Seeing how anxiously Anne was watching for her reaction, Julia feigned cheerfulness as she looked around. ‘It will all be very different when the ceilings are white-washed and we have moved in our furniture and rugs from Sotherleigh. Most of the year I’ll be able to gather wild flowers and plants to brighten Grandmother’s room. If I fixed a trellis on that wall outside her window I could train some greenery and roses to give the feeling of a garden being there. Ridley would make it for me.’
Anne felt weak with relief that she had her daughter’s support and encouragement in this venture. She knew it was a dreadful house, but it was the best she could do in the circumstances and it had a shelter of sorts in the rear that would make a stable for Charlie. This was the first time in her life she had had to face alone a crisis of such dimensions, and she could carry on with more heart now that Julia had shown a way by which Katherine might gain some comfort away from her beloved Sotherleigh.
*
There were only three days left when Makepeace invited Anne by a written note to have supper with him and she accepted. Only the night before she had enlisted Julia’s help in digging up the Elizabethan plate after midnight by the glow of a lantern. It was now concealed in a chest in the underground chamber, ready to be brought out secretly on the eve of departure. Then the chest could be placed inconspicuously with other boxes ready for the transport wagons without the risk of inquisitive servants questioning its sudden appearance in her bedchamber.
Anne’s spirits were low as Sarah helped her dress for supper with Makepeace. The house in Chichester seemed to look worse every time she went into it and even with the ceilings white-washed it remained a depressing place. The truth was that she loathed it, but the fear that haunted her was how Katherine would be when confined to such dismal surroundings. Suppose the old lady should give up the will to live? It was a thought that tormented her.
‘Your pink beads?’ Sarah asked, fetching the jewel-case that held so little of value these days.
Anne nodded. That necklace went well with the smoke-blue silk she had chosen to wear. It had no décolletage and the collar was interlaced with some of her embroidered ribbons depicting irises and forget-me-nots and several other blue flowers, which made it suitable for evening wear on this occasion.
When ready she opened her door cautiously and listened in case Julia should be about. Taking a chance, she sped past the apartment door and ran like a girl eloping to the grand staircase, for this time she felt entitled to descend by that route. Makepeace, waiting in the hall, saw her shadowed figure pass along by the flower screen and smiled to see how eager she appeared to be in coming to join him on time.
Supper passed off well. He was proud of a particularly fine wine he had obtained and poured it himself for them both. His eyebrows remained raised enquiringly as she sipped it, not realizing that she was wondering why her best Venetian glasses had been overlooked in the packing of her goods by his servants. She was forced to conclude it was by his instructions, for they were particularly beautiful examples of the craft of Venice. When she nodded approval of the wine he appeared as pleased as if it were some vintage of his own.
In the Queen’s Parlour afterwards she played the spinet for almost half an hour and he applauded her performance heartily. He rose from his chair to lead her to where she had sat opposite him the previous evening she was there.
They had talked for a while before he broached the subject that he had had in mind to ask her. ‘Tomorrow half a dozen women are coming as applicants for the post of housekeeper here. May I ask if you would be obliging and interview them for me?’
‘Yes, if that is what you want.’ She was about to ask him if there were any special qualifications he deemed necessary in the applicants when, with the force of revelation, she saw a way ahead free of all the troubles that had been mounting up with awful steadiness. ‘Have you been satisfied with the way Sotherleigh has been run since your arrival?’
‘It has been admirable. You have managed my servants well and you surely realized that many were not well disposed towards you when they came.’
‘I did indeed.’ She was feeling curiously calm as she always did when finally brought to the edge of an abyss. Since she knew from what he had said during their last evening together that money was all-important to him, she had a signpost to what she should say.
‘Then allow me to stay on as your housekeeper. I’ll ask for no pay. If you should wish me to move with my family out of the west wing into the attics I would be agreeable. Julia could take on the gardening of the flower beds, which would save the wages of one gardener, and Mary would make shirts for you — she made two that were sent to my son recently — and deal with the linen and all the mending, again without payment. As you have no competent linen-maid on your staff, she has already carried out some tasks I deemed necessary on your behalf. As for Katherine, I ask only that you let her draw her last breath at Sotherleigh.’
He put the fingertips of both his hands together in an arch, his elbows on the arms of his chair, as he considered what she had said, looking at her in speculative silence. When he did not dismiss her suggestion immediately, as he had done when she had asked for the house, she allowed a glimmer of hope to begin rising in her. Then that was shattered as slowly he began to shake his head.
‘No, madam, that would not be acceptable to me.’
He had expected some undignified bursting into tears at the thwarting of her brave attempt to salvage what she could of a situation he could see was unbearable for her, but that was not forthcoming.
‘Please forget I ever made that request. I was foolish enough to forget for the second time that you do not want Royalists in this house.’
She was struggling hard against tipping into her personal abyss, able to see Katherine suffering a further stroke upon being removed from Sotherleigh, for the old lady would know instinctively, despite her confused state, that she was being torn from her roots. Pity and despair were threatening to split her heart asunder from its slight healing in recent years, releasing grief and loneliness anew.
‘Mrs Pallister.’
She realized she had been gazing unseeingly down at her hands folded in her lap and she raised her head. ‘Yes, Mr Walker?’
He shifted forward in his chair, resting one thick hand on his broad knee. ‘Although I’ll not have you for my housekeeper, Anne, it would give me joy to take you as my wife.’
She stared at him. He saw the pupils of her eyes dilate until the grey iris was no more than a rim and all colour went from her face until even her lips were pale and bloodless. Then, as if from far away, she found her voice.
‘Katherine may stay in her apartment with Sarah to tend her?’
‘Agreed. She shall live out her days here.’
‘Mary may sew what she will?’
‘Yes.’
‘Julia shall again hold her position as the daughter of Sotherleigh, free to come and go about the house as she has always done?’
‘If you will be my wife she shall be my daughter with all the privileges that entails.’
She drew in a long shuddering breath. ‘Then I will marry you.’
He went to her at once and raised her hand to kiss it. ‘I shall be a good husband to you.’
He truly intended it. All day long he had been looking forward to this evening with a boyish excitement he had not felt for years. When she had passed so swiftly by the flower screen he had been touched by her haste. Without realizing it, he had been falling in love with her, a sentimental term with which he had never before held any patience. When she had been offering herself and her family to serve him in this house, he had been weighing up her virtues, knowing her to be honest and reliable and transparently malleable. What was most important, he would be able to draw her back to her Puritan roots. With that she would lose her Royalist fancies, which were no more than a simple loyalty to a wrong cause, and the day would come when they would rejoice together at her salvation.
She inclin
ed her head. ‘I shall do my best for you, too.’ He raised her to her feet. ‘I do not doubt it, my dear Anne.’ She thought for one horrified moment he was going to kiss her lips, for she was not ready for that, needing to adjust her thoughts and her whole attitude to this new state of affairs, but instead he put his lips to her hand again.
She went upstairs in a daze. At the apartment door she drew a deep breath and entered. Julia and Mary paused in their game of backgammon and stared in amazement at her dazzling evening attire. Sarah, closing the door of Katherine’s bedchamber after checking that she was asleep, showed by a sudden change of expression as she looked at Anne, that she was aware something dramatic had happened.
‘We’re going to stay at Sotherleigh after all!’ Anne announced shakily. ‘Everything can be unpacked tomorrow. I’ve agreed to marry Mr Walker.’
The silence in the room was almost tangible. Then Julia uttered a despairing cry.
10
Anne and Makepeace arrived at the civic office of the registrar of marriages in Chichester. Church weddings no longer took place, abolished with all other ecclesiastical rituals that were abhorrent to the extremist majority in the government. At Anne’s request, Mary was attending as witness with a gentleman acquainted with Makepeace. Julia followed the wedding party into the bleak panelled room where there was not a flower on show to mark the occasion. Sadness and anger were churning within her. If only she could have thought of a practical plan to prevent this awful day! She recalled the dozens of ideas she had turned over in her mind, even in sheer desperation considering how she might lock Makepeace up in the underground chamber, but she had had to dismiss it as being the most foolish of all. An important man could not vanish from the face of the earth without a thorough investigation taking place. The way Michael and Mary had been tracked down had showed her how intensive the Parliamentarians could be.
How little and slight her mama looked beside Makepeace’s hulk as they stood side by side facing the Registrar in his straight-dressed wig. Julia’s heart melted with pity. Not by a single disloyal word against Makepeace had Anne revealed why she had made this decision to be his wife, but the truth was now digging like a knife in Julia’s chest. All the time there had been some hope that a miracle would happen, such as Makepeace going away or a new plan proving practicable at last, so she had not dwelt too deeply on what this new role of wife instead of widow would mean to her mother. Since the announcement of the betrothal she had simply done what she could to be a friend and companion as well as a daughter to Anne, not wanting Makepeace to be the cause of the slightest breach between them. Now the realization of her mother’s self-sacrifice came home to her with full force.
It was not her strong-willed grandmother who had saved Sotherleigh, or young and vigorous Michael, or even she herself, who had made a vow about it, but this tender-hearted, self-effacing woman whom Katherine had once accused of not being able to say boo to a goose. Anne, who had loved Robert devotedly and kept his memory alive for others who had loved him as a father and as a son, was surrendering her privacy, her quiet hours of reminiscence, her contentment with the freedom that had always been hers and her closely guarded modesty. An inward cry of anguish seemed to rend Julia and she learned how it was possible to weep inside at circumstances that could not be changed. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t lost her temper with Adam Warrender. The least she could do was to support her mother in every way in the future. No more rebelliousness! No more defiance of Makepeace! It had to be.
The brief marriage declaration was over and the names were signed. Julia was the first to step forward. ‘God bless you, Mama!’
Anne accepted Julia’s kiss and loving embrace with gratitude. Although she knew how much her daughter opposed this match, there had been no recriminations, no stormy scenes. Julia had shown a new maturity out of the torment that her eyes revealed. Anne knew the girl understood that she herself could bear anything as long as this marriage did not create a gulf between them. To her immense relief and comfort they had drawn even closer to each other.
‘May you be happy, Anne.’ Mary had come forward to show her affection to the woman who had always been so kind to her. It was her most sincere wish that some good could come out of this marriage. Perhaps Anne’s gentleness would have some effect on that bigoted man. It was easy to see by the way he was looking at his bride that he had some fondness for her.
Anne returned Mary’s kiss and moved on to receive the good wishes of the gentleman who had acted as witness. She felt in a whirl. The joining of her life with Makepeace’s had been so quick that it was over almost before she had realized.
She thought how different everything was from the deliriously happy day when she became bride to Robert. In contrast to the groom at her side in his sombre black garments and tall steeple-crowned hat, Robert had been attired in yellow slashed satin with trimmings of gold and silver lace, cherry-red plumes floating from his hat. She had been ashimmer in silver tissue, a gown that was far removed from her present plain rose silk. Instead of the hollow ring of an office there had been the paeans of trumpeters and smiling faces all around. Wine had flowed during the feasting at Sotherleigh and there had been the traditional gift of a pair of scented gloves, jasmine-coloured that day, made in softest leather, for each guest. At the gates money had been distributed to the poor. Makepeace had not even asked his acquaintance to return to Sotherleigh with them and dine. It went against all her hospitable instincts, although she supposed that to these two men even a simple dinner invitation on this day would smack distantly of the roistering that followed Royalist weddings.
Her groom was offering her his arm. ‘Let us go home now, my dear.’
She hesitated by the coach, Julia and Mary waiting to enter after her, and she looked towards Makepeace’s acquaintance walking away down the street. ‘Surely we should — ’
Makepeace anticipated what she was about to say and guided her firmly into the coach. ‘He lives locally. Had he come a far distance it would have been a different matter, because then he would have been a traveller to be fed. Remember that from now on all decisions will be mine and made with the best judgement.’
Mary, taking her seat opposite the bride, wondered if Anne had caught the hard note in Makepeace’s voice. Obviously he had started as he meant to go on. In the time that had passed since Anne’s announcement of her forthcoming marriage there had been no disruption in their secluded life centred on Katherine’s apartment, but from now on the family was to be integrated into Makepeace’s household. She hoped that for both Anne and Julia all would go well.
Upon arriving home Anne went to remove her hat and cape before looking in on Katherine. The old lady was dressed, as she was each day now, and seated in her wedding chair, a rug over her knees. Julia was already with her.
‘Grandmother is asleep,’ Julia whispered.
‘Then you can leave her to come down to dinner,’ Anne said. It was no longer necessary to have Katherine constantly under supervision, for she was more aware of everything and content to sit in her chair for hours, unable in any case to move without assistance.
‘I’d like to eat dinner with her when she wakes. Do you mind?’
‘No. You stay here.’ Anne understood what it meant to her daughter to see her wed to Makepeace. Julia needed a little time of adjustment and where better than in the company of her grandmother, with whom she shared such a bond.
Downstairs again Anne went into the Great Hall. Makepeace and Mary were just taking their places. No sooner was she seated than a servant came forward with a dish of oysters. Makepeace held up his hand to halt the serving and asked Anne where Julia was. She explained tactfully. He frowned, looking sternly at her.
‘We are a family now, madam. From this morning Julia became my stepdaughter. It is my duty to see she eats properly. Young girls get fanciful notions about their figures and I should be amiss if I did not consider her well-being in every way.’ He turned to another footman standing by the s
ideboard. ‘Inform Miss Julia that dinner is being served.’
As Anne expected, the footman returned unaccompanied and delivered Julia’s explanation that she had already been excused. To her relief Makepeace said no more and dinner continued. Afterwards on his own in the Queen’s Parlour, he sent for Julia. She noticed as soon as she entered the room that her mother’s needlework box had been placed by another window on its stand and not where it was before. Neither was Anne’s wedding chair beside it, although both items had been brought downstairs together by two footmen. An ordinary chair, covered in bright wool Turkey-work, stood in its place. No other changes were apparent.
‘You wished to see me, Mr Walker?’ she said evenly.
He was standing with his broad back to her, hands clasped behind him, and his gaze set at some distant point outside. ‘You will address me as Stepfather in future.’ Then he turned and looked fiercely at her from under his brows. It was the first time they had been face to face since before the night of her mother’s fait accompli. ‘Out of consideration for your mother, whose wedding day it is, I overlooked your breach of good manners today. It must never happen again. You will take your place at the breakfast and dinner table on time. Punishment will be inflicted if you are late — confinement to your room, the cancellation of a ride or some social appointment. I do not tolerate tardiness in any form and my clerk has written out some rules that you are to obey without question. I suggest you have the list in your room where it will be a daily reminder. Don’t you think that would be sensible? No answer?’ He waited until her stilted agreement came.
‘To return to the subject of mealtimes. You will come to the Great Hall for supper only by invitation. I have taken a liking to eating that last meal of the day with Anne on her own. I expect to be entertaining a great deal before long. There will be evenings when gentlemen only are invited and on those occasions neither you nor your mother will be present. Is that understood?’
Circle of Pearls Page 28
