The Love Knot

by Charlotte Bingham

  Lady Violet gave a gay laugh and pointed to the signpost.

  ‘Only another one hundred and fifty miles and we shall be in heaven, Mercy dear!’

  Mercy had been to London once before, but only for a family funeral, so she had only really seen the inside of Browns Hotel – where she had been put up with her brothers because their London house was being redecorated – and the interior of St George’s, Hanover Square, before they were swiftly returned to Cordel Court in the family barouche. So now, longing though she was to lean her head out of the window and stare at the elegance of the carriages, and when they went through the Park at the ladies and gentlemen of fashion on their beautiful mounts, passing and repassing each other, she knew she must not. However, she could see from out of the corner of her eye that sometimes the fashionable folk were halted in little groups, chatting, and sometimes they were walking sedately, but wherever they were the sunlight caught at the decorations on their riding habits or the feathers in their elaborate hats.

  Of course no-one of fashion ever stared at people of fashion, and people of fashion only acknowledged greetings from their equals, or from old family friends. Mercy knew this because she had managed to obtain a very modern book of etiquette, which she had spent the last months reading again and again, and again. From this little booklet, discreetly despatched from a Bath bookshop which specialized in sending young ladies books in plain wrappers, she had learned everything there was to learn about etiquette and the Court. Of course there were some things which she knew instinctively, which could not be taught, but other things…like staring ahead, for instance, which was so different from life in the country where to ignore someone – anyone, really – would mean setting up a rift that could last for centuries.

  ‘And here, at last, we are – and as always when I reach London, even after two long days of travelling, and all the changes of horses and so on, I feel eighteen again!’

  Lady Violet stepped out ahead of Mercy to be greeted at the entrance of the Duffane house by their newly hired London butler, for the redoubtable Tallboy did not like the capital and hated to be asked to leave Cordel Court.

  He was not alone. Lord Duffane too hated London. And since, now that he was older, he relied on Tallboy so much for his day to day needs, he was loth to force him to come up to town for the Season knowing that Tallboy missed his life at Cordel Court and his nightly port (actually his lordship’s but that was by the by) but most of all his cronies at the old inn in the village where he appeared with a regularity that was much appreciated by the landlord.

  ‘My lady. Miss Mercy.’

  The butler bowed and Lady Violet and Mercy stepped into Lord Duffane’s town house with some relief on Mercy’s part, for it had been a long, long journey from Somerset and she did not have the same sense of happiness at arriving in the capital as her stepmother.

  Not that she was dreading her first London Season, by any means. She was, in many ways looking forward to it, but she was already missing the family’s pug dogs – not to mention her dear old mare, Grandy Girl. Mercy was no great horsewoman, and she did not hunt and had no wish to do so, but she did like to trot round the countryside on Grandy, and she loved a fast canter uphill, sometimes even daringly jumping a small stream, if Somerset’s clay soil was not too hard, or too muddy, for Grandy Girl’s thoroughbred legs.

  ‘New hall boy, new butler – the place seems better already,’ Lady Violet murmured as she swept ahead into the panelled hall where, since the day had turned suddenly chilly for the time of year, the servants had rather touchingly, Mercy thought, lit a fire to welcome them.

  ‘Well, there we are, Mercy, here is your room. It has been redecorated for your coming, you know – such a kind papa as you have! And my suite is below you, of course, but you know that.’

  Mercy did not, yet she did not say so, for her stepmother’s assumptions, she had found, were best left just as they were. Mercy had noticed that it always bothered her to be interrupted and to be asked questions if she was on what Lord Duffane called ‘one of Step-maman’s conversational runs’.

  Lady Violet stared around Mercy’s newly allocated room with approval.

  ‘I chose the cretonne myself, and if I may say so I think it catches the light just beautifully.’

  With another gay laugh and a wave of her hand Lady Violet left her stepdaughter, passing two of the lower servants who were bringing Mercy’s trunks up to her room, and went below to the first floor where her own suite had been made ready for her occupation. And where, Mercy knew, her innumerable trunks and hat boxes would already have been opened and the contents laid reverentially in cupboards and drawers by Smith, her devoted maid.

  Mercy looked round the beautifully decorated room, at the cretonne at the windows, at the velvets on the chairs, at the tapestry on the prie-dieu, at the richly dressed bed. It was all so different from her really rather run-down room at Cordel Court, where the furniture was throw-outs from guest rooms and her bed only a little better than a truckle bed, nothing having been changed there for many years, and certainly not since her mother died.

  As she stood in the middle of this new and glowingly sumptuous room Mercy could not help wondering how she looked in the middle of it. The room was dressed so beautifully that it was plain even to her that it showed up the poverty of her clothes, just as her stepmother’s elegance and beauty showed up the poverty of her stepdaughter’s demeanour and allure, and Mercy saw, yet again, just how difficult it was going to be for her to attract the right husband in the short months ahead. What rich Sir Galahad would want a mouse like herself? She was a bookworm, not a huntswoman. When left alone, without her brothers to bully her, Mercy preferred sewing at her tapestry by the fire in winter. Or, in summer, sitting under the apple trees in the orchard reading poetry, or playing the piano in the saloon. She infinitely preferred these occupations to sharing luncheon baskets with the men on her father’s shooting parties.

  But this was all hopeless as far as Englishmen were concerned, and she knew this, again, from her brothers, and of course Lady Violet. ‘Englishmen think of girls as boys in girls’ clothes. As long as you know that, you will never be disappointed.’

  Mercy stared out of the window. She was determined to begin as she meant to go on. She must not be a timorous mouse afraid to go out on her own, afraid to face the fashionable world which lay in all the streets around her. She would go for a walk in the Park with her new maid. She would see at close quarters those delightful ladies on their beautiful thoroughbreds, glimpsed from the carriage, and afterwards she would sit under a tree and, having smuggled a book out, she would sit and read it well away from any danger of mockery – for no-one in the family except herself read books. It was unknown. Her father boasted of it a great deal, always saying heartily, if anyone so much as mentioned reading, ‘No, no, no, never read a book in my life.’

  He had said it very often while Mercy was growing up. Sometimes she would have preferred it if he had found something else to boast about, but there it was. The Prince of Wales did not read, so as a consequence none of the men did, nor were they likely to do so. It just was not done. To be sporting yes, to be bookish, absolutely not.

  ‘Mademoiselle Mercy, we should not be sitting ourselves ‘ere, I think, huh?’

  Lady Violet had passed on her ‘bulldog’ as she called Clarice, her old French maid, with strict instructions to guard Mercy every minute that she was in London. They had walked through the park together from Mayfair, and, it being fine, Mercy had seated herself beside the Serpentine.

  ‘We must walk, Mademoiselle Mercy, and not sit with a book, huh? It is not convenable, so we go back to the ’ouse, soon I think, or Lady Violette will be very hungry.’

  ‘Angry, Clarice, not hungry. Lady Violet is rarely hungry and if she is she would never say, and you and I both know she is never angry. But still. Oh, very well.’ With a small sigh Mercy stood up again, knowing that Clarice had a better idea of London and the conventions than she herself. �
��It is a pity that sitting with a book in the Park is not proper.’

  ‘There are many things that are not convenable in London you will find, Ma’mselle Mercy. Most of all in the Park. You may ride in the Park, but walking is not ladylike at all – n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘I am afraid I shall not be doing much riding along Rotten Row. You know I am frightened of any other horse except Grandy Girl, and it was too expensive to bring her up to town for the Season, Papa said.’

  As they talked they were making their way briskly back towards the Park gates, but they were forced to stop in order to let a horseman on a large, dark bay gelding canter slowly past them. He was beautifully dressed in tight riding breeches and an exquisitely cut coat, his shiny top hat set on a handsome head of dark hair with just a little touch of grey to the sides – which meant that he was no longer a young blade but a man of the world, and possessed of a natural, elegant seat on his horse.

  ‘I can tell everything from the way a man sits his horse,’ Lord Duffane would say, and although Mercy was no huntswoman, she knew exactly what he meant. The way a man sat his horse proclaimed sensitivity, courage, temper.

  Glancing back towards the horseman who had just passed them Mercy imagined that he had to be courageous, for the horse was not an easy ride. He also had to be at least even tempered, for he was sitting his mount with patience, but although he had kind hands she wondered whether he would be the same with humans for, as she had sometimes observed, men who loved horses were not always the kindest of characters. Sometimes indeed you could hardly reconcile the man and his horses with the man and his family and friends. So although she went along with her father a little, she did not agree with him wholeheartedly. She knew very well from the gossip of the county which reached even Cordel Court while she was growing up that seeing a man on a horse was not the whole picture, at least not as far as a woman was concerned. So she did not turn to look at the rider again. Indeed, she forgot him.

  At the beginning of the twentieth century there were already cars to be seen in the capital, although the old Queen would have none of them. And while the Prince of Wales might be proud of his new ‘motor stables’ and many of his friends the same, for the most part the old order of the horse still reigned in the fashionable streets of London, where no man would be seen walking to his club in anything but the smartest clothes.

  This Season it would be a high collar and a wide cravat tied not in a bow but in a knot so that the effect was less artistic. A waistcoat, a long frock coat, a curly-brimmed topper – not so tall as it had been this, following the tone again set by the Prince of Wales – and of course a thin, graceful walking cane for town, with perhaps a family crest engraved on the handle.

  Mercy had already noted all this as she sat in the family carriage, before being once more decanted with Lady Violet onto a London pavement.

  ‘Come, Mercy,’ Lady Violet commanded, and her stepdaughter, smiling dutifully, followed her up the steps of the discreet brass-plated establishment in front of them.

  Mercy should have been concentrating on dresses and the excitements of the balls ahead, but instead she was annoyed with herself, for she had running through her head a poem that she had learned which began My Love in her attire doth show her wit, It doth so well become her.

  The poem would not go away, and it was somehow shocking because the poem ended in a way that – well, in a way of which her stepmother would certainly not approve: But beauty’s self she is when all her robes are gone.

  It was always the same, Mercy found. Whenever she wanted to be correct, something particularly incorrect, or inappropriate, or in this case fast, came into her head. It sometimes happened in church. It sometimes happened when she was helping to prepare a charity tea at Cordel Court. It was as if there was nothing, but nothing, better that her mind could find for itself to do than to turn itself towards something which it quite definitely should not.

  ‘Mercy, this way!’

  Lady Violet beckoned, and Mercy promptly obeyed, followed in her turn by Clarice looking at her most grim and carrying a Gladstone bag of great antiquity, its gold clasps wrought in a complicated cypher and its handle much decorated, giving it the look of a respectable Englishwoman who had been overdressed by an Italian. It was always known as ‘ze casse’ by Clarice.

  The interior of the small house into which they walked was most discreetly set about on the first floor with sofas and chairs. No-one could have known it was a shop, which is what it was. Neither could they have guessed that it was frequented by the mothers of debutantes unwilling or unable, due to monetary problems, to dress them at Worth in Paris. Lady Violet preferred to visit such places in person, not liking to be disturbed at home by visiting mannequins and other inconveniences.

  As soon as they entered, Clarice, who obviously knew the form, held back, and stayed downstairs on one of the hard hall chairs guarding who knew what – although from the look on her face it might well have been her ladyship’s jewel case hidden inside the large old faded Gladstone bag.

  In welcoming Lady Violet and Mercy, Madame Chloe sank to really quite a deep curtsy, although Mercy noticed that her small dark eyes were alive with the kind of determined observation that misses nothing that may be of use to a woman committed to the business of clothing the daughters of the well-connected for the London Season.

  The two visitors were shown to a sofa. Lady Violet, herself so magnificently dressed that she was quite obviously not in need of the dressmaker’s art, nodded to Mercy to sit beside her while Madame Chloe clapped her hands and the first of the mannequins appeared from behind a piece of curtaining.

  Madame Chloe’s eyes had rested approvingly on Lady Violet’s elegant ensemble before summoning her own mannequins. There was no doubt at all that her ladyship was a challenge to Madame’s art. Lady Violet always looked magnificent, whether mounted on one of her thoroughbreds – sweeping hunting skirt allowing just enough boot to show, plumes in her hat, fine leather gloves – or walking through Cordel Court, closely skirted, her high-collared lace blouse showing off her long neck, her French pocket watch pinned to her breast.

  But now, in London, and that morning most particularly, she so far surpassed anyone’s expectations of a fashionable woman of a certain age that people turned and looked as they passed her stepping from her carriage, or stopped and, quite frankly, stared from the other side of the road at the vision she presented.

  And yet that morning she was dressed only in a walking dress from the previous season, although only the most knowledgeable and the most fashionable would have known it. Her hat was a wide saucer of white with red flowers placed at the front, the hat itself tilted most carefully low, towards her nose. Behind the flowers at different angles rose two white wings made of the same material as the saucer, looking a little like birds’ wings. Her rich, dark brown hair, brushed out from the sides for a bouffant effect and beautifully arranged by Clarice, was shining and full, and caught up at the back into a large chignon fastened with combs, themselves concealed not just by the hat but also by the high red collar of the coat, which was lined with thick guipure lace, rising behind and falling to the front into wide lapels, also faced with the guipure. The full length buttoned red coat, interfaced at set intervals with the same lace so that it formed a pattern down the front, fell nearly to her feet. The shoulders of the coat were wide, and there were deep lace cuffs to the sleeves. The whole effect was magnificent, and Lady Violet’s slender, hourglass silhouette set it off to perfection.

  But this was last year’s fashion. The whole outfit had been, metaphorically speaking, only thrown on for a little morning’s shopping, and all too soon, Mercy knew, it would be put to the back of Lady Violet’s London wardrobe, to be replaced by something a great deal more up to the minute. Besides, it was now April. Lady Violet must have worn this coat upwards of a half a dozen times. It had, as she had remarked a little ruefully to Mercy that morning, ‘had its day’.

  She did not know why, but as the first
of the costumes were paraded before them Mercy could not concentrate on the clothes that were being shown to them so expertly, but found herself instead feeling really very sorry for the young girls who had to sweep out from behind the red velvet curtaining and show off the latest of Madame Chloe’s designs.

  The dresses might be really very pretty, but the girls themselves were pale, and thin, and obviously quite as young as herself, or perhaps even younger. Instead of looking at the gowns Mercy fell to wondering how they had come to model Madame Chloe’s clothes, and if they had ever had a square meal in the last months, and whether it was right for such very young girls to be used in this way, to show off dresses to people of fashion when they should probably be still at home with their families.

  Because Mercy’s mind was quite caught up with these thoughts, she missed Lady Violet nodding towards the dressmaker and saying, ‘Yes, yes, we will take everything so far, provided you can assure me that the fittings will be at home, and that my stepdaughter will not be passing every other housemaid dressed in the same thing?’

  ‘Oh, Lady Violet is so amusing always,’ Madame Chloe said, but she did not laugh or smile. Instead she lowered her voice and added, ‘They are all for your approval and your approval alone, my lady, of that you can be assured.’

  ‘I remember that dreadful incident last Season, when the Duchess of…well, we all remember that, do we not? It was a perfect scandal.’

  But Madame Chloe had already raised her hand and shaken her head before Lady Violet had finished and her expression had become one of such pain that for a second or two Mercy was quite sure that she was going to be unwell.

  ‘That was due to a very unfortunate incident. I do assure you, my lady, it would be difficult to describe to you my deep feelings of sympathy for poor dear Monsieur Worth. It turned out that there was a grudge involved, spies from England … a seamstress with a grudge is worse than a poisoning wife, I always say. So near to the seat of power, too easy for them to accept money, temptation everywhere.’