‘Well, then, you are certain to like James Fortescue enough in time,’ Mary said, pressing my arm for emphasis. ‘AH the girls in Bath are wild about him. Elizabeth is not the only one who wants to push you in the Avon.’
We all three laughed at that but what she said was half true. And others had noticed that James Fortescue had danced with me twice. His papa and mama came to stay with Mrs Densham one weekend, and Mama and I were invited to dine with them. They wanted to see the girl who was the best friend of their daughter, Marianne, and a potential bride for their youngest son. And Mama wanted to inspect them.
They were all well pleased. I knew his family liked me; his mama kissed me on the cheek at meeting and at parting, and her warmth suggested she had heard many kind things about me. My mama measured their wealth and their sharp city-trader manners with a keen eye and smiled. The Fortescues were a family of Bristol merchants, great traders. They were not long-established landowners like us Laceys of Wideacre; but they had a position which many would envy. His papa was an alderman – well thought of in Bristol and his mama was related to the Kent family.
I came home from the dinner with something of a rueful smile. I knew I had been looked over and found satisfactory as much as if I had been a brood-mare. I also knew that Mama had been assessing them. I had learned some town gloss in Bath – I could not escape it, watching the workings of the Bath marriage market. We might all pretend we were here for the waters, or here to buy some fashionable clothes, or to meet acquaintances; but the season was all about courtship and marriage, as obvious a task of pairing as choosing stock. Mary’s vulgarity was nothing worse than a recognition that she, and her sister, and even I, were in Bath to see and to be seen, to choose and to be chosen, to like and to be liked. My delicate mama trod a very narrow road when she tried to ignore the vulgarity of arranging her daughter’s marriage to one of the most wealthy young men in society that season.
She would not have forced me. She had the right to do so, and there were many parents who would order their daughters to marry the man that had been chosen for them. But my mama had never been that sort of a mother. She would not even have tried to persuade me if she had seen my mind set against this or that young man. But she would not have been human if she had not been flattered that her daughter should be dancing often with James Fortescue. She would not have been a good mother if she had not made sure that James Fortescue’s family knew that I was part heir to an estate which had once been great, and which would be great again.
In the meantime there were many new friends – not just the Fortescues. For, once I was in their party, I seemed to meet more and more young people, until our gilt mirror over the mantelpiece was rimmed with invitation cards, and the bowl at the foot of the stairs was filled with calling cards. Early every morning, before my visit to Dr Phillips, James Fortescue would drive his high-slung phaeton to our door and ask the landlady if Miss Lacey would care to come for a drive with him that day.
Miss Lacey almost always did.
He was good company, and he let me hold the reins, and when he saw how I handled his horses, he promised himself the pleasure of teaching me to drive a pair in earnest.
‘You have good hands,’ he said, and I laughed, remembering the last time I had heard that. He wanted to know all about it, and I found I was telling him about Dench and about the wild ride into Acre, and about Richard’s rescue. He hooted with laughter when I told him I had been riding astride with my gown all pulled up, and I had to make him swear to tell no one.
‘It sounds a wonderful estate, your Wideacre,’ he said wistfully. ‘I can understand my papa’s longing for a country home for himself, and a home for me. Your mama says that you could own it entire if you bought out your cousin.’
‘Yes,’ I said, and an awkward silence fell between the two of us as we both realized that my mama and his papa had been match-making.
He chuckled. ‘Don’t look so grave, Miss Lacey,’ he said. ‘My papa can perfectly well afford to buy his own estate. I need not marry to oblige him, and you need not think of obliging the two of us.’
I gave an irresistible ripple of laughter. It was quite improper to talk like this, but it felt so very much easier than pretending, for the sake of convention, that neither of us knew all of Bath had been planning our marriage for weeks.
‘I could always give you the estate outright,’ I said outrageously.
‘Yes!’ he said at once. ‘Please, I beg of you. Anything rather than having to act out this impossible part that I have to sustain. I have to pretend all the time that I like you, and I have to take you for drives, and ask you to dance. And next I suppose I shall have to send you flowers!’
‘And I have to accept,’ I said mournfully. ‘It’s terrible being such an obedient daughter!’
‘You could always elope with a footman,’ he suggested helpfully, ‘but you don’t have one, do you? What about the butler?’
I laughed aloud at that and forgot I was driving; I dropped my hands on the reins so that his horses lengthened their stride, and I had to lean back and put just an extra touch on the reins to steady them.
‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘but you should see our butler! He is a dear, but he is old enough to be my grandpapa!’
‘Then it may have to be me,’ he said apologetically. ‘I like it no better than you, my dear Miss Lacey; but we shall have to reconcile ourselves.’
The laughter caught in my throat at his words, which seemed still to be part of our indiscreet jest and yet also seemed a little warmer. I shot a sideways glance at him and he was looking at me, his brown eyes intent and smiling.
‘It is just a joke,’ I said quickly. ‘One that I should not be making. I have no intention of marrying for many years.’
‘I knew it!’ he said with such energy that he made me jump; but then I saw he was smiling still. ? jilt! And one so young too!’
I could not help but laugh at that, though I knew full well I should not; and I was still smiling when he took the reins as we drew up outside the door. He leaned over to give me a hand as I clambered down, but refused my invitation to come in.
‘I shall have to see you at the ball tonight, I suppose,’ he said gloomily’ ‘and I suppose I shall have to dance with you.’
I turned at the front door and swept him a most dignified curtsy. ‘Not at all,’ I said helpfully. ‘Though thank you for asking. I regret I have every dance taken.’
He looked twice at me then, and I saw the confident smile on his face slightly shaken at the thought that we might not dance together. But then he coiled up his long carriage whip and pointed it at me. ‘Miss Lacey,’ he said firmly, ‘if you have not saved the dance before and after supper for me, and if I do not take you into supper, then I shall tell Marianne and all our acquaintance that you are a gazetted flirt. And I shall speak nothing but the truth.’
And I, conscious for the first time in my life of being pretty, conscious for the first time in my life of being desired, looked up at him, seated on the high carriage, and laughed in his face. ‘Wait and see,’ I said, and flicked around on my heel and went indoors without another word.
I did not like him just for those drives in the cold wintry sunshine. I was not yet entirely an ordinary girl who would have her head turned by a posy of flowers or the fact that he was recognized as being the most desirable young man in Bath. I had called out a ploughing team, so I was far from thinking that the most important thing in the world was the whiteness of a man’s gloves and the number of dance-steps he could perform. More than anything else I liked James Fortescue because of how he was with his sister Marianne. Against the opinion of all the family and the family doctor, he maintained that there was nothing in the least wrong with her. His impossibly rude imitation of a duck quacking every time someone mentioned Dr Phillips, did not only bring a smile to Marianne’s face, it also made me feel more cheerful about the long draining hours which I spent in that close room.
‘What does he do with you?
’ James Fortescue asked me as we sat at a table in a coffee-house waiting for Marianne to join us from taking the waters.
‘He talks at me,’ I said gloomily. ‘To start with I was talking all the time. He wanted to know everything I thought. Bit by bit, the more I told him, the more the feelings slipped away from me, until now I hardly know what to think. I know I miss my home more than I thought possible to bear; but the special feeling I had – a sense of being somehow magic there – has almost gone from me.’
‘How do you mean? Magic?’ James asked gently. I glanced up at him quickly, but he was not laughing at me. He was not patronizing me in the way which sent my hackles on the rise when Dr Phillips spoke to me. This was a young man, my own age, with a good deal more experience of the world than I had. But he trusted his own counsel, and I thought I could in turn trust him.
‘There’s a long tradition,’ I said awkwardly. ? belief that my family is somehow special on the land, that the Lacey heir can make the land grow, can make it especially fertile. And I feel that. I believe when I put my face to the ground, I can almost hear a heart beating at the very centre of the earth – as if it were a living thing and it loved me.’
Someone dropped a spoon and it clattered against a plate near me. I jumped and looked around me. I was not on Wideacre, I was many miles from my home. I was suddenly aware of the dozens of people in the coffee-house, of the hundreds of people in the town, and of my own arrogance and folly in claiming to be special. I shot a nervous look at James Fortescue. He was watching me, and in his face I could see nothing but quiet attentiveness.
‘Or at least, I did,’ I said. ‘I was very sure of it. But since I have told Dr Phillips, and had to explain it over and over, I am not so sure. I expect it was all nonsense.’
James Fortescue huffed in temper and caught one of my restless hands. ‘That is exactly what I don’t like about this Dr Phillips,’ he said. ‘It is the same thing for Marianne. When she started going to see him, she certainly did have trouble in eating proper food at proper times. I had some ideas about why that should be.
‘You have a small family and perhaps you live peacefully together,’ he said diffidently. ‘It is not the same everywhere. My papa and my mama have differences of opinion, and there are five of us generally sitting down to dinner together. When there is a disagreement, there is an argument which is often long and loud. You will know by now how sensitive Marianne is; she simply cannot tolerate raised voices. By refusing to eat, she was excused dinner with the family. I was certain that was the start of the difficulty, and at one time she thought so herself. But since she has been seeing Dr Phillips, she does not know herself what the matter might be. He has taken all her certainty from her and has nothing to put in its place but a vague sense that it is her fault and that she is somehow in the wrong.’
I nodded. I had already had some idea of this from Marianne herself. James would not have spoken of it if he had not known I was in her confidence.
‘I cannot imagine how she could blame herself,’ I said hesitantly.
‘I can,’ he said, ‘and you should be able to imagine it. When you came to Bath, I dare say you thought it perfectly all right that you should feel so special about your home. Now you think that feeling somehow wrong, and you are even in danger of losing it altogether!’
‘Oh no!’ I said. ‘I was already unhappy about what Wideacre meant to me…’ I broke off and looked at him.
‘Why?’ he asked, as gentle as a sister.
I hesitated, and then I found I could tell him. I did not tell him the version which Dr Phillips had persuaded me was the truth: that I had been awakened by the storm and calculated the danger of the spire falling on the village, that I had made a lucky guess. I told him that I believed I had been given a premonition, and that I had acted on it. I finished the story of that strange night in a rush and I kept my eyes down. It sounded so bizarre. But then I felt the brush of his fingertips on the back of my gloved hand and I looked up.
‘I could not do that,’ he said gently. ‘But I should be a fool indeed if I said that anything I could not do was beyond the ability of anyone else. Perhaps you have a special gift. Perhaps you should cherish that gift and use it, rather than trying to knock it out of yourself.’
I was about to reply – searching for words to thank him for that brief sentence which had suddenly returned to me a share of my lost confidence in Wideacre, in myself as an heir to Wideacre – when Marianne and Emily and Mary and Elizabeth came to the table in a flurry of bandboxes and news, and the moment when I could have thanked him was gone.
But I did not forget it. Although my days were now a whirl of outings, shopping, dances and conversations, each night before I slept I used to lie for a few minutes and think about the day. It seemed to me that I was gaining a new sort of assertiveness, that even while Dr Phillips stole from me my bright faith in myself as the squire of Wideacre and the favoured child of a magic tradition, Bath was teaching me the assurance of a pretty girl who could give an answer – pertly enough, maybe – and who could hold her head up and deal with her peers as equals. And as the acknowledged favourite of the most eligible young man in Bath that season, I had a confidence I would never have learned at home. I had James to thank for that too.
15
I had not been lying to James Fortescue when I told him that all the dances for the evening were taken. But he was right to be confident of me – I had saved the dance before supper so that he might take me from the bright crowded ballroom into the supper-room and sit down with me on a bench with half a dozen of the young people whom I now called my friends.
Mama had been playing cards and she came up behind me when I was at supper and dropped a hand on my shoulder to prevent me rising. ‘You stay,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t want you to leave early, but I have to go home. This beastly cold I took the other day outside the milliner’s has made me too hot to enjoy playing any more. It has so destroyed my judgement that I am likely to game away John’s fortune unless I leave.’
‘How will you get home?’ I asked.
‘I’ll take a chair,’ Mama said equably, ‘and I’ll send out one of Mrs Gibson’s men to bring a chair to fetch you home.’
‘Excuse me, Lady Lacey,’ James interrupted, rising to his feet, ‘but I beg you will not take such trouble. I will undertake to bring Miss Lacey safe home to you. And if you will allow me, I will go and make sure there is a chair waiting for you at the doorway now.’
Mama smiled. ‘Thank you, Mr Fortescue,’ she said. ‘I should have known that you would be so kind. I shall expect Julia home at eleven, when the ball closes.’
James gave her his arm and took her through the crowds of the supper-room to the bright hall beyond.
‘Lucky you!’ Mary Gillespie said under her breath. ‘I’d push my mama downstairs and break her leg if I thought James Fortescue would take me home.’
‘Mary!’ I exclaimed, and collapsed into giggles. ‘Anyway, it’s not true. You’d lock her in the cellar as well to be on the safe side.’
We were still laughing when James came back and he looked at the two of us suspiciously. ‘It’s true!’ he said. ‘My heart is set on Julia’s mama. She really is so fetching, Julia. She must have been stunning when she was young. Did she ever have a London season?’
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘But I believe she was shy and retiring and did not enjoy it.’
James nodded.
‘Like me,’ I added, keeping my face straight.
‘Very like,’ James said, equally grave. ‘I was saying to Marianne the other day that you would be quite pleasing if she could prevail upon you to put yourself forward a little more.’
‘You!…’ I started, but the quartet began playing in the other room.
‘Is this the last dance I can have with you this evening?’ he asked.
I flickered my dance programme before him with a smug beam. ‘It is,’ I said. ‘But there is no need to stay until the end of the ball. I dare say o
ne of my other partners will escort me home if I ask.’
‘You are a baggage,’ he said feelingly. ‘Come and let me tread on your toes, Julia Lacey; and I hope I disable you for the rest of the evening.’
I laughed and went to dance with him, and then with George Gillespie, and with Sir Clive, and Major Peterson, and all the other new friends, until the quartet played the last dance and the clock struck eleven. The players started packing up their instruments, though Sir Peter Laverock went and begged them to play one more dance so that he could dance with me.
‘I am so sorry,’ James Fortescue said to him, sounding not at all sorry, ‘but I have promised Lady Lacey that I would see Miss Lacey home at eleven o’clock, and we must leave now.’
Sir Peter took one look at James Fortescue, and one look at my smiling face. ‘Well, really, James,’ he said. ‘I can’t like the thought of you walking all alone back from Gay Street. I’ll come with you both to see Miss Lacey safe home, and then walk with you.’
‘Very kind,’ said James. ‘But I couldn’t ask it of you.’
‘I insist,’ said Sir Peter, teasingly. ‘What do you say, Miss Lacey?’
James Fortescue offered me his arm with an air of absolute neutral courtesy, then he slid his hand on top of mine and pinched my fingers hard.
‘I will not trouble you, Sir Peter,’ I said politely, ‘and I’ll bid you good night and hope to see you tomorrow.’ Then, as we turned away, I said softly to James Fortescue, ‘And if I weren’t a lady, I’d kick you on the ankles!’
He laughed aloud at that and swept me to the entrance of the rooms. ‘Would you like a sedan chair?’ he asked. ‘Or can you brave the frosts and walk?’
I sniffed at the air. It was icy cold with a promise of snow behind it. I knew it lacked something, some scent I needed, and I turned my face up to the cloudless ink-black sky for some hint of it. I was missing the smell of my home, the faint scent of cold beech leaves, the hint of icy grass. I was far away from Wideacre tonight.
The Favoured Child Page 34