Taking Liberties (54 page)

‘Oh, Missus.'

‘I know,' Makepeace said, smugly, then frowned. ‘And Andra had better be there, waiting for it.' The deliverance of Josh had raised hope that everything was possible. She said: ‘The trouble is there wasn't time to hide Josh. One of his lordship's coachmen saw him. In the end I took him to the kitchen. I hope they'll think he's Toby's replacement.'

Which he is, they all thought.

After a moment, she went on: ‘So, ostensibly, he's your man, ladyship. Does he stay at T'Gallants or here?'

Up at the house or here? Questions about who Joshua was and the whereabouts of Tobias would require explanations which, at this moment, Diana was too confused to frame. On the other hand, to leave him at the Pomeroy under Nicholls's eye . . .

Watching her, Makepeace saw a woman at the end of her tether. She patted her knee again. ‘Leave it to me,' she said.

‘Thank you. And, Missus . . .'

‘What?'

‘Keep Gil at Rachel's; he'll be better off there than in the shaft room. And when the lugger comes,
get him on it
. Say I'll meet him onboard, put him in irons if necessary, but make sure he sails. He won't want to go.'

‘Why?'

‘Because I shan't be going with him.'

There was a knock on the coach door. Makepeace flung it open. ‘
What?
'

‘Her ladyship is required up at the house, madam.'

‘Let 'em wait.' She banged the door shut but Diana reached to open it again. ‘I must go. This looks so odd . . .'

Emerging from the coach-house, they found Nicholls in the forecourt. ‘Good morning, your ladyship.'

He watched the two women head up the hill then turned and followed Makepeace into the inn for breakfast.

Zack was already in his place. He'd hobbled up from his cottage at dawn with the intention of supporting his friend, the Missus, through her time of trial. She'd been on tenterhooks last night in case he gave something away but he'd proved himself to be an older campaigner than she was in the war against the Revenue. Nicholls, wanting to concentrate on the night's undercurrents, had been driven nearly mad by tales of how smugglers—always from other villages, mainly Cawsand—had sailed rings round past preventives. Zack was an ally of worth.

Joshua, however, was still a recruit. Horrified, she saw that instead of helping Sanders, as he should, he'd sat himself down in one of the booths with a cinder from the fire and was drawing Zack's profile on the wood of the table, frowning as he always did when the muse was on him.

She marched over, took him by the ear and ran him to the door. ‘Noughts and crosses, is it? Get to the stables and start mucking out. You can eat later.'

She'd realized that he could only forget Tobias when he was painting or drawing; the rest of the time the burden of the man's sacrifice was almost too much for him to bear. He knew what it was like to be a black prisoner in Millbay. ‘Why'd he do it, Missus? Why?'

‘Not so you can be miserable the rest of your life,' she'd told him, briskly. ‘Paint, boy, paint.'

He was a true artist. ‘I can't paint to order,' he'd said, ‘I can't paint what I don't see in my head, not even for him.'

‘Then paint what you do see,' she'd said, gently. There'd be unfairness a-plenty to force itself on his attention when he got back to America. The country might be new; but humanity was old, old.

When she went back into the taproom she saw Nicholls had picked up his eating irons and was carrying them to a table by the window. As he passed Josh's booth he glanced down and paused, looking at the sketch.

‘Excuse me,' Makepeace shouldered him aside and rubbed the table with her apron.

In the kitchen, Mrs Hallewell stirred porridge over the fire while Philippa cut newly baked bread and ham. ‘How can we feed them all if the snow lasts, Mama?' She wasn't referring to the inn's guests.

‘How do I know?' Makepeace said furiously. She took a ladle to the cauldron, dolloped some porridge into a bowl and spat in it. ‘Give that to Nicholls.'

 
T'Gallants's kitchen was busy. Diana recognized the cook but neither of the maids; Alice changed her maids with her linen. ‘Good morning, Mrs Smart. It's nice to see you again.'

‘Good morning, your ladyship.'

‘And these are?'

‘Eliza and Kitty, your ladyship.'

‘How do you do, Eliza, Kitty.'

‘Your ladyship.'

‘And this is Macklin, ma'am. What was lent to us at Lord and Lady De Vere's. For the heavy work.'

‘Good morning, Macklin. Have you been with the De Veres long?'

Old habits died hard.

When she'd left them, she said to Dell: ‘Why were they staring?'

‘You came through the kitchen, for a start, and, if you'll forgive the saying of it, most of them are cleaner than you are.'

She was still in the dress and cloak in which she'd set out for Millbay with Tobias; they hadn't been improved thereby, and her best calfskin boots were ruined. She didn't want to imagine what her hair looked like.

‘A bath, I think,' she said. ‘Eliza and Kitty can start earning their money. Tell them I'll take it in my bedroom.'

‘Can I get in when you're finished? It's months since I had a proper bath.'

‘You can.'

The Great Hall was empty but voices and the smell of kidneys and bacon came from the mausoleum that was the dining room; the subject of the conversation was ‘she'. Diana sidled nearer the door and listened.

‘. . . a certain wildness,' Kempson-Jones was saying. ‘I would not wish to commit myself further without more observation.'

‘There is no doubt about it.' That was Alice. ‘Just look around you; she is camping out in this place like an Egyptian. She wanders the Great Hall while she eats—oh, yes, Robert; there are crumbs in every corner. Did you see her
habillement?
This is not the Mama we knew, she was always so perfectly groomed.'

‘I do not understand it.' Robert's voice was grave. ‘I do
not
understand it. She has lost all dignity. Tinkler saw her running down to the inn earlier, hand in hand with that freakish new maid of hers.
Hand in hand
, mark you.'

‘It is all of a piece with the way she has sided with your enemies, Robert.'

There was a nasty moment before Diana remembered that, for Alice, all Whigs and reformers were the enemy.

Robert, I was never your enemy. A cowed mother and now a supporter of things in which you do not believe, never an enemy. I loved you. I love you still.

But last night, when she'd recovered from the shock of seeing them all and had hugged him, he had moved away.

She heard a maid coming from the kitchen and went upstairs, smiling despite everything. She'd lost all dignity, eh? Lost all dignity and gained the world.

She gripped the balustrade. And soon to lose that.

She kept to her room most of the day, trying to catch up on sleep yet constantly waking from nightmares. But when she dressed for dinner, she did it with care and put on the same gown she had worn for her Frenchman. Whatever they put her through tonight, she would face it without the hypocrisy of mourning clothes.

Her appearance when she swept into the Great Hall was not commented on, though her daughter-in-law's eyes gave a roll towards Robert.

Alice withstood the shock of blue
turquerie
bravely, however: ‘Mama, dear, we have invited Captain Nicholls for dinner. So useful in getting us here and soon to be knighted, he tells me, so we can hardly leave the poor man to the mercies of the inn. I thought we might play a little whist afterwards, and I know you do not care for cards.' Alice loved them.

Captain Nicholls arrived and followed the Dowager and her son in to dinner with Alice on his arm.

A refectory table and some rather beautiful Queen Anne chairs had been found among the furniture in the undercroft and were now rendering the awful dining room a little less awful.

Robert himself held her chair for her; she touched his hand as she sat down but he would not smile.

The meal itself was probably the best T'Gallants had seen in years. Alice had brought her own silver, napery and glassware and Mrs Smart, while complaining bitterly at the inconveniences of the kitchen, had risen magnificently above them. The Dowager, however, ate little and joined in the conversation even less, though most of it was directed at her in the form of questions.

‘By the by, Mama, did you ever discover the whereabouts of your acquaintance's son? The Grayle person?'

‘Thank you, Alice, yes. He is dead.'

‘There you are then.' Apparently that finished the matter.

A little while later, a question she had expected from Robert long before: ‘Mama, where is Tobias?'

‘He left after I gave him his freedom,' she said, languidly.

Alice tutted. ‘What did I say? What can you do with these people?'

Nicholls asked: ‘Isn't that your negro at the inn? I thought it was.'

All niggers look alike
. ‘A replacement.'

‘Well, I would not have employed another one,' Alice said. ‘Ungrateful and cunning, I always said so.' And the conversation turned to the untrustworthiness of black servants and the wilfulness of the working classes in general.

What is Nicholls doing here? Be sure it was by design; Nicholls did nothing through accident. He was not courting her anymore, thank Heaven, but he was courting Robert and Alice; staring at them as if they were exhibits but being, for him, positively fulsome.

Kempson-Jones was watching her. ‘You must forgive an old friend showing professional interest, ma'am, but should you not eat more? In this weather one needs fat on one's bones.'

Not as much as yours, she thought. And how dare
he
inveigle himself back into the household. She'd never liked the man—an antipathy that was now probably mutual since she had dismissed him without ceremony from Aymer's bedside after it had become apparent that the leeches, the blistering, and the Venice turpentine mixed with horse dung had been mere infliction of torture at a guinea a time.

She put him in his place: ‘Perhaps you would employ your professional interest on my housekeeper, Doctor; she is very ill. Please look in on her after dinner.'

It was too cold for the men to linger in the dining room after the cloth was drawn. The three men and Alice took a card table near the fire and played whist.

Diana wrapped her shawl closer round her shoulders and perched herself on the sill of the wreckers' window, trying to see beyond her reflection into the snow-flecked darkness.

Dear Father in Heaven, allow Jan and the others to come home safely. But if that is not to be, send another boat and give my men, my man, passage to France. And look to Tobias in his prison. If you put a price on these things, let me pay it, however high. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.

Between hands, Alice complained of draughts. ‘How you abide this house, Mama, I cannot think. So cold, so
grim
. I declare I could not sleep last night for unearthly sounds and whispers. I am certain it is haunted. And that
dreadful
old woman upstairs, she will murder us all in our beds before we can leave, I know it. Our rubber, I think, Captain Nicholls.'

‘You are a most excellent player, ma'am.'

‘I confess to surprise that you choose to stay here, Mama,' Robert called. ‘Mama?'

Diana turned reluctantly. ‘I'm sorry, Robert?'

‘Why do you stay here?'

‘I like it.'

She saw her son glance at Kempson-Jones before she turned back to the window.

They began another rubber and their voices resumed an unheeded, half-heard accompaniment to her preoccupation, like a string quartet played in another room. Alice's querulous
tremolo
, Robert's
viole da braccio
and the bland
sul tasto
of Kempson-Jones. It was only when Nicholls spoke that her attention was caught. She could not type his voice, it had the quality of producing silence, like the snow, deadening other sound.

‘. . . over one hundred.'

‘I thought they had been recaptured?'

‘I fear not, your lordship. We are still hunting down some forty.'

Alice was squeaking.

He knows something, he knows.

‘. . . a renowned smuggling area. I suspect the inn and the entire village.'

More squeaks from Alice.

‘. . . John Paul Jones has been sighted.'

‘Did I not say, Robert? I begged you not to expose yourself to danger. The villain will hear of an earl in an isolated house, you will be kidnapped, it will be the Earl of Selkirk over again and the rest of us murdered in our beds.'

‘My dear, the Earl of Selkirk was not in residence and . . .'

Gratefully, Diana relaxed. Nicholls was
frightening
them. He thought the house was still theirs and, having failed to get T'Gallants by marrying into it, he was hoping to scare Robert into selling it cheap. Poor, bourgeois little man; he wasn't hunting, he was shopping.

You should have enquired of Mr Spettigue, Captain. It doesn't belong to any of us here, it's the property of the woman who served your breakfast this morning.

She saw her reflection smile and then stop smiling as Kempson-Jones's loomed up behind it. He addressed her indulgently as if she were a child. ‘What is out there that pleases you?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Ah.' Again the exchange of glances between him and Robert.