Page 55

VENUS, LIKE FORTUNE, FAVOURS THE BOLD

Rose Bowman came tumbling down the steps from the accommodation above the stables and threw herself into Eliza’s arms. ‘You’re back! How good it is to see you!’ She picked up the heaviest of Eliza’s portmanteaus and led the way up the steps to their shared room. ‘Missed you so.’

Mrs Prebbles bustled out of the office as they passed.

When she saw Eliza she stood four-square, her hands on her hips and a look of satisfaction on her rosy face.

‘So, Miss Eliza, ye’re home. Didn’t think yer adventure would last too long.

’ She was about to return to her work but paused and added, ‘We missed ye, the show missed ye. Glad to see ye returned to us, ready to work tonight I ’ope.

’ This was not a question but a statement, and Eliza nodded.

Rose pulled her into their room and closed the door. ‘Well? What made you come back?’

Eliza was weary and overwhelmed with emotion.

She did not care to catalogue the complexity of fact and feeling that had propelled her return.

Instead, she said, ‘I discovered I was truly an orphan and there was no home waiting for me as I had hoped. Through the kindness of a new-found sister and new friends, I was offered somewhere to stay, but I cannot live off others. So here I am. Back to the only work I know I’m good for. ’

Rose Bowman was full of high spirits and seemed not to mind the meagre information offered by her friend, she had so much of her own news to impart.

‘Saw Mr Flynn last night and he says when he’s back from Ireland, he will take me to America with him.

There’s a job waiting with Flynn’s Furs, his father’s trading company.

’ She was bouncing up and down on the bed with excitement at the thought of travel and new horizons beyond her imaginings.

‘Rose, do you like and trust him enough to tie your future, at least for a time, with his?’ Eliza could not but be affected by her friend’s exuberance and had no wish to see her disappointed and betrayed.

Thus she felt compelled to raise the question that troubled her.

‘You know Mr Flynn also asked me to marry him?’

Rose’s enthusiasm was undimmed. ‘Oh yes! He said he had mind of you for a wife. Imagine if we both went to the Americas together!’

‘But how would that change what he meant to you, Rose?’

Miss Bowman looked at her askance. ‘Don’t care for him, beyond a rich cove who offers a different game in a new country. Told me once he married, I’d no longer be his girl.’

‘And you don’t mind?’

Rose scoffed. She was always a realistic young woman who recognised a good opportunity when it arrived.

She had no time for the romantic sensibility that fuelled Eliza’s life.

‘Told you, Eliza, I’m not sweet on him. He’s just my key to the door.

But if you marry him, he’ll be good to you.

He’s rich, richer than all the coves hanging around Astley’s trying for favours. ’

Eliza sighed with an intensity of emotion that seemed to come from the depths of her being. ‘I don’t want to marry him, Rose.’

‘Why not? You couldn’t do better. What a fine do we’d have in New York; that’s where he lives, ain’t it?’

‘It is. And at his stud farm in Kentucky.’

Rose whistled through her teeth. ‘See what I mean? You love the prancers. Are you dicked in the nob, or what?’

Eliza couldn’t prevent a gust of laughter. ‘I must be “dicked in the nob” as you so elegantly put it. He offers me everything but love.’

‘Pah! The sooner you give up such fancies the better. Girls with nothing must take what they can.’

Eliza changed the subject. ‘It’s probably time we got ready for tonight’s performance. Has anything changed I need to know of?’

‘No, it’s the same performance. That young girl, Maria, took your place but fell off a few times, and the punters kept on complaining. Wanted you back.’

Eliza’s smile was wan as she said, ‘Well they’ve got their way.

’ She gazed around the room and thought how stark the contrast with the luxury and comfort of the life she had glimpsed while living with the Wolfes.

By some lights she seemed obstinate and fool-headed to turn her back on that to return to a life as modest as this, yet she knew it was degrading to her spirit to accept utter dependency on friends, even the kindest. By returning to her work, she earned her own meagre wages and perhaps, with her share of Ohio’s winnings and fees, could save for her own home one day.

Eliza fortified herself with these certain facts; she had her freedom, she was no longer adrift and alone now she had found a sister and some friends; against the odds her adventure had worked out well for she had found who her parents were, been shown the golden liquor of life, and offered a dram.

But while she concentrated on the propitious, she could not erase the longing that weighed like lead in her chest. Her heart ached with missing him.

She had loved Lord Byron for his poetry but it was Lord Purfoy who had taught her what the words meant. For his own reasons he had rejected her, yet against all good sense, she knew that he would come. Some day her lord would come for her and she would know his tread upon the stair.

She and Rose once again dressed in their costumes for the night’s performance, Rose as a highwaywoman, a saucy moll of the high road, jacketed and overborne with pistols that fired blanks, while Eliza was once again masked and plumed as Clorinda the Winged Venus.

They made their way to the stables to collect their horses, suitably accoutred by the stable boy.

Rose’s was saddled with bags full of stolen loot and Percy arrayed in a feathered harness, with gold leather wings strapped to the fetlocks of his back legs to give the impression he had wings on his heels.

They could hear the roar of the crowd even before they arrived.

The clowns were going through their routine and the customers were excited, many riotous with cheap ale.

As the two young women rode into the circular arena, the cheers were deafening.

Eliza heard shouts of She’s back! Our pretty Venus rides again!

as she stood on Percy’s back, holding only his reins, while he cantered steadily in a circle.

As she balanced on one leg, then slipped into a handstand, his canter continued as steadily as a metronome.

She could trust him with her life and he trusted her in return.

She gracefully came down from her handstand to ride him backwards, sitting facing his tail; Eliza was aware she felt the same infinite trust for Lord Purfoy as she felt for this horse, and was ashamed that she had given him no reason to have the same trust in her.

* * *

A week had passed and the old friends who gathered at the Wolfe house for their usual late breakfast had grown increasingly melancholy with the days.

‘Dammit, Rav! Since you scared away Miss Gray, and that lummox Mr Flynn has left for the godforsaken isle of the leprechauns, life has turned very dull indeed.’ Ferdy Shilton’s stance was so languid he seemed to be propped upright by the mantlepiece.

Alick laughed in his good-humoured way. ‘Come now, Ferdy, you can’t blame it on Purfoy. Cousin Zadoc was always going to complete his tour. And Miss Gray is a law unto herself. We offered her a home here but she said she could not live on the charity of others. I respect her for that.’

Raven Purfoy was reclining in a chair, his legs in dark pantaloons stretched out before him, his black tasselled hessians as shiny as glass.

His handsome, fine-boned face was dark, and a wintry expression added to the gloomy air.

In his hands was The Sporting Magazine, but he did not seem to be reading it.

He had neither smiled, nor expostulated, nor turned a page for the last half hour.

Alick passed him a jug of ale. ‘Rav, why the discontented mien? You look like Prometheus suffering on your rock, your liver ruined. Isn’t it time to seek some solace with Mrs Cornford?

You’ve not been seen much at Cavendish Square. ’

Lord Purfoy leapt to his feet, irascible in a way his friends had seldom seen before. ‘Mrs Cornford and I have parted ways. Not that it’s any of your damned business!’ He was white with disdain.

Mr Shilton intervened. ‘Calm down, Rav. You’ve been as cross as a bear these last days. Are you unwell?’

His lordship sank back into his chair. ‘No I’ve just been wondering what is the point of life. We’re born, we live out our short span and then we die. For what?’

‘This is too deep for me, Rav.’ Ferdy Shilton shook his head, his brow furrowed. ‘I find it best to live each day as it comes, grateful I’m an Englishman with a very fine castle. No point inviting the blue devils to feast at your table.’

‘That is to live like a dog! My hunting hound cheerfully greets each day with a wagging tail and a lolling tongue. He knows not, nor cares, about the morrow or his place in the grand scheme of things.’

Alick intervened, ‘There’s no need to abuse Ferdy, Rav.

He has a different approach to life, that’s all.

’ Then, in a calm way, he dropped a thunderbolt into the morning by saying, ‘I think it’s time you married.

’ Alick Wolfe had always been straight-talking and unafraid of giving offence, but the thunderous look on his friend’s face made him wonder if this time he had gone too far.

Purfoy was on his feet again, The Sporting Magazine flung to the floor. ‘It’s fine for you to talk, Alick, oh happily shackled man! You stole Corinna for yourself and have rubbed our noses in your conjugal happiness and cupidity ever since!’