Page 20 of Hold Me Fast
“If you would,” Jowan said.
“As to Miss Roskilly, or Miss Lind, as she is now known, I should be able to find out what you want to know. You might not like any answers I find for you, however. Coombe was well known for his ability to corrupt innocence, and I cannot imagine that any young woman in his power would escape his attentions.”
Jowan shut his eyes against the roaring in his ears. His sweet Tamsyn in the hands of a villain! He didn’t want to imagine it but was besieged by a kaleidoscope of scenes of her calling for help while a malign presence assailed her.
“Jowan?” Bran’s voice anchored him back in the present and allowed him to catch his breath. He used it to give the investigator his answer.
“Find out, Wakefield. It is better to know the worst rather than be haunted by speculation.”
*
Lady Snowden seta good table, and her guests were an entertaining lot. Jowan found himself taking a Mrs. Ashby into dinner. She was accompanied this evening by her husband, a Mr. Elijah Ashby, and when Jowan asked if he was the famous travel writer, she smiled and blew a kiss at a gentleman halfway down the other side of the table. “He is, Sir Jowan,” she told him.
She was an early reader of the popular books, she told him, and they discussed some of their favorite anecdotes from the volumes for the rest of the remove.
After the servants cleared the plates and brought in the next collection of dishes, he turned to the lady on the other side, a Lady Stancroft. They had been briefly introduced at themusicale. Once again, she was wearing an ornate mask that covered one side of her face. Given the minor scars on the visible side and the somewhat more unsightly scars on her neck, he guessed the mask covered damage she did not care to show in public.
“My husband tells me he is considering investment in your mine, Sir Jowan,” she said after he had greeted her. “What is your position on employing children?”
Once again, Jowan found himself defending his stance of allowing those over the age of twelve to take up jobs in the mines. Lady Stancroft saw his point but insisted that families would never be able to drag themselves out of poverty if their children were not given the opportunity for education.
They had the opportunity, he explained, since he and Bran had funded a dame school. But, he told her, neither they nor their families could afford, in most instances, to take full advantage of it. Still, Jowan hoped that insisting on the little ones staying in school might change things over time. Surely a mother and father who had at least basic reading and numbering skills might see a benefit in encouraging a budding scholar if one of their brood showed talent.
He tried to express some of that to Lady Stancroft. Again, she was surprisingly sympathetic. “I see your point. It may take a generation or two, you think, to change minds and attitudes.”
“Not always,” Bran spoke across the table. “Two of our boys started apprenticeships in Plymouth this year, and one of the girls is being kept on at the school to train as a teacher. Jowan paid for the articles for both boys and is paying a weekly stipend for the girl.”
“It is good business,” Jowan protested. “The village lost its blacksmith several years ago. In time we’ll be able to provide a living for one of the boys, and the wheelwright is growing older and has no sons to inherit his shop. If the village is to continue to thrive, we need to provide options for our young people. And a thriving village is good for me, as a landowner and a mine owner.”
“Well said,” commented a man from farther down the table. “I wish more landowners and industrialists took that view. So many see education as a threat to their positions, rather than as a way of bringing wealth to their area.”
“Prosperity and happiness,” commented one of the women, and the conversation became general, some supporting Jowan’s standpoint, some wanting even more radical changes, and some espousing a more conservative, cautious approach.
It was far from the evening Jowan had expected in such high reaches of Society, and so he said to his host.
Snowden laughed. “You cannot judge all of Society by my friends, Trethewey, any more than you can judge them by the friends of, say, the Duke of Norfolk, or Viscount Sidmouth. The upper classes are not a single group in London any more than they are in any other part of the country, and though we meet one another at large events such as balls, we tend otherwise to gather with those of like mind. Indeed, even clubs and coffee shops attract Whigs or Tories or those with other interests such as fashion or horses.”
“Birds of a feather flock together?” Jowan asked. “Does that make you and your friends Whigs?”
Snowden pressed his lips together and narrowed his eyes in thought. “Not exactly.”
“I suspect we are too radical for the Whigs and too conservative for the radicals,” Lady Stancroft interjected. “Not that we all agree, as you have seen, Sir Jowan. I should like to see better education for children, particularly girls, a reform of the voting system, and regulation of child labor. Most people in this room would say the same, but the details of what each of those means and of how to achieve those ends might have us arguing from now until the end of time.”
“Legislation lags behind the dreams of reformists, whatever their views on the detail,” said Mrs. Ashby. “Thank goodness for practical people like you, Sir Jowan, and others here. People who simply make the changes that kindness and justice demand without waiting for politicians.” She nodded at Snowden. “Snowy’s wife Margaret offers her services as an herbalist to a free clinic that provides medical services to those who cannot afford to pay for a doctor.”
A second nod was for Lady Stancroft. “Arial and her husband Peter have established dame schools in their villages, to name just one of their innovations. I think I’m correct in saying that all the ladies here support the Duchess of Winshire’s efforts to provide opportunities for women, and also the Dowager Lady Sutton’s to provide a refuge for women in intolerable circumstances.”
“And would you say you are typical of London’s ladies?” Bran asked.
“Sadly, no,” Lady Stancroft replied. “No more than our husbands are typical of London’s gentlemen. Far from it, in fact.”
In that case, Jowan thought, he and Bran had been fortunate to find themselves in a community of like minds.
Chapter Eight
After the concertfor Her Grace of Winshire, Guy was besieged by requests for Tammie to sing at a variety of entertainments for a range of different hostesses, from top-lofty duchesses and marchionesses to the wives of the wealthy middle-sort.
He picked and chose between them, but even so, Tammie sang for four or five evenings a week and several times a week at afternoon entertainments. She enjoyed it. Not only was she happy when singing, but Guy had to keep her well and content, which meant frequent doses of the drugs she craved, carefully measured to keep her floating but not totally detached from reality. And no sexual favors for Guy or men that Guy wanted to influence.
