by Rose Lerner
Nick sat in the bay window of his room at the Lost Bell, watching the sleepy street below: the small shops, the knots of men and women talking familiarly together, a few maids with baskets out shopping. He’d always liked Lively St. Lemeston. He’d wished he’d lived here and been part of the odd, merry Christmas customs instead of swooping down to give alms to poor widows on Gooding Day and gifts to the servants and tradesmen on Boxing Day. He’d tried to imagine living in the same place all year.
Everyone here was a known quantity to each other. They all had their place in the whole. It reminded him of an army camp in the evening, calm and purposeful, with a certain logic even in the disorder.
The army had felt more like a home, a place where people shared their lives with each other, than any of his family’s residences ever had. This town was a home, but it wasn’t his.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Mrs. Sparks looking up at him with her luminous dark eyes and saying, I believe in my sister. No one had ever believed in him like that. And—this was harder to admit—he had never believed in anyone like that.
Why couldn’t he write to any of his friends in the Peninsula? He’d tried, but even in the hospital he hadn’t managed it. He wasn’t one of them anymore. His concerns were no longer theirs. And the Oxford friends to whom he’d written such detailed letters describing the Spanish countryside—he couldn’t write to them either.
He swung himself off the window seat with a deliberate lack of care, the jolt of pain a punishment for…there were too many things to name.
He knocked on the door of the common room devoted to Tony’s campaign. Tony himself opened the door with a sheaf of papers in his hand, looking harassed. Nick had expected him to be out canvassing. He’d thought only to foist himself on a bored election agent.
“Yes, Nick?” Tony asked impatiently.
“I wanted to help. To learn more about the campaign.”
For a moment he thought his brother would say he didn’t have time to schoolmaster him, but Tony swung the door wider. The room was filled with tables, all covered in stacks of notebooks and paper. Even the bed was strewn with documents.
“A list of voters, accounts of canvassing visits and their results,” Tony said, gesturing to one table. He went round the room, naming the functions of various piles of paper. Their mother’s handwriting threaded through everything, even apart from the heap of instructive letters she’d been sending Tony. “And here we have the heart of the campaign.” He smiled bitterly. “The checks and the cashbox. The venality of voters is an ever-unfolding wonder.”
To Nick’s surprise, he found himself saying, “We are their patrons. It’s only fair we show it.”
Tony chuckled. “I never thought I’d hear you parroting Mama.”
Nick grimaced. “Sorry. And what are those?” He pointed at the pages in Tony’s hand.
Tony gnawed at his lip. “My speech for the hustings. I should probably let Mama write it for me.”
Nick smiled. “You can do it. You wrote half my Latin compositions at Harrow, and you were three forms below me.” Even then, Tony had felt like a stranger: a better student, better dressed, a better conversationalist. He had always seemed to know what he wanted and how to make people give it to him, while Nick had gone into most situations wondering what the devil he was supposed to do, and why he never seemed to care enough to find out.
Nine years old. Tony had been nine years old when he started Harrow. He couldn’t possibly have been the prodigy of savoir-faire Nick remembered. Had Tony wanted an older brother who gave him more than a clap on the back and some smuggled cigars in exchange for an extra Latin essay?
Of course, Tony had had Stephen for that.
Tony’s laugh was tired. “Yes, and I’ve often wondered what your masters made of the sudden swells and ebbs of your vocabulary.”
“They thought I wasn’t applying myself the rest of the time.” They’d been right about that. They’d just been wrong in thinking his laziness concealed talent. “Speaking English is enough for me.”
“Mama told me you learned Spanish,” Tony said. His tone made Nick feel that he’d failed something yet again, that Tony agreed with his Latin masters.
“Yes, by speaking it.” He tried for a self-deprecating but careless smile. He knew he only sounded defensive. “I couldn’t learn a word out of the grammar I took with me on the ship. What do you want your speech to say?”
Tony pushed some papers aside to sit on the edge of the bed. “Christ, Nick, I don’t know. ‘Vote for me and I’ll sponsor the damned gaslight bill’? These people don’t care about politics. They don’t care about what Liverpool’s government will get up to in London. They don’t understand that their sons—” Tony glanced at Nick’s leg, and Nick could only suppose that a comment about the war had been intended. “All they care about is what the Whigs can do for them. And apparently it’s not enough.”
“It’s been a long campaign,” Nick said. “You’re worn out. You know that’s not true. Most of the people I’ve met seem to take their Orange-and-Purple loyalty very seriously.” Incomprehensibly so, in Nick’s opinion. “Mrs. Sparks feels guilty for even considering marriage to a Tory.”
Tony gave Nick a look of abject horror. “She’s considering marriage to a Tory?” He drummed his fingers on the table. “Did she tell you why?”
Nick sighed. “I don’t think she’s very impressed with Mr. Moon.”
To his surprise, Tony looked relieved—but only for a moment. “Oh God, I’m going to lose this election.”
Nick felt an edge of panic. “Of course not,” he said confidently. “What are the numbers?”
“Fifty votes for Jessop, so he’s assured a seat. The real contest is between Dromgoole and me for the second seat. Our current count is twenty-six for Dromgoole, and twenty-five for me. And one voter with his two votes still not spoken for.” Tony’s mouth twisted. “I don’t know what Mama will say when I tell her I’ve lost Jack Sparks.”
“Mrs. Sparks’s brother-in-law?”
Tony nodded. “The Sparks family has been Orange-and-Purple probably since the Great Rebellion, and I lost Jack Sparks. He avoids me and my agent in the street, and when I go to his press, he’s never there. Once I swear he slipped out the back door.” Tony rubbed at his eyes. “I can’t bring myself to tell her. How will I look her in the eye if I lose this election? It was supposed to be easy!”
“Tony, how could it be easy? She’s been fighting Wheatcroft for this borough at every election since before we were born. You’ll notice the only safe candidate is Jessop, and he’s a Tory. I don’t know what she said to you, but—”
“Leave Mama out of this. It’s not her fault. It’s mine.” Tony looked him in the eye, manfully taking the blame for something that was entirely not his fault. “Perhaps I’m not cut out for politics, after all.”
Politics were Tony’s army. He’d been politicking since he was in short coats. “Of course you are.” Nick held onto his cane as he bent over to clear the spot on the bed next to his brother. The angle was awkward, but he managed it. “Do you know why Jack Sparks is avoiding you?” he asked as he sat.
“No,” Tony said indignantly, his gaze dropping—but whether because he did know, or simply because he was discouraged, Nick couldn’t have said. He didn’t really know his brother all that well. Not as well as he should. He tried to remember if he’d written Tony a single letter from the Peninsula, besides a short one congratulating him on his marriage.
“Are you sure?” he asked anyway.
“Of course I’m sure,” Tony snapped. There was a pause. “Why, do you know?”
“How would I know?”
“You’ve been spending enough time with his sister-in-law.”
And nevertheless, she’s thinking about marrying a Tory. Perhaps Tony hadn’t even intended the accusation, but Nick heard it. “I’ll see her again soon. I’ll ask if she knows what’s going on with Sparks.”
Tony gave him an uncertain look. �
�I don’t know if that’s a good idea…”
“I’ll be tactful,” Nick promised. “The two of them are close. If she doesn’t know, she can find out.”
“And she’ll do that for you?”
Nick felt his face heating. “It can’t hurt to ask.”
“Oh, believe me, if there’s one thing I’ve learned these past two months, it’s that it can always hurt to ask,” Tony muttered.
Nick put a hand on his shoulder. He half-expected Tony to pull away, but instead his brother pressed back against the touch. Nick felt a sudden warmth in his chest. “She won’t marry a Tory,” he said. “We’re going to win this thing.”
Chapter Eight
The following morning, Phoebe made sure she was in the Honey Moon at nine o’clock sharp. There was no one in the front of the shop, so Phoebe let herself into the already warm kitchen. Mr. Moon was pulling a tin cake-hoop out of the oven, paper tied around the bottom to hold in the dough. “Good morning,” he said with his usual anxious cheer. Betsy and the kitchen boy gave her slightly more convincing smiles, but the whole thing still made Phoebe itch.
She gave him a cheery wave, then wished she hadn’t. He was only a couple of feet away, after all. “Good morning.”
Betsy elbowed him. He set the hoop on the counter with a clatter. “You look very fine this morning.” He glanced at Betsy, who gave an infinitesimal nod.
Phoebe didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Thank you. You’re very kind.”
His shoulders relaxed with the satisfaction of a job well done, and picking up a spatula, he transferred pastries from a tray onto plates for cooling. Every counter was covered in fresh-baked sweets except for one, where Betsy was laying out yesterday’s nectarine chips and dusting them with sugar. The kitchen boy—a spotty lad of fourteen or fifteen with light brown skin and beautiful green eyes—was draining syrup into a pot from a large preserving pan of greengages.
“We make all the pastries in the morning,” Mr. Moon explained, “before the kitchen gets hot. The butter must be cool when they go into the oven.”
“I write best in the morning, too.” She tried not to wish she were home writing now.
Sweat beaded on his forehead from standing at the ovens. She had used to like it when Will worked up a sweat printing the Intelligencer. His fine blond hair darkened and spiked, his shirt clung to his shoulders as he worked the press, and when a drop of sweat rolled down his neck she had wanted to lick it up.
She tried to appreciate Mr. Moon’s arms, which were objectively rather fine. But all she felt was a compulsion to wipe his forehead with a handkerchief before he dripped onto the pastries. She searched for something, anything to say.
The kitchen boy took the pot of syrup and set it on a stove. “See that it boils very smooth,” Mr. Moon instructed him. “And your clarified sugar should…?”
“Blow very strong.”
Mr. Moon smiled. “This is Peter, my apprentice.” Peter turned to look at her, his eyes immediately fixing on her breasts.
“Nice to meet you, Peter.”
He glanced up, saw that she had caught him looking, and ducked his head until his scraggly dark hair covered his eyes. “Nice to meet you, ma’am. Is it true you live in a haunted attic?”
Mr. Moon smacked his spatula on the counter. “Peter. Manners, if you please.”
“It’s no matter,” Phoebe said, since she was trying to make a good impression. “No, people say Mrs. Pengilly’s attic is haunted, but it isn’t true.”
The boy’s face fell. “So you’ve never seen the ghost?”
“I’m afraid I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Well, that’s why, then.” Peter turned back to his pot, satisfied.
Phoebe didn’t tell him that her lack of belief was more of a wish than pure truth. Mrs. Knight, who thought the supernatural very vulgar, had hated that Mr. Knight was a believer who insisted on passing along to their daughters all manner of tales of the fairies and ghosts who inhabited their corner of the world. “What does ‘blows very strong’ mean?” she asked Mr. Moon, seizing the opportunity to make conversation.
He opened his mouth to tell her, then looked at his apprentice. “Why don’t you explain it, Peter?”
Peter drew himself up. “Sugar’s got different degrees,” he told her slowly, clearly trying to soften the thick burr in his voice. “First, her’s to be—” Mr. Moon cleared his throat. “I mean, it must be clarified to remove impurities. Then, when you boil it, it can be smooth, blown, feathered, crackled or caramel…” He went on explaining, dipping a scummer into the sugar to show how a drop pressed between thumb and forefinger stretched into a thread when he drew his fingers apart. Phoebe listened with a great show of attention.
“It’s the first thing a confectioner must know,” Mr. Moon told her when the explanation was over, looking very proud of his apprentice. “Good, Peter.”
“I didn’t know you had an apprentice,” she said.
Mr. Moon glanced at Peter, and it occurred to her that perhaps he had needed the bond money from the boy’s parents. But after a pause, he smiled. “Peter has a gift. It’s best to have an early start in the trade. In any trade, don’t you know.”
Betsy snorted. “You never apprenticed.”
“And I’ve no established custom, have I, or the freedom of the city,” Mr. Moon said, more heatedly than she’d yet heard him speak. “If I’d apprenticed, I’d be a freeman and we could have a stall in the market—” He drew in a deep breath and looked at Phoebe. “My pa owned the bakery in Runford,” he said, naming a village seven miles west, near the Dymond estate. “It was my grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s afore him. The bettermost bread in three counties, Pa used to say. And I sold it to come here.”
Phoebe didn’t want this shop to go under. All she had to do, to ensure it and Helen’s security both, was marry the man. Why couldn’t she say the words? “Where did you learn the trade, then?” she asked.
“The Dymonds kept a confectioner. He taught me things, sometimes. I always had a powerful sweet tooth.”
“Mr. Moon had one afternoon off a week from the bakery,” Betsy said. “And he’d walk an hour each way to Lenfield House to slave in the Dymonds’ kitchen.”
The tips of Mr. Moon’s large ears turned red. He laughed. “My ma says I have syrup in my veins instead of blood.”
“Is that a compliment?” Phoebe asked.
He shrugged. “She does like syrup.”
“It’s a compliment,” Betsy said firmly. “We made you a saffron cake.”
Mr. Moon started. “Faith, so we did!” He fetched a paper-wrapped hoop from the next room. Expertly separating the cake from the sides with a knife, he popped it out, set it on the counter, and cut her a warm wedge.
She took it, conscious of three sets of eyes on her. It was a beautiful yellow color, and Phoebe knew that saffron was terribly expensive, but—it was studded all over with caraway seeds. She hated the taste of caraway seeds. “How beautiful,” she said with a nervous smile, and put it in her mouth. Ugh. “Mmm. Delicious.”
“Do you mean that?” Peter’s green eyes were suspicious. “I put a shilling’s worth of saffron in it.”
“Hush, Peter,” Betsy said sharply. “How you’ll ever contrive to have a shop of your own with such manners I don’t know. He don’t intend anything by it, ma’am.”
Phoebe swallowed. If only he hadn’t cut her such a large slice. “Of course I mean it.”
Mr. Moon shook his head. “It isn’t the one, is it?”
“No,” she said honestly. “Sorry.”
He sighed. “Well,” he said with an attempt at cheer, “what book did you bring for me today?”
“Tales from Shakespeare.” It was in very plain language—intended, she thought, for children—and got right to the heart of the stories, which she hoped would give it an advantage over Robinson Crusoe. Flipping hastily through the book, she stopped at Macbeth. That was a nice manly play, wasn’t it? “When Duncan the
Meek reigned King of Scotland there lived a great thane, or lord, called Macbeth…”
She was soon caught up in the story, but when she remembered to look up, Mr. Moon wasn’t really listening at all, but demonstrating to Betsy how to lay sugar-dusted nectarine chips on a tray to fit the greatest number. Phoebe had to give him credit for doing it silently.
Peter, on the other hand, said loudly, “Hey, don’t stop, you’re getting to the good bit. Lady Macbeth’ll do the king herself, won’t her?”
Phoebe grinned at him. “Wait and see.”
Peter was very disappointed by Lady Macbeth’s fate, especially when Phoebe explained that Banquo was an ancestor of the Stuarts. Peter, it developed, was a good Whig and despised Jacobites.
Wheels squeaked in the front of the shop. “That must be Miss Jessop. I asked her to meet me here.” Phoebe hesitated. “Peter, would you like to borrow the book?”
He reached for it eagerly, and she snatched it back. “Never touch a book with sugar on your hands. Never.” He hurried to wash them.
Mr. Moon came suddenly to attention. “Miss Jessop? The Tory MP’s daughter? I didn’t know you two were friends.”
Phoebe’s heart sank. “It’s nothing to do with the election. I don’t think, anyway. But—Mr. Moon, I owe it to you to warn you, I’m dining today with the Tory election agent and”—she felt cheap and humiliated and guilty, admitting to more or less taking bids for her vote and her hand—“the man he wants me to marry,” she said baldly. “I’m Orange-and-Purple, through and through, and you’ve all been very kind, but this is the rest of my life. Our lives. I—”
Mr. Moon looked stricken. Betsy’s eyes hardened. And poor Peter, who stood to lose his apprenticeship, slowly traced the words of Macbeth with his finger, so rapt in concentration he hadn’t even heard what she said.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” She took up her pelisse and fled to the relative chill of the front of the shop.