Lady Susan Plays the Game Read online

  As Lady Susan saw it, the real problem was that Frederica wouldn’t make the best of herself or her opportunities. Over the years her father’s lack of wit, his very goodness, had annoyed his wife more and more. Frederica took after him. It was worse in a woman. She needed to be cleverer. Lady Susan expelled a breath, then returned again to the subject. The girl had the advantage of youth. And the teariness, the simpering, might suit an older man. They really wanted children as wives.

  She turned over in her head the various men and their fortunes she knew were on the market, then eliminated the majority: they would wish or need a dowry. There were not many left, it was a bad season.

  The rich little Plunkett boys would do but they were mostly spoken for; Lady Philpot’s second son had an income of his own but played hard to get; Lady Clementina’s grandson perhaps, but others had tried there without success – he preferred London whores to decent girls; Lord Gaines was now a widower, though at fifty-five, might be thought too old, and since he’d taken up with one of the poorer Stanley cousins he was probably not looking for a wife at once; General Dunkin was available, no, that wouldn’t wear – he liked saucy women, not ingénues; the sickly Sir Thomas Hewitt, Lady Hen’s relation … Lady Susan put the idea out of her head. The girl was too foolish to see the advantage of a man who would soon make a widow, and Hewitt’s leering habit would frighten her before they began.

  After running through a few more names, Lady Susan decided to consult her friend Alicia Johnson. In school she’d been plain ‘Alice’ but ‘Alicia’ had been adopted as more suitable when she entered society. Together they would draw up a list and consider whether an immediate campaign was feasible. She fancied Alicia knew more about which rich men had ailing wives so would soon be available. There would be competition for these but Lady Susan flattered herself that she had skill in a contest. Still, it was best to have the school in reserve if nothing came of their efforts. She would write at once to Madam Dacre and indicate that, at some time during the next months, she would wish to use her services.

  As Barton fiddled too long with her hair, twirling the curls round the combs, Lady Susan found her fingers itching for London. She thought of the tables laid out in the fashionable drawing rooms around St James’s Square, the new packs of cards waiting in their rosewood boxes, the ivory fish and other counters heaped up on the green baize or directly on the inlaid wood tables.

  She loved the shine and feel of all this, the slightly rough back of the playing cards, and the smooth front, the coolness of the fish, the glitter and noise, the excitement, the candles, the bright light by the tables, the darker corners of the room where sometimes she knew she was being watched – with envy she supposed; her eyes though large and bright saw poorly at a distance but she had a sense of pulling other eyes towards her.

  She loved the hush, then the roaring in the head as stakes mounted. She loved winning; even losing excited her, made her feel alive in every inch of her body. She loved all the games: speculation, whist, piquet, vingt-et-un, quadrille, and faro and basset above all. They were quick games of such pure chance, such delicious hazard, played alone, with no partner. She loved all the terms; she rolled the words off her tongue: hombre, puesta and codille, the ace of spades, the greatest matador.

  Originally when drawn to play she’d believed she’d be rather good at it. She had a fine memory for the cards and most of the skill lay there, especially if one knew how to cheat. She had no scruples about this, simply lacking the knowledge of how not to be caught. A lady touching cards and signalling to footmen would, she’d imagined, be conspicuous. But in fact she was not drawn to this sort of subterfuge. She favoured luck more than skill or deception; she loved chance itself. It was superstition – but she felt there was some craft, some knowledge beyond memory which, by playing often, she might obtain, some trick, some gesture that would make her win and win, some way of dominating chance.

  Her father had propounded a theory that everything was cause and effect and could be controlled – you didn’t need a divine or magic principle, it was simply material. If you tried hard enough, in time you would get the better of chance itself. Yet predictability would be dull. Was it for this reason that he’d played for high stakes (and lost) at the Salon d’Hercule in the presence of Marie Antoinette? Fortune was a shibboleth, he said to his tiny daughter, whom he always treated as a woman: ‘You make your wins. You can control what is outside you and other men’s minds if you know how.’ But it did not do to win against royalty.

  For a time Lady Susan had been intimate with Jack Fortuny, a supposed card sharper who was said to have learnt his trade from the famous Gerachi – until she caught Lady Heton and other ladies looking askance at her.

  ‘I do think I might influence him a little,’ she’d whispered to this lady just loud enough for her alone to hear. ‘If he does cheat it’s not for gain, rather to be of consequence, to make a figure.’ She came closer; Lady Heton was all attention but was also rather deaf. ‘He’s not short of money, he’s inherited a good estate in the north – Yorkshire, I believe, or Derbyshire – he can’t need income. So you see, its amour propre he lacks. I do what I can.’ Lady Susan favoured this kind of analysis. It had a feminine yet clever air.

  When she’d stopped talking, Lady Heton had squeezed her hand and looked at her out of her naïve aged eyes in so dolefully kind a way that her friend had to raise her fan to her face to hide her amusement. ‘You are a good soul,’ Lady Heton had said; then, anxious that her compliment had made Lady Susan blush, she’d pressed the hand again.

  Lady Heton must be the only woman in London who could have believed this story, thought Lady Susan. She would not have tried it on anyone else. Lady Heton prided herself on never listening to gossip, and this was the result.

  In reality Lady Susan knew nothing whatever of Jack Fortuny’s past, wondering if, despite his flawless English, he was a foreigner. His name was strange, possibly Italian. The less favourable believed it a pseudonym taken to enhance his business. She had not repeated to anyone what he had told her alone: that he did not cheat at cards.

  In any case – and Lady Susan smiled to herself here – it was not Jack Fortuny but Lord Gamestone who had been the latest to lie with her in her blue silk chamber. She had enjoyed the deception, one false scandal disguising a real one so that her innocent looks were, had people known it, authentic.

  It took a little time to deal with the servants at Someyton. The mistress was so gracious to them that John no longer wondered why his master had been so willing to put up with her extravagant ways. Stories of her goings on in London had seeped back to the servants’ hall, and all of them had believed what they heard. Now, however, he wondered how Mr Vernon had borne to be without such a woman all this time.

  For, while avoiding the names of their parents or siblings and sometimes even their own, Lady Susan contrived to make them feel that they mattered, that their well-being was dear to her and that her interest in them was the most flattering condescension. Everyone would be paid, she said, though perhaps not that very week, and she would personally see that all of them, even those unnoticed in the will, had a little something to remember the master by.

  Miss Davidson’s anxiety was overwhelmed by grief – she had not known how fond she was of Mr Vernon till she saw his coffin going from the house. Then her breathing grew even more laboured.

  ‘Why not,’ said Lady Susan when the wheezing had subsided enough for her to be heard, ‘why not seek a position by the sea? You could drink the seawater; I’m told it’s beneficial for the lungs. And the air must do you good – it’s far better than inland. Mr Kimberly has a residence near Cromer; let me contact him for you.’ Would you like an asthmatic housekeeper? she would write.

  Nanny hobbled all the way down the stairs from her attic room to listen to the mistress. ‘Dear Nanny, you know how valued you’ve been both by Mr Vernon and me, and of course Frederica, and I only wish that you could remain with us. But we shall not forget you �
�� ever. I understand that living with your niece is not what you would most have wished but we shall see that you are independent there.’ Nanny took the hint and was grateful; the kind expression on Lady Susan’s face was so sincere that just for a moment she regretted that she had thought the mistress not good enough for her own darling.

  Mrs Baines avoided such momentary weakness. She was a reader of memoirs and accounts of trials, which she obtained from the circulating library in Norwich: she knew Lady Susan’s type from the reports of numerous society divorce cases. But what could she do? The country with its screeching crickets and croaking frogs had been no more to her taste than it was to her mistress but she had not that lady’s pretty face and connections and had had to put up with her lot.

  She flirted with the notion of telling Lady Susan what she thought of her, so haughty and two-faced a minx, but she would have difficulty finding another place if she did. So she swallowed the words. She had done a lot of swallowing in her life, enough to fill a larger stomach than hers with gall; she hoped her actions had been set against what she knew was a sad tendency to envy. Mrs Baines liked to think of the Lord in commercial terms.

  ‘When I am in London I will recommend you to a suitable family,’ was as far as Lady Susan could be bothered to go with the governess. Both women knew she would do no such thing.

  Someyton had been rented, so it now reverted to the Hobart family. Some of the furniture was put in store, from which Lady Susan assumed it would never emerge. It was in any case sorry stuff, mainly from the castle, too old-fashioned and bulky for a London house. The servants, by now perhaps a little uneasy as they saw first the furniture and then their mistress departing without leaving anything substantial in their hands, stood with proper expressions of willingness and melancholy on the steps while the wind swirled the piled leaves and small twigs round their feet.

  Lady Susan smiled on them all. It was easy to do for she was about to shake the Norfolk dirt off her shoes. She proposed never to soil them with it again.

  Frederica looked on in distress. To see the old chairs and tables leave so informally had been even worse than when the groom had set off to sell Spots. She feared the change coming to her: she loved her home and the life in it with her dear papa. She dreaded London.

  She had packed her poetry books. She still admired Cowper but found that many of his poems brought back memories of her father too acute to be pleasurable; she would not read them at once. With some misgiving she also packed her drawings – it was hard to part with them. Her father had praised the dexterity with which she reproduced stamens and pistols and the underside of veined leaves. He’d once brought home a camera obscura from Norwich: they had marvelled at the image of trees in miniature. ‘You don’t really need it, dear,’ he’d teased, ‘you already have an elf’s eye.’ But she knew the interest annoyed her mother – it smacked of the bluestocking.

  That Lady Susan had no interest in nettles or thorns would have been an understatement. She loathed the very names. She’d seen quite enough of the countryside at school. She’d hated the slush of everything, the way the east wind blew from the sea across the flat bean fields. If the sun shone – and she didn’t remember much shining – it had shone on wet grass and muddy heaps of turnips. In London it might be cold but it was never so biting: the houses, the people all shed warmth into the streets.

  Chapter 3

  It was dusk when Lady Susan’s carriage reached the outskirts of London but there was light enough for her to breathe in the sights from which she’d been exiled for too many weeks: a man with a tray of hot pies and pasties on his head; chairs with their muscular Irish carriers; lamplighters and their ladders; an urchin sweeping the pavement before an old woman swathed in cloaks; serving maids and footmen sauntering and chatting; shop windows lighting up and flambeaux being set before the better houses; beggars stretching out cupped hands to indifferent passers-by. All greeted Lady Susan like portraits of old friends.

  She had rented her smart house near Grafton Place on very advantageous terms. The absentee owner had benefited from the patronage of the Vernon family and been happy to pay back some of the debt. But, even on such terms, it was far too expensive. So now she abandoned it and took elegant furnished rooms in Henrietta Street.

  ‘My brother-in-law, Mr Charles Vernon, has a place in Duke Street, number 11 close to the corner,’ she informed Mrs Stott, the landlady. The houses at the end of Duke Street were the grandest and tallest and the connection suggested to the doubting lady that her new tenant was a person of means. It was the first time Lady Susan had ever had to invoke her country in-laws.

  Just as she was debating how to handle Mrs Stott – with hauteur or charm – she received some unexpected news. Lawyer Burnett was sending a bank draft in her name to a legal firm called Reeve & Reeve in the city. She was surprised. From what he had said, she’d assumed her situation was dire; where could he have found extra money? Possibly he liked to make a mystery of things to bolster his importance. In any case, the amount was not large and she could not stay long in London even in these rented rooms: the bustling life of people with nothing to do was expensive. And the cards were more insistent than ever: she had been absent so very long. She was thirsty for the thrill of the chance; she might increase the little pot of money that had fallen to her but it might just as likely disappear. She accepted either way. She returned to the topic of lodgings. A week or two, perhaps three at most.

  ‘It is enough,’ she said to Frederica as they paraded along the gravel walk in St James’s Park a few days later, ‘to smile and agree pleasantly to comments on the weather.’ Yet, when the next encounter, with the Miss Stanleys, came and Frederica found her mother’s eyes upon her, she had a struggle not to frown with anxiety.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, do try harder,’ said Lady Susan. She spoke softly and didn’t stop smiling for they were close to company; she nodded to Lady Clementina’s nephew as he passed on his horse. Frederica could feel the irritated restraint.

  ‘When we visit Lady Heton sit on the straight-backed chair so that your shoulders don’t sag,’ her mother continued. ‘It is just possible that her grandson will be at home. He has only one eye but he can see a slouch with it.’

  When they arrived Frederica managed to fold herself over despite the encouragement of a hard wooden back. As they left Lady Susan restrained her critical comments. She was learning that they made an impression but to no useful end.

  The next stop was the dressmaker’s, not the most fashionable one but quite serviceable, a scrawny middle-aged woman used to dressing young girls and ladies’ maids on very reasonable terms.

  As the dressmaker knelt before Frederica, her mouth festooned with pins, Lady Susan contemplated her daughter’s outline. She would never be long and narrow as was now the mode, but her plump figure was not at odds with the fashionable high waist. The bosom was small but rounding: if the girl stood up straight it could be used to reasonable effect. The colour for clothes had still to be predominantly black, though the blackness could be varied by differences in texture and softened by ornamentation. The dressmaker had fitted some lace round the neck of the gown so that it sat against Frederica’s throat. It was not entirely right in Lady Susan’s view. There was nothing innately wrong with the girl’s flesh and yet, although she frequently reddened in embarrassment, she seemed somehow unable to inhabit her own skin, to let it express any aspect of herself; there was something dead about her. What was thoroughly strange was that, when confronted with the glass and told to inspect herself, the girl hardly raised her eyes to look at her reflection, though the dressmaker, thinking to please the mother remarked on the soft silhouette she made. Lady Susan was almost out of patience. She ordered a dark blue cloak with a hood that would do for now and when mourning was over. Really, the girl deserved nothing more.

  After several other minor failures Lady Susan concluded that London with her daughter had not been the best idea for either of them. The campaign for a rich husban
d should be postponed. It was easy to teach a child morals, virtue, that sort of thing – far harder to instil the casual cunning of everyday life, let alone a decent posture.

  She wished she had suitable relations to retire to but she was badly served. There’d been a younger half-sister in France, met only once and briefly. Still more or less a child, Lady Henriette had married a French count with more debts than acres in the Auvergne. The revolutionaries had guillotined the pair. Lady Susan had made much of her murdered sister in the drawing rooms of Mayfair but stopped as London became inundated with French aristocrats. To have French relations now was to have poor relations. So there was only her husband’s family: the Charles Vernons of Churchill. If no alternative was offered, she’d have to stay with them: it was not a prospect to delight.

  Thinking of them stirred unwelcome memories. The meeting with Charles just after his wedding, for instance. He’d not brought his wife: without being explicit he’d indicated no very goodwill on the new Mrs Vernon’s part.

  The marriage had been one of Lady Susan’s few failures. Lacking his elder brother’s advantages, Charles Vernon had had to fend for himself and, by making good connections at Cambridge and having a little financial skill, had become a wealthy banker, now able to leave his affairs in others’ hands. Noting his rise, Lady Susan had tried to tempt him out of marrying the de Courcy girl by parading one of the Stanley sisters before him – pert, seductive little things who appealed at first to sober men like Charles but then – so conventional wisdom went – such men recoiled into bachelorhood. He’d refused the bait: it had all been too obvious.

  Lady Susan blushed for her younger self. Unfortunately Mrs Charles had learnt of her efforts.

  The sale of Vernon Castle also told against her. But there she knew herself in the right. However Charles and his new family regarded the matter, as she’d explained to him privately on his visit ‘it would be a constant reproach for poor Frederick to see his younger brother living in the family home. Such a blow to his honour – though we thought very long about it all. Indeed, Frederick wavered until the very last moment. But then we felt it better to sell to a stranger like Sir Philip Valmain. And besides,’ she had lowered her melodious voice even further here, ‘we were very distressed for money – you know how unworldly Frederick is – and Sir Philip was more than happy to pay far beyond the value of the property.’ She gave her tinkling laugh. ‘He even took some of the portraits and paid for them – or rather,’ she added when Charles looked pained, ‘he paid handsomely for copies of the pictures of Mr Vernon and myself. Strange, of course, but a whim and we had to humour him.’