‘Blaize—I can’t go from one bed to another—just like that—so quickly.’
‘Oh but you can,’ he said, his mouth against my neck, his hands delicately parting the folds of my collar. ‘Not here, of course—not now—but tonight darling, wherever we find ourselves, I shall manage to provide you with champagne and a good dinner, and a good bed, and I am not at all the kind of gallant gentleman who would allow you to sleep in it alone. You will have to make your full commitment, darling, make no mistake about it. I may not look the part, Faith, but I am a Law Valley man. I expect a return on my investments, just as much, and just as soon, as I can.’
And being a Law Valley woman I could not quarrel with that.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was, of course, a preposterous relationship which should soon have foundered. It did not. Our first night together should have ended in tears on my part, bitter reproaches on his, a mutual embarrassment neither of us could overcome. Incredibly, it ended in laughter, inspired partly, I must confess, by the endlessly flowing champagne Blaize considered an essential part of seduction, but largely by the split in my own nature, the practical Law Valley part of me which understood the reason for this immediate commitment—for once it was done it was done and there could be no returning—the part which said, ‘You have made your bed, so now it is only common sense to lie on it as comfortably as you can’; and the other part, the submerged part, released by Blaize’s persuasive hands, the woman in me who could enjoy, if only briefly, the languorous, sensual life of a pampered courtesan.
I should have been abominably burdened throughout those early months by the memory of Nicholas and of what he must believe I had done to him. I did not forget it. But I was a woman who had made, if not precisely a decision, a promise my self-respect would force me to keep, had entered into an arrangement the terms of which I perfectly understood and which I was determined to fulfil. I knew exactly what Blaize required in a wife and I saw no point at all—even before we were married—in holding anything back from him.
A good hostess, he had said, and a good friend, but Blaize Barforth’s ‘good friend’would need to be resourceful, independent, good-humoured, sensual, unfailingly patient; and from the start I became all those things, partly because this was my final opportunity to make something of my life and I couldn’t fail it, but also because Blaize himself, who demanded constant attention, expected at all times to be pleased, was well worth the pleasing, a challenge to any woman’s ingenuity.
I should not have found pleasure in his arms—not so quickly—and when I did I should have felt soiled by it, betrayed by my own sighing, demanding body. Perhaps if he had been sympathetic and allowed me to be sentimental I would have done exactly that, but the sexual act to Blaize was not so much a matter of need as of skill, a slow appreciation that could occupy the whole of a balmy Mediterranean afternoon—if he had one available—an experience which took on the shades and character of its constantly changing situation, a cosily bolstered French bed, a moonlit terrace overlooking the sea, my back supported by silk-embroidered cushions, a couch in a southern garden, as he had once promised, the spray of a nearby fountain feather-light against my bare skin, a dappled moonlight coming down to us through the chestnut trees. And from the start his expertise defeated me.
‘No—no,’ he told me that first night, when I turned to him too quickly, knowing it had to be done and wanting it over. ‘There’s no rush. I have to find out what pleases you, darling. And you have to discover what pleases me. I won’t tell you—and I won’t ask—because it’s in the finding out that we’ll have the fun.’
And in full lamplight he explored my body from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, returning unerringly to the tender places, his hands and his mouth inviting me, persuading me, to pleasure, coaxing it from me and nurturing it into the most acute physical joy of my life, leaving me exhausted but clear-headed, since emotion had scarcely been used at all.
From those first, difficult days when only the iron discipline of my father’s teaching enabled me to conceal how desperately I was grieving for Nicholas. Blaize intrigued and satiated my senses, filled my nights with pleasure, not infrequently with amazement, my days with a constant flurry of occupations, little errands to run on his behalf, people to meet, dinners to be eaten in gay company or romantically alone, race-meetings and theatres, elegant concert halls and wicked, fascinating pavement cafés, shopping, spending, railway stations, sinister foreign taverns, luxurious hotels. He kept me busy, laughed at me, pampered me sometimes, abandoned me at others for days on end in unfamiliar places while he made lightning trips alone. He indulged me, amused me, entertained me, kept me waiting in strange restaurants without ever making explanations, expected me at a moment’s notice to be ready to take a train or a coach, to be as fresh at the end of a journey as I had been at its beginning, expected me at all times—since I had declared myself to be a woman and not a child—to cope alone, to stand firmly on the two adult feet of which I was possessed. And if it was exhausting, sometimes exasperating, it was exciting, leaving me no time to brood on anything else, and I did not dislike it.
We were married eventually in Bournemouth, but it was clear to anyone with the slightest knowledge of mathematics—and there were few in Cullingford who could not do their sums—that we had travelled together on the wicked Continent for several months before he took me to his mother at Rosemount Lodge, and Cullingford, quite rightly, knew just what that meant.
‘My mother will help us to put everything right,’ Blaize had said, yet oddly enough it was not Aunt Verity who came to our assistance after all, but the irascible Sir Joel himself.
‘I don’t understand this at all,’ Aunt Verity told Blaize on our arrival at Rosemount, having offered me no more than a cool hand in welcome. ‘If you wished to get married you had only to say so. Obviously there is rather more to it than that. Are you going to tell me what it is?’
‘I shouldn’t think so, mamma,’ Blaize cheerfully replied, and, instead of the explosion I had anticipated, Uncle Joel, from the depths of his armchair, gave a grim but decidedly humorous chuckle and got to his feet, his face still showing the strain of the chest infection he had endured that winter, but his eyes very keen.
‘It strikes me you’ll have to be content with that, Verity,’ he said. ‘There’ll have to be a wedding now, no matter who likes it and who don’t. And I’m not sure I dislike it. To tell the truth I’ve had about enough of fancy marriages, and, if he’s gone about it in a peculiar way, then your eldest son has always been like that, Lady Barforth—wouldn’t you say? I reckon he’s fancy enough, our Blaize, without taking himself a fancy wife. And a Cullingford girl was good enough for me. So we’ll get you married now, Faith Aycliffe, just as quick as we can, and, as soon as the weather’s warmer and I’m feeling up to breathing some bad Cullingford air again, I’ll take you home and get you settled, where you belong.’
My mother, Prudence, Aunt Hannah and Jonas came down for my wedding, my mother melting into easy tears of forgiveness, Aunt Hannah, her eyes as shrewd as her brother’s, telling me that only her sense of loyalty to her family and her Christian duty inclined her to welcome me back to the fold.
‘How very enterprising of you,’ Jonas told me. ‘Obviously there has been no time to draw up a marriage contract, but I trust your husband will see no objection to leaving your personal affairs in my hands?’ And, smiling at him. I didn’t believe he had betrayed me; for, if Jonas had decided to ferret out the identity of my lover, I felt certain that he, unlike Aunt Hannah, would have got it right.
I took Prudence on a brisk stroll along the cliff top and before she had time to question me said, ‘I can’t tell you why. I promised not to tell anyone.’
‘Ah—you had a reason, then? I imagined it to be just the whim of a moment.’ And then, her voice still angry but no longer with me, she said, ‘There is no need to tell me. They are calling you a sly minx in Cullingford. Everybody’s mamma is preten
ding to be scandalized, when half of them would have put their daughters willingly on that London train in your place—and Celia is so torn between delight at having you so rich and shame at knowing you so wanton that it has quite made her ill. Well—I believe it has made me ill, too. They have used you, haven’t they—one of them or both of them, Nicholas or Blaize—what does it matter? You were manipulated and bewildered, weren’t you, and convinced that you had no choice? No—no, don’t say anything. I don’t know the details, and don’t wish to know.’
‘Prudence—please. I can ask no one else. Have you seen Nicholas?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and that was all she would say.
Caroline, who was paying a visit to Lady Henrietta Stone in Belgravia and could easily have come to Rosemount to see me married, declined, expressing herself much shocked at the manner in which I had snared her favourite brother. She was fond of me—in fact she had been very fond of me—but an earl’s daughter, she felt, would not have been too good for Blaize, and, when he dined with her in London, she did not scruple to tell him so.
Georgiana, who could not attend, being very near her time, scrawled me a hasty message of goodwill. ‘What wickedness! What a lark! What fun! One can always rely on Blaize to do things in style. My brother Perry could not have done it better.’
And although I asked Prudence again, and then again, I could persuade her to tell me nothing of Nicholas.
There was a high, very fragile blue sky on my wedding morning, shreds of cloud blown this way and that by a cool wind which, as I was driven to church, obligingly uncovered a glimmer of sun for me. White satin, of course, even had I not been a widow, would have been inappropriate on this occasion, but Blaize, as Georgiana had said, required things to be done with style, and my dress, ordered in Paris from Monsieur Albertini, was perhaps the most elegant I had ever owned, its cream-coloured skirt filling the carriage, the sleeves a cascade of cream lace, enormous cream silk roses on the waist and the bodice, a silk and lace flower-garden on my hat. Blaize kissed my hand at the altar as tenderly as if he had loved me all his life, I smiled up at him just as mistily, and afterwards, since we had already had our honeymoon, Aunt Verity moved our belongings from the two small spare bedrooms we had been chastely occupying at Rosemount Lodge into the large, double-bedded one, and we were married.
‘Will it be different tonight, I wonder?’ Blaize said, stretching himself out beside me.
‘Yes—you have made an honest woman out of me and so I shall behave like one. I am a wife now, not a mistress, so I shall keep on my nightgown and turn down the lights.’
‘Welt—that would be something new in my experience, at any rate. But, in fact, my married darling, you will do exactly as I say, for I am your husband now and my authority over you is very nearly life and death.’
‘So it is—does that please you?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve not really considered it. I don’t think it matters to me either way. If I needed the authority of the law to possess you, I’d feel myself to be something of a failure, and something of a fool as well, I reckon. And, whatever the law may have to say, you’ll only give me what you want to give me, or what you can—and I shall do the same. I think we shall manage well enough with that.’
He went to Cullingford a few days later, leaving me with my aunt—my mother-in-law—who, although she was kind to me again, alarmed me sometimes by the questions she did not ask. And when he returned he had sold my house in Millergate and had brought sketches of another to show me, which, while asking most courteously for my opinion, I suspected he had purchased already.
It was at a spot called Elderleigh Hill, a few miles out of Cullingford on the road to Listonby, not rural precisely, since the low, neatly folded hills were no barrier to those belching chimney-stacks, the lightest of breezes coming smoke-laden across them, but it was still green in patches, still fragrant with blossom in springtime, the house itself, built some fifty years ago in the Prince Regent’s day, being an elegant, classical box, a Grecian temple against the medieval cathedral that was Tarn Edge.
‘I am sure it will suit you,’ he told me and, realizing he had actually said, ‘It suits me’, and because, most of all, I desired to be settled, I had few complaints to make.
‘You will have a long drive to the mill every day.’
‘Darling—I don’t go to the mill every day.’
‘Well, it seems very nice and quite large. Can we afford it?’
‘Oh, as to that, I imagine my father will buy it for us. He keeps Nicholas in luxury at Tarn Edge and is always buying Caroline the odd farm or two. He’s bound to do something on similar lines for me. If you’re agreeable I will send Jonas Agbrigg word to complete the transaction, for I want to get you settled before I leave for New York.’
‘Blaize—-you didn’t tell me you were going to America.’
‘My dear—I’m telling you now.’
‘And I can’t come with you, I suppose.’
‘No, darling. These intensive selling-trips are not suitable for ladies, believe me. I would have no time to spare to be with you, and some of the places I visit are not ones in which I could very well leave you alone. Nicholas may call it self-indulgence, if he pleases, but in fact what I do is extremely hard work. You couldn’t possibly enjoy it.’
‘You saw Nicholas—when you were in Cullingford?’
‘I could hardly go to Cullingford without seeing him. He was more or less as I’d expected him to be. I am to buy the house, then? Good. There are some alterations I know you’ll be bound to make. The wallpaper is quite appalling throughout, so you will need to be nearby, darling. I shall take you to Listonby before I leave and I expect you’ll be so busy that you’ll hardly miss me.’
‘Blaize,’ I said, quite horrified. ‘Caroline will not have me.’
‘Of course she will. I have already spoken to her and it is all arranged. She may scold you for ten minutes, but she likes to be at the centre of things and is really quite lonely sometimes, you know. She will find you a pleasant change from Hetty Stone, and Listonby is very convenient for Elderleigh.’
‘Dear God—’ I said, and then, seeing the quizzical arch of his eyebrow, reminding me of our arrangement, that he had warned me from the start that I could not lean on him, I took a deep breath and then another, and smiled.
‘Yes, of course. The house will keep me fully occupied. I shall try to have it ready by the time you come back again.’
‘Good.’
And, having made his point, won his day, he crossed the room and kissed me.
‘I have no choice in the matter, Faith. I plan these journeys well in advance. My customers are expecting to see me, and if I don’t arrive they will make it their business to see someone else. And I’m not asking you to face Cullingford alone. I shall be back in plenty of time for that. We will tackle the Assembly Rooms together, and Aunt Hannah’s drawing-room, and anywhere else you fancy—that I promise you—but Listonby is hardly Cullingford, after all. Your presence there will be very well advertised. No one will call who doesn’t wish to see you. And there will be no reason for you to go into town.’
And that was as much as he would say to me of Nicholas.
I embarked then on a period of my life, lasting almost a year, in which I was continually called upon to do the impossible and somehow or other did it. Listonby was easy enough, for, although Caroline herself was stiff with me for a day or so, Lady Hetty Stone, an almost permanent guest, was a worldly woman, half amused, half bored by the middle-class notions of Lady Chard and more than ready to make friends with any woman who had a husband as charming as mine.
‘You will like Hetty Stone,’ Caroline told me, a command not a recommendation, and, although her thin, languid body did not please me, her die-away airs and graces were frankly irritating, her intelligence was shrewd enough, her pedigree of the very highest, representing for Caroline, who had so easily conquered the squirearchy, a new challenge. For Lady Hetty was the offspring of no fox-h
unting Tory squire living on his rents of one pound per acre, his acreage rarely surpassing the thousand, his influence powerful, perhaps, if strictly local, but of the Duke of South Erin, a Whig grandee of awesome international dignity, whose acquaintance could open new worlds for Caroline. And although Lady Hetty herself had married unwisely, a younger son who had first dissipated his inheritance and then died of his dissipations, she possessed nevertheless the entrée to those glittering Mayfair staircases where the high nobility received their guests, had been received at Court, could drop famous names so casually, yet so thick and fast, that her board and lodging at Listonby was amply justified.
‘I have stopped using place cards at dinner,’ Caroline told me, ‘Hetty Stone says in London no one does. It is up to the butler to recognize one’s guests and remember where they are to be seated. Well—Charles Worth is not very pleased about it, and I am forced to agree it must be easier to identify Lord Palmerston and Mr. Disraeli than a collection of hunting gentlemen, or commercial gentlemen, who tend to look very much alike, but he will have to do the best he can. You could keep your eyes open tonight, Faith, and give him a little nod in the right direction—since you will be sure to remember everyone.’
Yet she invited no one who could embarrass me, or, if she did, they did not appear, and once again I encountered the impossible and performed it, knowing Nicholas to be but a few miles away, and living, in surface calm, with the dread of turning a corner one day and meeting his anger, his hurt, suffering his reproaches, the temptation of going myself to find him and telling him the truth.
It was impossible now not to think of him. Impossible. I had no way of preventing it, but by then I knew I was expecting Blaize’s child, the most binding commitment I had ever made to any man, the ultimate possession, and it was a blessed relief to turn my mind inwards, to the new individual inside me, constantly marvelling at the functioning of my own body, which knew so exactly how to nourish this new life about which my mind, and my inexperienced hands, had no knowledge at all.
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