A Night of Secret Surrender

by Sophia James

  ‘The leaves are ridiculously overpriced, of course, and with the government’s penchant of raising the taxes on tea to be able to afford England’s expensive wars there is no telling how much higher the asking price will go. In fact, I buy it mostly because Alexander is so very fond of it, but I lock the caddy now so that the staff do not pilfer the leaves, which is rather upsetting.’

  As her grandmother rambled on, Celeste found herself bemused. All these words meant nothing. They were fillers in the air with no meaning in them at all save for wasting time. She shuffled her feet beneath the table, a coldness all around her. Autumn in Sussex. Already the leaves were falling and the first winds had grown cold. Soon it would be winter.

  When the older woman dismissed her maid and the door shut behind her Celeste tensed.

  Alone now. Just the two of them. The steam from the china cup plumed in the air, the smell of foreign lands on its edge.

  ‘Why have you returned? Why now, after all these years, have you come back?’

  The gloves were off and the fight rose in Celeste’s throat, only to be squashed down with a true effort. She had no other option, no safety net. The next moments were important.

  ‘I have nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Your mother told me exactly that when she arrived home from France and we all know how that turned out. Badly. A dissolution of the mind. I doubt I can weather another loss of the same ilk.’

  ‘I have a child.’ Four words that sat in the air like firecrackers, exploding with consequence and weightiness.

  ‘And the father?’

  Celeste shook her head. She could not place Summer’s name in the ring of fire.

  Her grandmother stood, fingers whitened where they held on to the table.

  ‘How old is it?’

  ‘He is nearly five months. His name is Loring.’

  The opaque glance of her grandmother was sharp and she looked each and every one of her seventy-two years.

  ‘He? He is a boy and he is here?’

  ‘Upstairs. Asleep.’ Celeste found she could not quite make a full sentence; her mouth was so very dry.

  ‘I see.’

  Her grandmother signalled her servant and then without another word she was gone.

  * * *

  Celeste was summoned to her grandmother’s room again the next morning, though this time she was asked to bring the child.

  Snatching Loring up from where he lay, she changed his swaddling cloth and tidied his face and hair. It never hurt to put on your best face, she thought, as she saw the woman who had come to fetch her watching them.

  Her grandmother was in bed today which was surprising, a deep blue shawl draped about her shoulders. When the girl left her in the room and shut the door, the older woman began to speak.

  ‘I am tired today, Celeste, a fatigue that is coming more and more often upon me of late.’

  ‘Then I am sorry for it. I hope you start to feel better soon.’

  ‘Could I see him?’ Her eyes were on Loring, tucked up against Celeste’s chest and still half-asleep.

  ‘Of course.’ She placed her child against her grandmother’s raised knees. She had always been a fierce, unpredictable woman and Celeste did not want her son frightened. But she need not have worried, for the lines of sternness disappeared as her grandmother gazed down on her firstborn great-grandson.

  ‘He is beautiful.’

  ‘I think so.’ Celeste could not help but smile.

  ‘And bonny, too.’ Her grandmother’s old fingers caressed his fat ones, though they stilled as the grasp tightened.

  ‘I had forgotten that they did that,’ she whispered. ‘And the smell.’ She breathed in deeply. ‘How could I fail to remember that? Loring, you suit your name.’

  This was pronounced in the French way with the retracted L. ‘Does he have other names as well?’

  Celeste shook her head, though his birth certificate sported Summer as a middle name. She had not been brave enough to place Shayborne along the line in the courthouse at Calais, so Fournier had stood there instead.

  ‘You are beautiful, little Loring. Where do you sleep, my love?’

  ‘Next to me.’ He had done so since his birth.

  ‘Mary Elizabeth’s cot is in the attic. Is that something you might wish to use?’

  It was the first time her mother’s name had been spoken between them, falling as a shared sorrow in the gap.

  ‘It is, Grandmère.’

  ‘Then I shall send for it to be brought down immediately.’

  Loring’s eyes were fixed on his great-grandmama’s, the amber in them obvious in the light from the window.

  ‘Does he have his father’s eyes?’ The question was quiet.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yet he looks like a Faulkner, too, and it has been so long since we have had the gift of a birth here at Langley.’

  Sitting on the chair next to the bed, Celeste relaxed. They had come home, Loring and her, and they were safe. When her grandmother’s hand reached out she took it and knew that there was at least a new start in such a gesture. A truce, maybe, and a beginning.

  * * *

  A visitor turned up four days later. Vivienne Shayborne was small and beautiful. She wore black, the colour suiting her tawny hair, and her eyes were a pale green.

  ‘I hope you do not mind my coming. Your grandmother had mentioned your presence here and I thought to at least make myself known to you. I seldom have company, you see, so this is a chance to get out of Luxford. My husband died a little over a year ago of consumption and so...’ She left the implication hanging. ‘Perhaps you remember me. From before. I recall you vividly.’

  Despite herself Celeste smiled. ‘I found a brooch of yours once, gold and emerald, that was lost in the kitchen gardens.’

  ‘And you brought it back to me with a bunch of wild flowers. White bryony, if I remember correctly, tied in a blue ribbon. Summerley was a friend of yours, too, was he not?’

  Celeste hated the way her heartbeat rose and quickened even as she did not answer.

  ‘He has been in London for most of the time since his return from the Continent and, believe me, he has had an enormous impact on the hearts of the young women of society. One of my brother’s friends wrote to tell me she swears he will be married soon. Miss Smithson, I think, was the name mentioned, though I have not had time to speak to him directly of it.’

  Celeste felt as though the air had left her body. Married. For ever. She made herself listen as Vivienne kept talking.

  ‘The Continental war was a long and onerous one and Shay was glad of some respite from it. Jeremy wished that he, too, might have been a part of the emancipation of Europe, but he could not go.’

  ‘I am sorry for the loss of your husband, Lady Shayborne.’ Was this the right title to give her, Celeste wondered, the English system of address so convoluted and difficult?

  ‘Vivi. Please call me Vivi, and whilst I have had a great number of months now to come to terms with it, I suppose that I haven’t. May I ask why you cut your hair? I remember it used to fall past your waist when you were here last. One of your crowning glories, I remember it said.’

  The quick change of subject was disconcerting.

  ‘It was safer for me to play a lad for a while.’

  ‘On the stage?’ Vivienne Shayborne’s eyes widened.

  ‘In a war. In Paris. After my father died I became a sort of courier. I imagine that here such things are unheard of, but there...well...I had to live.’ She found it hard to finish.

  Vivi nodded. ‘Sickness has restrictions, too, and my husband and I were not lucky enough to be blessed with children. Your grandmother described your small son in detail to me and I should love to meet him.’ Her green gaze rested on Celeste’s ringless hands, yet the woman before her did not seem to be here to criticise or to judge. She was lonely perhaps, left in the country as a young widow and trying to cope with her grief. There was melancholy there, too. Celeste recognised such an emot
ion because she’d often felt the same.

  Did Summer Shayborne come to Sussex much? Was he expected home across the coming weeks? So many things she could not ask, dared not ask because she had given up every right to.

  ‘Perhaps you would come to Luxford for tea tomorrow afternoon. I like to sit out in the greenhouse with my dogs when it is fine.’

  ‘I would enjoy that.’

  ‘It’s a very quiet house with everyone gone, but the trees are beautiful in the autumn. If you feel up to it, we could have a short walk. I think your grandmother is worried about you. She hoped I could be a friend.’

  ‘She said that to you?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but...’

  ‘Could she come to Luxford tomorrow as well? She may not want to, of course, for she seldom goes anywhere, but I think she might enjoy the invitation.’

  Vivi Shayborne clapped her hands. ‘Then it will be a proper afternoon tea with the table set elegantly, for it has been so very long since I had real visitors.’

  After she had gone, Celeste went to find her grandmother. In the days since she had arrived she had only seen her three times and each time had been different. Yet she had not been asked to leave and treasures had turned up unannounced to her room: the cot and baby clothes, warm winter blankets, a new desk with paper and pens and a fine shawl.

  The two gowns she had come to England with had been washed and pressed and mended, and if they were not the pink of fashion, they were nevertheless serviceable and presentable. Perhaps it was time to try to work out the future. For her and for her grandmother.

  Lady Faulkner was writing in the downstairs salon when Celeste found her, though she hastily pushed the journal under a pile of other papers.

  ‘I am in effect the chatelaine of Langley. Your uncle’s condition has worsened and I need now to put into place other safeguards to protect the estate.’

  ‘Then I hope I am not disturbing you?’

  A quick shake of the head was her only reply.

  ‘Vivienne Shayborne has asked us to Luxford for afternoon tea tomorrow. She was most hopeful we could both be there.’

  A heavy frown crossed the wrinkled brow.

  ‘I saw her yesterday in the village. She said nothing of it then.’

  ‘She has just now called in and she seemed very nice.’

  ‘She is a young woman who needs to marry again. Her husband, the Viscount, died a year ago and she has...atrophied here.’

  The word made Celeste smile. ‘Perhaps she is only now up to welcoming visitors again. She mentioned her dogs.’

  ‘Large Scotch collies. Frightening things. No doubt they will be at her feet where they usually are, drooling and misbehaving. She walks a lot with them through the woods and I have the feeling they need it.’

  ‘Then perhaps I might join her one day for the exercise.’

  ‘You are a nursing mother and I am not sure that would be wise. In my day we simply went to bed and rested and yet still Mary Elizabeth was born a month early.’

  That was the second time Celeste had heard her speak of her mother since she had been back. She tried to encourage more.

  ‘That must have been difficult for you to have such a small baby?’

  ‘I had two most competent governesses, so I seldom saw her for the first few years.’

  A twist of anger gripped Celeste. ‘Well, I intend to be there for every second of my child’s life.’

  ‘Even when the censure of others brings you to your knees?’

  ‘I don’t need society or its approval.’

  The returning laugh was harsh. ‘No one lives in a vacuum, Celeste. No one is immune to condemnation and if you think this fatherless child of yours is never going to be called out on such a fact, then you are wrong. My name can give some measure of protection, of course, but after that...’

  She turned away, but not before Celeste saw her hands shake.

  ‘I should not have come here...’

  She was stopped before she could utter another word.

  ‘Of course you should have come home, for no matter what your father said of me I will always protect family. You and your child will be welcome at Langley until the day I die and beyond it. Know that I would swear such even on my deathbed.’

  Celeste was astonished. She had not been asked for the details of her child’s father. She had not been castigated for becoming pregnant. Any censure had been directed at those who might be cruel about their situation. Her grandmother was standing between her and condemnation like an avenging angel as she swore guardianship until the day she died.

  It was astonishing. In a woman whom Celeste had imagined she would find little compassion, she had received fearsome and unwavering support. Even her own papa had been unable to promise as much.

  ‘Thank you.’ The words were small and insufficient, but her grandmother tipped her head and watched her closely.

  ‘If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be this—write to the father of your child and tell him of Loring’s existence. You might be surprised by what happens, Celeste, for if my advanced age has taught me anything it is that while one holds on to life, nothing is impossible.’

  Impossible.

  Some things just absolutely were. For a man of Summer’s worth to be tied to a woman like her simply because of a pregnancy was impossible and Vivienne Shayborne had just told her of his interest in one of the most beautiful and lauded daughters of the ton.

  He could have found her in France, should he have wanted to, for he had both the contacts and myriad ways of obtaining information. But he had not. He had taken the boat to England from Nantes and forgotten her.

  Summerley Shayborne was a good man, a moral man and a hero. Her own mother had had to marry her father because of an unplanned pregnancy and look how that had turned out. They had crucified each other with their unsolvable differences, punishing each other until neither knew any other way to be, even had they wanted to.

  She shook away any romantic notion of Summer arriving and professing his undying love the moment he knew she was at Langley. He was probably thanking his lucky stars for such a timely escape.

  Life had never been a fairy tale. She could stay here until she worked out exactly what she was going to do and their paths never need to cross again.

  The ache of such a realisation almost brought her to her knees, but she had a child to think about and a grandmother two feet away who was watching her carefully.

  ‘I shall not be sending any correspondence, Grandmère.’

  ‘So what is done is done?’

  Such words had her nodding. ‘It is just us. Me and the baby. There will be no one else.’

  * * *

  Later, walking with Loring across the wide green lawns to the lake, she fell to her knees behind a low stone wall and let the tears fall.

  ‘I will keep you safe,’ she whispered to the small sleeping child. ‘And I will always love you.’

  Another image rose as she said these words, shimmering velveted eyes soft after the throes of lovemaking.

  He’d told her she was beautiful and brave on their journey from Paris together, but now he was gone, from here and from her, the lure of London society drawing him in no doubt. She could imagine him in the city with his sense and his calmness, with his ability to negotiate the nuances of language and his easy way of leading people from all walks of life.

  Out of uniform he would be war-weary yet tough. How he must have drawn the interest of every lady young and old in court with his danger and mystery!

  Celeste picked a wild flower and stripped off its petals, lifting them up in the wind to scatter on the grass before her. She had become superstitious since losing Summer at Nantes and often now balanced one unlucky outcome against another. The way the petals landed. The number of ducks that crossed her path on the way to the river. Sneezing to the right, seeing spiders in the morning, birds flying low in the sky. Every step she took now held the terror of bad omens, the possibility of i
ll fortune in each living thing coming down to land on her shoulders.

  Once she had been brave and certain. Once she had been a woman who walked her world with boldness, daring and fortitude.

  Once. With Summer.

  She wished he was here with her and their child, and the ache was like a hole that ate at her every day.

  * * *

  Her grandmother was a completely different woman in the company of Vivienne Shayborne. She laughed at the antics of the hounds and even allowed one of them to curl up at her feet, its long face lying across her shoes.

  ‘I used to have dogs here before my husband died. My daughter played with them for hours and hours, but when one bit her on the hand Walter got rid of them all. No amount of persuasion on both our parts could change his mind.’

  ‘I suppose it’s only natural that a father wants to protect his children?’ Vivi said this casually, almost as an afterthought, but her grandmother stiffened in a way that was noticeable to them both.

  ‘Protection is sometimes overrated, I think. Better to let a child make mistakes and see the consequences of them. Your husband’s aunt, Vivienne, was the perfect example of that, I think. I remember she would allow the Shayborne boys to do the most dangerous things and watch them from a distance. To pick up the pieces, I thought at the time, but now I know it wasn’t that at all. She made remarkable men of them both because of her tolerance of their adventurous spirits.’

  Vivienne looked entranced at such a turn of conversation. ‘My husband was quite tight-lipped about his youth so I should love to hear more of what you know, Lady Faulkner.’

  It appeared as if her grandmother would say no more, but then she laid her hands on the table and leaned forward to speak.

  ‘They were little devils, both of them, but in the most charming of ways imaginable. Summerley, the youngest, was the leader because of Jeremy’s fragile disposition, but your husband was never far behind, I can assure you. They built a hut in the woods and slept there for a week once, high in the branches of an old oak. I found the ladders of rope a few months later on a walk and a sign carved into the trunk that read “Beware of apparitions”. Not ghosts, as any other young boy might have written, but apparitions. Summerley always had a way with words, even back then.’