The House

by A. O'Connor

  “Edbert!” she said loudly as she approached them.

  “Oh hello, Clara,” said Edbert, looking happy to see her.

  “I haven’t seen you in such a long time, where have you been hiding?” she mockingly scolded him.

  “I’ve been in New York, Clara.”

  She tutted loudly. “And not one postcard from you! You are a bad friend to me, Edbert. You’ll have to take me to lunch to make amends.”

  “I’d like that, Clara,” said Edbert, looking chuffed with himself.

  Clara waited for her moment and then turned to the man standing beside him and gave him a dazzling smile.

  The man did not smile back, but his dark eyes glanced at her in a disinterested way.

  Noticing Clara and the man were not greeting each other, Edbert said, “Do you two know each other?”

  “No, I don’t think we do, do we?” Clara continued to smile at the man.

  “Clara Charter, this is Pierce – Lord Pierce Armstrong.”

  Clara held out her gloved hand and Pierce took it and said, “Nice to meet you.”

  “And you.” She continued to smile at him.

  “Pierce is from Ireland. He’s over here attending a few parties.”

  “I see,” said Clara, realising this was why she hadn’t seen him before, or why her party hadn’t known him.

  “And are you enjoying yourself, Lord Armstrong?”she asked.

  He glanced at her. “Most of the time.”

  Another admirer suddenly appeared by her side. “Clara, our dance, I believe.”

  Clara felt like screaming at his interruption. She wanted to stay and talk to this man who was intriguing her.

  “Of course,” she smiled at him and took his hand. She smiled at Edbert and Pierce. “Edbert, I’m looking forward to our lunch. Lord Armstrong, a pleasure to meet you.”

  She was led off to the dance floor.

  If she was restless before talking to Pierce, she was twice as restless afterwards. She struggled to find another opportunity to speak to him during the night, but one didn’t arise. So she had to be content to try to overhear parts of conversations he was having with other people.

  “Heard anything of Robert Keane?” she heard Edbert ask him.

  “Yes, he’s just back from Scotland. I’m meeting him Tuesday in Fortnum and Mason for lunch.”

  That was the little bit of information Clara had been waiting for all night, and she could go home satisfied.

  Chapter forty

  Clara’s paternal grandmother, Louisa Charter, was coming to have tea with Clara and her mother. Clara’s family lived in a Chelsea stucco white townhouse.

  Clara had lived there all her life. She loved it there, and her memories were happy ones. She had two brothers, one older who was a doctor, and one younger still at Cambridge.

  Clara realised she was running late as the cab left her off outside the house, and she got out and hurried up the steps to the front door. Her grandmother hated lateness, and Clara tried to think of a suitable excuse as she rang the doorbell and waited for the butler to open it – but as she looked down at her hatboxes after a morning of shopping, she realised they wouldn’t be providing one.

  “Is my grandmother here?” asked Clara as the butler opened the door.

  “This past half hour. She’s with your mother in the drawing room.”

  Clara pulled a face, then removed her coat and hat and handed them and her shopping to the butler before making her way to the drawing room.

  “Here you are! We were getting worried about you,” smiled her mother.

  “The traffic was terrible from Knightsbridge,” explained Clara.

  “Isn’t it always?” said her grandmother. “At any time of day or night, if Clara is going anywhere from anywhere, the traffic is terrible, and that’s why she’s always late.” She looked knowingly at Clara as she offered her cheek to be kissed.

  Clara sat down and looked at her mother who smiled sympathetically at her while she poured her a cup of tea and passed it over.

  “None of us can fight our natures, Louisa, and it’s in Clara’s nature to veer towards the late side of things,” Clara’s mother, Milly, defended her.

  “This is half your problem, young lady – parents who overindulge you and shoo away any slight to you. I put it down to your having no sisters. I had four sisters and growing up, well, you’re just brought up differently from an only girl. No room for indulgence.”

  “Well, I will try to be on time in future, Grandmother,” said Clara.

  “I think it might be too late to save your reputation at this stage. A society hostess, who shall remain nameless, confided in me that you have the worst reputation in London for showing up to parties late. She says you’ve often been known to try and fit in two or three parties on the same night, and act as if it’s your right to arrive at any time you like.”

  “Well, I thought that showed good manners! Rather than declining invitations I make an effort to go to all of them!”

  “I do wish people wouldn’t talk about my daughter as they do,” said Milly, taking a sip of tea.

  “I believe a young lady shouldn’t come across as always in a rush . . . which is how you come across, Clara. A rush to everywhere . . . except down the aisle, of course. Perhaps your tendency to be late is making you late for your own wedding as well?”

  Milly gave Clara another sympathetic look.

  “Weddings are not about timing, they are about being with the right person,” said Clara.

  “Well, that is where you are wrong, young lady,” said Louisa. “Weddings are all about timing and your timing is decidedly off to me. It’s five years since you came out as a debutante. Five years! Most debutantes are married within months – their partner met and married by the time the season is over. That is the point of it all! But you, Clara! You’veenjoyed five seasons and not a whiff of an engagement!”

  “I just haven’t met the right person,” Clara shrugged and drank her tea.

  “Met the right person! You’ve met everybody who there is to meet. If you haven’t met the right person after that, then you never will!”

  “I haven’t met the right person who I can love.”

  “Oh dear,” Louisa sighed loudly. “Let me give you some advice, Clara. Do not marry the man you love – but the man who loves you. Life will be far easier for you that way.”

  “Well, she’s certainly met plenty who have loved her,” said Milly.

  “I would like it to be mutual,” said Clara. “Mutual love.”

  “You see, this is what you get when you have a girl who has been given everything – she thinks she can have everything. Well, you can’t, Clara. You can’t have everything in life. You’ve been blessed with looks and charm and you think you can have this love too. But love isn’t a given. And you’re in danger of ruining your life in the meantime.”

  “Ruin my life? I’m only twenty-four.”

  “Only, she says! Only twenty-four . . . I was on my second child by your age. They say you don’t want to get married. They say you enjoy the whole party circuit far too much ever to settle down. They say you enjoy the season more for the partiesthan what it is designed for – to find a husband. They say –”

  “They say too much!” interrupted Milly.

  “But looks fade, Clara, and charm sours alongside it. And you might not always be in such demand. You are in a prime position to elevate yourself to wherever you want, and position this family accordingly. Don’t let your time pass and miss your opportunity, Clara.”

  “I’m sure Clara knows exactly what she is doing, don’t you, Clara?” said her mother, smiling over at her.

  “Indeed I do,” said Clara, taking a sip from her tea.

  The door opened and Clara’s father walked in.

  “Ah, Terence, you’re home early,” smiled Milly, hoping her husband’s entry would put a stop to her mother-in-law’s tirade.

  “Hello, everyone,” he smiled as he kissed each of the wome
n.

  “You’ll be staying for dinner, Mother?” he asked.

  “If you insist,” answered Louisa.

  Clara waited until they were halfway through the pork dinner before making the enquiries she knew her grandmother would have ready answers to.

  “I met a new face at the Charlemont ball last night,” she said.

  “A new face or a young one?” asked Louisa.

  “Well, both, I suppose,” answered Clara. “A Pierce Armstrong.Lord Armstrong. Do you know him?”

  Clara watched her grandmother’s face as the mind behind it flicked through the catalogue of names she stored there.

  “Yes, the Armstrongs. Anglo-Irish. I knew his grandfather Lord Lawrence. Absolutely charming man, married a lovely girl from Kildare, and they went on to have six children.”

  “Yes?” asked Clara, anxious to know more but not wanting to reveal her interest to her family.

  “That’s right. The family did extremely well in the last decades of the nineteenth century, during Ireland’s boom. They had a house in London and Dublin as well as their main country house on a vast estate in the west of Ireland, which was their base. All the children went on to do very well. One of Lawrence’s daughters married the Duke of Batington. A son married into one of those senselessly rich American families with rather Dutch-sounding names who made their money in things like steel.”

  “Vanderbilt?” enquired Milly.

  “I can’t recall,” Louisa paused as she thought. “The title and the estate passed through to Lawrence’s eldest son Charles. And that’s when it all got a bit murky.” Louisa reached for her crystal glass and drank some wine.

  “Murky?” pushed Clara.

  “Lawrence’s son Charles inherited his father’s estate but none of his charm. He was known for being unpleasant and ruthless. He married someone like himself, an Anglo-Irish titled lady with not much charm either by all accounts. And they got caught up in that awful land war they had in Ireland in the 1880s.You see, this is the problem with Ireland. You can’t just go and live there and work and hunt like one would in Wiltshire or Yorkshire. You get embroiled in their turmoil and politics.”

  “What happened?” pushed Clara, trying to head off the beginning of one of her grandmother’s political rants.

  “They evicted one tenant too many, made too many enemies, and poor Charles was shot one day for his troubles.”

  “Goodness, how terrible!” commented Milly.

  “Dead?” enquired Clara.

  “No, he survived. But he wasn’t the same afterwards. And he died a few years later having never fully recovered. The title then passed through to his son.”

  “Which would be Pierce?” asked Clara.

  “Well, I presume this young man Pierce you met must be his son, yes.”

  “How intriguing,” said Clara.

  Louisa looked alarmed at her granddaughter’s interest. “It’s not really that intriguing at all, Clara. The Armstrongs might have been a force thirty or forty years ago. Now their house in London is gone, their house Dublin is gone and most of their vast estate is gone as well from what I know. They are a family on the way down, while we are a family on the way up.”

  Chapter forty-one

  Clara entered the tea rooms at Fortnum and Mason, but she wasn’t looking for the person she was having lunch with whom she had spotted immediately. She was surveying the room for Pierce Armstrong who should be having lunch there with Robert Keane. She saw them drinking tea at a table and, steadying herself, sauntered over.

  “Hello, there!” She stopped at their table and smiled brightly at them.

  Pierce looked at her as if he hadn’t a clue who she was. Luckily she was saved from embarrassment by the fact she was acquainted with Robert Keane.

  “My dear Clara, how are you?” said Robert, standing and smiling, kissing her cheek.

  “I’m very well, Robert. And good to see you.”

  Robert turned to Pierce. “Pierce, this is Miss Clara Charter.”

  Pierce stood up and shook her hand.

  “I think we’ve already met,” said Clara, smiling at him, before prompting, “At the Charlemont ball.”

  “Oh yes, nice to meet you again,” he said and sat down, leaving Robert and Clara to chat lightly.

  Clara felt herself becoming annoyed that Pierce had opted out of the conversation. She couldn’t help but glance at him as she talked to Robert, only to find he had picked up a newspaper and was reading through it.

  “Well, anyway, I’d better join my friend,” Clara said eventually. “It’s been nice to see you again, Robert, and eh – Lord Armstrong.”

  He looked up momentarily at her from his newspaper. “Yes.”

  She smiled and turned and walked across the tearoom to a man who was waiting anxiously for her to join him.

  Pierce folded away the newspaper as Robert sat down opposite him.

  “You met Clara at the Charlemont ball?” asked Robert, sitting back in his chair.

  “Yes, very briefly. I thought her a rather vacuous creature, flirting around the place like a giddy goat. Who is she anyway?”

  “Clara Charter . . . as in Charters’ Chocolates and Confectionery.”

  “She’s an heiress?” asked Pierce, glancing over at her.

  “Not directly. Just part of a wealthy family.” Robert looked over at her. “And just like one of their chocolates, she’s quite delicious, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Pierce took up a chocolate resting on the saucer of his teacup and studied it. “But the problem with chocolates is, no matter how delectable they look you never know what you’re getting – until you bite into it.”

  Pierce bit into the chocolate he was holding and chewed. He then tossed the rest of the chocolate back on the saucer, making a displeased face.

  Clara hardly listened to a word her male companion was saying over lunch, as she kept one eye on Pierce.

  “Clara? Clara – did you hear what I asked?” demandedher companion in irritation.

  Clara was jolted out of her dream-like trance. “Yes! Of course I heard you.”

  “Then you will then?”

  “Then I will what?” Clara looked at the man, confused.

  “Come shooting with me at the weekend?”

  “Oh no, I can’t possibly. I’ve already committed to too many engagements. Besides I can’t abide shoots.”

  “But Clara! You said you would!” he continued to plead, and Clara drifted off again.

  Seeing Pierce and Robert Keane get up to leave and then walk towards her to exit, Clara suddenly started laughing and pretended to be enjoying the company of the man with her. As the two men passed her table, Robert nodded and said goodbye. Pierce walked ahead, ignoring her.

  Clare cancelled all her appointments for the rest of the day and went home where she sat in silence, thinking about this man and the effect he was having on her. She had never felt like this before. By the end of the day she knew she had met the right man for her. All she had to do was catch him.

  Chapter forty-two

  Clara relentlessly pursued Pierce for the next few weeks. She started checking the guest-lists to all the parties and functions she was invited to and if Pierce wasn’t on it, she wouldn’t go. Quickly realising he was not to the forefront of London society, she discreetly organised for him to be invited to parties which she could attend and meet him at. She cultivated his friends. She vaguely knew his English cousin Gwen, daughter of the Duke of Batington, and began regularly to call on her for tea.

  “I met your cousin, Pierce, at a couple of parties,” said Clara nonchalantly.

  “Yes, he’s over for a while, I believe,” said Gwen, a very self-assured girl with a strong streak of arrogance. “He’s strikingly handsome, isn’t he?”

  “I guess he is . . . Are you two close?”

  “No, not really. I don’t think anyone is particularly close to Pierce. I’m not that friendly with his sister Prudence either.”

  “Did you not visit
your mother’s home in Ireland much growing up?”

  “Only when my grandfather was still alive. Bless him, he was a sweetheart. But then when Uncle Charles took over, we didn’t bother anymore. Charles could be . . . difficult. And the house – well, it’s cold and draughty. And it always seemed to be raining when we were there. Awful place, Ireland!”

  It didn’t seem like that to Clara at all. She had nearly become an expert on Ireland since she had met Pierce, reading every single thing she could get her hands on.

  Clara cleared her throat and put down her cup of tea. “I should think it would be very nice of you to invite your cousin to your garden party on Sunday.”

  “Would it?” Gwen looked unconvinced. “Pierce and I have really nothing in common.”

  “Hmmm, regardless . . . perhaps in the spirit of Anglo-Irish relations?”

  Pierce was invited to the garden party, did attend, and ignored Clara for the day.

  Clara spent her afternoon reading up on Ireland. She found herself becoming fascinated with Irish history and she wasn’t sure if it was just her fascination with Pierce Armstrong that was causing that. She spent hours going through the books in her father’s study, discovering all there was to be discovered.

  “Oh hello!” said her father, coming in and being surprised to find her there, head stuck in a book.

  “Sorry, I’ve been using your room to do a bit of research. Hope you don’t mind?”

  “Of course I don’t.” He bent down and kissed her forehead, then looked at the book she was holding. “Ireland in the Nineteenth Century,” he read out, looking at her curiously.

  “Just brushing up on my knowledge for dinner parties. It’s quite important, the Irish Question, isn’t it?”

  He went and sat at his desk, smiling. “I suppose it is.”