Chapter Six

T he materials for Dorcas's costume were easily organized. The ladies of the third floor all had costumes they had worn to previous Masques and were happy to provide one or all of them to Dorcas. "None of us will wear the same costume twice," Scarlett told Dorcas. "Not for the Masque. It is the most important working night of the year."

Apparently, the night of the Masque was an occasion for some men to audition mistresses. Nearly all the girls hoped for a patron who would put them up in their own house and lavish them with comforts. "And with jewelry," Scarlett added. "One can sell jewelry once the shine has gone off the arrangement. A girl must think about her retirement."

Dorcas could not wear any of the costumes as they were. They were all too large, for one, and too revealing for another. She did not wish to be taken for one of her new friends, however much she liked them.

However, the costumes formed a great pile of fabrics and trims, in all kinds of colors. Dorcas could certainly make herself a costume. She had put aside her usual stack of linens in favor of the costume. She just needed an idea.

She made dozens of sketches, but it was not until it occurred to her that some of the reds matched the predominant color of British army jackets that her charcoal took wings of its own and she decided to represent one of the sea of women who flowed after the army wherever it marched. Or, perhaps, more than one.

Lord Somerford could not miss the reference, she thought. The army, after all, was the connection between them. She would have a common soldier's jacket in red, though in more luxurious fabrics and cut to hug her figure. That would be paired with a white linen skirt. She had no desire to be mistaken for a man. Besides, the linen would form a good background for the scenes she had in mind.

Had she more time, she would have used her needle to decorate the skirt. But the images she saw in her mind's eye would take a single seamstress months to create. Instead, she sallied forth with one of the wolves to a shop where she could purchase brushes and paints.

They proved to be a shocking price—far too rich for her purse. However, the wolf said, "Select whatever you wish, Mrs. Anderson. Mrs. Dove-Lyon said that, if you hesitated over the cost or, indeed, attempted to make payment, I was to tell you she will pay for anything you purchase for your costume. It is, she said, part of your second token."

That was fair, Dorcas decided, for a far inferior costume purchased ready-made would cost more than a few tubes of color and the requisite paint brushes.

She cut six panels for the skirt, ignoring fashion to make each panel narrow at the waist and broad at the hem. She joined the seams, all but for the back seam, and hemmed along the bottom. Then she painted a deep border from one end to the other. The background was continuous, though it moved from valley to mountain to plain and back again. In the middle ground, the camp followers were on the march. Also, she painted the tail of the army itself, half a dozen soldiers, the leader disappearing at one end of the border behind a narrow tower. The other side of the tower showed at the far end of the border, and the two sides which would join when she sewed the back seam.

On each panel, the foreground showed women. Not portraits of some of the hundreds that had been Dorcas's friends, companions, servants, allies, and enemies, but a composite of many.

The first panel to the left of the row of six showed the colonel's wife. Behind her, the carriage and her maid—a soldier's wife—waited for the lady to finish giving a washerwoman her instructions, the fine lady in her carriage dress and the washerwoman in a skirt and a cut-down man's shirt, a heavy basket of washing strapped to her back.

The sutler on the next panel, whose job it was to sell foodstuffs to soldiers, also carried such a basket—this one piled high with bread, vegetables, and other supplies. Behind her, a young girl with the same flaxen plaits led a pair of heavily-laden donkeys.

The last panel in the row had two women with jugs, the donkeys behind them carrying bottles. In Dorcas's imagination, one sold wine, and the other brewed beer of some description whenever the army was in one place for long enough.

Two washerwomen plied their trade in the panel next to them, one hauling garments from a kettle and one spreading them on bushes to dry.

The two panels that would be the front spread of the skirt showed two mothers trudging determinedly after the army, one with a baby tied to her back and a child holding each hand, the other carrying an infant on one hip and leading a child. Behind them, between one panel and the next, another woman was bandaging the leg of a soldier who was seated on the ground.

Once the scenes had all been painted, she left them to dry and returned to sewing the jacket.

The ladies of the third floor had found her an officer's shako, left behind by a patron. She had to pad it so it would fit on her head. She removed the braid and the metal badge, replaced them with ribbon and a fabric rose, and added three ostrich plumes, dyed the same red as the ribbon. The hat was dark blue and the rose was white.

The mask was the hardest part. In the end, she accepted Mrs. Dove-Lyon's offer to have it made. It was to be a theatre mask with a different expression on each side. On one, the female face smiled. On the other, it wept.

Mrs. Dove-Lyon, the ladies of the third floor, the various employees of the den, and Mrs. Dove-Lyon's house servants all took an interest. The servants and the third-floor ladies actively helped by entertaining Stephen while she worked.

They would not, however, be available for baby-sitting duties on the night, since they would all be busy with other duties. Dorcas thought of asking her landlady, but Mrs. Dove-Lyon offered the services of Maudie, one of the kitchen maids who had formed a particularly strong relationship with Stephen, and who always had his favorite food ready for him whenever they went down to the kitchen for a meal.

Dorcas was growing more and more excited about the evening. Would Lord Somerford recognize what she was saying? That she did not apologize for the life she had lived? That in fact, she was proud of the role played by the camp followers who supported the army and enabled it to win the victories that had been so celebrated back here in England?

Most of the laurels had been given to the officers, and only to some of the officers, at that. The common soldiers had been forgotten. The camp followers even more so. In the eyes of those who had never been there, all but the few officers' wives were beneath contempt, possibly trollops, and certainly coarse and beneath notice. Even officers' wives were regarded with some suspicion.

Would Lord Somerford accept her as she was? Just for a dance or two? She did not expect more. A dance with Lord Somerford would give her something to dream about for years to come.

At noon on the day of the Mystère Masque, Ben received a note from the Duke of Kempbury, asking him to call at three that afternoon. Ben canceled his fencing class. After waiting for a reply from the man for the past week, he was not about to pass up the opportunity to meet with him and to tell him precisely how poorly he had performed his duties as head of the family of Dorcas's deceased husband.

He arrived at Kempbury's pretentious mansion at a few minutes before three and was shown to a room to await the duke. A visitor's parlor, he noted. Elegantly and comprehensively furnished, but still somehow anonymous. A room in which to see visitors who were not petitioners for the duke's favor—there would be another parlor or two for that—but who were also not friends or family worthy of being allowed into the duke's private spaces.

Ben seated himself on a comfortable chair to wait.

As the mantel clock chimed the hour, the duke entered. "Somerford," he said, in greeting.

"Kempbury," Ben replied, standing as politeness dictated.

He had looked Kempbury up in Debrett's Peerage and knew the duke was only in his early thirties. In the flesh, he looked older, perhaps forty. He was a tall man, with no signs of the dissipation that already marked his brother Augustus. He had a hawk-beak of a nose, closely cropped dark hair, and an austere expression.

According to Debrett's, he was three years older than his twin half-brothers. Augustus was thirty-one. Augustus and Vespasian were the sons of his father's second wife, married a mere six months after Kempbury's mother had died when Kempbury was two. Kempbury was not yet married, so the miserable vermin who was persecuting Dorcas was his heir.

The question to which Ben did not yet have an answer was whether Kempbury agreed with or was perhaps even directing Seward's actions.

"Sit, sit," said the duke. "Port?"

Ben inclined his head in acceptance. "Thank you."

The duke crossed to some decanters on a sideboard and busied himself filling a pair of glasses. He said nothing and Ben did not break the silence.

Indeed, apart from Ben's thanks as he accepted the port, neither of them spoke until after the duke had taken a seat opposite Ben. "I was disturbed by your letter, Somerford," the duke said. "It seems to me that you are accusing me of neglecting my duty to my brother's widow."

They were not to bother with polite nothings, then. Good. Ben was happy to oblige with some straight shooting. "Neglecting is an over-kind interpretation, Your Grace. You have been ignoring your duty as if it does not exist, and not just to Mrs. Anderson but to your nephew."

Kempbury looked, if possible, even more austere. "I have been given to believe that Mrs. Anderson's son is not my nephew."

"Then you have been given to believe a lie, Your Grace."

The other man took a sip of his port before replying. "I take it Mrs. Anderson is the source of this information?" The sneer implied by his words was absent from his face and his voice, neither of which showed any feeling at all.

"Not at all, Your Grace. My own regiment shared winter quarters with the company to which Lieutenant Lord Vespasian Seward belonged. His wife was known as both virtuous and deeply in love with her husband, and Captain Seward was most protective of her."

"Perhaps that changed once fighting started again," said the duke. "Did your regiment also march with Vespasian's company?"

"No, sir, it did not, and I am sorry for it. For I might have been able to prevent what happened to Lady Vespasian. Everything I heard at the time convinced me she remained a loyal wife up to her husband's death. In fact, I have never heard her speak a word against him, though he left her penniless and did not provide for her."

"And yet she married within a few weeks of my brother's death," Kempbury commented quietly. "Surely that action speaks for itself? To marry so quickly? And to a common sergeant?"

"Only after applying to her husband's commanding officer for sufficient money to purchase passage home to England," Ben explained, matching his tone to the duke's. "She had been left penniless, and the army does not hold itself responsible for wives whose husbands have failed to provide for them as your brother failed to provide for her."

He was losing control of his calm tone. He took a deep breath and began again. "The commanding officer refused and told her she could either marry again or whore herself out, as did other widows whose husbands had married without the consent of their commanding officer. She was, at the time, near her confinement with her child. Indeed, she gave birth to little Stephen a few days later."

The duke was frowning. "I see. This was army gossip at the time, I take it?"

"It was, sir. Furthermore, I confirmed it in questioning several reliable witnesses last year when your brother Augustus was a suitor for my sister's hand. Lady Vespasian married the sergeant in her husband's company several days later so she could put food in the mouth of her newborn baby. Your nephew, your grace."

Kempbury said nothing, and his face showed nothing. Ben's voice, on the other hand, was once again showing his indignation. He took another deep breath. "When, several months later, that company of riflemen was attached to my own regiment, I found her to be as I remembered her from winter quarters. Quiet, ladylike, as devoted to her son as she had been to your brother, and then to her new husband. A good worker, too. Whatever you have been told to the contrary, Your Grace, is a lie."

"The name of this commanding officer who refused to help my sister-in-law," Kempbury demanded, showing emotion for the first time during this meeting.

Ben met his eyes. "I think you know it," he replied. "But if you need the words, Your Grace, Major Lord Augustus Seward was your brother's commanding officer and the one who condemned Lady Vespasian to remarriage and three more years with the army when all she wanted was to return to England with her baby, his own nephew."

Kempbury's face was shuttered again, a blank mask behind which he hid his emotions. "You shall tell me about this theft. Of an apple, you said."

"This so-called theft," Ben insisted.

He spent another hour with the duke, countering all the man had heard about Dorcas. His Grace's information had come from Seward, of course. Apparently, he had written to his brother with his version of the story when Lord Vespasian turned up after leave with a bride in tow, a "country vixen" with whom he had eloped.

Kempbury had not questioned it back then, and apparently, Lord Vespasian had never written with an alternative version.

"She was seventeen and a vicar's daughter," Ben commented. "Lord Vespasian was seven years older."

"Why, then," Kempbury asked, "Did she not apply to her father when in need? Augustus says that her family disowned her for her dissolute behavior."

"She is an orphan, Kempbury. Her father was her only family, apparently, and he is dead. If you will excuse my saying so, to cast her as the aggressor in the relationship is madness. Though it may be true that her virtue led Lord Vespasian to believe he could only have her by marrying her."

"You do not need to ask my permission to insult my sanity," Kempbury responded, dryly. "You have been doing a fine job without it." He sighed again, even more deeply than before. "I believed my half-brother Augustus since Vespasian did not bother to respond to my letters with his own side of the story. It would appear I was wrong to do so, but having accepted Augustus's views as truth, I more easily believed the stories that followed."

And so, Augustus had managed to force his sister-in-law into exile. Ben was prepared to believe that Kempbury had not aided and abetted the fiend, but he had not stopped him, either.

"Mrs. Anderson applied to this house for support when she first arrived back in England," Kempbury volunteered. He sighed again. "I was away from home. My stepmother received her and turned her away. When she described Mrs. Anderson, I thought she was right to do so. A grasping harlot, and the little boy clearly not Vespasian's child. I received the impression that his skin was—er—swarthy."

Swarthy! The boy was a fair-skinned blonde. "A meeting with young Stephen will help to resolve any lingering doubts, Kempbury," Ben said. "He has the look of his father."

Kempbury raised an eyebrow. "Is that so? Give me a moment, Somerford."

He went to the door. Ben could hear the murmur of voices, Kempbury's and another. The duke closed the door again and resumed his chair. "Tell me about Mrs. Anderson, Somerford. How does she make her living?"

He had a few more questions about Dorcas and her child, and then they were interrupted by a pair of footmen, who carried in a large, framed painting. It showed half a dozen children in a playroom, surrounded by toys. One rode a rocking horse. Two wore paper hats and waved wooden swords. The three smallest were surrounded by wooden blocks, though only two were stacking them. The smallest of the three held a ball and was looking directly at the painter, his eyes alight with mischief.

"My cousins, brothers, and me," Kempbury said.

Ben put his finger on the child with the ball. "Is this Lord Vespasian? Stephen looks even more like him than I thought."

Kempbury was silent for a long moment, then asked, "Is he known as Stephen Anderson?"

"No, sir," Ben said. "He is Stephen Seward."

Kempbury looked away, but not before Ben saw the shine of tears. "I am glad."

After a while, he looked back. He was fully in command of himself again. "Thank you for drawing this matter to my attention, Somerford. I wonder if I might ask another favor of you? Would you mind taking a note to Mrs. Anderson? I wish to invite her to meet with me."

"I can do that," Ben agreed. "Or I could simply tell you where she was staying."

A small sad smile played around the duke's mouth. "My brother has already advised me that she has joined the whores who live at the Lyon's Den. Of course, no whores do actually live at the Lyon's Den, a fact that Augustus presumably thought had escaped my notice."

"She was released from the magistrate's court on my recognizance," Ben explained. "I could not be certain of her safety if she returned to her boarding house, and, in fact, two separate visits have been made to the house by people the landlady refused to admit. Mrs. Dove-Lyon has been taking an interest in Mrs. Anderson, and offered her refuge in her private apartments at the top of the house."

Both eyebrows went up this time. "Mrs. Dove-Lyon has a reputation as a matchmaker, Somerford. Are you in her sights for Mrs. Anderson?"

Ben had not thought of it, and he certainly had not expected the way his heart leapt at the thought. "Any man would be honored," he replied. He certainly would be, at least. Something to think about.

"I shall write that note," Kempbury said. "I would prefer you to give it to her, Somerford, if you do not mind. You can assure her I mean neither her nor my nephew any harm. And that I will deal with Augustus."

"The most pressing question is, Your Grace, though I ask you to excuse my asking. Why is he so determined to cause trouble for Mrs. Anderson?" Ben asked. "His younger brother's widow is surely no threat to him."

Kempbury raised his eyebrows. "You did not know? Vespasian was the older twin. Stephen Seward is my heir presumptive, and leaves Augustus completely out in the cold."