‘But if you would perhaps tell her that I—’
‘If I were to run every entreaty left with me for Mrs Neal, I would wear my feet to stumps,’ snaps Mrs Frost. ‘This is not your day, sir. Come by again, if you must.’
Then she pulls the window down, and leaves him confounded on the pavement.
‘What now, sir?’ asks one amongst his audience of seamstresses. ‘Surely you’ll not go home so insulted?’
He straightens his jacket and says nothing, but they lean out further to him.
‘You’ll not be refused entrance here,’ one of the girls says.
‘I beg your—’
‘We’ll give you a good price.’
‘Come in, come in!’ They jostle and whisper, and emit a great spray of laughter, and he retreats quite burning with shame and perplexion.
VOLUME II.
ONE
‘You have lost me my mermaid!’
Mrs Chappell’s chins quiver with rage as she slops across the marble floor in her wrap and her rabbit-fur slippers. She has forgone her wig for a starched and frilled cap, and wears spectacles very low down her nose: denuded of her rouge and jewels, she appears less imposing but far sterner. There is no weakness in her bare slackening skin or the furrow of her brow: in fact, she never looked more of a matriarch.
‘Is this why you sent for me?’ says Angelica, much put out. She had wavered, indeed, over responding to the abbess’s summons, Mr Rockingham being so very much on her mind, but I promised to oblige her, and there is always something in it for me, she had told herself. Two days in the otherworld of his arms has made her ebullient, and proud of herself: she is in the mood to be amongst friends and revel in her own magnetism. If she had recalled that Mrs Chappell did no entertaining at all before two – that the first part of her day has ever been devoted to the driest of business – she might have prepared herself not to be greeted with perfect civility at King’s Place, the site of such recent and dazzling triumphs. The house is rather unusually silent, as if the girls and dogs running about upstairs were not so lively today, and the footman who steps forward for her cloak lacks a certain sprightliness. ‘And what are you talking about?’ she asks. ‘I have lost your mermaid? If I have, I am afraid I know nothing of it.’
Above, there is a rustling on the stairs, where Elinor begins to descend. ‘Good morning,’ Angelica calls, ‘or has it yet struck noon?’ but Mrs Chappell shoots the girl a look of dark warning, so that she turns tail and vanishes the way she came. ‘That don’t bode well,’ quips Angelica, who has experience of that expression. Guilt now tweaks at her, and she thinks for the first time of Mr Hancock, the mermaid man, who was in her care and departed it – she now recalls – far from easy. Still, there is no reason to admit fault until it is proven beyond the possibility of denial.
‘My room, if you please,’ says Mrs Chappell stiffly.
‘You are dreadful cross,’ observes Angelica lightly, but she follows the abbess into the green-papered parlour without protestation.
The curtains are open and the fire is burning, but there is no tea laid out there, no Madeira or biscuits, and Mrs Chappell calls for none. ‘You have lost me a mermaid,’ she repeats.
‘Will you permit me to sit down?’
The abbess harrumphs, and Angelica takes her place on the sopha, slumping over its arm. In this attitude she marks suddenly the ache in her commodity, and the rawness where her thighs touch. Too much fun. She cannot keep the smile from her face. Perhaps it is to the good that Rockingham has returned to his studies for a few days: although she is already drafting her first letter to him in her head, her body could not take much more of his ardour.
‘Sit up straight,’ snaps Mrs Chappell. ‘And you can wipe off that saucy look too. I never was so vexed with you. Never so vexed with any of my girls.’
‘I cannot bear the suspense! Madam, what have I done?’
Mrs Chappell extends a furious finger. ‘You have—’
‘No, no, do not repeat it! I mis-spoke; you made yourself clear. I have lost you a mermaid. How did I effect such a thing?’
‘Mr Hancock has removed it from exhibition in this house.’
She recalls his foolish panicked stagger away from her, and how he blundered through the crowd. ‘You cannot blame that all on me,’ she scowls. ‘Any number of things may have displeased him. You orchestrated the entire night, after all; my role in it was very minor indeed.’
Mrs Chappell narrows her eyes. ‘No more of your babble,’ she says. ‘Your pertness today is not at all to my taste. You did not take care of Mr Hancock, as I requested …’
‘He did not like the show. What was I to do?’
‘Set things right! If I had thought that nothing could upset his ease I’d have put him in the charge of our silly Kitty. I chose you because I trusted that whatever went awry, you would know how to bring things to his satisfaction.’
‘But I—’
‘No gentleman should leave this house disappointed,’ says Mrs Chappell. ‘You know that. But Mr Hancock was sorely disappointed. I directed him to you the next day, that you might put it right – and mark me, he was willing to go to you; that’s half your job done for you. Why, you sent him away again!’
‘I never did!’
‘No?’
Angelica searches her memory, a blur of wine and bedsheets and sweat. ‘I never so much as saw him,’ she says firmly. ‘Never heard him, had no notion he had called.’
‘Eliza Frost was under the strictest instructions to let him in.’
‘You spoke to her?’
‘Simeon did.’
‘Then the blame is on them! I knew nothing of it!’
Now is the moment to retreat graciously from the argument: ‘A misunderstanding,’ one or the other should say, ‘a misfortune. It could happen to any body.’ But the words stick in both their throats. Angelica cocks her head in invitation of an apology; Mrs Chappell looks in the other direction.
‘You ought to run a tighter ship,’ she snaps. ‘’Tis down to you to make sure these confusions do not occur.’
Angelica’s judgement is swayed by her wounded pride. ‘And you, madam!’
‘I do not need you the way you need me,’ says Mrs Chappell, and although her tone is measured, it demands to be heeded. ‘I have been celebrated in this world since before you were born; since before even your mother was born I don’t doubt; I have standing. Your reputation rests only on what I have sent your way. You would do well to please me.’
But Angelica is not heedful. ‘You may believe that if you wish,’ she says. ‘But when I first returned to London, you and I were in accord that I was a valuable asset to you. And now that I am all about the town again, I’d reckon my value has only increased. Why, I could do as well as Bel Fortescue if I chose; so you had better not keep me down by assigning blame where there is none.’ Will she relate this conversation to Georgie? She has not yet decided. It may indeed be indelicate to speak of such matters around him; she would not wish to seem a haggling street-wench. No, more graceful to say nothing of it, and let him see the new respect with which her old bawd must treat her. ‘You struck the deal,’ she finishes with relish. ‘You hired the mermaid from the gentleman and he took it away again. That is not my lookout.’
Mrs Chappell claps her hands, less in real mirth than in the knowledge that it will goad her erstwhile protégée. ‘Oh, you wish to equal Mrs Fortescue, do you? You might start by emulating her humility, for you know, dear, ambition comes to naught without it.’