“Mr. Austen believes, Miss Sharpe, that we may exert ourselves to litde purpose.” I eased onto a child's wooden bench, a sampler furled in my hands. “It is by no means certain that Buonaparte is to invade; indeed, the merest rumour appears to have animated the General's anxiety. My brother has given no orders for the children's removal.”
“I do not understand,” she faltered. “We are not to be evacuated, then? We are not to leave for London in a few days' time?”
“As to that — I cannot say. I am sadly denied a full knowledge of the officers' intentions. We must abide by their instructions, of course — pack up our belongings and make ready to flee, in the event that all our calculations are hollow.” I smiled at her encouragingly. “Were it not the sort of conduct unbecoming to a lady, Miss Sharpe, I should suggest we lay a little wager. For who knows what will be the outcome? It is ever the way when Buonaparte has the ordering of events. The best-laid plans are torn all asunder.”
“So it seems,” she replied unsteadily. “So it has always proved, in my unhappy life.”
“Miss Sharpe—”
“Pray leave me, Miss Austen, to attend to this chaos. I am sure you have trunks enough of your own to fill.”
It was undoubtedly a dismissal, and one that brooked no refusal. I left the governess, her countenance grown agitated and pale, to the business of the backboards and books; and wondered very much as to the cause of her distress. Nothing so simple as a disgust for Mrs. Grey's murder could account for it. But I was hardly on such terms of intimacy as to invite Anne Sharpe's confidence. She moved presently in deeper waters, and must breast the current alone.
“AND SO YOU HAVE SEEN MR. GREY,” HENRY SAID GAILY, when the footmen had served the first course of dinner and retired to the kitchen passage.
“And he has seen me,” Neddie replied. “A less satisfactory meeting between two men of interest to one another, I cannot conceive. But come, brother — you have been cognizant of his banking practise some few years. What is your opinion of Grey?”
Henry shrugged. “I have formed none, Neddie. I cannot claim to be intimate with the man.”
“Intimate! I do not know of anyone who is — excepting, perhaps, Captain Woodford, who I believe has known Grey from a boy.”
“Grey is not the sort to encourage intimacy,” Henry said thoughtfully. “He is of a taciturn, unbending disposition, and keeps his own counsel.”
“But what is his reputation in Town?”
“He is a member of White's, of course. I should imagine that is where the groom found him last evening.” Henry set down his fork and tasted his wine. “Or rather, he may often be seen among its clubmen, but whether any of them are likely to call Grey friend, I cannot say. Perhaps George Canning—”
“Canning? The Treasurer of the Navy?”
“The very same. He is a very deep file, George Canning, and quite in the confidence of Mr. Pitt. He is also a passionate gardener — and it is this that endears him to Valentine Grey. I suppose you have heard of Grey's interest in exotic plants?”[20]
“I have heard very little of Mr. Grey,” Neddie replied grimly, “and I now comprehend how unfortunate such ignorance must be, in the present circumstance. I begin to think I have led too retiring a life.”
“But what of his character, Henry?” I pressed. “You have painted a very dry portrait, indeed! It is nothing like the quixotic fellow our brother encountered this morning!”
Henry studied me with interest. “Quixotic? I should say rather that Grey is calculating and shrewd. He is of a resentful disposition, and possessing considerable powers of intellect and energy himself, despises those of his fellows whose talents are inferior.”
“His good opinion, once lost, is lost forever,” Lizzy remarked from her end of the table.
Henry smiled at her. “Grey prizes loyalty and honour above all else. Such traits must serve him well in matters of business; but where ties of a more personal nature are concerned, I should imagine they would prove difficult to bear.”
“Little wonder, then, that his wife could not love him,” I murmured.
“They do seem an ill-matched pair,” Henry conceded, “but they are not the first to find themselves tethered for life in an unequal harness.”
“Mr. Grey spends the better part of his time in London, I believe. Does his trade prevent him from moving in the first circles? Or has it proved a sort of entree? What are his pursuits? His interests and ambitions?”
Henry was engrossed in the consumption of a quantity of buttered prawns. “I should hardly call Grey's sort of banking a trade, Jane. He inherited a vast concern second only to Hope's, unlike your jumped-up scrivener of a brother. “[21]
“Surely you exaggerate,” Neddie broke in.
“The fate of England sometimes hangs upon Grey's influence, brother.” An unwonted expression of seriousness had suffused Henry's countenance. “He has any number of the Great quite comfortably in his pocket, and may move among them as an equal. Grey is the sort of man who might go anywhere, and meet anybody— but to my knowledge the Fashionable World commands none of his respect. He is the ornament of no particular set, tho' many would claim him. He is much in the affection of Mr. Pitt, but spurns the Tories as liberally as he does the Whigs; he was once spoken of as a likely advisor to the Treasury, but disdains the connivance of public office. And with the Prince, thank God, he will have nothing to do.”[22]
Mr. Grey sounded remarkably like another gentleman in my acquaintance, Lord Harold Trowbridge — and I wondered, for a moment, whether the two were acquainted. Knowing a little of their characters, it was impossible for me to consider either man the friend of the other. Such subtle calculation as animated the spirit and understanding of each, did not easily lend itself to intimacy. They should rather be allies, or foes.
But then I checked my fanciful portrait of Grey before it was half-formed. In ignorance of one gentleman's character, I employed another's as pattern — and did grievous harm, no doubt, to the merits of both.
“If the mastery of neither politics nor Society is Mr. Grey's object,” Neddie persisted, “to what, then, may we ascribe his ambition?”
Henry shook his head. “Therein lies the chief of the man's power. He is a mystery to all but himself.”
I sipped Neddie's excellent claret, and allowed my thoughts to wander among the tantalising shades of Henry's conversation. The blustering vagaries of Valentine Grey — his insistence that his wife was chaste — his urgency in proving himself a man bereaved, and yet the absence of feeling behind his words — all rose in my mind with the force of argument: disputed, confused, uncertain as to issue.
“And his wife, Henry — the wife he appears to have banished to Kent,” I said. “Was Francoise Grey merely an impediment?”
“The lady was certainly a pawn, I believe, when she was affianced to Valentine Grey — it was a marriage of houses rather than hearts. It is indisputable that Grey owes to his late wife a considerable part of his present resources. The Penfleur family may command the fortunes of a continent, and in marrying Francoise, Grey acceded a little to their power.”
“And placed himself under the thumb of an empire,” I observed.
Henry's eyebrows shot skywards, and he pushed away his plate. “I should never describe Grey as under anyone's thumb.”
20
George Canning (1770–1827) served as Undersecretary of State in 1796, and as Treasurer of the Navy from 1804–1806. As such, he had virtually no authority over naval organization or policy, which was administered by the First Lord of the Admiralty, but he was responsible for matters of naval finance in Parliament. This included the salaries of naval captains, the naval budget, and the disposition of the Secret Funds — monies set aside for the purpose of espionage, and unaccountable to Parliament. —
21
The House of Hope was the powerful and influential Scots banking concern based in Amsterdam. Hope financed, among other things, Napoleon Bonaparte's government and campaigns. —
22
William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) was in his last months of life in August 1805. As minister of the Treasury, he was also prime minister of England. A brilliant, lonely, and calculating political genius, he was the foremost Tory of his generation and a lifelong adversary of the Prince of Wales. He was also an alcoholic, and his liver failed when he was forty-seven. He was carried, dying, from the House of Commons in December 1805, and died early in 1806. —