Jane Feather

by Engagement at Beaufort Hall

  “Oh, it’s the one with Wilde’s name on it.” Esther leafed through it with a gentle fingertip. “You did well to order it, although I know we have another copy somewhere in the library in town.”

  “Yes, the one accredited to C.3.3.” Imogen leaned back in her chair. “It’s just appalling what happened to Wilde. Such a brilliant man, just thrown away like that. ‘Hard labor, hard fare, and a hard bed,’ isn’t that what he was sentenced to?”

  “As I remember.” Esther set the book down. “And for a man who had lived such a soft and indulgent existence, it must have been horrendous. It’s no wonder his health was broken.”

  “No wonder at all.” Imogen rose from her chair, glancing at her image in the mirror above the fireplace, tucking an errant strand of hair into one of the pins that kept her chignon in order. “Of course, if he hadn’t insisted on suing Queensbury for libel, the whole business would have stayed undercover.” She returned to her seat. “Such a waste of a brilliant mind, all for the sake of some misplaced vanity.”

  “Who are you talking about?” Duncan came into the drawing room, Harry Graham at his side. “You sound uncommon serious.”

  “Oh, we were talking about Oscar Wilde.” Imogen gestured to the volume on the side table. “I just received the copy of Reading Gaol that bears his name. His plays are so witty, so pointed. I remember thinking how Lady Windermere’s Fan showed up the whole hypocrisy of this society.” She glanced at Harry Graham, who had taken up the volume. “Did you see it, Harry?”

  He looked at her briefly. “Yes, and I agree. A dreadful waste of a brilliant mind.” He set the book down again.

  “Help yourself to a drink, Harry?” Esther gestured to the sideboard. “Duncan seems to be off in a world of his own.”

  Her brother looked up hastily from his intent perusal of the fireplace. “Oh, yes . . . yes, of course. Forgive me, Harry. Whiskey all right?” He went to the sideboard as he spoke. “I really don’t think we should have that man’s books in the house, Gen. He’s persona non grata in society—many people won’t speak his name, particularly in front of women.”

  “Well, that’s just nonsense,” Imogen declared robustly. “That’s as good as saying one shouldn’t go and see The Importance of Being Earnest, for instance, for fear of contamination by . . . oh, how did Wilde describe it?”

  “‘The love that dare not speak its name,’” Harry said quietly, taking a cut-glass tumbler from Duncan with a nod of thanks. “Is that the quote you’re referring to, Imogen?”

  “Yes, exactly that,” she agreed, sipping her sherry. “What possible harm can a man’s private life do to the rest of the world?”

  Duncan’s complexion changed rapidly from red to white. “Not even a married woman would dare say such a thing, Imogen . . . and certainly not a single lady of breeding. You’ll never find a husband if you go around saying such things in public.”

  “I wasn’t aware that I was looking for a husband just at present,” his sister retorted.

  “I’m sure Charles wouldn’t approve,” Duncan persisted.

  “In the circumstances, Charles’s approval or disapproval are moot, I would have said.” Imogen rose to refill her sherry glass. “But as it happens, Duncan dear, you’d be wrong. Charles was a supporter of Wilde, believe it or not. If he’d been asked to defend him, he would have done. He said so himself.”

  Esther shot her sister a warning look as Imogen returned to her seat. Duncan was visibly upset, and Imogen was making things worse. Imogen caught the look and gave an infinitesimal nod of understanding. “We thought it felt like snow when we rode home.” She turned the subject onto an unimpeachable topic.

  “Yes, we thought so too.” Harry promptly picked up the cue. “It’ll put a damper on tomorrow’s shooting, I fear.”

  “Oh, it won’t be more than a dusting.” Duncan seemed to have returned to himself. He refilled Harry’s tumbler. “So what has Mrs. Windsor prepared for our delectation this evening?” He sat down, crossing his ankles, sipping his whiskey. The smile he cast generally around the small circle seemed strangely unmoored to Imogen.

  “I’m not sure, but I think in your honor she’s prepared her crown roast of lamb as the centerpiece. And I know there’s blackberry and apple pie somewhere on the menu.”

  “Excellent.” Duncan rubbed his hands together. “A veritable feast . . . just wait until you taste Mrs. Windsor’s blackberry and apple pie, Harry.”

  Imogen cast a quick look at Esther. Did she too think there was something odd about their brother’s manner? But Esther appeared oblivious. The arrival of the rest of Duncan’s guests put a stop to speculation. The young men seemed to have recovered from the afternoon’s excesses—they drank liberally from the whiskey decanter and kept up a level of social gossip and small talk quite clearly intended to provide diversion for their host’s sisters. Imogen and Esther did their best to reciprocate, showing appreciation of the effort, but the summons to the dinner table was something of a relief.

  Imogen thought Duncan rather abstracted throughout dinner. He seemed a little slow to respond to questions, or to jocular comments from his friends, and the level in his wineglass was consistently low. She wondered again if Esther noticed too, but her sister was cheerfully maintaining her role as friend and surrogate hostess and gave no sign of being aware of any abstraction on Duncan’s part.

  They were reaching the end of dessert, the last crumb of blackberry and apple pie demolished, when Sharpton entered the dining room. He looked affronted, a most unusual expression for the normally impassive butler.

  “I beg your pardon, Lord Beaufort, Miss Imogen, but Mr. Riverdale is insisting upon seeing Miss Imogen immediately.”

  “What?” Imogen dropped her napkin to the table. “What do you mean, Sharpton? Insists?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He is in the hall. I asked him to wait in the drawing room, but he refused. He insists on seeing you.” Sharpton’s voice was a monotone; only his rigid expression gave away the outrage he was concealing.

  “Well, bring him in, man,” Duncan declared. “Bring him in at once. I’m sure he’ll be glad of a glass of port and some of that excellent Stilton. What d’you mean, keeping the man waiting in the hall?” Duncan was on his feet, napkin clutched in his fist, with every intention of heading for the hall.

  Sharpton coughed. “With your permission, my lord, I did invite Mr. Riverdale to join you but he refused. His business, he says, lies with Miss Imogen . . . and no one else.”

  A momentary stunned silence fell over the table and all eyes turned to Imogen, who was very pale, but remained at her seat. “Would you show Mr. Riverdale into the library, Sharpton? I will join him there when I have finished dinner.”

  Sharpton bowed. “Yes, of course, ma’am.” He slipped away noiselessly.

  The silence around the table was profound. Esther looked at her sister, who calmly spooned Stilton from the round in front of her and placed it carefully onto her plate. Equally calmly, she took the scissors and clipped a bunch from the hothouse grapes on the plate in front of her. She began to eat.

  Esther smiled to herself and followed suit. There were going to be fireworks. As far as she was concerned, it was high time the artificial tranquility of the last few months was shattered. The coming confrontation was long overdue, however it ended. Imogen had broken the engagement too quickly to be at peace with her decision.

  The door opened abruptly and they all looked up. Charles Riverdale stood there, pulling off his gloves, snow clinging to the shoulders of his caped greatcoat, flakes glistening in his dark hair. “Esther . . . Imogen . . . gentlemen.” He nodded amiably to the diners. “As you haven’t quite finished your dinner, Imogen, then I’ll take a glass of port with you all.” A footman hastily pulled out a chair for him, and Charles calmly took off his overcoat, handing it with his gloves to the footman before taking the proffered chair.

  He nodded his thanks as William Markham slid the port decanter towards him. He filled the glass that had app
eared beside him and took an appreciative sip. “Very fine, Duncan. Part of your father’s cellars, I assume. He was always very fond of his port, as I recall.”

  “Yes . . . yes, he was,” Duncan mumbled, glancing anxiously towards his eldest sister, who was continuing to eat Stilton and grapes as if nothing could disturb her composure.

  Esther couldn’t help her amusement despite the tension. Even when Imogen had broken off the engagement, Esther had not really believed these two could simply walk away from each other without a backwards glance. There was a connection between them that all the differences of opinion in the world could not sever. Admittedly, a stray mistress was rather more than a difference of opinion, she amended, but the issue had never really been debated between them. Imogen hadn’t given Charles an opportunity to explain himself or even to try to make amends, and as a result, she had been left swinging in the wind as much as he had. If they were to live in the same social world, they had to reach some kind of resolution. Charles, by taking matters so firmly into his own hands at this point, possibly had a chance of achieving that. Gen would not allow herself to be bullied, but she could perhaps be forcefully persuaded at least to come to the table.

  Imogen finally looked up from her plate. “Do you care for some Stilton, Charles?”

  “Thank you, no.” He leaned back in his chair and twirled his glass by its stem. “But please don’t let me hurry you.”

  “Of course not,” she agreed with a tranquil smile that made him want to shake her. But he maintained his composure.

  Imogen knew she was buying time as she marshaled her resources to deal with this unambiguous challenge. Charles intended to confront her with what had happened on the lake last night. She could not deny those moments under the moonlight. She still loved him. And he felt the same for her. It didn’t matter that they were poles apart in so many important ways: This love was a visceral connection that existed on a plane of its own. But one could not live a normal, rational existence on that plane alone. In the real world, they had to find common ground where their differences could exist side by side or somehow be overcome.

  A common ground where she could forgive his betrayal?

  Chapter 12

  The stilted attempts at conversation finally unnerved Imogen. Charles had made no attempt to ease the situation, merely sitting toying with his port glass, his eyes resting with seeming benevolence upon Imogen. Except that she could feel his mounting irritation like an impending tidal wave building beyond a smooth tranquil shoreline. She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and tossed the cloth to the table beside her plate.

  “If you’ll all excuse us . . .” She pushed back her chair and Charles was on his feet instantly, coming around the table to place a solicitous hand beneath her elbow to help her up. She moved away from him towards the door, which a footman jumped to open for them both.

  “Let’s go into the library.”

  Charles followed her into the comfortably shabby room, where commodious leather armchairs squatted like old men dozing in their clubs after a good luncheon. He ignored the chairs, choosing instead to stand by the fire, one arm resting along the mantelpiece, one foot on the fender. Imogen debated whether to sit or stand. While sitting would put her at something of a positional disadvantage, it would indicate a composure that she was far from feeling.

  She took a wing chair, one in which she could sit upright, unlike the squishy armchairs into whose depths she would sink too comfortably for comfort in the present situation, and regarded Charles with an interrogatively raised eyebrow, waiting for him to speak.

  Charles looked at her in silence for a long moment, and it took very strong nerves to maintain her own silence. Finally he said, “I’m not going to accept it, Imogen.”

  “Accept what?”

  His nostrils flared. He said tightly, “Don’t be obtuse. I am not going to accept this situation. You cannot deny what happened last night—you cannot deny what we feel for each other. And a few hours later you’re stalking out of my house as if I’ve committed some heinous sin. Now . . . no, let me finish . . . I can see that inviting you this morning might have seemed like a trap, but it wasn’t intended as such. I tried to explain that to you. It was thoughtless of me, but no worse than that.”

  “As thoughtless, I suppose, as letting me discover accidentally that you’re keeping a mistress and child on the eve of our wedding,” she threw at him.

  “Oh, for crying out loud, Gen. I’ll grovel for that if I must.” He ran his hands distractedly through his hair. “Yes, it was thoughtless, criminally thoughtless, if you like. But that was all it was. I don’t have any feelings for Dorothea at all.”

  “And that makes it better?” she demanded, jumping to her feet. “You admit to having no feelings for a woman you’d been making love to for at least two years, a woman with whom you have a child. Do you even have any feelings for the child?”

  “Oh, now you’re twisting everything on its head,” he exclaimed. “In one breath I’m a dastard for having a mistress and in the next even more so for not having any great emotional attachment to her. What do you want from me, Imogen?”

  She took a deep breath. Things were getting muddled and she was as responsible for that as Charles was. She needed to separate the issues clearly in her mind, even though on one level they all had the same root. A lack of emotional consideration, a lack of sensitivity where the feelings of others were concerned.

  “I want you to think about other people once in a while,” she said slowly and clearly. “Did you think once about how I would feel if I discovered about Mrs. Symonds and the child . . . your child . . . in essence my stepchild, if we were married? Did you ever think about that?”

  Charles looked down into the fire, watching the orange flickers in the yellow flames. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “that I thought once we were married, what had happened in the past could stay in the past.”

  “Your child is not in the past. The boy is very much in the present,” she responded quietly. “Oh, I know it’s considered good manners to turn a blind eye to a man’s illegitimate children, and it’s always been expected of a good wife. But the world is changing, Charles, and I belong to that changed world. And I don’t have those kinds of manners. I will not tolerate a marriage where I must stay at home and be loyal and loving and giving while my husband has the right to philander, father children at will, and treat me like a good or a chattel—oh, don’t laugh. It’s not funny.”

  “The expression is,” he said, looking up from the fire, his eyes alight now with warmth and amusement. “But I accept what you’re saying. And I promise, Gen, I will never consider you to be either a good or a chattel. And I will try, really try, to be more sensitive, more aware about the effect on other people of what I do.”

  “And what of the child?”

  “Jamie,” he said, so quietly she could barely hear him.

  “Jamie . . . that’s his name?” Her own voice was soft.

  He looked up with a slight smile. “Yes. He was . . . a surprise, I think you would say. Oh, the pregnancy wasn’t planned, of course, I don’t mean that, but I didn’t expect to feel as I did—do—about the child, Gen. I never had siblings, and I’ve never had any dealings with babies . . . small children . . . oh . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it . . . the rush of feeling when I first held him.”

  Imogen was silent for a long time. The image his words conjured, Charles with a baby in his arms, was startling, startlingly wonderful. She had assumed they would have children, of course. And she had assumed that theirs would be a modern enough marriage for her to have some say in the timing of their production. But she hadn’t thought about the emotional aspects of such an addition to their union. And now she could see Charles as a father, and that added a whole new dimension to this burgeoning reconciliation.

  She spoke finally. “Your liaison with Dorothea is over . . . truly over?”

  He sighed a little. “Yes, truly over. It has been for man
y months. But I could never give up seeing my son.” He looked at her closely. “I see the child every week, and of course I see Dorothea. She is Jamie’s mother, Imogen.”

  “Of course,” she said swiftly. “I wouldn’t expect otherwise.” She looked down at her lap, twisting the fringe of the paisley shawl between her fingers. It was time to let it go. The man she loved, loved his child. It was a simple enough fact and one that warmed her to her core.

  A little gleam appeared in her eyes, and her tone was considering as she said, “Supposing . . . just supposing we were thinking about marriage again, you wouldn’t object to how I choose to spend my money?”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “That again?”

  “Yes, I know we haven’t discussed it in detail, but I know how you feel and it rankles. And if we were to start all over again, I think we should renegotiate all the terms. I want your agreement that you will not make any attempt to direct how I choose to spend my own funds.”

  Was she prepared to start all over again? Was that what this was all about?

  “So you want to start from the beginning again?” he asked, frowning.

  She shrugged, trying to sound casual and matter-of-fact. “Well, we are no longer engaged. It’s a publicly known fact, and I see no reason to change that at this point. If, somehow, we can see a way to changing it, then I’m willing to try. But nothing has altered how I feel about what happened.”

  “I see.” He tapped his mouth with his fingertips. “So you’re saying I have to change for you to agree to resuming our engagement? Or do you bear any responsibility at all?”

  It was a challenge and he was entitled to throw down the glove, Imogen thought. She knew she wasn’t perfect. “All right,” she said. “Tell me how I need to change.”

  Charles thought for a moment. The truth was, he didn’t want her to change one iota. He loved her passion, the intensity of her convictions, even if they were inconvenient sometimes. He loved her wicked sense of humor, her intelligence, the speed and keenness of her wit, her warmth. “Only in one way,” he said. “I would like you to try to understand me better. I would like you to try not to filter your view of me through your own convictions about the way this imperfect world should be. I’m not against women’s suffrage, I’m not against women’s legal and social equality, but I think I can see more clearly than you the difficulties in achieving those goals, however righteous they may be. It’s going to take a very long time, my dear, and I would like you to see that, to recognize that not everything can happen when you want it to. And sometimes I am going to do things, because that’s who I am and the work that I do, that will not help to advance your causes. I need you to accept that and, at the very least, not hold it against me personally.”