Inevitably, Devonshire House, the great Whig stronghold a little further along Piccadilly, was the centre of frenzied activity, as Mr Fox and his friends constructed one cabinet in the air after another. The Duke of Cley spent most of his time there, and Frances went too, to compare rumour and counter-rumour with her good friends the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Elizabeth Foster. The Duchess of Cley had never cared much about politics and kept away. Bored and restless, she had what was almost a quarrel with Charles Mattingley about his too literal obedience to her orders about Caroline.
‘I didn’t mean you to sit in the chit’s pocket.’ She had met him, by her own appointment, at the room in Shepherd’s Market he had taken expressly for their assignations.
‘A very charming pocket.’ His smile was a little sad, a little mocking. Surprised himself at how attractive he found Caroline, he recognised and regretted the Duchess’ inevitable jealousy. Quite soon now, the time would come for them to part. In the meanwhile, no use quarrelling. He picked up her slender hand, one of her acknowledged beauties which had lasted better than face or figure, and kissed each fingertip in turn. ‘A child,’ he said. ‘An attractive child who badly needs direction. I am afraid for her, a little. But enough of that.’ It was too much already. ‘Tell of yourself instead. Have you really been so unlucky at the card tables?’
‘Unlucky!’ The cry was worthy of the great Mrs Siddons herself. ‘It’s a disaster, Mat. My only hope is in the Prince!’
‘The Prince of Wales?’ She had really surprised him now.
‘He’s always been my good friend. Now, with this chance of his becoming Regent, the Whigs are his to command. A word from him, and I truly think the Duke would pay my debts.’
‘And you will ask for that word?’ He looked at her thoughtfully. Everyone knew that the Prince of Wales was addicted to older women. Might the Duchess of Cley, who had aged so sadly, be about to replace Lady Hertford in his affections? If so, he had a delicate path to tread. He pulled her to him. ‘Divine Maria, why are we wasting our time in talk?’
Later, looking down as she lay, relaxed and satisfied, in his arms, he thought that really it might be an admirable thing if he found himself able to make the gesture of yielding her up to the Prince of Wales. He had been used to call her his Rubens beauty, his Titian lady, now, regretfully, he thought her merely overweight. Even her famous complexion had succumbed at last to the toll of late nights and lavish food and drink. He always spared her lacquered face as much as possible in his love-making, but today the results had been disastrous. She would mind, horribly, when she saw herself in the glass. He must leave before she did, before the sad scene that would follow.
‘My love,’ he looked down at her with a deep affection he did not need to feign, ‘I must leave you, alas. I have been summoned urgently to the country.’
‘Your mother’s ill again? I’m sorry, Charles. I know how you love her. I sometimes think it is more for her sake than mine that you have not joined the army.’ She lifted her chin a little as if aware that it doubled itself as she lay. ‘I’ll miss you, Charles. The Duke and Frances spend all their time at Devonshire House, politicking. Do you think it is there that they…No,’ she surprised him by a real laugh, ‘the Duke’s too lazy. I have no doubt they contrive somehow at Chevenham House as they did at Cley. Dear Frances, I expect if I asked her, she would tell me. Really, it would make things easier.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Never do that. But I’m glad you still feel that you could.’
‘Oh, I love her,’ she said. ‘Much more than I ever even thought I did the Duke!’
More than you do me? But he had more sense than to ask the question aloud. Anyway, he knew the answer.
Mild February yielded to blustery March. The King was better, and Mr Addington declared in the House that, ‘There is not at this time a necessary suspension of the exercise of the royal authority.’ The Whigs concealed their disappointment as best they might and paid calls of congratulation at the Queen’s House. And Blakeney named a day at last for the long-promised expedition to Richmond Park.
His father had surprised him by taking him aside after the ladies had left the dining room one day and suggesting that he arrange some outing to throw Charlotte and Ffether together. ‘It’s high time that business was settled. I’ve told her mother to say a word to Charlotte. You give them the opportunity, the thing’s done, and we can get down to Brighton for a breath of air. Now the King’s better, there’s no point in dangling on here in London.’
‘The girls will be disappointed, sir.’ But Caroline would not, he remembered, with the little leap of the heart that now accompanied all thought of her. Caroline had told him only the other day how much she longed for the country and the sea. It would be a delight to see her glowing look when she saw the Sussex downs for the first time, the white cliffs shining down to the sea. ‘I beg your pardon.’ He realised that his father had said something and was waiting impatiently for an answer.
‘I said, “The girls will do as they are told,”’ repeated the Duke. ‘I don’t like this wool-gathering, Blakeney. Anyone would think it was you who were about to put the question, not young Ffether.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I was thinking I could make up a party to Richmond Park,’ improvised Blakeney, longing, as he said it, to plunge in, tell his father how he felt about Caroline, persuade him that she was the only girl for him. Instinct held him back. The Duke liked to do one thing at a time. When Charlotte’s fate was settled would be the moment to approach him about Caroline. Or was he putting it off because he feared the outcome?
He planned the Richmond party as a small one with the three girls squired by Ffether, Tremadoc and himself, but Amelia objected at once.
‘And have you and Tremadoc both dangling after Caroline? I thank you, no. Besides,’ she went on, ‘I’d think again on my own account if I were you, Blakeney. And on Caroline’s. There’s no future in it, Blakeney dear. I’m sorry for you both, but there it is, and the sooner you make up your mind to it, the better.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ he began, but she interrupted him.
‘Oh, yes you do. And why I’m the only one who has noticed it is more than I can understand. If ever I saw a case of April and May! She blushes if you so much as look at her, and as you can’t keep your eyes off her, it’s a miracle not even darling Frances has seen it. There’s none so blind…Skinny would have seen long since. What a bore that sister-in-law of hers is, dying in childbirth. I’d never have thought we’d miss Skinny so much. Things go on quite differently now she’s not here. But someone’s bound to notice you and Caroline soon. If you want your idyll to last a little longer, you’d better not do anything to draw attention to it. Besides, it would be downright discourteous not to ask Gaston to come too.’
‘So long as he does not kick up one of his rumpuses.’
She laughed. ‘At least he will make the day a more entertaining one, and you know it. But trust me to keep him in line, Blakeney.’
He hoped he could, and invited Mattingley to join the party too, just, he told himself, to be on the safe side.
Mattingley accepted the invitation with one of his quizzical looks. ‘Now I wonder just why you are inviting me. Is it to act as (God help me) chaperon and mentor, or is there more to it? Ah well, curiosity compels me to come along and find out. Can I take one of the young ladies up in my curricle? You will meet your horses at the Roehampton Gate, I suppose?’
‘Why, no. I had thought the Richmond Gate, and then we can give the girls a collation at the Star and Garter Inn after their ride.’
‘Why, a perfect orgy, Blakeney. I wish you would let me bring Miss Caroline, but I suppose it will have to be Lady Amelia.’
Blakeney could not help laughing. ‘If you will be so good, sir.’ He himself was to drive Caroline in the high perch phaeton he had just bought, and he meant Ffether to drive Charlotte and, he hoped, get the real business of the outing over with before it had ever begun.
But when he and Caroline arrived at the Richmond Gate, very much in charity with each other, and with the fine day that had rewarded his bold planning, it was to find Ffether awaiting them with a thunderous expression and no Charlotte.
‘Your sister,’ he told Blakeney between angrily clenched teeth, ‘chose to think I arrived late to fetch her, and did not wait for me.’
‘Well, you were late,’ said Blakeney reasonably. ‘She was dressed and ready when we set off, and we came the long way round because I wanted to show Caro more of the river.’ He looked about him. ‘But where is Charlotte, in that case?’
‘That’s what I would like to know,’ said Ffether. ‘Your servants did not appear to be aware which gentleman it was who had taken her when she “got tired of waiting”.’ He put the last few words into angry quotation marks.
‘Here she comes now,’ said Caroline, who had listened anxiously to this exchange. ‘And Mattingley and Gaston with her.’
‘Such a squeeze,’ exclaimed Charlotte, laughing, as Gaston helped her alight. ‘Why, there you are at last, my lord. You must have driven like the wind. I vow I waited for you an hour or more, until these two gentlemen took pity on me. Amelia is following with Tremadoc.’ She smiled placatingly at her brother. ‘You know she is never ready when she is wanted, and his mother sent to say he would be late, so we three thought we had better come along and tell you what has become of your party. Must we wait for the others?’ she concluded, looking to where the grooms were holding the horses. ‘Amelia had not even decided which habit to wear when I came downstairs.’
But as she spoke, Tremadoc’s curricle came swinging into sight, driven at a spanking pace, with Tremadoc and Amelia quite obviously not speaking to each other.
It was not an auspicious start to the excursion, and Blakeney hearing a hissed remark from Amelia to Charlotte, ‘You hid my habit, you toad!’ could only expect disaster, but to his deep gratitude, Mattingley suddenly took command, spreading his charm, like soothing oil on the troubled social waters. He sympathised with Amelia; he complimented Ffether on his showy bay, and at the same time directed a glance at once humorous and warning at Charlotte, which combined with something Gaston had just whispered to her to bring about a complete change in her manner. She turned to Ffether, made him the prettiest apology in the world, and begged him to help her mount her impatient little mare.
‘Since I did not have the pleasure of driving here with you, you must be my cavalier for the rest of the day,’ she told him, and Blakeney, seeing him reply with renewed warmth, thought that his party might not be such a disaster after all. Perhaps Charlotte had been clever. A touch of jealousy might be just what was needed to bring Ffether to the point.
At ease about this, he turned to help Caroline on to Zoe, only to find that Tremadoc had been before him and that she was looking a little wistfully back over her shoulder, as the two of them set forward for the rendezvous at the Pen Ponds. His eyes met hers for a swift moment of shared disappointment, which left him in such a glow of happiness that he was able to turn all his energies to helping Mattingley soothe down the still disgruntled Amelia. Gaston, curiously enough, had mounted his horse and vanished. Well, it was just like Gaston to do something odd and tiresome, and he could not be bothered with his vagaries today.
Riding beside Tremadoc, Caroline had not thought it possible to be so happy. Surely that quick exchange of glances with Blakeney confirmed her throbbing instinct that he cared for her? She thought, now, that she had loved him from the first moment they met, when he had played highwayman on the road to Cley, but it was only in the last few weeks that a special something in his glance had taught her to hope that her feeling might be returned. The Duke would be angry, but her confidence in Blakeney was complete. If he meant to have her, he would.
In her glowing happiness, she gleamed and sparkled at Tremadoc, and finished the conquest begun by her patient ear for his poetry. For once, his mother’s prohibition had had the opposite effect from what she intended. She had told him not to pay court to Caroline before he had seriously considered it, and her opposition had merely served to turn Caroline into a glamorous figure in his eyes, the heroine of a romance. Inspired by this, he had written a series of short poems about just such a heroine and lost no time in reading them to her. Unaware that they were, in fact, addressed to herself, she had been moved by an unexpectedly genuine note in his Poems to the Mysterious Amoretta. They were infinitely better than anything in his privately printed volume, and she told him so, without letting him see just how bad she thought the others. The result was inevitable. He had thought himself in love before, now he was as far in as was possible for anyone so self-absorbed.
Perceptive for once, he had noticed that significantly exchanged glance with Blakeney, and it had served to enhance Caroline’s value in his eyes. If Blakeney cared for her, and was looking visibly put out at not having her for his companion, she was a prize indeed. He had chosen a long way round to the rendezvous, and they were now out of sight of the others. He edged his horse closer to hers.
‘Oh, mysterious Amoretta,’ he began.
‘I beg your pardon?’ It won him a quick, upward look of surprise that he found infinitely touching. Modest little thing. It had not struck her that she might be the heroine of his poetry.
He quoted himself:
Oh, fair one, fairer than the night,
Oh made to be my heart’s delight
Oh face that puts despair to flight
Grant me the wish I wish tonight.
He was not entirely happy about that last line, but this was not, even he realised, the moment to be discussing that. ‘Exquisite creature,’ he reverted to prose, ‘can it be that you still do not understand me.’
‘I most certainly do not.’ She was surprised at his tone, and made a determined effort to change the course of the conversation. ‘I have been wanting to say to you that I am not sure that that last line quite keeps up the high romantic tone of the rest of your poem, Mr Tremadoc.’
‘Be damned to the last line! Divine Amoretta, will you not call me Geraint? Call me lover? Call me husband! Be mine, Amoretta, be my life, be my happiness, be my love!’ He reached out to grasp for her hand, but it eluded him.
‘Mr Tremadoc, you forget yourself!’ She cast a quick anxious look behind, hoping to see Blakeney and Amelia, but there was nothing in sight but a herd of deer, peacefully grazing along the side of one of the little woods that dotted the park.
‘On the contrary, lovely one, I remember myself. I understand myself at last. All my life I have been looking for my muse; for the peerless one who will inspire me to heights of poetry unimagined before. Amoretta, beloved, at last I understand that you are she!’
‘I am neither Amoretta nor your beloved.’ She tried to make her tone light, convinced that this was merely a passing whim, best treated as such. ‘I am plain Caroline Thorpe, and I think we should be catching up with the others.’
‘Or letting them catch us?’ he asked, suddenly acute. ‘No use looking over your shoulder for Blakeney, divine Amoretta,’ he told her. ‘I have come the long way round. You will not see him until we reach the Pen Ponds. And just as well, too,’ he went on, reassuringly more practical. ‘He is not for you, Amoretta, and in your heart you must know it. The Duke would no more let him make such a misalliance than…than…’
‘Than your mother would you,’ she concluded for him tartly.
‘Ah!’ He breathed a gusty sigh of understanding. ‘So that’s the trouble. Now I understand you, beauteous Amoretta. And you are right, of course. My mother did tell me to think no more of you, but it only made my flame burn more strongly. What do I care how base your parentage may be? You are my muse, my flame, my life, my heart!’
‘I am nothing of the kind.’ She was angry now. ‘I have been bearing your nonsense, sir, but I will not bear your rudeness. Base parentage indeed! How dare you?’ Her voice was angrier than she intended because he had struck a secret chord of fear. As she grew up,
she had wondered more and more often, why no one ever said anything about her mother and father, who had been such good friends of the Duke and Duchess. She had longed to learn about them, especially since she had been in London society and become aware of just how important birth was. But who could she ask? Miss Skinner was still in Cambridge, fixed there by the death of her sister-in-law. The Duchess and Mrs Winterton were kind enough, but she could not go to them. I will ask Blakeney, she thought. Blakeney will tell me. Her cheeks glowed with sudden happiness.
He misinterpreted the look. ‘How dare I? I dare anything for your sake, Amoretta! I am your champion. Against my mother. Against the world! Only say you will be mine!’ He reached out again and this time managed to catch her hand.
‘Don’t!’ Now she was frightened. His pull was upsetting her balance in the side saddle. ‘Let go!’ She exclaimed. ‘I’ll never…’ But the change of balance, and the feeling of tension in the air had unsettled the spirited mare, which bolted. For a while, all else forgotten, Caroline managed to hold on, grimly, breathlessly, then a brush with the branch of a tree finished the business. For a moment she lay on the ground, shocked but conscious, aware with relief that she was only shaken, not hurt, then got slowly to her feet and looked about her. The wild flight had brought her to the little wood, scattering the herd of deer. Close to her stood a stag, huge of antler, pawing the ground, staring at her, and she realised with a shock of terror that her madly bolting horse had got her between it and the rest of the herd. She stood very still and stared back at the stag as boldly as she could.
The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5) Page 12