The Love Knot

by Charlotte Bingham

  Leonie was also dressed in newly purchased black, for formal mourning was, and always would be it seemed, a large part of their young lives. Being fitted for such clothes was as important as for any other ritual.

  ‘Any more relatives of the deceased?’ The vicar stared over their heads as if a trifle disappointed at such a poor showing of mourners.

  Mercy answered, suddenly stern, ‘No, we are her only mourners, vicar,’ in her best clipped tones.

  It was the Cordel coming out in her, and she knew it. Yet she could do nothing about it. It was there, always, that Cordel bit of her, even when she did not want it – she was always aware of its being ready to be used, although only for certain importunate people who seemed to her to lack grace or understanding.

  ‘Do we pay you now, vicar?’ Leonie put in, equally suddenly, all innocence.

  Mercy, realizing at once that she was trying to be impertinent for the same reason that Mercy had been, refrained from looking at her friend, while all at once surrendering to an urge to give an imitation of one of her great aunts. This entailed staring straight ahead past the vicar, not wanting to take advantage of what she knew was going to be his disconcertion.

  ‘Payment after the service will be quite time enough, I find,’ came the frosty reply.

  Seconds after that the service began.

  Leonie could not concentrate. In some ways it was because she was too used to funerals. Not because the nursing home had many fatalities – far from it, as a matter of fact – but because she had grown up in Eastgate Street where, it sometimes seemed to her, there had always been someone about to go to heaven, and whoever it was, however little time they had spent in the street, all the neighbours had always attended their funeral.

  As Leonie’s foster mother said sometimes, ‘Not least because of the wake, dear. They do like to mourn, of course, but they come to keep warm and for the food too, you know. Stop that, and no-one would come.’

  Aisleen Lynch had always been in the habit of making small pies and custard tarts for these occasions – occasions when discreet amounts of both tea and sherry were ladled into cups (half of them usually on loan from someone else because a cracked cup was a mortal sin in Eastgate Street) and pallid cheeks became well flushed as a result of the much needed refreshments.

  So death was just death in Eastgate Street, no more to be particularly remarked upon than new life, and sometimes greeted with rather more relief than the sound of a baby’s first startling cry, heralding as it usually did yet another new mouth to feed.

  ‘I chose “Away in a Manger” for one of the hymns, because although it is a Christmas hymn I did think it might have been one of her favourites,’ Leonie told Mercy, as, after the service, they dutifully followed the simple coffin to the churchyard. ‘And I chose a white coffin, because although she was not quite a child she seemed to be hardly more, don’t you think?’

  Mercy nodded. She did not need to be asked to think, as it happened, because she had much to think about at that moment. The funeral, the coffin, Leonie’s lovely singing voice – rather more lovely than Mercy’s own – but most of all Clarice’s face when she realized that they were required to go on to the churchyard, for, as she hissed to her young mistress before they both climbed into the waiting hansom after Leonie, ‘I ’ave jus’ remembered that the dowager duchess were coming thees morning!’ All these thoughts were more than enough for Mercy as they returned to London.

  ‘Will it be all right with your stepmother, do you think, that you have come?’ Leonie asked anxiously as they parted an hour later.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mercy said in as reassuring a way as was possible, given that her heart was already thumping twice as fast as normal just thinking of the anger that she must have incurred.

  ‘You mean no, do you not?’

  ‘No. I came because I wished to, and for no other reason. Let us be glad that the poor little mannequin had the three of us to throw earth upon her coffin. I will call and see you soon at Sister Angela’s, you may be sure.’

  ‘You are in trouble––’

  ‘No, no, not at all. Please, it is of no matter.’

  Leonie waved the hansom goodbye, although the occupants could not have possibly seen her, and then walked slowly back to Mrs Dodd’s house. She could not imagine what would happen to Miss Cordel now that she knew she had been expected to be at home, and she could only hope and pray for her.

  Once more Lady Violet stood at the top of the stairs and looked down at Mercy and Clarice, but this time she was not in full evening dress, and certainly not in a good mood.

  ‘Follow me to the drawing room,’ she commanded Mercy.

  Clarice muttered ‘Mon dieu, la pauvre’ under her breath and sped away to the upper reaches of the house where she could, and doubtless would, stay out of Lady Violet’s way for the rest of the week.

  Mercy followed her stepmother into the elegant first floor drawing room with its light turquoise paint and its gilded paintings, its immense flower vases and its florions. Mercy did not know what florions were exactly but she knew there were a great many within the decorative patterns of the plasterwork of the room because Lord Marcus had told her so.

  ‘What do you mean by this?’

  Lady Violet produced the note that Leonie had sent round to Mercy the previous day. Staring at it for the second time, Mercy realized suddenly why there was such an atmosphere in the house, why her stepmother was white to the lips, Leonie’s was a message that could so easily be misinterpreted.

  ‘I can explain, Step-maman.’

  ‘I would imagine that you will have an explanation,’ her stepmother said tightly. ‘I can not imagine, however, what you will explain. I will be immensely interested, as you may know, since I have had to explain your absence – albeit with your maid, thank the Lord – to the Dowager Duchess of Clanborough who, you may also imagine, was more than surprised to find that you were not at home as expected. I passed off your absence as a medical emergency, your having had to have been rushed off to Sloane Square with a bad tooth. Now, you may now pass off your excuses on me and I will see whether or not to believe them.’

  Mercy took a deep breath, as well she might.

  ‘To begin at the beginning. This note is from Leonie Lynch, a nurse at Sister Angela’s Nursing Home. Do you remember when the mannequin passed out at Madame Chloe’s?’ Mercy could see that Lady Violet hardly could, for the simple reason that it was such a very trivial occurrence. ‘Well. As it happens, I went to Sister Angela’s with her, and afterwards I – well, I kept on visiting her. Not for long, though – and always with Clarice, of course. Because, well, I felt so sorry for her.’

  ‘Your wretched lame ducks again – you silly gel. How and when will we cure you of your bleeding heart?’

  There was a long silence as her stepdaughter stared up at her.

  ‘Quite so,’ Mercy said, suddenly icy, because of a sudden she had become once more ‘Cordel’ and remembered that her stepmother was not a Cordel. It was only for a second or two, but it was enough, and, oddly, she saw that Lady Violet had perhaps remembered it too. For some reason she stepped back, and sat down. Mercy remained standing in front of her, since she had not been invited to sit, but preferring to do so anyway, as it happened.

  ‘Continue.’

  ‘The young mannequin. She was unconscious to the last, alas, and subsequently died. Today was her funeral, the expenses for which I had undertaken myself, from my pin money, because I felt not just sorry for her but in some way responsible, since it was I for whom she was modelling the ball dress – the one which she collapsed in, if you remember?’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, I understand, but oh the boredom of it, Mercy! But thank God at any rate that you are at home. Do not let us refer to it again, shall we? All is well, and now we can just get on with the Season and its delights. But I do beseech you, Mercy, while in London, forget about your conscience, forget about your lame ducks, and smile a little! You look like a wet week in Wensleydale,
I do assure you. No-one is going to want to dance with you, you know.’

  Mercy stared at her stepmother, but not for long, because this was all so like her. Just as you thought she was going to explode, she smiled. And the moment would have passed. She had always been like this, reassuringly so, one minute all thunder and lightning and the next back to fun and laughter, bringing some colour to Mercy’s pallid cheeks.

  It was only when she had left the room ‘late for luncheon, my sweetest, with a certain personage for whom no-one must be late, but he will forgive me, I know, for he always does!’ that Mercy at last sat down, and rather abruptly, for she had suddenly realized that had she not had an adequate explanation for Leonie Lynch’s note she would have been ruined.

  If she had been out without Clarice, or somewhere that could not be substantiated, and word got out – as ‘word’ via the servants had a habit of doing – she would have been sent straight back to Somerset, and there would be no chance of her ever being able to marry within her own class. She would be considered damaged goods, and those goods would be confined to the schoolroom to teach any small children who had been left – as children were wont to be – to grow up at Cordel Court, or to the linen room or the still room, and no-one would have even cast a look in her direction again. Overnight she would have become ‘poor ruined Aunt Mercy, you know, such a scandal and in only the first weeks of her Season. No-one would touch her.’

  That night Mercy knelt by her bedside and prayed for the young girl upon whose coffin she had thrown earth that morning, but what she could not get out of her mind was the tall man in the impeccable black hat who had appeared from nowhere at the burial in the cemetery.

  Tired out at dinner by Lord Marcus and his fascination with gossip and trivia, Mercy fell asleep, forgetting as she did so that for one second she had seemed to recognize the dark looks of the man in the churchyard.

  Six

  Dorinda had caused a scandal. She had not meant to, but the truth was that she had. The fact that she had caused a scandal by doing nothing more than riding out with Lord ‘Crosstitch’, as the poor fellow was now permanently nicknamed, was not exactly her fault, and to give him his due Gervaise was the first to acknowledge this.

  What happened was that she had been riding amicably, and for her really rather beautifully, in Rotten Row, when they had stopped to greet a friend and ardent admirer of ‘Dorinda Blue’, as Dorinda was now known throughout fashionable London.

  Unfortunately the friend tried, for some reason best known to himself, to muscle in on Lord Crosswaite’s position by the railings, at which his lordship, being a man, and so naturally ready to see insult whenever or wherever even vaguely possible, dismounted from his horse and prepared to throw a punch at him.

  On seeing the really quite flattering little incident suddenly turning ugly Dorinda did as she knew all fashionable young women must at such a time. She promptly, and quite beautifully, fainted. Naturally this had an immediate effect upon the two men who turned their attention away from each other and towards her. But without any doubt whatsoever, it also caused a stir among those who were riding in Rotten Row. News of the incident eventually reached the ears of the Prince of Wales despite the fact that he himself had not been out that morning, on account of feeling not quite the thing.

  Although really very set in his ways now, it seemed that His Royal Highness had suffered through just too many scandals of his own to want any more within his circle, and so he had sent for Gervaise, and the conversation had quickly turned upon the reason for this too public argument.

  ‘Is she very beautiful?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘And her name is …?’

  ‘At this time, Sir, everyone calls her ‘Dorinda Blue’ because of the colour of her riding habit. It is a colour that I have to say suits her chestnut hair quite admirably. It is a kind of––’ But His Royal Highness was already bored and so, in dread, as everyone was, that the heavy eyelids might continue to droop, Gervaise had quickly finished, ‘––the kind of blue with which men dream of surrounding a woman with red gold hair, you understand, Sir. Dorinda Blue’s eyes really are quite dreadfully fascinating.’

  Nowadays his stocks and his shares, his yields from railroads, his friend Sir Ernest Cassel who was making the royal mistress Mrs Keppel rich beyond even her own husband’s dreams, were of far more interest than love-making to the future King of England and Emperor of India.

  But so romantically sincere did Gervaise sound that the royal eyelids suddenly reverted to their less drooped position and he nodded, saying in his guttural accent, ‘Red gold hair is always charming in a woman, I too find. You must bring Dorinda Blue to one of our little supper parties, after the theatre. I should be charmed to meet her.’

  A flash of the rubies on his plump fingers, a nod of the balding head, and the great figure had turned away, his mind already on something, or someone else. As to Gervaise himself, shortly afterwards he made his excuses and fled back to his town house, his wife, and his children, wondering with something of a sinking heart what would be the result of taking Dorinda to one of ‘our little supper parties’.

  Supper parties after the theatre were traditionally all-male affairs, and the women who were brought in to make them more ‘amusing’ were chosen because they were known to be more availing than the wives and the daughters, the aunts and the nieces, of the men who attended these discreet gatherings. Yet, beautiful and amusing though they might be, they were also the kind of women that Gervaise well knew the female members of his family avoided, even with their eyes.

  Over the previous twenty years the Marlborough House set, which the future King of England had long dominated, had been rent apart by feuds. Some whom the Prince of Wales had counted on as friends had proved to be very far from so, and, as happens with any group who start out young together, not many of those who had been happy to sow their wild oats with Queen Victoria’s son and heir in his salad days now remained in the same set to lighten the dullness of his late middle age. Instead, to take the place of those companions of his youth, there was ‘Little Mrs George’, as Mrs Keppel was known.

  She was always at the centre of everything that was modish, and thought to be a cool-minded individual who had helped to calm His Royal Highness, providing among other things charming conversation, bridge, and a regular and apparently enjoyable little domestic interlude in the late afternoon when he called on her for ‘pleasure and tea’.

  None of this was, as yet, of the slightest consequence to Dorinda, who on this particular afternoon had been happily engaged in the redecoration of her suite of rooms until a carriage drove up to the front door and deposited an enormous bouquet of malmaisons in her small hall.

  As soon as she saw them, knowing the male sex as she was just, it seemed to her, beginning to do, Dorinda’s heart sank. Large bouquets of flowers, most especially expensive malmaisons, were not normally sent by a lady’s lover without reason. What more did Gervaise want of her?

  ‘There is to be a little supper party, and His Royal Highness ...’

  Dorinda was not so provincial that she did not know of ‘little supper parties’ and how ‘the Jersey Lily’ had met His Royal Highness at just one of these, thereby insuring her social success until, most unfortunately, she gave birth to a ‘mistake’.

  Breaking the rules could not be forgiven, and so after that Society had been forced to turn their backs on her charming company and beautiful face. In her turn Lillie Langtry, like many another of her kind, had been forced by financial circumstances to take to the stage, which she did with great aplomb and considerable success.

  It had all been most regrettable, really, but it had to be said for the Prince of Wales – Dorinda’s mother had hinted in veiled terms – he did not, as some men might have done, abandon his Lillie from Jersey after the birth of her petite betise. Far from leaving her in the lurch, he took a large party to attend the first night of her play in the theatre, thus ensuring her lasting success in he
r new career. So, all in all, from this and other generous acts, Dorinda knew that ‘Bertie’ was a good man.

  Yet she still dreaded meeting him, and there was a good reason for this. She knew that ‘meeting’ the Prince of Wales would not entail just shaking hands. Normally, for a woman like herself who had, by force of circumstances, become a member of the demi-monde, this would not have mattered. Indeed, it was considered to be the ultimate compliment. But it was different for her, despite her change in status from wife to mistress.

  She stared down the table at the reason for the difference, who was at that moment sampling what appeared to be a particularly satisfying glass of claret. Her enchanting, handsome Gervaise. He was so naughty, and yet so brilliant! She could not lie to herself about him, she adored him, and the thought of perhaps turning him in for the ageing Prince of Wales was not even a tiny bit appealing to her. Dorinda did not mind that she was not Gervaise’s wife – in fact she rather thought that she had the much better part of the amorous bargain. She enjoyed her status and freedom as his mistress a great deal more than she could or would, it seemed to her, enjoy being his spouse. She just did not want to be passed on to the future King of England at the moment. It would be – well, muddling.

  But being a shrewd young woman Dorinda also knew that it was her duty to be much less than truthful to her lover, or else he would not remain her lover. Her mother had always told her that men did not like the truth, in any form whatsoever. They did not like sentimentality. Most of all they did not like displays of emotion.

  So, having waited until Gervaise finished his wine, Dorinda murmured, ‘I should be happy to attend a supper party whenever His Royal Highness commands me.’

  Even as she said it her heart was sinking and she suddenly saw that she might have a future that did not include her beautiful Gervaise, who fascinated and entertained her, spoilt her and cosseted her, but included instead a not-so-young prince.