‘You oughtn’t to talk about her like that,’ said Caroline, surprising herself. ‘She’s your mother’s friend.’
‘And our father’s,’ said Charlotte. ‘But you wouldn’t understand, Miss Mouse.’
‘Don’t, Charlotte,’ said Amelia. ‘You’re making her cry.’
‘You can’t cry here. Really, of all the babies!’ Charlotte whipped up the ponies and took them across the grass at a sharp trot to deposit Caroline at the edge of the family’s garden. ‘Run indoors and wash your face, cry baby.’
Reaching the sanctuary of her own room, Caroline found Tench waiting for her, looking anxious. ‘There you are, child. Mrs Winterton wishes to see you at once, in her boudoir.’ She gave Caroline a quick look. ‘What’s the matter? Sun too strong for you, love?’
‘No. Yes.’ She accepted the handkerchief Tench offered and quickly dried her betraying eyes. ‘Mrs Winterton’s not gone down for dinner?’ It was Duke’s law that all grown up members of the household appear on open days, and the warning bell had sounded as she came upstairs.
‘No.’ Tench was twisting her hair into reluctant curls and retying her sash. ‘The post came just as she was going down, and she made her excuses and sent for you.’
‘The Duke will be angry.’
‘Yes. Make haste, my dear, and don’t keep Mrs Winterton waiting.’
‘No.’ Caroline nervously smoothed out a crease in her muslin dress and hurried down to the next floor wondering why she was suddenly sent for. Charlotte had come uncomfortably near the mark in what she had said in the garden. In her first weeks at Cley, Caroline had fallen totally under Frances Winterton’s spell, as she had once before. And Frances Winterton had been wonderfully kind at first, sending for her, talking to her, listening to her, and doing her best to make things easy between her and the formidable Duke, whom she often met in Mrs Winterton’s room. She was ashamed, now, to think that she had only grown homesick when these visits stopped.
Timidly entering Mrs Winterton’s silk-hung boudoir, she saw at once that today’s visit was going to be different. Mrs Winterton was not sitting on her chaise-longue as usual, but standing by the window that looked out over the family garden, the only bit of the property that was closed to visitors.
‘My dear,’ she turned as Caroline entered, ‘come and sit beside me.’ She took her hand and pulled her down beside her on the pink velvet of the chaise-longue. ‘You must be a very brave girl. I am afraid I have bad news for you.’
‘Bad news? From home?’
‘It’s poor Mrs Trentham.’
‘She’s ill again? I must go to her. Please. At once.’
‘Not ill. It’s worse than that, I’m afraid. She’s dead, Caroline.’
‘Dead? Mamma?’ She sat quite still, her hand rigid in Mrs Winterton’s. ‘She’s…gone? But what will they do? Oh, poor Papa. And Sophie. Her wedding? Oh, the poor things.’ She let go of Mrs Winterton’s hand and stood up. ‘Mrs Winterton, please…will you, can you explain to the Duke that I must go home at once? That they will need me now.’ And was ashamed, as she spoke, of a little, selfish surge of joy at the thought of going home at last. She had missed her garden’s summer glory, but she would be home to see it fall asleep for the winter.
But Mrs Winterton was shaking her head. ‘I am sorry, my dear, but that is not the plan at all. Mr Trentham writes to ask if the Duke will be so good as to keep you here.’ And I shall have trouble enough persuading him to do so, she thought.
‘Keep me? Always? Here?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was bracing. ‘You see, everything will be different now at Llanfryn. Mr Trentham writes that Sophie is to marry the doctor she is betrothed to at once, and their old nurse will housekeep for him at the vicarage. Poor man, it will be a great change for him.’ Or a happy release? A kind woman, when kindness did not inconvenience her, she hoped Caroline need never know that Mrs Trentham had died by her own hand.
‘And there is no place for me?’ The cry of pure despair reminded Frances Winterton of her own lonely, desperate childhood, unwanted child of an uncaring mother. She took Caroline’s hand and pulled her back down beside her. Should she tell her she was her mother? Suddenly, she was enormously tempted. But how totally it would commit her. Anyway, the Duke had forbidden it. It would be madness to do so, and she felt instantly relieved at having the matter settled for her. The Duke would be angry already because her place at the dinner table was empty. It flashed across her mind that the Duke’s anger was just the same whether it was a question of disobedience to an important or a trivial order. But the Duke was the Duke. If she told Caroline, against his orders, he might do anything. For the child’s sake, she must hold her peace, and persuade him to make the best of things.
‘There is a place for you here,’ she said. ‘We all love you, dear child, and have always hoped you would make your home with us. Now, it must be settled.’ She looked at her diamond-studded watch, the Duke’s first present. ‘I must go down, or he will be really angry.’
Later, Blakeney, returning at last from his ordeal at the hands of his father’s tenants, looked round the children’s luxurious sitting room. ‘Where’s Caro?’ he asked. ‘Mrs Winterton says we must all be especially kind to her today.’
‘Yes,’ said Charlotte. ‘That dreary “mamma” of hers down in the West has died. So we must be kind to the poor baby, and keep her with us always, what a bore.’
‘But, where is she?’ persisted her brother.
‘Lord knows.’ Charlotte had just mastered the art of the elegant shrug. ‘Glooming in her room, perhaps?’
But when he knocked on Caroline’s door there was no answer. He sought out Tench, but she had not seen Caroline since she tidied her for her interview with Mrs Winterton. ‘Maybe she’s out of doors, my lord,’ she suggested. ‘She do like to run out into the garden in all weathers. If I’ve spoken to her once, I’ve done it a thousand times, and you might as well talk to a pillar of salt.’
‘You mean that no one has seen her since Mrs Winterton gave her the bad news?’ Angry, Blakeney sounded like his father, and Tench gave him a quick, scared look. ‘That has not been well thought of, Tench.’ And knew, as he spoke, that it was none of her fault. ‘I’ll look for her in the garden.’ He smiled at her. ‘Don’t look so scared, Tench dear. I know it’s not your fault.’
‘Oh, thank you, my lord. Take her an apple, why don’t you? She’s had no dinner, and she loves apples. She’ll be in the family garden, of course. She’s scared of the public, poor little mite. She do hate open days.’
‘Does she? I didn’t know.’ He took the apple she held out, polished it absentmindedly on his breeches and made his way out by a side door into the family’s enclosed garden. High yew hedges masked its open side, and an elaborate orangery linked it to the family wing. Standing on the shallow steps that led down to the Fountain of Neptune, he looked across the trim box hedges of the old-fashioned knot garden. ‘Caro?’ he called, tentatively.
No answer. He would not shout and make a disturbance of it. She was nowhere in the knot garden. The grotto, perhaps? He had never liked it himself, finding it dank and musty, and had thought she shared his distaste. Apparently, she did; there was no sign of her there. He emerged again into the knot garden and once more, hesitantly, called, ‘Caro, where are you?’
Dead silence. Dead? Now he was really anxious. She should not have been left alone to her sorrow all the long afternoon. He crossed the knot garden, jumping its hedges, and walked along the high yew hedge, wondering if perhaps she had run out into the main grounds, now empty again, the last guest gone. To the ornamental pool with its deep salt waters fed by a tidal inlet? He shuddered and began to run, only to pause, listening. Had there been the tiniest rustle from inside the yew hedge? He remembered the secret place he and Gaston had hollowed out, years before, when they were little boys. The thick yew had grown back since they had cut their secret entrance at the end where the hedge met the house, and it was a struggle to force his way
in, but he thought that someone had indeed been through quite recently.
‘Caro,’ he called again, softly. ‘It’s only me, Blakeney.’
She had made herself a kind of burrow in the heart of the hedge and was curled up in it like a small, desperate animal. ‘Are they very angry with me?’ She raised a tear-dirtied face to his. ‘I’m glad it’s you, Blakeney. I was beginning to think I’d never dare come out.’
‘Of course no one’s angry with you, Caro!’ And saying it, he thought angrily that in fact no one had even missed her. ‘We’re all so very sorry about your sad news. You must think of us as your family now. That’s what my father intends. Your mother was a dear friend of his and my mother’s, you know. You must let us look after you.’
‘Live here always?’ Caroline looked at him pitifully, tears still lingering in her drowned eyes. ‘I don’t think Charlotte and Amelia will like that much.’
‘They’ll have to,’ said Blakeney, ‘if the Duke says so.’
‘He can’t make them like it,’ said Caroline. ‘Or like me. Please, Blakeney dear, could you not persuade your father that I would rather be set in the way of earning my living?’
‘You? Little mouse. You earn your living? How, may I ask?’
‘The way Miss Skinner does, as a governess, or maybe even teaching in a school. I think I’d like that, Blakeney, I really do. I know you think I’m a mouse, but that’s because I’m always having to be grateful, don’t you see? I haven’t anything of my own, to be sure of. If I was a teacher in a school, I would be as fierce as anything with the pupils, because I would know who I was, where I stood.’ She looked at him with the honesty of despair. ‘Even at home, with Papa and Mamma.’ She choked on a sob. ‘Even there, I always knew I was different. Papa understood. He helped me to study, so that I would be ready to make my own way when I was old enough, but now it’s all pianoforte and deportment and fine embroidery, and, Blakeney, I’m no good at any of it. It’s such a waste! And, of course, Charlotte and Amelia scorn me. I don’t blame them a bit. I’m not good at any of their things.’
Blakeney had been lonely enough when he first went to Harrow to understand something of what she meant. ‘What are your things then?’ he asked.
‘Reading, and learning, and thinking about people. I want to be some use in the world, not just a pretty thing with ringlets, playing the harp. Besides,’ again that look of sharp honesty, ‘I never will be a pretty thing, however hard Tench papers my hair. I’m all wrong for this kind of life, don’t you see? Look at today. Open day. I hate it so. Charlotte and Amelia drive about, and let people admire them, and say pretty things to them, and smile, and make them happy. I can’t do that. And anyway,’ she concluded irrefutably, ‘I’ve no right to do it. It’s not my place. They’re the Duke’s daughters. Lady Charlotte, Lady Amelia. I’m nobody. With no one of my own. And the sooner I go back to being that, the better it will be. Please, Blakeney,’ she said again, ‘Do you think you could make your father understand that?’
‘Oh, Caro.’ He looked at her with sympathy. ‘You must have been here long enough to know no one can make the Duke do anything. He’s the Duke.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. It was stupid of me to ask it. But what am I going to do, Blakeney?’
‘You want to read and study.’ He had been thinking hard about her position. ‘Well, that’s not impossible, you know. Not in this house.’
‘But it is! I’ve got no books. No books at all. I even left my Lyrical Ballads behind. I thought it was just a visit!’
He recognised it as a cry from the heart. ‘Books mean so much to you? Well, there’s something we can do about that. Come along, and I’ll show you something.’ He reached out a friendly hand to pull her to her feet. ‘Lord, you’re filthy. You are going to get a scold.’
She smiled at him rather tremulously. ‘So are you! And your new satin breeches too, for the open day.’
‘Never mind about that! No one’s going to see us for a while. But clean your face a bit.’ He handed her a spotless pocket handkerchief. ‘Right now you could walk straight on stage as Hecuba, Queen of Troy. Not that you would know about her.’
‘But of course I do.’ She had accepted the handkerchief and was scrubbing away at her grimy, tear-streaked face. ‘Papa always called her the mobled queen, because of the line in Hamlet, you know, but we never did decide just what it meant.’
‘Lord, you really are a bluestocking. Thank you.’ He tucked the now filthy handkerchief into a pocket. ‘Let’s go then. Can you manage?’ He held back a stiff branch of yew for her.
‘Of course I can. You go on and I’ll follow. Giles always said it was one’s own stupid fault if one was hit by a branch the person in front let go.’
‘And quite right too. Who’s Giles?’ He asked as they emerged from the tunnel in the hedge and he turned to lead the way along the side of the house.
‘My brother at home, but he went to India.’ And then, ‘Not my brother!’ With a catch in her throat.
‘If you are going to cry again,’ said Blakeney severely, ‘I shall wash my hands of you, here and now.’
‘I’m not crying. But where are we going?’ He had opened an inconspicuous, low door in the rusticated wall of the family wing.
‘You’ll see.’ He led the way down four steps into a long corridor quite unlike any part of the great house that she had seen before. Bare brick walls, big stone flags underfoot and a feeling of damp cold even now with hot summer just giving way to mellow autumn. ‘This is the way the servants get into the family garden,’ he explained. ‘Had you never wondered?’
‘The whole house frightens me. I don’t much like thinking about the bits I don’t know. But, the poor servants, do they spend all their time down here in the cold?’
‘It’s not all so bad as this. The servants’ hall’s down that way.’ He pointed as they reached a junction in the long corridor. ‘They keep up a good fire in there, I can tell you. But the rest of it’s like this. I thought I might have matting put down when I am Duke.’
‘Oh, Blakeney, just think of you being Duke!’
‘I’d as soon not. I’d much rather be a great commoner like Mr Coke than have to sit in that dreary old House of Lords. But father will live for ever, of course.’ He turned to lead the way up a steeply winding spiral staircase, remotely lit by a window far above. ‘There’s the door to our floor.’ He paused to let her catch up with him, then went on up. ‘And there’s the one to yours. I’ll show you where it comes out on the way back. But now you must pay close attention to where we are going, or you will never find the way by yourself.’
‘But where are we going?’
‘You’ll see,’ he said mysteriously, as they reached the top of the winding stair and turned down a long, low-ceilinged passage. Lighted by flat windows in the roof it smelt mustily of disuse. ‘Grandfather had this built. He got tired of having to go through the state apartments with footmen leaping about opening doors for him. Mother told me that. I wish I had known grandfather; I think I would have liked him very much. Mother loved him, she says. Now, look!’ He turned a couple of corners and opened a shabby door.
Caroline gave a gasp. ‘Blakeney!’
He smiled at her with delighted triumph. ‘You said you wanted books. Well, there they are.’ They were looking into a large room entirely lined with bookshelves except on the side where long windows looked towards the sea, and even there, full length gilt-framed looking glasses between the windows reflected the loaded shelves. ‘Grandfather’s collection,’ he explained. ‘He loved to read, and he loved to be quiet, so he built this library up here above the state apartments and nobody was allowed into it except by invitation. Everyone used to come and stay at Cley then. Pope and Gibbon and even Dr Johnson. You’ll find all their works here. Is that the kind of book you meant?’
‘Oh, Blakeney!’ She was moving along the shelves, looking at the leatherbound sets of volumes, pausing to touch a book here, to look closer there. ‘Pope?’ she aske
d. ‘Would The Rape of the Lock be here?’
‘All his poems,’ said Blakeney. ‘He gave grandfather a set. Mother showed me. Poetry’s over here, where the light is best. Grandfather loved poetry, mother says.’
‘Oh, Blakeney!’ she said again as she followed him across the room.
‘Shakespeare.’ He ran a finger along a handsome set of gilt-edged maroon volumes. ‘Dryden. Take your pick, if it’s poetry you fancy.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed. ‘But, Blakeney, may I take them off the shelves.’
‘Well, of course.’ Impatiently. ‘That’s what they are for, isn’t it?’
‘But they’re so beautiful! May I really read them?’
‘Of course you may. No one else does. Old Pomfret the tutor used to come creeping up here in the bad old days before Gaston and I went to school, but no one comes here now. It’s all yours.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ She gazed around her, wide-eyed. And then: ‘But how? When? They won’t let me.’
‘I’ll talk to mother about it. She’ll contrive something. She’s a trump; she always does if I ask her.’
‘Blakeney, will you really?’
‘Of course I will, goose. And you will wash your face and put on a clean dress and come down to supper and look cheerful.’
Her face clouded over. ‘Oh, poor Mamma.’ She said, conscience-stricken. ‘I had quite forgotten.’
The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5) Page 8