Just before All Hallows, I received a letter from Rachael Johansen. James Talbot, Patience’s son, had reached an age and chose to leave the convent. I had long entertained a wish that he would seek me out, find the woman who had so often sent her heart to him, and her letter said she asked him to do just that.
While Cullah was gone, my visits with Lady Spencer took place as regularly as I could manage. Then the first week of November, I received a messenger with a note from her. It said she was ailing and begged me to call upon her. I wanted nothing more than to be with my old friend one more time if her days were numbered and few upon this earth.
Her old butler, Oswald, had been replaced with a new man, Rupert. Rupert had a clipped manner of speech, though he led me to Lady Spencer’s presence with more grace than Oswald had used. I found her seated before a window, a large rug covering her feet propped upon a cassock. “My dear!” she called. “How pleasant to see you. How is the new darling? I am sorry. I have forgotten. It is a boy?”
“A girl, Lady Spencer. Dorothy Ann.” She was two years old, but I said nothing.
“A fine English name, Dorothy. My favorite aunt was named that; my sisters and I called her ‘Dolly.’ I shall look forward to making her acquaintance. I want you to visit me again, Friday week, Resolute. I shall be having a dinner attended by important people to whom I want to introduce you, if you have not yet met them. My son and his wife will also be here. That means, of course, you will have to suffer the presence of fools, but we will negotiate those waters easily enough. It will be enough that you come. Now, that is Friday, and the following Saturday, then, the last Saturday before Advent, I shall have entertainments yet again but it will be held at Wallace, Lord Spencer’s home. Yes, you did not know my husband has died? Well, ours was a marriage of convenience. Convenient for him and profitable for me. Wallace is now Lord Spencer and I am throwing the ball in his honor. I wish you to be in attendance, and I hope you are able to accommodate me on this.
“We may as well speak now of the reason I asked you to call. I have invested in a shipping venture. It is risky, but what have I to lose? Only this house, which my son does not want anyway. I have put it up as collateral against a shipment of silks and spices from the East in India, fruits from the West Indies. They are running against the East India Company. Do you know what that means?”
“Only that everything in the colony depends upon East India Company.”
“The British are trying to throw the French out of every place they have a foothold, including this continent. The Indies. Bengal. They are bathing the provinces in India with blood. Lord Clive is gone back to London from his post in Bombay and so the place has gone to complete riot and the company is too busy shooting Frenchmen to hire privateers to ship their goods or to defend those who would. There are a few willing to risk their own necks and they demand bounty for it. That means the ones that are left are murderously foul and it is a dangerous ploy. I found a captain willing to make a run for it, and I am paying him double for a cargo, providing he brings it back dry. His name is Talbot. You know him?” She smiled at her tease.
“Well I do, madam.” I said it as much for the sake of listening servants as anything, for she knew my brother visited me whenever he was in port.