Three

Miss Harriette Wilson languished in the bow window of Lord Craven’s house on Marine Parade, Brighton, and pondered a listless tide teasing the amber shingle along its shoreline. The Earl, her current protector, had disposed himself in casual fashion at the opposite end of the window-seat and was absorbed in sketching her. Whilst it was pleasing to be the sole object of attention and was infinitely preferable to watching him draw endless orchards of cocoa palms, she yawned and confessed herself supremely bored.

“I knew I should not have turned down the Duke,” she said, though she preferred to gloss over that chapter of her pubertal career. His Grace had been more Disgrace than anything, a man of lascivious habits with a zeal for deflowering lissom young virgins. Harriette, though she despaired, even at fifteen, that she would ever make what the world called ‘a good woman’, had not been so depraved as to yield to him and allow commerce to dictate the terms.

“If you don’t behave, I shall inflict my cocoa trees upon you, you little jade. Disparage them all you like, but they keep you in silken hose.”

“I swear I had more fun listening to the clocks tick in my father’s house,” Harriette repined. She had been born Harriette Dubochet, daughter of a Swiss clockmaker and a Spitalfields silk-stocking mender, Huguenot skills well appreciated by the Establishment of England. Early on, Harriette had learnt that her merry eyes, sharp wit and tomboyish vitality were fascinating to men and were assets to be deployed in creaming off some of the opulence of that Establishment whilst retaining independence. “Craven, you have no taste for adventure.”

“I have been to the West Indies.”

“Only to worship your cocoa trees! How I abhor cocoa!”

“Do you? It has aphrodisiac qualities, I am told.”

“I had better not give any to Fred Lamb, then.”

“It ain’t as though he needs it, the way that fellow looks at you with his spaniel eyes and his tongue hanging out.”

“His brother, William, is smoulderingly handsome, but if he makes a match with Caroline Ponsonby my nose will be put out of joint for at least a month. Do you think he will, Craven?”

“What?”

“You aren’t listening! No wonder my sister Amy left you and ran off with Poodle Byng!”

“Caro Ponsonby is another little spitfire, just like you, and even resembles you, so all is not entirely lost. Poor William has a taste for unruly females.”

Harriette gazed out to sea once more. “It is deserted out there. Not a shipwreck in sight! Scarcely a soul on the promenade. I could feel so much more comfortable if Prinny hadn’t gone back to Town. Did I tell you I wrote to him?”

“Once or twice, maybe more. An encomium of your myriad charms, if I recall.”

“He needs to know what he’s missing!”

“Well, perhaps he is satisfied on that point, my love, and knows himself on velvet.”

“He’s gone charging off to Carlton House and everyone will trail after him. Do let us leave, Craven,” wheedled Harriette. “I quite pine for a masquerade.”

“We can’t. My mother is coming down with The Hun,” said Craven.

“The Anspaches! Oh no! Another stint in the broom cupboard!”

“Where you belong, you shameless hussy! Mama is giving one of her soirées for the benefit of Mr Brunton’s company. He has plans for a new theatre here, you know. Kemble will be there, and Mrs Siddons who’s fled Dublin in a flurry of scandal, Mrs Crouch and Mr Kelly and, of course, the Brunton girls. Miss Louisa’s debut as Lady Townley in The Provoked Husband was spellbinding. Divine!” declared Craven, kissing bunched fingertips to the air. “ Hers is not a light to be hidden!”

Miss Wilson, seeing her lover was in severe danger of losing his focus, made a lunge for his sketch pad to discover whether he had flattered her down-to-earth, if lively, features.

“Brute! Let me see! Oh, you have cast me as a Fury of the Underworld! It is a caricature worthy of Mr Gillray!”

“An amiable Fury, you must allow.”

“Craven!”

“Great Heavens! Is that Dursley and my brother coming to the door?”

“How I hope so! They’ll know how to create a stir!”

The drawing room was suddenly rife with rowdy males and Harriette was in her element. Berkeley Craven, ‘Bly’ to his friends, was an imperfectly finished version of William, did not fit his clothes half so well and could have benefitted from some guidance from Mr Brummell whose sanity he questioned when advised to shine his hessians with champagne sooner than drink it. His cousin, Lord Dursley, cut a contrasting figure. He was seventeen and there was nothing gauche about him. Already he had mastered the mannerisms of the dandy and crisp tailoring completed the picture. Harriette thought him a most aesthetic young man, self-possessed but cavalier.

“What a good fellow you are, Harry, to devote yourself to my brother,” said Bly, “when you could be dallying with me. Ain’t it time you was off to the wars, Bro?”

“Believe me, there is a queue forming,” Craven told him wryly. “Fred Lamb, Tom Sheridan, the Prince of Wales…. The tail end of it is somewhere up in the Scottish Highlands.”

“Ah, the Marquis of Lorne” sighed Harriette. “But even he is not so handsome as the fellow with the Newfoundland dog I meet upon my walks.”

“Harry plays the coquette to a turn,” said Craven. “It is her forte and her raison d’être.”

“My vocation,” elucidated Harriette who had been schooled in a convent. “I must say you are uncommon quiet Dursley.”

The Viscount tilted his head a fraction in acknowledgement, but forbore to add his homage at the shrine.

“Got a lot on his mind,” explained Bly.

“How so?”

“Smitten with an actress.”

“Do tell!”

“Unrequited passion,” said Bly as though his cousin wasn’t there. “About to fall on the sword if she don’t send him a note of hand by designated courier.”

“But who? Who?”

“Name’s Amy Knight. ‘A new star bedazzling our firmament’ according to the journals.”

“But where did you run across her, Dursley? When?”

“He ain’t run across her, not yet,” said Bly before the Viscount could reply. He lay down on the sofa and placed his anxious brow in Harriette’s custody. “Thereby hangs the bind. Spotted her through opera-glasses on Wednesday last. Had ‘em jammed against his skull all evening! Those rings you see about his eyes are not spectacles, Harry.”

“How these prima donnas torment us with their lyric charms,” observed Craven, striding to the japanned cabinet, a replica of one at the Pavilion.

“Yes, I will have a large whisky, Craven. Thanks for the gesture,” said Dursley. “And when you are all done quizzing me, you might as well know there’s not a grain of truth in it.”

“You sent her a brace of partridges!”

“How profoundly romantic!” marvelled Harriette. “No one need teach him the art of seduction. Ten dozen crimson roses would not be nearly so sustaining!”

“Comes of having a grandfather in the trade,” Bly pointed out. “Kept a gang of poachers. Ain’t that right, Dursley? ”

The Viscount scowled and cursed himself if he knew why he kept such company. “At least I’m sure who my grandparents were,” he said with some hauteur. “My Aunt of Anspach was never tight with her favours, upon her own admission, so you can’t call me out, Bly.”

“The trouble with Mama,” sighed Craven, “is that she was destined from birth to live life for three persons, being the only representative of triplets to have survived the ordeal.”

“It explains a lot,” said Bly dully and fell to thinking what a narrow escape the family had had from that Unholy Trinity! Their mother had forsaken their father and five of her children when the eldest was only thirteen, taking the youngest, Keppel, to live at the French Court where she had, in the fullness of time, seduced the Margrave, offshoot of the King of Prussia’s dynasty, whose full honours ran to several volumes.

“All’s not up, Dursley. You need not hone your sword. Dear Mama is having one of her splendid parties for the artistes of the Duke Street theatre. I shall make certain you are introduced to Miss Knight. She is a ‘Miss’ I take it?”

“If she isn’t,” cried Harriette, “I can see I’ll have to share the cupboard with her husband!”

“And maybe herself if the partridges didn’t go down well!”

“Professional compliment, that’s all,” mumbled the Viscount, now torn by doubt about the decision. “I could have sent roses.”

“Since you had no intention of winning the lady’s favours, I give you my word, your lordship did the right thing,” Harriette averred.

He could see the laughter sparkling in her eyes, behind the mock condolence, and sank still deeper into the mire of gloom.

“Will the Margravine be pleased to invite me to the gig, do you think? She is not on the best of terms with my father.”

“Oh, that is all on account of some prehistoric pact that he would never marry. She’s not one to bear ill will,” said Craven.

“Berkeley won’t receive the Hun,” Bly reminded his brother, thinking it a good excuse for covering his mother’s refusal to believe in Lord Berkeley’s preposterous claim of the ‘first’ marriage.

“Well, at any rate, be good enough to intercede with her on my behalf,” said Dursley. “The play’s the thing! There is a good deal more artifice within society than is to be found upon the boards. Mummers make refreshing company.”

“Oh, how right you are, Dursley!” agreed Harriette. “I am never so happily engaged as with a Shakespeare play.”

“Drinking cocoa bears no comparison,” endorsed Craven.

“I have no talent for economy,” lamented Harriette, “and am in terror of debt, or I should never have imbibed the nasty stuff.”

Three days later, three days of pacing and heart-searching and scathing reflection upon the caprice of the female sex, the Viscount received the following note from his enchantress:

9, North Laine Terrace,

Monday 27th

Miss Amy Knight offers Lord Dursley many thanks for the eloquent game which made a splendid supper.

She hopes her performances will long continue to delight him and assures him that such tributes are the inspiration of her art.

Your Lordship’s Humble Servant,

A. Knight

Rejection! The wings of the Theatre Royal, Cheltenham offered no such disappointment! ‘Flash blowens’, Bly called the frequenters thereof. Did Miss Knight know who he was? In all likelihood! His parents’ stupidity was the talk of the town, albeit they hobnobbed with the Pavilion set and were favourites of the Prince of Wales. Perhaps he should have sent flowers after all.

The snub to his pride did little to dampen his ardour. Lord Berkeley’s blood ran in his veins and there was nothing to equal the thrill of the chase! He went out and bought a pair of unpatriotic Dollond of Paris opera glasses, exquisitely ground and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, so that he might trespass, undetected, into the woodland glades of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Amy Knight was a proud Titania who fully deserved to be taken down a peg. (The rewards of that would be sweet!) But when she bade, with tender solicitude: Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms, he was hers for ever.

“Haul in your glims, Dursley,” hissed Bly. “It’s not your Bottom she’s after!”

The Viscount dropped the glasses, startled from his guilty voyeurism. He was beginning to realise the power of perception, that the landscape of the mind was, when all was said and done, the only reality. How liberating after the constraints of his uncertain role in actual life.

The performance over, they repaired to Belle Vue Villa where the Margravine and her husband threw wide their doors in a bountiful reception. They had been a patient audience and now it was their turn to shine. “Wilkommen! Guten appetit!” declared the Margrave whose flimsy English relied heavily upon mime and needed only the garb of a Pierrot to set off his red nose. Here, the atmosphere of Greek antiquity was beguiled by lyres, harps and panflutes. The cast of the production attended in their costumes. Titania’s was all rainbow veils upon a bodice of spangled Florentine silk. Her eyes were Latin-dark and her hair brought to mind poured molasses.

“Rather outré,” sniffed Craven, who understood from Dora Jordan that it was bad form to venture further than the Green Room in character and stage paint. “Trust Mama to flout the rules.”

It became clear to Dursley that Amy Knight was watching him. What if she had taken a shine to him, not guessing who he was! He would need to disperse the convocation of young bucks hanging upon her every word.

“Fitzhardinge,” said his aunt, refusing his title, “allow me to introduce you to some of the players. I believe you share my passion for theatre.”

“The stage is my world, ma’am,” he replied, which was, as yet, more elegant than true.

“So droll! Your father never had such wit, nor such a handsome countenance.”

The Viscount was introduced to Mr John Brunton under whose energetic management the Duke Street theatre had secured Royal patronage. He was a small, slightly bent man, not much to look at, but possessed of boundless goodwill. His command of the stage owed everything to an enlightened eye and the vocal resonance of an Apollo.

“So your lordship wishes to chance his arm at acting? Tis intelligent work, sir, not for idlers. Requires the constitution of an ox and the memory of an elephant. Rogues and vagabonds, we ain’t, sir.”

“I believe my memory is as sound as any man of letters and learning.”

“Coaching. You’ll need coaching. When I’m next down at Bristol, I’ll hear your Romeo.”

“Mightily obliged. I’ve a passable singing voice, too. I once sang for the Prince of Wales.”

Brunton took the liberty of presenting three of his daughters. Miss Knight, he said, had been drilled by the eldest, Elizabeth. The youngest, Louisa, had rapidly acquired a devoted following and benefits had been held for her in Covent Garden. Craven, whose knee-caps were quaking, did not doubt it. Brunton’s good lady gazed upon them in passive adoration from her Egyptian sofa, one of nature’s spectators, content to stitch seams and adapt costumes to their wearers.

As the Viscount listened, his mind elsewhere and retaining the thread of conversation with great effort, someone brushed his velvet-clad shoulder. He turned to see Amy passing, her eyes inviting, complicit, while she melted into the throng and circled the room, the Queen of Sprites, an aerial being, out of reach. Something about her…. What was it? Something from another time and place….

The collation featured many olives, lamb-stuffed vine leaves, artichokes, fig pastries, goats’ cheese canapés, aubergine and pearl onion tarts, pear soufflées, honey melons, shrimp salads, retsina and grape punch. His very gaze was glutted with it. Such morsels as were ventured stuck to his palate. His stomach churned with all the anguish of first love. At length, he heard a chaise called for Miss Knight and still no word had been exchanged so that all he could do was stare after the form diminishing down the staircase beneath a billowing cloak. He could no longer conquer the notion that his life would be forever doomed if he did not catch her. Mounting the banister rail, he flew by the seat of his breeches down the staircase to field her at ground floor level.

“Where is your crown?” he demanded. “You were wearing a sparkling diadem in the play.”

A melodic chuckle issued from Amy’s throat, but she seemed genuinely abashed. “You judge it a crime, sir, to cast off one’s crown? It had to be fastened securely and gave me the headache.”

“Then you are acquitted. Let me escort you to your door, I beg, for the infernal racket upstairs is giving me the headache. I swear those instruments are like copulating cats!”

“Sir, please let me pass….”

“Only say I may call upon you tomorrow….” Footmen were opening the doors.

She turned. She did not want to drive her suitor to distraction or live in fear of awkward scenes at the stage door when Brunton’s bruisers would be around. An actress had fixed times and venues and could not escape a dedicated admirer. “Very well. I think you know my lodgings,” she whispered. “Come at three o’ clock until a quarter past, for I must rest before the next performance.”

He saw that she had loosened from the role of Titania, a woman of the earth now. The prettily-painted face was less appealing in the conspiracy of shadows about the vestibule but preserved the sullen beauty of the late ‘Perdita’ Robinson. He kissed her hand in gratitude and let her go. She did know who he was! Since she’d invited him to her house, was she a free woman? He did not relish the idea of thé à trois.

Lord Dursley bounded back upstairs to find himself ravenous. His aunt was deep in discussion with Brunton about the design of the proposed new theatre which must be a Greco-Roman temple of the dramatic arts deserving of the highest patronage. The cost of the building was only the beginning. Complex machinery must be installed, soft furnishings, chandeliers and stage sets. Dursley heard Ferryman recommended to assist with this. He had achieved wonders at Brandenburgh House and was always on the lookout for inspiring work.

“I think,” said the Margravine in softened tones, “that he would welcome some relief from his present straits if he is to avoid the debtor’s prison.”

“Your Highness is most obliging,” returned Brunton with a bow. The penetrating beam of his eye came to rest upon the young Viscount whom he was mentally casting in Etherege and Molière. “Your family unites nobility with extraordinary talent.”

Back at the Yellow House, the Berkeley residence on the Steine, Dursley got little sleep for the rest of that night. He was sure he had acted too precipitately. He had made a fool of himself. How far were the charms of the evening owing to stagecraft and litharge of lead? The sober light of morning found him submerged in self-doubt which was often the spur of his overweening self-confidence. Neverthless, at two minutes to three, he presented himself at North Laine Terrace only to learn from a servant that Miss Knight had gone away. She had not said when she would be back and had mentioned no visitor.

Angrily, the Viscount forsook the premises, resolving to intercept the feckless actress at the theatre. When he got there, she was in her dressing-room and the stage doormen, trained boxers in the school of Tom Cribb, would brook no argument. He booted the door in a paroxysm of rage, only to be hooked beneath his armpits and slung down on the cobbles. Consigning the pair to Hades, he dusted his coat and took himself off. Why? Why was she ignoring him? Was it a trick to inflame his passion? Well, she would not succeed! William Fitzhardinge Berkeley was a dupe for no woman!

A few days later, when he had recruited his courage and a modicum of sense, he tried again and met with the same inglorious result, only this time, seeing red, he challenged one of the gladiators and came off the worse with a split and swollen mouth and an eye the colour of ripe damsons.

“Fitz!” exclaimed his mother, aghast. “I wish you won’t pick these fights! It’s so ungentlemanlike. Don’t tell me it was a matter of honour, for I shan’t believe you.”

She was too wise to ask him the cause of his injuries and if related to his shaky origins, she did not wish to hear. He allowed her to bathe his face and apply salve, as if he were seven and not seventeen, enjoying the brief ascendancy it gave to have her wait upon him.

“Stop fussing, Mama,” he said tersely when she advised him to seek a piece of steak from the larder. “If it wasn’t for your outmoded ideas, I’d be repelling Bonaparte alongside Freddy.”

“Is that where you’d rather be?”

“It’s where I ought to be.”

“Nonsense! You are the heir. Your destiny is carved in stone. If it were not, England would perish.”

“Craven has made a career in the army.”

“Your aunt may have attached herself to German royalty, Fitz, but the Cravens do not rank with the Berkeleys in the history of this nation. When your father retires as Colonel-in-Chief of the South Gloucesters, that office will fall to you.”

“There’s plenty of life in the old dog, Mama.”

“Perhaps a little less than there used to be,” she suggested. “He is inclined to become fractious and grows weary sooner than he was used.”

The Countess was about twice her eldest son’s age, but Lord Berkeley was two generations removed and heading for his three-score years. His youth had been played out in the rococo style, with all its fixed assumptions, during the reign of George II and the youthful governance of his grandson, the present King. The echoes of that era were fading fast and his children rallied to the drumroll of a different century.

“Ouch!” The Countess pressed damp cottonwool to her son’s smarting cheekbone as she had done scores of times in his infancy when his pony had thrown him or there had been a tussle in the yard with the miller’s boy.

“Perhaps you should go down to the ice-house….”

“I’ll be all right, Mama!” he growled.

“But not nearly so handsome, I fear.”

Though he had no greater champion in the world than his mother, she sometimes irked him beyond endurance. Was what he felt for Amy how it had been for his father while she stalled his advances and went into hiding, driving him to distraction so that he concocted the plot to kidnap her? She was an innkeeper’s daughter, for pity’s sake! Yet she possessed dignity and deserved to be heard. Hadn’t she been given every cause to believe in that hollow ritual the year before he was born? When he was very small, he and Freddy and Gus, she’d looked after them and played with them, even made clothes for them. There’d been no nanny then, no governess, just one or two maidservants and the Old Nurse, a hazy presence he could only just recall, who was rumoured to have been his widowed grandmother. Lord Berkeley had since told him his grandmother was dead, but his mother had failed to corroborate it and his uncle, William Tudor, with whom they seldom associated nowadays, appeared to know she was in fine fettle and had espoused the keeper of a tavern in High Holborn of the name of Glossop.

“What happened to your sisters? Don’t you ever hear how they go on?”

It was Lady Berkeley’s turn to flinch. Mention of her sisters flagged up all sorts of alarm.

“What makes you ask?”

“I was just thinking about the other side of the family.”

“It’s called the distaff side,” the Countess prompted meaningfully. “The elder married an officer of the Virginia Line who works to see land restored to American citizens and…. It’s strange you should think of them….” she broke off. Her voice trailed away in reminiscent key. Only last week she’d received a sad and rather unkind letter from her brother, who kept contact with his transatlantic siblings, to say that Ann had died in the fall of last year. Mary had wept to learn that. Ann was barely forty and a thousand leagues from her native land. It was a brave new world out there, with few frontiers. Everyone’s sight was set on the far horizon. Judge Claiborne had taken a new wife as soon as was half-decent. But Mary did not tell Fitz any of this. There was Ann’s first family in Gloucestershire, now full-grown. Their father, Will Farren, was also dead but Ann had forsaken them all long before that to follow her star.

“What of the other one?”

“My middle sister, Susan? She inherited rice plantations in South Carolina from her first husband where she now lives with her second. Mr Baring is an East India trader.”

“Rich!” said Fitz. “They’ll be vastly rich!”

“My sister does not care for the climate,” said his mother evasively. “Mosquitoes and malaria do not suit the English rose.”

“I bet they’ve scores of negro slaves.”

“About two hundred, I believe. Which is to be regretted.”

“It all depends how they’re treated, Mama.”

“Mr Clarkson and Mr Wilberforce think it intrinsically wicked, as do many other Members of Parliament. Mr Josiah Wedgwood maintains that they are our brothers.”

“It’s not only black people. Many a brat of the London stews is ankle-chained and cruelly beaten by his master.”

“That, too, needs addressing. Black or white, it makes no odds. When a human being is robbed of free will….but there! I shall not wax hot upon the subject. Mrs Baring’s conscience has always been her own!”

Fitz was left with the vague impression that these ethical matters were the source of his mother’s estrangement and why the aunt was seldom spoken of. That Mrs Baring was a heart-breaker, law-breaker, fortune-seeker, marriage-broker extraordinaire, would continue to remain shrouded. He couldn’t see why his father was so slighting of the Coles – except William, of course – when they were blessed with the faculty of scaling the social ladder. It almost beat being born to it. Fitz quite liked the idea of outwitting the bon ton.

As to Miss Knight, he had not given up hope. (If Brunton was as good as his word, then Fitz could find himself playing opposite her at some point.) It had become a question of winning the game, rather than earning her devotion. Bly offered to act as a spy and a go-between. He learned from Madame Brunton that the company was packing its costumes and properties and was leaving that weekend for Colchester. From there, they would be moving on to Norwich and King’s Lynn before returning to open in Covent Garden with a new production.

“The Rivals,” she told him, bustling about with armfuls of whale-boned petticoats. “That’s what Mr Brunton proposes. Miss Knight is the very compendium of Lydia Languish, I don’t mind saying….but it don’t pay like School. You can’t fill the chandeliers with tallow in Town.”

Bly called at Berkeley House with these grave tidings. “Can’t go haring all over the country for a bit o’ muslin,” he reasoned, for he was a pragmatic soul. “What you need is a spot of faro with some of the fellows. Better still, a day at the Races.”

“Colchester? London! I’ll catch the jade there!”

 

 

It stood close to the shore, a miracle of restrained classicism, amid chenille lawns, hibiscus, oleander and bougainvillea. The exterior betrayed no sign of the Byzantine excess with which it was later ‘beautified’. John Nash’s piped onion domes and pinnacles connoting far-flung empires, which Admiral Sir Sidney Smith was to liken to St. Paul’s having gone to sea and pupped, had yet to be conceived.

But to enter the Pavilion was to wander into a fable, its atmosphere secluded from the world outside. Tales of Samarkand and Ming Mandarins, Flying Carpets and Indian Moghuls were easily evoked and seemed to bear witness to Britain’s expanding global trade, despite wars and rumours of wars.

All the Berkeley children ventured within these walls from time to time, but Henry, Moreton, Grantley and little Mary liked especially to romp with the younger Fitzclarences, Dora Jordan’s children by William, Duke of Clarence. Mrs Fitzherbert was a close neighbour on the Steine and would bring Minnie Seymour to join their nursery games with spinning tops and pebbles, or play hide-and-seek and put on gloved puppet shows. Sometimes Mrs Fitzherbert arrived ever so discreetly and it was whispered that there was a secret passage from her house into the Royal apartments. While the womenfolk discussed linctus and dancing lessons, weaning and morning wear at one end of the Long Gallery, the gentlemen mixed whist and politics at the other, else went on a tour of inspection of the new domed Riding School and stables which equalled anything those Hapsburgs in Vienna could boast.

Mary found a soul-mate in Maria Fitzherbert and also enjoyed the gentle society of her sister, Lady Haggerstone. Dorothy Jordan was always sparky company, a good sport who could handle any situation with pithy humour. The Duke must have been in stitches half the night! It occurred to Mary that these three ladies were Catholic-bred and therefore inclined to be in tune with her own upbringing.

One afternoon, when the Prince had gone racing up to London because the King had some bee in his bagwig about the education of the Princess Charlotte, leaving his brothers William and Frederick in residence, these women found themselves taking tea together. Mrs Fitzherbert (‘a fine doorful of a woman’, as Dora described her behind the scenes) confessed her dismay at the tussle with Isabella Hertford’s lawyers over the wardship of Minnie.

“It was her mother’s dying wish that the infant be entrusted to my care.”

“How painful it must be, ma’am, to think of losing her now,” said Mary.

“Indeed, but I think Prinny has prevailed with Isabella and we might reach an amicable settlement, though I could wish he had asserted a little less charm! Thankfully,” Maria added at a discreet volume, “the affair quickly waned, for it is insupportable to share one’s beloved with a third person, do you not think?”

“We women are forgiving creatures,” sighed Frances Haggerstone. “We must turn the other way with good grace, or grow vexed and shrewish.”

“Why, faith!” cried Dora, “be hanged to that! I’d lace his port with jalap of an evening. He’d be sure to spend the night in the closet!”

The four women chuckled together. “I think that might be accounted treason,” demurred Maria.

“His great grandfather died in the closet, though not of an overdose of jalap, I’m thinking!”

Mrs Fitzherbert sat back in her Sheraton chair and rested her saucer against her ample bosom which nicely fielded spills from the bone china cup hovering somewhere above it. “Yes, we must overlook the peccadilloes of our better halves. But His Highness did promise the Pope that he was a reformed man, else I should not have been able return to him.”

“You might as well whistle a jig to a milestone if you expect fidelity from Adam’s sons,” reflected Dora.

“Dear Maria, you were nothing short of saintly in making way for the Princess Caroline when Prinny sought to do his duty,” said her sister.

“And we all know what a disaster that was! When I think of that poor child shut up at Windsor with hardly a glimpse of her parents, I cannot help but compare her situation with the freedom enjoyed by my own dearest Minnie.”

The group fell dutifully silent. They all believed that Princess Charlotte and Minnie Seymour were half-sisters and that it was not their prerogative to comment.

“Ah, no man ever wore a scarf as warm as his daughter’s arm around his neck,” claimed Dora. “His Hoighness can’t be blamed for wanting the little Princess removed from Blackheath. The goings-on!”

“I can only think them exaggerated,” Mary remarked. “Would our future Queen behave in such a wanton manner?”

“You are a good-hearted creature, Lady Berkeley, but make no mistake where the lady of Brunswick is concerned there’s no smoke without a conflagration.”

“What about the choild?” offered the actress for mutual consideration. “He sleeps in her bedchamber, they say. She didn’t find him under a gooseberry bush, now.”

“At least she doesn’t call him Master Guelph,” Lady Haggerstone commented. “I’m told his name is William Austin. She has a dozen others housed nearby who live by her industry in the vegetable plot.”

“An admirable use of her time and energy,” said Mary. “To alleviate a little of the nation’s poverty is not to be despised.”

The chatter went on in this vein for a good hour when the Countess of Berkeley begged leave of the party and took her fledglings off.

“Such an agreeable woman,” Lady Haggerstone remarked. “Who would have thought her a chambermaid?”

“Hence her empathy with the destitute, Fanny.”

“I can’t think what she’s doing with that old rogue, Berkeley,” declared Dora. “I reckon she bolted her door with a boiled carrot!”

“Much as you did, my dear, with William,” said Maria, looking down her long amiable nose.

“Now if anyone's a reformed character, it is the Earl,” observed Lady Haggerstone. “His wife has woven quite a spell about him.”

The subject of the Berkeley Peerage was not aired since Mrs Fitzherbert and the Prince of Wales had aroused scandal of a similar kind.

“How well Lord Dursley fills his father’s old shoes,” Dora said. “That one was dealt a double dose of Original Sin, to be sure. All the eligible mamas-in-law are locking up their daughters.”

“Not with boiled carrots one trusts.”

Lady Haggerstone shook her head. “Mr Fox was saying the other day that if only the silly fellow had not been expelled from Eton, something might be made of him. He has many accomplishments which would be of service to himself and the nation.”

“I hear he speaks several languages with great fluency,” Maria said.

“Aye,” said Dora, “twill be of the bruiser, the pickpocket and the highwayman. He’s made a fine art of it!”

His parents had never understood how insufferable Eton was at the time of the House of Lords Inquiry. For one thing, there seemed to be a preponderance of poker-faced candidates for the Church at this period who tried to curb his daredevil activities. Fitz was his father’s son and made it his life’s objective to steer clear of the Cloth, notwithstanding that there had been a renowned philosopher on the wider ancestral tree who had become Bishop of Cloyne and had been in cahoots with his great grandfather’s chaplain, Dean Swift.

The boy had entered the school as William Fitzhardinge Berkeley, Fitz Berkeley for short, just before knowledge of his parents’ long-suppressed marriage began causing tremors on the grapevine. Few had believed the story. From the outset, his fellow pupils had been infected with adult scepticism. There was a campaign of bullying under cover of the fagging system and some of the older boys picked fights which decidedly did not adhere to the Broughton Rules. They called Fitz ‘the Young Pretender’ with the inference that his Papa was the Old one, although it was Lord Berkeley’s word rather than his birth that was for conjecture. Fitz was herded together with all manner of grand fellows whose expectations seemed assured. When his courtesy title was skilfully insinuated into the family agenda, things worsened. He stood his ground with courage, but grew deeply aggrieved. It wasn’t as though his actual parentage was at issue; it all hung on the existence of a fusty old bit of parchment. His Mama actually was the Countess of Berkeley. He didn’t know what all the fuss was about. His frustration knew no bounds so that acts of rebellion, like scaling Lupton’s Tower, seemed the only outlet. He remembered thinking, as terror compelled him upwards, that this whole edifice might give out. The brick and stone were only compacted dust. And he remembered the sheer hegemony of looking down upon the Godolphin statue of Edward VI in School Yard, from high above his crown, and realising, in a moment of time, how small everything was, how ant-like the human race, and how absurd was an order that rallied under the Orb and Sceptre. Yet he could not for the life of him see any other means to distinguish himself.

Eton College had chewed him up and spat him out and he felt nothing but profound relief. There had been a hellish interview with Dr Heath in the presence of Lord Berkeley. Since then, his father had scarcely uttered a civil word to him. His mother gazed upon him with a sorrowful Madonna countenance and irritated him with her everlasting fortitude, as if she were the injured party. The race of women needed putting in its place. There were too many of them scribbling away in plaintive humour about the inequities of their lot.

Such feelings as these congested Fitz’s mood on the opening night of The Rivals. He had more or less resolved to put Amy Knight out of his mind – the highways and byways did not lack sportive nymphs – but that meant she would have beaten him. He had no wish to look like a desperado, but in order to keep self-respect he had to win.

The actress fully embraced her role as Lydia Languish. She seemed to relish the stereotype and find freedom in it, which was odd. Her ringing declamations stirred a barrage of emotions. Fitz wanted to vault the balcony separating them and land at her feet from the gods.

The interval saw him quitting Craven’s box and its occupants, Edward Berkeley Portman, William Craven and Louisa Brunton (Harriette was in the wardrobe!) to seek Miss Knight’s dressing-room which he made no bones about entering without leave.

She was still attired in her silk velvet costume of emerald and turquoise and a cockeyed creation upon her powdered wig trimmed with loops of ribbon and ostrich plumes. Seated at her candlelit mirror in a provisional attitude, she seemed agitated over the particulars of the script which she was discussing with a gentleman inclined towards her. “Pray, don’t refine upon it, my angel,” he was saying soothingly. “The number of people who undergo the fatigue of judging for themselves….”

Both started at the intrusion, he in an even more farcical manner than the actress.

“Lud, sir! You half frightened me to death!” she gasped, her hand flying to her palpitating bosom. “My lord!” She jumped up at once and curtsied.

“If it ain’t young Viscount Dursley himself, forsooth!” exclaimed her companion whom he recognised as Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

“Miss Knight. Sherry.”

“I’ve been putting Miss Knight’s mind at ease. She thinks herself a wilderness of faults and follies.”

“A veritable wilderness,” she echoed, rolling her eyes. “I declare if twere not for dear Sherry directing my turns, I should never be out of the undergrowth.”

“And refreshing your phrases, O Sweet One.”

“Exactly. I could not have put it more aptly myself.”

“You wish for an autograph?” enquired the playwright. “Hers might be a worthier offering, but mine will pay your tailor….if you have one.”

“Stop playing the ass, Sherry,” said the Viscount tersely. “I’m here to speak with Miss Knight. Alone.”

“Then I shan’t usurp your role any longer.”

“No, wait, Sheridan,” the actress bade him. “This fellow is minded to join the players. He hopes to offset my Juliet with his Romeo. What think you of that?”

“Does he now? May I presume to give you a little advice, sir? Give the quean the hemlock at the beginning...! It will save a lot of trouble and we can all go to bed in a sanguine frame of mind.”

“Monster!”

“Your lordship, I note, takes after his aunt.”

“My aunt?”

“The Incomparable Mrs Baring, Mrs Edge that was. Now there was a fine actress….lost, alas, to our Continent. I sent her to the Fishamble Street Theatre to try her fortune on the Dublin stage. I believe it was where the poor widow met the late Mr Heyward upon his travels and achieved the apotheosis of her career.”

The Viscount was astonished. “I knew nothing of all that. I thought him her first husband.”

“Ah! I perceive you a man of swift calculation,” said Sheridan. “Now, let me see….it is so very taxing to the intellect to recall the precise sequence of Mrs Baring’s oeuvre….”

The five minute rallying call came from the stage manager.

“Never mind that now, Sherry,” said Amy Knight airily. “I must compose myself.”

Mr Sheridan bowed with many a florid gesture and withdrew.

The Viscount suddenly felt like a vessel beached. The walls were papered with playbills, evoking an atmosphere of the legendary and the esoteric. For some reason, the actress smiled tenderly upon him so that he was emboldened to ask: “I wonder, Miss Knight, my I take you to supper at The Star after the performance?”

“Your lordship is most kind,” she said, dropping another quick curtsy and fluttering her lashes, which in itself seemed a concession from this Queen Bee, “but I think….”

“I implore you….” he interposed in spite of himself.

The one minute call came to beginners of the next Act. She hovered in genuine turmoil, then bestowed upon him gracious assent.

“Please allow me a little time to change and attend to my toilette.”

“In which hiatus, I trust you will not disappear.”

“You have my word,” she said.

He could not concentrate on the rest of the performance, not even upon Amy. She had mended the situation and soothed all his abrasions. He experienced a kind of tingling disconnection from himself and from the rest of the world. Amy had promised to have supper with him!

“Craven, you go ahead in the carriage,” he said at the end of the evening. “I shall make my own way…. ”

Craven’s brows shot up in amusement. “Scandalous,” he tut-tutted. “Quite scandalous. The lady has all my sympathy.”

The Star was a first-class establishment with elegantly-swagged supper rooms at one end of the Piazza. Seated in a discreet alcove below the soft light of wall sconces, Fitz confronted his charmer. Rouge-pot and lip salve had conspired to enhance nature a little, but her complexion was no longer embalmed in ceruse. He saw that she was older than he had supposed. Whilst her bearing was mature, especially when her hair was swept high, he had not taken her for more than twenty. The black eyes, full of orient mystery, fed on his soul and were constantly vigilant for response. Tonight she had cast off her Lydia Languish caricature which was a good deal more innocent than she was. But Fitz had no power to focus her: she was juggling her offstage masks. The challenge drove him to wade through thistle and thorn. He would break if he did not conquer her.

“Amy….I hope I may call you Amy…..is that your given name?”

“I was baptised Amaryllis,” she said.

“It should have been a darker appellation. Anemone would have better suited.”

She burbled with laughter and searched his gaze as though daring him to venture into new and shocking realms.

“You’re a strange boy."

“I rather fancy that’s no bad thing,” he responded, slightly nettled.

Champagne was brought to the table. The cork was slickly drawn by the sommelier. Fitz supped and savoured the black grapes skins in a riot of bubbles.

“Well, Sweet Amaryllis, not Adieu, Bonjour! Bonsoir! Bonne Nuit!”

“We’ve already done the parting,” she said.

“You have heard Mr Wilbye quoted before,” he observed dully.

“It goes with the territory,” she said.

The remark brought him down to earth just when he had begun to take flight.

“I perceive you ain’t easily typecast, Amy.”

“Versatility pays the rent, sir.” She raised her glass to that and half-drained it. No delicate sipping for Amy Knight. She was an emancipated woman.

“And how long have you been in the theatre?”

“Faith, I’ve been treading the boards since the French declared war! My debut role, though, was as Foible in The Way of the World. I reckon that was just after Dr Jenner inoculated Jamie Phipps with the ‘pox. Ninety-six, was it?”

“I believe it was,” Fitz agreed, startled, “for I and my brothers were also inoculated. But what made you think of that?”

“I knew the family,” the actress said succinctly.

“In Berkeley?”

“I believe I’m distantly related to the dairymaid from whom the cowpox lymph was taken.”

The Viscount thought this admirably candid and marvelled that she had not fabricated a more genteel history. Undoubtedly an air of breeding had been acquired via training in elocution and moving among the nobility and gentry, but she was inclined to lapse into hints of the vernacular in offguard moments, when fatigued or a little tipsy. “You have roots in Gloucestershire?” he said in surprise.

“The same county as you, sir.”

Some echo sounded in the recesses of his being. “I knew we had common ground!” He struck the table so that the silver cutlery clinked upon its lace and linen cloth. “Inexplicably, I sensed it when I first beheld you. It begs the question why you left?”

“My mother died. My brother and sister were both married. My father never came back from the American wars,” she shrugged, a touch wistfully. “I went into service to further my chances. If I’d played nursemaid to my nieces and nephews, I should have been tramping the same treadmill for ever, not a moment to lift my head and watch the lark rise.”

He became aware that he was stealthily gaining her confidence. Or was it another act? Did she have leisure and inclination to watch the lark rise? Was the escape from drudgery into her artificial world enough? Why should it concern him?

“And do you go down to the country often?”

“We run at Bristol and Cheltenham two or three times a year….”

“I’d certainly have remembered if I’d seen you there,” frowned Fitz, racking his underused brain.

“I visit my sister at Quedgeley a little oftener….” She was raking his gaze for an inkling of his mind. “My lodgings are in Cockspur Street.”

“Indeed? Next door to Spring Gardens. Our house is shut up at the moment. The family are down at Berkeley for Yuletide. In Town, I sponge off my Craven cousins. The country can be devilish dull in the depths of winter. The sport is excellent, but it means having the pater breathe down my collar.”

She was silent, as if coming to a decision, and then added: “I live quite alone.”

“No….companion?”

“None. I don’t have the call. We’re on the road as often as not.”

They dined on oysters and lobster bisque, quail and lemon syllabubs. White burgundy followed the champagne and enveloped the world in a golden mist. Fitz was beginning to feel truly adult, in charge of himself as never before. He almost wished he had not chosen a shaded corner, for he fancied there were older fellows ogling the two of them, whispering to their wives and comrades that the young dog was earning as raffish a reputation as the old one, but carried himself with superior aplomb. Well, he didn’t have to stoop to abduction to get what he wanted!

“So you’re ready to be a trouper, my lord?”

“With spit and polish, I might come up to scratch,” he grinned. His knife and fork were resting akimbo across his plate while he studied them. “Why….? Why did you give me the slip last summer? Not even a crack in the wall through which we might talk!”

“It wouldn’t do to be too breezy, now would it? There’s a gaggle of cheeky fellows around the stage door with bouquets on the first night. By rights, you should be way down the queue. Where are my roses and lilies, sir?”

“According to the poets, lilies fester, roses become cankered, but a hearty supper feeds body and soul.”

She considered this, thinking that he had always been precocious. For a young man of seventeen or eighteen, he possessed undue pessimism. “You are not of a romantic turn of mind, I apprehend.”

“I believe I’d sooner shoot our feathered friends than write odes to them!”

“The child is certainly father of the man,” she observed in teasing humour.

She spiked his gaze for a split second. His flesh prickled with electricity. “Who are you?” he queried under his breath.

“Honest to God, you were a right little tearaway when you were growing up. It was all your mother could do to keep behind you. She shut you in the boot cupboard for answering back. You’d still be there if Mr Chapeau hadn’t intervened.”

“Chapeau? By Heaven, I’d long forgotten all about the silly fellow! ….Lily! Lily Tudor! I never knew your name was Amaryllis.”

“The same surname as your Mama.”

“You were a nursery maid at the Castle. You ran off to London.”

“I went into service just before little Francis was born and left not long after the poor mite died. You created Bedlam, you three boys.”

“I was not the most compliant charge, I’m sure.”

“Your Mama counselled against me leaving. She well knew what could befall an unprotected female. I didn’t stay long, not in London. First, I went to The Red Lion as a chambermaid. Then I got a place at Nettlebed….”

“I know it. We have hunting kennels there.”

“Later, I took up with an actor and singer .”

“And what happened to him?”

“I soon discovered he had a roving eye for the ladies. He took off with Mrs Crouch. It didn’t last. She’d get no fifty pound notes from him to eat in a sandwich!”

The Viscount laughed heartily at this allusion to the Prince of Wales who had once tried to buy off the actress too cheaply. Charitable souls peddled the story as evidence of her essential virtue.

“Well, well! How different you look without a mob cap!”

Lily Tudor! She had once thought her fortune made when she joined Mary Sheffield’s nursery staff at the Castle. It was far better than serving as a scullery wench to some doctor or parson. But the Berkeleys’ eccentric ménage intrigued her. Miss Tudor seemed to be the mistress of the Castle, in every way you could think of, but was never addressed as the Countess. Lily had once made a terrible gaffe when the Earl was returning from Stowe, home of his sister, Lady Buckingham. She was crossing the yard when he strode out of the stables with gloomy aspect. “Where is your lady?” he demanded.

She flushed deep as beetroots and sprang a deep curtsy. “Please you, my lord, Lady Berkeley’s in the Pleasure Grounds. That’s where I saw her minutes ago.”

His response made her quake in her shoes. “You fool!” he thundered. “I have no Lady Berkeley! Not unless she be the Countess Dowager!”

“Sorry, sir. Ever so sorry,” said Lily, tears welling. Before he could repent of his anger and say something more emollient, she had swiftly ducked another curtsy and fled.

Why he felt the need to go after her he could not have explained. Even among his peers, he seldom stooped to justify himself. But something needed to be righted. Women! Tears! Had he not caused enough of them? The stab of remorse at his denial of Mary echoed Peter’s denial of the Lord. He caught up with the maid in the spinney behind the stables where she was sobbing her heart out, afraid someone would see.

“Dammit, wench, I was too hasty,” Berkeley huffed. “You’re new to the household, I perceive.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And is this your first post?”

“Y- yes, my lord.” Lily let out a halting breath and tried to control herself.

“Your first taste of the world? Your first time away from your mother?”

“She went to her grave last Michaelmas, sir. The tide snatched her away.”

He thrust a handkerchief towards her, revisited by familiar sensations. “There,” he said, “dry up your tears.” He had made the same gestures, used the phrase so many times with Mary. The irony of Lily’s surname added its own charge to the situation.

Acquitted, she turned upon him a smile of such cogent indebtedness, his knees began to tremble. Maturity bloomed in her bearing. There was a subtle change in dynamic so that when he leaned forward to bestow an obligatory kiss, she was, if only by instinct, poised to respond. Fire braced his manhood, that escape into wild irresponsibility where Nemesis did not pursue and pure lust was king. Hastily fumbling the preliminaries, he bonded to her beneath a tumbling of skirts and held her up between himself and the gnarled torso of a crab apple tree. She murmured and moaned and gave vent to a long whimpering wail. He had to smother her mouth with his coat. It was her first encounter with men. Her blood was upon him. She was his, this Earl of England, and no power on earth was going to let him forget it.

Lily smoothed her skirts and set her cap and pinafore straight before hurrying across the courtyard to her menial duties in the castle with the countenance of one startled by a vision of something pleasing rather than otherwise. Mrs Sheffield noticed at once.

“Why, Lily, what’s afoot? I reckon you’ve seen the ghost of Dicky Pearce,” she laughed.

Lily humphed in an actressy fashion, adroitly disguising her confusion. “I ran into his lordship in the yard and he wanted to know where the mistress was. When I called her Lady Berkeley, he gave me a right earful. Swore he had no Lady Berkeley saving his mother. Well, I wasn’t to know!”

“He’s a temper on him, that one, when things don’t suit. But he’s no leave to go scolding newcomers. God knows, their setup’s a Chinese puzzle to older hands than you.”

“Some whisper they’ve wed on the quiet and don’t want the Dowager to know.”

“Tell it to the marines! Miss Tudor’s no more his wife than you are, Lily. Aye, and I doubt not you’ve better title to that name than she has.”

Mary Sheffield was not to know how this glowing endorsement of the nursemaid’s status in the scheme of things would fly home. Lily gloated upon it in secret. The lord of the castle, who moved among royalty, was her lover! The only difference between herself and the other Miss Tudor was that she had given him sons. That was what bought her fine gowns and high estate.

When Master Fitz took his governess to task for not addressing his mother as ‘my lady’ it brought matters to a head. That dame had tartly replied that it was a title reserved for Lord Berkeley’s wife. This had caused a furore above and below stairs. The bewildered Fitz had thrown a powerful tantrum and the exasperated Lily, bearing the brunt of it, could not refrain from blurting out that his mother was no better than she should be. The mistress ended up in floods of tears, a not uncommon occurrence, and Fitz had to be punished. There was dissension between her and his lordship at that period which played right into the maid’s hands. Only last week she had informed him that she was with child and must quit his employ. She was terrified of her family and could not face the village folk of Quedgeley. Her brother-in-law would beat her senseless and want to know the child’s paternity. He would worry the truth out of her like a terrier.

“I am not so base a fellow as to shun my duties,” Berkeley said grimly. “There’ll be no cause for the serving of bastardy bonds!”

“Why, no, sir,” replied Lily, appalled, “not with you a Justice of the Peace an’ all.”

Berkeley mulled over the problem for a full five minutes and concluded that Lily should go to earth in London until her confinement. He owned vast tracts of Mayfair and ordered Mr Boodle to take lodgings for her above Morley’s Hotel, at that time in Cockspur Street. The gossip was that Lily Tudor could not cope with the Berkeleys’ crazy household and was seeking to further her prospects in Town. Miss Tudor was forbearing and tried to prevail upon her to stay. Lily was pretty and likely to attract the wrong kind of attention. The mistress knew from experience how easy it was to be lured into vice and didn’t appear to have the faintest inkling of what was going on within the ramparts of her own home.

The first child was stillborn. Lily saw that she would soon lose her claim upon Lord Berkeley if she didn’t continue to exploit his weakness for the fair sex and his reluctance to be branded a cad when her health was below par. She sensed all too acutely his guilt at the awkward position of Miss Tudor and his children by her. During that period, they lost two daughters and a son themselves and it seemed for a while that his progeny were jinxed.

Within a few months, Lily was pregnant again. She gazed down at the crumpled infant and determined that he should not be overlooked. He was an Earl’s son and as much an ‘Honourable’ as any of Mary Tudor’s.

“I want him to be baptised,” she said. “I want him to know his proper place in the world.”

“You must do as you see fit,” Berkeley had replied, unsuccessfully trying to smother his weariness. He had neither a spiritual nor a social interest in the child. Wasn’t it enough that he was sentenced to a lifetime’s ransom for his sins? The event had underlined just how precious his ‘real’ family was and in the light of this revelation he grew ashamed of how shabbily he had treated Mary. It had been the final trigger in his decision to marry her. By then, her disreputable sisters had forsaken England for good and a major barrier to social acceptance of Mary had been removed.

“I know there’s some vicars who take a high tone in these matters,” declared Lily, regarding him from under her lashes. “And some who are open to persuasion by persons of rank.”

“I am sure you can exert your charms to good effect, Miss.”

“There’s Mr Ferryman, of course. He comes calling when he’s in Town.”

“Does he, by God?”

“He thinks to rescue my immor’al soul, I reckon.”

“Fellow’s a fantasist!” The clergyman’s make-up was so variegated that nothing surprised Berkeley. His abject need of income was the motive for certain of his ventures but was by no means an overriding one. Hence his poverty.

Berkeley’s fingernails tattooed the windowsill as he considered this. Ferryman had done very well out of him. It would be the simplest way of ensuring discretion. “I will speak with him on the subject. I hope that may please you.”

“Thank you, sir. Be sure, it does!”

“But mind this, Lily: though I mean to grant an annuity for your needs, I don’t intend to be a grey eminence or any other kind in your lives from now on.”

There had been tears. Oh, those tears! But they came not from the same springs as Mary’s.

Lily named her son ‘John’ and called him Johnny. John Tudor, Berkeley mused. If any link between himself and the child surfaced among the litter of history, it would likely be assumed that it came through Mary. What did not occur to him, when he trusted Ferryman to officiate, was that Lily would give Fitzhardinge Berkeley as the baby’s baptismal names and them only. Lily sighed with satisfaction, feeling that God was in his heaven and her score with the Earls and Barons of Berkeley was settled. Ferryman thought nothing of it and was posted to the high seas with all despatch whereupon his own concerns took over.

In 1801, six years older and wiser, several shades of cynicism deeper, and now known by her Thespian name of Amy Knight, Lily began to review her position. The press had been buzzing with debate upon the Berkeley Peerage, resurrected, if it had ever died, by the Bill to preserve evidence of the older sons’ rights. While Miss Tudor lately went as Lady Berkeley, the first four of Johnny’s half-brothers had not proved their title to the family honours. The actress had instilled into her son that he was an ‘Honourable’. His father was a lordship who had been set upon by bandits on the King’s Highway and left for dead.

In the following months, as interest in the case waned, Lily decided to grasp the nettle and tender her claim to a gift of property. Her argument would have more weight while there was controversy about the Earl’s lawful heir. Had not Mr Ferryman mentioned that there were rumours in circulation that the Earl and his lady might never have been joined in wedlock. Jane Price, who was in the Berkeleys’ employ for seven years, now doubted the second marriage. “For,”she averred, “it cannot be counted the work of rational minds who are seeking to persuade us of the first rite. Miss Tudor kept her name long after May, 1796, when a further ceremony was supposed to have taken place.”

Ferryman had demurred at this. “To hedge their bets in such a way…. They’d be dicing with their lives! I cannot think it likely.”

“You forget, Mr Ferryman, that they are Berkeleys who think themselves above the law. History has favoured them.”

“They would not have the hubris….”

“Consider this,” advised the dame in unnerving proximity, “the baptism of Thomas Moreton is registered in two parishes and only once is he described as Lord Dursley. Make of that what you will.”

“How can you know such a thing?”

“I keep an eagle eye. The pursuit of truth is my life’s endeavour.”

 

Berkeley was dismayed to find that he had not written off Miss Tudor, nor had he foreseen the involutions of her surname. The tone of her letter smacked of his sister-in-law, Susan Cole. Had he lost one bête noire and gained another? He’d learned the hard way what could be achieved by a woman on a mission! If the Prince of Wales was worried about William Austin asserting a right to the English Throne, Berkeley could not discount the threat posed by Lily Tudor.

The Earl delayed his response because that was what he always did, hoping the problem would go away, that Lord Dursley would implant himself in the noblest society and become popular among those with influence upon the House of Lords’ Committee of Privileges. So far, the plan had gone badly. Fitz’s disgrace at Eton had wrong-footed him. He was not lacking in conduct and was found to be witty and talented, but was inclined to misfit expectations. The trouble was that Fitz resented having to make himself conciliatory to those who had downtrodden his ancestors. Though he half-despised his mother for failing to outwit them, he identified closely with her.

As the Earl feared, Lily Tudor was persistent. His historic guilt was his weakness. He agreed to give her title to her lodgings in exchange for a deed of silence and asked Boodle to make sure the negotiations were drawn out.

By now, the persona of Amy Knight had become as comfortable as a well-worn shoe. The actress sat in The Star, opposite her youthful admirer, downing fine wines and savouring new epicurean delights and began to feel that the turn of events was amusing rather than worrisome. She had had the charge of his siblings when he himself was no more than five or six years old and the epicentre of disturbance. There had been something in her demeanour that incited him to folly even then.

“Faith, I believe I shan’t order more liquor,” he said blearily. “Right now I could do a fair impression of the Porter at Hellgate!”

“Perhaps your lordship would care to sign the account and leave the favour of an oration until later?”

“Odd’s life, Amy! They know who I am!”

“Yes, sir, I fear they do.”

“Credit’s better than royalty! Ain’t that right? Go with Georgie Boy to the Races and he’ll stake your blunt!”

“You’re drunk, Fitz!” Amy hissed.

“Madam…. When I come into my own…. ”

“If’s a bigger word than when.”

“You castin’ aspersions upon Mama’s virtue? Name’s a good ‘un. Owned it yourself.”

“My son’s is even better. It’s the same as yours!”

The room swirled into a kaleidoscope. Lord Dursley’s Adonis-like profile was deftly fielded by his poires au chocolat which punctuated the exchange with a resounding clatter, drawing a barrage of stares. Amy jumped up in high dudgeon and threw down her napkin, when the Head Waiter smartly appeared at her elbow.

“I will see a cab is procured, madam,” he said. “I take it milord has no further utility for his dessert?”

In the carriage, she felt the full weight of him slumped against her. He had been a budgetful of trouble twelve years ago and nothing had changed!

Amy decided against abandoning her charge on the doorstep of Lord Craven’s house in Charles Street and asked the driver to take them to her own address. Johnny lived with her sister, Prudence, in Gloucestershire, and the maid who cleaned the apartment was not expected the following day.

When they drew up in front of Morley’s Hotel, the lamps were burning and the portico doors still unlocked. Amy swiftly alighted and ran into the vestibule, brushing past the liveried doorman.

“May I be of assistance, madam?”

“Oh dear, this is prodigiously awkward…. My cousin, I fear, has partaken a little too much refreshment and is unsteady on his pins. Would you be so good as to see him installed upstairs, I wonder?” The maître d’hôtel appeared in the hallway at that moment. “Ah, Joseph….the very man!”

“Miss Knight!” Joseph Arthur Ball of Slimbridge clicked his heels, only wanting an excuse to render the lady a service. He had followed her to London and was biding his time, confident that the society of feckless suitors would pall. An ambitious fellow, he had set himself to learn the hotelier’s trade from bottom to top when he might satisfy himself that he ranked with the Quality. An aproned porter was instantly summoned to assist the doorman and between them, they succeeded in hauling Lord Dursley up the private staircase.

“Plimmed a barrelful, this one,” muttered the porter. “Like shifting a trunk full o’ lead.”

“Pickled as a soused herring!”

Amy produced the key and paid off the cab from a cache of five pound notes she discovered in Dursley’s inner pocket. Tripping upstairs, she found him in complicit oblivion on her drawing-room couch. He was snoring like an old salt, fit to make the chandeliers tinkle, yet how boyish he looked.

The night shone clear above the roofs of Mayfair when she thankfully retired to bed with sighs of vexation at the folly of the male species.

No one had thought to close the curtains for the guest. Next morning, the sun began to gild the architecture of Cockspur Street and glance off the mirrors of number twenty-five. The Viscount groaned, torn from sleep with a searing headache, and struggled to orientate himself. He did not recognise the room, had no idea how he came to be there. He seemed to be faintly acquainted with his clothes; his hair smelled of syrup and chocolate and wine…? The figurines on the mantelpiece, the silhouettes on the wall, the flowery chintzes, were unfamiliar. But the gold-framed landscape above the fireplace limned the outlines of his home, rising above watermeadows foraged by shaggy, longhorn cattle. Berkeley Castle! As his focus became steadily adjusted, he discerned two smaller pictures of the town, the Chantry where Edward Jenner lived, and the towerless Minster which his father called a tabernacle of the ungodly. He started up, clutching his throbbing brow, for that was surely a portrait of himself next to them! A miniature done when he was a child. Those tetchy artists! The tedious sittings for minutes together!

He did not hear the door open gingerly, nor was he aware at first that Amy stood silently behind him, turned spectator now.

“A handsome taking, is it not? To the life!”

“Where….” he said, stumbling back to bewildered reality. “Where did you get it? Did my mother give it you?”

“Indeed, no. That’s not you, sir.”

“It ain’t?”

“No, sir, that’s my son, Johnny. He’s your brother!”

©2008 Rosy Cole