by Fiona Monroe
Margaret peeked through the door to the kitchen corridor and saw Souter, the second footman, disappearing around a corner. She could not be sure that she would not run into him or someone else if she went back out there. As quietly as she could, she pulled the door to and investigated the other exit. It led out of the house into a stone-paved yard, dank and cluttered and reeking of refuse and horse manure, with the mews buildings at the far end.
She knew this area only from above. It could be glimpsed out of the windows of the lesser back bedrooms on the second and third floors, rooms she hardly ever entered, but she had never, of course, ventured into the back yard in person. It was the domain of the servants, just as much as the backstairs were. She glanced back up at the house, noting how rough and unfinished the stone wall looked from this perspective. The front facade was smooth, gleaming yellow sandstone and colonnades; the back of the house was bare and plain.
We are on a stage, she thought. The lives of gentlemen and ladies, with their comforts and conveniences, are led in the lights and brilliance of the stage, and this shoddy world just behind it, hidden from the smart streets at the front and inhabited by the half-unseen servants who make the play possible, is the necessary backstage. She was pleased with the notion. It was erudite and original. She thought she might repeat it to Mr. Keats, when she was introduced to him, or at least she would write in her diary that night that she had done so.
She lifted her skirts so that the hems of her cloak and her fine poplin gown would not brush against the paving stones as she made her way toward the archway under the mews. The double gates that admitted the carriage were barred, but there was a side door that opened to a simple bolt.
Margaret glanced back and around nervously. Dodds, the head stableman, lived in the upper rooms of the mews above the stables with his wife, and so did at least two lads who were under him. These outdoorsmen were probably in residence and might spy her—escape, as she thought of it, although, she reflected with yet another bitter surge of resentment—this was her house. She was mistress of it. She had been mistress of it and ought to be free to come and go as she pleased.
There was a light glimmering in one of the upper windows of the mews. Maybe Dodds, Mrs. Dodds, and the stable-lads were securely within, eating their evening meal or playing cards or doing whatever servants did when they were in their own realm. Again, Margaret had a flash of insight. Servants, she thought, were real people, too, and lived lives that were as important and interesting to themselves as those of gentlefolk. She had known that intellectually, of course, but it struck her with the force of true understanding as she saw the stableman's light and imagined the domestic scene within those humble rooms.
Perhaps she would write an essay about it. She and Mrs. Douglas had made plans to found a ladies' magazine, edited by themselves, and consisting only of contributions—essays, reviews and perhaps poetry—written by women. They had spent two or three delightful evenings debating on the title alone, with Emmeline favouring something simple like The Ladies' Journal or The Scotswoman's Gazette, while Margaret yearned for something more imaginative, such as Athena or The Minervan Review. Alas, they had got no further than happily failing to agree on a title for their enterprise, which was to revolutionise the position of women in the intellectual sphere of the nation, before Emmeline Douglas had been ejected from number 17 Charlotte Square. But Margaret still thought of essays she might write for the journal and sometimes even jotted down notes.
Just before she slipped through the unbolted side gate, she gave one glance back at the great bulk of the house. Something had caught her eye. There had been the suspicion of movement, a glimpse of white, at one of the upper windows. She had no idea whether she, a cloaked figure in the gathering gloom, was visible to an observer, but she was almost certain that she would not be identifiable from such a distance and in such a light.
Nevertheless, she threw the hood of the cloak over her head and hastened out to the lane behind the mews. Here, it was gloomy and treacherous, dark except for lighted upper windows, cobbled underfoot and strewn with horse manure. The narrow street between the mews behind the great houses of Charlotte Square and its parallel thoroughfare, Princes Street, was quiet and empty at this time of the evening. Only servants and tradesmen ever came this way, and an unaccompanied gentlewoman on foot would have been a most conspicuous sight if there had been anyone to observe her.
Margaret hurried along past the blank walls and closed carriage-house doors, trying to shrink further into her cloak, feeling as exposed as if she were outdoors in her under-shift. To be out in the streets quite alone was a new and not at all pleasant experience. She reached the end of the mews lane and the corner of Charlotte Street, to peek back out into the familiar world of wide pavements, street lamps, and tall, glittering house fronts.
Her heart was in her mouth. She did not dare step out of the shadows of the mews, a lady all alone at dusk, but she could not immediately see her friend.
Emmeline had written in her note that she would be waiting for her, on the corner of Princes Street and Charlotte Street. Emmeline had always been the bolder of the two and would have no fear walking the streets alone in the dark for a short way at least. But there was no sign of a solitary feminine figure anywhere along the pavement toward Princes Street, only a carriage waiting there. Margaret watched the horses tossing their heads and stamping their feet, and the coachman blowing into his hands.
Margaret looked desperately along the other length of the street, toward Charlotte Square and the turning into George Street. There were groups of young men sauntering along, an older married couple, some common folk who looked like servants or tradespeople, but no solitary female pedestrian. And anyway, Emmeline would be coming from the Princes Street direction, across the bridge that spanned the recently-drained Nor Loch, from her rooms in Old Town.
Three young gentlemen passed by the entrance to the mews lane, and one of them caught sight of Margaret. His face, pale and pimple-scarred under a tall silk hat, broke into a wide, salacious grin, and he halted his companions with a tap of his fancy silver-topped cane.
"Ho, boys," he said. "What have we here? A good evening to you, madam."
Margaret shrank back in utter mortification. She had never in her life been addressed by anyone, far less a young man, who had not first been introduced to her. It felt indecent and humiliating. She was on the point of turning tail and running back along the lane, to the safety of her home—she would bang on the back gate and rouse Dodds if need be—when she heard her name called.
"Margaret!"
She looked around desperately. Mrs. Douglas was hanging out of the half-opened door of the carriage that had been standing on the corner all along.
Not waiting to wonder why Emmeline suddenly had a carriage at her disposal, when she had been reduced to living on the very tiny fortune her spendthrift husband had left her, Margaret fairly ran past the grinning boys and accepted her friend's hand. In a moment, she was safely in the padded satin interior of a richly-appointed coach, the door closed against the world, cocooned again in respectability and proper companionship.
"You escaped!" cried Emmeline with a laugh, embracing her friend and enveloping her in a cloud of perfume. "What fun this is!"
Margaret allowed Emmeline to press her to her bosom, but she felt uneasy. Mrs. Douglas smelled strange, doused as she was in the rich scent. "I did as you suggested. I went through the servants' quarters, and no one saw me or suspected, but, Emmeline, whose carriage is this?"
"It is mine, dearest one. Or at least, it is mine to use. Isn't it splendid? Oh, I am so happy to see you again! It's been too long."
Three months, at least, Margaret reflected and willingly submitted to another embrace as the carriage rattled and swayed into the street. It was hard to see exactly in the half-light of the carriage lamps, but Emmeline's gown seemed to be of the finest muslin, with a delicate lace trim. Her golden hair was swept beneath a velvet turban from which flopped a plume
of ostrich feathers. And nestled at her throat was a magnificent gem, catching brilliant gleams from every passing light.
"Is this gown new?" Margaret asked in bewilderment. In the weeks since Mrs. Douglas had left number 17 Charlotte Square, her letters had been full of complaints about the meagreness of her wardrobe.
"Yes! Do you like it? Mrs. Christie of Lawnmarket made it up for me. It is taken from the very latest Parisian fashions, and this lace is from Venice."
"And the necklace—"
"Oh, yes! It is a ruby. Is it not beautiful?"
"But, Emmeline, how did you afford these things?"
"I didn't! They are gifts, of course. From a friend."
"A new friend?" asked Margaret anxiously, a stab of jealousy piercing her heart. She rebuked herself. Of course, it was a good thing that Emmeline had managed to find another establishment. She had no family, scarcely any money of her own, and so, short of finding a second husband or submitting to the indignity of going out as a governess, taking another place as a lady's companion was the only way to secure her comfort. It was absurd to resent it as disloyalty. She, Margaret, could no longer give her friend a decent life, so, of course, she must seek security elsewhere.
"I'll tell you all about it presently. But here we are, at Mrs. Hamilton's."
The carriage had halted after an absurdly short journey from the corner of Princes Street; Mrs. Hamilton lived in one of the fine houses in George Street, the central avenue of the recently built and still developing New Town. She and Emmeline might have walked there in five minutes from Charlotte Square, but of course, it was far grander to arrive in a carriage.
Margaret's heart gave a lurch and a flutter as the coachman handed her down, and she gazed up at the gaily-lit windows. Was Mr. Keats, the author of Endymion, really somewhere within?
She tucked her arm into Mrs. Douglas' and mounted the steps.
Chapter 4
Lord John entered the Easter Wing study, a room he associated with childhood visits upon his late father's displeasure, to find his eldest brother, the Marquess, pacing the carpet in front of the French windows. The room was gloomy, as it did not catch the first rays of morning sun, and damnably cold. No housemaid had dared venture in to set a fire, while the master of this room and all the wide acres beyond it boiled and pranced in rage.
As soon as John stepped over the threshold, his brother halted and turned to glare at him.
"You—" The words seemed to choke in his throat. "You—look at your brother, sir. Look at him!" James stabbed a finger in the direction of the fireside.
Obligingly, John looked. By the cold and empty hearth, slumped in one of the winged armchairs, was his twin brother Gordon. He was bundled up in a greatcoat and scarf that bore traces of frosted dew, he was still wearing his travelling boots, and his face was pale with alarming spots of high colour in the cheeks. Across his chest, he held his left arm, which appeared to be swathed in bandages.
"Good Lord," said John. "Mrs. Swankie—what are you about—get a fire laid immediately, bring his lordship brandy. Gordon, are you ill? What has happened?"
"What has happened?" cried James. "You have happened! Gordon… Gordon, repeat to your wastrel of a brother what you told me."
John ignored the Marquess and, registering Mrs. Swankie bustling off to give orders as to the fire, found a decanter of something, either brandy or whisky, on a table near the window. Gordon allowed him to press the glass into his hand and drained half its contents at a swallow, then he coughed and convulsed.
"Gordon has come," said James, ignoring his previous injunction to their brother to tell his tale in his own words, "directly from London. He barely stopped to change horses or to sleep. He made the journey, his man tells me, in seven days. Seven days—injured—not taking care of himself. He could have made his injury much worse, all because of you!"
"Forgive me, James, but reprobate though I doubtless am, I fail to see how even I could inflict an injury upon my brother at a distance of six hundred miles. Even if I had a mind to do it, which I do not, I am not so remarkably wicked as all that. Gordon…" He put his hand upon his twin's forehead to test for fever. The sight of Gordon's face so pale and clammy, like looking into a distorted mirror, disturbed him, until Gordon's eyes snapped open, and he gave him a look of such disgust that John recoiled. Gordon pulled his arm back, too, with a grimace.
"You're injured?" John tried to catch his brother's sleeve. "Is it a broken bone? Has a surgeon seen it? Good God, Gordon, what happened?"
"Damned mountebank," Gordon mumbled. "Foreign count of some sort or other, black as sin, slashed me with a blasted sword. Wearing it at Mansion House, bold as you like, in the presence of the Prince Regent, he should have been stopped at the door." He took another huge gulp of whatever the amber stuff was, and his speech was lost in coughing.
"Gordon was at a reception given by the Lord Mayor," said James, as if even this made him angry. "A reception, in the course of his Parliamentary duties—serving the nation, sir, something you would know nothing about. A foreign nobleman—Italian—a count of some sort, who was attending the reception, challenged him. Is that right, Gordon? He challenged him, because he thought he recognised him. He thought, in fact, that Gordon was you."
John had understood the whole situation, almost as soon as Gordon had first spoken, and had risen to his feet and taken a step back unthinkingly. His breath froze, his heart seemed to plunge to his stomach, and yet he was not surprised. The dream-light cast an awful inevitability on events. "Contarini," he muttered, before he could stop himself.
Gordon was still coughing.
"You know the gentleman," said James. His face was so suffused with choler, it looked as if he had been standing next to a roaring fire for an hour. "What have you done, John?"
Fear almost, almost, drove John to blurt out what was more dangerous than anything else: the truth. He moistened his lips to form the words that would have condemned him and another, but at that moment, the door opened to admit Mrs. Swankie and one of the older, plainer chambermaids. Mrs. Swankie administered more medicinal brandy to Lord Gordon, the unprepossessing maid began to build up the fire, and the Marquess resumed his pacing, silenced for now in the presence of the servants.
Gordon waved Mrs. Swankie and her glass away, and she put the decanter down on the table beside him and withdrew discreetly.
The interruption gave John the chance to scramble his disordered thoughts together somewhat. While the girl scraped and rustled about the fire, he went to the window and looked out. The Easter Wing commanded a fine view of the formal gardens, with their immaculately groomed gravel paths and intricate patchworks of flowerbeds and hedges. There were gardeners working in the early morning sun, who would be gone by the time breakfast was over, and the family might expect to take in this view or stroll amongst the greenery.
Good God. How fine a fate it was, to be born a simple working man, with no cares beyond the toil of the day. How splendid, to wake to a breakfast of porridge prepared by a fresh-faced, bright-eyed wife, who never had a penny nor a family honour to her name, to put on an old straw hat and dig in a flowerbed for a few hours then return to a clean and simple cottage on someone else's land, to a dinner of mutton and parsnips and an evening by a humble hearth, sipping ale and thinking about nothing at all. To go to bed at last with the pretty wife and make sport with her with a mind completely at ease.
The front terrace, and therefore the main approach to the house, was not visible from this window. It was impossible to see a carriage or a rider from here, should anyone come along the principal driveway, or to be seen.
John stepped away from the window, anyway, and waited until the ugly housemaid had gathered her apparatus and departed. He had made up his mind.
"I have done," he said, looking at both his brothers, "nothing of which I am ashamed. The man who attacked you, Gordon, is Conte Andrea Contarini, of Venice, one of that venerable city's foremost citizens. It was on his account that I departed
La Serenissima with such unseemly haste a year ago, after he promised to have me killed in my bed."
"What," repeated James dangerously, advancing on him, "have you done?"
John steeled his resolve. "Why, nothing disreputable, believe me, brother. His sister—"
"He got his sister with child!" The explosion came from the chair by the now-crackling fire. Brandy and heat had sufficiently revived his twin and ignited his wonted pomposity of manner. "Fellow had no notion of honour, didn't challenge me to a duel, just went for me, sword drawn, as soon as he clapped eyes on me, but by God, he had grievance enough. Didn't speak much English, but enough to make his position plain. At any rate, he had an attendant, who spoke the King’s English like an honest man, and he told me the whole story."
"I doubt that," said John, blood pounding in his ears.
"Oh, yes." Gordon nodded vigorously. "The Count's sister, confined to a convent, disgraced. Il Conte has sworn to have his revenge on you, sir!" Gordon came out with a surprisingly lifelike imitation of the Venetian retainer's voice.
"And what did Contarini do, when you told him he had the wrong man?"
"Hang it," said Gordon. "Told him—nothing. Cleared out, came here. Didn't want to risk a despatch. Came to warn you."
"You didn't tell Contarini or his attendants that you were not me?"
"No," Gordon muttered. "The devil would I do that for?"
John went to the window again, though he knew he could see nothing. Gordon's gruff loyalty had touched him.
"It is as I always thought!" James shouted. "I knew it! I knew you had left trouble of some squalid and disgraceful sort behind you in Venice! And I knew, by God, that it would follow you here one day! What I did not imagine, did not begin to imagine, was that it would involve your brother—your worthy and entirely innocent brother—that it would expose him to mortal danger—"
"Bear up, James. Gordon is more or less in one piece, no great harm done."