Flint and Roses (51 page)

And in this complicated, busy household—where Caroline, I felt certain, knew the contents of every cupboard, was as precisely aware of the cost of anything and everything from a full-scale banquet to the replacing of a chipped cup—I was able to lose, temporarily, the keen edge of my anxieties, living from the ceremony of breakfast, the savoury-laden sideboard, the somnolence of newspapers and gossip in the Great Hall afterwards, to the more elaborate rituals of luncheon and five o'clock tea, the ultimate complexity that was dinner. I busied myself in changing my clothes as the occasion and the weather required, flirted mildly with a visiting, non-hunting gentleman or two, talked personalities, dress fabrics, fashionable philosophies with visiting ladies, walked to church with Caroline on Sunday mornings, watching with affectionate amusement as she acknowledged the salutations of her tenantry, the deference of her parson, the slap she administered with her gloves to her children and to her husband when the sermon inclined Sir Matthew to doze, the future Sir Dominic, the future colonel of Hussars, and little Gideon, the future bishop, to misbehave.

Nicholas did not come but quite soon Georgiana appeared, riding over from Galton to join the hunt, vivid and outrageous as she always was in the company of her own people, astonishing those young sparks Nicholas had feared on my account by her daring and endurance in the saddle, her sudden flights of fancy that ended, to Caroline's intense disgust, in a midnight steeplechase from Listonby church tower to Galton church tower, no holds barred, no quarter given, no farmyards and no fences spared, with champagne in the Abbey cloister for the survivors, a great deal of splashing in the Abbey stream, and Peregrine Clevedon discovered in such flagrantly promiscuous circumstances with one of Caroline's married, decidedly tipsy, female guests that my cousin could not be persuaded to overlook it.

‘But it's just Perry,' Georgiana explained. ‘He's like that, Caroline. He won the race, after all, and you must admit the woman was willing. Matthew—do make her understand.'

But Sir Matthew had taken the measure of his Caroline by now and, shrugging his heavy, lazy shoulders rather apologetically, not only submitted to her judgment but saw that it was carried out. The lady was asked to take her departure. Mr. Peregrine Clevedon, who had committed his misdemeanour on his own property, not Caroline's, was severely reprimanded, and for the next day or two Caroline patrolled her guests with the air of a good governess who has every intention of keeping her class in order, a procedure which, rather than giving offence, appeared to provide considerable amusement.

I returned to Millergate exhausted, aching for Nicholas, yet it was Mr. Adair, my mother's lover not my own, who came first to welcome me home, his bright black eyes roving merrily around me, shrewd eyes and a shrewd brain behind them, a man experienced in the ways of the world, who, I was quick to realize, could be another threat to me.

‘So you're home again, my lovely girl—that's good, since home is where you belong—except that I know how your mother is breaking her heart to have you back in her own nest again. It's not safe, she thinks, for a bonny young thing like yourself to be living here all alone. Fretting she is, which I don't like to see—but there now, what was it I came for? Yes indeed, you're expected at dinner tonight—and she said, now what was it? Yes—Sunday, some little trip she's planning. We'll collect you mid-morning.'

I went to Scarborough again in May, but this time, because Mr. Adair had raised a quizzical eyebrow at my explanation of visiting an old acquaintance in York—a friend, it had pained me to add, of my late husband—I was tense throughout the journey, exhausted on arrival, almost sick with nerves when Nicholas, who should have been there to greet me, arrived late. And, instead of the magical days of escape we had planned, we found ourselves compelled at last to admit that there could be no escape, and that one of us, or both of us, would be required to make a sacrifice.

He had a wife and child who might mean little to him just then, but he had a thriving business which mattered a great deal and anchored him firmly to Cullingford. Could he sacrifice that, and possibly his share of the Barforth mills with it for my sake, and start again somewhere else? I had a family who would not easily let me go. I felt love for one sister, a growing feeling of responsibility for my mother and Celia. I had a reputation for which I cared only spasmodically, but of which the loss would be damaging to others. Could I leave them all behind and creep away somewhere to the cloistered existence of a kept woman, a cherished prisoner? Yes, Nicholas, told me, I could. If I loved him, I couldn't hesitate.

But could I forget how Georgiana had flung herself against him that Christmas Day, offering reconciliation, or how wretched she often appeared lately, her spirits and her colour fading, as his temper grew shorter? Yes, he told me. She was his responsibility, not mine. He was the adulterer. His was the guilt and the blame, and his shoulders were broad enough.

Could I ignore the simple, honest truth that so long as I remained in his life there was no hope of peace for any of us? I knew better than to ask him that. But spring is a cruel time for the making of such decisions, an impossible time, and Nicholas refused to be thwarted in any case.

‘If Dan Adair suspects you, then he suspects you,' he said bluntly. ‘And if he comes sniffing around Lawcroft asking me to buy his silence, or around Millergate trying to blackmail you into going back to your mother, then I'll flatten him, and I reckon he ought to know that. I can't see what he'd have to gain by going to my wife or my father, but if he did I'm not even sure I'd give a damn. My father can throw me out of Lawcroft and Tarn Edge but he can't shift me from the Wool-combers, and if Perry Clevedon took it into his head to shoot me I could change his mind with pound notes. It would suit Blaize, at any rate.'

And although the greater part of his nature would have gloried in announcing his possession of me to our narrow world—‘This is my woman and be damned to the lot of you'—I knew beyond the slightest shadow of doubt that, if he lost his share of the Barforth mills to Blaize, a day would surely dawn when he would most bitterly regret it.

The summer drained me that year, shredded my nerves and evaporated my spirit, for, my own anxieties apart, I seemed the constant prey of all those who had cause to complain of my mother, so that I felt besieged day in day out, by Aunt Hannah, who required to know when we could expect my mother's jewellery to go up for auction and then her petticoats; by Prudence, who in her own intense frustration had no thought for mine; by the Irish cousins; by Daniel Adair, whose plans for me were every bit as specific as for my sister; and not least of all by Celia, whose fast developing pregnancy, she felt, was not attracting its share of notice.

‘Faith—you will never believe what Jonas has done to me. He has invited the Battershaws to dine. Yes, I know they are among his best clients and we have dined twice with them since Christmas, but how am I to manage? Oh yes—I can order the meal and see that everything is spotless and perfectly tidy, but Jonas should understand that I cannot be
looked at
in my condition.'

‘Celia, there is nothing yet to show.'

‘No, but I get so fatigued, Faith, by dinner-time, and then the maids are quite likely to bring out smeared glasses and chipped plates unless I make sure of it, and cook is so unreliable about timing, I don't see how I can be expected to sit there with a smile on my face and chat. You must come and do it for me.'

I did, Jonas taking advantage of my presence, I thought, to include our Member of Parliament, Mr. Fielding, and his political agent in the party, gentlemen whose good offices would be needed should he decide to embark on a parliamentary career of his own. And so it happened that when Celia, who had quite genuinely worn, herself out by a day-long flurry of cleaning and polishing, retired to bed soon after the meal, I remained in Albert Place very late, chatting pleasantly to two gentlemen I had no wish to impress—and so impressed rather easily—and to Jonas himself, who relaxed almost to humanity without the presence of his wife and his mother.

He escorted me home afterwards, a quite natural courtesy, stepped into my hall a moment to thank me, since I had put myself out for his sake, and although the house was perfectly silent, Mrs. Marworth's smile quite bland—and although Nicholas had been warned well in advance of my plans—no one could have failed to identify the odour of tobacco betraying a male presence behind my drawing-room door.

‘Mrs. Marworth—' I gasped, desperately seeking help from anyone, but, having no help to give me, she had already disappeared down the corridor, leaving me with my horrified guilt, and my brother-in-law.

‘Jonas—' I said, just his name, bowing my head, I think, as if for execution, since he would be well within his rights to demand the identity of my caller. When I raised it again, I couldn't read the expression—my sentence—in his clever, lawyer's face, had no idea at all what his faint smile might mean.

‘Yes, Faith. Thank you for your help this evening. I will leave you, now that I have seen you safely bestowed. Good-night.'

‘Oh Jonas—my goodness!'

And, incredibly, he shrugged his narrow shoulders and touched me, very lightly, with a cool fingertip.

‘Good-night. There is nothing for you to be concerned about—except that I believe one of your chimneys may be smoking, and you should attend to it. Celia will be very glad to see you, I expect, should you care to call tomorrow.'

Yet, although he did not betray me, gave no indication when I saw him again that he had observed anything amiss, exerted no pressure on my movements or my activities, the mere fact of his knowledge weighed upon me, burdened me.

An endless summer, hot days, a yellow sky hanging low over Millergate, heavy days spiced with a whisper of faraway excitements, since, in exotic lands I could scarcely imagine, the Tsar of Russia had invaded the territory of his brother monarch, the Sultan of an ailing Turkey, an event in which—for reasons I was slow to understand—we seemed likely to become involved. We could not, of course—or so a dozen people told me—tolerate the presence of Russian aggressors so near to India; but the truth was that we, the greatest military nation in the world, the conquerors of Napoleon, had been at peace for almost forty years now, and even in Cullingford a great many men were eager to hear the beat of martial drums, to show the Russian giant, the Austrian giant, any giant at all, that we had lost none of our vigour. And I found it easier, at tea-time, at dinner-time, at the concert hall and the Assembly Rooms, to ponder the fate of such unlikely places as Constantinople, Sebastopol, the Crimea, than my own.

‘There's nothing else for it. We've got to fight them,' Sir Matthew Chard declared, with no more idea than I as to where the Crimea might be found.

‘Aye,' Sir Joel Barforth answered him. ‘Fight them, and I'll sell you the uniform cloth to do it in.'

‘Will it make any difference, Nicholas?' I asked, and he told me, ‘No. I almost wish it would.'

I went to Scarborough, most dangerously in June and August, not daring to step out of the garden for fear of the summer crowds; twice in September, a hunted animal at my arrival and my departure, a few feverish days in between, immense fatigue at my homecoming, a dry-mouthed panic until my first encounter with Daniel Adair, with Aunt Hannah, with Jonas, reassured me that I had not been caught. I became dangerously, uncharacteristically emotional, prone to unexplained tears and sudden bursts of laughter. Loud noises startled me, flickering evening shadows loomed out at me, distorted into fearsome shapes that caused my stomach to lurch, my heart to beat in the wild palpitations to which my robust body was not accustomed. When my sister Celia, who had spent at least half of her pregnancy in bed, gave birth to a daughter that July—Miss Grace Cecilia Agbrigg, a silken little creature with a curl or two of dark hair and enormous liquid eyes—I wept unrestrainedly at my first sight of her, wept when I was asked to be her godmother, stood throughout her christening with tears seeping from my eye-corners, ruining the lace ribbons of my bonnet. There were long nights when sleep would not come at all, other nights of fitful dozing threaded by terrible dreams of myself hurrying through mean streets, a glimpse of Giles Ashburn in a doorway, nothing but an empty room when I ran frantically inside, his figure in the distance, the beloved quietness of him shredding away to mist the instant before I reached his side. A sick tortuous wandering in the dark, a sudden jolting to wakefulness and the certain knowledge that, although my love for Nicholas was deeper and more intense than ever, a change of some kind would have to be made.

A change. Yet, having told myself that I must make it, that it
must
be done, having rehearsed the reasons until they became welded to my brain and gave me no rest, I was unprepared both for the nature and the manner of it when it came.

He arrived very late, the second night of October, restless, ill-tempered, I thought at first, disinclined for conversation, barely listening to the few remarks I made. And then, blunt as he always was in moments of emotion, he snapped out, ‘I had better tell you, before you hear it from someone else. Georgiana is pregnant again.'

‘I see.'

‘No,' he said, taking me by the elbows, squeezing hard. ‘You don't see.'

But I would have none of that, pulling away from him, hurting myself, putting as much distance between us as my tiny drawing-room allowed.

‘There is no reason to make excuses to me, Nicholas, because you have—because you have made love to your wife.'

‘You knew it,' he said. ‘If you were married, you'd have had to do the same. You knew that I was obliged—'

‘No. I know no such thing. Be honest with me, Nicholas—that's about all there is left now. When it happened—whenever, how often—you wanted it. Don't insult me, and—just don't insult any of us by pretending otherwise. And don't tell me your reasons—don't—they have nothing to do with me. I'm not angry, Nicholas. I have no right to be angry. Just allow me—a moment or two.'