Distant Choices (32 page)

‘Quentin – the very man I wished for.'

He did not, of course, believe her, although her outflung arms, her enormous smile, the wide-open gleam of her eyes, were all vibrant enough, all ardent enough, to have deceived anyone else.

‘Why is that, Kate?'

‘So that you can drive me home. I have done enough riding for one day.'

‘Certainly.'

‘And we can talk about the Mertons, since I have decided to captivate them, and you have just come from there. On
very important business
, I know.'

He bowed very slightly. ‘Not really. Only a little matter of boundaries. Nothing to shake the nation.'

‘And is her ladyship perching on the edge of her chair, as if it were a cage with the door open, worrying if the weather is fit enough for her to fly?'

Most unusually for Quentin Saint-Charles he smiled quite broadly. ‘I believe one could say that.'

‘Oh dear.' Kate made another new, very flamboyant gesture, trying it out, perhaps, on her clever cousin. ‘She was so all the time in Monte Carlo. Wondering, all morning, whether or not to go out and then wondering what to do when she got there. Not an idea in her head, poor soul. And Adela is much the same. Whereas Dora
does
have a thought occasionally, if only of mischief. You will like Dora the best, Oriel – when we have made them our dearest friends and are forever running in and out of their Abbey.'

‘Is that what we mean to do?' asked Oriel, standing up, her legs unsteady.

‘Oh yes, darling. I told you. I have made up my mind to do it. Dinners and dances instead of that old hyssop tea.
Your
mother will be delighted.'

Slowly, with no apparent purpose, Quentin placed himself between them, in such a way that Oriel could not be seen from the house.

‘Should you care to plan your campaign with our Aunt Evangeline, Kate,' he said lightly, ‘she drove in just behind me and is waiting in the drawing-room, I believe.'

‘My mother …' said Oriel.

‘No time like the present,' said Kate. They both moved forward but Kate was quicker, Oriel still behind the table, still, to her chagrin, feeling lamentably –
foolishly
– weak and unsteady, so that by the time she had freed her skirts from the barrier of wrought-iron garden furniture and her own unaccustomed clumsiness, Kate was already striding away across the grass.

‘Give yourself a moment, Oriel,' murmured Quentin so softly that, had she wished, she could have pretended not to hear him. But she could not insult his intelligence, quite possibly his kindness, by doing that.

‘Oh – I am quite all right.'

He smiled. ‘I know you will be. But there is no great rush. Kate and your mother will have plenty to talk about. So you may take your time.'

He did not ask why she needed it, nor did he show the faintest alarm when she suddenly heard herself say to him, ‘I do beg your pardon but I think I am about to burst into tears.' He merely continued to stand between her and the drawing-room windows, shielding her, less with his quite slender body than an aura of assurance and calm. Qualities she well understood.

‘Do so,' he said. ‘And at the same time bend over the table a little … Could there be some problem with the glasses? Perhaps you have noticed a very fine crack and we are looking for others?'

A moment passed.

‘Thank you, Quentin,' she said.

And still he did not ask her for an explanation.

‘Do you wish to go in now?'

Where? Her husband's home, full to its brim, at this moment, with voices raised in demands for her to satisfy, hurt feelings for her to smooth over, with grasping hands waiting to claim as much as they could of her time, her energy, her notice, with faces turned hopefully, querulously, fretfully, in her direction? Was that where she wished to go?

‘I think I must,' she said.

Five months later, on a harsh, grey morning in November, Kate Ashington gave birth, in a great rush, to a daughter, a tiny, premature creature whose survival lay for some days in the balance, the anxiety thus caused being sufficient to explain – or to excuse – the young mother's apparent inability to touch or even to look at her baby.

The doctor had met such an attitude before. Or so he told the young father, Squire Ashington, into whose arms the newborn child had been hurriedly placed when the squire's lady had recoiled from it in what had certainly looked like horror. Not that there was any real need to worry. Squire Ashington was at once assured, by both doctor and midwife, of that. It would pass. And if not – well – one saw much the same with cows and sheep and bitches, and whenever one came across a rejected lamb one had only to find another ewe to suckle it. A good wet-nurse, therefore, would solve the problem, and would have been needed in any case, since the doctor did not suppose a lady of Mrs Ashington's standing could wish to sacrifice either the firmness of her breasts or the number of her social engagements to the very frequent feeding required by so small an infant.

Particularly when all one had to do was employ a good, placid countrywoman with milk preferably from a recent confinement, who would be happy to sit all day and all night if necessary, rocking the cradle and putting the child to the breast every hour or two. Under the supervision – naturally – of a competent nanny. Nothing could be simpler. No need at all for Mr Ashington to worry. Unless, of course, he might feel inclined to have the child baptized – fairly soon? A precaution, merely – no more – and often taken in cases of premature arrival. And with Dessborough church just a step away and the vicar entirely at his squire's disposal …? No doubt the names had already been chosen?

Names? No. With Kate becoming increasingly morose as the autumn passed there had been no cosy, fireside, hand-in-hand talk of names. Very far from that. And, glancing at the mottled scrap of humanity in his arms, remembering that it was female and ought therefore to be called after its mother, Francis nevertheless retreated instantly from Kate's sudden and far too frenzied refusal to permit the name ‘Katharine'to be used, even in second or third position.

‘Ondine. Roxane. Berengaria,' she said, her voice breaking on a high-pitched, jarring laugh which caused him to say quickly, ‘Anything you like – anything at all.'

‘Anything,' she told him, sinking back again into her pillows and her blank-eyed torpor. ‘Not Kate.'

But very soon Francis knew that what he had believed to be a private matter was slipping out of his hands. For Kate had given birth, he was quickly made aware, to an important child who, if she lived and had no brothers or sisters, would eventually inherit both Dessborough and High Grange. Thus giving several others – at least in their own opinion – certain rights and privileges over her. The ‘family'therefore descended
en masse
and at once, to let it be known that these fanciful Ondines and pagan Roxanes – reminding them so uneasily of the Kessler grandmother, so mercifully deceased – must be set aside at once. There were plenty of ‘family' names to choose from, after all. Sitting around Kate's bed the ‘family council lost no time in enumerating them. Grizelda, Celestine, and Barbara for the Ashingtons. Letitia, Maud, Clarissa, for the Stangways, as well as the very popular Katharine which, as Letty pointed out, she had chosen for her own eldest daughter who, so sadly, had been born too soon, just like this poor little soul, and had died a week later.

‘She was so pretty too – such a little love,' murmured Letty, ready to be tearful with memory, although, in fact, she had never been able to distinguish one baby from another, except Quentin who, if Kate had done as she ought and married him, would have been only too pleased, she felt, to fall in with his mother's wish for another Katharine. Suddenly, with the stubbornness of those who are neither very strong nor very highly regarded, it became of tremendous importance to her, almost as if it would give her
her
Katharine – of whom she had barely thought for twenty years – back again.

‘Katharine would be very –
fitting
,' she said.

‘Suitable,' declared Maud. ‘And it would please Matthew, since it was our mother's name too.'

But the figure lying in the bed as if she were a million miles away lifted her head from the pillows just long enough to croak out the two words ‘Not Katharine.'

‘I believe we have decided,' murmured Francis, ‘that it will not be Katharine.'

The Stangway ladies raised their shoulders and exchanged pained glances, as if he had been an intruder. Evangeline, in the unusual position, for her, of having no axe to grind in this particular issue, smiled. Celestine, she suggested lazily, might be worthy of consideration as an Ashington name with Merton connections. Celestine, then; with – after some further discussion – Clarissa to follow, with the name of one of the godmothers after that.

Celestine Clarissa …? Yes, indeed. But who were the godmothers to be?

‘Maud and Susannah,' said Letty.

‘Susannah,' snapped Maud, ‘and some connection of the Ashingtons.'

‘Oh – do you think so?' breathed Susannah. ‘Well – yes – I would be honoured. I so love all children.'

‘I do feel one should approach the Mertons,' murmured Evangeline. ‘Perhaps Lady Merton herself would find it too energetic. And Adela has her wedding on her mind. But Dora might appreciate being singled out …'

Once again Kate's voice emerged from the pillows, raised this time in what might have been a cry for help.

‘Oriel.'

Francis, seeing the end of his own tether clearly in view, quickly moved to her side. ‘Darling, you know Oriel is abroad with her husband.'

But the voice from the bed was beyond reason or comfort. ‘She said she'd come back for the christening.'

‘Yes, I know. But she was expecting the baby to be born at the end of December – as we all were.'

‘She said she'd come back and so she will. You can send for her. Can't you?'

‘No,' he said, because it was the truth and he could not change it.

‘Yes you can.' That was
her
truth, and since there was nothing else she wanted, she demanded it.

‘No, darling. She is moving about from place to place, and even if we could contact her, her husband may not see the sense in her travelling back alone just to attend a christening. In fact, I would not care, myself, to put her to the trouble …'

Kate's pillows were abruptly scattered as she sat up, skinny and sallow and unkempt in her lace bedgown, both hands clutching her disordered hair, her face flushed with what could have been temper or fever, or both.

‘Oriel would not think it troublesome, Francis.'

‘I dare say. But, just the same, it would be a great inconvenience …'

‘Indeed it would,' Oriel's mother put in. ‘A Channel crossing, alone, in winter. I cannot think my son-in-law would allow it.'

‘Then we'll wait for her – I don't care how long,' Kate said, her flush deepening to a damp and – in her condition – dangerous scarlet.

Too long, perhaps – was the thought in every mind – for the frailty of that tiny and so very quiet child. But how, without running the risk of fretting her into milk-fever, did one remind a newly-delivered and decidedly hysterical mother of that?

‘Nonsense, Kate,' said Maud. ‘We have been advised to have the christening tomorrow, as you know very well. And it is hardly the moment, I would have thought, for extra complication …'

‘I don't care what you think,' shouted Kate, turning purple. ‘Oriel is going to be godmother. That's what
I
want. And I'm going to have it. So either we'll wait, or … Or – yes – somebody can stand proxy for her. Well – can't they? You can get married by proxy, so it stands to reason you can be a godmother the same way. Can't you? Francis?'

He had no idea whether one could or not. ‘Yes – absolutely.' he said.

‘All right then. So let Susannah stand proxy for her. She's used to that.'

Deeply offended Susannah gathered up her skirts and fled the room, followed by Letty who returned, some ten minutes later, with the information that Susannah could not speak for tears. Letty, therefore, would speak on her daughter's behalf and did so, ably supported by Maud, until Francis – apologizing for his wife who had retired beneath her pillows again – went himself to woo Susannah into a calmer frame of mind where she eventually consented – for
his
sake, she made it clear – to be godmother in her own right after all.

‘And perhaps,' he suggested, ‘one of Oriel's stepdaughters could stand proxy for her?'

Stepdaughters! Evangeline was seen to wince at the word, finding it ageing. ‘Ah yes,' she said, as if just recollecting them. ‘There is one who smiles and one who does not. Perhaps we could have the smiling one.'

Elspeth? Susannah, having won her own battle, now moved swiftly to the defence of Morag – her own great favourite – the elder and far more responsible of the little Keiths who ought not to have her younger, and somewhat frivolous sister set above her.

‘Morag, then,' said Evangeline, wrinkling her nose as though pronouncing the name of a patent cough medicine.

‘Perhaps,' suggested Francis once again, ‘we might leave Kate, now, to sleep?'

He saw them all to the door, staying a moment longer at her bedside and then, understanding she had nothing to say to him – nor he, in fact, to her – going downstairs himself to find the house no more his own than the naming of his child had been. In the small book-room where he had hoped to sit for a while in total silence and smoke a cigar he found Matthew Stangway installed, for the same reasons, before him. In the parlour Letty was drinking a herbal tea to restore the ravages of her emotions, still talking of her own lost Katharine to Susannah. Evangeline, in the drawing-room, was writing graceful notes to the Mertons, on his behalf he supposed, inviting them to the christening. Maud had gone to the housekeeper's room with the openly expressed intention of remedying – for
his
sake, once again – six months of total domestic neglect by Kate.