Point of Honour (30 page)

Cook boxed the girl’s ear in a flurry of flour. “An’t I tol you enough times, there’s to be none talking about the guests?” she scolded over Jess’s wails. “Specially
Ma’am’s
guests. You’ll wind up on the streets, girl.”

Jess nodded penitently, one shoulder raised to ward off a second blow, but Cook had gone back to her scones, having made her point. The girl sidled away from Cook and poured a mug of tea for Miss Tolerance from the warming pot by the fire.

“I’ll bring you round a pot and some scones if you’d like,” she offered.

Miss Tolerance thanked her and, hands wrapped around the mug she held, made her way through the garden to her house. She was shivering by the time she got in, despite the rising warmth of the day. She settled herself on a chair at the cold hearth, her cloak still wrapped around her, and nursed the tea, savoring the warm spill of liquid down her throat. Jess, arriving with teapot and a plate of scones, looked at her with comical dismay and laid one rough hand upon Miss Tolerance’s forehead.

“Not burning up, but you’ve a fever, miss. An’ you look like a hundredweight of misery in a bushel basket, if you’ll pardon me. D’you want the doctor? Shall I send word to Ma’am you’re sick?” The girl bustled around the room making up the fire, drawing curtains, looking for blankets. “You should be abed,” she scolded.

Miss Tolerance, thinking of the program of work she had mapped out for the day, shook her head and started to rise. “Too much to do,” she began. But she felt weak and off balance when she gained her feet, and sat down hard. “Damn,” she muttered. It took effort to think clearly and consider how much work she could reasonably accomplish with a feverish cold. At last, bowing to the inevitable, she sent Jess upstairs to bring down her dressing gown and several blankets-and the invaluable
Art
of
the
Small
Sword
, should she need some soporific. When Jess at last returned to the kitchen, Miss Tolerance was well bundled, set up before the fire with her tea, the scones she had no desire to eat, and her writing desk and books to hand.

She drowsed off and on, wakened fully several hours later by a rap on the door. Marianne had brought a nearly undrinkable tisane and a copy of
Tom Jones
from the house.

“I don’t think I can read just now,” Miss Tolerance protested, sipping miserably at the infusion Marianne pressed upon her.

“I’d no intention to let you,” the other woman said comfortably. She was dressed in a round gown and shawl and looked like a prosperous farmer’s wife. “You drink that all while it’s warm, and then you may have more tea to wash the taste away.” She opened the book, squinted at it nearsightedly, and began to read aloud. Miss Tolerance, who had known nothing of the author except that he had been instrumental in founding the Bow Street Runners, found herself engaged, then chuckling as she listened. After an hour or so, Marianne closed the book. “That’s enough for now,” she said firmly, as if Miss Tolerance had been in the nursery. “You rest.”

She rose and started for the door, but Miss Tolerance stopped her.

“You’ve been very kind. Did my aunt send you?”

Marianne shook her head. “Though she had the tisane brewed up for you. But Mrs. B is always busy with affairs in the house; it’s a great lot to manage, that. I just thought … you seem to need a friend.”

Miss Tolerance straightened in her seat and regarded Marianne with a mixture of affront and curiosity. “Why do you say that?”

“Don’t know. It’s just the way it seems to me. P’raps I thought you’d be missing Matt. We all do,” she added. “But he was specially fond of you.”

“And I of him,” Miss Tolerance said. “And perhaps you’re right. Thank you, Marianne.”

The other woman smiled. “You rest. Someone will be over in a few hours to see to you.” She took the tray with her and left Miss Tolerance to dreams in which the histories of Tom and Jenny Jones, the Allworthys and Westerns, Lords Trux, Balobridge, and Versellion, Sir Henry Folle, and various modern-day prostitutes mixed freely.

M
iss Tolerance was wakened twice more to drink the horrid infusion her aunt had prepared for her; after the second time, it now being well after dark, she made her way rather unsteadily up to her bed and fell soundly asleep. When she woke again, the room sparkled with sunlight and it was after noon. She sat up, relieved to discover the room no longer danced around with her every movement. Downstairs she heard a bustling which proved, upon inquiry, to be the scullery maid, Jess, with more tea and a plate of bread and butter.

She rose and dressed and went downstairs to break her fast. Her head was clear, and while Miss Tolerance was aware of a sensation of fatigue, she could at least entertain the thought of venturing out to see Mrs. Virtue. Cole had left her mail, and she opened it without much attention until one note turned up, written in Versellion’s hand. He had somehow discovered an address in London for Dr. Charles Hawley, not much more than a dozen streets distant from Manchester Square. This gave her cause to reconsider her plans for the day: Luton Street was a more prudent destination than Cheapside.

“I had hoped to see you tonight,” Versellion’s note finished. Miss Tolerance read this ruefully, then took up pen and paper to inform the earl that she had been indisposed, and to thank him for his assistance. This done, she gathered up her reticule, bonnet, and shawl and left the house.

She had not walked two streets away from Manchester Square before she concluded that she was not fully recovered. Miss Tolerance was not in the habit of indulging weakness, and feverish colds—associated in her mind with Connell’s death—were her particular abhorrence. However, she could see no purpose in exhausting herself with the walk to Hawley’s address; she hailed a hackney carriage and was taken up immediatley.

Luton Street was tidy, prosperous, but not elegant. Number Four was an older house than its neighbors, and rather shabby. The door-knocker was well polished, but the shutters and door wanted painting. The door was opened by a very young maid with freckles and an air of importance; the homely scents of mutton broth and baking bread rose from within. Miss Tolerance inquired for Mr. Hawley.

“I’ll ask if he’s to home,” the girl offered, began to close the door, then eyed Miss Tolerance seriously and added, “You know he an’t a
real
doctor, do you?”

Miss Tolerance blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Miss Hawley calls him the Doctor, but he can’t physick you, if that’s what you’re wanting. He’s only a teacher,” she added, as if this must be a great disappointment.

Miss Tolerance smiled. “Thank you, but I don’t want physicking just now. I only need a few minutes of Dr. Hawley’s time upon business.”

The girl nodded and closed the door; evidently the rules of the household did not specify admitting visitors to wait in the front hallway. Miss Tolerance regretted the opportunity to sit for a few moments, but composed herself to wait.

The maid returned, flushed and agitated. “Miss Hawley says the doctor ain’t to home,” she said rapidly, and started to close the door.

Miss Tolerance put a hand out to stop her. “Will you give him my card?” she asked. “I only need a few moments of his time.” She was aware of a woman’s voice scolding from the upper floors; the maid looked over her shoulder with some apprehension.

Miss Tolerance pressed her card, and a sixpence, into the maid’s hand. “Please see that Dr. Hawley gets my card. Thank you.″

She saw the girl pocket her card and the coin before she turned away from the door. She stood at the gate for a moment, considering where she might best find a hackney to return her to Manchester Square, when a stentorian voice behind her cried out for her to stop where she was.

Fifteen

T
he woman who stood on the steps of Number Four was stocky and plain-dressed, with a square, high-colored face and dark hair pulled back taut, as if to make herself as unattractive as possible. She appeared to be about five-and-forty; her manner suggested she had been bullying the household for many of those years.

She called again. “You! Stop, young woman!” As Miss Tolerance had already stopped and turned back, the command was purely for effect. “What business have you with my brother?”

Miss Tolerance stepped closer to the doorway and said quietly, “It is a matter of business, ma’am.”

“I can imagine the sort of business you mean!” Miss Hawley said loudly. Apparently she had no reluctance to carry on an interview at her doorstep for any of her neighbors to hear. “A female alone, calling upon an unmarried man? This is not—this is a respectable household, whatever you may have encountered elsewhere. If you’ve come down from Oxford expecting to pick up some sort of acquaintance you had with Dr. Hawley there, you’re to be disappointed. My purpose is to keep my brother safe from the likes of you. My brother is a
scientist.”
She used the term as she might have said
archbishop.
“He cannot be bothered by every dubious female who presents herself at our door.”

By the end of this remarkable speech, delivered in dramatic tones, Miss Hawley was very nearly shaking her fist at Miss Tolerance, who kept her own demeanor as mild as possible. It was on her tongue to inquire whether other dubious females had already called in Luton Street, but she judged it would be inappropriate at the moment: the woman clearly preferred melodrama to plain dealing.

“I am very sorry to disturb you, ma’am. I have no acquaintance at all with Dr. Hawley yet; I need only a very few minutes of his time, and in fact, the matter upon which I come relates to his scientific inquiries.”

The older woman examined her visitor coolly, then turned back to the house. Miss Tolerance, already impressed by the shabbiness of the house and Miss Hawley’s dress and considering the likely stipend made to a professor of ancient history, said quietly that a reward might be forthcoming for Mr. Hawley’s assistance. The large woman looked back over her shoulder.

“I will not discuss the matter on my doorstep for any passing idiot to hear. Walk in, if you please.”

Miss Tolerance did so, and was seated in a narrow, fussy parlor.

It appeared that the mention of money had wholly changed the tenor of their conversation. Far from protecting her brother from Miss Tolerance, Miss Hawley was now moved to confide in her, speaking rapidly.

“My brother has been so troubled of late. All manner of false accusations and charges made against him—doubt he has the first idea what is happening on the continent these days; he may not even know that we’re at war! I protect him, as I have since we were children. He lives for his work, Miss …”

“Tolerance.”

“Miss Tolerance. Lives for his work, and I am the one who attends to the daily matters of life, at least when he is here in London with me.”

“I will not take up your time, Miss Hawley, as I am sure you are busy—″

But Miss Hawley, having found an audience, could not be stopped. She would air her grievances; Miss Tolerance could do nothing but assume a sympathetic expression and wait for the torrent to stop. “My father used to tell Charles he would never make his fortune as a scholar, and about that he was very right, I may tell you. When the King was well, things were very different, very promising, but after he was stricken—well! I’ll be frank: Her Majesty’s an indifferent patron, appointments are hard to come by. It’s only my management has kept the household going—and my little income. Charles has no thought of money!”

The Queen’s patronage, however unsatisfactory, might explain how Dr. Hawley had thus far avoided prison, Miss Tolerance thought. With that patronage in jeopardy, matters must be doubly anxietous with accusations of treason hanging over his head.

Miss Hawley had continued onward. “ … and to say that he is even capable of treason is slander; he has never had any sense at all since we were children. If he had, he’d have been a member of the Royal Society, with everything handsome about him by now. But no, he broke with Banks and Marsden, lost his best patron, all for the sake of these experiments he finds so compelling, and that has been the end of preferment for him, let me tell you. All my saving and management? Charles spends most of his stipend on plants and earth and books—all very well for him, of course, but how am I to manage?”

She did not extend her hand for payment, but the action was implicit. If Miss Tolerance intended to see Dr. Hawley, she would pay for the privilege.

“I think I may be of a little assistance there, ma’am. But my time is limited,” Miss Tolerance said. A pervasive smell of boiling mutton, and the pitch of Miss Hawley’s voice, were making Miss Tolerance’s head ache. “I must speak to your brother now.”

Miss Hawley looked mildly affronted by this uncivil hurry. She had clearly counted upon a few more minutes of unleashing her grievances before she permitted her guest to see her brother. But she rose and left the room. When she returned a few minutes later, it was to gesture Miss Tolerance to follow. They wound through the narrow hallway, down a flight of stairs, and out into a crowded kitchen garden, in the midst of which a stocky man, coatless and aproned, squatted before a vine dabbing at flowers with a fine paintbrush.

Miss Tolerance stepped forward, but was restrained for a moment by Miss Hawley, who whispered, “I beg you will not give any funds to Charles—he is so improvident! Come see me when you have done.” When Miss Tolerance nodded, Miss Hawley turned and left them.

“Dr. Hawley?” Miss Tolerance surveyed the garden, which was narrow but deep. What appeared at first to be a great mass of vines resolved itself, upon inspection, into two rows of six growing beds separated by narrow trenches. The vines themselves had been secured to poles and trellised across the length of each bed. The most curious feature of the garden was that all of the plants in the left-hand beds, and nearly all of those on the right, wore small muslin bags at intervals along their branches. In the last of the growing beds, Charles Hawley finished dabbing with a paintbrush at the flower on the vine, and from a pocket in his apron drew a muslin bag and tied it around the flower to which he had been ministering. He did not turn to acknowledge Miss Tolerance’s presence, but took up his brush again, dabbed it carefully in a jar, and began painting away at a new flower. Miss Tolerance observed that his face was as red as his sister’s, his head almost entirely bald, with a blow-away fringe of dark hair brushing his collar. Fine-tipped brushes bristled from one pocket of his apron, a ball of twine trailed a long end from another, and the ground around his knees was littered with notebooks, pencils, and gardening tools.