‘He did?’ Her eyes glowed with pride to hear of her sweetheart’s courage.
‘Yes, he saved me from certain death, armed only with a brace of unloaded pistols. I had a razor held to my neck at the time.’
Lady Elizabeth frowned and took my arm in her gloved hand. ‘You’re serious, aren’t you? Someone did this to you?’
I hadn’t meant her to set off on this track. I tried to shrug but the shock in the eyes of a girl who had only ever known the comfortable life of the affluent made me realise just how far below her I was. My life was a series of buffets and blows, hers a round of tea parties and pretty dresses. I felt ashamed of myself. But, to my surprise, Lady Elizabeth said, ‘You are the bravest girl I’ve ever met, Miss Royal. I admire your courage.’
I met her gaze and saw that she was not looking at me as the scruffy commoner, but as the heroine of my own tale. As her equal.
‘Please call me Cat,’ I said. ‘All my friends do.’
She smiled. ‘Yes, I’d like that. And call me Lizzie . . . that’s what Papa and Frank call me at home.’
Our friendship sealed, we returned to the Sparrow’s Nest to find the rest of the party decked out in a fantastical selection of robes and crowns. Lord Francis had Pedro’s turban perched drunkenly on his head and he was making Sarah howl with laughter as he tried to imitate Pedro’s spinning dance.
‘Lawd love us,’ said Sarah. ‘You’d go down a treat on the stage you would, sir.’
Lord Francis stopped twirling and gave her a wobbly bow.
‘Ma’am, may you be blessed a hundred times for your kind words. An actor’s life for me, it is!’
‘How many dukes do you know who combine their duties with clowning in front of the rabble?’ asked Marchmont as he toyed contemptuously with a patched cloak.
‘Not enough!’ cried Lord Francis, making Miss Jane and Sarah giggle.
‘I think I’d better take my brother away, Cat,’ said Lady Elizabeth, ‘before he does himself an injury. Thank you for your kind attention this morning.’
Her thanks were followed by the warm farewells of the rest of the party . . . excepting the Marchmonts, of course. Still, I had to remove an ostrich feather that the younger Miss Marchmont had inadvertently slipped inside her reticule, much to the chagrin of her brother. I wondered if he had put it there.
‘Well,’ said Sarah, rocking in the armchair with a pile of mending on her lap, ‘if all lords were like that Lord Francis, England would be a fine place.’
I heartily agreed with her. Unfortunately, there were too many Marzi-pain Marchmonts to make that a reality.
SCENE 4 . . . SNOWBALLS
‘So, what’s the story behind you and Lady Elizabeth?’ I asked Johnny as I sat over the slate of sums he had set me. It was mid-afternoon and the sun was pouring obliquely through the grimy windows of his office, lighting his face with a pale golden glow. What a fine couple he and Lady Elizabeth would make if fortune smiled on them. No longer needing to conceal his activities from me, he was inking in a cartoon he had done about the complicated love life of one of the princes. He looked up at me and brushed a stray strand of dark hair off his face.
‘A short story, I’m afraid, Cat. Not enough to satisfy your voracious appetite for information. We met in the autumn at her coming-out ball.’
‘Her what?’
‘Her first venture into society as an adult. They call it coming out. When you see a young lady, you must ask yourself, is she in or is she out?’
‘Sounds like cricket,’ I said glumly, remembering a tedious afternoon I had once spent with Syd’s gang when they had played against a rival team from Smithfield. Johnny laughed.
‘Not really. It’s a kind of code, meaning is she on the marriage market or is she not?’
‘And are you bidding for her?’ I teased.
‘I might’ve done . . . had circumstances been different. That was before I fell out with my father. He discovered all this.’ Johnny gestured at the cartoon lying on the table before him. ‘Didn’t take too kindly to it, staunch royalist that he is. He failed to understand how his son could be a republican at heart.’
The earl could be forgiven his confusion. How did the son of an earl end up rejecting the system that so favoured him and his kind in exchange for the new ways of France and America? I wondered. Well, the only way to find out was to ask.
‘Why are you?’
‘Why am I what?’
‘A republican.’
‘Ah.’ Johnny put his pen down and wiped the ink from his fingers with a rag. ‘It’s all thanks to Mr Shore, my old tutor. He taught me that all men are equal. Titles are nothing when you place man beside man in the wild. What is important then is character and intelligence. He told me how many so-called savage races around the world live noble lives, free of our corruption, greed and envy. It’s not the man’s title but his qualities you should look to.’
‘Or woman’s.’
‘Quite so.’ He acknowledged my correction with a slight bow. ‘That’s why I despise Billy Shepherd as much as I do the prime minister. It is nothing to do with Shepherd’s lowly station in life; it’s his cruelty and greed that brings him into contempt. And it’s why I admire Lady Elizabeth. Her rank is nothing, but her mind and her heart are everything. She’s so different from all the other young ladies I’ve met. When you talk to her, you know she understands you, follows your thoughts through all their fancies and wanderings.’
He meant she’d put up with him rambling on about his revolutionary ideas, I thought with a smile, picturing him talking earnestly to her in some corner at her coming-out ball. But he was right: she had the air of someone intelligent and thoughtful. Not to mention her beauty. I could see how he had fallen hopelessly in love with her.