The Love Knot

by Charlotte Bingham

  She had thought endlessly about how John seemed to have changed so completely when he returned to her at Christmas. And it seemed to Mercy that the change had come about through associating once more with the hard drinking, hard riding hunting set. That once back in Leicestershire he had become trapped once more in the same hardened personality from which the happiness of his marriage had seemed, just for a while anyway, to have rescued him.

  ‘The worst of it is – it’s all my fault,’ Mercy murmured suddenly out loud, staring into the fire. ‘If I had not wanted to transform Brindells, if I had not been so concerned with restoring the house, he would not have gone back to you. He did not want to go, but I made him. He wanted to stay with me, the new John wanted to stay with me at Brindells. And he was so happy! We both were so happy.’

  For a second it seemed that Lady Violet winced.

  ‘Yes, well, my dear Mercy, people are, at first, and then the bloom wears off, the young wife becomes enceinte and life returns to normal. The husband goes back to his mistress, who is usually most understanding, and the wife has another baby, or perhaps two, and after that, in time, she too takes a lover. That is the way of the world. Your father accepts it and you would be wise to do so too, and the sooner the better. Besides, John and I share a secret that you and he could never share.’

  At first Mercy seemed hardly to have heard her and perhaps because she felt suddenly uneasy at her stepdaughter’s extreme pallor Lady Violet rose up from where she was sitting and went to her, as she would have done in former, happier times.

  ‘My dear––’

  But on hearing the rustle of Lady Violet’s silken petticoats Mercy sprang up immediately, walked to the other side of the fire, and re-seated herself, removing herself from any possible contact with her stepmother. She might feel sick and ill, she might feel as if just forming a thought was too much effort, but she had enough emotion left not to want to be anywhere near her husband’s mistress.

  She gathered her thoughts as she heard her stepmother murmur, ‘Oh, very well, have it how you will. But that is the way of the world, my dear – love is not, alas, confined to marriage, and since it never will be, the rules of Society can be most beguiling.’

  ‘So that is the way of the world, is it? To have one’s cake and eat it while breaking God’s rules? Is this why members of Society are at pains to be so very correct in public, in the hunting field, in the dining room or ball room? So that you can all behave quite incorrectly whenever you wish in the bedroom? Is that why we are married off so young? So that we will not dare to question how things are, but have to accept the way of the world and be done with it? Snatching at happiness in a shabby, illicit way, whenever we can, turning a blind eye to everything that is going on around us? How disillusioning it all is!’

  ‘Only because you are young, my dear. Once you grow up a little, and become, let us say, more versed, you will see how truly sensible Society is! How much better to be discreet and not wash our dirty linen in public. How much better to be correct, accept our own weak natures, if you will, but put a polish on the top of it all for the sake of the servants and the children. Much better to keep things elegant and polished, and exercise discretion for the sake of generations to come.’

  But even Lady Violet could tell that her stepdaughter seemed hardly to have heard her, only staring almost blindly at something her stepmother could not see. For a second she thought that Mercy might be going to faint, but now, happily, the older woman realized that she had effectively silenced her, or perhaps even convinced her?

  She was wrong. Mercy’s silence, her momentary inability to respond to Lady Violet, was not because she was convinced by her stepmother’s arguments but because she was remembering the thousands of punishments she had meekly endured as a child, and the many thousand prayers said before the little altar in the private chapel upstairs, in front of which she had asked that God would make her as good as Lady Violet and her father.

  The truth was that all the time she had been growing up Mercy had worshipped the older people in her life, believing as she had that they were living up to their own strict values. Her brothers had been beaten, herself punished, in the sure and certain hope that if they took their punishments as rewards, one day, when they grew up, they too would be as good and as virtuous as their parents.

  But the truth was that the people that had punished them had been no better than they. They had not even been trying to be virtuous, but had been busy gratifying themselves.

  Mercy stood up, realizing with horror that if she did not hurry John would be late for his feed, and knowing that to mention it to the childless Lady Violet would bring a look of marked disgust to her ladyship’s face, as such things always did.

  ‘You are leaving, my dear?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mercy hesitated, and then said with slow deliberation, ‘Yes, I am leaving. I am going to feed my son, Lady Violet, and after that we will return home.’

  ‘But you have only just arrived. Your room has been prepared. The horses will be tired. You can not suddenly decide to leave again. It is unreasonable.’

  ‘I am leaving because, like many another young bride before me, I find it impossible to stay under the same roof as my husband’s mistress. I do not think that is unreasonable, Lady Violet. From my standpoint it is entirely understandable.’

  ‘You will break your papa’s heart if you leave now.’

  Mercy smiled bitterly. ‘Oh, I doubt that!’

  ‘You will show yourself to be without feeling. I will say you have taken a sudden and ridiculous umbrage and that your post petit quelque chose state has made you over-sensitive and intolerant.’

  ‘If you wish, then you must,’ Mercy agreed, sounding almost reasonable. ‘If my father knows everything, as you say he does, he will believe or not believe what he likes about me. There is nothing I can do about it. Nothing except hope that my son will grow up into a world that does not allow women like you to behave as they wish, and men like my husband to do the same. The natural and best state that a woman and a man can live in is one of love and trust. You are both living in a state of lust and deceit. As you sow you will reap. Goodbye, Lady Violet, I hope never to see you again. I hope I shall stop hating you. I know I will never understand you.’

  ‘No, Mercy, don’t go. Your papa will ask me where you have gone, and why. He will not understand.’

  For a second Lady Violet’s voice sounded almost pitifully pleading, and although she did not pause as she walked from the room Mercy could not help remembering how often she had acted as a companion and friend to the older woman. How she had taken her on rides and walks whenever she was bored, showing her things that children find interesting and adults at first find dull but then become enchanted by. Mercy remembered how she would point out secret badger setts, and fox cubs playing around the old oaks, and skylarks singing above them while trout lazed in the streams and lakes. She remembered how she had helped to nurse her stepmother whenever she was sick, and read to her of an evening as she sewed her beautiful tapestries.

  Well, that was all in the past. Now she would have to find someone else.

  And so a greatly disappointed Josephine was told to once more pack up their luggage and the baby, while Mercy said a dutiful goodbye to her seemingly indifferent father.

  ‘Off already?’ he asked in mild surprise, once more in the library after his outdoor exertions, only this time with a pre-luncheon drink rather than a book for company.

  ‘It’s the baby, Papa. I think it was a mistake to bring him,’ Mercy told him, and seeing the familiar look of relief on her father’s face she smiled.

  ‘Before you go, my dear, I want you to take this. It’s a letter,’ he said, possibly unnecessarily since they could both see what it was. ‘It’s addressed to you, but I would rather you did not open it until you have left the estate. You will see why.’

  He nodded, dismissing her, and Mercy curtsied and left.

  Lady Violet, wisely, absented herself from Mercy
’s moment of departure, and as her stepdaughter settled herself back against the worn dark blue leather of the old carriage she imagined she could hear, above the sound of the horses’ hooves and Josephine talking to the baby, her stepmother saying to her father, ‘Well, you know, Mercy was always a very difficult girl. I was always having to punish her, but not enough, it seems. She lets her emotions come between her and correct behaviour and that is a grave fault in her character, I am afraid.’

  And she could see her father nodding his head in agreement, and then shaking it in sorrow, before going in to luncheon with his beloved second wife, and thankfully forgetting all about Mercy. But that was before she opened the envelope containing his letter to her.

  Dorinda had enjoyed her Friday-to-Monday in the country with Leonie Lynch, but it had been quite enough. She never liked to stay in the country too long, for while she appreciated that the country was green, and the country was brown, and the sky was sometimes grey and sometimes blue, and at other times a mixture of both, and that once the summer came there were definitely flowers blooming and leaves on the trees, to her way of thinking the country actually lacked the one thing that was needed to really brighten it up – people.

  Nor was Dorinda the kind of woman who was content to stay for a week at a time at one house after another, spending the morning writing letters, the middle of the day hovering around shooting lunches, and the remainder of the day changing from morning to afternoon clothes, or from walking clothes to ball gowns. And so she discouraged her darling husband from having her invited to stay at the houses of his shooting friends. It was a kind of tacit understanding between them that Mr L went off shooting to Sandringham or Scotland quite alone while Dorinda enjoyed a life of her own, well away from such rural pursuits.

  Because Dorinda was the possessor of an easygoing nature, she never minded being alone. She never had any wish to be with someone who did not accept her for what she was. She was not socially aspirant. She was however socially mischievous, and although country society was, as far as she was concerned, happily out of bounds, she had started to really rather enjoy the thought that now that she was rich, and because Mr L was a friend of the reigning monarch, Society would eventually have to come to call on her.

  Some did come to call on her and left their cards, after which it was possible for the Leveens to ask them to their house. Once there, even the aristocracy were beguiled because the Leveens were too rich not to be able to offer the kinds of entertainments in which such people revel – the best wines, the most elaborate menus, and more servants to cook and serve them than any other household, including that of the King. But others did not call, and still others did not leave their cards.

  The dowagers and the leaders of Society still remembered Dorinda Blue, not the newly respectable Mrs Leveen, and they therefore resisted, knowing that they could give their husbands a respectable reason for so doing.

  On this particular day Mr L was once more away shooting, and Dorinda sat down at her George III mahogany writing table with its rosewood banded top to make out a list for a projected grand dinner and ball to be held sometime in the coming season. Mrs Goodman, her newly created secretary-companion, was seated to the side of her as she sat staring at the list which she had so carefully started to pen.

  ‘None of those who should have called on me, Mrs Goodman, have deigned to do so,’ she told her companion. ‘Not one, least of all Lady Londonderry, the queen of London. As a matter of fact, now we come to mention it, don’t you think that the poor Queen must be quite put out, knowing that Lady Londonderry is meant to be the queen of London, and poor Queen Alexandra merely an appendage?’

  Mrs Goodman did not smile. She loved Queen Alexandra and did not approve of the King and his mistresses, or indeed of Lady Londonderry, despite or perhaps because of the fact that she was known to make or break reputations, and thereby had caused a lot of mischief to innocent men and women whose careers had been gaily ruined by her, usually on the strength of nothing more than a spoilt whim.

  ‘Queen Alexandra, God bless her, is queen of our country and our Empire. That is more important I would think than the capital, Mrs Leveen. Far more important to be loved and respected by the real people rather than a handful of Society jackanapes.’

  ‘Oh, I forgot, Mrs Goodman. You are not an admirer of the King, are you? I love the King, although I only met him a few times when he was still the Prince of Wales, but he procured a bed at Sister Angela’s Nursing Home for my Harry when he was dying, and you know how it is – one always sees so much good in a person once they have helped you, I find!’

  ‘In that case perhaps you can bring the King’s attention to your own awkward position. Although I doubt that even the King can force Lady Londonderry to call on you, Mrs Leveen.’

  Dorinda pouted. ‘I did think that once I was rich everyone would call on me, but it does not seem to matter to the aristocracy how rich you are if they decide against you. The only person who might be able to help me is the King, but although Mr L sees him sometimes twice a day he will never ask a favour of him. He says to do so would be to destroy in three seconds their long and happy friendship. Mr L helps the King. He is one of the few people whom the King can trust. To ask him a favour would be to make the King feel uneasy, and Mr L would never make the King feel uneasy. Everyone asks favours of the King. Only Mr L never asks favours.’

  Dorinda paused. She could well imagine how dull and upsetting it must be to be a monarch, always being asked things and then expected not to mind. It would make you very uneasy thinking that people only liked you for your crown, or what you could do for them, and such was not the case with Mr L. Her Mr L had made such wise investments for the King, he had doubled or quadrupled the value of his stocks and shares – or anyway made him a great deal richer. The King had been able to ask favours of Mr L and that had made him feel happy and secure, and if the King was happy and secure – well, the people probably were too.

  ‘There is another person I could ask to help me with my quandary, Mrs Goodman.’ Dorinda turned to stare into Mrs Goodman’s small, shrewd grey eyes, and then back to the list in front of her. ‘This person is a relation of Lady Londonderry– –’

  ‘Everyone is a relative of Lady Londonderry, I believe.’

  Dorinda nodded, not really hearing. It was a risk to get back in touch with Gervaise, although she had written to him when his wife had died.

  ‘I could call on––’ She nearly said ‘him’ but quickly changed it to ‘them’. After the way that Blanquette had behaved she had never quite trusted a servant again. Not that Mrs Goodman was a servant, exactly, in fact she was very far from being so – but she was nevertheless paid to be where she was, so she was not exactly a friend either.

  ‘If you are going to call on them,’ Mrs Goodman said, the expression on her face purposefully blank, ‘I wonder if I should accompany you? It is sometimes better when calling on Lady Londonderry’s relatives to have a witness to proceedings, I believe.’

  Dorinda then made what might prove to be the mistake of her life.

  ‘Oh no, no need, I do assure you. I know and trust this person to be discreet.’

  It was only vanity really, just sheer vanity. She wanted to call on Gervaise, but not as she should, at his family house in Grosvenor Square, but at the little house from which she had been so summarily ejected, to see for herself how fortunate she was that he had rejected her as he had. She wanted to sit down in that little drawing room again, her Lady Duff-Gordon petticoats rustling sensuously, and flash the large diamond ring on her left hand, and smile up at Gervaise and thank him for not trusting her. She just could not resist that particular temptation. And, of course, there was one other thing. To call in at St John’s Wood would be dangerous, and it had to be admitted, on a dull, grey day when summer was not yet upon them, that danger was suddenly very appealing. She picked up her pen to write to her former lover.

  Following her flying visit to her old family home in Somerset, Mercy
had stayed overnight at an inn and then journeyed, long and slowly, first to London, for a night and day, and after that back to Sussex with Josephine and the baby.

  Arriving home she had been greeted neither by the wretched housekeeper, Mrs Tomkins, nor by the footmen. She had found that the footmen were drunk and the housekeeper gone to visit her sister without Mercy’s authority, while a fall of soot in the drawing room meant that Twissy had walked black footmarks all over the house, particularly, of course, on the new pale furnishings in the drawing room, because no-one had seemed to have given much of an eye to her, except to feed her.

  Of course Josephine was shocked and at once set about helping to tidy and wash down. But Mercy was not shocked, most unusually for her – she was furious.

  Perhaps some of her anger with her ‘husband’s mistress’, as she now thought of Lady Violet, had spilled over into her daily life. Mercy determined that she too would now become a mistress – but of a rather different kind. She would at long, long last become mistress of her own house.

  ‘Mrs Tomkins,’ she told the housekeeper, who was busy chewing a peppermint to cover the smell of her recent drinking, ‘I have put up with your insolence, I have put up with you making fun of me when I came to this house and wanted to make things nice for my husband, I have put up with your tittle tattle behind my back – and believe you me, everyone knows if someone is talking behind their backs. They might not hear it, Mrs Tomkins, but they can certainly sense it. I have put up with all these things, but what I will put up with no longer, I find, is you. You may have been here for nearly twenty years, as you are endlessly pointing out to me, but if you keep my house in this way while I am away then I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to leave.’