by M C Beaton
Lady Fortescue Steps Out
A Novel of Regency England
Being the First Volume of The Poor Relation
M. C. Beaton/ Marion Chesney
Copyright
Lady Fortescue Steps Out
Copyright ©1992 by Marion Chesney
Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2010 by RosettaBooks, LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.
ISBN Mobipocket edition: 9780795315275
For Ann Robinson and her daughter,
Emma Wilson, with love.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter One
It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
—CHARLES DICKENS
In the Regency, in an age when gambling had reached ridiculous heights and the aristocracy spent and wasted money as never before, there were many poor in London, miserable, half-starved, ragged creatures.
But there were also the members of the invisible poor, the victims of genteel poverty who, with many subterfuges and stratagems, hid their condition from the eyes of polite society.
The poor relations of aristocrats who lived in London led a lonely and dreary existence, living on the charity of their noble relatives; or on some meagre allowance from a family trust. Once a year, they were taken out and dusted down and conveyed to some stately home where they made themselves as inconspicuous as possible, hoping to be ignored, hoping that regular meals and fires would last as long as possible. But the day would always come when they were packed up and delivered back to London and a life of genteel cold and hunger. What kept them from helping each other, what kept them apart, was pride.
A small section of this miserable horde would have joined its fellows in dying, lonely and forgotten, had it not been for one momentous May day in Hyde Park when old Lady Fortescue met Colonel Sandhurst.
Lady Fortescue lived in a tall house in Bond Street. The house was nearly all she had left and she stubbornly held onto it. She had just reached her seventieth year, a great age in the days of the Regency, when very few managed to achieve the biblical figure of three score years and ten.
She had just returned from a humiliating visit to her nephew, the Duke of Rowcester. Two heavy silver candlesticks belonging to the duke had been found in her trunk. In vain had she pleaded her innocence, in vain had she protested loudly and with many oaths that she did not know how they had come to be among her effects—she was asked to leave.
The fact that she had actually stolen them did not ease her pain. It was the first time she had stooped to crime. The candlesticks had been standing on a table in a little-used side room. She had been so sure that nobody would miss them. And so she had taken them, thinking gleefully of all the meals the silver sticks would bring her when she returned to London and sold them. But their disappearance had been noticed immediately. While everyone was accusing everyone else, for the great mansion was full of guests, the duke had quietly dispatched a posse of servants to search the rooms. He had not made her humiliation public. He had simply taken her aside and told her the candlesticks had been found and that his carriage would be ready to convey her back to London in two hours’ time. He had listened to her protestations of innocence for a time and then had cut them short by saying wearily, “Theft is a bad-enough crime. Do not make it worse by lying.” And that was that.
Lady Fortescue was a tall woman with white hair and snapping black eyes. Her skin was dead white and her mouth thin and always rouged a bright scarlet. Although her husband had been dead for twenty years, she had never put off her mourning weeds. She had two servants—Betty, who was fifty-nine, and John, who was sixty. She could not remember when she had last been able to pay them a wage. But they stayed with her, for there was nowhere else for them to go.
Her humiliation had taken place in February and since then she had hidden in her house, too ashamed to go out, frightened that the criminal she had become would be evident for all to see. But one beautiful May day, she became weary of the dark house and of herself and her shame and decided to go and take the air in Hyde Park. When she got there, she sat down on a bench in the sun, a grim black figure, back ramrod-straight, one hand leaning on the ivory handle of her parasol.
She looked thoughtfully at that parasol. The ivory handle was mounted in silver. As she looked at it, it became transformed in her mind’s eye into a pile of savoury meat pies. How odd, she thought, giving herself a mental shake, that all the little knick-knacks of a lady’s wardrobe, once taken for granted, should now be considered as so many pawnable items to get money for food and coals. Unlike most elderly people, she craved food rather than warmth, for she had always enjoyed a hearty appetite.
The sunlight seemed to intensify her loneliness. She sat there for a long time. The fashionable hour came and went, with its glitter and carriages and horses. Still she sat as the Park became silent again and long shadows from the trees crept over the grass like so many dark fingers of doom pointing the way to the grave.
An elderly man was approaching the bench on which she was seated, striding out down the walk. She had seen him before. Like herself, he was tall and white-haired. His clothes were worn and his boots were in need of repair and he was surely as old as she, but he carried himself with an air, an old-fashioned hat called a wideawake tilted rakishly to one side on top of his carefully curled and pomaded hair.
He was almost abreast of her when he suddenly put his hand to his brow and then collapsed at her feet in a dead faint.
Lady Fortescue looked around for help but there was no one to be seen. She knelt down beside the fallen gentleman and, taking her smelling-salts out of her reticule, held them under his nose. His eyes fluttered open. They were very blue, childlike eyes to be set in such an old face.
“My apologies, ma’am,” he said faintly. “Must be on m’way to my club.”
Lady Fortescue’s sharp eyes took in the details of genteel poverty, from well-pressed but worn clothes and split gloves to cracked boots, and said, to her own surprise, “Sit down with me for a little, sir.”
She helped him to the bench. He again apologized, saying lightly that illness was one of the problems of old age.
Lady Fortescue would, before her disastrous visit to her nephew, have accepted this polite fiction and the gentleman would have got to his feet and gone on his way, and that would have been that.
But her own humiliation was still fresh in her mind and suddenly she found herself rebelling against all the shifts and scrapes to maintain appearances and said bluntly, “You need food.”
He looked at her, appalled at the enormity of what she had said. “My dear lady,” he remarked, his voice still light and pleasant, “I am amazed at you. How can you say such a thing? But let me present myself. I am Colonel Sandhurst, late of the 147th.”
She bent her head, a stately acknowledgement of the introduction, and said with an edge in her voice, “Oh, go on your way, then, sirrah. But have you ever thought that here we sit, both of us genteelly poor and wasting a lot of time trying to hide the fact? And there are others like us who come here, for the recognizable and unfashionable poor are not allowed in Hyde Park,
and because no one is going to charge us for breathing the air or looking at the trees. No, stay a moment!” For he had started to rise. “I am Lady Fortescue. I have decided to tell you what happened to me recently and then, if you like, you can walk away.”
The colonel listened gravely, and as she told him of the theft of the candlesticks a thin mist began to veil the trees and a curious squirrel stopped at their feet to stare up at them with bright, inquisitive eyes.
After she had finished, he sat in silence for a long time and then he slowly removed his hat and held it to his breast as if about to mourn the passing of genteel pretensions.
“Lady Fortescue,” he said, “I am very hungry.”
“Yes, I thought you might be,” she said brusquely, “Come home with me. My Betty has a mutton pie and some broth.”
When Lady Fortescue eventually stopped outside her home in Bond Street, the colonel looked up at the tall building curiously, imagining she rented one of the rooms. She led the way into a fine hallway, although it was devoid of furniture, and said, “Leave your hat on the knob on the banisters. I hope you do not mind. We will eat in the kitchen with my servants. The few coals I am able to afford are for the kitchen fire and it is silly to sit in the cold of the dining-room. Although the weather has turned warm, it has not yet permeated into the house.”
Surprised that she obviously owned the whole house, the colonel followed her down a narrow flight of stairs to the kitchen. The servant, Betty, was a thin, bent, swarthy woman, like a gypsy. She dropped a curtsy and concealed her obvious surprise when her mistress announced, “We have a guest for dinner.”
“I’ll just lay two places in the dining-room, my lady,” said Betty.
“No need for that. The kitchen is warm. We will eat here. Set two places at this end of the table and you and John may eat at the other. Where is John?”
“He went out to look for some firewood, my lady. A building fell down in Holborn, so he heard, and he went off to see if he could take some of the house timber.”
“I hope he is not caught,” said Lady Fortescue equably. “Pray be seated, Colonel. I am afraid we can only offer you beer—wine, tea and coffee being much too expensive.”
The kitchen door opened and a thickset man came in with a sack on his back. “Got some wood, my lady,” he said gruffly, “and would have got more had the watch not come along.” Then he saw the colonel and looked startled.
“You need not stand on ceremony with Colonel Sandhurst, John,” said Lady Fortescue. “But as we have an unaccustomed guest, I suggest you build up the kitchen fire for this night.”
Soon the colonel was drinking a bowl of broth while a bright fire crackled up the kitchen chimney. Betty and John, as instructed, sat at the far end of the table and talked in low voices to each other, and so, emboldened by hot broth and strong beer, the colonel began to tell his story. All he had was his army pension. His next payment was not due for another month. But he had been so sure that his rich cousin John would invite him on a visit that he had spent what he had left. The invitation had not come as it had always done in the past, and so he had no money left to buy anything.
Betty rose and took away his empty bowl and then produced a steaming mutton pie from the oven. The colonel thought almost tearfully that nothing in his life ever before had tasted so marvellous as that pie with floury potatoes and a generous helping of pease-pudding.
“Eat slowly, now,” cautioned Lady Fortescue. She was beginning to enjoy herself. She had been so very lonely. Such a long time ago, when she had been able to keep a full staff of servants, Betty had been a housemaid and John a footman. When she had fallen on hard times, they said they would stay on provided she gave them permission to marry. That permission seemed to bind them to her in loyalty. But they were devoted to each other and often made Lady Fortescue feel like an intruder in her own house.
“Forgive me for saying so, Lady Fortescue,” ventured the colonel, “but would not your circumstances be easier if you sold this place?”
“It is all I have to remind me of my late husband,” said Lady Fortescue. “I shall leave in my coffin.”
The evening wore on. The colonel seemed rejuvenated by warmth and company. He talked of books he had read and plays he had seen, he laughed over all the pathetic shifts he had made to keep up appearances, and while he talked, Lady Fortescue began to get the glimmerings of a great idea.
When he at last fell silent, she said slowly, “You have a small allowance from the army and I have a small allowance from a family trust. There is a great deal of space in this house and you have said that at present you are paying for your lodgings. Why not move in here with me?”
“My dear lady!”
“Why not?” demanded Lady Fortescue. “We could pool our resources. We are too old for such an arrangement to cause either scandal or comment.”
The colonel looked around slowly at the cheerful kitchen.
“It is certainly an idea. Yes, by George! We could play cards of an evening. And talk.” He threw his arms wide and laughed. “I have not talked so long in this age.”
The great idea burst full in all its glory in Lady Fortescue’s head.
“And,” she said calmly, “when we are settled together, we shall go out into London Town and find others like ourselves.”
“But that is ridiculous,” he expostulated.
“If it is not ridiculous in your case, sir, why should it be ridiculous in the case of anyone else? Think on it. An army of poor relations!”
“You are an amazing woman,” he cried. He shook his head and then suddenly capitulated. “What has either of us got to lose?”
Lady Fortescue took him on a tour of the house. It was, he reflected, much larger than he would have guessed from the outside. There were a multitude of rooms, with light patches on the damp-stained wallpaper showing where pictures and mirrors had once hung.
“There is very little furniture,” said Lady Fortescue. “I sold it off, bit by bit, over the years, then the paintings went, then the ornaments.” She sighed as she opened another door. “But here is my husband’s bedroom. I had not the heart to sell off anything here, so you may consider it as your own.” While the colonel admired the handsome four-poster bed and tall wardrobe, she went to the window and threw open the shutters. “The night is mild,” she said. “Not like winter. You have no need of coals at present. There is no need for delay. You may move in this night. Do you have a great deal of stuff to bring?”
“No, Lady Fortescue. Like you, I have been selling off everything bit by bit. What I have can be brought round on a handcart.”
“Then I will send John with you. He can borrow the cart from the tavern next door. Then rest and we will start within the next few days on our search.”
He raised her hand to his lips and said, “You are an angel. Forget about that wretched nephew of yours.”
“Why not?” laughed Lady Fortescue. “I am sure he has forgotten my very existence!”
But the Duke of Rowcester had not. In fact, he was thinking of his aunt at that very moment. The whole affair of the candlesticks had puzzled him. But he had decided at last that, like some elderly people, Lady Fortescue had begun to lose her wits. She probably had taken the candlesticks in a fit of mental aberration and then forgotten about them. He should not have sent her packing in that way. Perhaps, were he married, a wife would have handled the business with more tact.
He was thirty-three and had never married. He had inherited the dukedom at an early age and the responsibility had left him with little time to enjoy himself, as his father, the late duke, had let everything on his vast estates go to rack and ruin. Now that all was running well—in fact, had been for some years now—the duke was still reluctant to go to that famous marriage market, the London Season, to look for a bride. Because he was a duke and accounted handsome, he knew he could get any woman he wanted, and so, when any pretty young miss smiled on him, he cynically assumed she was smiling on his title and fortune.
He thought again of Lady Fortescue and shifted uncomfortably. Perhaps on his next visit to town he would call on her to see how she went on.
Mrs. Budley, one very sad widow, was sitting in Hyde Park, crying into a wisp of lace handkerchief as Lady Fortescue passed on the arm of Colonel Sandhurst. “Do you think …?” began the colonel.
“No, I do not think,” said Lady Fortescue. “Too young by half.”
Mrs. Budley cried on. She did not know what to do. Her servants had all walked out on her that morning and the reason she had fled to Hyde Park, leaving her house by the back entrance, was because of the duns at the front. Her carefree husband, Jack, had gambled and drunk himself into an early grave two years before. She was amazingly pretty, and fashionably dressed, with a trim figure and neat ankles, she looked much younger than the thirty years old that she actually was. She had a sweet face and pansy-brown eyes and fluffy brown hair and a fluffy mind to go with it, and she did not know which way to turn. She had written to her own relations and to Jack’s for aid, but only one had offered to help, and that help took the form of an invitation to stay at Christmas and Christmas seemed a lifetime away.
Her parents had died shortly after her marriage and she had neither brothers nor sisters. She felt like a lost child. Only the day before, a certain Sir Giles Marrin had suggested to her a way of meeting her debts, but the way suggested was for her to become his mistress and she had recoiled in horror from his bloated face and clutching hands.