'I doubt his lordship would agree,' Phyllis said. 'And if she went to live at the Dower House she could not have him live there with her. It would create too much of a scandal.'
'He'll go to Bath and find some other woman,' Mattie said. 'And then her ladyship will be annoyed. But who'd have thought it, at her age?'
*
CHAPTER 8
On the first fine day Edmund rode round the estate with Jonah. His bailiff had, he concluded, served him well during his absence. At last, as they made their way back to the house, they stopped at the lodge. The coachman's wife emerged, looking flustered, and dropped a curtsey.
'Oh, my lord, it's good to see you home,' she said. 'An' this is such a fine house, it is.'
Edmund raised his brows. Jonah had told him how they had six children, and he could not imagine how they contrived.
'The two littlest sleep with us,' she explained when he questioned her. 'The others share a bed, top and tail, yer know.'
He didn't, but let it pass.
'An' the range and bread oven are such a blessing,' she went on, despite Jonah's attempt to stem her garrulity. 'I can bake me own bread, an' that's a big saving, an' pies an' the like we never 'ad at our other place.'
At last they escaped from her and rode on.
'Miss Elinor used to bake bread and sell it in the village,' Jonah commented.
'Miss Elinor? But why did she need to?'
Jonah didn't speak for a moment, then he sighed.
'Her father gave all his money away, they had almost nothing when he died. Which is why I let them have the house for free. Miss Jane did some sewing, I believe, but it was Miss Elinor who provided for them with her baking. And very good it was,' he added. 'Her pies were better than Cook's. She walked to the village most days to take what she'd baked.'
'All that way?' He was appalled, both by the news the girls had been forced into such expediencies to provide for themselves, and at the thought of Elinor, who looked so dainty and delicate, tied to a kitchen and walking half a dozen miles every day. 'You say Miss Jane sewed?'
'She made nightcaps,' Jonah said. 'I understand they were much in demand by the village ladies. And Mattie took in washing.'
'Mattie? Their old nurse? But surely she wasn't strong enough for that? From what I have seen she is very old and not entirely well.'
'She was ill, but I believe Miss Elinor did much of that too, to save her.'
Edmund shook his head in disbelief.
'She could hardly have had time to sleep!'
Jonah laughed. 'She's a rare lass!'
'She is indeed. Well, they may all enjoy their rest now.'
They rode on in silence. Edmund was thinking of Jane. She was not the bright, pretty girl he had asked to marry him little more than a year since. She always looked apprehensive now, avoiding him, which he had decided was due to some embarrassment that she had so soon replaced him when she thought he had been killed at Waterloo. He had a suspicion, too, that all was not well between her and William. Perhaps her sallow looks and shrinking from any contact with her husband were due to her pregnancy. He had never before been close to a woman when she was increasing, so could not judge if this were normal. Yet from what Jonah had hinted, she had done little enough to help her sister when they had lived at the lodge, before her marriage. Women sewed and did their embroidery as a quiet, sedentary activity, he thought.
Did he regret the loss of her? He truly did not know. Surely he must have thought at the time that he loved her, but then a stray memory slipped into his mind. Odd recollections still kept coming back to him. His mother had been urging him to offer for his cousin Diana, the daughter of her sister Susan, who lived near Bristol with her merchant husband. Diana was an only child, much pampered, and would inherit a large fortune. He had known Diana since they were children, and he recalled always being irritated by her constant demands to be included in whatever adventures he and his friends had been enjoying, even though she was four years younger, and her wails of frustration when they escaped from her. Had he, and the notion startled him, offered for Jane in protest at his mother's machinations?
By now they had ridden into the stableyard, and he thrust these gloomy thoughts away.
'I'll see you in the estate room tomorrow morning, Jonah, and we can decide what needs to be done.'
*
Jane looked ill, Elinor thought. She was pale and listless, starting at every sudden noise, and eating almost nothing, saying food nauseated her. When Elinor, having persuaded her to drive to the village to visit Mrs Craven, cautiously asked whether William still bothered her, she shrugged.
'I am told it is my duty to submit to him,' she said. 'But, oh, Elinor, it's hard! He is so demanding, so – vigorous – he exhausts me! I don't know how I can bear it for years and years.'
Eleanor knew she had to do something to help her sister. She frowned in concentration. She was driving the curricle which Edmund had said they could use, but with only one horse. She doubted her ability to control any of the pairs in the stables, and would have preferred the gig, but it was raining again, and the curricle had a hood.
'Do you still have nightmares?' she asked suddenly.
'Do I still ride the night mare?' Jane laughed. 'I never have. It was always you that woke me up screaming that the devil was coming for you. Or the nasty giant wanting to eat you, after Mattie had been reading fairy tales to us.'
'But if you had a recurrence of these childish nightmares, and I were the only person who had ever been able to soothe you, I could move a truckle bed into your room. That would make it difficult for William to come to you.'
Jane looked at her and frowned.
'He'd never believe me. I have had no nightmares, I never did, and he would know it was false.'
'He would not be able to prove it,' Elinor said, growing more enthusiastic. 'If something happened which might set you off again, and I supported you, and warned Mattie to do so also, he would have to believe us. Now, what could it be?'
She was thoughtful during the rest of the drive, but forced herself to sound cheerful as they drank Mrs Craven's ratafia and nibbled on her macaroons. There were several other ladies there, and the talk turned to the depredations of a fox on the hen houses.
'My husband has seen him more than once, says he is a devious brute, he knows there is no hunting in the summer, and strolls through the woods in full view,' one of the ladies said. 'I say they should take no heed of the squire's huntsman, who only wants to keep him for the sport, and shoot him.'
'Sir David would be furious,' Mrs Craven said.
Sir David Leigh owned a large Elizabethan property on the far side of the village from Tremaine Court, and his family had been squires for centuries. Elinor sat back in her chair and thought hard, and was so silent one of the women asked her if she was feeling unwell.
'I, Ma'am? No, indeed, I am never ill, but I am, I confess, dispirited with all this cold wet weather. We have had no summer at all this year.'
This comment turned the conversation onto the prospects for the harvest, and how the farmers would suffer.
'And they will be asking us to reduce the rents,' one lady complained.
Soon afterwards Jane and Elinor took their leave, and after a few minutes Elinor had her plan developed.
'We saw a fox on the way home,' she said, 'and it was killing a rabbit. He was tearing out its entrails while the poor rabbit was still alive and squealing!'
'Ugh! But we haven't seen any fox,' Jane protested.
'No one will be able to prove differently, and after the talk at Mrs Craven's we all know there is a vicious fox prowling in the district. Tonight you will have a nightmare about it, and wake everyone by screaming.'
Jane shivered. 'I can't do that,' she protested.
'Of course you can. You were the star when we put on plays at school.'
'That was different.'
'Not at all. Jane, do you want me to help you keep William away from you? We can only do that if
I sleep in your room, pretending to be able to calm you when you have a nightmare.'
Reluctantly Jane agreed to try, but Elinor wondered whether she would be able to carry it off. She had barely settled herself to sleep that night when she was jerked awake by terrified screams coming from Jane's room. Hastily donning her dressing gown she ran out into the corridor to find Jane clinging to the door frame of her room and alternately screaming and gabbling. Elinor could just make out the words.
'Stop him! Take him away! He's coming for me! Aghh! He's eating me! He's taking my baby!'
That was a nice invention, Elinor thought appreciatively. Jane really did look wild, her eyes staring, her hair in a tangle, and she was trembling most realistically.
William, his nightcap awry, appeared from his own room and stared at his wife. Then he strode towards her and seized her shoulders, shaking her hard. Jane continued to scream and sob, and clutched at William's dressing gown. It was the same one he'd worn when he had been found in the young maid's room.
'Be quiet!' William was saying. 'You are hysterical, woman! You'll wake everyone making this ridiculous noise.'
As proof of his words Edmund was coming along the corridor from his own room. He wore no nightcap, and his own dressing gown was a sober dark blue. How much more handsome and dignified he looked compared with his cousin, Elinor thought, then chided herself for such a frivolous thought. It was time she intervened, for Jane could hardly keep up this pretence for ever.
'She's riding the night mare,' she said. 'Pray let me take her back to bed, William. I can calm her. I was always able to do so when we were children.'
William, rather thankfully, Elinor thought, relinquished his wife into Elinor's arms, and she persuaded her sister to move back into the bedroom. When William would have followed she barred his passage.
'Please, William, I will do better on my own. It must be that fox we saw on the way home.'
'What fox?' William demanded.
'We saw one as we drove home this morning, killing a rabbit and tearing out its innards. Now please permit me to get Jane to bed. My lord, can you please give someone orders to set up a truckle bed in Jane's room? I'll have to stay with her. When she was a child and had one of these attacks, they could last all night. She would drop asleep and the nightmare would start all over again.'
'Of course, Miss Darwen. I'll see to it at once.'
Elinor smiled at him, then frowned as she saw the twinkle in his eyes, and his lips twitching. Had he suspected? Of course not. Jane had given the performance of her life. She hustled her sister into the room, shut the door in William's face, and grinned at Jane.
'Wonderful, my dear. That should keep him away. Now keep on sobbing, and don't stop until after they bring my bed here.'
*
For a week Elinor insisted she needed to stay with Jane, and they supported the fiction by Jane having several attacks of screaming and sobbing. These Elinor was soon able to manage, and they woke no one apart from William, who was restlessly keeping to his own room, separated from Jane's by just two small dressing rooms.
'He's getting impatient,' Jane told Elinor. 'Yesterday, after dinner when we were in the drawing room, he told me he was calling in the doctor to prescribe me a sedative. He said that would cure me. Oh, Elinor, it will start all over again, I know it will!'
'Then we will think of some other expedient. When the doctor comes perhaps he will forbid William to come to you.'
'He'll do as William tells him,' Jane said, and Elinor was afraid she was right. These men stick together, she thought.
However, it was William the doctor came to see a few days later. William had been complaining of insomnia, saying that his worry about Jane and her continued nightmares kept him awake until he was barely able to function during the daytime. His mother, glaring at Jane and Elinor, supported him.
'He was always a light sleeper,' she said at dinner the day after the doctor had been. 'The slightest noise would rouse him, and he could never go back to sleep. Good Dr Carson has prescribed sedatives for Jane, too, and that will soon cure these hysterical outbreaks. They are, as I have frequently said, a sign of low breeding, and undue spoiling of a child.'
'If Jane's nightmares affect William's sleep, the solution is simple,' Edmund said. 'William can sleep in the old nursery. That's in the west wing, as far away from Jane's room as possible.'
William glared at him and Elinor had difficulty in suppressing a smile. She was sure Edmund knew the nightmares were faked, and was sympathetic to Jane. Did he still love her? Had he somehow guessed Jane did not relish William's attentions? Did he imagine she was perhaps still in love with himself? Elinor shrugged. It did not matter so long as William could be kept away from her sister. Jane had admitted she had never loved Edmund, but he must have loved her to have proposed. How could she not have loved so admirable a man?
Jane meekly accepted the sedative, but avoided taking it. William, overborne by an implacable Edmund, was forced to sleep in the old nursery, which he complained was cold and damp and too far away for his valet to attend him as quickly as before.
'I'm sure you will be able to move back to the old room soon, when Jane is better,' Edmund said, smiling kindly at his cousin when William, the first day after he had been moved, was complaining at dinnertime. 'You should take more exercise out of doors. I find that makes me sleepy.'
'In this rain?' William asked, horrified. 'It never stops, and unlike you, Cousin, I don't have a large income to provide myself with dozens of coats and cloaks!'
'Oh, I can always lend you some if that's all that prevents your enjoying some fresh air.'
'You must take care not to take cold, Edmund,' Lady Tremaine remarked. 'It would not do for you to contract an inflammation of the lungs.'
Mrs Tremaine glared at her. She, no doubt, would be ecstatic should Edmund die and William be able to resume the title. Soon afterwards the ladies left the table, and as was now their custom Mrs Tremaine and Amelia went upstairs to a small parlour they had made their own, while Jane and Elinor trailed into the drawing room to listen to Lady Tremaine's complaints until, to everyone's relief, the tea tray was brought in.
*
'You need to stop these die-away airs and forget those silly nightmares,' Lady Tremaine said a few days later.
Elinor looked at her in some surprise. For some time now Edmund's mother had maintained a stern silence at dinner. She had appeared to be absorbed in her own thoughts, merely nodding or shaking her head when asked a direct question. William and his mother never addressed her, and Amelia barely spoke at any time. Jane and Elinor had attempted to be polite at first, but when rebuffed they had spoken only to each other and to Edmund. He, Elinor decided, was the only one of them to behave normally. He spoke of estate matters to William, asked courteously after Mrs Tremaine's and Amelia's comfort, and had more normal conversations with herself and Jane.
He knew that now Elinor frequently rode to the village, visiting Mrs Craven and some other ladies. She had confessed to him one day, when she had been in the stables inspecting a new horse he had bought, that one of the worst deprivations since her father had died was not having a riding horse. He had immediately begged her to choose any from the stables.
'Apart from the bay stallion,' he added. 'William regards him as his own.'
'Isn't he? I thought he was brought here when they came?'
'William acquired him later, but with my money,' Edmund said. He looked rueful. 'It is confoundedly difficult to decide just what money William expended on his own behalf and what was for the benefit of the estate, and therefore ultimately to me. I would rather say forget it, but the lawyers insist it needs to be dealt with, and the fellow William had employed is demanding every penny he can conceivably claim is due to him, plus compensation, he says, for the fact William cannot return at once to his own home at Bude.'
'But isn't William receiving rent for that house?'
Edmund laughed. 'That, apparently, is beside the point. O
n the one hand he was forced to come here to look after the estate, but on the other he might have rented out his house at any time, so that rent is irrelevant.'
They began to walk back towards the house.
'How is your sister?' Edmund asked. 'Are these nightmares becoming less frequent?'
Elinor shot him a quick glance from under her brows. Did he believe in them? At some time, she had told Jane, they had to diminish, but her sister had clutched her hand and begged her not to desert her.
'They are a little better,' she said now. 'But they leave her listless, and she can never sleep during the day.'
'They must affect you too.'
'I am stronger than Jane, I have always been able to manage with less sleep. And,' she added, seeing his sceptical look, 'I can fall asleep again immediately Jane is calm, but she lies awake for hours.'
It was this, as well as fear of William, which contributed to the die-away airs Lady Tremaine complained of. Before Jane could respond Lady Tremaine was speaking again.
'In my day we made no fuss about breeding. It's a normal condition, and any sensible girl would be pleased and gratified that she was presenting her husband with heirs.'
Elinor bit back the retort that most wives received consideration from their husbands when in a delicate condition. She glanced at Edmund, and suspected the napkin raised to his mouth was hiding a smile.
'I have heard you often telling Aunt Susan to take more care, when she was breeding,' Edmund said.
His mother glared at him.
'There is a difference between undertaking hazardous behaviour, as Susan was prone to do, and normal activities. It is because she was foolish enough to continue riding that she and Mr Poyser have only the one child.'
She nodded, and relapsed into silence. No one else spoke for a while until Edmund asked William if he had been riding that day.
'Riding? But it's been raining for most of the day. You may choose to go out in all weathers and come in with mud up to your eyebrows, but I need to consider my health. Those sedatives are useless against the noise I suffer in that nursery you banished me to. It's above the kitchens, and there seem to be pans clattering and people shouting until late at night and they start again an hour later! I can tell you, the servants were better behaved when I was in charge!'
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