Taking Liberties (20 page)

She nodded, reluctantly. Makepeace was a realist; all the gains in her life had involved time and difficulty. Here was another. But she was coming round to Mr Spettigue; if he regarded a journey to Newcastle as too dangerous then it probably was—there was no point in consulting an expert on something as vital as this if one refused his advice.

‘This crossing to France,' she said. ‘Who does that?'

‘House commands a fishing village,' Mr Spettigue said.

‘Smugglers?'

Mr Spettigue fluttered his fingers deprecatingly. ‘Shall we say that certain of the fishermen co-operate with one in the export an' import trade.'

Andra, she thought, I could get Andra back.

‘Can they bring people back from France as well as take them?'

‘Depends, ma'am. We ain't in the business of importin' French spies.'

She said, gently: ‘This man ain't a spy. He's my husband. He's been trapped over there by the war.'

‘Dare say, then. Dare say.'

Mr Spettigue's scheme was becoming more attractive by the minute. She considered it while the men watched her.

They could not stay at the Prince George much longer; its landlord was already beginning to wonder why, now that Philippa had been found, they were staying on at all. The idea of moving from inn to inn was not pleasing and, in any case, would attract comment—with Sanders they made an odd quintet, and publicans chattered to other publicans, she knew; she'd been one. Last of all, if she had to live in close confinement with Dell much longer, she would go mad.

She made up her mind. ‘Make the offer, Mr Spettigue.'

Before they left, she asked him: ‘Have you ever been to America? ' He intrigued her; she couldn't place him. By the lights of English society he was aiding the enemy. He wasn't doing it for financial reasons; apart from the commission he might or might not receive from the sale of the house—if it came to a sale—he was taking no money.

‘No, ma'am. Like to one day, but no.'

She wondered what sober Boston would make of pink pantaloons. She had to ask him straight out. ‘Why are you doing this, Mr Spettigue?'

‘Oh, well, d'ye see.' Vaguely, he waved the lorgnette. ‘Liberty and all that . . . wonderful idea, what?'

THE public subscription for the Millbay hospital was posted with the names of the Dowager Countess of Stacpoole and John Howard, though without that of Lady Edgcumbe whose suggestion it had been.

She was embarrassed and apologetic. ‘But the Admiral feels it might carry a political nuance, and in his position . . .'

‘I understand,' Diana said, relieved that as a widow she was a free agent. ‘Aymer would turn in his grave, I fear. He didn't even approve of prison for Americans but would have hanged them all.'

‘Yes.' Lucy was still uneasy. ‘How do you think dear Robert will feel? His position with the King . . .'

‘I am doing this for the King,' the Dowager said, firmly, and she truly believed that in part she was. England's, and therefore the Crown's, honour should not be besmirched by inhumanity—the sights inside and outside the Millbay cottage still haunted her dreams. If Parliament could not afford to build a decent hospital for wounded prisoners, then somebody must.

She framed the preface to the subscription accordingly and with a nod to the Admiralty's difficulties: ‘Whereas allotment of monies is of necessity used up in the prosecution of the war, we appeal to the public . . .'

It was lodged in banks in Plymouth and Exeter and sent by mail coach to the Dowager's own bank, Coutts and Co., in London.

The response was immediate, both good and bad. Money flowed in from those whose compassion extended beyond England's shores and criticism from those whose did not. A great deal of the latter came from Aymer's friends, as well as some of her own; she was bombarded with letters expressing disappointment, even shock, at what was regarded as her lack of patriotism. All their opprobrium was heaped on the head of the Dowager and not that of her co-signatory: John Howard was of a class that the aristocracy expected to be a nuisance whereas Lady Stacpoole, one of their own, should know better.

‘Lady Aylesbury deprecates my willingness to side with the enemy,' she told Lucy, ‘and is sad to inform me that the Attorney-General has called me a traitor. How am I a traitor?'

‘I shouldn't worry about that. Loughborough still defends burning women murderers at the stake,' Lucy said.

Other letters told Diana that if she wished to do good there were better causes to which her energy should be applied at home: foundlings, slavery, child chimney-sweeps—an endless list.

But I have been presented with this one, she thought. Those charities already had organized support; the wounded war prisoners had none.

The letter that most disturbed her came from Robert.

 
The last sentence made her angry. The fifty pounds with which she had headed the subscription—feeling it could be no less—had been from the sale of a very fine emerald necklace and earrings left to her by the Torbay aunt. All her other jewellery must eventually pass to Alice but the emeralds she had regarded as her own.

Robert had not only limited her income but was telling her how to spend it.

Then she read the letter again and recognized panic. Poor Robert, who had always marched in step to the King's tune, to find his mother breaking ranks . . . it was a shock for him.

Perhaps I should have warned him, but a letter in much the same vein would only have arrived for her sooner. Nor would she have obeyed it; she had no intention of obeying this one. Royalty was above criticism but there were times when it had to be stood up to for its own good.

There was no turning back. It had been unbearable to discover that the boy from Frederick County who'd wanted his mother had died three days later, still lying on a dirty mattress in the cottage's upstairs room and still, as far as she could discover, with his wounds untreated. And what of young Lieutenant Grayle, both his hands cut off in battle yet incarcerated, to England's eternal disgrace?

She wrote to Robert giving these reasons for the subscription, asking him to explain them to King George, and made no mention of returning to Chantries. She had put her hand to the plough and would not stop until she saw some yield from her efforts.

What worried her was the implied suggestion in Robert's letter that both he and the King blamed the Edgcumbes for leading her astray.

Again, she was angry. Did they think she had no will of her own? But she was also concerned; it would harm the Admiral's career to offend the King; no wonder he had forbidden his wife to be a signatory to the subscription. If she was to be a source of offence, she must remove herself from under the Edgcumbes' hospitable roof before she offended further.

It was a peculiar sensation for her to find herself at odds with the very society to which she had always conformed, whose mores and beliefs had been her own. She could have wished the revelation to have been vouchsafed to someone else. But it hadn't. When she had been forced to walk away from men pleading for water, she had heard the voice of her Saviour begging for help. She would not have described herself as a particularly devout woman but she knew that if she continued to ignore such a summons she would be doing violence to her immortal soul.

If she was frightened—and she was—she was also invigorated, like an explorer on a peak looking out on the unknown. After twenty-two years as the Countess of Stacpoole, years of being curbed, of self-abnegation and compliance to one man's will, she would be free of any rein.

It was time to see what stuff Diana Pomeroy was made of. Time to move on. Time to set up house by herself and on her own ancestral territory.

Time for T'Gallants.

 
The upper room of the offices of Spettigue and Son was respectable, old and well kept, exactly what the Dowager Countess of Stacpoole had expected from a firm of land agents who had managed the Pomeroys' Devon property to advantage for four generations.

Young Mr Spettigue was not. He favoured an imbecilic simper and a tight coat of lime-green and white—unwisely, the Dowager felt, in view of his figure.

‘Wonderful happy to meet y'ladyship at long last, don't ee know, an' had ye told me of your intention earlier, I should, of course, have given notice to the tenants but as it is I doubt it will be possible for you to move in until the lease is—'

She fixed him with a look from under her lashes. ‘The lease is up, Mr Spettigue. One studied the accounts before one came to Devon.'

‘Ah, well . . .'

‘And to which tenants do you refer, Mr Spettigue?'

Mr Spettigue wandered across the room to consult a ledger. ‘Mr and Mrs Davis, don't ye know.'

‘I think you will find they are no longer in occupation at T'Gallants House.' The Dowager had also been making enquiries locally.

‘Really?' Mr Spettigue assumed surprise. ‘Mr Davis did not inform me he was leavin'.'

‘Probably because he was dead,' the Dowager said. ‘His widow lives in Exmouth and has done these five years.'

‘Ye don't say?' Mr Spettigue's face took on a look of complete vacuity. ‘Wonderful odd, that.' He waddled back to the arm of the chair and perched himself back on it carefully.

‘The wonderful oddness, Mr Spettigue, arises from the fact that the Stacpoole estate has been receiving rent for T'Gallants House all this time—without tenants to pay it.'

‘Ah.'

‘However, there seems to be a caretaker.'

‘Ah.' Mr Spettigue attached his lorgnette to his nose and returned to his ledger.

She allowed him some rope and then said: ‘Do sit down, Mr Spettigue. You fatigue me.'

With the utmost concentration, he lowered himself into the chair and gave a neighing noise which she took to be a laugh. ‘No harm done, don't ye know. Blame's ours but so's the loss. Inefficient of us, very.' He wobbled his head amiably. ‘Tell the truth, not a house your ladyship wants to bother with. Rent apart, that is.'

The Dowager yawned, tapping her fan gently against her mouth. ‘I intend to look over the property today, if you will be so good as to fetch me the keys.'

‘
Today?
Want to live there, d'ye mean?'

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Is there any reason that I should not?'

Mr Spettigue's cheeks blew in and out. ‘But . . . well, got the distinct impression from his lordship it was to be sold when the lease came up.'

‘His lordship is dead, Mr Spettigue.' How typical of Aymer to decide that her family home, which she had brought with her into the marriage, should be sold without consulting her.

‘Hardly fit . . . awful place . . . exposed to the elements and all that . . .'

‘I shall judge for myself, Mr Spettigue.'

He burbled on. ‘Damp, d'ye see, an' nobody worth knowin' for miles, an'—'

‘The
keys
, Mr Spettigue.'

He was a long time fetching them.

The Dowager allowed her gaze to wander while she considered. From the carved chair in which she sat, she could just see the sails of Plymouth's fishing fleet, brown and yellow and dark red, giving a Venetian look to the sunlit quay of the Barbican.

No land agent, not even this inane young man, could possibly have overlooked the fact that his firm was paying rent for a property to its owner on behalf of tenants who were not there—and hadn't been there for five years.
Ergo
, Mr Spettigue was making a profit out of T'Gallants by some other means. And the means which suggested itself—Diana looked out again at the fishing boats—was smuggling.

She sighed. The unpleasant Captain Nicholls was correct.

By rights, she should allow him his search. She was reluctant to do so; she had not taken to Captain Nicholls, while the ridiculous Mr Spettigue, for all his deception, was of good class and not unlikeable. And he had not actually bilked her; the rent for T'Gallants had been a good one and paid regularly.

She decided to wait and see what transpired this afternoon when she visited the place. After all, there might be some other explanation. And she would be in no danger; she would have the navy with her—the Admiral was allowing her the use of his barge.

Mr Spettigue returned, flustered and teetering on his heels like an unsteady blancmange. ‘Been lookin' for the spares, y'ladyship. Original keys, well, fact is, only yesterday gave 'em to a lady who wanted to view, possible purchaser, d'ye see?'

Now
she was cross. ‘Mr Spettigue, do I understand that you have put T'Gallants up for sale? And have now sent some personage to view it?'

‘Misunderstandin', I'm afraid. One gathered from his lordship . . . when the lease was up—'

‘His lordship is
dead
, Mr Spettigue.' The Dowager rose. ‘If there is any more difficulty over this house, you may wish that you had joined him. Good-day.'

Once he'd handed the Dowager into her carriage, Mr Spettigue summoned his footman. ‘Need to send a message to Mrs Hedley at the George, stop her goin' to Babbs Cove.'