The Sleeping Sword (4 page)

And, of course, it was the uncertainty which everyone found so intriguing and so maddening. Were the Nicholas Barforths separated or were they not? Did she live in the country for her health, as had once or twice been hinted, or was that just a part of the charade they were playing to make things
look
right; so that their conflict might not damage their unmarried and consequently very vulnerable daughter? Had Mr. Nicholas Barforth banished his wife from his hearth and home unable to support her aristocratic freedom of manner, which had never been greatly to the liking of Cullingford in any case? Or had she fled away from him in protest at his money-grubbing, middle-class ways? Had there been misconduct, which in Cullingford could be taken to mean adultery, and if so whose adultery, when, with whom?

Mrs. Rawnsley of Rawnsley's Bank felt certain that there had been cruelty and adultery on the gentleman's part which the lady had probably deserved. Mrs. Sheldon, the devoted wife of Mr. Thomas Sheldon MP tended, without actually saying so, to take the deserted husband's part since the wife, as a woman, had no vote and could therefore be no serious loss to Mr. Sheldon at election time. Miss Fielding, the spinster daughter of our other now very elderly MP condemned no one, such an attitude being contrary to her Christian principles, although having done her own duty unstintingly all her life she was bound to feel that Mrs. Georgiana Barforth, by this desertion of her husband and her home, had lamentably failed in hers. And the rest of Cullingford, sifting through these divers views, concluded that, like everything else of importance in the Law Valley, it had simply been a matter of money.

Mrs. Barforth had been well-bred but extremely poor. Mr. Nicholas Barforth had been common, as Cullingford itself was common beneath its prosperous veneer, but extremely rich. ‘She got what she came for and then she left,' Cullingford gleefully pronounced, finding it pleasantly ironic that Mr. Nicholas Barforth who used his money so ruthlessly to manipulate others should have been so blatantly married for it.

Yet whatever the true facts of the matter, Mr. Barforth had retained the power to call his elusive lady to his side whenever it suited him, producing her annually at the Christmas concerts in the Memorial Hall, escorting her, always splendidly dressed, to the anniversary dinner of Cullingford's Charter, the gala opening of a new hotel, a fashionable wedding, so that no one, however inventive or malicious, could ever be sure.

But to Venetia's frank and eager nature these parental deceits were insupportable and I heard the sharp intake of her breath, saw how painfully she bit her lip, as she watched her mother get down from the Barforth carriage and take her father's arm.

‘I told her not to come,' she whispered, ‘for she cannot bear to see these Cullingford hens cackling and staring whenever she shows herself. I told her
I
wouldn't come, in her place. She just smiled and said that at my age she wouldn't have come either. And I can't tell you how much that startled me—to think she was once like me and has lost her nerve. How terrible.'

She came slowly across the grass, her hand still on her husband's arm, trailing her elaborately draped skirts behind her with a regal disregard for the frailty or the cost of apple green satin and Brussels lace. Her hair, which had the same auburn sheen as Venetia's, was fashionably curled, her fine-etched, pointed face fashionably gay, a quick smile flitting on and off her lips in automatic greeting, her green eyes unwavering, nothing in her manner to indicate how much she had dreaded coming here, except that everyone knew it and many were hoping she would finally reach the end of her aristocratic tether and let it show.

But there was an added flavour to the spectacle today since Mr. Nicholas Barforth was not merely parading his wife to a hostile public but was on uncertain ground himself, having last entered this house over ten years ago with a legal document in his hand terminating his association with Blaize Barforth, his brother. And I heard, behind me, a collective sigh of anticipation as these two powerful men at last came face to face.

Cullingford, quite naturally had hoped for emotion. But such hopes were instantly dashed.

‘Nicholas,' said Blaize Barforth with a crisp, quite impersonal nod.

‘Blaize,' Nicholas Barforth replied in kind.

Clearly there was no more that could be usefully said.

We took our places at table soon afterwards, partook of rich food and old wines laughed and applauded the witty, easy speech of the bride's father, admired the few well-chosen words of the groom—chosen, one could not doubt, by his mother Aunt Caroline. We drank toasts as we were bid, grew sentimental, or languid, or even a trifle bored. And when Blanche had floated away upstairs to change into the travelling dress Monsieur Worth had made for her in Paris, I watched my father's wife, Mrs. Agbrigg, rise from her place and skilfully reclaim her bishop, saw my father join the group of serious gentlemen who, on the paved terrace, were discussing wool prices, share prices, wondering when trade with France would be likely to pick up again now that so free-spending an emperor as the third Napoleon had been chased off his throne. I saw Mrs. Georgiana Barforth get up too and launch herself into the crowd like a blind swimmer, her progress impeded at every step by an ingratiating Cullingford smile, an inquisitive Cullingford eye, her own eyes constantly darting to her husband seeking his reassurance that she was saying the things he had brought her here to say, playing the part he had designed for her in the manner he had intended. I saw Aunt Caroline—the
Dowager
Lady Chard now—grimace in an unguarded moment with visible pain, her eyes on the chair Blanche had just vacated, her mind certainly dwelling on the beauty and prosperity of Listonby which she, who had created it, must now relinquish to a careless seventeen-year-old girl.

But the weather-beaten little Duke of South Erin moved quickly to Aunt Caroline's side. Venetia's brother, Gervase, came strolling around the corner of the house, glass in hand, to join the mother he so resembled, a wild young man who was far more at home, one heard, among the aristocratic pleasures of the hunting field and the gaming table than in his father's counting-house. The day was almost over. The Blaize Barforths had creditably married their daughter. Lady Caroline Chard had lost her life's work at Listonby as well as her son. The Nicholas Barforths had demonstrated that they were, in a manner of speaking, sufficiently united to stifle the worst of the rumours which might wreck the matrimonial prospects of
their
daughter, Venetia. Mrs. Agbrigg, my father's wife, had made the acquaintance of a bishop.

I had gained nothing, lost nothing. But remembering that tomorrow morning and the morning after I would be obliged to sit in Mrs. Agbrigg's drawing-room and dine at her table, I got up too and began to move aimlessly through the throng, recognizing myself to be as complete a captive as Mrs. Georgiana Barforth and for the same reasons. We were women. We had no money of our own and no means of earning or otherwise obtaining any. We were dependent, luxuriously but completely, and had the freedom of choice, it seemed to me, merely between the authority of a father or of a husband.

I found Venetia as I had expected surrounded by her admirers, swaying slightly towards this one and that, almost taking flight in her eagerness to offer them her quick gestures and quick smiles, her swift ripple of laughter, giving a little of herself to each one and then, I soon noticed, turning back—for approval, for pleasure, to make sure he was still watching her—to the same man. No one, of course, of whom her father could possibly approve but a certain Mr. Liam Adair, a relative of mine by marriage, who had long been classified matrimonially as a bad risk.

I had not consciously thought of Liam Adair for a long time but watching him now, the dark, heavy-featured face I remembered, the merry almost insolent black eyes, I was not surprised. He was the son of an exceedingly witty and resourceful gentleman, now deceased, who had had the great good fortune in middle life to marry his employer's widow, my pretty little Grandmamma Elinor. But my late grandfather had tied his money up in so shrewd a fashion that no predatory second husband could touch it and Liam Adair had been required to make his own way in the world, an erratic way I'd heard which no lady could be asked to share. He had travelled, gambled, taken chances which, more often than not, he had lost and although for the past year or two he had been employed by Venetia's father to sell worsted cloth abroad I had heard no rumour that he had settled down. And that alone, coupled with his height, his breadth, his swagger, would be more than enough for Venetia. Was this, then, the ‘unsuitable involvement' my step-mother's tea-time ladies had hinted at? Yet Venetia had spoken to me of Liam Adair only a few days ago warmly but too easily as a ‘dear friend'and perhaps I hoped—since it would have been far better that way—that it was the presence of Gideon Chard that was making her so excitable and flirtatious.

I did not feel my best in the pretty apricot silk which had been Blanche's choice, but I looked well enough I suppose and there were a few among Venetia's following who, rating their chances of her favour very low and considering my fortune to be every bit as interesting as hers, began at once to pay me attention, a young member of Rawnsley's Bank saying all that was needful about my stay in Switzerland, the nephew of Mr. Sheldon MP requesting my opinion of Venice and listening, quite intently, while I gave it.

‘Bit of a pest hole, Venice, if you ask me,' drawled Gideon Chard from the fringes of the crowd, and although I had not asked him and would have done better to ignore him entirely, the self-assurance of his manner, that accumulation of three hundred years of Chard authority and Chard arrogance at Listonby stung me badly, stirring a certain arrogance of my own that came from another source entirely. For if his ancestors had been privileged and powerful mine had been tough-fibred and long-suffering, had fought hard for their prosperity not tamely inherited it, releasing themselves from the trap of poverty by their own stubborn refusal to stay there. And in actual terms he was only the third son of a baronet while I was the heiress to the whole of Fieldhead.

He had not changed greatly in the two years I had been away unless it was that he had simply become the man I had always expected of him. He was the youngest of the Chards for whom the estate could make no provision and who would not be needed by that estate for the purposes of procreation or management unless accident or disease—which seemed unlikely—should carry off both his brothers. And perhaps it was because he had been so carefully taught to respect the claims of primogeniture and to acknowledge the superior rights of those brothers that he had turned out to be a slightly better shot, a keener horseman, a rather more perfect example of his creed, his public school, his class, than either. Yet despite his pedigree, his expensive education, his exquisite manners, his air—and his conviction—of enormous superiority, he was every bit as much an opportunist and a fortune-hunter as Liam Adair, the kind of young gentleman—I was absolutely sure of it—that I had always dreaded, who believed that middle-class heiresses like myself and Venetia were not only fair game and ripe for the plucking but should be glad to pay for the privilege of marrying his noble name. And instantly he inspired me with a great antagonism, a most irrational desire to topple him from his aristocratic height into a puddle of real, industrial, Cullingford mud.

‘Venice did not meet with your approval then, Gideon?'

‘I can't say that it did.'

‘Poor Venice.'

But, nevertheless, a moment later and without knowing exactly how I had submitted to it, I found myself strolling beside him among Aunt Faith's roses, Venetia and Liam Adair a few paces ahead of us, my humour worsening by the moment since I knew I had been ‘managed', as Mrs. Agbrigg sometimes ‘managed'me, and I did not like it.

‘What a lovely day.'

I agreed that it was.

‘In fact a very fine summer altogether.'

I was not disposed to quarrel with that. But there was no doubt that I wanted to quarrel with him about something, being eager to let him know that there was at least one Cullingford heiress who had ‘seen through him', who could never be flattered and consequently never deceived by him.

‘How well Venetia is looking,' I said, indicating as clearly as good manners allowed that she was much admired—for
herself
not for those Barforth millions—and that even with her father's backing he would have his work cut out to get her. But the sight of her vivid face upturned to Liam Adair could be of no consequence to a Chard—since Liam would not be allowed to have her in any case—and, disliking him the more for not being jealous, I transferred my attack to his self-esteem.

‘So you are going into the mill, Gideon.'

And I believed—hoped—that few things could be more galling to even the third son of a baronet than the necessity for that.

‘Am I?' he said, toying with the remark and all too obviously amused by it. ‘Is that what you call it? I rather imagined I was joining my uncle's business—or might be doing so.'

‘Which happens to be a mill, or rather several of them.'

‘So it does. With room for several more, I imagine, if this boom lasts.'

‘My word, Gideon, I have never thought of you as a commercial man.'

‘Ah—then you
have
thought of me, Grace?'

‘Have I? I imagine I must have done, at one time or another.'

‘But not as a millmaster?'

‘Hardly.'

‘How then?'

‘As a Chard, I expect, among Chards.'

‘And you have quite forgotten that my “other grandfather” as my brother Dominic calls him—my mother's father—was Sir Joel Barforth, that prince of commerce?'

‘Well, I have hardly thought of you in such detail as that, Gideon. But, of course, if you are modelling yourself on a prince.'