The Passing Bells (3 page)

Fife and drum and the colors streaming. The Guards marching shoulder to shoulder over the icy mountains to Corunna, Sir John Moore watching them with tears in his eyes and knowing by the very sight of those ordered, unbroken ranks that Napoleon was doomed. Boyhood dreamings. Uncle Julian's tales . . . Fortescue's history of the British army . . . entwined inextricably with the social aspects of the game, for game it was, this playing at soldiering in London town. St. James's, Buckingham Palace, the Tower . . . an officer in the Coldstream Guards, the King's thin red line . . . a
Guards officer
and thus set apart in his own exclusive, distinctive class. To give that up, to be merely “Mr.” Fenton Wood-Lacy of Foxe, Ltd., purveyors of meat pies and sixpenny teas, cheap foods in tins, tea shops strategically placed on busy corners in major towns and cities—Brighton, Plymouth, Margate, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool, and the Greater London area—was to reduce himself to the level of the general herd. And if that be snobbery, make the most of it!

He leaned sideways in the saddle and saber-cut a milkweed with his riding crop—a vicious, backhanded slash that reduced the tall, slender plant to stubble. On straightening up, he heard a distant hallooing and glanced idly over his left shoulder to see Lord Stanmore several fields back coming on at the gallop, the chestnut gliding over hedges and blackberry thickets with the grace of a swallow.

The Earl of Stanmore in his proper element, Fenton mused. Coming on like the wind, horse and rider as smoothly integrated as a fine watch. It had been his initial view of the man when first visiting Abingdon Pryory at the age of nine with his younger brother Roger. The sight had impressed him then as it impressed him now. He rode just as smoothly himself, he supposed. And so he should, for it had been Lord Stanmore who had taught him the proper way to sit a horse, and how to take a jump without flinching. The summer of 1898, he reflected, the year his father had begun on the plans for the restoration of the great house. Abingdon Pryory had become a second home for the Wood-Lacy family, and his education as a horseman and huntsman had begun. A bond had been created between himself and the earl in that long-ago summer, and it had grown stronger with time. He watched the man galloping toward him and his spirits lifted, the gloom that had been so crushingly pervasive beginning to fade.

“Dash it all, Fenton,” the earl cried out as he drew alongside, the two horses whinnying, rubbing necks, “you could have waited for me.”

“Sorry, sir. Didn't think you'd be up that early.”

“Not up? What the deuce do you mean,
not up?
You know my habits as well as anybody.”

The captain smiled and proffered the open cigarette case. The earl took one.

“My apologies.”

“Accepted.” He leaned toward Fenton for a light. “Well, now, caught up with you at last. Did you see how we took that last hedge?”

“Yes, sir, I did. Like a champion.”

“You wouldn't think the old boy'd been laid up for two weeks, would you? I'll be taking him to Colchester next month for the point-to-point. By the way, did Hargreaves speak to you about the Tetbury hunt?”

“We discussed it over lunch at the Savoy. His treat.”

“You said yes, of course.”

“I did.”

“Fine. You shan't regret it. You can have your pick of mounts—except for Jupiter, of course.”

“That's very kind of you, sir.”

“Nonsense, my dear chap, nonsense.” Lord Stanmore patted his horse on the neck the way another man might pat a well-loved dog. “Let me rest him for a bit and then I'll race you to Hadwell Green. We'll knock up the publican at the Swan and have a pint and a wedge of cheese.” He puffed on the cigarette, not inhaling. “Damn, but it's a fine morning. That crowd at the house don't know what they're missing, lying abed to all hours. Anyway, at least you're here. How long can you stay?”

“A lengthy weekend. I have palace guard on Wednesday.”

“I suppose you know your brother's here.”

“I assumed he would be. Roger wrote me that he and Charles had plans for the summer—in celebration of graduating.”

“Dashed if I can understand the lads. In my day, chaps came down from Cambridge with a sense of purpose and a damn clear idea of where they were going in life. Neither Roger nor my son has the foggiest.”

“It's just a phase.”

“Damned if I can see why your blessed mother had to sacrifice so much to keep Roger up there. Now you take what occurred during snooker last night. Roger and Charles were in some sort of conversation about prosody, and Roger said that in his opinion the Georgians were on the proper track . . . so I put in my oar after sinking the five ball with a perfect bank shot and agreed that
Childe Harold
was still a damn fine bit of poetry even if its author
was
a self-confessed bugger. ‘Oh,' Roger said, ‘not those Georgians, sir, the
New
Georgians, Rupert Brooke et al.' Rupert Brooke! Have you ever heard such nonsense in your life? The chap walks around with his hair down to his shoulders and no shoes on his feet. Well, later, after a glass or two of vintage, I asked Roger what he intended doing, and he said, ‘Oh, edit a poetry magazine in London starting in September.' ‘Editor,' I say. ‘Good for you. How much they paying you?' And
he
says, ‘Pay? Oh, there's no pay, one can't expect to make money out of poetry.' Now I ask you . . . !” His voice ended on a note of heartfelt exasperation. Four jackdaws rose from the top branches of a solitary oak and flew, cawing lustily, toward the granite towers of Burgate House. “Well, enough of that. Let's spur off.”

“Can you lend me another hundred pounds?” Fenton said, gazing stolidly ahead.

Lord Stanmore tugged at his mustache. “Can I what?”

“Lend me a hundred pounds. I know that I still owe you—”

“Nonsense! No talk of that, my dear fellow. Of course, I'll lend it to you—if you need it badly enough.”

Fenton's smile was faint. “I suppose I shall always need it badly enough. I'm in a rather awkward position.”

“I quite understand. You're in the worst possible regiment for a man of your means. I would like to make a suggestion, Fenton, and I hope you won't take offense.”

“I'm sure that I won't.”

“Well, then . . .” He took a final puff on his cigarette and then crushed it out against the handle of his crop. “It's quite simple, really. So simple that I'm rather surprised you haven't done it before this. The season is upon us again. London is simply overflowing with the marriageable daughters of substantial men, as well you know.”

“Marry money,” Fenton said flatly.

“Yes, and where's the harm in it? By God, you're a fine-looking fellow—positively gorgeous, I might add, when you're wearing your scarlet jacket at one of those Mayfair balls. Be honest, lad, is it such a crime to rescue a Manchester mill owner's daughter from marrying some pasty-faced solicitor?”

The captain laughed for the first time in weeks. “I suppose it isn't, not when you put it that way.”

“Only way to look at it, old boy. As Archie Foxe might put it, you're a marketable commodity.”

“Like tinned beef.”

“Precisely. Look, we'll be opening the Park Lane house next week, and Hanna has half a dozen parties and balls in the works to get Alexandra launched. We could kill two birds with one stone: find my daughter the right husband and you the proper wife. Will you cooperate to the fullest?”

“I have little choice.”

“Why, dammit, man, you might enjoy it. Lord knows what pretty butterflies we may entangle in our net.” He pointed his crop toward Burgate House, where the jackdaws wheeled and cawed above the spires. “By Harry, there's a pretty one in that place I'd like to see taken off the market—for reasons I shan't go into, but I'm sure you understand.”

“I believe so, yes,” Fenton said quietly.

The ninth earl of Stanmore frowned and looked away from the great monstrosity of a house that, to his way of thinking, only a millionaire cockney with no sense of taste would consider grand.

“Dash it, Fenton, I've been more than accommodating over the years, permitted Charles his puppy love attraction to the girl when he was sixteen, but by God he's twenty-three now, time he got over it and faced reality. Then again, she may see the futility herself and give him the—What's that slang word?”

“Gate?”

“Right, the gate—and opt for a more suitable mate. . . . The quicker the better.” He dug his heels into his horse's flanks. “Let's ride!”

More suitable to
him,
Fenton was thinking as he kicked his own mount into a gallop and trailed the chestnut across the field, meaning, of course, that an earl's son didn't marry the daughter of a Shadwell greengrocer, even if that greengrocer could buy and sell most of the peers in England, Lord Stanmore included. Archie Foxe's daughter, despite her Paris clothes and Benz run-about motorcar, was still Archie Foxe's daughter. A friend of the family since her childhood, to be sure, but no more than that—ever. Lydia Foxe was fated by her class to wed in her class. Not the son of a greengrocer—Archie's millions obviated that—but someone a good step below the peerage. The soldier son of an architect perhaps, and a knighted architect at that? The late, lamented Sir Harold Wood-Lacy, refurbisher of old buildings, a master of his craft and the delight of such clients as Queen Victoria, for his work at Balmoral and Sandringham House, and the present earl of Stanmore, for his painstaking restoration of Abingdon Pryory, work which Anthony had paid for with part of his wife's dowry, the million dollars or more that Adolph Sebastian Rilke had gladly handed over to see his daughter wed to a nobleman, dollars that had been earned in Chicago and Milwaukee, USA, by the brewing of beer. No loss of social status in
that
union. Money was the American peerage: beer barons, steel barons, coal barons, robber barons of Wall Street, an occasional prince of industry tossed in for good measure. An American heiress ranked with a Hapsburg. And even if someone
had
sneered at the idea of a Greville, an Earl of Stanmore, marrying the daughter of a brewer, it could be pointed out that the Rilkes of Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Louis were simply a branch of the von Rilkes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and that Hanna Rilke had met the bachelor earl at a London garden party tossed in her honor by her fourth cousin, Princess Mary of Teck. Yes, one could so easily understand the difference between the Rilkes and the Foxes, even if one found the hypocrisy of it all slightly amusing.

“Come on! Come on!” the earl shouted over his shoulder. “Catch me if you can!”

“I'll give it a try, sir,” Fenton yelled, spurring his horse, but keeping a politic half-length behind.

2

“Mr. Coatsworth informed me how satisfied he was with the way you conducted yourself this morning, Ivy. But you must remember what I told you about dawdling and staring.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Ivy Thaxton whispered.

“You may go have your breakfast now and then give Mrs. Dalrymple a hand with the linens.”

“Yes, ma'am . . . thank you, ma'am.”

Mrs. Broome, for all her formidable size and regal bearing, was not unkind nor overly demanding. She prided herself on her ability to so train the household staff that reprimands were rare. There were some housekeepers who were veritable ogres and martinets, constantly bullying and punishing the help. She had only contempt for such creatures. She looked approvingly at the slender dark-haired girl and then reached out and touched her gently on the mouth.

“Let's see a little smile now and then, Ivy. You'll soon get used to it here.”

“I'm sure I will, ma'am.”

“That's the spirit, child. Now run off with you and have your breakfast.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” Ivy said, curtsying respectfully before hurrying down the passage toward the servants' hall. Ivy Thaxton was seventeen years old, and this was her first week away from home, her first week of service. She found it all very bewildering, but not unpleasant. She was not unhappy, as the housekeeper thought, not like that Mary Grogan from Belfast, who cried all the time. It was just that there was so much to remember and so much to see. The huge rambling house fascinated her. There were so many corridors and passageways, so many stairs and rooms, that sometimes she got lost when instructed to go to the “Blenheim room in the east wing,” or the “blue suite in the south passage.” She had grown up in a comfortable but crowded house in Norwich, the eldest child, with two brothers and two sisters and another child on the way. It had been the baby in her mother's womb that had necessitated her departure from the house. The older birds must make room for the fledglings, her father had said.

There were a dozen or more servants seated at the long table having their breakfast, but Ivy couldn't see anyone she knew. Valets, footmen, and the kitchen help, mostly. The kitchens were just beyond the servants' hall, and she went in there to get served: a plate heaped with bacon rashers, eggs, and a thick piece of bread, fried golden crisp in bacon grease. Urns of tea and pots of marmalade and jam were on the table in the hall. The amount and quality of the food that they were given still astonished her. There had always been enough food on the table at home—Mum had seen to that only God knew how—but it had been plain fare, heavy on boiled greens, carrots, and thick barley soup with a few bits of meat in it.

She found a place at the end of the table and ate her breakfast with a single-minded purpose that verged on gluttony. When she had finished and was mopping up the last trace of egg yolk with a piece of fried bread, she became conscious of someone staring at her from across the table. She glanced up into the amused face of a freckled young man with sandy hair who was nursing a mug of tea and smoking a cigarette. He was dressed in livery of some sort—a tight black jacket with pearl gray buttons, the jacket unbuttoned, revealing a starched dickey.