The Painter

by Mary Kingswood

  “Oh, you know Miss Oakes, do you? Governess to Fin’s wards, Godfrey.” A hesitation, then with obvious reluctance, she went on, “This is Mr Buckley, heir to the Marquess of Arnwell.”

  He made her a florid bow, far greater than her rank required. Although she was astonished to learn his identity, Felicia managed to make him a suitable curtsy, but her head was swimming with questions, the principal of which was — why was he staying with Lady Drusilla when he had the right to stay at Shotterbourne with the marquess? But it was not a question she could ask.

  “Such a pleasure, madam. I trust you have taken no hurt from our brief encounter. Drusilla, I must tell you that Miss Oakes was almost bowled over by my intemperate departure from the inn yard, yet not a word of censure escaped her lips. You are quite well, Miss Oakes? I did not cause you any injury?”

  “No, indeed, sir, none in the world.”

  “I am very glad to hear it. But you are not rushing away, I sincerely hope? You will stay for a little while, so that I may further my acquaintance with you. So many times since that day I have wondered who you might be, and what sequence of events brings you to this little corner of England, for all my diligent enquiries about the village told me only what I might guess for myself — that you are governess to Finlassan’s wards. Do, pray, resume your seat, Miss Oakes, and tell me all about yourself, for I am quite determined to have my curiosity satisfied.”

  Felicia looked at Lady Drusilla, but she gave the slightest shrug and gestured towards the chair. The footman arrived just then with the tea tray, and although there were no cakes, there were macaroons and biscuits, so Felicia sat and drank her tea when it was offered and ate as many macaroons as she could before Lady Drusilla surreptitiously directed the footman to move the plate out of her reach.

  Between bites, she answered the questions tumbling out of Mr Buckley as best she could. Where she was born was a mystery, but she told him all that she knew or had been told of the move to Boscobel Cottage at the age of three, the death of her protector when she was ten and her consequent removal to Miss Latimer’s Academy, and her time at Itchen. He listened with a flattering degree of interest, and whenever she made some gentle enquiry of him in return, he turned it aside and reverted to his own questions.

  When she felt obliged to leave, Lady Drusilla rose with alacrity, saying, “So soon? But if you must go, we will not detain you further.”

  But Mr Buckley jumped to his feet too. “Allow me to escort you to the Hall, Miss Oakes, so that I may enjoy your company for a few minutes more.”

  She could hardly refuse, but it was embarrassing to be the object of such pointed attention from a future marquess. Nothing could be less appropriate, and she could not imagine what more he might wish to know. In the event the walk was a pleasant one along a path lined by towering shrubs smothered in huge pink blooms. The questions were banished as he entertained her with a succession of amusing tales of Lady Drusilla, whom he had known since they were both children, and for whom he harboured an obvious affection. She had been a shy and touchingly inept debutante, Felicia discovered, brought out by a pair of aunts and struggling through several seasons before surrendering with relief to spinsterhood.

  “She has been a great help to Giles Warborough and to the parish ever since,” he said. “Finlassan found her too interfering, but to his credit he set her up very comfortably with the house and a generous allowance. How do you get along with Finlassan? He is a strange fellow.”

  “A little unusual, perhaps,” she said cautiously. “He values his solitude.”

  “Ha! He is a recluse, not to put too fine a point on it. He and Arnwell are a fine pair, are they not? Such shining examples of the peerage, locking themselves away in their great houses, and the world may go hang itself, for all they care. At least Finlassan keeps his estate in good heart, which is more than Arnwell does for Shotterbourne,” he added. “It grieves me more than I can say to watch it dwindling to nothing under his management. I talk to the steward about it, and he is in despair, poor fellow. Every year there is some other tenant farm abandoned for lack of improvements from the landlord. All the woods and coppices untended, the game birds gone for want of a little care, the trout lake silted up and most of the house under holland covers, and I can do nothing about it for he will not even see me.”

  He fell into morose silence. Felicia could think of no sensible response, so they walked on without speaking until they were within sight of the Hall, where he bade her a graceful farewell and hoped he would see her again soon.

  Felicia was thoughtful as she made her way to the schoolroom to see if Juliana and Margarita had returned from their riding lesson. Finding them engaged in their studies with the history tutor, she changed into stouter boots and collected Hercules for a long walk.

  She did not know quite what to make of Mr Godfrey Buckley. He seemed a personable young man, and she could not but sympathise with his position as heir to Shotterbourne, excluded from all communication with the marquess and watching the estate deteriorate before his eyes. Yet she was puzzled by his interest in her. What could he mean by it? She was a person of no family and no fortune. Not knowing what lay behind it, she had taken care to tell him of the cottage and modest independence that awaited her in Southampton, in case he thought her desperate enough to consider becoming a man’s mistress. Yet his interest had not waned at that point. It was a mystery, but perhaps he would be gone soon and she need puzzle over him no more.

  Hercules needed no persuasion on the walk, for he knew well where they were going. He bounded ahead of her, occasionally diving off in this direction or that, as smells or insects or the occasional fast-disappearing rabbit enticed him, but always he returned to their usual path to the fallen tree and the collapsed wall. Then he was up and over, and into the delights of the Shotterbourne wilderness. Felicia followed more circumspectly, for once she had torn one of her new gowns on a stray branch from the tree. Now she clambered inelegantly but slowly over the stones, and made her way out of the trees, then over the hill to the little pavilion.

  On some days, the marquess was not there, but he left a little note tucked into the conveniently splayed fingers of one of the statues. ‘Wretched physician’, one note had said, and another read, ‘Too much rain about for my stupid lungs’. But today the sun was shining and there he was, seated in his usual spot. Beside him on the bench were the treats he had taken to providing — a decanter of Madeira and two glasses, and a box of cakes, lemon today. On the floor lay the hamper lugged up from the house by some unseen footman.

  “Good day to you, Princess,” he called, with a cheerful wave of his good hand, before returning to his attentions to Hercules. “The sun is shining at last! I thought this rain would never let up.”

  She could not recall more than one day of rain, but to the marquess, rain loomed large in his mind since it kept him indoors. She smiled inwardly at the thought that Fin was the exact opposite — he seldom left the house and so he never noticed the weather.

  They talked about nothing very much for a while — the dog, the new bonnet she wore, the tasteless beef he had been served for dinner the day before — but she could not for long stay silent on the subject uppermost in her mind.

  “I made a new acquaintance today — Mr Godfrey Buckley.”

  The effect was startling. His face darkened and his fingers clenched so tightly in Hercules’ fur that the pup whined. “That wastrel! He is a scoundrel, a villainous rogue like his wicked father and uncle before him! You must have nothing to do with him, Princess, you hear me? Cut him dead, and never speak to him again, or—”

  “Or what?” she said, genuinely wondering.

  “You will have to choose. His friendship or mine, for you cannot have both.”

  8: An Invitation

  Felicia was shocked at the vehemence of the marquess’s response, and towards his own heir! It was inexplicable. “Whatever did he do, that you hate him so much?” she cried.

  The marquess took a long
draught of Madeira, visibly controlling his anger, although his hands shook. “It was not Godfrey, but his father and uncle who set themselves against me, in fact, against the whole family. Shall I tell you of it? I think I must, for when you know how far that branch of the Buckleys will go to attain their ends… well, perhaps you will understand, and treat him with the utter contempt that such a worm deserves.”

  He drained his glass and set it down on the bench beside him, folding his arms. When he spoke, his voice was almost calm. “When my father died, more than twenty years ago now, the inheritance fell to me. The title, the entailed estates and a great deal more. But I had no brothers, and at that time, no sons, either. Five daughters, but no heir. No uncles or first cousins, no great-uncles… it was necessary to go all the way back to my great-grandfather to find a younger brother with a surviving line. My heir presumptive was Lambert Buckley, Godfrey’s father.” He spoke the name with some effort, and the hands clenched again.

  “What must Lambert do, but put in his own claim for the title! He had found some minor irregularity in my parents’ marriage that he claimed put the legality of the marriage into question. It was nonsense of course, and the greatest insult imaginable to my mother. It destroyed her, all that legal uproar, and the uncertainty of it. Within a year of Father’s death, she was gone too, and all Buckley’s fault. It was as good as murder, and so I told him. He killed her, as surely as if he had taken a sword and thrust it into her heart. She could not stand the pain of all the questions, the finger-pointing and the innuendo. There was not a word of truth in any of it, yet people always like to believe the worst of others, do they not? ‘No smoke without fire’ they say, winking knowingly to each other. It was despicable, what Lambert did.”

  He seemed inclined to keep to this vein for some time, so Felicia said hastily, “But it was all settled in your favour in the end, clearly.”

  “Of course it was! There was never any doubt in my mind, but they spun things out as long as they could. It took two years to settle the matter, and Buckley was almost bankrupted in the process by the high-and-mighty lawyers he engaged, so some good came out of it. I forbade Lambert the house from the day the claim went in, the worthless traitor. And by the time it was settled I had my son, so they had nothing to look forward to. But then—”

  He stopped with something like a sob, covering his face with his good hand.

  “The fire?” she said gently, and he could only nod. “Your son was killed, and now Godfrey Buckley, the son of your enemy, will inherit after you, so you are making sure that his inheritance is a ruin.” Again he nodded. “Vengeance,” she said.

  “Yes!” he said with a sudden fierceness, so that she started and instinctively leaned away from him. “Lambert took his miserable self out of the mortal sphere two years ago, but his son lives on, and I will not rest until the estate is worthless to him. There is a limit to how much I can do,” he went on, brows lowering. “The title is his, no matter what, and the Shotterbourne holdings are entailed, so he will get those, but their value is far less than it was, and whatever could be, has been transferred elsewhere.”

  “And you never thought to remarry, and get another son?” she asked quietly.

  “Ah, if only I could have done so, but after the fire… no, there is no possibility. I did think…” He laughed gently. “It would have amused me to marry and allow my wife to get herself a son elsewhere, for as long as I acknowledge the child, he is mine in law. Yet I could not. It was beneath my dignity to resort to such underhand tactics.”

  Felicia was astonished at such extraordinarily twisted logic — too underhanded to make a pragmatic marriage, yet it was acceptable to destroy the estate? She could not comprehend the depth of hatred that would drive such actions. She looked at her hands, resting in her lap, and pondered the question. No, she could not blame him for hating Godfrey Buckley’s father, but Godfrey himself?

  “When did you last see Godfrey Buckley? For he may have changed greatly since—”

  “I have never seen him, and never will.” His chin jutted forward defiantly.

  “Having met Mr Buckley myself,” she said hesitantly, “I found him to be a personable man, very gentlemanly. He is genuinely distressed by the ruination of his inheritance. He comes here to talk to your steward about it.”

  “Aye, so Hamlett tells me. I do not mind him knowing all that I have done. Let him be distressed! It is nothing to the distress my poor mother felt at his father’s actions.”

  “But he is not his father,” Felicia said, with a little heat. “He cannot be blamed for the actions of another, undertaken when he must have been no more than a babe in arms. He may feel all the wrong of his father’s actions, and wish to heal the breach between the two branches of the family, and if he is to inherit—”

  “Oh yes, he wants to heal the breach! Of course he does, for he hopes I will reverse all the changes I have made, and allow him to inherit the full value of all my holdings. But I will not. Everything entailed is worthless now, and the unentailed properties and investments will go elsewhere. I have a natural daughter living somewhere in the south — Plymouth or Portsmouth or some such place. She will have everything else, and Buckley will get nothing except the title and the monstrous encumbrance of Shotterbourne, and the longer I live, the more of an encumbrance it becomes. I plan to live for a very long time, Princess, and the only condition which will cause me to retreat from my present path is if Buckley dies before me.”

  “You are implacable, then?”

  “I am, and if you care anything for me, you will cease all acquaintance with Buckley at once.”

  Felicia rose to her feet, brushing a stray crumb of lemon cake from her gown. “I do care for you, Lord Arnwell, very much. Even in the short time I have known you, I have grown to enjoy your company, and to appreciate the man of good sense and principle hidden beneath the gruff exterior. The village people say you are quite mad, but you are too rational for that. I am deeply sorry for the ills that have befallen you, but what you do here is wrong. So far as I know, Mr Godfrey Buckley has offered you neither insult nor injury, and I will not be a party to injustice. I regret to say that I cannot come here again.”

  The marquess jumped to his feet too, his face blazing with anger. “You would choose that vile specimen of humanity over me, then?”

  “I choose Christian forgiveness and compassion over bitterness, my lord. Good day to you. Come, Hercules.”

  She turned her back on the marquess and strode away.

  ~~~~~

  ‘Miss Felicia Oakes, Hawkewood Hall, Church Compton, Derbyshire. My very dear Miss Oakes, I have indeed information on the Lady Olivia Dulnain, for as you so correctly surmised, she is in my Peerage. In fact in my new Peerage, bought with a little of Mr Kearney’s very generous bequest. So kind of him to remember all of us servants, but then I have always said that he was a true gentleman, despite his somewhat unorthodox profession. To the point — the new Peerage informs me that Lady Olivia is the eldest daughter of Hadrian Dulnain, who is newly elevated to the Peerage as the Sixth Earl of Cottersmere. Such an interesting connection, for of course he is the brother of our Dulnain, the Lady Juliana, so is uncle to our own dear Juliana and Margarita, and Lady Olivia is their cousin! There is another connection also, for Lord Cottersmere is also brother to the Lady Alexandria Dulnain, wife to Oscar Buckley, the Eighth Marquess of Arnwell. There are six children listed, and such interesting names! Aldwina, Albertina, Elfleda, Eldira, Edwina and Oswald, the last the only boy. But how tragic to hear that they all died, and the youngest only a babe of a year old. A dreadful event, but not mentioned in my Peerage. I wonder why? We are very happy here at Boscobel Cottage, and the window in the scullery has been mended, so you need have no further concerns on the question of our safety. Jimmy would like to raise a pig, if that would not be disagreeable to you? There is a pen which may be made good with a very little work, if so. The chickens are laying well already, and we shall have an excellent crop of beans this ye
ar, despite the lateness of sowing. We are very content here and you need not feel you have to rush home on our account. Yours in friendship, Agnes Markham.’

  ~~~~~

  Felicia was unhappy with her breach with the marquess. He was a lonely man, who had become increasingly friendly and open with each day that had passed. She knew he had no visitors, for she had asked the Miss Trimms. Their cottage lay directly opposite the gates to Shotterbourne, and they sat in the window of their tiny parlour day after day as they stitched away, every movement of carriage or wagon or walker passing through the village square noted by them with interest. Not a stray dog or a horse for shoeing came or went without them knowing of it, and they told her that the marquess had no callers, apart from his physician, his steward and his lawyer.

  Yet Felicia could not regret her actions. What the marquess was doing was utterly abhorrent to her, and she could not condone it. Her conscience forbade it. She understood his grief and despair, but bitterness and retribution was not the answer. If he would not turn from that path, then she could not continue the acquaintance, no matter how much sorrow she felt at the loss of his friendship.

  And at the back of her mind was a thought she tried to suppress, but could not — the marquess had a natural daughter somewhere in the south of England. ‘Plymouth or Portsmouth or some such place.’ Or Southampton, her heart whispered? Was it possible? Oh, how she longed for it to be true, to have a family for the first time, to know where she belonged. It was incredibly unlikely, she knew that, for surely the marquess would know her name if it were so, but… stranger things happened in the world, did they not? And she had felt such an affinity for him, something more than mere friendship. Yet she dared not allow herself to hope, and tried to put the prospect out of her mind.

  Her thoughts were soon turned in a different direction. Lady Drusilla came one morning very early, summoning Felicia from the studio to the entrance hall, where she paced about, her anger not concealed.