By the King's Design Page 13

  Belle’s mind whirled at what must be required to write hundreds and hundreds of pages of interesting stories. Before she realized what she was doing, she blurted out, “I think interior design work is far simpler than what you do, Miss Austen.”

  Belle’s comment was met by bright, intelligent hazel eyes. “I can’t imagine that being so. Tell me about these designs. Do you actually work as an artist-designer?”

  “Well, not exactly ...” Belle proceeded to tell Jane about losing her parents, managing the cloth shop with her brother, her subsequent run-in with Luddites, her flight to London, and her resulting work for John Nash. She omitted any mention of Wesley’s wrongdoing, her devotion to him overriding any desire to be too garrulous with a newfound friend.

  “So you stormed Parliament! How I should have loved to have seen that.”

  Belle shook her head. “It wasn’t quite that dramatic. It mostly resulted in my looking rather foolish.”

  “I somehow doubt that. It must be fascinating to work for such a well-known architect, Miss Stirling, although his association with the prince does not garner him praise in every corner. Be careful that your own reputation does not always stay hitched to his.”

  Belle was silent. John Nash was her only hope for success. What did it matter to her what his eventual reputation might be?

  “Do you have to be in the prince’s company often?” Jane asked.

  Jane made it sound as though to know the man, who was effectively the ruling monarch, was a dishonor. The man was a bit forward, but, then again, he was the Prince of Wales.

  “I’ve met him more than once.”

  “And what is your impression?”

  “He is, well, determined in his nature.”

  Jane laughed aloud. “Yes, he is that. But I confess that I despise his shabby treatment of his wife, the poor woman.”

  “Is this what you were referring to in your mention of your characters Mr. Darcy and Jane Bennet?”

  Jane clapped her hands together. “Did you catch that?”

  “I knew that you intended something rather mocking, but I’ve not read your book and so I’m not sure what you meant.”

  “I will rectify that immediately. I’ll send a set of books to you.”

  “Would you? I’d be glad of it, although I’ve nothing to give you in return.” Belle’s mind flashed to the inlaid comb on her dresser, but she just as quickly decided she wouldn’t give that up.

  “No, wait, I do have something. I’ll send you a few yards of a nice gauze. You can wrap your books in them to protect them from sunlight and insect droppings.”

  The two women exchanged addresses before departing from each other with a warm handshake and promises to write letters straightaway.

  Belle was elated. She’d made her first real friend since leaving Yorkshire. It made her trip back to Brighton to deliver the books and finish her current work there a much lighter burden. She even considered going out of her way to Hampshire to visit Jane on her next return to London, but knew she’d already been away from her shop too long.

  She would save the visit for another time.

  Most everything in England was interrupted when the glorious news arrived that Wellington had once and for all smashed Napoleon in June 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, in Belgium. The little Corsican abdicated again, surrendered to the British, and was exiled to the remote island of St. Helena. Belle looked at it on a map. It was a tiny speck in the South Atlantic Ocean, far off the coast of Africa. Remote indeed.

  This time, the newspapers assured the Britons, there was no escape for Napoleon. He would die on this rocky, forbidding landmass.

  For the condemned, exile was always better than an execution, wasn’t it?

  The long-lasting good news of Napoleon’s exile was replaced by the immense news of Mount Tambora, which reached Belle’s ears in September 1815. The volcano in the Dutch East Indies blew its top during a series of eruptions in April, killing nearly eighty thousand people. Sailors returning to port spread talk about the devastation that had taken place more than seven thousand miles away across two continents, sending a colossal propulsion of gases high into the atmosphere. Belle could hardly imagine the destruction being wreaked in that part of the world.

  She shivered. At least England didn’t have volcanoes, and an eruption that far away could have little to do with the subjects of Great Britain, who were already suffering under the new Corn Law, which placed an import tariff on foreign crops to protect the profits of British farmers following the dramatic drop in prices at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The law prevented any foreign grains from being imported until the domestic price reached a certain level. The effect was disastrous, resulting in grain shortages and, consequently, rioting and strikes in many places, even in London.

  The rioting was, thankfully, in other parts of the city and they hadn’t experienced it on Oxford Street.

  Yet.

  22 February 1816

  Chawton House Estate

  Hampshire

  Dear Miss Stirling,

  Enclosed please find a copy of Emma, which I promised you when we first met. I hope you have found an opportunity to read the other books I sent you. My new publisher, Mr. Murray, will be releasing Mansfield Park again this month, and I hope that sales from it will help to improve our situation here. Mother, Cassandra, and I have lived simply but comfortably at the beneficence of my older brother, Henry. Did I tell you he serves as my agent? He is also a banker, although I think his talents are better suited to agenting. Of course, we are hopeful for the best of outcomes with regard to his bank.

  I do thank you for the package of gauze you sent, the finest I’ve ever touched. I’ve encased a set of my own books with it, and have more left over for the next edition of Mansfield Park. You have my greatest thanks.

  Please do let me know how you’re getting on in Brighton.

  Yours affectionately,

  J. Austen

  Belle carefully traced Mr. Nash’s rendering of the proposed Music Room in the Pavilion, and snipped small samples of fabric and trims she hoped to use in it, and sent it all to Jane along with a letter wishing her well.

  As she became overwhelmed with customers, Belle put aside her efforts to nurture this burgeoning friendship. Then, by late summer, Napoleon was long forgotten as England experienced an unexpected misfortune. Heavy rains had cascaded from the sky in bleak, unending sheets throughout the growing season, which was far colder than normal. In fact, Belle couldn’t remember the last time she’d been without a heavy wool cloak. The resulting failed harvests drove food prices up even higher than before, and the poor all over Great Britain were suffering from starvation and sickness. Many of them were streaming into London as refugees.

  The Worshipful Company of Drapers responded by asking its members to donate whatever spare cloth they could afford to the city’s hospitals, to be used for makeshift blankets, cots, and shawls.

  Belle contributed as much as she could, making trips to St. Bartholomew’s poorhouse in Smithfield once each week to deliver bundles of cloth. She began to think there wasn’t enough wool in all of England to comfort the suffering. She was more fortunate than most, though. Food might be more expensive and difficult to procure, but the aristocracy hardly knew the difference, and as long as the ton craved new fashions for their clothing and their interiors, Belle would be able to continue feeding herself and Wesley.

  In the midst of misery was a moment of national happiness. On May 2, 1816, the Prince Regent’s daughter, Charlotte, was wed to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield in a complete love match.

  Belle immediately ordered a vast quantity of a cotton print commemorating the marriage. In vivid colors of red and green on a white background, and the Prince of Wales’s insignia set prominently within, the fabric sold out in mere days.

  She welcomed the excitement and flutter generated by the royal marriage, and was almost disappointed when Londoners returned to their daily routines.

&nbs
p; Belle finally set aside time to write to Jane, who she hoped had not experienced difficulties from the failed harvests.

  I’m sure you know that Bonaparte has been exiled, presumably for the final time. I know that your animosity resides mostly in the prince, but I think you will agree that the emperor was of far greater threat to our country’s happiness and well-being. I myself am relieved to go to Brighton now unworried about a French invasion.

  I trust you have not been in dire straits as a result of the food shortages. The London newspapers are now reporting that it was the eruption of Mount Tambora, so very far away, that is responsible for all of this misery. That it is volcanic ash drifting around the planet that has caused everything from the prolonged cold to the endless rains. I can hardly believe it. My visits to a local hospital, though, convince my eyes of what my mind refuses to comprehend. They say that even the Americans are experiencing crop destruction because of frost and snows long into their growing season, which might have helped Britain defeat them had Lord Liverpool not signed the Treaty of Ghent with them already.

  Please let me know soonest how you and your family are faring.

  Belle tried not to wait too anxiously for a return post from Jane.

  The ongoing cold and rain temporarily stopped work at the Pavilion, giving Belle some free time in between checking on the shop and visiting her growing client list. Her constant scanning of the newspaper for information about the increasing refugee problem led her to an advertisement for Madame Tussaud’s traveling wax exhibition, which had arrived in London for a limited time.

  That was the woman Mr. Boyce had mentioned, who had sold him Napoleon’s supply carriage. Thinking that a visit to see famous people sculpted in wax might be an interesting diversion, Belle decided to go. She invited Wesley to accompany her, but he declined, claiming he wanted to go to the tobacconist’s for some new Cavendish tobacco that had just arrived from Virginia.

  She smiled, pleased. He did really seem to like the pipe she’d given him. He stayed locked up in his room with it for hours at a time.

  The wax exhibition was crowded with patrons gawking at wax figures artfully arranged in vignettes suggesting that person’s notoriety or fame. She instantly recognized the interior of a House of Commons meeting, with figures both standing and seated, made to look as if in debate. She paused at one middle-aged figure that dominated the scene, and read the plaque next to him. Sir Francis Burdett, born 1770, the member from Westminster. House of Commons. Figure made in 1803.

  Belle couldn’t recall him at all from the parliamentary meeting she’d attended. But then, she hardly remembered anyone from that day.

  She stopped at another tableau of Louis XIV of France, surrounded by courtiers. The king held a walking stick in his hand. Interest piqued, she knelt and examined the cane’s knob, which was carved into a large sunburst. The plaque next to him indicated that King Louis carried ornate, jeweled walking sticks but restricted their use to the aristocracy, the king not wanting the peasantry to carry sticks in his presence. Fascinating. Yet, just a few months ago, she could have purchased one of many that Mr. Boyce offered in his booth.

  She’d nearly finished her tour when she realized there was a curtained-off area she’d not yet visited. A young man stood guard there, collecting an additional admission fee for it.

  “It’s our Separate Room, miss. An extra twopence. Be cautious, it’s not for the faint of heart nor those with delicate sensibilities.”

  She smiled. “I’ll be careful.”

  Behind the curtain, the area was darker with only a few sconces illuminating it. Accustoming her eyes to the dark, she realized she was the only patron back here. The display was a macabre blend of wax heads on pikes, criminals meeting their ends at the hands of the hangman, and examples of execution instruments, including a guillotine blade that looked rusted from blood.

  She shivered. What a clever spectacle it all was. She wondered if the blade was an actual artifact.

  An exhibition worker was on his knees, his back to her, adjusting the legs of an ironically exotic writing table inside a mock prison cell, in which the prisoner was the Earl of Essex, courtier and onetime favorite of Queen Elizabeth, who met his end with an axman after being convicted of treason.

  Belle approached the man. “Excuse me, can you tell me if the guillotine blade—oh!”

  The man turning toward her was Mr. Boyce, wearing the same leather apron as at the Hyde Park celebration.

  A slow smile settled across his face, reaching up to those unusually mismatched eyes. “Why, Miss Stirling, isn’t it?” He rose from his work, dusting off his knees. “How did your brother like his pipe?”

  She was surprised he remembered her so well. “He likes it greatly. He didn’t even want to join me here today because he wanted to visit the tobacconist’s. Why are you here?”

  “Madame Tussaud wanted me to make her a writing desk for the earl here. I guess he would have been permitted more luxuries than most Tower prisoners. I even put a secret drawer in it. Would you like to see it?”

  Without waiting for her response, he opened a drawer, then gently pressed down on the bottom of it. It slid away to reveal a narrow space where a document could be stored flat.

  “I like to think Essex would have had something like that, much as he enjoyed intrigue and deception,” Put said.

  It gave Belle an idea. “Mr. Boyce, can you make Oriental-style cabinetry?”

  “You mean using ebony wood, lots of fretwork? Of course.”

  “Then perhaps I could commission you to make a desk for Lady Derby. She wants to remodel her home in the style of the Royal Pavilion before everyone else in London begins copying it.”

  Realization dawned in his eyes. “So you really are doing work for the Prince Regent?”

  “Of course I am!” If she were an aristocratic lady and held a fan, she would have swiped him across the shoulder with it.

  “Interesting. I’d be happy to do this for you, I mean, the Lady Derby. What if I were to escort you to see my workshop tomorrow, and you can see examples of what I’m capable of.”

  She gave him her shop’s location and left the wax exhibition, oddly pleased with her visit.

  Put arrived as scheduled, only this time not wearing an apron. In fact, it seemed he’d dressed for the occasion, although his nearly fashionable pants and waistcoat were clearly paining him.

  Belle hid a smile. The poor man needed a tailor, and quickly.

  She introduced him to Wesley, who took great interest in Belle’s male visitor but just as quickly lost his curiosity when he discovered Put was only there to construct a desk for one of Belle’s clients.

  Belle kept her rolled-up room drawings in her lap as they rode in awkward silence in a hired hack, with Put constantly fiddling with his buttons and the cravat badly tied around his neck.

  His cabinetmaking shop was at one end of Curtain Road, and was actually in the basement of a building. He escorted her down a flight of steps to his shop.

  His cabinet shop was long and narrow, consisting of an outer room containing random pieces of completed chests, chairs, and picture frames, separated by a doorway from another room, presumably a workshop, beyond it.

  Even from a distance, the open doorway revealed rows of pegs and nails all over the walls, from which hung saws, chisels, and planes. Waist-high tables were covered with wood shavings and partially finished pieces: Table legs, chair splats, and clock cases all had their assigned spots in the room. A scraping noise let Belle know that someone was back there working.

  She thought it might be rude to ask to see the workshop, so instead Belle asked about the finished pieces. Put referred to them as speculation pieces, intended both to demonstrate the cabinetmaker’s skill and also for quick sale to any patron who didn’t have time to wait for custom pieces.

  “Your aristocratic clients, of course, will be satisfied only with highly customized pieces.”

  Belle nodded her head in agreement as she ran her hand
across the top of a spinet that sat proudly against one wall. She knew nothing about cabinetry, but instinctively knew the piece was beautiful. The musical instrument’s wood had a pattern that swirled and danced, as though it could hear the music the spinet would produce. The words “Boyce Fine Furniture—London—1815” were inset in brass across the band of casing above the keys.

  Put stepped up behind her, his voice close to her ear. “What do you think, Miss Stirling?”

  “It’s beautiful. I didn’t know that a cabinetmaker could create wooden musical instruments.”

  “Actually, we’re virtually the only ones who can create them. This one is particularly fine, isn’t it? Do you know how to play?”

  “No, my fingers were intended for cloth, not ivory.”

  “And well made they were for it, Miss Stirling.”

  He reached around her and tapped on the keys, which made a melodious, if disjointed, tune.

  His nearness was creating disjointed thoughts in her mind, too. She stepped away from the spinet.

  Put noticed her discomfort and moved away himself. When he turned back, his manner was grave.

  “May I see your sketches, please?”

  As she proffered the drawings she’d brought with her, Put lifted the lid to a tall desk at one end of the room. The lid folded on a hinge to create an easel, on which he placed her drawings, placing a book on either end of the drawings to keep them flat.

  She recognized the books as the Chippendale and Sheraton directories, although they were far poorer quality copies than what Mr. Nash had in his offices.

  Belle described her idea for a desk for Lady Derby’s private chamber. Put nodded with understanding, and made notes about dimensions and proportions. He pulled out a second piece of paper, making some calculations, and presented her with a price and a delivery date of a month hence.