The Sparks Fly Upward (3 page)

Beautifully, he'd smiled. ‘So do I. But I want you, too.'

Oh, undoubtedly one of God's anointed. With charm.

‘Surely you will not subscribe to this appalling display, Heilbron?' Deedes was asking now.

Stephen Heilbron looked tenderly towards the rippling dance floor. ‘I fear I should be no ornament to Vanity Fair. Instead, I shall beg Miss Philippa to accompany me in a turn around the garden.'

Philippa laid her hand on his sleeve. ‘With your permission, Mama.'

‘Time you had that young woman married, Makepeace,' yelled Lady Gladmain as the couple walked away.

‘Ain't found anybody worthy enough yet,' Makepeace told her.
One in the eye for you, you harpy.
Gladmain's son had offered for Philippa and been refused.

‘Preserve us from worthy old maids is what I say,' Gladmain slung back.

Makepeace disengaged from the skirmish. No use saying that she did not, thank God, belong to the circle that married its daughters off, willing or unwillling; Lady Gladmain knew she didn't. The
haut monde
had come to accept Makepeace because she was rich and favored by Lord Ffoulkes and now old enough to be considered as an eccentric but she did not belong to it. No use saying, either, that one had as much chance of persuading Philippa into something she didn't want to do as shifting the Rock of Gibraltar.

None of this bothered Makepeace much, but it struck her now that Philippa, at twenty-six, was undoubtedly the oldest unmarried female at the ball. Immersed in her own grief, she had not, until this moment, considered the matter.

She watched her daughter leave the room with Heilbron. As ever, Philippa was dressed to avoid attention rather than attract it but the new simplicity suited her; her gown's low-cut white gauze over silk showed to advantage the fine, almost olive-tinged skin she'd inherited from her father. Nothing could persuade her mousy hair to curl but it had been piled neatly into a smooth and shining top-knot decorated with pearls.

Whether she could be regarded as pretty depended on how well you knew her; first acquaintances tended to think her plain—and, indeed, as a child her face had resembled that of a small and studious camel—but, given time, they could be astonished by a smile, a turn of the head, that took the breath.

When Jenny was returned to her chair, panting and exuberant, Makepeace kept her voice low and asked a question she should have asked before. ‘Philippa's happy enough, ain't she?'

Jenny thought about it. ‘There's no saying with Pippy, Ma, but I reckon she took a tumble over Lord Ffoulkes's marriage. When we got his note telling us about it, she looked poorly all day.'

‘She loves
Andrew
?'

Jenny was wriggling on her seat. ‘Don't quiz me, Ma, I don't know, I just wondered. If you remember, it was immediately after Andrew's wedding to poor Miss Tate that Pippy went abroad.'

‘So she did.' Makepeace began connecting events. Receiving the news of this most recent marriage, Philippa had shown her usual equanimity but had soon after gone to her room with a headache. And nearly four years ago, when Ffoulkes had married a wispy little twig of the nobility, Philippa had set out on the Grand Tour with friends less than a week after the wedding.

Poor little Lady Ffoulkes had died in childbirth, with the baby, nine months later.

She should've nabbed him then
, Makepeace thought irritably, aghast at her own lack of perspicacity. But Philippa wasn't a nabber. She'd stayed on with some people in France, only returning to comfort her mother when Andra was killed.

 

 

IT was bitterly cold outside but Heilbron had fetched her wrap. Together they stood by one of the burning braziers with which Ffoulkes had lined the terraces that tiered his steep garden.

‘Did you receive my letter?' Heilbron asked. His voice was usually melodious; she'd heard it move a meeting to tears but at the moment, bless him, it cracked with tension.

‘Yes.' Philippa indicated the tiny pocket attached by velvet strings to her left wrist. In fact, it contained three letters, among them the one from Andrew Ffoulkes telling her of his marriage. The other two had arrived that morning.

‘And what is to be my answer?'

She could hear the crunch of wheels breaking puddled ice as carriages took playgoers and revelers home along Piccadilly at the top of the hill.
Time's winged chariots hurrying near
, she thought,
and all before us lie deserts of vast eternity
.

Marvell might have been writing for her.
You ain't getting any younger, Philippa Dapifer.

She had received several proposals in her time; some of the best families in England, even one or two in France, had found her an eligible choice for their sons, being prepared to overlook her mother's lack of breeding in return for her money. Her suitors had proclaimed their love, had sworn to make her happy and compared her to various flowers.

Stephen's letter had told her he loved her but had dwelled more on his passion for God than his passion for her; he had nothing to give her, he said, but the satisfaction of being his comrade-in-arms against the world's evils.

She found it a better offer than any—and from a better man than any of her previous suitors.

‘Philippa?'

She looked up at the cold stars and went over the equation again to make sure she had it right; she took comfort in stars and mathematics.

Accept this good, good man and she'd be saved from the humiliating minus of waiting for someone who kept marrying other people. Saved from that most despised of human conditions, elderly spinster-hood. Plus she would have a worthy husband, a
very
worthy husband, and, most of all, she would have children. The thought of life without children had become intolerable.

Plus, she would be of use. Stephen would gain her person and her fortune in his fight against slavery, the greatest cause any man had ever undertaken.

This would equal a profitable life for them both.

It worked out very well. The only missing factor was love, but there was no point in including that.

‘Yes, Stephen, thank you,' she said, ‘I shall be happy to marry you.'

He crowed for a moment, laughing, before he bent to kiss her. The smell of the herbs in which his valet kept his clothes enfolded her, some combination that reminded her of incense. She thought of their marriage bed. She had factored it into the equation—how else to have children?—and tried to give it a low quotient. After all, Stephen lusted after Heaven more than the flesh. And he would be away a lot.

Bless him, he was telling her how happy he was; how fortunate in her tranquillity, the sense of peace she inspired in him, her modesty . . .

You don't know me at all
, she thought.
Pray God you never will. I am a stricken, turbulent, calculating bitch who would run off with Andrew Ffoulkes this minute if he asked. Which he won't. But you shall have what fraction of my heart is left to you. You will not be shortchanged, dear man. I
shall
love you.

She kissed him back with energy. ‘We'd better go in and tell Ma,' she said.

 

 

THE voice on Makepeace's left cranked on in the rising and falling cadences parsons learned at preaching school. ‘. . . were my sister to be seized by a strange man and subjected to his embraces and canterings, indeed I should not. I confess surprise that Lord Ffoulkes should introduce this foreign contagion to our shores ...'

Shut up
, thought Makepeace,
shut
up.

‘Indeed, I would say obscene. Were I not a guest, I should be forced ...'

The lifeline was elderly and missing a tooth or two but unhesitatingly Makepeace put out her hand to grasp it. ‘Certanmon, monsewer. ' Anything, anything.

As they approached the other dancers, she held back, shocked at herself: ‘Better not. I don't know how to waltz.'

‘Leave it to me, madame.'

A firm hand on her back pressured her into the sway, a cracked, once-elegant shoe gently nudged one of her feet back and to the side, then the other . . . they were off.

Her mind still on her eldest daughter, Makepeace asked dully: ‘Have you got children?'

‘One son, madame.' The little French face twisted. ‘No, two,
two
. For me, always two. But the elder went to the guillotine last year.'

He had her attention now. He was a valiant little bugger; he wouldn't let her grieve for him. He said, ‘Now we dance and think only of the dance.'

She smiled and had a second to think,
This will ruin the dancing-master trade; it's so easy
, before the pleasure of movement swooped and carried her away. So long, so
long
, since she'd been held; her skin was grateful for the touch of even this elderly hand. She was young again; there was no guilt, just memories. Under the white blaze of candlelight, Makepeace Hedley danced to the sweetness of past chimes.

She found herself crying. She smiled: ‘It's been a long time.'

There were tears on the lifeline's cheeks. ‘I, too,' he said, ‘At Versailles. '

They waltzed on in perfect understanding.

When they paused, waiting for the next turn, she discovered that he was the Marquis de Barigoule and the least irritating émigré she'd encountered so far. His conversation was less about his wrongs at the hands of the revolutionaries than his gratitude to the English for taking him in. The brocade of the rubbed waistcoat he wore over a shirt of sacking had once been remarkably fine. He still wore his hair powdered; she wondered how he could afford the flour.

‘What do you do now?' she asked. It was the most fascinating thing about the émigrés, how they coped with their fall.

‘I give dancing classes.'

‘Your pupils are fortunate.'

She approved of him; there were too many who couldn't or wouldn't adapt. Makepeace had known poverty as bad as theirs and had no time for the young and fit who took the government's shilling a day and shivered complainingly in their attics. Exiles like this one and the Comtesse de Guéry, who'd discovered an unsuspected talent for making ices and was doing a roaring trade in them, were people who were prepared to roll up their sleeves—these were a breed after her own heart.

He had only one grumble.

‘Tiss?' She had trouble with his accent and its occasional whistle.

‘Teess.' He grimaced to show the gaps. ‘In the haste to get away, they were lost,
quel désastre
. Beautiful tiss
en porcelaine.
Do you know the work of M de Chemant? A dentist of genius.'

If the man made china teeth that fitted, he must be. Such English as were both rich and dentally unfortunate were ever complaining that teeth taken from the dead rotted too quickly. Makepeace smiled again, showing teeth that were her own and very nearly perfect.

The Marquis stood on tiptoe so that his mouth could approach her ear. ‘Poor De Chemant, he is still in France,' he whispered through a cloud of bad breath. ‘Some of us have asked Lord Ffoulkes to save him.' He stood back.

Makepeace stopped smiling.

De Barigoule said: ‘A fine young man, Lord Ffoulkes. He talks of you as a mother.'

‘He was my first husband's ward,' Makepeace said, vaguely.

On the way back to her table, Ffoulkes himself came up to claim her for the next dance. ‘Fun, ain't it? Never thought to see you waltzing, missus.'

‘Me, neither,' she said, shortly. ‘Andrew, what are you about letting everybody know what you lads get up to in France?'

‘Who said so?'

‘That Froggy just now.'

He looked around, ‘Oh, de Barigoule? One of last year's deliveries. Can't help that, missus. Packages are bound to know the postman.'

‘They don't have to yap about it; Robespierre's got spies everywhere. ' She herself only knew of Andrew's and his friends' secret activities—they called themselves The League—because a fishing boat they were using to bring some aristocrats back from Cherbourg had gotten blown off course and landed at Start Point. It was in Makepeace's interest to be informed of the movement of all craft along that stretch of South Devon coast, and she was.

It turned out, somewhat irritatingly, that Philippa had known all along of the existence of The League and what it was up to.

‘Andrew. I want you to stop now.'

‘Goin' to, missus. League's being wound up. No more adventurin', I fear. Benedick the married man, me. What d'ye think of Félicie, eh? Approve?'

‘Very pretty.' Indeed, the little figurine she'd had been introduced to a day or two before was unbelievably lovely. Makepeace, always prejudiced against the French aristocracy, had been overcritical. ‘The female made me feel I was baa-ing at her like a damn sheep,' she'd told Philippa afterwards. In the company of her husband and her peers Félicie overdid the pathos; in the company of lesser mortals, like Makepeace herself, she kept an uninterested distance.

‘Give her time, Ma. England's new to her and she's just lost everything.'

‘She's gained Andrew.' Félicie couldn't be luckier than that.

Makepeace had loved him from the first, a motherless, miserable but brave six-year-old who'd just lost his father. And he'd come to love her—she was always better with boys than girls. Neither had disappointed the other over the years.

Except now
, she thought.
Why didn't you marry Philippa
?