Joan Wolf (4 page)

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Nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower....

—William Wordsworth

Jane hated school. She felt like a hawk in a cage; the genteel, refined atmosphere of Miss Farner's drove her into a hard and fierce isolation. The other girls did not know how to deal with her. The slender, aloof girl with her cold, clipped voice and utter self-sufficiency puzzled them and made them uneasy.

Jane was not defiant. She did as she was asked and performed adequately at her studies. But her light eyes had a faintly mocking look which disconcerted Miss Farner and often made her lose the thread of whatever she was trying to say. Jane was perfectly polite, but it was abundantly clear to Miss Farner and to all her teachers that as far as Jane was concerned, they might not have existed.

Miss Farner made one attempt to break through the impenetrable reserve Jane had surrounded herself with. She called Jane into her private sitting room one day about three months after Jane's arrival in Bath.

"Are you happy here, Lady Jane?” she inquired.

Jane's mouth set. “No,” she answered, uncompromisingly.

"Why, may I ask?” Miss Farner's voice was scrupulously gentle. To have Lady Jane Fitzmaurice as a pupil was a feather in her bonnet; Miss Farner did not want to lose her.

"I don't want to be here. I don't belong here. There is nothing here for me.” Jane sat upright on a chair, her back straight as always, her black head high.

"But why, Lady Jane?” Miss Farner persisted. “We want you to be happy. Won't you let us try to help you?"

Jane simply stared back, a derisive glint in her eyes. As if this stupid woman could do anything for her!

"Why don't you make friends with some of the other girls?” Miss Farner made one more attempt.

"I've already got a friend,” Jane answered with finality. And that was that.

What saved Jane from her passive but absolute antagonism to Miss Farner's Select Academy and all who inhabited it was the advent of Miss Becker, the art mistress. Jane had always loved color; it gave her a pleasure that was purely aesthetic. Miss Becker gave Jane oil paints and taught her how to draw. It was her salvation. She went with Miss Becker to see all the paintings Bath had to offer the public. And she sat for hours at her easel, working with a hard concentration in her eyes, her black head on one side and an intense stillness over her whole figure.

So the days passed as she waited with rigid patience for the holidays, when she could go home and see David.

For David, too, life had changed irrevocably. At fifteen he went to work fulltime for the Marquis. His aunt's health was failing and it had been some years since Mr. Althorpe had been able to teach him anything David considered worthwhile. His aunt had bitterly opposed David's decision to become a stablehand. She had cherished secretly a hope that he would become a lawyer, like her father.

"There isn't money enough, Tante Heloise,” David had said unarguably. “And besides, I shouldn't like it. I like working with horses. It's what I'm good at."

He was very good at it. In the spring of David's sixteenth year his aunt died and Tuft approached the Marquis on his behalf. “I'd like to train David to take my place, my lord,” the old head groom said gruffly.

The Marquis had looked startled. “Take your place, Tuft? What do you mean?"

"I mean, my lord, that I'm getting old. I've saved my money and I'd like to retire in a few years. My sister has a nice cottage in Sussex, by the sea. She wants me to come and live with her."

The Marquis stared at the face of his faithful retainer and realized with a shock that Tuft was indeed old. It didn't seem possible. Tuft had run the stables ever since the Marquis was a child; Heathfield without him was unthinkable. He cleared his throat. “You will have a handsome pension, Tuft, whenever you choose to leave. But this idea of training David! He is only a boy. Far too young for such a responsibility."

"David trained Dolphin, my lord,” Tuft said simply.

The Marquis looked thunderstruck. “What?"

"Aye, my lord. I let him handle the whole program. He came to me once or twice with questions, but the credit for Dolphin must go to David.” Dolphin was the Marquis's prime three-year-old, bred at Heathfield. He had won the Guineas at the Newmarket meeting two weeks ago.

"I can't believe it,” the Marquis said slowly.

"It's true, my lord. The boy has a sixth sense about horses. I've never seen anything quite like it. It's as if he knows what they're feeling. I used to be sorry that he's grown so tall because it limits his uses as a rider. He is a very fine rider; but he will be a genius as a trainer."

"Will the grooms take orders from a sixteen-year-old boy?"

"The men will do anything for him. They like him, but they also respect him. They see the same thing in him that I do."

"I see,” the Marquis said slowly. And so David Chance, age sixteen, became the heir-apparent to the top racing stud in England.

That summer was the last one of the old Jane-and-David relationship. And even then, there were changes. David, who had always lunched with Jane at Heathfield during her holidays, now insisted on eating at his own cottage. He lived alone since his aunt had died, and Mrs. Copley, who had worked for Mlle. Dumont for years, continued to come every day to clean and to cook his dinner. Breakfast and lunch he did for himself.

During that summer Jane took to going home with David for lunch. Privately, she felt it was much more comfortable since Mlle. Dumont was no longer there. At first, she would watch while David cooked; later, she would often do the meal herself.

David's scruples about coming to Heathfield had their origins in one main factor. As children he and Jane had always had their meals in the nursery; it was only this year that Jane had been allowed to dine downstairs. Eating with Jane was one thing, David felt, but eating in the Marquis's dining room was quite another. “It wouldn't be proper,” he told Jane stubbornly.

Jane thought he was being ridiculous, but since she liked going to David's cottage better than eating under the eye of Miss Kilkelly in the nursery or McAllister, the Heathfield butler, in the dining room, she didn't pursue the point. On the whole she enjoyed her new status. Her Uncle Edward was much more interesting to talk to than Miss Kilkelly.

The Marquis enjoyed the change as well. She didn't come down when there was company, but she was infinitely preferable to dining alone. Since they both had a common passion, the conversation never lagged. And Jane had a caustic wit that the Marquis found genuinely amusing. In fact, he enjoyed the company of his fifteen-year-old niece more than the company of a large number of his acquaintances.

They were discussing Dolphin one evening when Jane broached the topic that had been on her mind for weeks. “You're running him this summer at Ascot, aren't you, Uncle Edward?"

"Yes. In the Gold Cup."

"And David is going?"

"As he is responsible for the horse, assuredly he is going."

Jane swallowed. “Then may I go, too?” she asked hopefully. She had always attended the racing meets at Newmarket, but the Marquis had never taken her to the meets at Epsom, Ascot, or any of the other tracks where his horses ran. Those occasions Lord Rayleigh had had no time for a child.

Now he looked speculatively at the slender girl facing him across the table. He saw her beautiful high cheekbones beneath eyes that were as blue-green as the sea; he saw her white, even teeth, chewing at the moment on a fresh-colored but slightly chapped lip; he saw her magnificent candle-straight hair, neatly parted and tied, schoolgirl-like, at her nape. She was not yet a woman, but she was no longer a child. “You would need a chaperone,” he said slowly.

Jane's face lit. “Kelly will come,” she said, breathless in her eagerness. “Oh, Uncle Edward, do let me come! This is the first horse that David has trained. Just think of how exciting it will be if he wins."

Looking at the bone-deep beauty of his niece's face, Lord Rayleigh felt a quiver of apprehension. “Do you ever think of anyone except David, Jane?” he asked casually.

"Of course I do,” she answered, surprised. “I think about you. And about Miss Becker. And about the horses, naturally."

She was so transparently honest, he thought. Three people and a few horses: that was her world. She was still very much a child, after all. “Very well, Jane,” he said. “You may come with me to Ascot."

Her eyes glowed like pale gems. “Thank you, Uncle Edward. I can't wait to tell David."

Lord Rayleigh had rented an entire inn for the summer meet at Ascot. His entourage on these occasions was usually all male, but this time he had made some exceptions. Jane had been allowed to come not entirely out of altruistic motives. The Marquis was thinking about getting married.

He was thirty-four years old, fifth Marquis of Rayleigh and head of the ancient Stanton family.

It was his duty to marry and produce an heir. He had procrastinated for many years, enjoying his free bachelor life, but he knew what was due to his position. Jane's future, too, was on his mind. A suitable husband would have to be found for her, and who better to handle that than his wife? So he had invited Lady Bellerman and her daughter Anne as well as his cousin Sophia Carrington and her husband to join his party at Ascot. Anne Bellerman was a prime candidate for the role of future Marchioness of Rayleigh. She was twenty years old, soft-spoken, even-tempered, and pretty. The Marquis thought he might live with her very comfortably. It wouldn't be a bad idea, at any rate, for her to meet Jane.

The Ascot meeting was to last five days. As Ascot was close to Windsor, the Prince of Wales usually entertained a large house party during that time; it was a social event as well as a race meet. An invitation to stay at Windsor or to join the parties of such famous noble owners as Lord Rayleigh was regarded as a social triumph. Very few of the beautiful women who appeared dutifully at the racetrack had come to see the horses.

For Jane, of course, the races were everything. The prestige, at age fifteen, of being included in the Marquis's party quite eluded her. She was allowed to join the company for dinner, although when the ladies retired to leave the men to their wine she went, not to the drawing room, but upstairs to bed.

It would have been an ordeal to many young girls to be thrust into such sophisticated company; Jane felt quite comfortable. She had known many of the Marquis's friends, men like Lord Massingham and Mr. Firth and Sir Henry Graham, for years. She had hunted with them often. It never even occurred to her to feel shy.

Lady Carrington regarded Jane with considerable interest as they sat down to dinner the first night of the meet. Jane was dressed in a simple blue frock of schoolgirl cut and her hair was worn down her back, as befitted her age. But there was nothing of the
jeune fille
about Jane. She ate neatly with the appetite of a hungry schoolboy and all the time kept up a vigorous conversation with Lord Massingham, who was seated next to her. Lord Massingham was listening to her intently when she suddenly made a motion, as of a fencer thrusting home, and he threw back his head and laughed. My, my, Lady Carrington, cousin to both Lord Rayleigh and Jane, thought to herself; and she is only fifteen. She looked speculatively at the wide brow, high cheekbones, and square chin of the girl across the table. Edward will have his hands full with her, she thought with ironic amusement. And if he were planning to marrying the Bellerman girl, she would be no help in taming Jane. That black-haired child would ride roughshod right over the soft-spoken Anne.

Jane finished dinner utterly oblivious to the thoughts she had inspired in her cousin. She smiled vaguely upon the ladies as she left the drawing room to go upstairs. If she had met any one of them in another framework tomorrow, she wouldn't recognize her, but there was not a woman there who wouldn't have instantly known Jane.

David was staying at the stables with the horses and Jane spent most of her waking hours with him. The crowning moment of the whole meet came when Dolphin won the Gold Cup. The Marquis had invited David to join him for the race's running, and so both Jane and he had stood together along the rail in front of the Marquis's pulled-up carriage. Lord Rayleigh stood behind Jane, but she was conscious only of David. As the horses started she put out her hand and, without looking at her, David took it and held it tightly. When Dolphin came across the finish line a winner, the tight grip of his long fingers on hers told her all she needed to know about his feelings.

The Marquis turned from receiving the congratulations of his friends to hold out his hand to his young trainer. It gave Lord Rayleigh a shock to realize that he now had to look up to meet David's eyes. Several of the people who had been standing around came forward, anxious to meet the Marquis's new “wunderkind."

David smiled and answered politely in his deep, gentle voice, then, at a break in the noise, he turned to the Marquis. “I think I will go see how Dolphin is doing, my lord,” he said to Lord Rayleigh, but his eyes were on Jane. He felt a sudden need to get away from all these people, to be alone with her.

She nodded understandingly. “I'll come with you."

Laura Rivingdale stood beside the Marquis as the two of them moved off. She was staying with her husband at Windsor, but they had joined the Marquis for the race since they were part-time neighbors of his at Newmarket. Laura's long green eyes glinted as she watched David's blond-streaked head, easily visible over the crowd even though it was slightly bent toward the girl who walked beside him. “What an absolutely beautiful boy,” she said softly, almost to herself.

The Marquis stared at her, his eyes slightly widened. “David?"

"Yes,” she said. “David. How appropriate. One thinks of Michelangelo."

"You must be mad, Laura,” the Marquis said impatiently. “He is only sixteen years old."

She gave him a long, slow smile. “Age has nothing to do with it, Edward. Either you have that certain something or you don't.” She tapped him lightly on the chest. “And your David most definitely has it.” She walked away, leaving him staring after David and Jane, a troubled frown between his brows.