Chapter Five
From then on, everyone knew that if Caroline was needed she could be found in the old Duke’s library.
‘Oh, let her have her fling if it will keep her happy,’ the Duke had said impatiently, when the Duchess approached him with her odd request. ‘Better a bookworm, I suppose, than the cipher she is now. No wonder if our girls find her a dead bore.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Blakeney spoke of it, did he? Send him away for a bit, do you think? To his cousins, maybe?’
‘He goes to school next week,’ said the Duchess.
‘So he does. Quite slipped my memory. Well, that’s all right then.’
Caroline was sad to see Blakeney go, feeling him her one real friend in the house, but his absence was compensated for by that of Gaston, who had managed to plague her in so many small, apparently innocent ways. Anyway, she was too intoxicated by her secret life in the great library to mind even Blakeney’s absence much. He had seen to it, before he left, that she was supplied with paper and pens, and had the certainty of a fire when winter came, and she was simultaneously engrossed in reading the complete works of Shakespeare and writing an elegy for Mrs Trentham. As she had chosen to compose this in the complicated stanza form used by the poet Spenser in an absolutely enthralling poem called The Faerie Queen — that was better than any fairy story — this was an absorbing occupation and the family grew used to having to send a page to summon her to meals.
Nobody asked what she did in the library. The Duke and Duchess and, of course, Mrs Winterton, spent most of that winter at Chevenham House in London, where the two girls and Blakeney joined them for Christmas. Caroline should have gone too but was thought to have outgrown her strength, and spent a peaceful holiday at Cley with Miss Skinner. She had finished the elegy for Mrs Trentham now, and had embarked on an ode to Blakeney, which would have surprised him very much if he had ever had a chance to read it.
She had had no news from the Trenthams, and had minded, but when she asked Miss Skinner if she might write to them at Christmas, she had said, ‘Better not, my dear. The Duke prefers that you let the past be the past.’
Miss Skinner had been unhappy about this decision of the Duke’s, and yet, if Caroline were to be let correspond with the Trenthams, she was almost bound to learn that her adopted mother had thrown herself into the River Llanfryn. She was such a feeling child, Miss Skinner thought, that she should be spared this knowledge if it was at all possible. And, besides, Mr Trentham, associating his wife’s mental illness with Caroline and Giles, had made it clear that he would prefer to have nothing more to do with her. Unhappiness had made him cruel, Miss Skinner thought, and did her best to make amends to Caroline with an extra happy Christmas.
But Caroline, minding it all more than even Miss Skinner realised, sometimes thought she hated the Duke even more than she did Gaston. She had been reading Milton’s Paradise Lost and had a recurring dream about her lost garden at Llanfryn. The Duke and Gaston were the angels who stood, swords in hand, at the gate and kept her out. Or were they devils? She wrote a poem about the Duke after reading Pope’s Dunciad, was ashamed when she read it through, and burned it; but it did her good. She was learning to use poetry as a safety valve, and found it easier to endure Charlotte and Amelia’s small superiorities when she knew that they were figuring, in bold caricature, in the verse comedy she was engaged on. The Duke appeared in it as Lord Omnipotent, and when he next came to Cley she surprised him by failing to blush and look away when he spoke to her.
‘That child is getting some countenance at last,’ he told the Duchess. ‘We may do better for her than a country parson after all.’
‘I do hope we can,’ said the Duchess. ‘I think Frances has her heart quite set on a good match for her.’
‘Time enough to be thinking of that when we have got Charlotte and Amelia off our hands,’ said the Duke. ‘I promised Frances that her little shrimp should come out along with Amelia.’
Lady Charlotte’s coming out was postponed twice, in 1802 because the Duke insisted on taking advantage of the peace with France to go abroad, and in 1803, when the war broke out again, because of an ill-timed outbreak of the measles. It was not until 1804, when Caroline was sixteen, that they all went to London at last for Charlotte’s presentation and coming-out ball, which was to be held at Chevenham House in Piccadilly. This time there was no question of Caroline’s being left at Cley.
‘It’s no use, my love,’ said Miss Skinner when Caroline begged her to intercede for her with the Duchess. ‘The Duke has decided that you and Amelia are to come out together next year and he intends you to begin learning the ways of London society. He has quite made up his mind.’
‘I see,’ said Caroline. Lord Omnipotent again, she thought.
‘And he is right, too,’ said Miss Skinner bracingly. ‘It is time you got a little town bronze, and, anyway, I am quite sure that when you get to London you will enjoy it. There will be the theatre, and I know you will like that, and just think of the new books. Chevenham House is in Piccadilly, you know, no distance at all from Hookham’s Library. You will be able to change your book whenever you want to. And I am sure the Duke will not mind if you spend some part of your allowance in buying books.’
‘He won’t notice,’ said Caroline, with truth. ‘But will I get an allowance, Miss Skinner?’ The Duke did not believe in independence for young women, and even eighteen-year-old Charlotte was still forced to apply to her mother for money for any small purchase she wished to make. Not a single volume had been added to the old Duke’s library since his death. Caroline, too shy and too proud to ask, had longed in vain for funds to replace her lost volume of Lyrical Ballads, or buy her own copy of Mr Southey’s Thalaba which she had read avidly when the circulating library sent it to Mrs Winterton.
‘I hope so,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘I know the Duchess has talked to the Duke about it. She agrees with me that it is a part of a young woman’s education to learn how to manage her own money.’
‘It’s good of her to ask the Duke,’ said Caroline. Everyone in the house knew that the Duchess’ gaming debts were an ever-increasing source of trouble between her and her husband. They were silent for a moment, each aware of the other’s thoughts. ‘It’s not fair,’ said Caroline at last. ‘Did you hear the Duke the other day, betting Mr Carteret that he could not run twenty-five miles in four hours? £500 he bet on that, and he complains when the Duchess loses her own money at cards.’
‘Not hers, child,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘His, since she married him. I do beg you never to speak like that. The Duke must be master in his own house, as you well know.’
‘He is,’ said Caroline. ‘And of course I would never dream of speaking like that to anyone but you, but you know as well as I do, Skinny dear, that it is only because he makes such a fuss over her losses that the Duchess has been reduced to trying to conceal them from him, and so got into the hands of the moneylenders. And, anyway, whose fault is it that she has nothing to do to amuse herself but play at cards with that clutch-fisted set of hers? If he spent more time with her and less with Mrs Winterton…’
‘Caroline!’ said Miss Skinner in tones of horror.
‘It’s no use, Skinny, now I’ve started I’ve got to say it, just this once. What right has he to set himself in judgment over her when he neglects her so? Oh, I know he’s polite to her; it would not befit his dignity as a Duke to be anything else; but it’s Mrs Winterton he smiles at. I think the Duchess is a heroine to endure it.’
‘She loves Mrs Winterton,’ said Miss Skinner, now thoroughly alarmed at the course the conversation was taking.
‘I know. It’s the most amazing thing. You’d think she’d want to scratch her eyes out, but she really does love her. I’ve watched, and thought about it, and it’s true. I cannot understand it.’
‘Nor should you be thinking about it,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘You and I, my love, as unmarried ladies, should not be passing judgment on those who are called to a different walk in life. Thou
gh, of course, I hope that you will be too in good time.’
‘Frankly, Skinny, if marriage means the kind of life the Duchess leads, I think I’d rather be an old maid like you.’ And then, impulsively, colouring up to her hair. ‘Forgive me! I didn’t mean!’
‘Always think before you speak, child,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘But no harm in telling truth between friends. And so I will tell you that a single life is not at all necessarily a blessed one, even with such good friends as I have in the Duchess and Mrs Winterton.’
‘Oh, I know that well enough,’ said Caroline. ‘Because I don’t talk a great deal, never think I don’t notice things. It makes me mad as fire to see the way you are treated. You, who have more sense and more education than all three of them put together, and more morals, too, for the matter of that! And they treat you half the time as if you weren’t there. As if you didn’t exist.’
‘Well, there you are,’ said Miss Skinner. ‘Unmarried ladies to all intents and purposes don’t exist, so far as society is concerned, and as for governesses…So I do hope you will behave yourself in London, dear child, and try a little to get out of your bookish ways, and let the Duchess and Mrs Winterton find you a good husband.’
‘Is there really such an animal, Skinny?’
‘Of course there is. Why, my brother is the very best of husbands.’ She smiled, forgetting her anxiety over Caroline in pleasure at the thought of him. ‘I am to go there for a little holiday, when you all go to London. Dear Edith is expecting her first child, after all this time, and I am to stay with them until she is quite strong again.’
‘You’re not coming to London with us? Oh, how will I manage without you?’
‘Admirably, I am sure. Model yourself on Lady Charlotte, and you cannot go far wrong.’ Her heart misgave her as she said it.
‘On everything I’m not? Oh, Skinny!’
Just the same, it was impossible not to thrill to the first sights and sounds of London as the second-best Cley carriage rattled at last over the stones. Even Charlotte and Amelia, who had made the journey often before, admitted to excitement, leaning forward eagerly to peer through the gathering dusk and look for landmarks.
‘It will be quite dark before we get to the house,’ said Charlotte crossly. ‘I do wish Papa would ever leave when he says he is going to.’
‘You should be grateful he started at all,’ said Amelia. ‘When he told Mamma he had a twinge of the gout I thought it was all up with us.’
‘So did I,’ agreed Charlotte. ‘But you can mostly count on darling Frances to bring him round her finger if she really wants to. When she made those big eyes at him and lisped her little plea, I knew the thing was done.’
‘How Mamma stands it!’ said Amelia.
‘If you ask me, I think she finds Papa a dead bore and is glad to have him taken off her hands. You know he can talk of nothing but dogs and hunting and those dreary old politics of his. And darling Frances hangs on his every word and lisps her yes, and no, and, how amazing, and Papa knows he is a great man, and Mamma sits and thinks her own thoughts. I wonder if Charles Mattingley is in town.’
‘Sure to be if Mamma is. I don’t know what he does with himself since Papa forbad him Cley. He’ll cheer things up a bit! I believe I will make him squire me to my first ball. Mamma can’t object when she goes everywhere with him herself.’
‘She won’t like it,’ said Amelia.
‘I can’t help that. He’s much nearer my age than hers, and who knows but he may be on the look-out for a rich wife. Wouldn’t that be a thing! Imagine marrying Mattingley, the unmarrying man!’ She caught Caroline’s eye and laughed. ‘We are shocking Miss Mouse. I bet you a pair of French gloves that she falls neck over crop in love with handsome Mat when she sees him.’
‘Who is Mr Mattingley?’ Caroline, sitting with her back to the horses, was beginning to feel queasy as the carriage rattled over the stones, and the powerful smells and sounds of London assailed her senses.
‘Shall we tell her?’ Charlotte and Amelia exchanged knowing glances.
‘Better, I think,’ decided Charlotte. ‘She’s such a little innocent she might say something that would put us all to the blush. Mr Mattingley, dear child, is the good friend who consoles Mamma for Papa’s affair with darling Frances, otherwise the Winter Ton. Our ton of misery. Very thick, handsome Mat and Mamma are. Oh, very thick indeed.’
‘You don’t mean…?’
‘Don’t I just! There was a real turnout for the books when it first started, but that was a long time ago, before you came to live with us. Papa cut up very rough indeed and Mamma and the Winter Ton had to go off and rusticate on the Irish estate.’ She giggled. ‘So clever Mat got a post in Dublin and dangled after Mamma harder than ever. She was still quite young and pretty then of course. She’s gone off sadly these last few years, everyone says, with all the worry over her debts.’
‘Yes,’ chimed in Amelia. ‘It’s too hard that darling Frances can eat and drink just as much as Mamma does and never get fat at all, and there’s poor Mamma puts on weight if she so much as looks at a lobster patty. I heard her scolding her dresser this morning because her riding dress was too tight. I think she forgets to bother when she’s sunk down there at Cley with father and darling Frances billing and cooing under her nose.’
‘I don’t know what handsome Mat will say when he sees her,’ said Charlotte.
‘Everything that’s polite. He always does. It’s what he will do that counts. But do you really mean to have him, Charlotte?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Charlotte. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. He’s got a way of laughing at you, as if he cared, that I quite like.’
‘Anyway,’ said Amelia, ‘Papa would never let you.’
‘No, I’d have to make a runaway match of it, wouldn’t I? Just think what a lark that would be. Oh, look, there’s Devonshire House! We’re almost home. This is Piccadilly, Caroline, and the Park’s down there.’ She waved a hand to the left. ‘If one could only see it.’ It was dark by now, and flares outside the houses on the north side of the broad street gave a fitful illumination to the carriages that thronged it. ‘Everyone’s going out for the evening,’ Charlotte went on crossly, ‘and we’ll be too late even for the play.’
‘I expect Papa planned it that way on purpose,’ said Amelia. ‘You know the theatre bores him to distraction, and, besides, Mat’s always there.’
‘I bet you half a guinea he’s at Chevenham House tonight,’ said her sister, as the carriage turned under an archway into a wide paved square and drew up under the illuminated portico of Chevenham House.
Next morning, the girls learned that the Duke had come to one of his surprise decisions. Though they would not be presented, or officially out, Amelia and Caroline were to be allowed to go into society along with Charlotte.
‘Might as well get it all over with at once’ was how he had put it to his wife. ‘And they are all much of an age, after all.’
‘Hard on Charlotte, perhaps?’ suggested the Duchess diffidently.
‘Nonsense. She can take care of herself. And Frances thinks it’s time that chit of hers was dragged away from her books. She’s right, of course. I must have had windmills in my head to let her spend her time book-worming in the old Duke’s library. God knows what notions she’s picked up. She gave me a very cool, queer look when she arrived last night.’
‘She was travelsick,’ said the Duchess. ‘Charlotte and Amelia made her ride backwards the whole way.’
‘Quite right too,’ said their father. ‘Time the chit learned to know her place. Pity we ever took her up, if you ask me.’
‘We could hardly help it,’ said the Duchess, controlling herself.
‘And that reminds me,’ he went on. ‘Frances thinks the girls should dine with us now they are here. It will be a dead bore, of course, but I think she is right. They’ve got to learn conduct somehow, and I count on you and Frances to give them the nod when you think it’s time they left us.’
‘You might say a word to your friends about their language.’
‘Tchah,’ said the Duke.
‘There, miss, you’ll have to do.’ Tench twitched Caroline’s reluctant curls with a despondent finger. ‘Run along now, do, or the young ladies will have gone down already and I know you don’t want to have to enter the drawing room alone.’
‘I should rather think not,’ said Caroline. ‘You’re an angel, Tench, you think of everything. But will I really do?’ She surveyed the pale, muslin-clad reflection in the glass dubiously.
‘You look every inch the gentlewoman,’ said Tench, and with that cool comfort Caroline ran downstairs to the family floor, only to find that Charlotte and Amelia had indeed gone on without her.
‘They was all ready, miss,’ said Charlotte’s dresser apologetically. ‘Sent their love and said they’d look out for you.’
‘But they won’t,’ said Caroline despairingly. ‘Oh, Smithson, must I?’
‘You know you must, miss. His Grace’s orders. And there’s company come already. Best get it over with before there’s more.’
It was good advice. Caroline trod nervously down the stairs and approached the door of the drawing room reluctantly, pausing for a moment to look at the huge portrait of the Duke’s mother as a huntress that hung over it. In the entrance hall below, a little stir suggested that more guests were arriving. Get it over with. The two huge footmen who stood on each side of the door were looking at her expectantly. She put her chin up and approached it.
Then an amazing thing happened. The one on the left winked at her solemnly with one eye. ‘Good luck, miss,’ she thought she heard him breathe, and was through the wide-opened double doors and into the brilliantly lighted room.
Bright lights always made it hard for her to see, and she stood for a moment, dazzled, listening to the hum of conversation, looking blindly for a corner to hide herself. A tall man moved leisurely away from an animated group of young bucks to intercept her. Very elegant in the close-fitting trousers worn by the younger set, he wore his own dark hair cut short.
The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5) Page 9