Point of Honour (38 page)

Half an hour later, as she added up a column of figures for the fourth time, someone knocked on Miss Tolerance’s door. She put down her pen with some relief and went to answer it; she was surprised to find Marianne, with a tray of covered dishes.

“I had thought all of you were employed with the entertainment,” Miss Tolerance said. She stood aside to let the other woman enter.

“I can’t sing, won’t act, and don’t much care to stand about in a spangled slip to be pawed at by the boys,” Marianne said matter-of-factly. “I generally ask for these evenings off. Thought you might like a bite of something.”

Miss Tolerance discovered her appetite in the presence of food, and the two women ate cold beef, cheese, fruit, and pastries while waiting for the kettle to boil again.

“I’m glad you thought of it,” Miss Tolerance said when they had finished their meal. “I’ve wanted to thank you again for your care when I was sick.”

Marianne shook her head; her brown curls swayed with the motion, and one dropped over her eye. “You needed a friend,” she said simply. “Should have brought that book again,
Tom Jones.
Thought you liked it.”

“I did. Perhaps you can bring it another time.”

They did not talk much; the stretches of silence were companionable, broken by an observation or query from one to the other. Marianne had brought her workbag, and as she darned, she gave comical descriptions of Mrs. Brereton’s staff in rehearsal for the evening’s dissipation.

“All day Chloe’s been rehearsing; she must have started at dawn. Keefe and Daisy were hard put not to laugh at her when they came upon her in the green salon this afternoon, dragging silk scarves across her chest and flinging them to the floor—”

“Good heaven, in service of what?”

“The dance of Salome. Thank God, someone talked her out of having Cook make a savory to look like the head of John the Baptist! And Chloe’s balance is none too good, so half the time she waves the scarves, it wasn’t what she meant to do at all, but only a sign she was trying not to fall over!”

“I’m sorry I missed this,” Miss Tolerance said. “It would have been far more diverting than most of my activities today.”

“I heard about your brangle this morning. I’m sorry.”

Miss Tolerance poured more tea. “Sir Henry Folle? That’s certainly nothing to your account.”

Marianne shrugged. “I don’t know. He was in a foul temper when he arrived last evening, but I thought I’d gentled him out of it.”

“Sir Henry is your … visitor?” Miss Tolerance struggled to imagine Marianne, placid and sensible, with the volatile Folle.

“He came regularly; I suited him better than any of the other girls, and he is the sort that requires an even hand. Well, that’s a thing of the past, now. Mrs. B has forbidden him the house.”

Miss Tolerance felt herself torn. She liked Marianne very well; would any purpose be served in telling her what she suspected of Folle, now that the man could not return to Mrs. Brereton’s? “I’m sorry if I cost you custom,” she said at last.

“Bless you, dear. There will be another one to take his place,” Marianne said comfortably. “I’m only sorry he was in such a tear this morning. Politics and family always seemed to provoke him, and lately he’s been wild.”

Miss Tolerance sipped at her tea. “Had he been calling upon you long?” She could not have said why she asked, except that a sort of politeness seemed to require it.

Marianne smiled. “A year, perhaps.”

“I can’t think why I did not know it,” Miss Tolerance said.

“Can’t you?” Marianne seemed genuinely surprised. “Mrs. B don’t want us advertising who our followers are. And you’ve always held yourself rather apart from those of us who worked the house; no reason why you would know who my callers were—or anyone’s.”

Miss Tolerance blushed, feeling as if a charge of incivility had been leveled at her. “I didn’t mean—” she began.

“Of course you didn’t.” Marianne poured more tea. “Some of the girls have said, from time to time, that you thought you were too good for the rest of us. It was Matt who used to say it was more likely that you were afraid you were no better. I confess it took me a little while to understand what he meant by it.”

The pocket watch upon the mantel ticked loudly, its steady rhythm punctuated by the snapping of the fire. Miss Tolerance felt as if she had been shown a mirror’s view of herself, and had to study it carefully to confirm that it was indeed a true one.

At last she said, “Matt was a clever fellow.”

The breeze carried applause and a sudden roar of appreciation from the house. Marianne looked up from her darning. “That will be Chloe’s turn. She’ll be waving her scarves and tinkling the bells on her fingers, wrapping her legs round the gentlemen—” Another roar seemed to confirm Marianne’s guess. “I shall have to go back presently, or I shall have no chance at all of getting to my room undisturbed.”

“Will you be able to sleep with all that din?”

Marianne grinned. “If I couldn’t sleep through noises of all sort, I would never have survived a month in your aunt’s house.” She folded the stocking upon which she had been working and put it and her pincushion and needle case back in her workbag.

“You will be safe, going back in?”

“Safe? Safe enough, anyway. Keefe and the staff watch over us—particularly at the entertainments, when the blood runs very hot. I don’t fear anything like little Chloe’s adventure with Sir Randal that you stopped. But if I’m spied, they’ll want to drag me in to the business—”

“And you cannot sing and will not act.” Miss Tolerance rose to her feet. “I’ll walk you cross the garden, then.”

At the doorway, Marianne stared across at the house, brilliantly lit and noisy. “A fine, rollicking party,” she noted. “’Twill be a great mess in the morning.”

E
merging from her cottage the next morning, Miss Tolerance found a large bandbox upon her doorstep. At first she thought it might be a bit of debris from the entertainment across the garden; however, it was whole, neatly tied, and clearly contained something. She brought the box in and opened it curiously. On the folds of tissue paper a card rested; in Versellion’s characteristic hand, it said,
In case of need.—V.

The item to be used at need was a dress, suited to the most formal party or ball saving only a Court function. It was of silk so dark blue as to look purplish in the sunlight, over a slip of eggshell
mouselline de soie.
The bosom was cut low and edged round with gold embroidery and beads; the sleeves were slit to reveal the lighter fabric underneath, cuffed with the same embroidery and beads as the bodice. Whoever had selected it had considered her coloring and figure and chosen something which would display both to advantage.

Miss Tolerance sat gingerly beside the dress and ran her fingertips over its silky surface, admiring the way that it caught the light and held it in its depths. She was no less moved by beautiful fabric and exquisite stitchery than any of her sex, and for a few moments she entertained delicious fantasies of wearing the dress and appearing at the ball. Then she folded it back into the tissue paper which had wrapped it, and returned the dress to its box. When she learned the direction of the dressmaker from whom it had come, she would return it; she did not imagine she would have a use for the dress, and keeping it would only make her wistful for privileges she had forfeited a decade before.

Then she went across the garden and requested Cole to hire a hackney coach; she was bound for Chelsea.

Nineteen

T
he day was hot, the sun high overhead; the stink of sewage and fish rose up from the Thames as her hackney crossed the river, and followed some good way on as they drove south and east. Miss Tolerance had given directions to the Great Charlotte Inn and settled herself in a corner of the hackney with her eyes closed. She did not doze, however; when the driver pulled up before the inn, she had his fare ready and stepped lightly from the carriage. She wore a walking dress of steel-blue linen and a bonnet with a matching feather, and made a picture of such astonishing respectability that no casual observer would have dreamed of her true estate; the girl who met her at the door of the inn did not appear to recognize this visitor as one who had come before.

“Mrs. Cook? Aye, ma’am, she lives upstairs. Do you want me to ask after her?”

Miss Tolerance nodded and gave her name. The girl—Nan, or Nancy, Miss Tolerance recalled—stopped midway up the stairs and looked back sharply at her guest. “You was here before. But—”

“Not so finely dressed.” Miss Tolerance smiled.

The girl grinned and started up the stairs again. “Looks fine on
you
, miss,” she called down. “No one’d ever know you was—” Whatever she believed Miss Tolerance to be was lost as the girl rounded the landing and started up the next flight of stairs. A moment later the girl called down without ceremony: Mrs. Cook was in and Miss Tolerance should walk up, please.

As before, Mrs. Cook would not talk seriously until she had offered her visitor tea and cakes. By this visit the older woman clearly felt Miss Tolerance to be an old friend; she complimented her upon the cut of her dress, suggested that a neck frill might look handsome with it, and went so far as to offer to make one, embroidered in whitework, as a gift. “You’ve been so kind to me, my dear,” the older woman said comfortably.

They chatted for a few minutes, but once the tea had arrived, Miss Tolerance felt free to begin her inquiries.

“The late earl’s mistress before me …” Mrs. Cook frowned. “There were some girls, I think, but they were a here-and-there business. The woman who came before—do you know, young as I was, and in love as I was, I was so jealous of that girl! Particularly …” She faltered, as one caught in the throes of memory.

Miss Tolerance quirked her eyebrow encouragingly.

“Oh, because she was so very pretty, and Versellion had brought her from Italy. Of course, by the time he and I met, the affair was some time over, but still I fretted about it, the way girls do, and since he never wholly broke the connection—” She stopped. “You don’t want to hear my sentimental nonsense.”

“Indeed I do. It is of the greatest interest to me. Do you happen to remember the name of the Italian woman?”

“Oh, yes. Francesca de—something Italian. Versellion called her his Italian Fan. He used to make a very coarse joke about snapping her open … .” Mrs. Cook pursed her lips and her rounded chins quivered. “He never said such things about me.”

Miss Tolerance stared at the old woman. Her thoughts were briefly in cascading disarray. “Do you know,” she said at last, “if this was the same woman who was known as Fanny Virtue?”

Mrs. Cook nodded. “She took that name, yes. You know, despite Versellion’s interest in her, she did not prosper.” She leaned forward confidingly; her stays creaked. “I believe she went to work in a brothel! A very sad come-down for a woman who had been mistress to an earl.” It was evident from her tone that Mrs. Cook was comparing Mrs. Virtue’s florid career with her own impoverished but respectable end.

“I believe,” Miss Tolerance said, “that she worked for Humphrey Blackbottle, and through him came to own that fan which the old earl once gave you.”

Outrage, then hurt, and at last a smile of satisfaction chased across Mrs. Cook’s moon-shaped, guileless face. “But you have the fan back again,” she said finally. “I suppose it’s of no matter. I should not have sold it, but I was in such straits. And now Versellion’s son has it?”

Miss Tolerance agreed. If Mrs. Virtue was the Italian Fan, then the matter of what had happened to the pretty, gaudy trinket she had chased was not a secret worth guarding. But if Mrs. Virtue was the Fan that Lady Versellion had warned her son about—what was the secret she had carried? The madam herself was no longer capable of telling, and while it might be that the secret went with her to her grave, it might not. Would Versellion be satisfied to let the matter go so unresolved?

Something occurred to her. “Why did the earl not sever connection to Mrs. Virtue if it so distressed you?”

Mrs. Cook pursed her mouth, drawing up her chin so that it appeared to be one soft, gibbous column from collar to lower lip. “It is not my secret to divulge. I promised—”

“Was it the opium?” Miss Tolerance threw the question out at random; her aunt had implied that Mrs. Virtue had learnt the Chinese habit from the earl. Perhaps that had created an unwilling bond between them.

“Opium?” Mrs. Cook looked utterly confused, her eyes as large and blue as cornflowers. Their very blueness reminded Miss Tolerance of Fanny Virtue’s dark, liquid, brown eyes. An echo of something ran through her mind, and Miss Tolerance was struck with an idea, or the outline of one, so forceful it rendered her speechless.

Finally, “Is there nothing else you can tell me about the link between Mrs. Virtue and the late earl, ma’am?” She asked without emphasis, not wanting to betray the excitement she was feeling.

“No, nothing. I gave my word,” Mrs. Cook answered. There was a suggestion of melodrama in her tone.

“I understand.” Far from being disappointed, Miss Tolerance felt the old woman’s refusal to say more was as near to a confirmation of her own ideas as she was like to get from this quarter.

She rose, leaned down, and kissed the older woman on her soft cheek. “You have kept your word, and behaved with great honor, ma’am. Many of your sisterhood would not have been so discreet.”

“Well, they ought to be,” Mrs. Cook said. She took Miss Tolerance’s hand in her own. “I think
you
would have.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to disabuse Mrs. Cook of this romantic notion, but Miss Tolerance found she could not; the older woman regarded her with such sentimental admiration that it seemed unkind. She took her leave of Mrs. Cook, who looked at her sadly and remarked that she did not imagine she would see Miss Tolerance again. Moved by sudden affection as much as pity, Miss Tolerance promised that she would visit.

“We shall have cakes and tea, and talk about the war, and not the past. It’s best to let the past stay buried, my dear. You’ll find that as you grow older.” Mrs. Cook rose to show her visitor to the door; she wheezed with the exertion, and gave Miss Tolerance a kiss smelling of peppermint lozenges. “Do be careful, my dear. This is a harsh world.”