They rattled at a startling pace through the town, Mr Buckley silent with concentration as he threaded his horses between the thronging traffic, and Felicia silent with fear, expecting at any moment to be entangled with another vehicle. But there was no entanglement and they escaped Derby unscathed and set off on the Ashbourne road. Now her fear was quite gone, for all around her were fields and hedges and trees in their summer magnificence, and Felicia laughed with delight to find herself perched so high and with no obstruction to her view in any direction. Apart from the inconvenience of needing to hold tight to her bonnet, she had no fault to find with the curricle.
“You are enjoying yourself, I may presume,” Mr Buckley said, throwing her a wide smile.
That reminded her that she was attempting to discourage his advances, yet what could she do? It was so much fun! “Oh, yes! I do believe— Oh! Look there! Is that not a beautiful sight? Oh, such colours! If only I had my paints!”
Two fields away was one that had been ploughed and then left, although whether unneeded for a crop or neglected was impossible to say. It was filled with the pale palette of wild flowers — the delicate blues and pinks of cornflowers and corn cockles, splashed with the yellow of marigolds and the vibrant red of poppies, all mingled with white yarrow and oxeye daisies.
“It is very lovely,” he said. “Ah, look, here is the farm track.” With a deft tweak on the reins, his horses turned off the main road and began bumping along the rutted track. “If we can get close enough, I shall pick some for you to take home to paint.”
“How kind you are!”
They drew to a halt beside the field, where only a neat fence separated them from the flowers. Felicia had never seen anything like it, for in Hampshire such flowers had grown only around the fringes of the fields, and were weeded from the crops. The groom held the horses while Mr Buckley lifted Felicia down from the curricle. She was too excited to be made nervous by his hands at her waist.
“There is a stile just a little further along.” And within moments he had helped her over, and she was amongst the flowers, touching them, watching the way the gentle breeze rippled across the field in pastel waves.
“Here you are.” Mr Buckley pushed a bundle of flowers into her arms. “Ah, how well you look, so adorned, Miss Oakes. You are just like a bride.”
He smiled at her so warmly that her heart sank. She saw her mistake then, in willingly accepting his company for the drive home and allowing him to turn aside off the road. Now she was quite alone with him with only his servant nearby, so she supposed she must suffer the consequences. This would be the true test of his intentions. She thanked him as civilly as she could, but with a sick feeling in her stomach.
At first, Mr Buckley said nothing unsettling, merely asking Felicia to identify this flower or that, picking armfuls of blooms and wondering how easy it would be for an artist to capture the delicate beauty of the field. Then he spent some time contriving to tie them into bundles with grass stems and, when that did not serve, with his handkerchief. When that was done he started on some rambling tale of a garden in Hertfordshire belonging to an old friend of his, and Felicia began to suspect he was nervous. Yet why? He habitually conducted himself with such aplomb, no matter the circumstances, that his unaccustomed agitation made her nervous too.
“Mr Buckley,” she said tentatively, “I believe we have enough flowers now. Shall we continue our journey? If we are missing when the others arrive—”
“Of course, of course,” he said quickly. “But then… Miss Oakes, I—” He stopped, his breathing rapid and his expression uncertain.
If she had been at all attached to him, or perhaps if she had any ambitions to be a marchioness in the fullness of time, she would have waited and given him the time to order his thoughts and make whatever proposal was in his mind. But she had no wish to listen to any proposal of his, mistress and wife being equally unacceptable to her. So she said, “We should not dally, Mr Buckley. My two charges will be wondering what has become of me.”
He let out a heavy breath. “You are quite right, as always, Miss Oakes. Pleasant as this spot is, I have detained you here too long. Let me assist you over the stile.” He climbed nimbly over first, laid down the bundles of flowers, then set his hands at her waist and swung her to the ground. In a low voice, he said, “You are delightfully distracting company, Miss Oakes, and it is so very tempting to linger here, but I must not keep you from your responsibilities. It would not be right.” Then, more firmly, “Indeed, it would be quite wrong.”
Only then did he release her. Within moments she was aloft in the curricle, the flowers handed into the inscrutable charge of the groom. Mr Buckley deftly turned the vehicle and they set off to re-join the road. For some minutes he was silent, but then he laughed suddenly. “What a charming day we have all had, would you not agree, Miss Oakes? Was it not a perfectly agreeable day, in every respect?”
“Indeed it was, sir. I have not the least fault to find with any aspect of it.”
He laughed again, and regaled her with amusing tales of his fashionable London friends all the way back to Hawkewood Hall.
17: Flowers And Friendship (July)
JULY
Felicia hoped that she had now done enough to deter Mr Buckley from any further pursuit of her, and this seemed to be the case. For the two following days, she walked Hercules at her usual time yet saw no sign of Mr Buckley, and then came the news, conveyed by no less a messenger than Lady Drusilla herself, that he had returned to his own estate in Lincolnshire.
“I was very much afraid that you would succumb to his charming ways,” she said to Felicia with a disparaging sniff, “but it seems that you have better sense.”
“Or he has,” Felicia said mischievously.
“Oh, I make no doubt he would have caught you in his snare if he could. I hoped that your little jaunt with him the other day would have done the trick, and he would have taken you away with him, but here you still are.” Her brows lowered in suspicion. “I hope you are not harbouring ambitions towards my brother, Miss Oakes.”
“Certainly not,” she said, for it was perfectly true. Yet she could not help blushing hotly, and was unable to meet Lady Drusilla’s gaze.
“Do not imagine he has the slightest interest in you,” Lady Drusilla said acidly.
There was no point pretending, so Felicia lifted her eyes and said, “He sees me only as a fellow artist, so you need have no concerns on that score, but he increasingly depends upon my advice, and that makes it difficult for me to leave Hawkewood, as I must and would prefer to do. It would be a great deal easier if you were to engage a proper governess for Juliana and Margarita.”
“Hmpf. A good point. I have not found any single person who fulfils my requirements in every particular, but there are two who, combined, might do. And then you will leave?”
“I will. It should not be hard to manufacture a crisis in Southampton that requires my immediate return there.”
“Then we are agreed,” Lady Drusilla said.
Felicia knew perfectly well that leaving Hawkewood Hall was absolutely the correct thing to do. For her own peace of mind, she must go and never return. Yet it was so hard to face the prospect of never seeing Fin again. She would miss Juliana and Margarita, too, who had been her life for four years now, but it was not the same. The ache in her heart whenever she considered leaving, or thought of the empty life that faced her in Hampshire, was all for a man who barely noticed her, except when he wished to talk about art.
Yet however little she relished the prospect, her days at Hawkewood Hall were now limited, and this threw her into something akin to panic. Her painting of the ballroom must be finished! It was the largest work she had ever attempted, and there was so much detail still to be added. She woke early each morning, entirely unable to stay abed when there was so much energy inside her, just waiting to be poured onto the paper. For two or three hours she worked, motionless in front of her easel in the ballroom, only her hands moving, re
aching for this stick or that, stroking, blending, layering or delicately dabbing at the paper. Then she wiped her hands and began another colour. And gradually the scene was coming to life in front of her, the musicians playing, the dancers dancing, the onlookers watching and whispering together. Only when Bagnall brought her breakfast tray did she stop, stretch her aching arms and step away from the easel. The rest of each day was merely waiting until she could begin again.
Every afternoon, when the weather permitted, Juliana and Margarita went riding. This was now their favourite activity, and mounted on their own ponies and with two grooms in attendance, they cantered all over the estate, through the adjoining woods, along meandering streams and onto patches of rugged moorland. After the stifling confinement of Itchen and Southampton, they now had half a county to explore, and their rides grew longer and longer. Their enthusiasm reassured Felicia that they would not miss her nearly so much as she would miss them.
This left Felicia free to take the dog out for long walks which inevitably ended at the little pavilion in Shotterbourne. The Sanctuary, the marquess had called it, and so it was. Even when he was not there, which was quite often these days, for his chest bothered him greatly in the damp weather, he arranged for the cake and Madeira to be left there, with a little note explaining his absence. On such days Felicia sat and ate a great deal and drank a little, and thought about the marquess rattling round in his vast house, sad and lonely and not terribly well.
But when he was there, he seemed just as usual, and not sad at all. He called her Prinzessin and insisted that she call him Conte, and their conversations ranged widely. He had undertaken a grand tour in his youth, so he told her of his travels and how sad it made him to read in the newspapers of all the great changes in the countries he had visited. He talked of Parliament, too, and how proud he had been to take his seat in the House of Lords and participate in the debates there.
“Mind you, London is a rackety place now. I have no time for the Prince of Wales and all his no-good brothers. They, at least, should do their duty by the country. Not a legal son amongst the lot of them! Irresponsible, that is what it is. If I were there now, I should tell them so.”
“Why do you not do that?” Felicia said.
“What, go to London? Never!”
“Does your physician forbid you to travel?”
“Ha! He would forbid me to leave my bed in a morning if he could. No exertion, he tells me, in the cause of preserving my lungs and preventing further deterioration. Too much smoke got into them, that is the truth of the matter. I suppose it is a miracle I have lasted as long as I have, for they never expected me to survive the week. But here I still am, and Lambert is gone, for all he was ten years younger. And now there is just Godfrey, but no danger of him going anytime soon. He will outlast me, Prinzessin, and there is nothing I can do about that.”
Felicia did not want to talk about Godfrey Buckley or the marquess’s feud, for they would never agree on that matter. She was all too aware that her time in Derbyshire was drawing to a close, and any day might be her last chance to talk to the marquess. She decided, therefore, to be reckless and raise the matter that had buzzed in her brain for some time now.
“My lord—”
“Conte, Prinzessin.”
“Conte, may I ask you a question, and I know I should not pry but… it is about me, and I cannot bear not to know.”
“You may ask me anything,” he said. “Of course, I might choose not to answer.”
“I understand. Conte, you told me once that you have a natural daughter living somewhere in the south, and I am somebody’s natural daughter, also from a southern county, and I wondered… I thought perhaps… I might be your daughter.”
“Oh, child, would that it were so,” he said, his tone so gentle that Felicia almost wept. “I should give a great deal to have a daughter like you, but to my sorrow you are not mine. She is much older than you, a mistake of my youth. Her name is Diana, and never was a girl less aptly named. No goddess she! Not like you, Prinzessin. When I watch you walking through the meadow towards me, you are so light on your feet that you look as if you are floating, or dancing, perhaps. I should love to see you dance! Diana is nothing like that. She was a great lump of a thing when she was a child, and as an adult she was already stout. I have not seen her for years, but she must be about forty now, and fearfully respectable. Her husband is mayor of somewhere or other. She writes to me to tell me of his progress, and the children. They have a score of children.”
“A score!” Felicia said, laughing. “Gracious!”
“Oh, maybe not quite so many, but a lot, in any event.” He reached with his good hand, and placed it on Felicia’s. “I am so sorry, Prinzessin. Have you no notion at all who your father might be?”
“None, nor my mother either.”
“Were you left to an orphanage, then? Simply abandoned to your fate?”
“Not at all,” she said. “That would perhaps concern me less. A milkmaid who found herself with child by the shepherd — she might indeed leave her unwanted offspring with the nearest nunnery or orphanage, but my history is not so commonplace. I was raised by a lady by the name of Fidelia Armiger. She had money of her own, yet we grubbed in the dirt like peasants, and then she died when I was ten, leaving no word of my antecedents. So I know nothing of my history, Conte, except that I must be a bastard, for no legitimate child would be abandoned in that way. I amuse myself by inventing my history. Perhaps my father is a prince, or a pirate, or a spy… he could be anyone, I tell myself, even as I know that in truth he was most likely the younger son of minor gentry, whose father paid Miss Armiger to make the problem disappear. It would never do to have such a blemish on the family’s reputation, would it?”
“You are bitter, Prinzessin. We are both bitter at the hand life has dealt us. We neither of us have the comfort of a loving family about us. It is no wonder that we feel — or perhaps I should say, that I feel — such an affinity for you. Yet she gave you no clue, your faithful esquire?” When she looked puzzled, he laughed. “That is what the name means, Prinzessin. Fidelia Armiger… faithful esquire, in Latin. Not her real name, I imagine. She was defending you, perhaps, although from what is impossible to say. She told you nothing of your father, not even when she was dying?”
“There was no opportunity,” Felicia said sadly. “She died very suddenly in her bed one night. Her heart gave out, without warning. She went to bed that night just as usual, and the next morning… she did not wake up. I did not realise. I thought she was asleep, you see. Well, at ten, one does not think of death, does one? So I did my chores, made breakfast for the two of us, ate my share. Then I did my lessons in the morning, and worked in the kitchen garden in the afternoon. For three days, I did everything according to the timetable laid down for me, and wondered why Miss Armiger did not wake up. But then it was Sunday, and I walked to church. Five miles, all on my own for the first time in my life. ‘Where is Miss Armiger?’ they said to me. ‘Is she unwell?’ ‘She is asleep,’ I said. ‘She has been asleep for three days.’ So they went to look, and discovered her there and explained to me that she was dead. I never cried for her, not a single tear. There was a will and money and a trust fund for me, and the vicar found me a place at a school in Southampton. But no letter left with the will. No ‘Dear Felicia, Here is what you need to know about your parentage.’ Nothing like that. My trustees would not allow me to examine Miss Armiger’s personal effects until I was of age, but when I was finally allowed to look, there was no clue. I am nameless, Conte. I have no history, no family, no one who cares for me. I am alone.”
“Not so,” he said softly. “Not alone. Never alone, Prinzessin. And nor am I, any longer.”
He put his arm about her, and drew her towards him, and she wept on his shoulder and wished with all her heart that he was truly her father, but if that could not be, that she could stay there as his friend for ever. But it was impossible. For all his fine words, she had no place in the life of
a marquess. In a very few days, she would have to leave Derbyshire and then she would never see him again. Then she would be, as she had been for her whole life, truly alone.
~~~~~
Fin was full of energy. He could not account for it, but for some reason the lethargy which had afflicted him for years was quite gone. It had first struck him after the outing to Derby. He had not tried to prevent it, or to intervene when Buckley had taken Felicia up in his curricle, for why should she not have her chance of happiness? If Buckley showed himself willing to overlook her murky heritage and treat her honourably, then why should she not marry him, if it pleased her? If there had been the least hint of dishonourable intentions, why then he would have sent the scoundrel packing, but marriage was another matter. She had shown no sign of partiality, but she had never discouraged the fellow, either, so perhaps she would have been tempted.
But off they had gone together, and nothing had come of it. They had taken a detour somewhere, so perhaps they had stopped and had some talk, but when they turned up at Hawkewood just behind the carriage, there had been no awkwardness between them. They had seemed quite at ease, in a friendly sort of way, and then Buckley had gone away and Drusilla had no expectation of his early return. He was gone, and Felicia seemed unaffected by his departure, and Fin could only be glad of it.
He had begun a new painting of the view from the library, in the style of the Dutch painters, so that most of the scene was indoors but with a view of the outside seen through the garden door. He was rather pleased with the way it was progressing, but he would not show it to Felicia until it was nearing completion. She would approve it, he was sure.
After dining at Shotterbourne, he had felt obliged to call upon the marquess to thank him for his hospitality. His lordship was out walking, he had been told, but he had left his card with a scribbled note on the back, and then, in a fit of virtuous neighbourliness, left cards with three more local acquaintances. Not the ones with marriageable daughters, for he had no wish to be swamped with hopeful young ladies, but those with only sons, or no children at all.
The Painter Page 18
