Widow in White

Chapter Sixteen: All of London Knows

Neil left London just as most of England was arriving in it. Coaches and carriages trundled daily into the metropolis, carrying bundled-up and bored parties of wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, maidens, and maids. Silk-slippered toes surface from between the folds of fur-trimmed gowns and fish for the iron grilles of coach steps. Slender white hands slip out from brobdingnagian muffs to lay two delicate fingers on a footman's guiding palm. The silk-slippered toes land in London mud and track it up the white-washed doorsteps of London houses. The slender white hands hang idle as housemaids unwrap shawls and untie cloaks and unbutton spencers. The silk-slippered toes patter softly up silk-carpeted stairs into silk-curtained drawing rooms. The slender white hands drop brobdingnagian muffs to couches and their owners drop down after them. A husband, a son, a father, a brother, a master, or a bachelor is fetched from his study and steps into the room. Greetings are uttered. And then a wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a maiden, or a maid drawls:

"Now, dear, do explain to me what on earth Lord Albroke is doing with that woman."

That woman herself could not have explained. Laura did not know. So far it seemed that Richard was doing nothing with her. Five days had passed since he had agreed to make her his mistress, three since Neil's brooding presence had ceased to shadow the air, and still Richard had not so much as hinted she perform the duties for which he had engaged her. Indeed, they were spending less time together than ever. With Neil gone, Richard had to take up the business responsibilities Neil had been performing for him while he was ill, and he was often in his study for hours on end, talking with his men of business. At the end of those discussions, he was often in no mood to do more than lie on a couch with his arm over his eyes while Laura played the piano. It almost made Laura wish Neil was still there.

At least now he was coming down to every meal with her. Hobbling down the stairs, one step at a time, leaning heavily on the banister and having to rest and catch his breath on every landing. It hurt her to watch him, hovering uselessly by his side while he insisted he did not need her help.

"I have to start getting stronger again," he said.

"Not by overtaxing yourself!"

"I know I'm a cripple, Laura, but I can walk."

"But you don't even have your stick."

"I am capable of managing without it."

But he wasn't, not really. And the stick itself lay in two pieces in the bottom cupboard of a bookshelf in his study. She'd found it one day, when frankly snooping. He had been upstairs with Doctor Cavendish, and she, returning from a shopping expedition, had wandered curiously through the open door of his study, which had always previously been closed.

It was a long, narrow room, but well lit, with two tall windows overlooking the square. Bookcases lined the long wall, while a fireplace took up most of the narrow one, with a portrait of Richard, Neil, and their sister Elizabeth as children hanging above it. Laura crossed the room to examine it and laughed to see the identically surly expression on all three faces. None of them seemed happy to have to pose.

Laura moved away from the fireplace, dodging between a shabby footstool and two comfortable-looking armchairs, and went over to the bookcase. A large number of books were bound in pale green calf-skin and embossed in gold. These were all the sort of typical books you could expect to find in a nobleman's library: Latin and Greek classics and histories, and English religious poems and sermons. Laura knew instantly that it was Richard's father who had bought them. The other books, with miss-matched bindings, with threadbare spines, had to be Richard's. Shakespeare, Voltaire, Dante, Montaigne, and, both more esoterically and closer to home, Laurence Sterne, Maria Edgeworth, Henry Fielding, Fanny Burney, and a number of more recently published sentimental novels, whose presence surprised her. She noticed with pleasure that she and Richard shared similar tastes.