“Bit anxious about the police,” Reggie avoided his stare and assumed an attitude of concentration, as if he knew something Campbell did not. “Nosing around the servants’ halls, you know. Don’t know quite how responsible these police are. Ordinary sort of chap, working class, naturally. Could start a lot of silly gossip, without realizing the harm it could do. Freddie agrees with me.”
Campbell turned his head to look at him more closely.
“Freddie?”
“Saw him yesterday,” Reggie said casually. “Pointed out what a nuisance it could be, for all of us, if the square got the reputation for loose behavior, immoral servants, general bad taste, and so on. Not good, you know. Don’t want to be the butt of a lot of gossip, even if it’s all supposition.”
Campbell’s mouth turned down at the corners.
“Take your point,” he said with a slight rasp. “Could be difficult. Even if people don’t believe it, they’ll pass it on. Find ourselves snubbed in clubs, laughed at.” His face darkened fiercely. “Bloody damned nuisance! Some idiotic girl who-” his anger died out as suddenly. “Way of the world. Poor little bitch. Still, what did you come to me about, except to commiserate?”
Reggie drew a deep breath.
“Commiseration’s not much use-”
“None at all,” Campbell agreed.
“Better to prevent it before it happens.”
Campbell’s face betrayed interest for the first time.
“What are you suggesting, Reggie?”
“A discreet word, with the butler or housekeeper, to speak to the rest of the servants. See that one or the other of them is present every time this police fellow interviews any of them. Get them to make sure nothing-foolish-is said. Natural enough, what? Not to let a young servant be bullied. Got to protect them, eh?”
Campbell smiled with harsh amusement.
“Why, Reggie, I never suspected you of such subtlety-or such common sense.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“My dear idiot, my household is already aware that loose talk would cost them their livelihoods: but I admit it would be an added protection to make sure a butler or housekeeper is present if this, what’s-his-name-Pitt-comes back again. Personally I think they’ll probably drop it after a reasonable show of trying. After all, to whom does it really matter if some servant girl has two children stillborn? It’s hardly worth raising hell in an area like this. He’ll know that he’ll find out nothing that matters, and offend a lot of people who could make life damned difficult for him, if he gives them cause. Don’t get yourself upset, Reggie. They’ll run around to give the impression of intent, then quietly let it die. Do you want a glass of port?”
Reggie took a moment for the idea to seep through him with its relief: then he realized Campbell had offered him the port at last.
“Yes,” he accepted graciously. “Thank you, very civil of you.”
“Not at all,” Campbell smiled to himself and walked away to the side table to fetch the decanter.
Augusta had noticed Christina’s indisposition; and at first she had thought nothing of it, beyond a natural sympathy. It was easy enough to eat or drink something which did not agree with one. Then on the appalling discovery of Christina in the arms of the wretched footman, Max, the incident came back to her mind with rather more anxiety. When the indisposition occurred again a week later, and she heard from the lady’s maid that Christina was to remain in her bed for the morning, she felt something considerably more like alarm.
She did not wish General Balantyne to know anything about it-he would be entirely useless if indeed there were such a crisis as her worst fears framed, and if there were not, there was no purpose in alarming him. They were at the breakfast table when she was informed, and after a moment’s silent panic, she thanked the woman civilly and bade her return to Christina and care for her, then she requested the general to pass her the orange conserve to spread upon her toast.
“Pity,” the general said quietly, passing across the jar. “Poor girl. Hope it’s nothing serious. Want to send for the doctor? Always ask Freddie to slip over, if she doesn’t want a fuss.”
“Nothing he can do for a chill on the stomach,” she replied smoothly. Heavens above, the last thing she wanted now was a doctor! “Charming as he is, he can’t change the weather. Lots of pestilence of one sort or another in the autumn. I shall have cook make her an herbal tea. That will do as much good as anything. No doubt it will cure itself in a day or two.”
He looked at her with slight surprise, but rather than argue, continued with his deviled kidneys, bacon, eggs, and toast.
When she had finished her meal, so as not to appear in a hurry and give the matter undue importance, she excused herself and went upstairs. If there were no reason for alarm, so much the better, but if her worst fears were valid-and she remembered with a cold shiver through her flesh the familiarity of that touch in the stillroom pantry, the ease with which the hands had caressed the silk bodice under the breasts-and it was indeed true, then she must think now what to do about it. If there were any hope at all of saving the situation, it lay in immediate action. Every additional day would make it harder.
And if she did not succeed-a lesser woman would have flinched even from the thought, but even her enemies, and she had several, would never have denied that Augusta had courage-there lay ahead for Christina little but endless unhappiness. To have an illegitimate child was a sin never completely forgiven by the society in which Christina moved, in which she had been brought up, and in which were all her friends, indeed the society which would enable her to have the only life for which she was fitted. It might be possible, with care and money dispersed in appropriate places, to create some fiction to take her away from London for the necessary period of time, have the child brought up on the country estate, adopted by some good serving woman. It would take skill, but it was not impossible: it had surely been done by others! Christina was not the first, nor would she be the last in this predicament.
If only that were all!
But there was Max: an ambitious and ruthless man. Of course she had realized from the day she had employed him that he was intent, above all things, on bettering himself. And she had thought that that would make him an excellent footman. Ambitious men were good employees; and so he had proved, in respect of his job; he was always immaculate, always punctual, always more than civil; indeed she had received many compliments as to his quality. But she blamed herself now for not realizing that his ambition would lead him to use any means that offered to advance himself, even to lying with his employer’s daughter. She did not delude herself for a moment that there was any affection involved-on either side. And she should also have known her daughter better, she should have seen the weakness in her, and protected her from it. What else were mothers for?
Max had forged himself a weapon. If he chose to use it, to spread gossip, gently, like slow poison, Christina would be ruined. No man of her own class would marry her, no matter what her dowry. There was always a surfeit of personable young women in the marriage market, and Christina possessed no special advantage; at least none that would outweigh the reputation of a trollop. To be high-spirited was one thing, to be a whore and to have borne a child to a footman was quite another. The only world she knew, or could cope with, would be as closed to her as the Bank of England.
Max must be silenced: not by bribery of any sort. Give in to him even once, and they would be hostage to him for the rest of their lives. It must be a counterthreat of equal magnitude. Not only for Christina’s sake, but for the whole family, for the general, and for young Brandy, as well as herself. If Brandy should fall in love, or even find agreeable some well-connected girl, what parents would allow their daughter to marry into a family whose blood bred such as Christina?