opined that there were a multitude of peacetime jobs that were in the gift of Royalty, and that such jobs, filled by military men, were not demanding of time, yet were generous in their pay, promotion, and prestige. ‘He cannot retire as a Major,’ Lady Spindacre said scathingly.
‘And only a brevet Major, indeed,’ Jane confessed.
‘At the very least he should secure his Colonelcy. He could take a sinecure at the Tower, or at Windsor. My dear Jane, he should insist on a knighthood! Look how many other men, with much lesser achievements, are being deluged with rewards! All your husband needs do, my dearest, is to cultivate those high attachments. He must present himself at Court, he must persist in his acquaintances there, and he will succeed.’
This was all sweet and sensible music to Jane who, newly released from a stultifying youth, saw the world as a great and exciting place in which she could soar. Sharpe, she knew, had already had his adventures, but surely he would not deny her the opportunities of social advancement?
And Juliet, Lady Spindacre, was ideally placed to advise on such advancement. She was no older than Jane, just twenty-five, yet she had cleverly married a middle-aged Major-General who had died of the fever in southern France. Jane met the newly widowed Lady Juliet on the boat which returned them both to England, and the two girls had made an immediate friendship. ‘You must not keep calling me Lady Spindacre,’ Juliet had said, and Jane had revelled in the intimacy that was cemented by the similarities between the two girls. They were both women who attracted lascivious glances from the ship’s officers, they shared a fascination in the feminine accoutrements of clothes and cosmetics, men and intrigue, and they were both ambitious to succeed in society. ‘Of course,’ the Lady Spindacre explained, ‘I shall have to be reticent for a while, because of dear Harold’s death, but it will only be for a short while.’ Lady Spindacre was not wearing mourning for, she said, her dear Sir Harold would not have wanted it. ‘He only ever wanted me to be a spirit at liberty, to enjoy myself.’
Juliet Spindacre’s enjoyment of life was nevertheless threatened by her health, which was fragile, and by her constant worries about the dead Sir Harold’s will. ‘He had children by his first wife,’ Juliet told Jane, ‘and they are monsters! They will doubtless attempt to purloin the inheritance, and till the case is settled I am quite penniless.’
This penury was no immediate problem, for Jane Sharpe had the resources of her husband’s great fortune that had been taken from the enemy at Vitoria. ‘At the very least,’ Lady Spindacre advised, ‘you should establish yourself in London until the Major returns. That way, dearest one, you can at least attempt to assist his career, and if he should be so ungrateful on his return as to insist on a country home, then you can rest in the assurance that you did your best.’
Which all seemed eminently sensible to Jane who, on reaching London, and advised by the dear Lady Spindacre, withdrew all her husband’s money. She disliked Messrs Hopkinsons of St Alban’s Street who, when she first approached them, had tried by every means possible to prevent her from closing Major Sharpe’s account. They questioned his signature, doubted her authority, and it was only a visit from Lady Spindacre’s lawyer that eventually persuaded them to make over a letter of credit which Jane sensibly lodged in a proper banking house where a young and elegant man seemed delighted to make her acquaintance.
Not all the money was so sensibly secured. The Lady Spindacre had much to teach Jane about the ways of society, and such lessons were expensive. There was a house in fashionable Cork Street to buy, new servants to find, and furniture to buy. The servants had to be uniformed, and then there were the necessary dresses for Jane and Lady Spindacre. They needed dresses for morning wear, for receiving, for dinners, for luncheons, for suppers, and such were the strictures of Jane’s new busy life that no single dress could be worn more than once, at least, Lady Spindacre averred, not in front of the people the two friends intended to court. There were calling cards to engrave, carriages to hire, and connections to make, and Jane persuaded herself that she did it all in her husband’s best interests.
Thus Jane was busy and, in her business, happy. Then, just two weeks after the bells of London had rung their joyous message of peace, the thunderbolt had struck.
The thunderbolt arrived in the form of two dark-suited men who claimed to bear the authority of the Judge Advocate General’s office. Jane had refused to receive them in her new drawing-room in Cork Street, but the two men forced their way past the maid and firmly, though courteously, insisted on speaking with Mrs Jane Sharpe. They asked first whether she was the wife of Major Richard Sharpe.
Jane, pressed in terror against the Chinese wallpaper that the dear Juliet had insisted on buying, confirmed that she was.
And was it true, the two men asked, that Mrs Sharpe had recently withdrawn eighteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-four pounds, fourteen shillings and eightpence from Messrs Hopkinsons and Sons, Army Agents, of St Alban’s Street?
And what if she had? Jane asked.
Would Mrs Sharpe care to explain how her husband came to have so much money in his possession?
Mrs Sharpe did not care to explain. Jane was frightened, but she found the courage to brazen out her defiance. Besides, she saw how both men were attracted to her, and she had the wit to know that such men would not be personally unkind to a young lady.
The two dark-suited men nevertheless respectfully informed Mrs Sharpe that His Majesty’s Government, pending an investigation into the behaviour of her husband, would seek the return of the monies. All the monies, which, Jane knew, meant all the monies spent on powder and lace and hair-pieces and satin and champagne and the house; even the house! Her house!
She panicked when the men were gone, but dear Lady Spindacre, who had been in bed with a mild fever, rallied swiftly and declared that no dark-suited men from the Judge Advocate General’s office had the right to persecute a lady. ‘The Judge Advocate General is a nonentity, dearest one. Merely a tiresome civilian who needs to be slapped down.’
‘But how?’ Jane no longer appeared as a sophisticated and elegant beauty, but rather resembled the timid and innocent girl she had been just a year before.
‘How?’ The Lady Spindacre, seeing the threat to the source of Jane’s money, which was also the only source of the Lady Spindacre’s present wealth, was ready for battle. ‘We use those connections, of course. What else is society for? What was the name of the Prince Regent’s aide de camp? The one who was so solicitous of your husband?’
‘Lord Rossendale,’ Jane said, ‘Lord John Rossendale.’ So far she had been too scared to try and profit from that tenuous connection; it seemed too ambitious and too remote, but now an emergency had happened, and Jane well understood that Carlton House, where the Prince’s court resided, far outranked the drab offices of the Judge Advocate General. ‘But I only met Lord Rossendale once,’ she said timidly.
‘Was he rude to you?’
‘Far from it. He was most kind.’
‘Then write to him. You will have to send him some small trifle, of course.’
‘What could I possibly send such a man?’
‘A snuff-box is usual,’ Lady Spindacre said casually. ‘For a respectable favour, he’d expect one costing at least a hundred pounds. Would you like me to buy one, dearest? I am not feeling so poorly that I cannot reach Bond Street.’
A jewelled snuff-box was duly bought and, that same evening, Jane wrote her letter. She wrote it a dozen times until she was satisfied with her words then, as carefully as a child under the stern eye of a tutor, she
