The American Heiress (31 page)

Ivo looked down at his hands. ‘I’m sorry, Cora, that you felt unprepared. I have never wanted to burden you with my past, just as you,’ he looked Cora in the eyes, ‘have not disclosed everything to me.’

Cora took a step backwards in amazement. ‘What do you mean? I have nothing to “disclose”.’

Ivo shrugged. ‘So the Newport swain that your wretched papers kept comparing me to unfavourably was purely a fiction then?’ he said lightly.

Cora felt something close to anger. ‘But that was before I met you,’ she said.

‘Precisely,’ said Ivo, and he put the hairbrush back on the dressing table, lining it up with the hand mirror and the boxes of pins and powder.

Something about his careful movements infuriated her.

‘But they were laughing at me, Ivo!’ Her voice was petulant.

Ivo turned round and spoke so quietly that Cora had to lean towards him to hear every word. ‘Do you really want me to feel sorry for you? You can’t accept the privileges of our rank and not understand that you will also be stared at and gossiped about. You didn’t mind it when there were crowds outside the church for our wedding, did you? There were pictures of you in the New York papers as well as all kinds of articles about the most intimate details of your trousseau and fortune. I bore all that without complaint even though I found it vulgar beyond belief because I knew that in your world these things were quite normal. So I’m sorry if you felt embarrassed today but perhaps now you understand how I felt every day in your country, being spoken of quite freely in the press as a penniless fortune-hunter.’ His voice was almost a whisper but Cora felt the chill in his words. She was more alarmed by his quietness than she would have been by a more obvious display of anger. She wondered how things had come to this point.

She had pictured Ivo making a tender confession which she accepted with exquisite tact, but instead they were having a quarrel with no real purpose. Ivo was angry with her when clearly it was her prerogative to be angry with him. She looked at him and saw no softness in his face at all, and she started to cry. She tried to check herself but every time she attempted to hold back, she felt another wave of tears demolishing her self-control. She heard a violent heaving noise and realised that it was the sound of her own sobbing.

At last she felt his hand on her face, smoothing the hair away from her cheek. He gave her a big white handkerchief to dry her eyes. She blew her nose in it viciously. He laughed.

‘Poor Cora, I won’t let you go out alone again. I thought it might amuse you to be the toast of the town.’ He led her over to the chaise longue at the end of her bed and made her sit down.

Cora knew she should leave well alone but she couldn’t help herself saying, ‘Did you love her?’ She spoke through a curtain of hair.

Ivo paused and spoke carefully. ‘I was fond of her.’

‘Did you want to marry her?’ Cora knew that the question was absurd but again she couldn’t resist.

‘Dearest Cora, you’re the only woman I have asked to be my duchess.’

Cora wiped her face with the sleeve of her peignoir. She felt very tired. ‘And how did it end?’ she whispered.

‘End?’ He looked surprised. ‘It wasn’t like that.’ Ivo picked up the black pearls on Cora’s dressing table and started to feed them through his fingers like a rosary. ‘No, things ended when my brother broke his neck.’

‘What do you mean?’

Ivo put the pearls down with a clatter.

‘Everything changed when Guy died. It was the worst day of my life. My brother was dead and I was the Duke.’ Ivo stood up and went over to the bell pull. A footman appeared almost immediately. ‘Get me a brandy and soda.’

When the footman returned with the decanter and soda siphon on a salver, Ivo poured himself a stiff drink and began to pace up and down the room, talking as much to himself as to Cora.

‘Guy was the only thing I have ever believed in. He was a good man, almost a saint. If he hadn’t been the oldest son I think he would have been a monk. He only ever did the right thing and yet he was dead and I was the Duke. It made no sense at all.’

Cora said nothing, she had never seen Ivo like this before. He moved restlessly around the room, not looking at her but talking with quiet insistence.

‘I never wanted to be Duke, never. There are younger sons who think of nothing else but the health of their older brother. But I was glad that I was not going to inherit. I saw what happened to my father – he pretty much bankrupted himself trying to behave in the way he thought a duke should and all he got for it was the dubious pleasure of being cuckolded by the Prince of Wales, among others.’ He drained his glass and went back to the decanter.

Cora could hardly believe what he had just said. ‘You mean your mother and the Prince are…more than friends?’ She tried not to sound shocked but she couldn’t help herself. Duchess Fanny and the Prince, why hadn’t she realised?

‘Oh, I don’t think they are now, but when my father was alive…’ Ivo broke off as if in pain.

Cora was bewildered. ‘Did your father know?’

‘Of course he knew,’ Ivo said bitterly. ‘Everybody knew. My mother made sure of that. She even had that snake tattooed on her wrist to show she was part of “the club”, as she called it.’

Cora was struggling to understand. ‘But couldn’t your father stop her? He could have threatened to divorce her.’

Ivo shook his head. ‘Catholics don’t get divorced and, besides, you can’t name the Prince of Wales as co-respondent. No, my mother knew exactly what she was doing. My poor father, all he could do was stand by and let it happen. The worst thing was that he really loved her. Plenty of women would have consoled him but he wasn’t interested. And all the time my mother was acting as if she was doing him a favour by becoming a royal favourite. I didn’t understand what was happening at first, but now I can hardly believe how callous she was. She would open her love letters from the Prince in front of him, and he would sit there and watch.’ Ivo bowed his head in an unconscious imitation of his father’s acquiescence. ‘In the end, of course, the Prince got bored, which she accepted gracefully enough – I don’t think she ever cared for him deeply – and simply replaced him with Buckingham. When my father realised what had happened, he just gave up. He died a year later.’ He shook his head, as if trying to shake off the memories.

Cora felt a surge of pity. She saw the naked hollow at the base of his skull – when he turned his head there was a vulnerability in Ivo she had never noticed before.

‘And the worst of it was that Mother never understood what she had done. If anything, she was proud of herself. She was the reason that Guy was so devout. I think he was trying to atone for her sins. God knows there are enough of them. It wasn’t just the Prince, although he was the most public. She always had admirers – I think she even amused herself with the servants.’ His voice was bitter.

Cora put her hand on his arm. ‘But don’t you like being Duke now?’ she said.

‘It is not about liking. I am a link in a chain that stretches from the past through me into the future. Even though I never wanted it, I don’t have a choice.’ He looked down at her and his face softened. ‘But thanks to you I don’t have to watch Lulworth falling down, or part with its contents piece by piece. Our son will not have to grow up watching land being sold and farms crumbling because there is no money to repair them.’ He put his arm around her and pulled her to him.

Cora was relieved that Ivo’s mood appeared to have lightened. She was encouraged by the reference to their child and to the healing power of money. She liked the idea that thanks to her this ancient institution would get up off its knees and walk again. It gave her particular pleasure to think that she would be able to reverse the depredations wrought by the Double Duchess. She smiled to think how her mother-in-law would react when she saw the water terraces she was planning for the south front, or the Canova statues she had bought for the summerhouse. (After the contretemps with the Rubens, she had made sure that the statues of Eros and Psyche and Venus bathing came free of unwelcome associations.)

There was a tap at the door and Bertha entered carrying a tray.

‘I brought your hot milk, Miss Cora. The doctor said you should drink it before going to bed.’

‘Thank you, Bertha. I had quite forgotten.’

Bertha turned to go, when she heard the Duke’s voice.

‘Bertha!’

The maid wheeled round to face him.

The Duke said quietly, ‘Bertha, I would prefer it if you could address my wife by her proper title. I appreciate that you have grown up in a country without such niceties, but here we set much store by them. Please remember in future.’

Bertha stood motionless, her head bowed.

Cora leapt in. ‘It’s not her fault, Ivo. I encourage her to call me Miss Cora because it reminds me of home. What does it matter what my maid calls me in the privacy of my bedroom?’

‘Bertha, you may go.’ Ivo waited for the door to close behind her before he turned to his wife. ‘Cora, please remember that everything you say to me in front of Bertha is repeated word for word in the servants’ hall.’ He turned his back to her. Cora flew at him; the words she could forgive, but not this physical snub. She put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him round to face her.

‘What is the matter with you! One minute you say you never wanted to be Duke, and now you are scolding my maid for not calling me Your Grace. I don’t understand you.’

Ivo looked down at her tear-stained face. His face had an expression she could not read. He took her hands from his shoulders and clasped them in his own.

‘I have been thoughtless, Cora. You are tired. Women in your condition need a great deal of rest. We will talk about this tomorrow.’

Cora tried to respond but he led her to the bed and as she lay down she realised that sleep was all she wanted. She took his hand.

‘Stay here with me, Ivo.’

He lay down beside her and she put her head on his chest. She knew there was something she had to tell him but sleep overcame her before she could remember what it was.

In the attic Bertha turned up the gas so that she could get a better look at the seam she was unpicking. All Miss Cora’s bodices needed taking out now that she was beginning to show. Cora refused to accept her thickening body and simply ordered her maid to pull the laces harder, but Bertha worried that the tight lacing would harm the baby. By surreptitiously letting out the seams at night, Bertha was able to convince her mistress that she was still able to fit into her wardrobe. These secret tailoring sessions could not go on indefinitely, of course; Bertha hoped that Cora would soon accept the realities of her condition.

Bertha got to the end of the seam, pricking her finger in the process; a bead of red dropped on to the pink silk, soaking into the weave of the fabric, following the threads so that it looked like one of the tiny scarlet money spiders of Bertha’s childhood. She spat on the stain and rubbed it with her thumb, turning the spider into a rusty bruise. It was on the wrong side of the cloth, she would be the only witness to what lay beneath the Duchess of Wareham’s pink silk. She put the dress down and got ready for bed. Her mind was still turning over the Duke’s rebuke and she wondered how long Miss Cora would defend her. She had around three hundred dollars in the chest under her bed, the product of various gifts from Cora, the profits from the sale of used gloves and what she put away from her salary, and she also had the ‘boulder’. She had intended to send some of the money to her mother, but now she wondered whether her need might be greater. If only she could be sure of Jim, that he would have the courage to follow her into a new life.

Chapter 19

‘The Faint Half-Flush’

L
OUVAIN’S STUDIO WAS IN CHELSEA, A PART OF
London that Cora had only heard of. The coachman had looked astonished when she gave him the address and was forced to consult his fellows before setting off. The fog grew thicker as the carriage got closer to the river, so Cora could barely see the outline of the house through the yellow mist. All she could make out was a red painted door set in a Gothic stone arch. The coachman made to go and ring the bell but Cora stopped him. ‘I’ll go myself. Come back in an hour.’

She rang the bell and heard it tinkling far off in the distance. After a few minutes the door was opened by a manservant who Cora thought might be Japanese. He bowed to her and gestured for her to follow him down a long corridor lit from above by a skylight. Hanging from the picture rail on either side were black and white prints that looked oriental; Cora stopped to look at one as she went past and saw that it was an exquisitely detailed drawing of a man and woman embracing. Cora felt a quiver of shock mixed with curiosity. She would have liked to have examined the picture more closely but she couldn’t risk the servant turning and seeing her. She felt the blood pounding at her temple, she almost turned round and walked away, but she could see the servant holding back the heavy damask portière and she felt herself move forward. Charlotte had said a chaperone was quite unnecessary but now Cora wished she had brought Bertha with her.