Abbey, the Chief Groom, had ‘a way with horses’ that was second to none in the whole county.
The Earl found himself remembering the thrill of driving his first four-in-hand under Abbey’s instructions and how, when he brought them back safely to the front of the house, his father had stood on the steps and congratulated him.
He could not have been quite fifteen at the time, he thought, and wondered if anything else he had ever done had given him quite so much satisfaction.
Perhaps it had been equalled when he was in at his first kill out hunting at the age of nine and again when he had carried his own colours to victory at the Varsity point-to-point.
But it was Abbey who had taught him! Abbey who had made his father’s stud outstanding.
“You said that Abbey is dissatisfied,” he said to Higson. “He is not thinking of retiring?”
“No, my Lord, but he has had other offers and a man like Abbey finds it hard, my Lord, to carry on without appreciation.”
“I will talk to him,” the Earl said.
“He’s been sayin’ for a long time how much he wants to see your Lordship,” Higson volunteered.
He hung the last coat up on the rail in the wardrobe and then said in a somewhat puzzled voice,
“What’ll your Lordship wear for dinner this evenin’?”
The Earl glanced at the clothes he had brought back with him as if he had never seen them before.
The Bohemian clothes that were the usual wear amongst those he associated with in Paris, the loose velvet coats, the flowing ties such as he was wearing round his neck at the moment, the gauze waistcoats, would have made any tailor in Savile Row shudder.
Suddenly he saw how out of place they were at Kelvedon hanging in the wardrobe his father had used and which had been placed against that particular wall in Jacobean days to hold the clothes of every successive Master of the house.
“I came away in a hurry, Higson,” he said. “I see that my man in Paris has not packed the clothes I shall need here. I am sure that you have some of my old things stored away somewhere safe?”
“Of course, your Lordship,” Higson said with a smile. “Everythin’ is clean and pressed and ready for your Lordship’s return.”
“Then fetch them, Higson, bring them down and put them in their rightful place.”
“Yes, my Lord! At once, my Lord!”
It seemed as if the Earl had waved a magic wand and Higson was twenty years younger than when he had entered the room.
The Earl glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf, undressed slowly and then walked from his bedroom into the adjoining bathroom where his bath was already drawn and waiting for him.
There was a scent of verbena which was always used in the gentlemen’s bathrooms at Kelvedon. Over the chair there was a great white bath sheet embroidered in one corner with his monogram surmounted by a coronet and a bathmat to match bearing the same insignia.
The Earl stepped into the water and, as he began to wash, he found himself thinking of the strange woman he had found in the Duchesse’s room.
An embroiderer! He could not remember having met one before, but he could understand that one would be necessary at Kelvedon.
The Countesses of Kelvedon all down the ages had been skilled with their needles. There was one who had covered all with her own handwork the seat of every chair in the State dining room and there were sixty of them, while her husband was away fighting with Marlborough.
And there was another, he recalled now, who had completed several exquisite silk pictures while the Earl of that time had languished in the Tower of London under sentence of death from the Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell.
The Earl remembered seeing examples of fine needlework in the Louvre in Paris and feeling that he could equal every exhibit with what he possessed at Kelvedon.
‘I hope to God,’ he said to himself, ‘that Miss Selwyn knows her job! I could not bear the embroidery, or anything else in this house, to be messed up.’
This brought him back to the very reason why he had returned home suddenly and impulsively without even announcing his arrival.
How dare that impertinent upstart suggest altering the Orangery? How could his mother for one moment contemplate it? It was an outrage against good taste!
All the way on his journey from France to Kelvedon the Earl had found himself wondering frantically what else might have been defaced or altered.
Lanceworth at least had had the sense to write to him about the Orangery, but less fundamental alterations might easily have been undertaken on his mother’s instructions.
Instructions inspired by Felix Hanson!
The Earl was scowling when he came from his bathroom to find Higson laying out the conventional evening clothes that he had not worn for two years.
He had travelled almost round the world when he first left Kelvedon in a towering rage, having told his mother that she could choose between him and Felix Hanson and that he would not stay under the same roof with her lover.
They had stormed at each other in a manner that the Earl knew was undignified, but which the fiery temperaments to which both of them were subject had made inevitable.
He had remembered afterwards somewhat shamefacedly how he had always tried to emulate the calm self-control of his father.
The late Earl never raised his voice, but made his disapproval felt even more effectively than if he had raged or shouted at those who had offended him.
But while the Earl adored his father and tried to emulate him, his mother’s blood was also in his veins. Fiery, impulsive, sensual. The Alwards were noted for their uncontrollable tempers and their lack of emotional restraint.
They had figured in every scandal and in every social cause célèbre for the last five hundred years and the Earl knew it was only by a miracle that his father had not discovered the way his wife was behaving.
It was in fact only because he could never have contemplated that his wife would have a lower standard than his own and he had trusted her inexplicably.
“You’ve not altered an inch, my Lord,” Higson was saying with satisfaction as he helped the Earl into his stiff white shirt and high starched collar.
“I had forgotten how damned uncomfortable these things are,” the Earl smiled.
“But very becomin’, my Lord, and you look a real gentleman in them, if I may say so.”
The Earl laughed as if he could not help it.
“Meaning that I did not qualify as a gentleman in appearance when I arrived. Well perhaps you are right, but when in Rome we must do as the Romans do!”
He took up a handkerchief and placed it in his breast pocket.
“Does Miss Selwyn dine downstairs?” he enquired.
For a moment Higson looked puzzled, and then he replied,
“The embroiderer? No, of course not, my Lord. She has her meals in her own sitting room.”
“Then we shall just be a very pleasant partie carrée,” the Earl said cynically as if he spoke to himself and went from his bedroom aware that Higson was watching him admiringly.
*
Olinda was, as it happened, at that very moment, eating her own supper in her sitting room.
Lucy had laid the table with a white linen cloth and there was a silver candelabra to stand in the centre of it. It was not a very elaborate one, it was true, but nevertheless it was a silver candelabra and held three candles.
While she waited on Olinda, Lucy chatted. This was something she ought not to do and Olinda knew that if Mrs. Kingston heard her the maid would be severely reprimanded.
At the same time, because Olinda was curious, she made no effort to stop the words that flowed from Lucy’s lips.
“Such a to-do, you wouldn’t believe, miss!” she said as she served the soup. “The whole house is standin’ on its head, you’ve never seen anythin’ like it! And Mr. Hanson turned out of his room! I’d like to hear what he had to say about that!”
Olinda did not speak and Lucy went on,
“But it was not right, miss, it wasn’t really. That’s what we all said. The Master’s room is the Master’s room and them that’s not entitled has no right there!”
Olinda thought with a smile that these were not Lucy’s words, but undoubtedly the sentiments of Burrows, the butler, or perhaps Mrs. Kingston.
“Has Mr. Hanson been here long?” she asked tentatively.
“Over two years, miss. They say he was the reason his Lordship went away.”
Lucy went to the door. Another maid handed her the next course and removed the empty soup bowl. There was young chicken cooked with mushrooms and stuffed with fines herbes. There were several other vegetables, as well as two sauces.
Lucy was silent while she concentrated on handing them to Olinda, then she burst out again.
“There’s nobody as likes the gentleman, I can tell you that, miss.”
“Why not?” Olinda enquired.
Lucy did not reply for a moment and then she said somewhat evasively,
“It’s just the way he gives orders and – other things.”
“What other things?”
“They’re not things that I can repeat to you, miss,” Lucy replied.
She carried the food outside as she spoke leaving Olinda for the moment to eat in silence.
She was hungry, having missed her tea. Ordinarily she would have been delighted at having such delicious food and would have found it difficult to concentrate on anything else.
But now she found herself thinking not only of what Lucy had said to her but of the Earl.
When he had turned round from the window, she knew that he was just as handsome as she had expected him to be after seeing his portrait in his mother’s bedroom.
But in fact he differed from it so considerably that if she had not seen him at Kelvedon she would not have recognised him.
The portrait had been of a young man looking happy and obviously at peace with the world.
The face of the man who had turned from the window was dark, scowling and cynical in a manner that Olinda found it hard to explain.
He certainly looked disillusioned and perhaps to some people he would have seemed even debauched with the lines harshly etched from his nose to his mouth.
In fact in some ways he even resembled the portraits that she had seen of Charles II.
Once he had smiled at life and now she felt that he sneered at it and he had also in other ways looked different from what she had expected.
She had never thought to see a gentleman without a high collar and neat cravat or tie round his neck. The Earl’s collar had been turned down and he wore a flowing tie such as Olinda had seen French artists wearing in photographs.
His coat had been of black velvet and his waistcoat had a pattern on it.
She could not imagine her father, or indeed Gerald, dressing in such a way. Yet in some curious manner the clothes had become him, even while they had made him look Bohemian and even more Byronic than he had seemed in his portrait.
‘It’s strange, very strange!’ Olinda told herself.
Lucy came back into the room.
“Oh, miss, you’d die of laughin’ if you heard what’s goin’ on downstairs. Her Ladyship’s sittin’ up as stiff as a ramrod at one end of the table and his Lordship glowerin’ at her from the other! Mademoiselle de Broucy, I can’t remember her name, is flirtin’ with the two gentlemen!”
“What is that dish, Lucy?” Olinda asked, not liking to snub the maid, but knowing that she should not listen to such tittle-tattle.
“It’s strawberries and cream, miss, with a special sponge cake in the centre. It’s one of the chef’s specials. You’ll enjoy it, you will really.”
“I am sure I shall,” Olinda smiled.
“And I don’t mind tellin’ you, miss, that what you leave will not go back to the kitchen, not when me and Rose is about!”
“I hope I have left you plenty,” Olinda said with a smile.
“Oh, we’re not wantin’ you to feel like that, miss. Have another spoonful, do!”
“I have eaten all I want, thank you,” Olinda replied.
“Mademoiselle is on the stage,” Lucy went on, determined not to be circumspect for long. “She told Miss Woods, the Head Housemaid, when she was unpackin’ for her, that she could kick a plate held high above her head. What do you think of that, miss?”
“Very clever,” Olinda remarked.
Lucy brought her cup of coffee and set it down on the table by the fireplace. Then she cleared away what remained of the dinner.
“I’ll leave the candelabra, miss, until the footman brings up the lamp. They’re a bit late tonight, but then as I told you, they’re all of an upset!”
She left the room and almost before Olinda had time to sip her coffee she was back carrying a big brass oil lamp, which she set down in the centre of the table.
“That’s better,” she exclaimed. “You can now see to read. But you don’t want to do any more sewin’, miss, not after you’ve been workin’ all the afternoon.”
“No, I think I have done enough for today,” Olinda replied.
“My mother always said, ‘strain your eyes and you strain away one of your best assets’,” Lucy said. “She’s right, miss.”
“I am sure she is,” Olinda agreed.
“Then I will leave you,” Lucy said, looking round to see that she had not forgotten anything. “I wants to find out what’s happenin’ downstairs! You’ll ring if you wants anythin’, miss, won’t you?”
“I will, Lucy. Thank you so very much.”
Lucy shut the door behind her and on an impulse, which she could not explain even to herself, Olinda rose and locked the door. Then she crossed the room to sit by the window looking out over the garden.
It was very peaceful, the rooks had gone to roost in the high trees. There was the cry of the night-owl and the soft coo of the wood pigeons.
It seemed impossible to Olinda that so many passionate emotions should be raging inside the house when there was so much peace and beauty outside it.
‘How,’ she asked herself, ‘could the Earl have brought back such a woman as Lucy had described to Kelvedon of all places?’
But she knew the answer. He had done it deliberately to annoy his mother and to challenge her because of his loathing for the man she had put in his father’s place.
She had only had a short acquaintance with Mr. Hanson, but Olinda knew that he was not the sort of man her mother would approve of.
There had been something in his voice too that had told her that he was not well bred.
It was not that he spoke with an accent. It was just something that jarred on her sensitivity just as it had been jarring to feel his hand on hers and his whisper in her ear.
‘He will behave himself at any rate while the Earl is here,’ she thought reassuringly.
But her mind found it difficult to escape from the drama that was obviously taking place downstairs.
Although it might seem amusing to Lucy, it undoubtedly was a drama.
The Dowager Countess, losing her youth and frightened of losing her beauty, was clinging to a man much younger than herself! Yet she apparently had the whip hand over her son in that the money belonged to her for her lifetime.
Olinda could understand the hurt of that to a proud high-spirited young man.
He was the Earl, but he could not afford to keep up his possessions except with the approval of his mother. It must be an intolerable position to be in at his age.
She sat thinking about them for a long time. Then as she stood up to put her coffee cup down on the table she saw there was a piece of paper lying just inside the door.
It had not been there when she had turned the key in the lock and she realised that, while she was sitting at the window, it must have been slipped under the door.
Yet she had not heard anything.
It made her feel uncomfortable and apprehensive. She even felt a sudden reluctance to pick up the paper and read
what it contained.
Finally she did so and saw that it was a sheet of writing paper engraved with the address of the house surmounted by the Kelvedon crest.
In very small writing, almost as if the writer did not wish to draw attention to it, was inscribed,
“Fetch a book from the library at twelve o’clock.”
The note was unsigned, but without the slightest doubt in her mind Olinda knew who it was from.
“How dare he!” she exclaimed to herself. “How dare he think that I would lower myself to meet him clandestinely?”
Then she thought that if Mr. Hanson was capable of attracting the Dowager Countess, who had once been the most beautiful woman in England, he would not expect an insignificant embroiderer to be fastidious.
Olinda played with the idea of sending him back his note with a rude message on it. Then she knew that it would be undignified.
‘Let him go to the library and wait for me!’ she fumed.
She tore the note into tiny pieces, so tiny it would be impossible for anyone to piece them together again, and threw them into the wastepaper basket.
Then she walked back to the window.
The peace of the evening had been disturbed for her and she could only feel herself seething with resentment at the position that Mr. Hanson was trying to drive her into.
‘If I am not careful, the Dowager Countess will become aware of his interest in me and I shall be dismissed,’ she told herself.
It was not only the ignominy of it she feared, but losing the salary that would mean so much to her mother.
What she hoped to earn would not only buy all the immediate luxuries Lady Selwyn needed, but, if she stayed for a few weeks, Olinda knew that there would be no great urgency for her to work for some months to come.
‘How can I persuade this man to leave me alone?’ she wondered frantically.
She felt as if he was encroaching on her, encircling her. With an almost childish fear she thought that she could not escape from him.
He must have brought the note to her sitting room and, if the door had not been locked, he could have walked in and surprised her!
A Dream from the Night Page 6
