Almost a Gentleman (7 page)

No wonder Crashaw's boots never had a proper shine to them, Phoebe thought. The sight of Billy or Jamie lapping at his toes must make him too impatient—"to get onto 'is own business," as Billy put it.

She smiled grimly. So Crashaw liked to use the riding crop, did he? And
hard
—hard enough, damn his eyes, to make Billy scream.

Well, Lord Crashaw would scream too, with rage and chagrin—after his recent application for membership in White's was rejected.

"What sort of boot polish did he make you use, Billy?"

Billy shrugged, clearly surprised by the question.

"Think, dear. See if you can remember."

"Well I
think
… I think it's Drumblestone's: yeh, it's Drumblestone's Bargain Blacking."

Phoebe's smile widened into a triumphant grin. Drumblestone's indeed. Well, you couldn't blackball a gentleman from an exclusive club for cruelty to boy prostitutes. And nobody at White's cared that Crashaw intended to pauperize half the farm hands of Lincolnshire by pushing this next Enclosure Act through the House of Lords later in the week.

But it would be an easy matter to deprive him of the club membership he craved. One need only draw attention to his badly polished boots—and make it generally known that proud, supercilious Lord Crashaw was personally so cheap that he used Drumblestone's Bargain Blacking.

"Thank you, Billy," she repeated.

She took his strong hand and kissed it gently. "And now you must leave me to get some rest. All right, dear?"

He smiled regretfully, for he'd clearly hoped that she'd want a bit of a cuddle at least.

But he could see that her mind was made up, about the cuddle anyway. A darting look of anxiety flashed through his eyes.

"Good night," she said. "Have sweet happy dreams and take good care of yourself until I see you this coming Saturday. Quite as usual."

His smile of relief was like a benison. "G'night, miss," he said.

He paused at the door of the bedchamber and turned to her. "Begging your pardon, miss, but I 'ope the gen'leman you've been thinking of is a good sort, one what's… what's worthy of you."

Phoebe stared at him.

"Yeh well, g'night," he repeated.

He paused once more, his lovely face clouded and thoughtful.

"And do be careful, won't you, miss?"

"Damn his eyes," Phoebe muttered as she scanned the news-paper at her noontime breakfast a few days later.

Badly polished boots notwithstanding, Crashaw had prevailed in the House of Lords. The special meeting had voted; the common lands in the north of Lincolnshire were to be enclosed—given over to private ownership. The opportunities for quick profit would be stupendous, the newspaper said, with the vast majority of the benefits going to a few large landowners, chiefly Crashaw himself.

And the small farmers of the region? The newspaper was noncommittal as to their fates, mentioning only that they'd have to depend more heavily on the employment of the large property-owners, since they wouldn't be permitted to grow their crops or graze their few animals on the former commons.

And some of them will have to leave their homes altogether, Phoebe thought bitterly, to seek employment in the textile mills. Indeed, the newspaper commented that many of Crashaw's supporters had financial interests in that industry and hoped the surplus of cheap new labor would drive down wages.

She took an uncharacteristically messy, ungentlemanly sip of coffee.

"And damn these Enclosure Acts as well."

She was only glad that thus far these baleful developments hadn't spread to Devonshire.

Not that her own family would have been directly affected. Like Phizz Marston's mythical progenitor, Phoebe's late father had been a country clergyman; her brother Jonathan had inherited the position and its slender living. Jonathan took his duties seriously and he and Phoebe had had long discussions about the economic livelihoods of his parishioners.

Phoebe had been following the progress of the Enclosure Acts for years; the newspapers had been reviewing them since she'd come to London. Her mouth took a wry turn now as she remembered the first time she'd tried to discuss the subject with Henry.

It had been at breakfast, early in their marriage, before she'd learned to discern the signs of one of his violent hangovers.

That morning she'd been too involved in her reading to notice his red eyes and the slight puffiness distorting his aristocratic features. She'd been far too infuriated by the newspaper's account of a recent parliamentary debate.

What selfishness, she'd thought. What shortsightedness on the part of the gentlemen who ran the nation's affairs. And she'd been amazed that Henry didn't seem to understand how important this matter was to the health and welfare of the countryside.

Innocently, she'd tried to explain it to him.

"And so you see, Henry, some of these big farmers think they'll make more money if they take over those tracts of land the common people have been using for so many generations. They want to turn their farmhands into nothing but wage laborers, with no property, no resources of their own, no independence.

"They're absentee landlords, for the most part, the gentlemen who are voting for these stupid laws. They spend nearly all their time in London and know nothing of the land or the people who actually do the farming.

"And they don't understand that the best worker is a proud, independent one, rather like a woman who has her own independent intellect…"

It had been then, as she remembered it, that Henry had slapped her. Then and there, under the chief footman's bland, respectful gaze. In fact, as she remembered it, Trimble—one of the servants Henry had brought with him from his mother's home—had looked on with a certain quiet approbation, as though a slap from the master were long overdue and no more than what his upstart of a wife deserved. And—or had she imagined this?—he'd sneered when she'd lifted her hand to her cheek. Yes, she was sure of it: it had happened very quickly, but it had, nonetheless, happened. Her servant—no, her
husband's
servant—had bared long grayish teeth at her, taking his moment of pleasure from the spectacle of her powerlessness.

Of course Henry had apologized. And that afternoon she'd found her boudoir full of splendid pink roses, with a diamond and ruby bracelet wrapped around the tallest stem.

She'd worn the bracelet to the opera that night, and had arranged some of the roses in her hair.

The slap hadn't left a mark. The pink roses were lovely against her ivory skin. She'd looked young, gay, innocent.

Well, it's nothing
, she'd told herself.
He simply needs a bit of quiet, the morning after a late night out. And after all, I
can
be a bit of a bluestocking at times. Hasn't mother always told me that? Men hate it, she says, and I guess she's right
.

And so she'd given up newspapers and political conversation at breakfast. Henry purchased subscriptions to several fashionable lady's magazines: it was terribly important to him that she be elegantly dressed. She owed it to herself and her beauty, he told her. And to him and his position as well, he'd add in a slightly frosty voice, mornings when Trimble would bow respectfully and hand her the latest installment of
Ackermann's Repository
or
The Lady's Monthly Museum
.

Phoebe spent many weary breakfast hours poring over fashion plates while Henry monopolized the newspaper, sometimes reading aloud to her from the gossip pages. He always opened to that section first, to find out who had been invited to the most exclusive events—and more importantly, who had not. It didn't take Phoebe long to realize that he hated politics, found it boring, intimidating, and far less important than the latest society news and horseracing results.

And that nothing in the world was more loathsome or frightening to him than "a woman with her own independent intellect."

It had taken her a bit longer to understand that her handsome, sociable husband had the worst absentee voting record in the House of Lords. And that when he did vote, he did so frivolously, or to gain points with gentlemen who were richer than he was.

It had been a year later, after her confinement with Bryan, that she'd learned there was only one matter upon which he was sure to vote a consistent
yea
: that of enclosing common farmlands.

She and Henry had been to a brilliant reception at his mother's. She hadn't wanted to be there: her mother-in-law was always cold and rude to her. And as this had been Phoebe's first evening out since Bryan's birth, she'd been bored and sleepy, wishing almost from the outset that she could be back home with the baby.
Just allow me a moment's respite before I have to make any more polite conversation
, she'd implored Henry.
VII sit behind those ferns where nobody can see me
.

And it seemed that nobody
had
seen her—at least not the two gentlemen on the other side of the ferns, who were clearly discussing Henry and his voting record.

"A bit of unusually astute thinking for him," one of them commented. "Somebody must have taken him aside and explained the principle of Enclosure; typically he's too lazy to follow the simplest debate. But last week he even made a little speech in favor of this latest bill. What old maxim did he quote? Something about how 'the workman, like the willow, sprouts more readily for being cropped,' was it?"

"Sprouts quicker profits for an investor, I'd say," the other had returned.

"Well," the first had added, "you know he made a nice little pile investing in that new textile mill."

"Needs it, I expect, in order to support the handsome establishment he keeps. Wife and new baby, you know…"

"Not to speak of that mistress with the big…"

When just then Henry had returned from the refreshment table with the lemonade she'd asked for, and the gentlemen's conversation had ceased abruptly.

But it had never really ceased for Phoebe. It still echoed hollowly in Phizz Marston's austere pale blue breakfast room six years later.

She drained her cup and forced herself to relax as the coffee's warmth seeped through her. The tragedy of her marriage was over and there was no point reliving it.

And even, she thought now, if her present life were in truth a bit of a farce, at least it was a farce of her own authoring and control. Phizz Marston moved about as he liked: no more riding sidesaddle or following a man's lead on the dance floor. He was master in his own house: no more sneers from cold-eyed footmen. He set styles rather than copied them: no more anxious perusal of an endless stream of fashion magazines.