by Rose Lerner
Miss Jessop broke into an anxious smile at the sight of her. Phoebe couldn’t remember the last time so many people had wanted to please her. Most likely the election of 1807. She bobbed a half-curtsey. “Good morning, Miss Jessop.”
“Oh please, call me Caroline.”
Phoebe didn’t want to. Not until she understood what was going on here. “Then you must call me Phoebe.” She took a chair reluctantly.
“I shall.” Miss Jessop twisted her hands together in her lap. “What shall I have to eat?”
“I’m not—I really couldn’t say. I don’t love sweets as some people do. But everything is very good.” She would have to do better than that if she married Mr. Moon. She’d have to pretend to adore everything so as to sell it.
Betsy hurried out of the kitchen, tying the strings of a clean apron. “Good morning, madam. What can I fetch you?”
“Have you any meringues?”
“Yes, madam, baked fresh yesterday. With raspberry jam.”
“Splendid. I’ll take two, and a packet of those almond comfits in the window. Jeffrey, here’s sixpence if you’d like to buy yourself something. Would you like anything, Phoebe?”
“No thank you.” Phoebe was very aware of Betsy’s accusing eyes on her. “I just had a lovely slice of cake.”
Miss Jessop’s eyes lit up when the meringues came. “Oh, they’re beautiful.” She picked one up and bit into it. Her eyes fluttered shut and she very nearly moaned. “It’s like a bite of heaven. They’re delicious,” she called after Betsy, who had gone back to the counter. Betsy smiled more broadly than Phoebe had ever seen her.
“Are you sure you don’t want one? They’re extraordinary.” Miss Jessop held out the plate to Phoebe.
“I had one yesterday,” she said awkwardly. “You’re right, they’re very good.”
Miss Jessop set down her meringue. “I’m sorry, this is all very cloak-and-dagger, isn’t it? I wasn’t sure what else to do. I’ve something to confide in you, and really it isn’t my place, only—only Jack wouldn’t.”
Phoebe blinked. “Jack…Sparks?”
Miss Jessop blushed. “Yes. He’s asked me to marry him.”
Phoebe tried to absorb this. “And—you’ve said yes.”
Miss Jessop’s smile burst across her sharp-featured face with startling radiance. “I have.” The smile dimmed when Phoebe said nothing. “Do say you won’t be angry with him. He feared you would be, because I’m a Pink-and-White. He regards you as his family. His only family. He hasn’t the faintest idea I’m telling you all this, but he was so worried. I was sure you couldn’t really be so prejudiced.” Miss Jessop did not look at all sure.
It isn’t prejudice, it’s principle, Phoebe thought automatically, but given her own circumstances it would be ridiculous to say it. At least Jack was following his heart, not Lord Wheatcroft’s pocketbook. So this explained the nonpartisan Intelligencer. And it explained Jack’s consternation at seeing her at the library, if he had been secretly meeting Miss Jessop there.
“I’m not angry with Jack,” she said. “But—are you quite certain of your wishes? The printing office doesn’t make very much money, and neither does the newspaper.”
Miss Jessop’s brows drew together. “I didn’t choose Jack for his money.”
“There’s nothing petty or self-interested in worrying about money,” Phoebe said sharply. “It isn’t easy to be poor.” Miss Jessop couldn’t know what it was like, to worry you wouldn’t be able to pay the grocer’s bill next month. To kiss your husband’s forehead and feel that he had a fever, and to have to decide whether to call the doctor, and what you could sell to pay him. “Will your father help you?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t much like the Sparkses.” Miss Jessop poked at her meringue, watching the surface crack. “There’s money settled on me from my mother’s family, but the trust provides that if my father doesn’t approve of my husband, he can keep hold of the purse strings until my children are of age.”
Phoebe looked at Jeffrey. “I could only afford one servant girl on Will’s income.”
Miss Jessop colored. “Simply because I have been used to being waited on hand and foot doesn’t mean I can’t grow used to another way,” she said, an edge in her voice. “Jack will take care of me.”
Who will take care of Jeffrey? Phoebe thought sourly. From the look on the man’s face, he was thinking the same thing. “But you’d be dependent on Jack for everything. What if you quarreled or—?” She’d been confined to her bed for a week after her miscarriage, unable to escape Will’s hovering and his snappish fear for her. She’d pretended to sleep for hours on end just to get away, face turned towards the wall.
“Believe me, I know that better than you can.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “You’d think, with all the wonderful mechanical strides our great nation is making, that someone would invent a chair I could direct myself instead of always needing someone else to push me. But I suppose there isn’t as much money in that as there is in machine-looms to put men out of work.”
Phoebe felt ashamed. Miss Jessop might never have been poor, but she had used a wheelchair all her life. And she had almost sounded like a Whig, there.
Miss Jessop took a deep breath and returned her face to a semblance of calm. “If Jack mistreated me, I daresay my father would take me back. But I don’t think it will come to that.”
Phoebe didn’t know what to say. She wished she could be happy for Jack, but she could only see endless difficulties for him in this marriage, so many added responsibilities Miss Jessop could not share. What would Miss Jessop do on washing day? Could she learn to cook? Could she even bear him children? And surely, after years of being unable to leave their lodgings above the printing office unless he carried her down the stairs, she would come to resent him.
“We love each other.” Miss Jessop’s hands were tight on the arms of her chair. “I’ll be a good wife to him. You think I’ll be a burden, but it isn’t true. I’ll manage the advertisements and the books, deal with the newsagents as you used to do. I can do that.”
With her education, maybe she could do it better. Unexpectedly, the idea irked Phoebe. “I didn’t say—”
The shop’s bell rang, and Jack walked in. Phoebe stood abruptly. He looked between the two of them, his round face darkening. “Caro,” he growled. “What the—what the blazes did you do?” But his eyes lingered on Phoebe.
When she married Will, Jack had taken to bringing her his articles for the Intelligencer, to fix any errors in grammar or spelling before they could aggravate Will. Jack hated being corrected, and he’d taken even her mildest suggestions with a bad grace—but even though he’d been six years older than her, he’d always looked at her with this same burning desire for approval when he handed her the pages. She doubted anyone had ever cared so much what she thought, about anything.
Her eyes spilled over with tears. “Jack, I’m so happy for you!” she said, suddenly meaning it, and held out her arms.
He seized her in a great bone-crushing Sparks hug. “Thanks, Fee,” he muttered in her ear, and set her down out of the way. He and Miss Jessop grinned at each other like fools, fierce matching grins. Maybe Jack knew what he was about after all. “You’d no call to meddle,” he said, trying to sound stern.
Miss Jessop sniffed, her eyes gleaming. “I did if I ever wanted to be married. You’ll call on me at home now, won’t you?”
Phoebe almost laughed at the look on Jack’s face. When they were younger, they had sometimes spat on the pavement outside the Jessop house as they walked by, if the MP had recently done something to upset them. “This very afternoon,” he promised. “And I’ll wear my best suit.”
Phoebe hurried home. She didn’t know why she was hurrying, except that her stomach jittered and her thoughts crowded her mind, jostling each other. The brisk motion and the breeze on her face made her feel a little calmer. Only a few days ago everything had been fine, and now her life was topsy-turvy and in a fortnight she would b
e married.
Married.
She swallowed bile and panic together, and kept them down. She believed in Helen. She could do this.
I need to write, she thought. Writing always calmed her. It was an application of leeches for the brain, drawing out excess thoughts and containing them. Banishing thoughts of Helen, confectioneries and elections, Phoebe began to spin a new ending to her story, one in which Ann’s sister rescued Ann from her ditch and, after a touching reconciliation, nursed her and her child back to health.
She knew that wouldn’t wash with the Girl’s Companion. If Ann bore a child out of wedlock without repercussions, there was not much Improving about the Tale. Perhaps she should go back and add in some early details of Ann’s corrupt mother pandering to the villain, and Ann being borne along despite her sister’s good counsel. Then the moral could be about the terrible consequences of choosing money or pleasure over the claims of family rather than simply avoiding sensual temptation…she would have to punish the mother and perhaps have Ann lose her health or wear black for the rest of her life to pacify the editors, but it could be done.
She burst through her door and headed to the bedroom and her writing table, mind racing—and Helen twisted round to look at her from the dormer of the window, where she knelt on the chest to shelve Phoebe’s scattered books. “How did it go with Mr. Moon?” she asked anxiously.
Phoebe glanced around. The settle cushions were mended. Her cups and plates were in a neat cluster on the newly oiled table. Her notes were stacked with the corners aligned, no doubt all out of order—or worse yet, Helen had read them through in ordering them. She spotted Sukey behind the table, sanding the floor on her hands and knees.
Sukey knew Phoebe hated anyone rearranging her things. Helen ought to know it too; they’d shared a room growing up. The maid watched Phoebe curiously to see if she’d make her sister eat carp-pie.
Phoebe swallowed her frustration. “I’ll tell you later, Ships. I want to write now.”
“But we’re meeting Mr. Gilchrist in an hour,” Helen protested. “Don’t you want to get ready?”
“I am ready.”
There was a pause. “Oh, you’re wearing that?”
Phoebe looked down at her brown dress. “You redyed this dress only last month.” Helen had added a red ribbon at the waist. Phoebe liked this dress.
“Yes, to hide the ink-stains.”
“And I can hardly see them.”
Helen sighed. “At least let me do your hair.”
Phoebe hated when Helen did her hair. It always pulled at her scalp and gave her a headache, and she grew fidgety sitting still for so long. But mill-owning Mr. Fairclough would expect his wife to present a respectable appearance to the world. “Well…”
There were footsteps on the stairs—footsteps, and the knocking of a cane. Phoebe’s heart beat faster. Damn. “It’s Mr. Dymond,” she said. “I’d better see what he wants.”
Helen dropped the second volume of Wordsworth’s Poems. “Mr. Dymond?” she asked, scrambling to pick it up. “Why would he—”
“Can’t you hear his cane?” Phoebe resisted the urge to check her book for damage.
“Oh, Mr. Nicholas Dymond, of course. Fee, I’m so sorry, the corner’s bent.”
Phoebe’s surge of protectiveness was entirely unjustified. The corner might already have been bent. Until a few minutes ago, it had been stacked hugger-mugger under three other books and a teacup. “No matter.”
“I’ll put it under your dictionary to straighten it.” Helen hurried into the bedroom.
Phoebe had the door open before Mr. Dymond had even raised his hand to knock. He really was handsome; he stood out from her shabby stairwell like the shiny red ribbon on her old brown dress. “You could just throw a pebble at the window,” she said, trying to prevent her friendly smile from widening foolishly.
His blue eyes glinted and his mouth curved warmly. “Would you come down if I did?”
Another quarter inch and her smile would definitely be foolish. “Maybe. If I’d a mind to.”
Sukey made an amused noise behind her. Phoebe stood aside to let him in, but he said, “Would you like to take a walk with me? It’s a fine day, and who knows how many more we’ll get before winter sets in.”
“Go on,” Sukey encouraged her. “You’ve done enough cleaning for one day.”
Phoebe’s home had always been a refuge; having her beloved little sister here shouldn’t make her want to leave so badly, but it did. Mr. Dymond’s height only made her rooms look smaller and more cramped. “Helen was going to do my hair,” she temporized.
Mr. Dymond’s dark brows flew up. “Oh, don’t change your hair!” He laughed, ducking his head rather like Peter that morning. She wondered whether his hair had been long enough in the army to cover his eyes when he did that. “I’m sorry, that was unforgivably rude.”
Helen appeared accusingly in the doorway. “Good morning, Mr. Dymond. What were you saying?”
“Ships, Mr. Dymond and I are going for a walk.”
Helen frowned. “Fee—”
“I’ll be back in time, I promise.” She took her pelisse off the peg. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Nine
She resisted all the way down the stairs, but once in the sunlight she couldn’t help fishing. “You really think my hair is all right? Helen thinks I’m slovenly.”
He glanced at her. He had the sort of lashes women always claimed to envy (“What does a man need with such long lashes? They ought to have been given to a girl”) but actually were quite glad of, right where they were. “You’re not the most un-slovenly person I’ve met,” he said. “But you know, ‘a sweet disorder in the dress—’ Oh, blazes. I was about to be very rude again. Please, pay me no mind.”
Her face felt as if it were on fire. Her father had been fond of Herrick; she knew that poem. A sweet disorder in the dress / kindles in clothes a wantonness. The fire spread down her neck and over her bosom, until she was acutely aware of the heat trapped between her breasts and corset.
He bit his lip. “You know the poem, don’t you?” She nodded. “I shouldn’t have quoted it to you. The Cavaliers aren’t really suitable for respectable women.”
She sighed. “Few things are.” She didn’t want to see the hustings rising inexorably in the town square, marking the dwindling time until the polls; turning the other way, she led them down to the river and her favorite wooden bridge over the Arun. The birch and poplar leaves were yellow against the gray sky, the water the flat rich color of slate. Only the grass was bright and green from the recent rains. It would flourish until the frosts and snow began.
She enjoyed the rustle of dry leaves under their boots, the swish of his dark greatcoat beside her. She sneaked a glance at it, how splendidly it draped across his strong shoulders. Even in the pale autumn light, his hair shone warmly, like honey.
“How are things going with Mr. Moon?”
So quickly and efficiently he shattered the illusion that they were walking out, the two of them. Phoebe considered what to say. “Not—badly. He’s a pleasant young man, and he cares very much for his business. That’s in his favor.”
“Hardly the words of a besotted woman,” Mr. Dymond said ruefully.
She felt a flash of resentment. “My heart doesn’t start and stop at my command. Or yours, or your mother’s for that matter.”
He grew serious. “Of course not. It needn’t be Mr. Moon, you know. If there’s another man you would prefer, we have no stake in the matter.”
“There isn’t.” Phoebe had been thinking of this for days. But try as she might—making lists of the town’s bachelors and then tossing them on the fire before anyone could see, cataloging the faults and virtues of acquaintances she ran into on the street—there was no one. It wasn’t that she lacked a woman’s natural urges. There were a number of men she wouldn’t have objected to bedding. But marriage? “I suppose I’m too choosy.”
“An unhappy first marriage would make anyone cho
osy.”
“I was choosy before that. I don’t mean to sound puffed up, but I think—I believe, anyway, that there were boys who might have wanted to court me if I’d given them any encouragement. But I was shy, and none of them seemed to have so great an advantage over books as to be worth the effort.”
“Mr. Sparks must have been a very prepossessing man.”
She closed her eyes, and there was Will, big and broad and vibrant with his fair hair standing up from his head and catching the light like a halo. “He was. But he’d asked me to go walking with him before. He’d published a couple of my poems in the Intelligencer—youthful drivel I’d be ashamed of now, but he liked them. I pretended I thought he didn’t mean it—the compliments and the invitation both. He was a dozen years older, and my mother thought the ink on his hands made him lower than me.”
“But then your father died,” Mr. Dymond said.
Had she told him that? No, her mother must have. She knew exactly what Mrs. Knight had told him: that she hadn’t waited long enough. She wanted him to understand. “I was desperate to get out of that house. Everything there—his chair, his books, his pipe, the plate he used at dinner—”
She cut herself off. A tendency towards lists was one of the weaknesses of her prose. “Will took me out walking in the sun. And then he’d take me home. I knew my father wouldn’t be there, and that when I went in, my mother would show off her red-rimmed eyes and try to make it out that she missed him more than I did. Just because I’d laughed a little with Will. Sometimes I’d cry when we passed the spindle tree, and Will would put his arm round me. I wanted to be out with him more and more, I wanted him to hold me more and more, and I thought it was love. Maybe it was, but I don’t know if I’d still want to marry him if I met him now for the first time.”
She couldn’t imagine why she was telling a stranger all of this. Maybe it was because he was a stranger. Mr. Dymond hadn’t known Will, he didn’t know her.
He didn’t know that she’d left her grieving eleven-year-old sister in that dreary house to go walking with Will, to marry him and escape.