“No, I pay for my pleasures out of my own pocket.”
“If your earnings aren’t out of your own pocket, what is?”
“A nobleman, my dear Miss Mallow, does not work for gain. Infra-dig. We lords are too toplofty to engage in common labour for a wage. The taint of having earned money by the sweat of our brows can only be removed by donating it to charity. No, we are allowed to keep anything we wring out of our tenants by starving them in a hovel, but honestly earned money must be got rid of immediately.”
“How ridiculous you make it sound.”
“The truth often has a ridiculous ring to it. Well, I don’t have to tell you. It’s what your books are all about, isn’t it?”
“I never thought so.”
“You may not have known you thought it, but you wrote it. There was your Lady Allyson de Burlington, remember? The illiterate who kept the house full of books to hide the truth; and your Sidney Greenham-half greenhead and half pig I assume-who would never allow pork to be served at his table as he had his humble beginnings in a sausage factory. Hiding the truth at every turn, because it is unpalatable. In any case, I am not allowed to keep my hard-earned money, and I mean to give it to my favourite people-ruined females.”
He made a joke of it, but Prudence knew he was serious about helping the girls, and was proud of him. “Where will you set up your Magdalen House, here or in Hampshire?”
“I have pretty well decided on Hampshire, not too far from the Abbey, so I can keep an eye on it personally. I refer to the running of it-the finances and employees and most of all, where the girls are placed when they leave.”
“Which brings to mind old Mulroney. Had you any success with that man-Lucas was it?-who was to get rid of him?”
“He’s on his way out. We have managed to get him a rung up on the ecclesiastical ladder in a nice rich town, where he can’t do much harm. He’ll never dare to scare the wits out of a bunch of fat squires with his sermons and Bible readings. Let him herd as many people as he can to swell his church attendance and give him a good record. He’ll concentrate his accounting skills on getting some stained glass windows and an organ for St. Martin’s and have something to show for his efforts.”
“You mentioned your home would be in Hampshire so you could keep an eye on it. Do you plan to return to Longbourne Abbey soon then?”
“Yes, after the Season."
“Oh.” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice.
"I'll be in London a good deal, of course. I plan to take my seat in the House.”
"This sounds like a new Lord Dammler about to emerge. What of the poet?”
“He’ll have to keep his nose to the grindstone to support his women. I refer to my charity girls,” he explained with a lift of the eyebrow.
“My, with all your women of one sort or another, you’ll be busy.”
“I’ll still find time for you,” he said with a smile. “You’ll have to come to visit me at Longbourne Abbey some time.”
Comforted with this promise, she accepted the inevitable.
Chapter 8
Mr. Seville had called on Miss Mallow two days after the ball and found her out with Dammler. When he returned two days later, he found her at home and asked her to drive out in the park with him. It was not the same exciting adventure as going out with Dammler, but it was better than sitting home with Clarence, and her escort exerted himself to be entertaining. He was not a serious man; Prudence had his measure within a quarter of an hour. He was a man of the world. His conversation was of balls and the ton, of horses and fashion. He didn’t seem to think a lady capable of discussing more weighty matters, or perhaps he was incapable of it himself, but he was amusing.
“Have you heard the latest on dit about Clarence and the Princess?” he asked, leaning closer to her.
How very odd that she should know him to be referring to the Duke of Clarence, and either of two other princesses not of English royalty.
“Lieven or Esterhazy?” she asked, with a feeling of being very much in on things.
“Lieven,” he replied, not finding her answer remarkable, “was being shown to her carriage at the Pavilion t’other night by Billie, and what must the old slice do but pop in on top of her and try to make love to her.”
“He is a courageous man,” she answered, laughing at the picture called up by this incongruous couple.
“Aye, false courage-in his cups certainly. But Lieven is awake on all suits. She told him the Congress of Vienna was giving Hanover to Prussia, and England going along with it for a wedge of Westphalia. You may imagine his reaction-a confirmed Hanoverian. Lovemaking was forgotten. ‘God damn! Does my brother know this?’ says he. She assured him he did not, and he turned the carriage about to go back and tell Prinney the news. Famous it was. Prinney twigs him about it ten times a day. All a hum, of course.”
“I hear Miss Wyckham has given him his congé," she remarked, remembering Dammler’s gossip.
“She’d snap him up fast enough, but the Cabinet won’t hear of it. It’ll be some dull old Austrian princess for him, poor soul. But he’s had the best of Jordan, so he don’t need my pity.”
“Rather pity Mrs. Jordan.”
“Clarence will provide, never fear. He'll come down heavy. Thinks the world of his family-as any man should, of course,” he added hastily. “The least he can do. I have no opinion of men who seduce and abandon, as the saying goes.”
Prudence found the tone of this conversation displeasing and attempted to divert their discussion. “Lord Dammler is writing a new play,” she said as an opener.
“You are pretty thick with Dammler, I believe?”
“We are friends. Both being writers you know…"
“Professional thing, is it? Just a common interest.”
“A little more than that perhaps. We are friends.”
“He ain’t your lover?”
The bluntness of this question shocked her even more than its content. “Mr. Seville! Indeed he is not. The notion is absurd.”
“No offence, Miss Mallow. No offence in the world. But you ain’t seven years old, and his affairs are no secret. He’s not a bit too good for you. Not in the least.”
She was silent a while after this interchange. “Now I’ve gone and hurt your feelings, and that I didn’t mean to do. I would never have suspected it myself, but it’s only what’s being said. Wouldn’t have asked you out if I’d thought it for a minute. Just wanted to be sure. A man can’t be too careful of such details.”
Poor Prudence, reared in a retired village and unused to the ways of high life, took his concern to be for being seen with a lightskirt, when he was only worried that he was stealing Dammler's property. The talk went better after that, and when he deposited her at her door she had concluded that these ton people talked a little warm, but in their hearts they were strict moralists.
She was flattered to receive next day a bouquet from Seville, and not ill-pleased at the note with it requesting her company at the opera two nights hence. She had been there twice with her uncle, but not in a box with the upper members of Society. Her taste of high living had whetted her appetite, and she sent off a note accepting his offer. So this is all there is to it, she thought as she had her hair dressed and the gold gown worn to Mr. Wordsworth’s dinner party slipped over her head. One had only to meet a few of the right people and she was on her way to balls and the opera and drives in the park. She read both the Society column and the Court column to be up on the trivia that passed for conversation with Mr. Seville.
Before she left Uncle Clarence, decked out in garments suitable to escort her, though he was in fact staying home to play piquet with her mama, handed her a black leather box. “I want you to wear my dear late wife’s necklace,” he said.