Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [531]
“If I had the money, I’m not sure I wouldn’t marry her.”
He did not allow the thought to take definite shape.
“You’re too poor and too old,” he reminded himself.
For as the weeks passed, he had still failed completely to solve the question of how to earn his living. And though he was happy to be in the family house with his father and new brother and sister he was coming to love, he could not help feeling uneasy.
Then, on May 30, 1779, Sir Joshua Forest came to Sarum.
Joshua Forest was in his early thirties: of medium height; very dark, very thin, with a long aquiline nose, and thin, tapering hands. He was friendly to all, with studied civility.
“And his eyes see every fly on the wall,” Jonathan remarked when he described him.
Sir Joshua had been in London; then he had been at his new house in the north of the county; now he had come to spend a month at Sarum.
“He has just sent a man round,” Jonathan told Adam as he came in from a talk with Eli in the coffee house that morning. “You’re invited to dinner this very day.” He looked at his son thoughtfully. “Keep your wits about you and you may hear something to your advantage,” he added. But when Adam asked him what he meant, the older man would not tell him.
It was four o’clock in the afternoon when Captain Adam Shockley presented himself at the house of Sir Joshua Forest, Baronet. The hour of dining was usually about three, but Sir Joshua, it was known, liked to dine late.
The house of Sir Joshua Forest’lay the other end of the close from the Shockleys. It was a big, rectangular brick building, partly faced with grey stone. In front of it lay a gravel drive and a lawn. At one side, behind a low wall, was a path leading to the coach house and stables behind. The main floor was raised; before the front door was a set of handsome curving steps.
There were several splendid coaches on the gravel when he arrived; on the door of the largest he noticed the elaborate arms of the Forest family.
The door was opened by a powdered footman, and a moment later Adam was walking across the polished black and white marble floor of the hall. On the walls above the handsome staircase that rose up three sides of the hall were portraits of the Forest family. On a pedestal in one corner stood a marble bust of Sir George. Over the doors that led off the hall there were classical pediments with plaster mouldings above them. From the ceiling high above, on a twenty foot rope, hung a splendid chandelier with crystal glass that Sir George had acquired in France.
On his left, a second footman opened the tall white panelled door of the drawing-room, and he was ushered in.
They were all men in the room. Two or three of the local landowners; a clergyman he did not know, but clearly a wealthy one; two strangers, presumably from London; and of course, his host.
“Welcome, Captain Shockley. We are honoured you are come to join us.”
He fitted very well the description his father had given him. But there was one thing about Sir Joshua, as he advanced in his exquisite coat of crimson silk and lace, that Jonathan Shockley had not troubled to convey.
He was perfect.
He had learned the art in Italy and France during a grand tour that had lasted four years. He had learned it thoroughly.
There were many things that a man might study on the Grand Tour. He might read a little history. He might get a smattering of French, German and Italian. He might, if he had the introductions, meet the rulers and important men in half a dozen countries who could later be useful to him in a public career. He might, as the present Lord Pembroke had done, make a detailed study of horse breeding and riding at those incredible continental schools of equitation where the horses performed with