“There is more to it than that,” he said, his eyes not leaving her. “I may as well say it out. I’m in love with you!”
“That’s not possible!” she told him. “I’m not a lady! I’m not for the likes of you!”
“You can be the equal of any lady in the land,” he said. “All you require is some coaching in speech and manners.”
“Coaching in speech and manners?” she echoed him.
“You’ll need them,” he said quietly, “if you’re to take your place in society as my wife!”
“Your wife!” she gasped.
“I have thought it over all this time. I have waited too long to marry. I need companionship, and I need someone I can trust. You have proven your trust and wisdom, and I know full well I can never find anyone more lovely than you.”
“Please!” she said, her head reeling with the wine and this unexpected development.
“I’m completely serious,” he said. “I shall arrange with Crown to find a replacement for you. And I shall engage a coach to work with you on matters of etiquette and speech. Within a few months we can be married. As proof of my good intent I shall bring you an engagement ring to Number Eight tomorrow. I pray that you will not refuse it!”
“You have taken me completely by surprise,” Becky said.
He smiled one of his rare smiles. “Part of my strategy. I have spent hours deciding how to go about this. Winning you is more important to me than any business project.”
“You know so little about me!”
“I know the kind of girl you are. I need not know anything else,” he said.
“I cannot promise to accept your ring, not without some thought.”
Mark Gregg said, “I’m a reasonable man but an impatient one. I shall be at your room tomorrow at two with the ring. You have until then.”
He did not attempt to kiss her until he said goodnight at the door of Number Eight. Then he took her in his arms and held her in a taut embrace. His kiss was much warmer than she had expected, and she felt that his behaviour was that of a man deeply in love.
When he released her he smiled and said, “Until tomorrow, Dear Becky!”
“Goodnight,” she said in a small voice. And then added a shy, “Mark!”
She went inside in a state of ecstacy and excitement, and to her surprise she was met in the hallway by the warty-faced Mrs. Crown in her nightgown and robe. The old woman had her nightcap on and her hair in curlers. She held a candle in her hand.
“Well, my girl?” she said.
Becky smiled. “We had a wonderful evening. He took me to the Holborn for dinner!”
“The Holborn!” the older woman said, impressed.
“Yes,” she said. “And he’s asked me to marry him!”
“Glory be!” Mrs. Crown exclaimed. “Do you think he meant it?”
She shrugged. “He’s coming with a ring tomorrow.”
Mrs. Crown threw her arms around her and sobbed happily. “I couldn’t be more happy if you were my own daughter!”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I may not marry him.”
“What?” the older woman released her and stared at her in surprise.
“I have held a hatred for him so long I don’t know if I can erase it. But I have truly come to care for him! I’m not sure at all!”
“What sort of talk is that? He is in love with you and wants to care for you for the rest of your life! Oughtn’t that to settle any old scores you may have?”
“I’m not sure,” she confessed.
“You’d better be,” the woman advised seriously. “Miss a chance like this to rise in the world, and it may never come again.”
Becky knew this was true and perhaps it alone was the deciding factor in her decision to accept Mark’s offer of marriage. She lay awake long into the night thinking about it all. She was the survivor. Her father, Davy Brown, and even Peg were all lost to her. She was truly alone, and this man seemed to love her. It would be madness to refuse him, expecially since she was beginning to see another side of Mark.
So when he brought her a large diamond the next afternoon she prettily accepted it and agreed to become his wife. He at once arranged to pay all her expenses and have a coach come to her at Number Eight.
The coach was Mrs. Lucinda Bell, a woman of some social position, who had made the error of falling in love and marrying an actor. He had died early, leaving her a widow with several children. She now made a modest living teaching elocution and deportment. To her was assigned the task of making Becky a lady.
Mrs. Bell was a fragile woman who had probably been a beauty in her youth, but who was now much faded. Her manner was doleful but firm. On first meeting Becky she made an astute appraisal of her.
“Your face is pretty, and so is your figure,” she said. “We must build on them. Your speech is poor and your posture is sloppy. But we can correct all that!”
And correct them she did! After a month Mark Gregg congratulated both the former actress and her pupil. “You’ve made the most remarkable change in Rebecca,” he told the frail woman.
“She is a ready learner. She could go on the stage if she so wished. But I would not want her to do so. I would never marry an actor again not, even if the new stage idol of the day, William Kendall, should ask me!”
Mark Gregg had smiled at her and Becky as he’d said, “You need not be concerned, dear lady. The only stage she will grace will be the living room of my home.”
• • •
By the time September arrived she was finished with her lessons and living in a new flat which Mark had found her in Grott Street. In this more discreet section of the city she posed as a newcomer from Birmingham, and it was as such that she had agreed to be introduced to Mark’s relatives and friends. It had turned out that Mark was not as entirely alone as he’d said. He did have an older sister, Elizabeth, a spinster, who lived with him and devoted her activity to working for the London poor.
The wedding was planned for late in September, but first she had to be presented to his sister and the family of Matthew Kerr, his elderly business partner. Mark arranged with his sister to introduce her to these people at an afternoon tea to be held on a Sunday early in the month at his house in Elgar Road, which directly adjoined the Kerr home.
Mark came early to pick her up and take her to Elgar Road in his carriage. He was kind, but he had assumed a proprietary air about her, as if she were his creation. This worried her a little, but she tried to ignore it.
On this Sunday afternoon she wore a pale blue dress and bonnet and looked up into his stern, square-jawed face nervously. “I’m so uneasy, Mark. I’m sure they will see through my sham and know me for the barmaid I am!”
He took her by the arms. “Nonsense!” And in any case, you have become a fine lady under Mrs. Bell’s guidance. Just be vague about your background in Birmingham. I’ve told them you were brought up by an elderly uncle who recently died of a heart seizure. That is all they need know.”
“I hate these lies,” she protested.
“They will make our life easier and harm no one,” he said. “You may find my sister stiff at the start, but if you take no notice she is bound to warm to you.”
Elizabeth Gregg, tall, gaunt and as hard-eyed as Mark, was cool in her greeting. Becky pretended not to notice but congratulated the spinster on the nice flair she’d shown in decorating and furnishing Mark’s home.
Elizabeth Gregg had responded sourly to this, saying, “But then it will all soon be yours.”
Becky had blushed and said, “We shall share it and the running of the household as well. I insist upon it.”
“No,” her future sister-in-law had said coolly. “That will be your duty. I shall henceforth devote my time to my charities.”
Becky realized that her prospective sister-in-law was not enthusiastic about the coming marriage, and that she would probably give her an uncomfortable time. This was borne out a half-hour later when the guests from next door arrived and Mark introduced Becky to all of them.
“Delighted!” Old Matthew Kerr said, a stout, florid-faced man, who had breathing difficulties and who leaned heavily on a cane for support. His wife, Alice, was another prim woman like Elizabeth Gregg, though she was older and had white hair.
“You are one of the Birmingham Lees,” she said, staring at Becky. “I was sure I knew every branch of the Lee family there. My mother came from Birmingham, you know.”
Becky said hastily, “I fear my family were not old residents. I only lived there with my uncle for three or four years; before that we were in Liverpool.”
“Really?” The wife of Martin’s partner said, as if she didn’t believe it.
Vera Kerr came next, a young version of her mother with pale straw hair, a weak ching, and a generally frigid manner. She managed a smile for Becky and said, “You will be a most envied woman as Mark’s wife.”
Her brother, James, a young dandy in a purple jacket and bright yellow vest and pants came next. He gave Becky a knowing wink and said, “If you’re interested in marrying into the firm, I’m the youngest of the family partners.”
She returned his smile, feeling that he and his father would not be as difficult as his mother and sister. She said, “I fear I have made my final choice.”
“Great pity,” James said. “Since I’m about ready to settle down!”
“Settle down, is it?” his elderly father said from the chair into which he’d sat heavily. “Does that mean you’ll only be out gambling two nights a week instead of five?”
Mark smiled tolerantly. “We mustn’t be too hard on James. He is still suffering from growing pains.”
James, who had moved on to gaze out the window at the street, turned to the others in the living room once again and said, “It doesn’t matter; whatever I do, I’ll be criticized.”
His mother, primly seated on a divan with Vera at her side said, “That is not at all true!”
As if to end the argument, Elizabeth announced, “I shall now pour the tea. Will you all tell me your preference as to milk and sugar?”
Vera spoke up, “I like my tea with plenty of milk and lots of sugar.”
“Sure sign of a weak female,” her brother James teased her. “I’ve never seen it fail.”
“James!” Vera rebuked him.
Old Matthew Kerr told the spinster Elizabeth, “I like mine straight. Plain black! Though sometimes a bit of whiskey can improve it.”
“Hear! Hear!” Mark said with false jolliness in his tone as Elizabeth started to pour and serve the tea. Becky continued to feel miserable, as if she were on some sort of display and not being judged favorably.
With the serving of the afternoon tea and cakes, the party became a trifle more animated. Old Matthew Kerr said to her, “I think you are having a good influence on Mark, Miss Lee. He has been a trifle easier to deal with at the office since his engagement.”
She smiled at the old man and then at Mark, saying, “I trust the improvement in his disposition will continue.”
Mark looked none too happy at the comments and told them, “I’m sure all will agree I can do nothing but improve.”
Young James Kerr came over to Becky and said, “There’s one good service you can do the company.”
“Really?” she waited politely to hear what it might be.
“Tell him to build iron ships rather than wooden ones,” the young man said. “Iron ships are the future.”
“I agree,” Becky said. “But I understood it was your father who objected to the firm shifting from building wooden ships to iron.”
“Not at all,” the elderly Kerr said napping his cane on the floor to underline this. “I believe iron ships are with us to stay. It is Mark who doubts it.”
Mark showed annoyance. “We had a slack time but now we have orders it will take us a year or two to fill. Why should we change our policy when things are going well?”
The young dandy, James Kerr, ambled up to him and touched a forefinger to his coat lapel as he said, “So that we can get the jump on our rivals. Be first in the iron ship business, just as we once were first in the construction of wooden vessels.”
Mark eyed him insolently. “I find it difficult to believe you can remember so far back.”
The thin, rather feminine face of James Kerr flushed. He said, “I do not know it at first hand. I heard it from my father.” And he turned away.
Old Matthew Kerr glared at his son. “Most of all, you know about the shipbuilding business you have learned at second hand.”
Mark nodded. “You’d do better to pay more attention to the yard and less to the gambling tables.”
Alice Kerr spoke up in defence of her dandy son. “I think most men have their time of playing at the tables. I know Matthew did before our marriage, and I have heard you are no stranger to gambling, Mark.”
Mark’s smile was cold. “I bet only on the horses, ma’am.”
“Surely that is also gambling,” the washed-out Vera said.
“Different thing altogether,” old Matthew Kerr said. “But I do agree with what James said, Mark. If we don’t soon make a beginning with iron ships, we may well be too late for it.”
Mark showed derision. “You’re suggesting the firm might go under?”
“Larger companies than ours have been destroyed by a lack of change of policy or for catering to old customers,” the old man said. “We do not dare to be smug.”
James said emphatically, “That is the straight truth. You should face it, Mark!”
Mark drew himself up very straight and said, “While I’m the managing-director of Gregg & Kerr, the shipyard will build what I see fit. And I see a long future in wooden ships.”
Mark’s sister, Elizabeth, gave him a scathing glance, “Sunday afternoon tea to meet your bride-to-be is not the proper occasion for business arguments!”
Mark turned pale with rage. “My apologies to all of you, except to James, who began the discussion.”
James bowed mockingly, “My strong back is sturdy enough to withstand all blame!”
Alice Kerr glanced over at her stout husband’s chair to see that the stout man’s eyes were closed and he was snoring faintly. With exasperation she turned to the thin hostess, Elizabeth and asked her, “Dear Elizabeth, may I enquire about the state of your various charities?”
This launched the prim Elizabeth into a long, boring account of her efforts to assist the children of the poor. Behind her James Kerr stood smiling and winking for Becky’s benefit. She pretended not to see him, but it was most difficult.