“Surely such little money as I have must be carefully hoarded for other expenses than fashionable clothes, don’t you think?” Octavia said drily.
Theodosia’s mouth tightened, and she shot a meaningful glance at Augusta. “We are well aware of how you are circumstanced, but it is essential that you present a good appearance once you are out of mourning. It would reflect badly on Augusta and myself, and indeed on your brothers, were you to be seen to be poorly dressed. Your wardrobe, a minimum wardrobe, will be our present to you. And should you catch the fancy of a man of some fortune, well then, you may pay us … However, that need not concern us now.”
Octavia had a corner seat and so could look out of the window. Once they reached the open country, and rattled past neat dwellings interspersed with market gardens, the sunny spring morning raised her spirits. She had forgotten how pretty the English countryside was, even in the frozen, pre-blooming stillness of March, with the trees still gaunt and leafless. The hedges and fields, the villages with the church and manor, the men and women working the land, were all so different from the landscape and colours she had grown used to in India.
Yet she felt a pang of loss for that hot and mysterious country. Would she ever return there? Would she ever again watch the sluggish, murky waters of the Hoogly slide past, enjoy the startling dawns and sudden sunsets, hear the endless cawing of the crows, watch the vultures and hawks circling overhead, taste the hot, spicy food that Christopher adored?
It was difficult to imagine that this English scene was part of the same world; that in Calcutta the bazaars would be alive with people and colour and sound, while here a housewife would be tripping through the door of a village shop, no bustle or noise or wandering cow to interrupt her leisurely purchases.
Her attention was caught by a fine modern house, situated half way up a hill, facing south, an elegant building with a Grecian façade, and the Indian scene faded from her mind.
“Mr. Mortimer’s house,” a burly man in a green coat sitting beside her said, with a nod towards it. “He’s a gent who made a fortune in the city, and like all such, he wanted to buy a country estate. However, none was available, or none that took his fancy, so he set about building a house for himself. And a neat job he’s made of it, too. Mr. Quintus Dance was the man who designed it, an up-and-coming young man, who will make a name for himself, I am sure.”
Octavia, instead of quelling the man with a glance, as her sisters would instantly have done should they ever have had the misfortune to find themselves travelling on the stagecoach, at once entered into conversation with her fellow passenger, who was in the building trade, he told her. They discussed buildings, the modern as opposed to the classical style, and Octavia listened with lively attention to his disquisition on the importance of guttering and downpipes. “I take a keen interest in all aspects of building,” he said apologetically, fearing he might be boring her.
But she wasn’t bored, not at all. He was a most interesting man, an importer of fine marbles, and supplier to nearly all the great houses now building. “That house of Mr. Mortimer’s,” he said with a backwards jerk of his thumb, as the coach swung round a corner and the house disappeared from view. “I provided a mort of marble for that house, for fireplaces, panelling in the library, and even a bathroom. Very up to date is Mr. Mortimer, he has a contrivance for running water which is quite remarkable. Carrara marble for the pillars and travertine for the hall floor.”
They chatted on; Mr. Dixon, as he turned out to be called, was a well-travelled man. “For we don’t have much marble in this country, and that’s a fact. And what there is isn’t always of the best quality; no, I look to Italy for my best marble, and Turkey, too. During the war with France, when that Boney was rampaging about the Continent, well, I tell you, it was hard to keep my head above water. I inherited the business from my father, and he had it from his father before him, but with not being able to travel nor trade with Italy nor anywhere else in Europe, life was hard. I went further afield, to Greece, even, but bringing the marble back all that way is uncommon expensive, and then, with folk being so nervous about the outcome of the war, there wasn’t as much building going on as one would like to see.”
Mr. Dixon had travelled to India as well, and on the very vessel that Octavia had just sailed back to England on, the Sir John Rokesby.
“A commodious, comfortable vessel, and with a good turn of speed under a good captain.”
Octavia was fascinated by what he had to say, and was soon questioning him eagerly about styles of architecture now in fashion—Mr. Dixon wasn’t enthusiastic about the Gothic, not much call for marble in those kind of houses, and who in their right mind would choose to set up home in a place that looked like it was out of the Middle Ages? “Give me a modern style any day, elegant lines, spacious, light, that’s the kind of house a gentleman and his family can live in.”
In no time at all, they had reached the first stage, at the Salisbury Arms in Barnet, and as soon as the coach turned into the yard, the passengers tumbled out to try to swallow a cup of coffee in the few minutes allowed to them while the horses were changed.
“I’ll see to that for you,” said Mr. Dixon, surging across the inn yard. “It’s no place for a young lady like yourself to be jostling and shoving just to get a cup of coffee.”
In fact they had a few minutes’ grace, time for him to return with a cup of dark, steaming coffee and for her to drink it without scalding her throat, for a handsome equipage arrived at the inn, and the ostlers and boys leapt to the horses’ heads. “A prime team,” observed Mr. Dixon, watching with keen eyes.
The innkeeper came running out in his leather apron. “Good morning, my lord,” he said to the tall man in a many-caped coat, who had swung himself to the ground from the curricle. A waiter hurried up with a pewter mug, which the driver of the curricle took with a smile.
He was a striking-looking man; Octavia, while trying not to stare, could hardly take her eyes off him. There was a vitality about him that almost seemed to crackle, and his lean face, with keen eyes set above a long, aristocratic nose and a mobile mouth, promised both intelligence and wit.
A new pair of horses were in the shafts, the man was back in the driving seat; he called to the ostler to let go of their heads, and with a swift manoeuvre he was out of the yard and bowling along the road.
Then the post boy was tootling his horn, the passengers scrambled back on board the stagecoach, the last of them only just making it before the powerful team of four fresh horses leapt forward, and they were on their way again.
“That was Lord Rutherford,” Mr. Dixon said, settling himself into his place and saying politely that he hoped he wasn’t taking up Octavia’s room. “He has a house near Meryton, not his principal seat, of course. That’s Rutherford Castle, up Richmond way, and a gloomy pile it is, to be sure. This house of his in Hertfordshire isn’t much better, his mother lives there mostly. It’s Elizabethan, all chimneys and fancy brickwork, and not worth the upkeep if you ask me. Still, his lordship is rarely there, spends most of his time in London. A Whig, you see, and the Whigs don’t go in for being country gents, not like the Tories, who take their landowning very seriously.”
“Does his wife also prefer to live in London, is she a political hostess?”
“He ain’t married, though it’s not for want of the young ladies and their mamas trying, from what I hear. He’s as rich as can be, but he don’t care for the married state too much. Likes the females, I beg your pardon, but not in the matrimonial way.” He paused and shook his head. “His mama’s not quite right in the head by all accounts, so perhaps he doesn’t take too cheerful a view of the married state.”
Mr. Dixon was going on to Grantham, and it was with real warmth that Octavia bid him good day as she jumped down from the steps of the coach at Meryton. He saw to her boxes, and looked about him with a worried air, even as the coachman was warning him to “Look lively there, if you don’t want to get left behind.”
“Where’s this person who’s meeting you?”