The Silver Touch (25 page)

He hurried across to lean in front of her and open the door wide. As she went through he looked into her eyes again. ‘I look forward to our next meeting.’

In the hall her mother was coming downstairs. ‘Did all go well, Letticia? Mr Clarke didn’t get too impatient, did he?’

There was a certain smugness in her daughter’s smile. ‘Quite the reverse. The contact hasn’t been lost. In fact I would say it has been cemented.’

In her own mind Letticia was congratulating herself. She had always known she would attract the right man to her when she found him. What she had not expected was to be stirred herself as she had never been before, a disturbing element when above all else she needed to keep a cool and calculating head. Too much eagerness on a girl’s part could bring about a loss of male interest, something she had seen happen to friends who had let their hearts run away with them. Richard was older and therefore more astute than most of the beaux she had attracted to her, the exception being a few of the officers from the armoury whose very careers had eliminated them from the start as far as she was concerned, however handsome and well-to-do some of them had been. She wanted a husband who would always be with her, not one dashing off to foreign battles, and it was her considered opinion that Richard Clarke filled all the requirements she had long ago listed for the partner of her choice which included the ability to support a wife in comfort. Not for her the hard work and scrimping and saving that her mother had known. She intended to have much more from life.

John was well pleased with the order for gold watch-chains that he received from Richard. Many of his contacts had begun with simple orders and had led to much more. As soon as he had seen the young goldsmith off the premises he went to tell Hester what had ensued. That same night he had a recurrence of the dreadful coughing that had afflicted him earlier in the day. It racked him until he was bathed in sweat and twice Hester had to fetch him a fresh night-shirt to put on. Her herbal drink finally worked its soothing effect and he slept but in the morning he was still tired, as well as aching across the back and shoulders and in his arms from the exertions of the previous day. He rested until noon, coughed a little when he rose to get dressed and then the worst was over.

‘You’ll be as right as ninepence soon,’ Hester said cheerfully, when she dressed his hands and saw there was no sign of infection.

‘Of course I will,’ he agreed with equal enthusiasm. He did not tell her that after his spell of noon coughing he had found specks of blood on the linen rag he had held to his mouth. At the first opportunity he burned it and hoped that her healing potion would stop such a thing happening again.

He was certainly better in the nights that followed and gradually under her ministrations the cough faded away even as his hands healed. During this period, Richard called at the house several times, once to enquire after John’s injuries and on another occasion to collect the handkerchief from Letticia which had somehow been overlooked on his previous visits. Each time he talked to her for a while, took a stroll with her around the garden or along the lane and again drank tea, but with Hester presiding. Letticia gnawed her lip with frustration every time he left, unable to see that any progress had been made, fearful that he might yet meet someone else more attractive to him and not return to 107, Bunhill Row again. Always demanding, she had never been easy to live with and the new rise and fall of her moods frequently disrupted the harmony of the household.

Sunk in despair, not having seen a sign of Richard for nearly three weeks, she shut herself in the bedchamber she shared with Ann and failed to join in the interest of everyone else in the arrival of wagonloads of servants and baggage at the Esdaile mansion. Later she did take a peep and saw that indoor shutters had been folded back and windows thrown wide as a bustle of activity made the place ready for the owner’s arrival. Remembering what Richard had said about Mary Esdaile’s displeasure, she wondered if Mr Esdaile would be there on his own. In spite of her own misery, her curiosity was aroused.

Nine

Mary Esdaile arrived at her Bunhill Row residence late one evening in anything but a good mood. A big-boned, boisterous young woman with a round, open face framed with rebellious carrot-red hair that was difficult to keep in order, she strode into the mansion, ribbons streaming from her hat, and turned a thunderous look on her surroundings.

Three sets of double doors stood open and the illumined rooms beyond gleamed with silk panels and newly covered and gilded furniture, much of the latter from a cabinet-maker James had discovered with the name of Chippendale. All the refurbishing was dazzling, which made everything all the more infuriating. She had hoped to make her wishes for the house’s alterations such an outrageous expense that James would abandon it and build somewhere, for almost the same price, where the hunting and shooting were to her liking, for she was never happier than when on horseback or trudging moors with her skirts pinned up and dogs at her heels. Instead he had called her bluff and this was the result. She and her babies were to be installed for the summer months of every year in a place that was not her idea of the countryside, having the city within easy reach — part of his argument in its favour since he must be in touch with business matters — and traffic passing the door. If he had not given Great Gains and its estate away to the son of his first marriage, she could have spent the summers there in idyllic isolation.

She hated city life, having been reared in the countryside, and was more at home with farming folk and stable-boys than London society, however well she conducted herself there. Everything she had loved had been left behind when her father’s parliamentary ambitions had settled him and his family in Clerkenwell. She had seen her sister wed, but her down-to-earth attitude and her fierce independence had kept suitors at bay until James had taken a determined fancy to her.

He had followed her into the house and was handing his hat and cane to a servant. ‘Well?’ he asked her, ‘what do you think of it?’

She slewed her glittering green eyes over her shoulder at him. ‘It’s all perfect,’ she ground out between her teeth.

He ignored her show of displeasure. Not easily riled, he could tolerate her tempers, for he knew his power over her. The chink in her armour was that, apart from being a good-natured woman, she had a rough sense of humour that matched his own and it was often through bawdy exchanges and rollicking horseplay that he got the better of her. From the start he had intended to have his way over this house, whatever tactics he would have to counter. ‘I knew you’d like it when you got here,’ he said cheerfully, pretending to have misread her answer. ‘Don’t I always know what’s best for you, my love?’

Rounding on him, she gave him a violent push in the chest. ‘Oh, if I had a field-gun in my hands now I’d pepper you with shot!’

He gave a great bellow of mirth. She grabbed up her skirts and began to run up the staircase, he in hot pursuit. As she ran she began to laugh, never able to stay angry for long and in any case the battle was not over yet. She could raise some new objections before the summer came round again.

Reaching her bedchamber door, she entered intending to slam it shut, but he was too quick for her, pitting his strength against hers, both of them laughing. She released the door and he bounded in, pitching her backwards with his weight until they fell together amid the cushions and draperies of the Chippendale bed, causing the ostrich plumes on the canopy’s dome to sway as if in a high wind.

‘I’ll get my will over this house yet,’ she warned riotously, throwing her hat aside, heedless that it went skeetering into a far corner of the room.

He lay across her, looking down into her amused, defiant face, well aware that she meant what she said, her will as stubborn as his own. ‘Not all the time there’s breath in my body!’

She lifted her arms and linked them about his neck. It was tussling with him over endless matters, verbally and physically, that made being married to him such a pleasure. Any other man would have bored her. The difference of eighteen years between them was immaterial to her. With his broad chest and thighs like tree-trunks, he was more attractive to her than any younger man would have been and none could have challenged his prowess as a lover. Yet if ever she had to choose between his company and the wide hills and woods and valleys of the countryside there would be no hesitation in her decision.

‘You’ll never master me,’ she taunted boastfully, ‘not in a thousand years.’

‘We’ll see,’ he replied drily, a wrinkle of high amusement at the corner of his eyes.

By next morning everyone in the vicinity was aware that the Esdailes were in residence and within days the pattern of their existence became known. He went almost daily to the city in his big rumbling coach, returning to dine at three, while she spent her time playing with her little children as noisily and as uninhibited as if she were a child herself, or went riding on a spirited mare, taking off at a gallop across Bunhill fields and being away for hours on end. Hester had glimpsed her several times but had seen no sign of James, when one evening an invitation came. John read it through and made the announcement in the parlour, only the two girls being present with Hester, the boys already in bed.

‘We four have been invited to a dancing party and supper at the mansion by the Esdailes.’

Hester put the flat of her hands together in pleased surprise. ‘When is it to be?’

‘In three weeks’ time.’

Letticia, who had showed little interest in anything since Richard had failed to reappear, felt her spirits lift slightly. A new setting and the attention of other men would be some balm to her hurt pride. ‘Is that long enough to have something new made to wear?’

‘It’s time in plenty and I think Ann and I should have new gowns too.’

Ann, curled up in a wing-chair with a book, lowered it in dismay. She liked gatherings of close friends, but large parties and balls peopled by strangers were not to her taste at all. ‘Do I have to go?’

Letticia scowled across at her impatiently. ‘Don’t be such a mouse, Ann! It would be ill-mannered not to accept. Of course you must go.’

Hester nodded endorsement with a preoccupied air. So she was to see James again. He would scarcely remember her. It was obvious that he and his wife had decided to invite the neighbourhood to an informal social occasion out of courtesy. This conclusion was confirmed when Joss and Alice called in half an hour later to say that they had also been invited to the party. But as the days went by it became known locally that only the adult Batemans had been singled out for the honour and the rest of the guests would be coming from London and not-too-distant country estates.

John raised a gently mocking eyebrow at Hester. ‘You must have made a great impression on Esdaile the day you met him. Joss was still an apprentice then but Esdaile has taken the trouble to find out that the owner of Number 85 is your married son.’

She uttered a little laugh to hide her embarrassment. It was foolish to think of the kiss after all this time and she was relieved that she had never mentioned it to John. He might imagine it retained some importance for James or, worse still and just as erroneously, for her. ‘Whatever the cause, Letticia is the most cheered by it. She changes her mind about how to dress her hair for that evening a dozen times a day.’

In the sewing-room a dressmaker and her apprentice were hard at work making up the fabrics that had been chosen: jade silk for Hester, white ribboned muslin for Letticia and primrose satin for Ann. A fourth fabric of rose satin was for Alice, for Joss felt she should have a new gown too. All four garments, with their own variations, were to be in the current mode of tight bodices with low-cut square or deep oval necklines and elbow-length sleeves. The skirts, which were very full, hung straight back and front and were extended widely over hinged iron hoops at the sides, a quirk of fashion that Hester discarded in the workshop or on country walks, or anywhere else where comfort was more important than this French-dictated mode. She sometimes wondered why her fellow countrymen and women, who generally abhorred France and the French as a result of many bitter years of war, should follow the Parisian fashions so slavishly and buy smuggled wine and lace and Lyonese silk without the least clash of principles. For herself, she had learned tolerance in many fields since her marriage to John. So much that was good in him had had its effect on her, for he could weigh any situation and see virtues and faults on both sides, even in the latest conflicts with France.

There was only one sphere in which she wondered if he had an Achilles heel and that was in her own progress as a goldsmith. He was always generous with praise, never tardy with comments on what was a particularly good finished workpiece, and yet there were times when, with that special empathy that existed between them, she sensed an uncertainty in him as if his male ego was being undermined by her achievements being equal to his. If she really wanted to pinpoint its beginnings, she could date it back to the time just prior to Joss starting his apprenticeship when he had praised her little snuff-box on the bench as one of the best his father had ever made. With every nerve in her body she had felt John’s recoil and the sensation was embedded in her memory.

The final stitching of the gowns was done and the last length of hem pressed on the morning of the event which dawned hot and sunny. The evening retained a balmy warmth enabling the Bateman women, escorted by John and Joss, to wear the flimsiest of silk gauze shawls about their shoulders as they covered the few yards to the mansion.

Ann alone felt cold and shivery, which was due to apprehension, her self-confidence undermined by her apparel. She had chosen the primrose satin against both her mother’s and her sister’s advice because it was such a pretty shade and one in which she felt she could achieve her aim of looking her best, but quite unobtrusively. At the first fitting she had realized her mistake. The yellow hue heightened the sallowness of her complexion and in her opinion she had never looked worse. Her mother, guessing her disappointment, had suggested changing the matching lace to white for edging the neckline and frothing in a falling cuff from the sleeves. It had helped a little, but to her eyes she still looked as if she were cut out of old parchment from head to toe and she disliked the way Letticia had scooped her soft brown hair into the style called Pompadour with crimped curls that did not suit her in the least. The paralysing shyness of her childhood had returned as it sometimes did in the face of a social ordeal and her morale was at its lowest ebb as she walked with Letticia past the long line of coaches taking turn in letting the passengers alight at the porch steps of the mansion.

Hester, crossing the threshold and surrendering her shawl to one of the waiting maidservants, marvelled to herself at the complete transformation of the hall while regretting the loss of the old panelling that had given it a quiet charm. The walls were now hung with golden damask, the ceiling richly ornamented and even the staircase changed to a more graceful curve with a metal balustrade of anthemion pattern. As she and John turned towards the ballroom door she saw that the tapestries originally there had been replaced by panels of an apricot satin ground with a pattern of lyres, baskets and crowns of white roses which was echoed in the upholstery of the gilded furniture.

Then she sighted James and his wife welcoming their guests just a few seconds before he saw her, enabling her to assess his appearance after the lapse of time. He had put on weight, but his stature was such that he bore it well; his complexion was more ruddy, although that could have been a trick of his snow-white tie-wig, which suited him as did his ivory silk coat with its gold thread embroidery. As for his wife, she was certainly a credit to him in her evening elegance. Her pearly bosom, the mound of the right breast ornamented with a star-shaped patch, rose alluringly from the rigid bodice, displaying to full advantage her magnificent necklace of sapphire and diamonds that matched ear-drops in her lobes. Her gown was of silver brocade with panniers twice the width of Hester’s as the height of fashion decreed.

‘Mr and Mrs John Bateman.’

Hester drew in her breath as the announcement of their arrival was heralded out. James turned his head sharply, almost as if he had been waiting for this moment. His smile widened, creasing the sides of his face, and his gaze absorbed her as she approached in her jade silken gown at her husband’s side, her burnished hair drawn back from her face, a single strand of pearls tight and high about her long white throat.

‘My dear Hester!’ he exclaimed as if they were lifelong friends, startling John even more than her by this intimate greeting. ‘What a pleasure to see you again and to meet your husband.’ The sincerity in his voice rang through as he addressed John directly. ‘I bid you welcome to my house, sir. May this be the first of many visits.’

John was struck by the genuine bonhomie he recognized in the man. It would be hard not to like such a fellow and he did like him, in spite of the extraordinary lapse of good manners in a greeting to Hester that had been tantamount to an embrace. ‘You do me honour, sir.’

‘Allow me to present my wife.’ James drew Mary’s attention to the new arrivals and she responded with a warmth that matched her husband’s, her mind lively with curiosity. So this was the silversmith’s spouse whom he had talked about. His excuse about wanting to be neighbourly to the Bateman family had deceived her no more than it would have done any other wife with her wits about her. James was attracted to this lovely-looking woman, probably more than he was prepared to admit to himself. She felt no jealousy. There was no cause. In the circles in which she moved it was easy to spot the women who offered danger and Hester did not come into that category, except unwittingly in this case.