The Potter's Niece

by Randall, Rona

  ‘Bravo! Make him pay heavily. Choose a vastly expensive property. Between us, we can punish him — you, for his disgraceful treatment, and I, for bringing that illegitimate son to oust my future position. In my eyes the young pup will never be anything but illegitimate. Why should you and I be the losers, my dear Aunt Phoebe?’

  After taking her back to her carriage, Lionel went gleefully on his way. Life might be frustrating at times, but at least it needn’t be boring. Entering into intrigue on behalf of his aunt could be amusing and even profitable, enabling him to turn the screws on her whenever he wished. Not too soon, of course. She must suspect no ulterior motive. When she had left Tremain and settled in a place of her own would be the most opportune time, for he had no doubt that greed as well as spite would persuade her to retain dear Grandmamma’s rubies.

  In the meantime, there was this ravishing newcomer in the village, a young woman reputed to be rich. The important thing, of course, was to find out just how rich, but while doing so it would be enjoyable to pursue her with discretion, something which he felt should be easy for he had not missed the suggestion of discontent in her manner. Or was it loneliness? He would be only too willing to terminate either state for her.

  His thoughts were broken by the unexpected appearance of Miguel, galloping across the park at a furious pace. Even Lionel was forced to watch such a display of horsemanship. The boy rode magnificently, a skill no doubt acquired on the wilds of some Mexican plain. But did Grenada have vast areas in which a servant’s lad could learn to ride like that? Somehow one didn’t imagine so. Wasn’t it an island where people lazed all day in the sun? No matter. Wherever the unwelcome youth had grown up he had certainly been reared to the saddle. He would hold his own with the local Hunt, even outstripping the field. Lionel conceded that grudgingly.

  As the thunder of hooves drew nearer, he saw that the boy wasn’t wearing conventional riding clothes but Mexican-style trousers and jacket of leather, fringed and ornamented. He cut a striking figure and a damned handsome one — Lionel was forced to concede that also. No doubt women of all ages had been attracted to him during the voyage from America.

  The thought sparked an immediate idea, and when Miguel drew near he hailed him, greeting him affably and receiving in return a friendly smile.

  ‘You ride well, young sir,’ Lionel said patronisingly, ‘but we must rig you out with the proper clothes. I doubt if those would be accepted by the local Hunt.’

  Miguel shrugged and said that was surely unimportant since he wouldn’t be participating.

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Because I’m not accustomed to chasing animals for the pleasure of killing them.’

  ‘Again, why not? Don’t they do it in your part of the world?’

  ‘My mother used to tell me that in Mexico it was necessary to hunt for food, but in Grenada we were never hungry. Poorer people used to trap rabbits, of course.’

  Lionel could find no answer to that and the conversation threatened to flag until he brought up the subject he had in mind.

  ‘I expect you hunted many a pretty young woman on the voyage here. Or did they hunt you? Our local farrier’s wife, for instance. Mistress Fletcher. Your father was telling me about her — how charming she was, and of the friendship you struck up.’

  ‘Everyone struck up a friendship with her. She was much sought after.’

  ‘Because she is rich? Or so your father also tells me. I admit that surprises me in view of her lowly marriage.’

  ‘I know nothing about her marriage. As to being rich, it was other passengers who claimed that, people from her part of the country who knew about her family and background. She certainly appeared to be rich and was travelling in style. To me, it wasn’t important, and I can’t see that the social degree of her marriage is important either. Does it matter if it’s humble?’

  Damn his impudence, and damn his tone. Matching the chill of it, Lionel said, ‘Not in the least. Never let it be said that Tremain folk are snobbish. We must invite her here. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like to see here again?’

  ‘We intend to. And by-the-way, her husband isn’t a farrier now. My grandfather was telling us only this morning that he is building up a thriving trade in wrought iron. In the New World any man who works hard and succeeds is admired and respected, no matter what his background.’

  Lifting his crop, Miguel touched the wide brim of his ridiculous Mexican hat, and rode away.

  Disgruntled, Lionel’s thoughts turned back to himself, and immediately seized on the question of the Drayton Pottery. With Max Freeman’s arrival and his own chance of the Tremain inheritance disappearing like a puff of wind, he was forced to change his mind about a business which, as his mother had pointed out, had always been and always would be there, waiting for him. The time had come to stake his claim, and he would certainly call at Medlar Croft at the earliest opportunity.

  Meanwhile, he relished the chance to hit back at Max Freeman through the man’s disgruntled wife. Aiding and abetting Phoebe would be enjoyable. Making mischief was always that.

  There was also Martin Drayton’s extraordinary document to be mulled over. It had stirred a torrent of speculation, threaded through with an intriguing and somehow sinister touch, though he couldn’t analyse what it was or why his uncle should worry about the glaze on some drinking vessel. Pottery articles for such use were always glazed, otherwise they would be porous and would leak — even he knew that.

  So back came the question which had risen every now and then since Pierre told him about the incident at his father’s funeral. Could his mother’s beaker really have been the one to which Martin made obscure and disturbing references? And why had he warned Agatha not to drink from it, and why had Joseph promptly ordered him out of the house?

  That would be Carrion House, of course, which his father had restored with such magnificence and which his mother had never visited since the day she left it.

  ‘I could never bring myself to live there after your dear father died. I left it on the day of the funeral, and never went back.’ His mother had told him that more than once.

  But what Lionel remembered most was Pierre’s story of her parting gift, and how the wind had lifted her widow’s weeds, revealing her contorted face. And everyone had thought it to be twisted with grief-except Pierre, who believed it was smiling.

  CHAPTER 17

  Phoebe’s drive through Burslem was highly satisfactory, creating the stir she hoped for and confirming that everyone had heard the latest news from Tremain Hall. People stared as she went by; whether in admiration, sympathy, or merely curiosity she didn’t trouble to speculate. It was enough that they whispered to each other. Occasionally she acknowledged a favoured few with a gracious inclination of the head; others she ignored.

  At the sight of her carriage store-keepers hurried outside, ready to take her orders. The gentry were always served this way; never expected to descend from their vehicles or soil their fine shoes on rough stone or sawdust-covered floors. The butcher held up a brace of pheasants in one brawny hand and a newly slaughtered sucking pig in the other, proudly displaying their quality; the local draper hurried out with a roll of delicately patterned French mousseline, which caught her eye so much that she halted just long enough to feel the quality and to tell the man to deliver a dozen yards. Hannah’s nimble fingers could run up a pleasing afternoon gown for her. It would give the woman something to do.

  Other tradesmen she ignored, feeling she had done enough to show that she was bravely carrying on, despite shock — for surely few could imagine the recent events to have been anything less?

  It took her over an hour to tour the village, the final lap taking her past her family’s ancient pottery, for which she spared scarcely a glance. The mere chance of seeing her daughter looking like any female labourer was too embarrassing to contemplate, but she was forced to halt when Martin called to her. He was standing by the entrance, helping a man to erect a handsome pair of w
rought iron gates featuring Drayton’s name in the scrollwork.

  ‘Good-day to you, Phoebe. You’re just in time to admire Fletcher’s handiwork. He has made these gates in record time and they are much finer than the old ones. You know Damian Fletcher, of course.’

  She answered coolly, ‘Of course. My father-in-law’s farrier.’

  ‘No longer,’ Martin told her curtly. ‘Tremain’s loss is Burslem’s gain, and will eventually be the whole of Staffordshire’s.’

  She admired the gates because she was expected to, but thought how greatly Joseph would have disapproved of such extravagance. For him, the old fortress-like entrance had sufficed, but her younger brother was forever indulging new ideas, encouraged by his wife. Phoebe guessed that it was Amelia’s suggestion to order more impressive gates — a nonsensical notion, Joseph would have said, for a pot bank was not a playhouse in need of ornamentation.

  She lingered only because Martin seemed to expect it, and this unfortunately gave her time to observe a group of workers gathered in the yard, watching the erection of the gates. Martin was far too lenient with his employees. In Joseph’s day they would never have dared to leave their benches, or the cost of idleness would have been docked from their wages, and rightly.

  Then shock drove all else from her mind, for in the middle of the group she saw her daughter. Her skirts were hitched up beneath a clay-bespattered hessian apron, sleeves rolled well above her elbows, and hair straggled from beneath one of those awful caps worn by working women. She looked a sight, a disgrace. Phoebe’s eyes widened in horror, and when Olivia blandly waved to her she jerked her head away — and met the assessing eyes of Damian Fletcher. He looked amused, as if her reaction to her daughter entertained him, but she resented the underlying hint of contempt.

  Furiously, she commanded Parker to drive on and to be sharp about it, but the pace he set proved too much for the horses as they climbed the steep hill out of Burslem. Half way up stood the house where she had been born, the old family home, Medlar Croft, and from the crest of the hill Carrion House looked down on all below. At this point she had to yield to Parker’s plea for the horses to rest.

  While they did so, something urged her to visit the house which Joseph had turned into one of the most admired in the immediate vicinity of Burslem, but at close quarters its condition shocked her. It was like a ghost house, haunted by a forgotten past. She thought indignantly that Agatha should have preserved the place as a shrine in memory of Joseph. Restoration would now be costly.

  ‘Make him pay heavily … choose a vastly expensive property … ’

  Dear Lionel, the ally she so badly needed. Her spirits rose. She would take his advice.

  Retracing her steps, she saw a woman standing outside the gates, looking down the drive toward the house. Distance, and the fact that her face was overshadowed by the sweeping brim of a fashionable black hat, made it impossible to see her features, but even as far away as this she appeared striking.

  By the time Phoebe emerged the woman was proceeding down the hill. She carried a wicker travelling grip and a strapped bundle, so presumably she had descended from the public stage at the Hiring Cross a mile or two distant, and was walking from there to Burslem.

  Something compelled Phoebe to study the retreating back; a vague feeling that there was something familiar about its erectness, also about the confident stride. Beneath the woman’s flowing cloak her hips were no doubt swinging provocatively, which was why Parker was staring after her with the kind of look men reserved for women of a certain kind. He jerked to attention when Phoebe ordered him to proceed, but, after settling her, his eyes flickered to the woman again.

  Phoebe was disgusted. Parker, of all people! The man was well into his sixties and had been employed at Tremain man and boy, so he should know better than to stare after women when on duty. Her mouth tightened, but she found herself looking over her shoulder as the coachman climbed back onto his perch. The stranger was respectably and soberly clad; plain black skirts showing beneath a matching cloak, the elegant hat perched at exactly the right angle, so it must have been that striking face which caught Parker’s eye. Phoebe wished she could have seen it more closely, though it advertised its owner’s profession, no doubt. Any woman who attracted male appreciation of the kind Parker displayed had only one trade. Society gentlemen might admire handsome ladies in passing, but would never dare approach them, whereas the look in her coachman’s eyes plainly said that he would have liked to accost this one.

  As he twirled his long whip and the carriage moved forward, Phoebe glanced again over her shoulder. The woman had paused half way down the hill, by the gate of Medlar Croft. She seemed to be hesitating, as if debating whether to enter. A servant applying for a situation, perhaps? She looked too well dressed for that, but since she had no conveyance and was carrying her bags, she was plainly of a lower order.

  At that, Phoebe lost interest and returned to thoughts of herself. She decided that the minute she reached home she would send a message to her husband, demanding to see him.

  There was no need. He was waiting for her, seated comfortably in an armchair, his injured legs propped up on one of her beautifully upholstered chairs, a glass already in his hand and a decanter at his elbow though it was scarcely four o’clock. He looked for all the world as if he had never ceased to occupy this wing of Tremain Hall, and never intended to.

  ‘I’ve been waiting an hour,’ he said. ‘My mother tells me you refuse to live in another part of the house.’

  Leisurely, she removed her long mittens, untied the ribbons of her Leghorn hat, and rang for Hannah to take her outdoor things.

  ‘Naturally, I refuse. This wing has been my home for over twenty-one years. It was yours for only six months. Traditionally, you weren’t presented with it until your marriage. Then you rejected it.’

  ‘I rejected you,’ he said bluntly. ‘You and your swine of a brother who was bleeding me dry, though little did I suspect it until he turned the screws. I was wild and extravagant — a waster, I admit — and Joseph took advantage of it. I’m convinced he married you off to me with one object in mind. He was more ambitious than any man I’ve ever met, which means he was a schemer. That was why he married poor Aggie. No man would have had her, but for the fortune she inherited from our Great Aunt Margaret. From Joseph’s point of view the match admitted him into the family. It also gave him the opportunity to urge me into deeper and deeper debt, until he could have me at his mercy and place himself a good step nearer to becoming the country landowner he aspired to be, for once he had me where he wanted me, he could foreclose and seize Tremain. He was a man who could wait for years if need be, all the while getting an even tighter hold on things, on people, and especially on young fools like me. Luckily, I escaped. I won, and he lost.’

  ‘I don’t believe a word of this.’

  ‘Of course, you don’t. You idolised your brother. Unhealthily so, I eventually thought. He could do no wrong; your husband could do no right.’

  ‘Do you call the things you did to me on our wedding night right!’

  ‘Many people would consider none of them wrong, but I spared you nothing, I admit. I was brutish, but you goaded me with your damned purity, your disgust with the physical side of marriage. You were an unnatural bride if ever there was one, and plainly not in love. You actually expected me not to touch you! Whom did you really want? Your brother? What bridegroom wouldn’t have gone berserk, faced with frigidity such as yours? Widowhood no doubt suited you well.’

  She turned away, hiding a small, pleased smile. What outrageous nonsense he was talking and how enjoyable it would be to boast about her lover and the happiness she knew with him! But as the law stood a husband could divorce his wife for infidelity, whatever the circumstances, and she wasn’t going to risk that and lose everything.

  Max said briskly, ‘We are wasting time — ’

  ‘You are wasting it. You have come here to order me out of this part of the house so that you and yo
ur son — your servant’s son! — can occupy it. You would turn me out, me and the daughter who is your legitimate child. You expect us to step aside without protest. Well, I won’t, and nor will Olivia. I will see to that.’

  At the mention of his daughter he had the grace to look uncomfortable, though she wouldn’t credit him with feeling ashamed. He said quietly, ‘I hope to atone for my neglect of her. Now all I ask is a chance to get to know her. She strikes me as an interesting young woman, and certainly an independent one. Miguel liked her at once. They liked each other.’

  ‘Don’t mention that boy to me! Especially in the same breath as my daughter.’

  ‘Our daughter.’

  Phoebe hissed, ‘Get out! Leave these rooms at once! They are mine — ours — and as for your mother’s alternative accommodation, I won’t even consider it. There is only one way to persuade me to vacate — ’

  ‘ — and that is by providing another home for you. Do you imagine I didn’t anticipate that? You want a place of your own, a house of your own, and substantial funds to live on. Very well, I’ll agree on every count. I consider the idea an excellent one, but I hope Olivia will remain.’

  ‘She will not. I won’t permit it.’

  Sighing, Maxwell dragged himself to his feet. ‘The choice must be hers, not yours. I see no reason why she shouldn’t continue to live here. It has always been her home.’

  ‘Live with a father she has never known and a boy who isn’t her natural brother! What an idea!’

  Max ignored that. Reaching the door, he looked back and said, ‘Find a place you want, and I will buy it for you.’

  ‘I have found it already. Carrion House. Plainly, Agatha doesn’t want it. She has neglected it so badly she should be pleased to sell. Restored, it would suit me well. Until then, I shall continue to occupy these rooms, so the sooner you make Carrion House habitable again, the sooner I shall go.’