The Flight of Swallows (23 page)

She dressed carefully that evening in a gown of pale, duck-egg-blue silk helped by Kizzie who had left her charges in Meggie’s increasingly capable care. The bodice was low-cut with transparent sleeves of the same colour. It had a wide, boned waistband, the skirt flared and very full at the scalloped hem. Kizzie had brushed her hair, but instead of dressing it neatly in a coil at the back of her head, fastened it to the top of her skull in a curly knot. It fell from the blue ribbon that exactly matched her gown, the curls reaching to the middle of her shoulder blades. She made no attempt to hide her bruised cheek!

‘Will tha’ not . . . powder tha’ cheek, love?’ Kizzie asked her tentatively.

‘No, leave it. Perhaps he will be more amenable to what I have to put to him if I look vulnerable. He will feel guilty. It is not his nature to be violent, especially towards a woman and it might make my own position a bit stronger. He will be sorry and will feel the need to make it up to me.’ She sighed. ‘At least I hope so.’

Kizzie shook her head sadly. ‘Aye, tha’ knows best.’

She was already in the drawing room sipping sherry when he strode in, still in his riding things. He was brisk and yet at the same time awkward if such a thing was possible, ready to smile if she did, watching her carefully. She did her best to appear calm, but not too calm as if the blow had not mattered. She turned her head to stare into the fire so did not see the look in his eyes, a look of contrition, of deep sadness, a mixture of concern and desperation as he did his best to hide his true feelings. She looked exquisite in her lovely gown, her brave smile flickering across her face. He was a man of deep silences, a man of calmness, a man who retreated into a distant part of himself when faced with the love he felt for this woman, the passion that astounded him. And yet the mark of his hand flamed on her cheek and he could have wept. Sweet Christ, he had done this to her. The one person he loved more than any other who walked this earth, who he would gladly die for and in his madness and bitter disappointment he had blindly struck out at her, then . . . then had he raped her, taken her against her will? It hadn’t seemed so at the time, for she had met him in a thunderous explosion that had carried them up in a soaring wave of pleasure before depositing them into the drifting shallows of peace. They had slept, but before she awoke he had crept into the dressing room and climbed into the bed.

He had not seen her since.

‘I’ll go and change,’ he told her now. ‘I won’t be long.’

Robbie had been in to say goodnight, kissing her with sly tenderness, for he had been hoping to stay up and chat about his day but she had bundled him off with Nellie, smiling as he cast reproachful looks over his shoulder.

When they were seated at the dining table eating the excellent asparagus soup Mr Johnson put before them there was silence for a while, neither of them knowing how to begin a conversation. Was she to set about him for what he had done to her? But surely not in front of the servants. Was he to apologise for what he had done to her? But surely not in front of the servants. Were they simply to ignore it and what had caused it and, hopefully, continue as a country gentleman, his wife and their life together? Their lives were mapped out for them by the station into which they had been born. He was a gentleman, she was the daughter of a gentleman. They mixed – or should do,
would
do – with others of their class and the mad idea she had conceived had been nipped in the bud. He was not an ogre and would find places for the women she had housed in the Dower House and for the children they had borne but he would close the place down and she would agree. That was the end of it.

Mr Johnson moved in his silent and dignified way about the room, helped by Connie, taking away their plates, putting the second and then third course before them, offering wine, nodding to Connie, who had taken over from Nellie, to do this and that, then standing motionless before the sideboard in case something might be asked for. The dining room was soft and warm and elegant, the surfaces of the woodwork gleaming in the light from the candelabra in the centre of the table and the logs burning brightly in the fireplace. The silver, which Mr Johnson had polished in his butler’s pantry and which had been in the family for generations, was complemented by the pristine napkins, each one folded by the parlour-maid into wings in the way Mrs Dickinson had taught her. Hothouse roses from one of John Dudley’s many greenhouses decorated the length of the table and the setting for romance could not have been more propitious, or so Brooke thought as he surreptitiously watched his wife.

He was to be sadly disappointed. They had finished their meal, chatting equably of this and that, nothing of consequence, a gentleman and his wife, he telling her of a scheme he had spoken of with his tenants whereby they could participate in farming tasks, a sharing of seeds for crops, of animals and any profits that would be made. He had ridden long and hard, for he felt he needed to get away from the scene last night and was pleasantly tired, wondering in his mind if they would sleep in the same bed tonight and was he to make love to her. Gently, tenderly, something to make the last time fade away and yet, did he want it to fade? She had been magnificent. He had spoken with Joel Denton who he had met cantering through Overton and Joel had been filled with admiration for Brooke’s wife. Charlotte, of course, had not engaged Charles and Rosemary Denton’s son in problems of wayward females and their illegitimate children or the Wakefield Union Workhouse and so he had thought her delightful and very, very lovely. In a most respectful way, naturally, for she was the wife of Brooke Armstrong but his approval had been balm to Brooke’s sore heart.

‘There is to be a ball at Park Mansion, or so Joel Denton tells me, to which we are to be invited. A hunt ball to mark the end of the hunting season. A great affair with all the county there. Rosemary Denton is a wonderful hostess,’ he began.

‘I’m sure she is but it’s not certain I shall be able to attend.’

The bombshell of her words dropped into the drawing room, exploding in his smiling face. ‘Not . . .’ he spluttered.

‘No, I shall be busy with my girls and the employment they are to be given. Rugs! Rag rugs.’ Her voice was crisp but if he had cared to look, which he didn’t, he would have seen the pulse in her neck beating wildly. ‘Kizzie and I have been to Victoria Mill in Batley today and ordered the shoddy to make them. It will arrive tomorrow so you see I am to be very busy.’

With that she stood up and walked gracefully from the room.

15

They did not speak to one another for a week. He ate alone from a tray in his study to the bewilderment of the servants who wondered in private if the goings-on in the Dower House had anything to do with it. He slept in the dressing room and each day after a solitary breakfast leaped on to the back of Max or Bruno and galloped off, hardly giving Percy or Arch time to open the yard gate.

‘Bugger if I know what’s up wi’ ’im,’ Percy grumbled to Arch. ‘Tha’d think old Scrat ’imself were after ’im, way ’e tekks off.’

‘’Appen it’s not old Scrat but young mistress,’ Arch replied knowingly.

‘What’s that serpposed ter mean?’

‘Jane in’t dairy, ’oo ’ad it from Rosie, tell’d me master an’ mistress’re not best friends at moment.’

‘Oh aye, an’ what’s that serpposed ter mean?’ Percy asked again.

Arch lowered his voice. ‘They’re sleepin’ in separate beds.’

Percy looked shocked. Him and his missis had never slept apart in all their married life. Mind, with six young ’uns and only two bedrooms, they had no choice, but it ensured that many an argument was resolved in the most satisfactory way!

The end of the fox hunting season approached and the promised written invitation to the hunt ball arrived from Sir Charles and Lady Rosemary Denton. The ball had been held at Park Mansion as far back as any of them could remember, since Park Mansion had the most magnificent ballroom in the county of Yorkshire.

She was about to bite into a slice of hot, buttered toast, her feet to the fire in her bedroom, still in her filmy, oyster-coloured negligee when he knocked politely on the door and entered at her invitation to ‘come in’. His heart was pounding, and so was hers at the sight of him, but they both hid it from one another, pretending an indifference neither of them felt.

‘Good morning,’ he said coolly. ‘I apologise for interrupting your breakfast but I have just received Charlie and Rosemary Denton’s invitation to their ball. I wish you to accompany me.’

It was a crossroads in their marriage and both were aware of it. There had been a week of cooling off, giving them both time to consider their future together. The matter was, of course, in his hands. She was his wife. The wife of a gentleman and his word was law. King’s Meadow was his home and it was he who decided what occurred in it. He had threatened to turn out the two young girls, one of whom was expecting a child, the other with a young baby, and, so he was told, an infant abandoned by its mother. He could shut the Dower House, lock it up and put a stop to the mad scheme his wife seemed intent on introducing. The opening of what was, in essence, a factory, or a mill, or whatever name you cared to give it. And not only that but she had told him she was not to perform the social duties of the wife of a man in his position. Something inside him had broken when she had sat in the drawing room and calmly told him she did not think she could attend the Dentons’ ball, intimating that she would be far too busy for such an inconsequential affair, but naturally, he would not allow that! He was not a man who particularly cared for such occasions himself. The dinner parties, the balls, the social get-togethers his friends and neighbours thought so important. But he was a man of his time. A conventional man. A punctilious man, a man of breeding who conformed to the dictates of his class. The luncheon parties, the dances, the house parties attended by people from many parts of the country and even abroad, titled people, some of vast wealth. Tea parties, tennis parties, bridge parties, all meant to pass the time of the idle rich. He enjoyed the sporting events. Shooting pheasant and grouse in season. Deer hunting in Scotland to which he was often invited, again in season, and where he had a notion to build a small cottage in order to avoid – to him – the tedious company of the ladies and gentlemen who were his fellow guests, the supposedly pleasant company, polite and punctual, the conversations, witty and knowledgeable, the adultery committed under the roof of his host. Tea for the ladies served at little tables round the fire, the gentlemen playing their interminable games of cards. All very sophisticated and he had been brought up to accept it as the life of men like himself and, when he had one, his wife.

Fox hunting was his particular favourite and in his heart, where his wife, his young, lovely and much loved wife was treasured, he had dared to hope that she would be his companion in all these pastimes.

Then he had his estate to care for. His tenants to oversee, his gamekeeper to confer with, problems to be solved, farm buildings and cottages to be inspected, repairs put in hand, stock to be checked, wood and moorland to be given attention, hedges, dry-stone walls, streams, ponds on which an eye must be kept, vermin exterminated, all under his careful management.

But still the unwritten rules and conventions of his class must be complied with and this exquisite but wary creature who eyed him defiantly must learn her place in it, and obey.

She lifted her head imperiously, the gesture somewhat ruined by the slice of toast in her hand and the smear of butter around her mouth. It took all his control not to smile.

‘I don’t wish to attend the ball, Brooke. I don’t hunt and apart from Patsy – I forget her surname – I did not enjoy the company of the women at her party. I found them shallow and with very high opinions of themselves for no reason I could see. I shall be busy from now on. I’m busy today arranging my girls’ training in hooking rugs and at the end of the day I am too tired to gad about—’

‘Is that so?’ he interrupted. ‘Well, we can soon solve that problem by closing the Dower House, returning the shoddy stored in the stable block opposite and finding alternative accommodation for the waifs and strays you have gathered about you.’

‘And how do you intend to do that?’

‘What?’

‘Find alternative accommodation for these girls?’

‘They are maidservants, aren’t they? Good maidservants can always find employment.’

‘With a child in their arms?’

He was momentarily nonplussed. It seemed such a simple thing. He had many acquaintances with enormous households, big houses that needed staff to run them and maids were the silent and efficient young women who kept such places clean and running smoothly.

‘Their children must go into care,’ he said at last.

‘They do not want to be parted from their children.’ She glared at him, her face rosy, her startling blue-green eyes brilliant with outrage. ‘That is the whole purpose of my scheme. To allow them to keep their babies but at the same time have decent work in a safe, comfortable home.’

‘They should have thought of that before they allowed a man to interfere with them.’ Then he could have bitten his tongue for uttering such an unfeeling remark.

She became still then, on her face such a look of contempt he wanted to throw himself at her feet in abject apology. How could he be so crass? But it was too late. He had said it, not really meaning it, for it was not in his nature to be callous. The expression on her face tormented him but if he was to have mastery over her – when all he wanted was her love, not her submission – he must stand fast.

‘You are vile,’ she hissed. ‘I had no idea you could be so brutal.’

Her words cut him to the bone, sliced into his heart but still he did not show it though she pinned him to the wall with an arrow through him. His face remained impassive. ‘You are at liberty to think so and I can see . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Perhaps we might come to some understanding. A compromise.’

‘Compromise? In what way?’