The Rambunctious Lady Royston (14 page)

It was in a small shop tucked behind Albemarle Street that she at last discovered the establishment of a French
émigrié
named Bertrand. Before the enraptured man she put a plan that would be her first step in becoming an "original" (a plan the ambitious Frenchman was quick to see would also go a long way toward making his fortune).

Bertrand's shop was devoted to the manufacture, maintenance, and repair of umbrellas. After a good rain, his shop was knee-deep in gentlemen requesting he press and refold their immense, ugly Robinsons (so-called by the French after the famous Crusoe umbrella). But the increase in popularity of the umbrella had resulted in the establishment of no less than sixty-three umbrella shops by this year of 1815, and Bertrand had yet to make much of an impact on the local buyers. Perhaps this was because his first love, women's parasols, had never gained the popularity among the rich London ladies that it had in France.

"Ah, madame," he crooned reminiscently to Samantha, "and such parasols as I made in Paris!" He kissed his fingertips.
"Magnifique!"

As Samantha listened, entranced, Bertrand went on to catalogue some of his better efforts—creations wrought of India muslin, Mechlin lace, colored crepe, damasked satin, checked silk, and other materials—all trimmed and accented to the tastes and whims of his feminine patrons. And the handles! Lovely turned handles containing telescopes, stilettos, secret compartments for
billet-doux
, any special design Madame required.

Samantha was so excited she could scarcely contain herself. And when Bertrand lovingly produced some of his creations for her personal inspection, it was all she could do not to jump up and down, clapping her hands in glee. By the time Daisy succeeded in dragging her away, Samantha had purchased no less than half-a-dozen of Bertrand's finest creations and ordered a dozen more, each to be made up in materials she would forward immediately.

After a solitary luncheon, Samantha doggedly attempted to curb the restlessness brought on by her exciting morning. It was, however, an exercise doomed to failure from the moment she discovered an old London guidebook in her husband's library. "A man who saunters about the capital with pockets on the outside of his coats deserves no pity," read the warning against pickpockets inside the guide's cover. And as if that bit of delicious nonsense were not enough to set Samantha off searching for Wally's breeches, a sampling of a few of the descriptions of parts of the city hitherto unexplored by the adventurous lady succeeded in turning the trick.

She made her escape from Portman Square with ridiculous ease, and a friendly jarvey welcomed her aboard his broken-down hackney for the ride to her first stop: The Field of the Forty Steps, behind Montagu House. Both Samantha and the jarvey, who had not heard the legend, climbed down to search the ground for the spot where, years before, a young lady had watched two men duel for her hand in marriage. The guidebook pointed out that no grass had ever again sprouted where the woman had stood. After several minutes spent in fruitless investigation, Samantha and her driver were agreed the guidebook had either been in error or the young woman's scene of shame had at last succumbed to a persistent English gardener.

By way of easing his temporary employer's disappointment, the jarvey was happy to halt his hackney in the middle of King Street, begging his customer's pardon, to point out the Duke of Wellington and ask if he wouldn't like to see "our Arthur" crossing the road.

Samantha voiced her approval of the scheme and as coaches, carriages, and tradesmen's carts backed up along the street, she called out three impetuous cheers to the great Iron Duke as he made his way behind a young crossings sweeper, doffing his hat indulgently at the young gentleman in the hackney.

Samantha's next stop was Ludgate Hill, and the house where Daniel Lambert—who had exhibited himself for a time years before in Piccadilly as the self-proclaimed fattest man on earth—had died in 1809 and his 739-pound frame was loaded inside a coffin constructed of 112 feet of elm wood. One entire window and part of a door had to be removed to get old Daniel out of his house, she told the jarvey, and in the end his nine-foot-four inch girth had to be rolled into the grave, as no one could lift him. Samantha, viewing the house and mentally removing the window and door, was as suitably impressed as any young gentleman fresh from the country could be.

The delighted jarvey—partly in jubilation over the whopping tip his customer was bound to bestow upon him and partly because he was enjoying himself—urged his horse on to the summit of Fish Street Hill and the Monument, a Doric column 202 feet high, commemorating the Great Fire of 1666. Samantha read aloud from St. John's guidebook the history of the Monument, and the jarvey learned it was said to be, if laid on its side, "the exact distance from the shop in Pudding Lane where the fire began."

Both jarvey and customer climbed the 311-step spiral staircase leading to the balcony and a fine view of the city... and that's when the trouble started.

Samantha's strong eyes could see beyond the dome of St. Paul's to Smithfield and the hodgepodge of tents, riding machines, and animal pens that made up Bartholomew Fair. She fairly dragged the jarvey back down the 311 steps in her haste to explore the famous Fair.

Upon their arrival, the jarvey, who had been fleeced more than once by the thieves of Bartholomew's, hastily pocketed his fare and a generous tip and hied his horse off with a warning to the young gentleman to guard his purse.

But Samantha hadn't forgotten the warning in the guidebook. She patted the plump purse that she had tucked snugly into her waistcoat and was quickly swallowed up in the crowd.

The first thing she did was to satisfy her hunger pangs (for she was certainly sharp-set—a possible result of having lived mainly on love and sherry for the best part of two days), with a plate of spiced beef and some miniature sausages that had been fried over a saucepan filled with hot coals. Although there were cloth-covered tables and ample forks and knives nearby, she noticed that most of the stall's customers—either by choice or due to lack of familiarity with the accepted utilization of such niceties—were putting their fingers to good use. Slopping up sausages and huge chunks of beef with their grimy paws, they then wiped their chins, chest fronts, and greasy hands with the handy tablecloths.

When more than one of her fellow diners remarked on the la-de-da tadpole sitting easy as you please before one of the tables, slicing a tiny bit of sausage and daintily putting it in his yapper before starting on to slice another bitty piece—"just like one of them namby-pamby lords that calls themselves our betters," one rather large man in a somewhat strong-smelling leather jerkin leered menacingly—Samantha quietly laid aside her cutlery. She picked up a fat sausage, ripped off a healthy portion with her teeth and, as she chewed opened-mouthed, favored her fellows with a broad smile and broader wink. Some thirty minutes, eight hearty backslaps, and two mugs of ale (pressed upon her by her newfound friends) later, she was once again jostling along with the crowds, eager to see as much as she could in the time she had left.

She watched skeptically as a learned horse read the mind of "a woman in the audience" and declared it was her greatest wish to be married. There were at least two score and five women looking on, but the horse did not choose to single out the woman in question because of the delicacy of her desires.

A man standing near Samantha yelled out, "If the woman be Mazie Leaky, it's not wishin' as much as needin' a 'usband she be—seein' as 'ow she's clear full blown and near to whelpin'. Be there any man 'ere to 'elp puir Mazie and play Da ta 'er kiddey, eh, mates?" The man laughed

heartily at his own joke and, encouraged by the mirthful appreciation of his own fellows, would have said more. He was interrupted by the arrival on the scene of one very irate and very pregnant female, who hesitated not a moment before swinging a slop-bucket (she had been carrying it from a nearby stall to the common sewer at the end of the pathway when she heard her name being called out) and loosing its offensive-smelling contents over the jokester's head.

" 'Ow's that, ya bastardly gullion? An iffen that don't mum yer clack, Oi ken gift ya wid a wherrit across the chops wid this 'ere bucket," the woman (whom Samantha supposed to be Mazie) screeched triumphantly, as the forever-fickle crowd applauded her assault as heartily as it had her tormentor.

As the scene before her was distasteful as well as distressing to her sense of smell, Samantha pushed her way out of the knot of thrill-seeking spectators, now goading Mazie on to more inventive punishments while just as eagerly urging her dripping, stinking adversary to give her "wot for." She spent the next hour viewing a puppet-show enacting the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon and a bloodthirsty rendition of the plight of Daniel in the lion's den.

She rode the up-and-down, a mechanical marvel that raised her person, once it was positioned in a swinging seat, above the heads of the fair goers. From that vantage point she could see the animal pens that made Bartholomew Fair the principal live horse-and-cattle market in the city.

She did not linger at the wrestling or cudgelling exhibitions, but found herself fascinated by the pugilist who would take on all comers, offering the prize of a shiny guinea to anyone who lasted five minutes in the ring. Three strapping young country lads stepped into the ring, and three strapping young country lads were carried out again before the boxer's eyes lit on Samantha and he issued his challenge once again.

Samantha retreated hastily, only to be approached by another person interested in her body—this time not with the intention of breaking all her bones, but instead with the stated promise to take the peach-faced young cub aside and, after just a paltry sum had changed hands, transform the unfledged boy into a man. With a barely suppressed shudder at the painted face and black-toothed grinning mouth, Samantha turned and fairly ran back towards the tamer sights of the puppet-show booth, as the two-penny whore's echoing, cackling laughter sent a chill down her spine.

Buying a ticket for the play—
Medly of Mirth and Sorrow
, with the added feature on the bill being a rendition of
The Mad Lover
—just about to begin, Samantha was more than happy to lose herself in the crowd for the duration of the show. Midway through the first act she was weeping copious tears into her handkerchief at the plight of the heroine, who was beset by all manner of travail and degradation until the final act. The arrival of the promised mirth set her to chortling as heartily as her benchmates in the airless tent, tears of glee replacing those of sympathetic suffering until Samantha's spirits were quite restored. She was soon eager to walk the grounds in search of more entertainment.

An hour later, munching on a gilded gingerbread that had capped a snack of five fat oysters served up on shells as huge as tea saucers, she stood at her ease, now picking her teeth with a long blade of grass in imitation of the men around her, watching one daring man ingesting broken glass while his partner gingerly swallowed a ball of fire. In her free hand she held a square wicker cage containing two white mice. She had won them as a prize for wagering sixpence she could best a stall-holder who had vowed she couldn't outlast him in a grinning match. Tucked under her arm was a small sack containing a fine, gaudy necklace of Bristol diamonds for Daisy that had cost just three & six d.

She might have escaped the coming calamity had she not at that moment spied out of the corner of her eye Lady Lorinda Foxx, delicately picking her way through the crowd while leaning heavily on the arm of—devil roast him!—none other than Zachary St. John. Samantha stood transfixed, the gingerbread boy dangling from her mouth as she stared in disbelief, until—without warning—she was whirled about on her heels by two sets of racing bodies, each running across the fair grounds towards each other from opposing directions. Yelling and screaming fit to wake the dead, they mowed their way through the crowd. By the time the two forces had exchanged places, many a gold watch, pearl necklace, and fat purse had disappeared, never to be seen again.

Amid the bustle of fainting women, cursing men, and crying children, Samantha stood alone, silent and unmoving, unfeeling and unseeing, as she—buffeted physically only moments after receiving a stunning blow of a vastly different but equally debilitating sort that had set up an agonizing throbbing in the area of her heart—succumbed to the lure of that soothing retreat from reality that often accompanies a sudden shock to the system.

Zachary and Lady Foxx, together! Samantha's confused brain acknowledged the sight mournfully. Zachary and that pretentious hussy. Her Zachary! Didn't the last few days mean anything to him, hadn't they changed anything for him? Could he be so unfeeling as to get up from his marriage bed and go directly into the arms of another woman? Had he just been doing his duty by the St. John name, and—preferring to secure his objective as speedily as possible—enacted that prolonged display of husbandly ardor, only to have the distasteful chore over and done with in a single go? Feeling his bride must surely by now be carrying the heir to the Royston title and lands, was he now celebrating his happy release from the clinging arms of his wearisome wife?

A single tear escaped down one ashen cheek, the only sign that the ramrod stiff figure of the young gentleman was in reality a living person and not a statue.

I loved him, she screamed silently. And worse yet, I almost told him I loved him. Thank the Lord for that at least: I stopped short of making a complete fool of myself.

But it was so wonderful, she warred with herself, and he was so magnificently kind. No, more than that, he acted as though he too enjoyed our little honeymoon, as he called it. He has got to be either the best actor or the greatest liar in all the British Isles. Or else—or else—he is a creature completely without honor: bankrupt of soul, devoid of any finer feelings, and an out-and-out cad into the bargain. He was, perhaps, an insensitive Casanova, taking his pleasure where he found it and caring not a whit for the hearts he trampled along the way.