The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5)

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  ‘Is that why you want to marry me?’ Why could she not feel anything?

  ‘Nonsense.’ What a favourite word this had become. ‘I’m not one for pretty speeches, Carrie, never was, but I can tell you this, I need you! I mean to get on in the world; to make a name for myself as a gentleman publisher. Who knows, perhaps Parliament in the end? The Whig interest, of course, granted your connection! With you at my side, the world’s my oyster!’

  ‘You really need me?’ He had found the argument that went straight to her heart.

  ‘More than anything in the world!’ He pulled her to him, gently, firmly. ‘My little Carrie.’ His kiss was expert, confident, undemanding. ‘I shall go to your mother at once.’ He put her back in her chair. ‘She’ll be delighted. So will your father. For the moment, we will tell no one else. Not that I don’t long to boast of my happiness, but it is hardly fitting, with you so deep in mourning. What an age it will seem before I can call you mine indeed.’ His eye lit on the dog-eared little packet of sonnets lying on the table beside her. ‘In the meantime, no sonnets, please, my precious! But it did strike me, reading those effusions of yours, that you may have been more of an inspiration to Tremadoc than we any of us quite understood. From what I have heard, nothing he had done before prepared the world for the success of The Downfall of Bonaparte. Do you think, perhaps, that you and I might work together as you and he did? With you as my Egeria, who knows what heights I might not touch! Shall we give it a try, you and I?’

  ‘Oh, Giles, do let us!’ Something in her still held aloof, still rejected the idea of marriage to Giles, but this was an overwhelming argument. To be needed, to be at work again, this, surely would lift the grey all-inconclusive cloud of gloom that hung over her.

  It did, for a while. It was wonderfully pleasant to be, for the first time in her life, totally approved by both her mother and her father. The Duke actually smiled, called her a good girl, and made one of his inconclusive remarks about something handsome and his man of business.

  And Frances Winterton plunged with enthusiasm into the matter of a trousseau. ‘We will do everything as it should be this time. I have carte blanche from your father.’

  ‘I wish he would say just what the “something handsome” is to be,’ said Giles, when Caroline told him this. ‘The more I think of it, the less I fancy the idea of my Bloomsbury Square house as the abode for a Duke’s daughter — or a future Member of Parliament, come to that. I’ve been looking about me for a house nearer this end of town, but with prices the way they are, we’ve not a chance unless the Duke comes down handsomely.’

  ‘There’s the Tremadoc house.’ Caroline was relieved that he seemed to have given up the idea of moving into Chevenham House.

  ‘Quite ineligible! A widow’s nook for retirement; not the least bit right for a young couple rising in the world. I’ve suggested to James that he look about him for a buyer.’

  ‘Without consulting me?’

  ‘Dear little Carrie!’ He planted a kiss on her forehead. ‘Man and wife are one flesh, you know.’

  The new ministry was announced a few days later. ‘Portland and Fox.’ Giles had brought the news to Chevenham House. ‘Your mother is disappointed, I am afraid.’

  ‘Disappointed?’

  ‘Do you pay attention to nothing, Carrie? Surely you know she hoped the Duke would be First Minister. And so he would have been, I think, if the Duchess had not died. Poor Frances, I hope she never understands how much harm she has done him by sitting tight here. He’ll have to marry her, of course, in the end, but the harm’s done.’

  ‘Does she know you call her Frances?’

  ‘Yes…no. I don’t know. I am sure she would not mind it. My future mother-in-law. How I wish we could be married tomorrow, Carrie!’

  Caroline did not. But then, she wished nothing these days, looked forward to nothing, felt nothing. Was it because of this that the new canto of The Downfall of Bonaparte was going so badly? Or was it, as she began to fear, because it was impossible to work with Giles as she had with Tremadoc?

  Work with? Work through? What it came down to was that where Geraint had been happy to accept her words as his, Giles had a will of his own. Surely this was good? Looking back through the mist of her unhappiness, she recognised that in her marriage to Geraint, she had always really been the leader, though of course she had had to let him think he was. Tired and sad, she thought it would be marvellous to let the burden of herself slip on to someone else’s shoulders.

  Giles’ shoulders? He was making decisions for her already. The Tremadoc house was up for sale, and he had given Mrs Jones notice without consulting her. When she had protested about this he had had his usual answer ready:

  ‘Man and wife are one flesh.’ It was his duty, he said, to spare her every possible burden of decision. ‘Especially just now, little Carrie.’ He made no secret of his impatience with her continued state of listlessness. He was right, of course. If she could not even make up her mind what dress to put on in the morning, how could she expect to make more important decisions?

  Tireder and tireder, she could not sleep, but lay awake, hour after hour, listening to the distant voice of the watchman, or, if she dozed off, plagued with anxious dreams. She was running, but her feet would not touch the ground. She was flying, but her wings beat the air in vain. Always, she was trying to get somewhere, to someone whose face she could not see. Once or twice, she woke up crying. She had been in her garden, her lost garden, she was sure of it. But which garden? At Llanfryn? At Cley? And whose hand had held hers?

  ‘Really, Carrie, try for a little common sense!’ She and Giles were having one of their increasingly unsatisfactory sessions on The Downfall of Bonaparte. ‘We must have a new hero, now Nelson is gone. Who would Tremadoc have chosen? Surely you cannot have lived for more than a year with a powerful mind like his without gaining some insight into it! Now, think: apply yourself! The Prince Regent, perhaps? Fox?’

  ‘I don’t think there is a hero,’ she said slowly. ‘I think, perhaps, we have to wait, to hope that one will appear.’

  ‘Nonsense! I have promised the new canto for the late summer. You must see, child, that if it was outlined by Tremadoc, the canto must be ready this year.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was true, of course. She put a tired hand to her head. ‘Give me a little time. I’m so tired…It’s hard to think. I wish I could go to the country, to Cley. London stifles me.’

  ‘You think about yourself too much.’ Giles took an impatient turn about the room. ‘It’s over four months now since Tremadoc died. You must quit these self-indulgent fancies, and think about the future. Our future. I want a wife, not a memorial statue. Look at Frances! There’s an example for you. She has lost her dearest friend, but she does not pine and mope and grieve. She does her best to spread happiness around her.’

  ‘Yes. She said that to me too.’

  ‘Carrie! I don’t like your tone. That is no way to speak about your mother, the best friend you have ever had.’

  ‘I suppose that is what she says too. It’s not true, you know. The Duchess was my best friend. Oh, Giles, I miss her so.’

  ‘I never heard such nonsense in my life. Everybody knows about the Duchess. A crazy gambler; a woman in debt to every moneylender in town. And as if that was not bad enough, she has reached from her grave to harm the Duke now!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Letters she wrote to that lover of hers, what’s his name? Mattingham, Trappingley, something like that. I met him once at your house and wanted to throw him out neck and crop. Lucky for him he’s gone off to ruralise, or I’d have done it sooner or later. All his damned airs and not enough sense to burn the Duchess’ love letters. The word in the clubs is that some cunning devil of a blackmailer has got hold of them and is bleeding the Duke dry. Published, they’d make your father the laughing stock of the town. And Mattingley with him, of course. I’d like that. By what I hear, it was more the threat of the letters than any indiscretion
of poor Frances’ that cost the Duke the post of First Minister. The Duchess wrote pretty freely to her good friend Mattingley. Her views of everyone. The King, the Prince Regent, Pitt, Fox! A very lively pen, I understand. I think poor Frances is anxious about what she may have said about herself and the Duke, and can you blame her? What a saint of a woman that is!’

  ‘A saint!’ This was too much. ‘Mistress of her best friend’s husband! That had gone on for ever, Giles. Mr Mattingley must have been a boy when my mother and the Duke…’ Hot colour flooded her face. ‘I’m eighteen. All those years…Can you wonder the poor Duchess turned somewhere else for comfort? That’s horrible about the blackmailer…Obscene. How could anyone?’

  ‘Money’s a powerful argument. All very well for you, who have grown up with a silver spoon in your mouth. And that reminds me, has the Duke said any more about what he means to do for you?’

  ‘I should have thought you would know better than I, Giles, such good friends as you and my mother are these days.’

  ‘Good God, I do believe you are jealous!’ Giles let out a great self-satisfied roar of laughter. ‘Bless your little heart, of course I am good friends with my future mother-in-law. Poor little Carrie, this waiting is coming harder on you than we any of us imagined. I think we must put our heads together and see if we cannot advance our happy day. That’s what you need, my precious, a husband’s strong arms round you. No wonder you are indulging in these megrims!’ He pulled her to her feet and held her close. She could feel him stir against her, and felt, in pure horror, that he meant to take her where she stood.

  Stop him. How? She pulled her mouth from under his rough lips and spoke. ‘You’re thinking of my mother!’ How had she known it?

  ‘Nonsense!’ But he let her go.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘I can’t marry him.’ Caroline went straight to her mother after Giles left. But how could she convince her when it was so impossible to give her reason?

  Frances Winterton laughed impatiently. ‘Anyone would think you were a miss out of the schoolroom, not a widow! I tell you, child, I have no patience with this affectation of nerves, and nor, let me warn you, has your Giles.’

  ‘Not my Giles! I don’t love him, and I do not believe he loves me. I have made one mistake, and regretted it bitterly; I’d rather die than make another, and with my eyes open too.’

  ‘Die indeed. Such heroics! What you need is to set up your nursery and then maybe you’ll become a rational creature again. We’ll talk no more of this, and I warn you, not a word, not a hint to your father. I don’t like to think what he would say! I have just talked him round to considering a figure for your dowry. We don’t want to do or say anything that will give him second thoughts.’

  ‘But Mother, please!’ Had she ever called Frances Winterton mother before?

  Frances Winterton reached out for a hand bell. ‘The subject is closed. None of us can afford any more gossip, and that’s the end of it.’

  Back in her own room, Caroline raged at herself for not having been firmer. How had she let herself get to this pass? And what was she going to do? Giles and Mr James had dismissed the servants from the Tremadoc house and put it up for sale. She should not have let them, but it was too late to be thinking that now. She could not go back there. Where else could she go? She had asked Giles, a few days before, whether she was not due further payment granted the continued sales of The Downfall of Bonaparte and he had laughed, called her a little Shylock, and told her once again that man and wife were one flesh. Situated as she was, it would be very difficult indeed to make him pay her what she was sure he must owe her.

  So, she had hardly any money. And friends? She could not turn to Blakeney for help. Charlotte hardly spoke to her. She thought for a moment, longingly, of Oldchurch. Would Mrs Bowles take her in? If only her good friend John Gerard still existed, but she had lost him when she discovered he was Mattingley. And now, she had lost Mattingley too. What was he doing all this time, so silent, in the country? Still mourning the Duchess? Or had the blackmail threat driven him out of town? No. He would not let it. She knew him too well both as Gerard and as himself to believe that for a moment. What good friends they had been. How sad it was.

  All hopeless. At least Giles thought he needed her. Perhaps, when they were married — if they were married — she would find a way of writing with him as she had with Tremadoc. Was she not overvaluing herself after all? What if Giles was infatuated with her mother? What right had she to mind? She did not love him either. Women had made unloving marriages through the years, and made the best of them. Why should not she? It would be so much easier to give in. She felt the grey mists close round her again. To do nothing. To go with the tide.

  It was Giles himself who offered her the chance of escape. Calling next morning, he made no mention of her appeal to her mother. Perhaps, for once, he had come to her first. He was certainly looking serious.

  ‘I’ve had a letter from Sophie.’ He had kissed her and told her she looked very much more the thing today. ‘Poor fool, she is in trouble as was to be expected. Tom Staines was killed in a hunting accident the other day.’

  ‘Oh, I am sorry!’

  ‘I should just about think so. Young fool; he left no will. Saddles her with a pair of illegitimate brats and makes no provision for her! It would serve her right if I left her to the fate she deserves, but I cannot bring myself to do so. Only — it’s difficult! The Staines family’s man of business is here in town and I must bring what pressure I can to bear on him. So there is no way I can go to the silly girl, and from what she writes I fear she may do something stupider still…something really foolish. Just look at her letter.’

  It was hysterical, blurred with tears, frightening.

  ‘Oh, poor Sophie,’ said Caroline. ‘Giles!’ Inspiration struck her. ‘Let me go to her!’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘I’d like to! Poor Sophie…and the little girls.’ And I’ll get away from you, she thought. Get myself time to think.

  ‘It’s like you, Caroline.’ He thought for a moment. ‘I think it would do. She needs family support, public support. I’ll make time to drive you down there; show that we intend to stand by her, but come straight back myself to take up her case here in town. How soon can you start?’

  ‘I’ll need a companion for the journey.’

  ‘Your fiancé, Carrie?’

  ‘You know I must have a woman. My mother was speaking, just yesterday, of the need to avoid further scandal.’

  ‘Prudent little Carrie! Shall I ask Mrs Jones to come with us? I think I know where I can find her.’

  ‘Oh, yes, please, Giles, that would be beyond anything. I have felt so unhappy about her.’

  ‘That’s settled then.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I’ll find her out at once, and plan to call for you tomorrow morning. Don’t pack a million trunks, Carrie. I’ll hope to fetch you all back to town quite soon. I doubt the Staines family will let Sophie and the brats stay long in the house. Imagine not seeing to it that he made a will!’

  ‘Perhaps she tried,’ said Caroline.

  ‘She should have succeeded.’

  ‘An excellent notion.’ Frances Winterton approved of the proposed journey. ‘It will give you time to set your thoughts in order, and we can get the rest of your bride-clothes together when you get back.’

  Caroline did not argue with her. It would be time enough, when she got safe down to Llanfryn, away from Giles, to say that she did not mean to marry him. Perhaps she would find an old friend in the West who needed a housekeeper. She plunged into a daydream of an unmarried, elderly vicar. She would keep his house and walk in her lost garden again. Or perhaps she and Sophie would decide to set up house together. She longed to see Sophie’s two little girls and felt a warm stirring of gratitude to Giles for unwittingly giving her this chance of escape. It was good of him to go to his sister’s help, surprisingly good. Had she let herself get into a bad habit of doing him less than justice? Might she ev
en find, away from him, that she could marry him after all?

  She woke next morning to the muffled sounds and unmistakable, thick smell of a London fog, and it was hardly surprising that Giles was very late. He arrived at last just when she had finished a light luncheon with her mother.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Now we can press on until it is full dark.’

  ‘Has Mrs Jones eaten?’ But Giles had turned from her to say goodbye to her mother.

  Busy packing, Caroline had not been out all morning, and had not realised just how bad the fog was until she and Giles emerged into the courtyard, to see his carriage waiting, a dim shape outlined by glimmering side lamps.

  ‘It’s worse than I thought,’ she hung back on the top step. ‘I had no idea it could be so thick, this late in March. Should we not perhaps wait until tomorrow?’ She turned to consult her mother, but Frances had already returned, coughing, to the house.

  ‘Nonsense.’ Giles took her arm to guide her down the shelving steps. ‘It will be clearer as soon as we get out of town. I sent a note by the night mail telling Sophie when to expect us. We must not disappoint her now, or I don’t like to imagine the consequences. She was always impulsive, poor, silly Sophie and I really fear she might do herself or the children a mischief.’ He helped Caroline up the carriage step as a footman held open its door.

  It was dark inside, and it took her a moment to realise that the carriage was empty.

  ‘But, Giles,’ she turned as he got in behind her. ‘Mrs Jones?’

  ‘We are picking her up on the way.’ He sat down beside her and the carriage door clicked shut behind him.