A Song Twice Over (20 page)

On the whole she thought Sairellen was probably right.

Her days were still immensely long. She awoke at first light, made up the fire to warm her rainwater and, no matter how chill the morning, how glacial their little downstairs room, went through what she believed to be the essential toilette of a lady, standing naked before the hearth with only the thin wool rug between her bare feet and the splintered floorboards, to wash her hair and as much of her body as she could manage without freezing, before either Odette or Liam were up; only the dog looking on, grunting his displeasure at her intrusion – since this was
his
rug now, after all,
his
fireside – his small, sardonic eye informing her that
he
knew she was no lady, whatever she might pretend to Mrs Amabel Dallam. Just a barmaid from the Fleece, that vicious little eye kept on reminding her, with no more chance of rising above it than a crippled fighting-dog. Also from the Fleece. And the rightful property, whenever he chose to reclaim it, of the Fleece's owner. Or whenever he chose to call in the debt which she did not really believe to be cancelled.

He would want something from her one day. Not her body, like poor Ned who had reached the stage of trembling now and turning pale whenever he managed to lay a hand on her. No. Not that, since Captain Goldsborough had women enough around him who knew far more about catering to the finer points of his appetite than she did. She felt in no danger from him there. Why should he demean himself with a barmaid, after all, when he still – albeit surprisingly – had the celebrated actress Mrs Marie Moon from Martinique and Paris. Not to mention the red-headed woman in a black riding-habit and a man's tall hat who appeared like a thunderbolt sometimes in the afternoons, when her husband thought her out hunting, Cara supposed; and an assortment of others, not all of them beautiful, some of them positively strange, but with an air of quality or style about them, coming to spend a night or two in the huge four-poster bed in his private rooms – the ‘seraglio' they called it – at the head of the back stairs.

In his place Cara would not have demeaned herself with a barmaid either.

But eventually he would want something and she would very likely find herself summoned to his rooms – the ‘seraglio', the harem, the lair – not for sex like Mrs Marie Moon and the lady of the riding-habit, but for instructions, as she watched so many others, both men and women, climb that back staircase every day.

She had no idea what he asked of them, no notion at all of what aims or ambitions he might wish to foster, or what – if anything – mattered to him in life. Yet she was in no doubt at all as to the sources of his power. The possession of two things. Property. And information.

For when the Goldsboroughs, of whom he seemed to be the last – she could only say Amen to that – had sold their manor and their land they had
not
sold their ramshackle dwelling-houses and warehouses and their tumbledown squares of old taverns and shops – perhaps none of it quite so ramshackle then – leaving their final heir in possession of what had once been the very heart of Frizingley.

Everybody, therefore – or very nearly – in the decaying cobweb of streets and squares and alleys loosely called St Jude's paid him rent, or owed him rent, being, in consequence, very much at his disposal. No shopkeeper or tradesman could afford to forfeit his goodwill, since he owned their business premises and the homes of their customers. No dubious tavern, and there were several, could keep its secrets from him for the same reasons, so that he would know the names and faces of the men who attended the radical meetings in the back room of the Dog and Gun, the Chartists, the Ten Hours Men, the Owenites, the Anti-Poor Law Leaguers, who would be certain, of course, to lose their jobs should Ben Braithwaite or Uriah Colclough or John-William Dallam ever come to hear of it.

He would know, too, who brought illegal gaming cocks to the Beehive and about the discreet back door of that tavern, shrouded with ivy, where men were admitted who had stolen goods for sale. He would know what happened to those goods when the thieves had been paid off and gone, who bought them, who remodelled them, who melted them down. He would know which pawnbrokers were honest and which were not. He would know, since assignations of this type usually took place in a room laughingly known as the ‘bridal chamber'at the Rose and Crown, which women deceived their husbands, whether it was for love or for money, with whom, and for how much. He would know who was in debt and how steeply, since usually the debt would be to him. He would know, so well, which debts could never be paid and must therefore be settled, to suit his whim, in some other fashion.

And so when he smiled and said, ‘There is a little something you can do for me …' it was done. Always. One way or another. Sometimes, waking abruptly and startled in the night, a sick, cold dread would come over her that one day his queer humour might find it amusing to try and give her to Ned.

It was a part of her life she took great care to conceal from the Dallams. Appearing at Frizingley Hall bright and early throughout October and November, never staying long enough to make it obvious that she had no other work but always on hand to seize any scrap of opportunity which might come her way, she was Miss Adeane, Dressmaker and Milliner, to the life; always – and at a cost in effort none of the Dallams could even imagine – immaculate in her pale blue wool dress, refurbished now with tiny royal-blue satin bows from neck to hem, and a dark blue cloak made from the unworn bits joined together of a pair of old plush table-cloths she had inveigled from Ned O'Mara.

She had gloves too with embroidered tops done by her mother, her old cream kid boots dyed black to hide the scuff marks at the toes, her freshly washed hair elaborately coiled and ringleted, not a stain upon her anywhere, not an odour of anything but the lavender and violets and rose-petals she gathered surreptitiously from
anybody's
garden she happened to pass, and which Odette brewed into perfume in the cellar. Miss Adeane, bright as a button, neat as a new pin, as she cheerfully responded to Amabel Dallam's bubbling enthusiasm for her daughter's wedding. Diverting it, whenever she could, in her own direction.

It was to be at the end of December, as near as possible to Christmas yet not later, certainly not in January, Amabel being unwilling to forfeit, by a day or two, the distinction of marrying Gemma in this year of 1840 when the Queen – a year younger than Gemma – had gone so blissfully to the altar with her Albert. And if Gemma should further follow the example of the Queen who, married in February was expecting her first child for November, then Amabel would be well-satisfied.

A honeymoon baby. What a pity one could not use the term ‘love child'which, Amabel knew, meant something rather different. Perhaps Miss Adeane who had done such exquisite embroidery on the wedding chemises would be interested in the layette? Most definitely Miss Adeane would. Although the wedding-dress, white satin like the Queen's, with masses of lace and orange blossoms, had been ordered, of course, safely and securely and considerably to Linnet Gage's satisfaction, from Miss Ernestine Baker, who was
always
called upon for wedding-dresses. In fact Amabel knew of no one in Frizingley – who was
anyone
, that is – who had not gone to her. And no one who had been dissatisfied.

‘What a wonderful woman she must be,' murmured Cara. ‘One wonders, with so many bridal gowns to churn out in a season, how she manages so that they do not all look alike.'

Perhaps they did. A little.

‘Heavens,' Cara smiled, knowing she had sown the seed, ‘How clever of her to remember everything. Even to stitching the little sachets of sugar in the hem. She does do that, of course …? Doesn't she?'

‘My dear …?
Sugar
in the hem?'

‘Why yes. A symbol of the sweetness of the married life to come.'

Amabel was charmed.

‘But Mrs Dallam, we
always
did that in the rue Saint Honoré. For good luck.'

What else did they do there, Amabel was bound to wonder, what other elegant and thoroughly delightful innovations which had not yet arrived in Miss Baker's establishment in Market Square? What fun it would have been at the reception, murmuring that little snippet about the sugar to Lizzie Braithwaite and Maria Colclough and Ethel Lord. A pretty trifle, of course. But Amabel's life was made up of such things. And now the wedding-dress was finished, hanging in guarded splendour in a locked wardrobe upstairs, a fairytale creation – if, perhaps, bearing just a whisper of resemblance to the fairytale creation Maria Colclough's daughter had worn – and which, she was dimly aware, had aroused her admiration a shade more warmly than Gemma's.

‘What a dream! Sheer bliss,' had enthused Amabel when the dress had been delivered, seeing
herself
– and perhaps Linnet – in those fluted tulle frills, that May-blossom of lace with which the white satin foundation had been covered.

‘Very nice, mother,' Gemma had said.

Oh dear. Would Gemma have preferred something a little less …?
Girlish
was the word which came into her mind. Dainty.
Pretty
. Would Miss Adeane, who was not dainty either, have had other ideas on how to dress Amabel's dear but often so difficult daughter?
Was
there another way?

Amabel, who had been so radiantly happy lately, with her husband well on the road to recovery and her daughter bringing her the very son-in-law she had most wanted, was suddenly troubled and perplexed. She had simply desired to make Gemma beautiful on her wedding day, to hear the gasps of admiration, the sentimental sighing echoing around the church as her daughter entered it. Would Miss Ernestine Baker's dress produce that gasp, those sighs? Or would Gemma be just another Frizingley bride going to the altar in the same tulle frills as Maria Colclough's daughter, although rather more of them, the same wreath of orange blossom as Queen Victoria, perhaps, but which young Amanda Braithwaite had also worn when she became Mrs Jacob Lord?

Having produced the impression she desired, Cara bowed her head over the nightgowns she had just delivered, unfolding them slightly to show the elaborate pin-tucking, the delicate white on white of the embroidery, no two alike, nothing to resemble them anywhere in Frizingley she was quite certain – since Miss Baker would never have taken so much trouble with undergarments which did not
show
.

Miss Baker would have considered it uneconomical to expend so much time and ingenuity on a petticoat or a chemise. Unnecessary even, with orders for a wedding gown and bridesmaids'dresses on her hands. But Cara and Odette had put everything they knew into the work, everything they could imagine. Four dozen of ‘everything', one hundred and ninety-two garments altogether, each one different, Cara doing the cutting and plain sewing, Odette working at the embroidery all day with Liam at her skirts and continuing, when she had put him to bed, by candle-light and fire-light until her eyes burned and a blind headache forced her to stop.

Even so, Cara had calculated that when the order was completed, their profit would be six times more than they would have earned doing the same work for Miss Baker at her rate of twopence an hour. And if they could achieve that much, labouring in cramped, poorly lit conditions, on these fiddling undergarments which ate up more time and trouble and embroidery thread than an evening gown, what could be done with good light and good orders for
real
clothing. Day wear which required cut and style. Evening wear which demanded a little more daring than could ever be found in Miss Baker. Feathered and ribboned hats – Cara's own speciality – which she could put together much more quickly and profitably than these cobweb-fine chemises.

The prospect excited her. Opened doors and windows in her mind leading outwards and upwards, offering her at the very least – and it was a great deal – a
future
. Another rainbow? As her father had so often glimpsed it? Did she resemble him then in other things besides the dark hair and bright blue eyes? But when had he ever worked so consistently, miserably hard as she was doing now? Another rainbow? Perhaps. But her father, in the moment of running towards it, would already have filled his eyes and his mind with a tantalizing glimpse of the one beyond. And so would allow both to pass him by.

Recognizing that flaw in him, she set herself to resist it. Never to deviate. To persevere. Yet she had a great deal against her, not least the renewed animosity of Miss Ernestine Baker who, despite Cara's precautions, was not long in discovering her connection with the Dallams of Frizingley Hall.

And it was Linnet Gage, for reasons of her own, a little exercise in power, a tiny flexing of her claws, just to test how far she could go, who let Miss Baker know, one morning in late November when Miss Baker had been shown into Amabel's dainty little private parlour to answer some enquiry about the bridesmaids'dresses.

‘Miss Baker,' said Linnet pleasantly, as the woman was on the point of leaving, not really knowing what she might discover, simply aiming a shot in the dark. ‘What is your opinion of the work of this new dressmaker from France we keep hearing of? Miss Cara Adeane? I assume you must be acquainted?'

And seeing the shock on Miss Baker's thin face, the angry flush which mottled it, Linnet opened her blue eyes very wide, very innocently, and smiled.

‘Good Heavens – Mrs Dallam – how is it that you have been importuned by such a creature?'

The story was revealed. Miss Baker, in her turn, had a great deal to say, apologizing, as she said it, for the need to lay such indelicate information before a woman of Mrs Amabel Dallam's sensibility, and two as yet unmarried young ladies.

‘These are not matters which one would readily discuss …' Yet she discussed them nevertheless in some detail, from the perfidious disposition of Mr Kieron Adeane who, to escape his creditors, had abandoned his foreign and therefore necessarily suspicious wife, down to the loose moral character of Miss Adeane herself, of which Miss Baker, despite the virginal ears of two of her listeners, did not shirk from producing the evidence. She had
seen
with her own, presumably virginal, eyes. Therefore, she
knew
. The girl was … Perhaps there was no need to use the ugly word. No need either to point out the dangers, the downright health hazard of her acquaintance?