“Just to satisfy the neighbors, cher Richard. Please!”
It was difficult to think, and the small beer was making him feel a little sick; Richard grasped the proposition and turned it over in his befuddled mind, wondering if this might not be the best way. He was outwearing his welcome at the Cooper’s Arms—or else the Cooper’s Arms was outwearing him. “Very well,” he said.
She jigged up and down on the bed, beaming. “Tomorrow! Willy is helping Mrs. Hale move today, then he can help me. Tomorrow!”
The news
that Richard was leaving stunned his parents, who looked at each other and resolved to say nothing against it. His consumption of rum between coming home and going to bed was greater than ever—if he transferred himself to Clifton he would have to pay for at least a part of what he drank.
“For I cannot deny my own son what he has here,” said Dick.
“You are right, it is too readily available,” Mag agreed.
So Dick lent him the handcart in which they fetched sawdust and provisions, watched a grim-faced Richard load two chests upon it. “What about your tools?”
“Keep them,” said Richard tersely. “I doubt I will need those kind of tools in Clifton.”
The house in which Mistress Latour and Willy Insell lodged was the middle one of three conjoined premises on Clifton Green Lane not far from Jacob’s Well. That the edifice had once been a single dwelling was patent in the narrowness of the stairs and the rough partitions which divided it into three separate sections, thereby increasing the rents. The boards did reach the ceilings, but were typically slipshod—full of gaping cracks and thin enough to hear a woman’s voice shrilling next door. Annemarie’s garret rose alone like a single eyebrow and had afforded a great deal more privacy, Richard now discovered as he surveyed her fine bed in its new location one floor down.
“Our lovemaking will be rather more public,” he said dryly.
A Gallic shrug. “All the world makes love, cher Richard.” Suddenly she gasped and reached into her reticule. “I forgot! I ’ave a letter for you.”
He took the folded sheet and stared at the seal curiously; not anyone’s he knew. But the front was clearly addressed—by the copperplate hand of a scrivener—to Mr. Richard Morgan.
“Sir,” said the letter, “your name has been drawn to my attention through the kind services of Mrs. Herbert Barton. I believe that you are a gunsmith. If this be true, and you are able to furnish good references and perhaps demonstrate your skills in my own presence, then I may have employment for you. Kindly present yourself at nine of the clock to my establishment at 10, Westgate Buildings, Bath, on the 30th of September.”
It was signed, in a shaky, unschooled hand, “Horatio Midder.” Who on earth was Horatio Midder? He had thought he knew the name of every gunsmith between Reading and Weymouth, but Mr. Midder was new to him.
“What is it? Who is it from?” Annemarie was asking, trying to peer over his shoulder.
“From a gunsmith in Bath named Horatio Midder. Offering me a job,” said Richard, blinking. “He wants to see me on the thirtieth at nine in the morning, which means I will have to leave tomorrow.”
“Oh, it is the friend of Mrs. Barton’s!” caroled Annemarie, clapping her hands in joy. She hung her head until her long black lashes cast shadows on her cheeks. “I mentioned you to her, cher Richard. You do not mind?”
“If it means a job,” said Richard, picking her up and tossing her into the air, “I would not care did ye mention my name to Old Nick himself!”
“It is too bad,” she pouted, “that you will have to go away tomorrow. I have told everybody in these ’ouses—
houses
—that we are married and you have moved in, and we have many invitations to visit.” The pout grew poutier. “Perhaps you will have to stay in Bath on Friday night too—I will not see you until Saturday.”
“Never mind, if it means a job of work,” said Richard, taking one of his chests to a spot where he thought Annemarie would not want to put anything of her own. “I am still sorry that ye moved the bed downstairs,” he hinted. “Since Willy has elected to live in the cellar, there was no need.”
“What does it matter, Richard, if you get a job in Bath?” she asked with inarguable logic. “We will be moving again anyway.”
“True.”
“Is it not nice to have a room for my desk?” she asked. “I love to write letters, and it was so cramped upstairs.”
He walked to the room behind the bedroom and looked at the desk, very solitary. “We will have to buy furniture to keep it company. How odd! In all my life I have not needed to furnish a place, even when Peg and I lived on Temple Street.”
“Peg?”
“My wife. She is dead,” said Richard curtly, suddenly needing a drink. “I shall go for a walk while you write letters.”
But she followed him downstairs, where the living room and the kitchen lay, the one containing four wooden chairs, a table and a sideboard, the other a counter and crude fireplace. Could Annemarie cook? Would Annemarie have the time to cook, if she spent her afternoons and evenings with the late-rising Mrs. Barton?
On the doorstep she stood on tiptoe and kissed him.
“Egad!” cried an affected voice. “Mr. Morgan, is it not?”
Richard broke the kiss with a jerk and slewed around to see Mr. John Trevillian Ceely Trevillian posing not three feet away in all the glory of cyclamen velvet embroidered in black and white. The hair on the back of his head rose, but, aware of Annemarie, he could not do what he longed to do—turn his rump on Ceely Trevillian and stride away down the lane.
“Mr. Trevillian, as I live and breathe,” he said.
“Is this the wife I have been hearing about?” the fop fluted, pursing his painted lips in admiration. “Do introduce me!”
For a long moment Richard stood silent, striving to keep his face expressionless as his rum-clouded mind raced through all the possible consequences of this unhappy, inopportune encounter. To one side of and behind Mr. Trevillian stood a small group of men and women he had not so far met, but assumed from their indoor dress that they lived in one or the other of the boarded-off sections on either side of Annemarie’s apartment. What should he do? How should he answer? “Do introduce me!” Ceely had said.
Like almost every other Englishman, Richard knew very little about the law, but he did know that once he spoke of a woman as his wife, in effect she became his wife at Common Law. When Annemarie had proposed that she tell her friends and neighbors of a marriage between herself and Richard, he had retained, even in his hungover state, sufficient sense to resolve that she could prattle on about marrying him as much as she wanted, but he would make sure he never confirmed her talk.
Now here he stood, confronted by his inimicus Ceely Trevillian in the midst of Annemarie’s neighbors, neatly impaled on the horns of a dilemma: if his introduction implied that she was his wife, then as long as he cohabited with her, she was his Common Law wife; if he publicly disavowed her, she acquired the status of a whore in the eyes of her neighbors and the persecution would start.
He gave a mental shrug. So be it. His wife she would have to be until—or if—he ceased to cohabit with her. Though he loathed her tasteless musical analogies quite as much as he loathed himself for being caught in her sexual toils, he could not turn her from a respectable maidservant into a trollop. Of their two lives, hers was the one that revolved around Jacob’s Well and its denizens.
“Annemarie,” he said curtly. Then: “What are you doing here?”
“My dear fellow, visiting my hairdresser—Mr. Joice, y’know.” Ceely indicated a simpering man at his elbow. “Lives next door, which is how I learned ye’re married and come to live here.” Out came a lace handkerchief; he passed it delicately across his brow. “’Tis a warm day for the end of September, is it not?”
“Oh, sir, please to come in,” said Annemarie, curtseying in a flurry of petticoats. “A rest in the cool of our living room will soon make you feel better.” She ushered the unwelcome visitor in and sat him on one of the chairs, then fanned his brow with the edge of her apron. “Richard, my dear, do we ’ave anything to offer the gentleman?” she asked dulcetly, obviously impressed with so much style.
“Until I fetch beer and rum from the Black Horse, naught,” said Richard ungraciously.
“Then I will find you a pitcher for beer and one for small beer,” she said, and bustled with many twitchings of her skirts into the kitchen, making sure that Ceely got an eyeful of ankle.
“I owe you no thanks, Morgan,” said Ceely as soon as they were alone. “That tale you fabricated about me has led to several very unpleasant interviews with the Commander of Excise. I do not know what I did to offend you while you tinkered with Mr. Cave’s apparatus, but it was certainly not sufficient to deserve the tissue of lies you told the Collector.”
“No lies,” said Richard levelly. “I saw ye at work by the light of a full moon on a cloudless night, and heard your name.” He smiled. “And because ye were injudicious enough to converse frankly with Mr. Cave and Mr. Thorne while another listened, you will be exposed as the villain you are, Mr. Ceely Trevillian.”
Annemarie came in, an empty white pitcher in each hand. “Is beer acceptable, sir?” she asked the visitor.
“At this hour of day, quite,” said Mr. Trevillian.
A pitcher in either hand, Richard went off to the Black Horse under Brandon Hill while Annemarie settled in another chair to talk to the awesomely grand gentleman.
When he returned he discovered that his trip had been for nothing; Mr. Trevillian was standing on the stoop, busy kissing Annemarie’s hand.
“I ’ope we see you again, m’sieur,” she said, dimpling demurely.
“Oh, I can promise you that!” he cried in his falsetto voice. “Do not forget that my hairdresser lives right next door.”
Annemarie gasped. “Mrs. Barton! I will be late!”
Mr. Trevillian offered his arm. “As I know the lady well, Madame Morgan, pray permit me to escort you to her house.”
And off they went, heads together, he mouthing pretty nothings, she giggling. Richard watched them turn at the corner of a nearby lane of half-finished houses, emitted an angry growl and went to get his father’s handcart. It had to be returned. The silly French bitch! Simpering and groveling to the likes of Ceely Trevillian just because he wore cyclamen velvet some poor workhouse child had been forced to embroider without seeing a farthing’s recompense.
The daily
coach to Bath left the Lamb Inn at noon and made the trip in four hours for a price of four shillings an inside seat or two shillings on the box. Though he had saved scrupulously during the six months he had worked for Mr. Thomas Cave, there was very little money left; the trip to Bath would cost him a minimum of ten shillings he could ill afford. He had come to no arrangement with Annemarie over domestic expenses, and yesterday’s two meals had been taken at the Black Horse, a more costly business than the Cooper’s Arms; she had not offered to pay the shot, nor apparently disapproved of the amount of rum he drank. Her tipple was port.
Thus Richard set off to walk clear to the other side of Bristol in time to secure a two-shilling seat on the box; this necessitated sitting on top of the coach exposed to the elements, but the day did not promise rain.
Posting inns were busy places, endowed with large interior courtyards in which grooms and horses trailing harness walked to and fro restlessly, ostlers ran in all directions, and servants bearing trays of refreshments tendered them to the prospective passengers. Finding the team of six horses not hitched to his vehicle yet, Richard paid two shillings for a seat on the box and went to lounge against a wall until Bath was announced ready for boarding.
He was still lounging there when William Insell ran through the gates and paused to look about, chest heaving.
“Willy!”
Insell came hurrying over. “Oh, thank God, thank God!” he gasped. “I feared ye might have left.”
“What is it? Annemarie? Is she ill?”
“Not ill, no,” said Insell, pale eyes goggling. “Worse!”
“Worse?”
Richard grasped his arm. “Is she dead?”
“No, no! She has made an assignation with Ceely Trevillian!”
Why did that not surprise him? “Go on.”
“He came to see the hairdresser fellow next door—or so he said, but the next moment he was aknocking on our door, and I had not got up the stairs from the cellar when Annemarie opened it.” He wiped the sweat from his brow and looked at Richard pleadingly. “I am so thirsty! I ran all the way.”
Richard disbursed a penny for a tankard of small beer for Insell, who drained it at a gulp. “There! Better!”