The American Heiress (25 page)

Cora smiled but said nothing. She knew that her mother-in-law was furious at having been upstaged. As Fanny moved on, Cora caught a glimpse of Charlotte Beauchamp, who was sitting very still, her arms folded. As the Prince went back towards the card table, Charlotte rose to greet him and Cora saw that she had four red marks on her smooth white upper arm where the nails had dug into the skin.

That night, Cora sent Bertha away as soon as she was out of her dress. Before her marriage she would have told her maid everything about the evening, but Ivo had made it clear that he did not think that a duchess should be gossiping with the servants. He had even wondered whether Bertha was an altogether suitable maid for a Duchess, but Cora had refused to listen, Bertha was the only familiar thing in her new life. But out of loyalty to Ivo’s wishes, she no longer confided in her maid as she used to. Now as she sat in front of the dressing-table mirror brushing her hair, she felt lonely. She thought of writing to her mother. Mrs Cash would want to know every detail of her encounter with the Prince. She wondered what her mother would think if she wrote what she really thought, which was that the Prince was fat and alarming and that he had pressed his foot against hers several times during dinner. She ran her hand over the smooth skirts of her wedding dress lying on the chair; she would not wear it again.

She was tired, but she was too anxious to sleep. She wanted desperately to see Ivo. If only she could go and find him. She sat on the bed, twisting her hair, waiting for the door to open. At last she heard his step outside. He looked flushed and before she could tell him anything he was kissing her bare neck and shoulders and tugging at the strings of her peignoir and she was caught up in the urgency of the moment.

When he finally reared up, giving a yelp of what was both pain and pleasure, she pushed herself towards him, willing him to continue. She wanted him to stay deep inside her forever – only by keeping him there would he be really hers. As he collapsed, spent, she still yearned for him. She lay in the dark for a while, listening to him breathe; once he stirred and pulled her to him, whispering her name. She moulded herself against him and at last she, too, fell asleep. But when she woke in the morning, he was gone.

Chapter 16

Madonna and Child

I
T WAS THE FIRST REALLY COLD DAY OF THE YEAR
and the track leading down to the sea was beginning to be covered by fallen leaves. This was Cora’s favourite part of the ride: going down the narrow pathway through the wood where the undergrowth was so dense that she could see only a few feet ahead, and then about halfway down the rumble would begin and she began to smell the salty tang of the sea air through the rotting smell of leaf mould. The wood ended and then she was on the cliff overlooking the cove. She thought that it looked like a lady’s drawstring purse, a weighted oval with an opening through a break in the cliffs into the sea. The mist that had lain over Lulworth all week had finally been blown away. Today the sea beyond the cliffs was dark blue and here in the shallower waters of the cove it was almost turquoise. The sun had turned the sandstone cliffs a warm gold. But for the bite in the air, it might have been summer. There were sheep grazing on the fields surrounding her, their white shapes echoed by the stray white clouds in the sky. Cora loved the scale of the cove, the coastline was so charming here compared to the rocky outcrops and pounding surf of Rhode Island. She looked at her pocket watch – eleven o’clock. She should turn back, Ivo might return tonight and she wanted to make sure that everything was ready.

After their week at Conyers they had come back to Lulworth, but Ivo had almost immediately been called away to his estates in Ireland. There had been a rent strike and Ivo did not trust his steward to handle it alone. She had wanted to go with him but there had been Fenian activity in the area and he had declared it too dangerous. The last seven days were the longest they had been apart since their marriage six months ago in March. Ivo had suggested, almost seriously, that she might go back to Conyers while he was away but Cora had chosen to stay at Lulworth. She had wanted to get to know the house, to make it hers. When Ivo was there she was always conscious of his relationship with the house; every inch of it, she knew, had meaning for him. On their return from their honeymoon, Cora had been shown the Duchess’s rooms, a set of exquisitely panelled rooms on the south side of the house facing the sea. She had been delighted with their proportions, their lightness and the distant glimpse of a triangle of sea through the shouldered hills. She had at once decided to make these rooms her own and had ordered new furnishings, jettisoning the red velvets and beaded fringes that the Double Duchess had favoured in favour of a Liberty fabric with birds and pomegranates. The first night after the rooms were finished, Cora had got ready for bed and waited for Ivo. He had been late, it was past eleven, and when he came in, instead of embracing her, he had skirted round the room, touching the curtains and the walls like a dog getting to know unfamiliar territory. In the end she had taken his hand and led him to the bed but there he had been restless and angular and had left her in the small hours. He had even smelt different, there had been a sour undercurrent to his normally warm sweet skin. This behaviour had gone on for three nights, with Ivo behaving as normal during the day but turning into a twitchy facsimile of himself at night. Cora had tried to talk to him about it but he had been evasive, so the next night she had gone to his room, the Duke’s room, and Ivo had fallen on her before she had even closed the door. Clearly no amount of new curtains could erase his mother’s presence from her rooms. After that she only used the Duchess’s apartments during the day when Ivo was out on the estate.

Cora tilted her face to the sun and closed her eyes. It was not warm, thanks to the south-westerly wind, but she enjoyed the light burning through her eyelids. The sun was the thing she missed most; at home she had always taken it for granted but here every sunny day felt like a blessing. She opened her eyes and looked out to sea and saw a flash of white in the waters just beyond the mouth of the cove. She kicked Lincoln’s flanks and trotted along the cliff for a closer look. As she grew nearer she saw that it was a pod of dolphins lacing through the waves. There were about five of them moving in unison as they spiralled through the water. Cora had seen individual dolphins before in Newport but this was the first time she had seen a pod and she found herself smiling till her cheeks ached.

Usually, about halfway back to the house, Lincoln would prick up his ears and she would let him canter home. But today she did not let him have his head but reined him in tightly as they walked sedately back up the hill. Lincoln snorted in protest but Cora did not relent. Normally she liked to be shaken up but today she wanted to prolong her state of dreamy content. As she approached the stables a groom ran out to take Lincoln.

‘Good morning, Your Grace.’ The groom touched his cap and led Lincoln over to the mounting block.

‘What a beautiful day! I saw some dolphins in the bay. Is that common round here?’

The groom scratched his head. ‘Well, I’z bin here close on seventeen years and I ain’t never seen no dolphins, Your Grace.’ The groom clicked his teeth and held out his hand to Cora as she dismounted. ‘They say as dolphins are lucky, and Lulworth ain’t had much luck lately, though I reckon that’s changin’.’ And the groom smiled, showing a row of broken brown teeth, his eyes moving across her body.

Cora’s understanding lagged behind as she struggled to decipher the man’s thick Dorset accent, but then she felt herself flushing. What did he mean? How could he possibly know? She had only begun to suspect herself these last few days. No one else knew, except possibly Bertha, and she was unlikely to start gossiping to the grooms. She threw down her whip and gloves and stalked off towards the house. As she reached the garden entrance, the butler appeared with a telegram on a silver salver. She tore it open.

‘It’s from the Duke, Bugler, to say he will be here for dinner. Have they finished in the chapel?’

‘Yes, Your Grace. I think the men are only waiting for you to come and approve their work.’

‘Have you seen it? Do you think the Duke will be pleased?’

Bugler looked at her from under his hooded eyelids. He had worked at the house for thirty years, starting as a footman, then under-butler, and he had been in his present position for the last ten years. He had many duties: the upkeep of the family silver, the maintenance of the cellar, upholding good behaviour in the servants’ hall, even the conveying of bad news (it had fallen to him to tell Duchess Fanny about her older son’s death) but he was not paid to have opinions. The new American Duchess should know better than to ask.

‘I really couldn’t say, Your Grace.’

‘But you saw the old one, do you think this one is as good?’

‘They both seem to be of the same size, Your Grace.’

Cora gave up. ‘Tell them I will be up there directly I’ve changed.’

Bugler noted with disapproval that the new Duchess ran up the stairs to her rooms, holding her habit so high that he could see her legs nearly to her knees. Cora was running because she had felt an overwhelming desire to be sick. If only she could reach her room first. But her door was a good hundred yards away. To her horror she found herself on her knees retching on the carpet in the corridor. She prayed that Bugler had not seen. Feeling clammy and shaky, she got to her room and rang for Bertha.

Before Bertha reached the Duchess, the mess on the carpet had been cleaned up by Mabel the housemaid, who had seen the whole episode. By the time that Bertha had sponged her mistress’s temples with eau de cologne and had helped her into her morning dress, and the cook had sent up some dry toast and weak tea, the news of the Duchess’s indisposition had spread through the servants’ hall, much to the jubilation of the second footman, who had drawn May in the downstairs sweepstake on the birth of an heir.

Aloysius and Jerome, the Duke’s dogs, followed Cora as she walked up the path to the chapel. It had been nearly a year since she had first seen the chapel. Every time she had entered it since then, she had felt reproached by the rectangle of light paint above the altar. In Venice she had written to Duveen Brothers, the art dealers who her mother used, and asked them if they could trace the painting of St Cecilia that had hung there. In July she had received a letter telling her that the painting had been sold to one Cyrus Guest of San Francisco, who was not minded to sell. Undaunted, Cora had asked the dealers to find another painting by Rubens that would fit in the alcove above the altar in the Lulworth chapel. Two weeks later Duveen wrote to say that there was a Madonna and Child by the same painter being offered for sale by an impoverished Irish earl. Was the Duchess interested in viewing it? Cora decided to buy the painting on the spot. A Rubens was a Rubens, after all. The price had been higher than she had expected but she had found that reassuring.

She told the dogs to stay on the steps of the chapel. They did not mind her as they minded Ivo, so she went into the chapel quickly, shutting the door behind her so they would not follow her in. At first she could not see anything, but then a shaft of light broke through the windows in the cupola and fell directly on the altar and lit up the painting. The Madonna, who was wearing an orange robe, was clutching the infant Jesus to her with one arm and looking at an illuminated book that rested in the other. They were in a bower of pale pink roses, and the book that Mary was looking at lay on an intricately patterned Persian carpet. Cora was struck by the picture’s tenderness, the way that Jesus, blond and naked as a cherub, was resting his head so trustingly on his mother’s breast. She could not help noticing that the Madonna had hair of the same chestnut hue as her own.

A voice behind her said, ‘They say that Rubens used his wife and baby son as models for this picture. I think that gives the picture its intimacy.’

Cora turned to see a small dark man in a very white collar, smiling at her.

‘Ambrose Fox, Your Grace. Mr Duveen asked me to come down with the painting to make sure you were happy with it.’

Cora held out her hand and after a moment’s hesitation the man shook it.

‘Tell him it is perfect. I think it looks very well here in the chapel, don’t you, Mr Fox?’

‘Yes indeed, Your Grace. It looks quite settled.’

‘I am so relieved. You see it is a surprise for the Duke. There was another Rubens here before, but it was sold and I wanted to replace it. The other one was of St Cecilia but I think the Madonna and Child is just as good, perhaps even more appropriate. I wonder, have you seen the other picture? I never did but if you have you could tell me whether this one is as good.’

Cora knew she was talking too much to someone whose status was not clear – was he someone you invited for lunch or sent to the housekeeper? But she felt overwhelmed by the painting. She had not known when she had agreed to buy it how apt it was. She had never had much to do with children, but there was something about the way that the baby’s hand was spread out so possessively on his mother’s breast that made her realise, for the first time since her suspicions began, where she was heading. Would her baby lean on her like that, claiming her for his own?