Chapter 40 Apsley House
APSLEY HOUSE
MARY
Georgiana and I rode down Piccadilly, our heavy town coach swaying as we stopped and started in the crowd.
It was March, ten months since what they now called the Battle of Highbury.
The afternoon sky was blue and the air crisp.
The pleasant weather had packed the road, and horses and people cut between the stalled carriages.
“I think I shall walk the rest of the way,” I decided. “Meet me at Chathford House for dinner?”
“Wonderful,” Georgiana said. She wore, if not the latest fashion, the latest fashion she considered tasteful, a coat cut like a militia officer’s uniform, double-breasted and scarlet with prominent angled lapels and shining brass buttons.
Some ladies even paired the coat with white pantaloons, but Georgiana had chosen a white wool skirt and a sapphire knitted bonnet that matched her eyes.
“Do hurry,” she added. “I missed you during your trip.”
“You could have come with me.”
“I have had enough of that, thank you very much.” She examined me with her critical artist’s eye. “You look beautiful. Every bit the Bar—”
“Do not,” I warned. She sealed her lips innocently.
I rapped on the coach’s ceiling. We stopped, and the footman let down the step.
Georgiana came for a farewell embrace. I buried my nose in her hair, her wool bonnet scratching my temple, and we held each other rather long for a public street.
So long, a passing pair of working men, strolling openly hand-in-hand, tipped their hats with a wink.
When the song blossomed, more than draca had changed. London’s prejudices were fading in the brilliant spring.
The carriage rolled off, and I picked my way through the Piccadilly crowd, Green Park on my left, mansions on my right.
The crowd was abustle with good cheer and normalcy.
I attracted few looks; my black gown and scarlet petticoats were no longer noteworthy.
Young ladies who wished to shock had moved to a fashion borrowed from Paris fifteen years ago.
Then, it was called croisures à la victime—victim crosses, red ribbons crisscrossed on a dress to mimic the bloody guillotined executions of the Terror.
The English revival, illogically, was also named in French: cicatrices à la dame, or wyfe scars.
The dresses were black as blight, the back low-cut to expose the shoulder blades, and horizontal red ribbons were strung to mimic the scars of wyves whipped by slavers.
I thought it purposeless, a pursuit of shock, not a call to action. The war was past, and those wounds were healed. Newer causes called.
A pair of young ladies à la dame glanced at me as we passed, looked again, then gasped and curtsied. I hurried faster.
Apsley House was one of the larger manses, another notch in the tally of wealth stretching west as London prospered.
The front door was standing open and the house under noisy renovation, so I ignored the bell and went in, dodging a spray of dust from workers messily banging bricks out of a wall.
I tried my usual path but had to detour around an obstructed door and then a floor torn to bits.
A maid spotted me just before I reached my destination. She rushed to the door before me and announced, “Your Grace, the Baroness Bennet.” I must have scowled, as she departed even more swiftly.
The Duke of Wellington rose from his comfortable chair and rubbed his hands happily. “What a ring that has! A duke and a baroness meeting for luncheon.”
“At least you sought your title,” I muttered.
“A peerage is a nuisance. People look at me.” There was a freshly opened wooden crate on one side of the study.
I brushed aside the straw and found a pair of andirons shaped like dragons.
I dragged one out to check the sculpting, straining as it was heavy. “Did you ask for these to be gilded?”
“No. That must have been Wyatt. He claims to be an architect, but really he designs furnaces that burn money. I am grateful for your help in reining him in.”
“If I am to visit, I need to defend myself from his taste.” I frowned at the golden dragon. Why put gilt on something that would be covered with soot? At least this time they had the right number of limbs. The first shipment had been four-legged.
The duke watched with a hint of smile. “I appreciate your help. You are a good friend, Mary.” I was considering how to answer when he continued, “If you detest your peerage, why not refuse?”
“Refusal was… discouraged.” This led to a topic on my list. “And it presented an opportunity.”
The duke, though, was not done with his prior topic. “In the world’s eye, Mary Bennet is the sole great wyfe. How amusing that only your identity became public knowledge.”
“Amusing,” I agreed sourly.
“Cheer up, Mary. You must embrace the politics of the thing. The Prince had to reward someone. And he had to secure your loyalty, or appear to. You bound a dragon.”
I settled my spectacles. “I have never commented on that.”
“Your pardon.” The duke bowed. “It is rumored that the Baroness Bennet of Derbyshire is bound to a dragon.”
“Dragons—and wyves—do not seem very valued. He rewarded you more handsomely.” That sounded petulant, and I regretted saying it.
The duke smiled, not the slightest bit abashed.
“Shall we proceed?” He led me around stacked tools and paints into the longest room of the house.
The sides had tall scaffolds for installing gilt filigree on the roof and walls.
“I think I shall call this room the Gallery. That wall can be paintings depicting the battle. And then down the center, we will put a long table where, once a year, friends, soldiers of every rank, gather to reminisce. We shall toast the future and remember the absent.”
His voice roughened at the end. We had our political disagreements, but I respected his love for his men.
We sat at a plain workman’s table in the center of the room. The duke noted, “I see you still wear black and scarlet,” as a pair of footmen brought platters with silver covers.
“I am mourning the unjust death—”
“—of our fellow sentient animals,” he finished with me.
The footmen removed the covers, revealing pork chops and paté.
He hastened to explain, “There is no meat. Mushroom paté, and the pork chops are made from some sort of Chinese bean pudding. If I must eat vegetables when you visit, they may as well look like food.”
I fiddled with a silver spoon. “I sometimes imagine telling Mamma about being a baroness. She had quite given up on me being anything. Her feet would have floated for a day. She adored titles.”
“She was your mother. She knew you would achieve great things.” The Duke of Wellington lifted his glass. “To Mrs. Bennet, who raised a remarkable cadre of daughters.” I had to fumble my spectacles aside to dab my eyes while the footman served the food.
The duke continued, “I did not see you last week.”
“I traveled. To America.”
The duke gave me a sidelong glance. “An eight-week trip, according to the shipping schedule. Be careful, or you will confirm certain rumors. But why America?”
“I have always been curious about it. It was peculiar to see. Huge plains that are tremendously flat, and only now thawing from winter. I had several meetings attempting to comprehend the politics. The slave states of the Southern Confederate Alliance poured immense funds into the French alliance to conquer England. Defeat weakened them, but also embittered them. They will secede, and civil war is imminent, south against north, earlier than it would have been otherwise. But I think that haste will shorten the conflict. Slavery is more reviled than ever. The abduction of English wyves proved the lie in the slavers’ claims of racial entitlement.
And the south spent much of their political capital fanning the war with England and Canada, to the cost of everyone. ”
In my mind’s eye, I returned to a street corner in Manhattan. Two American ladies were handing out abolitionist pamphlets. They wore red-ribboned dresses, copying the fashion in London, but in America the style was called cicatrices à l’esclave, scars of the slave.
The duke spread mushroom paté on a slice of rye bread. “If only the government analyzed foreign policy as succinctly as you. I have long held that women are more observant and practical in these matters.”
I cut a bite of faux pork chop. “Then you will be pleased tomorrow. I am taking a seat in the House of Lords.”
He put down his knife. “You cannot be serious.”
“A life peerage entitles one to a seat,” I observed mildly.
“Not for women! How do you dream up such modern nonsense?”
“The law does not stipulate gender. And the concept is hardly modern. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, countesses and abbesses served.”
We argued about that until the duke was frustrated by the facts and fell into a moody silence.
I, on the other hand, felt invigorated. “There will be objections when I arrive. Will you support me?”
“A woman in the House of Lords…” He stabbed his pork chop with his fork.
“Think of it as a great wyfe rumored to have bound a dragon. The Prince supports me, but privately. He cannot say so publicly.”
“The Prince?” The Duke of Wellington’s brow beetled.
“He chose to ‘embrace the politics of the thing.’ Is that how you put it?” Mentally, I reviewed the list of lords I had spoken with. “I have support from liberal members, but a word from you would make a difference. The Hero of Highbury would sway die-hard conservatives.”
He glared at his plate. “You are more stubborn than your sister. I shall think on it.” He took a bite of the faux pork chop and made a face. “This is like jelly. Between this and politics I have lost my appetite.”
I was unconvinced by the Chinese bean pudding myself, but I took a hearty bite.
The duke pushed his plate away, folded his arms, and settled irritably in his chair. Finally, he said, “How are your sisters?”
“Kitty wishes she were a baroness,” I said, picturing her flabbergasted expression.
“Jane’s new twins are wonderfully healthy, and Jane is back to her sunny self.
The binding sickness after her wyvern’s death frightened me, but Emma’s skills cured it.
It was a near thing, though. Emma had to invoke…
remarkable power.” My skin prickled at the recollection.
“I suspect it was worse because Jane had been afflicted before.”
The duke nodded, sipping his wine.
I knew which sister actually interested him, but we had arrived at another topic on my list, so he would have to be patient.
I tested possible phrasings, then proceeded.
“Jane had a difficult few weeks after the twins were born, a type of sadness not uncommon with mothers, so Jemma came to live with Georgiana and me. Jane is past that now, but Charles and Jane have suggested we make that a regular event. Jemma will foster at Pemberley for a few months each year, then longer when she is older. Georgiana and I intend to establish her as heir.”
The duke burst out in laughter. “Mary Bennet! You have secured your succession. How aristocratic. Find a spare while you are at it.”
“It is not a succession,” I said, annoyed. “The peerage is only for life, or I would certainly have refused. Hereditary privilege is a crime.”
“Do announce that in the House of Lords. I shall enjoy the show.” He considered me, rather like he was appraising a battlefield. “What do you intend to achieve with this new political influence?”
“Voting reform for parliamentary elections, to start.”
“To start?”
“And an end to the laws that persecute those who love unconventionally.”
The duke looked less surprised by that, and more concerned. “You would have better odds in the courts. Have you even observed the House of Lords? I would not have much hope.”
“Hope is not something that you have. Hope is something that you create.” I pulled out a folded sheet of cheaply printed newspaper, a galley proof before publication. “The editor of The Morning Herald sent this to me. He demanded five hundred pounds not to print it.”
I handed it across the table, and the duke unfolded it. The title was visible: “The Unnatural Intimacy of Two Famous Ladies.”
He read it silently, every word, flattening the creases with businesslike efficiency. When finished, he tossed the page to me. “Tell them to publish and be damned.”
After discussing the renovation—we decided to add sculpted dragons to the already elaborate Gallery doorcases—the duke escorted me to the front door.
A burst cocoon had been mounted inside the doorpost, the empty puff of silk neatly sliced open from within.
It was a common decoration. Many cocoons had opened on a warm day last month, and London, briefly, had been resplendent with glorious creatures.
Londoners called it the Day of Song as everyone had heard the music.
Only a lucky few perceived the true wonder, a palace etched beyond the tallest steeples, a symphony composed of the emotions that make life precious—and a shining ideal that guided us to greater things than pettiness and strife.
“And Mrs. Darcy?” the duke asked at the door.
It must have required tremendous self-control to wait so long before asking.
The best I could answer was, “Lizzy intends to proceed with her plan.”