A business associate approached Richard and clapped him on the shoulder. “What a splendid son you have there, Spencer! Someone who can truly follow in your footsteps one day.”
“That he is,” Richard agreed as his face lit up with pride.
Sibylla pursed her lips. Everyone was behaving as though Oscar had just single-handedly defeated Napoleon. But it was just a game, a leisure activity! She immediately regretted her bitterness, though. When she was a girl, she had often played cricket with Oscar in Hyde Park. She had been good, but then her father and Mary deemed it unseemly for a young lady to break into a sweat and scream and pant trying to hit a small ball. Of course, Oscar, not even particularly fond of cricket, was encouraged to practice.
But it was not in Sibylla’s nature to give up. If she was not going to be permitted to play cricket, she was going to attract her father’s attention by some other means. And today she had a particular kind of surprise in store for him.
“Look, Father,” she told him with gleaming eyes as she reached into one of the wicker baskets. “I’ve grown these myself in the greenhouse.”
“Tomatoes?” he asked impatiently. “What for?”
“To eat,” she replied and then took a hearty bite out of one of the red fruits.
“What, are you mad?” Richard leapt over, tore the tomato from her hand, and cast it into the bushes. “Spit that out at once! Or do you want to kill yourself, you foolish girl?”
Sibylla’s eyes filled with tears as she turned away to spit the piece of tomato into the handkerchief that Mary had quickly handed her.
“They aren’t poisonous,” she sputtered. “A Colonel Gibbon Johnson has proven that by eating them in public. They’re quite palatable, in fact. You could make a lot of money if you sold them, to city dwellers, for instance, because they have no time or space to grow them themselves.”
“Nonsense!” Richard said. “And terrible business sense. Even if they weren’t poisonous, people would believe they are. It is difficult to eradicate superstition.”
“If Oscar had come up with this idea, you would have been thrilled,” she replied furiously.
“Enough!” Richard roared. “Stop it with your foolish schemes and adventures. Accept your station in life.”
“Richard, please,” Mary admonished him quietly, because he had attracted the attention of several people. She signaled Benjamin, standing by the kerosene heater, to start pouring the tea.
“Sibylla, dearest,” she began gently. “Won’t you pass your father a cup of tea?”
Sibylla obeyed without comment or expression. The festive mood of that summer’s day had been dashed. Oscar went off with his teammates to celebrate. Mary’s spirits only lifted once two of her lady friends came over to inquire in detail about the young man accompanying Sibylla. Richard had fished the Times out of a picnic basket and was studying a report about the progress of the Commercial Railway, set to link the western part of the docks to central London.
Sibylla watched Benjamin, who was reading the label of one of the champagne bottles. Presumably, he wanted to remember the name in order to show off at the next available opportunity. She had been noticing how much he tried to impress her, only she was not sure whether to find this ridiculous or touching.
She sighed softly, then took out the book she had brought along. It was the account of a marvelous journey that an English merchant named Mr. James Curtis had taken to Morocco. He had even been a guest at the sultan’s palace.
The ruler’s invitation had been discussed at length in the Spencer office. Richard, gleeful at the thought of an untapped market, had sent one of his traders, a Mr. Fisher, who had previously worked for Spencer & Son in Algeria, to Mogador. To Sibylla, the very idea of an exotic country like Morocco was thrilling. She would have loved to be in Mr. Fisher’s place, but she was well aware that was out of the question. So she had gone to Lackington, Allen and Company, a large bookseller in Finsbury Square, and purchased not only James Curtis’s but also James Grey Jackson’s travelogue, as well as a translated edition of One Thousand and One Nights.
She became so engrossed in Curtis’s description of the colorful bazaar in Tangier that she forgot all about her quarrel with her father.
“Might I persuade you to accompany me on a walk around the cricket field, Miss Spencer? Your mother assures me that she would have no objections.” Benjamin stood in front of her expectantly.
Sibylla, caught up in her reading, was on the verge of declining his invitation before thinking differently. She would never be able to evaluate Hopkins’s potential as a husband who would grant her freedom and value her opinions if she did not afford him an opportunity. She closed her book and flashed a radiant smile. “With the greatest pleasure, Mr. Hopkins. Would you be so kind as to help me up? My legs have grown stiff from sitting.”
“But of course!” Benjamin quickly offered her his arm.
“Do you believe that this time it will come to anything?” Richard asked his wife, watching the pair walk away arm in arm.
Mary smiled dreamily. “We should allow them the opportunity to find that out for themselves.”
London, February 1836
“We make a beautiful couple, my love. Everyone who sees us together says so.” Benjamin stood behind Sibylla in the hallway of their home and smiled at his reflection in one of the full-length crystal mirrors.
It was thrilling being able to visit the high-end tailors, hatters, and glove makers, and order whatever one’s heart desired, then simply have the invoice sent to Hopkins, Stanhope Gate in the exclusive Mayfair district.
Benjamin had managed to acquire quite an impressive new wardrobe in the ten weeks he’d been married to Sibylla. Each time yet another package was delivered, Sibylla would tease that they would soon need to build an addition to the house in order to accommodate everything.
Now, too, she was looking at him archly. “Could it be that I have mistakenly married a peacock?”
Benjamin smiled uneasily. He wasn’t fond of her teasing because he could never be sure if it was meant to be loving or derisive. But he was very fond indeed of being able to count himself among the rich. Many people exhibited a new reverence for him. He had his own office and his former coworkers tried nearly as hard to please him as they did the boss.
That evening, he and Sibylla were going to visit Sibylla’s parents. Richard Spencer had invited a special guest to dinner, a Scotsman by the name of Liam Moffat, who had traveled to North Africa on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society of London. Richard was keenly interested in any information that might affect his trade with Morocco.
“Your carriage is here, sir,” the butler announced.
Benjamin placed Sibylla’s cape over her shoulders. He arranged the collar and nodded with satisfaction when her amethyst necklace sparkled in the light from the wall sconces. Even though it was just a family dinner, he had insisted on selecting her gown and jewelry. She had humored him to a point because his childlike delight in luxury amused her, but when he had tried to instruct her maid on her hairstyle, she had protested, saying, “You are treating me like a doll. I don’t even recognize myself anymore!” His face had been so crestfallen that she regretted her objection at once.
It was the same look he’d given her that June afternoon at Lord’s Cricket Ground when he asked permission to call on her soon and she hesitated. They had not discovered many things in common during their walk. Sibylla feared that, if married, they would live parallel lives. Then she remembered the unpleasant quarrel with her father and felt a renewed determination to break out of her circumscribed existence.
“I would be delighted if you came to call,” she’d said, and Benjamin’s bright smile had eased her doubts.
In August, he had asked for her hand. In December, when they were married, the one thing that Sibylla knew for sure was that she did not love him.
Benjamin seemed to her like a boy in a giant toy shop allowed to choose whatever he liked. They had been married in the elegant St. George’s in Hanover Square, although Sibylla would have preferred a modest ceremony in a simple church. He had compiled a very long guest list, which she would dearly have loved to reduce by half. And yet she could not find his parents’ names anywhere.
He had been very embarrassed when she pointed it out, hemming and hawing, saying that they lived very private lives and did not take pleasure in lavish fetes.
“Are you ashamed of your parents? Don’t you even want to invite them?”
Benjamin had fallen silent, his face a deep red. Sibylla ended the conversation by adding his parents to the list and telling him that, if they were honorable people, she would be happy to welcome them.
Sibylla would never forget that moment. It revealed much about the character of her future husband and so, while Benjamin was busy choosing menus, engaging musicians, and hiring a dance instructor to teach him the Viennese waltz, Sibylla asked her father to place her dowry in a trust. It was a rare occasion when she and he were of the same mind. A trust was the only way for a woman to retain the fortune she brought into her marriage. Otherwise, every penny went to the husband.
It took them ten minutes to get from Stanhope Gate to Sibylla’s parents’ at Hamilton Place. It was snowing, and the cold dampness crept through the cover of the landau in which they rode. Sibylla snuggled into her fur blanket, which Benjamin had carefully tucked in around her. It was gestures such as these, unexpected and rare as they were, that made her feel a fondness for him. Had it not been for the blanket and a coal pan provided by the butler, she would surely have frozen to death in her silk evening gown and thin satin shoes.