Eppie (71 page)

With her fork, Genevieve stabbed a shallot in her serving of
stuffed roast veal. ‘I don’t give a hoot about riches.’ Aware of Catesby’s eyes
fixed on her, she added, ‘Nor gentlemen, come to that, neither.’

‘Nonsense,’ Hortence said, ‘any unmarried woman in her early
twenties will die a spinster. Mother, when we next attend the Assembly Hall in
Bath you really must chaperone Lady Genevieve.’

‘I will be delighted,’ Lady Wexcombe conceded, knowing that,
as an impoverished widow of noble blood she would be entitled to payment for
such an undertaking from Gabriel. ‘One meets many notable families at such
engagements. Your lordship must also become acquainted with a diversity of
well-connected society people, from which you will be able to select a wife.’

‘I am bound to my mill manager’s great-niece.’ 

At this devastating news, Permelia’s fluttering eyelashes
stilled.
      

Parson Lowford drank liberally from his fifth glass of wine.
‘Now you have returned to your rightful home, Lady Genevieve, you should not
feel guilty about, hic, bless me, living the high life. The bible prescribes
joy as a means to, hic, righteousness.’ 

Clutching a sparkling, quartz bowl of jelly, Betsy gave it a
vigorous wobble. ‘I whipped this up with a dollop of cow hoof gel. See ‘em
things bobbin’ about?  ‘em’s crystallised lemons.’

‘It is quite the place to be seen,’ Hortence said.

‘What is?’ Genevieve asked.

‘Bath. There are well-paved roads, a magnificent Town Hall,
luxurious stores and fine statues.’

Tiring of the affected conversation, Genevieve knowingly
stirred trouble. ‘Not like how I lived in Rotten Yard, with its open sewers and
everything as mucky as sin.’

Lady Wexcombe gripped her neck as though in excruciating
pain.

Hortence glared at Genevieve. ‘You have much to learn of
what is deemed polite conversation and what is not.’

‘Your ladyship is unwell?’ Gabriel enquired.

‘I am at the mercy of carbuncles. No remedies my physician ministers
have the slightest benefit.’

Embittered by her treatment at the hands of the privileged
class, Betsy chose not to mince her words when speaking to insufferable members
of the aristocracy and would happily go further; seeking to aggravate those
whom she believed merited no regard. She dunked a roast potato into a steaming
gravy boat. ‘Suck a dead frog; it’s the best cure for an abscess.’

‘You vile individual!’ Lady Wexcombe cried.

‘Don’t call Betsy
vile
,’ Genevieve said angrily.

‘Such a creature as this woman is lower than a dog,’ Lady
Wexcombe declared, ‘and should not even be permitted at the table.’

Genevieve glowered at Lady Wexcombe. ‘Privilege has made you
self-righteous and shallow-minded to say such a thing to Betsy.’

‘Genevieve,’ Gabriel said, raising his hand by way of
warning to silence. ‘Perhaps, Betsy, it
would
be better if you left the
table?  I only ask because it upsets me to hear you slighted.’

‘Simply because Betsy has had a hard life, that doesn’t mean
you have the right to insult her,’ Genevieve told Lady Wexcombe. ‘I wonder
whether you have ever reflected upon the wasted lives of the poor, or felt
compelled to help those worse off than yourself. Have you ever thought about
how workers are crowded together in atrocious working and living conditions in
towns, or given a thought to the dreadful diseases that afflict the underprivileged?’

‘Such individuals are simply the servants of the affluent,’
Lady Wexcombe replied haughtily. ‘I cannot imagine in what manner their lives
can be wasted.’ Pursing her lips, she considered the hefty choice of which
dessert to select: peaches, nectarines, brandy cherries or chocolate-coated
filberts.

‘The poor are thinking people, with feelings like you,’
Genevieve declared passionately.

‘That I very much doubt. Now, your lordship, my furniture, when
it arrives I insist that your footmen store it in the Green Room. They will be
careful? I have several antiques worth hundreds of pounds.’

Making much of her aches and pains, Lady Wexcombe
repaired to bed. Her chamber, last occupied by Genevieve’s mother, resembled an
intimate sitting room, the bed sumptuously overflowing with cushions.

Genevieve
and Betsy, almost constant companions at her bedside, were adamant that the
lady was feigning illness. Betsy had procured several cures, none of which
would her ladyship entertain. Not only had she refused to endure the sheep’s
lung upon her feet, she had declined to drink the blackcurrant and dung
cordial. 

Old
habits dying hard, Betsy sat at a mahogany table hollowing turnips ready to
place lighted candles in their cavities. Cupping her hand to her mouth, she
whispered to Genevieve, ‘If she was
really
ill she’d have eaten that
butter-coated harvest spider.’    

‘It
was rather immense,’ Genevieve said. ‘It even made me shudder. Maybe we ought
to try something less invasive?’ 

‘Rusty
coffin nails are admirable for creaky bones. They couldn’t do no more harm than
them powdered pearls she swills.’

‘Don’t
you think you are infuriating Lady Wexcombe a little with all your homespun remedies?’

 ‘Only a
little
?  I must try harder. You can’t laugh,
young miss. I’ve heard you lapse into the cottage tongue. Don’t tell me that’s
not meant to annoy them?’

‘You are extremely astute, Betsy.’

‘What are you two scheming about?’ Lady Wexcombe asked. ‘Come,
Genevieve, I am in need of conversation.’

Genevieve seated herself in the pink and white striped tablet
chair beside the bed. ‘The farm has done well this year, the barns and
granaries are generously stocked for winter.’

‘A bad harvest always follows a good ‘un’, Betsy said.

Lady Wexcombe wafted her lace-cuffed wrist. ‘Such tedious talk.
Do you know nothing of the wider world, Genevieve?’

‘Every day the plight of the poor worsens. With the number
of idle rising, many are forced to take ships to North America.’ Thinking about
Fur, she added, quietly, ‘I wonder whether he survived the voyage to Canada.’

‘I do declare, Lady Genevieve, that your line of impolite conversation
is calculated to disturb my timid nature.’

Hortence stood before the looking-glass, dressing her hair
with tortoiseshell combs. Admiring herself, she chewed her lips to redden them.
‘Oh, so gloomy! We must contemplate some entertainment. What about holding a
ball?’

‘After the corn was in, a Harvest Home was held in the threshing
barn,’ Genevieve said. ‘Father stopped the merrymakings the year after I left
for Malstowe.’

‘You are surely not implying that we hold the ball in a
barn
?’
Hortence asked. ‘A barn is for pigs. It shall be in the Great Hall. Gabriel goes
to London tomorrow. He will take invitations. He must also invite all the local
gentry.’

‘Do you not think that his lordship would take exception to
us arranging such an event?’ her mother asked.

‘Not at all. Often you have recounted to Permelia and I
about the balls you used to attend at Tunnygrave Manor.’

‘We would need musicians,’ Permelia said, ‘and a vast stock
of victuals.’

‘Are you aware if his lordship keeps a vast stock of
victuals?’ Lady Wexcombe asked Genevieve.

‘I think it most unlikely.’

‘I wonder who we shall invite,’ Hortence pondered. ‘There is
Lord Tyllstoy and his family, and Lady Peppelowe.’

‘I see no occasion for her to attend,’ Lady Wexcombe said
dismissively. ‘I have not the slightest opinion of her.’

‘Miss Mendelove?’

‘A most charming young lady,’ her mother reflected.

‘I’ll hobble over to the graveyard, Eppie. See if ‘em rats
have scratched up any nails.’

‘Catesby and his company must come,’ Permelia enthused.

‘By all means,’ her mother answered.

‘Lady Smert also,’ Hortence said.

Lady Wexcombe sniffed with disdain. ‘We owe her no
particular courtesy; it would be most tiresome to invite such a specimen.’

‘Before Genevieve is exhibited at the ball, it is imperative
that she becomes acquainted with the customs of polite society,’ Permelia said.

‘Such as?’ Genevieve asked.

Permelia picked up her fan, beautifully made from horn with
mother-of-pearl ornamentation. ‘Such as the language of the fan. One holds it
in one’s left hand, thus; in front of the face infers that one is desirous of
making a gentleman’s acquaintance.’ Coquettishly, she fluttered her eyelashes. ‘Flourish
your fan as the company leave and your beau will know that you mean him not to
forget you.’

Taking up her fan, Hortence pursed her lips. ‘A fan on the lips,
kiss me!’

‘If Genevieve is to develop a habit of wealth and fashion, something
must be done about her hair,’ Permelia said.

‘Apollo’s knots would be a marked improvement,’ Hortence suggested.
‘Although with that shocking scorch mark about her ear I expect it would be
best if she retains her bird’s-nest style.’    

‘When I was a child I remember my mother dressing to attend
a ball,’ said Lady Wexcombe. ‘She ornamented her hair with the prow of a ship. It
was a fetching style, considered to be the height of elegance.’

‘Sister, I have the most entertaining idea,’ Hortence said. ‘Let
us embellish Lady Genevieve’s hair this very afternoon.’

Genevieve wanted to get along with the sisters to please
Gabriel, but this was taking things too far. ‘I think not,’ she said warily.

‘I think so,’ Hortence persisted.

Whilst Hortence and Permelia
ransacked the house and garden in search of curious objects, Genevieve read
Lord Byron’s
Hours of Idleness
to Lady Wexcombe. 

Compelled for the last two weeks to remain indoors as
companion to the sick lady, Genevieve felt claustrophobic. Earlier that morning,
she had gone to watch the shearing in the threshing barn. As custom would have
it she took with her packets of tobacco for each of the men who, that night,
would attend the sheepshearers’ dance. 

In reality, it was an excuse to see Samuel. Since the
arrival of the Wexcombes he had barely spoken more than a few words to her, and
these of a servile address, of a servant to his mistress.

‘Why can’t things be the way they were, Grumps? I want nothing
to change between you and me.’

He seemed to shrivel into himself. ‘Things are different,
whether you wish it or not. You’re a lady now.’

‘Don’t call me a lady; it puts such a distance between us.
Say we may go on as before.’

‘’ee knows that wun’t be right,
One-Quart. You have to forget the way we was.’ He added, less forcefully,
regret in his voice, ‘I have to.’

‘What about this?’  Hortence had discovered an ornament of
the ruined folly. 

‘Or this two-handled watering can?’ Permelia said, clutching
it with a fragment of linen.

Curious as to the reason for the sisters’ shrieks of
laughter, Gabriel peered around the door, smiling.

Genevieve sat before the dressing table. Wired to a pad of
false hair, garlanded with beads and ribbons, was a stuffed snipe which Hortence
had taken from a glass-fronted cabinet in the Brown Room.

‘Take that ridiculous thing off!’ he demanded, sensitive to
the sisters’ playful malice and Genevieve’s gullibility.

The sisters blushed, their looks of guilt betraying their
embarrassment that he should expose their jest.    

‘It is fashionable,’ Hortence objected. ‘Don’t you think it
makes Genevieve look even more amusing?’

It was rare that Gabriel displayed expressions of rage. This
was one of those occasions. ‘You have no right to make fun of my sister!’

Genevieve desperately needed to hide
her face in humiliation, and sought out the familiarity and solace of the Swan
Chamber.

‘Grr!’ she roared as she marched along the passageway,
tearing at the snipe, which now hung upside down, tangled in her hair. ‘Grr!
Grrr! Grrrr!!’

Talia was playing with the ghostly baby-house.

The sight of her sister, her calmness and compassion, eased
Genevieve.

Fetching out a chair made from a chicken’s wishbone, Talia made
to pass it into Genevieve’s hands.

‘What do I wish?’ Genevieve
said. ‘I wish with all my heart that you had never died. I wish I could hug
you, proper like. I wish Molly had never died. Sometimes, in the middle of the night,
I heard Wakelin crying about her. It made me feel so sad. If only he could have
seen her one more time.’

The wide window sill in the drawing room was bathed in
sunshine. Genevieve settled here, hidden by thick curtains, to read Goldsmith’s
Deserted Village
. She had read to
Where wealth accumulates, and men
decay,
when Hortence and Permelia drifted in, tittering as though over a
secret shared.

‘I do believe you have designs on Lord du Quesne.  Do not
refute it.’

‘I do not,’ Permelia replied. ‘He is most courteous, most
handsome, but he is promised to another.’

‘To a girl raised in a poorhouse? A girl who once slaved in
a seamstress’s garret? I think, my beloved sister, that you would have more
claim on him if only he could be made to see the absurdity of holding on to his
blinkered vision of this worthless creature.’

Genevieve was about to throw back the drapes, to argue in Rowan’s
defence, when there came a rap at the door.     

‘Enter,’ Hortence said in a superior manner, as though she
herself were the Queen of Sheba.

‘If you please, ma’am,’ the butler said, ‘there is a
gentleman who wishes to speak with you.’