The Penny Heart (42 page)

The cold rains ended for a season and then came back again. Feasts were eaten, and war parties returned with canoes full of slaves. Then, one ordinary day, a piece of cloth appeared in Areki-Tapiru’s hut. Only half interested, for she was teaching one of her mistress’s sons to play knucklebones, she watched her mistress try to squeeze herself into the tube of woven stuff. Frustrated, Areki-Tapiru picked up an odd sort of black basket and tried to balance it on top of her oiled hair. Extraordinary words exploded into her brain like musket-shots:
bonnet
,
ribbons
,
lace
. She continued shaking the bones onto the hard dirt, entirely disguising her emotions, as the gunpowder of memory fired her mind back to wakefulness–
tartan
,
buttons
,
collar
.

*

‘Peg. I’ve been ringing the bell for ten minutes.’

Pox the woman, she hadn’t even heard her. Mrs Croxon was standing right in front of her by the kitchen table. ‘May I have a word, Peg?’

‘Let me show you what we have,’ Peg said archly, and motioned her to the basement stairs. Taking lanterns, they both made their way down to the cold larder, her Aladdin’s Cave of treasures: there were pheasants, turkeys and fowl, and row upon row of carcasses hung on metal hooks from the ceiling. Fish and oysters stood in pails of brine all over the floor.

Once they were secret and alone, Peg said breathlessly, ‘I’ve seen Sue. And it is bad news, Mrs Croxon. Miss Claybourn has ordered ten yards of white silk taffeta and Venice lace.’

‘Perhaps she is going away?’ her mistress said hopefully.

‘White silk. Wedding quality.’

‘A ball, then? Oh, I don’t know. Don’t look at me like that.’

‘Think, Mrs Croxon. It is only my concern that makes me speak up. And what of you?’

The mistress wouldn’t meet her eye directly. ‘I can no longer disguise my dislike for him.’

‘Then you must be wary,’ Peg said, warming to her subject. ‘He may strike soon.’

‘He may? How?’

‘Think, mistress. If anything happens to you he will have all he wants. And Miss Claybourn can parade in her Venice lace in your lovely sitting room.’

The mistress covered her mouth with her hand as if fearing to speak out loud. ‘I still cannot quite believe . . .’

Peg approached her mistress very gently and took her mistress’s two lily-white hands in hers.

‘Listen to me. It is about saving your life, now.’

She gave her mistress a powerful look and she quailed, as if on command.

They clambered back up to the kitchen, where the grocer’s boy was unloading his cart. The table was attractively heaped with parcels and bottles.

‘Yet more food? My goodness, what a vast amount. I suppose we can send some out to the poor.’ Mrs Croxon inspected a bottle of catsup and a box of tea.

‘The master has told me he wants a grand Christmas whatever the cost,’ Peg said. But she didn’t add that she was hankering after her own favourite dishes, too. After all it was five long years that she had yearned for the taste of plum pudding and roast beef.

‘Well, you need not bother on my account. I want nothing too rich at the moment. My stomach is unsettled enough.’

Mrs Croxon frowned at a small blue bottle at the top of the heap, and lifted it to squint at the label.

‘Ratsbane, Mrs Croxon. Them black beetles have swarmed right back into the fruit store again.’

‘Well, do be careful, won’t you, Peg?’

Peg took the bottle and slipped it inside her apron pocket. ‘There’s no one more particular than me around poisons, Mrs Croxon.’

25

Delafosse Hall

December 1792

~ Christmas Punch ~

Take a bottle of dark rum and put to it 24 ounces of cold tea, add to it the juice of a half a lemon and two or three tablespoons of the best Muscovado sugar. Grate in some nutmeg and lemon rind as you please it. This makes about a quart of a fine and pleasant liquor.

The Gentleman’s Magazine

On December the twenty-third, the park was hazy from clammy mists that muted and softened all colour and distance. Michael had not set off for Whitelow after breakfast, so I bundled myself into my redingote that was as thick and warm as a man’s, and pulled on my sable hat and muff. Even so, the chill pinched my nose as I hurried along paths of mushy leaves, sending startled birds pink-pinking up into the air. Claw-like seed pods clung to my skirts; the fine flowers of summer drooped slimy and black. I collected a few posies of evergreens to paint: stiff pine cones, jewel-like berries of black and scarlet, and oval seed pods as lustrous as pearl.

I was roused from unpleasant thoughts by the unwelcome sounds of someone walking behind me on the path. I stopped and listened. There was a confidence and heaviness to those striding steps that made me sure a man was following me. I had left Michael with his feet on the fender and a pile of plans for the mill. Could it be a poacher? No, it was Michael, I was sure of it. ‘It is about saving your life, now,’ Peg had said. I picked up my skirts, and hurried as fast and silently as I could towards the summerhouse. Once inside, I looked about for a hiding place and still fearing the tunnel, I slipped into the niche beside the statue of Harpocrates, and stood very still. Bless me with silence, I thought, and a phrase chimed in reply from the back of my mind: ‘Silence was their very god’. Of course; this must be where Moncrieff and Michael’s mother had met. This must be where Michael was conceived.

Booted footsteps crunched on the broken tiles at the entrance; an unwelcome heat burned my cheeks. A confrontation with Michael out here, so far from the house, so far from Peg’s help, filled me with terror. I glanced towards the low arch where the entrance to the tunnel lay, but it was too late to dash for it.

‘Grace? Are you there, Grace?’ The voice was inside the summerhouse now. Once I would have mistaken it for Michael’s, but now I knew better. Overjoyed, I stepped out from the niche.

‘Peter? You startled me.’

My brother-in-law was muffled in a greatcoat; as he spoke, white vapour rose from his lips. ‘I am not surprised, hiding out here in this broken-down place. Did you not hear me?’

‘I wasn’t sure who you were,’ I said, not caring to say I had mistaken him for his brother. ‘Did you call at the house?’

He pulled a sullen face. ‘Michael has forbidden me from calling. Extraordinary, isn’t it? But I’m just on my way down from Ripon and I thought I might be able to search you out. An old servant sweeping the yard told me which direction you set off in.’

I ushered him towards the emerald-stained marble bench and settled before him in my painting chair. The light trickling in through the cracked panes was meagre and greenish too. ‘This is my private place. No one will find us here.’

‘Good.’ He looked about himself, at the decay of the place, and pulled up his collar. ‘Grace, I have written to you twice this week of arrangements for you to join us in London. When you don’t reply it alarms me. What is wrong?’

‘Forgive me. I should have replied to your invitation weeks ago. But as to further letters, I have received none at all.’

‘You will join us? I am not sure if you know, but Michael has quarrelled with Father.’

‘Over what matter?’

‘What do you think?’

I exhaled contemptuously. ‘Money?’

‘Naturally. But you are welcome to join us. We all expressly wish you to know that. There is a mail coach from here in Earlby, and I will meet you directly from it.’

I did not reply at once; precisely because I was powerfully tempted to join them.

‘It is hard,’ I said, my tongue suddenly tied. Fear of Michael’s fury were he to discover my betrayal hovered over me like Damocles’ sword suspended on a horse’s hair.

‘Peter, why did I not receive those letters?’ I asked instead. Since Peg had confided in me, even the events surrounding my father’s death had taken on a malign significance. ‘It is not the first time I have felt isolated by Michael. When I was ill he took it upon himself to direct my affairs: serious matters, even my father’s funeral. I was bedridden for mere days, and yet weeks of correspondence passed between here and Greaves.’

‘So letters were written in your name? This is bad.’ Peter shook his head. He rose and paced up and down the broken floor, clapping his arms against his sides. Suddenly he stopped. ‘Do you ever think that someone is contriving against you?’ So remarkably did he resemble Michael that he could almost have been a doppelgänger made in my husband’s image; perhaps that was why I found it impossible to unburden myself to him. I shook my head, but found myself whispering a contrary, ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ How many warnings did I need? Peg intimated daily that Michael contrived against me. Now his own brother echoed her concerns. I felt wholly desolate.

To my surprise Peter sprang towards me, crouching low so that his face was close to mine, and took both my hands in his. ‘Grace, I know you are stronger than we all at first believed. But you should not be alone here. And as for Michael; don’t waste your sympathies on him. He does not deserve you.’ His face had taken on a beseeching expression uncannily like Michael’s.

‘Peter. Don’t do this.’

But he held my fingers tighter and would not release them. ‘Leave now, with me,’ he urged, not letting go, and pressing my fingertips with his. ‘There are things I know, Michael’s secrets, that I have made a great oath not to divulge. I know why he brought you here. It is outrageous.’

I glanced at the statue. Naturally, Peter knew all about his brother’s paternity.

‘I know all about it,’ I told him. ‘Michael has told me. About himself, and his feelings of shame.’

‘Shame! So he should feel – infinite shame.’ He began to caress my cold fingers, speaking fervently. ‘I would never treat you like that. Come with me tonight and he will never know. That’s why I came here. I saw you in York, Grace – how you shone, like a jewel. The truth is, I think of you often. And not always as a brother should.’ He raised my hands to his warm lips and began to kiss the knuckles.

A gratifying pulse of flattery lasted only an instant. Then a horrible apprehension flashed into my mind. Did Peter hope to outdo his brother at one stroke; by taking Whitelow from him, and by taking me? Had the brothers’ rivalry escalated to this absurdity – that Peter now imagined himself attracted to me? Or was it – and this showed how deep my suspicions ran – a test devised by the brothers, to expose my treachery to my husband? I jerked my hand away.

‘Peter! This is nonsense. I suspect I only shine so bright because I am Michael’s wife. I tell you plainly, I will not be treated as a plaything for the two of you to squabble over.’

My brother-in-law made a mocking feint backwards from my harsh words. Then, a moment later, he looked at me with some awkwardness. ‘It is not all about Michael, you know. I do like you exceedingly. But I see it now, it will not do.’

‘It will not.’

In a moment he was his usual affable self again. ‘Well, well. If I cannot tempt you to London tonight, might you not join our party in the New Year? You will be intrigued to learn who else makes up our party: Mr John Francis Rawdon.’

Now that did wound me, for I should dearly have liked to speak to my old friend.

‘He will be with his bride-to-be,’ I replied smartly, ‘and she would certainly not welcome my company.’

‘Have you not heard? Your friend has broken with his bride. The rumour is that he paid a very large sum to keep the breach of promise from the courts. So he is free, sister dear.’

Horribly discomposed, I struggled to hide my feelings. For once, I found Peter’s teasing quite as uncomfortable as did Michael.

I summoned a reserve of calm and said, ‘Peter, I will not make a secret assignation with Mr Rawdon simply to bait Michael. If you think I will, I fear you are entirely mistaken in my character. I wanted to join you in London, but all you have done is make me uneasy, now. It would be sensible to go now. For my own sake, please don’t let Michael find you creeping about the estate uninvited.’