by Wilma Counts
“I don’t care! It is wrong!” Phillip said fiercely.
“Not now, Phillip,” Harriet said gently, and the boy calmed, turning his attention to the window as the coach wound its way through magnificent autumn colors.
Nevertheless, Quint felt he should point out “Gibbons is right: it is the way of the world. But not all leaders of our part of it are satisfied with that. You heard what Stevens said of changes your grandfather and your father had made. When you are ready, you will continue their work.”
The boy responded with a polite “Yes, sir,” and turned back to the window. Quint exchanged a helpless gaze with Harriet, who merely shrugged and offered a comment about a fortuitous change in the weather.
The four of them rode for quite some time with the adults occasionally making innocuous comments now and then about the scenery or the activities they witnessed as they passed. It was, after all, autumn. Farmers were bringing in their last crops and many were obviously preparing for the final cattle market of the year to be held the next day. Quint had committed himself and Chet to accompanying Phillip to that event too. Moreover, in what he now considered to be a distinct moment of weakness, he had agreed to allow the twins to accompany them. That, of course, meant adding an extra footman to the entourage to keep track of those two imps while Quint and Chet and the new earl, along with Sedwick farmers, went about the business of buying and selling stock.
Because it was to be such a busy day with the market and all, everyone had agreed to forego the morning rides the next day, though Quint knew that Harriet had intended breaking her fast with the children in the nursery. When his mother and Mrs. Hartley did not appear for breakfast, he assumed they had taken trays in their rooms. He and Chet enjoyed dawdling over their coffee, and when they finally reported to the stable yard, Quint was shocked to see that not one, but two coaches had been outfitted with teams, drivers, and required attendants. Harriet stood near the open door of the second coach—the one without the Sedwick crest. She wore a traveling outfit of cobalt blue with a perky matching hat that sported silver ribbons. The thought flashed through his mind that she looked good enough to kiss, but what the devil was she doing here?
“Uncle Quint!” Sarah squealed and waved from within the coach. He could see Maria and Mrs. Hartley in the vehicle as well.
“What is going on here?” Quint demanded.
“We are going to the market too,” Harriet said as Phillip came from around the rear of the vehicle.
“Isn’t it exciting?” Sarah cried enthusiastically. “I ain’t been afore, Maria’s been lotsa times. So’s Pip. But not me an’ the twins.”
Quint raised a mocking eyebrow at Harriet. “You actually think it within the realm of acceptability to cart young ladies off to a cattle market?” he asked in a silky voice. “Young ladies who just happen to be my wards—and thus my responsibility?” He watched with interest as her face paled and then colored markedly, first with embarrassment, then fury.
“I do most sincerely beg your pardon, my lord. It simply never occurred to me that you might object to something that is in the way of a family tradition.”
“A family tradition!” He snorted. “I certainly do not recall Sedwick females buying and selling cattle—ever.”
“No, of course not,” she said sweetly. “But you may remember this market—like others of its kind—is more than just a cattle market, that, in fact, it is something of a fair with all sorts of peddlers displaying their wares, street entertainers, and the like. I am sure Phillip and the twins will be taking in some of those diversions too.”
“Father and Mother always brought us once we had six years,” Phillip said.
“They did?” Quint responded, recognizing defeat when it stared him in the face.
Just then his mother came bustling up. “Thank you, Harriet, for waiting for me. I see Sylvia is already here. I do hope that woman with the Belgian lace is here again this year. Oh, good morning, Quinton, dear.”
“Mother.” Without another word, he handed the ladies into their carriage and saw them off.
* * * *
Harriet took little part in the chitchat within the coach as it rolled out of the stable yard and through the village and then on to the market and mill town of Hendley. She was still seething over the colonel’s outburst. Good heavens! How was she to know his ever-so-noble lordship might object to the girls’ going on that day’s outing? Certainly his own mother had raised no objection in that regard. Quite the opposite. She had babbled on about it last night at supper. Harriet concluded that only the presence of Maria and Sarah had surprised him and for that he blamed her.
“You are very quiet this morning, Miss Mayfield,” Sylvia Hartley said from the seat she shared with the dowager.
“Aunt Harriet is sad because Uncle Quint yelled at her,” said the precocious Sarah. “Uncle Quint makes people sad when he yells at them.”
“Yelled at her? Whatever for?” the dowager asked.
“He did not know Sarah and I were coming today,” Maria explained.
“Pish-tosh.” The dowager waved a dismissive hand. “That boy takes everything too seriously. He will get over it.”
“I daresay he already has,” Harriet attempted to head off that line of discussion, but she noted Maria and Sarah shared a grin at hearing their austere uncle referred to as “that boy.”
The cattle market was located outside the town some fifty yards off the main thoroughfare. Between the market and the town a wide expanse of field had been set aside to accommodate the vehicles of the men and boys attending the cattle market and the ladies and girls who would stroll about the nearby streets buying household items and trinkets from a variety of vendors and being entertained by street singers, puppet shows, and even a dancing monkey. As Harriet’s little group exited their carriage, she was struck by the pungent smell emanating from the area of the animals, which she knew included horses, sheep, pigs, and even ducks and chickens, as well as both dairy and beef cows. A cacophony of animal sounds—lowing cows, bleating sheep, an occasional horse’s neigh or triumphant screech of a rooster—assailed their ears.
Sarah jumped from the carriage and immediately started toward the fence surrounding the cattle market. “I want to see the pigs!” she yelled.
Her grandmother grabbed at her cloak to halt her in her tracks. “Oh, no, you do not.”
Sarah stamped her foot and seemed on the verge of tears. “But, Grandmother, I only want to see them.”
“You have seen pigs before,” Maria said. “The Bensons always have them on the home farm.”
“It’s not the same,” Sarah pouted.
“Nevertheless, you will come with us to the street fair,” her grandmother said, taking a firm grip on Sarah’s arm as the Sedwick females turned their backs on the cattle market and headed into the town.
In short order, the group divided as the dowager and Mrs. Hartley dawdled over a display of embroidery silks and Harriet accompanied Maria and Sarah, who were soon distracted by a Punch and Judy puppet show. Harriet was pleased to hear Sarah’s giggles of delight at the classic slapstick fun. When the puppeteers took a break they walked on and soon joined a group watching a dancing monkey. The animal, dressed in a bright orange shirt and green shorts, wore a harness with a long leash that was attached to the wrist of a man who sat on a stool playing a concertina. When the music stopped, the monkey picked up a tin cup near the stool and held it out for members of the crowd toss in coins. Harriet reached into her reticule for a coin to give to Sarah. Those standing nearby readily allowed the little girl room to approach the animal. As Sarah gingerly put her coin in the cup, the monkey put a hand on his belly and bowed to her.
The crowd laughed at this, and Sarah emitted a little squeal of glee. “Oh, look. He likes me.”
“’Course he does,” the concertina man said with a chuckle. “My Dickie here likes all the pretty ladi
es.”
Sarah beamed at this and extended a hand toward the monkey. “May I pet him?”
The man quickly took a firm grip on the leash. “Best not, my lady. Dickie’s manners sometimes ain’t the best.”
“Oh.” A disappointed Sarah drew her hand back.
To Harriet, the man said quietly, “He is an animal, you see—could be startled by somethin’—an’ who knows?—” He shrugged.
“Of course,” Harriet said. She took Sarah’s hand and drew both girls along to the next distraction.
They happened upon a line of people waiting in front of a knife sharpener to avail themselves of his services. He was a man of some age—Harriet guessed at least sixty—and he was dressed plainly in leather pants and a heavy cotton shirt. He operated his sharpening stone with one foot as he guided his blades with his hands.
“Oh, look. There’s Turkins!” Sarah pulled Harriet to stand before a tall blond young man standing in the line. He was dressed in the everyday brown and tan livery of the Sedwick servants. “Turkins! Why are you here?” Sarah demanded.
The young man lifted a bulky, long bag at his side and smiled at Sarah. “Mrs. Hodges sent me to get some o’ her knives sharpened. Mostly we do ’em ourselves, but she likes ’em done real proper like when she can.”
“Of course,” Harriet murmured and gestured for Maria and Sarah to move along.
But Maria stepped closer and said, “Aunt Harriet, why is that woman staring at us?”
“What woman?” Harriet looked up and around, at once catching the gaze of Mrs. Rosalee Reed holding the hand of her young daughter Betsy as they walked in the edge of those moving along the street. Both mother and daughter were dressed in the same cotton print dresses they had worn on the job the day before.
“Mrs. Reed,” Harriet called as she and her nieces walked toward the Reeds. “How nice to see you. My nieces and I are taking in the fair.”
Mrs. Reed curtsied and her daughter followed her lead.
Ever the impatient one, before Harriet could begin to make proper introductions, Sarah said to the other little girl, “I am Sarah. What is your name?”
“B-Betsy.”
“Did you see the monkey?”
“M-monkey?”
“Yes! He dances! You must see him! Can I show her, Aunt Harriet? Can I?”
“‘May I,’” Harriet corrected automatically.
“May I? Please?”
“If Mrs. Reed has no objection and Maria agrees, I suppose we can visit the monkey again,” Harriet said with an inquiring look at her elder niece. Maria smiled, shrugged, and sighed indulgently.
“Ah, Harriet—Maria, dear! I was just saying to Sylvia that I hoped we might see you!” The voice of the Dowager Countess of Sedwick cut through the street noise and cries of nearby vendors as the woman herself and her companion appeared on the scene.
As she introduced Mrs. Reed and her daughter, Harriet cringed inwardly at the not-so-subtle coolness with which the dowager treated these strangers. Had the woman never before met Sedwick employees casually?
The dowager cleared her throat authoritatively. “Harriet, my dear. I can see that you and—Mrs. Reed, is it not?—have some sort of business to conduct, so I shall just take my granddaughters off your hands. Come, Maria and Sarah, you will spend the rest of the afternoon with me.” With that pronouncement, she made a grab for Sarah’s hand.
Bewildered, Maria looked to Harriet for direction.
Mrs. Reed made a point of stepping aside and taking her child with her.
Before Harriet could decide quite how to respond, Sarah jerked away from her grandmother and ran to take Betsy’s hand.
“I want to show Betsy the dancing monkey.”
“You will come with me, child,” her grandmother said decisively.
“No! I don’t want to. Auntie Harry—please. Please, don’t make me.”
Sarah was in tears. Harriet knew—and she was sure that the dowager knew it as well—that Sarah was capable of throwing a full-fledged temper tantrum right here in front of God and everybody, but Harriet thought there was more going on here than just a spoiled child’s show of temper. Outside of her family, Sarah did not have many friends, and none who were just hers alone. Moreover, Sarah was not close to her grandmother—but then, few of the children were.
Counting on the dowager herself wanting to avoid a scene, Harriet said, “Please let her stay, my lady. We shall just visit the monkey, then be along shortly. Maria may do as she wishes.”
“I shall stay with you and Sarah, Aunt Harriet,” Maria said.
“No surprise there,” the dowager said tightly. With a swish of her skirt, she said, “Well, let us be off, Sylvia.”
The man with the dancing monkey remembered Sarah and when the animal finished its act, it bowed particularly to Sarah, who clapped her hands and giggled.
“Isn’t this fun?” she fairly squealed to her new friend Betsy as Harriet dug into her reticule to search for small coins to give each girl to drop into the monkey’s cup.
“Thank you, my lady,” Mrs. Reed said softly as she took her daughter’s hand and departed. “I shall not forget your kindness this day—nor the other.”
As Harriet and the girls made their way toward the field where their coach had been parked, they came upon a group of vendors selling drinks and foodstuffs. A number of wooden tables and benches were scattered about to accommodate customers and some patrons had laid out blankets on the ground. One of the tables Harriet saw had been commandeered by the Sedwick men, along with the dowager and her companion.
“Ah, here you are! Come join us, ladies,” Quint invited. “I know my Lady Sarah will not refuse a sweet cake or a maybe a tart before undertaking that lon-n-ng journey home.”
“Maybe just one,” Sarah said with a coy giggle as she squeezed herself onto the bench between Quint and Chet and reached for a cake.
Harriet and Maria found places on the end of that bench, directly across from the twins, who had Phillip and then the dowager and Mrs. Hartley to their right.
“We saw a puppet show,” Sarah announced to her brothers in a note of triumph.
“So did we,” said Richard, deliberately taking the wind out of her sails.
“Well, did you see the dancing monkey?”
“Yes, we saw the dancing monkey.” Robby mocked her tone and Sarah sat back, momentarily deflated.
“Never mind, Sarah,” Maria leaned forward to look at her little sister around Mr. Gibbons, “the monkey bowed especially to you.”
“Anyway, we saw a man sell his wife!” Robby topped his sister’s story.
“You what?” Harriet asked, staring in shock, first at the boy, then leaning to stare down the table at the child’s uncle.
“It’s true, Aunt Harriet,” Richard corroborated. “We were in the auction barn. This man leads a woman in with a rope around her neck—just like a cow—an’ they started bidding on her!”
Robby picked up the story. “An’ this other man bought her and she went away with him real quiet. Jus’ like that! ’Tis true, isn’t it, Phillip? Uncle Quint?”
“Yes.” Phillip’s tone was dull and he kept his head down.
“Yes,” Quint said. “That is the way it happened, but, as I told you before, the less said about that incident, the better.”
“Oh. I forgot.” Robby sounded chagrinned and directed his attention back to his food.
The general conversation turned to other sights of the market: a bull that had broken free of its hobbles, an impromptu horse race, friends not seen in a long time, but Harriet found it difficult to let go of that terrible scene of wife selling the little boys had witnessed.
She had, of course, heard of such. Facetiously known as “the poor people’s method of divorce,” it allowed a man to dispose of unwanted “property” without going through the enormous exp
ense required by first the secular and then the ecclesiastical courts in a proper legal dissolution of a marriage. Poor women, of course, had no such recourse, Harriet thought bitterly.
In the coach on the return journey, Harriet sat between Sarah and Maria, across from the dowager and Mrs. Hartley. The older ladies and Maria leafed through fashion magazines and Sarah played with a small figure of a monkey.
“Auntie Harry,” Sarah said in a serious tone.
“Yes, dear?”
“Do you think I will be able to see Betsy again? I really like her.”
“I do not know, love. Betsy must work with her mama, you know.”
“I should not think so,” the dowager said firmly.
“But I like Betsy,” Sarah protested.
“I meant to speak to you later on this matter, Harriet, but I suppose now is as good a time as any.” Harriet braced herself. “I cannot believe that you think the Reed woman and her child of a class to be suitable associations for my grandchildren.”
“They are Sedwick people, my lady. We happened to meet them on the street. Not to acknowledge them would have been rude.”
“It appeared to me that you went far beyond mere acknowledgment,” the dowager said. “I gave you sufficient opportunity to support me in that little scene and perhaps teach both Maria and Sarah a valuable social lesson, but you chose to ignore me—perhaps to pursue some agenda of your own. Frankly, I see no need to encourage familiarity in the lower orders. I will not have my grandchildren unnecessarily exposed to riffraff.”
Harriet was nearly speechless with anger. “Lower orders? Agenda—” She hardly knew where to begin and found herself grateful when young Maria, ever the peacemaker, interceded.
“But, Grandmother, Mother and Father, and Grandfather, too, insisted we should respect the people whose labors make our lives possible.”
“Yes, my darling child. Respect. There is a fine line between respect and familiarity and one must learn to maintain it, my dear. I am sure that your Uncle Quinton will see to that as one of the requisites of the education of his wards.”