by Nita Abrams
Several of Anthony’s colleagues at the bank were active in their local militias, which had been drilling regularly for ten years in case Bonaparte ever invaded England. It was a relatively safe method of demonstrating patriotism. He said, watching his uncle’s face, “No, not the militia. An infantry regiment. The 44th Foot.”
Meyer lost his faintly bored look. He sat up with a jerk. “An infantry regiment? You are joking, surely.”
Anthony set his jaw. “James is in the Rifles,” he pointed out. “At least, he serves in the 95th when he isn’t doing something even more dangerous, like sneaking into French fortresses. No one suggests he is joking when he goes off with his battalion.”
“Yes, and a fine model for prudence he is!” Meyer snapped. He left unspoken what they both knew: James had been studying to be a spy since he was eight. Anthony could barely fire a gun. His uncle took a deep breath. In the patient tones of a man trying to reason with a child, he said, “Forgive me, but you cannot have thought this through. You have no idea what the life of an enlisted man is like.”
“Do not tell me about floggings and weevils and seventy-pound haversacks,” Anthony said, his jaw set. “I have already heard it all. Mr. Davis, my unofficial trainer, insisted that I walk from Battersea to Walworth carrying all my gear on the hottest day last week. I still have the blisters.”
“And you are prepared to sign on for seven years of these delights?”
“No, but it will not be seven years, no matter what the enlistment papers may say. Everyone believes there will be one great battle. In mid-July, most likely. That is less than two months from now. I want to fight in that battle.”
“What if everyone is wrong? What if it takes years of slow, grinding, dreary work to push Bonaparte back again? As it did in Spain?”
“Then I will ask you to buy me out.” He gave his uncle a level stare. “Don’t tell me you would not be able to do it.”
“What I would like to do is to talk you out. Before you are in.” Meyer sat back in his chair and brooded. “This is because of that beating you took in Sisteron,” he muttered, half to himself. “In front of Miss Hart. You asked me to teach you how to shoot a gun right afterwards; I should have seen this coming.”
“That is not the reason. At least, not entirely.” Anthony shifted uncomfortably. Here was his cue for a fiery speech denouncing Meyer’s devious ways and justifying his own decision, but he no longer wanted to deliver the speech. To his surprise, he found himself reaching for a very different explanation. “I was in Grasse, you know, meeting with perfumers, when the news of Bonaparte’s escape arrived,” he said slowly.
Meyer frowned, but waited for him to continue.
Anthony made a frustrated gesture. “Do you know how long it has been since those poor men could export their goods legally? Over ten years! How much of a local market for fine perfume do they have in the hills of southern France?”
“So you are going to war for the lavender growers of Provence.”
“Yes, I am,” said Anthony fiercely. “I am sick of being a smuggler instead of a businessman. You and James enjoy breaking the rules. I don’t. If the only way to stop Napoleon from bringing another decade of war and embargos and blockades to Europe is to stand there with a musket in some field in Belgium, then so be it.”
There was a long silence. His uncle studied him carefully, then said at last, “When are you meeting the recruiter?”
He had been holding his breath. Now he let it out. “Friday.”
“They will have you on a boat to Antwerp twenty-four hours after you sign on, you know. Wellington is desperately short of men.”
“So I have been told.”
There was another silence. “Have you shared this news with anyone else?”
Anthony shook his head. “I wanted to tell you first.”
“Hoping I would talk you out of it, perhaps?”
“Hoping that I could resist when you tried,” Anthony admitted. “I thought you would be the toughest. With the exception of my mother, of course, but she is in Italy.” He asked after a moment, “What do you think her reaction will be?”
“Apoplexy,” said Meyer succinctly. “Followed by death threats against me for failing to stop you.”
“I’ll write to her tonight,” Anthony said, dreading the thought. “And what of Aunt Louisa and Uncle Eli? I suppose I must tell them as well.”
“You must do more than that. You must persuade them, as you did me. Unless you fancy being abducted from your regiment by bank hirelings.”
“Uncle Eli would never do anything of the sort!” Anthony was shocked.
His voice dry, Meyer said, “You think not? I assure you that in his own way he is just as ruthless as you accuse me of being.”
That gave Anthony pause. What if Meyer had only been pretending to accept his decision to enlist? What if Anthony woke up tomorrow to find himself drugged and bound in the hold of a ship headed for the Antipodes? He shot his uncle an uneasy glance.
“I have renounced ruthlessness,” Meyer reminded him. “You are safe from me, if not from the French army.” He stood up. “Are you going to the bank? Now that I will have you to worry about as well as James, I think I would like to see those reports you mentioned. On our way we can stop by the house and you can tell your aunt Louisa what you have told me.”
Anthony swallowed. “This morning?”
“Do you want her to hear it from someone else? I have already hinted to your uncle Eli that he might want to investigate those powder burns on your face.”
“May I observe,” said Anthony bitterly, “that in Italy I only have one parent?” But he stood up and put on his hat and gloves.
They were walking out together when Anthony suddenly remembered his other piece of news. “Oh, I stopped by the Harts’s yesterday. Mrs. Hart accepted your gift.”
Meyer stopped and turned around. “She did?” he said, looking both relieved and apprehensive.
“Yes, and I took the liberty of asking her whether you might call on her at some point.”
Now his uncle looked even more apprehensive. “What did she say?”
“Nothing. But if I had to interpret her silence, I would translate it as ‘not yet.’”
“Well,” said Meyer, “that is better than the ‘Over my dead body’ silence, which is what I was expecting.”
It was not until the morning after Anthony Roth’s visit that Abigail finally got up her courage to look carefully at the book Meyer had sent. The note on the flyleaf had been so brief that she had begun to wonder whether there was not some other message inside—a loose sheet of paper folded between two pages, perhaps. Or something in the margin of one of the poems. She brought the volume down to breakfast with her, and made herself wait until she had looked at all of the post, including the bills. Only then did she pick it up and shake it. Nothing fell out. She flipped the pages. No pieces of paper appeared. No marginalia either. Perhaps the poems themselves were meant to be the message. Glancing up quickly to make sure that Fanny was still absorbed in the newspaper, she began to read.
The first poem, “She Walks in Beauty,” was a love poem. It made her a bit uncomfortable, especially when it described the flowing hair of the beloved. The second poem, “The Harp the Monarch Minstrel Swept,” was incomprehensible. The third seemed to be another love poem, in an almost sacrilegious vein. She stopped reading and began skimming. Then, increasingly uneasy, she turned back to the beginning and read every word on every page. It was not a long book.
An hour later she was on her way to find Meyer.
Sweelinck came to find Louisa in the kitchen, where she was consulting the cook about a new pastry recipe her niece Rachel had sent her. “I beg your pardon, madam,” he said, “but there is a caller for Mr. Meyer.”
“He has gone out,” Louisa said. “I heard him tell you so myself. He is at his club and may not be back until this afternoon. If it is someone from Whitehall, send them on to the Traveller’s, or ask them to leave a note.
” She turned back to the recipe, which seemed to be missing some key ingredient. She and the cook had both tried to roll out the dough, and it crumbled apart each time.
“The caller is a lady,” Sweelinck said. “A Mrs. Hart.”
Louisa turned around. “Mrs. Hart? Not Miss Hart?”
The butler’s injured look told her that he did not make errors of that sort.
“I will be right up,” she said, hastily looking around for something she could use to clean off the flour from her hands and bodice. “Put her in the bookroom. No, that is full of Eli’s papers. The drawing room, then.”
Sweelinck bowed and withdrew.
“Offer her some refreshments as well,” Louisa called after him. One of the kitchen maids brought her a basin of water and she repaired the damage to her gown as best she could. But she felt harried and untidy as she arrived to greet her unexpected guest, and the sight of Abigail Hart did not make her feel any better.
Neat. That was how Louisa would describe her. Everything about her was neat. Her features were regular; her clothing impeccable; her hair smooth beneath a starched cap. She was sitting very carefully on the edge of a gold silk armchair, with her hands folded in her lap. Under her hands, centered precisely, was a small book. Then she looked up, and Louisa saw her eyes. They were wide and green and did not belong to the person who had chosen that modest gown and folded her hands over the book.
Abigail rose, setting the volume on an adjacent chair.
“Mrs. Hart?” Louisa hurried over. “Louisa Roth. My brother-in-law is from home, but I have been wanting to meet you; my nephew Anthony speaks of you often.”
“I am sorry, I cannot stay.” She looked nervous. “I only came by to return this book. Mr. Meyer gave it to me by mistake.”
Louisa wisely did not ask why the book had not been sent with a footman. “Please do sit down, if only for a minute or so,” she said. “I should have called weeks ago to thank you for your care of Anthony; you must at least allow me to do that much now.”
Abigail sank back onto her chair.
“Were you offered anything? Would you care for some tea?”
“Yes.” Then she corrected herself. “That is, yes, I was asked if I wished for anything. I am quite content as I am.” A blatant lie, her folded hands were trembling slightly.
“Anthony tells me that you had quite a time of it in France,” Louisa said. “What with his illness, and the soldiers, and the snow.” Her phrasing was deliberately constructed to suggest that she knew many more details; in fact, those three words—illness, soldiers, snow—had been acquired only through patient sifting of Anthony’s occasional offhand references combined with judicious consultation of newspaper reports.
“It was not very pleasant,” her visitor admitted. “But it was certainly memorable.”
“You had your daughter with you as well. That must have made you even more anxious.”
The first hint of a smile softened Abigail Hart’s face. “That is an understatement. When I saw Diana being held at gunpoint at that roadblock, I thought I would faint. Luckily Mr. Meyer remained calm, even when they stripped him and found all of his weapons.”
Louisa tried in vain to think of some way to obtain the full story of this incident. No wonder none of the travelers had been willing to answer questions about what had happened. She gave the other woman an encouraging smile.
There was a pause. “Perhaps you are wondering about Diana,” said her visitor. “In connection with your nephew, that is. He does call quite often, but I cannot say that I have seen any signs of a serious attachment. If something does come of it, it might reassure you to know that the Harts acknowledge Diana as a full member of the family, and have been very courteous to me as well. You need not fear that my divorce will harm her prospects in any way, in spite of the unusual circumstances.”
Another tantalizingly incomplete piece of information. “What unusual circumstances?” Louisa wanted to ask. But her question was never spoken, because at that moment the door opened and Meyer came in, closely followed by her nephew Anthony.
“I beg your pardon, Louisa,” Meyer said. “I know you have company, but when you have a moment Anthony has something rather urgent to tell you.”
Then he saw who was with her.
It was hard to say who was more shaken. Abigail turned pale and half-rose from her seat. Meyer stopped so quickly that Anthony nearly ran into him. Glancing back and forth between her visitor and her brother-in-law, Louisa sighed. Something had indeed happened in France. She was looking at it. For once, Eli’s matchmaking had produced some results; they were, unfortunately, not happy results.
Meyer recovered first. He gave the smallest possible inclination of his head, as though he were afraid to move more than a fraction of an inch.
Abigail answered with an equally restrained nod. “I stopped by to return the book,” she said. Louisa could see her swallow. “It—it was very kind of you to think of me, but perhaps you should offer it to someone who will enjoy it more.”
Louisa glanced down at the volume on the chair and recognized it at once. As clumsy as her husband was at matchmaking, her brother-in-law was evidently even clumsier at the rituals of courtship. What had he been thinking, to give such a gift to a woman like Abigail Hart? But then she suddenly realized what must have happened.
“Nathan,” she said. “Did you read those poems before you gave Mrs. Hart the book?”
“No,” he confessed. Alarmed, he asked, “Are they—unseemly ? I thought Byron was very widely read. The bookseller assured me that the ladies who patronized his shop admired him greatly. And I was told that everything in this collection is based on the Bible.”
“The poems are not improper, or not very much so.” Louisa was groping for words to describe what happened when scripture and Byron were mixed. “It is just that the allusions to the Bible are very free. And it is all quite morbid; doomed love and battles and exile and death.” Typical Byron, in other words. Obviously Meyer had never read him. “It might not be to everyone’s taste,” she added diplomatically.
“You found it offensive.” Meyer addressed Abigail.
She hesitated. “Perhaps I did. I do not read very much poetry. I suppose I took Lord Byron’s sentiments as representing yours. After what happened at Pont-Haut, to read about pure maidens and armies and dead patriots was not pleasant.”
“Obviously I do not read much poetry either.” His eyes caught hers. “I meant no insult,” he said. “Please forgive me.”
The silence that followed was so charged that Louisa almost expected Abigail to be drawn across the room to Meyer, like a piece of iron caught by a magnet.
Instead she wrenched her gaze away, turned, almost blindly, and picked up the book. “I am unused to modern verse,” she said. “Fanny was right; I should not have been so quick to condemn what I did not understand. That is a far greater fault than offering someone an ill-chosen gift. Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs. Roth.” And before anyone realized what she was doing, she was already at the door.
“Abigail, wait,” Meyer said in a low voice, catching her arm. “The book is nothing. I should have sent you a note, but I was afraid you would not read it.”
“I must go,” she said faintly. She looked down at his hand on her sleeve as if not quite understanding what it was doing there.
He released her at once. “At least tell me that you are well.”
“Yes, quite well.” She did not, Louisa noticed, ask Meyer how he was.
“If I can do anything—if you need anything—”
“Thank you. You are very kind.”
“Allow me to see you out,” he said.
“No, please—” Her voice was trembling slightly.
He stepped back and held the door for her. After she had left he closed it again and stood leaning against it, his expression unreadable.
Louisa glanced at Anthony. He, too, was wearing the implausibly bland face males use to signal that questions on a certain topi
c are not welcome. She sighed inwardly and made a mental note to add “roadblock” and “Pont-Haut” to her list of items to be investigated. Then she turned her attention to her nephew. “You had something to tell me, Anthony?”
He shot a worried look at Meyer.
“Go ahead,” said her brother-in-law. “I am not endorsing your decision—Miss Hart still looms a bit too large in the background for my comfort—but I do not oppose it either.
Frowning, she looked at Anthony. “What decision ?”
“I am enlisting,” Anthony said with an odd mixture of embarrassment and defiance. “In an infantry regiment.” He added, half under his breath, “And it is not because of Diana.”
Louisa was beginning to wish that Eli had never heard of Joshua Hart’s beautiful cousin and her daughter. Abigail Hart was making Nathan so unhappy that he had resigned from the army, and now her daughter had provoked Anthony into joining. At least, she thought, this latest news would cure her husband of interfering in Nathan Meyer’s love life. Permanently.
22
The sky on this sixth day of June arched in a cloudless blue band over the parade ground behind the Horse Guards, and the assembled soldiers looked very impressive as they stood at attention under the midday sun. Their trousers were pristine white, their boots and tall hats gleaming black. Weapons, carefully polished, were held at precisely the same angle by doll-like men in neat rows.
“They are nearly all recruits,” said Martha to Diana in an undertone. She sounded disappointed. Diana had learned more about the British army in the half hour they had stood here than in her entire lifetime. As they had watched the latest batch of troops muster for transport to Belgium, Martha had issued a series of pronouncements. Veterans were good; recruits were bad. Infantry were good; cavalry were bad (this in spite of Martha’s brother Charles, who was in the Light Dragoons and was the family black sheep as a result). Officers promoted on the field were good; spoiled aristocrats who bought commissions were bad.