by Issy Brooke
“No. Guess again.” She teased him with the letter.
Of course. Harriet Hobson was no traditionalist and would not waste her time folding a letter in the old way. “Small, neat writing – a dark pen – a scent of roses. Our daughter Dido, perhaps?”
“Well done!” Adelia said proudly. She scanned the missive quickly. “She gives us the usual chatter. Our grandsons are faring well. Her husband is making even more improvements at Mondial Castle. They have constant streams of guests. They plan a garden party to mark the end of the season! She is happy and healthy. You know, my dear, do consider that it is nearly a year since we saw her last...”
“I am glad to hear she is happy.” Theodore knew exactly where the conversation was now going. And much as he adored his second-eldest daughter, there was one fly in the ointment. A large fly, in the shape of her obnoxious husband, the Marquis of Mondial.
A marquis outranked an earl by one step, and were somewhat rarer in the British aristocracy. John, Lord Mondial would never have been as crass as to point those things out in actual words. Oh no. He was far more subtle in his snobbery. Theodore could not quote a single instance when the Marquis had condescended to him – yet he came away from every meeting feeling like a small boy who’d been smacked.
“She is happy,” Adelia said. “Dido is always happy. Yet she would be happier still to see her father. And me. Here – why not read her letter yourself? She has actually invited us both to stay. They, too, have left London early. I should love to see what they’ve done with the indoor plumbing. She has a contraption around the bath that shoots water out at various angles, you know.”
“Why?”
“To clean one’s ... crevices.”
“I do not have crevices. I am a man of polite society.”
“And a man of polite society does not reject a lady’s invitation.”
Theodore took the letter but he knew he’d already lost the battle.
They were heading for Mondial Castle by the end of the week.
Two
“She may well be the wife of an earl now,” said the cultured female voice with a sniff, “but some of us do not forget from whence she came.”
The tortured, pseudo-correct grammar alone was enough to annoy Adelia. She couldn’t help overhearing what Lady Montsalle was saying because that lady had ensured that Adelia would overhear it. Adelia had been subject to such tedious sniping and power games for the past thirty years and she didn’t expect to ever quite leave them behind. While there were spiteful people in the world, there would be spiteful comments.
Adelia smiled at her companion, a sallow-faced dowager of impeccable breeding and absolutely no title whatsoever. Mrs Montagu Tott smiled back and rolled her heavily-lidded eyes like she was a mutinous girl of fifteen. They both knew exactly from whence Adelia came.
To hear people like Lady Montsalle snipe, you’d think Adelia had been raised in a coal mine and had seduced the Earl of Calaway with sinful charms, swaying hips and a dose of opium slipped into a drink. Such would have made for a romantic tale but the truth was a little more prosaic. Adelia had had a privileged upbringing as appropriate to any young woman of the upper middle classes. She had been tutored at home under a governess, and spent some time abroad perfecting her Italian, French and German. By the age of eighteen she knew how to dress, how to dance, how to waste a few hours completing passable needlework, and how to have an unremarkable conversation with anyone from a tailor’s boy to a duke.
Those skills were essential in the family business – and here came the rub for those of Lady Montsalle’s sensibilities.
Before Adelia took the Caxton name – the family surname of the Earls of Calaway – she was a Pegsworth. Pegsworth’s had been one of the most prestigious galleries and art dealerships in central London, and had been so since the time of the Restoration. Indeed, a portrait of King Charles II hung in the lobby, reminding everyone of the generations of royal patronage that Pegsworth’s had enjoyed.
Anyone who was someone was on good terms with the successions of the Pegsworth family who had inherited the business down the years. So the Pegsworth family were, technically, trade; but they were an acceptable side of business. Their lavish parties, gallery openings, private viewings and discreet deals were highly thought of, and invitations were sought after. The Pegsworths were good people to know and to be seen with.
So for someone like Theodore, who was happy to defy convention, the lack of an aristocratic background was no impediment when he asked Adelia to be his wife. Other men of his status had married maids and actresses; as far as he was concerned, Adelia was perfect.
She had not been so sure, and had turned him down flat.
Lady Montsalle would have approved of that, Adelia thought, watching the woman glide away across the great hall. There was quite a little gathering of people at Mondial Castle this evening, milling around awaiting their fashionably late dinner.
Adelia and Theodore had arrived in the mid-afternoon and found that they were not the only guests expected. Dido had greeted her mother only briefly, looking harassed and careworn. “Oh, John throws these dinners every week, more or less,” she said. “You know what he’s like about his social standing. You would think I’d be used to it by now, but there’s been a rush of people leaving London – the season, this year, you know? Quite dull. Not what it ought to be, they say – and we’re quite overrun with folks fleeing town. And we have to do the dinner á la Russe and you wouldn’t believe the work behind that. One footman per three guests, mama! Let me show you to your rooms. We can talk later.”
“Are they all staying?” Adelia had asked, scurrying to keep up with her lean daughter. Dido almost ran, powering along the narrow carpets that were laid in almost every corridor. She had that efficient and don’t-stop-me movement common to every overworked mother. And that was strange, because a woman of Dido’s status shouldn’t have needed to be involved with her children. Adelia wondered whether John was allowing her to employ the right sort of help. The choice of nurse and so on ought to have been Dido’s domain and it was a foolish master indeed who meddled in that. Lord Mondial, however, expected to be in charge and Adelia wondered how far that expectation went.
“Some will stay tonight but most will not, thank goodness,” Dido said. “There will be a little influx just before eight and you can all gather in the great hall because John likes people to admire the heraldry on the walls. You can barely see it all in the dark but you’ll have to pretend and make the right noises. Then we’ll eat, drink, play cards, and I shall have to play hostess to a tiresome late hour. Tomorrow, mama, we will be free to talk. Oh, I am so glad you are here!”
And with that, Adelia and Theodore had been abandoned in a suite of rooms.
“What did you make of that?” Adelia had said, turning to her husband.
He was more interested in the view of the lawns from the wide windows. “Those box hedges are exquisitely done! I wonder why ours have gone so yellow. I must speak to the gardeners here.”
“I meant, what do you make of Dido?”
“She seems happy.”
“What on earth makes you say that?”
He had turned to her with a look of bafflement on his face. “She smiled and she has a big dinner coming up tonight and lots of guests will be here, and we’re here too. Why wouldn’t she be happy? She did not say that she was unhappy in any way. You know she is our happiest daughter.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake. Did you look at her? Where are your powers of observation? Does she need to carve it on a marble plaque?”
“I have no idea what you mean. I observed her smile. I sometimes think you women approach every interaction like a romantic novel, hunting for hidden meanings and subtexts.”
Adelia huffed. “At least the men in romantic novels are worth talking to.”
Theodore had remained oblivious and Adelia had given up. She left him muttering about hedges while she had refreshed herself and dressed and gone down to join
the throng, where she had heard Lady Montsalle’s scathing assessment of her heritage.
She was still thinking about her infuriating husband – rather than Lady Montsalle, whose opinion meant nothing to her – when the announcement came that they were to go into the dining room. “At last,” muttered Mrs Tott. “At my time of life, one doesn’t want to go too long between meals. One never knows when one will be gathered into the arms of the Good Lord above, and one would be awfully disappointed to die hungry.”
If the great hall had been designed to impress guests, the dining room was even more grand. While the great hall of Mondial Castle had been kept to a traditional style with high grey stone walls covered with animal heads, a huge fire and deep plush rugs, the dining room was the very epitome of modern style.
John Haveringham, as the Marquis of Mondial, welcomed the dozen or so guests into his home and stood proudly as they looked around in awe. Even people who had been in the room before gasped at the opulent decorations, the vast swathes of ferns and leaves on the table, the thick rich swags of ribbon that looped from corner to corner, and the silverware which glittered in the soft light from the hundreds of candles. Dido was next to the Marquis at the head of the table and she looked utterly dazzling. Adelia could have burst with pride. She looked so serene and beautiful, the very ideal of a marchioness. Dido was twenty-eight years old and had two sons and a rich, clever husband.
She had everything she could have ever dreamed of.
Although then Adelia remembered that the young Dido had mostly dreamed of owning horses and being able to eat whatever cakes she liked, whenever she liked. Those had been her aims for adulthood until she had been told to dream of marriage instead.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. Adelia knew that John kept a fine stable of horses and she hoped that Dido still had the chance to ride them. She should have. The house was well-staffed and she should have had at least some free time even with her main duties of overseeing the staff and endless entertaining.
Adelia glanced around the room as the various courses were brought to the table from the sideboard by an absolute army of interchangeable servants. As well as the widowed Mrs Tott and the insufferable Lady Montsalle and her husband, who was a man distinguished only by his appalling halitosis, she recognised everyone else to some degree. Theodore had been placed next to a woman a little younger than Dido. Adelia caught the young woman’s eye and smiled in greeting. She was Philippa Lamb, one of Dido’s friends who was rapidly accelerating past the usual age for marriage. The pretty woman was still unwed in spite of a bevy of suitors. She was a vivacious socialite who had turned down every offer with a stock of now-dwindling excuses. It was something of a surprise to see an unmarried woman at an evening dinner party and Lord Mondial was known for his cleaving to what was considered to be “correct”. Adelia thought that perhaps Dido had persuaded him to unbend a little, for her sake.
Adelia’s immediate neighbours had been well-chosen by Dido. The gentleman to her right spoke to her of his travels in the Brazilian rainforests, and he was a witty and erudite man, ready to share a tale to entertain her even if it painted him in an unflattering light. And to her left was a restrained but pleasant middle-aged woman who always seemed to take in more than she offered in a conversation. That was a reassuring trait. She never gossiped, and Adelia respected that, even if it made her a somewhat dull companion over time.
The meal followed the usual pattern. Every course was exquisite and kept small so that no one felt over-faced by a vulgar amount of food in one sitting. After the soup, two boiled turbot were placed on the table, the brown side up at one end of the table and the white side up at the other. Then there was a joint of beef and the butler came in to serve some salad. Their palates were refreshed by a pineapple and rum sorbet so that the following roasts were fresh-tasting, though Adelia didn’t care for the rather too lifelike rabbits. After a smattering of vegetables, including Jerusalem artichokes carved into wonderful shapes, there was a sweet course of jellies in elaborate moulds although Buckingham Palace was slightly listing to one side.
By the time the savouries came out, she could only manage a few braised chestnuts but she discovered she did have space for the ices. The butler reappeared with the dessert course of fruit and she was delighted by the gold grape scissors. But three grapes were enough for her. The extravagance finally concluded with the women retiring while the men smoked and drank. Once in private, the woman took their chance to drink unwatered claret and sherry; everyone had been rather restrained in public as it didn’t do for a woman to appear to be fond of alcohol. They didn’t stay parted for long. Some guests made their excuses and left but there was still a determined circle around the card tables even at midnight.
Dido slipped away from Mrs Tott and came to sit alongside her mother by the fire. “You are all alone, mama!”
“I am perfectly happy watching everyone else,” Adelia told her. She was enjoying her glass of wine and felt pleasantly replete with food. She did rather fancy a nap now.
“You will be trying to guess everyone’s secrets from afar.”
“Will I? Is that what you think I do?”
“Is it not?”
“Well – perhaps. A little. But those secrets, once unearthed, will remain hidden in my mind, quite safe and private. I am more likely to be sitting here and admiring everyone’s marvellous dresses. Except for that one over there. Grey is not her colour and the shape of her bodice makes her look like a pigeon who wants a fight. Now, dear Dido, is everything as well as can be, here?”
“Of course, mama!”
“But you asked me here for a reason.”
Dido looked affronted. “Yes. I asked you here because you hinted, very strongly, that you had to get away. What has father been up to? I have heard rumours, you know. They say he is ... well, I cannot really repeat what they say.”
“I can guess. They say he is the worst doctor in England.”
“But mama, he is a genius!”
“And you are a loyal daughter. But they are correct in what they say. He is quite, quite terrible, and must be stopped before we are utterly ruined. Scandal beckons. Bankruptcy. Jail.” In truth, Adelia didn’t think it could quite get that far, but who knew, these days? Being a wealthy aristocrat was not what it once was.
Dido’s mouth opened and closed in shock. “No, mama, I cannot believe it. You are making a tasteless jest.” She reached to take her mother’s drink from her hand but Adelia evaded her deftly.
“I wish that I were jesting. And yes, we did need to get away from home though perhaps I overegg the pudding slightly. Anyway, I thank you for the invitation here. Your home is utterly lovely, as always. And yet the invitation came at the right time for you, too, though. Don’t deny it. You did want me to be here.”
“You have me,” Dido conceded. She swirled her own glass of wine around, twisting it in her fingers. Hers was watered down. “But not, I think, for the reasons you suspect. John and I are perfectly happy – as happy as we can be. I’m under no illusions, of course, about him. You know. Him as a man.”
“What do you mean?” Adelia sat up straight, ready to leap to her feet, grab a candlestick or a poker and run the man through. She would do it without a second thought if her own daughter was in the least bit discontented.
“Oh, nothing terrible. It’s only that after a few years of marriage, the flames die down somewhat. I knew that they would. But a smouldering fire is still a fire, and I am grateful for the warmth. No, I did not want you here because of any ... marital issues. Everything is under control in that regard. I am afraid that it is a different matter. See over there – do you remember Miss Lamb?”
“Of course I do. She would light up our summers when she came to stay with your other friends, that poor dear orphan. You were both once very close and I am pleased to see her here again; it has been many years. Yet she is as bright and brilliant as always. But is there yet any hope of a match for her? I had expected to see her married. I’ve exp
ected it for nine or ten years.”
“See, I knew that you would hit upon the matter!” Dido said, her face lighting up. “That is the reason I need you here, mama. As she is quite without a mother or father of her own to guide her, she has missed out on certain important things. Only her old grandfather the doctor remains and he is in poor health. She lacks guidance and will not hear advice from me or any of her contemporaries. Sometimes such advice need to come from an older person.”
“Ha! When have the youth ever listened to their elders?”
“Mama, you know that we do. It is only that we pretend not to. Her time ticks on, mama, and I am dreadfully afraid that she will wake up as an old maid and it will be too late for her. She doesn’t see herself as we do; she only knows parties and pleasure and she thinks it will last forever. But you have successfully married off all seven of us. You also aided Mrs Christie’s daughter to wed and everyone thought her teeth would be the undoing of her. And what of cousin Mabel? You are celebrated for orchestrating her match and I am sure they will be very happy in British Columbia. After her scandal, that’s probably for the best. So I was talking with Mrs Tott last week and we both agreed that you, of all people, would be ideal for the purpose.”
“The purpose?”
“The purpose of arranging a match for Miss Lamb!”
“And what does Miss Lamb think about this plan?” Adelia asked. She watched the young woman from across the room. Philippa Lamb was in deep conversation with Lady Montsalle and another woman. Adelia scanned the rest of the room, hunting for eligible bachelors. There were none.
“Honestly, mama, I think she is secretly ready for it, but simply won’t admit it. Sometimes I find her looking wistfully at me when I am sitting with John, and I fancy she envies the state of wedded bliss that we enjoy.”
