Page 3 of The Lady's Companion
“No, Papa. That is all I have,” she said quietly.
He was silent then for the rest of the brief journey. I will not permit you to shame me into giving you my last treasure from Mama, she told herself as she wrapped her cloak tighter about her. She was so tired, worn out with the hurried packing of her clothes and what household items the estate agent had allowed her to keep. She burned with the humiliation of having to fight for the taken-for-granted treasures of her life that could have had no possible meaning for the new landlord. “What can he possibly want with a portrait of my mother?” she had finally shouted in frustration at the agent, weak-kneed at the humiliation of having to dicker.
“He’s a brash man from the weavers’ district,” the man explained. “He’s got an indecent lot of cash, but no background. These paintings will give him countenance, or so he told me. Instant ancestors,” he concluded, chuckling at the absurdity of his client.
“But this is my mother’s picture!” Susan had pleaded. “Can you help me?”
To answer her, the agent had patted her cheek, sidled a little closer, and suggested to her a service she could provide him, in order to retain her paintings and some of the furniture besides.
Nothing shocks me now, she had thought grimly as the man leaned even closer to her. He knows there is no one beyond an ageing butler to come to my defense. He knows how useless my father is. I have no champion.
From somewhere, she had pulled the tatters of her dignity around her shoulders and looked the agent in the eye. “I think not, sir,” she had informed him serenely. “You may keep the paintings and the furniture and go to hell on the next mailcoach.”
She stared through the dirty pane of glass as the jarvey picked his practiced way through London traffic. “Do you know, Papa, the real estate agent told me I could keep the paintings and furniture if I let him lay with me,” she commented, keeping her voice normal and conversational.
Sir Rodney sighed and shook his head. “I know I can come about again, daughter, I know it! I need your help.”
“Papa, did you hear what I just said?” Susan asked quietly.
He looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time. “Something about paintings, wasn’t it? Don’t know why you gave them all up without a fight, but then, no one ever said Hamptons were any good at dickering for this or that like fishmongers.”
“Papa...”
He put a hand to his head and smiled at her in that brave way of his that made her want to grind her teeth. “I have such a headache, my dear. I do hope Louisa isn’t entertaining tonight. Do you think she will feel obligated to give a party for us? I sincerely hope not. My waistcoats have all seen too much duty lately; everyone knows them. It’s such a worry.”
I think we will be lucky if Aunt Louisa does not direct us to the nearest workhouse, Susan thought, and smiled sourly to herself. Well, at least Papa and I could learn a trade there.
“Papa, do you think you could ever find employment?” she asked suddenly, her mind on the poorhouse.
Sir Rodney’s shocked stare said more than words ever could. “Dear me, what was I thinking?” she murmured and settled herself lower into her cloak, drawing the folds around her.
“I cannot imagine,” he replied and ignored her for the rest of the ride.
The carter, arriving before them at Timothy and Quayle streets, had deposited their few boxes and luggage on the steps leading up to the front door. He left without lingering aboutfor a tip to augment the agreed-upon fare that Sir Rodney had carefully counted into his mitten at the other house. How perspicacious he is, Susan thought. The carter knows there is nothing extra from such threadbare shabby-genteels as we.
“Well, Papa, knock,” she said a few minutes later as they stood together, facing the closed door. It was beginning to sleet again, the icy rain scouring them.
He only stood there, as though unable to raise his hand to his sister’s overly impressive door knocker. He stared at the thing—a somewhat dyspeptic-looking gilt lion—as though he expected it to roar and lunge at him. “My dear, do you recall how we used to laugh about Louisa’s vulgar door knocker?” he said, not taking his eyes from the thing.
He glanced at her then, wincing as the sleet drove into his eyes, and for the smallest moment she could see the pain that he had contrived so earnestly to hide for the last three days. “My dear, Louisa is Louisa, even if she did marry a purchased baronet who smelled ever so slightly of the shop.” He took her arm. “I trust this will not distress you.”
We are destitute, without a home, it is sleeting again, and you wonder if I mind a little vulgarity? she asked herself, amazement edging out contempt by only the slightest margin. She opened her mouth to pour out her distress, then closed it again, stopped in time by the sight of her father’s anxious face. Unbidden from nowhere like an additional dousing of cold water came her mother’s last words to her: “My love, do take care of your father,” Mama had said. Susan had been fourteen at the time, but as she shivered on those steps with Sir Rodney Hampton, she understood them finally. She swallowed the great lump lodged in her throat and touched his arm.
“I do not mind Papa. Let me knock.”
And so they found themselves rescued by Lady Louisa Sanderson, relict of Sir William Sanderson, a man with distantYorkshire mill connections who had indulged himself in life with a purchased title and did not object to vulgar door knockers. With a pang, Susan watched as her father allowed himself to be rescued, clucked over, and folded into the depths of his sister’s obligation and disdain, dished out in equal parts to her little brother.
They were treated well enough, better than Susan would have suspected, considering the nature of the burden Sir Rodney represented to his older sister. True, their rooms were at the back of the house, when there were larger chambers to spare elsewhere. And was it her imagination that the servants only turned away to chuckle when Sir Rodney, dressed impeccably if shabbily, passed them as he made his stately progress from room to room? Never mind. He did not notice, nor would he ever. It was Susan’s misfortune to writhe inside, bite her lip, and overlook that which she was powerless to control.
For all that she was unhappy, it was a quiet week. Families were only just now straggling back from Christmas celebrated on their country estates, and the Season was yet an anticipation. Few came calling, and it was just as well. To hear Louisa tell it, breakfast room tables all over London were littered with pattern cards and modistes’ drawings as mothers and daughters conspired over swatches of spring fabric and dreamed of grand entrances in the coming Season.
In the Sanderson household, Louisa’s youngest daughter, book on head, practiced her own entrances and exits while her mother frowned at the dressmaker’s news that jonquil would be all the rage this year.
“Emily will completely vanish in that shade of yellow,” Louisa protested as she pushed away the fabric pieces.
“It is the high kick of fashion, my lady,” said the dressmaker, obviously not a stranger to the pale-eyed, pale-haired daughters of the Sanderson household.
“But she will disappear!” Louisa lamented, careful not to disturb Emily’s gliding progress up and down the room. “I ask you, how will she find a husband if no one can see her? Show me some blue fabric, Madam Soileau,” she insisted.
