by Sophie Gee
“You have no money for me, then,” he said.
“No money,” Douglass repeated, drinking off a mouthful of the ale. “And no prospect of getting any. My advice to you, Dupont, is that you forget the five hundred pounds, and leave England immediately.”
“When I met you at that coach stop on my way to Liverpool, you said that he was good for two thousand. What the devil went wrong?”
“I cannot say. The plan was sound—he supported the cause ardently—he had not the slightest suspicion of me.”
Dupont laughed at this last claim. “So your man was an imbecile,” he scoffed. “But then who but an imbecile would give two thousand pounds to a group of madmen he has never met, to save a king he has never seen?”
“You know nothing of Jacobite affairs,” Douglass snapped in reply.
“Neither do you, I might say.”
Douglass said in a fierce whisper, “You would not have had any money out of him, had he not believed that I was true to the cause. But beware, Dupont—Francis Gerrard told his secret before he died.”
Dupont shrugged. “Our scheme is ruined. The little priest was not lying to us that night when he warned us we were too late. You killed him in vain.”
“You killed Gerrard, Dupont,” Douglass said.
“You handed me the knife,” answered Dupont quickly.
Douglass stood up. “You need to leave England. I shall go to Liverpool tonight.”
“You sail for Jamaica?” Dupont asked.
Douglass nodded.
As he walked out of the cookshop, he reflected that he had probably not seen the last of his French friend. After all, their scheme was cunning—his own idea, of course—but it could not go ahead without Dupont. Douglass lacked the connections to pursue it on his own. And Dupont was ruthless. He thought again of the night when they had killed Gerrard; Dupont had slit his throat as though he were opening a sack of flour.
The trouble with Dupont was that he was not clever. It had been Douglass who thought of the masquerade ticket. He remembered running back down the alley to find Gerrard’s bloody body after Dupont had scurried off in the opposite direction. He had pulled the ticket out of his own pocket, and put it into Gerrard’s as neatly as he could. It had not been easy, with the dead weight of the corpse falling against his legs. But it had bought them time. Gerrard was still known to most as the poor devil from the masquerade.
As he walked into the night, Douglass shrugged. He did not much care that the plan with Lord Petre had gone awry. He was tired of being in England, and longed to escape abroad again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“The conqu’ring force of unresisted steel”
Less than a week later came the day appointed for Queen Anne’s levee at Hampton Palace. It was to be the crowning event of the summer season, the one to which Teresa had looked forward to so eagerly, and for which she and Martha had remained in town. The day would be spent drinking tea, playing cards, and talking of the pleasures of the season. Her Majesty would make a brief appearance in the afternoon, encircled by those courtiers with whom she enjoyed the most favorable relations. Court dress was the order of the occasion; Teresa and Martha had ordered new gowns of pink and pale green silks; the colors of a magnolia tree in the flush of its spring color. Arabella’s dress was of white damask, with birds and flowers embroidered in gold on the skirts. Her shoes were covered in fine ribbings of golden thread, and she carried the ostrich muff that she had ordered from Molly Walker many months before.
The guests were to arrive at the palace by water. Arabella traveled in a boat up the Thames with Henrietta Oldmixon and Lady Salisbury, whom she met on the banks of the Strand early in the morning. It was sunny but not yet hot, and all three ladies wore light summer shawls around their shoulders. The seats of the vessel had been covered in silk cushions to protect the ladies’ gowns, with additional pillows and rugs behind them. A delicate shade was suspended like an awning above to preserve the ladies’ fair complexions from the brightness of the day.
As soon as they were settled, Henrietta asked, “How are we to bring my Lord Petre to the point? He has been dithering far too long.”
“To which point must he be brought?” Lady Salisbury asked languidly in reply.
“He must make Arabella a proposal,” Henrietta declared. “I think it would be fitting if he were to speak today.”
Arabella did not want this sort of talk. She was still confused by Lord Petre’s strange request in the carriage. “Flirtation is far too pleasant to be thinking of marriage,” she interjected. “The baron would be a man of little taste if he were to make his declaration just as we have at last arrived at easy intimacy.”
Lady Salisbury flounced her fan open and waved it at herself. “Ah! So you do expect to hear from him,” she said.
Henrietta cut in briskly. “Of course she does. They are constantly together.”
Arabella, sitting as far forward in her seat as the angle of the boat permitted, corrected her. “We are in each other’s company but once a fortnight.”
“But that is in public, my dear,” said Lady Salisbury sweetly. “Henrietta is speaking of your private hours.”
Arabella was silent, unsure as to what response she should make to this, and Lady Salisbury, taking her silence as a tacit admission, continued to speak.
“Well, Arabella,” she continued, moving her fan back and forth. “I am glad to hear that you still expect an offer, for I have just heard that Lord Petre is to marry Catherine Walmesley—and none of us wishes to have her as a friend, of course.”
“You mean William Dicconson’s ward?” Henrietta interrupted in astonished tones. “But she cannot be more than sixteen! Lord Petre must want her for her fortune.”
She looked across to Arabella, who had gone rather white. “Be not alarmed, Arabella,” she said. “Miss Walmesley may be worth fifty thousand, but in every other respect you are her superior.”
Arabella did not have an answer for this, and she was glad when Lady Salisbury spoke instead. “I hope that he does marry you, Arabella,” she said. “You have been a delightful member of our party this year, and we should be sorry to lose you.”
Arabella smiled in reply, but like the sun, her smile was more brilliant than it was warm. She saw Henrietta and Lady Salisbury exchange a confidential glance. Meaning to show that she was indifferent to what had passed, she reached lazily over the side of the boat to trail her fingers in the water. But the surface of the river was farther away than she had expected, and she was forced to withdraw her hand in a quick, jerking motion. She gripped the sides of her seat in an undignified pose, conscious that the others were smirking, though they pretended to look around at the view.
She was staggered by Lady Salisbury’s news. It could not be true—Lord Petre would have said something when they met. To be sure, Catherine Walmesley was worth many thousands of pounds a year, and Arabella’s own marriage portion was only four thousand pounds in all. But though she had never met Miss Walmesley, she knew that she was considered dull, and not at all pretty. Lord Petre liked to pretend that physical beauty did not rate highly in his catalog of virtues, but Arabella believed that he did not mean it. It was a position that he only maintained when he was in the company of very handsome women. Besides, he had told her that he loved her. A proposal could not be far off.
When Arabella’s party arrived at the palace, the gardens were already well supplied with the ladies and gentlemen of the court. They strutted about in fringe, gold lace, and feathers, with as great a quantity of hair powder and paint as could be carried off without obscuring the identity of the wearer. The peacocks seemed drab beside them.
Arabella walked up the path from the river with her two companions and came face-to-face with Lord Petre.
He swept her a low bow, declaring loudly, “Miss Fermor! Your beauty is as a zephyr upon a blazing day, bringing exquisite relief and refreshment to the weary traveler.”
Arabella disliked him in this mood. The conve
rsation in the boat had made her nervous. “On what account are you weary, my lord?” she asked tersely. “Did your oarsman expire upon the river, and oblige you to row yourself to Hampton Palace?” She saw a familiar flash of laughter in his eyes, but he restrained it, and bowed formally again.
He turned to Henrietta. “Miss Fermor is high-spirited, is she not, Miss Oldmixon?” he said. Henrietta looked at him with surprise, and was about to speak, but Lord Petre stopped her. “Miss Oldmixon looks displeased,” he said. “I hasten to assure her that her spirits are every part as high, and her beauty just as brilliant as her companion’s.”
He was gone as soon as he had spoken, hurrying to greet Lady Mary Pierrepont and her sister, who came up the walk behind them.
At first Arabella attempted to take Lord Petre’s conduct as a matter of course, reminding herself that she had seen his concern for the opinion of others before; it was no surprise that on this most public of occasions he should abandon the intimacies that he permitted himself when only close friends were present. She did not number indomitable strength of character among her lover’s signature traits. But as she watched him moving around, she perceived a nervous unsteadiness in his movements that contrasted sharply with the authority and control of his usual demeanor. Normally when he saw her in public he would catch her eye, sharing the secret of their connection. She wished that she could find a way to speak to him away from everybody else.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lord Petre walk up to Teresa and Martha Blount. This was strange; he had paid them very little attention in the past, except when their friend Mr. Pope was by, which he was not today, she was pleased to see. Lord Petre bowed to Teresa—no doubt she would be grateful for the attention. Arabella could only surmise that he wanted to show off his acquaintance with so ancient a family as the Blounts, although everybody knew that they were heavily encumbered by debt.
“How charming to see you and your sister,” Lord Petre said to Teresa, as he kissed each of the Blounts in turn. “I was speaking of you but a few days ago when a gentleman of my acquaintance praised the beauties of Mapledurham. I told him that even so lovely an estate as that was not one part so charming as the ladies who belong to it: Miss Teresa and Miss Martha Blount.”
Martha looked apprehensively at her sister, expecting her to receive this new attention with fawning enthusiasm. But much to her surprise, Teresa greeted the baron with a wary smile.
“We can hardly be said to belong to it anymore, my lord,” she replied. “Mapledurham is now my brother’s seat.”
Martha took Teresa’s response as a sign that, finally, her sister had accepted that her interest in the baron was never to be reciprocated. She wished that Alexander might have been there to observe the spectacle, and wondered what he would make of it. Alexander had always understood Lord Petre very thoroughly.
Teresa did not wait for Lord Petre to reply to her last remark, but said instead, “I am so unaccustomed to seeing you without Miss Fermor, my lord, that I would fear she had taken ill—but she is standing twenty feet away.” She gave a little tinkling laugh, not unlike one of Arabella’s.
Lord Petre looked nervous. “Oh! Miss Fermor and I are such established friends that it would be tiresome for me to hover about her on an occasion like this,” he said. “Nobody wants to be hindered by old acquaintance when they are in pursuit of new.” At this, the girls stared at him with open astonishment.
Lord Petre, seeing that they were at a loss, forged on. “You are not with your friend Mr. Pope today,” he said. “A pity—I would like to have improved my acquaintance with him. I fancy that he will be sorry to have missed an occasion that could have supplied him with so much diversion for his pen.” He chuckled to himself, appearing not to mind that the girls still said nothing. Martha wondered whether he might be drunk.
As Petre walked away Martha stole a quick glance at Arabella. She flicked her head around as soon as she saw her cousin, but Martha caught, nonetheless, a look of alarm.
The girls’ attention was taken again by Lord Petre, who was being addressed in the clear, unmistakable accents of Lady Mary Pierrepont.
“I am surprised to hear you describe Miss Fermor as an old friend, my lord,” she was saying. “The general understanding is that your acquaintance with her is of a different kind altogether.”
Teresa smiled to see Lord Petre’s face when Mary Pierrepont delivered her observation, and wished, not for the first time, that she, too, had been the daughter of an earl. He looked around to see if they had been overheard, but he collected himself, and replied with something close to his former self-confidence. “Miss Fermor would be dismayed to know that so scandalous a rumor has circulated,” he said. “A lady of her unrivaled beauty and charm would not permit an association with a person so inconstant, so uncertain, as myself.”
Lady Mary looked closely at him. “But the general expectation is of an engagement between you,” she said. Again he started visibly.
“The person who marries Miss Fermor must be a more deserving gentleman than I,” he finished, and quickly extricated himself from the exchange.
He joined a party of girls in pale blue and lilac silks, whom Teresa had never met. They were several years younger than she and Arabella—she had seen one of them at a levee that she had attended with her mother. She had given the impression of being very silly. Soon after Lord Petre had joined the group, the girls could be heard laughing in shrill, excited bursts, and Lord Petre’s own distinctive baritone rang out after them.
“Lord Petre’s remarks puzzle me,” said Martha to Teresa, as they followed his movements. “Arabella seemed sanguine about the match, and I cannot believe her to be mistaken. Perhaps this is the line she has instructed Lord Petre to take with respect to her until they are publicly engaged.”
“Hardly!” Teresa replied. “Not even Arabella would wish to be thought so beautiful that Lord Petre did not deserve her.”
They were interrupted by the hurried arrival of Margaret Brownlow. She had remarkable news to deliver.
“Eliza Chambers says that Catherine Walmesley is to marry Lord Petre!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “But I told her that it could not be true. Is not the baron engaged to your cousin?”
Martha gasped; Teresa, too—but she collected herself quickly.
“That seems rather to depend on which of them you ask,” she said with a tart smile.
“We had believed that an arrangement would soon be in place between them,” said Martha hastily, covering over Teresa’s sharpness. “The Fermor family has been expecting it—and ours, too, indeed. But if my Lord Petre is to marry another lady, I hope that people will not think Miss Fermor has been treated unhandsomely.”
“Oh! Arabella Fermor will not mind,” said Margaret. “Every man in London is wild for her. But Miss Walmesley! Who can believe her good luck?”
Arabella, who was beginning to mind a good deal more than Margaret would allow, was walking in the grounds between Lady Salisbury and Henrietta. She knew that people had been talking about her, and she wished that she could find a way to stop Lady Salisbury from discussing the subject of Lord Petre now.
Lady Salisbury did not trouble to lower her voice as she said, “If Lord Petre cannot obtain his family’s permission for the match, you might still marry in secret. An arrangement about the money can always be made later on.”
It would be futile to try to silence her, so Arabella responded in an equally strident tone. “I would never consent to a secret marriage,” she declared. “It suggests that the lady has something to conceal. There is but one situation in which that arrangement is allowable, and that is where a woman wishes to avoid a husband chosen for her by being already married to somebody else.”
But it was apparent that her friends had no wish to discuss the general subject of matrimony. Their concern was with the specifics of Arabella’s relation to Lord Petre, and they were determined to pursue that topic as loudly as they could.
“Lord Petre is prod
igiously cavalier today,” said Henrietta. “Look at him playing the flirt with Clarissa Williamson and her friends. He flatters them—see how Miss Williamson blushes.” But Arabella, who had already observed the scene, did not look in their direction again. “I think that he might be more gallant toward you, Arabella,” Henrietta added.
Arabella called upon the sturdiest reserves of her self-discipline. “I had much rather that my Lord Petre made Miss Williamson blush than me,” she answered, as another burst of laughter came from Lord Petre’s quarter. “What a noise those girls are making. I have never known the baron to be thought so entertaining before.”
Lord Petre’s laughter was loud indeed, but, as he reflected bitterly, it was no more heartfelt than Arabella’s could be. All morning, whenever he caught sight of her, he had felt a cruel smart of anguish. While he spoke cavalierly to others he did so with a surge of shame. When she had lifted her hurt eyes to meet his own, he had felt an overpowering tenderness. She was to him as a wounded deer, which holds itself proud and lithe, even as it pants to escape the mortal blow. How he longed to speak to her; to tell her the truth of what had happened. But if he did tell her he feared that she would quit the levee, and his undertaking to Caryll and his mother would remain undischarged.
He told himself that, in not warning Arabella of her fate, he was being strong—and after a while he really began to feel that this was true. His conviction was not that of a man who knows he must fight to defend the woman he loves, but it was powerful nonetheless. It was the conviction born of self-preservation, and in Lord Petre’s noble bosom that ancient instinct had taken firm occupation. He believed that he would hang upon the gallows if he did not obey his family, and his distaste for such an outcome meant that he did not linger long in deliberation. His course of action was clear. He had no choice but to forsake Arabella, and so, when he looked at her this morning, it was with the eyes of a modern Aeneas who abandons his Dido—his one true love—to face the perilous waters of chance alone. The baron knew which way his duty lay.