Mrs. Sancho shook her head, smiling. “You and Miss Gregoire. I do feel she would take care of my girls. I can’t say that for every school, I’m afraid.” Her eyes drifted to Jem, and Lucasta turned as if recalling his presence.
“Oh! Mrs. Sancho. May I present to you the Viscount Rudyard, grandson to the Marquess of Arendale. Rudyard, this is Mrs. Sancho, widow of the extremely gifted Mr. Ignatius Sancho.”
The widow’s eyes narrowed slightly as she assessed Jem. “Rudyard,” she said softly. “And your father is now Earl Payne. Governor of the Isle of Barbados, if I am not mistaken?”
Jem inclined his head, ashamed to admit to this woman that his father governed a colony which drew its economic profits from enslavement and exploitation. He sensed that Mrs. Sancho knew of the earl’s reputation—all of it. “I’m afraid that is correct.”
“Is it.” She turned away. “Have you talked to your aunt about giving my girls music lessons, Miss Lithwick?”
Lucasta pulled on her muff, her face falling. “Aunt has said I will be too busy to give lessons for the foreseeable future. To anyone.” She tried to rearrange her features into a brisk smile. “All the more reason to send them to Miss Gregoire’s, for I shall be at liberty there, and they should be my favorite pupils. Good day, Master William, Mrs. Sancho. Please give my regards to the girls.” She gathered her packages and was out the door before Jem could recall that, as a gentleman, it was his place to offer to hold them for her.
In the carriage, Lucasta seemed to be struggling to compose herself. Jem felt such a roil of his own emotions that he didn’t know where to begin. He urged the horses around Chesterfield House and toward Hyde Park. It was not yet the fashionable hour, but there was a chance they would be seen. For reasons he could not satisfactorily explain to himself, he very much wanted to be seen with Miss Lucasta Lithwick.
“You frequent Sancho’s,” he began, keeping his eye on the team, who kicked up their heels and their spirits at Hyde Park Corner and the sight of grass beyond. “You do not mind that they are—” He searched for the word. “Africans.”
She drew her brows together. “I should think they have lived here long enough to be called British,” she answered. “Mr. Sancho voted in the last election, if you didn’t know. But yes,I agree with Mr. Sancho’s opinion that if African people are enslaved to produce our luxuries, then the family of a former slave should at the least see some of the profits of that terrible institution.”
She was an abolitionist. That laid to rest one fear, but another tightened Jem’s throat. She would have the same opinion of his father that Mrs. Sancho did.
“But you aren’t—” For some reason words were deserting the man whose pronouncements were hung upon in polite circles. He nodded at the occupants of a passing landau, two ladies craning their necks to get a glimpse of his companion under the deep brim of her bonnet. “You didn’t,” he managed finally.
“Didn’t what?” She tensed. “Treat them differently because of the color of their skin? As if they are less human, as the enslavers would have us believe?”
Jem’s tongue felt enormous in his mouth. He had never discussed this issue with anyone, not his friends, not his family. They tiptoed around it as if circling a pit of viperous snakes.
There were thousands of Africans in England, more in the coastal towns than inland, employed at all levels of society. Too many were enslaved and denied their freedom. Others earned a salary but were denied their full humanity nonetheless.
“Not everyone believes as you do,” he said hollowly.
Every line of her body went taut. “You’d best let me down here, Lord Rudyard.”
They were near the reservoir. Not the greatest cad would abandon her here, leaving her and her maid to walk the miles back to Bedford Square. “You misunderstand me, Miss Lithwick. I am not?—”
He was not his father, who chose to bestow his affections upon an enslaved woman, but not do her or her children the courtesy of granting their freedom. “I am not of that mind,” he attempted.
“I perceive your mind, Lord Rudyard, and it makes it impossible that I can continue in your company. Mary!” she snapped at her maid, holding tight in the folding seat behind them. “We shall walk from here.”
Jem denied her by the simple ploy of refusing to pause the horses. Though they went no faster than a brisk walk, she could hardly throw herself from a moving vehicle.
“I shall see you home, Miss Lithwick,” he said, his tone equally sharp, “and you will do me the honor of illuminating me as to what precisely you understand my mind to be.”
She refused to look at him. “I don’t wish to discuss it,” she said, her jaw set with anger.
His own anger sparked. “If you are accusing me of something, I’d damned well like to know what it is.”
He never lost his temper. He never swore at anyone, especially not a woman. But Lucasta Lithwick burrowed under his skin in a way no one ever had.
“Your comment about Selina!” she burst out. “That said everything about yourmind, didn’t it?”
Jem raked his memory for the conversation in question. “Miss Humby? I haven’t said a dozen words to her this season. I don’t think our paths have crossed before the theater last night.” Once, perhaps, maybe twice.
“It took less than a dozen words.” She held her chin high. “You called her a zebra. No one had the least concern that her mother is Bengali until you made her out to be some circus freak. Now no one will speak to her.”
Horror turned Jem’s blood to ice. “I never said?—”
But he had. The remark rose to his mind instantly, with the memory of those awful glaring stripes. “I meant the print of the fabric. It looked exactly like a zebra. I never thought…” He trailed off, stricken.
“You didn’t mean to remind everyone that her mother has dark skin?” she challenged him. “To suggest that she is a creature half one thing, half another? Because everyone presumes that is what you meant. Everyone,” she repeated.
