Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
How has this occasion already arrived?
The invitation had come three weeks before, and William had accepted it because at the time, it had served to accept it.
Sir Henry Merrivale held a considerable share in the Liverpool shipping market. The dinner would include two of the other main investors and was the kind of evening at which a great deal could be accomplished. They would share ideas over port, which could not be accomplished in any office.
He had ridden out of London that morning.
It was twenty-six miles to Merrivale Park, through the long flat fields of the smaller counties.
He had set out early enough to arrive in the late afternoon, with time to wash and change and read once through his notes on the freight questions before the bell rang for dinner.
The ride will clear my head, he told himself.
He had ridden twenty-six miles thinking of the same four things he had been thinking of for five days, and his head was no clearer. He arrived at Merrivale Park with those four things arranged in precisely the order he had set out with.
In the inner pocket of his coat, tucked against his heart, was a letter from Anne that he had not yet opened.
He had told himself he would read it in the morning.
In the morning, he had told himself he would read it after breakfast. After breakfast, he received a letter from his steward and then a visitor.
Then he had to pack for the journey, and the letter had somehow, without him quite intending it, gone into the pocket of his traveling coat and stayed there.
It was there now, hot against his chest. He had been aware of it for the entire ride.
I will read it tonight, before I go to bed, he promised himself.
He arrived at Merrivale’s door, and the footman took his hat. Merrivale himself was coming down the hall, with his hand extended and his face composed into the expression of a man greeting, with exactly the correct degree of warmth, a valuable connection.
“Your Grace! My dear fellow. You have made excellent time.”
“Merrivale.”
“Come, come. Lady Merrivale is in the drawing room. You will wish to greet her before you go up. The Carstairs have already arrived. Hollis is delayed, but we expect him within the hour.”
“Very good,” William said.
“You will forgive us a little domestic chaos. My eldest is home from Eton.”
“Not at all.”
He followed Merrivale down the long paneled hall.
The house was handsome, a well-kept early Georgian building. Family portraits hung in the correct places, and a very fine Turkish carpet ran the length of the hall.
William found himself thinking it was precisely the house he would have designed for himself ten years ago, if anyone had asked him to describe the house of a successful man. His own manor was devoid of such portraiture.
Lady Merrivale rose from her chair as they entered the drawing room. She was a handsome woman of perhaps forty, in a gown of pale grey silk. She gave William her hand, and he bowed over it.
“Your Grace. We are so pleased you could come.”
“Lady Merrivale. The pleasure is mine.”
“I trust the roads were not too dreadful. I was afraid the rain would make them terribly muddy.”
“Entirely tolerable. Thank you.”
“I am so glad.”
She indicated a chair. He took it. Sir Henry took another. Lady Merrivale went back to her own.
A small silence fell, precisely the kind that fell over drawing rooms where all the necessary civilities had been exchanged and no one had yet thought of the next thing to say.
“A glass of sherry, Your Grace?”
“Thank you. Yes.”
Sir Henry nodded at the footman. The footman went away.
“Henry tells me,” Lady Merrivale said, “that you have come expressly from London for this evening. I hope we have not inconvenienced you.”
“Not in the least. I had business of my own in this direction.”
To clear my damn mind.
“Ah. I am glad.”
The Carstairs joined them shortly.
Mr. Carstairs was a bluff, heavy man with a Lancashire accent that he had not bothered to smooth away as he became wealthier in commerce.
Mrs. Carstairs was his polar opposite, small and quick and sharp-eyed.
They brought into the drawing room a certain amount of noise, for which William found himself, for no reason he could have named, grateful.
Hollis arrived twenty minutes later.
“A lame horse is to blame for my tardiness,” he said as they made their way to the dining room. “Terribly muddy.”
“That’s just what I was afraid of.” Lady Merrivale shook her head.
The dining room was long and low-ceilinged, lit by eight silver candelabras and a row of sconces along the wall. There were eight at the table, the three couples, William, and the Merrivales’ eldest, a boy of about fifteen called Edmund.
Edmund had been seated opposite William. He was a well-made boy, fair like his mother. He bowed his head as he came in, took his seat without being told, and did not say a single word during the soup course.
“Edmund has made the Upper School,” Sir Henry said over the fish course.
“Congratulations,” William said to the boy. “That is grand.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“I was at Eton myself. A while back,” William said as he set his shoulders back and looked at the boy.
“Yes, Your Grace. Papa has told me,” he replied, his mouth tight as he forced a polite smile.
“And what are you reading at present?”
“The Aeneid, Your Grace.”
“Ah. Book?”
“Six, Your Grace,” he answered quickly.
“The descent.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” he said, his eyes now just meeting William’s.
There was a small pause.
The boy waited with the steady courtesy of a well-drilled child to see whether he was required to say anything further. When it became apparent that he was not, he looked down and returned to his fish.
William set down his wineglass. He looked absently at Lady Merrivale. She was talking easily with Mr. Carstairs about a house in Cheshire he had recently bought. She was smiling, a perfectly pleasant smile. She had not looked once at her son since they had come into the room, which William noticed.
“The new frames from Platt Brothers,” Sir Henry was saying. “Ring spinning. I tell you, Hollis, the throughput is not to be believed. One girl minding twice the spindles she could manage on the old mule.”
“And the quality?”
“As good. Better, in the finer counts.”
“Remarkable.”
“It is the future of the trade. I do not say that lightly.”
The conversation at the head of the table proceeded in this way—competent, informed, entirely about the Lancashire concern—through the fish and well into the main course.
At the foot of the table, Lady Merrivale was addressing Mrs. Carstairs across a low arrangement of late roses.
“And did you hear about poor Augusta Pemberley?”
“I received a letter from her sister only last week. She is not at all well, I understand.”
“Not at all. The doctor was very gloomy, I am told.”
“Dreadful.”
“One does not like to say it, but I do not think she will see another summer.”
“Elinor,” Mr. Carstairs interjected mildly from across his wife, “not over the fish, perhaps.”
“The fish is gone, George. We are well into the main course.”
The two conversations resumed again and did not intersect. They ran parallel, like two wheels of a carriage turning in perfect time, neither troubling the other.
Edmund, seated between his mother and his father at the long side of the table, ate his meal in silence.
William watched him cut his meat into neat, small pieces, each the same size as the last. He watched him wait between bites, with his hands folded in his lap, in the way of a boy who had been taught at some point that one did not slouch.
“Sit up, Edmund,” Lady Merrivale ordered, without breaking the thread of her own conversation, nor quite looking at him.
“Yes, Mother.”
He is already sitting up, William wanted to tell her.
The boy sat up a fraction further.
“… and she had taken such pains with the invitations, poor thing. Quite mortifying, I should imagine, to have to withdraw at the last…” Mrs. Merrivale droned on.
The boy’s face was perfectly composed. He was not unhappy. He was not, as far as William could discern, anything in particular. He was only there, sitting correctly, eating his dinner, waiting for the meal to be over.
For some reason, it bothered William.
“The capital outlay is considerable, Sir Henry,” Hollis was saying. “Has the group discussed the matter in full?”
“At length. Twice. We are of the mind that the moment favors the bold.”
Favors the bold…
A small image flashed unbidden through William’s mind. Celia, a fortnight ago, at his own table, standing up on her chair to reach a dish of strawberries that had been placed too far from her. She had been gently reproved by Anne, who had said, “Celia, darling, sit. I shall pass them to you.”
And sitting down with great dignity, Celia had said, “Very well, Anne, but I wished the reader to understand my grievance.”
Felicity’s laugh had followed, her genuine laugh, the one from the boat on the Thames. “The reader, Celia. Are we a novel now?”
“We are always a novel, Felicity. Do try to keep up.”
He had felt Anne’s hand cover his own under the tablecloth, squeezing once and withdrawing, because all four of them had been laughing together.
He looked at Edmund again.
“Mr. Edmund,” he said quietly.
It was the first word he had said to the boy since the soup course.
Edmund turned his head. “Your Grace?”
“Do you care for the lamb?”
“It is very good, Your Grace. Thank you.”
Edmund returned to cutting the meat. William let a moment pass. Neither parent had noticed the exchange, neither of the parallel wheels had so much as slowed.
“Have you read anything else of interest lately? At school, perhaps.”
A small hesitation. Edmund glanced almost imperceptibly at his mother, who was still rambling on, and then at his father, as though to verify that speaking was permissible. Neither noticed.
“We are also reading Caesar, Your Grace. The Gallic Wars,” the boy answered.