Dorothy Eden (4 page)

‘You won’t have him running off to sea, Mamma.’

‘Not if I can help it. Not that it doesn’t seem to have done you some good.’ She put her head on one side, studying his splendid figure. He wore his black frock coat and striped neckcloth just that much better than any other man she had seen, with a certain casual air that suggested the clothes were important, but subtly less important than the form they covered. He would have all the young women swooning. Did he make his wife swoon? One couldn’t tell what went on behind her secretive face. It was a pity she was not some nice English girl to whom one could talk and grow fond of.

‘Do you remember Maria?’ she asked suddenly, at random.

‘Maria?’

‘The gamekeeper’s daughter. With the fair curls.’

She saw that he did not remember. His eyes had gone blank.

‘Although you were only fourteen you wanted to marry her,’ she said slowly. ‘You loved her deeply, you said.’

‘Mamma, if I remembered all the girls I’ve imagined myself in love with—’

She shook her head stubbornly.

‘One usually remembers the first. But it was before your accident, certainly.’

‘Then let’s not think of Maria when Amalie’s waiting impatiently.’

‘No, go and get her and Titus. I want to see my grandchild.’

He turned to obey. He had reached the door before she called to him. He paused, standing there in the richly appointed room that had been built exactly to her late husband’s requirements, with marble sculptured in Italy for the fireplace, an elaborately carved and gilded ceiling, and woodwork of the finest mahogany. A great deal of money, time and loving care had been put into this house. It would not be pleasant, Lady Malvina was thinking involuntarily, if it were to be occupied by an impostor.

‘What is it, Mamma? You wanted to ask me something?’

‘Are you—’ her voice was thick and uneasy. ‘Tell me, are you really my son?’

He came to kneel before her. He offered his face to the full glow of the gaslight. She could look as closely as she wished at the unfamiliar lean brown cheeks, the superb brows, the long high-bridged nose.

The nose was her own, surely…The boy she remembered had had dark eyes. But had they been of such intense brilliant darkness as these? Had that unformed sixteen-year-old face given promise of this bony splendid structure? The colouring, the scar beneath the left ear, the look of arrogance—that was all. It was absurd that a woman should bear a child in the greatest agony and then live to be unsure of his identity.

But if this was not Blane, who was it? And what did he want?

A shiver of fear went over her. She saw a ruthlessness she hadn’t previously noticed in his mouth, a moodiness in his eyes. She spoke sharply to cover her sudden foolish nervousness.

‘Order the champagne. We need it. We need gaiety, a celebration. Fetch Amalie and Titus. Titus must come, even if he’s been put to bed. His grandmother needs him.’

The man straightened himself slowly. He stooped to print a kiss on Lady Malvina’s hot and fretted brow.

‘Thank you, Mamma,’ he said gently, and left the room.

S
ARAH DRESSED WITH THE
greatest care. She had to look like a gentlewoman, though an impoverished one. There was not too much difficulty about that, for none of her clothes was new. Indeed, she had not had a new gown for two years, just before Papa had died. Then he had come back from St Tropez in fine fettle, an infallible sign that he had been lucky at the tables. All the girls had been permitted to get new gowns, and Mamma had had the drawing-room done out in one of the modern wallpapers, a deep-maroon colour with a rich gilt design. It was a little like one the Queen had chosen for her new country house at Balmoral. One of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, who was a cousin of Mamma’s, had told them so.

But within a month of that apparent beginning of better times Papa was dead of a chill, and they were all in mourning. And there was almost no money.

From that time, the two eldest, Amelia and Charlotte, had positions as companions to rich elderly ladies, and Sarah had been taken under Aunt Adelaide’s wing. Aunt Adelaide had thought to find her a husband, but Sarah, after being annoyingly pernickety about several suitable young men, had chosen to fall in love with Ambrose Mallow who was now as impecunious as herself.

It wasn’t fair! Sarah told herself. She had scarcely slept for sorrow and indignation, and now the very thought of this turn of luck that had snatched hers and Ambrose’s happy future from them made the colour deepen indignantly in her cheeks.

She must remain calm. She could not present herself to the new Lady Mallow looking flushed and irresponsible. She must remember to keep her eyes lowered, and not to answer her ladyship as if she were an equal. Not only an equal, she thought indignantly, but a superior. For who was this woman, straight from the West Indies, as anonymous as someone picked at random from the streets. That was where she would go back, Sarah told herself vigorously. In a very short time it would be herself interviewing applicants for positions at Mallow Hall. And the first person to be dismissed would be that sly villain Soames, the head groom, who in court had put words into the impostor’s mouth.

The impostor—but in the meantime she would have to learn to call him Lord Mallow. She would keep her eyes downcast and murmur meekly, ‘Yes, my lord. No, my lord.’ Ambrose confidently expected her to act the part, and she would show him she could.

Excitement made her impatient to hurry with her dressing and set out on the way. To make her unbidden visit even more plausible she had the newspaper which had reported the result of the trial very fully, and a gossip columnist had interviewed Lord Mallow himself.

‘Lord Mallow,’ the infuriating chit-chat informed her, ‘intends to travel to Mallow Hall on the Kentish coast early in the week. He is looking forward with the greatest pleasure to displaying his childhood home to his wife, and, of course, to its heir Titus, named after the fourth baron. Lord Mallow has not yet made any plans for his son’s education. He is too young, as yet, for Lord Mallow’s old preparatory school, and it seems likely a governess will be employed.’

The fact that the columnist was playing into her hands failed to console Sarah for this smug and triumphant statement. But she had enough sense to cut the piece out and slip it into her reticule. It could be produced if the genuineness of her application was doubted.

She had to confess to some perhaps malicious interest in seeing Blane’s wife at close quarters, and more than a little interest in the child, with his reputed famous likeness to the portrait in Mallow Hall.

She had brushed her hair smoothly back from her round young forehead, and arranged it in a cluster of curls at the back. She preferred not to wear the demure forward-falling curls that were in fashion, but to display her ears and the clear line of her cheek. This made her look a little older and more responsible, she thought with satisfaction. Her face, looking so serious now in the little upturned mirror on the dressing-table, had no great beauty. Aunt Adelaide had repeatedly told her her charm lay in animation, and then, trying to cope with Sarah’s high spirits, had requested a little less animation. But her eyes, wide apart, and of a curious smoky blue, were most distinctive, Aunt Adelaide conceded. A little less colour in her cheeks would have been desirable, but at least she would not have need to resort secretly to the rouge box.

Sarah herself wished she did not. look quite so robustly healthy, for all her slim waist and narrow shoulders. It was so much more fashionable to be pale and languid. She could have wished, too, for more regular features and the stateliness that her sisters, Amelia and Charlotte, possessed. However, in spite of all this, Ambrose had fallen in love with her. Dear Ambrose. She would achieve the required stateliness when she became Lady Mallow.

From her modest wardrobe she took her bottle-green merino day dress, and wore over it the grey felt cloak trimmed with black velvet that could not be more suitable and discreet. Her black velvet bonnet with green silk ribbons completed this picture of respectability. She looked at her reflection and sighed. She dearly loved pretty clothes. The prospect of perhaps several months of this drabness was infinitely depressing.

She was putting on her gloves when Aunt Adelaide bustled in to say that Ambrose was downstairs.

‘He means to see that you carry out this mad scheme,’ she said.

‘Did he think I would lose my courage already?’

‘I don’t know what he thought, but what I think is that you’ve both lost your senses.’

‘You don’t really, Aunt Adelaide. You approve of us fighting for our rights.’

‘But not in an underhand way.’

‘What other way is there? We must use our enemy’s own weapons.’

Aunt Adelaide sighed deeply.

‘Then here’s one of them. The reference I’ve perjured myself to write for you.’

Ambrose, waiting downstairs, was full of excitement. He had been down to the docks and contacted the captain of a schooner to sail in two days’ time for Trinidad and other West Indian ports. He could have a passage if he wished, and the captain promised him a journey that might be completely dull and uneventful, or full of the drama of hurricanes, becalmings or even attack by pirates.

‘But, Ambrose!’ Sarah cried in alarm, ‘is there danger? Then must you go? What use will either Mallow Hall or a title be to you if you lie at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea?’

Ambrose laughed, gratified by her dismay.

‘The fellow was only showing off. Of course there’s no danger. Or what there is,’ his face hardened, ‘if Blane could face it at sixteen I can do the same at twenty-six.’

‘You’re to sail so soon!’

Ambrose tilted her chin.

‘In two days you yourself will be on the way to Mallow. Now tell me, are you ready? You haven’t lost courage?’

‘Only for you, and the thought of those hurricanes.’

Ambrose laughed gently.

‘Would you like me to come part of the way with you in the cab? It wouldn’t be wise for me to go all the way.’

‘No. I shall go alone.’

‘Remember, you must succeed.’

Sarah met his gaze levelly. She didn’t think she had noticed that stony look in his eyes before. For a moment it almost frightened her. He was so determined. And supposing, at the very outset, she failed.

She straightened her shoulders.

‘I won’t fail.’

He took her hand and smiled, and the bad moment, the moment of wondering whether Ambrose was not the person she had imagined him, was over.

‘The cab’s waiting outside. Are you ready?’

The fog had lifted, but only to show a low grey sky and the still shapes of trees to which the tattered leaves still clung. It was very cold for October. It was going to be a hard winter, Sarah thought, and she wondered how draughty and uncomfortable Mallow Hall might be. Ambrose said his uncle had let the place fall into disrepair. But the new family, coming from the tropics, would surely take precautions against the cold, and see that the Atlantic winds were shut out. Anyway, Sarah herself would not be there long. She would quickly discover incriminating evidence against this man calling himself Blane Mallow. She would have to listen at doors, and perhaps try to read other people’s letters. As Aunt Adelaide had said, it would be distinctly unpleasant. But it was in the cause of right and justice, and must be done. For Ambrose’s sake much more than for her own, she did not dare to think of failing.

The cab jogged across London, skirting Hyde Park and then proceeding down the Brompton Road. It was a longish journey, and the driver was glad enough to wait outside the house in South Kensington to rest his horse. Sarah said she would not be more than fifteen minutes. Nervousness had brought the colour to her cheeks again. The cabby was quite ready to trust the vivid face lifted to him. Despite her sober clothes, his passenger had the voice of a lady, and she smiled at him. She knew that he had a miserably chilly job in winter, sitting up there in all weathers, and that his bones got aches just as well as finer people’s. Her warm smile told him all that. It was nice for once to be treated as a fellow human being.

‘I’ll wait, miss. God bless yer.’

This comforting voice following her up the steps kept Sarah’s courage high. But when the front door swung open in response to her ring, and the solemn-faced butler stood within, panic filled her.

It had been all very well to invent this scheme and talk blithely about it. But now she was faced with reality, and the whole thing seemed completely crazy.

However, here she was, and the butler was asking her her business.

She straightened her shoulders.

‘I should like to see Lady Mallow,’ she said firmly.

The butler stood aside for her to enter.

‘Take a seat, if you please. I will enquire if her ladyship is available. What is the name, please?’

‘Miss Sarah Mildmay.’

The butler bowed and withdrew. Sarah had scarcely time to look round the hall with its fine marble staircase, its tapestries and statuary, before there was a commotion. A little boy dressed in outdoor clothes was running down the stairs pursued by a stout untidy old woman with flying grey curls and lace cap askew.

‘The great grizzly is catching you! G-r-r-r! G-r-r-r! Run for your life. Or he’ll hug and hug you to death.’

The child flung himself into the arms of a nursemaid who had come running down the stairs in their wake, and the old woman collapsed, panting, into the nearest chair.

‘Well, Titus! Wasn’t that a fine game? Don’t you love to play with your Grandmamma? Now off for your walk. Where’s his hoop, Annie? Isn’t he to take his hoop?’

‘We didn’t mean to go far today, your ladyship, it being so bleak. His mother said he wasn’t to catch cold.’

‘Bah! He’s got to be made tough. This is England, not the tropics. Little boys here go out in all weathers. I won’t have my grandson pampered.’

‘No, your ladyship,’ said the maid, hastily taking the child’s hand and departing to the door.

Lady Malvina fanned her face vigorously, still gasping and panting noisily.