Crossed Quills

by Carola Dunn

  “Not the world, I daresay, but me. However, it does not go into particulars.”

  “Eldon has postponed my speech. For three weeks!”

  “What a nuisance.”

  “Nuisance! It—”

  “It is annoying, to be sure, but there is no need to fly off the hook,” she said soothingly. “Three weeks? I should have thought the Chancellor might find an earlier time, if he tried.”

  “But what shall we do? I cannot—”

  “Really, Lord Selworth, this is not the place to discuss it.”

  “Then come back to Charles Street. Allow me to escort you. You are not here alone, are you?” Wynn asked disapprovingly.

  Her lips quirked and she spoke soothingly again. “Mama and Kitty are somewhere about. I expect they have found what they want, but I have not. There is no need for haste. We have three weeks in hand.”

  “I didn’t mean to rush you,” Wynn said, abashed, noting for the first time the five volumes cradled in her arm. “Let me carry those for you. How many more are you looking for?”

  “Oh, half a dozen or so,” she said, laughing as she handed him the stack. “I believe people buy books by the yard to fill their library shelves, but borrowing by quantities is an altogether new notion!”

  “All my own,” he said with a grin. “Do you think it will become the rage?”

  Her calm reception of his news had entirely allayed his agitation. He should have trusted her to know how to deal with the delay.

  The speech they had toiled over was neither abandoned, forcing Wynn to learn a new one, nor kept as it stood, losing its freshness. Instead, they made a few major changes and several smaller ones. As the new date approached, Wynn decided it was better than ever, and once again he was confident of his ability to deliver it without too many references to his notes.

  Then another letter arrived from the Lord Chancellor.

  “Dammit!” he yelled. “Three weeks’ postponement again. What is the man about?”

  “Three weeks again? Sounds fishy to me,” agreed Gil, neatly dissecting a succulent kipper.

  Wynn forsook his kipper and rushed around to Charles Street. The ladies had not come down yet. When he said he would wait, Wynn was ushered into the dining room, where he found George Debenham at breakfast.

  Though not involved in politics—except at elections—or government, Debenham had Tory sympathies. He was a member of White’s, and his family’s considerable influence in their constituency always supported the Tory candidate. Labouring under a strong sense of ill-usage, Wynn poured out the story of his shabby treatment at the hands of the arch-Tory Lord Eldon.

  “I had heard there was to be another delay,” Debenham admitted.

  “What? It’s bandied about at White’s?”

  “One hears rumours. Look, I’ll be frank with you. I gather Liverpool and the others have learnt you are hand-and-glove with Prometheus. Don’t look daggers at me, I have not breathed a word to a soul, upon my honour! It pains me to divulge to you,” Debenham continued, at his most sardonic, “that the Government is shaking in its shoes for fear of the power of Prometheus’s rhetoric.”

  Chapter 14

  “They don’t know who Prometheus is?” Pippa asked apprehensively, clasping her hands tight in her lap to stop her fingers twisting.

  Lord Selworth shook his head. “No sign of that. You ought to be flattered, you have the Government’s collective teeth chattering with terror.”

  “But who told them? You are sure it was not Mr Debenham?”

  “I have his word as a gentleman. It’s possible—in fact I strongly suspect—he has guessed you are Prometheus, but I trust his discretion absolutely.”

  “As I trust Bina’s—I am certain she knows—to say nothing of Mama’s and Kitty’s. But who, then? Not Mr Chubb!”

  “No.” Lord Selworth turned to the window and gazed unseeing at the grey drizzle which dripped relentlessly on the back garden. In a voice as leaden as the rain, he said, “Millicent.”

  “Millie? I am quite sure Bina did not tell her. It would have been sheer folly, if you will excuse my speaking so of your sister.”

  “It could be no one else. She must have overheard something.”

  “Perhaps.” Pippa thought hard. “When she told us about Lady Holland, do you recall? When she came up to us, I believe you were saying something about not losing Prometheus’s help through overwork. No doubt there were other times, too.”

  “I’ll kill her,” Lord Selworth said through gritted teeth.

  “I hardly think that would be advisable! Being hanged for murder is not the way to win influence for your opinions.”

  He turned, with a wry smile. “True. I had best limit retribution to cutting out her tongue while administering a thorough tongue-lashing.”

  “Scolding will not help. Very likely she would not recollect having said anything. I daresay it just slipped out in a flood of words without her even noticing. She would not realize the significance and did not know it was a secret. It is our fault for being so careless as to let her find out.”

  “My dear girl, you are far too lenient! Consider the damage she has done! Suppose Eldon never lets me speak?”

  “Is that not impossible? You are by right a member of the House of Lords.”

  “I’m not sure,” he said with a frown. “Even if he cannot stop me joining in a debate, he can continue indefinitely to postpone my maiden speech—my best hope to make my mark—which amounts to preventing it. No, Millie has a great deal to answer for.”

  “At least she does not know, or has not told, that I am Prometheus. If you rake up the subject, she will have it on her mind and may put overheard oddments together to work that out next.”

  “I surrender! Millie shall keep her life, and her tongue. When you argue against me, instead of for me, I perfectly understand the Government’s misgivings.”

  “Well, I do not.” Pippa shook her head doubtfully. “It is prodigious hard to credit that all those powerful lords are afraid of what I might say!”

  “You don’t look dangerous,” said Lord Selworth, contemplating her with a curious glint in his eye, “but if I could have you beside me in the House, to put the words in my mouth, I’d gladly make do with the extempore speech of a debate. Failing that, what are we to do?”

  “You must give me time to think. We shall contrive,” said Pippa, with more confidence than she felt.

  * * * *

  Pippa spent most of the day reading over all the notes she had made in the course of the past few weeks, hoping for inspiration. None came. Simply rewriting the speech to concentrate on different topics would not help. It was not any specific opinion the Tory Lords objected to, but Lord Selworth’s entire philosophy—and that of his mentor.

  That evening she assured him that she had the seed of an idea, but did not want to discuss it until it had time to germinate. Since he had not the least notion how to proceed, he was forced to be content.

  When Pippa retired to bed, she lay long awake with thoughts running aimlessly around in her head. There must be some way to outmanoeuvre Eldon, Liverpool, Castlereagh and the rest. Lord Selworth trusted her. She could not bear to let him down. How despairing he had been that morning, before she promised to find a solution!

  Drowsily, she recalled their conversation. He had called her “my dear girl” again—but only in exasperation at her defence of Millicent. He had looked at her with what might conceivably have been an appreciative light in his eye—but all he said was that she did not look dangerous. Then he had said he wanted her beside him—but only in the House of Lords, during a debate, when the Chancellor could not stop him speaking.

  It was no use, she could not persuade herself he admired anything but her mind. On that unhappy thought, at last she fell asleep...

  ...And half-awoke at dawn with the germ of an idea. A debate, when the Chancellor could not stop him speaking, that was the key.

  She did not wake again until Nan came in with the morning c
hocolate and drew back the curtains on a sunny day. The sunshine made Pippa feel cheerful even before she remembered that she had come up with the beginnings of an answer to Lord Selworth’s difficulties.

  Yesterday the heavens wept for him, today they smiled. “The pathetic fallacy,” she said aloud.

  “What is that?” asked Kitty, sitting up and sipping her chocolate.

  “Imputing human emotions to inanimate objects. The sky is blue in sympathy with my cheerful mood.”

  Kitty laughed. “More likely you are cheerful because the sky is blue. Yesterday’s rain was horridly depressing. I had rather have a brief downpour than drizzle. In Town, at least. Drizzle is better for crops, if it does not go on too long. A storm tends to beat them down.”

  “Do you miss the country?”

  “Oh yes. The Season is fun, but I could not bear to spend every Spring in London. When I think what I am missing, the wild flowers, the lambs and calves and chicks....I hope my chicks are all right without me.”

  “I am sure Sukey is taking excellent care of them.”

  “Mr Chubb has discovered a place where I might buy the chicks of a new breed of fowl from Cochin China, and Musk Ducks from Africa. But there is no point getting them now. I should want to be at home to make sure they settle well and to find out how best to help them thrive.”

  “Perhaps you can send for some next year,” Pippa said absently. Debate, she thought, as Kitty obligingly fell silent, recognizing her sister’s cogitative expression.

  Debates concentrated on a single subject. She and Lord Selworth must find a subject which was to be debated in the not too far distant future. It must be something about which he had strong feelings, yet which would not threaten the status quo in such a way as to make the Government take fright. Their aim was to prove his ability as an orator, not to reform the country radically in one fell swoop.

  That could come later, gradually, once he had the respect of his peers.

  Two problems remained to be solved before Pippa could settle down to writing a new speech. First, she must find a suitable debate. Second, she must persuade Lord Selworth to limit himself to a single topic. The second, she suspected, might be the more difficult.

  She half expected him to be awaiting her at table when she went down, as he had the day before. However, Discretion had apparently mastered Impatience—he had, after all, no open invitation to breakfast at his sister’s house.

  Mr Debenham, with a satirical air, handed Pippa the Morning Chronicle, as was his habit. Lord Selworth was probably right, she realized. His brother-in-law had surely worked out by now that she was Prometheus. Fortunately Millicent had no interest whatsoever in periodicals without fashion plates. Since she had no idea that the Chronicle was full of Parliamentary news, she did not wonder why Pippa read it.

  After a thorough search of every page, Pippa was no nearer choosing a suitable subject. She had hoped to present the viscount with a fait accompli, or at least a specific proposal to show him what she meant.

  “But everything was either inconsequential,” she told him when he called that afternoon, “like the farthing duty on tea, which they still have not settled, or too consequential, like the Seditious Meetings Act and the suspension of Habeas corpus.”

  “I could talk for ever on Habeas corpus,” Lord Selworth grumbled. “Why not?”

  “Because a great many other people will talk about it, too. If you have prepared a speech, you are likely to find half of what you have to say already said. What we want is something few members of the Lords have thought about seriously or in depth. We must keep looking. Something is bound to come up soon.”

  “I hope so! I should hate the Tories to prevail to the extent of shutting me out of an entire session.”

  “You have only been a peer for a few months,” Pippa consoled him. “Some only appear in Parliament for state occasions.”

  “They say Lord Melbourne has only made one speech in his entire life,” Lord Selworth agreed. “His wife is a more active Whig than he is. I’d best go and talk to someone else now. If you and I are seen tête-à-tête too often now it’s known that I’m consulting Prometheus, someone may add two and two.”

  Pippa had to agree. After all, there was no chance anyone would come to the conclusion that the eligible Lord Selworth was courting so undistinguished a female.

  The drawing room was somewhat thin of company. The morning sun had given way to wind and rain, inducing many ladies to curtail their usual routine of calls for fear of damage to slippers and bonnets. However, the flock of young gentlemen around Kitty and Millicent was undiminished. Millicent was silent at present, listening with the rest to an ode a youthful poet had written to a curl on Kitty’s brow.

  Mr Chubb came over to Pippa when he saw Lord Selworth leave her. “Such balderdash!” he snorted. “A crow’s wing on a snowy field! Crows are vermin, and what’s a wing doing in the middle of a field, anyway, without the rest of the bird? I wish I could write such stuff,” he added wistfully.

  “You would not if you heard Kitty and Millicent giggling about Mr Darlington’s poems when he is gone.”

  “Truly?” His round face brightened, then fell again. “But I daresay she laughs at me, too, though I know you are too kind to tell me so.”

  “If she did, I would not tell you, to be sure, but she does not, and I would not lie to you. Only this morning she was talking of your discovery of a place selling rare poultry and her regret that she could not buy any this year as she is not at home to tend them. She hopes to try next Spring.”

  “I shall send her some,” Mr Chubb said eagerly, “or better still, bring her the chicks myself, to be sure they are well cared for on the road.” Again despondency overcame him. “But by next Spring she will be long married, to someone else.”

  Pippa wished she was able to assure him that he had an excellent chance of winning Kitty’s hand. She thought the two extremely well suited, and she liked Gilbert Chubb very well now that he had overcome his bashfulness with her. But Kitty showed no disposition to favour him—or anyone else, for that matter. She had already turned down two suitors. As far as Pippa could see, her sister’s heart was whole.

  Kitty apparently knew none of the doubts and fears which kept Pippa awake at night, nor the rush of lightheaded joy she felt whenever Wynn Selworth came into a room—the joy which must be hidden, the lightheadedness which must be overcome before she was able to concentrate on ideas and words. How Kitty would stare if she knew her intellectual sister quivered inside when her hand accidentally brushed Wynn Selworth’s, went weak at the knees when she placed her hand on his arm, melted from top to toe at his smile.

  Somehow she had hidden her love from Kitty, and from Lord Selworth. If he knew, he would surely relinquish his mentor rather than risk encouraging by his constant presence the passion to which he was indifferent.

  Sometimes Pippa wondered whether Mama or Bina had guessed. If so, unable to encourage her to hope, they were too kind to add to her heartache by pointing out the unlikelihood of his ever returning her feelings.

  Mr Chubb had a better chance with Kitty, Pippa thought. “Kitty’s affections are as yet unengaged,” she said, “and you and she have a good deal in common. You must not give up.”

  “I shan’t,” he promised.

  * * * *

  By the fourth day of searching the newspapers in vain, Pippa was ready to give up. It seemed the Lords had nothing quite suitable on their agenda this session. Lord Selworth would just have to wait and hope that Lord Eldon might relent.

  She persevered, however, and the very next day was rewarded by finding precisely what she was looking for.

  “Climbing boys?” said Lord Selworth dubiously.

  “The children chimney sweeps send up chimneys. There is a society trying to abolish the practice, and they are to present a petition to Parliament. It is perfect, Lord Selworth! The petition will arouse interest, but it is not a matter which will make the Government fear you are striking at the very
roots of society.”

  “I don’t know much about climbing boys.”

  “They are shockingly badly treated, and quite unnecessarily, for a machine has been invented—a sort of elongated brush—which does the job just as thoroughly. The sweeps prefer to use little boys because it is easier and less labour for themselves. All they need do is stick pins in the child’s feet, or light a straw fire, to force them to climb.”

  “Good lord! Do they really?” exclaimed the viscount, shocked.

  “You see? Few people know what happens, because naturally they leave the house when the sweep comes to do his messy business.”

  “Yes, but bad as it is, even you can’t make a whole speech out of pins and a small fire.”

  “Of course not,” Pippa agreed. “We need to find out more, only I am not sure how. The master sweeps certainly will not tell us anything useful.”

  “I’ll go and talk to the society who are getting up the petition,” Lord Selworth proposed. “They must know the worst or they wouldn’t be up in arms.”

  “Oh yes, why did I not think of that?”

  “Are you sure you didn’t?” he asked suspiciously. “You are not just trying to cheer me up by allowing me a small contribution to your plan?”

  “Heavens no. I honestly never considered consulting the society, perhaps because I have always had to work from published reports. I shall go with you.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Pippa demanded indignantly. “Because it is your idea?”

  “Don’t be a widgeon. For the same reason you have always worked from published reports, only more so. If I go and make enquiries with a view to airing the matter in Parliament, and you go with me, you might as well stand on the rooftops and proclaim yourself Prometheus. Well, nearly.”

  “Oh. I daresay it would be rash,” she conceded.

  “You could go on your own account,” Lord Selworth offered, “as a philanthropist considering signing the petition but wanting to know more first. They might tell you things they hesitated to tell me.”

  “I cannot think what, but thank you for allowing me a part in the venture!”