by Sarah Zettel
So much for gaining information from the servant. I took a deep breath. I looked toward the door and the window. If I meant to flee, now was the time. But where would I go? And how? I had no cloak to keep off the rain I could hear drumming against the windowpanes and no money to pay my way. I could pawn my pins and kerchief again, and my earrings, and my ribbons, but there was a limit to how far what I wore on my back would take me.
As fleeing did not seem the most practical option yet, I settled for lifting the poker off its stand and laying it on the floor behind my heels so my skirts would hide it from immediate view. The maid did not once look up from her needlework, and I began to wonder whether she was deaf or just well practiced at not noticing what the masters of the house did. Neither possibility made me feel any easier.
The door opened again. I rose reflexively as Mr. Tinderflint entered, followed by two much thinner, much more soberly dressed persons.
“My dear miss, my very dear Miss Margaret Fitzroy . . . allow me to present my partner, Mr. Peele. And this is Mrs. Abbott.”
Mr. Peele had evidently taken the view that as his friend wore enough ornamentation for the entire district, he need not trouble himself with any at all. His coat and breeches were unrelieved black velvet, and his shirt a plain and perfect white. The only colors about him anywhere were the silver buckles on his shoes and knees and the startling scarlet ribbon tying the short queue of his wig. Mr. Peele’s eyes were dark and deeply shadowed by his overhanging brow. His general build was an angular one with a square jaw, square shoulders, and sharp elbows. By way of contrast, his hands were long, narrow, and immaculately kept.
Mrs. Abbott was taller than either of the men, though not by much. She also seemed to feel that severity was in order on this day. Her black dress was so plain, and her white cap tied so tightly under her chin, all I could think was that she was either a highly proper upper servant, or an adherent to some strict Calvinist sect. Her hair, what showed of it from under the sharp edge of her starched cap, was iron gray streaked with black. Although her face was deeply lined and its skin drawn tight, one could see that she had been a beauty. Her eyes stood out large and bright above her cheekbones, but they were red-rimmed and deeply shadowed, as if she had not slept in far too long. I wondered if that accounted for the measure of anger and distaste which seasoned the way in which she looked down her long nose at me.
Mr. Peele folded his immaculate hands behind his back and began walking around me in a circle, as if I was but recently come on the market and he did not quite trust the seller.
My heart tried to squeeze itself far enough to hide behind my spine.
“Parlez-vous français?” inquired Mr. Peele. Do you speak French?
“Sprechen sie Deutsch?” added Mr. Tinderflint. Do you speak German?
“And Latin,” I told them both, in that most ancient language. The last thing I had expected to feel today was gratitude toward Uncle Pierpont. But my uncle had a particular distaste for “empty-headed females,” so Olivia had been educated with a rigor my aunt feared would spoil her looks. While not an official pupil, I’d sat in at her lessons, where I turned out to be hopeless at drawing and composition, but much better at mathematics and languages. For good measure, and perhaps to hide my nerves, I switched over to the tongue of the Athenians: “But the tutor of my cousin says my Greek requires much work.”
Mr. Peele raised his heavy eyebrows toward Mr. Tinderflint, and the two men shared a look full of Meaning and Import. He said nothing, however, and merely resumed his thoughtful orbiting and ogling of my person.
“Perhaps you wish to inspect my soundness of wind?” I muttered. “I can produce a certificate swearing my teeth are my own.”
To my surprise, Mr. Peele let out a bark of laughter. “Very good, miss!”
“Yes, very good, very good!” Mr. Tinderflint clapped his hands. “And her appearance, you see, Peele, is quite perfect.”
“Yes, and who will look for her?” Mrs. Abbott still had not moved from the doorway. Her voice was taut around a heavy French accent. “She is clearly of quality. When she disappears, who comes asking questions?”
Disappears? My body stiffened, and I nudged my heel back against the poker. If I swung for Mr. Peele first, I could probably catch Mr. Tinderflint second. But that left Mrs. Abbott blocking the door. Perhaps I ought to try smashing the window first? Oh, why wasn’t Olivia here? She’d seen more dramas than I had. She’d know what to do.
“Well, Miss Fitzroy?” Mr. Peele smiled as if he enjoyed my discomfort. “It is an excellent question.”
But it was Mr. Tinderflint who answered. “Surely Miss Fitzroy deserves to hear the proposition in full first. Then she can provide whatever additional information we might require.”
Mr. Peele shrugged, as if it was of no matter to him, but Mrs. Abbott responded with a stream of French so rapid I caught only one word in three. Mr. Tinderflint stood his ground at this sudden Gallic bombardment with admirable, and wholly unexpected, courage.
“She is exactly the one we need,” he answered, also in French. “Exactly.”
It was very clear Mrs. Abbott did not agree. The look she leveled against Messrs. Tinderflint and Peele would have done murder even without a poker’s assistance. Mr. Peele responded by walking her out into the dim hallway, where they stood whispering and casting glances through the doorway in my direction. I felt suddenly quite cold, despite the pleasant fire flickering in its tidy hearth.
Mr. Tinderflint sidled up to me and opened his mouth.
“Sir,” I said, “if you intend to tell me she is not as bad as she seems—”
“Oh, no, oh, no. She is at least that bad,” replied Mr. Tinderflint. “I wished only to ask if you’d care to take a little wine to refresh you after your trying day?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He said a few words I didn’t understand to the servant girl, who laid by her needlework, curtsied, and hurried out.
“Dutch,” he said when he saw my surprise. “All servants here are Dutch. No English among ’em. No English at all.”
“Very well, Mr. Peele.” From the hallway, Mrs. Abbott raised her voice. “But only for my lady’s sake. You understand me?”
“You’ve made your point, Mrs. Abbott,” replied Mr. Peele firmly. “As I have made mine.”
Mrs. Abbott gave him another withering glower, turned her back, and stalked away.
Mr. Tinderflint let out a gusty sigh, and I realized he’d been holding his breath. “Oh, do let us sit. Yes, my good Peele, sit, sit.” He availed himself of one of the room’s armchairs while Mr. Peele took the other. I lowered myself slowly back onto my own seat.
“Now, Miss Fitzroy,” said Mr. Peele, “you will forgive me for being blunt, but our time is short, and our business urgent. My colleague and I have been searching for a young woman of good breeding to take on our most exceptional commission. She must be in possession of wit, sense, nerve, and complete discretion.” He dipped his chin to better look out at me from under that great shelf of a brow. “Would you be willing to produce a certificate swearing to these attributes?”
“That would depend,” I answered.
“On what?”
“On who was asking and to what use they intended to put . . . my attributes. Mr. Tinderflint said something about a post . . . ?”
Mr. Tinderflint fluffed the lace at his throat nervously. “As maid of honor to Her Royal Highness Caroline, Princess of Wales.”
There was a long moment of silence. I took Mr. Tinderflint’s words into my mind and turned them over, trying in vain to fit them into a narrative that bore any semblance to objective reality.
“I understand how mad it sounds,” said Mr. Peele. “This whole business has involved far more madness than any of us could have foreseen. I will be as plain as I can. Last year, Mr. Tinderflint’s ward, Lady Francesca Wallingham, was named one of the maids of honor to Caroline, our new Princess of Wales. But Lady Francesca was struck by sudden illness while she was
visiting home and died of the fever.” Mr. Tinderflint shook his head slowly, his round eyes having turned quite moist. “It is our intent that you should take up the post in her stead,” Mr. Peele continued.
“Because the Princess of Wales’s prerogative no longer extends to choosing her own maids?” I inquired with a mildness that surprised even me.
Mr. Tinderflint adjusted the angle of several buttons on his left sleeve. “We do not mean for anyone to know you are a replacement, no, no.” He switched his attention to the right sleeve. “You will assume the name as well as the place. You will become, yes, become, Lady Francesca.”
Become Lady Francesca. They had brought me to this house to ask me to assume the place of someone I’d never met, in a station to which I was untrained and unsuited. I looked from one man to the other. Neither betrayed any hint of being other than perfectly serious.
Heaven help me, I had gone down into London and come up in Bedlam.
“And when I’ve stormed the palace in the guise of Lady Francesca, what then?” I inquired. “Shall I marry King George and become Queen of England? Or just bring Pretender James back from over the water to take his father’s throne?”
“Oh, you mustn’t joke about that, Miss Fitzroy, you mustn’t.” Mr. Tinderflint fluttered his lace and looked about as if I might be hiding a Jacobite behind my skirts rather than a fireplace implement.
Mr. Peele waved one long, white hand, dismissing us both. “All that will be required of you is that you smile and charm, wait on Her Royal Highness, and generally be an ornament to the court. You’re pretty enough; the rest should follow with practice. For this service, you will be granted by the Crown a salary of two hundred pounds sterling per annum, which you will turn over to your beloved guardian.” Mr. Peele nodded to Mr. Tinderflint, who bowed nervously from his seat.
I smoothed my skirts and tried not to look as if I was searching for additional weaponry. “What you intend is that I risk my neck by committing a patent fraud against the King of England, for which you are to reap the reward?”
Mr. Peele’s patient smile took on an edge, as if he had honed it against some mental whetstone. “A maid of honor is a person of influence. She has the ear of her royal mistress. She is regularly in the company of important ministers, the Prince of Wales, and even the king, when he’s not gallivanting off to Hanover.” Mr. Tinderflint winced at this. Mr. Peele ignored him. “Such a person is much flattered. Gifts come into her hands from all quarters: clothes, jewels, money. Sometimes the value of these gifts amounts to much more than her salary, especially if she is clever and witty. Such gifts would be entirely yours. Mr. Tinderflint would receive only the salary.”
Mr. Tinderflint fluttered again.
“Why?” I addressed myself to Mr. Peele, as he was clearly the more efficient speaker of the two.
The edge of Mr. Peele’s smile was refined several degrees further. “Mr. Tinderflint finds himself in . . . delicate circumstances, from which Lady Francesca’s position—and her salary—would have given him relief. Without her . . .” Mr. Peele waved his so very eloquent hand, indicating we need not say anything further on that score.
Disappointment dug oddly deep. Mr. Tinderflint had lured me here with mention of my mother and a post at court simply for money. Perhaps I should have guessed. Many a gentleman in our troubled times found himself with a distressing shortage of funds and had to make shift to supply the lack. Make shift or flee the country.
I could only assume it was Mr. Peele that Mr. Tinderflint owed. With those soft, unmarked hands, Mr. Peele could easily be a financier. Or possibly a tailor. Given Mr. Tinderflint’s evident passion for lace and ribbons, he could have amassed a substantial debt to London’s various stitching men.
I covered my mouth, because I was coming dangerously close to hysterical laughter. I had to remain serious. The scheme was mad. It was also dangerous, and the threat to my neck quite real. Our Hanoverian-born sovereign lord, George, by Grace of God King of Great Britain and Ireland, was not reported to have much sense of humor. Or any at all. I could not picture an ordinary man—let alone a king—taking kindly to discovering a fraudulent upstart in his home. But how could I refuse? The way back from this house led to repentance, obedience, and Sebastian Sandford.
It occurred to me that I might have a third option. I could play the game just long enough to find out what Mr. Tinderflint knew about my parents or any surviving family. Then, once Kitty Shaw came back to town or Honoria Dumont recovered from her measles, I could flee. I’d already gotten away once. I could do it again.
True, it might not be easy to discover information about my friends while I lived under an assumed name in a strange house, but that was a problem that could be solved in its own time.
Perhaps it appears I tripped rather lightly across this marsh. The truth of the matter is, I could not think about my situation too deeply. Otherwise, what remained of my senses would sink into sheer terror. I had to hold tightly to the belief that I could escape as soon as I truly tried.
“Very well, Mr. Peele,” I said. “Mr. Tinderflint. I accept.”
CHAPTER NINE
IN WHICH MANY SORTS OF LESSONS ARE LEARNED, CONSEQUENCES INTENDED AND UNINTENDED ARE FACED, AND REALITY COMES UNCOMFORTABLY CLOSE.
Thus began my time as lady-in-training. Had I any conception of what lay before me, I would have used that poker and made my escape, rain or no rain.
I cannot in honesty say my situation in the house was cruel. I had an airy and well-appointed chamber, a comfortable bed, and the use of all Lady Francesca’s clothing and jewels, which were as plentiful as one might expect for a girl who had lived at court. What I did not have was even a modicum of freedom.
Had I found my time in my uncle Pierpont’s house dull and confining? Oh, the follies of youth! That life was a whirlwind of social gaiety compared to the one I now led. There, I had Olivia as friend, my aunt as a silly but affectionate chaperone. I had but one master, and him I saw only on select occasions. Now I had no friends at all and a total of three taskmasters, who seemed determined not to leave me a moment to myself.
Mrs. Abbot was my mistress of the robes. Not that she dressed me—oh, no. She had a whole infantry of little Dutch maids for that. Mrs. Abbott quizzed me. I must memorize all aspects of a lady’s dress: all fabrics, all trimmings, all furbelows and gewgaws, and all their gradations. I must be able to identify the difference between Egyptian cotton and Irish linen on sight. I must be able to tell which lace was Belgian and which Parisian. Nor was it simply clothing. It was cosmetics, the styles of patch, jewel, and fan, and all the ways hair might be dressed and wigged. I knew some of this, of course, but the extent of all I was now expected to recognize was bewildering.
When my head was dull and aching from this delightful tutelage, I was permitted the luxury of a midmorning snack: cold ham and lobster salad, perhaps, or oyster pie and spring greens accompanied by small beer or a light wine. Then it was Mr. Tinderflint’s turn. He was my master of dancing and deportment. As a woman of the court, I must move with perfect poise and grace, and without disturbing a false hair on my wigged head. “The true lady treats the whole world as her dance floor,” he said, and being Mr. Tinderflint, he said it two and three times. “Concealment is her highest art. You are an ornament to the company. Such a decoration must show only decorum. A misstep would be disastrous. Disastrous.”
Which remark invariably made me stumble.
But Mr. Tinderflint was not only a master of deportment. Despite his mild eyes and stuttering speech, he proved to have a prodigious memory. He could recall without effort the names, ranks, and genealogy of all the members of court. I must learn precedence, politics, alliances and enmities, and I must demonstrate what I knew in conversation, usually while being led through the steps of yet another variation of the minuet.
After I’d worn myself out by dancing and deporting, I was given a sumptuous nuncheon, served by Mrs. Abbott’s infantry and supervised by Mr. Tinderflint so that
I would not neglect the intricacies of soup spoons and fish forks. I had been taught all my life that ladies ate sparingly in public, but Mr. Tinderflint evidently had not received this bit of news. Nothing would do but that I taste everything presented to me and come back for seconds, until I felt my stomach press tight against my stays, which, I suspected, were being let out little by little. During these meals, in addition to practicing my skills with the entire range of superfluous cutlery, I must practice all my languages in conversation, including the Latin and the Greek, where Mr. Tinderflint matched me easily enough to set me wondering about the true depths of this round, overdecorated man. But my attempts to draw him out failed. He had nothing to say about himself, let alone about my mother or my father.
“I understand, my dear, I do,” he twittered. “And one day we will have a good talk. For now, we must focus on the task at hand. It would not do for you to get your stories confused, it would not.”
After this, Mr. Tinderflint launched again into the life and history of me, that is, Lady Francesca.
Lady Francesca was born in Dover, daughter of Francis Wallingham, second Duke of Kingsbroke, and the Countess Sophia Frederica von Hausen, a Hanoverian born lady. “Which makes your ability to speak German so very fortunate, my dear,” he told me cozily. “So fortunate!”
I did confess I had never been to Dover, which might have been a mistake, because for three solid weeks after that, I was permitted to read nothing but descriptions of Dover, its famed cliffs, its principal towns, its imports and exports, all of which were added to my quizzes, in three languages.
I was further informed that Francesca’s parents and her only surviving brother had all died of the smallpox when it had swept through London three summers ago. It was her mother’s last act to write to Princess Caroline. The von Hausens had apparently known the princess’s family back in Hanover, and Countess Sophia had begged that her daughter, Francesca, be given some post at court when King George came to take possession of the kingdom.