Lace for Milady (7 page)

George was sent over in the evening to entertain us, which he did by routing through the shelves for an old copy of
The Sporting Magazine
left behind by Mr. Seymour and poking his head into it while Slack and I set up the tambour frame to make a firescreen. I was coming to see that if the windows were to admit two-thirds of every wind that blew past, our backs would require some protection. With memories of his experience the night before, George left early. As soon as I suggested having a fire lit, in fact. The grate gave another performance, but in much diminished form. I took the notion that on this occasion it was indeed having the fire lit that caused the sounds. I hoped that with successive lightings whatever was bumping would get knocked into a position where it no longer rattled, and we would have peace.

~ ~ ~

Perusing these pages, I see I have omitted many personages in our life. We had other acquaintances than my relations, the Duke of Clavering, and the revenue officer. Neighbours came to call often, and we returned their calls. A few card parties and dinners had been attended, and three teas had been given by us. We had a quite respectable number of people to bow and speak to in the village, and never left the church without being drawn into some group for a chat after service on Sundays. Both Slack and I were active with the women of the parish in visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked (in a Christian sense, of course). Without boasting, I think it only just to mention that other gentlemen than Cousin George took some little interest in me, too. There was a certain Mr. Harkness who... However, that has nothing to do with my story. One of our favourite callers was Mr. Harvey McMaster, a gentleman farmer nearby who was well educated, well-to-do, and well mannered.

It was Slack’s unpleasant custom to refer to him as my “beau,” which was an exaggeration, though I did enjoy his company. He was well over thirty-five and plain in appearance. Some few days previously he had been to call and asked me to accompany him to Eastbourne, where he had to go on business. I had been looking forward to the trip, but when the actual day dawned fine, clear, and bright, I was a little sorry I was to be deprived of my second attempt at riding Juliette. I feared she would take the notion she had bested me and was to spend the remainder of her days standing in the stable, eating her head off. However, I had accepted the invitation and would, of course, go with him. I had not said, but thought, that he would take his closed carriage and Slack would accompany us. She had on her black suit for the trip and was quite put out to observe he drove up in his sporting curricle that held only two.

“We can take my carriage,” I told her.

“Oh, no, your beau has purposely brought his curricle to get you alone. Don’t let
me
interfere with his plans.”

“Don’t be an ass, Slack.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll call on Lady Ing instead. She is lending me a pattern for a netted shawl. I’ll have need of it before long, I think.”

“Suit yourself. You’re welcome to come if you wish.”

“Mr. McMaster will not welcome me.”

Her coyness deprived her of the trip, and I would have liked her company nearly as much as she would have liked coming with us. She must be taught to curb these sly taunts about Mr. McMaster, however, and leaving her behind was the surest way to do it.

The trip was enjoyable without her. It was my first longish trip in an open carriage—Mr. McMaster had driven me home from Pevensey once before. There is nothing like a high-perch open carriage to give a view of the countryside, though, of course, both wind and dust are included in the trip. Contrary to Slack’s teasing, the conversation throughout was most decorous, not a word spoken that the bishop could frown at. I told him something about the part of Wiltshire where I had been raised, and he in turn explained his home territory to me. This south-east corner of England, he informed me as we drove along, was the most history-laden part of the country. It was here the Celts had landed, and been pushed off by the Anglo-Saxons. The Normans, he assured me, though their conquest is thought of in terms of Hastings, had actually landed at Pevensey Bay, right on our doorstep. The Spanish Armada hadn’t made it to shore, but this was the spot they had their eye on. And at this very moment Napoleon coveted our shores. Mr. McMaster pointed out architectural features denoting the reigns of the various invaders. A Roman fort, a Norman church, a modern Martello Tower built to hold Boney at bay.

“Bonaparte is not likely to invade us now, when he is busy with Prussia, do you think?” I asked.

“You will notice the Martello Towers are manned,” he pointed out, and indeed sentries were to be seen in their highly visible red jackets, parading back and forth before the grey stone cylindrical towers that spanned the coast at regular intervals. “Behind the slits of the windows, glasses are trained on the sea twenty-four hours a day,” he added.

“There is little enough to see.”

“Best to be prepared. Boney might think this is an excellent time for a surprise attack on us, when we
assume
he is busy at Prussia. Of course, he is fighting there, and doing pretty well, too, winning at Lutzen, but there is no saying he hasn’t an army preparing at Calais or Boulogne to slip across La Manche one foggy night and attack us. I know I keep my blunderbuss loaded and have my men trained up as well as ever they were in Papa’s day, when invasion was considered imminent.”

At Wilton, a safe hundred and fifty miles from this attack-prone coast, no mention of invasion from Bonaparte had been made for years; but, of course, he was feared, dreaded, and those round stone towers brought forcibly home the reality that he was still a powerful foe. I felt a little icy finger of fear creep up my spine at this talk. This was more likely to put me off with my new home than any talk of smugglers or floods. Odd Clavering hadn’t thought to mention this particular menace to me. I brought up the subject of smugglers, just to gauge the sentiments of an objective, sensible person like McMaster. Clearly Clavering had been trying to frighten me, but possibly Officer Smith painted a rosier picture than was true. He was in charge and would like to give the impression he had things under control.

“Oh, yes, they are still active,” he told me, without a moment’s hesitation.

“I have heard that in wartime they do less smuggling because France is not safe for them.”

“Ever since Boney went to Prussia, it has been going on much as it used to. Englishmen don’t stop drinking brandy and buying silk only because of a war.”

“The majority of it comes ashore at Romney, I understand.”

“Most of it, for the landing is easier there, and concealment, too, but from Margate to Bournemouth there are men engaged in it. We have some right here in Pevensey.”

“Officer Smith keeps a close eye on them, I should think.”

“He does what he can, but he’s no Argus with a hundred eyes. He took a boatload a week or so ago, but there is collusion between them, of course.”

“The revenuemen let them through for a price, you mean?”

“They have clamped down pretty heavily on that. There was some scandal of one fellow, Lazy Louie they call him, who had the revenuemen from Romney to Pevensey on the take, and they dismissed the officers. It amazes me that Lazy Louie walks the streets a free man this day. Bribed the judge, I suppose,” he said, laughing.

“What did you mean by collusion, then, if the practice has been stopped?”

“You must know the smugglers are in an excellent position to do a little spying for England. Who but they would know if Boney is assembling a flotilla at Boulogne? Some of them are spies as well as smugglers, with a gentleman’s agreement that they will not be caught, I think. They do a great deal of good in their former capacity and little enough harm in the latter if you don’t bother them. The government is taxing us to death. Ten percent on our income wasn’t enough, they had to raise it for the war, and a guinea a head for male servants, a tax on our carriages and our windows and I don’t know what else. They could at least let a man have a glass of brandy without paying through the nose for it. I don’t buy smuggled brandy myself, but I drink it. A little, I mean—I don’t blink an eye if a friend offers me a glass of brandy. I know it is smuggled, but I don’t resent it, and it is no secret every inch of silk at Peters’ Drapery Shop is smuggled.”

My mind flew to my green silk gown, and I felt that I, too, was an unwitting accessory to the Gentlemen.

“Well, half the men doing it are so poor it is all that is keeping body and soul together,” he went on. “With the common lands enclosed they have nowhere to graze a cow, and with fellows like Clavering trapping their land so that even a hare is beyond them, what are they to do? Of course they can fish. We on the coast can at least depend on cheap and ready food from the sea.”

We arrived at Eastbourne, a quaintly formal little place, rather elegant in appearance. McMaster went to the grain merchant, and I poked about the shops for an hour, meeting him for lunch at an inn. It was a trifle chilly on the way home. Quite a brisk breeze blew in from the ocean, and when we got to Hillcrest, I asked him in for tea. Slack was on her high ropes at having been abandoned. She had not gone to visit Lady Inglewood, after all, but had sat home the whole time to make me feel guilty.

She succeeded only in making me angry. “Cut off your nose to spite your face if you like,” I told her, after McMaster had taken his tea and left us. In retaliation she kept from me a note that had been delivered at our door shortly after my departure. This was not given over to me till an hour after dinner, when we were sitting by the grate where we had again laid a fire. No rattling had followed the lighting, and I assumed it was at an end.

“Oh, this note came for you after you left,” she told me then and handed me an envelope bearing a crest. I am morally certain she hadn’t forgotten it for a moment but kept it back for spite.

“Kind of you to bother giving it to me,” I replied, mistaking it for my aunt’s stationery. Naturally, Aunt Ethelberta used nothing but crested paper. In fact, the ugly Inglewood crest designed by some totally unaesthetic person adorned many of her belongings. But this was not her crest. I did not recognize it at once, but as I was acquainted with only one other titled person, I had a fair idea it was from Clavering, as indeed it was.

“If it is an offer to purchase Hillcrest, I will pitch it straight into the grate,” I said angrily.

It was not an offer to purchase. It was a bare two lines scrawled in black ink in a fist that managed to be both casual and arrogant. The two lines filled the card, as Clavering’s black presence filled a room. “Please come to tea tomorrow at four o’clock,” it said, and was signed “Clavering.” Not your obedient servant, or yours truly, or anything but “Clavering.” Blunt to the point of rudeness. He could make even a social invitation an insult.

“You should have given it to me sooner and I could have sent in our refusal,” I told her, handing the note along to her.

“Refusal? Will you not accept?”

“Certainly not. This is no invitation; it is a summons.”

“I’d like to see Belview. It looks very interesting from what I can glimpse through the trees.”

“We would be overset by mantraps along the road, I fancy. I shall not accept.” She returned the card, and I flung it into the flames.

“Lady Inglewood says he asks no one there,” she began, trying to tempt me.

“Which means he does not ask her.”

“It would be fun to go to spite her.”

“What a petty mind you hide behind that pious face, Slack. I’m ashamed of you. Well, I suppose I can’t reply before tomorrow. I don’t intend sending my servants out into the night.”

“You might change your mind.”

I saw Slack was eager to go. I was curious to see Belview myself but would not accept a summons. “My mind is made up.”

We discussed the trip to Eastbourne, and I painted a rosy picture to give Slack an idea what she had missed by her sullen temper.

“It seems I am not to go to Eastbourne and not to go to Belview. I might as well take to my bed, for it seems
I
am to go nowhere of any interest!”

“You go to visit Belview if you think it is your company he seeks. But pray don’t sell Hillcrest out from under me. That is what this invitation is all about.”

"I
know it, but we could go without selling the house."

The knocker sounded. It was nine o’clock in the evening. If George came in the morning, he came at eleven; if in the evening, at nine. I assumed we were to have the pleasure of looking at the back of whatever magazine he chose to read this evening, and waited for his shuffling entry. The firm tread on the hallway floor told me it was not George even before the deep voice spoke. “Evening, Wilkins. Are the ladies at home?”

It was Clavering, come in person for a reply to his invitation. He was certainly eager to buy my house. The evening took an unexpected turn. Slack found herself a beau, but I shall write all about it in the next chapter. It deserves its own, and I am too fagged to do it justice at this time.

Chapter Five

Clavering waited to be announced on this occasion, adopting formal manners to match his attire. He wore black evening clothes, jacket, and pantaloons. I surmised he had been out to dinner, but was incorrect.

“I have just seen the last of my guests home and took the liberty of dropping in to see if you had my invitation,” he said, helping himself to a chair with a mere vestige of a bow, a ducking of the head really toward us both in turn.

If he had been seeing guests home, I took for granted they were female guests and felt some little anger that he invited
us
to tea, others to dinner. I had placed little reliance on my aunt’s statement that he did not entertain. Certainly a man in his position must entertain lavishly.

“Yes, I just received it this moment. Miss Slack forgot to give it to me earlier. I was out all day. Very kind of you to offer, but I’m afraid we are busy tomorrow.”

“All day? We could make it a morning visit, if that is more convenient for you."