Nan Easter, the formidable head of the formidable firm of A. Easter and Sons was negotiating the purchase of a new London home. Never one to waste time in unnecessary searches or pointless preliminaries, she had discovered the property she wanted within three days of commencing her search for it, a first grade house in fashionable Bedford Square, double-fronted and built in the Palladian style, with a huge pediment and engaged columns. Just the right sort of house for a woman in her position in society. Now she was bullying the vendor’s solicitor to get the deal completed as quickly as possible.
He had come to her office in the Strand, cheerfully enough and according to her instructions, ready to undertake the sale in his usual leisurely way, but now, after a mere half-hour in the lady’s demanding presence, he was already finding the transaction more difficult that he could ever have imagined.
She was so impatient and so domineering, quite unlike any other woman he’d ever had to deal with. The force of her character had been a considerable surprise to him, for she was such a little woman, barely five feet tall and slender as a reed in her straight green coat and her little button boots, but the face above the green velveteen should have given him pause despite her lack of inches. It was such an open, confident, expressive face, framed by thick dark hair that sprang from her temples in forceful curls, wide of brow, with shrewd brown eyes and a wide mouth and the most determined chin he’d ever seen on a woman. An honest face, he thought, but with far too many marks of passion upon it; laughter lines fanning beside those eyes and two deep lines of temper between eyebrows as thick and dark as any man’s. It was, as he now realized rather belatedly, the face of a person used to getting her own way.
He had opened the proceedings with his usual caution, stressing that it might well take some little time before a suitable price could be agreed upon but assuring her of his best endeavours in the matter. And she’d fairly brushed him aside.
‘Tosh, Mr Randall,’ she said, ‘I’m a woman of business. I en’t got all day to haggle, so I’ll tell ’ee straight what we’ll do. I will offer a fair price, you will inform the vendor, and if ’tis agreeable I’ll buy and if it en’t I’ll look elsewhere. There are squares a-plenty in this city and one is much the same as any other.’
He was much put out, although he did his best not to let her see it. ‘How if the vendor would prefer to bargain, ma’am?’ he suggested. ‘The asking price is often, if I may make so bold as to point out, merely offered by way of preliminary. Lengthy negotiations are customary.’
‘Maybe they are,’ she said, grinning at him, ‘but I en’t. Come now, the vendor wants to return to the Bardados and is to stay there, which I know for a fact. He’ll be glad of a sale at the price I’m offering, depend upon it.’
Such bluntness took his breath away. ‘This is all – um – rather unorthodox, ma’am, if you will forgive me for saying so,’ he protested.
She put back her head and roared with laughter at him. ‘So I should hope,’ she said forcefully. ‘Leave orthodoxy to the timid, Mr Randall. ’T en’t for the likes of us, I tell ’ee plain. Come now, is it a deal or no?’
So with considerable trepidation he had to agree to put her offer to the vendor. She seemed to have no qualms about the matter at all and no further time to spend upon it. He gathered his papers and bade her good morrow politely, but he noticed as he left her that she was already busy studying the close-packed figures in an account book. An extraordinary woman, he thought, to have so little care where she lives. One square as good as any other! Dear me! What an opinion! They’d have something to say about that in Berkeley Square or St James’s. And he went down the stairs towards the midsummer heat of the Strand shaking his head with amazement.
Actually he was quite wrong about her, although it would probably have made his position even more difficult had he known the true state of her intentions. For Nan Easter meant to own the house she’d chosen, and neither he nor the Barbadian vendor, nor anyone else for that matter, was going to be allowed to stand in her way.
It was the right time for a change. She’d altered the management of her firm, increased her sales tenfold in the last five years and refused to marry her lover after an affair that had gone on for the best part of fifteen, and now, at the energetic age of two-and-forty, she was embarking on a new life of her own.
She read the accounts rapidly, making swift notes in the margins and glancing at the clock from time to time, for she had allowed herself twenty minutes for the task and then she and Mr Teshmaker would be meeting to discuss the London trade. And Cosmo Teshmaker was always scrupulously punctual.
Sure enough he came knocking on her door just as the clock began to strike midday. They smiled at one another like the old friends they were.
‘Did all go well, ma’am?’ he asked.
‘’Course,’ she said. ‘I shall be in residence by September, depend upon it.’
It didn’t surprise him. When had the resourceful Nan Easter ever been baulked of anything she wanted? The idea of anyone opposing her was quite unthinkable.
‘Sales are still poor, I see,’ she said, waving her quill at the account book.
‘Except in Mayfair and Bloomsbury.’
‘Um,’ she said. ‘Peace may be preferable to war, but it sells fewer newspapers. Should we venture that second shop in Piccadilly, think ’ee?’
‘On balance,’ he said gravely, ‘it is my opinion it would be a justified risk.’
‘Then we will risk it,’ she said, brushing the palms of her hands against each other, swish swish, the way she always did when she’d made a decision.
‘What news of Mr John?’ the lawyer asked.
‘Still in Cambridge,’ his mother said. ‘I had a letter from him this morning. He means to come home to us via Ely, so he says, which seems an uncommon circuitous route to me, but all done to give him two days to inspect his new shop there.’
‘He is thorough,’ Mr Teshmaker said. ‘That you cannot deny.’
‘Unlike my harum-scarum Billy,’ his mother said, grinning at the thought of her elder son. ‘He spends every spare moment in Bury these days a-courting Miss Honeywood. I tell him I’m beginning to forget what he looks like.’
‘Indeed, yes,’ the lawyer said. ‘He does seem much enamoured of the lady.’ And he wondered whether a wedding might not just be possible, but forbore to speak of it in case he upset his old friend’s feelings, which must be tender, in all conscience, considering how recently she’d parted from her lover. He had the greatest respect for Mrs Easter, and would never willingly do anything to cause her pain.
‘’Twould be a good match,’ she said, grinning again. ‘Mr Honeywood is almost as rich as I am and Matilda quite as fond and foolish as my Billy.’
‘So it is rumoured.’
‘Well we shall see,’ Nan said, opening her account book as a signal that their business meeting was about to begin. ‘Billy is a loving creature, in all conscience, but he lacks seriousness. ’Twas Johnnie took a double portion of that commodity.’
‘And makes good use of it, you will allow,’ Mr Teshmaker smiled, gathering his accounts together in a neat pile.
‘’Twon’t win him a wife,’ his mother said, grimacing. ‘Nor a lover I’m thinking. And that do seem a pity to me. Now that he’s a manager of this firm a wife would be timely. Howsomever, I en’t seen the slightest sign of any interest in that direction.’
‘Still waters, Mrs Easter?’ Mr Teshmaker suggested diplomatically.
‘Lack of inclination, Cosmo. Now as to last week’s sales …
*
It was an opinion she shared with Miss Harriet Sowerby, although of course neither of them knew it. All through that summer Harriet had been reminding her Maker of the possibility that He might help her to see Mr Easter again. She said regular and heartfelt prayers about it, tentatively suggesting possible lines of action: that the gentleman might drive up Churchgate Street as she and her family were walking to church, perhaps, or arrive by stagecoach at a time when she’d been sent on an errand that would take her through Angel Square, or meet her when she’d been sent to escort Miss Pettie on her weekly trip to market. But there was no answer. Mr Easter remained elsewhere.
His brother Billy came rollicking into town every Saturday night as regular as clockwork, as Miss Pettie reported to Mr and Mrs Sowerby equally regularly every Sunday after the service.
‘Visiting again, my dears,’ she would say. ‘’Twill be a match. Depend on’t. Mrs Thistlethwaite tells me they went riding this morning. Down to Rattlesden to visit with his sister, Mrs Hopkins, I shouldn’t wonder. The romance of it, my dears!’ And Harriet listened to the conversation, hoping that this time he’d brought his brother with him. And was constantly disappointed.
Finally when ten weeks had passed and twenty-one earnest prayers had been ignored, and the wheat was golden-brown in the fields, she decided that she would have to take matters in hand herself.
The next Thursday afternoon, when she was helping Miss Pettie with her sewing, she asked whether other members of the Easter family did not visit their house in Bury during the summer.
‘Mrs Easter is uncommon busy this year,’ the old lady said, squinting at her tacking and then happily setting it aside for the greater pleasure of a little gentle gossip. ‘We have seen her but rarely, more’s the pity of it, for she is a fine woman, my dear, and highly thought of in the town. Howsomever if Mr Billy and Miss Honeywood make a match then I am sure we shall see a great deal more of her. He is invited to her twentieth birthday party next month, which I do consider most significant. I introduced them, you know my dear, at the Victory Ball, little dreaming what might come of it. There was romance in the very air that night, my dear.’
And she was off into a happy reminiscence that lasted fully fifteen minutes. Harriet endured it quietly and smiled agreement when she thought it appropriate, but it seemed an age before she could rephrase her question and ask it again.
‘And what of Mr John, Miss Pettie? Does he not visit with his brother from time to time.’ Even as she heard the words she knew she was being too direct. She sounded forward and unladylike and she knew she was blushing for shame at her presumption, and ducked her head towards the chemise she was sewing, hoping that Miss Pettie wouldn’t notice. Oh dear, oh dear.
Miss Pettie ignored the blush, for she was always the soul of discretion where the comfort of her guests was concerned. But although she said nothing she thought much and happily. For had she not introduced this quiet child to young Mr John that very summer? How if she were to further another match in the Easter family? What a triumph that would be!
‘Well now, my dear,’ she said, ‘Mr John is busier than his mother, so they do say. He is a manager now, you see, with a deal of responsibility. Mr Orton tells me he has opened six new shops just hereabouts and each and every one quite as grand as the shop in the Buttermarket, with fine curtains in the windows and armchairs in the reading-room and the signs all new painted and everything in order. But no more than we should expect, I do assure you. He was always such a diligent young man, even as a child. A scholar.’
This was better, for it sounded more like gossip than unseemly interest. ‘You have known him for a long time, I daresay,’ Harriet said, prompting further information in the accepted way.
‘Indeed I have, my dear. A very long time. Why, we’ve been neighbours for – let me see – it must be eight years at the very least. Mr Billy and Mr John were mere stripling boys when they first came to my door. Billy was just fifteen, I recall, the same age as you, my dear, and so handsome. Such a fine figure and so tall. He could reach any shelf in the house without even stretching his arms. Imagine that! “Pray allow me, Miss Pettie,” he would say to me. So politely. And now he’s courting Miss Honeywood. Who’d a’ thought it? They went riding again last Sunday. And to think I introduced ’em. Oh there was romance in the air that night …’
Oh, Harriet thought, concentrating on the next button hole, if only some of it had touched my Mr Easter. And while Miss Pettie rambled happily and garrulously on, she allowed herself the luxury of a little romantic daydream, and went riding with Mr John down the leafy lanes towards his sister’s house in Rattlesden, where she was lifted, oh so tenderly, from her horse and led through bright sunshine into the welcoming house where Mrs Hopkins came tripping forward to kiss her welcome and to say …
‘I am thinking of taking a little trip to Ipswich in a day or two,’ Miss Pettie said. ‘Do you think I could prevail upon your parents to permit you to accompany me, my dear? We could stay overnight at the Crown and Anchor, which is the most respectable establishment and served me a quite excellent dinner the last time I was there. Yes, indeed. Quite excellent. You would like that, would you not?’
‘Yes, Miss Pettie,’ Harriet agreed, setting her daydreams aside and reaching for the scissors. A trip to Ipswich would be very pleasant if her parents would allow it.
‘And then if all goes well,’ Miss Pettie promised, ‘we could go further afield the next time, to Norwich, perhaps, or Cambridge, which is a trifle old-fashioned, but worth a visit. I should like to go to Bath and take the waters which they say are quite excellent for the rheumatics, howsomever that would have to wait until the spring for I can’t abide that city in winter time.’
Harriet said she would be happy to accompany Miss Pettie to any or all of these places, but secretly she would have traded every single one for a chance to see Mr Easter when he came to Bury to attend the Honeywood party.
Unfortunately the Honeywoods, being the most hospitable of parents and mindful of their position in society, had decided that their daughter’s twentieth birthday should be celebrated by a rout, a night-long, fashionable party with dancing and gaming and entertainments of every kind. Their country seat was good enough for a garden party, but there was only one place for the sort of reception they had in mind, and that was their town house in Cavendish Square. So on that warm September evening when the Easter brothers arrived to assist in the celebrations, Harriet was a long way away from their sight and their thoughts.
Billy was in a state of muddled intoxication, which was partly due to the half bottle of British Hollands he’d consumed before he left home and partly to the prospect of an evening being teased and tormented by his bewitching beloved. He was dressed in the very latest style, as befitted a manager of the great firm of A. Easter and Sons, in a pink frock coat, white silk waistcoat and an exuberant purple cravat that wouldn’t have looked amiss on the wild Lord Byron himself. His face was already flushed, and his forehead moist and his blue eyes watery, and he was saying secret prayers that this time he would comport himself with style and avoid the usual clumsy accidents that had dogged him all through the summer.
For wherever he went with the delectable Miss Honeywood, and however hard he tried to be adroit and suave in order to impress her, he always ended up making a fool of himself. When they rode together, his horse bucked him off, when they danced he trod on her feet, and when he took tea with her parents he smashed her mother’s precious porcelain and, on one fearful occasion, broke the leg of a chair, which turned out to have been made by Mr Chippendale.
In the warehouse his broad shoulders and sturdy legs were useful and admired. He could shift the heavy batches of newspapers as deftly as any of his workmen, and besides that his knowledge of the trade and his ability to make decisions quickly had given him a reputation for dependability and common sense. But in salons and theatres, at parties and dances and routs, it was as if he’d reverted to his childhood again. Some part of his anatomy always seemed to be in somebody’s way. People fell over his feet, or removed chairs just as he was about to sit on them. Or he would be rapt in some ardent conversation and wave an arm and demolish an entire tray of champagne glasses. And the more deeply he fell in love with his dear Matilda, the more clumsy and foolish he appeared before her. It was getting so bad it was beginning to upset him. If only he could be cool and contained like Johnnie. Not all the time, of course, because being cool and contained all the time was really rather a bore, but now and then, when he needed to be. Like this evening, for example, when his nervousness and fussing had made them terribly late.
He glanced at his brother as he stepped delicately down from their carriage, brushing an imaginary fleck from the cloth of his blue coat and surveying the road in his calm contained way.
But in fact John was not as calm as he looked. He had accepted this invitation because he couldn’t find any credible reason for refusing it, and he too had dressed with care, but soberly, of course, in his new blue cloth jacket and his new buff trousers, and a cravat of plain white linen heavily starched and tied with such precision it looked as though it had been ironed to his neck, but despite all his efforts and his quite admirable composure, he was feeling terribly shy.
But the rout was shriekingly under way and there was nothing for it but to follow Billy into the house where a footman resplendent in green livery and gold braid dazzled them into the ballroom. It was an overpowering place, being decorated in red and green and hung about with bunting, and it was already uncomfortably full of guests, all taking up more room than usual because they were in their best clothes, and making a great deal of noise since that was what was expected of them at a rout. Four great chandeliers blazed like burning bushes above the embroidered muslins and shimmering silks and extraordinary coiffures of the ladies. There was a band on a raised dais playing discordantly but very loudly, and everybody seemed to be rushing from place to place, glass in hand, spilling wine as they ran.
‘Mr Easter, you wretched creature,’ Matilda Honeywood said, scampering towards them with both hands outstretched to catch Billy’s hands and twirl him about. ‘I declare we all thought you had reneged upon us. How late you are! Mr Ottenshaw has been here an age, you bad, bad creature, and moping for lack of you.’ And she smiled at him with her eyes and tossed her curls at him and beat him with her fan, which spun him into a state of such happy confusion that he trod backwards onto the feet of an unobtrusive dowager who had the misfortune to be sitting behind him.
‘Oh!’ he said, ‘I am so sorry. I didn’t mean …’
‘Of no consequence,’ the poor lady murmured, trying not to wince. ‘I do assure you.’
‘This is Mr William Easter, Aunt,’ Matilda explained, waving one airy hand by way of introduction. ‘He treads on everybody.’
‘Oh steady on!’ Billy protested. ‘Not everybody, Miss Honeywood.’
‘You’ve trod on me enough times,’ she said dragging him off through the throng. ‘I declare I’m black and blue all over.’
‘Steady on!’ he begged again. ‘I ain’t said how d’ee do to your parents. And anyway how do I know you’re black and blue all over, eh? Tell me that. I don’t see any bruises, upon me soul I don’t.’
She turned to give him the full benefit of her fine grey eyes, standing so close to him that he could see the little pulse beating at her throat and feel the warmth of her body almost as if he were holding her in his arms. ‘Shame upon you, Mr Easter,’ she teased. ‘Have I to strip to my chemise to show you the harm you do?’ It pleased her to wonder what it would be like to strip to her chemise in front of Billy Easter, for he really was extremely handsome.
The thought of it made him weak at the knees. ‘Miss Honeywood!’ he said. ‘Matilda!’ But then a gaggle of her friends came bearing down upon them, all talking at once, and the image and the opportunity were lost.
‘This is Miss Lizzie Moffat,’ she said, seizing a tall, skinny girl by the hand and pulling her forward. ‘My dearest, dearest friend. Allow me to present Mr William Easter, Lizzie my darling, and his brother Mr John.’
‘How d’ee do,’ the skinny girl said, profering two limp fingers to each of the brothers in turn. ‘Womantic wout, ain’t it? Weally womantic. They’ve got woses everywhere. Positively miles and miles of wed woses. It’s incwedible.’
She was a peculiarly unattractive girl, John thought, and her lack of charm was accentuated by that deliberate drawling lisp. She was far too tall for a start, and bony and gawky, her fair hair tortured into lank ringlets, and her faced so blotched with freckles that at first sight he thought she was suffering from some sort of skin disease. A bean pole with a skin disease he thought, wryly. But he was not to be allowed to avoid her.
‘You are to dance with my dear Lizzie,’ Matilda whispered, leaning towards Billy’s chest until she was touching his waistcoat with the tips of her fingers. ‘Both of you. Because she is my very dearest friend. And you are to dance with her first, Mr William Easter, or I vow I shan’t tread a single measure with you myself. No, not so much as one single measure. So you’ve been warned you bad, bad boy.’
So of course Lizzie’s card had to be marked there and then, and two dances booked with each of them, which she pronounced, ‘Perfectly thwilling!’ in tones of unalloyed boredom.
As he put his dance card back into his pocket John knew that it was going to be a perfectly dreadful evening. And for a fleeting second before Matilda rushed them off to pay their respects to her parents, he remembered the quiet girl he’d danced with in Bury St Edmunds and wished she could be here to rescue him.
But no rescue was at hand, and the impossible Lizzie was pushed before him at every turn, almost as if Miss Honeywood was going out of her way to fling them together, which heaven forefend. She was produced at supper time, to tempt him with a plateful of vol-au-vents as limp as her curls; she was propelled flat-footed into the centre of the Scottische to partner him; and even when he fled from her company to a quiet seat in the darkest corner of the long library, somehow or other she appeared on the very next seat before three minutes of precious privacy had passed. It was like being pursued by a broomstick. By the time midnight struck and he was endeavouring to waltz with her while keeping her at arm’s length he was heartily sick of her. It was quite a relief to hear his mother’s bold laugh and to realize that she had joined the company. Now at last he had a perfectly proper reason to desert the dance floor and leave his unwanted companion.
‘My heart alive!’ Nan Easter said, when the dance was done and he was able to join her. ‘Who was that apparition a-hanging onto your arm?’
He gave her a little grimace of agreement and explained. ‘Her name is Lizzie Something-or-other, and she is Miss Honeywood’s best friend, according to Miss Honeywood.’
‘Ah!’ his mother said, understanding at once. ‘’Tis the habit of pretty young girls nowadays to choose some great gawk to befriend. ’Tis uncharitable, in all conscience, but a neat ruse, for it renders their beauty inescapable.’
John grimaced again. ‘It has been my experience tonight, Mama,’ he said, ‘that it is the great gawk who is inescapable.’
‘Fetch me a rum punch,’ she said, grinning at him, ‘and we will go into the library and talk business.’
William Easter had been sent for rum punch too, and was equally glad to go, although for very different reasons. It was always a pleasure to wait on his dear Matilda and, besides, dancing had given him a thirst.
‘D’you see my Matilda?’ he asked his brother as they stood side by side at the serving table. ‘Ain’t she just a corker? Come and join us, why don’t you?’
‘Because this rum punch is for Mama.’
‘Ah!’ his brother said. ‘Duty before pleasure, eh?’ And was surprised when John laughed at him, for he’d really imagined that his brother was enjoying the rout as much as he was.
‘If only you knew,’ John said. ‘I will tell you about her later.’ And he followed his mother into the library.
‘I’ve arranged to see Mr Chaplin at six o’clock tomorrow morning at the Cross Keys,’ he said as soon as they had both sat down. And was pleased by the immediate approval on her face.
‘Good,’ she said briskly. ‘He’s an outspoken man, but you’ll find him fair.’
‘I have given much thought to this meeting, Mama,’ he said. ‘I do not think you will find me wanting.’
‘No more do I,’ she said cheerfully. ‘For much depends upon this deal, which you and I know well. I mean to travel to York within the week, to open a shop or two there, and a reading-room too, I daresay. I suggest you start work upon the Bath road when you’ve seen Mr Chaplin. ’Twould be as well to get negotiations underway before the winter puts paid to travel. What think ’ee?’
‘I believe you have read my notebooks, Mama,’ he said, ‘since you suggest my own plans, entirely.’
‘You understand this business as well as I do,’ she said grinning at him.
‘Not quite, Mama,’ he said, gallantly but truthfully. ‘But I mean to one day, you may depend on it.’