The Sleeping Sword

by Brenda Jagger

  She would love her child when she saw it, not because it was Robin Ashby’s but because it was her own, and although I was not yet certain how to go about it, I was adamant that she and her baby would not only live together but would live in peace.

  Left to himself, I did not think her father would stand in the way of anything I wished to do for her. My own father would support me. Aunt Faith would do her part. But Aunt Caroline would surely oppose the return of so disastrous a daughter-in-law, Sir Dominic would see no sense to it, now that Gideon had shown he could manage his affairs very profitably without her. And what might Gideon feel? But I could not think of Gideon in terms of feeling or sensation, could not even contemplate the possibility of his distress, preferring to regard him—certainly in this instance—as a survivor, a victor, an adversary. For he was Venetia’s guardian and the decision would be his.

  I ordered the victoria and drove to Nethercoats Mill, my carriage in the yard occasioning no comment, the clerk who showed me to Gideon’s splendid, oak-panelled room being more concerned with the details of my dress—presumably in order to tell his wife—than with the nature of my business. I was, after all, the ‘young squire’s wife’, and so I walked boldly through the double doors, drew off a glove and smiled with far more composure than I was actually feeling as I saw how much I had taken Gideon by surprise. For we had kept very separate from one another while Venetia had been away—very separate, elaborately polite—and I could not expect the next half-hour or so to be easy.

  His vast, polished table was in excellent order, nothing in evidence upon it but an embossed silver cigar-box, a silver-banded inkstand, a sheet of expensive parchment elaborately stamped and sealed, a contract, no doubt, worth many thousands of pounds, which he now replaced neatly in its folder. The room was fragrant with beeswax and tobacco, good quality wood and good quality leather, his panelled walls bearing a heavily framed picture apiece, dark landscapes borrowed, I thought, from Listonby. There were several high-backed leather chairs, a smaller writing-table, a wine cupboard which I knew—since I had placed his order for him—contained the finest of old brandy and cut crystal.

  ‘Good afternoon, Gideon,’ I said, ‘or is it a little later than that?’ And as he came round his desk to draw up my chair and to ask me if I had had a good journey from—where was it I had been visiting?—I wondered, with a terrible inclination towards nervous laughter, how best I might tell him that I had been to Scotland and brought him home a pregnant wife.

  But one way or another it had to be said. The fact that I was here at all proved the matter to be serious, and once he had resumed his own seat I began to tell him as concisely as I could all that had occurred, my voice taking on the passionless tones Venetia herself had used, my eyes fixed on a corner of the cigar-box and his hand close beside it, square-palmed, and long-fingered, a scattering of black hairs disappearing inside an immaculate shirt-cuff, a beam of late sunshine slanting across his arm, glinting on his plain gold shirt-studs and the heavy gold ring with the Chard crest upon it.

  I told him the ‘facts’as Liam had told them to me, then I told him what I had observed and what conclusion I had drawn, watching his arm stiffen as I did so, the beam of sunlight moving slowly away from him so that the room seemed to darken. And when I had finished he said, ‘How dare you come here and tell me this!’, speaking not in anger, not in condemnation, but because he wanted to know.

  ‘Someone else would have told you, Gideon.’

  ‘Ah yes, I see. You are merely saving me from the curious and the malicious.’

  ‘I am doing what I believe to be necessary—and right.’

  He snapped open the lid of the cigar-box, let it fall shut again, tapped his fingers irritably on the desk-top and then rapped out at me, ‘Quite so. And what am I to do about it, Grace? What “right” am I to believe in? Are you suggesting I should play the Christian gentleman and take her back?’

  ‘I could not make that suggestion.’

  ‘No,’ he said, throwing back his head so that I could see the tight clenching of the jaw muscles, the long dark glitter of the eyes, the brows drawn together into a scowl, his whole face a mask of suppressed anger and disgust. ‘No, I suppose you could not—not in words at any rate. But your attitude—your attitude, Grace, says it. And I ask you again how you dare?’

  He got up, pushing back his chair, and stood at the window staring down at the mill-yard—the Barforth mill, the Barforth daughter—the line of his back still taut with anger, his fingers still tapping out their frustration against the window-sill, although gradually his wide shoulders seemed to haunch a little, the rhythm of his fingertips to assume a more measured pace.

  ‘Very well, Grace,’ he said, making a half-turn towards me but remaining by the window. ‘What are you actually saying? Are you telling me that, since I married her in the first place to give my name to a child which never materialized—and for money—that now, when there is a child and I’ve made sure of the money, I should be willing to do the same? Is that it, Grace? If it is, then say so.’

  It was. And recognizing the need, I said it, word for word as he had expressed it himself, looking straight at him—because it would have been cowardly to have done otherwise—but not really seeing him.

  ‘I am extremely sorry, Gideon. I am not insensitive to your position. I know—believe me, I do know—how very dreadful it must seem. But—’

  ‘But what? My position has its inconveniences, but on the whole I have done very well out of it? Is that what you think, Grace?’

  ‘I have said I am sorry, Gideon. And I think it only right to tell you that whatever you decide—or whatever anyone else decides—I shall not desert her. If no one else will look after her, I will find a way to do so.’

  ‘Should that surprise me? It does not. It is like you,’ he said, returning slowly to his desk and sitting down again, his brows still drawn together in a frown, but of concentration this time, his defences, which had been shaken by anger, now altogether intact.

  ‘Has she expressed a wish to return to me?’

  ‘I don’t think it has even crossed her mind—either to come back or that you might agree to take her. She is here only because I brought her. She would have gone anywhere she was told to go. She is really—very unwell, Gideon. All she wants is to have her baby in safety and she has given no thought at all to what comes after.’

  ‘What seems strange to you about that? When did she ever make allowances for tomorrow morning? Have you spoken to her father?’

  ‘No. But I am sure he would accept your decision—as he did when she went away.’

  ‘My decision not to follow her, you mean—to let her go and be damned? Yes, he accepted it. But did he like it?’

  ‘One assumes so.’

  ‘Why? Because he formed a limited liability company as I’d been urging him to do for a long time? One should beware of assuming too much in one’s dealings with Mr. Nicholas Barforth, Grace. He did not give me the managing directorship which I felt I had earned and which I had been promised—merely a seat on the board, like Gervase. And the limited company does not include Law Valley Woolcombers, nor the dyeworks—both highly prosperous concerns over which I have no control whatsoever. Nor have I the faintest notion as to what his plans might be for their eventual disposal. So perhaps he was not altogether delighted by my readiness to let his daughter go. Perhaps he may have an Achilles’heel after all. Who would have thought it?’

  I had nothing more to say. I had asked a man whose wife had left him because she disliked him to take her back now that she was pregnant by another man. What else could I say? He would make his own decision for his own reasons. I had simply placed the matter before him, and for the moment it was out of my hands. My bones were aching from the discomfort of the train, my stomach hollow and uneasy from scanty meals taken in dubious places. I was tired and from sheer weariness sank readily into the silence that fell between us, the sky darkening now towards evening, the mill-yard emptying and th
en filling again with shawl-clad figures as the night-shift came on; the screech of a hooter, doors banging, carts laden with wool-sacks grinding the cobbles, and Gideon Chard sitting at his desk, staring at his inkstand, his eyes unwavering in their concentration, thinking, planning, working it out.

  ‘Thank you, Grace,’ he said, startling me. ‘I suppose you have been kind.’

  ‘I can hardly think so.’

  ‘Well, we will not argue about it. Let me see you to your carriage.’

  I put on my gloves, allowed him to take my arm as we walked downstairs and across the yard, his manner courteous and unhurried, although his glance was keen, checking, perhaps automatically, that everything was as it should be, letting it be seen that he was not the ‘young squire’like Gervase but the ‘young master’.

  ‘Take the top road,’ he told my coachman, ‘to avoid the wagons. And go steady. I shall not be home to dinner, Grace.’

  ‘Are you going to Galton?’

  And in the twilight his smile seemed to flash out at me, his skin very dark, his teeth very white, a hungry, healthy man whose humour took me by surprise.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ he said. ‘I reckon I’d do well to have a word with my chairman and managing director—our father-in-law—first of all. Well now, Grace—and wouldn’t you?’

  I returned to Tarn Edge and immersed myself gratefully in hot water, feeling bruised now in body and in spirit and totally unprepared for the slamming of my door, an hour later, as Gervase strode into my room. I had ordered a tray to be brought up to me, soup and bread and cheese, chocolate cake, a wholesome, almost nursery, supper which did not require me to move from my bedroom sofa; and neither his arrival nor his too obvious temper could be welcome.

  ‘You have been very busy, have you not?’ he almost spat at me. ‘Yes, very busy—traipsing off to Scotland with Liam Adair and all the way back again with my sister—yes, my sister. I was at Galton this afternoon, which might have occurred to you had you given it any consideration. And what was I to feel when she arrived like that—with Liam? What the hell was I to make of it?’

  ‘I just hope you didn’t make a fuss.’

  ‘Christ! And if I did?’

  ‘I just hope you didn’t. She’s been upset enough already.’

  ‘She’s my sister,’ he said, coming to stand over me, his fury blanching and shaking him, my response to it being fierce and immediate since at last we had found a reason to abuse each other that had nothing to do with Diana Flood.

  ‘She’s my sister. Did you think of that? She’s my sister and I have a right—damn it!—to help her.’

  I jumped to my feet, dislodging the tray as I did so, its contents scattering with a mighty clatter, no thought now in my careful housewife’s mind of coffee stains on my rose-pink carpet, the soup bowl upended, the crumbs.

  ‘She’s your sister,’ I yelled at him ‘and what does that mean? I’m your wife. That means nothing either. Just words—like company director, when you never direct anything. Like husband, when all you do is come home twice a week. Like brother, when—God dammit, Gervase Barforth, what help could she expect from you? Like son—’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘Like son, when you live like a parasite on your father’s money and lie to your mother. Yes, lie to her, Gervase, to keep her on that wretched estate so you can take your whores into the cloister—’

  ‘That is enough.’

  ‘I’ll decide that.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn what you decide, Grace,’ he said, hating me. ‘And as for my whores, it strikes me you’ve never cared overmuch about that, so long as it meant I was leaving you alone.’

  It was enough then. Had I remained in that room I think I would have tried to kill him. I believe he felt the same. I walked out on to the landing and down the stairs. ‘Mrs. Barforth,’ my housekeeper said, intercepting me. ‘What has happened to your dress?’

  ‘An accident with the supper tray! Please see to it.’

  And I walked past her and Chillingworth, not even acknowledging the discreet rapidity with which he opened the outer door for me, not caring what conclusion he might draw as I went out into the cold October air, and a blessed solitude.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was not really Venetia who came back to us, but I had great faith in the healing processes of time, in letting nature take its course, and did not despair.

  I had played no further part in her restoration to the family fold and had been acquainted with only a bare outline of how it had taken place. The gentlemen, in fact, had assumed control and I had been sent, as so often before, into the drawing-room to wait. Gideon had spoken to his father-in-law. Mr. Barforth had then driven over to Galton and had returned very late that night. The following morning—a Sunday—he had called Gideon, and then Gervase, then Gideon once again, into his study where he had spoken to them at length, both separately and together. Mr. Barforth had next made his second journey to Galton Abbey, and Gideon, an hour later, had set out to join him. Gervase rode off, one knew better than to ask where. Mr. Barforth and Gideon returned for more discussions. Gideon rode off, not to Galton, I thought, but to Listonby to make his explanations to his mother, and a few minutes later my father-in-law sent for me.

  ‘Grace—if you would see to the domestic arrangements. The room adjoining Gideon’s might serve for the time being. And you might drop a hint to the servants that there’s been a reconciliation in the offing these past three months and more, and they’ve been together a time or two to discuss it. You understand my meaning? Good girl—then you’ll realize the importance of stressing that they have been together—secret meetings in hotels and the like, you’ll know the score. She’s been in the South of France, by the way, with my mother. People may not believe it, but if I say so, and you say so, and my mother says so, then I reckon it will suffice.’

  Gideon came back looking grim, having endured a gruelling interview with Aunt Caroline, who had never liked Venetia in the first place and would certainly never abide her now. We had dinner, and soon afterwards Venetia arrived with her mother, drank her coffee in the drawing-room and went up to bed, her luggage having been delayed, I told my housekeeper, by the vagaries of Continental trains.

  ‘What a nuisance!’ said Mrs. Winch, who did not believe a word of it. ‘Might it not be wise to wash and press some of her old things, since really, with foreign travel, one never knows?’

  ‘Please see to it, Mrs. Winch.’

  The separate room, a lovely bay-windowed apartment adjoining Gideon’s dressing-room, I did not attempt to explain and was thankful, when Mrs. Rawnsley and Miss Mandelbaum came to call, that if they had heard of it from their maids, who assuredly gossiped with ours, they would consider it a subject too delicate to mention. Nor did I try to conceal the fact that Venetia was a prodigal returned. Certainly—and in the strictest confidence—I was now ready to admit that she had absconded from her husband and her home. But Gideon had pursued her, which was exactly what one would have expected him to do, had shown himself masterful and persuasive, and now one must simply hope and pray for the best. The child—the result, it was implied, of his persuasions—had certainly influenced her decision to return, but all the world knew that children held a couple together, and one could only look upon it as a blessing. And because this was a more romantic version, a better story, than the truth, it was gradually accepted, while even those who continued to insist there had been a lover somewhere in the story were thinking of some Gallic or Latin charmer safely abandoned in the South of France, not of a pit village and Robin Ashby.

  She was home again, that was all I cared for, and when, a month later, her father resigned his position as managing director and appointed Gideon in his stead, there was no conclusion I wished to draw.

  ‘You see,’ said Venetia with her astonishing calm. ‘I have been sold for silver once again—or is it gold? A great deal of it, I imagine.’

  But there was no animosity in her voice and no
humbleness either. She was not meek as she had been at the beginning of her marriage, nor grateful, nor anything else to which I could easily give a name. Neutral was the only word I found for her, the state of un-feeling which had enabled Sally Grimshaw’s mother to accept her daughter’s rape with a shrug. ‘It happens.’ Not apathy precisely, but an impenetrable resignation. ‘It happens.’ And she seemed to be quietly, rather sweetly amused by women like myself who still believed that there was something to be done about it.

  I don’t know how much conversation Gideon had with her, if any at all, but since I lived with a husband to whom I rarely addressed a word, I could not be astonished at that. He had won his directorship, she had won respectability for her child. For the time being that would amply suffice. No entertaining was done at Tarn Edge that winter, Gideon making use of the Station Hotel, Mr. Barforth dining more often than not from a tray in his library. Christmas was bitter cold and almost friendless, Gervase at Galton, Gideon at Listonby, my father-in-law, as usual, at his mills, my father in Eastbourne with his wife. Only Blanche drove over to see us on Boxing Day, grieving a little because Noel, after all, had followed his regiment abroad to Africa of all places, where everyone knew the Boers, or the Zulus, or both, were spoiling for a fight. But one glance at Venetia’s face caused her to forget both her sorrow and her curiosity as to whose child this actually was, a piece of information which not even Sir Dominic had been able to prise out of his brother.