Forty-Five

A Woman Scorned

“You have a caller, my lady. Mr. George Selwyn requesting to see you.”

Sukey paused in her packing and looked up in surprise. “George Selwyn, you say?” If Philip had sent him as an emissary, he was surely wasting the gentleman’s time. “You may show him in, Bess, but pray be clear I’ve little time for social calls.”

The maid promptly returned with the announced caller.

“My Lady Messingham.” George doffed his hat and sketched a bow.

“It has been some time, Mr. Selwyn.”

“A pleasure I have forgone for far too long,” he replied gallantly.

She arched a brow. “Flattery is assuredly wasted if you are come on Philip’s account. It is over between us.” She punctuated the sentence by slamming the lid of her trunk.

“You are undertaking a journey, my lady?”

“Not a journey but removing to Leicester House. I have decided to accept a position offered to me long ago. I am to be a Woman of the Bedchamber to the Princess Augusta.”

“Is that so? Then you have not yet heard?”

“Heard what?”

“The Prince of Wales is dead, my lady.”

She froze in disbelief. “Dead?” She shook her head in vehement denial. “Death, especially of a future king, is no jesting matter, Mr. Selwyn.”

“Why do you think I would make this up?”

“You can’t be in earnest?”

“Dead earnest.” He couldn’t help the pun. “It happened early yesterday, though it was kept quiet until the cause of death could be determined.”

“But the prince is only in his forties and in excellent health. The last I heard he only suffered from a chest cold.”

“The king’s physician pronounced it a burst abscess in his lungs.”

She stared at him for a moment, dumbstruck. “Dear God! It’s true? He would have been king, you know.”

“And now, mercifully, he won’t,” said George.

“You should not speak ill of the dead, Mr. Selwyn,” she chided.

“I am not the first, nor shall I be last,” he replied. “Indeed the body had barely cooled before this irreverent verse began to turn up in every London coffee house.” He pulled the page from his pocket, quoting:

“Here lies poor Fred who was alive and is dead,

Had it been his father I had much rather,

Had it been his sister nobody would have missed her,

Had it been his brother, still better than another,

Had it been the whole generation, so much better for the nation,

But since it is Fred who was alive and is dead,

There is no more to be said!”

“How callous!” she cried.

“Our dear departed Frederick was far from being the most shining example of his line,” George said.

“I daresay you are right about that,” Sukey agreed. “But one must still show the proper respect. I must call upon the princess and offer my condolences.”

“You still intend to accept the position?”

“I don’t know,” she replied thoughtfully. “The princess and her entire household will observe an extended period of mourning, and I have no desire to play the hypocrite. Perhaps I will leave London instead. I have a great deal to ponder at the moment.”

George remarked the hollow ring to her words. “Then I must suppose it truly is over between you and Philip.”

“I said it was. I gave him all I had to give. There is nothing left.”

“They have taken him to the King’s Bench, you know.”

She started at that, completely betraying herself. “How is that possible? He’s an earl, for goodness’ sake! What crime other than treason could cast an earl into prison?”

“Why, the crime of insolvency, my lady,” George replied. “To a nation built on trade there can be no greater injury than of that to its commerce. Ergo, there is no higher law in Britain than protecting creditors from those who refuse to pay their debts. It is sacrosanct.”

“But he is an earl!”

“And our dear friend Lord Weston perceived an opportunity to settle an old score.” He eyed her intently, reminding her at once that she, herself, was the original cause of it. “The marquess has pulled some strings at the Court of Chancery, thereby suspending Philip’s title and associated privileges.”

“That is unconscionable!”

“Not surprising conduct from a worm like Weston, to kick a man who is already down.”

“Yet, how can this be? Philip made a very accommodating arrangement to settle his accounts with the Jew.”

“The unfortunate arrangement you speak of was based entirely upon Philip’s rank and station, which is now under dispute. Moreover, it appears increasingly likely the Chancery will decide in favor of Edmund’s daughter.”

Once more she started. “So soon? I thought these questions took years to settle.”

“One does wonder at the workings of justice,” Selwyn said noncommittally. “But this unhappy turn of events has placed Philip in a most precarious position.”

“I don’t care, Mr. Selwyn. Philip Drake made his bed and he may now rot in it.”

“If that is your wish, it may well be granted, but as his friend I cannot share your sentiments. Even if he could pay off the original debt, the attorney’s fees, bailiff’s fees, and other so-called ‘taxed costs’ will compound to double or treble the amount he owed. He is indeed in a hopeless position. This all brings me to my real point in coming here.”

“If you have more to say, get on with it,” she answered peevishly.

“I have come for any personal effects of his that might be sold for his maintenance. I can’t bear the thought of him begging alms at passers-by through the iron grate of the Fleet.”

“I thought you said he was at the King’s Bench?”

“Indeed, but ’tis all the same, isn’t it? Disgusting, filthy places, habited by the wretched, ragged, and half-starved, deprived of life, liberty, and any means of livelihood to repay the debts that interned them.”

“Surely it is not so bad for him,” she insisted.

“Not while he has any coin to buy food, bed, and coal, but his means are limited. Once all is depleted…” George gave a fatal shrug.

“What do you mean to do?” she asked, her urgency showing despite herself.

“There’s not a damned thing I can do to release him, but I mean to sell what can be sold so at least the chap doesn’t starve. Indeed, I’ve instructions to meet Lord March in Newmarket on a matter of some horses. I nigh forgot quite another charge I promised to perform on his behalf, against my better judgment I might add.”

George retrieved an elongated, velvet-covered box from an inside coat pocket. He opened it slowly, revealing the almost blinding brilliance of diamonds. The necklace was still magnificent, and the shimmer of refracted light from the central pear-shaped stone, breathtaking. “Perhaps you recognize it?”

She gasped. “It can’t be the one! It isn’t real!”

“I assure you it is,” said George.

“How did you come by this?”

“I was given a key to his safe deposit box containing certain items with instructions on how to dispose of each. Although the necklace might have kept him in comfort in that hellish place for years, he insisted I give it to you.”

“I believed he had sold it years ago.”

“So had I. I am certain he once intended to pay off your debts with it, but you took that matter into your own hands, if I remember. Even after that it seems he could never bring himself to part with it—the maudlin fool!”

“Why? Why would he have kept it all these years?” she asked in a voice choked with emotion.

“I believe he had hoped it might one day have been your bridal gift.”

“No! I don’t believe you!” she cried. “He never intended any such thing!”

“Did he not? Then pray reason for me why the man would have locked away such an item, if not solely out of a mawkish sentimentality?” George asked.

She stared at him in silence, clutching the necklace to her breast.

At times, a jolting revelation overtakes one in a crushing, incapacitating wave, and at others, it unsettles one in steady, subtle stages. It was in this manner, piece by wretched piece, in measured moments of increasing comprehension, that Sukey slowly came undone.