‘The Wash? Where King John lost his baggage? It’s like living in history! And Cley is near the real sea?’
‘Yes. We will be driving along the coast this afternoon. The first Duke of Cley built his house here because King William the Third asked him to oversee the drainage of the marshes. The first house was quite a small one, in the Dutch style. He had lived in exile in Holland, after the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion, in which he was involved. They were very good friends.’ She paused.
‘Giles told me about poor Monmouth,’ said Caroline, surprising her. ‘Was he really Charles the second’s son?’
‘So it was said. And, if so, he and the first Duke of Cley were half-brothers.’ She was grateful to Giles, who figured largely in Caroline’s conversation, for giving her the chance to convey this piece of information.
‘Like the Duke of St. Albans.’ Caroline surprised her again. ‘Giles told me about him too.’
‘Giles seems to have told you a great deal.’
‘We were friends.’ A hint of tears in Caroline’s voice. ‘He told me all kinds of things. He said I listened like a boy. I wish he hadn’t had to go to India.’ She sniffed resolutely. ‘Please tell me more about the Dukes of Cley. Was the first Duke part of the Glorious Revolution?’
‘Yes. He came over with William and Mary. He had married a Dutch lady, the sister of a friend of King William’s, and knew a good deal about how they drained their land.’
‘Was he made a duke for that?’
‘No, that came later. He was a soldier, too, and fought beside the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim. They were good friends for a while, but their wives never did get on. People say the first Duchess of Cley planned their new house to rival Blenheim Palace. She was a very rich lady in her own right.’ She did not add that the Dukes of Cley had made a practice of marrying rich women.
‘Like Blenheim?’ said Caroline. ‘But that’s a palace, isn’t it? Is Cley so very big?’
‘Huge. I used to get lost in it all the time.’ She laughed and patted Caroline’s hand. ‘Don’t look so scared, child! The family have a wing of their own, and you won’t get lost in that.’
Caroline drew a deep breath. ‘A whole wing!’ And then, eased by Miss Skinner’s friendliness. ‘Will they like me, the children? Will they mind my coming?’
‘Not a bit of it. They are used to visitors, and you are to be a very special one. They were looking forward to it when I came away. I am afraid they find life a little dull now they are all the time at Cley, and any diversion is welcome.’
‘And I’m to be a diversion?’ Caroline was quiet for a long time.
The morning mist had cleared into a brilliantly fine day and they stopped for their picnic luncheon at a place where the road commanded a wide view of brownish green salt marsh and deep blue sea. ‘The air smells different here.’ Caroline took deep breaths of it as the footman laid out rugs by the side of the quiet country road. ‘I like it! I like the country, too. Sophie said it would be flat as a pancake, but it’s not, is it? And there’s so much sky. And as for the sea…’ She took another ecstatic breath. ‘I can’t think of words for it.’
Miss Skinner showed her Holkham Hall that afternoon, grand and gleaming behind its newly planted screen of trees, and again she found herself without words.
‘It looks like a temple,’ she said at last. ‘Giles had pictures of them in his Homer. Is Cley like that?’
‘Not really. Mr Vanbrugh had a different idea of building. But it’s just as big.’
‘Oh dear!’ said Caroline.
The going had been heavier than the coachman had expected and it was late afternoon when they drove through the thriving little town of Blakeney, from which the heir to Cley took his title.
‘The people are bowing to the carriage!’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘I feel like a queen.’
‘The Duke’s a good landlord,’ said Miss Skinner.
‘Like Mr Coke. Does he dress up and pretend to be a labourer, and find out that way what is really going on at his estate?’
‘Well, no,’ said Miss Skinner, awed by the idea of the autocratic Duke in a peasant’s smock.
Soon after they left Blakeney, the road joined a high stone wall, running along the gentle slope that rose from the salt marshes.
‘There,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘The estate wall at last. Not long now.’
‘The trees here are higher than at Holkham,’ said Caroline, disappointed. ‘Can we not see the house?’
‘Not until we are through the lodge gates. Cley’s older than Holkham, remember. The trees here are about eighty years old. Gracious me,’ she exclaimed, as the carriage drew to a jolting halt. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s highwaymen, miss!’ The footman looked in at the window, a broad grin belying his words.
‘Your money or your life,’ said a boy’s voice. And then, impatiently, ‘Out of the way, James, or I’ll shoot you!’
The footman vanished, with a look of comic dismay, and his large figure was replaced by that of a slim boy in slouch hat, cloak and mask who edged his horse up close to the carriage, rested a deadly looking duelling pistol on the lowered sash of the window, and repeated his demand of, ‘Your money or your life!’
‘Blakeney.’ Miss Skinner’s tone was arctic. ‘How dare you! Give me that firearm at once. How do you know it’s not loaded?’
‘Of course I know,’ said the boy. ‘Don’t spoil sport, Miss S! You brought her, I see.’ He removed hat and mask in one sweeping left-handed gesture, and made a low bow to Caroline. ‘Welcome to Cley, Miss Thorpe. We’ve come to escort you, but you’re late. The girls got tired of waiting and went home. You’ve lost your bet, Gaston,’ he turned to speak to someone behind him. ‘She’s tiny, much smaller than I am.’
‘Let me see.’ The solid-looking, dark-haired boy had taken off his mask but also held a pistol. ‘So she is,’ he said disgustedly. ‘What a take in. I was sure she would be tall. That’s ten good shillings you’ve cost me, Miss Thorpe.’
‘Give me those weapons at once,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘And make sure they are not cocked before you do so. Oh, dear God!’ The pistol Blakeney held had gone off as it rested on the rim of the carriage window and she looked aghast at a neat hole in the window opposite. ‘Are you hurt, Caroline?’
‘No, ma’am, but something’s happened to my bonnet.’ She had been leaning forward to look at the two boys when the pistol went off, and the shot had gone clean through the high brim of her bonnet, which was now drooping round her face. Oddly enough, instead of being frightened, she was enormously amused by the horrified expressions of the two boys.
‘Your faces,’ she said with a little gasp of shocked laughter. ‘If you could just see your faces!’
‘You said you’d unloaded them!’ Blakeney turned on his companion. ‘You told me!’
‘Tell-tale, tell-tale, Blakeney’s a tell-tale!’ mocked his companion. ‘How could I imagine you’d be such a fool as to cock the thing? I just thought it would be a lark to fire a shot if the coachman didn’t stop.’
‘I didn’t cock it,’ said Blakeney. ‘It must have hit the window frame. Miss Skinner, Miss Thorpe,’ he turned suddenly from angry boy to serious, very young man, ‘I beg you will accept my profoundest apologies for this accident.’ And then, a boy again. ‘I must say, Miss Thorpe, you’re a brick. Charlotte or Amelia would have squeaked and fainted. You’re like Queen Elizabeth, I think, great heart in tiny body.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘That’s the best compliment I ever had.’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘And I admire Miss Thorpe’s courage quite as much as you do, Blakeney. But the fact remains that you near as possible killed her. What are we going to say to your father?’
There was a little, shocked silence before the bigger boy spoke. ‘Why, nothing, Miss Skinner. The men will be quiet about it because they know their orders are to drive on if they see a highwayman. It’s as much as their job’s wort
h if the Duke learns they stopped for us.’
‘Yes, but I knew you, sir,’ said a reproachful voice from the box.
‘It won’t do, Gaston,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘I’m sorry, but it won’t do. There’s Miss Thorpe’s bonnet to be explained, for one thing.’
‘Hasn’t she got another one?’ asked Gaston. ‘All she has to do is change it.’
‘It’s my only one,’ said Caroline ruefully. ‘It was a beautiful bonnet.’ And knew, watching Gaston’s face, that she had made an enemy.
‘I’ll buy you a new one the very next time I go to Lynn,’ said Blakeney. ‘And indeed I am sorrier than I can say, Miss Thorpe. It is all my fault.’ He spoke now to Miss Skinner, ‘And so I shall tell my father. It was my idea to hold you up, and it should have been my responsibility to check the pistols.’
‘Handsome of you, Blakeney,’ said Miss Skinner drily. ‘It’s late. Drive on, Stokes,’ she told the coachman who had been unashamedly listening. ‘And if I were you boys, I’d ride ahead and tell your story to the Duke before we arrive. It won’t improve with keeping.’
‘Oh, I say!’ protested Gaston.
‘Thank you, Miss Skinner,’ said Blakeney. ‘You’re right. We’ll tell them to expect you shortly.’ He motioned to the coachman to wait a moment and leaned in at the carriage window. ‘I still think you’re a brick, Miss Thorpe,’ he said. ‘May I call you Caroline?’
As the two boys rode away, Miss Skinner reached out a friendly hand to Caroline. ‘That was brave of you, my dear. I’m proud of my new pupil.’
‘Oh, thank you.’ Reaction was setting in. A cold little draft blew on to her face from the hole in the carriage window, and she felt herself begin to shake as she realised what had nearly happened. ‘Might I really be dead?’
‘Best not think about it,’ said Miss Skinner bracingly. ‘Here we are at the lodge gates.’ They were being held open by two grinning children. ‘And, in a moment, you will get your first sight of Cley, but we’re very late. I am afraid we must not stop to look.’
The carriage emerged from the screen of trees that lined the park wall and as it turned with the curve of the driveway Caroline gave a gasp of astonishment at sight of the house squatting hugely on the crest of the slight slope up from the marsh; a vast, dark silhouette, fringed with tower and turret and Gothic ornament. ‘But…but it’s worse than a palace,’ she exclaimed, frightened as she had not been by the pistol shot. She clasped Miss Skinner’s hand. ‘You won’t leave me?’
‘We’re much later than I meant to be, but maybe it will all be for the best. The family should be at their dinner and we can get you straight up to the children’s apartments.’
‘They have their own?’
‘Yes. In the family wing. Family and guests have the two south wings. You’re family, of course,’ she reassured, as the carriage swept past the turning that led to what was obviously the main front of the house. ‘That’s the state entrance,’ she pointed. ‘We’re going around to the family courtyard. That’s right.’ She took the ruined bonnet from Caroline and helped smooth her braided hair. ‘They’re almost bound to be at dinner.’ She was encouraging herself as much as Caroline. ‘The Duke insists on town hours,’ she explained. ‘Except on open days, of course.’
‘Open days?’
‘When he entertains his neighbours. But that’s on Wednesdays. Ah, here we are at last.’ The carriage had rounded the vast bulk of the family wing which seemed to Caroline larger itself than the ruins of Ludlow Castle. As they turned into the courtyard and under a low arcade, the sun came out from behind the clouds, slanting down into the yard, striking sparks from big windows and giving a rosy glow to the brick of which the house was built.
‘It’s all built of brick,’ Miss Skinner explained. ‘Mr Vanbrugh who designed it found the clay on the estate. Thank you, James.’ The footman had opened the door, and, behind him, Caroline saw other footmen swinging open heavy doors at the head of a sloping flight of steps. ‘Chin up, my dear.’ Miss Skinner turned swiftly to pinch spots of colour into Caroline’s pale cheeks. ‘You’ll be quite a heroine, you’ll see.’
The doors opened into a cold marble hall lined with huge statues, and Caroline, gazing round her, wondered what the main entrance could be like if this was the family one.
‘The Duke is a great collector,’ said Miss Skinner, eyeing the statues without enthusiasm. ‘But here come the children. I thought they’d not be long.’ She advanced smiling to greet the two girls who had appeared at the top of yet another sloping flight of steps. ‘Lady Charlotte, Lady Amelia.’ She kissed them in turn. ‘Here is your new schoolmate, Miss Thorpe.’
‘But we are to call her Caroline,’ said Lady Charlotte, the taller of the two girls, who were both pink-cheeked, golden-curled and dressed in identical tucked muslin dresses, one with a blue sash, one with a pink. ‘You are to call us Charlotte and Amelia,’ she told Caroline. ‘And Blakeney says you are a regular Trojan. Did he really shoot clear through the brim of your bonnet?’
‘He did indeed.’ Miss Skinner held up the bonnet for the girls’ inspection. ‘Where is he now?’
‘With father,’ said Charlotte. ‘He had to wait until dessert was served, poor Blakeney, and it has just gone in, and we are to join them as soon as Caroline is ready. It is just the family,’ she told Caroline. ‘Papa and Mamma and the Winter Ton.’
‘Charlotte!’ said Miss Skinner in a voice Caroline had never heard her use before, even to Blakeney.
‘I beg your pardon, Miss Skinner.’ Charlotte dropped a quick curtsy but did not look in the least repentant, Caroline thought. ‘You see what bad habits we get into when you are away, you dear old Skinner. We can’t go on without you at all, but Mamma says Caroline is going to be an example of propriety to us, having grown up in a country rectory. Did you really, Caroline? And have to pinch and scrape and think twice about every new dress? I declare it might be more amusing than having to dress up every Wednesday in a different one to entertain the county. And then to be in debt for every last one of them, as poor Mamma is. There’s been more trouble, Skinny dear, while you have been away.’
‘Lady Charlotte,’ said Miss Skinner repressively, ‘that is quite enough of your nonsense. If we are really expected for dessert I must take Caroline straight up to her room, and perhaps you will be so good as to tell your mamma we will be down directly.’
‘May we not come and help Caroline to change?’ asked the younger girl, taking her hand. ‘How old are you? I thought you were almost as old as me, but you’re not nearly so tall.’
‘Age and size don’t always go together, Lady Amelia,’ said Miss Skinner as the whole party moved up into a square, panelled hall. ‘Any more than age and intelligence do. No, Lady Amelia, you and Charlotte must go and join your parents. Caroline will be better by herself for tonight.’
‘Tench is waiting for her with open arms,’ said Charlotte. ‘Doesn’t your hair curl at all, you poor thing?’ She looked with pitying sympathy at Caroline’s neat braids. ‘Oh, very well, Skinny, I’ll tell Mamma you are home and as starchy as ever.’ And she whisked herself and Amelia through a door held open for them by an immobile footman while Miss Skinner hurried Caroline away down a long corridor and up a flight of stairs. ‘I persuaded the Duchess that to begin with at least you had best be up here near my room. I hope you will not mind it.’ She opened a door and revealed a corner room full of the last sunlight. ‘Lady Charlotte’s room is directly below. And Lady Amelia’s beside it. And I am next door. Oh, bless you, Tench, you’ve contrived to unpack, I see. This is Miss Thorpe, who will be in your charge. Caroline, Tench will help you to change — yes, the muslin, Tench, and I believe there is a string of pearls.’
‘Yes, miss.’ Tench was a cheerful-looking woman with braided hair very like Caroline’s own. ‘But what am I to do with her hair?’ she asked, almost on a note of despair.
‘Nothing for tonight. We’re late as it is. Those wretched boys! I leave her in your good hands, Tench. I mus
t make myself fit to be seen.’
Twenty exhausting minutes later, Caroline was ready in just such another muslin dress as the other girls had worn.
‘A pity really,’ said Tench, tying her sash. ‘White don’t suit you the way it does the others. If I’d had the ordering for you I’d have got you pink, like that dimity you come in. Never mind, can’t be helped. You look neat as ninepence, and that’s something. Speak up if his Grace should speak to you. He’s a mite deaf and don’t like to admit it. You’re white as a sheet, child.’ She turned as Miss Skinner entered the room. ‘Do you think maybe a touch of rouge, miss? Just the smallest in the world?’
‘No,’ said Caroline. ‘Please not. Papa says rouge makes him think of the scarlet woman.’ And flushed crimson at her own boldness.
‘I quite agree with Mr Trentham,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘Thank you, Tench, she will do nicely. Come, child.’ She led the way back to the panelled hall where they had parted from the two girls. ‘This room divides the children’s part of the wing from the rest of the family’s,’ she explained, as two footmen threw open the door through which the girls had previously vanished.
It opened on to a hall with more of the statues that made Caroline feel so uncomfortable. She caught Miss Skinner’s hand. ‘I do not think papa would quite like these,’ she said.
‘You’ll get used to them. My brother says art justifies anything.’ She did not add that her brother thought nothing of the Duke’s idea of art. ‘Do you know my dear,’ she went on now, ‘I believe I would not be talking all the time of what your papa thinks of things.’ And on this warning note they passed between two more footmen and entered a dining room blazing with light. The candles in the huge chandelier that hung over the dining table were echoed by more in sconces round the walls, and all of them reflected over and over again by immense gold-framed looking glasses on three sides of the room. On the fourth wall, red velvet curtains closed out the last of the daylight.
The cloth had been removed, and heavy silver dishes gleamed against the mahogany, holding such a cornucopia of fruit and sweetmeats as Caroline had never even imagined. Glasses sparkled, bottles gleamed in ornate silver containers…And almost masked by the silver and candles, a group of people shining in silks and satins, silent now, suspended, all eyes fixed on her.
The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5) Page 6