by M C Beaton
‘Sir George!’
‘Good day to you.’ He touched his hat and strode off across the park at a great rate.
He did not slacken his pace until he was sure he had left her far behind. Dreadful woman, he thought. And what harm was there in his entertaining Miss Pym if he so chose? It was not as if he were going to marry her.
Benjamin cursed Sir George under his breath. He thought Hannah was becoming dangerously overexcited. The small flat he shared with her in South Audley Street had been cleaned about ten times over to his reckoning. She was talking about buying the finest tea and the finest cakes and she had not yet had the courage to invite the man to tea.
He was used to his mistress’s being calm and resolute. He did not like to see her in this dithering, anxious state.
The footman was now on his way to see Sir George Clarence. Benjamin had decided to take matters into his own hands. He had told Hannah he was tired of scrubbing and polishing and was desperately in need of fresh air. This had worked, Hannah being a great believer in the efficacy of fresh air.
Benjamin’s footsteps slowed to a lagging pace as he approached Sir George’s house. Perhaps it would be better to hang about and pretend to bump into him. The day was fine, but he was getting very tired of walking from one end of the street to the other when he finally saw Sir George emerge.
He strolled towards him. ‘Good day, Sir George,’ said Benjamin, raising a white-gloved finger to his powdered hair.
Sir George nodded and walked on, paying no more attention to Benjamin than he would have paid to any other liveried footman.
Benjamin sprinted round the streets and back again. A more direct approach was needed.
‘Why, Sir George!’ he cried, stopping in amazement. ‘The mistress was just talking about you.’
Contrary to Mrs Courtney’s now sour beliefs, Sir George did not talk to servants, nor was he used to any of the breed daring to try to strike up a conversation with him. He nodded again, swerved round Benjamin, and continued on his way. From behind him came an exasperated Cockney voice. ‘Bleedin’ blind old fool. I give up.’
He swung round in a fury. The liveried footman was moodily kicking a dustbin outside an area gate.
He marched back. ‘What did you say, young man?’ he demanded.
‘I was talking to meself, Sir George,’ said Benjamin hurriedly. ‘I was thinking of a character Miss Pym met on her road to Dover.’
‘Why, Benjamin!’ said Sir George. ‘I did not recognize you. Miss Pym is returned?’
‘Yes, sir, ’deed she has.’
‘Well, well, I must call on her.’
Benjamin winced. Miss Pym would be thrown into a worse flutter if she had to wait for Sir George to call. The footman could gloomily imagine more scrubbing and cleaning, not to mention all the rushing to the windows at every sound of a carriage in the street.
‘I would like the mistress to find larger quarters, sir,’ he said earnestly. ‘So cramped for entertaining, like.’
‘I found Miss Pym’s apartment so charming,’ said Sir George, ‘that I really did not notice the size of it. I would not like her to go to any trouble on my behalf. Of course, I can take her out. Tell your mistress I will call for her at three o’clock tomorrow. If that is not suitable, you may let me know. If you do not, then I shall be there at three as promised.’
‘Very good, sir.’ Benjamin bowed until his nose was almost touching his knee.
Sir George turned and walked away. Odd fellow, that footman, he thought and turned and looked back in time to see Benjamin dancing down the street, occasionally performing a leap in the air and kicking his heels together.
Hannah listened breathlessly to Benjamin’s tale of how he had happened to bump into Sir George purely by accident and of Sir George’s invitation.
‘Good heavens,’ said Hannah. ‘What an odd coincidence when you think of all the people there are in London.’
Hannah did not sleep much that night and rose at a painfully early hour, looking at the clock and reflecting that she had to live through a good few hours before three o’clock arrived.
Benjamin stayed in his room for as long as possible. He knew Hannah would be fussing and fretting and trying on one dress after the other. By noon, he was too hungry to stay in bed any longer. He rose and put on the new – or rather, new to him – livery he had bought in Monmouth Street. It had belonged to a duke’s footman who had run away from his employ and had sold the livery. Benjamin had taken off the crested buttons and replaced them with plain ones. The livery was of red plush with epaulettes of gold like a field marshal’s. There were gold buckles at the knees and the coat was edged with gold braid. He felt he had put what was left of the prize-money after he paid his debt to good effect. He then opened a box and carefully took out a spun-glass wig and tried it on. No more powdering for him!
Hannah stared in amazement when the grandeur that was Benjamin emerged from his room.
‘You do look a trifle gaudy,’ said Hannah doubtfully.
‘Me!’ screeched Benjamin outraged. ‘I look as fine as fivepence.’
‘Yes, yes, Benjamin,’ said Hannah soothingly. ‘Perhaps I shall become accustomed to it. You make me look quite dowdy.’
‘You’ve done a good enough job yourself,’ said Benjamin, looking at Hannah’s plain brown gown. ‘What are you about, modom?’
‘I look very well,’ snapped Hannah. She went back into her room and stared at herself in the long mirror. The truth was that she had been trying on one gown after the other and could not make up her mind and so had settled for one of her old gowns, thinking in despair that it all did not matter anyway. He could never be interested in her.
Benjamin followed her in. ‘Come now,’ he said coaxingly. ‘The green silk’s just the thing with that pelisse to match.’ He walked to the wardrobe and hooked it down. ‘Does wonders for you, if I may say so, modom.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure as eggs is eggs. Put it on.’
Sir George, arriving promptly at three, could not have guessed as he bent over the hand of the fashionably dressed lady in the green gown and pelisse what near hysteria had taken place just before his arrival, Hannah screaming that the gown was too vulgar-grand and trying to take it off, and Benjamin preventing her by tying the tapes at the back so tightly that she could not get the dress unfastened.
Hannah did not protest as the uninvited Benjamin climbed onto the back of Sir George’s carriage. She felt now she needed her footman’s support.
‘Gunter’s again, I think,’ said Sir George and Hannah’s soul burst out of her body, shot up into the sky like a rocket and cascaded its happy blessing over the west end of London in a shower of golden rain.
When they were seated at Gunter’s, Benjamin removed himself to stand with the other footmen outside, for the famous confectioner’s was too small to allow the presence of servants as well.
Hannah recounted her adventures and Sir George listened, amazed, while his untouched tea grew cold. The green dress, had Hannah but known it, had been an excellent choice, for when she was excited her odd eyes glowed green. Her hair, instead of sandy, looked the rich colour of an autumn leaf, and her sallow skin, like warm honey. She was like an interesting landscape, thought Sir George, as he watched her as she spoke: at first quite plain until you began to notice a beautiful tree and a tumbling river and the richness of the leaves on the trees.
Outside Gunter’s, the other footmen regarded the vision that was Benjamin, rather like a bunch of crows finding a peacock in their midst.
‘Wot you lot staring at?’ demanded Benjamin angrily.
‘We got the Duke o’ Flummery here, boys,’ jeered one. They were all idle and bored, knowing their masters and mistresses usually took a long time over their tea and confections. Baiting this newcomer seemed like excellent sport.
A tall one put his hand on his hip and began to mince up and down. ‘How can we rival such magnificence?’ he said.
‘Stow yo
ur whids, you poxy sons o’ whores,’ shouted Benjamin. ‘You popinjays. You with your faces like donkey’s arses.’
The mincing one stopped in his tracks, his face under his white paint turning red with fury. ‘There’s five o’ us and one o’ him. Let’s get ’im,’ he said.
‘Frightened to take me one at time?’ jeered Benjamin.
They looked at him and at his deceptively tall and slight figure. ‘Barney can floor you,’ they said, pushing their hero forward. Barney was footman to a Mr Greystone, an effeminate, cowardly fellow who had chosen his bruiser of a footman for protection, rather than show.
‘All right,’ grinned Benjamin. ‘Barney it is. But what’s the wager?’
‘You name it,’ said one sulkily.
Benjamin’s eyes fell on Barney’s tall walking-stick, propped against one of the young plane trees which had been planted in Berkeley Square during the same year as the French Revolution, or, as the polite still called it, the Bourgeois Uprising. About five feet high, it was made of Malacca-cane, with a large silver knob on top. No footman with any aspirations to elegance should be without a walking-stick. Benjamin had longed for one, but they were very expensive and he had grown thrifty since his terrible gambling debt at Rochester, and furthermore, the second-hand-clothes shops of Monmouth Street did not run to silver-topped sticks.
‘Your cane,’ he said to Barney, ‘if I win. Ten guineas to you if I don’t.’
The footmen moved to the middle of Berkeley Square and Benjamin and Barney began to strip down to their small-clothes.
Barney’s friends had never seen him stripped before and watched with some consternation as their hero removed his jacket to reveal that, under all the buckram wadding, he was a much smaller man. Then he peeled off his silk stockings and unstrapped a pair of false calves.
Two Exquisites, strolling across Berkeley Square, stopped and raised their eyeglasses. ‘Servants’ brawl,’ said one with distaste.
The other studied Benjamin. ‘Dash me!’ he cried. ‘Do you know who that tall thin fellow is? That’s the fellow who downed Randall at Rochester.’
The word spread like lightning. Carriages quickly blocked the entries to Berkeley Square in case the tiresome militia should try to spoil-sport.
‘I would like some more hot tea,’ said Sir George plaintively. ‘Where is Gunter? Goodness, Miss Pym, little Gunter is outside his shop, watching something in the square and dancing up and down like a monkey on a stick. And where has everyone else gone?’ He had been so wrapped up in Hannah’s adventures that he had not noticed the confectioner’s had emptied of staff and customers.
Hannah’s sharp ears heard the cheering and the cries of, ‘A mill! A mill!’ and had a sinking feeling it all had something to do with her battling footman. Benjamin must not be allowed to disgrace her on this day of all days.
‘As the shop is empty and the hot water is just over there, Sir George,’ she said quickly, ‘allow me to help us to more tea.’
She quickly prepared a fresh pot of tea and carried it to the table and began to elaborate on her adventures, painting such a funny picture of Mr Conningham’s Norman ancestry that Sir George laughed and laughed and thought he could not remember when he had ever before been better amused.
Benjamin treated the crowd of his admirers to ten quick rounds before expertly felling Barney. He carefully put on his clothes, after making sure he had that precious stick, and then returned to his station outside Gunter’s, where he lectured a large audience on the finer points of pugilism and then, feeling they should pay for his time, passed round the hat.
Gunter’s filled up again, full of excited people discussing the fight. Sir George seemed deaf to it all. ‘The gardens at Thornton Hall are looking magnificent, Miss Pym,’ he said. ‘Might I persuade you to accompany me there tomorrow?’
‘I should be honoured and delighted, sir,’ said Hannah demurely, while inside that green silk gown her heart tumbled and raced.
They emerged into the sunlight. There seemed to be a vast crowd. Sir George took Hannah’s arm and led her to his carriage. Benjamin grabbed his new walking-stick, broke away from his audience, and strutted to Sir George’s carriage and jumped on the backstrap. They were followed by a cheering crowd.
‘What on earth is going on?’ said Sir George, driving carefully out of Berkeley Square, not knowing the road he was on had just been unblocked. ‘There must have been a raree-show. A two-headed cow or something like that. I almost thought those people were cheering us. But that is ridiculous. I do not understand society. Why must they bring the low manners of Bartholomew Fair to Berkeley Square? By Jove, one would think there had been a prize-fight.’
Hannah twisted round and flashed Benjamin a fulminating look and got a saucy wink for her pains.
Benjamin knew, when he heard the couple making arrangements to meet on the morrow, that Hannah would not give him much of a lecture. When they arrived in South Audley Street, he ran to the horses’ heads as Sir George helped Hannah down.
‘I just remembered,’ said Sir George. ‘A friend of mine was recently in York and he swore he saw Mrs Clarence walking along the street.’
‘York!’ exclaimed Hannah.
‘So,’ he said, ‘if you go to York on your travels, mayhap you might find her at last.’
Hannah went slowly indoors after saying goodbye to him. Benjamin braced himself for a lecture, but Hannah simply sat down and stared into space. ‘Sir George said someone saw Mrs Clarence in York, Benjamin. Do you think that can be true?’
Benjamin, anxious to avoid a row, placed his new stick tenderly in a corner by the door, and said, ‘Could be. Was you thinking of travelling again, modom?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Hannah slowly. But there was Mrs Clarence, pretty little Mrs Clarence who had run off with that footman, Mrs Clarence to whom she owed so very much. Besides, only look how enraptured Sir George had been with her tales – so enraptured that he had not even troubled to find out what was going on in the square.
‘Ah, Benjamin,’ said Hannah severely, ‘you will now tell me how you came by that silver-topped stick, how …? Stop! Where are you going?’
‘Just to the booking-office,’ gabbled Benjamin. ‘See the price o’ them tickets to York.’ And he was off before Hannah could say any more.
She sat alone, brooding about Mrs Clarence and then about Sir George. That Sir George could ever look at her the way, say, that the Earl of Ashton had looked at Lady Deborah was impossible to imagine. She thought of Lady Deborah and sent up a brief prayer for her happiness before returning to worrying about Sir George.
* * *
Lady Deborah and the Earl of Ashton were riding neck and neck across the grounds of Downs Abbey. He eventually slowed his horse to a canter, then a trot and then to a halt and, laughing, Deborah reined in beside him. She was riding side-saddle and wearing a very smart riding-dress with a high-crowned hat.
He dismounted and came around to her and held up his arms and she slid down into them. Their horses began to crop the grass.
‘Still love me?’ he asked.
‘You know I do,’ she said, turning her face up to his. He kissed her long and hard, and then said, ‘The fact that your papa is on his way home is good news. We will get married the day he arrives.’
‘So urgent,’ she teased, leaning against him and hearing the steady beat of his heart against her breast. ‘And do you know who my maid of honour is going to be?’
‘Who, my sweet?’
‘Why, Miss Pym, of course.’
‘Excellent. Does she know?’
‘Not yet,’ said Deborah. ‘But I have her address and I will write to her and ask her. And Abigail has written to me. We are invited to her wedding and we shall go for her sake, shall we not?’
‘I would go to the ends of the earth with you,’ said the earl, holding her close.
‘Pretty, but hardly original,’ said Deborah. ‘My poor brother is still afraid of you. He crept in during the night and colle
cted his finest clothes, or so Silvers tells me. I have a feeling he has gone to stay with Aunt Jill with a view to courting Miss Carruthers.’
‘Poor Miss Carruthers.’
‘Do not be too hard on William. I miss him.’
‘Do you miss your old wild life? There is no need to be Miss Prim and Proper with me.’
Deborah laughed. ‘Whatever gave you the idea I had turned prim and proper?’ And she set to kissing him in a way that made his senses reel.
‘Come along,’ he said at last. ‘I am close to forgetting we are not wed and there is no Miss Hannah Pym here to stop us!’
Benjamin walked a few paces behind Hannah and Sir George the next day in the gardens of Thornton House, making great play with his walking-stick and admiring the way the sun glinted off the silver top.
How boring gardens were, thought Benjamin idly. All stupid flowers and dull trees and bushes. But Miss Pym seemed enchanted. But then, anything Sir George said or did would enchant her.
Something would have to be done. Benjamin’s shrewd black eyes rested on the pair: Sir George, elegant and courteous, and Hannah breathlessly hanging on every word.
Benjamin had no thoughts of leaving his mistress, but he considered life was going to be uncomfortable if he were ever left alone in the country with a pining Hannah Pym. A married Hannah would stay in London with all its shops and taverns and amusements. A Hannah who had given up hope would go to that cottage in the country. Benjamin could picture it vividly – stone floors, rising damp, bad drains, or, more likely, no drains to speak of, bumpkins for company, and good works to pass the time.
Sir George would need a jolt in the direction of matrimony.
Mrs Courtney, like the rest of the polite world, learned from the newspapers that one Benjamin Stubbs, footman to a Miss Pym of South Audley Street, Stubbs who had trounced Randall at Rochester, had put up a splendid fight in Berkeley Square. Miss Pym? A footman? How could a servant afford a footman, of all creatures? Mrs Courtney quickly decided that Hannah must be some man’s mistress. It was her duty to find out and relay such news to Sir George.