Chapter 8

Make no deep scrutiny

Into her mutiny

 

Lady Bettiscombe's Millinery was the finest hat shop in all of London. It was the perfect place for a privileged young lady like Margaret Marshall to spend her exorbitant allowance on frivolous and pretty things. It was a place to indulge herself, forgetting the sordid affair the day before between Peter and their father.

“Good day, Miss Marshall!” Lady Bettiscombe smiled from the arrangement she was primping at the window. “I have some lovely peach ribbons for you. They just came yesterday.”

“Sounds lovely.” Margaret smiled, and pulled her gloves off one finger at a time while Lady Bettiscombe retreated to the backroom.

Lady Bettiscombe had found herself in dire straits a few years prior, after the sudden death of her deeply indebted husband. Accustomed to a life of leisure Lady Bettiscombe decided to use her talent for design, and her well to do connections, and opened a hat shop. She created the most elegant designs, at least in Margaret's estimation, and she soon won over many of the women who once counted her as an equal. Now it seemed no one cared for her past and many flocked to her tiny hat shop to plunder her creations, making Lady Bettiscombe a very rich woman in her own right.

Margaret spotted an arrangement towards the back of the store, a variety of green hats with ostrich plumes and sleek black and brown ribbons tied in extravagant bows. Green had become quite the fashion since textile mills discovered a way to make a true, vibrant green. Margaret ran her fingers over the smooth surface of the ribbon and smiled.

The door opened with a loud flourish of the bell that hung overhead. Two women, boisterously laughing, entered the shop, not seeing Margaret near the back behind some bolts of cloth and fabric.

“She is not the first one to tire of her husband!”

Margaret recognized the voice in an instant as Mrs. Delilah Robbins. She was a speculative woman, with a propensity to gossip wildly. “But the entire thing is quite scandalous. Leaving the city so abruptly, without so much as a word to anyone. Never thought I'd see the day,” Delilah Robbins continued.

“Oh I saw it coming for years--” the other woman quipped but was cut short when Lady Bettiscombe returned.

“Good day ladies,” she said. “What is this you say? What did you see coming for years?”

“Lady Marshall, of course. She's run away from home,” Delilah said in that high pitched tone Margaret recognized her by. She often used a sing-song voice when she was excited to pass on her nuggets of titillating gossip.

Margaret clasped a hand over her mouth to muffle a gasp and then slipped further behind the cloth.

“I cannot say I believe it,” she heard Lady Bettiscombe say. Her voice was soft and almost apologetic. No doubt she questioned whether to tell the women that Lady Marshall's daughter was hiding amongst the fabric.

“I can,” Mrs. Robbins laughed. “Those two were ill-matched from the beginning. She's so headstrong and... unladylike in many respects. I am sorry to say it ladies, but it does not surprise me in the least.”

Margaret heard the voice of Mrs. Robbins becoming closer and closer to her, and then imagined the woman standing practically on top of her as she crouched in the shadows. Margaret gripped her mouth tightly, struggling to remain silent in the midst of such accusations. She could not stifle the tears that spilled over her cheeks. To be talked about in such a way, her family's respectability coming into question, was horrifying to behold. She bit her lower lip hard and closed her eyes to stave off the tears.

“Many women leave the city for their health,” Lady Bettiscombe tried to explain.

“But do they take their lover with them?”

Margaret pounced from her secret spot. “I beg your pardon?” she growled, unable to control the anger. “Of all the spiteful, malicious rumours to perpetuate! I have never heard such mean spirited gossip!” Margaret glanced to Lady Bettiscombe, aware of the scene she must be causing in her friend's shop. Seeing Lady Bettiscombe's face, Margaret's anger left her and she lowered her tone. “For your information, my mother has gone to our country house, alone, to help her lungs,” she lied.

Margaret reached for the peach ribbons in Lady Bettiscombe's hands. “Thank you, Lady Bettiscombe. You may charge these to my family's account.” Margaret forced a half smile, gave a slight curtsey more out of habit than respect, and left hastily.

 

A few blocks away she looked down to her hands and found the peach ribbons crumpled in her tight grasp. Propelled by fury, she had charged down the pavement side stepping couples walking arm in arm, and governesses with their small charges close at hand. She recognized no one and saw no haven from the gloom that engulfed her. The ribbons only exemplified how everything that was once gay had turned sour and unrecognizable.

It was hard to tell if she was angry that her mother possessed a lover, or angrier still that she had been caught. Margaret could hardly say she was shocked. She had known for a long while that her parents no longer harboured any passion for each other. Her mother had always been a wild card, refusing to play along in society, always living on the edge of respectability. She often said outlandish things, breaking standard conventions and protocols, and every so often allowing herself to become drunk in public. Her mother answered to no one, least of all her husband, and now she had created an even greater scandal than public drunkenness or committing a societal faux pas. Her mother's rash behaviour had finally caught up with the family and now they were paying the price for her heedlessness. Anyone who bore the name Marshall would be associated with her and the ill-bred choices she made.

Margaret intended to head straight for home, to write to Peter immediately but as she walked that plan seemed horribly unsatisfying. If she possessed any source of strength at all she’d demand her mother return to her husband in the city, where they can hopefully erase any thoughts of a lover from the whispers of the gossips.

But what if it was true?

Margaret stopped at a corner, unable to catch her breath. What if the rumour was true and not just the product of idle tongues?

She turned in place, placing a hand to her bosom as her breath quickened, the pace of pedestrians and carriages quickening along with it. The world around her became a streaked fog without distinguishable shapes. Closing her eyes momentarily she willed herself to calm. She pictured The Briar, her family’s country home in Tunbridge Wells, where her mother was no doubt passing the time reading a long neglected volume or surveying a healthy pile of social invitations. Margaret smiled at the thought and opened her eyes, with a renewed sense of assurance. Her mother would never take a lover, she told herself. Such a disgrace was unthinkable. All Margaret needed to do was head to The Briar to prove it.

With Peter gone, however, the simple task seemed that much harder. Her father would never permit her to travel alone, but then again she doubted she would bother to tell her father of her intentions. She needed an escort, someone she could trust to take her from the city and see her properly deposited in Tunbridge Wells. Someone without connections to London society.

Pushed along by a rush of people, Margaret walked, contemplating her need to be free of the city when she saw him, Jonas Davies, a friend of Peter’s whom he had met in medical school. Both doctors now, they kept close ties. Margaret had met him a many times, though because of his profession he would never been seen as a proper companion, and now that she saw him, she knew he was the answer she sought.

“Jonas!”

A block ahead of her, he stepped down from a carriage and walked a few steps along the pavement before turning into a building. Margaret hurried along, hoping to catch him and turned quickly into the front door where she had seen him disappear. Pushing passed some men at the entrance, she craned her neck and watched him slip further away from her.

“Jonas!” she yelled again but the noise in the dark room was too loud.

Someone stepped in front of her, smiling devilishly. “Pardon me,” she said, and squeezed by. The room was so tight with people, men mostly, Margaret became entangled in the crowd and she was forced to weave between people just to keep pace with Jonas. Then she felt someone pull at her arm and she jerked it away. “Pardon me!” She gave a hard glare to the man who had touched her and when she turned back to Jonas she saw that he had turned and recognized her now.

“Jonas,” she breathed. He was a tall man, taller than her brother Peter, though not by much, and wide in the shoulders. Where Peter had a lean, compact strength, Jonas was bulky and intimidating, not at all what you would expect a surgeon to be. He looked more like a prison warden or military captain. Despite this, he reminded her of Peter in every way and that is most likely why she was so desperate to reach him.

“Miss Marshall, what brings you here?” He licked his lips nervously and glanced around the room. Margaret followed his gaze and for the first time noticed where she was. At first glance it resembled a pub with a serving bar along one wall and men standing with drinks. There were a few tables where the men gathered around them held playing cards with thick cigars perched in their fingers. Jonas himself had a lit cigar in one hand. It was only when a barmaid passed between her and Jonas, wearing a dangerously low cut bodice revealing milk white mounds, did Margaret realize the place she stood in was a gentleman’s club with drink, gambling and women at their disposal.

Margaret’s eyes went straight to the floor. “Forgive me.” She turned quickly, dreading the long walk back to the street through the throng of men who had practically molested her as she walked in. She could sense Jonas closely behind her, which made her feel better. She felt his hand on her shoulder and his other arm around her motioning for those in front of them to move aside and let them through. Once out on the street and a sufficient distance away, Margaret turned to him, aware that her face had flushed a deep crimson. “It would appear my day is fraught with errors,” she said.

Jonas smiled. “I doubt that.”

“What is that pl—?” She shook her head quickly. “No, I don’t care to know.”

“It’s the kind of place I had never expected to see you in.” Jonas smiled, almost unapologetically. He slid his hands in to his pockets and breathed heavily, as if glad the awkward encounter had finished. “Come, let me see you home.” He raised his hand to summon a hansom to them and helped Margaret as she climbed in.

With the carriage rolling along toward Belgravia, Margaret waited, unable to look at him and yet very much aware of how much he was transfixed with her. “What kind of desperation could have brought you to me?” he asked after a long silence.

“I was not desperate!”

Jonas cocked an eyebrow. “Oh no? So you had intended to follow me straight into a gambling den?”

Margaret pressed her lips together and turned to look out the window. “I scarcely knew you were the type.” This was not entirely true. She knew rumours abound regarding his entertainment choices. He enjoyed a good drink, just like her brother Peter, but Jonas also liked to gamble. He had once arranged a betting pool when Peter had been scheduled to box the champion from a rival school. Margaret only heard of this after, of course, when both her brother and Jonas had fifty pounds in winnings to brag about. Had the outcome been different she doubted they would have been so bold to tell her about it.

She saw the look on Jonas’ face and knew she couldn’t continue with the charade and keep her dignity intact. “If you must know,” she relented, “I need to travel to Tunbridge Wells and I have no escort. I naturally thought of you.”

“Naturally.” A smile teased the corners of Jonas’ lips. Margaret ignored him.

“I shant require more than a day in travel time. You could be back in your gambling den before this time tomorrow.” She avoided his gaze but desperately wanted to see his reaction to her plan. From the corner of her view she saw his reluctance. “I will pay you for your time, of course.”

After a moment of silence the carriage stopped in front of Margaret’s home. Jonas left the carriage first and offered a hand to Margaret from the pavement. Walking down the three steps to the ground she looked him in the eye but could not decipher his thoughts.

“Very well,” he said at last. “When do we leave?”