The Spider's Touch (5 page)

She thought she had hidden her reaction to these lies fairly well, until her aunt said, “And you needn’t sigh like that, Goody Kean!  I know very well what I’m doing. And there is no reason why Mayfield shouldn’t get a share of my lord’s influence, when every Tom, Dick and Harry is asking for the same.

“Besides,” she said, “I have quite another reason for bringing Mayfield here. And if I tell him what it is, he will keep on shooting and riding with his friends and refuse to come.”

“
Another
reason?”

“Yes, Sir Humphrey Cove’s sister, Mrs. Jamison, is quite the matchmaker, I’m told. She is a widow, but her husband was a merchant in the City, so she has an abundance of relations with persons of that sort. I want her to find Mayfield a splendid match. They say she found Lord Lunley’s son an heiress, and if she can do that for a coxcomb with nothing to recommend him but a squint and a pair of spindly legs, she can very well do it for my son.”

Since Hester knew that the success of any matchmaking on Dudley’s behalf would depend entirely on Mrs. Mayfield’s ability to extract money from her son-in-law for a settlement, she could not doubt that this statement was true.

* * * *

Before Dudley arrived, Mrs. Mayfield paid a visit to Mrs. Jamison and engaged her interest. Mrs. Jamison promised to come up with a list of possible brides, so there was nothing more for Mrs. Mayfield to do than wait for the unwitting bridegroom to arrive. She was afforded an opportunity to discuss the list in advance when Sir Humphrey brought his sister to Hawkhurst House one evening.

Isabella always preferred to go out, but even she knew that a lady must sometimes be at home to welcome her friends. A steady stream of visitors had passed through her drawing-room since eight o’clock. Most had not lingered, but had moved on to other houses where, Hester suspected, they would find the conversation more enlightening. The ones who stayed were Harrowby’s usual cronies, and they made themselves comfortable on the satin and velvet cushions.

Lord Lovett had brought a friend with him, a Colonel Potter of the Foot-Guards. He was a tall, lean gentleman with a military bearing. Neither a brown shoulder-length periwig nor a sandy moustache could conceal his complexion, which was decidedly red. Every inch on his face and hands was covered in large, reddish freckles, and his face was set in sullen lines.

His career had not taught him the necessary skills for a lady’s drawing-room, for he paid Isabella only scant courtesy and ignored every other woman present, before turning his attention exclusively on Harrowby. Even from where she sat in a corner, Hester could see that the Colonel’s conversation was far too sober for Harrowby’s tastes. Lord Lovett occasionally tried to lighten it by throwing his friend a sally, but even though the Colonel often attempted to respond in kind, his humour was too dour to be amusing.

Lord Lovett had given up and had gone to sit on a sofa with Isabella, when Sir Humphrey and his sister burst breathlessly into the room. Their breathlessness turned out not to have been caused merely by a hurried walk up the stairs, for before they could even be welcomed, Sir Humphrey called from the door, “It’s good I’ve found you here, Potter. You will be needed in the park. There’s been the most frightful to-do.”

Colonel Potter frowned. He threw a glance at Lord Lovett, and an invisible intelligence passed between them. Lord Lovett made no response except to raise an eyebrow in Sir Humphrey’s direction, before asking, “Whatever is the trouble now?”

“Whatever it is, can’t it wait?” the Colonel said. “I was speaking to his lordship.”

“I beg my lord’s pardon, of course.” Sir Humphrey extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face, which was covered in perspiration from his haste. “But there’s trouble in the Foot-Guards. When we were coming up St. James’s, we saw a group of them waving and shouting. They were burning the shirts the King gave to them today—something about inferior cloth. They were not very happy, I assure you. I thought you might be needed to quiet them down.”

The Colonel did not seem alarmed, but instead rather grimly pleased. “Perhaps that will teach Marlborough not to cheat them.”

Harrowby gave him a shocked look. To criticize Marlborough, now that the Whigs were in power, was blasphemy.

Lord Lovett relaxed into his cushions and said, “Tut, tut! I wonder what our new King will have to say on the matter? Or, rather, his interpreters, of course, for he cannot address the troops, since very few of them speak German. It will not be easy for him to sleep if his Foot-Guards are unhappy with their general. They might even think of holding his Majesty to blame, and then what?”

“They were building a bonfire in the middle of the street as we passed,” said Sir Humphrey, waving his handkerchief in excitement, “and now that you mention it, Lovett, I believe I
did
hear his Majesty’s name called aloud.”

Colonel Potter raised his upper lip in a satisfied sneer. “I shouldn’t be surprised if you did.”

“This may be something to consider.” Sir Humphrey seemed curiously elated.

Hester was no expert on the army, but even she knew that it was no small thing for troops this close to the King to be angry with him.

“Shouldn’t you do something about it?” Harrowby said helplessly to Colonel Potter. “We regret the loss of your company—very amiable and all that, of course—but your duty to his Majesty will naturally come first. I am not a military man, thank God!—but that’s what I should think. Needn’t be concerned about offending us. An’t that right, Little Woman?” he said to his wife.

Isabella was making sweet eyes at Lord Lovett and tapping his thigh with her fan, but she raised her eyes to her husband and agreed, “Whatever you say, my Lambikins.”

Thus urged, the Colonel truly had no choice but to go. He hid his irritation with imperfect grace as he begged his hosts to excuse him and promised to pay them another visit just as soon as he was able.

Once he quitted the room, Sir Humphrey recalled with a sudden start that he had not yet observed the rules of politeness. He made Mrs. Jamison known to the few in the room who had not already met her. Isabella called to one of the footman to place a chair for her beside Mrs. Mayfield, and Sir Humphrey looked over his group of friends with pleasure.

“Well, here we are then, my dears,” he began afresh, once his sister had been settled. He folded his fingers over his paunch and beamed. “Very well met, indeed. I have not seen any of you since the day of our going to see the infant with the mark. I hope that everyone is recovered from that incident. The ladies took no serious fright, I hope, for in truth there was nothing to fear.”

This statement amused Hester, when she recollected how shrilly he had shrieked, but they all assured him that they had come to no harm.

“No, of course, you did not,” he agreed. “You were all perfectly safe as long as Lovett and I were with you. Were they not, my dear Adrian?”

Lord Lovett sighed and rolled his eyes. “Yes, Humphrey, perfectly safe. But, for my part, I should rather forget the episode. Being beholden to you for my deliverance has grown rather tedious, so I beg you will forgive me if I neglect to thank you again for it.”

He ignored Sir Humphrey, who protested that that had not been his intention and would have appealed to Lord Lovett again for his assurances of the ladies’ safety, if Mrs. Mayfield had not welcomed the opportunity to draw notice to herself. She regaled Mrs. Jamison with the palpitations she had suffered that evening on hearing of the danger in which her precious daughter, the countess, had found herself, and did it so loudly as to distract Sir Humphrey from his speech.

  She was eager to hear of the candidates the go-between had found, however, so soon she changed the subject, and before too many minutes had passed, the ladies had their heads together over Mrs. Jamison’s list.

Hester was sitting in her usual chair, where she could do needlework by the light of a branched candlestick. The candles in Hawkhurst House were made of such superior wax that they never spit, and Hester preferred spending her evening hours this way to participating in her family’s trivial conversations.

She could not help overhearing the talk around her, however, and her mind wandered in and out of the various discourses. Mrs. Jamison had a tendency to repeat herself, for every young woman she mentioned was either “very amiable,” “a polite sort of girl,” or from “a very respectable family.” They all had enormous fortunes, of course.

The name Mrs. Agnes Hobbes soon emerged. Her father was a master brewer who had made such an enormous fortune supplying the inhabitants of London with beer that he had recently purchased his family a tidy estate at Kingston-on-Thames. Mrs. Agnes was his only surviving child. Whoever married Sir William Hobbes’s daughter would come into possession of her sizeable fortune and estate, with a strong possibility of being given a title, when the combination of name and wealth obliterated the source from which the fortune had come.

“From the point of view of prospects, fortune, and connections,” Mrs. Jamison said, “no other candidate can approach Mrs. Agnes Hobbes. It is rumoured that her father will be elected Lord Mayor in next year’s election.”

While the potential brides were being ranked, sight unseen, Lord Lovett whispered bits of nonsense in Isabella’s ear. She responded with high, rippling giggles and an occasional rap of her fan. Harrowby and Sir Humphrey came to sit in armchairs across from the sofa, and Harrowby, who’d been lost in his thoughts, cut into their flirting.

“Now why should that fellow want to blame Marlborough for those shirts, I wonder?”

Lord Lovett quickly took his eyes off Isabella, who pouted at having her amusement  spoiled, and said, with an irony that was undoubtedly lost on Harrowby, “
Could
it be because the Duke is responsible for their pay? If I am not
misinformed—
” Hester had to smother a smile at the way he drawled this word— “the troops receive one new suit of clothing every year as a major part of their compensation. And if these shirts are truly inferior, perhaps they have cause to imagine that he’s abused them.”

Harrowby snorted, but could not find words to dispute this logic. “I am certain that his Majesty will put everything to rights, now that the matter has been called to his attention. But the soldiers would have been wiser to keep their mouths shut.”

Although his back was to her, Hester could almost see the grin behind Lord Lovett’s reply. “If they
had
kept their mouths shut, I am certain that one of his Majesty’s
German
gentlemen would have called the problem to his attention. They must surely be aware of his concern for his English subjects.”

“Quite right,” Harrowby said, feeling better now that they seemed to be in agreement. “I’ve never known a king to be so fond.”

“Fond, indeed! And loyal, too, or surely he would have found a way to leave those ugly mistresses behind in Hanover. King George’s taste appears to be rather
catholic
in women, if not in religion. Instead of a fair English rose—” Lord Lovett inclined his head at Isabella beside him— “he binds himself to a Maypole with the one hand and an Elephant with the other. But perhaps this reflects some German taste, which we English will never grasp.”

The English had all been astounded by the unattractiveness of the King’s favourites, when Charles II’s many mistresses had been so very beautiful. The two ladies who had accompanied George from Hanover were Madame Schulenberg, so skinny as to have been dubbed the Maypole, and Madame Kielmansegge, whose profusion of chins had earned her the nickname, the Elephant.

Isabella had misunderstood Lord Lovett’s nod, which was a compliment to her English fairness and not a suggestion. “I wouldn’t want the King to choose me,” she said, making a face. “I shouldn’t know what to say to him in bed. But I did hear that the Countess of Platen begged him to take her, and he was good enough to oblige.”

“I do not doubt his eagerness to
oblige,
my lady. Indeed, the whole line seems ready to share itself prodigiously. It is his lack of fastidiousness that puzzles me.”

“I have it on good authority that Madame Kielmansegge is his half-sister,” Harrowby confided in a low voice, though there was no one in the room who could not hear him.

Hester was shocked to hear Lord Lovett reply, “My point precisely, my lord. A curious taste, indeed. But who are
we
to question the habits of royalty?”

His tone was so heavy with irony that Hester could not doubt his disapproval. She was dismayed, however, when the members of her family broke out in boisterous laughter. Harrowby covered his mouth and guffawed, and Isabella gave a gasp before hiding her face with her fan.

Mrs. Jamison’s mouth dropped open, and Sir Humphrey said, “Well, if she
is
his sister, why don’t he acknowledge her? I never heard such scandalous goings-on. Not even with Charles II!”

Indeed, the Stuarts had acknowledged their bastards, given them titles and wealth, and married them to princes and peers, in the same way that Louis XIV took care of his. It was accepted that every king would have his mistresses.

Why shouldn’t George’s father have acknowledged his daughter, or George his sister, if that was what she was? The very fact that he did not seemed to confirm the charge of incest. There were secrets about this King that made even Hester uncomfortable.

Harrowby and Isabella could laugh at the suggestion of incest, for they were titillated by every notion of sex. But, if the English people got a whiff of this worst of sins inside the Palace, many would believe that something should be done to stop it.

Chapter Three

Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods,

To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods;

For some his Interest prompts him to provide,

For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride:

All feed on one vain Patron, and enjoy

Th’ extensive blessing of his luxury.

That very life his learned hunger craves,