Fitz would be worried now, she guessed. He must have expected her to take the offer, or at worst hold out for a higher price; then he would have felt his secret was safe. Now he would be baffled as well as anxious.
She had not given Solman a chance to ask what she did want. Let them flounder around in the dark for a while. Fitz would begin to fear that Ethel intended to get revenge by telling Princess Bea about the baby.
She looked out of the window at the clock on the roof of the stable. It was a few minutes before twelve. On the front lawn, the staff would be getting ready to serve dinner to the miners’ children. Princess Bea usually liked to see the housekeeper at about twelve. She often had complaints: she did not like the flowers in the hall, the footmen’s uniforms were not pressed, the paintwork on the landing was flaking. In her turn the housekeeper had questions to ask about allocating rooms to guests, renewing china and glassware, hiring and firing maids and kitchen girls. Fitz usually came into the morning room at about half past twelve for a glass of sherry before lunch.
Then Ethel would turn the thumbscrews.
Fitz watched the miners’ children queuing up for their lunch-or “dinner,” as they called it. Their faces were dirty, their hair was unkempt, and their clothes were ragged, but they looked happy. Children were amazing. These were among the poorest in the land, and their fathers were locked in a bitter dispute, but the children showed no sign of it.
Every since marrying Bea he had longed for a child. She had miscarried once, and he was terrified she might do so again. Last time she had thrown a tantrum simply because he had canceled their trip to Russia. If she found out that he had made their housekeeper pregnant, her rage would be uncontrollable.
And the dreadful secret was in the hands of a servant girl.
He was tortured by worry. It was a terrible punishment for his sin. In other circumstances he might have taken some joy in having a child with Ethel. He could have put mother and baby into a little house in Chelsea and visited them once a week. He felt another stab of regret and longing at the poignancy of that daydream. He did not want to treat Ethel harshly. Her love had been sweet to him: her yearning kisses, her eager touch, the heat of her young passion. Even while he was telling her the bad news, he had wished he could run his hands over her lithe body and feel her kissing his neck in that hungry way that he found so exhilarating. But he had to harden his heart.
As well as being the most exciting woman he had ever kissed, she was intelligent and well-informed and funny. Her father always talked about current affairs, she had told him. And the housekeeper at Ty Gwyn was entitled to read the earl’s newspapers after the butler had finished with them-a below-stairs rule that he had not known about. Ethel asked him unexpected questions that he could not always answer, such as “Who ruled Hungary before the Austrians?” He was going to miss that, he thought sadly.
But she would not behave the way a discarded mistress was supposed to. Solman had been shaken by his conversation with her. Fitz had asked him: “What does she want?” but Solman did not know. Fitz harbored a dreadful suspicion that Ethel might tell Bea the whole story, just out of some twisted moral desire to let the truth come out. God help me keep her away from my wife, he prayed.
He was surprised to see the small round form of Perceval Jones, strutting across the lawn in green plus fours and walking boots. “Good morning, my lord,” said the mayor, doffing his brown felt hat.
“Morning, Jones.” As chairman of Celtic Minerals Jones was the source of a great deal of Fitz’s wealth, but all the same he did not like the man.
“The news is not good,” Jones said.
“You mean from Vienna? I understand the Austrian emperor is still working on the wording of his ultimatum to Serbia.”
“No, I mean from Ireland. The Ulstermen won’t accept home rule, you know. It will make them a minority under a Roman Catholic government. The army is already mutinous.”
Fitz frowned. He did not like to hear talk of mutiny in the British army. He said stiffly: “No matter what the newspapers may say, I don’t believe that British officers will disobey the orders of their sovereign government.”
“They already have!” said Jones. “What about the Curragh Mutiny?”
“No one disobeyed orders.”
“Fifty-seven officers resigned when ordered to march on the Ulster Volunteers. You may not call that mutiny, my lord, but everyone else does.”
Fitz grunted. Jones was unfortunately right. The truth was that English officers would not attack their fellow men in the defense of a mob of Irish Catholics. “Ireland should never have been promised independence,” he said.
“I agree with you there,” said Jones. “But I really came to talk to you about this.” He indicated the children, seated on benches at trestle tables, eating boiled cod with cabbage. “I wish you’d put an end to it.”
Fitz did not like to be told what to do by his social inferiors. “I don’t care to let the children of Aberowen starve, even if it’s the fault of their fathers.”
“You’re just prolonging the strike.”
The fact that Fitz received a royalty on every ton of coal did not mean, in his view, that he was obliged to take the side of the mine owners against the men. Offended, he said: “The strike is your concern, not mine.”
“You take the money quick enough.”
Fitz was outraged. “I have no more to say to you.” He turned away.
Jones was instantly contrite. “I beg your pardon, my lord, do forgive me-an overhasty remark, most ill-judged, but the matter is extremely tiresome.”
It was hard for Fitz to refuse an apology. He was not mollified, but all the same he turned back and spoke to Jones courteously. “All right, but I shall continue to give the children dinner.”
“You see, my lord, a coal miner may be stubborn on his own account, and suffer a good deal of hardship through foolish pride; but what breaks him, in the end, is to see his children go hungry.”
“You’re working the pit anyway.”
“With third-rate foreign labor. Most of the men are not trained miners, and their output is small. Mainly we’re using them to maintain the tunnels and keep the horses alive. We’re not bringing up much coal.”
“For the life of me I can’t think why you evicted those wretched widows from their homes. There were only eight of them, and after all they had lost their husbands in the damn pit.”
“It’s a dangerous principle. The house goes with the collier. Once we depart from that, we’ll end up as nothing better than slum landlords.”
Perhaps you should not have built slums, then, Fitz thought, but he held his tongue. He did not want to prolong the conversation with this pompous little tyrant. He looked at his watch. It was half past twelve: time for a glass of sherry. “It’s no good, Jones,” he said. “I shan’t fight your battles for you. Good day.” He walked briskly to the house.
Jones was the least of his worries. What was he going to do about Ethel? He had to make sure Bea was not upset. Apart from the danger to the unborn baby, he felt the pregnancy might be a new start for their marriage. The child might bring them together and re-create the warmth and intimacy they had had when they were first together. But that hope would be dashed if Bea learned he had been dallying with the housekeeper. She would be incandescent.
He was grateful for the cool of the hall, with its flagstones underfoot and hammer-beam ceiling. His father had chosen this feudal decor. The only book Papa had ever read, apart from the Bible, was Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He believed that the even greater British Empire would go the same way unless noblemen fought to preserve its institutions, especially the Royal Navy, the Church of England, and the Conservative Party.
He was right, Fitz had no doubt.
A glass of dry sherry was just the thing before lunch. It perked him up and sharpened his appetite. With a pleasant feeling of anticipation, he entered the morning room. There he was horrified to see Ethel talking to Bea. He stopped in the doorway and stared in consternation. What was she saying? Was he too late? “What’s going on here?” he said sharply.
Bea looked at him in surprise and said coolly: “I am discussing pillowcases with my housekeeper. Did you expect something more dramatic?” Her Russian accent rolled the letter r in “dramatic.”
