Lace for Milady

by Joan Smith

  “Well, upon my word! I knew you were the most stubborn woman God ever created, but this is the first time I ever realized the extent of your conniving, scheming brain—and laying the whole of it in my dish, if you please! It would not have occurred to me to manipulate you in that under-handed way. My schem­ing, if it even merits the word after what you have thought—is quite open and aboveboard.”

  "Except for the part of it that takes place under­ground with Roman mosaics, or in secluded meadows with smugglers. Never mind. We’ll argue tomorrow. My head aches.”

  “I won’t be here tomorrow.”

  "You're not leaving!”

  He smiled softly and took my hand. “Do you know, I think that is the first nice thing you’ve ever said to me, and the strain of uttering it has given you a migraine. I will be back soon.”

  “What was nice about it?” I asked, for I had certainly intended no compliment.

  ‘The anxious tone, Priss. Very nice.”

  “I was not anxious.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. Au contraire.” There was no point in arguing with him, and besides, my head did ache. Slack must have gobbled her dinner. She was back within minutes, carrying a tray for Clavering, from which he ate at a table in the room. The first meal he had ever taken with us, and what a ramshackle meal it was, sitting alone at a deal table in a corner. He remained till the doctor came, not so much later. After a brief examination, the doctor left a quite unnecessary sleeping draught, which I never did take, but which Slack kept for an emergency. As soon as Doctor Sloane was gone, Clavering, too, arose to take his leave. Slack, with some misguided idea of tact, decided to leave us alone, for which I upbraided her severely later.

  Privacy was not in the least necessary for our last words. “Recover quickly,” was his parting solicitude, delivered in his customary curt, commanding way.

  “I am recovered.”

  “And stay out of the meadow. Louie’s uncle might be there. He’s as bad as his nephew—worse, a drunkard and renowned womanizer."

  “You entrust your priceless Roman mosaic to a drunkard? You amaze me, Your Grace.”

  “He has orders to be sobered up, and when he is, he’s the best worker in the country."

  “Eel!”

  “Time for me to join the eelfare. Pity, I would like very much to stay and wrestle with you—verbally, of course. Recuperate!” he ordered, punctuating his com­mand with a pointing finger; then he turned and left the room.

  I overheard him talking to Slack in the hall. “Take care of her,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  As Slack made no startled exclamation, I assumed she had been told before of his leaving. “I’ll keep Juliette at Belview till I return. I wouldn’t put it past her to try the wretch again to spite me.”

  Luckily for Slack, I couldn’t make out her answer, but I heard that eel laughing. “But that is exactly what I like about her,” he said. “Birds of a feather, we two.” Then the outer door closed, and Slack came back to me, looking suspiciously innocent. I’d have given another diamond ring to know what she had said, but would not satisfy her to ask.

  I was given a light supper a little later on, then went early to bed because of my headache. Slack, in a fit of guilt, cleaned up my riding habit, and now that I had not the least intention of ever donning it again, also took pity on my poor stitchery and fixed up the gaping neck. I don’t believe she can have read a single chapter of her books that evening.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  I recovered quickly from the accident. Already the next day I was up and about the house, but was content to remain indoors, since the weather was inclement. Lady Inglewood and George came to call, which is the only reason I bothered having a relapse in the afternoon. Slack told them the story, and Lady Inglewood, after expressing every concern, offered to buy back Juliette. I expect she was missing her rides.

  With nothing better to do, I glanced through a few of the many books Slack had borrowed from Clavering. One dealt with the Forts of the Saxon Shore, and I was interested to learn that there was the remains of one at Pevensey. Also curi­ous, since they were not normally spaced so close together as to allow of another at Willow Hall, only three miles away. There was a much greater distance between the others, at Lympne, Richborough, Pevensey, and Portsmouth. In fact, I realized at once that it was unlikely in the extreme that what we were built on was an old fort at all; it must be some other Roman ruin. I looked through other books, trying to discover what might be the foundation of my home, but there was a deal too much to make any decision.

  They erected temples, villas, stores, forums, baths, and garrisons with a prolificity that was truly astound­ing. Their engineering feats, too, were impressive. Central heating, for instance, was common and a luxury not indulged in in our own modern times to any extent. Their skill in transporting water, clearing swamps and filling them in for building purposes, erecting bridges, building foundations and piers under water, and build­ing roads sixteen to twenty-four feet wide of metalled surfaces was surely unparalleled in their time, and hardly surpassed since.

  Pleased that I was showing any interest in her hobby, Slack surrounded me with a wall of books dealing with their art, trade, politics, and religion. Had I had the time or interest to read half of them, I would have been an expert, but I had not the least intention of sharing her mania.

  I did continue to wonder though about the ruins under Seaview. A fort at Pevensey indicated a military establishment hereabouts, and if the ruined chapel in the meadow was built on a Roman temple as Clavering had indicated, there was more than military goings-on in the area. A settlement. It might be built on a villa, or even a bath. The diagrams outlining the arrange­ment of the baths were impressive and interesting. Huge things, allowing a thousand or more to bathe at one time, and quite a ritual they made of it, with athletics first and oiling their bodies afterward. I could not suppress a twinge to think of taking a bath in the presence of nine hundred and ninety-nine other per­sons, but at least they had running water, and separate hours for women and men.

  On the second day I drove into Pevensey to fetch my rose satin gown, with a little misgiving as to what Slack would say when she observed the daring neck­line and lack of sleeves. I looked about sharply for Lazy Louie, for whatever Clavering had to say on the sub­ject, I felt I owed him my thanks. He was not to be seen anywhere, and later Officer Smith, of whom I enquired at the Customs Office, told me the Nancy-Jane had slipped away a day ago, and he would keep an eye peeled for its return. I also enquired of Lazy Louie’s last name, for I seemed to remember Smith’s having mentioned it once, and I thought I ought to address him as Mr. Something when I met him.

  “He’s a FitzHugh,” Smith said, with a sly smile that told me there was some significance in the name. A question caused him to elaborate.

  “One of old Lord Hugh’s by-blows.”

  “Who is Lord Hugh?” I asked. It was not unlike trying to extract information from George.

  “Why, he was uncle to the Duke of Clavering, the father’s younger brother. Long since buried, but the countryside hereabouts bears many a trace of him, if you know what I mean,” he said roguishly. “He did better for most of them than he did for Louie, but the lad was a renegade from the beginning, and there was no making him respectable. It does bother His Grace no end that the lad has turned bad; it’s why he is so determined to catch him. Clavering has tried his hand more than once to reform the fellow; set him up as a horse breeder, but all he ever got for that is the stallion he rides. There was some falling out between them. They don’t hardly nod when they pass on the street.”

  I was hard-pressed not to break into whoops of laughter in the man’s face. The illustrious Duke of Clavering, half a cousin to Lazy Louie, that “unsavoury charac­ter” too low for me to speak to. A smuggler, a bastard, and a renegade. How I would crow when next we met! There was no reason to doubt Smith’s story. I had even thought I glimpsed some small similari
ty between them, and it was true they both rode huge black stallions. “It doesn’t bother you then?” Smith asked, with an inquisitive face. The question left me speech­less.

  “Why should it bother me?” I asked.

  He was taken aback, looked embarrassed, as though he had ventured to say more than he should have. I really think the man was intimating there was some­thing between Clavering and me, and he was in need of a setting down. “It does bother me a little that you can’t seem to catch the one smuggler you have to deal with. But you know he is out, and surely won’t let him land a load again.”

  Till I was out of his office, I held in my secret delight. This discovery was of more worth to me than my new rose satin gown, which I think might warrant a warmer description than being “dressed up a little.” Not that I had any place to wear such a dashing ensemble, unless someone should decide to hold a ball. For the next few days there was no ball, nor any excitement of any sort save a visit from Mr. McMaster. With my rides discontinued, George was coming to find our visits as dull as I always had myself. He had no excuse now to talk horses, and curtailed his calls to a very agreeable twenty minutes. Lady Inglewood came once to see what she could find out about our dealings with Clavering, and was so vexed to see his clavichord in my saloon that she didn’t return. His being safely away in London may have lessened her vigilance, and in any case from Wednesday on we saw no sign of her.

  With so little to do in my convalescence, I turned to books, like Slack, and read of the glories of Roman Britain. I was curious to see examples of the mosaic floors and muralled walls that once graced the homes of the mighty, but most of all I envied them their central heating, ingeniously contrived by conduits in walls and floors. The heat was made by coal, surface-mined, I read. Why could we not install it nowadays? I found it wonderful that some roads remained when they had built five thousand miles of them. Again and again I returned to puzzle the mystery of what ancient build­ing once stood where today Seaview, or Willow Hall, now stands. With Clavering away, I felt less intense about the name of my house somehow. He did not write to us, of course. We did not expect that he would do so. He would be busy in Parliament, where the war against Napoleon must surely be one of the major matters for discussion. He had not said exactly when he would return. Soon is a relative term—it might be a week or a month, but with London only sixty miles away I didn’t think a trip in Clavering’s well-sprung carriage need wait a month.

  The war dragged on. Since Wellington’s victory at Vittoria in June, he had been advancing on the French frontier. It was hoped he would soon be in France. And with Napoleon’s army weakened from the Russian battles, and with the Prussian War of Liberation using what men and guns he had left, we were hopeful of a victory at last. I did not really fear invasion; it was not spoken of locally as being at all a likely thing. Still, with Napoleon, one could never be sure. England’s armies, too, were largely dispersed elsewhere, and the possibility could never be ignored entirely. The round Martello Towers were a welcome safeguard, but a reminder, as well.

  I became impatient with our dull routine. Slack did nothing to soothe my exacerbated nerves. Coy remarks that I was “lonely” and that we might take a jaunt up to Londinium were treated with the contempt they deserved, but we did make some halfhearted plans for visiting Brighton the next summer, a stylish resort and close to us. This sent Slack dashing up to Belview to see what she could discover of its older name, and what she might find of interest to an historian like herself. I informed her that what I intended to see was the Prince Regent’s pavilion, and I doubted very much if even her precious Romans had ever done anything to outshine it in opulence, extravagance, and folly. I also wondered if it had central heating. But, of course, an onion dome and Chinese decor held no interest for her. She learned at Belview that the Duke was expected home “soon,” and got it pinned down a little more firmly than I what his “soon” meant.

  “Tomorrow or the day after; before the next week definitely. They say he’s never away above a week,” she said.

  While Slack was gone, I decided to take a walk, and chose to walk through Clavering’s spinney, the same through which I had permission to ride; I could not feel walking would be prohibited. As I approached the far end of it, I went just a distance into the meadow, to see if there was any sign of Louie’s uncle, (maternal, I presume) working on the ruins. I was careful of traps, looking with a sharp eye before every footstep. I could see in the distance one mount, a dappled grey which I did not recognize, nor did I see any sign of its rider. There was no work going on. The ruins stood in a flat field, and scaffolds or piles of equipment or mortar or cement must have been visible had they been there. It seemed the uncle like the nephew was indeed a brandy lover, and was probably asleep in the ruins. Being a little frightened of both traps and drunken stone­masons, I turned my steps around and went back home.

  A rather vicious storm blew up that night. Already at dinnertime it was dark and cool. We lit the fire in the grate and settled in for a comfortable evening with our books. The grate had been silent as a mouse for some time now, and we had become complacent about it, but at nine o’clock it began to tremble a little, and we exchanged silent expressions of chagrin.

  It rattled again, and Slack said, “Not that business again,” voicing my sentiments exactly. We set our jaws for trouble, but there was actually little enough to complain of—a few minor jiggles that might well have been caused by the howling winds outside.

  “Burne couldn’t come tonight if he wanted to,” Slack commented. “Home from Londinium, I mean."

  “Missing him, are you?” I quizzed her. “Go ahead and eat your cherries without him, Slack. It will make you feel closer to him.”

  “Oh, I feel close enough just reading his books,” she answered quietly, inured to my taunts.

  I had, of course, told her the moment I returned from Pevensey some days previously about Clavering’s relationship to Lazy Louie. Without knowing a single thing about it, she denied all kinship. Then went on to explain it away as a harmless thing anyway, if Burne’s uncle should have been a rakeshame, and she was sure there were more Fitzes in England than FitzHughs. Furthermore, Lazy Louie bore not the slightest trace of resemblance to Burne, and what if they did both have black eyes? For that matter, she personally hadn’t a thing against smuggling, and neither did I, apparent­ly, for I bought up every scrap of silk the drapery shop had for sale, yards and yards of it, in all shades of the rainbow.

  “Clavering’s cousin won’t be coming home tonight, either,” I said.

  “You refer to Lazy Louie, his alleged half-cousin, do you?”

  "Yes, the bastard-smuggler of the family.”

  “Such talk is not becoming in a lady, Priscilla, and I’m sure I don’t know what Burne would say if you carry on so."

  “Neither do I, but I’m dying to find out.”

  “Well, he’s right about you is all I can say,” she retorted sharply.

  “What did he say?” I asked, ready to take umbrage. She sniffed and snorted for a few moments, but eventually I got it out of her. “He said you were always fixing for a fight with him, and so you are.”

  “Did he, indeed? Gallant of him!”

  “And he’s not much better if it comes to that. Birds of a feather.”

  That is exactly what I like about her. Oh yes, he’d hear my views on Lazy Louie all right. Slack knew there was no point trying to talk me out of it, and suggested a little music instead. We had played our few standard pieces to death, and I thought I had seen some music books in the bottom of the parson’s bench, so we opened it and pulled piles of magazines out onto the floor to search through them. But they were so ancient as to be unknown even to Slack, and neither of us is such a fine musician that she does a good job of timing a piece with which she is unfamiliar, so it was not a great success.

  “I’m for bed,” Slack said after a short musical interlude. “I feel a touch of the headache. Not that I’ll sleep with that storm going on out
side. I’ll just tidy up that welter of books and close the parson’s bench.”

  “That is why we have servants, Slack,” I told her, and convinced her to leave it to Sally, for she was holding her head, and this indicated one of her bad headaches, which come to trouble her once or twice a year. “Why don’t you take a few drops of that sleeping draught the doctor left for me? It will give you a good night’s sleep.”

  “I think perhaps I will. A good thing I didn’t throw it away."

  We both went up to bed early, but as we had been doing so all week, I was not at all tired. I lit a brace of candles and read till close to midnight, and was still not sleepy. Even after I blew out the candles and lay for some three-quarters of an hour, sleep did not come. I became quite vexed with myself. The longer I lay there, staring fixedly into the darkness, the less did I feel like sleeping.

  My mind roamed over all the past weeks since coming to Seaview, and as I reviewed it, it seemed people had been trying to push me into doing things I had no desire to do since the moment I had arrived. First Lady Inglewood trying to push me into marrying George, then Clavering trying to make me sell him Seaview, Slack trying to make me into a lover of antiquity, and even myself, making me ride a horse I despised. And now trying to sleep when it was perfectly obvious my body was saturated with sleep. I would get up and do something. No matter if the clock was approaching one. I could stay in bed as long as I chose tomorrow.

  And I wouldn’t bother reading about any more Roman ingenuity, either. I would find myself a good, romantic novel and indulge in a bout of emotion. Between the storm and my old Gothic mansion, I was in a mood for Mrs. Radcliffe tonight, and regretted my old friend had remained behind as a gift to the circulat­ing library at Wilton. There was no proper library at Seaview, but in the morning parlour there were a few bookshelves built in under the window, and I remem­bered seeing the tell-tale marble-covered books denot­ing the Minerva Press.

  I lit my candelabrum and slipped into my dressing gown and houseslippers to go down to the morning parlour. My saloon is to the right of the staircase as one descends, and I took a peek in to see if the embers had burned themselves out so that I might close the flue, for it was still raining, but more gently now.