"Angry? Oh, my dear, I am in heaven!" cried Jane Kennett. "What a stunning gag!"
When Tory returned to the pastry-cook’s in the morning, to collect her things, Mrs. Kennett was waiting for her. Upon hearing the truth — that is, this new lie Jack had invented to protect them — nothing would do but that she be allowed to stand Tory to luncheon at the Blue Fox after Tory and Jack moved themselves into a room at the lodging house.
"We never thought to deceive anyone," Tory sighed, gazing into her dark ale. "It was so much easier to invent a story."
"As it so often is," agreed Mrs. Kennett, her odd eyes sparkling. "Like your dashing Captain Lightfoot. All fabricated, I suppose?"
Tory smiled apologetically.
"And here I was thinking you were some poor little widow afraid to say boo without your brother’s permission.” Mrs. Kennett laughed again. "God’s blue blood, how I loathe to see any poor woman dependent upon a man for her living and protection, especially a relation. You have the advantage of all of us, and a fine lot of fools we must look! Oh, I couldn’t be more pleased if Mr. Dance were your secret lover into the bargain."
Tory was too well schooled in duplicity to respond to this with anything more than a dismissive laugh of her own.
"Ah, well, one can’t have everything. A husband he is, then, and I wish you joy of him."
"Thank you, Mrs. Kennett."
"But you must call me Jenny." Her smile broadened into a wicked grin. "Oh, our Mr. Harding will be speechless with shock."
"That will be a pleasant change."
“Oh, aye, the great puffed-up goose, making love to you right under your husband’s nose!” Jenny laughed. "How I should have loved to see you knock him on his backside that day in the wardrobe — oh, yes, between Ingram and Aunt Hat, it was the sensation of the Green Room! However did you manage it?"
"Did anyone mention he was blind drunk?" Tory smiled. "For the rest, it was just a few tumbler's tricks. It's all about balance and surprise. I could teach you."
"Why, I may take you up on that," said Jenny. "Useful to know, indeed." And she took another sip. "For that matter, I suppose I must apologize for any tactless thing I may have said about Mr. Dance in the past. I might have held my tongue, had I known I was overheard by his bride. Had I had such a husband, I might have remained a wife."
"So there is a Mr. Kennett somewhere?"
"Kennett was my mother’s name. But there is a Mr. Crowder, more’s the pity. My lawful husband." With this, Jenny took another, longer draught of ale.
"He didn’t suit you?"
"He suited my father. And as I was only an ignorant female without a penny on my own account and no voice in the matter, the bargain was struck. They ought to have made a match between ‘em, they were so alike, with their taste for ledger-books and porter and the strap for any female who didn’t trouble to please 'em."
Tory frowned. "Your own father beat you?"
"He’d have beaten the world if he could, but the world was out of his reach and I was not. My mother was a broken, dispirited thing for as long as she endured, poor soul, but I would not give him the satisfaction of breaking me. Or Mr. Crowder." She had nearly drained her glass, but Tory felt her words were coming from some deeper place than a bellyful of ale. "Oh, I did my duty, mind. I produced his son and heir. It’s a lucky thing I didn’t have a daughter, I’d have had to strangle the poor thing with her own birth cord, knowing what she’d have to endure. But as soon as the boy was breeched. Mr. Crowder had what he wanted of me. And I took to the only trade I could find that would carry me far away from Leeds and teach me a living into the bargain."
Another runaway, Tory thought. Like all of us.
Jenny glanced up again, her gaze steady. "It is your turn, I believe, to call me a monster for abandoning my child."
"Any woman who stays with a man who beats her is a fool," said Tory.
"It’s plain you chose your husband, my dear," said Jenny. "So many foolish women have no choice. But I had foolishness pummeled out of me at a very early age."
"Is there any danger to your son?"
"Being male, he’ll have nothing to fear from his father on that score, and everything to gain. Tutors, ponies, boarding school. It’ll be nothing but the best for Charles Crowder’s son. More than I could ever give him." Jenny’s expression clouded for an instant, then she shook her head. "Have you any children?"
Tory took a breath, steeling herself. "My mother died in childbed when I was a girl. My father went out of his mind. It’s not something I’m eager to experience."
Tory read the sympathy in Jenny's eyes before she gave a brisk nod. "Quite right," said Jenny. "Let ‘em birth their own precious heirs and see how they like it. But . . . do you not take a great risk, as a married woman? Unless, in addition to his other attributes, your Mr. Dance is a saint."
"I once knew a woman very skilled in the husbandry of herbs," Tory said carefully. Enslaved women in the islands were offered a reduction in field work if they managed to survive five live births. Many were desperate enough to risk it, although many more were determined not to commit any more innocent lives into slavery, so the herb woman's illicit skills were much in demand. "Precaution is possible with a little vigilance."
"And your husband doesn’t mind?"
Did Jack mind? Tory had never thought to ask. She knew how afraid he was for her, terrified of losing someone else he loved, as he had lost his foster parents. But she had only to remember her own mother’s lifeless face to cure any renegade impulse toward motherhood; was Jack so ready to abandon all hope of fatherhood?
"You might have another child some day," Tory ventured, to fill the void left by her own reluctance. "A child of your own."
"Oh, no, I’m well out of it, now," Jenny said, more briskly. "Mr. Crowder’s son broke the mold, as you might say. Or you might say once his son emerged, no further thought was spared for the mold until the damage was too deep to be undone."
"I’m so sorry."
"Well, it’s rather more of an advantage than not, in some respects. I’m free to sample what little men have to offer without fear of the consequences."
"As long as they don’t offer you the pox," said Tory.
"My dear, what sort of lowlife do you imagine I consort with?" Mrs. Kennett grinned. "I promise you, Mr. Bell has excellent taste."
"Here they are, Mr. Dance, gossiping in a tavern like a pair of alewives at half-past noon," declared Christopher Bell, bursting in through the coffee room doorway with Jack in tow. He peeped into Jenny’s glass, grimaced and ordered claret from the attentive landlord’s boy bobbing at his elbow, then sprawled onto the banquette beside Jenny while Jack pulled up a chair beside Tory.
"I thought it prudent to spirit Mr. Dance out of the Green Room, the others were so beside themselves with last night’s scandal. Which reminds me," Bell added, leaning forward and reaching for Tory’s hand. "I must congratulate you on a most sensible marriage — overnight. You’ve spared us all the crashing boredom of a wedding breakfast, interminable toasts and some smug parson droning on and on." He lifted Tory’s hand briefly to his lips. "A splendid coup, my dear Mrs . . . ah, Mrs . . . "
"I shall keep Lightfoot for the stage. It's a family name."
"And where is your family, dear?" asked Jenny, her odd eyes keen. "Surely not England." She glanced mischievously at Jack. "Sister, indeed."
"I was born in America. My father was a Scotsman out of Boston, but his people are all gone. My mother was a native of the Mohawk people."
"But, it's fantastic! Like the much lamented Captain Lightfoot," Jenny cried. "And by what extraordinary circumstance did the two of you ever meet?"
"Fortune," Jack and Tory replied together.
"It may be a very fortunate thing for us to have you," Bell observed, saluting Tory with his glass. "The Indians of America are all the rage in London, at the moment."
"Are they?" asked Jack.
"Good God, man, do you not read the newspapers? The great Kean has been made grand princeling of some American tribe. He’s been holding court at Drury Lane in full tribal dress, complete with feathered headdress. I don’t suppose you’ve anything like that about, have you?" he asked Tory.
"I’m afraid not."
"Well, never mind. But Fairweather really ought to get up a production of Pizarro around you, my dear. You are Cora to the life."
"The heroine of Peru," Jack explained to Tory. "She helps her native people fight the conquering Spanish."
"Only consider the bills!" Bell went on. " 'Mrs. Lightfoot, a genuine American Indian, in the role of Cora, the Maid of Peru.' Much more of a sensation than that brother-and-sister business. Is Peru anywhere near America, I wonder? Ah, well, all Indians are one to the people of Wessex." He took another sip. "Have they seen to your lodgings yet?"
"They've found us a corner in the attic above the Fairweathers," said Jack.
"I daresay you're glad enough to escape the clutches of our Mr. Gabriel," Bell observed. "I expect your virtue was under constant assault."
Tory's eyes rounded at Jack. "Was it? You never told me."
"There was nothing to tell," Jack shrugged. "We came to an understanding, and that was the end of it. No harm done — until last night," he added guiltily.
Tory remembered Mr. Gabriel's mortified face and cold outrage. She'd laughed it off as an excess of piety — she'd seen plenty of that in Boston. But she was suddenly very sorry that he'd caught her laughing.
"And I would appreciate it if the tale was not carried beyond this table," said Jack, with another glance at Jenny and Bell.
"Of course not," Jenny agreed. "But everyone knows about Mr. Gabriel, although only Harding is mean enough to taunt him about it."
And Tory felt guiltier still.
"You don't imagine you're the first sheep who ever wandered into that crib, do you?" Bell joined in. "I tried him myself, once upon a time."
"But, darling, you must have been an infant!" said Jenny.
"Now, Kennett, I was of age. Thought I might learn something, besides the advantage of proximity on the road, and all. Devil of it was, we had rather a good time. Wonderful bedfellows, passion and sin. But after, why, it was a blessed orgy of repentance. I didn't want to be repented of, I thought we'd enjoyed ourselves. And, of course, we never spoke of it again. Fellow scarcely speaks to me to this day." Bell turned again to Jack. "Indeed, you'd have been much better off sampling me than Richard Gabriel."
"Ah, but you never asked me," Jack pointed out.
"Well, you're scarcely my type. Married gentlemen of my acquaintance are rarely discovered in flagrante delicto with their wives."
Jack laughed with the others, further heartened by the sauce in Tory's eye as she glanced at him. Indeed, this was a far more suitable lie than the last one. And he tried not to wonder how long Dame Fortune would allow them to compound their lies before demanding something in return.
"Fortune and prosperity in the New Year, gentlemen!"
"Hear, hear!"
Alphonse Belair glanced briefly at the small party of gentlemen saluting each other across the room, then turned back to his meal. He always found the Christmas holidays a melancholy time. In the islands, the season was celebrated with a few days of raucous slave parades, where the people were given leave to dress up and cavort in a garish parody of freedom, until their masters shut them back up in their cages for another year. Even now, in this far off place, when the English were enjoying their feasts and their toasts, the season reminded Alphonse only of oppression and injustice and all the work that was still left to do.
That's why he had declined an invitation from Mr. Jepson to that gentleman's festivities this evening, the last night of the old year. Alphonse preferred the anonymous company in this comfortable chop house and tavern hard by the Bristol waterfront. He and Jack had posted playbills here, not so long ago; it was also just down the road from the warehouse from which he would launch his mission on Jepson's behalf tomorrow. He was looking forward to having real work to do again, meeting with others in the movement, making whatever contribution he could.
But here, now, friendly shadows cloaked him as he finished off the last of his smothered fish and small beer. There was hardly any other custom on this festive night, but for a solitary figure at the bar, and the party of three gentleman toasting each other at a nearby table. When these gentlemen rose, bowing and saluting each other with the usual compliments and flattery, to stroll off to other New Year's revels elsewhere, Alphonse chose to depart as well, eager to be off about his own business.
Alphonse was a keen judge of fine things, and as he nodded to the barman on his way out, he noticed the excellent quality of the sable-colored topcoat worn by the tavern's last remaining customer, whose attention seemed to be absorbed by the notice board a the end of the bar. Alphonse wondered fleetingly about a gentleman of such obvious means all on his own on this festive night, although he appeared to be known in the place.
"Have a glass of wassail, sir, in honor of the day," the publican addressed the man in sable as Alphonse glided out into the bitter cold of a Bristol night.
"Mmm? Oh, that's handsome of you, William."
The gentleman reached out to accept the proffered glass filled from a punch bowl the fellow had behind the counter, then turned again to the notice board. He continued to scan down through the postings until he saw an out-of-date playbill about some theatrical foolery in a nearby town.
A fortunate New Year to you, sir," smiled the publican, raising a glass.
The sober gentleman in brown inclined his head ever so slightly, and raised his own wassail glass.
"Thank you, William," said Charles Crowder.
Top: Columbine and Harlequin, vintage illustration
Above: Engraving of Edmund Kean, in Huron tribal dress presented to him in 1826; from a painting by Frederick Meyer
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