Chapter Four
“Twelve days from now,” I said, using my intimidate-the-recruits voice, “Leander will no longer be welcome under this roof. Mrs. Danforth has been very clear about the limits of her charity, and I doubt her kind offices will extend to writing you a character. Would you have me article the lad to a cobbler while I look for baptismal records that will prove his patrimony?”
Miss Dujardin’s hands fisted in her skirts. “She said that? Twelve days?”
“When I first called, it was a fortnight, and she’s apparently counting the very days. I don’t intend to try her patience.”
“Twelve days ?”
“She wants him gone, Miss Dujardin. I asked Mrs. Danforth if she’d be willing to foster Leander. She fears a stain on her reputation and refused.”
Miss Dujardin directed a contemptuous look at the house. “Has it occurred to you, my lord, that Martha Waites was fostering Leander and that her stories regarding his father were convenient fabrications designed to ensure Leander had some lofty connections?”
I would have wandered ’round to considering such a theory, eventually. Maybe. “Do you have evidence to support that conjecture?”
Leander was replacing the bricks in the stack from whence they’d come and washing off his unfortunate Frenchmen in the rain barrel.
“Martha was charming and imaginative by nature,” Miss Dujardin said, taking out a plain handkerchief. “I can see where an officer on leave would have been taken with her, but I can also see why she’d invent fabrications to better her child’s lot in life. She may not have known for certain who Leander’s father was, and she simply chose the best of a randy lot, or chose a passing fellow who’d do as well as any other. Consumption took some time to kill her, and she was doubtless making what plans she could for her son.”
Leander finished at the rain barrel and shook out his forces. “The Frenchies lost, miss. Good King George’s men beat them to flinders.”
“Was Wellington on hand?” I asked.
“Nah. He was at the duchess’s ball, but we lads were a credit to our uniforms.”
I had played with soldiers as a boy. Twenty years of warfare, of militias parading on village greens, units being called to active service, and casualty lists posted on the church doors, had doubtless inspired a booming business in toy soldiers and miniature artillery.
But to hear this small child so casually parrot an infantryman’s words and tone unnerved me.
“May I have some chocolate now, miss? I’m thirsty.”
Miss Dujardin knelt to examine the boy’s dirty hands and applied her handkerchief with vigor. “Leander, the day is quite warm. Wouldn’t cider or lemonade do?”
“I like chocolate.” He beamed up at me. “I like chocolate with nutmeg on top.”
Expensive tastes for such a small lad. “I like mine with a dash of whipped cream, but only when it’s cold enough to snow.”
Leander scowled at me. “That’s wintertime, and it’s not wintertime.”
“Right you are, lad. In summer, it’s cold meadow tea, cider, or lemonade for me.” Or a good summer ale, brandy, or hock.
He looked from me to his nurse, who had finished with his hands. “Not chocolate?”
“Not for me,” I said, assisting Miss Dujardin to rise. “Wellington wouldn’t have been caught dead drinking chocolate on a summer’s day. Lemonade with a bit of lavender garnish, but never hot chocolate.”
Leander eyed the lavender border.
“A few sprigs,” Miss Dujardin said. “If you pick three for you and three for me, how many is that?”
“What about him ?”
“None for me. I’m about to take my leave.”
“Will you come again?”
“Yes.” I answered without hesitation, because I knew the child would note reluctance or prevarication. This might well be Harry’s child. In the alternative, Miss Dujardin, who’d had years to speculate on the matter, might have put her finger on the truth: Harry was not the boy’s father, though he’d been close enough to Martha Waites that she could pretend he was.
I wasn’t sure which outcome I preferred, but on no account could I allow this child to be cast upon the charity of the parish.
Miss Dujardin folded her handkerchief and stuffed it into a pocket. “You have made an impression, my lord.”
On her? On the boy? A good impression or some other kind? She had perfected the art of scolding by inference. My mother had the same ability. While I weighed her words, Leander secreted his men beneath the arching fronds of the lavender border.
“You have made an impression as well, Miss Dujardin. Leander is lucky to have you.”
My sincere compliment earned me the most subtle relenting.
“Leander,” she said, “when you’ve chosen your lavender, take it to the kitchen and wash your hands properly with soap and water.” She smiled at him, and he was soon sniffing one sprig after another.
“You will come back?” she asked.
“The day after tomorrow. The questions you raise bear not only on Leander’s paternity, but also on the identity of his mother. Your theory that Mrs. Waites was fostering the boy might have merit.”
“You think his real mother was some Society belle passing her indiscretion off on her companion?” Said with no inflection whatsoever.
“Or an opera dancer unable to support her offspring. Or a servant, though I rather hope not. Harry had scruples.”
She leveled a flat stare at me. “Servants can have scruples too, sir.”
For a nursemaid, Miss Dujardin had a propensity for fierceness. I liked that about her and approved of her boldness because she exhibited it in defense of the child. She and Hyperia would understand each other without a word being spoken.
“Servants are,” I said, “in my experience, generally more principled than their employers, but having scruples and having the latitude to uphold them are not always synonymous in service. If you know anything further about Leander’s antecedents, I trust you will pass it along to me?”
She nodded, but her compliance was distracted by some other thought. “Twelve days, sir?”
“Less than that, if I can bestir the staff at Waltham House. The nursery hasn’t been in use for decades, and the governess’s quarters will want a good scrubbing and airing.”
Leander was ready for an old slug of a pony, too. I mentally added a stop at Tatts to my day’s itinerary.
“She’ll need to be patient,” Miss Dujardin said. “The governess. The whole nursery staff. He’s been through so much, and Mrs. Waites told him this is his new home.”
Miss Dujardin had been snappish with me, disrespectful, and difficult, all of which had saved some time and earned my respect. Leander’s personal dragon now looked to be blinking back tears.
“I was rather hoping that governess would be you, miss. What I know about the care and feeding of little boys wouldn’t fill a lady’s dancing slipper.”
She blinked at me, her scrutiny putting me in mind of the lad. Too serious to be polite. “You want me to come with him?”
“For the nonce at least. I understand that at some point, governesses give way to tutors, but surely not when a lad is only five years old?”
A sniff, another blink. A slight nod. “We can discuss those particulars at a later time. Leander should visit you before he’s uprooted again.”
She’d saved me having to make the suggestion. All children were reconnaissance officers at heart, and Leander would appreciate an inspection tour of the ducal quarters before moving there.
“I will come by Friday to collect you both at eleven of the clock. You can be my guests for luncheon, if that suits?”
Another nod, then she bounced a curtsey, summoned the boy and his half-dozen lavender sprigs, and disappeared into the house. The soldiers had been left to maintain surveillance from the depths of the lavender border.
I made my way in the direction of Hyde Park and Tattersalls. Miss Dujardin and her charge had given me much to think about, not least of which was the possibility that Martha Waites, regimental widow fallen on hard times, might not be the boy’s mother, though she had claimed to be.
Lady Clarissa, by contrast, might have given birth to the child, but was professing to know nothing of him.
A conundrum, and a ducal title could fall into escheat if I did not find the solution.
“I am the last man to know anything about our brother’s opera dancers,” Arthur said, tilting his hat a half inch to the right, then returning it to level.
“Who would know about his liaisons and flirtations when on leave?” I took the hat off his head and replaced it, tilted a half inch to the left. “Better.”
He regarded himself in the mirror over the sideboard. “Better how?”
More dashing. If I said that, Arthur would smite me with a scowl, and I had been scowled at enough for one day.
“Ask Banter why you should tilt left. He has more of an artistic eye than I do, but I think it might have to do with which hand carries your walking stick. We become accustomed to presenting ourselves to the world in a certain posture, and that posture becomes ingrained.”
Unless, of course, in the interests of appearing harmless and trustworthy, one purposefully altered his posture to that of an old man three sheets to the wind, or a simple-minded drover happy to jaunt across the miles with his livestock.
“I like that,” Osgood Banter said, coming down the steps. “Your Grace cuts a bit of a dash with your hat angled just so.”
Arthur’s gaze and Banter’s collided in the mirror . I would like to see you wearing only that hat. The admission twinkled in the depths of Banter’s eyes, and I wanted to hit him. Not because he was flirting with Arthur, but because I was interviewing a potential witness, and my witness, before my very eyes, had just gone witless and besotted.
“We were discussing opera dancers,” Arthur said, tossing Banter his own hat, such that it spun across the foyer like a fashionable discus. Banter caught it one-handed.
“Jules,” Arthur went on, “has come up with the notion that Leander might not be Harry’s son, or the late Mrs. Waites might not be his mother, even if Harry is his papa. His lordship’s mind has turned to opera dancers and love nests and vexing conundrums.”
“All the best conundrums are vexing,” Banter replied, tapping his hat onto his handsome head. He was lanky, dark-haired, likable, and more shrewd than he wanted people to know. “Waltham labors under the impression that we owe our loved ones discretion, though, so Harry’s habits would have been unknown to His Grace. Perhaps Harry confided in an old tutor or former amour? Upon whom would any soldier call when he’s in London on winter leave?”
I gave Banter’s excellent suggestion some thought. “Old school chums. Harry enjoyed his years at Oxford.” I had come along after him, and his reputation had preceded me. I hadn’t been nearly as frolicsome, to the disappointment of all and sundry. Given my memory problems, chronic inebriation had struck me as begging for trouble.
“Harry was senior wrangler in fornication and drunkenness,” Arthur said. “Papa did not know whether to be proud or despairing. Mama threatened to go to the lawyers about Harry’s funds, and Harry learned a little moderation.”
This was news to me, but then, Arthur was not one to bear tales.
He shifted his walking stick from his right hand to left and struck a contrapposto stance before the mirror. His Grace of Waltham, the personification of dignity, was preening.
“Harry was great friends with the Dortmund brothers,” Arthur said, switching his forward foot. “One of whom is yet extant, one of whom perished at Badajoz. He was also on famous good terms with Alexander Newton.”
“Newton is in Town,” Banter volunteered as Arthur tossed him his more serviceable walking stick. “Bides in Knightsbridge above the King’s Helm, belongs to the Arthurian Club. Something of a scribbler these days. He wrote a comedy that was quite well received in the spring. Ready, Your Grace?”
“I have been dawdling about this foyer for the past quarter hour while some people dithered over their choice of cravat pin. Don’t wait up for us, Jules.”
I had no idea where they were off to. Supper at the club, perhaps, or strolling at Vauxhall. “I’ve asked the housekeeper to tidy up the nursery suite.”
Arthur waved a gloved hand. “Of course, and you probably warned the stable that we’ll be acquiring a pony. I trust you to have all in hand, Julian. Adieu. Bonne nuit . Banter, come along.”
I vow the scent of roses followed them from the foyer, and yes, I was jealous. Of the abundant affection, of the sense of shared mischief, of absorption with another person so complete it precluded anything as mundane as fretting over a potential nephew—or over a brother grappling with the family’s latest vexatious puzzle.
The sooner I got the pair of them off to the Low Countries, where the law had better things to do than invade a person’s very bedroom, the better for all concerned.
Alexander Newton welcomed me into a modest pair of rooms above a venerable inn. He was two streets south of Hyde Park, meaning rents were manageable, the air less foul, and the neighborhood less fashionable. I applauded his choice, though it was likely born of necessity.
“The year without a Christmas,” he said, verbally caressing the syllables as only a man with a native Scottish burr could. He sat back in a worn wing chair and crossed his bony knees. “Though, in fact, that was the year we all stayed in Town and socialized and gossiped like mad for the duration of Yuletide. I do recall Harry’s visit. He looked so damned hale and hearty.”
“Any detail might be helpful, though I’m particularly interested in his lordship’s social activities. We have reason to believe Harry did not die without issue, but we have more questions on the matter than answers.”
Newton’s appearance was ascetic, pale, thin, languid, and I would have termed him effete, but for a pair of green eyes that conveyed keen intelligence. From prior acquaintance, I knew he had the writer’s habit of viewing the whole world as so much material for his next magnum opus.
Reconnaissance officers had the same observant quality, though our imaginations went to tales of war rather than belles lettres .
As a playwright, Newton occupied Society’s penumbral ranks. When his works were well received, he would be well received too. Not so when his efforts were less successful.
“I’d be surprised if Harry hadn’t left you a few mementos,” Newton said. “He was dedicated to his pleasures, though I understand he was an equally dedicated officer. My condolence on your loss.”
Civil of him. “Thank you. If I might speak in confidence?”
“You may. A Scotsman learns to listen more than he talks when dwelling among the heathen English.”
If Leander came to live at Waltham House, all of London—and half of Edinburgh and Dublin—would soon know of Harry’s indiscretion. The overwhelming majority would think nothing of it. The Regent himself was said to have sired by-blows. Provided a fellow looked after his progeny, no judgment attached to him.
Judgment fastened like a set of shackles to the woman involved and to her family. The child was affected to a lesser extent, particularly if his father’s family had means and standing, and acknowledged the illegitimate offspring.
“His Grace,” I said, invoking Arthur’s standing purposely, “received word that a Mrs. Martha Waites had expired in the home of a friend, leaving behind a child she claimed Harry had fathered. We have no documents, no witnesses to the relationship, no arrangements in Harry’s will that support or refute the allegations.”
“Martha Waites?” Newton rose and took down a bound volume that looked to be some sort of journal. “The name is familiar. Brings to mind…” He flipped to the middle and stared hard at the lines on the page. “ The Taming of the Shrew . ‘I see a woman be made a fool, if she hath not spirit to resist.’”
He sat with the book open in his lap. “Moreton did an adaptation of the original tale, set among polite society, a penniless belle, her military swain from Society’s highest ranks… Martha found a job as a seamstress because she knew all the uniforms. She had a great eye for altering what was on hand to suit who was cast for a part. The poorer ladies can often work wonders with a needle from a young age.”
His observation struck a discordant note. “Martha was from limited means?”
Newton set aside his book of plays. “She referred to herself as the parson’s wayward daughter. She did not elope with Waites, but it wouldn’t have made much difference if she had, because her dowry was so modest. He was to grow rich in India, but alas, he expired before making his fortune. She was cast on her wits when she returned to Town, though I think she had a sister or a cousin who helped her get back on her feet.”
Progress. “How do you recall these details?”
He looked me up and down. “Martha would have made a fine tragic heroine, though nobody is writing many of those lately. The audiences want farce, satire, humor, song. Sheridan in as many guises as we can provide him. For our tragedies, we need only read the newspapers or look out the window. We can’t afford bread, but fellows like me can obligingly turn the theaters into histrionic circuses for those too fashionable for Astley’s. Martha was consumptive, and that never ends well.”
Was Newton consumptive? I hadn’t heard him cough, but many consumptives fared better in warmer weather.
“She was ill even then?”
“Brave with it, but what choice did she have?”
Would Harry have dallied with a consumptive seamstress? I was reminded of that five-pound expense and of the stupidity that sometimes passed for military gallantry. A man returning to war might have married a dying woman he felt sorry for, if that man believed his own days were numbered.
But the whole point of such an undertaking would have been to place Martha under the protection of the Caldicott family shield for whatever years remained to her, and that, Harry had not done.
“Did you ever see her with Harry?”
“I did, aye. They were friendly, but you know how Harry was. He could flirt with the best of them or pretend to politely discuss bonnets on the bridle paths with a woman he’d been swiving twelve hours earlier. The stage lost a talent when he bought his colors.”
But had Leander lost his father, or had Martha, as Miss Dujardin had suggested, designated a plausible wellborn fellow for that honor, one now unable to refute her tale?
“Not a complete loss,” I said. “Harry’s work required him to play various roles in service to his country. He was good at it.”
“Harry was spying? Naughty, naughty. I honestly can’t tell you if he was naughty with Martha Waites. She didn’t strike me as a game girl. Wayward only by the standards of a Puritan, and a woman can’t help it if she’s pretty, can she?”
I was more inclined of late to believe that women could not help it if men were arrogant, philandering boors.
“What did she look like?”
“Pretty, pale. Good teeth. Not much sugar served in a parsonage, I suppose. Beautiful hands. Hair shading auburn by candlelight, brownish otherwise. She knew her letters, had a bit of French, could manage well enough on the pianoforte. She hummed airs and hymns rather than drinking songs.”
This man should have been a reconnaissance officer. “A lady fallen on hard times?”
“A parsonage is often the last stop before a family loses any pretensions to gentility. Yes, the vicar is a gentleman, but his means are notoriously limited, and his children are thus unlikely to make advantageous matches. They might not slide into ruin, but penury is near at hand from birth.”
The cushion upon which I perched was thin, Newton hadn’t offered me any refreshment, and yet, I was enjoying his company. He’d known Harry and not been taken in by Harry’s charm, nor had he judged my brother for his foibles.
“What of the sister or cousin?” I asked. “Was she on the verge of penury?”
“She had a decent roof over her head, I know that, and she was gainfully employed. She’d also been raised by a parson. Martha stayed with her from time to time between productions, took meals with her sometimes. Nobody likes to rely on charity, but family is supposed to look after family.”
He’d laced the last observation with a hint of a warning.
“The boy will be cared for, Newton. Whether he’s Harry’s progeny, Martha’s indiscretion, or just some lad cast upon the world’s kindness at too young an age, Waltham and I will ensure he’s well fed, clothed, housed, and educated.”
Newton rose to return his book to the shelf. “Even if Martha were gracing Haymarket street corners, the child is blameless. Perhaps especially if she was on the stroll, the lad’s blameless. It’s not my place to judge, but for the sake of Harry’s memory, I hope you do right by the child.”
I stood, having been given much information to consider. “You will immortalize me in a play as the arrogant lordling if I don’t see to the lad?”
“I’ll do as half of London has done and cast you as a traitor.” Not a hint of humor laced his words. “Though, as to that, Harry always said you were too honorable for your own good. If anybody was likely to sell his soul to the devil, I’d put my money on Harry, and his lordship would get the better of the bargain too.”
Was that a compliment, an insult, a test?
“I’m safe from your pen, then.” I retrieved my hat from the hook on the back of the door. “You said audiences want humor, farce, and comedy, and a man betraying his honor would never be anything but tragic.”
He smiled, his green eyes dancing. “Suppose it would. Good point.”
I was headed back to Tatts, but I put one last question to mine host. “I don’t suppose you know the name of Martha Waites’s sister or cousin? The one with the roof over her head and a decent post?”
Newton stared into the middle distance. A sparrow lit on the windowsill, as if waiting for his answer. He waved a hand, and the bird flew off.
“Little shite comes around beggin’. He’s early today. He does that when rain’s on the way.”
“You feed him.” Prisoners in Newgate had the same habit. A man with crumbs to give away was still, in some regard, human.
“The cousin was Mel,” Newton said. “Maybe Melisande, Melanie, Melody. Mel is the best I can do, no last name, but she wouldn’t have been Waites, would she?”
A first name was something. “And Martha’s home parish?”
“No idea. She hadn’t an accent to speak of, more evidence of a decent upbringing. She wasn’t a village girl.”
The sparrow came back and commenced strutting about on the windowsill. I was keeping the local dignitary from his nooning, apparently. One of the local dignitaries.
“My thanks. I don’t suppose you have another play in the works?”
“I always have a play in the works. Don’t worry. Just another comedy. The last one earned some blunt, so it’ll be smiles and laughter all around this autumn when the great and the good are done murdering me uncle’s grouse.”
He was putting on the plaid for me, and I appreciated the performance. “You’ve been a considerable help. Best of luck with the play.”
I left him swearing affectionately at the bird, who was perched on an ink-stained finger and looking hungry and hopeful.