“More than a hundred years ago,” Letty pointed out. “And surely Versailles was positively full of people! Was it not the apex of the fashionable court in France at the time? This is not - we have only Stonegate and his mama to entertain us – and I do not think he resembles Louis XIV nor she whoever his mother was!”
“Anne of Austria; I am not so sure she does not, you know. Anne was regent during Louis’s minority and ruled with steely determination in order to preserve her son’s absolute power. I think she was most likely a force to be reckoned with.”
“Perhaps she was and perhaps Lady Stonegate is – or would like to be - a forceful influence upon this household, but I do not see that the two cases are at all similar. Stonegate is not a minor and, if he does not have absolute power in his own castle – which I own I have seen no evidence of – it is entirely his own fault!”
Aspasia laughed at this and said, “In my opinion, he is a kind man who shows an almost infinite degree of patience towards an exceedingly irritating woman. What would you have him do?”
“Send her away! Why, she is not even his mother!”
“No, but I suppose she lived here with his father and he hasn’t the heart to banish her. After all, Lord Archibald has not been here much in the last few years so that she would have been quite on her own for some considerable time if she had moved to his abode.”
“Unless he has a wife – and we do not know for certain that he has not,” Letty reminded her, her cheeks beginning to flame as she thought of the abominable possibility of there being a Lady Archibald.
It was into this scene of mild dissension that Lord Stonegate walked a few minutes later.
“I must apologise for Mama’s ill-temper,” he began. “She was very much looking forward to your arrival but is unused to meeting many people.”
“Of course,” Aspasia murmured.
Letty said nothing and made no attempt to wipe the sulky expression from her face.
Aspasia, conscious of a slight awkwardness between their host and her niece, said, “We met a gentleman who said he was at school with you on our journey.”
She had been feeling uncomfortable about the imminent arrival of two unmarried men upon her host’s doorstep and was relieved to have found an opportunity to confess.
“From what he said, I had the impression that he intended to call upon you in the next few days,” she went on.
“Oh! Who was he?”
“A Major Fielding.”
“Oh, yes, I recall him well. Indeed, when my father bought the commission for Archibald, I made sure that it was for the same regiment as I hoped he would be able to keep an eye out for him.”
“I am sure he has done so; he seemed to be a most agreeable – and reliable – gentleman. He is travelling with his nephew, Lord Sharpthorne.”
“I do not know him. I believe the family comes from somewhere in the north. Is the nephew a soldier too?”
“Yes; he is a captain, although in point of fact I gained the impression that both gentlemen had it in mind to sell out. Letty told me that the Captain recalled the occasion when your brother was wounded.”
“Yes,” the Earl said at once. “It was a bad business. At first, nearly two years ago now, we were informed only that he was missing -– which was why his mother and I had begun to fear the worst. It was not until a few weeks ago, when he finally got back, that we learned that a local family had taken him in and nursed him back to, if not full health, at least a state where he was able to return home. He had been very badly injured and it was, I understand, only the skill of a Portuguese surgeon which saved his life. He left the Castle a few days ago, saying that he could not endure any more fussing and wanted to go to his own house.”
Chapter 8
The effect of this narrative on Letty was dramatic. Her eyes and cheeks bulged and she jumped up, forgetting that she held a glass in her hand, dropped it, tried to speak, but succeeded only in producing a sort of suffocated gasp.
The Earl, tactfully ignoring these signs of extreme emotion, pulled the bell.
“Did you …” Letty began, coming to herself briefly but stopping abruptly when the door opened to admit Crabb who, observing what he took to be the reason for the bell having been rung, nodded at his employer and went out again without a word.
“Sit down,” Stonegate said, assuming the firm, reassuring tone of a parent. “I infer from your reaction that you have not after all forgotten my brother.”
“Did you really suppose that to have been likely?”
“I did not know but concluded you must have when I did not hear from you.”
Once again whatever Letty had been about to say was interrupted, this time by the arrival of two maids with a dustpan and brush, a bucket of water and a cloth.
No one spoke while the glass was swept up and the carpet mopped but, as soon as the servants had gone, the Earl poured another glass of lemonade and brought it to Letty.
“You have spilled a little on your dress; would you like to change it?”
“No; it does not signify.”
The interlude provided by the servants seemed to have removed whatever had been impeding her speech and given her complexion time to revert to a less alarming, although still heightened, colour.
“Are you trying to tell me you wrote to tell me all this?” she asked accusingly.
“Yes; I have written several times: first, to tell you that my father had bought my brother a commission and then, later, to tell you he was missing. My final letter on that subject was written quite recently, when he turned up here. Did you receive none of them?”
“No. Papa does not allow me to receive letters from anyone, including, it seems, you.”
“I see. I am sorry; I had not realised that Hankham was quite so autocratic. Did he tell you about the commission? I wrote to him too, assuming at that point that he and I were both trying to protect our relatives from contracting a hasty match, but I have not kept him informed since so that he does not know of Archibald’s injury or return. I wrote to both you and him when I made my offer; you did not reply; now I know why. You did not receive the letter, did you?”
“No.”
“Did he force you to accept my offer?”
“No; at least I did not give him the chance; I accepted at once. I think he was rather surprised.”
The Earl, looking almost as startled as the Viscount had and disagreeably aware that it behoved him to clear up as many misunderstandings as he could, asked, “Did you think Archibald had abandoned you?”
“Yes. I was told he was married. I own it was that which made me accept you so readily, my lord.”
The Earl, who might perhaps have been relieved that his betrothed saw no reason to deceive him in any way nor even, it seemed, to exercise much tact, said rather coldly, “I see. He is not. I take it that, if you had known him to be still unwed, you would not have jumped so readily at the chance to become Lady Stonegate?”
“No.”
The Earl nodded but only said, “You will see him tomorrow as we have been invited for luncheon. Now, as dinner will be served in an hour or so, I suggest you go upstairs to change.”
Dismissed from the Earl’s presence, aunt and niece rose as one and left the room.
Neither spoke as they mounted the stairs and, having arrived slightly breathless in the upper saloon, sank down on to a pair of matching sofas.
“Lud!” Aspasia said and closed her lips on what else she had been about to say, not wishing to influence Letty by voicing her own opinion.
“He is not married!” Letty said on a tone of wonder mixed with a sort of dawning horror.
“No more are you – yet,” her aunt replied.
“But I am affianced! Oh why, oh why did I not trust him? Of course he would not have wed when he swore that he would not – would only marry me! What have I done?”
“Not a great deal yet,” Aspasia reiterated, “although you have deceived poor Lord Stonegate. But,” she added, seeing the
hot colour rush into her niece’s cheeks and fearing an explosion of some kind, “it was not at all your fault for you were deceived too.”
“What shall I do?” Letty asked, beginning to wring her hands.
“Only you can decide that – and I do not think you can do so until you have seen Lord Archibald tomorrow. Your papa – and your stepmama - have behaved abominably. I can readily understand that he did not want you to marry a man who changed the object of his affections from one sister to another as a result of an ill-advised kiss, and that he disapproved of elopements, particularly when you consider what had happened to his own sister. But it seems to me that he has acted so foolishly in allowing you to be deceived that he has probably destroyed all likelihood of your actually going through with the match of which he does approve.”
“What do you suppose Stonegate will do now that I have admitted that I would not have accepted him if I had known Archie was unwed?” Letty’s heightened colour was beginning to recede in the face of her aunt’s calm and sympathetic manner.
“I do not think he has a great deal of choice unless he wants to be labelled a jilt. More to the point, what will you do?”
“I don’t know. I cannot marry Stonegate if Archie is still free, but I have not heard from him in four years.”
“From what we have learned today, I think we can infer that an absence of letters does not by any means prove that he has not tried to contact you,” Aspasia reminded her. “I believe we can take it that your papa has destroyed any letters addressed to you and almost certainly yours to Lord Archibald too, so that he will think you have forgotten him.”
“What do you suppose he feels about my agreeing to marry his brother?”
But Aspasia could not answer that, not having met Lord Archibald.
After a moment, Letty went on, “He didn’t reveal the extent of Archie’s injuries in much detail. Aunt, do you suppose he has lost a limb – more than one perhaps? Or has his face been cut in two?”
“I don’t know; he was clearly very ill for a long time. But don’t forget that Major Fielding has sustained an injury to his face and I do not think that it detracts much from his looks now that it is healed.”
“We did not know him before.”
“Would it affect your regard for Lord Archibald, do you think, if he is much changed?” Aspasia asked, drawing her brows together.
“No, never! But I own I am a little afraid of what I will see tomorrow.”
“I think,” the aunt said, trying to reassure the girl, “that you will have to wait to see how you feel when you meet again, but if his injuries – whatever they prove to be – give you a disgust of him just at first, I do not think you should immediately assume that you will not, in time, become reconciled to his altered appearance.”
“Oh, I begin to wish more than ever that we had not come!” Letty exclaimed, not much comforted. “I thought my heart was broken and almost longed for death; now I realise that I should have treasured what I had then – the memory of my love – for what lies ahead is almost bound to be infinitely worse.”
“There is no certainty of that,” Aspasia responded rather tartly, irritated in spite of herself by Letty’s descent into melodrama. “In any event, you are still very young and cannot live your life in fear of what lies around the next corner. No doubt you wish you had never met your Archie and had been presented in the usual way as an innocent of seventeen or eighteen, but we cannot all do exactly the same as everyone else – nor precisely what we wish.”
“It was not because of Archie that I did not have a come-out but because Mama was so ill!” Letty reminded her. “The thing is, Aunt, that even if I had been presented, I would not have been able to form an attachment because I considered myself promised to Archie.”
“Yes, my dear, I know. All I am trying to say is that our lives must run their course and we must face up to whatever is thrown at us without feeling too persecuted by what we perceive as our misfortune. In the end, everyone is likely to have their fair share of ill fortune as well as at least some portion of happiness. Chin up, child! Shall I ring for Baxter to do our hair?”
Letty assenting to this, the bell was rung and Baxter appeared, followed, as before, by a retinue of maids carrying jugs of hot water. Both women retired to their chambers and made themselves ready for dinner. Attired in their evening gowns – Letty in white and Aspasia in blue - they went down the stairs with little enthusiasm for the evening ahead.
Letty was so thrown by the Earl’s revelations that she said she had a headache coming on and Aspasia was so taken up with trying to work out his motivation in offering for the girl in the first place, her niece’s likely response to the sight of a mutilated Lord Archibald and the Dowager’s unpredictable behaviour that she found herself wishing she had not left her small house and the relative certainties to be expected from Miss Watkin.
The Earl received them in the saloon in which they had first met his mother. She, decked out in black silk embellished with quantities of blond lace and a high and intimidating headdress – quite as though she had been on the way to Court – appeared to have exchanged her earlier acidic mood for one which was rather more agreeable. She smiled and complimented them on their appearance, conduct which was so unexpected that it only added to the decidedly confusing atmosphere.
“My son tells me you met a couple of soldiers en route,” she began in a suspiciously friendly tone.
“Yes; they belong to the same regiment as Lord Archibald,” Aspasia said.
“Did they speak of him?”
“Indeed they did; they said what an agreeable man he was and how courageous in the face of battle.” Aspasia was glad to be able to report this tribute to the Countess’s son, hoping thus to endear both herself and the soldiers to the older woman.
“It would be a kind gesture on their part if they were to call upon him,” the Dowager said. “He is by himself and shockingly lonely.”
Aspasia, wondering why the older woman had allowed her son to immure himself in a house where he was lonely when she could surely have borne him company, said, “Indeed; I am sure they would like to.”
“I suppose they may be able to prevail upon Frederick to send them in the right direction if he is minded to be kind to poor Archibald,” her ladyship said on a sigh, unable to resist the opportunity to inveigh against Lord Stonegate once more.
Aspasia, feigning sympathy with her ladyship’s concern for her son, asked, “Do you visit him often yourself, my lady?”
“As frequently as I am able but, as neither the carriage nor the horses are mine, I am obliged to seek permission from Frederick.” The martyred manner had already been banished in favour of a return to the Countess’s more habitual sharpness of tone.
“Yes, of course, that is only proper,” Aspasia agreed warmly, adding in a softer voice, “Forgive me, my lady, but would it not be agreeable for your son if you were to stay with him while he is recuperating? I am persuaded he would find your presence comforting.”
“Are you? You do not know anything about it, my dear. I suppose you mean well but the truth is that there is a great deal of tension between the two households – so much indeed that I am afraid, if I were to leave here for even a fleeting visit, I might find the drawbridge up when I returned.”
“What sort of a house does Lord Archibald have?” Aspasia asked, determined to engage the Dowager in conversation and hoping that a discussion of architecture might prove relatively innocuous. She wanted to facilitate a dialogue, uninterrupted by the Countess, between Lord Stonegate and her niece who, it seemed to her, had a good deal to discuss.
“It is not a castle, if that is what you are wondering. It was built more recently than this – in the sixteenth century – and was at one time a handsome building but unfortunately is now in very poor repair. Archibald, as a younger son, has insufficient funds for its upkeep.” She sniffed and added, “As you have no doubt noticed, Frederick keeps the Castle in an excellent state of maintenance althou
gh he spends very little time here – he prefers the company of Lady Vanston in London.”
“I suppose he likes to keep an eye on his London residence too,” Aspasia suggested, disappointed that her attempt at diverting the Dowager from spiteful innuendo had already foundered.
“Oh, yes, indeed, although it’s my belief he spends his time in London to keep an eye on Lady Vanston. I must say that, although of course everything came to him by way of the entail, I cannot see that it would in any way inconvenience him to make poor Archibald more comfortable.”
“Perhaps Lord Archibald would not care to be funded by his brother? I daresay, now that he is home, he will do his best to repair his house and manage the estate so that it makes a profit. I presume there are farms and so forth?”
“Oh, yes, I believe so, but what use are farms? Not only do they not bring in a great deal of money, but they are generally mis-managed by foolish and extravagant tenants.”
Since it had by now struck Aspasia that nothing she could say was likely to meet with anything but a negative response, she turned the subject again and asked, “Will Lord Archibald go back to the front when he is recovered, my lady?”
“Oh no; he could not; he is far too badly injured; there can be no question of such a thing. He will be obliged to try to manage Amberstone as best he can, but it is a dispiriting thought. He is still only eight and twenty, you see, but his life has been ruined.”
“Perhaps he will marry soon,” Aspasia said, trying another tack.
“I cannot conceive it likely that anyone would want him now although it had looked as though he might be forming an attachment to a charming local girl – a Miss Pottinger!” the Dowager exclaimed so loudly that the rather strained conversation taking place between the Earl and his betrothed came to an abrupt halt.
“Oh, what has happened to him?” Letty cried, her own anxieties so inflamed by this terrible prognosis that she hardly noticed the reference to Miss Pottinger.
“Mama exaggerates,” his lordship said. “He has been badly wounded; do you really wish me to describe his injuries?”
Letitia Or The Convalescent Heart Page 7
