‘Oh dear,' she said. ‘I'm better now. What a fool I've been. You must not tell your father what a fool I've been, Edward.' He was still kneeling before her, watching her face, and she thought how very young he looked, and she was glad in a secret and guilty way that he would stay hers, like that, and not marry away from her. She patted his cheek, and he smiled. 'Poor Allen! What a time he's having of it, and on his birthday, too, when everything was supposed to be so splendid for him.'
‘Yes, poor Papa. We must try to make it up to him when the fuss dies down.’
*
Flora and Lord Meldon, who had once been the cause of tumult and scandal themselves, felt tenderly towards Allen and Jemima, and on the day after the news broke they came up with their scheme to ease matters for them. They proposed, when they left for London, to take with them not only Mary and William, but James too.
‘I've spoken to my father about it,' Meldon said, 'and he's perfectly agreeable to have James stay at Chelmsford House, and to present him at Court. He's sure he will be able to get James some appointment. The King likes well set up young men, and he will not forget what he owes to you, Sir Allen. As a gentleman of the bedchamber or something of the sort James will be in the way of making a career for himself, and the talk here will soon die down once he is out of sight.'
‘And it will take him out of temptation's way, as far as Mrs Skelwith is concerned,' Jemima murmured approvingly, for from what she had seen and heard of James's attitude to the whole affair, she was not convinced he did not mean to take up again where he left off, only more discreetly.
Thus it was settled, and James, though not asked for his approval, was satisfied with the scheme. He was eager for new horizons and wider opportunities, and it would certainly be agreeable to be out of the way of his sniggering acquaintances and his scolding family for a while.
The last small incident happened on the day before the departure in the middle of September, when Mary had gone into York to make some last-minute purchases. She scorned the idea of hiding herself away and avoiding the Ansteys or Fussells or anyone else who might stare or laugh; but as she was walking along Pavement with her maid behind her, she almost bumped into a young man coming out of the hatter's shop, and when she saw that it was John Anstey, she almost wished she had stayed home.
There was a moment's awkward silence, and both of them turned a little red, and then John Anstey bowed abruptly, and Mary replied with a slight curtsey, and John said, 'Your servant, ma'am. I hope you are well?'
‘Thank you, sir. I'm just - just doing some shopping, you see.' It was foolish of her to explain her presence, and the foolishness warmed John, and made him more confident.
‘Miss Morland - I just wanted to say - I'm very sorry—' ‘Sorry? For what?’
Tor the unpleasantness. You know. For what Celia did. It was terrible, but she has been so miserable, if you saw her you would forgive her.'
‘I'm not aware there is anything to forgive,' Mary said coolly. He looked at her sadly.
‘I can understand your being angry. But really she has almost made herself ill, and my father has sent her and my sisters away to Harrogate until she's better.’
Mary felt she had been too cold, and tried to make amends.
‘I am leaving too, Mr Anstey. Tomorrow. I go to London tomorrow.'
‘Tomorrow? To London? And pray - pray, when do you return?'
‘I don't know,' she said, and suddenly it seemed silly to be so stiff with the boy she had known since she was a child, her old friend and admirer, the first of her knights. She dropped all her formality and stiffness. 'I don't know if I'll ever come back, except for holidays, now and then. My life can't be here any more.'
‘Can't it? Oh Mary, can't it?' He took her hands impulsively, affected by her change of mood, and she did not pull away. 'I'm independent now, and you are of age too. Our parents cannot oppose anything we want. Mary, couldn't you marry me? You know how I feel about you.'
‘I know,' Mary said gently. 'I'm sorry, John. It wasn't my parents who opposed before, you know, it was me.'
‘They told me that, but I didn't believe it, quite. You had looked at me - and said things - I believed you cared for me. I still believe it,' he said stubbornly, overcoming his shyness.
‘I do care for you, John, but it's impossible. I can't live here, like this.' She freed a hand, to wave it at the city of York. 'There's a bigger world that I belong to. And especially now, after what's happened, I can't stay here.' She resumed her formality like a mantle, and gave a slight curtsy. 'Goodbye, Mr Anstey. I'm glad I had the chance to say goodbye to you before I leave.’
But for once John did not follow her example. He stood his ground, his face a little red, and his eyes defiant, and said, 'You'll come back, one day, when you've had enough of the wide world. And I'll be waiting for you. I'll wait for ever for you, if needs be. You'll come back to me one day.’
Mary stared at him for a moment, and bit her lip, and turned quickly away down the busy street.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jemima opened Flora's letter and scanned it quickly, while Allen, lying on the sofa under a blanket, watched her face expectantly until it broke into a satisfied smile.
‘It is done?' he said. 'William has a ship?'
‘It is done. He is made first lieutenant into the Albemarle, 28, going out to the Leeward Islands.'
‘First lieutenant in a small frigate will be the best possible start for him,' Allen said with satisfaction. 'And I imagine he is lucky to get the place.'
‘Flora says her father-in-law had very little to do, now that Lord Howe is First Lord. She says that to the West India veterans the name of Morland is all.’
She read on. 'Albemarle sails on the eighteenth, so he will be at sea at Christmas. What a shame! But I am so pleased for him. It was what he wanted.’
Allen smiled privately at this change in her attitude. ‘And what of the others?'
‘Not much. James is settled in, and gone down to Windsor for Christmas with the Court. Flora and Mary have been to a concert - Mary and Horatio danced together at Charlton House,' she turned the page, 'they are all going to Wolvercote for Christmas because Windsor is too Germanic and dull. And that's all.' She folded the page and looked up at him, smiling. 'It seems they are all well and happy, from the tone of the letter. Flora becomes a good correspondent.'
‘Perhaps in time she will become a good mother, too,' Allen said. Jemima had grown so used to bringing up Louisa and Jack that she no longer thought of them as Flora's children, and for a moment she was confused.
‘But she's not pregnant - oh, you mean Louisa?'
‘And Jack; but Louisa mostly.'
‘Well, it is a change for the better that she has Louisa at the boarding school in Chelsea, which is at least closer than Yorkshire. And she's taking her to Wolvercote for Christmas. I think now that Louisa is getting to an age where Flora can take an interest in her appearance and marriage prospects, she may become fonder of her. Flora never found anything interesting in babies, and who can blame her?'
‘Hm. I hope it answers, because I miss my little girl very much. I have no one to warm my lap now.'
‘Nonsense, you have Lucy. But I know what you mean,' she added, with half a sigh. 'It is very quiet with the children gone. I'm so glad now that we have our second family. Henry and Jack and Lucy will stop us growing dull.'
‘And perhaps in time Edward will provide us with some grandchildren,' Allen said wryly.
‘Edward hasn't time for girls, with all he does,' Jemima said defensively.
‘I don't think he'd have any time for them even if he did have time for them,' he said. Jemima wondered how much he meant by that, and decided not to pursue it.
‘I think he's a man who will fall in love late in life, and do it properly. For the moment I'm just grateful that he is so un-preoccupied, and hard-working, because otherwise you'd be doing it all, and the surgeon said you must rest, or you'd have another attack.'
�
��I know what he said, and he's a damn fool,' Allen said. ‘He said it was brought on by the strain—'
‘Of my birthday, yes. That is a nice irony, don't you think?'
‘Oh, darling! I wish I could have kept all that from you,' Jemima said, taking his hand.
‘Nonsense. We share things - everything. That's how we've always gone on. And as soon as I'm off this damned sofa—'
‘You should be in bed by rights, and if I could have got you to stay there you wouldn't be on the sofa,' Jemima said sternly. 'And when you're well enough to get up, you and I are both going to retire from the business of running the Morland estate and the Morland family and, in your case, half of Yorkshire, and concentrate instead on the longest love-affair in history.’
He kissed her hand. 'You would really give up your horses for me? Now that's what I call real love.'
‘Ah, well, I didn't say I'd give up the horses—' Jemima began, and he laughed. 'All right,' she said sheepishly, ‘but horses will be part of our pleasure, and only the pleasant parts, I promise. The steward can govern all that as well, under Edward.'
‘Yes, Edward's old enough now to take up the reins, and Godman is very experienced.'
‘Hm. I just wish his name was Clement, though,' Jemima mused, looking into the fire, her hand still warm in her husband's. 'Do you think we can get him to change it?'
‘Anything's possible,' Allen said. 'What time is it? Is it time for tea yet? I could relish a dish of tea - or two - and some hot, buttered teacakes.'
‘You're master of the house, you shall have tea at any time you choose,' Jemima said, jumping up with an energy that belied her age and going briskly to the door. As her hand reached the doorknob, Allen called her back.
Jemima!'
‘Yes?' she turned inquiringly, and he smiled at her with affectionate amusement.
‘Why don't you just ring the bell?’
*
In September 1787, on a beautiful, sunny autumn day when the leaves were just beginning to yellow, Henri Maria Fitzjames Stuart, Comte de Strathord, was riding in a closed carriage down the precipitous and fashionable Rue St Jacques. Beside him his little daughter sat very upright, as she had been taught, and in a pensive silence which allowed Henri to continue with his own thoughts. The Rue St Jacques was the heart of the Quartier Ecossais, and it reminded him relentlessly of Madeleine. Here he had lived as Monsieur Ecosse, and woven his wicked plan around her. Here he had first loved her, and spent that long, lovely summer before their fraudulent marriage getting to know her, walking with her in the Jardins du Luxembourg.
Such a day as this, when the sunshine was that soft, deep yellow that only comes in autumn, when the warmth held a warning of cold to come, making it the more grateful, when the world was so beautiful and yet so poignant that one felt one must seize life and live it to the full, while there was time - on such a day Madeleine, loved and lost, seemed very close to him. And there was a great deal of her in Henriette-Louise - he thanked God for it. In her steady, sensible gaze, in her calm acceptance of whatever fate should mete out for her, and in her quick and lively humour, Henri found her mother over again. But in her looks there seemed nothing of him or Madeleine: Héloïse was only herself - the last Stuart princess, as he had come to think of her.
She was not really pretty, he knew that. She had a breadth of face - presumably from her mother - which gave her too much bone, too many planes; for since the Queen was the style of beauty, what was required from a young woman was a little, pointed, kittenish face. Her large, dark, melancholy eyes, which might have come straight from a portrait of King Charles or any of his kin, were not an asset in a society which admired light eyes; and her nose was a trifle too long and her mouth a trifle too full for true beauty.
Yet altogether her face had such charm, and such sparkling vitality, that he could never look at her without thinking her beautiful, and he had observed her in enough company to know he was not the only one who thought so. When he took her riding in the Bois de Boulogne, in her emerald-green riding habit, with a feathered tricorne hat perched upon her glossy black ringlets, sidesaddle upon the white pony he hired for her, she attracted every eye, and strolling couples would stop to watch her go by. Old men would lift their hats to her, and smile, and dames would clasp their hands in enthusiasm at the pretty sight. And Héloïse, who loved the whole world, would smile back, lighting her rather dark, sad face, and leaving a wistfulness behind her.
The years since Madeleine's death, the years in which he had devoted himself to her, had been happy and fruitful ones. He had worked hard, made himself such a reputation as a designer of interiors that what he did had transcended the barriers of prejudice and had come to be regarded more as an art-form than a trade, so that no one regarded him as ungentlemanly for earning his living by it. His fees were so enormous that no one was ever so indelicate as to ask what he would charge for transforming their house, and a bill would pass between Duncan and the customer's treasurer like a kind of immaculate conception. He had turned his hand recently to garden design and architecture also, and had travelled all over France, leaving his mark upon posterity.
All he did, he did for Héloïse, to make her proud of him, and to provide her with the background of wealth that he felt she ought to have. Indulged and adored at every turn, she might have become insufferably spoilt; but Henri felt that Madeleine's spirit hovered around her child, guarding her from vanity and pride, and directing her energy towards love. For she did love; it was her driving force. From the moment she first opened her eyes, she smiled at every face that hung above her crib. From the moment she could walk, she used her mastery of her legs to take her running from one embrace to another. She brimmed over with love for her nurses, the servants, the dogs, the horses who drew her carriage, the sparrows outside the window, the beggars at the gate of the park. She wept over a pigeon with a trailing wing, and kept it in her bedroom and fed it bread and milk until it was well enough to be released. She would have hugged the beggar at the street corner, sores and all, had her nurse not restrained her, when he played a tune especially for her on his thin whistle-pipe. When she was five, she gave away her new shoes to a pauper child who ran beside her carriage with bare feet.
But most of all she loved Tante Ismène, and Uncle Meurice, and Papa; and Henri, swelling and burgeoning with her love like a plant watered after long drought, grew sleek and happy and kind. He had not entirely given up his old ways: a child's love, however, spiritually satisfying, did not fulfil his physical urges. He had mistresses, longstanding and casual, but he was circumspect about it, so that Héloïse should not find out. He liked to drink and dance and play cards, and though he restrained himself to moderation on Héloïse's account, sometimes he felt a need to break out that could not be denied.
On those occasions, he had two plans. The one was to tell his daughter that he would be away for a day or two, and to go off on a debauch at the house of one of his rich friends, drinking himself unconscious, gambling, making love, just as he pleased. At other times he would change his clothes for something simpler and return to his old haunts round the Cour du Commerce, where he resumed the identity of Monsieur Ecosse. He had made many friends amongst the lawyers and students there, and liked to drink and talk with them.
His chief friend there was a newcomer to Paris, a farmer's son from the Champenois called Dan ton, who had graduated in law and recently bought himself a practice and taken a wife. Danton's Gabrielle was just another such as Madeleine, which had been Henri's first attraction to Danton's house. There was always soup and bread and wine and a bright fire and a well-swept hearth at Danton's house, and a cheerful, friendly, sensible woman to greet his friends and make them comfortable.
Danton himself was an astonishing man, with a face so scarred and ugly that it by-passed the normal rules of beauty and had an attractiveness of its own. At two he had been gored in the face by a cow, trampled by a herd of pigs at five, disfigured by small pox when he was ten, and kicked in the face b
y a bull when he was fourteen. He was stockily-built, barrel-chested, short-necked, and large-headed, full of vitality, brilliant ideas, fervour, and untamed sexuality.
At Danton's house Henri met other lawyers, printers, unemployed actors, novelists and pamphleteers and poets and students, and here he was able to drink deep and listen to the conversation of this naturally rebellious group. The new philosophies took on a different slant when mouthed by these men rather than Ismène's polite and well-bred circle. Everything was ruthlessly criticized, and brisk and sometimes even sensible plans worked out for governing the country and, more particularly, Paris, when the time came. And they were sure the time would come. We cannot, they said, be satisfied for ever with muddle and incompetence, corruption and jobbery and the inequalities of wealth and poverty.
Though it was a release to become, for a little while, Monsieur Ecosse, Henri generally returned home after those debauches sobered and thoughtful. The time was coming, he thought, and if Paris went up in flames, he would have to learn to live in fire if he was not to perish. And he was determined not to perish: he had to survive, for Henriette-Louise's sake.
The carriage lurched on the uneven cobbles, breaking his train of thought and bringing him back to the present, and he found his daughter's eyes upon him, and smiled reassuringly at her.
‘You were thinking very deeply, Papa,' she said.
‘I was thinking about your mother,' he said, selecting one thing from the many. 'She would be so pleased that you are to go to school. You must be sure and work hard at your lessons, for she would want you to be an educated lady.'
‘And you, Papa? What do you want me to be?'
‘Clever, and beautiful, and happy,' he said, 'and since you are already all three, you have only to be yourself to please me.'
‘I hope I shall like it at the convent,' she said thoughtfully, and her eyes were a little apprehensive. 'You won't leave me there and never come back, will you, Papa? I shall see you?'
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