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The Fletchers conducted their own assessment of their new neighbours, in their own way. First, in whispered conversations in bedrooms, later in snatched bursts as they met about the house and then at greater length over dinner.
“I must say, they keep a very good table,” Mama said, as the soup was removed with a haunch of venison. “So many dishes! And fish — I counted six kinds at least, not including the oysters. I do not countthem, for anyone might serve oysters, after all. You admired the poultry livers, I believe, Mr Fletcher. I must ask Lady Plummer for the receipt. And the prawns! So delicious.”
“And all laid out in a timely fashion,” Julia said, throwing dark looks at Keeble, who was pretending to ignore the discussion. “Dinner served precisely to the hour. It is most agreeable not to be kept waiting for a meal.”
“Oh, but one must make allowances, dear,” Mama said quickly.
“Must one?” Julia said. “Why?”
Pa chuckled. “Now, now, puss, don’t be plaguing your mama with your jokes. She’s not used to your teasing ways, yet. Well, I thought them a fine, polite family. A little starchy, perhaps, but then their ancestors came over with William of Normandy so maybe they’ve a right to be starchy.”
“No one has a right to be starchy!” Julia said.
Will chuckled. “You are always so refreshing, Julia. No obsequiousness with you, is there?”
“I should hope not, indeed. We have no need to bow down to the Plummer family, after all. They were desperate for money and we gave them some of ours. They should bow down to us, if anything.”
“Really, Julia!” Mama said. “Your liveliness is misplaced, sometimes.” When Keeble and the footmen had withdrawn again, she went on, “I did not think them starchy at all. Lady Plummer is exceedingly refined, and you girls would do well to model your behaviour on hers.”
“Not on yours, Mama?” Julia said. “Surely we must be guided by you.”
“If you only would!” Mama said, a hint of exasperation in her tone. “My manners are, I hope, above reproach for any society, but Lady Plummer has something more — an air of good breeding such as you will see a great deal when we are in London. It is a great condescension for her and Sir Owen to invite us to dine, and we should be grateful for it.”
Julia said nothing to that, for there was no response that would not open her to reproof.
“I can’t speak for Sir Owen,” Pa said, “for he’s a baronet, after all, and perhaps he’s entitled to be condescending to mushrooms like us. Not that he was, not in the slightest. Very gentlemanly, I thought him, and honest, too. I can deal admirably with a straightforward man like that. But Lady Plummer wasn’t always so grand. She was nothing but his quartermaster’s daughter when he was in the army. Her mother was respectable enough, by the sound of it, but still, if Sir Owen’s older brother hadn’t died and made him the heir, she’d have been a lowly soldier’s wife, with nothing to be condescending about.”
“A lowly soldier? He would have been a general by now, I daresay,” Mama said, slightly pink about the cheeks. “Perhaps he would have won some famous battles and been elevated to the peerage for his trouble.”
“Perhaps he would and perhaps he wouldn’t, but she’d still be a quartermaster’s daughter,” Pa said. “Don’t be making these people out to be finer than they are, Lizzie. I’ll respect Sir Owen as a baronet and Lady Plummer as his wife, but I’ve seen real lords and their ladies at Sagborough, and some of them are as friendly as you please, and nothing condescending about it. Take Lord and Lady Craston, for instance. They only know me through buying from my warehouses, but they always acknowledge me in the street and ask how I am. Not in the least starchy, even though he’ll be a marquess one day.”
“That is true, but the Marfords are not so friendly, nor the Harbottles.”
“Well, they don’t know us from Adam. They don’t buy their silks and muslins from us, so how could they? But Malpas has occasion to deal with them, as mayor, and his wife’s on calling terms with them. They find them easy enough to get along with. Not like us lower mortals, of course, but mostly they don’t put themselves on too high a form.”
“Why should they, just because they have money and houses and a fancy title?” Julia said impatiently.
Mama looked shocked, but Pa chuckled. “Aye, and we’ve got the money and the house, now, so the title’s all that stands between us.”
“Andbreeding,” Mama said sharply. “There is no hiding their distinguished breeding, Harry. I will concede that Lady Plummer is no better than we are, but the Marfords… such exquisite manners!”
“They can be mannerly enough in society, when they choose to be,” Pa said, “and some of them are good-hearted, I’ll grant you, but there’s no denying that some of them are arrogant, selfish creatures beneath it all. Old Lady Harbottle looks down on anyone below the level of a duke, and Lady Harriet Marford’s pretty high and mighty, too — far too stiff-rumped for my taste. As for Lord Gilbert Marford — I can’t tell you all the high jinks that he got up to, in his younger days, and no one to stop him. I tell you now, Lizzie, I’ll not be happy if you push our Rosie towards a man of that ilk. I don’t mind her marrying a lord, if one of them takes her fancy, but it’s got to be a man we can all get along with, who’ll treat her right and not make her ashamed of her background.”
“Well, of course, my dear,” Mama said stiffly. “That goes without saying.”
“And it doesn’t have to be a lord,” he went on relentlessly. “If one of these Plummer boys catches her eye, I’d not object to it.”
“Not the younger!” Mama said hastily. “Not a mere rector. She can do better than that. But Mr Michael Plummer… who will inherit the baronetcy…” She turned speculative eyes on Rosie. “What did you think of him, dear?”
Rosie had a way of looking as if she would like to curl up into a ball, like a hedgehog, but she answered readily in her quiet way. “He was very agreeable, Mama.”
“And he seemed most attentive, as I recall, both before dinner and during the meal. Very attentive indeed, and Lady Plummerdidsay… I thought nothing of it at the time, but she whispered to me quite confidentially after the meal that you seemed very quiet and unassuming. Which is true, of course, but ifshelooks kindly on you, then there is no knowing what may come of it. His attentions towards you were rather marked, now that I consider the matter. In fact, at table he quite neglected Julia on his other side, although possibly that was as much Julia’s fault, for devoting allherattention on the rector.”
“He is amusing, unlike the rest of his dull family,” Julia said. “Although Sir Owen’s brother was entertaining — what was his name? I forget.”
“Mr Morgan Plummer, and he was quite rude,” Aunt Madge said. “He kept presenting dishes to me and asking how I liked them, as if I had never tasted venison or teal before. He must think we are peasants who have never eaten anything but turnips, risen straight from grubbing in the earth. So insulting! I had to set him straight on a few points.”
“I wish you would not, Madge,” Mama said. “We are trying to find our new place in society, not alienate all our potential allies.”
