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Harriet turned to the dressmaker. “Madame, did you wish to say something?”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Swanley,” she said. “But that woman makes me feel the Revolution did not go far enough. Frippe, indeed. Does she not know the name Marie Rambert? Does she think I am some country peasant selling secondhand clothes? My wares come direct from Paris, I assure you. I doubt that she does.”

There was a little silence. Harriet had not appreciated the layers of insult in the marchioness’s words. She had guessed that frippe meant some sort of jam or preserves, and had thought the insult contained in the double meaning of the word stale.

“Forgive me,” Madame Rambert said. “I let my tongue run away with me. The dress will be ready in time for Lady Hardwicke’s ball.”

On occasion the husband hunter may feel a great temptation from the warmth or distress of her feelings to express those feelings in speech or to ink them onto a page of hot pressed paper and drop a line in the post. Perhaps she feels the growing coolness of a suitor who has completely possessed her affections. Now more than anything she would like to understand how the gentleman’s feelings have changed.

In such a moment it is fatal both to her pride and her reputation to succumb to the desire to enter into an improper correspondence. Her anguish is no excuse for such a breach of sense and decorum. A much better expedient is to open her diary, and there un-bosom herself of all the torment and confusion she feels, blot the page, close the book, and leave the letter unsent.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter 10

The following Monday, Charles received from the marchioness a note of regret that she was indisposed with a cold and must rest so that she would be able to fulfill her promise to take Octavia to Lady Hardwicke’s ball. He recognized the polite evasion and wondered what the woman was up to. Spying was making him quite suspicious of his fellow man. Only Harriet Swanley seemed to him open and honest.

With no obligation to the marchioness, Charles wasted no time in turning his attention to Captain Fanshaw. A few questions in his club had turned up the information that the captain was with the Horse Guards and had a reputation for idle charm. His father was a general with a substantial estate in Wiltshire. The younger Fanshaw was apparently a competent but unambitious soldier. Riding through the park and looking smart in his scarlet coat seemed to satisfy his desire for military action. No one knew any great ill of him, but no one thought him worth much. When Charles asked where Fanshaw might be found when he was not on duty, eyebrows went up. Apparently, he had a favorite brothel and a favorite club for practicing his sword work. Charles made up his mind to seek out the captain as soon as he reported to Goldsworthy.

* * * *

Harriet, aware that a necessary interval of several days must be got through between Octavia’s meeting with the dressmaker and the Hardwicke ball to which she was to wear her new dress, invited Octavia to the afternoon’s Royal Lecture. Anne and Camille were to go with their mother to a lying-in hospital of which Lady Luxborough was a sponsor to bring the mothers and new infants a box of those items most necessary to a baby’s care.

At the Royal Institute, the day’s topic included a brief digression from the planets to Ptolemy’s ancient methods for determining the relative brightness of the stars. For a moment Octavia forgot her woes to lean forward in fascination. Harriet found her own attention wandering. Her gaze shifted to every movement at the door of the theater, and she took herself to task for the idle hope that Wynford would join them. Really, she would see him soon enough to report her observations from the dressmaker’s.

John Jowers abandoned his male friends to sit with them and openly stared at the girl rather than the speaker. At the lecture’s end he told Octavia she must come to the Luxboroughs’ that evening.

“Why must I?” she replied with just that mulish tone Harriet was coming to recognize.

“So you can play Miss Swanley’s game,” John Jowers replied.

“More child’s play? Like ice skating?” Octavia asked, assuming her most worldly air.

“You thought ice skating was good sport, didn’t you?”

Harriet smiled to herself. Octavia refused to admit any such thing.

With surprising understanding of Octavia’s mood, John Jowers simply walked away.

“He thinks I’m just a schoolroom chit,” Octavia told Harriet. “What game?”

“Come tonight, and you’ll find out.” Harriet smiled, but refused to say more. Octavia’s curiosity was a sign of the girl’s forgetting her misery and looking outside herself.

* * * *

Charles sat blinking at Goldsworthy as Wilde poured coffee. The youth called it “cawfy,” the one word that betrayed his East London origins.

“Under no circumstances,” said the spymaster, “can I permit you to follow this man. Can’t have you jeopardizing the whole mission.”

Charles controlled a strong rush of rebellious feeling. A rich vapor rose from the cup in front of him. He picked it up and had a swallow. He would rely on reason. “I must disagree, sir,” he said. “Pursuing Fanshaw won’t hurt the mission. More likely his actions will shed light on the marchioness’s intentions, which have so far eluded us.”

“Nevertheless, can’t have you spotted, Wynford. You’ll stick out badly, and you mustn’t tip your hand.” A prodigious frown darkened Goldsworthy’s brow. Even seated at his massive desk, Goldsworthy towered above visitors to his office. With his shaggy russet hair like a lion’s mane, and his broad person dressed in browns and greens, he reminded Charles of the famous Green Knight of legend who had come to King Arthur’s court with his huge axe and challenged the knights to a contest.

Wilde cleared his throat, and the big man’s stare shifted to the youth.

“I could go with him, sir, and with Kirby’s help, we could have his lordship looking like...the lowest scum of London.”

Charles looked at Wilde. “You mean I’d have to abandon my splendid waistcoats?”