Another Heartbeat in the House (17 page)

We had been speaking of the ball (which had been reported in the morning newspaper thus: ‘After the grand dinner came a grand ball, which was indeed one of the gayest and prettiest sights ever seen; the ladies of the city mixing with the ladies from the country, and vying with them in grace and beauty'), and now we were assessing the fortunes of the gentlemen I had met there.

The graceless, pockmarked youth was a strong matrimonial candidate, according to Maria, for he was a viscount and first in line not only for his father's title (which was of little import to me) but also for a substantial inheritance (which was). I was on the point of quizzing her on her connection to the St Leger family, when Eilish, the housemaid, flung into the room and thrust Sir Silas's letter at me. I scanned it, laughed, then began to read it aloud to Maria:

‘My dear Miss Drury,

Did you by any chance last evening form an idea of the extent of my intrepidity? If you did, I have a notion that I shall now exceed whatever might have been your estimate.'

‘His … intrepidity?' said Maria, raising an eyebrow.

‘What a bumptious, conceited clown the fellow is! He would not appear out of place in Astley's circus. Look – here is his version of the Allemand, which I was obliged to dance with him last night.'

I rose from my chair and performed a creeping, hopping movement on my toes, my hands groping the air like the paws of a palsied cat. Maria started to laugh, and the harder she laughed, the more exaggerated my impersonation became, until we were both helpless with merriment. Finally I subsided into my chair, and reached for my handkerchief to wipe the traces of hilarity from my cheeks.

‘I danced with many square-toed bores last night, Maria, but believe me, Sir Silas was the most lethal of them. The military ought to requisition him as a weapon of torture.'

‘Tell me the rest of the letter,' urged Maria.

I composed myself, and continued reading.

‘I am about to ask you – to ask you plunging without preface or apology – to go to work for me, and to give
me
only
,
because
I
have the intrepidity' – that word again! – ‘to ask for what every body would wish to have from you, and nobody who had any pretence to modesty would venture to think of asking for.

Most truly your Affectionate friend,

Sir Silas Sillery (Bart).'

Maria and I regarded each other in disbelief. Then, screwing the
billet doux
into a ball, I aimed it at the Staffordshire coal scuttle.

‘He wants you to be his whore,' Maria said.

‘So do most men,' I replied with a shrug, ‘but he was right about his intrepidity. He has sufficient of
that
to ask me outright, which the majority of his rank would hesitate to do. One would be tempted to admire such candour in another gentleman, were he well-favoured and agreeable enough.'

My thoughts, I confess, had turned to Jameson St Leger. Some nuance in my expression alerted Maria to a possible imbroglio, for she said at once, ‘What man was there last night, who has turned your head?'

‘No one,' I protested, scrutinizing the lace hem of my handkerchief.

‘You fib, Eliza. You're thinking of someone in particular. Allow me to guess at Mr St Leger, who I know attended.'

I gave up any pretence of examining the lace, and raised my eyes to hers. ‘I cannot deny, dear Maria, that I did feel a strong affinity with that gentleman.'

‘You are not the only female to have felt an “affinity” with him,' she declared. ‘He is a great flirt. Half – nay,
all
– of the eligible ladies in the county pursued him before he married.'

‘Oh!' I tossed my head in vexation. ‘He is
married
!'

‘To a milk-and-water countess, the only daughter of the Earl of Roesworth in Buckinghamshire.'

‘Are there brothers?'

‘No.'

I leaned my elbows on the table and fixed Maria with a purposeful look. ‘So is she heiress presumptive, or apparent?'

‘Apparent. The succession was contested by some pinchbeck baronet, but the House decided in her favour.'

‘Then she is in line for a substantial inheritance.'

‘The estate is entailed in the absence of a son.'

‘Has she children?'

‘No. A daughter was stillborn; the travail nearly killed her, as it did her mother before her. She is a delicate creature, narrow in the hips. Women like her should never bear children.'

‘Who stands to inherit if no son is forthcoming?'

‘Her cousin. Sir Silas Sillery.'

At this I laughed heartily. ‘It is a Flemish knot! I tell you, Maria, I'd rather be Sir Silas's whore than his governess, for he has eight children.'

‘Eight! No gentlewoman should be obliged to have charge of eight pupils. They should all be packed off to school, by law.'

I looked at the broken seal on the letter, which bore a double ‘S' over a coat of arms. ‘The laws of primogeniture are quite egregiously baffling,' I declared.

‘Quite. Redress the balance, allow women to inherit, and all might go well with the world.'

Just then, Eilish put her head around the door and announced the arrival of Lady Charlotte.

‘My sister!' said Maria. ‘She must have stayed the night in town. Bid her come in, Eilish. And bring us tea.'

‘Still in your morning gown, Maria!' remarked Lady Charlotte, as she swished into the room with her pug under her arm.

‘Why should I change out of it, dear Charlotte,' retorted Maria, ‘when I have nowhere to go, nor any inclination to gallivant? I am perfectly snug and well set up here in my own house.'

‘As long as you have tenants to pay the rent.'

‘I have plenty of tenants.'

‘You'll find they'll renege,' said Lady Charlotte, ‘if you allow the place to sink like a dilapidated ship. Have you done no repairs lately? The front door knocker came off in my hand, and I saw what I took to be a broom handle propping up the sash of the upper salon.' She turned to me with a compassionate smile. ‘No wonder, my dear Miss Drury, you are anxious to find a situation. Did you receive a letter from Sir Silas?'

‘Yes, this morning by messenger. Thank you, Your Ladyship, for your advocacy.'

‘Pooh. Forget about Sir Silas and his brats. I have a better proposition for you.' She took a seat upon one of the spindle-backed chairs that flanked the table, and set the pug on the floor. ‘I understand that all the fashionable ladies in London are engaging companions nowadays. None of your dowdy spinster-cousin charity cases, neither, but accomplished young ladies.'

I saw my opportunity, and grasped it at once. ‘Oh, it is quite the done thing, Your Ladyship! A companion is as vital a necessity to a lady of fashion as is her reticule, or her lapdog! You will not see
any
modish gentlewoman in a public place without a smart companion in attendance.' I remembered what Maria had said the previous day, about the carriages lined up outside the church in Doneraile. ‘Especially at church on Sundays.'

‘In that case, I propose to take you on. Since my son left Doneraile Court for London I no longer have access to the intellectual stimulation his tutor used to afford me. We delighted in our tettatets, Mr Chummy and I, and I confess that I miss our lively games of piquet and backgammon.'

‘I play both.'

‘Do you play well?'

‘Well enough, I hope, to match Your Ladyship,' I said. I had learned all manner of tricks from my father and his friends, but I did not wish to jeopardize any opportunity of advancement by revealing just how proficient I was.

‘Then perhaps you will pay me the compliment of coming to live at Doneraile Court?'

‘Where the hems of St Leger garments have been kissed for centuries,' snipped Maria.

‘Oh, you!' snapped back Charlotte. ‘Are you bitter, Mrs Sourpuss, because you cannot afford to engage a companion?'

‘I am at liberty, Charlotte, to choose my friends and send them packing when they cease to amuse me. I have no need to purchase company.'

‘And I wouldn't waste
my
money on the company you keep.'

Although the words were barbed, neither seemed to take much offence. I suppose that is the nature of sisterhood; I have had no experience of it.

Lady Charlotte turned back to me. ‘I am to take tiffin with my friend Lady Fitzpatrick.' She consulted a silver-gilt watch. ‘I shall come back and pick you up at three o'clock.'

‘Will you not stay a while?' asked Maria. ‘Eilish is bringing tea.'

‘No. I promised Caroline all the news from last evening, and she talks so much I will barely have an opportunity to relay it if I don't get to her on time.' She rose from her chair and made for the door. ‘I see
this
handle is in good repair. Perhaps you are not so deficient in housekeeping skills as I thought,' was her Parthian shot.

Maria resumed her seat. ‘I noticed she didn't pay you the compliment of waiting for an answer to her charming request for company. If you accept her offer I hope you will teach her some manners; my sister takes for granted that everyone will do her bidding. I wish you could have told her to make herself scarce.'

‘I am in no position to turn down employment,' I told her, ‘and I'd rather be companion to your sister than governess to Sir Silas's litter of eight.'

‘It will be nine soon, for I hear that Lady Sybil is
enceinte
again. It is because she
will
send her infants to a wet-nurse. If she nursed them herself, she should not conceive so quickly. It is a sure preventive, you know.'

At this, Eilish arrived with the tea. ‘Mr Thackeray is without,' she announced, as she set the tray on the table, ‘and wanting to speak with you.'

‘Bid him come in,' said Maria.

William looked morose as Eilish showed him into the room. His neckcloth was dégagé, and he was unshaven. He had clearly spent another sleepless night watching over Isabella.

‘Sit down, Mr Thackeray,' said Maria, ‘and join us in a cup of tea. Or would you prefer beer?'

‘Beer, if you please.'

‘Bring us some beer, Eilish. We all three will have some, I think.'

The housemaid said, ‘tch', and sloped off to fetch it. A glass of beer was a most welcome notion, following my abstemiousness of the previous evening when I had not allowed so much as a sip of champagne to pass my lips.

As William joined us at the table, a yelp rose from beneath it.

‘What the deuce is that?' asked William.

‘Oh, it is Charlotte's new pet,' said Maria, scooping the pug up from the floor. ‘It will vex her that she has forgotten it, for I am sure she wanted to show it off to Lady Fitzpatrick.' In imitation of her sister, she assumed an autocratic voice. ‘It is all the fashion, you know, to be seen in society with a lapdog.'

She sat the dog on her lap, where it assumed the stance of a constipated gargoyle. ‘It will be one of your duties, I dare say, Eliza, to take the creature out twice a day to make sure it moves its little bowels.'

‘One of your duties? What's this?' William turned a look of enquiry on me.

‘I have been offered a situation as companion to Lady Charlotte.'

‘Who is Lady Charlotte?'

‘She is the wife of Hayes St Leger, Viscount Doneraile,' Maria told him, ‘and I have the misfortune of being her sister.'

‘And she lives here, in Cork?'

‘She lives at Doneraile, a neighbourhood crowded with seats of the gentry, of which my brother-in-law's is the most conspicuous. It's a fine, handsome residence, Eliza. You will be very comfortable there.'

‘Isabella's grandparents are from Doneraile. It's a market town, is it not?'

‘It is a gentleman's village,' Maria told him, ‘and the pleasantest place in Cork. Eliza could not have hoped for a better situation.'

‘You are staying on in Ireland?' William asked me.

The way he looked at me reminded me of a moony messenger boy in Chiswick who had used to run errands for naught but the pleasure of being of service to me.

‘Yes.'

Maria suddenly made a face, and sniffed at the dog on her lap.

‘Pooh! It must want to do its business. Bad, smelly creature.' Holding the animal at arm's length, she rose to her feet and hastened from the room.

A silence descended between William and me. It endured for a minute or more, until he said, ‘How will I manage without you, Eliza?'

‘You shall manage very well. You have done until now.'

‘I never knew you until now. Until now, I didn't know that a woman could be my equal, my confidante.'

‘Well, now you do,' I replied brusquely, keen to change the subject. ‘How is Isabella?'

He shrugged, wearily. ‘There has been no change. I must give up any notion of leaving her here in Cork, and get her to Paris somehow.'

‘Why Paris?'

‘There is a highly regarded
Maison de Santé
in Ivry, not far from the capital. It's not cheap.'

‘What about the guidebook you came here to write?'

‘I shall be obliged to put it on the long finger, as the Irish say. Isabella's health takes precedence over everything.'

‘When do you go?'

‘Tomorrow. You?'

‘Lady Charlotte returns for me at three o'clock this afternoon.'

‘So we shall not see each other again. This is … abrupt.'

‘Yes.'

‘I think there is no hour in the day has passed since I met you that I have not thought of you.'

‘You stupid man!' I exclaimed. ‘Stop this talk at once, for if you don't, I will never see you again. Never. And I
want
to be able to see you again, when you return to write your book.'

‘That's not likely to happen, burdened as I am with responsibilities.'