Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (18 page)

She wriggled along the window seat till she was close to him and leant over and pecked his cheek. Would he sense that she too held evil within her, the devil which only Ursula could keep at bay? Here it was again, holding her back from loving her father. She let her arms go round his neck as she murmured, “I’ll go back to Cranmore House till the end of the school year, won’t I? You have paid the Mistress till then.” That would surely be a vital argument.

He shrugged it off and gently drew her hands from his neck as if the pressure were painful. He held them between his own which looked pale and felt cold. “That money is of no consequence now. It is paid and cannot be reclaimed. We are in some straits you must understand and every needless expense is to be avoided – even overnight in an inn and the stabling of horses. Robert finds it hard to economise. What will come of Horden when I am gone I know not. We must arrange your marriage sooner than I thought. You are fourteen now. Fifteen will not be too young. If I mortgage the Hall, I can raise money for a dowry.”

Bel pulled her hands away. “You are speaking of my second cousin William Horden, who could be a wastrel for all you know. You needn’t raise any money to marry me to him or anyone else. I have no intention of marrying at all.”

“Oh Arabella, have you not learnt obedience yet? Of course you must marry and he’s no wastrel. He is eighteen and already learning his father’s business, the correct way as ordinary apprentices do, and I believe he would be in a position to marry in the summer of next year as long as you lived at first under his parents’ roof. His father has been in touch with me about it and is willing to take an interest in the Hall as dowry payment. At least we can then keep it in the Horden family.”

“So, if I understand aright ... the poor Hordens must borrow from the wealthy Hordens on the security of their home in order to pay money to the wealthy Hordens, so that I, against my will, can be married to their son, who has no notion of what a horrible monster I am. This is what you, my father, have been planning to greet me with after my long absence.” Her throat swelled and she almost choked on the words. This was so far from being the start of a new bond with her father that she could not even pay heed to his hints of his impending death. She stepped round the end of his couch with the intention of leaving the room to hide the bitter tears she felt rising up.

“Arabella,” he cried in his old authoritative tone, “you will not walk out like that. Come back here and sit down.”

Very slowly, with clenched lips, she walked back into the window and sat down.

He gazed at her with sad eyes. “I broached this subject because it was in the forefront of my mind, having only received my cousin’s letter today. I believed, too, that you were a changed girl since your time at Cranmore House.”

“I am changed. I am older and wiser because I have met so many people and because I have made a friend.”

“What friend? Not a man?”

“Not a man. What little I have seen of men has not endeared me to them.”

He looked relieved. “So you have a friend among the girls? Only one? I hoped you would make many.”

“Not the girls. They were so ... different.”

He shook his head. “It is you I fear who is different from them. You are not like most girls. Your interests are not the same. So, it is a teacher with whom you have struck up a friendship?”

“No, a servant.”

“A servant! Oh Arabella, why do you always have to do the odd thing? Why can you not be ...?” He struggled for a word.

“Ordinary?” she offered.

“Pliant, conforming. You must know that daughters are expected to marry as their parents choose. Affection will follow later.”

“Tell me about you and my mother then. Did her family select
you
?”

He flushed and there was an uncomfortable silence. Then he spoke, slowly and with obvious reluctance. “I must make some things clear to you about your mother. She was not perhaps as grand as she may have let you and Henrietta imagine. She was an orphan and only the
ward
of a French aristocrat. I had been given an introduction by my Grandfather to a Count Rombeau, who had been page to the French ambassador at the Court of Queen Elizabeth when Sir Ralph was a page there.”

“That’s the one outside!” Bel turned her head and pointed to the statue.

“Indeed. He had the notion I should travel abroad and then seek a place at the court of the young Prince Henry. The Prince liked the people about him to have knowledge of foreign parts.”

“Yes, yes, but you and mother?”

Her father sighed. “Count Rombeau was your mother’s guardian. He loved her, but was eager to have her married. Her beauty overshadowed his own daughter. When he learnt that my grandfather had been created baronet by King James, he thought I might do. So, yes, in a sense I was acceptable to her family. But it only happened because I, having just attained my majority, acted alone as I should not have done. I engaged myself to her without reference to my family. It was the worst thing in their eyes that I could do; to marry a Catholic ...” His voice tailed off, his chin sank onto his chest and he looked so unutterably woebegone that Bel was moved.

“You were in love,” she said. “And you still are I believe. Is this why you talk of dying? You are pining because Mother has been away so long and is afraid to come to you. Do you think you will never see her again?”

“Don’t Bella. Don’t probe the wound.”

“But you know about love, then, and happiness. Should you not want
me
to be happy?”

“I do, Bella. I do. But I am in poor health and you must be provided for. If my cousin Clifford Horden owns a part of this property, he will have some control over Robert, who is not as wise in the management of it as I would wish. William is quiet and steady and you will grow to love him. They are also inclined to the Puritan way of thinking, which will make you and Horden safe from the suspicion of Popery which still hangs about it. My parents and my grandfather wanted to choose for me among the neighbouring gentry. He was particularly angry because I had spoilt his plan for me. Prince Henry would have no Catholics at his court, but that mattered little because we were married in France in the summer of 1612 and the poor Prince took typhoid fever and died in the November. But if I had left it to my parents, I would not have suffered this separation from wife and daughter. Life would certainly have been easier. So, you see, it is not always wise to succumb to the passions of youth.”

She gazed out at the spring sunshine that had seemed so happy. His speech saddened her deeply. Here she was, truly conversing with her father for almost the first time in her life and still they could find no meeting point. Without turning her head she said, “I have no passion for anyone, only a passion not to be married at all.”

He tut-tutted and his impatience turned it into a cough which racked him for a few minutes till he could sip some cordial that stood on the low table beside the couch. Then he looked at her, shaking his head in the old way he had when she was naughty as a child. “How can you say such a thing, Arabella, at fourteen years old?”

“You didn’t make Henrietta marry till she was eighteen and Robert is twenty. Where is the heiress for him that would solve all our troubles at a stroke?”

He sighed. “There is a family in Newcastle who have made their money from coal and would be happy to ally with a baronetcy like Horden, but Robert has not endeared himself to the young lady.”

“She is proving difficult, too, is she, like me? We young women will have to stand together and not agree to be sent hither and thither like parcels and married off against our will.” A thought struck her. “You didn’t say
Mother
was in love. Did
she
have to do what she was told?”

It was a tactless thing to ask as she realised at once. He winced as though in real pain but angrily blustered it out. “Oh Bella, she was fifteen as you will be. She never questioned it. Marriage came to young ladies and she liked me. As only the
ward
of a count she had not expected to marry well. Love came later when she had ceased to be homesick.”

That told Bel a great deal. Perhaps her mother had never ceased to be homesick. She had instilled in Henrietta a passion for all things French. The thought prompted Bel into another question. “How did the Count accept Henrietta as his grandson’s bride? We are poor I keep being told and yet you must have paid a dowry.”

“The Count’s own daughter had married by then and given birth to a son, so as he was always very fond of your mother he hoped to draw her back into their family circle by this marriage. I set money aside for Henrietta at that time. Well-invested it accrued over the years.” He shook his head as if to be rid of that subject.

It
is
a pain to him, she realised. He believes he has lost Mother for ever.

“But you and William,” he hurried on, foiling more questions, “he is not only English but our own kin. No homesickness there. Love will grow easily and naturally between you.” He leant back against his cushions. “Now I am weary of this talk. I so longed to have your company believing you to have changed at Cranmore House ...”

“Yes,” she cried eager to find a different subject and keep him talking. “What did the Mistress write to you of my good behaviour? You said in your letter my
exceptionally
good behaviour? Did not my mother write to you what
she
knew?”

He looked startled. “Why, no details ...”

“Then I shall tell you.” And she recounted the whole incident of the attempt to seize and probably murder Father Patrick, but she checked from mentioning his subsequent declaration to herself.

He listened with growing alarm and his hands went up over his open mouth.

When she was silent and gazing expectantly into his eyes he lowered his hands and clasped hers. Then he spoke the same thought that her mother had expressed in her letter. “Ah, my little Bella, you are the son we should have had. We had a boy you know, before Robert, and another after Henrietta but neither survived infancy. When you were expected we hoped for a son ...”

She broke in vehemently, “Is that why I was unloved? If I’d been pretty like Hen I might have served, but to be plain and boyish and a
girl
was unforgiveable.”

“Unloved? No, my child, how can you say that?”

“I never felt loved. I know I was a horrid child and that’s why no one loved me, but maybe it was the other way round.”

A knock came at the door just as she saw in his weary eyes that he was struggling to work out what she was implying.

Nurse looked round. “Arabella, your supper’s waiting, and will I bring yours up here, Sir John?”

“Yes, yes, please. I am very tired.”

Bel rose and went silently out. She was tired too. Tired and frustrated. There was so much to come out between herself and her father but it was twisted and turned aside as much by her own devilment as by his weakness and lack of understanding.

Am I not capable of keeping the devil in and holding a friendly conversation that will make progress towards love? she thought. And if I am as brave as the son he wanted why can he not love me though I am a girl?

When she descended the stairs she found two places laid in the family dining-room and Robert already eating greedily. How he remained so gawky and stick-like she had no idea but anything like a friendly conversation with him was impossible.

I don’t believe he lives up to Father’s hopes, she thought sadly, so why can I not be a substitute son? She began to eat silently, but he seemed inclined to talk.

“Nurse is standing in as housekeeper, you see. To save money of course, but if my own plans work out, I’ll soon bring a very capable and very rich young lady here as mistress. She can choose what servants she likes and you can go back to school. We’ll be all right then, eh?”

Bel just looked at him and looked away again.

“What did you think of Father?” he asked next.

“He looks ill. Has he seen a physician?”

“Oh yes, he gave him the cordial for his cough but reckons he won’t mend.”

“Why? When did this start? When he heard Mother was afraid to return?”

Robert shrugged. “That made him worse, but he was brooding before that. You know he resigned from his magistracy. God knows why but he took to heart that rick-burner we hung ... even though I put it all right for him at York. He guessed I’d had to bribe the clerk when your ten pounds was missing but, as I said to him, that’s common practice. Then before Christmas we had a letter from a Captain Carter telling us the man’s family wanted the villain’s body for burial. Father tried to find out where it went, but of course it was the Scots took it down and the commander had been replaced since then. It was likely in some field where they put other felons, but who can say where? It won’t be a pretty sight now.”

Bel who had tried to cover her ears pushed away her plate and leapt up. “How can you speak of it so lightly? Father is cursed. We are all cursed. It was a man’s life.” She ran from the room. The image was there again, stark as ever, leering down with its one eye. And yet they wanted the body. He was someone, real, their son, a person who had lived a life till it was horribly snuffed out.