Respectable Trade Read online

  “I’ll take that!” Josiah said, bustling forward. He put the tray on Frances’s knees. “Now, eat up, wife, and meet me downstairs in an hour. No later, mind!”

  Frances smiled at him. “I shall be prompt,” she promised.

  Josiah bent to kiss her forehead. Obeying an impulse, Frances lifted her face, and their lips met. Josiah’s kiss was very gentle. Frances felt tender toward him; he was so exuberant, like a little boy about to open a gift. In Lady Scott’s eyes, he might be nothing more than a vulgar trader, but Frances acknowledged that he was her husband and that her future wealth and happiness depended on him. And besides, she was coming to like him.

  “An hour,” Josiah said ebulliently, and went from her room.

  THE CARRIAGE WAS WAITING on the cobbled quay outside. Frances was dressed in her best dark blue velvet gown and pelisse with matching blue hat and muff.

  “You look very fine,” Josiah said. He did not know that it was an old gown, carefully unpicked and resewn with the bald patches of the velvet folded inside where they would not show. “You look very grand. You look like a proper lady.”

  Frances winced at that. “I should hope so indeed.”

  Josiah heard the slight reproof in her voice. “Of course, of course,” he said hastily. “Shall we go?”

  Sarah was at the top of the stairs. Frances hesitated. “Are you not coming, Sarah?”

  “There are things that have to be done to ensure that the Daisy sails on time. Cargo to be ordered and checked, papers to be made ready. All the permits have to be entered. I shall spend this morning at work.”

  Frances wavered a little at the reproach, but Josiah was cheery. “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “And do not think that we are gallivanting, sister. There are many ways to make money in this town, and one of them is to be seen to be prosperous. This move will be the making of us, I swear it!”

  “And will she teach the slaves this afternoon?” Sarah asked rudely.

  “Yes, yes,” Josiah said. He opened the door, led Frances to the coach, and handed her in. “And tell Brown that the slaves can start to help packing. I want us to move in as soon as possible. They can start today.”

  Frances settled herself in the carriage and smiled half apologetically at the dark house and Sarah’s irritable glare. Josiah swung himself into the seat beside her as the carriage jolted on the cobbles and lurched forward. “Sour as lemons,” Josiah said cheerfully under his breath. “Now, Mrs. Cole, you shall see something!”

  THE HOUSE WAS INDEED furnished in Chinese fashion. Frances had to close her eyes when she first saw the best parlor, which was gloriously ornamented with plasterwork that sprawled magnificently from the top third of the walls to the central rose in the middle of the ceiling, rich with dragons, cherubs, swirling leaves, wild vines, and the ultimate vulgarity of long-beaked ho-ho birds. The walls were lined with plush red silk—an eccentric choice given that the carpet, all twining vine leaves and fruit, was blue, and the curtains were green.

  “Very grand,” Josiah said with satisfaction. “Very fashionable. Colorful! I doubt there is another house like it in Bristol!”

  “I doubt it, too,” Frances said. She stepped from the room and peeped into the second parlor opposite, which was slightly smaller and plainer. “And this is a very pretty room.”

  “You won’t sit here,” Josiah ruled. “The best room is surely the morning room at the front of the house? This back room will be my office, and tradesmen can come and see me and enter from the back door. We shall have two doors now, Mrs. Cole! No more workingmen tapping at your front door! No more tradesmen marching through your hall.”

  Frances smiled. Despite the excesses of the plasterwork and the exuberant color schemes, it was a fine house, built in simple rectangle shapes: four rooms on the ground floor, four above, four above them, and then the attic rooms fitted into the roof. The kitchen and domestic rooms were crammed into the rear courtyard; the cellar stored wine and goods. As they stood in the hall, they heard a crash and muffled oath from above as one of the Warings’ servants dropped something.

  “We will need to take on more staff,” Frances thought aloud. “There is too much to be done for Brown and the scullery maid in a big house like this.”

  “Aye,” Josiah said with satisfaction. “We will use the slaves for now. And we will have to buy furniture to fill the place up a bit. Shall we buy all Chinese goods, my dear? I have a man in mind who imports very good copies from India. I swear you would not tell the difference.”

  Frances managed to smile. “I think I would prefer some simple English furniture.”

  “But Chinoiserie is all the rage!” Josiah expostulated. “It is the very thing! And with the house already so designed!”

  Frances gave him a small sideways glance.

  “Is it a little ornate for your taste?” he asked. He was immediately unsure. “I thought it very fine. Is it not any good?”

  Frances touched his bare hand with her gloved finger. “Mr. Cole, it is very fine indeed,” she said. “And it is the very height of fashion. But I think we will look a little less”—she hesitated, trying to find a word that would not hurt his feelings—“a little less new if we buy some furniture which is not at the very top of fashion but which will give us a little background.”

  “Background, is it?” Josiah asked. “But not secondhand. I’m not having other people’s goods furnishing my house. I’m not a bailiff to sit on other men’s chairs.”

  “My parents’ furniture was kept at Whiteleaze,” Frances offered. “They had some very fine pieces, and it is good to have things in a house which are not all new. They give a house a sense of . . . belonging.”

  “Old stuff?” Josiah said, still ready to argue. “We don’t want old stuff.”

  “From the Scott family,” Frances added quickly. “Heirlooms.”

  “Oh, heirlooms!” Josiah cheered immediately. “I thought you meant old rubbishy stuff. Heirlooms is excellent. And with the Scott crest? Does it all have the Scott crest? Or we could put the Scott crest on anything we buy, couldn’t we?”

  Frances was about to refuse, but then she saw the eagerness in his face. “Oh, well,” she said, thinking that no one who would matter would ever know. “Why not?”

  “But we’ll buy some China stuff as well,” Josiah persisted. “Great vases and that.”

  “Yes,” Frances said. “I shall write to Lady Scott for my father’s furniture this afternoon. When we see what we still lack, we can buy it.”

  “But we will have a great vase or two,” Josiah insisted. “Whatever furniture you have. We will have a great Chinese vase or two. And porcelain dragons. I have seen them in red porcelain. We will have a pair of dragons!”

  Frances giggled. “I could not live here without!” she told him. “I am depending on it.”

  Josiah gave her his half-ashamed, rueful smile. “You think I am a fool. But I am assured that China stuff is the thing.”

  “It is,” Frances agreed. “And as long as we do not have too much, then the house will look very lovely.”

  “You will make it nice?”

  For the second time that day, Frances was prompted to show him affection. She reached up and put a dry kiss on his cheek. “I will,” she promised. “I will make it lovely for us.”

  He was surprised at her caress, and they stood in embarrassed silence for a moment.

  “I should like to see the upstairs rooms.” Frances moved away and up the stairs, Josiah following.

  Only when she had seen all over the house, from the attic bedrooms to the kitchen with the new-designed range for cooking, did Josiah agree that they could leave the Warings’ servants to take the last of their things out and close the big front door behind them.

  Just as they were leaving, a carriage drew up. It was Mrs. Waring.

  “Mrs. Cole.” She stepped down to shake Frances’s hand. “You must forgive my informality, but I so wanted to see you and wish you well in your new house. It has been a happy house