They were still some hundred yards from their destination when a tiny girl in plaid pinafore and a lace bonnet toddled up, arms held up, chattering unintelligibly.
‘Yes, yes, papa is here to see you,’ said Charles, lifting the child into his arms.
Edie was not prepared for the effect this little reunion had on her. She felt a kind of agony, as if a dream held in suspension had finally been shot through. Despite herself, despite everything, she had held a vestige of foolish hope that in fact he had not fathered a child with a servant girl and had been unfairly accused. But there was no doubt this girl was his, from the shape of her face and the blue of her eyes.
‘Where’s mama?’ he asked, throwing her gently up and down while she squealed and laughed. ‘Is she at home, hmm? This is Edie. She’s my friend. I’m afraid she didn’t bring you any sweets. What a naughty lady she is.’
He set Charlotte down and reached into his pocket.
‘But I didn’t let you down, look.’ He held out a paper bag which the child snatched up. She picked out a handful of barley sugars and stuffed them all into her mouth at once.
A young woman emerged from the low door of the end cottage, flapping a duster in her hand.
‘Charl, where are you, darling?’ she called, then she caught sight of her visitors and her face stiffened. ‘Twice in a month? I’m honoured, ain’t I?’
‘Monthly visits were your stipulation,’ said Charles, pausing at the wicket gate. ‘May we come in?’
‘You’d better introduce me to your lady friend first. We must observe the formalities, eh?’
She gave Edie a stony look and put her duster in her apron pocket, blushing as if ashamed to be caught so.
‘Certainly. Edie Prior, this is Susan Leonard. Susan Leonard, Edie Prior.’
‘Mother of his child,’ said Susie, nodding formally.
Edie felt that she should offer an equivalent, but ‘lover of his bed’ did not seem calculated to delight her hostess.
‘Lady Deverell’s maid,’ she mumbled instead.
‘What happened to Sylvie?’ asked Susie sharply of Charles.
He shrugged. ‘You’ll hear the gossip when your friends visit, no doubt.’
He made a movement towards the threshold, which Susie, with a sigh, ushered them over.
‘How may I be of service?’ asked Susie sourly.
Charles, who seemed to make a practice of ignoring her nuances of tone, said, ‘A pot of tea would be ripping, Susan, if you would be so kind.’
She clattered fiercely about her range while Charles and Edie took seats at the kitchen table. Charlotte sat down in the chimney corner and played with a pair of kittens who had been sleeping there.
‘Charlotte’s looking well,’ remarked Charles. ‘She’s a credit to you.’
‘She is,’ said Susie. ‘It ain’t no small thing to bring a child up alone.’
Edie observed that the cottage was well furnished and its copper and plate were of good quality, gleaming on the chimney breast and the dresser.
‘She will be talking in no time, I suppose.’
‘She says “mama” already,’ said Susie proudly. ‘Whether she’ll ever be able to say the other thing, who can tell.’
‘She knows me well enough,’ said Charles, who had lifted her on to his knee once the kittens lost their appeal. ‘Don’t you, angel?’
The child reached up and stroked his cheek, still muted by her mouthful of sticky sweetness.
‘She knows what you bring her.’ Susie turned away from the range and gave him a sour look. ‘I’ll be warning her about that when the time comes. Beware of blokes bearing gifts. Either they want something from you, or there’s a guilty conscience behind it.’
‘You’re going to bring my daughter up to be a cynic? Oh, I don’t know if I approve of that.’
Edie looked away from the challenging shaft of eye contact that held the two former lovers locked, uncomfortable at what she witnessed. Susie might be well provided for, but she bore a whole nest of grudges, it was plain to see.
‘So, what do you want from me today?’ she said.
Charles put a roll of banknotes on the kitchen table.
‘Get Charlotte something pretty. Take her to the fair at the weekend. Whatever you want.’
‘Whatever I want? Maybe I’ll spend it on gin.’
‘Susan.’ His voice was low, half reproach, half rebuke.
‘What do you think?’ Susie had turned to Edie, who started, having been absorbed by the wriggling of the child.
‘I? Oh, it is your money. You must do as you see fit with it.’
‘No, not about the money. About this – a visit by Lord Skirt-Chaser to the child who’ll never inherit from him. How kind of you to call. You’re his new piece, I take it.’
‘I’m …’
‘Edith is my friend,’ said Charles icily. ‘She wants to hear our story. I’d like her to hear it from you.’
Susan set the tea tray on the table with a clatter.
‘Oh, no,’ she said, sitting down. ‘You’ve been cruel enough in your time, but parading your new fancy piece in front of your old one and then asking her to humiliate herself into the bargain – no. It ain’t fair and I won’t do it.’
Charles nodded. ‘I can understand that. In that case, would you object if I told her the story in your presence, so that you can interject if you feel I’m misrepresenting any aspect of it?’
‘I’d rather not.’
Charles put a finger on the bankroll.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘All right. But if I don’t agree with what you say …’
‘Of course you can put your side of things. Of course. That’s why I came here. And to see you, of course.’ This last to Charlotte, who was insisting on being bounced on his knee. ‘Horsey needs a rest, darling. Down with you now.’
He put her on the floor, amidst much complaining, and took his teacup.
‘The common perception, which I have done nothing to dispel, is that I seduced Susie here, got her pregnant and then abandoned her. I’ve never denied any of it, because the proofs are pretty clear in the shape of my lovely daughter and because my reputation isn’t important. I’m rich, I’m male and I’m eligible, no matter what. For Susie, however, this isn’t the case.’
‘It’s terrible, the stigma that’s attached to the women who are abandoned by men who get off scot-free,’ said Edie passionately, and Susie granted her a smile.
‘Funny, but it’s often the women who treat you the worst,’ she said. ‘I get my share of name-calling and whispering in the street, but they know that my little girl’s a Deverell so they don’t dare say anything to her. And they’d better not do, either.’
‘I won’t allow it,’ said Charles. ‘You must come to me if anything of the sort ever happens.’
‘Oh, I will.’
‘Susie here,’ continued Charles, ‘was a parlourmaid at the Hall when I came back from the war. Tom had preceded me by a year or so after the business with his leg but I stuck it out to the bitter end. Susie won’t deny that I wasn’t quite the man you see now when I came back to Deverell Hall.’
Susie hesitated, coloured, then shook her head.
‘I suffered a kind of breakdown. Obviously it was hushed up, as these things are, but I was quite ill. Terrible nightmares, sleeplessness, a hopeless feeling of horror and despair – I won’t dwell on it, because it’s passed, but …’
He paused, swallowing, a haunted look flitting across his face before he composed it once more.
‘I used to spend my afternoons sitting in the garden. I tried to read but I had no concentration. My sketching is poor, so I soon abandoned all such efforts. I took to sitting out there with strip cartoons. I became quite addicted to them. They were something my mind could encompass – one of very few things. Susie here was detailed to wait on me on those afternoons. She would go and fetch blankets, drinks, that sort of thing. It was easy enough work and I wasn’t up to conversation so at first we spe
nt our afternoons in silence. She was good and attentive. She knew when I needed things before I did. I appreciated her care.’
‘I had no idea,’ said Edie softly, her heart pierced by this new knowledge of him. She found herself wishing she could have nursed him, tended to him, brought him back to life.
‘Well, you know. It’s all in the past now,’ he said, trying an insouciant wave that didn’t quite come off. ‘This is accurate so far, would you say, Sue?’
She nodded. She looked dreadful, grey in the face, as if she might burst into tears at any minute. Charlotte had wandered off to the garden with one of the kittens, perhaps driven out by the sombre atmosphere.
‘After a while, she started talking to me. Silly bits of conversation about the weather and so on. I was bothered by it at first and I’m afraid I probably wasn’t very polite. But she persevered and eventually our relations became more cordial. Not long after that, things started to change. She would linger around me, tucking in the blanket, leaning over me, putting her hand on my thigh, that kind of thing. I almost wasn’t aware of it at first, but it began to become obvious. She’s a beautiful girl. I’m a man. I’d been wondering …’
‘You make me sound like …’
‘What do you want me to make you sound like? You did these things, Susie. You brought your banquet right to my table. I’d felt nothing … no feelings of any kind … for months, and now desire was back. I was still a man, after all. The first stirrings of recovery, and they had to come from my loins. It was inconvenient, but it was exciting. I didn’t do anything to dissuade you, that much is true. I let you go on leaning over me and lifting your skirts over your ankles and pushing yourself against me until that day came and I had to grab hold of your waist. You remember that day?’
‘Of course,’ she whispered.
‘That kiss,’ he said. ‘A drink of water in the desert.’
‘Enough,’ said Edie. ‘I think I understand. You don’t have to go on.’
‘It was once,’ said Charles, ‘and it was wrong, but we both wanted it. I didn’t seduce her. Tell her I didn’t seduce you.’
‘He didn’t,’ said Susie, and tears splashed from her eyes into the milky tea.
‘I’m eternally grateful to you, though, love,’ he said to her, putting his hand on hers. ‘You gave my life back to me. When you told me you were pregnant, it was like a high-voltage electric shock. Everything that had been so blurred and confused was clear again. I had made a new life and I had to provide for it. I gave up the crosswords and took an interest in the day-to-day working of the estate again. And I learned to drive.’ He smiled, as if to signal that any sympathy for him might now be put away.
‘But it must have been so hard for you,’ said Edie to Susie. ‘When you found out about the baby.’
Susie shook her head, then nodded, then shook it again. She mopped her damp eyes with a handkerchief and drew a breath.
‘I had hopes,’ she said. ‘I won’t lie. I thought we could be married. Everyone knew Lord Deverell had married an actress – so why couldn’t his son marry a parlourmaid?’
‘He wouldn’t allow it. I asked – no dice. It won’t reflect well on me, but I was relieved. I was fond of her, but that was about it. It wasn’t love. I’m sorry. If it was, I’d have told him to go to hell, gone to Gretna Green, whatever it took. But it wasn’t love.’
‘For me neither,’ said Susie, as if she needed to assert her dignity. ‘But it might have been. It might have grown.’ She sighed. ‘We’ll never know.’
‘I wouldn’t have made you happy,’ he asserted. ‘It would have been a miserable yoke for us both.’
‘But her.’ Susie jerked a thumb in Edie’s direction. ‘You can make her happy, can you?’
Charles was quiet for a little while. Edie had never felt so horribly, sickeningly close to breaking down.
‘I hope so,’ he said. ‘I mean to give it a bloody good try.’
‘And your pa’ll change his mind about marrying maids, will he?’ said Susie scornfully.
‘No, probably not,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t really apply in this case.’
He did not furnish Susie with any of the further details her open mouth seemed to show she was angling for, but stood up abruptly.
‘Would you mind awfully if we took Charlotte out for the afternoon? Perhaps she’d like a splash in the lake?’
‘Oh.’ Susie looked around, putting a hand through her tumble of dark hair. ‘I suppose so. I’ve enough to be doing, that’s for sure.’
‘She’ll be back for tea,’ he promised.
***
They drove, Charlotte excited and squealing between them, to the shores of a lake in the area. Edie sat by its shores while Charles, trousers rolled up to his knees, splashed in the shallows with his toddling daughter.
She had so much to think about now. Charles was not quite what she had thought him, and to have found this out on the very day that she already felt light-headed and fatally vulnerable from the morning spent in bed was devastating.
Watching him with Charlotte was like inviting the destruction of her heart. Pang after pang assaulted her senses, every time he laughed, every time he teased, every time a look of pensive affection passed over his face.
Please don’t let me be in love with him.
But she felt quite strongly that her plea was too late. Her treacherous mind kept whispering to her. That could be our child; I could be his wife; this could be our garden.
She stood up, needing solitude so urgently that she ran to the shelter of some nearby trees, leant against the bark of one and put her hands to her face, sobbing out the multifaceted emotions of her day.
She only stopped when she heard him call for her, his shouts accompanied by little childish imitations. She dried her face, wiped her nose and set a course back to the shores of the lake, where she smiled at Charlotte and took her in her arms in order to avoid meeting Charles’s eyes.
‘Have you been crying?’ he asked curiously, opening the car door for her. ‘Where did you go?’
‘Just the sun,’ she said vaguely, putting Charlotte down on the seat beside her. ‘So strong – hurt my eyes, you know.’
They drove back to Kingsreach and left Charlotte, after many farewells and tears and cuddles, with her mother.
***
‘She’s taken a shine to you,’ said Charles, setting off again for the Hall.
‘She’s a little dear,’ said Edie, her voice catching again. Why couldn’t she seem to moderate her feelings today? ‘Poor little darling.’
‘Now look, there’s nothing poor about Charlotte. She’s the best provided for child in Kingsreach. And her mother doesn’t go short of attention either. She has suitors by the dozen – she’s a beautiful woman and plenty of men want to play stepfather to a Deverell child. They know they’ll be set up for life. Don’t go wasting your pity where it isn’t needed.’
‘She’s hurt. You hurt her.’
Charles reached over to squeeze her knee.
‘I never intended to,’ he said. ‘I had a reputation, which she knew of – and, before the war, it was well-deserved. But I’m not that man now.’
‘Except where I’m concerned.’
‘Everything’s different where you’re concerned, Edie. All bets are off.’
‘You sound as if you see a future in this.’
He looked startled.
‘Well, I do,’ he said, as if it were self-evident. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I …’ She shook her head, looking away from him, not wanting to see what lay behind the wall of suave reserve she had broken down. This was impossible, utterly impossible. Her mother’s stepson, the man she had confessed to loving. It did not fit into her design at all.
But she did not want to talk about that, not today. Tomorrow, when everyone was back and Deverell Hall fell into its routine, there was time enough to fret. Today was a holiday from all that.
***
She scurried back into the house thr
ough a side door, leaving Charles to park the car. In her East Wing bedroom, she threw herself back on the bed and stared raptly at the ceiling. Now she had a moment to herself to contemplate how her post-virginal state felt, and she meant to use it to the full.
She was an experienced woman. It did not feel as different as she had expected it to, apart from the obvious physical side-effects between her thighs. The tenderness seemed to spread through her body, infecting her with a tremulous vulnerability that she must make sure Charles never saw. Charles, her deflowerer, the man who had taken her across that bridge – now there would always be a bond between them. She simultaneously thrilled at and recoiled from the idea. It was all so complicated, and yet it was so dangerously addictive – she could see that now. To fall once was to keep falling; there was no end to it.
Even the sound of his boots on the gravel far below made her heart speed up and her stomach convulse.
Damn it, Edie Crossland, you can’t fall in love with him, you simply can’t. It’s your body playing tricks on you, making you think that, because he’s had you once, you want him always. It’s a biological ploy, Edie, that’s all.
However much sense she tried to talk into her nerves, they would persist in tautening and bursting into fountains of excitement every two minutes, so she gave up trying to be calm and fell into a glorious reliving of the morning’s activities.
She was still trying to remember the exact sensation of him upon her when he entered the room, laughing to find her laid out on the bed with her arms up and her cheek to the pillow.
‘I’ve forgotten what I came say to you now,’ he said in a low voice, coming to sit on the bed beside her, his hand drifting over her light cotton blouse.
‘Words,’ she said, still blissfully abstracted, arching her spine slightly to encourage his touch. ‘Mmm.’
‘Don’t make me take you in this mean little room when we have the entire Hall at our disposal,’ he said. ‘Come on, get up. You need to dress for dinner.’
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