London - Edward Rutherfurd [472]
“What is it?”
She gazed at him. Then, suddenly it seemed as if she might dissolve into tears. “You can’t guess?”
He did not speak.
She sighed. “I’m at the end of the road, Jack. I can’t face all this alone. I don’t want to.” She looked down, so as not to meet his eye. “If I’m to live, I only want it to be with you.”
Jack Meredith paused, thought, and made his decision. He understood that she had come to bargain. But she was a beautiful woman in distress and, God knows, he had nowhere else to go.
“I am yours,” he said, “for ever.”
Then she told him her plan.
Fleming stared at the surface of Fleet Street and shook his head. He had forgotten about the paving.
The quality of the London streets was remarkably uneven. There was no public roadbuilding in the city – the residents and tradesmen were responsible for paving their own streets, each paying for his own frontage. In poor quarters therefore, the lanes and alleys were like middens; but in big thoroughfares the residents often insisted on the finest paving. Now, in Fleet Street, they had decided upon resurfacing with the finest cobbles. And poor Fleming had just been informed how much he must pay.
“Fifty pounds!” He glanced miserably at where his new bow window was to have been. “That’ll have to be delayed,” he sighed. “This isn’t much of a May Day, I must say. And the trouble is,” he added, “I haven’t got the money.”
“You’ll have to go to Lady St James,” his wife said. “She owes you thirty.”
“I suppose,” he agreed, “I shall.” He did not like to bother a great lady like that, and was afraid it might offend her.
“You’ve no choice,” his wife said gently.
It was four o’clock when he came to Hanover Square. He was wearing his best brown coat, which was too hot for the day, and he was sweating under his hat. With trepidation he approached the big door fronting the square, noticed briefly that the house was protected by the Sun Insurance Company and rang the bell. A footman answered. But before he could even ask if his lordship or her ladyship were at home, that liveried personage, seeing at once that he was a tradesman, told him to go to the back entrance of the house and slammed the door in his face.
Fleming might have been less discouraged had he understood that in aristocratic houses even a gentleman personally acquainted with the owner, especially if that were so august a person as an earl, would be highly unlikely to secure an interview with anyone beyond the butler, or his lordship’s secretary, unless he was expected. To the mews behind he went therefore, getting his best coat muddy along the way, and approached the entrance near the kitchens.
But there, more amiably, they told him that both Lord and Lady St James were out; his suggestion that either, when he or she returned, might grant him an interview was treated with a scornful laugh.
“Leave your account,” they advised, “and go your way.”
But this was not what he had come to do. So instead, he returned to the square and, taking up his position near a post where some sedan chairs were waiting, he kept watch on number seventeen. Half an hour later, it seemed that his patience was rewarded when a smart carriage, bearing the arms of the de Quettes, drew up before the door. He started forward.
The groom was already at the carriage door. He had placed a step before it and was holding out his arm to help the occupant down. Fleming could not see the face of the lady because she held a silk scarf against it, but he was certain it was Lady St James. Placing himself a little before her he made his best bow.
“Lady St James? It’s Fleming, my lady, the baker.” He smiled hopefully. The lady with the covered face gave no sign of recognition. It seemed to him that she made to move past; but without realizing it, he was blocking her way. “My lady was kind enough,” he began, before the groom turned on him, with a peremptory wave of his arm.
“Move away, there.”
Out of the corner of