‘You know,’ he said—and pointed to the portrait before which they were both now standing. ‘It is this—that if you are Louise Hanslope it beggars belief that you have the face of Adelaide Cleeve. How many mysteries are you concealing, Madame Félice—and why?’
‘Oh,’ Louise said, bitter regret consuming her that he should find out her secrets in this fashion, and furiously aware that he, one day to be the lord of all, who lived out his cushioned life in luxury, should be so ignorant of the hard and difficult lives of the lowly, among whom she had been thrown to live by cruel chance.
‘What can such a poor creature as I am do, m’lord, when I face ruin at every turn if my true identity is revealed, but protect myself in the only way I can. If Jackson discovers that I am Louise Hanslope, the missing Marchioness, and makes it known to the world, what price my peace of mind, and the business which I have built up with such care? What would be left to me in order to survive, but to accept your dishonourable offer, and when you grow tired of me, sink down as so many women do, to a short and disgraceful life?’
‘No,’ said Marcus, trying to take her into his arms. ‘Trust me a little—tell me Louise Hanslope’s history, and tell me—if you know—why you look like my family, the Cleeves.’
Could she trust him? Must she trust him? It seemed that she had no alternative but to do so. What was she to do for the best?
Louise looked up and saw Mr Marks again. Something she had said had changed him. The look of accusation had left his face, and if she saw only pity there, then that was better than anger, was it not?
‘I should speak to you of this, m’lord, and will do so. I will not apologise for what I have done, but I will explain why I have kept my secrets from a harsh world. After that, if you wish you may judge me and leave me, if what I have done disgusts you.
‘But we cannot speak of it here, not now. Lady Yardley and Lady Sophia will be with me at any moment, and I have a commission to fulfil. The world’s work does not stop because M’lord Angmering needs some answers to his questions. I will take the day off tomorrow—I was thinking of doing so, and Mr Marks may visit me in Chelsea if he will leave Lord Angmering at home.’
Oh, she was a gallant creature, if a devious one, and he would agree to do as she wished, because she was the woman he had hoped to meet and he could not, must not, lose her now.
Louise could not sleep that night. She had managed to go through her dressmaking duties with the Countess and her daughter without betraying the distress which had inevitably followed her unmasking.
She had known that Marcus was clever, but not how clever. Clever enough, once he had recognised her—and that after so many years—to grasp at once who she might be. That it was unlikely—as Jackson must also think—that lonely Athene Filmer had had two young friends, not one, and that that friend must be the lost Marchioness.
The only thing which he had not pursued was why she was so like the Cleeves, and if she were going to tell him the truth about Louise Hanslope and how she came to marry, and then desert, Sywell, she also owed him the duty of telling him the most amazing truth of all—who she really was.
And that would be her biggest problem. The problem which kept her awake that night. For would he believe the truth? Or would he think that she was inventing it to claim a name and a lineage which were not hers. However difficult that might be, though, she must bite the bullet. She could not deceive him further if she were to retain his respect, never mind his love.
She might mock him by calling him Mr Marks, she might hold him off when he wished to make her his mistress, she might deny to him that he meant very much to her, but she could not deny the biggest truth of all: that she loved him.
The kind boy who had bandaged her damaged knee had turned into a strong and kind man—however bluff he was to those around him, his essential goodness shone through. She had no idea of how much Marcus’s hard life had made him the sterling man he was, but she knew that man and knew him well.
Despite that she would never be his doxy, his light of love, however much she loved him. For she would be as true to herself as he was to himself, and what would follow from that, only time would tell. Worse than that, who and what she was, and what he would learn of her, might stand in the way of their happiness.
Trust me, he had said, and no one had ever said that to her before.
Consequently, on the following morning, she awaited his arrival in a fever of anticipation. She had thought that he might adhere to the code of conduct which said that the quality did not call in the morning, but, as she ought to have guessed, no such thing. Mr Marks and Marcus, Lord Angmering, made up their own rules.
He had been considerate enough to allow her time to breakfast, but the moment that the French clock on her mantelpiece tinkled out eleven, he was at her door. He was very much Mr Marks, simply dressed, as usual, so as not to attract attention: he might have been a lawyer’s clerk, and Louise fleetingly wondered what his valet made of him.
She was not to know that he was his valet’s despair. He had once dressed his master in a white satin court suit, and had occasionally kitted him out as a dandy, but was more likely to have to help him into the clothes of a labourer, or a gamekeeper when he was running his father’s northern estates.
Louise felt awkward when the little maid showed him in, but she might have guessed that Marcus’s manner to her would be unchanged.
His bow was as deep as ever. He accepted the glass of Madeira which she offered him as though this was simply a courtesy call, not a ritual during which Louise would make a full confession to him. He was not yet to know how full and surprising that confession would be, but he would not allow it to change the loving consideration with which he had always treated her until that fatal moment when he had seen her in the picture gallery.
For a moment they sat facing one another, speaking of banalities: the weather, that her session with Sophia and her mother the previous afternoon had been a successful one. Louise thought that Marcus’s face was a little shadowed as though he, too, had passed a bad night, but she said nothing of that.
Finally, their conversation ran down. Louise put down her glass, from which she had drunk little, and began, ‘M’lord—’
‘Mr Marks,’ he said. ‘Here I am Mr Marks.’
‘Very well, Mr Marks. I said that I would tell you the truth about the life of Louise Hanslope whom you have known as Madame Félice, and however much it pains me to relive it, it is my duty to you, and to the truth, to reveal everything. First of all I must tell you that Louise Hanslope is no more my real name than that of Madame Félice Morisot is. If, when I tell you my true name, you wish to leave and to forget that you ever knew me, I shall quite understand. It is a risk which I must take.’
She paused, not knowing how to continue.
Marcus said, gently, ‘It is a risk which I must take also. But it is not, I think, a great one.’
‘So you say now, not knowing it. When you have heard me out, you may think differently.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ said Marcus gravely. ‘But first, tell me your story and allow me to be the best judge of how I react to it.’
‘Very well, but before I begin you must understand that some of what I shall be telling you was told to me. John Hanslope was not my father. He was first the bailiff of the Earl of Yardley who lost the Abbey, and then of the Marquis of Sywell who cheated him out of it. Consequently he knew the family well, and in particular Lord Rupert Cleeve, who was, of course, your distant relative. He ought more properly to have been known as Lord Angmering, but for some reason of which I am unaware, preferred not to be.
‘It seems that Lord Rupert, to the anger of his father, the Earl, married a French lady, Marie de Ferrers, who was a Catholic. The Earl repudiated him and forbade him the house. He even suggested that since the lady was a Catholic their marriage was not a legal one. Lord Rupert, however, told the bailiff when he left his wife and child—a little girl—with him, while he looked for a home for them, t
hat the marriage was legal.
‘This is the difficult part of my story, for the little girl was none other than myself, Louise Cleeve. I cannot, of course, remember any of this, for I was only a baby then.’
Marcus gave a short exclamation. Louise, her eyes wide and troubled, stopped, but he waved her on.
‘John told me later that my father returned and took us away. He later discovered that he left my mother in Cheltenham while he went back to France to recover her inheritance. This was of course, all taking place after the French Revolution had started. My father had quarrelled with my grandfather over that as well. He was at first very sympathetic towards the revolutionaries. Later, when the Terror began he changed his mind. Unfortunately he became trapped in France and died there, exactly how, no one knew.
‘So Lord Rupert, my father, never returned from France. John never learned whether he met my mother’s family again—or even whether they had also died in the Terror as so many aristocrats did.’
‘Which, of course,’ interjected Marcus, ‘means that if your story is true you are, by rights, the Honourable Miss Louise Cleeve.’
Louise nodded and continued. ‘John heard nothing more from Lord Rupert or his wife, although he tried to trace them, until he received a letter from my mother telling him of my father’s death in France, and that she was living in great poverty in Cheltenham and was dying. She begged him to help her for the sake of her child, myself. She had not approached the Earl for assistance because she didn’t want him to have the care of her Catholic-bred child. She was unaware that he had already died, and that your father, a distant cousin, had inherited the title.
‘John immediately drove to Cheltenham and reached us in time to be present at my mother’s death.’
Her voice faltered. She swallowed tears, before saying, ‘I can just remember her death and John arriving, but only after a jumbled fashion. I have, of course, no memory of my father. Before she died my mother begged John to adopt me, for he too was a Catholic, and also to ensure that, as soon as possible, I took my rightful place in the world. He agreed and took me to Steepwood. Unfortunately my guardian, as John Hanslope became, could find no proof that my father and mother had ever married. He could only assume that they had done so in France, although from something that Lord Rupert had once said to him it seemed that they might have been married in England, after all.
‘Lacking proof, the Hanslopes brought me up as their own, since they could find no evidence of my legitimacy and would even have found it difficult to prove that I was an illegitimate child of the Cleeves. Mrs Hanslope had been a governess in a French family, spoke French well, and taught me the language from infancy. She also gave me an excellent education. I had no notion at this time that I was Louise Cleeve. I assumed that my parents had bequeathed me to my guardian and his wife because my true family was poor. It was only years later that John—my father as I called him then—told me the truth.’
Marcus had said nothing while this remarkable story was unfolded. Louise looked across at him and said, ‘It is like a Gothic novel, is it not? Something out of one of Mrs Radcliffe’s tales. I can quite understand why my guardian did not wish to subject me to the scandal and unpleasantness of proving my birth when I had no evidence to support it.’
‘If this story is true,’ murmured Marcus, ‘and I can see that you believe it is, I still fail to understand why, when my father returned from India, the Hanslopes did not contact him and inform him of your existence.’
‘By the time he returned it was too late. Mrs Hanslope had died, the Marquis of Sywell had taken up permanent residence at the Abbey, and since I had always enjoyed dressmaking John apprenticed me to a French sempstress, an emigré who had moved to Northampton where she worked for the nobility and gentry. She thought that I had real talent and wished to recommend me to another French dressmaker in London. Before I could move there, I returned to the Abbey to visit my guardian who was dying.’
She gave a sad little laugh. ‘It seemed that I was doomed to lose everyone I loved. Just before he died I met Lord Sywell. He was not quite the debauched wreck he afterwards became and still possessed some of the charm which I understand was his in youth. He became obsessed with me, and of all things offered me marriage. I refused him at first, but when I told my guardian he urged me to accept him.
‘It was then that he first told me that I was Lord Rupert’s child but that I had no means of proving that I was a Cleeve or that I was legitimate. He said that by marrying Sywell I could regain my place in society and that if I had a child, the Cleeves would have returned to the Abbey which they had lost. Remember that I was very young and innocent and that I was about to lose the last person in the world who could be called my family. I was shortly to be left quite alone. I shall never know why Sywell did not simply take me by force and make me his mistress—but he was a man of great caprice and perhaps it amused him to marry a bailiff’s daughter. By then, of course, no genteel family would have allowed their daughter to marry him.
‘So, we were married, and it was the worst thing which I could have done. I will not weary you with the story of my life with him. Suffice it to say that it was one long agony. Fortunately for me I was, from my wedding day, his wife in name only, which did not prevent him from tormenting me in other ways. Only my renewed friendship with Athene Filmer saved my sanity. Finally, one day, I decided to run away to try my fortune in London, as my old mistress had suggested. I shall always wonder why he married me at all.
‘I felt no compunction about robbing Sywell of both money and jewellery before I left; he owed me that as compensation for the ill-treatment which I had endured from him. I used it to set up my business, of which you know. That, Lord Angmering, is my story, and whether you consider me to be deluded, an impostor, or even the true descendant of the Cleeves, either legitimate or illegitimate, is your choice to make, since I have no proof to offer that any of my sad tale is true—other than that I am Sywell’s widow and John Hanslope’s adopted child.’
Silence fell in the pretty little room. Marcus had listened to Louise’s sad tale first with interest, mixed up with an element of disbelief, and then with shock when she had spoken so measuredly of her dreadful life with Sywell.
‘One thing is sure, though,’ he said at last. ‘You have the face of the female Cleeves of the elder branch—of which, if you speak true, and I think that you do—you are the last twig. The women of my father’s line are different in appearance, which was why I did not at first recognise you for what you are. It took the portrait of Lady Adelaide Cleeve to do that.’
Louise gave a half-laugh. ‘Legitimate—or illegitimate—who is to know which at this late date?’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Marcus. ‘Nothing has changed between us. Your honesty impresses me. Many in your position would have brazenly claimed legitimacy, but you have laid out the few facts of your past with an impartial clarity which would be applauded in a court of law. Whatever else, it seems that we are quite distant cousins. I can only wish that you were more than a cousin to me.’
Louise’s heart gave a great leap. She was not to lose him—as she had thought possible.
‘The thing is,’ he went on, ‘that while I can quite understand your desire to remain anonymous so far as this Sywell business is concerned, I think that your guardian, despite his care of you, did you few favours by not trying harder to establish your legitimacy—or rather by giving up the hunt so soon. He also did you the worst disservice by encouraging your marriage to Sywell.’
‘All that may be true in hindsight,’ said Louise. ‘But now that you know my story, what do you intend to do about it?’
‘Well, I shall certainly not broadcast it around London, you may be sure of that,’ he told her. ‘I don’t believe that you murdered Sywell. I am sure that you can prove that you were safely here in London when he was killed. Nor has it changed my opinion of you. On the contrary, I am full of admiration for your resourcefulness, Louise. I hope that I may call you tha
t. Madame Félice has suddenly become a figment, a fairy-tale figure behind which Louise Cleeve—or Hanslope—takes refuge.’
So he did understand. He had not called her Louise Cleeve, the daughter of a man who was properly a Viscount, but she never thought of herself as that. The Honourable Louise Cleeve was someone in a romance as she had earlier said, not the down-to-earth woman who made dresses.
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I am so relieved that you do not think me a liar,’ she murmured. ‘I would never have told you any of this if you had not seen my resemblance to the portrait in Berkeley Square.’
Marcus rose and came over to where she sat. He went down on one knee beside her, and touched her hand to try to reassure her. The look of pain on her face was affecting him strongly.
‘My dear,’ he said, lifting her hand and kissing it, although to do so was temptation itself, but only a cur would assail her with his love when she was so greatly distressed, ‘my dear, you have been carrying such a monstrous burden for so long that I am amazed at the fortitude with which you have faced life. You have my deepest admiration. Now, I am going to ask you to allow me to do something to help you. I would like to consult Jackson, the ex-Runner, about your past, and ask him to try to find the proofs of your parents’ marriage and your own birth. I would charge him to do so in the strictest confidence—which I am sure that he would honour.’
‘No, indeed not. I do not wish anyone other than yourself to know this. My secrets must remain secrets.’
‘Consider this, my dearest heart. In fairness to my father and myself, we must attempt to discover whether or not you are Louise Cleeve, the daughter of Lord Rupert Cleeve. That you might be makes no difference to the ownership of Steepwood, since the estate, like the title, was entailed on the male line. But you should not only take your rightful place in society, but you ought also to have the dowry which would rightly have been yours.’
‘I don’t want any of it,’ she told him stubbornly. ‘I am Louise Hanslope who is also Madame Félice, and that is all I wish to be. Even if this Sywell business were not hanging over me, I should still say the same. I don’t want the whole world to gossip over my past.’
The Missing Marchioness (Mills & Boon Historical) Page 8
