by Kate Moore
“Worse, for they were free to beat me or any boys in their charge for dullness or error.”
“Did they? Beat you?” she wanted to know. Of course that was just the sort of question he would not answer.
“Come, let’s return to the hotel. You will need to look your best for the duchess’s party tonight. I’ll drive you past St. James’s Palace on the way, and you can contemplate the honor soon to be bestowed on your father.”
* * * *
The inescapable topic of conversation at the Duchess of Huntingdon’s supper party was London—its unusual icy weather, its superior shops, and its latest scandals. Jane listened and looked on, at a little remove from her fellow guests. In her white gown she looked like the other young women around her, but she could not quite catch their knowing way of speaking about London. Their conversation followed a pattern of allusions and jokes that, as an outsider, she could only guess at.
The duchess had stepped in more than once to remove Jane from the edge of one circle of friends and introduce her to another. From time to time she caught the duchess watching and smiling encouragement.
As the supper hour approached, she stood between one of the massive gold candle stands that lit the long gallery, and a tall, thin-shouldered young man with curly brown hair, whose attention had focused on Jane after the duchess’s introduction. He extolled the antiquities of the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly. “You’ll not have more fun for a shilling anywhere else in town.”
Jane liked him, but she knew in some perplexing way that she had no interest in him as a husband. It was strange to have such certainty in the matter on her first night of husband hunting. She kept her smile in place and told herself that her lack of interest must be because she was not truly hunting a husband, but searching for a father.
“Do you have a supper partner, Miss Fawkener?” her companion asked.
“I thought I did.” She looked for Hazelwood among the shifting groups of guests in the vast hall. She had come to expect him to be at her side, and now he’d simply vanished.
“Lost him in the crowd?” her companion asked.
She ventured another glance down the room. “It’s just that…” Her voice trailed off as a tall, stately white-haired gentleman in black approached the duchess.
“My dear, how is your party going?” He bowed over the duchess’s hand.
She smiled up at him. “It’s a success as you see.”
The gentleman gave no answering smile. A single round glass dangled from a pale blue ribbon around his neck. He lifted it to his eye and scanned the room. He turned back to the duchess with a little crease between his brows. “I understand Hazelwood is here.”
The voice was mild, but there was no mistaking the rebuke. The duchess smile died. “He is.”
“Ah, is that wise? You do not want to squander your influence on such a man, I think.”
The duchess’s fan fluttered. “You don’t think anyone regards such old scandals, do they?”
The tall gentleman appeared to consider the idea, looking at the glass in his hand. “Ah but they do, my dear. Several of his mother’s friends are here.”
The duchess cheeks reddened, and she gave a quick look around. Her eyes failed to meet Jane’s. She bowed her head.
“I’ll have a word with him, shall I? We can’t be seen to take in every stray, after all.” The tall man patted the duchess’s arm and turned toward the crowd.
“Who is that gentleman?” Jane asked her companion.
“His Grace, the Duke of Huntingdon.”
Jane understood at once. Hazelwood was about to be humiliated in the most polite but devastating way. It would be public, too, unless there was another way out of the vast gallery.
She turned to her companion. “You’ve been here before?” she asked.
“Yes, of course, my sister and the duchess—”
“Where would one go to hide?”
“Hide?” He looked utterly perplexed.
“Be…private?” She had to find Hazelwood before the duke did.
His eyes widened.
“I need a moment to myself,” she told him, glancing after the unhurried figure of the tall duke.
“Follow me, then.” Her companion caught her sense of urgency, and taking Jane’s arm, he led her across the gallery, around a pair of velvet settees, and through an arch wide and tall enough for a Roman emperor’s chariot to pass. He pointed to a door just beyond the arch. Jane thanked him, and passed through the door into a cool, dark dimly lit space that smelled of damp and earth. Its inner wall stretched the length of the gallery. Its outer glass wall was frosted over. She looked to her left at a series of alcoves furnished with benches and lit by candles in glass lanterns.
“Found a husband already?” Hazelwood’s voice came from the shadows.
She moved toward its low rumble. “You knew you would be shunned tonight.”
He came to his feet in the darkness. She could see the white linen at his throat and the faint gleam of his eyes. “The potted palms made no objection to my presence.”
She assumed they were alone in the long room, but she moved close enough to speak softly. “How long have you been here?” It was cold enough that the flesh on her arms puckered.
“Long enough. Did you find a suitable octogenarian?”
“No. I did find a promising young baron.” She stepped closer to him.
“Much better. Is he coming to meet you here?”
She took hold of his coat and tugged. “Of course not. You warned me against such a rendezvous.”
“So I did. Yet, here you are, alone in the dark with…me, tugging at my coat. A man might misunderstand.”
“Well don’t. I’m here on a mission.”
“I know. To get a husband.” He leaned forward, his forehead touching hers.
She stilled at the contact. Their frosty breath mingled. She shivered. “At the moment I have a more immediate goal—to keep my protocol officer from being ejected from a select party by his host.”
He straightened away from her. “Ah, the duke is here.”
“He is, and he strongly objects to your presence, which has been noted by friends of your mother’s apparently.”
“It’s the way of things in London. I assure you I deserve their censure for my youthful indiscretions.”
“So you say. Nevertheless, I don’t wish to see my protocol officer publicly ejected from a party. Do you know another way out?”
He reached up and took her hands from his coat. “That’s one thing we pariahs always know. Come on.”
The danger of fairy tales we are told is that they mislead girls into dreams of marrying Prince Charming. We are to believe that unless we snatch from our girls’ hands the stories of Cinderella, Snow White, and Beauty, and insist on the reading of Fordyce’s Sermons, they will marry badly. And yet the heroines of these tales are as humble, cheerful, competent, and caring in the domestic sphere in which each lives, whether castle or cottage, that each must be considered a model of female virtue. If there is a danger in these familiar tales, it is surely that the tales ignore Prince Charming’s life. There is no requirement that the heroine understand him, know his past, know the work that he is called to do in the world. She is left to imagine that the story is entirely about her rescue, not his.
—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London
Chapter Twelve
Jane did not want the service to end. For an hour she had felt English, at home in her surroundings. The worn red psalter in her hands, the sober cadence of the worship of the season, the light slanting down into the chaste white interior of the chapel from its upper windows had transported her back to that long ago time when she and her father had come to services on Sundays to pray for Mama.
Until she’d entered the chapel with her Grandmother, she had remembered little of her London
childhood. As she crossed from the dark porch into the church proper, memories rushed back in with the smell of candles and the stirring notes of the organ prelude. She heard Hazelwood whisper in her ear, “Any single man under forty in this lot is probably yours for the taking.” Then he vanished, after dogging her footsteps for days. She did not yet understand the pattern of his disappearances and wondered what on earth so alarmed him about a Sunday church service that he’d fled her company.
She and her grandmother parted with Margaret at the rear of the church. Margaret slipped into a pew in the very back on the right, squeezing in with three ladies and two gentlemen, who nodded to her as she entered.
A trim white-haired gentleman noted her grandmother’s arrival and came to offer his arm to assist her. As they passed up the aisle, Jane heard whispers in their wake. At the front of the church where Jane and her grandmother sat, the dark, straight-backed pews with their blue velvet cushions felt instantly familiar as if nine years had not intervened since Jane’s last Sunday service but only the usual interval of a week. The service passed in a measured succession of creeds and collects and prayers for the king, clergy, and people. Only her questions over Hazelwood’s abrupt departure interrupted her thoughts. Hazelwood had a way of doing that, occupying her mind when she meant not to think about him.
Now the worshippers in their pew stirred, taking hymnbooks into gloved hands. They were to stand for a benediction and the recessional hymn. Around her the onion-thin pages of the hymnbooks rustled and people cleared their throats. She helped her grandmother to stand. The unseen organist struck the opening chord of a hymn of praise. Just then a broad-shouldered gentleman in a blue coat jostled his way into the pew, forcing everyone to shift to the left. The congregation began to sing, and Jane found her voice. It was a stirring tune to rouse a martial spirit.
As the organ notes died away, a procession of elegant people filled the main aisle, those from the first pews leading the way. The business of helping her grandmother stand and step into the aisle occupied her attention for several minutes as the crowd passed. When at last they began to move, Jane’s attention was caught by an elegant woman in dove-gray silk, her chestnut hair streaked with white at the temples. The woman’s fellow churchgoers bowed and greeted her with apparently little expectation of a return greeting.
“The Countess of Vange,” her grandmother whispered in her ear. “She’s a great patron of this chapel and a regular at Sunday services. Your scapegrace friend, Hazelwood, is her son.”
As soon as her grandmother spoke, Jane saw the resemblance. What little Hazelwood had admitted about his family came back to her. And something else. Hazelwood was wrong if he thought his mother felt about him as his father did. The countess’s drawn face and her brittle hauteur were signs of a woman suffering from a great loss.
“Come, Margaret will be waiting of us with her Last Bench Lending Library group. We’d best get it over with.”
Margaret made the introductions. The others smiled and nodded at Jane and looked awed by her grandmother. Hazelwood’s words about husbands echoed in her head when Margaret introduced Captain Simon Mudge, a retired naval officer with a limp and brown military whiskers that curved from his ears along his fine square jaw, and Thomas Bickford, a tall, lean man of extraordinary pallor, a widowed barrister of the rank of King’s Counselor. The surprise was that her father’s indistinguishable twin sisters, Cassandra and Cordelia, in matching fox fur-trimmed pelisses and bonnets were part of the group, indeed its most elegant members. The final member was Lucy Holbrook, a young woman in a plain dark blue wool coat that could not limit her striking fair prettiness. Each of them clasped a book in hand.
“We are not Mudd’s Circulating Library, but we do keep books moving,” Cordelia confided, holding out her book for Jane’s inspection. “Have you read Mrs. Raby’s latest medieval romance?”
Jane shook her head.
“Hair raising stuff. I’ll lend you Volume One when Cassandra’s done with it. She’s the slowest reader of the bunch.”
“Yes, but, unlike Cordelia, I never forget what I’ve read. She’s the one who slows the group down by re-reading a book she read a month earlier.”
The group of friends moved toward the entrance. Margaret took over with Lady Eliza. Jane was looking for Hazelwood when the broad-shouldered gentleman who had entered late came up to her. “Jane Fawkener, is it? They told me you’d be here. Let me look at you.” His hearty voice echoed through the emptying church. “It’s your Uncle Thaddeus, niece.”
Jane looked up at a rosy-cheeked gentleman with smiling blue eyes. Now that she could observe him closely, she saw the threadbare condition of his coat. “Uncle Thaddeus, hello.”
“Doing my duty, don’t you know.” He looked around. “Used to come here after your mother passed. Put in a word or two, you know”—he glanced upward—“on her behalf. Not that she needed anything from the likes of a plain naval man like me. She always was a good sort of girl, even when she was mad for your father.” He cleared his throat. “Now, he, mind you, he probably needs all the words you’ve got to say, eh?”
“He needs more than words, Uncle. He needs our help. I’m sure he’s very much alive and probably in trouble.” Jane spoke quietly but clearly, sure that no one else could hear her in the general murmur of leave taking.
Her uncle’s brows shot up, and he glanced around. “Do you know what you’re saying, niece?”
She nodded.
His brows contracted in a heavy frown, and he offered his arm to her.
Again, Jane felt that moment of hesitation, caught between the ways of Halab and the ways of London. She took his arm, and he turned them toward the church door.
The crowd was thinning, but her uncle looked about before he spoke again. “Did your father leave you a map? Always giving maps to people, as if we were all about to go haring off on an adventure.”
“Did he give you one, Uncle?”
“No, but I have one, one he gave to your mother long ago. Don’t know where the thing has got to, but if you’ve got one, best to keep it to yourself. Don’t let anyone see it.” He looked around again although the vestibule was now nearly empty.
She nodded. She had believed the map in The Husband Hunter’s Guide to be significant from the moment she’d seen it. Now curiosity consumed her about her uncle’s map. She glanced around. No one seemed to note their conversation. The Last Bench Lending Library friends stood at the foot of the chapel steps, exchanging talk and laughs.
Her uncle looked chagrinned. “Well, I’d best be on my way, niece. You’ve got other fish to fry, eh? Your grandmamma tells me you’re on the lookout for a husband. Don’t want to hurt your chances by talking to an oldster like me.”
“I hope I may talk to family, Uncle Thaddeus, and still expect to attract a husband.” Jane smiled at him. She didn’t want to ask him outright for his map from her father, but she did want to see it. “May I call on you, Uncle? Is it done?”
His face brightened. “Of course, my girl. You’ve got some kind of companion, haven’t you?”
“I do.”
“Well, I’ve only my bachelor’s digs in Hampstead, but my man can make a decent cup of tea. You’ll come have a dish of tea, eh? This afternoon?”
Jane nodded. Her uncle had a map of her father’s. She would get Hazelwood to take her. “Thank you, Uncle Thaddeus.”
She joined the Last Bench Lending Library members as churchgoers waited for carriages to arrive. Margaret smiled at her. Her grandmother’s companion looked different after her talk with her friends, livelier, brighter, almost cheerful. Jane would have to get her grandmother out more often. “Now that you know how we operate, Miss Fawkener, you must bring a book next time.”
“I shall.” Jane smiled back.
Across the narrow street Hazelwood emerged from behind his carriage, and she wondered whether he had seen his mother leave the chu
rch.
* * * *
In the end Jane could get him to say nothing about his family other than to admit that he had an older, married sister. When the conversation shifted back to the investiture ceremony, she was able to persuade him to take her to Hampstead by refusing to practice another minute and by agreeing that she would return from her cousins’ musicale that evening in his carriage.
Uncle Thaddeus’s white cottage was tucked away among other houses on a hillside sloping toward the heath. A narrow lane passed by the high-walled garden, and the interior was fitted up like the inside of the ship that had brought Jane back to London with wood paneled walls, upon which hung the brass tools of the sailor’s trade—clocks, barometers, and sextants.
Uncle Thaddeus settled them in the small dark parlor in heavy chairs with worn leather seats. His man brought the tea tray and set it on a battered old sea chest that filled the center of the room. The tea was weak, the old-fashioned dishes worn and chipped, and the plate of biscuits quite sparse. A meager fire burned in the grate. Her uncle was either very frugal or very short of cash. For a few moments they talked about the house and how her uncle’s prize money had allowed him to settle there when he left the navy. A large square of blank paneling above the hearth drew Hazelwood’s attention.
“Are you missing a work of art, Captain Drummond?”
Uncle Thaddeus put down his dish of tea and patted his whiskers with a napkin. “That I am, Hazelwood. Hoping to ask my niece Jane for some help in the matter, but first things first. Promised to show her one of her father’s maps.”
Thaddeus rose from his chair and signaled them both to stand, beckoning them across the room to a large desk under a round window like a ship’s porthole. He lit a lamp.
“Didn’t think I’d know where this was, but I found it right off.” He unrolled a sheet of heavy yellowing paper and spread it on his desk anchoring the ends with a compass and some bits of sea-weathered wood and loops of iron that Jane did not recognize.
She bit back her disappointment when she leaned over to look and found that it was a map of the city of Oxford, the locations of the ancient colleges marked by shields of their coats of arms.