The Love Knot

by Charlotte Bingham

  After all, when all was said and done, the prince was a man, and if he made a play for her she would just have to deal with him as she would any other gentleman and keep him on tenterhooks without insulting him.

  As the hairdresser and Blanquette continued to hover and fuss it seemed to Dorinda that the best thing was to detach herself from the situation and try to remember what it was that, in a few hours’ time, she should be doing, and how she should be doing it.

  ‘Remember, with royalty, at all times the deepest curtsy, Dorinda darling, always. Despite its being a quite informal occasion, whatever happens, the back is never turned on royalty, unless you want to end up taking breakfast in the Tower!’

  Some twenty minutes later Gervaise collected his Dorinda Blue from the hands of her maid and hairdresser and was obviously quite delighted with the result of all their efforts. Dorinda, as he informed her as he offered her his arm, was going to make every other woman present look dowdy and shop soiled, such was the shimmering quality of her youthful beauty, the silver grey of her gown showing off the blue of the Indian sapphires to perfection. Her hair was set about with small diamond stars, and the sapphire and pearl choker showed off the slenderness of her neck, so delicate that it seemed it must snap.

  Exactly one hour later, Dorinda, her heart beating most dreadfully fast, found herself sinking into her best and deepest curtsy as she was presented to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.

  From under her thick eyelashes Dorinda could only marvel at his elegance, at the rubies on his fingers, and the exquisite cut of his evening coat with its decorations. Gervaise noted with some pride that the prince himself, always eagle-eyed when it came to details, appreciated the colour of the eyes that had been only momentarily turned up to him, and the way they matched the Indian sapphires in Dorinda’s ears and at her throat.

  ‘My dear Gervaise, you are to be congratulated. Mrs Montgomery is indeed en plein beaute!’

  Dorinda blushed with pleasure.

  ‘Yes, yes, you may rise, Mrs Montgomery, and come closer to me. I want to look into the famous Dorinda Blue eyes and tell my grandchildren about the experience.’

  There was a great laugh at this, not just from the prince, but from the entourage surrounding him, and then he passed on, quite slowly, for he was already stout. Dorinda, realizing that his breathing was not as good as it should be, thought that he might not be quite as well as he would have liked. She was sorry for it, but also relieved because, after all, if he was not so well, he would not be so – ardent, surely?

  Whatever the state of the royal health, seconds later Dorinda and Gervaise were joined by a tall, dark, older man who brought with him a feeling of impatience and danger, which Dorinda realized at once must mean that he was a sportsman at least, if not an explorer.

  Gervaise obviously knew him very well, since as soon as he came across to them he said, ‘My dear Brancaster, I don’t think I have introduced you to Mrs Montgomery, have I?’

  John Brancaster shook his head, and looking down at Dorinda through the most appreciative of dark eyes said, ‘I know I would have remembered had you done so, Lowther.’

  Dorinda curtsied yet again, and he bowed, and after some small talk about racing and horses, which Dorinda could not follow, supper began.

  It was an occasion that proved riotous, as full of good food and wine as pretty married women. Yet despite this Dorinda had the feeling that everyone there was performing a dance of which they had long ago tired. All, that is, except Mr Brancaster, who kept looking towards Dorinda with amused eyes, finally saying to Gervaise, in a voice quite loud enough for the object of his appreciation to hear, ‘You are a lucky dog, Lowther. Where did you meet her?’

  ‘Over lobsters, Brancaster, over lobsters. It is the best place to meet beautiful women, would you not say?’

  The evening was shorter than expected, for HRH was unaccustomedly tired, and besides, as Gervaise remarked to Dorinda later, ‘Little Mrs George’ now held centre stage for him, and HRH was really rather more inclined to play bridge and chat over brandy and cigars than to disport himself after supper with some new pretty object of his manly desires.

  ‘You did very well, darlingest,’ Gervaise murmured, as Dorinda’s carriage let him down outside the back entrance to his own house, round which he would shortly walk to let himself in, be put to bed by his Italian valet, breakfast with his wife, and generally behave himself as he should, for the benefit of his family and – most of all – Society. ‘I will see you for luncheon tomorrow. Meanwhile I am most proud of you.’

  Dorinda sat back in her leather-lined carriage, and surveyed her life as she realized it was now. She was part of the demi-monde, she had a loving and devoted patron, she had most of London at her feet, she had her own carriage, and she had her own house in St John’s Wood. She just did not have love.

  But love, as she well knew, was not for the likes of the kind of woman she had now become. When she had thankfully and daringly surrendered herself to Gervaise on the boat journey from the Channel Islands, she had also surrendered that particular emotional luxury. Love was for wives and daughters, making love was for women such as herself. To expect any more was just foolish.

  She stared at her new sapphire and pearl ring. She must not, whatever happened, mistake what Gervaise felt towards her for love.

  Besides, Gervaise was such a generous and kind man. To expect him to love her as a husband might would be heading for insanity. In fact she was quite sure that it would be asking too much of life as a whole, pushing her luck, inviting the wrath of the gods. She was not just lucky in Gervaise, she was blessed. She knew this from one particular event, and that was her meeting with the renowned ladies’ man John Brancaster. If she had met him on the boat coming over to England, she would never, ever have felt tempted to join him in his private dining room, however many lobsters he had ordered for luncheon. John Brancaster spelt the one word that Dorinda was anxious to avoid – danger.

  Part Two

  In the Swim

  Seven

  It seemed that the rain would be incessant before Ascot that year. Indeed every time she had cause to put up her umbrella Lady Violet referred to it as ‘Ascot weather’.

  But happily, before that particular week opened, it stopped, as if on command, and all the ladies were able to breathe a sigh of relief, crossing their fingers and hoping against hope that the weather would prove to be less than typical of the first week in June, while the sigh that their dressmakers breathed was not unnaturally one of even greater relief.

  As Madame Chloe had often observed to Mrs Dodd over the years, ‘Whatever we make, and we make everything as beautifully as we can, there is no doubt that the weather makes a fool of us in two seconds. And the ladies, God bless them, of course they blame us if they feel the cold, whereas it is Almighty God they should blame, not their dressmakers.’

  Naturally fashion too had changed that year, for fashion had to change each year, or persons such as Madame Chloe would not be able to survive. The acknowledged and excessively seductive hourglass silhouette of the fashionable lady, however, remained.

  A woman was still expected to seduce the eye of the beholder from both in front and behind with her tiny, corseted waist, her sway of silk skirt, her ruffled lace-strewn shoulders, and her large head of shining hair, atop which would sit a small, enchanting hat trimmed with flowers, or feathers. Her forehead would be covered with curls, her earrings long and delicate, and her hands always gloved.

  Shoes would not be seen. Dresses were to the floor, and this year those summer dresses, being made of the purest silk, floated, lace-trimmed, over the ground, held by one of those same gloved hands, while in the other was a parasol to match the dress, and keep the sun away from the pure rose and cream English complexions, for the sun was considered by all ladies, of whatever age, to be the enemy of good looks and health. Only servants or people who worked outside had the misfortune to have a brown skin.

  Mercy was to be fitted
for her Ascot dresses at home. Madame Chloe spent morning after morning at the Cordel house, for that was part of her special service, and one on which she prided herself.

  And while some debutantes – and the lucky girl who had been proposed to at that early ball was one of them – had parents and godparents who were quite happy to let their young relatives dance through the Season in a few white dresses and some loaned jewellery, Lady Violet would have none of that penny pinching for Mercy.

  ‘You need help.’

  Mercy knew that by this her stepmother really meant that she needed to be made to look pretty, because her natural looks were not pretty at all.

  ‘Help’ had been forthcoming in the shape of expensive ball gowns, and walking dresses, and tailored riding habits from Busvines, all designed to show off what Mercy described jokingly to Madame Chloe as my complete lack of looks.

  This particular morning Madame Chloe had, besides a large velvet pin cushion strapped to her wrist, a mouthful of yet more pins, but, as always, this did not stop her protesting.

  ‘But this is simply not true, Miss Cordel. You have very pretty looks – despite your not yet being engaged. You just do not have confidence in them, my dear. That is what you need more than anything in the world if you are to be successful as a woman – confidence in your looks. Once you have it you will become twice the person you are at the minute, and in a matter of seconds. It is just a fact.’

  From where she was standing, above the kneeling dressmaker, and facing the dressing mirror, Mercy gave the top of Madame Chloe’s vast chignon a wry look.

  ‘Oh, I think I have confidence all right, Madame Chloe. I have the confidence of knowing that I am no beauty, and to pretend to be as much would be as vain as it was foolish.’

  Mercy and Madame Chloe had actually become great friends over the past weeks, Madame Chloe having apologized for the trouble over the mannequin, and Mercy, in return, having promised her stepmother never again to step in where angels fear to tread, at least until the end of the Season.

  ‘How rightly named you are – Mercy,’ Lady Violet had teased her.

  The loss of Lady Violet as a customer would have been more than a disaster to Madame Chloe, it would have been a catastrophe, except Madame Chloe called it a cata-stroph.

  ‘So there we were in the middle of preparing the bride, and this if you please only halfway through the Season, when the cata-stroph struck. Lady Elizabeth was just about dressed, to all intents and purposes anyway, when I saw it, and upon my soul, I cannot tell a lie, I screamed. There was no other word for it. Yes, I admit I screamed. Happily it was a soundless scream – I expect you know the ones. For it was her little terrier dog, and the end of the twenty-five foot train bore the impression of his devoted attentions. Well, you can imagine?’

  Madame Chloe was round the back of the dress now, so although there were fewer pins in her mouth it was still difficult to hear her. Mercy strained her head to keep listening.

  ‘I have to be plain, Miss Cordel, I shall never know how we managed to get the tinkle out of the silk – and dry and iron it before the footman came up to ask her down to the reception rooms below to stand with her father for the photographs. Can you imagine? I have never been so close to fainting right out in my whole life, and no amount of burnt feathers under my nose would have brought me to again, I am sure.’

  ‘And what about Lady Elizabeth? Was she near to fainting too?’

  ‘Lady Elizabeth – near to fainting? Gracious heavens, she was far from fainting, dear Miss Cordel, she was laughing. The little minx! And I mean laughing fit to bust. And you know what she said to me? She said, “Madame Chloe, I am sure that this is going to be quite the only entertaining moment in my wedding, let alone my married life.” And she about to embark on her lune de miel on a steam yacht in the south of France, and I don’t know what.’

  Madame Chloe had raised herself from her knees and was now standing in her black dress just behind Mercy, who turned her honest eyes towards her and frowned.

  ‘She was perhaps not marrying for love?’

  ‘No, dear.’ The dressmaker nodded vigorously. ‘She certainly could not have been marrying for love. Persons marrying for love do not allow dogs to romp on their wedding trains. Poor girl, though, she was to be dreadfully pitied, for her mother so hated her, was so cruel to her, that the poor child had to be taken away from her and brought up by a governess in London until she was seventeen. She never did forgive her for being a girl, you see.’

  ‘Poor Lady Elizabeth. And what happened to her?’

  ‘Well, dear Miss Cordel, seeing as you have such a bleeding heart, I will tell you. Her mother had nothing to do with the girl, all that time. Sometimes I thought I was the only person in the whole world who loved that child. Because the governess and the rest did not care a shred for her, except that on account of her they were paid. I dressed her, see? And when I dressed her, believe me, she caught every eye in the Park, and in the street too. But then, of course, one day, her mother came up – good excuse to escape from the country I thought it was – and Lady Elizabeth was hardly presented at Court when she was engaged to be married – to the man of her mother’s choice, naturally.’

  ‘And so that was that?’

  ‘Good Lord, bless you, by no means. No, she was married all right, train or no train, dog or no dog, and gave birth to a son nine months later, thank God, for there was a title involved, after which, poor child, she died. Eighteen years is no age, is it? Not for becoming a mother and dying too.’

  Mercy could not help herself asking, ‘And her little dog?’

  ‘I went up to Scotland for the funeral when I heard the sad news, and I fetched the poor little dog, and brought him back, and he is at home with my husband in Surrey. Lovely little dog he is too, but not allowed near weddings, you can be sure. Oh, but God rest her though, Miss Cordel, she did love him. And it was the least I could do for her, to do something for him.’

  ‘The husband?’

  ‘No, Lord bless you – the dog. I could not very well bring the husband back with me, dear, that would have been most awkward.’

  ‘No, what I mean is did she love him, in the end, or did he love her, do you think? Her husband?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Lord Chastleton? Oh, I should imagine that he loved her all right. Well, stands to reason he must have, I should have thought, or he would not have built her a monument in marble, and a really good likeness of Skipper – that’s the little dog, her little dog, who is at home now with me – sitting at her feet.’

  As her head re-emerged through the top of yet another sumptuous silk creation, Mercy went on, ‘I am so very glad that he must have loved her. You see, I want to marry for no other reason, whatever anyone says. I think one must marry for love, or else there is truly no meaning to life, wouldn’t you say, Madame Chloe? I know I must.’

  Madame Chloe turned and stared at Mercy as if she had gone quite mad.

  ‘You want to – you want to marry for love? Well, that is original anyhow, I will say, Miss Cordel. But if you take my advice you will do no such thing, really. That sort of thing, love and all that, well, I dare say it is all right in songs and such like, but if you want to be truly happy sometimes it is far better, in my opinion, to learn to love. We women do not have to be led up the garden path by love’s young dream and foolish notions of roses around the cottage door. We can learn to love our husbands after marriage, and sometimes that is a better way, to my mind. More sensible too, if we are to be truthful, for ourselves, for Society. You don’t want to expect too much from marriage, Miss Cordel, believe me you don’t. That way lies a great deal of misery, and I say so what has seen it, I am sorry to tell you.’

  Mercy pulled a little face as Madame Chloe tucked and pinned the upper half of the dress, and all this before the arrival of the hats, and the fitting of the gloves, and all the other endless details that would go to try to make Mercy look modish and attractive for the Ascot races.

  As a matter of fact, a
s she stared at herself in the looking glass, Mercy had to hand it to Madame Chloe and the dressmaker’s art. For once in her life, it seemed to her, in this particular dress, she could almost be taken for looking quite pretty.

  Dorinda was not pretty, she was beautiful, but goodness she was bored. There she was, in her house, everything just as it should be, everything excepting Blanquette her maid whom not even Dorinda’s mother, at her most perverse, could find beautiful.

  It was all the fault of Ascot week, when the husbands and lovers of the ladies who were kept in chic luxury in St John’s Wood had to be surrendered back to their families for this most important of occasions.

  Still, it was no good pretending that she did not miss Gervaise. She missed him terribly. She was like an old maid, or a nun, just sitting and staring about her, sewing, or painting a water colour. She had even had to read a book, for heaven’s sake! An awful, dreary confection by Marie Corelli, or some such, full of gloom she had found it, nothing amusing to it at all, and this despite the fact that Gervaise had given it to her, for it seemed it was much recommended in Court circles.

  ‘There is a visitor, madame.’

  Blanquette was at the drawing room door.

  Dorinda, who was seated at the fireplace with some embroidery, looked up and smiled at the maid with something close to sweetness. She was thinking how dreadfully amusing it all was, for if anyone else was to stand where Blanquette was standing, and take a look at herself through the open door, what with the fire and the embroidery, they might even think she was virtuous.

  ‘I am not expecting anyone, Blanquette. Please do not admit them. Tell them to leave a card in the approved manner.’

  ‘I did, madame.’ Blanquette shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘And?’

  ‘There is no point in ’im leaving madame a card, becos he is your ’usband.’

  ‘My ‘usband! My husband?’

  ‘Yes, madame.’