The Love Knot

by Charlotte Bingham

  But first and foremost it was imperative that John Brancaster proposed to Mercy Cordel. She, as the future stepmother-in-law, would see to it that he did so, very soon.

  Mercy’s father would be down for Ascot, not liking to miss seeing his old friends at least once a year. Just after Ascot, therefore, would surely be an ideal time for John Brancaster to propose to Mercy. He would first of all have to ask permission from Lord Duffane, naturally, and after that all would go as merrily as the proverbial wedding bell. Mercy was, after all, clearly head over heels in love with Brancaster after only one evening, so that was satisfactory in every way, for a bride in love would behave herself as her husband wished.

  As a matter of fact Lady Violet had never seen Mercy’s eyes shining so brightly as after last night’s ball. She had observed that Mercy even hung about waiting for him afterwards, to thank him for rescuing her from her usual sojourn on the inevitable gilt chair.

  Nor had Lady Violet seen John Brancaster, whom she had known for some long time, laugh so much in the company of a young girl. It was surprising, for everyone knew – it was common knowledge since every mama in the world had over the years thrown their daughters at him – that Mr Brancaster did not like very young girls. Nor did Mr Brancaster normally attend debutante balls. Indeed, in the normal course of things he would not have done so that night had not Lord Marcus prevailed upon him to go.

  All in all Lady Violet was more than happy. She would bring about a wonderful match for her darling little plain stepdaughter, and at the same time endow a bachelor with a very young wife, who would in a very short space of time doubtless produce the two necessary boys – the heir and the spare. What could please someone of simple tastes such as herself so much? Brancaster would be happy. Mercy would be happy. Even her dear old husband would be happy, surely?

  Here, however, Lady Violet had to admit to a fault in her character, and one about which she had been warned by her devoted maid. She lived too much for others. She lived only to make others happy. It had been the rule of her life, to improve the lives of others and to help everyone – even her poor little adoring maid – to appreciate the beauty that surrounded them in life’s rich progress.

  This, among many others, had been one of the reasons why she had married darling old Duffane, to make him happy, to make his children happy, to help them all. And it had to be admitted that in this, if in no other aspect of her life, she had succeeded, where many another might have been expected to fail.

  She had been a mother to Mercy, and to her brothers. In her company it had to be admitted that her husband had quickly forgotten that he was a widower, and in the joy she had brought to him it had also to be said that he had quite forgotten his poor first wife, Mercy’s mother. And what more could be asked for than that a man could be brought to forget his first spouse in favour of his second? What more could a woman do than to make sure that this same man be brought to love his children more than he had loved them before? What more could be expected of a chatelaine than that she and her servants, in the company of her husband and his children, attend their private chapel daily for family prayers? What more could she ask of God than to receive their thanks for these and all His other gifts, those gifts of money and property, of family history and titles, of coaches and carriages, of a London house, of a thousand shares in the American railways, in short all those things that God in His infinite mercy, had seen to shower upon Duffane and Lady Violet? It was inconceivable that she should not wish to thank God for those gifts, daily, sometimes twice daily. Without them she could not be herself, and He had always known this, guiding her through her life in the full recognition of what she wanted, what she needed.

  And now most of all, for so many reasons, she needed John Brancaster to ask permission to ask for Mercy’s hand in marriage. It had to be done, and soon. Her so-great devotion to Mercy demanded that she should not end the Season unengaged. Her so-great devotion to her stepdaughter meant that she would walk on hot coals to get her married to John Brancaster, and thereby bring about a satisfactory situation for everyone.

  The truth was that John Brancaster did not much like Mercy’s father, Lord Duffane. He was just not his sort, not because Duffane was not a likeable old chap, but because they were so far apart in the way they lived their lives.

  Brancaster was first and foremost a sportsman. He lived for his hunting and his shooting, and while he knew Duffane shot he also knew that he did not hunt, any more than his daughter hunted. Nor, as she had told him on a long walk in the Park, a walk carefully chaperoned by her maid, did she want to hunt.

  She liked to ride, but since a childhood accident she had not jumped her horse.

  ‘The most I have ever jumped since my accident is a stream, and then not very wide. As a matter of fact I long for the day when women are allowed to ride astride. I think I could manage to jump better astride. I think I could put my fears behind me, if I was not consigned to the side-saddle.’

  ‘The new pommel spring makes it much easier, surely?’

  Mercy turned her large grey eyes up to the dark ones that were looking down at her.

  ‘Oh, I know, the new side-saddle has made it easier for us ladies, but not so easy. If you think about it, we have to be twice as brave as you when we are out in the field.’

  ‘This is true,’ Brancaster agreed, but he did not seem all that interested so Mercy decided to press home the point.

  ‘So many ladies are killed when their horses roll – because their skirts get caught and they are not thrown clear – that you would think someone would allow us to at least hunt astride?’

  ‘The safety skirt has made hunting much safer for women, I should have thought?’ Brancaster still did not sound very interested in what Mercy might have to say on the subject.

  ‘There were two ladies killed hunting last year in our county alone, so it is still dangerous. I must say I worry about Lady Violet. I worry that she will be killed and break my poor papa’s heart.’

  ‘She has survived enough seasons now for you not to have to let it concern you, I should have thought.’

  His tone was so avuncular and comforting that Mercy nodded.

  ‘And now, to a rather more interesting subject, to me, at any rate.’ Mr Brancaster turned towards Mercy, clearing his throat, and for a second she realized with surprise that this older man with his outwardly confident manner was actually nervous. ‘Miss Cordel.’

  At that moment Mercy’s whole life stopped. She knew just from the way Mr Brancaster was saying ‘Miss Cordel’ that he was about to change her life for ever, that he was about to tell her that he had every intention of speaking to her father and asking his permission to make a proposal of marriage to her.

  And, while the whole world appeared to be riding by on their hacks or driving by in their carriages, it seemed to Mercy that it was quite right that he should do so. After all, they had danced together at three balls now, he had walked with her, twice, and her stepmother was smiling so sweetly at her every morning when she presented herself at breakfast that Mercy knew, without a single word passing between them, that Lady Violet wholeheartedly approved of Mercy’s having fallen in love with Mr Brancaster.

  So why then had her whole life stopped, just before those words that every young woman always wanted to hear?

  ‘May I say that I would very much like to ask your father’s permission to marry you? But before I do, I would like to know your feelings on the matter. In these modern times, at the start of the glorious twentieth century as we are, I think that a girl’s own mind on a matter of such moment to her is of the gravest importance.’

  Mercy stared ahead, while Clarice hovered tactfully some twenty paces behind them. Still the horses were trotting on, still the carriages and their immaculately groomed pairs and singles passed each other, and the nurses with their perambulators, and the ladies with their maids, walked on. Little girls with their hoops, little boys carrying their sailing boats under their arms back from the Serpentine, hap
py as she that the sun was shining and the air seeming suddenly to be filled with the singing of birds.

  And so why did she find herself turning to Mr Brancaster and saying, ‘Of course you have my permission to ask my father, Mr Brancaster, but I have to tell you, whatever his response, my own can not be guaranteed.’

  As a sportsman par excellence John Brancaster’s reaction was exactly that of the man who has just fired, and missed, a sitting duck. Yet he recovered magnificently.

  ‘Naturally,’ he agreed, stiffly.

  They walked on in silence, and now, to Mercy’s ears, even the sound of her maid’s feet treading behind them was as loud as an army – tramp, tramp, tramp. Such was the awful look on Mr Brancaster’s face she even imagined that she could hear muffled drums. Indeed, judging from the look on Mr Brancaster’s face he was not, it seemed, used to being kept waiting for anything, nor was he used to a young woman – whatever he had previously said – having a mind of her own.

  ‘Mercy.’

  There was no trace of a possible question mark in the voice of Lady Violet. It was not ‘Mercy?’ as in ‘May I have a word?’ It was ‘Mercy’ as in ‘Come here’.

  ‘Mr Brancaster is to speak to your father this afternoon, and then he will come to you, in the drawing room. Provided your father is satisfied with the arrangements, you might as well know now, my dear, that he intends to ask your hand in marriage.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mercy agreed. ‘I know.’

  ‘You know? Did you say you know?’

  Lady Violet’s mouth smiled, but her eyes did not.

  ‘Yes, Mr Brancaster told me as much on our walk yesterday.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I said that I could not guarantee what my reply was going to be. As I can not.’

  ‘You still can not?’

  ‘No, I still can not.’

  There was a long silence, and then Lady Violet said very sweetly, ‘You have not been the Season’s greatest success, have you, Mercy?’

  ‘No, that is true.’ Mercy smiled suddenly. ‘But that would only be a disappointment if either of us had imagined that I was going to be, and as neither of us ever entertained such a notion we can not now be disappointed, can we?’

  ‘What is it that makes you doubt Mr Brancaster?’ asked Lady Violet, seeing herself well and truly defeated by Mercy’s cheerful response.

  ‘I do not doubt that I love him, not in the least. What I doubt is that he has the slightest feeling for me.’

  ‘Oh, but my dear, if that is your worry, believe me I can honestly tell you that I have it on the greatest authority that he finds you quite enchanting. He has told Lord Marcus as much, and more. And he admires your sense of humour.’

  ‘Maybe so. For my part I think that I am just the kind of girl that a man like him might find a convenience rather than anything else. I have the right blood lines, I am the right age – but, you see, I want to be loved too.’

  ‘You will be! Of course you will be. He will learn to love you as much as you love him, be assured of that. That is the challenge of marriage, my dear. It is what makes it such a tremendous undertaking for our sex. If we can enchant the male of the species in every way, believe me, he becomes our captive for life!’

  Her stepmother’s words would have cheered Mercy had they not reminded her of the dressmaker’s. They had used exactly the same words.

  Could someone learn to love? Could Mr Brancaster learn to love her as she undoubtedly loved him? Was love just that, quite simply, a lesson?

  Mercy smiled across at her stepmother, but more to reassure her than because she was feeling particularly cheerful, for in her heart she had yet to be convinced of love’s being a lesson and Cupid some sort of teacher. Perhaps Mr Brancaster would be able to do the convincing? Or perhaps he had more feeling for her than his stiff announcement in the Park had allowed?

  Later, waiting alone in the drawing room, it seemed to Mercy that it would take for ever, this strange ceremony of men talking over the future of a daughter. Discussing property, jewellery, income, and nowadays of course stocks and shares. Lord Duffane had arrived from Somerset the previous evening, and Mercy knew that he and Mr Brancaster would be negotiating the package mule of usual bribes that were so necessary to a successful union.

  Mercy had no jewellery to speak of. The Cordel diamonds were for the use of the Lady Duffane of the day. She had no property. She had no looks. All she really had, when she came to think of it, was ancestry. She had clutches of the right ancestors, and she was young, and had caused no scandal.

  Mercy stared at her feet as she waited for John Brancaster to come out of the library and into the drawing room. She still had no idea at all as to what her reply to his prospective proposal was going to be. She supposed that she was waiting for some sign from him, some hint that she could interpret as being a sign that he too just might love her? For one-sided love was no good, to her mind. If she loved but he did not, their union would quite surely be doomed?

  For what the dressmaker and her stepmother had left out of the marital quandary was that whilst Society expected girls to marry men of whom their family could approve – men whom they would be in the natural course of events expected to learn to love – Society said nothing of the men’s feelings. Were the men, too, expected to learn to love, or were they let off that particular nicety?

  ‘Miss Cordel.’

  Despite his being such a well-known sporting figure, famous for his courage, standing in the middle of the drawing room with its excess of flowered patterns and its crowded tables filled with ornaments of every kind, Mercy could not help noticing that Mr Brancaster was looking as if he would rather face a double oxer on a rainy, muddy morning with the wind driving towards him and the water dripping off his doeskin coat than a young unmarried spinster.

  ‘Miss Cordel.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Brancaster?’

  Mercy, on the other hand, found that she herself, while experiencing all the usual emotions felt by a girl in love, was yet strangely calm, perhaps because she was determined that Mr Brancaster was not going to be the only person who would have something to say this particular afternoon.

  There was a short silence during which Mr Brancaster breathed in and out.

  There was a long pause.

  Finally he said in a rush, ‘Might we sit down, do you think?’

  ‘I think we might.’

  They sat down each to one side of a pair of pale yellow damask sofas, Mercy perching on hers, her blue and white pin-tucked blouse with its high collar and swept up skirt giving her a look of some bright but slender bird, while Mr Brancaster, darkly clothed in comparison, although also high collared, stared at her before swallowing hard once more, clearing his throat and beginning.

  ‘Miss Cordel, as you doubtless realize, after our walk yesterday, I have spoken to your father, and he has graciously’ – Brancaster cleared his throat again – ‘he has, er, graciously agreed to my being allowed to see you alone, and, er…’

  Mercy’s eyes took on a set expression. Mr Brancaster might be old, he might be rich, and a famous sportsman, but really the reality now that he was facing her was that he was becoming tediously gauche, and minute by minute reminding her more of a shy and anxious schoolboy than a mature man.

  ‘And er, Mr Brancaster?’

  She saw that he had at once sensed her growing impatience and was both put down and encouraged by it.

  ‘And er Miss Cordel’ – he smiled briefly – ‘and er, Miss Cordel, I would therefore like to ask you, formally, for your hand in marriage.’

  ‘I see.’

  Another silence while Mercy glanced up at him before speaking.

  ‘Why, Mr Brancaster?’

  ‘Why?’ He looked confused, almost affronted. ‘Why, for the usual reasons, Miss Cordel! The usual reasons why a gentleman asks for a girl’s hand in marriage, because he wishes to marry her, and set up house with her, and – and all that sort of thing. That is why’ – he glanced around him – ‘that is
why a man proposes to the girl of his choice, surely? So that they may marry and set up house?’

  ‘Mr Brancaster!’ Mercy was now on her feet, and her hands were tightly clenched by her side to stop her from waving them about indignantly. ‘How could you possibly ask me to set up house with you when all we have done is no more than dance six dances and go for two walks together. It is absurd. I am not some sort of thoroughbred to be sent off to Newmarket. I am a person. I have flesh and blood, and although you are a friend of my family and saved me from ignominy on the dance floor, I have to say I am not at all happy with your attitude to marriage.’

  He had to stand up and face her now, since she was standing up. He was a great deal taller than Mercy, and yet, given the force of her emotion, an emotion that amazed and astonished him and would, he knew, appal her family, she seemed to be far taller than her actual height, staring up at him with quite apparent indignation.

  ‘You are behaving in a most unconventional manner, Miss Cordel.’

  ‘Well, precisely,’ she agreed. ‘I am behaving in an unconventional manner because I do not particularly like the convention of being pushed round a ballroom and then up an aisle. Marriage has never really held many attractions for me, Mr Brancaster, and now I can honestly say– –’

  The expression in his eyes was of amazement, but there was also something else, something dawning, perhaps respect, perhaps contempt. Whatever it was, in her indignation, Mercy found that she neither knew nor cared.

  ‘What can you honestly say, Miss Cordel?’

  His astonishment had now, she suspected, turned into a form of patronizing humour which, alas for him, only fuelled her indignation.