Free Sword and Song by Roz Southey Page B

doesn’t appear to have arrived.”
    I expected him to give me some emollient platitudes but I saw something unexpected in his eyes – a sudden stillness. “To whom did you entrust the note, sir?”
    I described the footman. I saw his jaw set hard. “I will – ” the slightest of hesitations – “ deal with the matter, sir. I suggest that if you wish to send
another letter you give it directly to myself.”
    The footman, I thought, would regret his decision to pocket my money and ignore my orders.
    “Thank you.”
    “And – ”
    I was turning away but hesitated. “Yes?”
    “I apologise, sir,” he said, “for the misunderstanding when you arrived.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that. The butler went silently out of the hall and I was left wondering why on earth he should voluntarily have raised a matter so embarrassing to himself.
    Before dinner, in the drawing room, Alyson was in high good spirits, extolling the virtues of horse-riding in fine country. William Ridley was telling everyone who’d listen to him, and
everyone who didn’t want to, about the iniquities of a neighbouring landowner who insisted on claiming woodland that belonged to other people. Heron came in as quietly as usual; Esther, I
noted, seemed tired and worn. I accidentally caught her eye; she looked away.
    I didn’t meet the Ords until we sat round the dinner table, and then I was shocked at the change I saw in Lizzie. I’d not seen her since the day before her marriage, when she’d
prettily thanked me for all my teaching and presented me with a hand-made pair of slippers. She’d been a girl then, sixteen years old, with artfully naïve dark ringlets and a fresh open
look about her.
    The woman who sat opposite me seemed ten years older. Her hair was dressed too elaborately for one so young; her cheeks were rouged too heavily. Her dress aged her too; it was very fine and
expensive no doubt, but the low neckline showed off her immature breasts too cruelly, and the heavy fall of material at the back seemed to drag her down.
    She looked dully at me, as if she hardly recognised me.
    Her husband did not look at me at all.
    Casper Fischer, beside me, was as full of his family history as ever and glad of a new audience. Lizzie Saint, now Lizzie Ord, picked at her food listlessly without comment but Philip Ord was
bored by the talk of sword makers and tanneries and not afraid to show it – he was barely polite. A man of thirty-three or so, he plainly wanted to be talking politics with a gentleman across
the table; Fischer, catching on quickly, was happy to join in but his Colonial view of the matter was not welcome, and he wanted a deeper discussion than the languid complaints about government and
trade that the other two gentleman favoured.
    “My view, sir,” he said, with incautious directness, “is that Mr Walpole is going about the matter in an entirely incorrect fashion – ”
    “What the devil do you mean by that!” Ord demanded, red with anger.
    One of the singing ladies said loudly, “Mr Patterson, I hear Mr Handel has a new opera. Have you heard it?”
    “Handel always has a new opera,” Heron said dryly, “and all the plots are equally nonsensical.”
    “But some of the music is extremely beautiful,” the lady protested.
    I launched into an explanation of the first opera that came to mind and the singing ladies laughed and joked over the antics of Handel’s leading actresses, and retailed the latest
scandals. A few sly remarks were made about castrati singers, and their attributes, or lack of them. Under cover of the merrymaking, I leant towards Fischer. “I’m afraid you hit on a
sore topic.”
    He regarded me wryly. “Is that a tactful way of suggesting I should not talk politics, Mr Patterson? Shall I talk about my book after all?”
    “A book?” said the musical lady. “I like a good book.”
    Fischer, casting me a humorous look as if to say he was doing his best to be unexceptional, obliged with