Chapter 15 #2
Other households might make do with a combination butler-valet or housekeeper-lady’s maid.
Other households did not have porters or under-butlers or steward’s boys.
The Duke and Duchess of Marchmont did not make do.
They had everything and more. It was their patriotic duty to be waited upon by scores of servants, whether they needed them or not, and the servants were as well aware of this as they were.
Still, the staff performed admirably in the circumstances, and Zoe and Marchmont were able to go out to the theater as they had planned, and afterward to a ball at Hargate House, where Zoe danced with the Earl of Hargate, three of his five sons, and most of Marchmont’s friends.
The duke and duchess knew rumors would start circulating soon, regarding the sudden disappearance of their senior staff, but that was for tomorrow and the days to come.
For this night, all people talked about was what a handsome couple the Marchmonts made and how amiable and witty the duke was—wittier and in better spirits than anyone could remember seeing him before.
The happy couple returned home at half past two in the morning.
They did not see the shrouded figure skulking in the shadows of the square.
Wednesday, 6 May
April showers, the wags said, came in May, the result of what some still deemed the misguided change, several generations earlier, from Julian to Gregorian calendar.
A glance out of the window told Marchmont that one April shower was in the offing this morning. Black clouds were massing overhead, and an un-May-like wind blasted through St. James’s Square.
It was not the most inviting day to go out, but the Duchess of Marchmont needn’t worry about bad weather.
He’d ordered a closed carriage for her. Servants would hold an umbrella over her head when she walked the few paces between vehicle and door.
Furthermore, as she pointed out to him, she wasn’t sweet enough to melt.
She needed to visit her parents, and that errand oughtn’t to be put off.
They already knew she was happy and well, because they’d seen for themselves—at Lexham House and various social gatherings.
But she wanted to seek their advice regarding the servant problem, particularly the matter of finding a housekeeper.
Marchmont couldn’t go with her. He’d sent for his solicitor, to work out the details of Cook’s, Dove’s, and Hoare’s philanthropic servitude.
It was a tedious process, sifting through all the possible situations, and deciding where the miscreants would do the most good.
This matter couldn’t be put off, either.
He could hardly keep them locked up in Harrison’s room indefinitely.
He did leave his solicitor for long enough to see his wife off, though.
“This is exciting,” she said as they crossed the entrance hall. “It’s my first time out alone as a married woman.”
“Not entirely alone,” he said.
Jarvis trailed behind her mistress, umbrella in hand as always.
“I told her she needn’t come,” Zoe said. “I told her there would be two big, strong footmen standing at the back of the coach and a burly coachman driving, and we’re only going a short distance.”
“We must hope that the housemaids don’t run amok while she’s away,” he said.
“What do housemaids do when they run amok?” Zoe said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Excessive dusting?”
She smiled up at him, and he could actually feel his heart melting. Marriage had a deleterious effect on a man’s dignity. If he didn’t watch out, he’d be giving her idiotish smiles in return.
He pretended the feathers of her bonnet needed straightening. Then he had to adjust the satin puffs at her shoulders. Then he had to step back and regard her critically.
Then she had to laugh at him and step closer and grasp his lapels.
“Zoe, you’re wrinkling me,” he said reproachfully.
She tugged.
He bent and kissed her, there, in front of the servants. When he straightened, he noticed with amusement that Jarvis was pointedly looking the other way and the footmen and hall porter were carefully looking at nothing.
Marchmont walked with her to the door and out of it, and down the steps to the waiting carriage. He helped her in and closed the door behind her.
He watched the carriage proceed westward, round the fence enclosing the circular pond in the center of the square.
When he saw the vehicle turn into King Street, he started back into the house.
He’d scarcely crossed the threshold and the door hadn’t yet closed behind him when he heard horses shrieking, people shouting and screaming, and a thunderous crash.
He leapt down the short flight of steps and ran through the square and into King Street.
Everyone about him was screaming and shouting, but it was all background noise.
He was aware of people running out of buildings, but they were shadows.
He saw bodies on the pavement and in the street.
Blood everywhere. People crowded about the overturned carriage.
He pushed them out of his way. He saw the crest. His crest.
Zoe was in there.
He saw her in his mind’s eye, galloping ahead of him on a narrow bridle path, the sky grey, the tree leaves shining, the ground slick with wet.
It was the last time she’d run away. The last time he’d chased her, exasperated, as always, and afraid, as always.
It had rained for two days and she was supposed to be safe at home, studying her Greek and Latin.
She’d promised to study very hard, because she was going abroad, to visit Greece and Egypt and the Holy Land with her parents.
It was the last time she’d run away, the last time he’d chased her. Not a year later, she was gone. Forever.
Gone forever.
Someone was shouting at him, but the sounds made no sense.
He was climbing up onto the wreckage. He had to fight to wrench open the door.
The first thing he saw was the ostrich plumes. They didn’t move.
Nothing moved.
His heart stopped moving, too.
“Zoe.”
Then, louder. “Zoe.”
A small movement. A feather quivering.
But the wind was whistling through the street on this dreary day—the same wind that had blasted through the square only a moment ago, ruffling the water in the basin.
He reached down, his hand shaking.
The feathers fluttered.
One slim, gloved hand moved, rose, and reached for his.
His heart gave such a lurch that he nearly fell off the vehicle. Then he was clasping her hand tightly, so tightly. “Zoe.”
“Lucien.”
She shook her head and looked up. The bonnet tilted over one blue eye. “What are you doing up there?”
He remembered little of what happened immediately afterward. He’d fallen into some kind of frenzy, and all the world seemed to have gone mad, too. People had crowded into King Street from everywhere.
He vaguely recalled the footmen helping him get Zoe and her maid out of the carriage.
The footmen accounted for two of the bodies he’d seen.
They’d been thrown or had jumped from their perch behind the carriage.
They were bruised and their livery was torn and filthy, but that was the worst of their sufferings.
Marchmont carried Zoe back to the house in his arms. One of the footmen tried to carry Jarvis, but she wouldn’t have any part of it, instead limping after her master and mistress, umbrella tightly clutched in her hand.
Bystanders helped carry the coachman back to the duke’s coach house on a litter.
Some of the blood Marchmont had seen was the coachman’s, apparently.
But most of it must have been the horses’, given what the servants told him later.
It took a while to sort things out.
There were witnesses, as there usually are, but everyone told a different story, and all told it at the same time. In any case, Marchmont refused to wait about to listen.
John Coachman had had the best view of events. He was in no condition to be interrogated, though, even had Marchmont wished to question him. He didn’t. He left his servant in the physician’s care, waiting only to be sure the man was not fatally injured.
Then he returned to Zoe, whom he’d carried up to his bedroom.
He wouldn’t have left her, even to see about the coachman, but she’d assured him she was unhurt—and she wanted to bathe.
By the time he returned, she was clean and dressed in one of her pretty nightdresses, sitting up in his bed, propped up by a brace of pillows.
If she hadn’t sat there so quietly—too quietly for Zoe—wearing a small furrow between her brows, he might have believed the accident had not disturbed her in the least.
He went to the bed, sat down on the edge, and took her hand.
“It’s no use,” she said. “I really don’t know what happened.
It’s a great jumble in my head. I know Jarvis was talking about Almack’s, but I was looking the other way.
Before I turned, I heard noise—shouting and screaming—and then…
” She frowned. “But I don’t know what came next.
One moment all was well. Jarvis was speaking.
Then there was a dreadful noise.” She considered.
“Did I think it was a riot? No, it was the horses. It was like Grafton Street. The cry they made because they were frightened and hurt. Then there was a great thump…I think. The next thing I knew, I was looking up at the carriage door and there you were, looking down at me. And I thought it was so curious that the carriage door should be up there and you should be looking down at me.” She shook her head.
“I am useless. You had better ask Jarvis. She saw something.”
He looked at the maid, who was fussing over the tea tray she’d carried up herself.
“Jarvis, can you enlighten us?”
She frowned as she placed the tray on Zoe’s lap.
She looked from Zoe to Marchmont and back again.
“Tell him,” Zoe said. “Whatever you saw, tell him.”
“If the coachman was derelict, I want to know,” Marchmont said tightly.
“Your Grace, I don’t think he was,” she said.
“I was looking out of the window, and there was Almack’s, and I said, ‘Your Grace, that’s Almack’s,’ because I wasn’t sure my mistress knew where it was.
Then I saw a man run out from Cleveland Yard straight into our path.
I screamed, because I thought we’d run him down.
When the horses started jumping in the air and making such a noise, I thought that’s what happened: They’d trampled him or he’d got under the wheels or something.
But that’s as much as I thought, because the next thing I knew, we were going over—and I don’t remember much of that.
I know I grabbed for my mistress. All I could think was she would hit her head. I d-didn’t want her to hit her h-head.”
And then, to everyone’s amazement, the stolid Jarvis burst into tears.
Late that afternoon
Marchmont having sent word to Lexham House, Zoe’s mother came to look in on her.
The duke returned to his study. During the crisis, his solicitor had carried on without him. Evidently, Marchmont’s directions were clear enough, because Cleake had narrowed down the selection to half a dozen charities.
The last thing Marchmont wanted to do at present was to find positions for untrustworthy minions. However, he’d played Solomon, and had to carry through his decision.
“Cook to the orphanage,” he said. “Dove to the home for aged and infirm soldiers. And Hoare to the school for the blind.”
Leaving Osgood and Cleake to make the arrangements, he proceeded to the coachman’s quarters at the coach house.
John Coachman had a broken collarbone and a sprained wrist and many bruises. He was not happy about being immobilized, and furious about the accident, his first since he’d entered the duke’s service.
“Your Grace, I never in all my time seen anything like it,” he said. “Like a madman he was—running out of the yard into the street and attacking the poor creature.”
“Attacking?” Marchmont said. “He went after the horse?”
“He had something in his hand, Your Grace. Didn’t know what it was then, but it’s clear it had to be a knife.
What I knew was, he was making for the horse, and meant trouble.
I went for him with the whip, the bastard, and took a strip off him, I’ll warrant.
He howled at it. I heard him howl. But I wasn’t quick enough, sir.
” With his good hand, the coachman wiped a tear from his eye.
“I reckon they had to put down the near side grey, did they, Your Grace? The one he was bent on killing? They took me away before I could look at the poor beast—either of ’em. ”
“The second coachman and the others will do what’s necessary,” Marchmont said. If the horse—or both—had to be destroyed, that would have been done promptly. “They are only waiting for me to leave before they speak to you.”
“Those fine cattle, sir,” the coachman said. He swallowed and went on more gruffly, “The sweetest-natured beasts. For Her Grace. I said she must have the sweetest, prettiest pair in the stables.”
“So she must,” Marchmont said. “Let’s hope they survive. But whether they do or don’t, we must get to the bottom of this. You say a man ran out of Cleveland Yard and straight at the horse and attacked it—he attacked the horse?”
“Oh, he did, Your Grace. I went for him, but he stuck her. Poor, innocent creature that never did him nor anybody any harm. We was going so slow she never had a chance. That bastard—begging Your Grace’s pardon. If I ever get my hands on ’im—”
“Did you see his face?”
The coachman’s expression became grim, indeed.
“I saw. I won’t forget it in a hurry. He tried to cover it up—burnt cork or some such.
And he’d got some cloth wrapped about his head, like a turban, but he weren’t no more Turk than I am.
You ask Joseph and Hubert, Your Grace. They must have seen him, and they’d know him better than I do, seeing him every day. ”
“Seeing whom?” Marchmont said. He knew the answer already but didn’t want to know it, didn’t want to believe it.
“Harrison, sir. I’d stake my life that’s who it was. And I’ll stake him, too, only let me get a chance.”