Chapter 3 Night And Morning #2
“Of course, who else? Oh, make sure not to look at the girl with the reddish hair. She is companion to the heir’s wife, an impoverished widow, and not to be thought of.
The duchess has sisters, too, but none of them are here at present and we cannot depend on one arriving in time.
My goodness, Simon, the duchess! She must be fifty years younger than her husband. The poor child! It is unspeakable!”
“My own mother was thirty years younger than her husband,” Simon said mildly. “Married at sixteen to a man well past forty.”
“Yes, well, that was not right, either,” Juliet said robustly. “But she seemed… contented, would you say? She never complained, did she?”
“No, she never complained.” But then she had never needed to express it in words. He had seen the strain in her eyes.
“Have you ever seen her? Since you left Edlesborough, I mean. You used to walk the streets at night quite a lot when you were younger, so I wondered if you went to meet her, or at least to loiter around the places where she might go.”
“She told me never to try to make contact with her, so I never did. It was better so. Kendle would tell me if ever there were any need for contact… if she dies.”
“Kendle? He is your father’s tool, Simon,” Juliet said. “As the heir, he must be. Has he ever made contact?”
“Only once. He wrote to tell me that he had given my address to Mama, but not to expect many letters, since she did not dare to defy Father openly. He put fifty pounds in the letter, too. Kendle is sound, Juliet. He does not defy Father openly, either, but he is a good man at heart.”
“Fifty pounds? In one letter? Not cut up?”
“It was hand delivered. I suspect from the description that he brought it himself. Do you remember the stables I designed for the baron in Gloucestershire? He was a friend of Kendle’s. The kennels in Yorkshire, too, although that never came to anything. He does what he can for us.”
“That was years ago. Nothing since then… another fifty pounds would be useful,” she said sourly.
“Does it not grind you down, Simon, this dreadful poverty? You are an earl’s son — a younger son, admittedly, amongst a veritable army of brothers and sisters, but still you should not be scraping to put food on the table. ”
“Nor would I be, if I had gone into the army, as he had wished,” Simon said equably.
“I should have been comfortably situated, probably married to a shrewish society wife, mired in the emptiness of the season and I should have been unutterably miserable. I had far rather live on cabbage stew and be able to do the one thing that makes me happy. I live in hope that one day, perhaps sooner than you might think, I shall be a famous architect and rich enough to keep you in comfort for the rest of your life.”
***
Simon woke to the unusual sound of a footman creeping into the room. The bed curtains were swept aside and the spotty-faced youth called Robert was grinning down at him.
“Mornin’ chocolate, sir. Cold outside an’ snowin’ again.”
The cup of chocolate was dumped on the side table, slopping a little over the side.
Simon hauled himself into a vaguely upright position, while the footman cheerfully rattled the fire irons and tipped coal onto the flames in a great clatter.
It was just as well that Simon was not recovering from a surfeit of alcohol.
As it was, he smiled. The bed was both comfortable and warm, the heat of the fire was already making itself felt and oh, the joy of a cup of chocolate in bed! What a glorious way to start the day.
“You wantin’ me to lay out linens and such?” the footman said. “Press anything?”
“No, no. I can see to myself,” Simon said. “Off you go now. You must have more important gentlemen to deal with.”
“Only Mr Godley, and he’s not prop’ly a gen’leman,” the boy said. “Not like yourself, sir. An Honourable, you are. Son of an earl. Mr Godley’s father was a grocer… or a butcher, I don’t rightly remember.”
“A respectable tradesman, then,” Simon said, with a quick laugh. “What was your father’s occupation, Robert?”
“Farm labourer, sir,” he said grinning, “so I’m doin’ better’n him, ain’t I?”
“So you are, and if you work hard and learn to speak properly, as Froggett does, you might even end up as butler one day.”
“Lor’, sir, that’d be a fine thing!”
“So it would. Now off you go and see to Mr Godley, and try not to spill his chocolate into the saucer.”
“Right you are, sir,” he said cheerfully, not in the least chastened, but he took himself off and left Simon to enjoy his chocolate in peace.
Juliet, always an early riser, was already in the breakfast parlour, deep in a discussion with…
what was his name? The duke’s secretary.
Another man was there, too, whom Simon had not seen before, an older man who rose politely at his entry.
Then, when the other two seemed too engrossed in their discussion to make the introduction, he bowed to Simon.
“How do you do, sir? William Hammond at your service, father to this young man here. I had the good fortune to be secretary to his grace for many years until my retirement. Jamie has followed in my footsteps, but I help out with compiling his grace’s diaries in preparation for publishing his memoirs. You must be Mr Payne, the architect.”
“I am, yes.”
“Delighted to make your acquaintance, sir. I hope your mission here is successful.”
The butler came in just then and poured coffee for Simon, as Mr Hammond Senior tucked into his breakfast again.
“What precisely are his grace’s memoirs?” Simon said. “Political?”
“The subjects of interest to his grace cover many areas,” he said with a broad smile.
“His grace commenced to keep a diary when he undertook his Grand Tour at the age of twenty, and has maintained the habit ever since. As you may imagine, in his grace’s long and full life there is much to record, both of his public life, his observations of the world and also of personal matters.
There is also correspondence of relevance to be reviewed, and newspaper reports of key events in which his grace played a part.
There is much to be done to collate all of this information and distil it into a suitably succinct form ready for consumption by the world at large. ”
“A massive undertaking, I should imagine,” Simon said.
“Indeed it is, and one must be something of a diplomat to ensure that no offence is caused. His grace expresses his opinions in his diary more robustly than he would if voiced aloud.”
“I am not sure I would agree with you there, Father,” said the son, his attention caught by the conversation. “The duke can be extremely robust when he wishes to be. He is not a man who smiles sweetly to a man’s face and roundly abuses him in the privacy of his diary.”
“So you think he would have called a certain Prime Minister ‘a snake of the first order, who should be nailed by his treacherous neck to the stable door and left to writhe’ to his face, do you?”
“He certainly called him vermin, in the House of Lords, if you please, and said he would set his dogs on him if he ever set foot in Brinshire.”
The father burst out laughing. “Did he so? He is a redoubtable old fellow, is he not? Who could not admire such spirit?”
“I could not, for one,” Juliet said acidly. “I value a little civility, myself.”
“Oh, to ladies, certainly,” Mr Hammond Senior said, a twinkle in his eye. “A true gentleman will extend every courtesy to a lady, but gentlemen may exchange views more vigorously, and yet remain the best of friends.”
“How very odd,” Juliet said. “I should not call anyone a friend who was rude to my face. Do gentlemen never fall out with each other, Mr Hammond?”
“Certainly,” he said, “but not on account of a few choice epithets after a glass or two with convivial friends. On points of honour… that is a different matter entirely. A gentleman will always defend his own reputation, or that of the ladies in his family.”
“At the point of a sword, no doubt,” Juliet said. “How very foolish men are.”
“Undoubtedly,” James Hammond said, with an edge of impatience. “Mr Payne, Lady Juliet and I have been puzzling over this letter that you received, asking you to come here.”
“From the supposed attorney,” Simon said absently, as he concentrated on buttering his toast liberally.
“Goodenough, who does not exist,” Hammond said acidly. “Yes, that letter. Did you have not the least idea who it might be from?”
“If it is not from an attorney by the name of Goodenough, then no.”
“But he accompanied you here. Can you describe him?”
Simon set down his toast with a sigh. Clearly he was obliged to earn his breakfast today. “A nondescript fellow, rather shabby.”
“Age?”
“Hmm. Hard to say.”
“Tall? Short?”
“Average, I should say.”
“Thin or fat?”
“Neither thin nor fat. Middling brown hair, what I saw of it. Nothing distinctive about him.”
Hammond huffed in frustration. “Which no doubt describes half the men in Brinshire.”
“Is he from Brinshire?” Simon said. “He did not have the accent.”
“Ah… interesting,” Hammond said. “But of course that means he could be anybody. And the question remains — why? With Mrs Richard, the motive was clear, since she was the very image of the duke’s first duchess, but with you, Mr Payne…”
The sentence tailed off into silence, but Simon understood him well enough. Why an unproven architect, rather than a more established man? And why an architect at all, when clearly there was already one in the family?
“It is a mystery,” Juliet said impatiently. “Perhaps we may never know, so it hardly matters. No point wasting energy on fruitless wondering.”
“I believe we must,” Hammond said. “If this were the work of a random stranger, it would be no more than a curiosity, but it cannot be. The letter is quite specific in requiring someone to design an orangery. That means that someone known to the family wrote to your brother, Lady Juliet. Possibly someone within the family. So, again, and more strongly, I wonder why.”
“Wrote to Juliet,” Simon said.
“What?”
“Letter was to Juliet. Asked her to bring me here. Not written to me.”
Hammond huffed in disbelief. “That makes no sense whatsoever.”
It made no sense to Simon, either, so he disregarded it and turned his full attention on his toast.