A Season of Secrets

by Margaret Pemberton

  Carrie seated herself in the opposite armchair. ‘And was the table service perfect at dinner? Mr Jennings said it was, but he may simply not have wanted me to get into a pickle of worry.’

  ‘Everything went as smoothly as clockwork. The only slight dampener on the evening was Elizabeth retiring to bed early. Ever since Paris she’s felt as if she was coming down with flu, hence her wanting to rest up as much as possible this weekend. She’s hoping to stave it off.’

  She leaned her head against the back of the armchair. ‘It’s wonderful to have you at Gorton again, Carrie.’

  ‘It’s wonderful to be here. Just before you knocked at the door I was remembering the first day I came here. I was very nervous and your mother made everything all right within minutes.’

  ‘And then you introduced us to Hal, and Thea was rude about him, and you and Thea fell out over it. I remember that day so well, Carrie. We had happy childhoods playing by the river, didn’t we?’ The expression in her hazel eyes changed and became suddenly sad. ‘I always hoped I’d see my children playing on the river-bank and watching the voles, just as we used to, but I don’t think I’m going to have any children, Carrie – and you can’t imagine how ghastly it is to want a baby and not be able to start one.’

  Carrie couldn’t and so, although her tender heart ached for Olivia, she remained sensitively silent.

  Olivia bit her lip. ‘There’s something else that’s ghastly as well, Carrie. Though I know Dieter loves me, I think he’s sometimes unfaithful to me. Lots of my friends’ husbands are unfaithful. Their wives accept it as just being part of life, but I can’t. I think of how happy Papa and Mama were and I want a marriage like that.’ Her voice shook, and unshed tears glittered on her eyelashes. ‘I want Dieter to be as true to me as I am to him. It isn’t too much to ask, Carrie, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Carrie said fiercely. ‘Of course it isn’t.’ She leant forward, taking Olivia’s hands in hers, her eyes dark with concern. ‘But I can’t imagine it to be true, Olivia. Dieter always looks so happy to be with you – and sometimes, when you are in the same room as him, he hardly lets you out of his sight. I can’t believe that, feeling as he so obviously does about you, he would be unfaithful. How silly would that be?’

  ‘But men are sometimes silly.’ Remembering that Carrie had had very little experience of men – and that whatever experience she may have had, it would not have been with sophisticated men like Dieter – she said, ‘Have you ever had a boyfriend, Carrie? You’ve never said.’

  For once Carrie didn’t blush. Releasing hold of Olivia’s hands and leaning back in her chair, she said, ‘I’m twenty-eight, Olivia. Of course I’ve had boyfriends.’

  Entranced, Olivia forgot her dark thoughts where Dieter was concerned. ‘Who were they? What were their names? Do tell!’

  Carrie’s eyes danced in amusement. ‘One of them was John Size, a farmer from Skeeby, on the other side of Richmond. And Ted Ramsden asked me to marry him, but I turned him down.’

  ‘Ted Ramsden? The Ted who was Monkswood’s gamekeeper and who went to work for Lord Rochdale?’

  Carrie nodded.

  Knowing how few opportunities there were for anyone in service to be able to conduct a courtship that ended in a proposal, Olivia’s eyes were the size of saucers. ‘You turned him down? But why, Carrie?’

  This time, knowing she couldn’t possibly tell Olivia the real answer, Carrie did blush. ‘He wasn’t the one,’ she said simply. And then, thinking that now she’d begun saying things about herself that she’d never told anyone before, she might as well be in for a penny as a pound, she went on, ‘That wasn’t the only proposal I received.’

  ‘Goodness gracious! Who did your second proposal come from?’

  Carrie tilted her head a little to one side, paused only fractionally and then said, ‘Hal.’

  Olivia stared at her, opened her mouth to speak and couldn’t.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so speechless with amazement, Olivia.’ There was genuine surprise in Carrie’s voice. ‘Both Hal and I know it’s what you, Thea and practically the whole of Outhwaite have always expected would happen.’

  ‘Yes, but . . . But for you not to have told us . . .’

  ‘There was nothing to tell. He loves me – but in the same way I love him, which is as a friend. He isn’t in love with me. He’s still obsessed by Thea. I think he thought that if he married me it would put an end to his temptation, where Thea is concerned.’

  Olivia’s forehead furrowed in a frown. ‘Temptation? I don’t know what you mean, Carrie.’

  Carrie suppressed a sigh. Olivia had one of the nicest natures of anyone she knew and she always looked breathtakingly sophisticated – so sophisticated that you had to know her really well before you realized that she sometimes failed to understand things that were, to other people, quite obvious.

  She said patiently, ‘Just because Hal made a decision years ago that he wasn’t going to compromise his socialist principles by marrying a member of the aristocracy – or even having a long-term love affair with a member of it – doesn’t mean to say he isn’t constantly tempted to go back on that decision.’

  ‘Oh, Carrie. Wouldn’t it be wonderful for Thea if he did? Kyle has given up on her. It happened last year, when they were guests of Prince Edward at the Fort. He again asked Thea to marry him. She said she couldn’t, when she still cared for Hal so much, and he told her that she was a fool and his patience had run out.’

  Carrie, who knew this – she had had a telephone call from Thea the day after it happened – said, ‘Thea’s obstinacy in clinging to the hope that there’s a future for her with Hal is equal to Hal’s obstinacy in being determined that her hopes will never be fulfilled.’ She rose to her feet. ‘I hate to bring this to an end, Olivia love, but you can lie in, in the morning. I can’t. I need to go to bed.’

  ‘Oh, of course!’ All concern, Olivia leapt immediately to her feet. ‘I think Bertie will probably go out with Papa and Dieter tomorrow shooting pheasants, and that Elizabeth will stay at Gorton, cosily tucked up in front of a fire, eating chocolates and drinking sherry and chatting with me and Thea.’

  ‘It sounds blissful,’ Carrie said, amused at how different her own day was going to be. ‘Goodnight – God bless, Olivia. Pleasant dreams.’

  Carrie’s own dreams were rudely shattered three hours later by a sharp, urgent knocking on her sitting-room door.

  Instantly wide awake, she swung her legs from the bed, grabbed hold of her dressing gown and, as she hurried out of the bedroom and through the sitting room, pulled it on.

  She opened the door to an ashen-faced Mr Jennings. ‘We have an emergency, Mrs Thornton.’ There was nervous perspiration on his forehead. ‘The Duchess has been taken ill. I don’t know what her temperature is, but her maid says it’s dangerously high. Lord Fenton has telephoned Dr Todd and he’s on his way here now.’

  Carrie didn’t waste time in any expressions of shock. She said swiftly, ‘Please return to Lord Fenton. I’ll be with the two of you in just a couple of minutes.’

  She was accustomed to handling dramas and emergencies at Monkswood, but none of them had included the sudden illness of a royal duchess.

  With hands that were slightly unsteady, she dressed, coiled her long plait of wheat-gold hair into its usual neat bun, washed her face and was outside the door of the Yorks’ guest suite, if not in a couple of minutes, then certainly within ten minutes.

  Gilbert said, ‘Todd will be here any second. The Duke is with the Duchess, as is her maid.’

  ‘If the Duchess has a high temperature she’ll need plenty of fresh lemon barley water to help bring her temperature down. I don’t think there’s any need to disturb Cook’s sleep, but I’ll wake a couple of the kitchen staff, two of the housemaids and a footman.’

  Again she didn’t waste time talking unnecessarily. Leaving Gilbert and Jennings waiting for Dr Todd’s arrival, Carrie roused the minimum number of servants that she thought would be requi
red to see to the Duchess’s comfort during the night and instructed that the guest bedroom adjoining the suite occupied by the Yorks should be made ready for the Duke, so that his sleep would not be disturbed by the medical care being given to his wife. Then she went into the kitchen and instructed one of the kitchen maids to begin making fresh lemon barley water.

  Twenty minutes later, when Dr Todd emerged from the Duchess’s bedside to the room where Gilbert was anxiously waiting for news, Carrie was with him.

  ‘Bed rest and nursing care are what is needed, Lord Fenton. The Duchess’s temperature is one hundred and two degrees. My advice is that she doesn’t consider a return to London until it is back to normal.’

  ‘But she’s not in danger?’ Panic of any kind was alien to Gilbert, but the prospect of a royal guest dying beneath his roof was decidedly unnerving.

  ‘No. If I thought she was in the remotest danger I would be informing her personal doctor and demanding that he travel north forthwith. That, thank God, isn’t the case. However, there is a difficulty.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The Duchess’s maid is similarly indisposed.’

  Gilbert uttered an oath he’d never before in his life uttered in front of a woman.

  Carrie didn’t flinch. She understood only too well how he was feeling.

  ‘And the Duchess most definitely needs a nurse,’ Dr Todd continued. ‘I don’t have one at my beck and call, but there’s a clinic in Richmond that may be able to supply someone. I won’t be able to arrange it until the morning of course, and her lady’s maid should be in bed immediately. I wouldn’t like to answer for the consequences if she isn’t.’

  ‘I can nurse the Duchess,’ Carrie said. ‘In my years at Monkswood I’ve nursed members of staff – and Lady Markham – through several illnesses.’

  ‘Splendid!’ Dr Todd hadn’t the least anxiety about leaving anyone – no matter what their rank – in Carrie’s tender, and obviously efficient, care. ‘Then my advice to you both is to ensure the Duchess’s lady’s maid is put straight to bed and, like the Duchess, given plenty of liquids and plenty of rest. I’ll be back first thing in the morning.’ He began walking away from them and then paused. Turning, he said as an afterthought, ‘The Duke has a nervous disposition and isn’t a man who is of any use in a sickroom. I advise that you encourage him to leave it and get some sleep.’ And, with that, he continued on his way out of the house.

  Gilbert’s amber-brown eyes held Carrie’s. ‘Thank you,’ he said simply. ‘Let us now apprise the Duke of how his wife is to be cared for.’

  With Carrie by his side, the back of his hand almost brushing hers, he entered the guest suite, taking comfort from her presence, just as he had once taken comfort from Blanche’s.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs . . . ?’ Elizabeth said dazedly as she accepted the glass of lemon barley water Carrie offered her.

  ‘Mrs Thornton, Your Grace.’

  ‘And you are?’ Elizabeth asked, disorientated by her high temperature and forgetting their earlier introduction.

  ‘The housekeeper, Your Grace. I am caring for you, as your maid is ill also.’

  Elizabeth closed her eyes, fatigued by the effort of talking, and Carrie carefully laid a cold, lavender-scented compress against her sweating forehead in an effort to begin bringing down her temperature.

  When morning broke and she went into the adjoining sitting room to speak to the Duke of York, Lord Fenton and Dr Todd, Carrie said, ‘The Duchess has had an uncomfortable, disturbed night, but her condition hasn’t worsened.’

  ‘Nor has it, Carrie,’ Dr Todd said. He had known Carrie for years and had no intention of addressing her as Mrs Thornton. ‘Her temperature is still at one hundred and two, but if you keep doing what you have been doing – encouraging her to drink plenty of lemon barley water and continually applying cold compresses to her forehead – I think we will see an improvement by this evening.’

  ‘I s-s-sincerely hope so,’ Bertie said fervently. ‘In the past, her fevers have s-s-sometimes continued for days.’

  Throughout the morning Carrie got the kitchen staff to supplement the lemon barley water by regularly bringing up to the bedroom a drink that had been her granny’s solution for fevers and flu: grated ginger added to boiled water, strained, with a liberal spoonful of honey added.

  ‘That’s very comforting and soothing, Mrs Thornton,’ Elizabeth said weakly as she sipped it. ‘Thank you.’

  By late afternoon Elizabeth, though still weak, was no longer disorientated and Carrie judged it safe to suggest to her that she had a bath in lukewarm water, to aid the process of lowering her temperature.

  Elizabeth, seeing the sense of it, agreed. Later, back in bed again, this time drinking an infusion of hot water, lemon juice and honey to which half a teaspoon of saffron had been added, she said, ‘Did you say it was your grandmother, Mrs Thornton, who told you about adding saffron to lemon and honey?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace.’ Carrie was sitting by Elizabeth’s bedside, from where she could regularly apply cold compresses to her forehead. ‘My granny was very good at nursing people. She was Lord Fenton’s nanny and nursed him through many childhood illnesses.’

  ‘Your grandmother was Lord Fenton’s nanny?’ Elizabeth’s eyes widened. ‘But how extraordinary!’

  Though she thought it was probably inappropriate to explain, Carrie felt an explanation was needed. ‘When Lord Fenton was too old to need a nanny any more, she acted as nanny for other members of his family, and then Lord Fenton retired her into a tied cottage in the village. That was where I grew up. So, you see, I’ve known Gorton – and the family – all my life.’

  Gently she laid another cold compress on Elizabeth’s forehead.

  ‘And so when you left school you immediately came into service here?’

  ‘No, Your Grace. I couldn’t come here as a tweeny because I had become friends with Miss Thea and Miss Olivia – and with Miss Violet as well. Lady Fenton – the first Lady Fenton – thought it best if I went into service for a friend of hers, Lady Markham, over at Richmond.’

  Elizabeth pushed herself up against her pillows, wondering if she was still a little delirious. ‘But how did that all come about, Mrs Thornton? It sounds most unusual.’

  ‘Yes, I think it was.’ Carrie removed the compress and replaced the glass of lemon, honey and saffron with a tall glass of lemon barley water. ‘When I was eight my father was killed in the Great War at the battle of Hooge. His company commander was Lord Fenton, and he suggested to Lady Fenton that it might help me get over my grief if I came to Gorton and played with Thea and Olivia. Olivia is my age, and Thea a year older. I did, and we’ve been as close as sisters ever since.’

  ‘What a very nice story.’ Elizabeth was aware she was beginning to feel fractionally better. ‘And so was it when you were in service with Lady Markham that you met your husband?’

  Carrie smiled. ‘I’m not married, Your Grace. “Mrs” is a courtesy title. And I’m still in service with Lady Markham. I’m her under-housekeeper, and I’m only at Gorton this weekend because Mrs Huntley, Lord Fenton’s housekeeper, has had to dash to Leeds Infirmary, where her daughter has been taken after being in a traffic accident.’

  ‘I’m beginning to feel as if I’m in a Hollywood movie.’ There was amusement in Elizabeth’s voice. ‘A dash to a hospital. A sick house-guest. A Mrs Thornton who is a Miss Thornton. A housekeeper who isn’t actually the housekeeper at all. What else is going to turn out to be not what it seems?’

  Carrie, aware that Elizabeth had turned a corner and was now on the way to recovery, said, ‘If you are beginning to feel a little better, would you like to try some clear chicken soup, Your Grace?’

  Elizabeth nodded.

  When Carrie came back into the room after giving the order for the chicken soup to be brought upstairs, Elizabeth said, ‘What is your Christian name, Miss Thornton?’

  ‘Caroline, but everyone calls me Carrie. I don’t think I’ve ever been called Caroline i
n my life.’

  ‘You must have had a nice childhood, growing up in such a pretty part of the Yorkshire Dales.’

  ‘I did. Together with Thea and Olivia and another friend of mine, Hal, we would play down by the river and, in summer, paddle and swim in it. Sometimes we would watch the voles that live in the river-bank, and when it was blackberry and bilberry time we would pick quarts and quarts of them for Cook to make jam and tarts with.’

  Elizabeth said, ‘When I was a little girl we lived at St Paul’s Walden Bury, and my best friend was my brother David. In the summer we would get up very early to let our six silver-blue Persian cats out. After that we would go and say good morning to the ponies, feed the chickens – there were more than three hundred of them – and collect eggs for our breakfast. Like your childhood, doing simple country things was the best part of my childhood also.’

  In the early evening Elizabeth had another lukewarm bath, but by then she, Carrie, and Dr Todd knew there would be no need of another one, and that her temperature was fast returning to normal and a serious bout of influenza had been averted.

  Carrie still kept up with the regime of cooling compresses, regular glasses of lemon barley water, and hot lemon, honey and saffron on the hour every hour.

  Late in the evening Elizabeth said, ‘I’m beginning to feel much better, Carrie. Usually when I have a fever it’s days and days before I feel well again, so I’m very grateful to you.’ She paused, and then said, ‘Will you be returning to Lady Markham next week?’

  ‘I expect so, Your Grace. Lord Fenton received a telephone call from Mrs Huntley at teatime saying that although her daughter has been badly injured, she no longer has a life-threatening condition, and so I imagine she will be back by tomorrow, or the day after at the latest.’

  ‘Is my maid recovering at the same speed that I am?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

  Elizabeth’s eyes, the same midsummer-blue as Carrie’s, twinkled. ‘Then that must be because she’s having the same infusions and diligent care as I am receiving. Tell me some more about your childhood, Carrie. Did you have other friends besides Lord Fenton’s daughters and Hal? When I was eight every friend I had was either a brother or a sister or a cousin.’