So it was a good picnic after all and Billy perked up and began to enjoy himself. Even though Sophie and Maria spent the first ten minutes of the meal mimicking his behaviour when he’d swallowed the fly, with every splutter and retch most vividly recreated.
‘Fell into the hedge, so he did,’ Maria giggled. ‘Positively fell in. The poor thing was spattered all over. Claude told us. Ugh! I couldn’t bear to look.’
‘Oh I say,’ Billy protested weakly as the laughter continued. ‘Steady on! It wasn’t that bad.’
‘Done a deal o’ tumbling just lately, so I hear,’ Jeremiah said. ‘Fell out of a tower after the ball last night. Ain’t that so, Billy?’
‘Oh Mr Easter!’ Matilda reproached him. ‘How did you come to do such a thing?’
‘Calling a certain young lady’s name, so I’m told,’ Jeremiah teased. ‘Ain’t that the size of it, eh? Plunged from the tower with her name on his lips, so he did. All good romantic stuff.’
‘And which young lady was that, pray?’ Matilda asked, magnificently innocent, her grey eyes opened wide between those swaying curls.
‘Deuce take it,’ Billy complained to his friend. ‘Ain’t a man to have any secrets?’
‘Not when he screams ’em from the top of the tallest tower, old thing.’
‘Oh do tell,’ Matilda begged. ‘Who is she? I long to know.’
‘When we have finished our picnic, we will take a turn through the rose garden,’ Billy suggested, ‘on our own, and then I will tell you. I promise.’
‘I could not walk with you alone, Mr Easter,’ Matilda said, thrilled by the idea. ‘’T would not be proper.’
‘Perfectly proper, Miss Honeywood,’ Jeremiah said, winking at Billy with the eye Matilda couldn’t see. ‘I assure you. There are plenty here to see you and chaperone you. You may walk where you will. I mean to take Miss Maria and Miss Sophie to see the fish ponds, if they will do me the honour.’
‘I very much hope you will, sir,’ their cousin Claude said, ‘else I cannot ride your roan, as you promised.’
‘We must sit here with our children, I suppose,’ the reverend Hopkins teased his Annie. ‘Like the old married couple we are.’
‘And what could be better, my love?’ she said. So it was arranged.
It was very quiet in the rose garden, down in the dell between the house and the hazel copse, and if Billy and his new beloved were being chaperoned they were quite unaware of it. They walked side by side, Billy holding out his right arm gallantly and rather stiffly so that she could rest the tips of three of her gloved fingers very delicately upon it.
‘Now do pray tell me, Mr Easter,’ she said, flirting her grey eyes at him. ‘What was the name you called upon as you fell from the tower? Was it truly the name of a young lady?’
‘It was indeed,’ he said earnestly. Should he tell her? Or was it too soon?
‘What prevailed upon you to do such a thing? I declare, you gave me to believe that you were a gentleman of the most serious intentions.’
‘Did I?’ he said, amazed to hear it. ‘Oh I say, I don’t know how I did that, upon me word.’
‘Dear me,’ she teased. ‘Are your intentions less than serious, Mr Easter?’
‘No – I mean – well yes – I ain’t the most serious feller alive, Miss Honeywood, and that’s the truth of it.’ How betwitching her eyes were, gleaming at him in the pale sunlight. I could be serious with you, my beautiful Matilda.
‘Dear me,’ she said again, and this time she smiled at him, looking straight into his eyes. ‘Do you trifle then, sir?’
‘Oh no, indeed,’ he vowed, quite overcome by such directness. ‘I could never trifle with you, Miss Honeywood. Not when you are so – when you have – when I –’
‘We have reached the end of the arbour, Mr Easter,’ she said, still gazing into his eyes, ‘and if we continue to walk in this direction, I fear you may fall into another hedge.’
‘I have fallen in love,’ he said truthfully.
‘Have you indeed?’ she teased. ‘And who with, pray?’
‘Why with you, Miss Honeywood.’
‘Have you indeed?’ she said again. And she began to laugh, chortling with delight at his declaration, beaming at him as if she were applauding.
It was such an infectious sound it set him laughing too. He seized both her hands and began to skip about, dancing with her between the roses.
The noise they were making echoed all over the grounds, from the open heath where her brother Claude was happily riding the roan, to the shade of the picnic oak where his sister Annie was half asleep with her head in her husband’s lap.
‘Oh James,’ she said. ‘I do believe our Billy has made a match.’
‘If you could prevail upon him to refrain from swallowing flies,’ her husband said, smiling at her, ‘I do believe you could be right.’
Chapter Four
Nan Easter, the formidable head of the formidable firm of A. Easter and Sons was negotiating the purchase of a new London home. Never one to waste time in unnecessary searches or pointless preliminaries, she had discovered the property she wanted within three days of commencing her search for it, a first grade house in fashionable Bedford Square, double-fronted and built in the Palladian style, with a huge pediment and engaged columns. Just the right sort of house for a woman in her position in society. Now she was bullying the vendor’s solicitor to get the deal completed as quickly as possible.
He had come to her office in the Strand, cheerfully enough and according to her instructions, ready to undertake the sale in his usual leisurely way, but now, after a mere half-hour in the lady’s demanding presence, he was already finding the transaction more difficult that he could ever have imagined.
She was so impatient and so domineering, quite unlike any other woman he’d ever had to deal with. The force of her character had been a considerable surprise to him, for she was such a little woman, barely five feet tall and slender as a reed in her straight green coat and her little button boots, but the face above the green velveteen should have given him pause despite her lack of inches. It was such an open, confident, expressive face, framed by thick dark hair that sprang from her temples in forceful curls, wide of brow, with shrewd brown eyes and a wide mouth and the most determined chin he’d ever seen on a woman. An honest face, he thought, but with far too many marks of passion upon it; laughter lines fanning beside those eyes and two deep lines of temper between eyebrows as thick and dark as any man’s. It was, as he now realized rather belatedly, the face of a person used to getting her own way.
He had opened the proceedings with his usual caution, stressing that it might well take some little time before a suitable price could be agreed upon but assuring her of his best endeavours in the matter. And she’d fairly brushed him aside.
‘Tosh, Mr Randall,’ she said, ‘I’m a woman of business. I en’t got all day to haggle, so I’ll tell ’ee straight what we’ll do. I will offer a fair price, you will inform the vendor, and if ’tis agreeable I’ll buy and if it en’t I’ll look elsewhere. There are squares a-plenty in this city and one is much the same as any other.’
He was much put out, although he did his best not to let her see it. ‘How if the vendor would prefer to bargain, ma’am?’ he suggested. ‘The asking price is often, if I may make so bold as to point out, merely offered by way of preliminary. Lengthy negotiations are customary.’
‘Maybe they are,’ she said, grinning at him, ‘but I en’t. Come now, the vendor wants to return to the Bardados and is to stay there, which I know for a fact. He’ll be glad of a sale at the price I’m offering, depend upon it.’
Such bluntness took his breath away. ‘This is all – um – rather unorthodox, ma’am, if you will forgive me for saying so,’ he protested.
She put back her head and roared with laughter at him. ‘So I should hope,’ she said forcefully. ‘Leave orthodoxy to the timid, Mr Randall. ’T en’t for the likes of us, I tell ’ee plain. Come now, is it a deal or no?�
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So with considerable trepidation he had to agree to put her offer to the vendor. She seemed to have no qualms about the matter at all and no further time to spend upon it. He gathered his papers and bade her good morrow politely, but he noticed as he left her that she was already busy studying the close-packed figures in an account book. An extraordinary woman, he thought, to have so little care where she lives. One square as good as any other! Dear me! What an opinion! They’d have something to say about that in Berkeley Square or St James’s. And he went down the stairs towards the midsummer heat of the Strand shaking his head with amazement.
Actually he was quite wrong about her, although it would probably have made his position even more difficult had he known the true state of her intentions. For Nan Easter meant to own the house she’d chosen, and neither he nor the Barbadian vendor, nor anyone else for that matter, was going to be allowed to stand in her way.
It was the right time for a change. She’d altered the management of her firm, increased her sales tenfold in the last five years and refused to marry her lover after an affair that had gone on for the best part of fifteen, and now, at the energetic age of two-and-forty, she was embarking on a new life of her own.
She read the accounts rapidly, making swift notes in the margins and glancing at the clock from time to time, for she had allowed herself twenty minutes for the task and then she and Mr Teshmaker would be meeting to discuss the London trade. And Cosmo Teshmaker was always scrupulously punctual.
Sure enough he came knocking on her door just as the clock began to strike midday. They smiled at one another like the old friends they were.
‘Did all go well, ma’am?’ he asked.
‘’Course,’ she said. ‘I shall be in residence by September, depend upon it.’
It didn’t surprise him. When had the resourceful Nan Easter ever been baulked of anything she wanted? The idea of anyone opposing her was quite unthinkable.
‘Sales are still poor, I see,’ she said, waving her quill at the account book.
‘Except in Mayfair and Bloomsbury.’
‘Um,’ she said. ‘Peace may be preferable to war, but it sells fewer newspapers. Should we venture that second shop in Piccadilly, think ’ee?’
‘On balance,’ he said gravely, ‘it is my opinion it would be a justified risk.’
‘Then we will risk it,’ she said, brushing the palms of her hands against each other, swish swish, the way she always did when she’d made a decision.
‘What news of Mr John?’ the lawyer asked.
‘Still in Cambridge,’ his mother said. ‘I had a letter from him this morning. He means to come home to us via Ely, so he says, which seems an uncommon circuitous route to me, but all done to give him two days to inspect his new shop there.’
‘He is thorough,’ Mr Teshmaker said. ‘That you cannot deny.’
‘Unlike my harum-scarum Billy,’ his mother said, grinning at the thought of her elder son. ‘He spends every spare moment in Bury these days a-courting Miss Honeywood. I tell him I’m beginning to forget what he looks like.’
‘Indeed, yes,’ the lawyer said. ‘He does seem much enamoured of the lady.’ And he wondered whether a wedding might not just be possible, but forbore to speak of it in case he upset his old friend’s feelings, which must be tender, in all conscience, considering how recently she’d parted from her lover. He had the greatest respect for Mrs Easter, and would never willingly do anything to cause her pain.
‘’Twould be a good match,’ she said, grinning again. ‘Mr Honeywood is almost as rich as I am and Matilda quite as fond and foolish as my Billy.’
‘So it is rumoured.’
‘Well we shall see,’ Nan said, opening her account book as a signal that their business meeting was about to begin. ‘Billy is a loving creature, in all conscience, but he lacks seriousness. ’Twas Johnnie took a double portion of that commodity.’
‘And makes good use of it, you will allow,’ Mr Teshmaker smiled, gathering his accounts together in a neat pile.
‘’Twon’t win him a wife,’ his mother said, grimacing. ‘Nor a lover I’m thinking. And that do seem a pity to me. Now that he’s a manager of this firm a wife would be timely. Howsomever, I en’t seen the slightest sign of any interest in that direction.’
‘Still waters, Mrs Easter?’ Mr Teshmaker suggested diplomatically.
‘Lack of inclination, Cosmo. Now as to last week’s sales …
*
It was an opinion she shared with Miss Harriet Sowerby, although of course neither of them knew it. All through that summer Harriet had been reminding her Maker of the possibility that He might help her to see Mr Easter again. She said regular and heartfelt prayers about it, tentatively suggesting possible lines of action: that the gentleman might drive up Churchgate Street as she and her family were walking to church, perhaps, or arrive by stagecoach at a time when she’d been sent on an errand that would take her through Angel Square, or meet her when she’d been sent to escort Miss Pettie on her weekly trip to market. But there was no answer. Mr Easter remained elsewhere.
His brother Billy came rollicking into town every Saturday night as regular as clockwork, as Miss Pettie reported to Mr and Mrs Sowerby equally regularly every Sunday after the service.
‘Visiting again, my dears,’ she would say. ‘’Twill be a match. Depend on’t. Mrs Thistlethwaite tells me they went riding this morning. Down to Rattlesden to visit with his sister, Mrs Hopkins, I shouldn’t wonder. The romance of it, my dears!’ And Harriet listened to the conversation, hoping that this time he’d brought his brother with him. And was constantly disappointed.
Finally when ten weeks had passed and twenty-one earnest prayers had been ignored, and the wheat was golden-brown in the fields, she decided that she would have to take matters in hand herself.
The next Thursday afternoon, when she was helping Miss Pettie with her sewing, she asked whether other members of the Easter family did not visit their house in Bury during the summer.
‘Mrs Easter is uncommon busy this year,’ the old lady said, squinting at her tacking and then happily setting it aside for the greater pleasure of a little gentle gossip. ‘We have seen her but rarely, more’s the pity of it, for she is a fine woman, my dear, and highly thought of in the town. Howsomever if Mr Billy and Miss Honeywood make a match then I am sure we shall see a great deal more of her. He is invited to her twentieth birthday party next month, which I do consider most significant. I introduced them, you know my dear, at the Victory Ball, little dreaming what might come of it. There was romance in the very air that night, my dear.’
And she was off into a happy reminiscence that lasted fully fifteen minutes. Harriet endured it quietly and smiled agreement when she thought it appropriate, but it seemed an age before she could rephrase her question and ask it again.
‘And what of Mr John, Miss Pettie? Does he not visit with his brother from time to time.’ Even as she heard the words she knew she was being too direct. She sounded forward and unladylike and she knew she was blushing for shame at her presumption, and ducked her head towards the chemise she was sewing, hoping that Miss Pettie wouldn’t notice. Oh dear, oh dear.
Miss Pettie ignored the blush, for she was always the soul of discretion where the comfort of her guests was concerned. But although she said nothing she thought much and happily. For had she not introduced this quiet child to young Mr John that very summer? How if she were to further another match in the Easter family? What a triumph that would be!
‘Well now, my dear,’ she said, ‘Mr John is busier than his mother, so they do say. He is a manager now, you see, with a deal of responsibility. Mr Orton tells me he has opened six new shops just hereabouts and each and every one quite as grand as the shop in the Buttermarket, with fine curtains in the windows and armchairs in the reading-room and the signs all new painted and everything in order. But no more than we should expect, I do assure you. He was always such a diligent young man, even as a child. A scholar.’
>
This was better, for it sounded more like gossip than unseemly interest. ‘You have known him for a long time, I daresay,’ Harriet said, prompting further information in the accepted way.
‘Indeed I have, my dear. A very long time. Why, we’ve been neighbours for – let me see – it must be eight years at the very least. Mr Billy and Mr John were mere stripling boys when they first came to my door. Billy was just fifteen, I recall, the same age as you, my dear, and so handsome. Such a fine figure and so tall. He could reach any shelf in the house without even stretching his arms. Imagine that! “Pray allow me, Miss Pettie,” he would say to me. So politely. And now he’s courting Miss Honeywood. Who’d a’ thought it? They went riding again last Sunday. And to think I introduced ’em. Oh there was romance in the air that night …’
Oh, Harriet thought, concentrating on the next button hole, if only some of it had touched my Mr Easter. And while Miss Pettie rambled happily and garrulously on, she allowed herself the luxury of a little romantic daydream, and went riding with Mr John down the leafy lanes towards his sister’s house in Rattlesden, where she was lifted, oh so tenderly, from her horse and led through bright sunshine into the welcoming house where Mrs Hopkins came tripping forward to kiss her welcome and to say …
‘I am thinking of taking a little trip to Ipswich in a day or two,’ Miss Pettie said. ‘Do you think I could prevail upon your parents to permit you to accompany me, my dear? We could stay overnight at the Crown and Anchor, which is the most respectable establishment and served me a quite excellent dinner the last time I was there. Yes, indeed. Quite excellent. You would like that, would you not?’
‘Yes, Miss Pettie,’ Harriet agreed, setting her daydreams aside and reaching for the scissors. A trip to Ipswich would be very pleasant if her parents would allow it.
‘And then if all goes well,’ Miss Pettie promised, ‘we could go further afield the next time, to Norwich, perhaps, or Cambridge, which is a trifle old-fashioned, but worth a visit. I should like to go to Bath and take the waters which they say are quite excellent for the rheumatics, howsomever that would have to wait until the spring for I can’t abide that city in winter time.’
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