Chapter 4
The next morning, Francesca sat down to her correspondence with the same determination with which she might have settled to needlework, which was to say none at all.
She had slept little, and when she had finally dozed, her mind had been unpardonably busy, arranging and rearranging the previous evening.
She told herself sternly that it was Lord Upton’s dinner which lingered, and her uncle’s anxious looks, and her own vexation at being nudged into a Season when she had no desire to be displayed like a piece of property in a shop-window.
If Arch Manners appeared in the remembrance with inconvenient vividness, that was merely because he had been placed so obligingly in her path, and because he spoke with an aggravating mixture of civility and candour.
A man might be both polite and impertinent—it was an accomplishment, though not one she wished to reward with further thought.
She arranged her blotter and her pen, drew a stack of letters towards her, and forced her attention to settle upon the sensible world.
Her sitting-room in Sir Percival’s Mayfair house was bright with a pale, decisive winter light that made everything look clean and rational, while the fire burned with admirable heartiness.
The first letter was from her great-aunt.
Aunt Mavis’ hand was shaky, her sentences full of affectionate admonition and careful direction, as if she feared Francesca might accidentally wander into ruin between breakfast and dinner.
Aunt Mavis reminded her, with gentle severity, that her mourning had been respected; that her position obliged her to be seen, and her fortune obliged her to be guarded.
Francesca folded the missive again with patience, because she knew her aunt meant well, and because she had loved her since she was a child.
The second letter was from a friend she had had at school in Manchester, who wanted to know whether French lace or English muslin were all the rage, and whether she might attend the latest play by Edmund Kean the following week. Francesca read it, sighed, and set it aside.
The third letter, addressed in a hand she could have recognized in the dark, made her pause with the pen hovering above the blotting-paper.
Thomas Kendall.
The name alone caused a small flutter in her chest—not of fear, but of habit.
Thomas had been part of her life for so long that she sometimes forgot he was not, by blood, a relation.
His father had served hers as solicitor with a gravity that had bordered upon sanctity; Thomas had inherited the position with all the confidence of a man who had inherited the right to speak freely in her presence.
When she had been a girl, she had found his earnestness reassuring.
When grief had made her raw and unsteady, he had been there, precise and unshaken, to tell her what forms must be signed and what bills must be paid and which relations must be answered.
She had leaned upon him, and he had never once given the impression that he might not be entirely safe for her to know.
Now, after one dinner in a London house and one conversation with a too-perceptive soldier, she found herself reading Thomas’s letter more carefully than she ever had before.
My dear Miss Vale, it began, with the respectful affection he had always used, though she had told him, more than once, that she was not a widow of seventy and did not require such formality from a man who had chased her through orchards when they were children.
He wrote of her Warwickshire estates: the new looms installed at Vale Mills, the difficulty of securing good wool at a tolerable price, and the stubbornness of a particular steward who refused to adopt her improvements.
He praised, in his manner, her ‘enlightened concern’ for the factory workers, and spoke approvingly of her intention to adjust wages, to shorten shifts, and to provide cleaner dormitories for those who boarded near the mills.
Francesca felt her shoulders ease a fraction; there was comfort in being understood, and Thomas understood her purpose, at least in words.
Then, in the second page, he mentioned something that made her heart quicken.
There is a gathering tomorrow afternoon, he wrote, at the home of Mr. Tidd in Bloomsbury.
The topic is wages and conditions in the manufactories; several men of sense will attend, and one or two ladies of uncommon courage.
I believe it would suit you better than another tedious rout.
You would be received with respect. If you desire to influence minds that matter, you must sometimes present yourself where minds are gathered.
Francesca read that paragraph twice.
It was not, she told herself, a Society event. It was not Almack’s. It was not a ball. It was, in the most literal sense, a meeting. Men met to speak of matters of consequence all the time; only ladies were expected to pretend that consequence did not exist.
However, she knew very well what Sir Percival would say.
He would say she must not go alone. He would say she must not go at all.
He would say that she had no right to expose herself to such censure merely to make a point, as if such people—who were intent on making the world a better place—were dangerous.
Francesca had made points all her life, and survived the making of them. She would not begin to shrink now.
Her thoughts drifted, unwillingly, to the memory of Arch Manners’ eyes upon her the previous evening. They had been neither warm nor indulgent. Rather, they had been alert, as if he had been trained to look for the second meaning beneath the first.
“I shall go,” she said aloud, and was faintly vexed that her voice sounded as though she were challenging someone.
Nelly, behind her, made a quiet sound that might have been approval or alarm. “To what, miss?”
Francesca kept her eyes on the letter. “A salon,” she said smoothly, “but not a fashionable one.”
Nelly came nearer. She did not pretend not to listen; she had never done so. “Will Sir Percival be attending?”
“No.” Francesca turned her head a little. “I shall go alone, with you to lend me countenance.”
Nelly’s mouth twitched.
“This is Bloomsbury, not a ballroom. It is not an evening party of the Beau Monde.”
“Then you will not take a chaperone,” Nelly said, not as a question.
Francesca tapped the blotting-paper once with her pen. “I shall take you.”
Nelly’s expression softened into something like resignation. “I am honoured, miss, although I believe a maid is not sufficient escort for such company in London.”
“Tush,” Francesca said, keeping her eyes lowered.
By the time afternoon arrived, the decision to go had become a fact, and facts were easier to live with than hesitations.
Francesca dressed with deliberate simplicity: a dark blue gown of good cloth, not new but well cut; a plain bonnet with modest trimming, and gloves that would not advertise her fortune.
Nelly approved of the practicality and yet fussed over details all the same because she could not help herself.
Francesca allowed it because it was a kind of tenderness, and she needed tenderness more than she liked to admit.
“You will not speak of this to Sir Percival,” Francesca said, as Nelly fastened the cloak.
Nelly’s brows lifted. “And when he finds out?”
“He will scold,” Francesca said, with forced cheer, “and I will endure it. He has endured my obstinacy; he may endure it still.”
Nelly did not smile. “If anyone makes you uncomfortable, miss, you will leave at once.”
“If anything is disturbing, we will go,” Francesca agreed.
They left the house with quiet haste, hoping they would not encounter Sir Percival, though he spent most days at Parliament or his club.
Francesca had her own carriage, of course, yet she instructed the coachman to set them down a street away from the address, because she did not wish to arrive like a grande dame come to patronize a cause.
She wanted, for once, to be merely Francesca Vale, a woman with ideas and the means to put them into practice.
Bloomsbury received her with a different air than Mayfair.
The streets were narrower, the houses respectable but not ostentatious, the noise less glittering and more human.
She saw women with baskets on their arms; she saw the occasional gentleman hurrying with his collar turned up against the cold.
There was none of the languid entitlement of fashionable London. There was, instead, a sense of purpose.
Mr. Tidd’s home was a tall brick house with steps worn slightly at the edges. Francesca’s stomach fluttered with the strange sensation of entering a room where she might be welcomed for herself.
A maid admitted them and took their cloaks.
Francesca followed the sound of voices to a drawing room that had been cleared of the usual furniture to make space for chairs arranged in a half-circle.
A table at the back held tea and biscuits.
The room smelled of warm bodies and the coal fire.
The people within were not the sorts she had met in Lord Upton’s dining room.
There were gentlemen, yes, but not gentlemen with polished smiles and ambitions.
These were gentlemen with ink-stained fingers: men whose coats were good but not exquisite; men who looked as though they worked for a living.
There were a few women scattered among them too: one older lady with spectacles; another woman of perhaps Francesca’s age, dressed plainly, her hair arranged in a neat chignon; and a third with an infant asleep against her shoulder, as if she had refused to let motherhood prevent her from greater purpose.
Francesca felt, unexpectedly, her shoulders ease.
Someone noticed her at once. An older bespectacled gentleman rose, his face brightening good-naturedly. He appeared to have recognized her. “Miss Vale?”