Mrs Montague hovered in the hall, watching over her staff as they took the first-ever guests to their rooms, moved luggage, offered refreshment.
“A butler, Sir Frederick, we must have one to do this properly. Before the wedding, sir – the house will be full – big dinners, silverware and wines and the port decanters – a butler it must be, sir.”
“I am sure you are right, Mrs Montague – how do we go about finding a man?”
“There is an agency in London, sir, for the best, and we should send them a letter and they will despatch a man on liking. We must tell them who we are, how big the house is and what we expect in terms of society, and they choose the right person, sir.”
“Good God! I had not imagined it to be so complicated. Send the letter, Mrs Montague.”
“I’ll tell young Davy – he’ll have it to hand, sir.”
They rode out en masse next morning, the men mounted from Bosomtwi’s stable and loud in their praise of the horseflesh, the ladies decorously in their travelling carriage, Iain atop a tiny New Forest pony, a gelding, a runt that should not breed, ideal for a little boy. Rogers had taken a note at breakfast time and the Partingtons were adequately prepared for invasion, all except Elizabeth who had changed three times and was in a flutter of spirits that was rapidly outwearing her mother’s patience.
“For the last time, my dear, they will all like you today, for Sir Frederick’s sake. They will only allow themselves to take you in aversion if you persuade them to over several meetings – and that is your choice! You are dressed very properly and prettily and not too fine for daytime. Now, try to busy yourself – and do not bite your fingernails!”
The parents met, hackles raised no more than is normal on such occasions, made each other’s acquaintance and exchanged the usual compliments on each other’s offspring, the men retiring rapidly to a bottle in sheer terror of their womenfolk. It was agreed that Frederick’s parents should host a dinner two nights hence for the families and one for the neighbourhood in the following week. The Partingtons would call a formal celebration, the bulk of the County invited, for the week after that.
“And the wedding?”
“September, third or fourth weeks,” Paget suggested, the elder Harris instantly agreeing. “Harvest rules out the month before – could not possibly take the people out of the fields for a day then, or find the staff needed for the days of preparation beforehand.”
The Partingtons were still not attuned to the agricultural life, had to have the necessity explained to them in greater detail. Discreet enquiry had disclosed the Hackett’s shabby-genteel thousand a year to have derived from Consols and a quarter-share in a coal mine. They had lived in a large house and small garden on the outskirts of a town called Leeds, which the Bride Valley had never heard of. Partington felt out of place in the easy company of the Pagets and the Harrises – his son was still of an age to feel out of place everywhere and had a far better chance of becoming part of the community. They entered, the three sets of menfolk, into a discussion of how best to arrange matters and how to organise the festivities in the villages, a question that had not occurred to Partington.
Frederick soon saw that he was peripheral to all this, slipped away and intercepted Elizabeth accompanying the ladies and Charlotte en route to an inspection of the gardens and park.
“Can we quickly discuss the number of extra servants we will require, my love?”
“In the library, where we can write out our decisions, Mama?”
The library, properly north-facing so as to exclude the direct sunlight that could damage the books, contained six rows of shelves round three walls and four bays, well over a thousand feet jam-packed with volumes, the collection of more than a century.
“Papa has forbidden me use of the library yet, Frederick, says it contains ‘unsuitable’ volumes.”
“Knowing the late lord, I would be amazed if it did not, my love! A man of disgraceful habits and very little shame.”
He took her in his arms, she most willing, an exploring hand soon entering her bodice and drawing a very quiet squeak of protest.
“I do not think you should do that again until the last week of September, sir – a most… disturbing sensation.” She shivered, smiled uncertainly, not at all sure how to cope with the feelings he had aroused, not even sure what the feelings were, but definitely not prepared to indulge them in the library!
“Of course, my love – you need only ever say stop – I am no lord and master!”
She smiled gratefully, out of her depth.
“I did want to ask you about the hire of your personal maidservant – should I ask Mrs Montague to go about it, or will you wish to see her yourself?”
“But… am I to have a personal maid, sir?”
“Of course – you will hardly wish to look after your own wardrobe or do the hundred small tasks one’s own servant will find to perform. Bosomtwi is so necessary to me, I could not do without him or Ablett about me – you must have your own lady’s maid!”
“Oh! Perhaps Mrs Montague would know better than I how to choose one.”
“Your mother might wish to select a maid for you, do you think?”
“I cannot imagine so, sir, she will probably see it as ostentation and wordliness – she has a great down on vanity, you know, Frederick.”
“Then you should perhaps talk with my mother instead, or with Mrs Paget. Pin-money, now, for your personal expenditure and dressing – I had thought of four hundred a year, except that when we go to London next year for the Season you will have to dress fashionably and we would purchase those separately.”
“I had not thought of the Season, sir.” She was overwhelmed by his commonplace approach to the concept of spending four hundred pounds each year on herself, seized on the one item she could perhaps comprehend immediately – eight pounds a week! Ridiculous! How could she possibly spend that much? The Season, yes…
“We should go, I believe - my uncle will sponsor us. What I must also talk to you about is something I cannot publicly say, my love, not in propriety, and which I beg you will hold in confidence. Your father is short of cash this year, must be – the late lord had debts, was a ridiculously extravagant man – and so you should not, as far as you can avoid it, seek to purchase your trousseau immediately. It is my plan that we should go to London in October or November and you can make your purchases better there than in Poole or Dorchester. Delay your father’s expenditure, and then we can cut it to the bone without hurting his pride.”
“That is very good of you, Frederick, I had not thought about the money, except to know that I come to you with none. I am not the wife a prudent man should seek, sir!”
“Whoever heard of a prudent sailorman? I am rich enough, my true love, that I need have no worry about your portion – I can marry for love alone. When we are wed I will sit down with you and explain our finances in detail, for you will have Power of Attorney when I am at sea, but, so that your mind is at rest, be sure that a few hundred a year is as nothing to us.”
“All I shall ever have will be one half of Mama’s five thousands, on her death.”
“You come with your love and mine – we neither of us need more, I hope.”
She could not be wholly convinced, was quite certain that coming to him penniless she was not going to be a spendthrift with his fortune – that would not be the honourable course.
The problem of her colouring exercised his mind as he accompanied the party home – rubies and sapphires might well be too dark and rich to suit, whilst diamonds were not a favourite of his. Not emeralds – Marianne’s stones were put away for Iain to give to his bride or daughter one day, and he preferred not to have a reminder of them. Abrams would be able to advise – a visit to Winchester was essential, he had to buy rings in any case – he would need her finger size, he must ask her tomorrow. A memory struck him, that vile renegade, Whitebeard, offering a bribe – he wondered what it might have been, what had happened to it – some piece of
cheap, flashy, gimcrack tawdriness no doubt, meant to impress an ignorant Frank. He signalled across to Bosomtwi, riding next to Iain.
“Oh, that! I put it in the little bag what have the razors and shaving brush and basilicum powder in it, sir, and forgot it, isn’t it.”
Bosomtwi shook his head, he had never opened it. He glanced anxiously back at Iain, had been away from his side too long for his own comfort.
“Good horseman he going to be, isn’t it, sir. Brave boy, no fear in him and want to learn. I teach him your English straight leg and Arab bent knees both. He say he like her, the missus, sir, she got a mouth that laughs.”
“Good, I am glad he does. She said that she was frightened that you might not approve of her, that you might be jealous of her.”
“Me? My name not Goldfarb!” He laughed, a rare indulgence, but his life had given him little joy so far. “You my chief, sir, and I go to war behind you, like a warrior should. I am a fighting man, I am your servant, and the keeper of your horses, and proud to be, sir. But I ain’t no bloody woman, isn’t it!”
“Goldfarb? Was he jealous of you?” Frederick was quite appalled at the implications.
“Not like that, sir. He just say I not good enough to be you man, I don’t dress you like a gentleman should every day. But he love you, sir, because you treat he soldiers good, and rescue them and make them proud men again. He got a tender heart, him, isn’t it.”
“Tender hearted? Goldfarb?” The big ex-sergeant did not seem a fount of tenderness, as Frederick recalled him.
“Not that sort of tender, isn’t it! You know that Barbary man what stick you? He still alive when the fighting stop, his guts hanging out but awake. Goldfarb pull he trousers open and cut his parts off – then he get me to say in Arab talk, maybe he go to Paradise, but he ain’t goin’ to be no use to them virgins what is waiting for him! Goldfarb, he really cross!”
“Do you know, Bosomtwi, I think I could have lived without knowing that!”
“He your man, sir – you watch, next ship, we in commission someplace, Goldfarb he turn up, saying he come to join – no questions asked, sir.”
Frederick shook his head, still unable to cope with the maze of personal loyalties the service generated.
The little bag contained a brooch, about as long as Frederick’s thumb, a firebird, its body a single ruby with a breast of smaller, light sapphires, wings and tail in diamonds, head and back in rubies, a single emerald eye. It was ugly, garish to English taste. It was rich. He showed it to Elizabeth.
“Oh! That’s awful! The sort of thing the truly vulgar manufacturers’ wives would wear at the dinners in Leeds. Husband worth half a million from mines, iron, wool; tutors hired to teach their horrid offspring the letter ‘H’; a fortune on their backs and their dressers begging them to cut the price-tags off!”
“Ah! Then I am to assume you do not wish to wear it, my love?”
“No, I damn well do not, sir – as you very well know!”
“Tut! Such language, ma’am! I will get rid of it in Winchester – Abrams will know just what to do with it.”
“I know just what to do with it!”
“Oh dear! How crude! And me just a poor, naïve, sailorman.”
She made no reply, merely stepped prudently out of arm’s reach.
“Rings, my love – I thought a diamond and a plain band? I wish you could be with me to choose, but rely on Abrams’ taste.”
“What sort of name is that, Frederick?”
“Jewish – Low Countries, I think – I believe he fled Antwerp a few years ago, when he sniffed Revolution in the air, brought his family and stock to England.”
She scowled, the broad mouth turning down in distaste.
“Should Christian folks be dealing with Christ’s killers, Frederick?”
“Do what?”
“The Hebrews – servants of the Devil!”
“Oh! Sacrifice Christian babies at full moon?”
She bridled at the unsubtle mockery.
“It is merely, sir, that, as every good Christian knows, the Jews are outcast wanderers, doomed for their inherent sinfulness!”
Frederick was neither religious nor learned, but he recognised Methody cant when he heard it. The very low Protestant churches were loud in their condemnation of Jews, black men, Papists and the Irish, supplying their congregations with enemies of lower status who they could comfortably hate, ideally without ever having to meet them. Inclusive cultures thrive best when they have a neatly defined external enemy – and the Low Churches took their money and much of their support from the prospering middle classes, could not therefore be revolutionary, so needed identifiable foreigners as a target.
He shrugged – religion was for the womenfolk anyway, it kept their minds occupied while their hands were busy, and a woman’s life was hard enough that a promise of Heaven always went down well. Chapel, however, would be a difficulty, should be discouraged.
“We will have to be Church of England, my love - the place we occupy demands it. I go to church every Sunday I am here.”
“Does the Church of England not condemn Jews, Frederick?”
“Good Lord, no, my dear! They might have money to put in the plate! In any case, the function of the Established Church is to provide tranquillity in a troubled world, to calm the people, not to excite them. And we, too, are here to lead the estate, Elizabeth, not to indulge our personal beliefs at the expense of good order. The Mob will rise at any excuse, you know, my dear.”
She was silent a minute, her quick intelligence busily reconciling belief, revelation, mundane practicality, and her love, not least.
“Are we too rich and important to have a God, Frederick?”
“Not at all, my dear, merely too responsible. Have you read of the Gordon Riots?”
She nodded, shrugged in her turn. “Lord George Gordon was a righteous man – and because of him hundreds died and whole streets burned – and few of the victims were the Papists he rose against! I saw that he died still in Newgate only five or six years ago.”
“Did he? I never noticed, I would have been at sea at the time. A dangerous man, yet no criminal by intent.”
“There is a right and a wrong, Frederick, can we not live by them?”
He shrugged.
“My life, our riches, come from my trade, which is killing French sailormen, and occasionally Dutch and Spanish. Must we believe that each of those men is wrong and I alone am right? Are none of them loving fathers, sons, brothers, good men?”
“But… our cause?”
“Perhaps… but I fight for me and mine, and never ask what is right or wrong.”
She nodded resignedly, “so we trade with Jews whether it be right, wrong or indifferent, because it is good for stability and the people.”
“Just so, my love.”
“Papa will be pleased, sir – he has always cleaved to the Church of England, has been somewhat distressed that Mama preferred Chapel.”
“I do not believe we have a Methody Chapel in the parish, do we?”
“No – and the vicar has been a little upset over Mama’s insistence on good works in his parish!”
Abrams thought the piece to be magnificent, an ancient firebird out of Byzantium, with origins that could perhaps be traced to the pagans of the eastern lands, he suspected. A noble collector would pay much above the intrinsic value of the stones – which were not of the best – for such workmanship and artistry. Abrams knew of three in England who would wish to add such a rare objet d’art to a collection, he would write them, and puff off the brooch in the trade.
“A shortish lady, sandy in colouring, pale of skin, stands proud and tall – a pendant stone, Sir Frederick, a pigeon’s blood ruby on a pale gold necklace, it will go! Rings? Easily done, sir. You have her finger size?”
“I thought rubies possibly too bright for her colouring, Mr Abrams.”
“Bring her to me when you are wed, Sir Frederick, and we can change them if she wishes – but I ho
pe she will be happy with my choice. I shall send my son to you with the necklace and rings, Sir Frederick, a few days before you are wed. Depending on the price the firebird fetches, it could be interesting!”
“Add on up to another couple of thousands, Mr Abrams, if there is a particular stone that catches your eye. I intend to give this to my bride at the wedding breakfast, want something that is the epitome of taste and states that there is a new family in the ranks of the great in the County!”
Abrams grinned complicitously – his clients were rarely so open in their desires, or, at least, in their expression of them.
Book Four: The Duty and Destiny Series
Chapter Two
Standing in the church at Winterbourne Abbas, the largest in the valley, Lucius Harris at his side again, marginally more portly, as amiable as ever, wife and three sons in the congregation. The pews were jam-packed, every inch of space taken, naval blue and military scarlet everywhere evident, civilians in morning dress and best new gowns, an air of happy expectation. Frederick had been unable to recognise at least half of the faces he had glanced at – members of the Alton and Paget clans come to celebrate the nuptials of their famous relative, together with a leavening of society worthies, self-invited but with some slight claim to Frederick’s notice.
Nantes frigate had been sent in from blockade to water and store at Bridport, the date of her making her mooring no coincidence. Captain Warren’s large presence was very visible, flanked by a beanpole first lieutenant out to see the lions. Ablett had intercepted him as he had made his way into the rear of the church, had escorted him to the unassigned pew towards the front, held deliberately vacant against fortuitous important guests. Wholly unexpectedly, Captain Jackman sat beside him, his swab on his right shoulder, Farquhar having made him almost immediately; his fiercely scarred face attracted considerable, and often horrified, attention from the civilians, and no little awe amongst the soldiers, most of whom had never had the opportunity to go into action.
Britannia’s Son (The Duty and Destiny Series, Book 4) Page 4
