The Love Knot

by Charlotte Bingham

  He had already begun his pudding. Mercy had refused hers, for the truth was that she found her appetite had fled once ‘coming out’ and ‘doing the Season’ was mentioned. It seemed to her that even as she watched her step-uncle ladling what appeared to be mountains of meringue and fruit and cream into his mouth she could feel a hard chair sticking into her ‘sit-upon’ and hear music playing, but feel no white-gloved hand on the back of her ball gown.

  ‘I expect Lady Violet is doing something about your hair and dresses, is she not?’

  He had finished and was now wiping his ripe over-red lips on his napkin even as he lifted his wine glass yet again.

  Mercy remembered how her brothers, back at Cordel Court, had nicknamed him ‘Marcus Mighty Mouth’ as he passed them to take his sister in to dinner if their father was out visiting someone on the estate, or attending to his duties as Lord Lieutenant of the county.

  ‘He only comes here to eat,’ they would say, ‘he can’t do anything else. That’s all he’s good for, bridge and eating.’

  ‘Yes, she is doing something,’ Mercy agreed in a low voice, and found herself praying that she would die before she reached a ballroom, or the presentation rooms at Buckingham Palace, or drove to Ascot, or took to the dance floor with someone, anyone, who would dance with her.

  ‘Still, at least you have my sister to present you at Court, that is a blessing. She will guide you in every way. It will be a dream come true, mark my words.’

  He smiled down the table at Mercy.

  But Mercy thought that it would not be a dream so much as a nightmare. She had heard all the stories, as all young girls of her age and position had, about girls who while walking backwards from the Queen tripped over their trains. Of dresses that had caught up at the back, unbeknownst to the wearer, thus exposing her pantalettes to the amused and interested Court. She had been told of dowagers who had dropped their tiaras where no-one would want to drop anything. Of the Prince of Wales’s inability to miss a single presentation because it meant that he could eye the new Season’s crop of debutantes and make a note of those he might wish to see again after they were married and had, in the accepted manner, given their husbands sons and heirs.

  ‘Above all, do not let it prey on your mind. The secret of a successful London Season, believe me, is to relax and be yourself – enjoy yourself.’

  Mercy nodded blindly down the table through the candlelight, because to relieve her tension she had put her mind elsewhere – with Nurse Lynch at Sister Angela’s Nursing Home, as a matter of fact. With the beautiful young nurse who might or might not, by way of ice on the feet, be helping that poor young mannequin back to consciousness.

  ‘Forgive me, my dear, but you seem somewhat preoccupied.’

  ‘Oh no, not at all, not at all preoccupied,’ Mercy lied.

  ‘I expect you are tired. I am awaited at the opera, of course, so I know you must be feeling tired.’

  And Mercy knew it was incumbent on her to withdraw from the dining room, and did so, making her way without pause up to her own room where she sat down suddenly on her bed and put her head in her hands.

  She was a mouse, not a ballroom star. She was plain, not a beauty. How would she ever survive what was ahead of her?

  And yet, as she found herself twisting her handkerchief around her fingers in a fever of tension she knew, from what had happened that day, that she was quite wrong. The condition of the poor young mannequin was what mattered, and how Mercy Cordel was pulling through these first days away from Somerset was not important in the least. What mattered was what had happened to that other country girl, not whether or not Mercy Cordel found dancing partners or a husband in her first London Season.

  Reluctantly she went to the cheval glass in the corner of her beautifully furnished bedroom, and stared at herself. Turn this way or that, do what she could, she was still unable to deceive herself into thinking that she was a beauty, or could ever be. Her hair was brown rather than blonde, her eyes grey rather than blue, her mouth, though generous, not full lipped, her height small rather than Junoesque.

  She needed no convincing of her coming fate. She knew that she would end up without a husband or an engagement to announce, and would be sent back to Cordel Court like a parcel marked Return to sender. There she would fritter away her life between her books and her horse, while pretending to herself that she was of use to her family by sewing and helping out with all the thousand and one things that were always needing to be done in a large country house, until finally she would die unmarried, even her gravestone proclaiming the failure that faced her in the coming months.

  ‘I know I shall care so much, feel so humiliated,’ she thought, as she turned away from the mirror. ‘But I shall just do as I have always done. I shall pretend that I do not care and that way I will survive. I shall think of what really matters, and what really matters is not to do with me, it is to do with other people’s lives, people’s deaths – other people matter, not myself. I must be like that nurse, think less of myself than of other people.’

  But as she heard the fashionable carriages passing under her window, and as she thought of the people inside those carriages, witty, good looking and above all rich, Mercy knew that she did care, very much. She was too honest not to realize it, and so she found herself kneeling by her bed and praying, first for the girl in the nursing home, but second for herself, that she might somehow survive the coming months.

  Five

  Dorinda had always, but always, suspected that her life had been destined from the start to be somehow very special. Perhaps it was because she had so disliked her mother that she had finally become convinced while she was growing up that she would one day be transported from the place where she was – a dull grey-tinged boarding house inevitably filled with spinsters and bachelors whose only purpose in life seemed to be making up a four for bridge – to fulfil a special destiny.

  It was also because of the inevitable attentions of all those occupants of that self-same boarding house that she knew she was quite beautiful. They were always telling her she was, and it had seemed a bit of a pity not to give in and finally believe them.

  The point being that from the time she was small, Dorinda had realized that people turned to look at her when she passed them. It was something which she took for granted, and enjoyed. Her mother, who did not really like anyone else being beautiful, said, often, that it was only because of her hair and her violet blue eyes.

  ‘It is the contrast in your colouring, Dorinda,’ she would say, flatly. ‘You have your father’s hair colouring and my eyes. It is the contrast, that is all. And since your looks are nothing to do with yourself, but everything to do with le bon dieu, you will not become conceited about them, if you please.’

  Dorinda did not care for the last part of that oft repeated sentiment; every time she saw the words forming on her mother’s lips, she would skip away from her. Sometimes she would find herself running towards the sea shore which bordered their garden, towards the beaches and the tides, the sighing winds and the noisy nagging cries of the seagulls, all of which helped to drown out the sound of her mother’s voice. Dorinda knew very well that it was always her mother’s intention to drag her down, to make her ordinary. The ground was where Dorinda’s mother wanted her only child’s feet to stay, and the ground was what Dorinda had every intention of floating above, whether it be on a horse or in a well-sprung carriage.

  And here she was, stepping down from just such a well-sprung carriage as she had dreamed of so often, towards her first riding lesson with Gervaise’s friend Lord Crosswaite, whom she could see, even now, waiting for her at the entrance to the livery stables, himself immaculately attired in the latest riding clothes.

  ‘Lord Crosswaite.’

  He bowed, but not before Dorinda had seen the expression in his eyes change from impatience (Lord, this is going to be a dull morning) to one of amazement and fascination. Dorinda did not blame him in the least. She knew she was looking perfectl
y at her best, which was to say very, very good indeed, but she did not know this because of having looked in any mirror. She knew it from looking into Robert Crosswaite’s eyes.

  ‘Mrs Montgomery.’

  He bowed and kissed her hand in the French manner, for which Dorinda immediately gave him good marks.

  ‘I am so looking forward to you teaching me everything you know ...’ a slight pause, and then, ‘about horses and riding, Lord Crosswaite. Mr Lowther tells me you are expert in the hunting field and always follow your own line, whatever that might mean!’

  Dorinda gave a little ripple of laughter and Lord Crosswaite too laughed, although she had not really made a joke, and really they were both laughing because it was a sunny morning, a beautiful day, and Dorinda was wearing such a becoming riding habit, close-buttoned, long-skirted, in her favourite blue, her curly-brimmed, short-topped, shiny ladies’ topper sitting forward onto her forehead in just the way the fitter at Busvines had told the famous ‘Skittles’, Lord Hartington’s great love, to wear hers.

  Skittles had made herself famous riding not just in Rotten Row but also in the Bois de Boulogne, where crowds would gather to watch her pony chaise with its matching pair of black cobs and its two grooms on coal black cattle behind.

  ‘It is so kind of you to offer to help me, Lord Crosswaite.’

  By this time, Dorinda was standing on the mounting block and a groom was holding her hireling’s head, and she was being helped by his lordship into the saddle. From behind her Dorinda could hear just the slight suspicion of a sigh as if her teacher was enjoying some secret pleasure, and then they were away, Dorinda’s mount walking sedately beside that of Lord Crosswaite.

  The two of them headed right into Rotten Row. It was a great deal too early in the morning for many of the fashionable to be about, something for which, Dorinda confided to her companion, she was only too grateful, since if she was to take a ‘flyer’ she would rather do it with a smaller than a larger audience.

  ‘It is the most perfect sensation,’ she went on, ‘to be out on a morning such as this with a beautiful creature such as this, and a lovely way to see London too.’

  Robert Crosswaite was obviously not used to this ingenuous view of the fashionable life, but seeing Dorinda’s smiling delight in everything, and how prettily she already sat her mount, he too started to look about, at the trees with their tender green, newly come out in time for the Season, and the occasional carriages and hansoms that he could see across the Park, but most of all at Dorinda whose genuine, innocent delight was so very refreshing after the demeanour of more fashionable ladies, so many of whom, it had to be faced, often gave their male companions the impression that they were more than tired of the Season before it had really begun.

  Of course Crosswaite did not know that Dorinda had sent for a ladies’ side saddle and had been practising sitting on it for some days now, one leg forward over the pommel, one down to the stirrup, back straight, eyes always ahead.

  ‘Mrs Montgomery,’ her pilot Lord Crosswaite told his friend Gervaise a few hours later, ‘is a natural on a horse. Once she has her own mount, she will become as famous a sight in Rotten Row as the Empress of Austria in the hunting field. I predict it.’

  As a matter of principle Dorinda had actually no intention of not becoming famous, and so after that first expedition with her kind young pilot she went out regularly, at first with him, but then, after a few weeks, with another, and yet another, and yet another, all of whom, the gossip of the clubs being what it was, having heard that if they rose early enough they would find themselves escorting a new and fabulous beauty who went by the name of Dorinda Montgomery. An early morning beauty, a stunning woman on a horse – the combination was enough to lure all the most fashionable men to rise before they really liked.

  Of course Gervaise was nothing if not proud of Dorinda’s swift progress, and as a consequence was soon encouraged to buy her a stunning liver chestnut mare of her own.

  If it had not been vulgar Dorinda would have kissed her lover straight away when she saw ‘Glitters’ being led up in the livery yard, but as it was she contented herself with murmuring, ‘My, my, but she is a very pretty thing, is she not?’

  ‘I thought I must have it right. I was not sure, but I thought I must, because she is exactly the colour of your hair,’ Gervaise said proudly. ‘Why, you could be sisters!’

  ‘She will look very much the thing with my Dorinda Blue riding skirt set against her shining liver chestnut colour, will she not?’

  ‘I hear “Dorinda Blue” being bandied about all over town. In such a short space of time, my dear.’

  ‘Do you mind, monsieur?’

  ‘Monsieur’ looked down at Dorinda. He did not mind at all. He was proud of taking her up as he had, but he was also realistic. Once a young woman was being talked about in the clubs it was only a very short space of time before her name came to the attention of the Prince of Wales, and after that, of course, anything could happen, and usually did.

  And so he found himself, for once in her company, falling silent.

  It was difficult for Mercy to slip off anywhere with Clarice, not that she was not adept at sidling out of doors, and in through them again too, but because Clarice was such a clumsy old thing, forever walking about in squeaking shoes, or standing still and hiccuping when she was meant to be creeping, quiet as a mouse, after Mercy.

  This afternoon, two days after their late afternoon visit to Sister Angela’s Nursing Home, Mercy was sure that it would be quite safe to slip off to see how the young mannequin was progressing. She was aware, however, that if she should dress in any of her new town clothes – those clothes that had arrived from Madame Chloe’s Maison de Couture – she would be noticed, if not by her stepmother, at least by one of her stepmother’s friends. They would all be calling to leave their cards; friends who, over the last two mornings, had been ‘looking Mercy over’ for their sons, and had, by their lack of enthusiasm, made it all too clear that they thought their sons could do really better than Miss Mercy Cordel.

  For this reason, in order to visit the nursing home once more, Mercy made sure that she was dressed in her coming-to-town shabby Cordel Court clothes, and insisted Clarice wear shoes that for once did not squeak.

  Having guarded against all exigencies she slipped out of a side door into the street and walked off in the direction of a hansom cab. Once safely round the corner she jumped into it, followed by her maid, and sat well back. London was so small, with so many eyes to see you, she knew that she had to be careful. She also knew that Clarice, for all her disapproval of such activities as reading novels in the Park, had given her full support to Miss Mercy’s interest in the poor young girl.

  ‘It is what Christians must do, huh?’

  Mercy had to agree it was just what Christians should do, although not usually Christians of her class and age. For the truth was that nothing had interested her more, since coming to town, than the incident at Madame Chloe’s establishment.

  Not that Madame Chloe was unkind. She was not unkind, but the whole fashionable system of using innocent young girls was cruel. And the whole idea that she could have been taken off to some public hospital and abandoned, with no-one to take an interest in her, aroused Mercy’s deepest feelings of disgust at the way a so-called Christian society conducted itself.

  Of course, nothing had altered very much. She had been the same at Cordel Court, and doubtless when she returned there, assuredly still very much a spinster, her attitudes would still be unchanged. She would still be all set to rescue some lame dog, or some stray or waif, and nurse them in some lonely cottage, far away from the prying eyes of her family who so strongly disapproved of her involvement with such things or such people.

  Not that they were unkind, or uncaring. Their attitude was that once they took up with more than their usual charitable concerns – namely the Church, the Church Orphanage, the Church Old People’s Trust, the Church Committee for the Settling of Waifs and Strays, a
nd the Church Benevolent Society – they would have too much on their hands.

  ‘So many depend on Cordel Court already,’ her stepmother was always murmuring to Mercy. ‘It seems to me that if we take on one more person we shall be like the famous boat that took on one too many to crew, and promptly sank.’

  Mercy longed to ask which ‘famous’ boat it was that had been so over-crewed it had sunk, but her stepmother was always gone before she could frame the question, rapidly walking away from her, glancing at the tiny French watch pinned above a pocket of one of her fine lawn blouses, her quick light steps echoing down the stone-flagged floors of the old house, a small terrier at her heels.

  ‘Miss Mercy, we are here!’

  Mercy jumped down from the hansom, thankful that although she was no heiress she did at least have a small income – girls’ pin money, it was always called disparagingly by her brothers who had considerable inheritances from all sides – from her mother’s estate. But, disparaged as it was, the money was enough to allow her to pay for ribbons or medicines or lace or, as in this case, hansom cabs, without having to resort to asking for charity from someone else.

  She was so anxious to know whether the ice had been of any benefit to the patient when she saw Nurse Lynch she forgot to greet her.

  ‘How is the poor creature? I am sorry I have not been back before this, but I have had to– –’ Mercy stopped. It was no good. She would have to confess. ‘I am to be presented at Court, and really there is so much fiddle-faddle to everything, what with the dresses and the costumes – oh, it is so fatiguing and tiresome really, and then the dowagers and the duchesses come in to take tea with my stepmother and look me over, and go away again quite resolved that they can do better for their sons! It is such a thing to be a girl, and not at all pretty. But then – you would not know about that, would you?’