My Fair Lord

by Wilma Counts

  And then there was Lady Henrietta. He shied away from any real consideration of her as a conduit for information. Yes, she was bright and concerned with the sorts of things that might interest a spy—or, more particularly in her case, things that might arouse the enthusiasm of domestic reformers. But, so far, he had seen nothing of that sort, either—though she had decided views about the less fortunate beings in the body politic. What was more, she chose to act on her opinions within the bounds of legality and propriety—though she might stretch the latter a bit. He smiled himself at that. The lady had spirit!

  He recalled his second trip to Spitalfields with her and Annie just last week. Once again he was attired as a Blakemoor footman, for he had agreed with Lady Henrietta that he would be less conspicuous in that role than in any other. And once again the carriage was loaded with bags and baskets containing food and clothing, but also he noted the inclusion of writing materials, paint boxes, and children’s books. The vehicle was so loaded with these items that Jake was forced to ride above with Charley, the coachman.

  When they arrived, having driven through a cold rain, Jake and Annie, with the help of the Fairfax butler and a young man of perhaps thirteen or fourteen, were left to do the unloading as Lady Henrietta was ushered upstairs to the drawing room. Jake conjectured that the butler, a man in his forties who was missing one arm, was one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ex-military men who had been turned loose on England with the end of the wars on the continent. Jake allowed himself a moment to wonder silently how in the world England would cope with another influx of demobilized soldiers, now that the ill-advised war with the United States had also come to an end.

  Jake and Annie were invited to wait for Lady Henrietta in the warmth of the kitchen in the basement where the scent of spices and yeast added to the comfort being offered. Annie introduced the butler and his wife, the cook-housekeeper, as Samuel and Maggie Boskins. The young boy had been sent with a heavily laden tea tray to serve the ladies in the drawing room.

  “Jus’ the three o’ ye, then?” Jake asked to make conversation.

  “Oh, no. They’s others—prob’ly ‘bout ten or twelve, total. Maggie’s always got the maids cleanin’ to beat all. The two of us—we’re sort o’ permanent,” Samuel Boskins said. “The rest comes and goes.”

  His wife, a plump motherly sort, placed mugs of hot cider in front of her husband and Jake and Annie who were now seated at the long work table that dominated the center of the kitchen. “Here ye go. This should warm ye up some.” She then returned to her tub of bread dough at the other end of the table and picked up the thread of her husband’s conversation. “Soon as they gets ’em proper trained, Miss Fairfax or Miss Penelope finds ’em places elsewhere. They mostly does quite well too. Ain’t that right, Annie?”

  Annie, looking somewhat embarrassed, merely nodded and sipped at her mug.

  Jake gestured at Boskins’ crippled arm. “Army?”

  “Aye. Talavera—’09. Talavera made Wellington a viscount, but me ‘n’ Maggie had a real tough time of it fer a good many months. Nobody wants ta hire a one-armed man, don’t ye know.”

  “Don’t know what we’d a done if the Fairfax ladies hadn’t a come along,” his wife said. “They was a godsend, that’s fer sure.”

  “Were ye in the Peninsula too?” Boskins asked Jake.

  “Nay. Not me.” Jake lied for Annie’s sake.

  “Hmm. Thought you had the look of a soldier,” Boskins said.

  “Nay. Jus’ London docks.” Jake drank from his mug grateful for the warm liquid sliding down his throat. “I have ta tell ye, I’m real curious ‘bout this place,” he said to change the subject. “Bein’ in Spitalfields, an’ all.”

  “Ain’t much to tell,” Boskins said. “The Fairfax ladies inherited this house and a small fortune from their father who had a silk factory here fer many a year. When the silk business died, so did he, an’ they decided to set up this house as a sort of refuge for women and children needin’ a place ta stay.”

  “The flotsam and jetsam of the streets, ye might say,” his wife said, pounding away at her bread dough. “That’s what we was too.”

  “But in Spitalfields?” Jake asked. “Most folks tend to avoid Spitalfields even in daylight hours.”

  “Guess this be the place where the most need is,” she replied, brushing a strand of graying hair off her face and leaving a streak of flour on her cheek. “Folks here needs a hand up.”

  “And the Misses Fairfax supply that, eh?”

  “Well, they does have help. Lady Henrietta and some other ladies brings much needed goods—an’ they often help find places—especially for young folks ready to move on.”

  Jake glanced at Annie who seemed quieter than usual. “’Tis true. They all does good work,” Annie said. “Not like some of the swells, you know.”

  Just then the young boy came in to announce that Lady Henrietta was ready to leave. Jake and Annie said their goodbyes. Jake was grateful to have a seat inside the carriage for the return journey, for it continued to rain. The excursion had given him new insight to Lady Henrietta. And he now understood better Annie’s fierce loyalty to her mistress.

  * * * *

  Both before and after the trip to Spitalfields, Jake struggled with that slip of paper Fenton had given him. The message Richter had faithfully copied from the blotter was a reverse image. Jake transposed it so it would read as the original must have appeared, but it was still a fragment and it was still puzzling. He had what appeared to be nine rows of alternating words and numbers, all of them in a code that Jake had never encountered. Furthermore, some of the letters in the “words” seemed to be numbers and in the rows of numbers, there was an occasional letter. Also, there were two symbols off to the side, just below—or at the top—of the others that resembled a hasty C, or half a zero, and either a 4,or maybe an L? Initials, perhaps?

  He conjectured that the words were the names of geographical locations. He tried matching just the number of letters in the words to locations in both France and England, but he came up with too many matches to make that approach practical. He also thought they might be names of people. He filled page after page in his notebook with possibilities, but still had nothing to report to Fenton.

  If only he had more than just a fragment . . .

  “Has Richter found anything else?” he asked Lord Peter Fenton when they met at yet another pub.

  “No, but Richter did send me a message a few days ago that he had something. Unfortunately, he did not show up at the rendezvous he himself had suggested.”

  “That’s strange.”

  “Yes.” Fenton sighed. “And it becomes more so. I sent someone to Trentham House to do a discreet inquiry. The butler said Richter had been let go without a reference for pilfering.”

  “Pilfering? Richter?”

  “A guest accused him of going through a bag or a valise and demanded that Richter be dismissed on the spot. The butler complied.”

  “Do we know if Trentham approved?” Jake asked. “Do we know who the guest was? Male or female?”

  “No. No. And no.” Peter’s white-knuckled fist on the table showed his frustration. “The butler refused to explain and other members of Trentham’s staff are simply not talking—yet. Richter has family up north—in Durham—but I cannot believe he would just leave like that.”

  “Nor can I,” Jake said. “Meanwhile, I’ll keep working on this message.”

  “Your little charade may be annoying for you at times, but there is still a chance you may come up with something useful. Our sources in English ports report that activity has picked up now that the Congress has finally and actually convened.”

  “But nothing solid, eh?”

  “Nothing solid.”

  November had brought chilling cold, but during intermittent spells of dry weather, Lady Henrietta insisted on sticking to her sched
ule of morning rides. Jake thoroughly enjoyed these excursions with her ladyship and, often, with Lord Alfred as well. Now that he had a decent mount in Blaze, he was able to keep up with her when she insisted on something other than the sedate pace that was considered proper for ladies riding in the park. He loved the color that rose to her cheeks and the sparkle in her eyes that the hard riding engendered. He did not love it when he felt he had to lag behind, either alone or with Lord Alfred, because she had encountered on the bridle path some gentleman of her acquaintance. He suspected that at least two of these fellows were rarely chance encounters—especially when he noted that one of them was the same Viscount Willitson he had met earlier. According to the gossip below stairs at Blakemoor House, the viscount’s name was often linked with Lady Henrietta’s. Jake recognized insipient jealousy for what it was, and tried to brush it off—only to have it recur the next time.

  Activity in the park had considerably lessened as a good portion of London’s fashionables had left the city for their country estates to wait out the most inclement months of the year. Of course many of that set were frolicking on the continent, now that Napoleon was incarcerated and Europe was free of war and blockades for the first time in years. Jake was glad that Lady Henrietta chose to ride whenever the weather permitted—and that she was not intimidated by a soft drizzle of rain now and then.

  The departure of Lady Henrietta’s sisters and the other two, and then of her brother Richard, was followed by the arrival of Lady Georgiana and Madame Laurent. Jake found conversation at the dinner table and in the drawing room much more interesting than it had been previously. But he also found himself much more aware of who and what he was supposed to be. At dinner, he would occasionally hesitate at which piece of flatware he should be using and he would look to Lady Henrietta for a slight nod or shake of her head to direct him. The Yorkshire dialect was of course very familiar to him, but remembering to use it among people who were, after all, truly his peers, was not always easy. The longer he and Lady Henrietta worked at his “elocution lessons,” the more he was able to revert to his own manner of speaking. He had to be careful, though, not to abandon the dialect too easily. To this end, he often slipped a word or phrase into his discourse, then made a point of “correcting” himself.

  “I just cannot believe how wonderfully well you are doing with your speech,” Lady Henrietta remarked one day. She leaned back in her chair set next to his at the table in the morning room where they had been reading the daily paper together. “Aunt Georgiana is very impressed too. We were talking about it just last evening.”

  He twisted to look at her directly. “Other folks’s talk has always come easy ta me, ye ken.” He deliberately exaggerated his country tone. “You meets up wit so many diff’rent types on board ships, ye ken. What I mean to say is: sailors meet with people from many parts of the world. I have always been quite adept at imitating the speech patterns of other people.”

  “Have you now?” she asked, holding his gaze for a long thoughtful moment, and Jake suddenly felt panicky. Had he gone too far?

  “I truly do be a workin’ on it, milady,” he said, trying to retrieve the ease of the lesson.

  “Yes. Well. Back to our ‘workin’ on it’,” she said brusquely and leaned forward again to tap at the newspaper item they had been discussing. “What do you make of this writer’s story about the so-called Luddites?”

  “I’m a thinkin’—that is—I think that writer is trying to take a very simple approach to a complicated problem. An’ he’s got no sympathy for workin’ folk.”

  “‘Has little sympathy for working people.’ Remember your gs,” she cautioned.

  “Right. ’Tis just that workers gets lost in these matters. Mill owners and mine owners forget the folks what are puttin’—who are putting—all that money in their pockets. An’ them folks are facin’ ’nother problem too.”

  “What problem do they face?” Her precise speech, he knew, was intended to show him how to put these matters correctly without interrupting the flow of discussion too much. He thought she enjoyed their verbal fencing as much as he did.

  “All these soldiers comin’ home. They needs jobs and some is so desperate that they be willin’ to work for less than the fourteen or fifteen shillings a day other folks bin gettin’—have been getting.”

  “Fourteen shillings?” She sounded genuinely shocked.

  He nodded. “Think about that. And trying to feed a family.”

  “And this General Ludd? You believe he has the answer—destroying looms and threatening strikes?”

  “Well, now, milady, as to that, no one seems to know fer sure that there even is a General Ludd. Might a bin someone o’ that name in years gone by—twenty years ago--but it ain’t fer sure now.”

  “Nevertheless, the tactics are the same now as then—smashing the very machinery needed to maintain their livelihood. It simply makes no sense.”

  “Gets attention, don’t it?”

  “Yes, it certainly does get attention. But is it the right kind of attention?”

  Later he reflected on this last session. He thought perhaps his adherence to country speech was more pronounced when it was just the two of them conversing—that he truly enjoyed having her correct him. In more normal situations—with others at dinner or in the drawing room, or with Lord Alfred on their rides—he found he dropped those speech patterns more readily. For the hundredth time, he wished this farce were finished; he wished there was not this social divide between him and the lady. He often found himself distracted by the contour of her cheek, the swell of her breast against the fabric of her dress, or the way her eyes changed from gray to green, reflecting her emotions at any given time. There was also the fact that he simply enjoyed her company, that he felt a sense of loss when she declared a session finished for the day. He was forced to remind himself on more than one occasion that he was on a job.

  * * * *

  Now, several weeks into what she thought of as “the project,” Retta was finding the whole situation more and more frustrating—and on more than one level. Keeping the truth from Uncle Alfred was not only difficult, but she felt guilty about doing so, especially now that his sister, Aunt Georgiana, who did know the truth, had joined the household.

  Also, there was Madame Laurent who had accompanied Lady Georgiana to Blakemoor House and added unforeseen complications. The two older women, now occupying the rooms next her own that had heretofore held Rebecca and Melinda, made liberal use of the sitting room connected to those three bed chambers. In general, Retta enjoyed the company of both the older women, but she did not feel totally free in her conversation when Madame Laurent joined her and her aunt. Aunt Georgiana had agreed early on that it would be better not to share the truth of Mr. Bolton’s presence in Blakemoor House with Madame Laurent, for that lady, charming and agreeable as she was, might be inclined to let things slip during dinner conversations, with visitors in the drawing room, or when she visited other drawing rooms. Besides, she might well discuss it with her son, Charles, who was something of a hanger-on with London’s dandy crowd when he was in town and often saw casual gossip as a way of ingratiating himself with that group.

  There was also the matter of the servants. Blakemoor servants were far too well trained and too loyal to openly question the actions of the family they served, but who knew what was said below stairs? Or communicated abroad on days off. They must have noted that she spent an inordinate amount of time in the company of Mr. Bolton, and surely they too could see the improvement in speech and even his demeanor. This thought startled her. Yes, it was true: his demeanor had taken on a degree of confidence and ease she had not seen in that dockworker twisting his cap in the library some weeks ago. It was almost as though like Hamlet he had been “to the manner born.”

  What if he had been? She indulged herself in that fantasy briefly, but only very briefly. One afternoon when Madame Laurent had gone driving
with a friend, Retta and her aunt sat in padded chairs at a small table in the sitting room, enjoying cups of tea.

  “As I told you earlier,” Aunt Georgiana said, “your Mr. Bolton seems to be progressing very well in modifying his speech patterns.”

  “Yes, he does,” Retta agreed absently. “And he gets along quite well in conversations at dinner and in the drawing room. I was initially concerned that he might bring up an inappropriate topic, but he has not done so at all.”

  “But—? I hear a note of worry in your tone.”

  “But there is only so far I can go with this. What do I really know of what men discuss over port after a formal dinner? Or in a card room or some other ‘male only’ discussion? How can I instruct him in such?”

  “Ask your brother. Heaton can surely help with that. After all, he bears a degree of responsibility in this whole affair.” Aunt Georgiana set her cup and saucer down rather firmly.

  “I wish Uncle Alfred—”

  “Oh, no!” her aunt interrupted. “I love him dearly, but Alfred would put a stop to this whole business immediately. He would see it as ‘not quite the thing,’ you know. Unfortunately, he would be right.”

  “But you—”

  “Frankly, I see it that way too, but I do want you to come out of this unscathed. Eventually, the ton may see this as a great joke—but only if it is carried off with a degree of finesse. Should it become an on dit earlier, it could become uncomfortable for all of you. All of us.”

  “Oh, Auntie Georgie.” Retta laughed and gripped her aunt’s hand across the table. “You were ever the master of understatement.”

  “Yes, well.” Her aunt’s tone became more matter-of-fact. “Have you given any thought to Mr. Bolton’s decorum in a ballroom?”