Page 43 of A Gathering Storm
“A dressing gown.” Ward cocked a hip, raised a brow, and said, “Do you like it?”
Nicholas didn’t even answer. “What will your servants think if they see you like that?”
“Oh, they’ve gone to bed.” Ward waved his hand in an airy gesture. “The only person who might still be around is Pipp, and he won’t think anything of it. He understands how things are with me.”
“Well, he doesn’t understand how things are withme.”
Ward shook his head. “Nicholas, you don’t need to worry. Truly. I often dress like this in the evenings. None of the servants would think anything of me wearing a dressing gown if they saw me—it doesn’t signify anything.”
Nicholas gave an impatient shake of his head. “Men like you don’t seem to think the people who serve you have the ability to form thoughts or opinions of their own. You just assume they will accept whatever you tell them, whatever you want them to think.”
“That’s not true,” he protested. “What you don’t understand is that I know Pipp, probably better than anyone else in this world, and he knows me, and—”
“And Mr. Pipp isn’t the only servant in this household,” Nicholas interrupted flatly. “You have a cook, several maids, a groom, a gardener. You think they don’t have eyes and ears?” He looked away, shaking his head, as though astonished by Ward’s obtuseness. “I’ve sat around plenty of servants’ tables in my time, and I can tell you theyalltalk, they all gossip.”
Ward tried again. “Pipp is very discreet—”
“I daresay he is,” Nicholas said. “But you are not.”
Ward bristled at that, but Nicholas wasn’t finished.
“I realise you don’t need to be as wary as I do,” he said, holding up a staying hand. “You’ve plenty of money to protect yourself. You could buy off a gossiping servant if you wanted, or up sticks to go and live somewhere else.” He paused, settling his silvery gaze on Ward. “But you have to understand that I am not in the same position. If gossip starts up about me in this village, it will never be forgotten. I will have no choice but to deal with the consequences of that or find myself a new position.” He shook his head. “And that would be no easy business for a man of my birth.”
He was right, Ward realised with a stab of shame. Ward was always assuming that Nicholas shared the same privileges that he himself enjoyed, but that was not the case.
Slowly, Ward began to undo the black silk clasps on his dressing gown, then he peeled off the garment and tossed it aside, reaching for his shirt instead.
“Thank you,” Nicholas said.
Ten minutes later, fully dressed, Ward led Nicholas downstairs. As they reached the bottom of the staircase, Pipp appeared—in his dressing gown as it happened, though his was a sight less ornate than Ward’s ostentatious, crimson one.
“Allow me, sir,” he said, drawing out his enormous key ring and flipping through the many keys there.
“Thank you for dinner,” Nicholas said to Ward, politely. “And the, ah, conversation.”
“Not at all. Thank you,” Ward returned awkwardly. “I’ll see you next Friday for our trip to Truro. Shall we leave around two o’clock? If that’s not too early?”
“Two o’clock will be fine,” Nicholas said as Pipp wrestled the door open and stepped aside to let him pass.
It was very dark outside, a cloudy night with no stars or moon to be seen. But Nicholas went out into it without hesitation, Snow a pale shadow at his heels.
“Good night, Sir Edward,” he said and set off down the path.
“Good night,” Ward echoed.
Nicholas didn’t look back.
The shadows of the night had already swallowed him up by the time Pipp closed the door.
FromThe Collected Writings of Sir Edward Fitzwilliam, volume I
My brother and I went up to Cambridge together, though my brother only stayed a year. At the end of that year, George persuaded my father to purchase him a commission with the 80th Foot, his lifelong ambition having been to join the Army. Later, when George died in Burma, I took great comfort that we had had that year at Cambridge together. We shared rooms, ate together most days, even attended the same classes—though George was not as interested as I. As the months passed, we regained that closeness we’d shared as boys, finishing one another’s sentences, seeming sometimes to share the same thoughts—though no one would now have mistaken one of us for the other, with George topping me by several inches.
24th June 1853
By the time the following Friday came around, Ward was on tenterhooks at the thought of seeing Nicholas again. The strange formality of their parting, after all that had gone before, had unsettled him. All week he’d found himself reexamining the things Nicholas had said to him about privacy and privilege and consequences.
“Spoken like a true gentleman . . .”