“You’d do much better to wait for His Grace,” Jarvis said. “If he’s with you, no one will dare to stare or behave disrespectfully toward you, her ladyship said. She said if anyone else was to go about with you, they would have to call out the guards again and read the Riot Act and if you was killed by the mob, even by accident because of too much enthusiasm, what would she and his lordship do? she said.”
“The mob is gone,” Zoe said. “Even the newspaper men have left the square. Last night the Princess Elizabeth married the Prince of Hesse-Homburg at the Queen’s House. She is the news. I am not the news.”
“But, miss, her ladyship said—”
“If we travel in a hackney, no one will know it’s me,” Zoe said. “No one in my family travels in a hired vehicle.”
“That’s true, miss, which is why I never fetched one before. And if anyone ever did want one, it’s rightfully a task for one of the under footmen or—”
“There is a stand, I believe, not very far away,” said the implacable Zoe.
“Yes, miss, on Bond Street, but—”
“Then go to Bond Street.”
It was the voice of command. Jarvis went.
A short time later
The maid had been obliged to run up and down Bond Street, waving her umbrella, to procure the hackney, with dubious results. Judging by the creakiness, crumbling interior, and smell, the carriage had probably done service in the time of the first King George, if not the eighth Henry. Still, it moved, which was all Zoe required.
Once they were safely enclosed in the ancient coach, embarked on their journey, Jarvis showed a more adventurous spirit and began naming the sights along the way.
They traveled along Bond Street to Piccadilly, with the maid pointing out dressmakers’ shops and furriers, goldsmiths and jewelers, bookshops and print sellers, and houses of the great. They made their way through Haymarket and continued southeastward to the Strand, then headed westward again by another route that took them to Covent Garden.
Zoe gazed out of the coach window, entranced. For a time, the sights of London took her mind off the capricious Marchmont, but only for a time. She did not see how she was to become fashionable with only her sisters to guide her. He seemed not to take this matter seriously. He did not care, certainly, that she’d been cooped inside Lexham Houseforever.
Perhaps he’d forgotten?
It would be easy for a man to forget about a woman when she wasn’t right in front of him. Life offered men a great many more distractions than it did women. Then, too, men were so easily distracted.
“Where to next, miss?” said Jarvis. “Would you like to see the Tower? Or would you like to go back?”
“I’m not ready to go back,” said Zoe.
“Whitehall, then?”
After a moment’s thought, Zoe said, “I want to see White’s Club.” She knew Marchmont spent a large portion of his day there, not thinking about her or the tortures she’d be undergoing at her sisters’ hands.
The driver, amply paid to indulge the lady’s whim to wander through London, took them back to the West End. They passed Charing Cross and the King’s Mews and the Opera House. At another street, the maid pointed out Marchmont House, nearby in St. James’s Square. They did not enter the square, though, but continued along Pall Mall to St. James’s Street.
All the coaches, carts, riders, and pedestrians in London seemed to have crammed themselves into it this day. As they neared the top of the hill, the hackney slowed to a crawl. At White’s, close to the corner of Piccadilly, it came to a dead stop. This gave Zoe ample time to study the building. It was handsome but did not look very exciting. What on earth did he find there to amuse him, day after day? Or was it merely a comfortable place in which to get drunk with other idle men?
“There’s the bow window,” said Jarvis. “The gentlemen gather there and watch the passersby. But only certain gentlemen are allowed.”
Several were gathered in the window at present. Zoe couldn’t make out their faces, though, through the dirty glass of the hackney’s window.
“Curse it,” she said. “I can’t see a thing.” She wrestled the window open and leant out for a clearer view. At the same moment, one very fair head turned to look out of White’s bow window, straight at her.
She regarded the gentleman for a moment, then sat back. “Close the window,” she told Jarvis.
The traffic gave way and the hackney lurched forward.
Meanwhile in White’s
The Duke of Marchmont was half-listening to his friends’ unstimulating conversation and gazing out of the bow window in hopes of a diversion when an ancient hackney paused in the street outside and its window went down and a young woman’s face appeared.
He blinked.
