High Society novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Dowager's Test

Tilly refuses to leave, the Dowager drills Effie on a childhood that never happened, Hugh's hand on her back starts a fight, and Lord Marchbank is announced at eight in the morning.

By ten that night my mother had her fifteen hundred pounds.

A footman in blue carried it to Southwark in a locked box, and he came back with a note in her square, furious hand.

It said, "Who is he and what does he want?"

I wrote back, "A duke. A name. Nothing else."

She replied in one line, "Nothing else is the most expensive thing there is."

I put the note in my pocket and went down to be taught how to be a lady.

The Dowager received me in a drawing room the size of my whole wash yard.

Tilly sat on a stool by the door, because the Dowager had looked at her once and said, "You may keep that one."

Tilly had not stopped smiling since.

"Sit," the old woman said, and then, "No. Not like a sack of flour."

I sat again.

"Where were you raised?"

"Cornwall."

"Where in Cornwall?"

"A village on the north coast."

"Which village?"

"I don't know any villages in Cornwall."

"You were raised in one."

I thought hard, and the only word I found was a pasty.

"Trevithick," I said.

"That is a surname, not a village."

"It's the name of a village now."

"Hmm."

She tapped her stick against my ankle.

"Your nurse was a Cornish woman."

"She kept a cow and a very strict Methodist chapel."

"She told you your father was a sea captain who drowned."

"Did she?"

"She did, until you were fourteen and found a letter."

"What did the letter say?"

"That your father was a duke."

"You were furious, and you have been furious ever since."

I looked at her.

"It's an easy part to play," I said.

The corner of her mouth moved, exactly as her grandson's had.

"Good."

"Keep that."

She made me say it all again.

She made me cross the room four times with my hands folded and my chin up.

Each time she found something new to fix.

"You walk like a woman carrying a basket."

"I have been carrying a basket for twenty years."

"Put the basket down."

At midnight the door opened and the Duke came in.

He had taken off his coat, and his sleeves were rolled up, and there was ink on his right hand.

He stopped when he saw me standing on a book with a glass of water on my head.

"This is the Dowager's idea," I said.

"I am aware," said the Duke.

"Grandmother, may I?"

"You may correct her carriage," said the old woman.

"Your carriage, Hugh, not hers."

"She has a perfectly good one."

I had just time to think that the old woman was the cleverest person I had met when he stepped behind me.

His hand settled flat in the middle of my back.

It was warm through my dress, and it was very steady.

"Here," said the Duke.

"You are leaning forward to carry something that is not there."

He pushed gently.

My spine straightened under his palm, and my whole back went hot from the neck down.

"Better," he said.

His voice was lower than it had been all day.

"Take your hand off me," I said.

"I am correcting your posture."

"You are enjoying correcting it."

There was a very small silence.

Tilly made a noise at the door.

The Duke took his hand away.

"Forgive me," he said.

"I'd like it noted that I said no touching," I said, "and I meant it."

"I recall."

"I'll say when."

He stood very still behind me.

"Understood, Miss Tapper."

I wanted to turn around and see his face, and I did not.

I picked the glass up off my head, and I drank every drop.

"Again," said the Dowager, from her chair.

She was watching the two of us with the look of a woman at a play she has seen before.

We worked until the fire had burnt to ash.

When the sky went grey in the long windows I was still on the carpet.

I was reciting the Cornish nurse's recipe for saffron buns.

I had not slept, and my feet were swollen in borrowed slippers.

"The cow's name," said the Dowager.

"Buttercup."

"The Methodist minister's wife?"

"She disliked me and sent me hymns."

"Her name?"

"I never learned it."

"Good."

"The date you left Cornwall?"

"The fourteenth of June, by the carrier's cart, because I had a letter in my pocket and a pasty."

"Excellent."

"You will do very well, Miss Tapper."

"You may go and get some sleep."

I turned to find Hugh by the window with his arms crossed, watching me, and not at all pretending he was not.

"Your Grace," I said.

"Effie, please," he said.

"I did not say you could."

"You didn't say I couldn't."

I had no answer for that.

The door opened again.

The butler stood there, a stout grave man with white gloves.

He was holding a card on a silver tray, and his face was exactly as flat as a plate.

"Your Grace," he said.

"The Earl of Marchbank and Lady Rosamund Selby are in the hall."

"The Earl requests breakfast."

It was eight o'clock in the morning.

I looked at the Duke, and he looked at me.

"He's early," he said.

"He knows," I said.

"He cannot know."

"Then he's a very polite man who likes to be early."

The Dowager rose slowly, leaning on her stick.

"Wash your face, child," she said.

"And let down your hair."

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