“Are you saying they’d rather listen to you?”
“They’ll look and then they’ll listen. Men are that way with me, as you very well know! That’s why the emperor sent me.”
“Damn your impudence!” Gaspard spat and worked off his irritation by stalking off and winking brazenly at Betsy, recently released from her cabin, right in front of her father who pretended not to see it.
Who did Charlotte think she was, Gaspard debated with himself. She was nothing more than a Yamstock peasant who had been puffed up by Napoleon’s attention until she actually believed she was destined to play an important part on the world’s stage. How laughable! Pathetic, really. Gaspard had seen the emperor make puppets out of kings and princes, playing them in such a masterful way that they believed it was destiny, not Napoleon, pulling their strings.
He would take his revenge. It might take a little time, a glass or two of wine, but sooner or later he would conquer her like he had conquered her best friend, Mary. Napoleon had conquered emperors, and he had helped him do it. But Gaspard believed his own specialty was conquering women. He liked a spirited resistance, in love and war, it made the moment of surrender more exquisite. This pretty young upstart was no longer under Napoleon’s protection. She was at his mercy. Soon she would grovel at his feet like her friend had done, begging to be ravished again and again!
She did have beautiful feet…
Charlotte slipped her shoes back on. She walked over to where the Balcombes, husband and wife, sat in a sullen heap, stewing in the unpleasantness that had sent Betsy howling back to her cabin. As soon as she had pulled herself together and come back on deck, she did her best to intimidate Charlotte with the size of London.
“When I first saw Jamestown, I laughed out loud!” she crowed. “What’s its population, do you think?”
“Depends,” said Charlotte, “on how many ships are in.”
“I meant permanent population, silly. How many? Guess.”
“A thousand,” Charlotte said.
“A thousand!” Betsy hooted. “There are more than a million people in London! It’s the largest city in Europe by far!”
“Even bigger than Paris?”
“Paris is only half the size!”
“It must have been quite a shock for the emperor to…” Charlotte trailed off and tried to hide her eyes in Pride and Prejudice, which she was reading for the third time at Mrs. Balcombe’s insistence, even though she found it frivolous. Had these women nothing better to do than fuss about getting a husband? Where was the intrigue in their miserable little lives? Where was the Napoleonic grandeur?
“Boney!” said Betsy triumphantly, as if she’d just made the most remarkable discovery. “You’re thinking of him again, aren’t you?” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone. “You’re involved in some deep and dangerous plot to rescue him, aren’t you? You and Gaspard, always putting your heads together! Oh, I hate Gaspard so much! He’s much vainer than Mr. Darcy,” she said through a sudden shower of tears, “and I hate Papa even more for all his interfering! I’m sick of you all. I’m going back to my cabin! There’s a cockroach under my bunk I’m becoming very good friends with!”
Charlotte laughed and went back to Mr. Darcy. The wind went back to inching the Winchelsea toward London.
Chapter 13: A Rosebud in Regency London
The carriage dropped Balcombe off in front of the Palace of Westminster. He turned his back on it, gazed instead at the tidy Thames sweeping the great city’s refuse down to the sea. Somewhere in this ancient building, the home of legends, was the office of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, private secretary to the prince regent, gentleman usher of the black rod. For a moment he imagined the honorable gentleman beating his ebony rod three times on the door of the Commons, and when the door was obediently swung open inviting the honorable gentlemen to follow him across the threshold to the House of Lords.
But the only instrument he had to ease his entry into Black Rod’s presence was the flask in his pocket. He took a swallow of the brandy and turned to face the edifice.
He was kept waiting for over an hour. By the time the skeletal clerk, who looked like he’d been on a fast for forty years, showed him into the great man’s presence, the flask was empty. Ten minutes later, perhaps less, Balcombe was back on the bank of the Thames. Sir Thomas had said he would see to it that a notice appeared in The Times that said Mr. William Balcombe, provisioner to the Emperor Napoleon on Saint Helena, had returned home and was exploring the possibility of taking up a suitable mercantile position in London.
“It’s not much, William,” Sir Thomas said, “but I do have it on authority that you were involved in some irregularity or other on the island. Until Sir Hudson Lowe clears your name, it will be difficult to find you a position, in government, anyway. I’m sure you understand my position.”
Balcombe did. He went to the nearest tavern and got quite drunk.
Gaspard had better luck. He polished his medals, dressed in his least threadbare regimentals, and walked the two miles from his totally suitable lodgings near Brunswick Square (paid for by the British government) to the mighty edifice in Whitehall that housed the War Office. For a while he watched a troop of redcoats marching on the parade ground. How much rather he would be doing humble drills than this treachery Napoleon had lured him into!
The sergeant guarding the entrance to the War Office, one of the departments in the huge Palladian edifice, eyed Gaspard’s well-worn jacket with faint disapproval. “Who now?”
“General Gaspard Gourgaud. Lord Bathurst is expecting me.”
“Is he now?” said the insolent redcoat. “Very odd, because Lord Bathurst is not in today.” He ran his finger down a roster. “You’d be seeing his undersecretary. But I don’t see anyone called Go-Go anywhere. What exactly is your business?”
Gaspard flushed with fury. He’d never been treated like this in his life. “Napoleon!” he barked. “Now I’m sure you’ve heard of him!”
That one word was enough. The sergeant’s eyes widened in awe. “Bonaparte! I fought him three times and lost every one. Now there was a real general for you! We loved him even though he was killing us in droves. Go-Go, you said? Ah, here you are! General Baron Gaspard Go-Go. Do you know him sir? Napoleon?”
“Of course!” said Gaspard irritably, “I am his aide-de-camp. May I go through now? I am already late.”
“Right away, General.” The veteran of three lost battles rang for an attendant. “What’s he like? In person, I mean?”
Gaspard, who had turned to watch a detachment of horse guards trot by on the parade ground, ignored the impertinent question.
The undersecretary turned out to be a clean-shaven, balding, urbane young man in his mid thirties. At a side desk sat a clerk, looking straight ahead, pen poised, ready to take notes but not presuming to be seen.
“General Gaspard Gourgaud,” the undersecretary said with a tiny bow. “Lord Bathurst has asked me to offer you his apologies. He’s been called away on important matters of state.”
“I wish I’d been informed,” said Gaspard, still fuming. Was the man trying to infer that his business with Lord Bathurst wasn’t important?
The undersecretary gave him an amiable smile. “My apologies,” he said, slipping into faultless French. “His Lordship is most interested in everything you have to say.” He nodded in the general direction of the clerk. “Everything you say will be written down and passed on to His Lordship.” He waved Gaspard to a chair and sat down himself. “Now tell me, what is your major concern?”
“Nothing, really,” said Gaspard with a bite of sarcasm, “except that Bonaparte plans to escape to America, where he will take up arms with that warmonger President Monroe. He talks of nothing else. The Americans will build a mighty navy and sail for Europe. That gutless puppet Louis XVIII you have put on the throne of France will flee. Austria and Russia will take up arms with Bonaparte. Within five years he will rule one half of the world and his American ally will rule t
he other half!”
The clerk’s pen scratched away in the deathly silence that followed. When the undersecretary got the wind back in his sails, he said, “You have heard him voice this plan?”
“Of course. He talks of nothing else. We live in the same house. He dictates his memoirs to me, lies and all. I am closer to him than anyone else on earth. But he has no friends, only followers. He is a wild animal caught in a trap, slavering and snapping its jaws.”
“But I hear that he has an entourage, a court of sorts, that strives to follow imperial etiquette at meals and such. Isn’t that so?”
“An entourage! There’s only one reason he has any hangers-on. They intend to make their fortunes writing books about him! He knows this, berates us about it. He looks down on all mankind as his inferiors, you see. I saved his life at Brienne and in Moscow, where I foiled a Russian plot to blow him up with a huge cache of gunpowder. But does he thank me for it? No! He treats me like his dog! He treats everyone like a dog. He shaves himself because he fears his barber will cut his throat!”
The undersecretary frowned. “Is that why you have come over to our cause—personal animosity?”
“There’s nothing personal in it. I have turned to you because twenty years of conflict is enough. Unleash Napoleon and you unleash the dogs of war. Let him continue to rot in hell!”
The undersecretary, whose name was Henry Goulburn and who would go on to greater things, raised an eyebrow. “Hell? Saint Helena is that bad?”
Gaspard corrected himself. “No, it’s a very pleasant island, tropical but fanned by the southeast trade winds that blow all year. Much too good for the tyrant, in my opinion. His accommodations are spacious; food and drink are so plentiful that his butler runs a thriving black market with all the surplus wine we can’t drink. The selfish monster spends most of his day wallowing in a hot bath, in water that has to be carried miles from the nearest spring. He uses so much water for this swinish indulgence that the soldiers in the guard camp don’t have enough to make their tea!”
On went Gaspard, stimulated by invention, pausing only to make sure the clerk was getting everything down. When he saw the undersecretary beginning to fidget, he ended his recitation. “I could go on for hours, because Bonaparte is the most cunning rascal in the world. But surely you don’t need more to persuade you that the beast must be kept chained to his rock?”
“It isn’t the war minister that needs to be persuaded, it’s Holland and his hangers-on. We have your testament now, but it would be so much more persuasive if you delivered these facts in person to Lord Holland and the rest of the Liberal lobby.”
“That would be my pleasure!” said Gaspard, trying to keep the crow of triumph out of his voice.
“Excellent! I shall speak to the minister this evening and strongly recommend your plan of action. I am sure a communication will pass as early as tomorrow between my superior and Lord Holland. Expect an early invitation to the decadent splendors of Holland House!”
Very satisfied with himself, Gaspard took the air by walking south along the embankment to spit on the Houses of Parliament. The English boasted that they embodied the wisdom of the ages, but they had fallen for a simple ruse. The expression on the undersecretary’s face assured him that very soon he would be whispering what he thought was the vile truth of Napoleon’s behavior to the fine feathers that adorned the Liberal wing of British politics. He turned back north, and on his way, as he was about to strike away from the river, a spring in his step, a commotion outside a tavern caught his eye. Someone was being poured, not very ceremoniously, into a cab, which took off at a trot.
He could have sworn its incapacitated passenger was Balcombe.
As the Balcombes were low on funds, they were staying in a comfortable terraced house with Lucia, Mrs. Balcombe’s niece, the siren who had broken Mr. Burchell’s heart. This was where the letter addressed to Charlotte had come late the previous afternoon. The envelope was plain but slightly scented. The message was one line of hurried scrawl: “Go shopping for a suitable dress in Bond Street tomorrow morning.” It was signed, “Lady H.”
“A Bond Street dress!” said Mrs. Balcombe with a tight little laugh. “How does Her Ladyship expect us to pay for that?”
“Uncle Samuel gave me money.”
“I know that, dear, but it won’t get you very far on Bond Street.”
“Can I at least go and take a look?”
The expression on the pretty face was so eager that Mrs. Balcombe couldn’t say no. “Why not?” she said. “I’m sure the girls will love an outing.”
So while Gaspard was lying through his teeth in the War Office and Balcombe floating his in a tavern nearby, Charlotte was savoring the enchantments of London’s most fashionable arcade, where those who already had everything went to shop.
“Aunt Jane, you are to stay as long as you like,” Lucia said as they walked along. “Luke won’t be back from the Indies for months, and it’s just little Lucia, me, and the nanny in that big house. Honestly, I could do with the company.”
“You are too kind, Lucia,” said Mrs. Balcombe, “but I’m sure Mr. Balcombe is securing a position with the government as we speak, and we will probably need accommodations nearer Whitehall. Betsy, what do you think you’re doing?”
Mrs. Balcombe’s abrupt change of tone distracted Charlotte from the splendid sights in shop windows and the splendid people who were looking at them. The brash sixteen-year-old had put on a disdainful expression and was walking with a most unladylike strut.
“Look!” said the brat, as a knot of exquisitely dressed but very bored-looking young men, with their hands stuffed deep into their pockets and toothpicks rolling around in their mouths, strolled toward them with a languid swagger. “It’s called the Bond Street Roll. Beau Brummell used to do it, and so did Lord Byron. It’s what all the fancy gents do when they promenade down Bond Street!”
Byron, the world’s second most dangerous man! The name on the letter written in Napoleon’s scrawl. How often had she looked at it? She’d even kissed it once, late at night, in a fit of pure depravity. How much simpler if she could just have bumped into him, swaggering down Bond Street on his way to take boxing lessons with Gentleman John Jackson at number thirteen! But Byron was in Italy—in Venice, she’d heard—and that seemed almost as far away as Saint Helena. The delivery of the letter from Napoleon would most probably never take place.
“Gentlemen may walk like that, perhaps, but certainly not ladies,” said Betsy’s mother. “Can’t you walk like Charlotte? She fits right in!”
Betsy immediately changed her walk to a mocking, mincing step with exaggerated swaying of her hips, although that was not the way Charlotte walked at all. She dabbed at her nose with an imaginary handkerchief, which suggested she was trying to drown out the offensive smells of ordinary life. “Is this better?”
Charlotte ignored her and went back to her principal objective: dress shops populated with gorgeous creations, looking for something—something fashionable, emerald green to go with her eyes. Green. Napoleon’s favorite color. She found one that clung to the body and featured the daringly low, more natural waistline that had suddenly become all the rage among the fashionable Bond Street ladies. It had short sleeves to show off the arms and a plunging neckline to show off other assets.
The shop assistant sniffed as she examined the homemade Saint Helena dress Charlotte was wearing. “So you and your mistress have the same measurements, then?” she asked.
Charlotte did not dignify the slight by noticing it. “It’s for me.”
“But miss, it’s offered at fifty pounds!”
Mrs. Balcombe laughed nervously. “Ridiculous! Charlotte, we need to go elsewhere. This shop is grotesquely overpriced.”
“Can’t I just try it on?”
“Charlotte, that’s not done. You don’t try on clothes you can’t afford,” said Mrs. Balcombe.
“I think it will suit the young lady handsomely,” said a man who had just walked
into the shop. He was tall and well dressed, with curly black hair and blue eyes as sharp as broken glass. “Let her try it on if she wants to,” he said.
The shop assistant recognized authority when she saw it. Her attitude changed instantly. “Certainly, sir.”
Ten minutes later, because there were a few nips and tucks to be made, Charlotte emerged, radiant, from the dressing room. Her face fell when she saw that the tall stranger was no longer there.
“The gentleman had to leave,” said the shop assistant.
“He paid for the dress,” whispered Lucia. “All of it! He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He said he was acting on behalf of your friend in Saint Helena. He came right out with the name of the island. I could hardly believe my ears. He must have been following us.”
“Of course he’s been following us. I noticed him get out of the carriage right behind ours,” piped Betsy. “It was very fancy!”
“He left you a note,” said Mrs. Balcombe. “Of course I had to read it for propriety’s sake.” She handed Charlotte a neatly folded sheet of paper. On it, in a hasty scrawl, were the words: With the compliments of Lady Holland.
Chapter 14: Holland House
The invitation arrived by messenger the day after Gaspard had spoken with the undersecretary and Mr. Balcombe had been deposited, still swaying, at the front door of Lucia’s house in Cheapside.
The nanny, who did what she could to help out when two-year-old Lucia was napping, interrupted Charlotte who was in the living room reading Byron’s “Manfred.” “Miss, there’s a messenger asking for you. I think he has an invitation.”
The boy couldn’t have been more than twelve. In spite of his fine blue livery, he needed a good wash. “Miss Nip?”
“Knipe,” Charlotte corrected him.
“This is for you.”
Charlotte took the envelope from the grubby hand. It had her name and Lucia’s address written on it and was sealed with some sort of mythological creature, perhaps a griffin.
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