Chapter 14 #2
The question, for once, was not absurd.
Francesca immediately thought of Harcourt, which annoyed her.
He was polished to the point of danger and agreed with her too readily to be wholly trusted.
Yet if the dinner were to be shaped around reform as something intelligent rather than alarming, he would be of use.
She thought, too, of younger gentlemen in the Commons who had spoken cautiously on wages, corn, and manufactory discipline—gentlemen without glamour but perhaps with conscience enough to matter.
She could not name them impulsively. “I should like to consider,” she said slowly, “and consult with Sir Percival.”
Lady Upton nodded at once. “Excellent. He will know who can be trusted to dine without becoming tiresome.”
Lady Upton, perhaps sensing some shift in her protégée’s silence, did not press. Instead, she rose with sudden, alarming energy and crossed to the bell-pull. “There. That is settled.”
“Settled?” Francesca repeated.
“The guest list is not, but what comes first certainly is.”
“What might that be?” Francesca was afraid to hear the answer.
Lady Upton pulled the bell with the firm conviction of a woman summoning not a servant but destiny. “Your wardrobe.”
Francesca blinked. “My wardrobe?”
“Yes. Your toilette must be à la mode if you are to host important ladies at table without allowing them to think you have inherited only money and no judgement.”
“Surely what I say will matter more than what I wear?”
Lady Upton turned and looked at her as if such innocence ought to be preserved in glass. “My dear,” she said, “what you wear determines whether they are prepared to hear what you say.”
That was, Francesca thought grimly, probably true. Truth was forever lending itself to dreadful causes.
The butler appeared in answer to the summons.
“Send for the carriage again,” Lady Upton said.
Francesca rose more slowly than her preceptress had done. “Now?”
“Immediately. We must beat the rush.”
“Rush?”
“Modistes are reserved years in advance. Years, Francesca. Births, deaths, and marriages may all be uncertain, but a lady of purpose secures her fittings in advance of what is certain. Thankfully, Madame Monique is always willing to oblige me.”
Francesca had seen enough in the last fortnight to believe that the whole of London must be willing to oblige Lady Upton, no matter what she required.
“Do not look so startled. It was a matter of silk, diplomacy, and another lady’s appalling taste. I resolved it to the satisfaction of all involved and, in addition to my customary standing, was promised eternal gratitude, which I shall now claim in muslin and silk.”
This was said with such calm authority that it became impossible for Francesca to resist smiling.
“I begin to think that no one in London does anything without owing or being owed in some form or another.”
Lady Upton’s eyes gleamed. “At last, my dear, you are learning how to go on.”
They departed within the half-hour, Lady Upton armed with calling cards, intentions, and a list already half-formed in her mind of colours, fabrics, and social events, which she expounded upon.
The carriage rolled through the late-afternoon streets while her ladyship discoursed upon the uses of clothing with the same seriousness that Lord Upton probably reserved for parliamentary tactics.
Francesca sat opposite and listened with the same baffled respect she might have accorded a foreign military theory. It was ridiculous. It was exacting. It was, apparently, indispensable.
“Is lavender acceptable?” she asked, before she had quite realized that she had.
Lady Upton looked up, then smiled. “Lavender is a wise choice for your colouring. Why?”
Francesca looked out of the window. “I merely thought to reassure myself.”
The answer was not quite true. She had seen Major Manners’ face when she had come downstairs that afternoon.
She had not imagined it; nor had she misunderstood the quality of his attention in the Park afterward.
It had altered something in her—subtly, unhelpfully, and perhaps irreversibly.
She found herself aware of him now in ways that seemed to multiply rather than diminish—the firmness of his hand at the small of her back in a crowd; the way he listened when she spoke, as though words mattered because she had chosen them and not merely because he must answer politely.
She ought not to have noticed such things.
“Then I shall put you in lavender again,” Lady Upton said with satisfaction, proving that mothers and generals had at least one instinct in common: they observed what was not said. “And blues, and perhaps silver-grey. Madame Monique understands that distinction and will not insult us with dove.”
Francesca surrendered to the current. It was easier.
Madame Monique’s establishment was exactly what one might expect from a woman to whom the elite of London entrusted their appearance.
The rooms were elegant without vulgar display, scented faintly of starch, perfume and money, and full of fabric so beautiful that it almost succeeded in excusing the industries of fashion.
Lady Upton entered as one accustomed to being assured welcome.
Madame herself emerged through a door with fluent gratitude, foreign charm, and that professional expertise which made every client feel singular and every decision urgent.
There followed a blur of measuring, pinning, draping, and pronouncements.
Francesca stood upon a low platform while Lady Upton and Madame Monique discussed her as though she were both a diplomatic project and a column of architecture.
The words shoulders, waist, line, movement, complexion, evening effect, candlelight, importance, distinction, freshness and authority tripped from their tongues.
The language would have been absurd had it not been delivered with such absolute seriousness.
“Miss Vale is quite intelligent,” Lady Upton confided to the modiste, much to Francesca’s amusement.
Madame Monique placed a hand dramatically upon her heart. “Oui. I can see this,” she said while circling her.
“I do not think it can be disguised, so I think we should celebrate it.”
“Mais naturellement.”
“She is one-and-twenty, after all, so we will have more flexibility.”
Francesca nearly laughed aloud.
Hours later, when she was finally restored to Sir Percival’s house, she felt as if she had lived several separate days in one.
Hyde Park; politics; patronesses; a political dinner for princesses and countesses; a modiste who was booked for years…
and beneath all of it, still, the ledgers.
Kendall, Arch—Major Manners—and the slow, uncomfortable rearranging of trust.
Sir Percival was in his library, his spectacles low on his nose, and one hand resting upon a sheaf of parliamentary papers that looked as though they had already suffered greatly beneath his opinion.
“Well?” he asked, as soon as she entered. “Has Augusta Upton finished with you?”
Francesca went to him at once and bent to kiss his cheek. “No one could finish me in an afternoon.”
“Nonsense! I meant for the day.”
She laughed and sank into the chair opposite him.
There was comfort in Uncle Percival’s presence that London had not yet managed to spoil.
He was worldly enough to understand manoeuvre, affectionate enough not to make affection feel forced, and secure enough in his own intelligence to appreciate hers without being alarmed by it.
Lady Upton might be the architect of the campaign, but Uncle Percival was the old fortress one still trusted to protect the battalion.
“She is to host a political dinner, to present me as a good hostess,” Francesca said.
Sir Percival took off his spectacles and stared at her. “Of course, she will.”
“You are not surprised?”
“My dear girl, Augusta sees a young woman with a fortune, a mind, and a taste for reform, and immediately begins a campaign to emphasize her—your—assets. I have known her these twenty years. She has been rearranging cabinets from dinner-tables since before half the present ministers were out of the schoolroom.”
Francesca laughed despite herself. “She intends to invite Countess Lieven and Princess Esterházy,” she said.
Sir Percival let out a low whistle. “Then she means business.”
“So I gather.”
He studied her more closely. “The question is, do you?”
The query deserved honesty. Francesca folded her hands in her lap.
“I very much wish for reform, but perhaps not so publicly.”
“That is sensible.”
“She asked whom I would wish to invite… gentlemen who matter to reform.”
Sir Percival nodded slowly. “What did you reply?”
“That I would consult you.”
“That was very prudent of you and entirely flattering to me.” He reached for a pencil and pulled a sheet towards him.
“If Augusta Upton wants to give your reforming inclinations the appearance of fashionable gravity, then there are three sorts of men we need: those who genuinely care for the subject; those who do not mind being seen caring for the subject; and those who dislike the subject but are too important to be omitted.”
Francesca smiled. “Politics sounds like table arrangements.”
“Clever girl. Table arrangement is politics with napkins.”
She leaned forward. “Whom would you place where, Uncle?”
Francesca listened, adding her own thoughts where she could. Harcourt’s name came up naturally and remained. Ashbourne’s did not, which confirmed her initial impression of him. The others he named she had not heard of, but she trusted her uncle’s judgement implicitly.
“I hear Kendall was here,” Sir Percival commented at length, almost idly.
She looked up.
He was watching her over steepled fingers with more attention than his tone implied.
“Indeed, he arrived a few days ago. He said he had some business to attend to,” she answered carefully.
Sir Percival gave the smallest of pauses. “What do you know of his political leanings? I have heard his name mentioned recently in reforming circles.”
The phrasing was so close to her own private fear that she felt almost transparent.
“He has been… more political of late,” she said.
Sir Percival’s gaze narrowed. “Has he, indeed?”
Francesca looked down at the list between them. “He is different. I cannot decide whether London has altered him or merely revealed him.”
Sir Percival did not respond at once. When he did speak, his voice was very mild. “Then use caution, my dear. Anything I can help with, you need only ask.”
She nodded. It was excellent advice, and she was tired of trying to discern everything on her own. No one presented their true self in London, Lady Upton had said. Perhaps that was true.
It was also, she feared, not wholly false.