Chapter 16
Sixteen
That night
Despite her travails of the day, the Duchess of Marchmont, resplendent in a ball gown of Clarence blue and white, appeared at Almack’s Wednesday-night assembly with her husband.
The scene of the crime was the last place Marchmont would have chosen. But this was where Zoe wanted to be.
“If I keep away, the place will become too important in my mind, and I’ll always be afraid of it,” she’d told him.
“Better to go right away, the same day, before it can take hold of my mind. And what’s the likelihood of someone trying to do exactly the same crime in the same place twice?
Besides, I have a beautiful gown, special for my first time at Almack’s. And I want to dance.”
“Oh, a special gown,” he said. “Well, that settles it, then.”
He was a great, besotted idiot, and he gave in, though he wasn’t settled at all.
Still, he’d done all he could. He’d gone to Bow Street and spoken to the chief magistrate, Sir Nathaniel Conant.
Tomorrow’s news sheets and journals would carry descriptions of both Mrs. Dunstan and Harrison.
Even now, Bow Street Runners and metropolitan patrollers were looking for them.
If the two servants were still in London—which the runners seemed to think unlikely—they’d soon find them.
If the pair had done the intelligent thing and fled, they’d be found eventually.
Marchmont had offered large rewards for their capture, jointly or separately.
He didn’t care about Mrs. Dunstan—unless she’d aided Harrison in this attack—but he wanted to see Harrison hang.
Though it was a short, easy walk to Almack’s from Marchmont House, they’d driven in Marchmont’s sturdiest carriage, with guards discreetly accompanying them.
He and Zoe arrived at the club without mishap, and when he saw everyone’s head turn toward his wife, and the admiration and envy in those gazes, his heart swelled with pride.
Mine, he thought. The finest female in the place, and she was his.
She did look splendid in the gown, though the blue satin bodice, as usual, showed a good deal more of her bosom than he deemed necessary—enough, he suspected, to constitute a threat to public order.
But it was the fashion, and he was the most fashionable husband in London, and so he must not break any fellows’ noses for looking where she was so flagrantly inviting them to look.
After greeting the hostesses and making the few introductions still necessary—for the Countess Lieven and Mrs. Drummond-Burrell had not yet formally met Zoe—Marchmont said, “I must apologize for the little contretemps this morning, ladies. My wife had been told repeatedly that it was next to impossible to be admitted to Almack’s. I never dreamed she’d try to break in.”
The witticism quickly made its way through the assembly.
The runaway carriage had suffered far greater damage than it caused.
It had scraped a bollard and damaged a fence and nicked some brickwork.
Had the accident happened later in the day, when the street was busier, the damage and injuries would have been considerable.
At present, the worst he and Zoe had to deal with was the talk.
It seemed as though the gossips and newspapers had hardly finished with one matter related to Zoe than another came along to tantalize them.
She would be plastered in all the print shop windows by tomorrow, he had no doubt. But the notoriety that would have brought social ostracism to the Harem Girl merely made the Duchess of Marchmont interesting.
“How brave you were to come out this night,” Lady Jersey told her. “The excitement would have prostrated me. I should have kept to my bed for a fortnight.”
“If I could not leave my bed for two weeks, I would have to try a variety of positions,” said Zoe. “Prostrate is all very well, but Marchmont would find it boring, night after night—or day after day.”
He whisked Zoe away, leaving Sally Jersey and her associates to debate whether the Duchess of Marchmont had actually said what they thought she’d said.
“That was droll, what you said about my breaking in,” Zoe told him.
“You’re going to attract enough of a crowd as it is,” he said. “By tomorrow, everyone will know the lurid details, and I shall have the most popular wife in all of London. I thought a little humor this evening would give us some respite. Tomorrow the melodrama begins, I daresay.”
By tomorrow, everyone would know that the accident wasn’t an accident and an attempt had been made on the Duchess of Marchmont’s life. He’d kept the fraud quiet, but that would get out eventually, and so the circus would continue.
Tonight, though, most people knew only that there had been an accident.
A few stories circulated about an anonymous madman attacking the duke’s horses.
A madman had killed Spencer Perceval almost exactly six years ago and another had tried to kill Lord Palmerston, the secretary of war, a month ago.
One constantly read of murders attempted and committed by madmen.
Generally speaking, though—and with the notable exception of Lady Sophronia de Grey—the patronesses excluded lunatics from their list.
Tonight, all was well, and Zoe could flash her great lighthouse beacon of a diamond and dance to her heart’s content. She was alive, beautifully and fully alive, teasing his friends and astonishing the ladies, and living the life she’d wanted.
Late Wednesday night
Harrison was a London servant, born and bred. He knew every inch of the metropolis: the high, the middling, and the low. He’d made a great many friends among certain types of tradesmen and publicans. He had no trouble finding lodgings within easy walking distance of Marchmont House.
They were only temporary, he’d assured Mary Dunstan. As soon as he’d collected the money he’d secreted in various places, they would go to Ireland and start fresh. They had planned to become innkeepers in London. They would simply change locations, Harrison assured her.
On Wednesday evening, though, when he came back to the lodgings, and Mary Dunstan asked him if he’d got all the money, he said, “We want something better than money, my dear.”
Then he told her what he’d done that morning: how he’d lurked in the mews and learned the duke’s coach was setting out for Lexham House.
“I knew the route they’d take,” he said.
“Don’t I know the routes they always take, wherever they mean to go?
Don’t I always know everything? Isn’t it my job to know everything, even before it happens?
I knew what would happen before it happened this morning.
I knew it and I was ready, waiting for her when they turned into King Street. ”
He’d been waiting, knife in hand—one of several he’d taken from the kitchen before he ran away. It was a beautiful knife, and Mary didn’t blame him for taking it. She’d taken things, too.
But it was to be for their inn, for the cooking.
It wasn’t for what he’d used it for.
She couldn’t believe her ears when he told her. He was drunk. She tried to make herself believe he was simply drunk and boasting. But what man boasts of such things?
“I couldn’t hang about to see the smash-up,” he said.
“That’s the devil of hiring the best. John Coachman saw what I was about, and I got a taste of his whip.
The horses panicked and the carriage went amok and overturned, for all his care, but it wasn’t as I pictured.
No time to wait about to tally the damage.
I thought she’d get the worst of it, but no.
It was the horses and the coachman, curse her. ”
He found a bottle and opened it. He filled his glass and drank, and stared at her. He slammed the glass on the table, and she jumped.
“Don’t look at me like that!”
“I was only wondering whether you had time to arrange for the post chaise,” she said composedly.
Mary Dunstan had had years of practice acting calm no matter how she felt.
A housekeeper always had to appear to be in complete control of everything.
Other servants must never believe they could rattle her.
She must always be as steady as a rock. She must always be sure of herself.
Those beneath her must look upon her as omniscient and omnipotent, a version of the house steward, lower in status but equally formidable.
Those above her must be able to take her competence completely for granted.
“What post chaise?” he said.
“The one to take us to the boat that will carry us to Ireland,” she said.
“Ireland.” His lip curled. “Savages. Bog trotters.”
“We can’t remain in London,” she said.
“No, we can’t,” he said. “Everything’s ruined because of her. No London inn for us, thanks to her. No future here. No future anywhere. No future.”
“If you don’t like Ireland, we can go to France,” Mary said calmly. “The English appreciate a proper English hostelry there. Good food and drink and clean, dry linens and spotless floors.”
He wasn’t listening. He drank some more.
“Ruined,” he said. “Twenty years climbing to the top. And then, all at once, there am I, on the bottom.” He snapped his fingers.
“Like this she knocked me down. And I’ll knock her down.
I’ll finish her, I will, like this”—another snap—“I’ll finish her, because she finished me. ”
He went on ranting and drinking, and Mary Dunstan pretended to listen calmly. But she was a paragon among housekeepers, and a good housekeeper saw ahead. It didn’t take much looking to determine what she must do.
Saturday
It didn’t take Marchmont long to replace nearly all of the upper servants. Everyone and their grandmothers, he found, wanted to work at Marchmont House.