Paying Guests (29 page)

‘Where did you meet him?’ Tilly asked and looked very forcefully at Sophie. Since her arrival at Quentin’s she had foreborne to question her about her past and had not been able to bring herself to ask questions about her mother, Dorcas; to hear now that at some time the girl had hobnobbed with a duke was startling indeed.

‘Ah, well, as to that,’ Sophie said airily, ‘it is a long story. It was at the theatre, in Covent Garden one evening. We had been doing the opera,
Faust
, as I recollect – he had enjoyed it greatly and was most complimentary about it. And that was when he asked me to
visit.’ She looked very directly at Tilly as she spoke, her chin up and her eyes seeming to challenge her.

Miss Fleetwood’s mouth was now actually open in amazement. ‘You had been –’ she began and then as Tilly attempted to interrupt her, held up her hand. ‘No, I shall not be stopped! What were you doing at the opera, young lady, talking to a
duke
?’

Sophie looked more charming than ever. ‘Why, I was earning my bread, Miss Fleetwood,’ she said with an air of great simplicity. ‘You cannot think I am able to live on air alone? You teach children in order to earn your bread, and I too have an occupation.’

‘What sort of occupation?’ Miss Fleetwood said in an awful tone. ‘Am I to suppose that –’

‘You may suppose what you will, my dear teacher,’ Sophie said. ‘But it will be simpler if I tell you, will it not? I was dancing in
Faust
. I am an excellent dancer, and I had the main role. That was what the duke had so enjoyed. And why I am able to propose myself – with Duff’s aid, of course – to Paton for the hunting. So I hope, dear Aunt Tilly, you will have no objection to Duff accompanying me? For I, of course, shall go, no matter what!’

Silas, as he had promised, accompanied Tilly on her visit to the court at Clerkenwell and she could not deny that she was glad to have his company. Even though he was on the silent side.

He had indeed been so ever since Sophie had dropped her most effective little bombshell into their company. In the two or three days that had elapsed the house had buzzed with it, and with little else. The guests murmured to each other and looked sideways at Sophie as she swept by, and even the servants seemed to have found out, for they looked at her with a sort of awe, and Eliza, when asked about the matter, told Tilly with some complacency that of course she’d known it was something like that all along.

‘I knew soon as I set eyes on her again that there was
somethin
‘ more I remembered than just her being a little girl here. I’ve seen her picture in my magazines, that’s the thing of it, lovely drawin’s they was. I knew I knew that dimpled chin from somewhere! Imagine – our little Miss Sophie on the stage!’

Which was small comfort for Tilly, for she herself had been, to tell the truth, somewhat shocked by the revelation. She had never thought much about the theatre; she had attended performances from time to time of course, but very few, for most of her entertainment was found within her own four walls in the company of her guests, who were, she told herself with a stab of wickedness, sometimes as good as watching a farce. If she had ever thought about actresses and dancers at all it had been in the same terms as the generality of her neighbours, that actresses were in some way disreputable. No decent lady, surely, would permit herself to be displayed on a stage. And yet –

The thing of it was, she had to admit, Sophie was so beguiling. If other guests peeped and gossiped for the first day or so, they were soon won round and became as eager for her company as they had ever been, and in some ways even more so. She had now an added sheen to her person, it seemed, and this made her glow and they all basked in it. The servants too seemed willing to treat her with extra respect rather than less. It was as though the power of her own character quite overwhelmed any rascally connotations of her occupation. So why should I feel so put out? Tilly asked herself as reasonably as she could, and receiving no satisfactory answer, took the route she had so often in the past, and went to talk to Jem, finding him, as usual, in his shop, busily arranging the winter fabrics.

He listened as she told him of Sophie’s newest piece of news and then nodded seriously.

‘I’m not at all surprised,’ he said simply and returned to his fabric which was not settling itself entirely to his satisfaction. ‘She was always a little madam, wasn’t she? Showing herself off and expecting people to admire her. It makes sense she’d be on the stage. And I wondered where she had her money from. Unless her mother had died and left her a legacy, I couldn’t see it.’

‘She hasn’t said her mother has died,’ Tilly said doubtfully. ‘She never speaks of her and somehow I have never brought myself to ask her.’

‘Perhaps you should,’ Jem said reasonably and stepped back to admire the thick green silk that now hung in perfect swathes from
the bar above the counter. ‘There, if that don’t sell out inside the week, then I know nothin’ about this business or the taste of my customers – isn’t it a fine piece of stuff?’

‘Indeed it is,’ Tilly said and then laughed. ‘In fact, you may let me have a length.’

‘I’ve already cut it for you,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d like it and it’ll suit you fine. As to Miss Sophie – she has her own reasons for telling you now and not sooner. I’d not cater to her taste for attention by letting her see you’re all that concerned, if I were you.’

Which, she decided, was wise advice and went home comforted, to concentrate instead on the matter of Polly and her father; and sought out Silas and told him frankly she would, after all, welcome his company on the visit to Clerkenwell.

‘I beg your pardon?’ He looked blank for a moment, dragging his attention from the street which he had been staring into from the drawing-room windows. ‘To Clerkenwell? Oh, the court – of course, glad to be of service, Tilly. Very glad.’ And he had smiled at her a little vaguely. ‘Er – the young ones off to Leicestershire then?’

‘Next week,’ Tilly said and looked at him sideways. ‘Does that perturb you?’

‘Oh, not in the least!’ he said, a little too quickly. ‘Ah – tell me, were you – I mean – were you surprised – oh – that is to say –’ He stopped awkwardly.

‘Surprised that Duff should be invited to return to Leicestershire?’ Tilly said a little wickedly. ‘Oh, not in the least. I suspected that he would return – he enjoyed the shooting so much that it is natural he should now consider hunting, I suppose. And I am no longer at all perturbed by his friendship with Patrick Paton. I was an unduly anxious mother to be concerned in the first place. Now I have seen how attached he is to Sophie, how can I deny my own foolishness?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am sure you are right.’ And lapsed into silence to remain so, apart from necessary comments regarding their travel, until they had almost reached the courts.

‘I am sorry if I am boring you,’ Tilly said a touch sharply just as they entered the City of London and the horse drawing their cab was whipped up to turn northwards for Clerkenwell. ‘I would not
have asked you to accompany me if you had not offered, you know, and although I said I was perfectly able to make this journey on my own I have to admit I quaked a little at the prospect. But now I see I should have suffered the quakes and left you in peace.’

‘Oh, no!’ he protested and roused himself. ‘I do beg your pardon, Tilly. It’s just that –’ He shook his head. ‘I feel such a fool, you know. I had convinced myself over the years that I was an excellent judge of character. I prided myself on it. And I had Miss Oliver down as a person of independent means who because of her sprightly nature and high intelligence found it possible to live her life independent of any maternal care or support. To discover how wrong I was – I have to confess to being quite put down in my own estimation.’

‘That must be painful,’ Tilly said and leaned back in the corner of the cab so that her face fell into the shadows and she could study him without close observation on his part. ‘Your feelings are engaged with Miss Oliver, I believe?’

He turned his head and peered at her. ‘Engaged? Decidedly not!’ he said vigorously. ‘Or not in any – in any loverlike sense! She is a child and I enjoy her company, for she makes me laugh with her prattling, just as children do. And she is so very pretty that she is a pleasure to the eyes. But my feelings are not engaged further than that. I am a man, Tilly, not a boy like Duff. You may ask him if his feelings are engaged – and I strongly suspect that they are – but for my part – no.’ He smiled then a little crookedly. ‘If I seem put out by young Miss Oliver, believe me that it is the wound to my
amour propre
and my intellect that causes suffering, not to my heart.’

Does the gentleman protest too much? Tilly wondered, still in the shadows, and then as her spirits quite unaccountably lifted, wanted to laugh. It didn’t really matter, did it? He didn’t care for Sophie and she had been feeling those stabs of unbecoming jealousy for no reason. How cheering that was! It even helped her pretend she was not concerned about the other comment he had made, regarding Duff and his feelings. She’d think about that some other time.

The courts, when they reached them, were alive with human
activity, and Tilly felt greatly comforted to have Silas’s large protective shape beside her. The entrance hallway, which was surging with people of all sorts, lawyers as well as clients – many of the latter looking decidedly the worse for wear, even at this hour of the morning – smelled foully of dirt and bodies and tobacco smoke and the alcohol which had had its damaging effects on the people she saw around her, and she lifted her handkerchief to her nose as unobtrusively as she could as Silas led the way in to stand beside her, looking about.

‘I think I must seek out the clerk of the court,’ he said in her ear. ‘I shall go and make enquiries and return to you swiftly. You be so good as to wait here while I check where he is to be found – I think that will be best, so please don’t stir from this spot.’ And before she could object he was gone, pushing his way through the crowd, leaving her feeling very isolated and conspicuous, for she was much better dressed than most of the other women in the big vestibule.

There was a uniformed man at the door, and she caught his eye, and he came across to her, his brass buttons winking in the thin sunshine that came in through the high windows.

‘Can I be of ‘elp, Madam?’ he asked heavily, looking at her in an avuncular manner.

She caught her breath and said gratefully, ‘Indeed, I am seeking information about a man who was – he was before the court here a year ago and was found guilty. I employ his daughter in my household and seek to gain information about his welfare for her peace of mind.’

‘O’ course, Madam,’ he said as though it was the most commonplace request in the world, and one he regularly heard each day. ‘This way.’

‘Oh! There is a gentleman with me,’ she said. ‘He has gone to seek where we should be and –’

‘I’ll find him and send him to you, Madam,’ the man said heavily. ‘It ain’t suitable for a lady like you to be standin’ here in the middle of all this.’ And she shrank back as a man a little more drunken than the rest came reeling across the hallway and nearly bumped into her, only being held back by the buttoned one’s hefty arm.

She didn’t argue after that, and gladly followed the buttons in the opposite direction to the one in which Silas had gone, and let him deliver her to a small room at the back of the building.

‘There,’ the man said. ‘Here’s the register of all the people what’s been in and out of ‘ere this past year. When did this case come up?’

‘It was just over a year ago,’ Tilly said and the man nodded.

‘In that case, you look in this ledger ‘ere. Start from the back, see? It’ll be quicker than going through for the whole year. You know his name?’

‘George Robert Mitcham,’ Tilly said. ‘So his daughter told me. Of Postern Court, High Holborn.’

‘Then you should find him easy enough. Now, the name of the gentleman what’s with you? I’ll go seek him for you,’ the buttoned giant said and she smiled up at him gratefully.

‘Mr Silas Geddes,’ she said. ‘And thank you for rescuing me so kindly.’

‘It’s no more’n my place, Madam,’ he said with an air of vast superiority and turned and went, leaving her with the big leather-bound ledgers. Some of them were set on a sloping desk in the middle of the small dirty room, and the rest were on the shelves which lined the walls in serried rows of well-tooled leather, a series of accounts of felons and thieves of all sorts, going back to the end of the last century, according to the dates carefully engraved at the foot of each ledger’s spine. She shivered at the thought of the years of wickedness contained therein, and with a strong effort of will, opened the pages of the ledger the man in buttons had indicated.

It was heavy and the pages smelled of damp and ink and newly released dust, but she riffled them through her gloved fingers, not quite sure why, but needing to become accustomed to the sight of the pages, all of them covered with names and addresses written in perfect copperplate, though in rather cramped lines. After each name was a laconic account of an offence, such as ‘pickpocket’ or ‘horse thief’ or, in some cases, ‘murderer and batterer’. She saw the words ‘hanged at Newgate’ appear several times in a final column and shuddered and hurried on, riffling harder and faster.

And then she caught her breath, staring down at the name that
leapt off the page at her, almost as though it had shouted to attract her attention.

It was not Polly’s father’s fate she had found. It was Sophie’s mother’s. Dorcas Oliver, she read. And slammed the book shut.