Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory

pointed to the grand house, the best house on the square, three redbrick stories high with little attic windows let into the roof. Long white stone columns ran the length of the windows on each story; above each window was a carved face. The double doorway was large and imposing, flanked by more pillars. Stone-carved gateposts and wrought-iron railings shielded the front of the house and emphasized its importance. “This is it, Mrs. Cole. This is our house-to-be. I happen to know that it is coming up for sale, and I shall bid for it, you may be sure. And I shall have it. No one will outbid me, cost what it will. It is generally known that you and I are wed. It is generally known that I am looking for a town house to establish my family.”
    Frances looked around the square, trying to imagine what it would be like to live there. A curtain in a front parlor beside them twitched, and dimly she saw a woman step back from the window. It would be a little community, ingrowing and inbred. There would be small feuds and long memories. Frances didnot mind. She had lived in a country village, dependent on the goodwill of the lord, her uncle. She knew how small communities worked.
    “We should drive on,” she said gently to Josiah. “We will be noticed if we stay here any longer, looking.”
    “So?”
    “These people will be our neighbors,” she explained. “We wish them to have an agreeable impression of us.”
    He was about to argue, but she saw him hesitate, and then he nodded. “You know best, Mrs. Cole,” he agreed. “You are the one to teach me. It shall be as you wish. Now, is there anywhere else you would like to see?”
    “I don’t know the city at all,” Frances said. “I have never visited here. I had some friends who drove out to a picnic and looked at the Avon Gorge. They told me it was sublime.”
    Josiah leaned forward and gave the order to the driver. “We can go and look at the gorge,” he said. “You will not think it so sublime when you understand what it costs me in barge charges. We can drive to the Hot Well at the foot of the gorge. I have a particular interest in it.”
    The carriage turned out of the square and bumped along yet another dockside beside another river.
    “This is the Avon again?” Frances asked.
    “The river Frome,” Josiah corrected her.
    “It is as if we live on an island,” Frances said. “Surrounded by water.” She nearly said “foul water.”
    “The old city was a defensive site ringed by the two rivers, the Avon and the Frome—like a moat,” Josiah told her. “Now it is all docks.”
    They waited for the drawbridge ahead of them to be dropped, and then the carriage bowled over the wooden planks and turned left, away from the docks.
    Frances looked ahead as for the first time the city seemed something more than a dockside slum. The pretty triangle of College Green was before them, with two churches on theirleft. The college church was an imposing building with the Bishop’s Palace behind it. Frances heard birdsong—not the irritable squawk of seagulls but the summery ripple of a blackbird’s call. Looking up, she saw swallows and house martins swooping and wheeling around the cathedral.
    The thick foliage of the elms threw dark green shadows over the road, and as they drove up the steep hill, the air grew fresher and cleaner and the sun shone brightly on the new buildings.
    “Oh, if we could only live up here!” Frances exclaimed. Set back from the track were occasional terraces of houses in soft yellow stone, built in the style that Frances liked—plain, regular, and square.
    Josiah shook his head. “It’s a whim. One or two people are building here, but no true merchant will ever move away from the city. The river is our lifeblood. Clifton is too far to go. It is country living—not city dwelling at all. There are people buying land and putting up houses, but it will never be the heart of the city. We will always live along the riverbanks; that is where