Touchstone (26 page)

Chapter Thirty-Four

S
ATURDAY MORNING BREAKFAST
at Hurleigh House was laid out on twelve feet of crisp white linen covered with hissing chafing-dishes filled with hearty foods, many of them foreign to the American sensibilities of Harris Stuyvesant. He worked his way down the row of lids, eyeing the contents, before he decided that morning was not the time to investigate unidentifiable lumps of spicy-smelling meat. He helped himself to eggs and sausages.

The only person in the breakfast room was the Duke, seated with his back to the room and his shoulders hunched over the morning newspaper. Stuyvesant took his host’s posture as a disinvitation to companionship, so he picked up a paper of his own and carried his plate to a seat between the window and the crackling fireplace.

Twenty minutes passed. A gray-haired woman came in to check the buffet table and left again, clearing his empty plate; the Duke grumbled at something in the paper, stood up, and stalked out, the two deerhounds bouncing at his heels. Stuyvesant skimmed the newspapers: Mussolini was in Tripoli; the House had stayed up all night debating the Economy Bill under Churchill; a boy fishing in the Thames had caught what he thought was a “big ’un” that turned out to be a badly battered corpse; some schoolchildren presented an iron-faced Duchess with flowers; and the
Times
was at last showing some apprehension about the looming strike—their regular “Coal Crisis” piece had moved smack into the center of its page. The less sedate papers verged on hysteria, calling for “volunteers” for the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, which sounded more and more like a tool for recruiting scabs.

In the Oxford
Bugle,
interviews were given with a local housewife (who denied that her purchase of six tins of salmon, three of corned beef, and twenty pounds of flour amounted to hoarding food); a city fireman (who gave a stern lecture on the inadvisability of storing quantities of petrol in the home); and two university undergraduates (hearty lads who eagerly anticipated the chance to man a London bus in defiance of the Strikers, and rather hoped to be given the opportunity to use their boxing skills, as well).

With relief, Stuyvesant heard someone else come into the room; with pleasure, he saw it was Sarah Grey.

“Good morning,” she greeted him, making for the coffee samovar. “None of the others up yet?”

“Just the Duke.”

“The Duchess will have been up and away long ago; there’s a horse she’s looking at near Cheltenham.”

“Your brother warned me that I might be pressed into horseman-ship, but nobody’s said anything.”

“A month ago we’d all be mounted and off by now, but the season’s just ended. Which is probably why this gathering didn’t take place a month ago.” She dimpled.

“I had an aunt once who was mad for German opera, used to dragoon anyone within arm’s reach to go with her. It got so the rest of the family would check the theater listings before we accepted a lunch invitation, because it could easily stretch on to midnight.”

“Then you know the hazards. As it is, I shouldn’t expect the others until much later—I heard them at one, going strong in the billiards room.”

“It was well after two when they came through.”

Her eyes sparkled at him over the rim of her cup. “And did they all end up in separate rooms?”

“I did my best to ignore the openings and closings of doors,” he replied primly.

She chuckled. “Gilly’s incorrigible. The Duchess only invites him because she and his mother were ladies-in-waiting together. The Duke goes wild.”

“He’s going to get himself arrested, if he’s not a little more circumspect.”

“Oh, Mr. Stuyvesant, we’ve loosened up a bit since the days of Oscar Wilde’s arrest.”

“I wouldn’t count on that if I were Dubuque. And please, call me Harris.”

“If you call me Sarah.”

“With pleasure.”

A short time later, Stuyvesant was surprised to see the two men themselves. Gilbert Dubuque and his chinless friend, last night’s bartender, both in startling Fair Isle pull-overs, both looking somewhat the worse for wear. Dubuque shot Stuyvesant a bloodshot glance, taking in the American’s proximity to Sarah and the unwelcoming glare on his face, and veered off for the shiny samovar.

“Morning, boys,” Sarah chirped merrily. “Hope you slept well?”

Dubuque muttered a response, whose only recognizable word was “train,” and walked to a table set up at the far end of the room; his friend flipped a hand in their direction but did not try to speak. Sarah’s eyes sparkled with mischief, and she called, “Mrs. Bleaks made some of her famous curried kidneys, you must try them.”

The sound Dubuque emitted was halfway to a retch; the other spilled his coffee. The two young men crept into a couple of chairs, huddling over their cups, and Stuyvesant leaned forward to murmur, “Sarah Grey, you are an evil woman.”

Again came the laugh, sexy as hell emerging from a cute little blonde thing like Sarah Grey. Damn it, her brother had been right: She was just his type.

Which wasn’t going to make using her any easier.

As if summoned by the thought, or the laugh, Laura Hurleigh appeared in the doorway. She checked briefly, taking in the tête-à-tête between Sarah and Stuyvesant, and her eyebrows rose.

But not, as Stuyvesant feared, from disapproval, because her expression was warm as she came over to their table.

He stood and pulled out a chair for her, offered to bring her coffee, then subsided when the gray-haired woman appeared with a tray carrying a setting of tea and an envelope.

“This came for you, my Lady.”

“Thank you Mrs. Bleaks,” Laura said, snatching the flimsy and ripping it open. She ran her eyes down the telegram, and went pink with pleasure before folding it into a pocket and telling Sarah, “Richard thinks he’ll be able to make it, after all.”

“Oh good.”

Stuyvesant felt like shouting aloud. He’d planned a day of vamping the two girls, feeling more and more like a heel with every passing hour, but trading that for a chance at The Bastard himself, well, that was an unexpected bonus.

“Mr. Stuyvesant, I trust you slept well?”

“Thank you, Lady Laura, the room—”

“Please, I prefer not to use the title.”

“Okay, Miss Hurleigh. Yes, the room’s very comfortable, but boy oh boy, it’s quiet out here. I kept waking up and thinking I’d gone deaf.”

“You should have asked Gallagher to stand outside and bang a few pans for you.”

“If I have the same problem tonight, I’ll be sure to ring for him.”

“Well, you needn’t have risen so early. You’d find the breakfast things out until noon.”

“Oh, I’ve been up for hours. In fact, I walked up to the Peak, I think you call it, and had a nice chat with your father.”

“Yes, the Old Man starts his day before the roosters.” Her voice put capitals on the title, as if at a family joke. “Perverse of him, I’ve always thought. What did you and—ah, Bennett. Good morning.”

The figure walking towards them looked no more rested than he had twenty-four hours before, following a night’s train trip. Still, he gave Laura Hurleigh an easy smile and tweaked his sister’s hair as he went past her, so maybe he just needed coffee.

Stuyvesant had to wonder at the timing of his entrance, but decided that if the former lovers had spent the night renewing their acquaintance, the innocence of their salutations was an act worthy of Broadway. Besides, Laura’s smooth skin was rosy with nothing more than the morning warmth, and her lips showed no sign of passion’s bruising, while the powerful out-of-doors air that Grey carried into the room was not the result of a mere two minutes in the garden.

Stuyvesant folded his suspicions back in their box and set about winning Laura Hurleigh’s approval.

“I was just telling the ladies that I started the day with a nice chat with the Duke, up on the Peak.”

“Let me guess: Romans and military history.”

“Right on the mark. But look, I should ask,” he said, turning to Laura. “Last night I offered to do something about the motor on the Morris. He seemed to think it a good idea, but maybe I should ask you, was that just some form of English manners too subtle for me?”

“Oh heavens, you don’t want to spend the day bent over a dirty motor! Wouldn’t you prefer a nice ride, or tennis? No doubt there’ll be boats on the stretch as well, nothing like the Isis but it has its own charm.”

“It won’t be an all-day job, nothing like. And I enjoy working on engines, if no one objects.”

“I imagine my father would be just tickled pink if you were to beat the thing into submission.”

“Oh, not beat it. I am of the gentling school when it comes to coaxing proper behavior out of engines.”

“I thought Bennett said you sold the things, not fixed them?”

“Nowadays I do. Mr. Ford sent me over here to see if my English colleagues could use any help in their sales techniques, but before I moved into sales, I was a mechanic. Learning the business from the ground up, as it were.”

“Industry in general might be less wicked if everyone followed the same path to the board room,” she said.

“Oh Lord,” Grey groaned, and got to his feet. “Politics before breakfast? I need fortification before I can face that.”

They were, indeed, getting right into the heart of the matter. Well, thought Stuyvesant; so be it. “Yes, you can’t help thinking this Strike would be a non-starter if some of the owners had ever been down their own mines.”

“Inherited wealth goes hand in hand with inequity,” said the Duke’s daughter, “just as lack of respect leads to lack of self respect.”

The American sat back, frowning at his cup as he took careful aim. “Interesting opinion, from someone born in a house like this.”

Sarah stirred, but Laura waved away any would-be defense. “It is because I was born in this house that I can see both sides so clearly, Mr. Stuyvesant. That Hurleigh House was built upon centuries of robbery makes its walls no less graceful, its garden no less lovely. However, this is a new age we live in. I believe it is time to return the wealth from the few to the many.”

“I don’t know that I’ll talk about the writings of Mr. Marx to your father, though.”

“You’ve read Karl Marx?”

“Sure. I don’t fully agree with him, but he has some ideas worth bringing up. Why do you think this country’s fling with Socialism a couple years back didn’t work? I’d have thought it would catch on like a house afire.”

“That’s rather like saying you’d have expected us to have a lovely picnic out in the fields, while guns are pounding on either side. The half-hearted, imitation Socialism of the Labour Party did not succeed simply because there was nothing to differentiate it from the capitalist policies all around. If one accepts that all government is based on enslaving the worker, then one realizes that no government can be otherwise—democratic, Socialist, monarchical, or what have you. Trying to change the nature of government by replacing one party with another is little more than using rouge to enliven a corpse.”

He blinked at the image. “So what would you do?”

“I, Mr. Stuyvesant? Fortunately the decision isn’t up to me, although I will say that if laws were passed by the miners, farmers, and housewives who have to live under them, more sensible decisions might be reached.”

“And where would that leave owners of houses like this one? Would your parents be given rooms over the kitchen and families of ten brought in to fill the rest?”

“Now you’re teasing me, Mr. Stuyvesant,” she scolded. “But yes, my family is like anyone else’s. Of some members and their actions, I am inordinately proud. Other portions of my family tree fill me with shame. But no matter our history, we have outlived our function, and all that remains are the chains that bind us as well as our working-class brothers. A house like this could be a resource for the nation.”

“So you wouldn’t follow the example of the Russians and the French and just execute the upper classes?”

But with that, he’d gone too far. She sat back, looking down her aristocratic nose at him in a manner worthy of her mother. “Mr. Stuyvesant, the reason the working class turns on their oppressors with violence is that violence has been done to them—literally, but also figuratively, in the violence done to their self worth. I believe there is hope in this country for non-violent change. No birth is achieved without pain, but with care, bloodshed is unnecessary.”

Grey had returned with a laden plate and paid no attention to their talk. Instead, he addressed himself to a glistening sausage, its crisp brown skin oozing juice. He eased his fork into it, then sliced it open with a knife, head bent over the plate. A rich aroma of spices and fatty pork rose up. Grey’s nostrils flared and his eyes half shut as he lifted the sausage round to his mouth—and by this time, the other three were staring at him.

He closed his lips around the morsel, withdrew the fork, chewed twice, and moaned with pleasure.

Sarah burst out in laughter, but Laura Hurleigh flushed scarlet. Stuyvesant had to agree, the overt sensuality was a little unnerving—he had to wonder if Grey had done it deliberately, to break up the discussion.

“For heaven’s sake, Bennett,” Sarah scolded. “Nanny would smack you with her ruler for making a noise like that at the table.”

“I’ve dreamt of Mrs. Bleaks’ sausages every morning for the past twelve years. You Philistines are not going to spoil my pleasure.”

“Nor am I going to share it. I have a letter to write.”

Stuyvesant rose along with her. “And I’m off to tinker with an engine. I’ll see you later, Bennett. Miss Hurleigh, Sarah.” He would rather have stayed and explored Laura Hurleigh’s political leanings, but long experience with undercover work had taught him the benefits of playing hard to get—or at least appearing marginally uninterested. If Laura Hurleigh was half as passionate about the matter as he thought, she would not let it rest.

As they left the breakfast room, Sarah Grey asked, “Shall I show you where the motors are kept?”

“One of the servants can show me,” he protested, but she declared that she wanted a breath of air before writing her letter, and he allowed himself to be talked into it.