by M. J. Logue
It was someone else's turn. He had earned his peace.
She clenched her fists at her sides and looked up at the sky, digging her nails into her palms, because she must look like the worst kind of madwoman, standing bareheaded in the wintry rain with her eyes full of tears and stars.
"How would I live without you, you bloody fool?" she said aloud, to no one, and a respectable goodwife stiffened as she passed, sidestepping as if profane insanity might be catching.
"Mistress Russell?"
She did not recognise him, though he looked respectable enough. A tall man, though neither so elegant nor so finely put-together as Thankful - tall, and running a little to fat, with a very clean, pink face, and earnest hazel eyes, and possibly the most ludicrous wig she had ever seen: a great confection that tumbled in lustrous curls over his shoulders, and rose to two little spiralling peaks at his temples. "Mistress Russell, my dear, wherever is that neglectful spouse of yours? Surely he has not tired of such a ravishing beauty so soon!"
"Do I know you, sir?" she said. She was almost tall enough to look him in the eye, and had she been wearing heeled slippers, or pattens, she would have been. As it was she was stoutly-shod enough to kick him in his silk-clad shins and do some serious damage if he were to endeavour to lay hands on her.
He seemed to be well aware of that fact. His mouth twitched. "No, mistress, although I was on my way to remedy that lack. Charles Birstall - the Earl of Fairmantle - your adoring cavalier, ma'am." And right there, in the middle of the street, with everyone passing by and staring and giggling, he took off his hat and made her the most ludicrously flamboyant bow. "Your next-door neighbour," he said, peeking up from under the tumbling curls with a roguish twinkle in his eye. "And Member of Parliament for Everhall."
"We don't hold much with cavaliers in our house," she said disapprovingly, and he grinned at her, and straightened up.
"So I understand, madam. I trust I - being smitten by your beauty - may be exempt from the just punishment of other cavaliers? The merest hint of your displeasure renders me prostrate with grief..."
"Sir Charles," she began, and he gave her another cheery wink.
"Chas, dear. Honestly. We are neighbours, and I hope we will be friends. Calling me Sir Charles makes you sound like my bank manager, and he makes me quake. Now. I know where you last had him, because since I received no reply to my little invitation last night, I thought I'd pop round in person and see what your plans were for this evening. I am sure you're very much in demand, madam. For the novelty value, dear, I imagine, of thawing Old Crophead's frosty heart. So. Anyway. I saw that dear little country-mouse you keep as a housekeeper - so novel! - and she said you meant to have coffee - and how fortunate, because here you are, but here he is not. Well, then, young lady, whatever have you done with him?"
It was difficult not to giggle at him, because he was silly like a fond uncle, in a sort of harmlessly flirtatious manner, and especially with that absurd confection perched on his head. "I left him in the coffee shop," she said, with a defiant tilt of her chin.
"Oh dear," Fairmantle said, looking sympathetic. "How very rebellious, dear. Not permanently, one hopes?"
"Um. No."
"It does appear to be - well - raining, rather, madam. Now I appreciate that the gallant Major probably approves of a little light mortification of the flesh after breakfast, but I am not made of such stern stuff, dear. May I offer you my arm and seek shelter? I fear I am considerably more old-fashioned than your husband, or I should return you to the coffee-house -"
"There is no need," Russell said grimly, from about a yard's distance. "Wife, if you ever pull a trick like that again -"
He looked furious. He also looked incredibly relieved, and as if he wouldn't admit it if she asked. "I thank God that you were mistaken for a fanatic, or a hoyden," he went on, completely ignoring Fairmantle, "bare-headed, in the rain, you were distinctive enough that men marked you -"
"And a good morning to you too, Major Russell," he said innocently, "I see I find you in good health, sir, and may I offer you my felicitations on -"
"Thomazine, you might have been robbed or worse! You are not in Essex now, mistress, you are in the City of London and these streets swarm with cutpurses and - and -" his cheek twitched, "I was worried to bloody death, tibber!"
"Dear me, I've not heard anyone called 'tibber' in years," Fairmantle said, rubbing his jaw reminiscently. "My old nurse used to call me that. How sweet."
"I thought I'd lost you," her husband said simply, and nothing more than that, but his eyes flicked over her shoulder, and she turned round to see what he was looking at. And found a tavern, and a rather elegantly dressed, slightly portly gentleman with a face like an amiable pig leaning in the doorway, watching them.
"Master Pepys," he said curtly. "May I be of assistance?"
"On the contrary, Major Russell. I was not aware that you had returned to town." Master Pepys gave her a polite bow, and did not ask, though his eyes were all but popping out of his head with intrigue. "I imagine the Admiralty will be delighted with the information."
"I imagine the Admiralty can wait a day or so, Samuel, before you tell them. My wife. Mistress Thomazine Russell, of White Notley, in Essex - Master Samuel Pepys, Clerk to the Board of the Admiralty. Don't you dare, sir."
His round, cheerful eyes were alight with mischief. "Give you up, Major? Well, if you plan to stand in the middle of Fleet-Street making yourself the talk of the City with a pretty girl young enough to be your daughter, I won't hardly need to, will I?"
"Is this turning into a commercial gathering?" Fairmantle said. His gaze rested for a second on Pepys, coolly. "Because I find the smell of ink makes me sick. Smells of the shop, dear."
The clerk's rosy face flushed a darker pink and he turned away, back into the tavern.
"I mean it, Master Pepys," Russell called after him. "If I receive word from the Admiralty on the morrow, I am going to come looking for you, sir. And Sir John will have your chambers, because you will not be requiring them further. I am married less than six months, sir. Have some kindness."
"I imagine he has some outstanding tailor's bill that you could offer to meet, Major," Fairmantle added cheerfully. "Master Pepys is customarily financially embarrassed, I believe."
"Oh, as ever, Sir Charles," Pepys said, with a polite bow. "Although I -" he inclined his head graciously - "do usually manage to meet my obligations. Major Russell, sir. I will bid you a good day, as I see you are engaged on -" his mouth curled upwards at the corners, and his good-humoured, stubby-lashed eyes beamed at her, "much more pleasurable business than mine. I take it you are still lodging near St Gabriel's, with Jane Bartholomew? You lucky dog, sir. Two beautiful ladies under one roof."
26
Fairmantle did not like Master Pepys, it was clear, and it was also clear that Master Pepys was well aware of that fact and immensely amused by it.
(It was also abundantly clear that Master Pepys would not talk to Thomazine's face if he could help it, and she wondered if her husband had noticed the pink clerk's fascination with the shadowy place where her collar tucked into her bodice, and if he was likely to simply drop him off the bridge into the Thames at a convenient point when no one was looking.)
Having escaped the society of both, though, they finally compromised on a bakehouse, which was warm, and dark, and where she could badger him to her heart's content to furnish her with breakfast. And where she could sit and watch some of the more absurd teetering wigs and pattens that London had to offer, go wobbling through the grey sleet past the open windows. And where Russell could sit with his chin propped in his hands and watch her, with a rather silly grin on his face.
"Perhaps," she said, "perhaps, when you are done feeling pleased with yourself, you might like to enlighten me, finally, as to what one retired supply officer has to do with a war with the butterboxes? Dear?"
Her husband laughed his almost-soundless laugh. "Been trying to do that all morning, tibber, but you
will keep getting sidetracked. General Monck, is what. My old commander, who is now commander of the Navy -"
"Oh, indeed? And what, pray, are his qualifications as a sailor? And more to the point, what are yours, that you should be dragged into this - this - enterprise?"
"Mine? Well, I've been to the Low Countries more than a few times, lass. I flatter myself I am more than conversant with the language. Very glad of it, too, for I imagine that silk gown we had made up will be much admired, later."
"You are engaged in trade with the enemy?" she squeaked.
"Me personally? Oh God yes! It's been driving Gillespie stark mad for months. He reckons I've filled the house with gauds and bawbees -" it wasn't a great Scots accent, coming from a man with a faint Buckinghamshire burr to his voice and an even fainter slur to it when he was weary, but it was recognisably Gillespie's dog-bark - "and no' a decent chair to sit on in the place."
"So because General Monck has not the wit to run fast enough when they asked him, you must needs pick up his dirty linen?"
"Not quite, my tibber, no. Thomazine, we are at war."
"We weren't this morning," she said tartly, and he sighed.
"Indeed. Well, we are by now, I imagine. According to Master Pepys, who has a nose for such tattle. And no, the Navy does not want for perfectly adequate supply officers of its own, who are doubtless competent in their way. It does, however, want for competent supply officers who can discourse like reasoned human beings in Dutch, and who have some reputation for, uh, a want of compromise in their personal dealings. Try how they might, lass, they will be hard put to it to attach any scurrilous gossip to my name, for there is none. I told you I was a dull dog. No, regrettably, I am sufficiently boring in my intimate relations that I have one wife, one household to maintain, moderate personal beliefs, and absolutely no leverage for blackmail."
"Are you telling me that you are an intelligencer?" she said faintly.
After only a few months of marriage, it was becoming fatally clear to Thomazine that when her man dipped his lashes in that particularly sweet, innocent, doe-eyed manner, he was as guilty as sin. "You are, aren't you?"
"Not in so many words. I am not a spy." He cocked his head on one side assessingly, looked at the last of her mutton pie where it cooled in front of her, and it was gone before she had a chance to protest. "I am simply a further weapon in the Navy Board's armoury. Well, truly, lass, you've met Master Pepys, you've met Fairmantle, and they're a fair representation - Samuel negotiates most of his contracts in taverns and puts more of his wages on his back than in his purse, and Charles runs with a distinctly unsavoury set indeed, though there's no harm in him, there's not the sense for that. Honestly, Thomazine, can you imagine, were you a respectable, sober gentleman from the Low Countries, expecting to treat with a like Englishman, and Charles Fairmantle turns up in that preposterous wig, reeking of perfume and -" he stopped abruptly, remembering to whom he was talking.
"Girls," she finished for him, and he gave her a reproachful look.
“Indeed. Girls. Some of the most notably pious and respectable gentlemen of my acquaintance have been Dutch. They are a good Protestant people. I – well, I hardly dare say, tibber, but – some of the people I know – in an official capacity – some of the Court – dear God, lass, if some of that lot showed up to negotiate, it’d be taken as an affront.”
“So –”
“So, I am not likely to be summoned hence to my destruction, Thomazine,” he said primly. “So that – silliness – in the Rainbow, was pure silliness.“ He gave her a severe look. “And for nothing. Am I attached in a military capacity to the Navy Board, yes. Hence my acquaintance with Master Pepys. God help me. I have previously had to account for my receipting to Master Pepys in his capacity as clerk to the Board – and having Sam Pepys accuse one of profligacy is, as your esteemed father would say, the kettle calling the pot bruntarse. My fighting days are done. Other than wrangling with the Navy Board in matters of overdue expense claims.”
“Do you promise?”
“Very much I promise.” He raised his eyes to her face, and for a minute he was her young rebel angel again, armed with nothing but ideals and a fiery sword. “I love you more than my hope of heaven, but not even for you would I perjure myself. I do not make idle promises, Thomazine. I swear to you, I would swear to you with my hand on a stack of Bibles as high as this house, I am no more than an administrator. I am one of the few people at His Majesty’s court with a wholly unblemished name, my tibber, and were I to lose that integrity I should be of no further service to my country.”
Gillespie had said almost the same thing to her. That her husband would do the thing that was right, no matter what it cost him, no matter how unpopular or inconvenient, because he could not do else and remain who he was. That uncompromising honesty might set him out of favour in a court that they said favoured strategy and polite pragmatism above all else, but if he said a thing, it could be depended on. Always.
Take away his good name, Gillespie had said, and you stripped him of everything
26
"You scrub up very nicely, husband," she said wickedly, and slid a surreptitious hand down his back.
That scarred and inscrutable war hero jerked as if he'd been shot as she squeezed his backside in a very familiar fashion, and then turned just before the great doors swung slowly open, ducked his head, and kissed her with a brief, fierce enthusiasm.
And Thomazine - thoroughly kissed - gasped, at her first sight of society.
Thankful had warned her, of course. He'd said it was all shadow and glitter, the women with tiny, perfect breasts like pomegranates all but spilling from their stiff bodices, jewelled and scented and ringletted. And the men almost as primped, in their extravagant curled wigs and ribbons.
"It is not at all what a gently-reared young lady will be accustomed to," he had said primly, and then the unscarred corner of his mouth had turned up in that slow, sweet smile that only she ever saw. "Joyeux would scratch your eyes out, tibber."
The thought of her little sister's envy had seemed unlikely - Joyeux was beautiful, and sociable, and she had been the reigning belle of Essex before she married, and now she was the reigning belle of Hertfordshire. Whereas Thomazine - well, Thomazine was tall, and unfashionably slight, and unfashionably cinnamon-coloured, and before Thankful she’d never been so much as looked at by a boy. She glanced sideways at her husband, who was worth a dozen of the boys of White Notley in her eyes. It didn’t matter.
She had asked Deb to lay out her good yaffingale-green silk gown and her decent shift with the ruffled sleeves, and Thankful had shaken his head. "The bronze,'" he had said, firmly, and she had been minded to argue for he grew too fond of his own will of late, that one, and the one piece of advice her mother had been adamant on was to allow a husband his head in small things, but keep a firm hand on the bridle. Besides, that bronze silk gown was a shocking vanity, almost indecently cut. A pretty enough thing, to wear in the privacy of your own rooms, to flirt decently with your husband, but not -
"And the pearls," he said, and then she had protested because those pearls had been her wedding gift and they were too precious to be worn at any casual supper -"In your hair."
And in the end she had acquiesced to his ordering her dress, too stunned to do else. He had directed Deb, in a most peremptory fashion, and it had taken hours, including the bathing and the curling and the brushing: the sun was set and he had called for candles before they were through, and mousy little Jane Bartholomew had come scampering up and down the stairs with tapers.
The little widow's eyes had almost started from her head, the last time, and Thankful had given her a conspiratorial smile and set his finger to his lips. And of course Thomazine had been near sick with jealousy, until he put her hands on her shoulders and turned her to face the mirror.
And for a second she had not recognised the slender glowing flame reflected there, with her russet hair wound about with a rope of moonlit pearls and curl
ed down her shoulder in a thick ringlet, and a pair of wide-set green-amber eyes looking back at her with far more worldliness than Thomazine Babbitt knew she possessed. Not beautiful, for the girl in the mirror had wide cheekbones and a wide, full mouth to go with her wide-set eyes, and flyaway cinnamon brows that hinted at a sense of the absurd. "That's not me," she said cautiously, and Thankful put his hand on her shoulder, and squeezed it.
"It is, too," he said, and met her eyes in the mirror. "You see why I should have you wear that dress tonight, my tibber?"
She looked at her white throat, at her shoulders, at her - yes. Well. "For a certain ease in removing it, I imagine," she said shakily, "for if I laugh, or sneeze, I am almost certain to outrage public decency."
"Not to mention catching your death of cold," he added, and smiled at her. "There is a reason for all this vanity, Thomazine. Trust me."
She'd thought it was just his old puritanical streak, and she stood on the threshold of that high-ceilinged, glittering room, where the women were plastered and painted as thickly as the walls, and she gawked like the veriest country bumpkin. There was a - a beast, of some nature, a small dog or some such, scampering free about the floor, and she recognised Charles Fairmantle at least, sitting at his ease at the head of the table in a great carved chair with his wig all askew and his cheerful face glistening with sweat and good feeding.
"Major Russell!" he bawled, "d'ye plan to stand there on the threshold all night, sir, or will you not come in and sit down to supper like a Christian?"
"Only if you'll play Messiah, Chas, and make more loaves, for I swear Sedley's eaten the bloody lot!" another voice yelled from the shifting candlelight.
Fairmantle staggered to his feet. He was not, precisely, drunk, but it was close. "Now, now, gentlemen. You arrive late, Major Russell. It's unfashionable to be late, d'you hear me?"
"For he who comes on stroke of nine,
Must take his chance, and forfeit wine," a sepulchral voice intoned. "Strephon, damn your eyes, can I take you nowhere?"
