Chapter 3
It was not to be supposed that the dowager marchioness took her son’s absence with equanimity. He had stormed out on the Wednesday, early in the morning – for the marchioness, anyway – and she anticipated that he would drive until his horses had had enough, and would then find an inn for the night, and return the next day, having driven off his temper.
When Geoffrey had not returned by dinner-time on Thursday, Lady Calver was a little concerned, but made the assumption that her son had sought female companionship of the unsuitable kind. So long as he was not overcome with some quixotic urge to marry a peasant girl, just to spite her, what he did was his own business. She had a momentary qualm that it would be just like Geoffrey to do just that, but he could not ride rough-shod over the church, and without finding a bishop to provide a special licence, he would have to wait for fifteen days’ residency, wherever he fetched up. Time in which to realise that he would not want to be tied for life to some ignorant girl, and even Geoffrey was not so stubborn as to do that to his own detriment.
When Geoffrey had not returned by Saturday, his mother began to feel some qualms that he might have suffered some accident, or fallen in with footpads. What one read of in the newspapers was, after all, often quite horrific. There had been no extreme weather conditions, so it was unlikely that he had been struck by lightning, or been blown off his curricle seat into a river, nor bogged down in mud. Depend upon it, the horses had been startled by a dog in the road, and had shied, and Geoffrey had decided that he cared more for their wellbeing than that of his mother, which would be just like him. In this supposition, Lady Calver was correct; her son had scarcely known his mother in the nursery, and after Eton had gone on to Oxford. Geoffrey had a good relationship with his father, but until his father died, had rarely spent more than an hour or two in his mother’s company at a time, and that at dinner, where the conversation was limited by convention, company, and a series of outsize epergnes. Geoffrey was better acquainted with his horses, and was very fond of them. He had been known to commit the faux pas of failing to recognise his mother at a soirĂ©e, when she was made up with face paint, but he had recognised her voice raised to say ‘Geoffrey!’ in the awful tones in which she usually spoke to him.
Lady Calver decided to give it until Monday, and then go to Bow Street over a missing person; for surely Geoffrey must, of courtesy, write to let her know where he was.
oOoOo
It never occurred to Geoffrey to write to his mother. He did write to his man of affairs, one Simon Endicott, to ask him to let him have some money sent by courier. The Running Buck collected the mails and a boy rode into Erwarton with them and collected any answers from the same place.
Geoffrey explained why he had ridden out in a temper, and that he was posing as having lost his memory to give him the chance to cool down and make a reasoned decision about how to handle his mother.
So, send me some blunt, old man, and get me a bag packed of clothes for a country stay, but do it covertly. Also, what have you got on Philip-Paul Seward? I have, currently in my employ, one of his offspring, who is in a most unhappy situation, and whom I must, in conscience, take as my ward. Can you find me some clothes suitable for a youngster of dubious status, age about 12? Some of my old clothes, perhaps. Being out of fashion will not really matter. Can you also let me know if my mother did, in fact, post a betrothal notice, and whether it has been retracted. If not, I authorise you to take such steps as are needful because the betrothal was not of my making. Oh, and can I have the provenance of the ruby parure; the wretched woman gave the ring to some whey-faced chit who was happy to hand it back, and it’s a ghastly piece and I have decided to sell it, but I can hardly do so without provenance.
Calver.
It was irritating, thought Geoffrey, that just the simple act of writing a letter exhausted him; and he found himself in need of lying back on the bed, after sending Pip down to find the boy who carried mail.
Here he was found by the vicar, whose ears stuck out quite as badly as Pip had said, and who did have unfortunate tendency to look like an indignant trout.
“What, still lazing in bed? I suppose it should be expected of the gentry, but to fail to attend church does not look well for you,” boomed the trout.
“And to think I thought you were doing your Christian duty in sick visiting,” said Geoffrey.
“What, a tender hangover?” sneered the Reverend Coot.
“I don’t dare drink with a concussion, you know,” said Geoffrey. “Have you ever had a concussion?”
“I… no, I cannot say that I have,” said Coot.
“Well, if you wanted me to be in danger of shooting the cat on the floor of the church, or passing out, and possibly dying from overdoing things, then by all means invite me to the service,” said Geoffrey. “Plainly, you have heard only that a gentleman is staying in the inn, and have not even troubled to find out the circumstances of the need for my sojourn here, nor bothered to acquaint yourself with any detail other than that I have not attended your church; well, be assured, I will find some other church to attend, in order to avoid a church where Christianity is not practised. Now bugger off. No, hand me the utensil, I’m going to be sick and it’s your fault.”
The vicar handed up the utensil and fled as Geoffrey made horrible noises.
He was not sick, but he felt nauseous from the encounter, and his head hurt, horribly.
Pip slid in, and laid a rag soaked in cold water on his head, removed the utensil, and drew the curtains.
“Invaluable brat,” said Geoffrey.
“Miss Effie must not marry him,” said Pip.
“No, she mustn’t,” said Geoffrey. “Even if she felt able to sacrifice herself, I cannot think that she would condemn her niece to be brought up by that fellow.” He considered. “I don’t think that gratitude and sympathy is enough of a basis for marriage; so I will have to stay around long enough to see if I like her well enough.”
“Or Miss Alethea,” said Pip.
“I don’t believe she’d appeal to me, but I won’t neglect her. Will that do for you, brat?”
“Very well,” said Pip.
“If I am staying here, I shall need a more permanent base than the inn; but I had already decided that, I suppose,” said Geoffrey.
“You could buy a yacht and live on a yacht,” said Pip.
Geoffrey blinked.
“I suppose I could,” he said. “Where would I get a yacht?”
“Ibsidge,” said Pip. “You could hire hands, too, and just sail across the estuary.”
“I suppose Ipswich is just over the river, though it’s a long way round by the road,” said Geoffrey. “I’ll think about it.”
“You could offer trips into the tow-un for Miss Effie,” said Pip.
“Oh, ho, you little cupid,” said Geoffrey.
“Well, you wants to git tu know her, do-ant yew?” said Pip. “And yew could be all milord in Ibsidge, without no-one here bein’ any the wiser.”
“What a pernicious brat you are,” said Geoffrey.
Pip beamed at him, though it was harder to see in the half dark.
“I hope you feel better, soon,” said Pip. “Yew did look whoolly queer arter that little owd fule did rant at yew.”
“I was starting to feel better,” said Geoffrey. “It’s why I wrote that letter to my man of affairs. And it really took it out of me. Then that canting fool came and… demme, I do feel ‘whoolly queer’ as you put it so picturesquely.”
“I had a concussion once,” said Pip. “Da hit me hard enough I fell, an’ knocked meself silly on the fireplace. Cuh! He thought he’d killed me, an’ when I come to, he’s busy diggin’ a hole to bury me an’ hide the deed, an’ I screamed, an’ he screamed, an’ he lit off over the fields like moi ghost wuz arter him. So, when I’d puked good an’ proper, I drug mysel’ back into the house, figgerin’ that he wouldn’t be back a whoile yet, and I hed a drink o’ water out o’ the pump, an’ I slep’ in the outhouse. An’ when he come hoom, he wuz so many sheets in the wind, any vessel he wuz’d be tooken aback all standin’. So, I managed to get to moi pigsty while he slep’ it off, and I don’t rightly remember if it wuz four days or five that I could get moiself out an’ fetch in some vittles’.”
“You were lucky not to die.”
“I allus keeps fresh water there, an’ there’s a spring,” said Pip. “Now I knows he ain’t really my da, I won’t feel I orta stay an’ look after the owd bugger. He do-ant hev no claim on me.”
“No, he doesn’t, but I do, and your language leaves much to be desired.”
“If yew knew da, yew’d know he’s enough to maerke a saint swear.”
“Possibly, but you are young and should not be using such words yet,” said Geoffrey.
Pip giggled.
“Yew do-ant harf sound pompous,” he said.
“It’s my excessive age,” said Geoffrey.
Pip giggled again.
“Yew do-ant be owd, yew be a bit over-used,” he said.
“Over-used! What do you mean by that, brat?” asked Geoffrey.
“Yew bin used-er burnin’ the candle at both ends, ar, an’ rackettin’ about in society loik a pea in a fryin’-pan an’ cooked long enough to look burnt.”
“Picturesque. Not, alas, entirely inaccurate, though,” admitted Geoffrey. “You realise that it’s only because I feel so ill that I’m not shouting at you for your impudence?”
“Sometimes, yew need someone wass’ll tell it straight,” said Pip.
oOoOo
Ned Suggs was happy to earn a guinea a day to go looking for a marquis on the razzle. On Monday, when Geoffrey had not appeared by five in the evening, Lady Calver went to Bow Street, explaining that her son had driven out, and not returned. Whilst it was the right of any Englishman to disappear if he felt like it, Bow Street could be persuaded to take more notice of the summary disappearance of a nobleman, especially when the nobleman had a mother whose voice could shatter glass and scatter the horses of horseguards. Ned Suggs was of the opinion that if he was the marquis with that mother, he’d disappear as well, if she couldn’t be sent to the Peninsula as a secret weapon. Not that she’d be secret long, but she was scary enough to make any mere Frenchman run for just hearing her.
Suggs was well briefed that the marquis had committed no crime, but that his mother was concerned that he might have been hurt, or be the victim of crime, from highway robbery, to abduction. How a man who boxed with Gentleman Jackson, and fenced with Angelo – Suggs had found out a few things about his quarry that the man’s mother did not know – was likely to be abducted, Suggs did not know; but the old woman [a description Lady Calver would have decried in horror] dropped hints of designing hussies, and the use of bait to unlawfully inveigle the marquis into being married.
Somehow, Suggs did not see a man of fashion, learning, the science of pugilism, and a very-well-developed will of his own, succumbing to such whiles.
But he was not about to turn down his guinea a day.
Depending on what he found, he might even let the marquis bribe him. In the meantime, he had to assume the man had met with some kind of accident and was either dead, or injured. Suggs might be open to bribery – so long as no real law had been broken – but he was a conscientious fellow, and he found out from milord’s chief groom what equipage milord was driving, that he had taken a pair of bright bays, whose manes, tails, and hocks were black, save for one offside white sock on the wheeler, and which were short-stepper half-bred Cleveland bays and Arabian. Suggs was no expert on horses, but he knew enough to recognise that it would be worth betting on such horses over a long distance.
Suggs converted a guinea into groats; fifty groats was fifty eager-eyed little boys to be paid for information. And nobody would notice a bang-up curricle with new brass lanterns, and top-of-the trees springs [Geoffrey’s chief groom had waxed lyrical], not to mention such fine prads, as little boys.
Suggs did not believe in dashing about by mail or stagecoach. You could miss things that way. He was no great rider, but he could stay on well enough, and demanded of her ladyship the loan of a riding beast, to facilitate his searches.
Her ladyship almost refused, but caved in. She wanted Geoffrey found. It saved Suggs from laying out some of his earnings on hiring a horse, which would not be such fine quality. Suggs rode at ten stone[1], being a wiry Londoner, if not built on such slight lines as the average jockey, but his lordship’s horse, used to his lordship’s tall, muscular body, weighing in at some twelve-and-a-half stone, made light of his new rider. Hercules, which was the name of the horse, was relatively placid, being Geoffrey’s mount of choice in Hyde Park and for other town use, and was equable with anyone he met, except Lady Calver, whose voice hurt his ears. Hercules, when led out by the groom, proceeded to munch the decoration on Lady Calver’s bonnet whilst she lectured Suggs; and Suggs did not dare comment.
He heard the shriek from well down the street from the square which meant she had found out. He had no qualms; the pay was a set amount, and the horse was not his, so he could not be sued for the re-trimming of a bonnet. He hoped Hercules would not suffer indigestion.
In point of fact, Hercules expelled short lengths of well-chewed lilac ribbon for a while without apparent ill effects, to Suggs’s relief.
