Scandalous Innocent (24 page)

Not surprisingly, the two men were accompanied on their short walk by Miss Maskell and Claudette, who were eager to give advice on every aspect of interior decoration which they saw as entirely their province, while wishing to prevent Leon filling his new home with unfashionable cast-offs from the Dysart’s attic. The Countess had already seen the problem.

‘Some of this stuff,’ she said to Hetty, Phoebe and Ransome, ‘is absolute rubbish, and if it’s not sorted out, Wilbraham will be burning things I could use and keeping things that are quite revolting simply because he likes them. Look at this pair of two turbaned figures, for instance. Did you ever see anything more ridiculous? I expect he’ll keep them. But here’s something I
know
he’ll not want to keep. Buck dear, just pull out that long box, will you? Yes, that one.’

‘The sword-box, my lady?’

‘Yes, dear, it’s a pair of rapiers. He’ll not want to keep it. I brought it out of the Duchess’s Room hidden just inside the door to the service-passage.’

‘The one in the wallpaper?’ Phoebe said, craning forwards to look.

‘Yes, the concealed one. I believe she used to exercise with rapiers until her gout prevented it. There,’ she said, sweeping off the cobwebs and opening the lid, ‘still as good as new. Wilbraham’s brother John was killed in a duel, you know. Someone made up a song about John’s lovely wife, but he was no swordsman. So rapiers will not be wanted here, I think. You take them, Buck. Why, Phoebe dear…are you all right? Does all this bring back a memory? Would you rather…?’

‘Oh, no, my lady, thank you. Nothing like that. It’s just so…er, strange.’ Taking one of the rapiers in her hand, she lifted it out of its box and held it, balancing it lightly, though with nothing like the skill she had seen demonstrated by the Hawkynnes. So, the rapiers had belonged to the Duchess of Lauderdale who had used them for exercise. But what had
she
to do with the quarrel? Had
that
Phoebe Hawkynne suffered from the kind of female interference she herself had fled from?

Ransome took it from her and replaced it. ‘You should sit down, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘See, Hetty has brought you some water. Take a sip.’

‘Thank you. The rapiers are beautifully made, are they not? Is there a date somewhere?’ She took the glass and sipped, just to please them.

‘Inside the lid. Wilkin. Cheapside. London. 1650. That date would be about correct for the Lauderdales, wouldn’t it, my lady?’

‘The Countess of Dysart remarried in 1672, I believe, by which time she had quite a family. The eldest daughter Elizabeth married Lord Lorne, the young heir to the ninth Earl of Argyll, but I believe it was not a success. Her two sons were born up in the Yellow Satin Bedroom. Which reminds me,’ she went on while her hands lifted and moved a pile of papers and pictures spread out on the table, ‘there’s something here that came from the cabinet in that room, which will almost certainly find its way to the bonfire if I don’t rescue it first. A little mystery…ah! Here it is!’ Her hands emerged, holding a small linen package with a piece of faded red ribbon hanging from it, as if it had been undone and put aside. Laying it on Phoebe’s lap, she invited her to unwrap it. ‘There you are. Take a look.’

‘It’s…a button,’ Phoebe whispered. ‘A
gold
button.’

‘Looks rather like a waistcoat button,’ Ransome said. ‘What does the little note say? Look, there’s writing on it.’

It was faded and brown with age, written in the most beautiful` copperplate hand. Phoebe read,
‘The button cut off my waistcoat by Sir Leo Hawkynne, Secretary to his Grace the Duke of Lauderdale, here at Ham House, being the only man I ever loved, though he will never know of it.
Written on this 23rd day of June, AD 1676.
Oh, that is
so
sad,’ she said. ‘So…
so
sad.’

The memory returned. The young woman’s expression of adoration. The pain as she watched him kiss his wife. The furtive concealment of the button. And exactly
whose
waistcoat was it? Perhaps she would never know, but if Elizabeth had told a little comforting fib, she could surely be excused? For she had written as if Sir Leo had cut it off the waistcoat while
she
was wearing it, which put a different connotation on the facts, connotations which were more like what she
wanted
to believe than the truth. Poor Elizabeth, made to marry, no doubt, a man she could never love, by whom she was obliged to bear children. Was there something about the Yellow Satin Bedroom then, where birds in cages had been placed all round the windows at some stage?

Phoebe knuckled a teardrop away from her cheek before it dropped on to the note, but Ransome had seen it. ‘Why, sweetheart…is it so sad? A little keepsake, that’s all. Don’t weep.’ Tenderly, he removed the linen and its contents and passed them to Hetty.

‘It’s nothing,’ she whispered, mentally sending an apology to the desolate young woman for whom it had meant everything and all she could ever hope for. A button. Cut off by his sword. ‘She meant it to be a keepsake, so it should be kept, my lady.’

‘You’re right, of course,’ said the Countess, sympathetically. ‘Keepsakes are meant for keeping, so you take it, Phoebe dear, since it refers to your ancestor. I’ve no idea who could have been so in love with Sir Leo without him knowing of it. Obviously it was not his wife. If I come across the waistcoat, my dear, I’ll keep it for you, shall I?’

‘Thank you. I would like to have that too. In memory.’

‘In memory of what, sweetheart?’ Ransome said, smiling at her whimsy.

She smiled back at him, her heart overflowing with emotion. ‘Oh, I’m being sentimental,’ she said. ‘Love is such a fragile thing, isn’t it?’

‘It is indeed, dear,’ said Hetty. ‘It is indeed.’

Having shown signs of fragility herself, Phoebe returned to Richmond after a day in which the last remaining pieces of her life fell neatly into place, as if the whole saga of events had been shaped to fit a previously ordained plan. She knew such things happened, but to others, not to oneself.

They sat together in the little topiary garden at the side of Ferry House, talking about plans for the future as they had not done before. ‘I think we might do some entertaining of our own,’ Ransome said, resting a hand on her shoulder and twisting a black curl round his thumb. ‘How does her ladyship feel about holding a dinner party for all the helpful and unhelpful relatives and friends? The French Set, too? We could hold a betrothal ball, if you prefer. Then a wedding breakfast? Whatever?’

‘Then am I betrothed, dear heart?’

‘Er…I think so. Aren’t you?’

‘Well, don’t intended husbands get down on one knee and offer their intended wives some kind of token, my lord? A ring of sorts?’

‘A
ring
! Oh…er…yes. That’s right. Here—’ he said, digging into his waistcoat pocket ‘—is something I had made in case I should ever find you. I’d have given it to you some years ago, but you seemed rather against the idea, I remember. Now, I wonder if it fits. Give me your hand. No, the other one. There!’

Like the very last piece of the picture, the exquisite golden ring slipped on to her finger as if it had been waiting only for her to submit to Fate. ‘A white pearl moon surrounded by diamonds,’ she said. ‘Oh, it’s perfect! Thank you.’

‘The most perfect I could find, sweetheart. For a perfect woman.’

‘And it’s almost like the pendant in the portrait, Buck. Was that intentional?’

‘Partly. But Lady Hawkynne’s enamel moon would not have been suitable for my Phoebe. I wanted something more brilliant. More appropriate.’

She had teased him, not in the least expecting he would have given a moment’s thought to the purchase of a ring, let alone the ceremony that went with it. Nor did she think he would have given much thought to whether she was betrothed, or still his mistress, as long as she was his. The process had been fluid, as he’d said to Ross, with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

But now she enclosed his head within her arms, drawing his face to hers, offering herself, her love and her life for as long as he wanted them. ‘Let’s go up,’ she said. ‘It’s getting late, and we have a lot to celebrate, dear heart. We’ll talk about dinner parties tomorrow, shall we?’

She had not been prepared for him to lift her in his arms and to carry her through the house and up the stairs as if she was too exhausted to walk, but she had time, between kisses, to recall something similar that had happened to the other Phoebe. But then, of course, they had been quarrelling, and
her
quarrels with Viscount Ransome were well and truly over.

Epilogue

T
he Yellow Satin Bedroom and its adjoining dressing room on the first floor, now closed to the public, was created by the sixth Earl of Dysart after he inherited in 1799. There was, however, a Yellow Bedchamber on the ground floor when the Duchess of Lauderdale lived there at the time of my story in 1676. This became known as The Volury Room after 1683, from the bird theme used to decorate it. All rather confusing, I thought. So I have brought the use of the Yellow Satin Bedroom on the first floor into Part I because it suits my story better, and I have made mention of the birds for the same reason, hoping that those informed people who know Ham House well will accept my fusing of the two rooms into one. All other rooms are as they should be, though it is not easy to find one’s way around the alterations to the grounds outside, the old walks, walls and pathways. I hope any discrepancies will not spoil the story.

It is a fact that the Duchess’s eldest daughter, known as Betty, gave birth to her two sons in the Yellow Bedchamber in 1680 and 1682 and that her marriage to the eldest son of the Earl of Argyll was not a happy one. They lived apart after 1696. She was seventeen years old at the time of the story, her sister Katherine about two years younger. The second-eldest son of the Duchess, Thomas, born in 1651, became a famous soldier. Although in my story he comes across as rather immature, I am sure he became the charming man much commended for his bravery.

Portraits exist of the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale, together and separate, as does the bronze bust of the Duchess’s mother. The portrait of Sir Leo and Lady Phoebe Hawkynne is, of course, quite fictitious. A childhood portrait of the sixth Earl, Wilbraham, hangs in the Great Hall near that of his beloved wife, Anna Maria, who died in 1804, the year after the story. The 1803 pen-and-watercolour painting by Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) of ‘Lord Dysart Treating his Tenantry’ is in the possession of the Tollemache family. This event would probably have taken place each year at harvest-time, but I have brought it forward to June to fit my story.

The quotation on page 250 is from John Donne, the seventeenth-century English poet and one-time Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London.

The little gold moon pendant made by the first Phoebe’s brother, Timothy Laker, was passed down through the Hawkynne (later Hawkin) family until it reached Sir Leon, the second Phoebe’s father. His wife inherited it but did not appreciate its significance so, when she became Lady Templeman, she kept it in her jewel-box because it was unfashionable. It was only after she died that it came, with a few other trinkets, to Claudette, Lady Ransome’s eldest daughter. But by this time the Hawkynne portrait was in the possession of her Uncle Leon at his Harley Street house, and Claudette was able to relate the two.

The black velvet waistcoat was never found, but this is not surprising at a time when clothes were passed down through the family, then to servants, until they literally dropped to pieces. The remaining gold buttons would have been removed and re-used, time and again.

Leon Hawkin and Tabitha Maskell were married later in 1803, but his commission to paint the Ham House renovations came to an abrupt end with the death of the Countess the following year, after which the Earl left Ham House for many years. So they closed ‘the cottage’ at Ham and went to live as housemaster and housemistress at Greenwater, Mortlake, to look after the orphans, by which time Leon was able to sell everything he produced, like his friend Thomas Rowlandson. He exhibited at the Royal Academy almost every year after that, still keeping Hetty as his housekeeper and still maintaining his London house on Harley Street. Some of the orphans became artists too.

The Viscount and Viscountess Ransome continued to live at Ferry House, with its productive gardens, and at their London home, where they entertained and raised a large family of sisters and a brother for Claudette. It was not until many years later, when Phoebe looked into the records of the Hawkynne family, that she discovered the date of Sir Leo and Phoebe’s wedding to be one year
after
the date on the note found with the button. Which told her what we knew, that the scene in the Great Hall was enacted before the two were married. Weddings were not allowed to interrupt the Duke’s plans; Phoebe and Sir Leo had to wait upon His Grace’s generosity.

INSPIRATION FOR WRITING

Scandalous Innocent

I
n most of my previous novels I have included real places, and sometimes real people too, to give an extra flavour of authenticity to the story. It seems a pity not to use those parts of our history that are still there to be seen—large houses, castles, palaces and natural features, some of which have changed little over the centuries. One of the closest great houses to me is Ham House at Richmond in Surrey: a National Trust property that celebrated its four-hundredth anniversary in 2010. What better reason could there be for using it in a story?

Visiting it, reading about it, about the occupants of the vast rooms throughout its history, their disappointments and hopes, their dysfunctional families and political intrigues, would provide any writer with a wealth of material. Reading the guidebook alone is enough to set ideas in motion: the Civil War dangers, the periods of excess, neglect, and the changes made to the house and gardens, the sad marriages, bankruptcies, premature deaths, and the influence of the French Revolution on the local population. There is no shortage of ideas, the only question being which era to choose for its most interesting characters, the amount of information available, the outside events that might contribute to the storyline and, not least, the kind of lifestyle people lived. The more colourful this is, literally and metaphorically, the more fun one can have with the characters.

I decided not to have my hero and heroine live at Ham House but instead to associate them closely with the owners at the time—to give them the independence and freedom to come and go. With
Scandalous Innocent
I took the unusual step of using two periods, the first in 1676, only ten years after the Great Fire of London, when many households were in a state of flux (always a good device), and the second in 1803, at the time of the French Revolution. This must, I thought, tie up somehow with the noble fraternity of French emigres then living in Richmond. The one constant feature would be the house itself, reflecting not only two very different periods but also the changes, structural and decorative, that affected the lives of the main characters. It’s surprising how the changes to a house of that importance can affect the tone of the story and the kind of behaviour in which the occupants indulge. To me, the main point of writing
historical
fiction is that social mores and the behaviour of the participants belong securely to certain historical periods and do not transplant well into the modern world. So it makes sense to use all the quirks of the chosen period—except, of course, the language, which would make reading unbearable.

The Ham House owners in my two stories needed no extra embellishments to make them interesting. They fitted in as if they knew the plot already, warts and all, particularly the larger-than-life Lauderdales, who were actually more fascinating than I have made them. Powerful women in history are not hard to find, nor are they all entirely under the domination of men, and to find ways in which women can ‘kick over the traces’ and still retain their dignity is one of the aims of the romantic fiction writer. There are, naturally, things a heroine could not and
would
not do. Living entirely alone is one of them, so she has to be placed somewhere on the edge of society, making her reasonably independent yet rather vulnerable, which is why the idea of marriage to the right man must be made to sound more attractive than the alternative. Staying single was never a happy prospect, yet my heroines have usually had some kind of experience that has made them resistant to the idea of marriage. This is where I had to persuade them both, either by a set of inescapable circumstances, as in the second Phoebe’s story, or by a love rekindled, as with the first Phoebe. Having strong, opinionated women also acts as a link between the stories, as ‘strength of character’ is what Harlequin(r) readers expect. We like to see ourselves putting up a fight. From the safety of our armchairs, of course.

The position of secretary to the powerful Duke in the first story seemed like a useful place for my hero to be—he’s influential, socially adept, intelligent, wealthy, experienced and peripatetic—which explains why he and Phoebe had not sorted out their differences before. This also gave her time to gain a ‘reputation’. As Samuel Pepys’s Diaries show, the seventeenth century was a time of extravagant gestures, quick tempers and overreaction, and the sword-contest between Phoebe and Leo would not have seemed as absurd to them as it would in a later era. Even so, coming early on in the story, I could not allow it to settle the quarrel as it was meant to: I had to make it do the opposite, as in life. It made things worse for a while, until the hero tackled the problem head-on—although there had to be some question left unanswered to take the first story on into the next one. I liked the idea of this ‘something’ being as small as a button, but the truth is that I didn’t know what it was going to be until the seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Tollemache picked it up in the ghost scene. Honestly, she did it without any instruction from me. Nor did I even know there was going to be a ghost scene. It appeared quite without warning. When it happens like that, I just let it.

Things moved around a little with the second Phoebe and her brother Leon, who are direct descendants of the first Leo and Phoebe. I had to draw a family tree to make sure the generations coincided with the sixth Earl at Ham House, but it was coincidental that the lovely Wilbraham and his Countess were there doing wonderful things when Phoebe and her Buck were at Ferry House in Richmond. Another family tree, more ground-plans, dates and maps were needed for this, as discrepancies are picked up immediately by sharp-eyed readers. Naturally, I needed my second hero to be quite different from the first, both in character and lifestyle, but the similarities are that Buck, like Leo, is already known to Phoebe, disliked but attractive. He also has the upper hand from the start, and has a powerful ally at Ham House, who this time helps rather than hinders. I would rather have liked the Countess to live longer, but she didn’t, and that is a fact an author may not change.

The sad truth that dissolute young men sometimes lost their entire inheritances was the start of my second story, and one can read of many occasions when families suffered terribly from out-of-control gambling. And, since Mortlake featured in the first story as Phoebe’s home, I wanted to continue the link in the second by having Buck Ransome live there, and Phoebe’s other brother too. Living so close, there had to be some serious interference and wrong conclusions between them to throw things off course.

There is a danger, though, of presenting a set of problems that could so easily be solved if only the characters would act a little more rationally. So the main problem of ‘the other mistress’ had to be made water-tight—not only by hearsay, which is hardly enough to go on, but by taking a look at first hand, which is what Phoebe did. Interestingly, what she actually witnessed was the opposite of the construction she put on it, which is so often the case. This is why I like to look at both sides of the picture to avoid the obvious. I am not naturally a devious person, but I believe some deviousness may have developed in me as a writer of fiction. I have to admit to becoming dreadfully tangled at times.