The Pleasure Merchant Page 5

  “Yes?” Tom tried to sound polite, but it was a challenge.

  “Be up early tomorrow. He’ll have some correspondence for you to deliver. And he’ll want coffee at nine sharp,” said Holland—and was gone.

  Tom wanted to kick something, but didn’t, lest Holland be lurking outside his door, listening for some sign of weakness. It frustrated him, having no outlet for his fury. Mrs. Jervis had seemed like an anchor; Holland, a hurricane. How could he trust such a man—at all, but more specifically, to convey what their mutual master truly wanted?

  Tom would just have to establish his own line of communication with his Mr. Bewit. No, more than that—Holland knew that because Tom was in an unusual position, that made him vulnerable. Tom would have to make himself indispensable to his new master. He wasn’t quite sure how he would manage it, but he would just have to figure it out.

  Tom sighed, his fear giving way to frustration and disgust. He hadn’t even officially begun his new job, and already he was having to fight for his place!

  Mr. Dray’s parting bonus wouldn’t last long if Tom lost this position; he had no idea what he would do if things didn’t work out. Become a porter, as his father had been, before the typhus took him? What a thought that was—it wasn’t like any of his father’s cronies had agreed to take him in as a boy, when he might have been trained to the trade. What would they make of him now, with his shopkeeper’s manners and skin pale from a lifetime spent indoors?

  There was nothing for it; he would just have to find a way to manage. Tom turned back to his crate. He would likely feel better after he was settled in—not that he had much settling in to do. The clothes all went into the small wardrobe, and his few possessions were quickly placed on the single shelf.

  He was pleased to find that the Dray’s wigbox contained his best wig, sitting on what had been his first, halting attempt at painting a wig stand. The eyes were off-center and the nose was too narrow, but looking at it made Tom’s heart ache once again. He’d labored so hard on it; had been so pleased when Mr. Dray praised his efforts.

  As he re-settled the wig, which had shifted slightly during transport, Tom noticed one of the curls had been mussed—it had unfurled slightly, and it made the whole piece look uneven. Upon further inspection, he discovered his wig hadn’t been knocked about incidentally—something had been stuck into the gap. Carefully, so very carefully, he retrieved it. To his delight, he found the note he had longed for:

  Dear Tom,

  I’m so sorry about all this. Mother and I argued with Father, saying he was being cruel, and a villain, but he says he cannot trust you. Well that’s the most foolish thing I ever heard in my life; I don’t believe for a minute you sabotaged Mr. Mauntell’s wig. I watched you labor on it—talked to you about it—and I know you wanted to do your best work for Mr. Mauntell, because he’d been so kind to you! But Father will not hear of granting you a second chance and I suspect there is something behind his wroth. He interrogated me awfully about you—for some reason he will not disclose he suspects we may have reached an understanding, which of course we have. I denied it as thoroughly and casually as I could to him… not in my heart, though, Tom—never. I still love you, and want to be your wife.

  I cannot imagine how you must feel, all alone in a strange house. I hope the other servants are kind and helpful. But even if they are all like brothers and sisters to you, you must long to come home again—yes, I still call it home, for I have hope you will once again call it that!

  How? Well, let me tell you. I noticed when Father described what happened he mentioned the gentleman, Mr. Bewit, insisted you were innocent. Father suspects this means Mr. Bewit was indeed involved, for how else could he be so very certain? Of course, when I pointed out to him that it was unreasonable to punish you if he suspected Mr. Bewit he just shook his head. “I can replace an apprentice but not my reputation,” was all he would say. How do you like that? He doesn’t want to say anything against a gentleman, the coward.

  So here is what I think: It sounds like you’ll be serving Mr. Bewit directly, from what the servant said who came to pick up your things. Why not try to find out the truth? If you uncover what really happened, then you could come to father with that evidence and show him, really prove to him that you were innocent! At this point, it would be much easier on him to have you back than train up a new boy… and of course I want you home again, and soon.

  Try, Tom—try to prove you had nothing to do with the incident. Ask subtle questions of Mr. Bewit and the rest of the staff, and when you uncover the conspiracy that I know must exist, come back and tell us. Then perhaps you can complete your apprenticeship and we can be married.

  Pass any return letters to Jane. She does the marketing most mornings, and she is trustworthy.

  I remain,

  Your Hizzy

  Tom read the letter several times, amazed once again by the brilliance of his future bride, and then folded it up and tucked it into a crack in his wardrobe. He wouldn’t put it past Holland to rifle through his belongings.

  It was amazing how much better he felt now that he had a plan. He would do exactly as Hizzy suggested, he would try and find out the truth. And Hizzy’s ideas nested nicely with his own resolutions—he would be allowed more liberty to ask pointed questions if he established himself as deserving of Mr. Bewit’s confidence. Once he got to the bottom of the matter he could go home, resume his life, and everything would go back to the way it was.

  Tom smiled to himself. He’d beat Holland at his own game, yes he would. He’d be the best servant Mr. Bewit ever had in his life, so good Mr. Bewit would trust him with all his secrets. And he’d begin first thing tomorrow—in spite of what Holland had advised, Tom would bring Mr. Bewit coffee and tea.

  In spite of his initial concerns, Tom’s first month serving Mr. Bewit was actually quite enjoyable. He had to rise early, true, but Tom was accustomed to rising early—just not from a decently comfortable bed in a decently warm room, to find a breakfast table laden with thoroughly decent things to eat. These might seem like but small changes to you, but to Tom, they made more of a difference than he would ever have imagined. As an apprentice, he’d felt lucky when there was butter with his morning bread; in Mr. Bewit’s house, even the servants ate meat, and there was toast, and tea, and sugar, and sometimes wine, and once when Cook slightly burned the family’s drinking chocolate she gave it to the staff to share. The scant spoonful Tom snagged was the most delicious thing he’d ever tasted.

  After eating as much as he liked, Tom dressed in his elegant livery. Though Holland had made a few snide remarks about ‘better servants’ not needing to wear uniforms, Tom loved the tan breeches, white stockings and gloves, and green waistcoat. The ensemble was grander than any outfit he’d ever owned, especially the hunter-green coat trimmed with rich silver braid and tin buttons embossed with the Bewit’s coat of arms: a hooded falcon perched on a falconer’s glove.

  Once dressed, Tom attended to anything that required seeing-to before Mr. Bewit rose, such as delivering any correspondence for Mr. Bewit, Hallux Dryden, or his wife Sabina. Mr. Bewit was very pleased by Tom’s ability to perfectly mix ease and respect when talking to his betters, and recommended he be assigned those kinds of tasks from almost Tom’s first day, so it fell to Tom to run any family errands too personal for one of the interchangeable footmen but not dignified enough for a servant like Holland.

  Once Mr. Bewit rose, Tom was expected to stay near to his master’s side, as a great man was always in need of something. This fit well into Tom’s plans to try and draw him out, so he kept closer than a beggar fetching a new quill while Mr. Bewit was writing; tying back the curtains or trimming the candle-wicks while he was reading; getting him a glass of cognac or a sandwich when he desired some refreshment. It got a bit tedious, but Mr. Bewit always thanked him, which he did not have to do, so quickly Tom came to consider Mr. Bewit the best of men. Even if serving him wasn’t as intellectually stimulating as making wigs for the gentr
y, being a cup-bearer wasn’t a bad job at all; Tom quickly discovered, as I did, that pleasing people is remarkably rewarding work.

  And best of all, his diligence seemed to be softening up Mr. Bewit nicely, just as Hizzy had predicted. In fact, Tom made himself so useful that within a week Mr. Bewit hardly let him out of his sight. Tom was initially surprised this didn’t seem to bother the prickly Holland… but then again, Holland was too dignified to sprint like the Devil was after him just to fetch a new deck of playing cards during a game of polignac, or haul the enormous new Encyclopaedia down to the parlor when company was over, and some point of fact needed to be settled. Tom, of course, had no such qualms—and eventually, he was rewarded by Mr. Bewit taking him along when he dined out, with friends, or at his club.

  The hardest thing for Tom was, as Mrs. Jervis had predicted, the expectation of invisibility. A craftsman’s apprentice—especially one who spent most of his day in the front of the shop, serving customers—was never invisible. He flattered, he fawned, he bowed and complimented. He did not quietly bring what was required and then do his best to blend into the wainscoting, pretending to be just another piece of furniture. This simply wasn’t in Tom’s nature. He prided himself on the swiftness and precision with which he obeyed all orders, but when it came to the matter of his presence, more than once during those first weeks Tom caught himself failing to simply blend in.

  The odd thing was, it didn’t seem as if Mr. Bewit minded. In fact, he seemed to enjoy the way Tom put himself forward. He even laughed at Tom’s little attempts at humor, and emboldened by these successes, after watching his master struggle for half an hour over a certain turn of phrase in a letter one night, Tom suggested something based on Mr. Bewit’s mutterings. When it turned out to be “just the way to put it, my boy,” Mr. Bewit began consulting him regularly about such matters.

  Thus, between his increasingly intimate relationship with his master and the friends he made among the servants, Tom felt confident he was doing well in his new position. He seemed to please everyone, even Mr. Bewit’s prickly, bombastic cousin Hallux Dryden and his dizzy, distant wife Sabina; a feat in and of itself, for to Tom’s mind, those two were the queerest couple he’d ever met in his life.

  I can assure you, it was not simply his ignorance of the private lives of the gentry that led him to think this.

  Sabina Dryden might look in perfect health—better than perfect, in Tom’s opinion, for she was a rare beauty—but she was said to be sickly, and her behavior, if not her appearance, confirmed this. She kept mostly to her rooms, her only company her husband and a mute French maid called Maritte. When she emerged, to visit with company or to eat, she did little, and said yet less—unless it was to praise her husband. Hallux was her favorite, practically her only, topic of conversation, and she spoke of his virtues any chance she got, describing him as ‘a man of fearless candor,’ ‘the bold innovator needed by our nation,’ or the like, when anybody would listen to her. But when he was not present, or when the conversation turned to other matters, she would lapse into the strange saint-like silence that was her most common state. It seemed to Tom that once she had taken a chair she scarcely moved unless told to, and she did not occupy her time with reading novels, painting fire-screens, embroidering, or music, like the other gentlewomen he met.

  Sabina might be strictly ornamental, but just the same, Tom liked her—liked her very much indeed. When she spoke to him she was always extremely courteous, if remote; between that, and her astonishing loveliness, it did not take him long to decide she was one of the most pleasant women he had ever met. And, given the muffled but ecstatic cries Tom frequently heard while passing Hallux’s chambers after leaving Mr. Bewit’s, she was a most obliging wife.

  As for the husband whom she held in such high esteem… well, Tom wholeheartedly disagreed with her assessment of the man, and he was not alone. Hallux Dryden was hated below stairs, and no great favorite above them either. Perhaps it was his self-described “scientific turn of mind,” whatever that meant. As far as Tom could tell, it involved collecting and fiddling with abstruse mechanical devices that emitted light or sound when activated, and pouring over enormous tomes that all seemed to be about the mind, the spirit, and memory. That was about it.

  Hallux’s dearest wish was to join the Royal Society, which seemed to be some sort of club, like Waddles or Brooks’s, but for brainy people—natural philosophers, moralists, and doctors, who also possessed a ‘scientific turn of mind.’ But first, Hallux had to publish something called a “monograph.” To that end, he spent the bulk of his time in his study, tinkering with his toys, or scribbling notes in the most appalling handwriting on reams and reams of paper. But when company asked after Hallux’s pursuits, he claimed to be a brilliant doctor, a specialist in something called “nerves.” Tom was suspicious, for Hallux saw no patients, but following Mrs. Jervis’s advice, he said nothing about it to anyone.

  If eccentricity and ‘scientific-mindedness’ had been the whole of Hallux’s faults Tom would not have disliked the man so much. Mr. Bewit was himself something of an eccentric, after all—he had never re-married, was idle, and was given to melancholic episodes unless distracted by cards or company. But Hallux was neither mercurial nor dull—he was a pompous ass. He never wanted for an opinion, and when he did not have an opportunity to speak one aloud, he made one. No one was safe; even Tom was frequently held up in the process of carrying out Mr. Bewit’s orders because Hallux saw fit to stop him in the hall to lecture him on this or that matter concerning his person, on matters as various as his posture, his reading habits, or the obvious flaws in his upbringing.

  Tom found this vexing, as you might imagine—but he was not the sole subject of Hallux’s lectures, not by a long shot. Hallux was an absolute terror when the Bewits had company, giving long lectures on the difference between the male and female mind, the faults of modern English parents when it came to raising their children, and, oddly enough, the necessity of Colonial independence. He also, in spite of owning over a dozen silk coats, absolutely condemned fancy dress in men, but most especially in women, and considered manners a failure rather than an accomplishment of polite society. Indeed, he was deliberately rude and abusive when anyone disagreed with him over his pet passions, making his points by presenting evidence until all were sick of it—and if that didn’t work, he resorted to hurling insults, and once—just once—the sugar bowl. Mr. Bewit once called his cousin a “firebrand,” but the only conflagrations Hallux Dryden seemed to ignite were under the bottoms of anyone who came to dine or play cards, prompting them to run out the front door with all possible haste.

  Thus, while Tom was happy enough to run errands for the man, as they were always peculiar or interesting, he found Hallux’s society completely hideous. But, he couldn’t complain about it, not too much at any rate—Hallux was the one thorn in the rosebush that was his new life. Even Daniel Holland, after his initial nastiness, seemed disinclined to actively torment him—he just teased Tom, and pushed him about a little.

  Tom missed his wigs, and Hizzy too, of course he did… but at the same time, he could hardly be blamed for noticing there were undeniable advantages to residing in the servants’ quarters in 12 Bloomsbury Square instead of in a garret in St. Martin’s Lane. In fact, the longer he spent away from his apprenticeship, the less he wished to return to it.

  He should have known it was all too good to last.

  The worst day of Tom’s new life began much like any other. During breakfast one of the footmen handed him a delivery, a heavy leather tube containing some of Hallux’s diagrams, to go to some doctor in Westminster. As he was going out anyways, Cook told him to pick up a few items at the market, a simple enough task… but to Tom’s dismay, Jane was there, with yet another letter from Hizzy tucked up her skirts.

  Hizzy had written to Tom several times during their month-long separation, but Tom had replied only once—after her first missive, to tell her that he would do exactly as she suggested.
Jane made disapproving noises when once again he replied he had no return; nor did he appreciate her broad hint that her mistress should like to hear back from him sooner rather than later.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t think of Hizzy—he did! He just had no idea what to say to her. He had made no progress in the investigation, and the prospect of admitting that to Hizzy in writing was intolerable. Mr. Bewit had not so much as mentioned Brooks’s since Tom entered his service, and there was no way to pry without seeming obvious. He had to wait for the right moment. Anyone could see that—anyone except Hizzy, apparently.

  At least he had his reasons for fleeing Jane’s furrowed brow and low tut-tutting. Mr. Bewit had decided to take Tom with him to a luncheon appointment at Vauxhall Gardens, but Tom didn’t mention that, sensing Jane would not appreciate being brushed off in favor of a visit to a pleasure-garden. He still told her the truth, however; Cook needed her shopping quick as he could pelt back to Bloomsbury Square, as that evening Mr. Bewit had invited several of his friends over for supper that night.

  Such a full day meant an early start for a gentleman like Mr. Bewit, so Tom was unsurprised to find Daniel Holland already seeing to his master’s toilet when Tom came in with breakfast.

  “Thank you, Tom,” said Mr. Bewit, though he scarcely looked at the rolls, butter, spiced peaches with cream, and boiled egg. He had a gloomy air about him that morning, as he accepted the cup of coffee Tom handed him. “No need to run off just yet. Stay a while, won’t you?”