Reckless Griselda (24 page)

“You will come to my drum night. You will all come,” said the Duchess, as if her world depended entirely upon their answering yes. Griselda was forced to make a graceful acceptance although she was not at all sure that Thorpe would want to go. For that matter she was not sure she wanted to go herself.

“Well, I shall have to take a drop of that wine, if you’ve left any in the decanter, George,” said Lady Farquarson when the Duchess and her sister had left. “A junket at Renfrew House. I should never have imagined it possible in a hundred years. And what the devil shall we wear, Miss Grizzy? We must go shopping today and waste no more time about it.”

“I thank my maker that it is only your money that you will be spending!” said Sir George.

***

“Will, you have not lost your taste for strange places!” exclaimed Tom looking about him. Will Randall, a friend from Eton and now a rising barrister, had taken him to a gloomy chop house in a quiet City lane.

“I thought that in the circumstances, you might appreciate the discretion of it,” said Will, settling down at a corner table under a latticed window.

“Well, I don’t imagine there is a soul here who knows us.”

“Exactly. Here we may be candid with one another.”

“Rather, I may be candid with you.”

“Of course,” smiled Will. “And the mutton is always sweet, which is more to the point.”

“I hardly feel like eating.”

“Perhaps not; but after a morning of legal circumlocutions with the likes of George Woburn, I could eat a hind quarter of mutton. The more verbiage my learned master spews out, the more hungry I become. Not to mention thirsty. Mrs Taylor, will you bring us a bottle of claret?”

“To drown my sorrows.”

“There’s no need for that,” said Will. “We shall get you out of this one.”

“But Woburn and my attorney…”

“Are damnable pessimists. And frightened of a fight, which you are not.”

“There are too many ladies’ names involved to go to open court,” Tom said. “It would be better to settle out of court, for their sake if nothing else.”

“And admit guilt when there is none? Tom, my boy, this is the chance you’ve been looking for all you life. To get back at that blackguard Wansford. It’s a wonderful opportunity.”

“If it were just a matter of Wansford and myself, yes, but… the scandal it will cause…”

“Whichever way, there will be scandal, Tom,” said Will. “So clear your name. And how can I rest easy and see a friend’s name blackened when he is an innocent man? You have to fight. You know it.”

“How?”

“We find the forger of those letters. That they are forged there is no doubt because you give me your word that you did not write them. You do, do you not?”

“Devil, Will, you know I did not!”

“Good, that’s more the spirit. Remember, you have the court to convince that you are a man who cares for his reputation.”

“But in the circumstances perhaps it will seem I do not. My marriage and the reasons for it, well…”

“Pah!” said Will with a wave of his hand. “That’s easily explained. There’s nothing that a jury likes better than a love story. With my lady sitting in full court, with a Paris bonnet and a concerned expression, they’ll be on your side before you can say – ”

“That’s a disgusting suggestion, Will.”

“Why, isn’t she pretty?”

“Yes but… she’s my wife, damn it. Lady Thorpe, sir.”

Will laughed and sipped his wine.

“Then you are in love with her.”

Tom hesitated for a moment.

“I’m not sure what that means – this business with Griselda…”

“Griselda. Is she Scotch?”

“To her bonnet strings. Proud, fierce, sharp as a needle and better than an opera girl in bed.”

Will whistled.

“It’s as well we came somewhere quiet,” he said. “And you had better not take me home to dine. I shall just fall in love with her.”

“Then I would be obliged to kill you, Will,” said Tom. “If I don’t kill myself first.”

“What do you mean?”

“She doesn’t care for me, and that’s the plain truth of it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Tom said nothing. He was watching the maidservant cross the room with a tray. She was a fresh-faced, strong girl, with dark eyes and glossy ringlets. She caught him looking and smiled, as if the sight of him pleased her. It was like walking into a room with a warm fire. She came to the table and took her time putting out the plates of mutton chops.

“Anything else I can do for you gentlemen?” she said, with a provocative expression.

Tom guessed for a few shillings she could be his, and such was his irritation with Griselda at that moment, he felt half-tempted to do it. But the temptation passed in a moment. Hers were not the arms he wanted to feel tangled with his, and her kisses would not slake his desire. He wanted Griselda or no-one.

Will waved her away and began to attack his mutton chops with a different sort of appetite.

“Now,” he said, his mouth full. “A forger. How does Will Randall find a forger in a great town like this?”

Sir George need not have worried about his money; Lady Farquarson did not allow herself or Griselda to be extravagant. In their long expedition that morning, through all the shops of Oxford Street, they bought only trifles – a few yards of ribbon, a pair of gloves and some feathers to refurbish a bonnet. And invariably they did not pay the first price mentioned by the shop man. Lady Farquarson was an inveterate haggler. It was clear that shopping was a sort of game to her, one which she was accustomed to winning.

“I would be ashamed of myself if I paid these London prices,” she remarked to Griselda as a cowed assistant at the Schomberg House went to pack away the piece of lace that she had got reduced by three shillings because of a minute inconsistency in the pattern. “I was born within spitting distance of the Mercat Cross in Glasgow and trade is in my blood.”

“You make it seem like a sport,” said Griselda.

“Well, it makes more sense to me than those fools who play cards for money. Gambling is a sin, make no mistake about it. But you are too sensible to get sucked into that midden. See yon gentleman, by the column?”

“With the burgundy coat?”

“Aye. That’s Colonel Nisbet of Achlmahoy. They say he has lost two fortunes on the tables – his own and his wife’s – and yet he lounges about as if he owns the world itself. I would sooner shoot a man like that than drink tea with him.”

“And the woman with him?”

“Miss Lucy Perez, late of the theatre Royal and now fairly setting herself up as the most expensive strumpet in the town.”

“You know everything and everyone, belle-maman,” Griselda said, glancing back at Lucy Perez and her dazzling pelisse of bronze silk. Then she coloured, embarrassed at the familiarity she had just thoughtlessly extended, and added, “If you will let me call you that?”

Lady Farquarson took her arm.

“My sweet, I like it very well. Now, let’s go down to Pattinson’s and get your dancing shoes.”

From the street, Pattinson’s tiny shoe shop looked crowded. Through the bow window Griselda could see a family of little girls all being fitted for pink satin slippers, with a maid, a governess and the mother of the family in fussy attendance as well as Mr Pattinson and his two shop men. And in the corner, quite unconcerned by all the bother, sat a gentleman reading his newspaper.

“Well, would you credit it?” murmured Lady Farquarson as they went into the shop. “It’s my cousin Jeanie and her man Clarke.”

“Wasn’t he Sir Thomas’s tutor?” said Griselda.

“Aye, that’s the man,” said Lady Farquarson, who had now been recognised by Mrs Clarke.

“Cousin Margaret!” she exclaimed. “I had no idea you were in town! Girls, girls, come and make your curtseys to Lady Farquarson. Mr Clarke, will you put down that newspaper for one moment, if you please. Look who is here.”

Sleekit, Lady Farquarson had called him. As he made his bow and was presented to Griselda it seemed a just description – a smooth, self-satisfied air hung about him.

“My lady Thorpe,” he said. “Accept my sincerest congratulations on your marriage.” There was a whiff of impertinence in his careful civility that made her bristle. She could imagine at once how Tom Thorpe would have hated submitting to the authority of such a man.

“We live in town now,” said Mrs Clarke. “Mr Clarke has been so fortunate as to be appointed to a very good living – enough to employ a curate.”

Enough to pay for four pairs of one-guinea pink silk slippers, Griselda thought, observing that the little girls were as elaborately dressed as their mother.

“You must come and dine with us,” Mrs Clarke went on.

“Oh, I am sure Sir Thomas and Lady Thorpe will have no time at present to grace our humble household, my dear,” said Mr Clarke.

“But we are all family now,” went on Mrs Clarke. “A simple family dinner, what could be more delightful?”

“I think not, my dear,” said Mr Clarke quietly, a touch of embarrassment in his voice. “Perhaps another time.”

“Our house is in Ellis Street,” said Mrs Clarke, undeterred. “The prettiest place you ever saw, Margaret. You will call, I beg you. Write down our address for my cousin, Mr Clarke – we have no cards yet. They are still at the printer.”

“As you wish, my dear,” said Mr Clarke, reaching into his coat pocket and extracting a small memorandum book. He scrawled the address with a pencil, ripped out the page and handed it with a bow to Lady Farquarson. “And now, I think we must all be on our way.”

After a considerable flurry of shawls and bonnet strings, and a small rainstorm of tears on the part of one of the girls who had set her heart on a pair of scarlet slippers, the Clarke entourage took their leave.

“At least he had the decency to realise that Sir Thomas would not wish to be obliged to him in any way,” Griselda said, as they sat waiting for Mr Pattinson to bring her some shoes to try on.

“Which is surprising, for I thought he was as much of a climber as she is,” said Lady Farquarson. She was still holding the page ripped from the memorandum book. “How much a year does a house in Ellis Street cost, do you think?”

She handed it to Griselda.

“I don’t know,” said Griselda. “They did seem very prosperous. Is it a good street?”

“Very. As smart as that bonnet she was wearing. It’s quite a transformation. The last time I saw them they were quite threadbare.”

Griselda looked down at the paper.

“How like Sir Thomas’s handwriting this is,” she said. “He must have taught him his letters.”

***

Tom reeled out into the bright streets of the City, drunk with want, thinking that he must cut a strange fellow amongst all the men of business with their orderly lives. He felt like taking one of them by the elbow, one of the sensible-looking ones, greying at the temples, and asking him as a man of affairs, how he might begin to deal with Griselda. How was he to make peace with a creature who could with her words and her actions light his temper as quickly as a piece of dry tinder on a bale of straw? How was he going to learn forbearance when every argument left him sick with desire? How could he do his duty by her, when she would not let him, for God’s sake?

He walked from the City towards the West End, quickening his pace, burning with energy that he did not know how to expend. Town felt like a stony prison. He wanted the comfort of his horses and his lands, but most of all he wanted to lie abed with Griselda and see her smile at him, or better still hear her laugh and feel her fingers touch his hair.

He passed by Garrard’s and hesitated, wondering if he might find her some trifle. It would be a foolish gesture, no doubt, and he would receive no credit for it, but he wanted the comfort of a ritual. A man gave his wife such things, and a wife, for all her strangeness, might see through the ritual and read the real meaning of the gesture. Perhaps.

He sat down and asked to see some pearls. It occurred to him that pearls and Griselda had an affinity. The operation of chance in the matter – the grit in the belly of the oyster that transformed itself into a thing of beauty – perhaps there was hope for them if nature could accomplish such miracles.

“Pearls, sir, of course. For a young lady?”

“For my wife. Black pearls. A necklace and earrings, perhaps?”

“You’re in luck, sir. We have recently had a shipment of the finest black pearls from the Orient. Superb quality. An incomparable lustre.”

The man laid the string of pearls on a white silk pillow. They might have been made with Griselda in mind. They were simply set, with delicate gold chasings, but their colour was extraordinary. Like the glowering sky over that Norfolk abbey, in the rain.