Chapter Twenty-Two
T he following morning, the duchess provided not just the guidebook and a maid, but also a carriage and a driver, waving off protests and thanks. “There is no need for thanks, Apollo, Jacqueline. My dear Clara was a Godsend in the early days of my marriage. I have no idea how I would have survived without her. I am only too happy to be able to repay her many kindnesses.”
Nor would she hear of them seeking work just yet. “I know I am being selfish, dear children, but I am not willing to give Clara up so soon. However—it is foolish, I know, but people will have these ideas—you cannot run a dressmaking business from my husband’s house, Jacqueline, and Apollo, you must not abandon your grandmother and your betrothed for a new position already. Surely it cannot hurt to just take a holiday for a week or two. While David Wakefield looks into your problems.”
How could they argue when she presented it as a favor to her? Not to mention that a week or maybe two of holiday was enormously appealing, especially when they expected to spend it together.
It was a glorious day. Just the day to be out and about in London in a sociable, or two-bodied phaeton, with the maid and driver up before and Jackie and Pol in the seat behind, the whole of London at their feet.
Their first goal on the first morning of their London adventure was Westminster Abbey. “It was built by the order of Henry the Third,” said Jackie, reading from the guidebook. “Or rebuilt, rather. There has been a church and abbey here for more than a thousand years.”
“Henry the Third is… what? Six hundred years past?” Pol commented. “It is certainly a magnificent building!”
“Breathtaking,” Jackie agreed, and insisted on seeing the choir where kings of England were crowned, each of the chapels, and dozens of tombs, including those in Poet’s Corner. Pol, who was taking a turn with the guidebook, read, “It says, ‘never could a place be named with more propriety’.” They spent perhaps fifteen minutes reading the epitaphs of luminaries such as Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare and Milton.
For sixpence each, they were allowed to climb nearly three hundred steps to the top of one of the western towers to look out over London. The maid was offered the chance to accompany them but looked so alarmed at the prospect that Pol suggested she make her way back to the carriage and gave her a couple of pennies to purchase tea or ale from a street vendor.
They were not alone on the tower, however. A kindly verger explained the vista spread before them: the Banqueting House at Whitehall, St. James’s Park, with the Parade and Horse Guards, Carleton House where the Prince of Wales had his principal residence, the gardens of the Queen’s Palace, the Green Park, the western end of Piccadilly, and Hyde Park, with the Serpentine curling amongst the green trees and lawns. Looking toward the Thames, they could see both Westminster and Blackfriars bridges, with the river spread between them. Beyond, St Paul’s Cathedral, with the sun falling on, was exquisitely beautiful.
“We shall go there, shall we not, Pol?” Jackie said.
And they did. They visited St Paul’s Cathedral, drove past Queen’s Palace and Carleton House, and through Green Park and Hyde Park, all before the fashionable hour.
They returned to Winshire House to describe the sights they’d seen to Gran and Maman, and to read out what the guidebook had to say about the Tower of London, which was to be their first stop the following day.
And Pol managed to find an unused parlor after dinner, as they made their way upstairs to bed, so Jackie finished the day thoroughly kissed, and went to sleep dreaming of more. It was a perfect day.
On the following day, they spent the entire morning at the Tower. Jackie was intrigued by the grim history of the place, but less enamored of the animals in the Royal menagerie. “They all seem so sad, Pol,” she said.
“Trapped, far away from their homes and families,” he replied, and she guessed he was thinking of his own exile from Italy to the colder climes and even colder hearts of Riese Hall. She slipped her hand around his arm, and he put his hand over hers. They left the menagerie, in one mind on this, as on so much else.
*
The afternoon was given over to the Levarian Museum, a private collection of curiosities and art objects, open to the public for the princely sum of one shilling apiece. “Well worth it,” Pol declared, after they had torn themselves away from the room of Roman and medieval artifacts, the Sandwich room with its collection of objects from the Sandwich Islands, where Captain Cook had met with his end, gowns from the time of Charles the Second, and a large collection of stuffed monkeys, posed in groups.
Even the maid, who had trailed behind them with her mouth wide open, nodded at Pol’s statement. They drove back across Blackfriars Bridge, chatting about the things they had seen. Pol had found the first room the most compelling, with its evidence of earlier times. Jackie had been fascinated by the gowns.
“The monkeys made me shudder,” she said, and shuddered again, to prove it. “Poor little things.”
Pol agreed. The slightly worn stuffed animals, no matter how artfully posed, had been more pitiful than interesting.
Suddenly, Jackie put her hand on his arm. “That man…”
“Where?” Pol stared in the same direction as her, but no one appeared to be looking their way.
“He’s gone,” she said, the tension going out of her. “Pol, I’m sure it is the same man I have seen before. At Westminster Abbey, and before that at one of the inns on the way to London.”
“Do you know him?” Pol asked. “Is it one of the Whitelys?”
She shook her head. “Not one of the Whitelys. And no, I do not recognize him. Yet, I feel that I ought to. There is something familiar about him.” She grimaced. “It has only been a glimpse each time. When he sees me looking, he disappears. What do you think it means?”
Pol had no idea, but he would discuss it with Drew. Perhaps it would be wise to stop their excursions, or to take a guard with them.
*
Over the next three days, Jackie saw the man twice more—once in the bookshop known as the Temple of the Muses, and once in the street outside the Winshire townhouse as they came down to join their carriage one morning. Both times, he was out of sight before she could point him out to Pol or to one of the two retainers Drew had sent to attend them.
From the glimpses she had of him, he was a man in his middle years, of slightly above medium height and of average build. She had not seen him hatless, so could not make a guess at his hair color, and he had never been close enough for her to get more than an impression of dark eyes. The sense that he was somehow known to her did not abate, but nor did she receive any enlightenment about who he was.
The visit to the Temple of the Muses resulted in an unexpected addition to their party. She and Pol were waiting outside for their carriage, strolling up and down as they talked. Jackie stopped at a sound.
“Do you hear that?” Whimpering came from the narrow alley that ran between two buildings.
Pol’s brows drew together in an expression of puzzlement. “Hear what?” he asked.
Jackie let go of his arm and took a couple of paces toward the alley, one of the guards moving swiftly to reach it first.
“Miss de Haricot is correct, bey,” the man said to Pol. “An animal is in pain.”
“Let me see,” Jackie insisted, and they all entered the alley, with the retainer in the lead, then Jackie, followed by Pol—the gap was too narrow for them to walk shoulder to shoulder.
It was Jackie who discovered the sack—a grimy flour bag, tied tight at the top by a scrap of rope, more than half sunk in a water trough. The sack jerked and flopped as whatever was inside it struggled to keep its head above water.
Pol lifted the sack from the water. The retainer used a knife from his boot to cut the rope. The creature that emerged was a mid-sized, and very wet, dog of indeterminate breed and color. It seemed to believe it owed its rescue to Pol, for it wriggled on its belly to lick his boot, whimpering all the while, and wagging its tail so vigorously that its entire bottom swayed to and fro in the dust of the ally.
They couldn’t leave it there, of course. The dog went home with them, sitting on the floor of the carriage, occasionally attempting to put its paws up on Pol’s leg but subsiding when he ordered it, “Down, Scruffy.”
“Scruffy” was a good name for the disreputable creature, with its shaggy coat, matted with dirt. By the time they arrived back at Winshire House, both Pol’s trousers and Jackie’s gown were marred by streaks of muck flicked from the beast’s eager tail. “I had better take him to the stables and see if someone will give him a bath,” Pol said, and followed the carriage and horsemen into the mews while Jackie entered by the front door and went up to see Gran and Maman.
*
By the time the dog—who proved to be a she, not a he—had been washed in two separate baths, Pol was wet to the skin and Scruffy was a creamy white rather than a muddy grey. The stable master produced some dry rags, and Scruffy accepted a toweling with blissful enthusiasm. Dried, or rather, dryer, her long coat tended to curl, suggesting that poodle played a part in her makeup, though Pol guessed at some spaniel and perhaps a couple of other breeds as well.
The stable master did not have a place for a dog, but agreed to keep Scruffy until Pol could make other arrangements. Scruffy, though, was not happy. In the end, to stop her from following him, they had to shut her in the harness room, and he could hear her whining and then howling as he walked away.
An hour later, he had had a bath of his own and changed into clean clothes, and was describing the dog, as it was now, to Jackie, Gran, and Madame when the door opened and he heard a gasp.
Why was the maid attempting to juggle the tray as she crossed the threshold into the room? The answer to the mystery was shooting across the carpet on her belly, her tail wagging ninety to the dozen. She arrived at Pol’s feet, flopped two paws and a nose onto his boots, and gave a deep sigh.
“This, I take it,” said Madame, her voice bubbling with suppressed laughter, “is Scruffy.”
“I’m sorry,” said Pol to the ladies, and repeated the apology to the maid, who had managed to keep everything on the tray, “Though not all the milk remained in the jug, my lady,” she apologized to Gran. But the cake was still on its plate, and the biscuits, which had not been so fortunate, did not appear to have suffered from their minor encounter with the spilt milk.
“It is fortunate that the footman had the teapot,” Gran commented. “Had that spilt, someone might have been injured. Perhaps you could let the stables know that the beast has found its way up here?”
“I’ll take her back down,” Pol said, standing. “Come along, Scruffy.”
This time, they tied her in the stables. An hour and a half later, after the family and guests had sat down to dinner, she appeared again, a sudden weight against Pol’s legs under the table, and with the same contented sigh. A brief examination showed she had chewed through her lead.
Nothing they did deterred her for long. She managed to materialize in Pol’s room that night, sleeping on the rug beside the bed and not being discovered until Pol put one foot on her in the morning. That time, she had escaped both rope and shut room, and even managed to get into a shut bedchamber, though no one admitted to opening the door for her.
Indeed, it appeared the dog was some kind of magician, as she escaped again after breakfast and followed the carriage in which Pol, Jackie and the ubiquitous maid were going for an early drive. They were already in Hyde Park when she caught up to the carriage, leaping aboard and greeting Pol with a happy yap before settling at his feet.
“She does not like being separated from you,” Jackie pointed out, no longer surprised by the dog’s unexpected appearances.
“She is happy for an hour or so,” said one of their outriders. “But then she becomes restless and before long, she disappears. The stable hands have a betting pool for how long it will take for her to escape and find you, sir.”
Pol didn’t know what to do. “I can hardly have her with me inside someone else’s house,” he said.
But Gran applied to the duchess, who said, “She is a well-mannered dog, and will be no trouble.” So, Pol gave up trying to keep her out of the house. Once he found she would wait happily in his room if he gave her a boot or a glove and told her to guard it, it was easier. He no longer had to lead her slinking out of the dining room or one of parlors, her tail between her legs and her head hanging so low that the long hairs of her chin trailed on the ground. And so, the little dog became a part of their formed family.
Mr. Wakefield had little to report at the end of the first week. “Continue as you are,” he recommended. So, Pol and Jackie continued to go out each morning, but as Gran recovered, she and Madame decided that it was time for Jackie to have a larger wardrobe, and so all three were spending part of each afternoon sewing.
At first at a loose end, Pol discovered the training sessions held for the duke, his sons, his retainers, and any footmen who wished to join them. He joined in with enthusiasm, believing himself to be fit. After all, he was no stranger to hard work, often joining the tenant farmers and other in the fields and the stables.
These exercises were different, and deadly serious. He finished the first session bruised in places he didn’t know he had but fronted up the next afternoon determined to improve. After that session, he didn’t miss an afternoon.
On most evenings, they attended the Winshire family dinner, and twice, they were guests at a formal dinner with guests outside of the family. On the first occasion, Pol, seated between Jackie and her mother, found it safest to follow their example. While he had been taught formal manners, he had had no opportunity to practice them.
When he mentioned to Jackie how out of place he felt, Drew and his sister Ruth, Lady Ashford, overheard. They both chuckled and began telling stories of their own experiences. They had arrived in England eight years ago, the half-Persian children of the exiled third son of the former duke, who had unexpectedly inherited the ducal coronet.
Ruth spoke of her horror that women ate at the same table as men, and Drew had been flabbergasted that most of the duke’s guard were excluded from a formal dinner. “What the English upper classes regard as a sign of good breeding would be the height of ill manners in other parts of the world,” they agreed.
“Just be yourself,” Drew advised. “Most people will understand that any blame for your lack of experience with the Ton belongs to your aunt, if blame is even the right word.”
Ruth was more scathing about those who thought manners matter. “People worth knowing will care about the quality of your character rather than whether or not you know how to use a citrus fork,” she said. She inclined her head toward Lady Sutton, her sister-in-law. “Sophia—who is a Belvoir by birth and so whose blood is bluer than blue—told me once that some people espouse a set of rules that they call manners merely so that they can exclude others. But real manners are merely a matter of behaving in a way that makes other people comfortable. And you do that without thinking about it, Pol. Because you are a gentleman.”
Later, as Pol and Jackie hid in a quiet alcove just off the stairs, she said to him, “I know what you mean about dinner, Pol. Maman and I—we practiced, but it is not the same as actually being at a dinner with two dukes, two duchesses, a marchioness, several earls and countesses, not including Maman, two viscounts—three if you are included—a baron, four knights of the realm, two people that Drew described as captains of industry… and all the wives. It was somewhat overwhelming.”
An understatement, but also a reminder. If he was a viscount, dinners like this might become a common part of his future. That would be a good thing if he could just sit there and listen, as he did when the ladies withdrew, and when ideas on politics, science, engineering, business, and even morality were passed as generously as the port. He had never known a dinner like it.
The second dinner was easier. Perhaps, if he attended another sixty or so, Pol decided he might even start to enjoy them.
At least he had suitable clothing. Drew had taken him aside one day and asked if he would be offended to be offered a coat Drew no longer wore, and before Pol knew quite how it happened, Maman’s nimble fingers were altering several coats and waistcoats to his measure, and two sets of evening breeches.
As for shoes and stockings, Pol dug into the money he had taken from the goose to outfit himself and Jackie both. Gran and Maman insisted that they were already suitably shod.
One day toward the end of their second week at Winshire House, a footman arrived just as he joined the afternoon practice session to tell him that Mr. Wakefield had called to see him.
When Pol joined the enquiry agent in the Chinese parlor, he soon discovered that this meeting would be different. Wakefield had found Crawford, Gran’s disreputable maid, and the doctor’s complicit servant. “The stand-in magistrate has them both in custody,” he told Pol, “And both have given evidence that is enough to arrest the doctor for attempted murder. He has taken to his heels, but we found arsenic when we searched his house. I’ve people looking for him. If we can catch him, and if he will implicate Lady Riese, we’ll have reason to arrest her, too. I’d like to get her for her husband’s murder, but I’d have trouble proving it at this late stage. Apparently, however, his final illness was very similar to the illness your grandmother had.”
That was a shock. “What of my grandfather,” Pol asked. “I am told he died while I was still in Italy, but I am not certain when, only that it was before my uncle. My grandmother would know more about exactly how much before.”
“A good question.” Wakefield made a note.
“On the matter of the theft, I was unable to find the names of the witnesses to your supposed thefts, but the items described by Lady Riese in her accusations against the de Haricot ladies are those detailed in the bill that Madame de Haricot showed me. Squire Pershing has dismissed the charges.”
Excellent news . “The ladies will be pleased,” Pol commented.
“The question of your legitimacy and your right to the title was the easiest of the three to solve,” Wakefield said next. “They told me at the Hall about a man who used to come to visit you. A friend of your father’s who delivered you to England. Do you remember him?”
“Uncle Toby,” Pol said. “I remember his visits. Lady Riese insisted I must call her ‘Aunt Louella’ in his presence and tell him what I was learning and how happy I was.”
Wakefield nodded. “Tobias Carver, Viscount Fuller. He is here in London and remembers you. He has someone staying with him at the moment who would like to meet you again, too. One Signor Giuseppe Allegro.”
Pol started as his heart leapt. He recognized the name, and besides, Wakefield had said “again.” It was someone who had once known him. Pol had thought he’d been abandoned by a family who no longer cared about him. Yet…how was this possible? “My uncle? My uncle is here in England?”
“Yes. Your mother’s brother, with whom you lived until Fuller brought you to England. Both men were present at your parents’ wedding, both men met you within a few hours of your birth, and Fuller can swear that the boy he brought to England and the boy he watched growing up at Riese Hall are the same person. Between the two of them we have all the proof we need that you are Viscount Riese.”
Pol sat back, feeling as if all the breath had been knocked out of him. As simple as that? Two weeks of investigation, and Wakefield had the answers. “I don’t know what to say. How can I ever thank you?”
“It isn’t over,” Wakefield warned. “You’ll need to apply to the House of Lords, and you’ll need a good lawyer to make sure that every ‘I’ is dotted and every ‘T’ crossed. But it has fallen into place far more easily than I expected. The Rieses are not clever criminals.”
He handed over two cards. “Here is the direction of Lord Fuller, and this card has the name and address of a solicitor who handled a similar case of a stolen title last year.”
After Wakefield left, Pol stood in the hall with the two cards, turning over all that he had believed and fitting it into what he knew now. He would send a message to Fortescue, the solicitor, asking for an appointment, and to Lord Fuller asking to call on him and Giuseppe Allegro tomorrow. And then he would find Jackie and tell her what Wakefield had discovered.