Maisie’s voice was filled with love and pride, and for one brief moment May was bitter that it took a man to make her mother change her ways, when it should have been the responsibility of caring for her daughter that made her more circumspect. But resolutely, she turned away from bitterness. That would serve only to hurt herself in the end.
“He sounds wonderful,” she said simply.
“He is! I so look forward to marriage; I who never thought I would say such a thing! My desire for sexual release has become converted into desire for just one man. And though the marriage bed will be satisfying, it is not mostly what I want from Edmund. I want his love, and I wish to earn his respect. I’m desperately afraid of losing his regard, his . . . his admiration.”
Was this her mother? May gazed at the woman before her and thought that all that time, when Maisie was trying so hard to retain her youth with paint and henna and youthful fashions, she had seemed so old, so weary. But now with joy in her voice and tears in her eyes, she looked . . . well, not eighteen, certainly, but there was a sparkle of what she must have been like before life changed her.
“May, would you consider coming to the wedding? I would so like you to meet Edmund. I have told him much about you. How smart you are, how brave!” Her voice held an unmistakable note of motherly pride.
Unexpectedly joy welled into May’s heart, taking the place of the pain of her mother’s betrayal. For this woman to give up her jewels, her London house, her allowance from the van Hoffen estate, she must be in love, and she must have made a determined effort to change. And if Lady Maisie van Hoffen, soon to be just Maisie Banks, could change, then May could forgive and forget. The past was dead and she would not let old fear and bitterness taint her life.
“I will try to attend, Mother,” she said slowly, thinking about Etienne and his need of her. He had regained much of his strength, but the wound was not healing as it should, and she would never consider leaving him until he could fend for himself. “Will you stay a while?”
“Only overnight,” Maisie said with a rueful laugh. “The wedding might be small, but it is surprising how much preparation there is, and I’m doing it all myself. I didn’t pack more than enough for one night anyway. I wasn’t sure how you would receive me.” She gazed at her daughter with fondness. “I would never have believed you would be so kind to me.” Her eyes widened as she realized the implication behind her words. “Not that I did not think you kind, but you had so much reason to be resentful and I would not have blamed you if you tossed me out . . . not that I ever thought you would—”
“I understand what you are trying to say, Mother,” May said with a smile.
Maisie sighed with relief. Then her face lit with a mischievous smile. “You are going to laugh at me. I am trying to learn how to cook, at this late stage in my life!”
May gazed at her mother in astonishment, at the woman who was emerging from the chrysalis of who she was. It was like she was being reborn. The woman before her had learned that sacrifice often had rewards, and that self-restraint led to self-respect. She longed to hug her mother but was still shy, still unsure. Maybe that would come with time. She needed to learn to trust her, and her mother would have to earn that trust. But she had a feeling she would. She hoped she would.
One thing she determined; Maisie would not go to her new husband empty-handed. On the day of her marriage, May would make sure that her mother received a letter of intent from their solicitor, telling her that in one year, on May’s twenty-fifth birthday, ten thousand pounds would be placed at Maisie’s disposal as a dowry.
“I am so happy for you, Mother,” she said, and never had she meant anything so fervently.
Chapter Twelve
Dinner was almost festive. Dodo, reserved at first in Maisie’s presence, relaxed once she took in the changes in the woman’s demeanor. The elderly woman had the mother and daughter almost in tears from laughter, as she described an encounter in the village with a local.
“And then when I asked him the donkey’s name, he scratched his head, looked puzzled and said, ‘Don’t rightly know, milady, as we hain’t never been properly introduced!’”
Even Maisie laughed, and the dining room was filled with the merry sound of conviviality. May glanced from woman to woman. She hadn’t thought to see a day when the dining room of Lark House would be inhabited only by women, and they having a delightful time. She remembered all of the years when she despised dinnertime, for her mother never had less than three men staying, and inevitably one would think it his duty to pay court to the plain daughter. After all, she was rich and would make a convenient wife.
But tonight was a time to put aside painful memories and hope that the future would prove different. The only thing she would change about this night was that she would have loved to see Etienne at the head of the long walnut dining table. He had just the right demeanor, a blend of cultured, sophisticated manner and a bon vivant’s conviviality that would set everyone at ease. The memory that he was alone in the dark, cold folly, eating whatever was left of his meager provisions, and that he would never sit at her table took the shine out of the evening, but she forced a smile and stood.
“What say we adjourn to the blue salon, ladies?”
They drank coffee and chatted desultorily, but May had started worrying about Etienne and could not settle. She fretted and paced, worrying. Did he have enough to eat? Was he warm? Was he safe in the folly? If only she could think of a way to bring him up to Lark House, but even in the attic he could be discovered, and at least down at the folly he could look after his horse.
She paced the length of the blue salon, or saloon as it would have been known in past years. It was her favorite of the formal rooms at Lark House. The walls were blue silk panels set into white wood, each panel hung with a different scenic view of the Lark House grounds, painted during her father’s lifetime. There was one that drew her attention, and she stood mesmerized before it as if she had never seen it before.
It was the folly, and had been painted before the woods had grown up so much around it. You could see the pretty stone structure amid saplings, and it looked like a perfect setting for a Greek scene with nymphs and demigods cavorting, but all May could see was one tall, powerful Frenchman leaning negligently against the doorway, waiting for her to return. She turned away with a stifled exclamation. She was becoming entirely too caught up in Etienne. She must not forget that he would leave and she would be left alone. Alone. What a desolate word!
Maisie’s eyes were on her, and May forced a smile to her lips.
“Come sit here,” her mother said, patting a spot on the silver brocade sofa beside her.
May took a seat. Dodo was glancing through a folio of drawings, searching for another scene to needlepoint.
Taking her hand, Maisie gazed into May’s eyes. “My dear, I know I have not been much of a mother to you,” she said with a sad smile.
May waved off her regret. “That is the past, Mother. I have realized that it is unprofitable and painful to live in the past. The present is all we can be sure of.”
A tear glistened once more, in the pale blue eyes so like her own. “Thank you for that, my dear. But I will never leave off regretting what could have been between us. Despite what you may think, I was thrilled when you were born and I found out you were a girl. I had such plans! I knew you would have all the advantages I did not, growing up.”
Would her mother finally speak of the family she had left behind? May wondered. All she had ever known was that Maisie came from a farming family near Manchester. She had come to London at a very early age, and because of her looks had become an immediate success on the stage. But she had never acknowledged her parents, and May had always thought there was some bitterness there, that she would sever all ties so completely.
“But more than that,” Maisie continued, “I wanted a little girl to pamper and spoil. But your father saw to it that I spent little time with you. He engaged a wetnurse immediately. Said the aristocracy did not
do anything so plebeian as nurse their own children. And he engaged a nursemaid, and left orders that I was not to spend above an hour every day with you in the nursery. Said it was common. Said I was common.”
Here it came, May thought, stiffening. She will blame everything, every failure of her own, on her husband.
“And I was common. Common as dirt, in so many ways, like the family I came from. He taught me just how different I was, and I learned to distrust my instincts. But I should have stood firm. I should have insisted on caring for you the way I wanted to.” She shook her head. “Enough of that. I will not abuse the man, for he plucked me from obscurity and gave me a life I could not have even dreamed of. Without him I would have become a courtesan, I have no doubt. He gave me respectability, which I turned around and threw away the moment he was dead.”
“You were so young,” May murmured, finding with surprise that she wanted to defend that young girl from long ago.
“I still knew right from wrong,” Maisie said, not letting herself off the hook. “When Gerhard died, I had the chance to live as I wanted. I could have started then to take care of you as I had wanted to from the start. But by then I did not know what to do. You were sick for a time after your father’s death, and you would cry whenever I picked you up, and then the nurse would shoo me out of the nursery, saying I was upsetting you. And I believed her. She was terrifyingly efficient. I know now that if I had been persistent you would have come to know me better. It was just the illness and the unfamiliarity that made you cry. But I did not know.”
“But I could not have been ill for that long!”
Maisie shrugged. “I was weak and silly, a twenty-one-year-old ninny. A man came to visit in the week after your father’s death, a man he had been used to gamble with in London. He was my first . . . my first seducer. I had never known that lovemaking could be like that—so active and . . . and lusty—and I was utterly entranced. And then he introduced me to a friend of his, and . . . well, there is only one way to say it.” Her face took on a grim expression. “He passed me along to him. I thought I was being gay and sophisticated. Thought it was what was expected of a young widow. That is what they told me, and I had every reason to believe them.
“In the theater company I worked for when I met Gerhard we had heard that the aristocracy was very loose. Once a woman provided an heir for her husband, or once she was widowed, a woman could take as many lovers as she wanted without censure. By the time I realized that discretion was still necessary it was too late, I was a byword among the ton. And so I pretended I didn’t care, and descended further down a path I had not even known my feet were set upon.”
May supposed that she could understand that happening to a naïve and foolish girl of one and twenty. But why was her mother telling her all of this? It was all so much chaff, blown away on long-ago winds and forgotten.
Taking her daughter’s hand again, Maisie said, “I just want you to know that I did not intend your life to turn out as it has.”
Sighing, May said, “My life is just fine! I am past all the troubles of the bad old days.”
“Are you?” Maisie asked, searching her daughter’s face. “Are you past it all? I want you to find a good life, and I cannot help but think that I have spoiled for you one of life’s best experiences, the love of a good man.”
Withdrawing her hand with a sharp exclamation, May said sharply, “My life does not have to include a husband to be complete.”
“There, see, I knew I had damaged you! You will never trust men, and it is all my fault.”
Irritated, May stood. “There is precious little in most of them to trust, it seems to me.”
“But a woman should be married. And there are many men who would make you a good husband!”
And not a one she would accept, even if they asked, May thought. Or perhaps there was one man she would accept. If Etienne wanted her and loved her, she would marry him no matter what. But there was no chance he would ever love her, and she refused to speculate why that knowledge hurt so very deeply. “Perhaps,” she said, gazing directly into her mother’s blue eyes. “I have been changed by my life experiences, but you have forfeited any right to comment and you cannot regain that right, no matter how much you have changed. I appreciate your concern, but do not worry about me. From now on I am responsible for myself. Good night, Mother. I will see you in the morning before you leave.” Turning, May said, “Good night, Dodo. I apologize for deserting my guest, but I am tired. It has been a long day.” She swept from the room.
She might have known her mother would sooner or later return to her favorite subject, that of her daughter’s obstinate failure to marry. It seemed that finding a new husband had only made her more concerned that May wed, too. She supposed she had been rather hard on the woman, but really! Her mother must accept that May would do what she wanted with her life. She ascended to her room, to spend a sleepless night worrying about Etienne and turning over her mother’s infuriating words.
• • •
In the salon, Maisie glanced over at Dodo with a puzzled look. “I suppose I was a little clumsy in the way I said that?”
Dodo looked up from the folio in her large, bony hands and snorted. “There is no way you could have approached that subject that wouldn’t have gotten your head bit off.”
“I just want her to be happy!” Maisie moaned, twisting her hands in her lap.
“Then don’t expect her to be happy in any way you would understand,” Dodo said sharply. “She is her own woman, and a daughter of whom anyone could be proud. Let her build her own happiness.”
Maisie cast her an unexpectedly shrewd glance. “I know you don’t have much use for me, Lady Dianne.”
“That has nothing to do with anything,” Dodo said abruptly. “You appear to be mending your fences now, and that’s all well and good, but as I said, May is very much her own woman now. Took her a while to recover from that awful experience last spring, but she has now, and nicely, too.”
“I’m glad. No matter what you think, I have worried.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Dodo said gruffly. She stared at the woman on the sofa with narrowed eyes. Could she trust this woman? Was Maisie van Hoffen—the Queen of Tarts, as she had called her once—really a changed woman? She supposed she had to take a chance. “I will admit that I have been worried lately, though,” she said. “About your daughter.”
“Why?” Maisie looked alarmed. “Has May said anything? Told you anything? Is she truly well? I thought she looked a little . . . tired, distracted, sometimes. She just seems different. I suppose that is to be expected, but the way I saw her when I first arrived! She had been out riding in breeches!”
Dodo sighed and crossed the room, sitting on the sofa beside the younger woman. “Until recently she has been very circumspect. When she went riding, she wore her proper riding habit and rode with a groom, but then one day, a few weeks ago, everything changed.”
Maisie gazed at her blankly, but then she nodded. “I’ll wager she stole a groom’s saddle and took off riding without a companion!” There was a hint of laughter in her voice.
Dodo looked shocked. “How did you know?”
“’Twas what she always did before when she was feeling particularly wild and free!” She sobered. “It was only when I had no guests, and she knew she could come and go as she pleased without being accosted by a man.”
Dodo got a glimpse of May’s former life, and her lips firmed to a thin line. No matter how much this woman had supposedly changed, it in no way made up for a past of cavorting with unsuitable men, and allowing them to pursue her marriageable daughter with who knew what intent! “Yes, she has donned breeches and taken to riding out alone for long hours at a stretch. And she has fixed up the folly—I assume it is the one in that painting—with furniture, saying she wanted a little privacy and someplace to . . . to dream, I think she said.”
Maisie shrugged. “This is all hers, you know.” She swept her hand around. “She owns it a
ll, the house, the grounds, everything. Gerhard left me only a provisional allowance, and that will soon end.”
Dodo shook her head. “I suppose I am worrying where I ought not, but there is a murderer on the loose somewhere in the neighborhood, or so someone says. May would not allow her steward and the vicar to search Lark House property. Very sternly warned them off, in fact.”
“She is very protective of her property and has a fierce attachment to her inheritance. I never understood it myself. I do not like the country; I never have. Richmond will be quite far enough from London for my tastes. Trust me, it is just that protectiveness and her independence that will not allow anyone to root around on her private property.”
Dodo nodded slowly. “I suppose that is it. I have spoken of this—delicately, you may be sure, for it is none of my affair, after all—with Mr. and Mrs. Connors, and we have come to much that conclusion. If it were any other girl than May I would be afraid that she had contracted an unsuitable alliance that she was hiding, but with May . . .” She smiled. “The idea is clearly ridiculous. I guess the real reason also lies in the fact that the vicar and steward, Mr. Dougherty and Mr. Crandall, insisted on treating her as if she had no right to determine what went on. She was incensed that they dared organize the search without consulting her.”
“That is your answer,” Maisie agreed. “May has always been headstrong; I see it as a blessing, for that and her courage have allowed her to survive some very nasty experiences. Is there really any danger? Should I be concerned?”
Dodo folded her narrow, blue-veined hands together. “On balance, it all sounds far-fetched. The normal bogeyman stories we all heard during the war . . . you know, murdering Frenchmen and the like? I tend to discount it.”
Maisie sighed. “Good! I would not like to think May was cutting off her nose to spite her face. Denying them the right to search the property in a fit of pique when there really is a danger.”
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