CHAPTER SEVEN
“When she wishes to listen, she is quiet.”
Private Education: A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies.
Elizabeth Appleton. 1815.
As the rosewood mantel clock struck the midnight hour, Amelia checked for the knife in its sheath and then, for one last time, shifted the curtain aside to peer from her bedchamber window.
All was still. No shadows in the garden. No movement in the stables.
No sign of Mr Cadwalader’s return.
As he’d ridden out onto Oxford Street, she’d slipped the sash window up and closed her eyes to listen. Heard the single clip-clop of hooves, noticed an uneven gait and deduced the horse he rode was no thoroughbred.
Now she turned, reached for her special lantern and then crossed to open her bedchamber door, the hinges of which she’d newly oiled this eve.
Cruikshank, she had observed last night, would occupy himself on the ground floor until his master returned home, no matter the hour, so she’d decided to carry out a first reconnoitre of Mr Cadwalader’s personal quarters on the floor above. His valet, Mr Towlson, would be taking a brandy with Cook, Sally Longlane being a font of gossip on the servants’ daily routines.
The rug-covered floorboards neither creaked nor groaned as Amelia tiptoed down the corridor, past the ballroom with its grand double doors and to the main staircase. There, she paused to rotate a small metal dial on her lantern that brought shutters across its light on three sides and then listened once more – for distant hooves or the opening of a far door.
Silence.
A few sconces were lit for Mr Cadwalader to find his way to bed and so she crept up the stairs to the landing of the master’s floor.
As per her architect’s plan, one room to the front overlooked Hanover Square but a door lay straight ahead, so she commenced there, gently rotating the handle and…
Proffering her lantern high, she could make out a bathing chamber.
But what a sight.
A smart wash cabinet sat upon thick rugs, and atop a marble plinth was a colossal permanent bath with scrolled feet. How many pails of water must it take to fill?
She withdrew and peeped into the next room – a plethora of shirts, cravats, coats and other manly paraphernalia met her shaft of lantern light, but not having the time on this occasion to poke around his unmentionables, she turned on her heel and continued towards the back of the house.
At double doors above the similar ones on her floor below, she halted. Surely not another ballroom?
She reached for the handle.
In the dead of night, the door groaned like a stricken soul, so she paused, shrouding the lantern’s glow against her chest.
Listened.
Not a sound.
So she pushed the door further, pivoted her lantern to the room and held it aloft.
Then stifled a shriek as dozens of Amelias within meek globes of light stared back at her.
It took a deep breath and some rapid blinking to realise that much of the room was mirrored.
Gracious.
Whatever did the Scandalous Mr Hugh Cadwalader get up to in here?
She twisted the dial to unshutter two further panes on her lantern, its own mirrors projecting light that still failed to reach the edges of the vast room.
A few cupboards could be discerned but that was all. No paintings, chairs or sofas.
