The Vice Of Virtue (A Poor Man At The Gate Series Book 10)

by Andrew Wareham

"The Marquis of Grafham is his mother's younger brother and Rothwell is therefore his direct cousin. The estates march together and they met frequently after the Marquis inherited and moved away from London. In terms of friendship, I believe they found little in common - Rothwell is clever, but is more of a Classicist and lately has discovered an interest in Political Economy; he has small knowledge of things mechanical. I would expect Rothwell to dwell much in London after his marriage, he may well be forced to become a Public Man - so there will be little opportunity for any close relationship between the families to flourish."

  Miss Markham was cheered by the news.

  "I have had little to do with Miss Massingham, of course, Lady Andrews. I am loath therefore simply to parrot popular prejudice..."

  "I am not, my dear! I believe the marriage to be potentially disastrous for Rothwell and his family. He will be made a laughing-stock, at best, and may well be forced to a Bill of Divorce before too many years - a gross humiliation for any ordinary man!"

  A Bill of Divorce was a Private Act of Parliament, both expensive and conducted very publicly indeed - the evidence of wrongdoing to be given, normally in the Lords, but always openly for the delectation of every gossip in Town. Every nuance of adultery would be offered for the amusement of the malicious and too often for the satisfaction of the guilty party, who might be assumed to be shameless in any case.

  "A pity that he will become Marquis, your ladyship, for the title I am convinced is her main concern, the man of far less significance."

  "I agree, but he has made his offer and there is nothing to be done, unless perhaps a duke may come along in which case she may jilt him!"

  "I hear they are to wed in the Little Season, ma'am."

  "There is to be a great and undoubtedly vulgar celebration of the joyous occasion - one that will take some months to arrange!"

  "How delightful! I am sure the bridegroom's family will be so pleased. Will Royalty be present, do you know, ma'am?"

  "Quite possibly, and if not the King in person then certainly many of the barnacles that cling to his deplorable skirts!"

  The passenger ship made good time down the Atlantic Seaboard, the wind commonly favourable and the ocean calm enough for the paddles to make good practice. Even Grace, who did not pride herself as an ocean-going being, was able to enjoy the excursion.

  Early in the morning of their eleventh day they passed into the Straits of Florida, between the Bahamas and the peninsula, and came to a more disturbed sea, heavier rollers working up from the south. The master took the ship closer to the shelter of the mainland, wishing to keep well clear of the shallows of the Bahamas. Inevitably they slowed in their progress.

  “The purser tells me that the captain wishes to round the cape and reach the sheltered waters of the west, probably making port in St Petersburg. He believes that there is a possibility of a great storm to the south-east of us, one that will blow heavily on the east coast but should be no more than an inconvenience in the waters of the Gulf.”

  Grace was a little worried for the sake of the children, but if Henry was content that they were safe then she would display no fear.

  By the afternoon it was clear that the storm, a hurricane now seemed probable, was moving closer to them, but still seemed to be to the east. The captain held his course, fearing that to attempt to turn back to any port on the Atlantic Coast would expose them even more to danger.

  The sky became blacker as the wind rose and rain began to fall.

  “We are amongst the Keys now, my dear. The waters are dangerous to travel at night and the captain had expected to make this passage during the afternoon. Dress yourself and the boys in warm outdoor clothing. Luke will stay at your side, as will I. I have instructed Mr Blake and Beaver to join us, together with the two women.”

  The party sat together in the First Class lounge, were joined by the Vanderbilts and the Scotts and the Greek merchant, Stavros. The rolling increased and the ship slowed even more. They watched in the last light as the sailors struggled to reduce sail and to set a few scraps of very strong storm canvas. The wind began to howl and the rain became heavier and they saw lightning strikes close about them.

  “We are in the edge of the storm now, ma’am. The engineer will be forced to draw his fires, I fear, and we shall be reduced to sail only. The men in the stokehold cannot work if the ship rolls so much as to throw them off their feet. Keep the boys close.”

  They could not keep a lantern alight safely, the roll was so pronounced. They heard one of the women sobbing, trying to control herself.

  “Are we going to die, Mama?”

  “We are in the hands of God, Marcus. His will be done!”

  It was not a satisfactory answer for a small boy doing his best to be brave; he was very pleased to be taken up onto his uncle’s lap. He could just see his brother in his Papa’s arms.

  “If anything happens you must hold on very tight. Do not let go of me.”

  He grabbed hold of Luke’s belt, promised to be good.

  The seas grew greater, the interval between them shorter, the roll now accompanied by a heavy pitch.

  The lounge door flung open and a seaman fell inside.

  “Captain says we in shoal waters! Suppose we ground then get you selfs onshore best you can. We droppin’ the boat, tryin’ anyhow. They’s water barrels in her; she comes ashore you get what you can!”

  Blake, the tutor, pulled himself towards the front of the lounge, tried to peer across the bows; a series of lightning flashes showed him white seas and then the vague outline of a low and barren island, little more than a few sand dunes.

  “We are very close, sir!”

  “Come away from the glass, Mr Blake.”

  Luke shifted forward, Marcus held tight.

  “If we hit, Henry, then we must run quickly to the highest point and all go over the side together. If we can keep hold of each other then we may yet survive.”

  There was a great grinding thump from the bows, a series of jarring crunches as the ship ran up on a shallow sandy point.

  “Run! Now!

  The nursemaids began to scream, stopped as Henry backhanded them.

  “Don’t waste your breath! Run!”

  They scrambled into the bows and jumped out into the darkness, rolled off their feet by the breakers but thrown up onto the beach, almost all of them holding together.

  Luke and Henry, Grace, both of the boys stumbled and crawled out of the water and a few feet up the shallow slope and over the crest of a low dune, out of the force of the wind. They sat, collapsed rather, in the shelter, took a count of who was with them.

  Frances was irritated with Rothwell, gave thought to the possibility of absenting herself from his wedding, but it would have been an insult, and very publicly given, possibly the commencement of a feud with the Massingham connection. She contented herself with presenting Joseph and his bride with a tasteful, and large, silver epergne to grace their new dining-table while finding no more than an Etruria tea-service for the Rothwells.

  In the weeks immediately following Rothwell's unfortunate descent into indignity she took Verity to Dorset, there to enjoy the tedium of her mother's brother's hospitality and to meet her own half-brother, though not introduced openly as such. The little girl concluded that Captain Burley was a very nice man, which was a pleasure to all.

  "We cannot visit with you for a long time, for I must go back to Thingdon Hall, Captain Burley, for my puppy will be eight weeks old very soon, and I may then take him to live with me!"

  "Quite right, Verity. Puppies are very important and must never be neglected!"

  She was glad that he understood, for she would not have liked to hurt him by appearing anxious to leave his company.

  Frances' brother deplored the visit - he had lately become suspicious of the Burley connection, had come to fear there might be a degree of irregularity, which his naive young sister could not have apprehended.

  "Not to put the matter too bluntly, my dear g
irl, but I suspect that your late husband might have, shall we say, strayed in his reckless youth, even before his first marriage. I blush to present the proposition to you, Frances, but I am inclined to suspect that there was a... a relationship between Captain Burley and Lord Andrews."

  Frances debated whether to swoon in horror but decided it would be a waste of time.

  "Oh, is that so, Gervase? I had thought Captain Burley was his bastard son. I do not believe that my husband was ever one to form relationships with very small boys."

  'And stick that in your pipe and smoke it, you sanctimonious little shit!' - but she was far too well bred to utter the last sentence aloud.

  Gervase was horrified, had never dreamt that such a construction might be placed upon his well-meaning words; he dropped the subject and fled to the estate office on urgent business with his bailiff.

  Frances left for the Dower House next day, explaining that she intended to break the long journey in London, for Verity's sake - she was too little a girl to travel for a week unbroken in post-chaises.

  "There will be railway lines before you are grown up, little one! You will be able to ride behind a steam engine at great pace and in far more comfort, or so one is told. We shall travel to your brother Joseph's house in a week or two and we shall demand that he introduces us to the engine then. You will enjoy that."

  Verity was pleased to hear that to be so, but was far more concerned to be brought together with her puppy.

  Miriam made a morning visit as soon as they were installed at the Dower House - it was only polite to do so and the estate people liked to see that all was well between them.

  "A bad winter to come, I fear, ma'am!"

  "I had thought the harvest was within reason good this year, my dear."

  "It was, but there are so many mouths to share it now. Every cottage has a dozen children, or so it seems, ma'am. There is something in the English air nowadays, I believe, for there was never used to be so many. Indeed, I wonder sometimes what is to become of us all - there are eight in our own nursery and schoolroom now, as you know, Lady Andrews, and I really do not suspect that will be the end of it!"

  Frances had heard the same tale in Dorset and Norfolk both - more children born and living and with mouths to be filled, parents at their wits' end to keep their families fed. Not only in the poorest parts of the towns and villages either - many a father in the middle order of people found himself with growing sons in need of employment and daughters wishful for well-found husbands and with no idea how to meet either demand. A man who could lay his hands on fifty pounds could send a single son overseas to make his fortune, but he could do little for his daughters, the more because the young men were leaving.

  "Is there trouble in the villages yet?"

  "There is word of Captain Swing - the younger men and older boys are talking up riot and revolution. My lord suspects that they are doing so in the hope that the Lord Lieutenant will call for a second battalion of Militia and provide a living for another five or six hundred, even if it be in poorly-found barracks. The maids think not - it is their brothers and followers who are to be found in Captain Swing's arms - and they say that the young men are simply desperate and know not what to do, but fear they must do something, that their misery must be heard. I suspect that many will die, again, and more be transported, unless the Plague comes to release them from all Earthly cares."

  Miriam had read her Malthus, as had Frances; both feared that he might be right.

  "What is to be done, Miriam?"

  "We are finding work, making work in fact. There is a long stone wall abuilding down the driveway to the Thrapston Road and my lord intends to bridge the Isebrook in two places after that. Then there will be cart-tracks to resurface - but there is a limit to what may be done from our pockets."

  Frances agreed; she would do her bit and hire on another maid for each of her three houses, but that would cost more than a hundred pounds a year all told, wages and keep and clothing put together, which was a not insignificant sum to be added to her accounts.

  "Is there waste land which could be brought to the plough, perhaps? A square mile to be rented out as smallholdings of ten or twelve acres could give fifty or sixty families a living, of sorts."

  "There is a swathe of uncultivated land to our south, leading down to the River Nene, but who owns it and why it is unused, I do not know. It is not good land, but it could be turned into vegetable plots and used to run hogs and chickens, or so I should imagine."

  They made inquiries and discovered eventually the land was the remains of an ancient estate that had escheated to the Crown generations before.

  "It seems, ma'am, that the landlords were involved with the Jacobites, more than eighty years ago, and were declared traitors and fled the country. The house and yard and the barns were sold off but the acres were never granted to another holder and, in the nature of things, have become forgotten - the home of a few squatters and of no other use, except for rabbits and deer to be taken now and then. My lord is to take advice in London, I gather."

  Robert had placed the question of the neglected lands in Michael's hands, expecting little to come of the matter. Michael came back to him with less than a month gone.

  "The escheated lands, my lord, lie in the hands of the Duchy of Lancaster and may be granted to deserving agriculturalists who will bring them into use. I believe the procedure will actually be to give a very long lease at peppercorn rent as the Crown may not alienate its estates in perpetuity."

  "Meaning what, Mr Michael?"

  "On proper application, the land may be leased for nine hundred and ninety-nine years at a rental of one pound, in advance."

  "One pound per year?"

  "In total, my lord."

  Robert had learned to listen to all that was not said by lawyers.

  "'Proper' application - which is to imply what precisely, sir?"

  "Was you to appear at a Levee, my lord, to make your bow when both the King and the Heir Apparent were present, then you would be signifying your loyal support for the dynasty..."

  "I was not aware that the dynasty faced any challenge, Mr Michael. The young princess appears to be healthy and will succeed King William in the absence of heirs of his body."

  "Just so, my lord, yet there are those who wonder if we might not be better served by an active and male monarch, not by a Queen who must inevitably be wed to an unknown consort who might exercise great influence over her."

  "Who?"

  "A number of names have been... conjectured, one might say, my lord. The Devonshires are very powerful in the land and might well be glad to see a connection promoted."

  That would be undesirable, Robert realised. The Devonshires were politically active and exercised a vast deal of power already - put the throne in their pocket and the country might return to the days of Charles the First, the king claiming actual sovereignty rather than its very mere semblance.

  "When should I make my bow?"

  "In late winter, my lord, assuming that HM’s health remains adequate to public appearance. It would be appreciated if you could be accompanied - perhaps by Lord Star and the Marquis? The Duke of Wellington will make himself present on the day in question, I am assured."

  "I will do my possible, Mr Michael, will forewarn the family. Thinking on this matter, and in purely hypothetical fashion..."

  "Of course, my lord - air-dreaming, in no way a consideration of the affairs of the country."

  They smiled their understanding.

  "This matter of a consort for the young princess - another decade before she comes of marriageable age, of course, but the question should be considered. She would be, shall we say, the greatest of prizes on the market in a generation - any of our noble houses would be very glad to secure her. One could imagine there to be a degree of competition, and a massive accrual of power to the successful."

  "The point is under active consideration, my lord. The English or Scottish family that wed her would undoubtedly
expect to be very strong in her government, would naturally gain in lasting influence. One doubts that the Settlement of 1688 could survive the impact of such a relationship; our monarchy could easily become Prussian in its power, might indeed incline towards a Tsarist autocracy."

  "Then, is she to be another Elizabeth, a Virgin Queen?"

  "Bearing in mind her family, my lord, and not wishing to descend towards vulgarity - but that seems a highly unlikely occurrence!"

  Her parents and uncles were not renowned for their chastity; assuming such appetites to be hereditary then it would be absolutely essential to get the girl married off, and preferably to a vigorous gentleman.

  "A problem, Mr Michael. Are you privy to the thoughts of the influential?"

  Many of the senior officials and members of the Boards that ran the Army and Navy and controlled the functions of government were permanent appointees, often remaining in a particular office for decades. Their advice was essential to the more ephemeral politicians who were the Ministers of State.

  "There is an awareness of the particular problem. Bearing in mind that she must not be wed to a Catholic or to an adherent of one of the Low Churches, then one is forced to consider a princeling from Northern Europe. The Scandinavians are far too autocratic, and the Russians too barbarous; the Dutch are out of the question - His Grace of Wellington would not tolerate any member of the House of Orange!"

  The Battle of Waterloo still rankled, it seemed, and the incompetent, arrogant, stupid butcher of Orange would not be forgiven.

  "Thus we come to Prussia and the lesser German states, Mr Michael."

  "Not Prussia, perhaps, my lord. A prince of the royal house would retain undesirable loyalties and might attempt to place England in the Prussian pocket. A minor Archduke or some such would be best; a man who has been brought up to a sense of inferiority and to a belief in duty and educated in English ways to some extent - but not to fit in too well, to the extent that he might make allies. I believe the word is out and two or three young gentlemen are in training, shall we say, for the role."