Bowlby, Banker Bowlby’s wife, was holding court in her drawing room surrounded by cronies and toadies on the afternoon after Georgie’s encounter with Jess, and she could scarcely contain her enthusiasm on learning of his arrival.
‘You are sure, Letitia,’ she announced, addressing the poor gentlewoman who was her cousin, dependent and victim, ‘that he really has taken up quarters here? I would not like to make a fool of myself by visiting an empty house in order to be patronised by that awful butler. One might imagine that, if the heir truly has taken up residence here, one of his first acts will be to dismiss him and engage someone more suitable.’
‘Oh, I am quite sure that he is the gentleman now in residence,’ Miss Letitia Markham reassured her demanding mistress. ‘The cook there told our cook that he arrived here two days ago, but has not advertised his presence to the generality. He wished to inspect the house and grounds in private, he said. Far from sacking the butler, he immediately rehired the few servants left to look after the house—so I’m afraid you will have to put up with him, Maria.’
One of poor Miss Letitia’s few comforts in life was to administer small pinpricks to annoy her irascible employer, whose only concession to her poverty-stricken cousin was to allow her to use her Christian name. Fortunately for Letitia, Mrs Bowlby was never quite sure whether the pinpricks were accidental or intended.
‘The more fool he, then!’ she exclaimed. ‘He had a fine opportunity for a clean sweep. Have you any notion who he is? Of what family or fortune? Or how old he might be? Has he a wife, for example?’
Miss Letitia smiled and nodded. ‘Oh, yes. He is Mr Jesmond Fitzroy, Miss Jesmond’s great-nephew who used to stay with her, I am reliably informed, many years ago when he was only a lad. He is not married. Of his own family or fortune, I have no information—or rather, our cook had none.’
‘Hmm, Fitzroy,’ murmured old Miss Walton of Walton Court. ‘An odd name. I seem to remember a boy of that name visiting Miss Jesmond some twenty-odd summers back.’
‘It means King’s son,’ declared Mrs Bowlby, nodding authoritatively. ‘Probably goes back to the Middle Ages.’
‘Oh, how romantic,’ gushed Mrs Firth, whose own family only went back to Elizabethan times, although Letitia often privately thought that that meant nothing since all families went back to Adam and Eve. This was an opinion so seditious that she never voiced it aloud.
Instead, she added slyly, ‘I understand that Mrs Pomfret sent Mr Fitzroy an invitation to supper which—according to what his cook said to ours—he gratefully accepted.’
‘Did he, indeed! One would never have suspected that she might be so forward—she being such an invalid these days. What does puzzle me,’ added Mrs. Bowlby, ‘is how it is that the servants always know these things before we do. You must have spent a great deal of time gossiping in the kitchen with cook today, Letitia, to have learnt all that.’
This last came out as a piece of overt criticism.
Miss Letitia was in no way daunted. ‘Yes, wasn’t it fortunate that I did? Otherwise we should all still be in the dark about our new neighbour!’
‘Has Mrs Pomfret invited anyone other than Mr Fitzroy to supper?’ asked Miss Walton, looking around her. ‘I have heard nothing—has anyone else?’
No one confessed to having been invited. Mrs Bowlby, giving a ladylike sniff, said, ‘You may be sure that she will monopolise him if she can. I will not be at all surprised if he is her only guest.’
Mrs Bowlby plainly felt that her desire to be the first lady of Netherton—spurred on by Caro Pomfret’s retirement from public life—was under threat if Caro decided to leave her sofa and return to it.
She was just about to say something even more cutting than usual about the Pomfrets when the butler opened the door and announced ‘Mrs Charles Herron,’ and Georgie walked in, looking charming in a leaf-green walking dress which showed off her russet hair and green eyes to advantage.
So much so that, looking at her ladylike self in her mirror, she had felt so composed and comme il faut that she had a sudden wish to call on Mr Jesmond Fitzroy and dazzle him in her character of Professor Charles Herron’s wife, to demonstrate how mistaken he had been to dismiss her as a hoyden in breeches.
She had, on the other hand, not the slightest desire to visit Mrs Bowlby, whom she disliked intensely, but, having defied Caro’s wishes over meeting Mr Fitzroy again and inviting him to supper, felt that she was compelled to oblige her over Mrs Bowlby.
‘Try to find out,’ Caro had said eagerly, before she set out, ‘whether there is any useful gossip about our new neighbour to be gleaned. Mrs Bowlby’s cook is Miss Jesmond’s cook’s sister, you know.’
Georgie didn’t know, and was sadly amused by the vacuous tittle-tattle which formed the staple of provincial life. Her marriage to a gentleman-scholar who had been a pillar of academia at Oxford University had introduced her to a far different society. It had necessitated making herself over into a demure and outwardly conventional wife, but she had considered that a fair exchange for her entry into the world of ideas in which he had reigned supreme.
Her return to Netherton had shown her its emptiness—but she could not say that to Caro, nor that her reversion to her previous lively ways was a silent rebellion against Netherton’s dullness. Nevertheless, to please Caro, she smiled at Mrs Bowlby, pretending that the greatest desire of her life was to sit in her drawing room, to drink weak tea and to engage in prattle about all those neighbours who were not present.
Mrs Bowlby was not slow to attack. ‘I understand that Mrs Pomfret has already asked our new neighbour to supper. May I ask if you have met him, Mrs Herron?’
After a night’s rest and a private determination that she was making a cake of herself over Mr Jesmond Fitzroy, for whose opinion she did not give a damn—to use a phrase which her brother John had been fond of—Georgie found it easy to answer the Gorgon, the name with which she had privately dubbed Mrs Bowlby.
‘Oh, indeed. By pure chance, I assure you. I was walking with the children in the paddock between the Hall and Jesmond House when we came upon him.’
She paused, surveying the expectant faces around her who were finding her narrative much more exciting than the tale of what one cook had said to another.
‘And what did you make of him?’ burst from Miss Walton, who had the reputation of being both downright and forthright and tried to live up to it.
‘I thought that he appeared most gentlemanly and agreeable. He was dressed in the London fashion,’ said Georgie with a smile, as though she and Jess had been exchanging civilised pleasantries on the previous afternoon instead of engaging in a slanging match.
‘We hear that he is young—in his thirties,’ stated Mrs Bowlby. ‘Did he mention anything about having a wife or a family?’
‘Oh, our conversation was brief and we never touched upon personal matters. Neither of us thought it the time or the place. We shall shortly know everything about him, shall we not? Until then we must possess ourselves in patience.’
The smile she offered the assembled company this time was that of Mrs Charles Herron of Church Norwood at her most cool and commanding and brooked of no contradiction. It killed further conversation about Jess Fitzroy dead, and the ladies were reduced to gossiping about the next Assembly Ball, due
