“I must say you have a bloody nerve,” said the captain. “Let’s both go to Scotland Yard, now. Of course it will come out that you are a blackmailer and you will be ruined.”
Hecker’s bluster left him. “No need for that. But I warn you –”
“No, I will warn you. All the money you blackmailed out of these ladies must be discreetly returned, every penny. In a few days’ time, I will check to see if you have done so. It would give me great pleasure to ruin you, but in doing so I would ruin your victims’ reputations as well.” He leaned forward on the doorstep and smiled into Hecker’s face. “If you do not do what I say, I will shoot you.”
“You can’t do that!” Hecker turned pale. “This is England.”
“Marvellous country, isn’t it? Now, stop fouling my doorstep and make a noise like a hoop and bowl off.” Harry put his hand on the artist’s face and shoved and sent Hecker flying down the steps to land on the pavement.
Harry let himself in with his key. He doubted that he would hear from Hecker again.
♦
High summer spread across the English countryside. Society moved out to Biarritz and Deauville, returning in August for grouse shooting in Scotland. Lady Rose read, walked through the countryside, and sometimes thought she might die from boredom and loneliness.
As August moved into September, the earl received a visit from Baron Dryfield, who owned one of the neighbouring estates. The little earl was glad to receive him. Because of Rose’s disgrace, he felt ostracized from local society. The baron was a huge jovial man, a great favourite of King Edward’s.
“I need to talk to you privately,” said the baron. Lady Polly, who was in the drawing-room with her husband, rose to her feet and left the room.
“What is it?” asked the earl, alarmed. “What is it that my wife can’t hear?”
“You will shortly hear from the palace that His Majesty is going to favour you with a visit in September.”
“But that’s wonderful news. It means the scandal is buried. Great expense, of course.”
“Well, the bad news is there’s a buzz at court that our king wants to try his luck with Rose. She’s become a sort of challenge, see. They call her The Ice Queen.”
“What am I to do?” wailed the earl. “How can I protect Rose? If he asks, say, to go for a walk with her, I can hardly refuse.”
“Bless me, I don’t know. But thought I’d warn you.”
♦
Captain Harry Cathcart had been busy all summer. Word had got around, and in a society rife with scandal, his services were in demand. There was nothing very dramatic, mostly petty business which could be solved with shrewd advice, but his bank balance was getting fat and he now had a carriage and pair.
He found to his surprise that he was also much in demand socially. His taciturn manner, damned before as boring, was now considered Byronic. But he accepted few invitations. His experiences in the war seemed to have left a dark, sour patch inside him.
One morning he received an urgent telegram from the Earl of Hadshire, asking him to travel to the earl’s home, Stacey Court, as soon as possible.
The captain packed a suitcase and set out with his man, Becket. They took a hack to Paddington Station and the Great Western Railway train to Oxford, planning to take the local train at Oxford, which would bear them on to Stacey Magna, the nearest station to the earl’s home, where they would be met.
Harry was unusual in that he had bought first-class train tickets for himself and Becket. Normally the master travelled first class and the servant in the third-class carriages at the back of the train.
Half-way to Oxford, Becket fell gently asleep and Harry studied his servant’s face. After his discharge from the army, Harry had taken to walking around the streets of London to exercise his injured leg. One morning early he had been in Covent Garden market, watching the porters carry in great baskets of vegetables when one of them collapsed and sent the contents of the basket of potatoes he had been carrying spilling across the cobbles.
“Bleedin’ milksop,” jeered one porter. “Leave him lie, Bert. Ain’t nuthin’ but a shyster.”
Harry had picked Becket up and supported him into a nearby pub and had bought him a brandy. Then, realizing by the man’s emaciated form that he was starving, had ordered him breakfast. Becket had fallen on the food, shovelling it desperately into his mouth.
“I’ve been hungry like that,” thought Harry with compassion, a picture of lying under the hot sun on the African veld swimming into his mind.
When the man had finished eating, Harry questioned him. Becket, too, had been a soldier, and having left the army, found it hard to get work. He had a thin, sensitive white face, straight brown hair combed severely back, pale grey eyes and a thin mouth. He said he’d been in the army since he was a boy but would offer no further clue to his background.
On impulse, Harry explained that he, too, had recently returned from the wars and was on a small budget, but if Becket liked to follow him home, he would find work for him.
And so Becket had fallen into the role of manservant. He could read and write and studied books on how to be the perfect gentleman’s gentleman. He only spoke when spoken to, never complained, even when his wages were late.
As Harry did not like people asking him questions, particularly about the Boer War, he respected his servant’s reticence.
Although Becket was expected to eat the same food as his master, he was still thin and pale, but apart from that seemed healthy and strong enough.
Harry, resplendent in new morning dress and silk hat, arrived finally at Stacey Magna, to be met by the earl’s coachman and two footmen who bore them off in a well-sprung carriage to Stacey Court.
Stacey Court was a Tudor mansion, built of red brick and with many mullioned windows which flashed and twinkled in the summer sun as the carriage bowled up a long drive under an avenue of lime trees. Harry was surprised to think of Lady Rose in such an antique setting. He had pictured her in a stately Georgian home with portico at the front and long Palladian windows.
Brum, the butler, was on the steps to meet them. Two footmen followed the butler with the luggage up an old oak staircase and then along a corridor which seemed to be full of steps up and steps down and threatening overhead beams, in places so low that the captain had to duck his head.
The room Harry was ushered into had a magnificent four-poster bed. A small adjoining room had been allocated to Becket. Somehow Harry was glad that his manservant was to be close at hand and not confined to the servants’ quarters, although Becket would be expected to take his meals in the servants’ hall. Harry was told the earl expected him in his study as soon as he had freshened up after the journey. There was a spot of soot on his shirt-front. Becket changed him into a clean shirt and bent down and gave his master’s shoes a polish.
“What will you do?” asked Harry after he had rung the bell to be conducted to the earl’s study.
“I will go down to the servants’ hall, sir.”
“Get on all right, will you? I mean, you haven’t been with other servants before.”
“I am sure I shall manage.”
Harry looked at him doubtfully, wondering how his manservant would cope with the rigid class system that existed among servants in large houses.
A footman appeared and Harry followed him along the corridor and then back down the stairs under the gaze of family portraits to the hall, where Brum was waiting to take over. He led Harry across the hall and into the study on the ground floor.
“There you are again,” said the earl gloomily. “I’m in a fix. Sit down. Have sherry. Help yourself. Have you eaten?”
“I had lunch on the train. Let’s get to business.”