulgently, “now I suppose you understand one of the reasons why young ladies do not play cricket. Shall we say—?”

  “We shall say that Daphne will repay the cost of the broken pane out of her pin money,” Abigail put in firmly, seeing that Baring was going to let her get away without any punishment. “Young ladies must learn to pay their debts as well as young gentlemen.”

  “I’ll share,” Victor offered cheerfully, because he knew Daphne’s intervention had saved them a scolding. His mother would have insisted on their paying for the glass in any case, so he considered himself ahead. “I was the one who said to let her bat.”

  “But we all agreed,” William protested, not wishing to be outdone in generosity.

  “My, my,” Anne remarked, trying not to laugh. “This is going to be a most complicated accounting. Alex will have to work it all out and send you a bill, Abby.”

  “Very well,” Abigail agreed, “but he must not forget. I would not want to withhold more than necessary, especially since we must do some shopping while we are in London.”

  “Indeed you must,” Anne agreed, suddenly looking thoughtful. She then turned to her husband and, giving him a glance full of meaning, asked, “Might we put off going out of town for a few days, my dear? I would like to accompany Abby on her shopping tour.”

  “Certainly,” Baring replied, understanding that Anne was going to explain to her friend the need for patronizing certain fashionable shops, not so much because the style or quality of their goods was better but to prove that she herself was au courant.

  Further talk became momentarily impossible because of the noise the children were making, but seeing how much they were enjoying each other’s company, Anne said it would be a shame to part them and asked Abigail whether she and the children could stay for an informal dinner. Abigail agreed at once, the children were sent off to wash, with the wa
rning that they would be exiled to the nursery if they continued to be so noisy when they returned, and Baring excused himself to attend to some business matters.

  The advice Anne gave Abigail did not, of course, confine itself to shops but ranged widely over the manners and mores of England’s high society, which the newspapers, Anne told Abigail, giggling, called the haut ton or simply the ton. What Anne said was all the more valuable because she had made the transition herself and knew from personal experience just what would most confound and annoy her American-born and -bred friend. Another woman, who had been as socially successful in the past as Abigail, might have listened with only half an ear or inwardly dismissed what she was being told, but Abigail paid strict and particular attention—to the point of requesting writing materials and taking notes.

  Anne was much flattered by what she felt was her pupil’s respect for her wisdom and searched her memory for every sharp lesson taught her by embarrassment in the early years of her residence in England, even though some of them were painful to recall. However, Abigail’s intense seriousness owed little either to her respect for Anne’s experience or her own considerable common sense. She had been sensitized by her mother early in her life to the need for conforming strictly to the rules of the ton—no matter how idiotic they might seem to her.

  Abigail’s mother, Martha Milford, had been severely punished for nonconformity. Having married outside of her class, Martha found that neither her beauty nor her intelligence would provide her with a passport into the society to which her husband’s family belonged. In fact, it was the coldness with which his wife was treated that had convinced Abigail’s father to emigrate to America, where Martha’s origins would be unknown and she would be accepted. Thus Abigail carried both an intense desire to be accepted—not so much for herself as to prove that her mother’s daughter was as good as the best—and a deep resentment that urged her to make fools of the know-nothings who had rejected her dearest mama.