The Invitation

by Belinda Alexandra

  I thought it curious that he should direct so many of his comments to Caroline rather than Isadora. He must have understood who it was he really had to charm.

  The palace had over three hundred rooms and we weren’t going to cover all of them in one afternoon. After showing us the drawing room with its Roman marble busts, and the chapel, the Duke asked the butler to summon the four maids to escort us to our rooms.

  ‘I’m sure you would like to rest before dinner,’ he told us.

  Despite the magnificence of the palace’s public rooms, the bedroom assigned to me had a low ceiling and was furnished only with a plain wrought-iron bed and a large, shabby wardrobe. The walls were covered in faded china-rose paper that was peeling at the seams. A musty stink like swamp water pervaded the air although the room looked as though it had been cleaned and dusted.

  I had become so used to the modern plumbing in Caroline’s New York house that it was a surprise when Patsy and three housemaids brought in a copper bath, and proceeded to fill it with buckets of water that must have been coming from the kitchen given the time it took them.

  ‘Better get in before the water gets cold, miss,’ advised Patsy, squeezing out her sodden apron before helping me undress.

  I had washed this way in my Paris apartment, but the source of the water had been much closer to the bathtub then — and I hadn’t had a small audience of women ready to hand me soap, washcloths and brushes.

  After my bath, the maids removed the tub and left me on my own. I wrapped myself in several blankets, trying to get warm again. If the house was this cold on the cusp of spring, what was it like in the dead of winter? I wondered if the housekeeper had assigned me this draughty room because the Duke considered me of lower status than the others.

  However, when I went to see Isadora after Patsy had helped me dress for dinner, I found that her room was as frayed and faded as mine. Isadora was used to the best of everything and had grown up with thick carpets, luxurious bedding and flush toilets. Would she languish away if she had to live permanently in this cold and damp house?

  ‘I won’t be able to sleep here,’ she whispered to me after her maid had finished doing her hair and left the room. ‘It feels haunted. No wonder Lady Clara and Lord Randolph spend as much time in London as possible.’ She nodded in the direction of the fireplace. Above it was a stuffed pike with a carp in its mouth. ‘Look at that hideous thing. Why are the English so ghoulish?’

  Isadora’s love of animals didn’t bode well for life on an English estate. The pictures in the great hall of men and women fox-hunting had sent a shudder down my spine. I’d read that the foxes were often ripped apart while still alive, and the hounds put to death when they were no longer considered good for hunting. But it wasn’t my role to encourage my niece to reject the possibility of marriage to an English aristocrat; at least, not unless she expressed complete disgust at the idea. Caroline’s warning to me rang in my mind: Don’t let anything go wrong now.

  ‘Your father’s trophy room is ghoulish too,’ I reminded her.

  She touched her throat and looked at me askance. ‘Father? He hates hunting. He’s only interested in business, his motor cars and playing cards at his club. Those poor animals were shot by Mother. She put them in Father’s wing of the house to mock him.’

  ‘Your mother? But I’ve never heard of a woman hunting big game.’

  ‘Big game is the only type of animal Mother’s interested in killing,’ Isadora replied. ‘She thinks women who only shoot at birds are pathetic. I feel that way about people who shoot at anything.’

  An odd tingling disturbed my stomach, as if I’d been given the first piece of a puzzle but didn’t know quite what to do with it yet.

  I placed my hand on Isadora’s. ‘What do you think of the Duke? Seriously.’

  She lowered her eyes. ‘What does it matter what I think? I can tell Mother is determined I shall marry him.’

  Her words rang in my head. ‘What does it matter? It matters a lot! If you object to him, you must tell your mother that. My opinion of him won’t sway her. It must come from you.’

  Isadora turned away. Her shoulders were shaking, but I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying. ‘You would think, wouldn’t you, that when you tell someone who is supposed to love you that they are hurting you, they would stop.’

  ‘Of course! Nobody wants to deliberately hurt somebody they love.’

  Isadora shook her head. ‘Each time I’ve tried to stand up to Mother, she has destroyed me. She doesn’t care; she knows all our deepest fears and how to use them against us. She does it to Father, she does it to me, and she does it to you too, Aunt Emma. Once, when I asked for a kitten, she ripped into me, ridiculing everything I loved — from Aunt Anne, to my art, to my friendship with Rebecca. She twisted my mind so much that I held a knife to my heart and threatened to kill myself. But did that stop her? No. She smiled a smile I will never forget, because she knew then that she had absolute power over me. So don’t ask me to stand up to my mother.’

  Even as a writer, I would never be able to express the horror Isadora’s story roused in me. Now I knew the real reason for those ‘nervous collapses’. Caroline herself had driven her daughter to them.

  I put my arm around Isadora and drew her close. ‘I’m here with you now. I won’t let her hurt you like that again.’

  She turned to me, her face very pale. ‘Mother told me that you’re only here because you need money from her. She said I shouldn’t get too close to you.’

  Any semblance of regard I still held for Caroline vanished. It was horrific the way she played people off against each other. Divide and conquer seemed to be her motto.

  ‘Isadora! It’s true that your mother agreed to pay my debts in return for me tutoring you. But I would have come regardless. When I met you in Paris I was enchanted by you.’

  She smiled. ‘And I with you. Don’t think I believe her lies about you. She slanders everyone I love, but it’s only when she attacks me directly that she has any effect. You have shown me nothing but kindness, Aunt Emma. That’s why I want to ask you to do something for me now.’

  ‘Of course. What is it?’

  ‘Don’t oppose Mother about the Duke. She’ll destroy you if you try to stand between her and something she wants. Go along with this engagement, please — for my sake. You will be much more help to me if you are still in one piece and Mother doesn’t forbid me from seeing you. Once I’m here in England I won’t have Mr Gadley or Rebecca any more for comfort, but perhaps I will be allowed to visit you in Paris and invite you here. That is the best I can hope for.’

  A sense of helplessness swept over me, a feeling that Isadora and I were facing insurmountable odds, and all because of my sister’s unappeasable ambition. Yet I had to stay calm for Isadora’s sake.

  I clutched my niece to my chest and kissed her head. ‘I’ll do anything for you, my sweet Isadora. Anything!’

  We ate supper in the dining room under a ceiling frescoed with cupids. From the rapture on Caroline’s face when the Duke informed her that the baroque paintings on the walls were by Rubens and Caravaggio it was apparent that even a dingy bedroom and a cold bath couldn’t dampen her enthusiasm for the English aristocracy.

  ‘I should imagine that installing plumbing and electricity will be next on your list,’ she said to the Duke, cutting into a lamb cutlet that had turned rubbery with cold. ‘And to move the kitchen closer to the dining room.’

  He lifted his eyebrows, surprised. ‘But it is much more dignified to have servants wait on your bath than to have water spurting from a tap. And electricity might be acceptable for a London house but it is too harsh for the ambience of Lyndale. As for the kitchen, it was built so far from the dining room to avoid unpleasant cooking odours.’

  Caroline’s face pinched, but she replied as if his remarks had been made in jest. ‘How delightful!’

  Isadora’s story of Caroline nearly driving her to take her own life had enraged me so much that it
took all my effort during dinner to pretend everything was normal. As for the Duke, I comforted myself by thinking that if the marriage went ahead at least I could be satisfied that Caroline would make his life miserable. She wouldn’t stand for an English palace that wasn’t comfortable for her.

  The evening concluded with a recital in the library by Lyndale’s own organist. I was glad I’d brought a shawl with me because the temperature was dropping by the minute. Yet I forgot my discomfort as the majestic music of Wagner burst from the grand pipe organ and flooded the room. The library’s acoustics were near perfect. Perhaps there were things that could make living at Lyndale if not joyful then at least bearable. I promised myself that I would come as often as I was invited to help Isadora, and I would write to her every day. I would be her lifeline.

  The following morning, the Duke took us around the estate’s gardens, including the rose garden where tiny buds were starting to form on the bare shrubs.

  ‘The garden contains sixteen hundred specimens of roses,’ he told us. ‘But not yet the American Beauty rose.’

  ‘We can arrange that,’ Lucy whispered to me.

  The grounds were spectacular, but the pergola in the rose garden was in need of repair, and the temple of Diana near the lake had fallen into ruin. In summer, it would take dozens of gardeners to scythe the vast lawns. The cost of upkeep of the grounds must surely be almost as high as the house, I thought.

  In the afternoon we travelled by open carriage into the village, where we were the subject of curiosity. Faces popped up in windows, shopkeepers rushed out to see us, men tipped their hats and women curtsied. A group of children hurried out of a house to hand us each a hastily assembled posy of whatever flowers and greenery could be found in the frosty garden.

  I found the villagers’ reverence for the Duke rather quaint, but, from the gleam in Caroline’s eye and her self-satisfied smile, it was obvious the attention was appealing to her sense of vanity. As she looked about her, I wondered if she was imagining herself as the Duchess of Bridgewater rather than her daughter.

  On our last evening at Lyndale, Caroline and the Duke had a lengthy discussion in his study after dinner. Later, after Isadora had gone to bed, my sister called me to go with her to Lucy’s bedroom.

  ‘Well?’ Lucy asked as soon as we were all seated.

  ‘He is very pleased with Isadora’s manners,’ Caroline said, unable to keep the satisfaction from her voice. ‘He feels that she will come to understand the running of Lyndale in time, and he is willing to help her. His lawyer will begin negotiations with Oliver’s London lawyer. If all is agreeable, he will propose to Isadora before we leave England.’

  ‘Has he agreed that they will marry in New York?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Of course. The wedding will be at Saint Thomas’s. Everyone will marvel at the fine duke we’ve captured for Isadora!’

  ‘Then you have triumphed!’ said Lucy, clasping her hands together. ‘All has gone splendidly!’

  Neither woman said anything to me. I was too insignificant for them to worry about.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Back in London, Caroline indulged any request Isadora asked for, including going to see Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the Lyceum Theatre and visiting Madame Tussaud’s waxwork exhibition. I didn’t know which was worse: Caroline’s false generosity born of her elation at having got what she’d wanted from the Duke; or the way Isadora found means to distract herself from her sorrow, as if doing so was habitual.

  During a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum, Isadora was captivated by a marble bust of Thucydides. ‘The secret to happiness is freedom . . . and the secret to freedom is courage,’ she said, quoting the Greek philosopher. ‘Mr Gadley is always saying that. Perhaps I haven’t chosen freedom strongly enough.’

  That evening, Caroline called us all into the parlour for ‘a chat’. I quailed at what was coming, even though I was prepared for it and Isadora seemed to have resigned herself to marriage to the Duke.

  ‘Isadora, when we were visiting Lyndale Palace you must have noticed that the Duke of Bridgewater couldn’t take his eyes off you,’ Caroline said, watching her daughter closely. ‘He has asked for your hand in marriage.’

  I squeezed my palms together, feeling all the angst and helplessness of someone hearing that their loved one has been condemned to death. What happened next caught me by surprise.

  Isadora pursed her lips, then lifted her eyes to meet her mother’s. ‘I know you have arranged this proposal with the best of intentions, Mother. But I’m not going to marry the Duke.’

  At first I thought I must be hearing things. I leaned forward in my chair, intrigued by the sudden turn of events. What had made Isadora change her mind and decide to assert herself?

  Caroline’s mouth twitched and her brow furrowed. ‘But you’ve hardly got to know him,’ she said with a merry laugh at odds with the hard expression in her eyes. ‘How can you decide that?’

  ‘It’s true that we haven’t spent a lot of time together,’ Isadora answered calmly, ‘but it’s enough to know that we aren’t compatible.’

  Caroline’s fingers kneaded the armrest of her chair. ‘What do you know of compatibility? You are only a child. Compatibility is more than the silly chit-chat young people make these days. It’s a deeper understanding and sympathy with one another.’

  Isadora’s eyes flashed at the word ‘child’ but she continued in a firm, even voice. ‘Well, I don’t think we have those either. He doesn’t listen when I speak so how could we develop any understanding?’

  ‘You’re being absurd, Isadora,’ Lucy said. She looked as perturbed as Caroline by the turn of the conversation. Usually she and my sister made a formidable team when they wanted something. ‘You know nothing of life. Your mother has your best interests at heart. You have to trust her to make decisions for you.’

  ‘How will marrying a man who is only after my money benefit me?’ Isadora said. ‘The Duke has no fortune to offer me. By your logic, I should marry one of the New York wealthy heirs; at least then I would know that my husband is marrying me for myself and not my money.’

  ‘The Duke has a title, a position in parliament and a history,’ Caroline said. ‘No one in New York can offer you that.’

  Her voice was getting louder and more agitated. My pulse was racing, but Isadora remained resolute.

  ‘A title means something to you, Mother. It means nothing to me. I respect that a title might have helped Lucy, but since my debut I am accepted wherever I go.’

  Caroline’s eyes narrowed. ‘You are so ignorant, Isadora — I could slap you! A title is something that can never be taken away from you. Why do you think in London society the peers aren’t threatened by new money as the Van der Heydens, Schorers or Warburgs are in New York? Because in England they have positions that can never be taken away. If a man is a duke or an earl, he will be a duke or an earl until the day he dies.’ Her voice trembled with emotion and tears welled in her eyes. ‘I know what it is to struggle, and how terrible it is to be poor. Your Aunt Emma and I were born into one of the most prominent families in Louisiana; we had a grand plantation on the Mississippi. But everything was lost in the war. You can have money and lose it, but you can never lose a title!’

  Isadora blinked, taken aback by her mother’s distress. I was unsettled too. The only strong emotions I had witnessed Caroline display before were rage and triumph.

  ‘I didn’t mean to upset you,’ Isadora began.

  It was her first stumble. I willed her to keep going, to stay strong. But it was too late.

  ‘Well, you have!’ Caroline shouted, her voice hoarse. ‘If you continue in this vein, you will force me to take action I don’t wish to. If you refuse to marry the Duke, I will no longer consider you as my daughter.’

  Isadora flinched as if her mother had struck her.

  My stomach pitched. I turned to Lucy, hoping she might intervene, but she only lowered her eyes.

  ‘Are you saying you will disown me if I don
’t marry the Duke?’ Isadora asked, her gaze never leaving her mother’s face.

  Caroline lifted her chin but still wouldn’t look at Isadora. ‘I have to take a firm hand to stop my daughter foolishly throwing away an opportunity she doesn’t realise the value of.’

  Isadora rose from her chair, her face contorted with disbelief. ‘Is your ambition so great that you’re prepared to sacrifice my happiness? Are you glad for me to live in a dreary, cold and isolated place in a far-away country just so you can say you have a duchess for a daughter?’

  Lucy finally spoke up. ‘Of course not! My husband understands that I need to visit friends and family in the United States, and travel in Europe to refresh myself. And your mother will see you in London every season.’

  Isadora’s mouth set into a grim line. ‘So you are prepared for me to have a loveless marriage.’

  Caroline glared at her. ‘How dare you insinuate that I am thinking only of myself,’ she hissed. ‘When I recall how I suffered to bring a spoiled, ungrateful girl into this world, I curse God that it was William who perished and not —’

  She stopped, but not before Isadora had gasped and stepped backwards. ‘Me?’ she said.

  She staggered as if she had been stabbed.

  My hand flew to my throat in sympathy. It was as Isadora had described it: Caroline knew all our worst fears and turned them into weapons against us.

  I jumped to my feet and wrapped my arm around Isadora’s shoulders. ‘Stop it, Caroline! Calm yourself!’

  My sister glared at us. ‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘Get out, the both of you!’

  ‘We’re all tired,’ I said, endeavouring to stay composed but quivering from head to foot. ‘Let’s talk rationally about this tomorrow.’

  I took Isadora’s hand and led her out of the room. She didn’t resist me. I guided her upstairs to her room, and with the assistance of a maid helped her out of her gown and into bed.