Barbara Metzger (7 page)

“A schoolmistress, you say? Bla—bless you. Still, there’s no need to fill your lovely head with figures. I am certain you will find many better things to do with your time now that you’re in London. You’ll want to visit the shops, of course. What woman can resist? And you’ll want to visit all the historic sights so you can tell your students when you get back. Bath, was it?”

“I shall not be returning to Bath, Major, but yes, the shops do sound inviting.” That hundred pounds was like an itch. Uniforms for Blass and Fanny, new hangings for the parlor, a cartload of soap and rags—and that was just to start. There were the famous London booksellers, too, like Hatchard’s, and all these empty shelves. “Still, business must come first, so I’ll want to look over the books myself, but not tonight, of course.”

“Of course.”

The connecting door led to Nick Blass’s bedroom, which Cristabel insisted on viewing, over the major’s protests.

“He is my employee, isn’t he? No one could complain of the impropriety in that. It is not as though I were visiting your chamber, sir.” Cristabel was mortified to find herself blushing. She hid her face in the hanky and gave the room a most cursory examination. Aside from the prevailing reek of tobacco smoke and the unmade bed, the place was almost neat. Small, but not the rat’s nest she’d expected from the gritty little man. They returned through the maroon parlor to the entry hall.

“My suite is on the other side of the stairwell,” MacDermott told her. “I think you might take a peek at the sitting room without offending anyone’s sense of decorum,” he teased, having noticed her blushes. He’d also noted what a difference a little color made toward enlivening her looks.

“It’s quite large,” she said from the doorway.

“But the bedroom is small. Would you…?”

Cristabel was already back in the hallway. “Those must be the best rooms in the house, Major.”

“Oh yes, Lord Harwood was kind enough to make allowances for a half-pay officer. The rooms upstairs are all smaller and less costly, naturally, but the stairs are difficult for me to negotiate.” His next step was a faltering one, for emphasis. “I’ll manage, though, to show your charming self the way,” he said, leaning on his cane.

Nick was standing in the entryway, blowing cigar smoke out the door, when the major asked him to carry Miss Swann’s bags. He would have kept chewing on the soggy leaves if not for MacDermott’s glare, at which he stubbed the cigar out on the doorpost and put the butt in his pocket. Hoisting Cristabel’s portmanteau in one hand and the hamper from Captain Chase’s housekeeper in the other, he followed MacDermott’s cane-aided progress, grunting. Only Cristabel, coming last, seemed to mind the bags clumping on the stairs and scraping against the wall, and the grunting.

“There used to be four bedroom suites on this level,” MacDermott told Cristabel as they paused at the first landing. Blass set the bags down and wiped his face with a checkered cloth. “With sitting rooms and dressing rooms, I understand, but when Lord Harwood decided to change the house from a private dwelling, he made all of the rooms into bedchambers. Some of the larger ones have two tenants, and most of the smaller rooms don’t have doors to the corridor. An awkward arrangement.”

“It’s very quiet.” The doors were all closed and no sounds reached the hallway, except Blass’s heavy breathing.

“The gir—ah, guests keep pretty much to themselves. They’ll be at work, or readying to go, or resting from after. Diligent folks.”

“They work at night, too?”

“Yes, yes, didn’t I mention that? That’s why you wouldn’t want a room on this story, if one were vacant, which it isn’t. The girls come and go at all hours…shop girls, ah, baker’s assistants who leave well before dawn, and of course some of them attend concerts or the theater on their days off, so it’s quite noisy at times. Not what you’d like, I’m sure.”

“Do you think I could see the rooms?”

Blass wheezed, but the major ignored him. “Perhaps Fanny could show you in the morning. It wouldn’t be proper for me to knock, you know, in case they might be dressing.”

“Oh, of course.” She thought she heard Blass murmur a high-pitched “a-course” in echo, but when she turned around he was already hefting the bags for the next flight up.

This time Cristabel followed the officer, who oddly enough was somehow managing without the cane again, even though this second stairwell was uncarpeted and steep. Blass trailed after, puffing. Suddenly Cristabel stopped short, struck with a horrible idea. “There are no actresses or opera dancers here, are there?” she demanded.

The major was dumbfounded, seemingly aghast that she would even know about such women. She did, for they figured prominently in Miss Meadow’s precepts. It was squash-faced Blass, bumping into her from behind with the hard-edged hamper, who answered: “’Eaven forbid.”

Cristabel smiled at him. “Quite right. This has to be a respectable place, where gently bred strangers can find a secure welcome.”

“Quite,” he drawled, nudging her onward with the bag.

The uppermost floor would have been servants’ quarters. The hallway was dark and narrow and water-stained from years of unpatched roofs. The room MacDermott opened was small, the single window tiny, the ceiling pitched so that Cristabel, at five-foot-eight, would have bumped her head with alarming frequency.

“See? Isn’t it perfect?” MacDermott asked. “We usually rent these rooms to transients, except for young Fanny, whose room is at the end. She goes rent-free, for being maid. The other long-term renters are all downstairs. It would mean a loss of income, of course, if you stay here, but you would have your privacy and peace. Why, you could even use next door as a music room. Nick, put the bags down and go fetch the harp.” The major continued after the double thuds and heavy clumpings: “That way you wouldn’t have to worry over disturbing the boarders, no matter what time you wanted to practice, and your instrument would be safer here than below, where some of the callers might get rowdy. Besides, you’d be out of the hustle and bustle of the common room. Please don’t think me impertinent, ma’am, but it would pain me to see a cultured lady like yourself have to participate in the day-to-day workings of a business establishment.”

Cristabel was certain she’d worked harder for Miss Meadow than she would ever have to here, for herself, even if she got down on her knees to scrub the floors. The major’s concern was touching, it truly was. Of course, his care would have been more affecting if he’d offered her his own suite, a niggling little voice whispered. There were the stairs, and his injury, though, weren’t there? And he
was
a paying customer, wasn’t he? He smiled at her in wide-eyed expectation, almost like one of her little schoolgirls hoping for a nod of approval for a difficult piece.

And there came Nick Blass, manhandling her precious harp and muttering words Cristabel was sure weren’t meant as anxiety over her well-being. Nick Blass, who was too short to bash his skull on the eaves of the attic room, who had a perfectly lovely set of rooms downstairs, including the abused library, and who, furthermore, worked for her. It may be a comedown for a lady to dirty her hands in business, but there were definite advantages, too! In addition, instead of being a ship at sea, it was time Cristabel became captain of her own fate.

“I am sorry, gentlemen, it won’t do. As you say, it would cut into the rental income, which appears to be small enough as is. I’m sure I’ll have more suggestions about that tomorrow, after I look over the ledgers. I do intend to deal with matters myself, you see, because this is meant to be my income. I shall have to use the office, therefore, so it’s only natural for me to occupy that rear bedroom, too.”

Nick had been standing pop-eyed from exertion, mopping sweat off his forehead. At Cristabel’s words he found the cigar stub and jammed it into his mouth, chomping it around.

It was Lyle MacDermott who hastened to reply: “You can’t have considered, my dear Miss Swann, the noise, the dirt from the street, the…the…”

“There won’t be any dirt in my house,” she ordered, glaring at Nick. “The condition of this house is abysmal. I lay the blame at Lord Harwood’s door, naturally”—her grimace at Nick belied the words—“but this state is no longer acceptable. Anyone who wishes to remain in my employ had better understand. Is that clear?”

Blass started to growl something around the nub of the cigar, but the major interrupted. “Of course it is. The place needs a woman’s touch, after all. Isn’t that right, Nick?”

Miss Swann didn’t wait for a reply before sailing off down the stairs.

Fanny was enlisted to help the furious Nick move his belongings. Instead of facing those stairs again—or leaving altogether as Cristabel hoped—he’d chosen the pantry area for his bunk, dislodging a shadowy figure identified only as Boy, whose duties seemed to include carrying coal and water, though how only the first item got on him was another mystery. The pantry was below ground with the infrequently used windowless kitchen, so Cristabel still had hopes that the surly, unkempt Blass would choke on his own cigar smoke. Boy seemed happy enough to move upstairs, until Cristabel noted the winks he and the maid Fanny exchanged. His pallet was dragged to beneath the kitchen table for now, and he was drafted to shift Nick’s possessions and help clean the two rooms while Fanny changed the bed linens.

Nick’s thick-browed scowl chased Cristabel into the parlor where she busied herself unwrapping and polishing the harp. She’d had Boy move it nearer the window, thinking how lovely it would be to play there in the morning’s sun and how, if need be, she could give music lessons. She was much too tired to try the pianoforte or to tighten more than a few of the harp’s strings. She felt as if her fever had returned in fact, and her throat was burning again from the smells in the room. The first thing she would do in the morning was open all the windows! For now she couldn’t wait to put her three books on the shelves, her parents’ portraits on the bureau, and her weary head on a soft pillow.

Nick’s last load was a carved-wood humidor and one boot. Boy tugged his forelock, and Fanny rambled on about new sheets and more time and maybe a plant or two to brighten things a bit, for her mum always said as how growing things made a place look like home. Except for that pretty plant the cat ate and died.

“Fanny,” the major said, returning to the room, “Miss Swann is looking a little peaked again. Perhaps you should make up more of that hot posset for her?”

“Please, Fanny, if you would. That would be just the thing.”

“And I’ll fetch it upstairs for you myself, Miss Swann.”

“How kind you are, Major. I’m sure it will help me sleep better.”

The major was sure she’d sleep better, too. He and Nick Blass poured half a bottle of laudanum into the cup.

Chapter Seven

I’m gonna kill ’er, so help me, I am. ’Cept she’d make me carry ’er bloody ’arp up to the pearly gates for ’er.”

“Put a sock on it, Nick, we’ve got to think.”

“Think? Huh! What ’appened the last time you put your brainbox to work? I near broke my back and the broomstick moved in anyways. You got about as much sense as you got stuff on under your kilt. Which, incidentally, I didn’t see your stiff-rumped moll aswoonin’ over.”

“She noticed, all right. She’s just too much of a lady to show it.”

“Yeah, and you were gonna turn ’er up sweet, with your speechifyin’. Any sweeter ’n she’d ’ave ’ad your rooms ’stead of mine. Which ain’t a bad idea.”

“Especially if I were in them.”

Nick hooted. “You’re dicked in the nob, if you think you can get Miss Prunes ’n Prisms into your bed.”

“I don’t know. Did you see her smile?”

“Yeah, right when she was talkin’ about how respectable the place had to be. ’Sides, cold comfort’s all you’d get out of that one.”

“Maybe,” the major said with a grin.

“Maybe? Maybe it’d be like takin’ a demmed icicle to your bed. There’s nothin’ soft or cuddlesome about that witch anywheres. And she’s too tall.”

“Only for you, my friend. I like looking into a woman’s eyes for a change. Miss Swann’s are a lovely blue, by the bye. Seriously, Nick, I think she’s got possibilities. Put a little meat on her bones, do something with her hair, and I wager she’d pay for the dressing. There’s something elegant about her, even in that ugly rig she’s got on.”

“And I say the mort’s got an odd kick to ’er gallop. Looks like a feather could knock ’er over, yet she don’t bend an inch. Your attic’s to let, Mac, if you think you can bring that one under your thumb. I say we get rid of ’er ’n be done with it afore she gets a better look at the place, or the books.”

“I told you, and told you, Nick, you can’t just get rid of a lady that easily. She’s not some two-bit shab-rag you can toss in the Thames and no one would miss or come looking for. You’d have all of London out searching for her and asking questions.”

“Then maybe she could just pass on, natural-like. Maybe ’er ’arp could fall on ’er or somethin’.”

“You’d still have those legal chaps out here, handing the deed to the house to some other relict, or selling the place to pay off more of Harwood’s debts. Besides, we haven’t considered that the girl’s got a guardian. You saw the carriage she drove up in, all the lackeys in uniform.”

Blass spit. “Uniforms be damned. That’s where she got the idea about makin’ me into a blasted servant.”

“Stubble it, Nick. What do you consider yourself, anyway, an entrepreneur?”

“Huh?

“A business manager?”

Nick drew himself up as tall as he could. “Well I ain’t no doorman, ’n at least I ain’t aimin’ above my touch, like some folks I could mention.”

“Take a damper. We’ve got to figure this out. I did some checking on this Captain Chase while you were, ah, rearranging the furniture. Seems the fellow’s become a naval hero since I met him.”

“A real hero,” Nick taunted in revenge, “or another park soldier?”

MacDermott ignored the implication. “He’s got medals and decorations enough to sink a ship, they say, except the ship is already down, blown clean out of the water. He was one of the only survivors, got chewed up some, too. He’s selling out now, the talk goes, to take up the family estates in Staffordshire. Came into the Winstoke title, too, and money.”

“Yeah, so what’s he got to do with Harwood’s niece?”

“No one seemed to know, that’s why we’ve got to move carefully. He got Harwood’s place in London, it seems, but not much money out of the card game. He didn’t get to collect on the baron’s vouchers; the creditors got there ahead of him.”

“I ain’t cryin’ for ’im.”

“Right, but what about the girl? The way I see it, there are three possibilities. One is that Winstoke is taking her on as a dependent, in which case she’s like family, and you know those nobs when it comes to their women. But he wouldn’t have sent her here unchaperoned, even if he didn’t know about the place. So the likelier idea is that he knew Kensington, and he’s set her up here in keeping. And you know about toffs and the women under their protection.”

“Yeah, they get tired of ’em fast. This one even faster.”

“Correct. And he might just come down hard in appreciation, if we can take her off his hands when the time is right.”

“I don’t know, Mac. She don’t look like no well-kept mistress to me, an’ she sure don’t act like any light-o’-love.”

“That’s why my third theory is looking better, that she really is a schoolmarm who got Harwood’s money. I mean, maybe there was something else beside the house the cent-per-centers couldn’t touch, entailed jewelry or whatever? Maybe old Harwood settled an annuity on her before he ran up all the debts. I don’t know, maybe he even put aside a dowry for her somewhere.”

“Lookin’ prettier all the time, ain’t she?”

MacDermott grinned. “I can’t say as how I’d turn my back on the package. A dowry, the deed to the house, and the lady herself. No, a fellow could think of worse fates.”

Nick could. He could think of MacDermott set in a soft bed for life, and himself down in the kitchen with the cats and rats, if not out in the cold. “So we got options,” he agreed, not mentioning the few he’d keep under his hat for now. “And we got ’er tucked up and out of the way for tonight, but what are we gonna do about business?”

“How much laudanum do you have?”

* * *

After five days of rest Cristabel’s cold was nearly gone. She had slept enough to make up for those seven years of young girls coughing, whispering, and weeping all night at Miss Meadow’s, and the early-morning wake-ups. Now she slept so heavily, it was hard to get up in the morning at all. Staying abed till near noon, when Fanny brought her chocolate and rolls and Boy came in to relight the fire, was entirely unlike her, and Miss Swann reveled in it! She would bathe in a tub placed near the fireplace, then dress and sit in the library reading, or in the parlor playing her music or visiting with whichever of the boarders could spare time to keep her company, mostly a young woman of about Cristabel’s age named Marie, who brought in her sewing. Of course, the major frequently entertained her with tales of his travels and a gentle flirtation.

Cristabel’s days were delightfully lazy, with only the tiniest twang of conscience to remind her that she was accomplishing nothing. Not refurbishing the house or checking the books or advertising for music students. Well, she hadn’t had a vacation in all those years, she rationalized, and she was sick. Actually, she was thriving. With all the care and attention, the good food and even affection, Miss Swann had never felt better. If it hadn’t been for the occasional headaches, and worse, the nightmares, she would be like a cat in the cream. For if her days were pleasant, they were also short.

Soon after supper, it seemed, she could barely keep her eyes open. The major had made an evening ritual out of taking tea with her and it was he, to Cristabel’s chagrin, who had to lead her, yawning and nodding, back to her chambers. As soon as she had changed into her worn flannel nightgown and tossed some water on her face, she would collapse on the bed. Then the dreams would start.

All those girls—seven years of sweet, laughing little girls turning into hard-eyed predators—ringed her bed, laughing at her. Now their faces were rouged, like dolls, and their laughter was raucous. “You’ll never be one of us,” they taunted, and only shrieked louder when Cristabel tried to tell them she never wanted to be.

Miss Meadow was there, too. She kept repeating: “You’re a bad example. A bad image for the school. Bad. Bad. Bad.” Then she turned into Nick Blass, with his broken nose, and he was blowing that rancid smoke at her, yelling, “Bad for business. Bad.”

Next the smoke wrapped around Nick’s head and changed into bandages, like Captain Chase’s, or like a ghost’s shroud. “Ba-a-a-d-d,” Uncle Charles wailed, looming over her bed.

Even when Cristabel thought she jumped awake, gasping, she would still hear the loud laughter and her students thumping out tunes on the pianoforte. “Too fast,” she tried to tell them, “too loud,” but they never listened as she huddled into her covers and fell back to her troubled sleep.

Fanny wanted to call a physician. “It ain’t healthy to sleep and not rest. Why, you wake up more tired than you went to bed. Maybe he’ll come bleed you and get rid of the restless humors, my mum used to call them. Of course there was Aunt Hattie, who kept her own leeches, all in a jar. Talk about nightmares! She used to say those leeches could cure anything, even the bad head she’d get from drinking too much of her own chortleberry wine. So she’d get herself foxed and spread those leeches around.”

“Fanny, no!”

“She did, truly, Miss Cristabel. Only one night she was so jug-bit she forgot to take them off, and they found her next morning, stiff as a carp. And white. Of course, she may of froze to death, being too drunk to light the fire.”

“Now I’ll have bad dreams for sure! No, I think I just need more fresh air and exercise. I’m not used to lying abed, you know.”

“You don’t want to go out today, not with that raw wind. Why, I had a cousin Jeb, my mum’s cousin what were, and he…”

Fanny’s artless tales about her enormous family did a lot to cheer Cristabel, who found them especially intriguing since she had no relations of her own. Fanny was content to chatter on with only the slightest encouragement, to relate her kinfolks’ varied gory ends, until she remembered her self-appointed task and ran off to fetch a raspberry tart from the bakery, or a meat pastry from the butcher’s boy, passing in his cart. Anything to tempt Miss Cristabel’s appetite. Cristabel had won the younger girl’s instant loyalty by promising an increase in wages, for all the extra work, as soon as she had a chance to review her resources. In the meantime there was a gold coin, and the offer of reading lessons.

“Won’t my mum be proud if I can send her some money in a letter!” Fanny exulted. “Of course, Mum couldn’t read it, but the vicar could tell her what I wrote. Too bad Uncle Hiram ain’t around anymore. He was book-taught at a charity school once, and they say he was even reading a newspaper when the house caught fire.”

Boy was another new source of pleasure for Cristabel, although he was as different from Fanny as chalk from cheese. The lad was shy and untalkative, while Fanny was a prattlebox; he was born and bred in London, where Fanny was a transplanted farmgirl; and his family was…small.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters, Boy?” Cristabel asked one morning while he was carrying in her bathtub, hoping to win his confidence enough to suggest he use it, without hurting his pride. Mostly she was curious what their names would be.

“Yes’m.” It was a start.

“Which, then?”

“Two brothers. One sister.”

“How lucky for you! I never had any. What are they called?”

“Son’s older. Junior’s younger.”

“I, ah, see. And your sister?” she asked, hating herself for such a dumb question.

“Jane Ellen Maria Cassandra Ann.”

“My goodness. And what do you call her?”

“Sister.”

“Oh.”

Boy’s family was “gone,” according to him. Cristabel didn’t probe any further, fearing the worst and not wanting to remind the lad of any sadness. According to Fanny, however, the family had emigrated, involuntarily.

“Pickpocketing. They left Boy behind because he was too slow.”

Cristabel did not ask whether he was too slow for the boat or the family business.

For all his reticence, Boy always had a smile for her, under the grime. And he cared about her, too, even before she asked if he wanted to join Fanny’s lessons. When he heard about her nightmares, he brought her a gift wrapped in a rag, or his second shirt; it was hard to tell which.

“Bein’ alone’s scary,” he told her as she unwrapped the parcel, gingerly. Inside was a scrap of a kitten of that color cats come in when they don’t know who their father is. This one was particularly unappealing, or attractive, depending on one’s viewpoint, with a bent ear, a nose that couldn’t decide between being pink or black, and a tail like a wet snake.

That night Cristabel’s bogeys had orange-yellow eyes and kept pinching at her. The next morning she was covered in flea bites, and the kitten went back to the kitchen, “because he missed his family too much.”

On her foray to the kitchen she had been appalled to see Boy’s straw-filled tick under the table, making a comfortable cushion for a whole pride of scabby, shabby felines. Her mind was just too foggy to undertake bringing the kitchen to order right then, but she added it to her mental list. In the meantime she told Boy to fetch a cot down from the attic floor, for his bed.

“And where do you think a payin’ customer is gonna sleep? On the floor?” Nick wanted to know, coming out of the pantry and scratching his back with a soup ladle. “Or ain’t we supposed to be interested in makin’ money anymore?”

“If you are so interested in the paying customers,” she answered sweetly, “perhaps you should give up your bed.”

It was a good thing she couldn’t hear Nick’s muttered reply, for she was trying to avoid confrontations with the little man for the major’s sake. She was still uncertain of Nick’s precise function at the house, and she wished to postpone serious decisions until her head cleared.

It was also a good thing she didn’t return to the kitchen soon, to visit “her” kitten, or she would have seen all the cats ensconced on Boy’s new bed, while a mangy, windy old mutt snored on the abandoned straw mattress. She didn’t have to venture down the stairs though. Boy brought the scrap cat to her, with devastating regularity.

A more welcome diversion was one of the boarders, Marie. Cristabel hadn’t yet learned to put names to faces, for most of the renters breezed past her short stays in the parlor between naps. Some of the women looked away, unsure of their welcomes, others waved cheery hellos or good-byes on their frequent outings. She was neither fish nor fowl to them, Cristabel realized, neither working class nor aristocrat, and most had nothing to say to her despite their similar ages. For her part, they seemed very busy, very gay, if a trifle loud in their manners which must, no doubt, be due to London’s freer, more temperate moral climate. She also noticed that they were dressed better than she would have thought possible for shop girls and bakers’ assistants, but what did she know of fashion? She knew they were all dressed better than she was!