Chapter Three - Believe
The smell of jugged hare floating up from the kitchens made Elizabeth's stomach rumble audibly. She chuckled at herself, checking over her hair again in the small mirror; curled and pinned up gently, with a few borrowed pearls scattered in decoration. Sarah had lost a daughter three years after Nathaniel's birth, and she was always enthusiastically helpful whenever Elizabeth needed anything feminine. Smoothing the skirts of her dress, the embroidered blue silk soft under her hands, she pulled on her gloves and left the room.
Nathaniel clapped delightedly as she descended the staircase.
"Oh Lizzie you look so pretty!"
She smiled at him- the boy was entirely free of dirt, a rare sight and was dressed in very smart short britches and a small green frock coat.
"You don't look too bad yourself Nathan." She ruffled his sandy hair as he beamed, taking his arm and walking towards the drawing room. The debris of the attempted burglary had been hastily cleared away and the window repaired in time for tonight's festivities.
She understood this was politically important for Andrew- there seemed to be a few peers in attendance along with his usual Whig friends and the odd businessman. Elizabeth knew when she owed a debt, and summoning all one’s social graces no matter what troubling dreams one had been having, what memories had been stirred from the silt, was a small price in exchange for a roof over her head.
Sarah beckoned her into the room.
"Elizabeth, you look wonderful! Lord Marshall, you haven’t met my cousin's daughter. Elizabeth, this is Lord Marshall- he's just been made Lord President of His Majesty's Privy Council." After the pair nodded to one another Sarah steered her further into the party. Lady Farthing, the Right Honourable James Deacon, Edward and Jane Rochester, Sir Michael Ball...
"And this is Sir Richard Bletchley." Sarah's voice was expectant. Elizabeth looked up at the man and could not suppress a slight gasp. He was tall, taller than Will, with auburn-tinted brown hair curling about his ears and a neatly trimmed moustache. His nose was perhaps a little too large for his fine-boned face, but his eyes... Elizabeth remembered the holiday they had taken in Andrew's constituency last summer, watching the English Channel lap at Sussex shores in shades of grey and blue. Richard's eyes were warmer than the water she and Nathan had laughingly paddled in, but they held the same shifting depth and colour.
She blushed slightly, realising she was staring, but he was staring at her too, wonder and curiosity sparkling in those eyes as they gazed into her own. Sarah's voice seemed an intrusion.
"You'll be sitting together at dinner."
"So what exactly do you do, Richard?" He had insisted she drop the 'sir' immediately, claiming it embarrassed him.
"Well until a few years ago I was an investor in the East India Trading Company, but I had to pull out after they put Cutler Beckett in charge, the blighter. Recently I've been putting money here and there- small shipping firms, cotton mills, that sort of thing. And managing father's estates more often than not too, the old man's not quite what he was. I hear you have tangled with the Company yourself, Miss Swann- if I'm not being too forward in asking."
She smiled warmly.
"Please, Richard, do call me Elizabeth. I have had... dealings with the East India Company-" a vision of her second encounter with Beckett flashed through her mind and was gone "- though there isn't much to tell; I simply fell afoul of their mistakes in Jamaica, and of course found my way to Andrew and Sarah." The lies came so naturally now that she barely noticed them, even to those she would rather not have lied to.
He grimaced slightly.
"Goodness, that was a terrible business indeed. But I'm sure you've been forced to relate it to far too many boring dinner guests these last few years; I do get tired of the repetitiveness of table chatter nowadays. I've often thought we ought to be able to make lists to be presented to our neighbours at these sorts of events- I think I should rather like drawing up something headed with 'Do not mention these topics to Richard on pain of being run through'."
Elizabeth laughed as the first course began to arrive from the kitchen.
"Well in that case I do hope I don't inadvertently stumble onto one of them."
"So do I." His eyes twinkled mischievously. "I'm not generally prone to threatening lovely young ladies."
Sarah sneaked another look at the pair seated further down the table. They were halfway through the main course and still talking, heads slightly bent together. A few of the other women were raising eyebrows, but she could only beam inwardly. It was rare to see Elizabeth this animated, but something about the red-haired man seemed to capture her, a light flickering in her eyes that seemed to belong. Occasionally snatches of their conversation drifted up the table. It seemed they were discussing Daniel Defoe; Elizabeth had made many additions to the Wilmot library since her arrival and was enthusiastic about them, though not usually to the few men she would actually engage in conversation with. As she illustrated a point with a carefree wave of a hand it seemed Richard was quite captured too, eyes focused intently on her face.
She elbowed her husband.
"Look, Andrew, what did I tell you?"
Andrew turned away from Lord Marshall for a moment.
"What, dear?" He followed his wife's line of sight. "Oh. Yes, very nice indeed. Bletchley's a good fellow." She must have imagined the slight frown that whispered across his brow. Andrew had been behaving a little oddly towards Elizabeth since that incident with the break in earlier in the week; really it was quite impressive that the girl had managed to trip one of the men over as she shouted for help, though Sarah couldn't entirely recall hearing anything herself. Nathaniel had babbled something about swords, but he had probably become a little confused with the lateness and excitement; he really was a volatile child. She ought to have a word with his tutor.
After the dessert plates were cleared away and the ladies retired as drinks for the men were brought out, Sarah cornered the girl in the drawing room.
"So how did you like Sir Bletchley?"
"Oh, Richard is quite the gentleman." Elizabeth looked more flushed than was entirely proper; Jamaica evidently hadn’t been awash with handsome and intelligent eligible bachelors (though for that matter London had been having something of a dry period). "How does Andrew come to know him?"
"Well he's the second son of Lord Bletchley, though everyone expects him to inherit now- his brother hasn't been heard from for years, vanished with some revolutionary group in France. His father had the sense to give him a little money to set himself up and he's become very successful, though really he oughtn't to have pulled out of the East India Company for such a small matter... anyway, Andrew worked with his Lordship when he first entered the Commons, and Sir Bletchley has been lobbying for some import duty reform, or something else dull, since he got back from the country." She leaned in a little closer to Elizabeth. "My dear, you know that we love having you here, but it would be so nice to see you... happy. Please do think very carefully."
A few bright stars were visible through the clouds when the guests finally began to depart. Elizabeth stood by the door with her benefactors to bid their farewells. Infuriatingly little of the mens' talk had filtered through the chattering gossip of the drawing room, but Andrew had apparently made some kind of advancement; he certainly seemed quite puffed-up as he shook hands with Lord Marshall.
The touch of a hand on her own made Elizabeth start. Richard nodded politely to Andrew and Sarah before turning back to her, lifting the hand gracefully to his lips.
"Until we next meet... Elizabeth."
She was half surprised Sarah didn't demand they marry right then and there.
In the still of her room she sat a short while later, running a fine-bristled brush through her hair. It had been strange at first, restarting the ritual after months of only rough-combing it with her fingers, but her arms remembered the path of the one hundred strokes and it was almost normal now. The pearl ornaments sat in an untidy pile on her dressing table, the gloves put away with the dress and shoes. She regarded herself in the mirror. It wasn't entirely unheard of for a young woman to be unattached at 25, and would be nothing at all if she were a man- really that was quite ridiculous- but she knew if this was ever going to work she would be required to be... happy.
Elizabeth frowned at her reflection. She'd been prepared before to enter into what certainly would have been a lifetime of unhappiness with James, and this was little different. And Richard had made her feel... she closed her eyes and drew breath. He was certainly quite unlike the handful of eligible men to whom she had been introduced previously; she had almost become used again to the slight condescension in tone, the badly concealed surprise when she dared voice an opinion on politics or the arts, but Richard had listened attentively to her and matched her thoughts with his own. And he was very easy on the eye. If she would be married, there could be worse choices.
Setting the hairbrush back down she rose from the stool and slipped into bed, savouring the warmth of the blankets. A married woman might find memories easier to quash, under household and children and all the mundanities of a proper life. It mightn't be so bad. Her eyes drifted shut.
Richard clasped her hands in his, smiling broadly, but suddenly her footing slipped, the gloves were being torn from her hands, she was falling and she could not even scream as she hit the water. She sank, through golden-shafted blue spangled with the silver of fish, and warm hands seemed to reach out to her, but she felt another embrace pulling her out of the arms of the sea and up, up towards light and air. Coughing as she was dragged onto a dock, she stared up at her rescuer.
Jack.
Half memory, half dream, half something entirely different, though he must be a creation of her mind because now he was muttering something about pirates being allowed as many halves as they liked and she hadn't spoken a word. His hand trailed across the top of her cheek, brushing away a soaking snarl of hair. She did not catch her breath, not in the slightest.
Dream-Jack lowered his head towards her, those fingers delicately tracing the curve of her lips, like they might some trinket he was weighing up the value of.
"Little naiad," he whispered, eyes half closed in kohl-blackened crescents, "siren girl, you always try to drown me." She struggled to get away but his other hand on her shoulder held her down. Angrily, she tried to summon the other figures from the memory, the soldiers, her father, the swords and the chains, anything to get away from Jack's stare and Jack's feather-touch, but whatever recess of her mind was creating this refused to obey.
The moon stared down through a clouded haze as Elizabeth whimpered in her sleep.
Nathaniel clapped delightedly as she descended the staircase.
"Oh Lizzie you look so pretty!"
She smiled at him- the boy was entirely free of dirt, a rare sight and was dressed in very smart short britches and a small green frock coat.
"You don't look too bad yourself Nathan." She ruffled his sandy hair as he beamed, taking his arm and walking towards the drawing room. The debris of the attempted burglary had been hastily cleared away and the window repaired in time for tonight's festivities.
She understood this was politically important for Andrew- there seemed to be a few peers in attendance along with his usual Whig friends and the odd businessman. Elizabeth knew when she owed a debt, and summoning all one’s social graces no matter what troubling dreams one had been having, what memories had been stirred from the silt, was a small price in exchange for a roof over her head.
Sarah beckoned her into the room.
"Elizabeth, you look wonderful! Lord Marshall, you haven’t met my cousin's daughter. Elizabeth, this is Lord Marshall- he's just been made Lord President of His Majesty's Privy Council." After the pair nodded to one another Sarah steered her further into the party. Lady Farthing, the Right Honourable James Deacon, Edward and Jane Rochester, Sir Michael Ball...
"And this is Sir Richard Bletchley." Sarah's voice was expectant. Elizabeth looked up at the man and could not suppress a slight gasp. He was tall, taller than Will, with auburn-tinted brown hair curling about his ears and a neatly trimmed moustache. His nose was perhaps a little too large for his fine-boned face, but his eyes... Elizabeth remembered the holiday they had taken in Andrew's constituency last summer, watching the English Channel lap at Sussex shores in shades of grey and blue. Richard's eyes were warmer than the water she and Nathan had laughingly paddled in, but they held the same shifting depth and colour.
She blushed slightly, realising she was staring, but he was staring at her too, wonder and curiosity sparkling in those eyes as they gazed into her own. Sarah's voice seemed an intrusion.
"You'll be sitting together at dinner."
"So what exactly do you do, Richard?" He had insisted she drop the 'sir' immediately, claiming it embarrassed him.
"Well until a few years ago I was an investor in the East India Trading Company, but I had to pull out after they put Cutler Beckett in charge, the blighter. Recently I've been putting money here and there- small shipping firms, cotton mills, that sort of thing. And managing father's estates more often than not too, the old man's not quite what he was. I hear you have tangled with the Company yourself, Miss Swann- if I'm not being too forward in asking."
She smiled warmly.
"Please, Richard, do call me Elizabeth. I have had... dealings with the East India Company-" a vision of her second encounter with Beckett flashed through her mind and was gone "- though there isn't much to tell; I simply fell afoul of their mistakes in Jamaica, and of course found my way to Andrew and Sarah." The lies came so naturally now that she barely noticed them, even to those she would rather not have lied to.
He grimaced slightly.
"Goodness, that was a terrible business indeed. But I'm sure you've been forced to relate it to far too many boring dinner guests these last few years; I do get tired of the repetitiveness of table chatter nowadays. I've often thought we ought to be able to make lists to be presented to our neighbours at these sorts of events- I think I should rather like drawing up something headed with 'Do not mention these topics to Richard on pain of being run through'."
Elizabeth laughed as the first course began to arrive from the kitchen.
"Well in that case I do hope I don't inadvertently stumble onto one of them."
"So do I." His eyes twinkled mischievously. "I'm not generally prone to threatening lovely young ladies."
Sarah sneaked another look at the pair seated further down the table. They were halfway through the main course and still talking, heads slightly bent together. A few of the other women were raising eyebrows, but she could only beam inwardly. It was rare to see Elizabeth this animated, but something about the red-haired man seemed to capture her, a light flickering in her eyes that seemed to belong. Occasionally snatches of their conversation drifted up the table. It seemed they were discussing Daniel Defoe; Elizabeth had made many additions to the Wilmot library since her arrival and was enthusiastic about them, though not usually to the few men she would actually engage in conversation with. As she illustrated a point with a carefree wave of a hand it seemed Richard was quite captured too, eyes focused intently on her face.
She elbowed her husband.
"Look, Andrew, what did I tell you?"
Andrew turned away from Lord Marshall for a moment.
"What, dear?" He followed his wife's line of sight. "Oh. Yes, very nice indeed. Bletchley's a good fellow." She must have imagined the slight frown that whispered across his brow. Andrew had been behaving a little oddly towards Elizabeth since that incident with the break in earlier in the week; really it was quite impressive that the girl had managed to trip one of the men over as she shouted for help, though Sarah couldn't entirely recall hearing anything herself. Nathaniel had babbled something about swords, but he had probably become a little confused with the lateness and excitement; he really was a volatile child. She ought to have a word with his tutor.
After the dessert plates were cleared away and the ladies retired as drinks for the men were brought out, Sarah cornered the girl in the drawing room.
"So how did you like Sir Bletchley?"
"Oh, Richard is quite the gentleman." Elizabeth looked more flushed than was entirely proper; Jamaica evidently hadn’t been awash with handsome and intelligent eligible bachelors (though for that matter London had been having something of a dry period). "How does Andrew come to know him?"
"Well he's the second son of Lord Bletchley, though everyone expects him to inherit now- his brother hasn't been heard from for years, vanished with some revolutionary group in France. His father had the sense to give him a little money to set himself up and he's become very successful, though really he oughtn't to have pulled out of the East India Company for such a small matter... anyway, Andrew worked with his Lordship when he first entered the Commons, and Sir Bletchley has been lobbying for some import duty reform, or something else dull, since he got back from the country." She leaned in a little closer to Elizabeth. "My dear, you know that we love having you here, but it would be so nice to see you... happy. Please do think very carefully."
A few bright stars were visible through the clouds when the guests finally began to depart. Elizabeth stood by the door with her benefactors to bid their farewells. Infuriatingly little of the mens' talk had filtered through the chattering gossip of the drawing room, but Andrew had apparently made some kind of advancement; he certainly seemed quite puffed-up as he shook hands with Lord Marshall.
The touch of a hand on her own made Elizabeth start. Richard nodded politely to Andrew and Sarah before turning back to her, lifting the hand gracefully to his lips.
"Until we next meet... Elizabeth."
She was half surprised Sarah didn't demand they marry right then and there.
In the still of her room she sat a short while later, running a fine-bristled brush through her hair. It had been strange at first, restarting the ritual after months of only rough-combing it with her fingers, but her arms remembered the path of the one hundred strokes and it was almost normal now. The pearl ornaments sat in an untidy pile on her dressing table, the gloves put away with the dress and shoes. She regarded herself in the mirror. It wasn't entirely unheard of for a young woman to be unattached at 25, and would be nothing at all if she were a man- really that was quite ridiculous- but she knew if this was ever going to work she would be required to be... happy.
Elizabeth frowned at her reflection. She'd been prepared before to enter into what certainly would have been a lifetime of unhappiness with James, and this was little different. And Richard had made her feel... she closed her eyes and drew breath. He was certainly quite unlike the handful of eligible men to whom she had been introduced previously; she had almost become used again to the slight condescension in tone, the badly concealed surprise when she dared voice an opinion on politics or the arts, but Richard had listened attentively to her and matched her thoughts with his own. And he was very easy on the eye. If she would be married, there could be worse choices.
Setting the hairbrush back down she rose from the stool and slipped into bed, savouring the warmth of the blankets. A married woman might find memories easier to quash, under household and children and all the mundanities of a proper life. It mightn't be so bad. Her eyes drifted shut.
Richard clasped her hands in his, smiling broadly, but suddenly her footing slipped, the gloves were being torn from her hands, she was falling and she could not even scream as she hit the water. She sank, through golden-shafted blue spangled with the silver of fish, and warm hands seemed to reach out to her, but she felt another embrace pulling her out of the arms of the sea and up, up towards light and air. Coughing as she was dragged onto a dock, she stared up at her rescuer.
Jack.
Half memory, half dream, half something entirely different, though he must be a creation of her mind because now he was muttering something about pirates being allowed as many halves as they liked and she hadn't spoken a word. His hand trailed across the top of her cheek, brushing away a soaking snarl of hair. She did not catch her breath, not in the slightest.
Dream-Jack lowered his head towards her, those fingers delicately tracing the curve of her lips, like they might some trinket he was weighing up the value of.
"Little naiad," he whispered, eyes half closed in kohl-blackened crescents, "siren girl, you always try to drown me." She struggled to get away but his other hand on her shoulder held her down. Angrily, she tried to summon the other figures from the memory, the soldiers, her father, the swords and the chains, anything to get away from Jack's stare and Jack's feather-touch, but whatever recess of her mind was creating this refused to obey.
The moon stared down through a clouded haze as Elizabeth whimpered in her sleep.