The Loves of Leopold Singer (12 page)

A noise from the other room brought her out of her reverie. The bath was going cold. She got out and put on the wrap Gray had left. No one was in the bedroom, but there was a note from Leopold:

Dearest—

I learn we are to attend a dinner tonight given by the Dss of Devonshire. I am assured you will be properly dressed. Business detains me for the afternoon. I shall meet you tonight at Devonshire House. Try to get some rest before then.

Yours, etc., L

She lay down on the bed, but her mind wouldn’t let her sleep. He usually signed his notes with Lpld, not L. He moved easily in this upper crust where she would never, could never belong. And he had already found time to see the duchess.

She woke hours later after the candles had been lit. Gray was at the foot of the bed holding a massive agglomeration of blue and buff silk. Marta was aware enough to suspect this gown was hopelessly out of fashion, and Gray’s demeanor confirmed her suspicion. “I am sorry, Madam. It’s what the duchess wants you to wear.”

“Then I shall, with pleasure,” Marta replied. What did it matter, these games the duchess played? Two facts would not change: She was married to Leopold, and together they would soon be on the other side of the world away from autocratic wars and aristocratic games.

The white brocade mantua was a tight fit that showed off her figure. The wide skirt made her waist appear even tinier. The old-fashioned white powdered wig conspired with her dark lashes and brows to set off her eyes like sparkling emeralds.

“You’re beautiful,” Gray said. It was not a compliment, but a statement of fact. “I’m told this gown was worn by her grace’s mother at a Whig party at Devonshire House years ago. They are all Whigs around here. Her grace must want to remind the Duchess of Devonshire of old times.”

“Old times,” Marta absently repeated.

“Yes, madam. You seem young, if you don’t mind my saying so, to have any old times to remember.”

“I am nearly twenty-one, but I do feel young.”

“Have you been married long?”

“Just past two years.”

“How did you meet your husband?” Susan forgot her place asking such things, and it was self-torture, but she couldn’t stop.

“I cannot remember a time I did not know Mr. Singer.”

Mrs. Singer obviously loved Leopold, though Susan found it difficult to gauge the depth of her passion. “You have no children as yet?”

“No.” Mrs. Singer seemed hurt by the question. She started to say something else, but just said no again, like an admission of failure.

Susan felt wretched satisfaction; and yet she felt pity too. “I wouldn’t worry,” she said. “It’s probably on account of the chaos of war. They say cows go dry and hens refuse to lay when the guns are near. When you get to America, things will be different, so long as the French and the Indians—and the British, for that matter—keep to themselves.”

“Do you really believe this? It is my great hope. I was afraid there might be something wrong with me or even…”

“Your husband unable to get a child? Not likely,” Susan said. “And you appear healthy enough. I am sure you will find yourself blessed as soon as you’re secure in your new country.”

“That is kind of you, Gray.” Mrs. Singer examined herself in the glass. “And as for tonight, I hope they are pleasant memories my costume will recall.”

Marta was glad to have Gray’s help with the awkward dress as she went down the stairs. The butler waited at the front door, agitated. “The duchess has had to depart early, Madam. She ordered a rig for you.”

Marta was stunned. She was to be taken unescorted in a tiny exposed cart out into a city she didn’t know to a house she didn’t know and with no idea of protocol. She stepped aside with Gray.

“What do I do?”

“Do not fear. Devonshire House isn’t far. First, you must know you are beautiful, truly, and beauty is a charm in any company. At the door give your name, Mrs. Leopold Singer. You will be announced. Enter as if you had been there a hundred times. Believe me, someone will be quite sure he knows you and come to your rescue.”

“You have rescued me already, Gray.”

“Now, say to me ‘that will be all’ so the others think you’ve been giving me instructions.”

The instant the rig pulled away, Susan rushed upstairs, anxious to evade Matthew Peter. She collected her writing desk and hurried back down to Mrs. Singer’s room. She laid out a dress that needed mending and sat on a stool behind the bed. She cradled the wooden writing desk, the finest thing she had ever bought for herself. It was made by a Bath artisan from Brazilian rosewood, decorated with carvings of Minerva, her sacred owl, her helmet and shield. Its hardware was polished brass, and Susan wore its brass key around her neck always.

Inside the desk were her most precious things: the Wollstonecraft book, a pen and a small bottle of ink, a few sheets of writing paper, and a miniature hand-carved frame which held the likeness of an infant. Susan set the picture where she could see it and wrote:

Mr. Singer:

You have a son. He is a darling boy, as good and as clever as his father, with the same dark brown eyes and lovely cornsilk curls. His name is Perseus Gray.

When I was sure of my condition, I resolved to rid myself of the child. But my mother’s illness grew worse, and I had to leave Gohrum House to care for her. Too much time passed, and no apothecary would help me.

He was born on 12 May of 1800, an early baby. It was a dreadful birth. I nearly died, but I had to live for little Persey’s sake; Necessity will have her way. Your son is healthy.

I write you now because I have come to believe you have the right to know you do have a child in the world. Persey does not know who his true father is and shall not. When he is older, I will send him to school.

I have no regrets. Persey was conceived in love. I wish you only happiness,

Susan Gray.

She told herself it was for Persey she wrote the letter. Who was she to deny him to a father that could provide a future if it came to that?

Leopold circulated through the guests at Devonshire House, listening for the announcement of Marta’s arrival. It would have been better to stay at St. James Square and get some sleep. He hadn’t been able to see Sir Carey, and the duke wouldn’t be in town for another few days. Well, there was time yet. He was just relieved to be gone from Austria at last. Amiens wouldn’t hold. Napoleon was too ambitious. Surely daffodils bloomed in American valleys, and very likely more cheerfully.

Before leaving Europe forever, he’d decided to satisfy his mother’s last wish and rid himself of his father’s “English business,” as she had put it. Haas had been right. Leopold owned half of the
Maenad
, a vessel which was indeed engaged in moving contraband. That didn’t bother him so much, but he didn’t like one of his partners. Sir Carey Asher, the dandy with the dragonhead stick.

The
Maenad
had a reputation for luck—once his father had got her, she had never been taken for a prize—and she had made them all several fortunes, but he wanted out of it. He had an aversion to the sea. Indeed, being near a body of water of any consequence always filled him with illogical dread.

With the current peace had come a window of opportunity. He had originally meant to dispose of the ship, buy a country estate, and start a new life in England away from war. All that had changed this spring when he chanced upon the farmer Zehetner walking in the village with Reverend Haas.

“Did my wife not tell Mrs. Singer?” Zehetner had said. “The Zehetners are going to America! With the peace, the trip is worth the hazard.”

“That is amazing news,” Leopold had said, though Haas had just clucked and shaken his head. “Have you yet taken leave of The Green Owl?”

Inside the tavern, the barman had asked Zehetner, “How is it the Lady is letting you go? Does the new Lord have his own man?”

“As things go, he does,” Zehetner answered without sadness. The owner of the land he managed had died three years ago, leaving him with even more responsibility running that large estate. But recently the widow, called “the Lady” outside her hearing, had married her neighbor who brought his own man to the joined properties, making Jonathan Zehetner redundant. “I was so compliant when she told me I had no place, she gave me this as a by-your-leave!” He held up an unimpressive coin. “It won’t book passage to America, but I think we can get a bit wet on it!”

A round of beers went out to the men in the tavern. Times were indeed changing when a common man could break free of the land he was bound to. Zehetner’s talk had filled Leopold with romantic visions, and his altered eye fixed on a brave new plan.

“Zehetner, my friend, how will you acquire land for this grand New World estate when you are buying beers for all of us here?”

“Singer, I have no money. I admit that. But I have what money wants: knowledge. Benjamin Franklin himself once said, in America it is not asked of a man ‘What is he?’ but ‘What can he do?’”

“I’ve read
Information for Those Who Would Remove to America,
” Leopold said. “He wrote: The People have a saying, that God Almighty is Himself a Mechanic, the greatest in the Universe; and he is respected and admired more for the variety, ingenuity, and utility of his handiwork, than for the Antiquity of his family.”

“Mr. Singer,” Reverend Haas said. “Quoting clockwork philosophers, we might think you’ve turned Deist.”

Leopold’s face went blank. Since his parents’ death, he had had nothing to say to Haas, but no one knew the real story behind that. The chatter stilled, but the other patrons would learn nothing new that day. Leopold merely said, “You might be right.” Everyone knew he meant the opposite.

“I know how to run the land,” Zehetner continued. “Who will feed the thousands, the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions who are pouring even now into the New World? I can make anything grow anywhere. I can tan leather. I am a blacksmith. I can make shoes and shear sheep. I know rye and barley and wheat. What strange crops America has, I will soon know all about them, too. It will be an adventure!”

“To Zehetner!”

“And I will hire myself out to a rich immigrant Parley Voos who knows nothing…”

This brought laughter all round.

“…and put money aside until I have enough. It may take until my sons are old men, but the Zehetners will own their land.”

During this declaration of independence, Leopold’s vision had taken form: Jonathan Zehetner had no capital, but knew how to run a farm. Leopold had capital, and he could raise more. “Zehetner, what would you think of owning your own land before even
you
are old?”

“I would think very well of it, Singer. What’s in your mind?”

“That we work together. I’ll buy the land, and instead of using your talents to make some Frenchman rich—”

“I’ll use them to make you even richer than you are now?”

“And yourself,” Leopold had said. “When you’ve taught me what I need to know to run my own place, you’ll have your land, free and clear.”

Haas had slammed down his empty stein. “And have neither of you any loyalty to your emperor, your homeland?” It wasn’t clear who Haas disapproved of more, the man who dared to better his station in life or the one who had not attended church since his wedding day.

Remembering what Susan Gray had said to him their last day in Bath, Leopold had answered Haas, “An artist’s loyalty must be to himself.” Suddenly everything about the village, everything about Europe itself, reminded him of the opening to Rousseau’s
Social Contract
: “Man is born free, and yet we see him everywhere in chains.”

He wouldn’t miss this land of man-made chains, nor the chaos that had come to break those chains. Bonaparte seemed eager to forge a new and better order from the one he was ripping apart. If that were true, Leopold wished him success. But he wanted to live where a man could fashion his destiny, unrestrained by tradition.
 
He would have crops, and cows, and a wealth of daffodils on his own hillside, and fellow citizens as free and ambitious as himself.

Even now, while Leopold and Marta were in London, Zehetner and his family were sailing to American on the
Maenad
. If all went as Leopold hoped, he’d see the last of that vessel after it brought him and Marta to Boston. All he had left to do was sell out his half to the duke and that fop, Sir Carey.

-oOo-

If the Duchess of Gohrum’s plan had been to embarrass Marta, her evening must be a success. The flamboyant Duchess of Devonshire derived wild entertainment from Marta’s costume. “Oh, my dear, you are a breath of spring to me! How fondly I recall those days of Revolution and Hope! Come sit by me here.”

Marta moved awkwardly in the outdated contraption of a dress.

“Fox!” The portly duchess addressed a portlier man at her side. “Are you not reminded of the nobler aspect of our natures? The days when there was no doubt of our devotion to the public good?”