Now it was his turn to be astonished. “How on earth do you know that?”
“India interests me.” She smiled. It felt good to have surprised him. “I have an uncle who served there as Governor of Bombay. Unfortunately, I was too young to visit him during his term, but he is full of the country’s woes and strengths to this day. He still reads the Indian newspapers, even if they are three months old when he gets them.” She laughed, and he wondered at the evenness and whiteness of her teeth.
Charles nodded. “I’ve never been, but I believe it is a country with a great future.”
“Within the Empire.” Did she say this approvingly? He couldn’t decide.
“Within the Empire for now, but not forever,” he said. “What is your uncle’s name?”
“Lord Clare. He was there from 1831 to 1835. He used to bring back silks that were the finest I have ever seen, and precious stones that were simply stunning. Did you know they have wells where you climb down more than a thousand steps before you get to the water? And there are cities where the skies are full of kites? And temples made of gold. I’ve heard they don’t bury their dead as we do. They burn them, or float them down the river. I’ve always wanted to go to India.” Charles looked into her clear blue eyes, admiring the softness of her lips and the curve of her determined chin. He had never met anyone quite so charming. “Do you know which part of India you’ll be dealing with?” she continued, quite aware of his gaze and yet uncertain what to do with it.
“I am not sure just yet. The north, I think.…”
“Oh.” Her enthusiasm brought color to her cheeks, and he thought he had never in his life seen anyone lovelier. “Then, if I were you, I should be sure to visit the Taj Mahal in Agra.” She almost sighed at the thought. “It’s said to be the most beautiful monument to love ever built. A Mughal emperor was so struck down with grief on the death of his favorite wife that he ordered its construction. I’m afraid he had several wives, which of course we disapprove of terribly.” She laughed and he laughed with her. “But she was his favorite. The marble is supposed to change color—from a blush pink in the morning, to a milky white in the evening, to gold when lit by the moon. The legend is that the shade reflects the mood of any woman who sees it.”
Charles Pope was transfixed. The way she moved, the way she spoke, her wit, the alluring way she did not seem to be aware of her own beauty. “What about the men who see it?” he said. “What does it tell us about them?”
“That when they lose the right woman, they find her harder to replace than they expected.”
They were still laughing when they heard a voice. “Maria?”
The girl turned around. “Mama.”
Lady Templemore stood, silhouetted, in the doorway. “They’re calling us to supper,” she said, looking Charles up and down. It was obvious he did not meet with her approval. “It is time we went and found John. I’ve hardly spoken to him all evening.”
And a moment later they were gone. Charles stood gazing at the spot where Maria had been standing, his reverie broken only when Lady Brockenhurst found him on the balcony and insisted he accompany her to the supper, which was just being served.
The guests crowded into the dining room, where a collection of small round tables were now dressed with linen cloths, silver candelabra, and exquisitely decorated plates and cut-glass decanters. Charles had never seen anything so lavish. He knew that things were done well in Society, and he’d heard that Lady Brockenhurst was known for her entertaining, but he had never expected anything quite on this scale.
“Mr. Pope,” she said, indicating the seat right next to her. “You will come and sit by me.” There were only four other places at the table. He looked frantically around the room. Surely the hostess would want someone else to sit in the place of honor? He felt himself flush. She patted the seat with her closed fan and smiled up at him. There was little else he could do but accept. Footmen were circulating the room as guests arrived and left, and soon Charles was dipping his spoon into a plate of iced soup. This was followed by cold salmon mousse, then quail, a little venison, pineapple, ices, and finally candied fruits: These were all served in the new fashion, à la russe, with the footmen bringing each course and standing to the left of the guests to allow them to help themselves. And all the while Lady Brockenhurst was delightful, including Charles in as many of her conversations as she could, even interrupting her passing husband at one point so he could hear about Charles’s plans.
“What on earth is my sister-in-law up to?” complained Stephen Bellasis to his son, who was seated on the other side of Anne Trenchard. She was consequently drawn into the conversation without the slightest desire to be so. “Why is she making such a fuss of that dull man?”
John shook his head. “I can’t understand it.”
“There are at least three dukes in the room, but when they look across at the seat to the right hand of our dear hostess, they see it occupied by… by whom, exactly? Who is he?” Stephen was finding time to wrestle with a rather bloody quail as he spoke.
John turned to his neighbor. “I think Mrs. Trenchard will know the answer. Doesn’t he work for your husband, Mrs. Trenchard?” Anne was quite surprised, as Mr. Bellasis had not given the slightest clue before this that he knew who she was.
She shook her head. “No, he doesn’t work for him. He works for himself. They know each other. They may have some common interest. But that’s all.”
“So you can’t explain Lady Brockenhurst’s fascination?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Anne looked over to the table. Caroline Brockenhurst was playing a dangerous game. Even John Bellasis had noticed the attention she was paying her grandson, and Anne was worried. Did Lord Brockenhurst know? If not, how long would it be before he did, if his wife was prepared to be this indiscreet? How long would it take for the secret to get out? How long before Sophia’s reputation lay in tatters and all they had worked for was in ruins at their feet? She caught her husband’s eye. He was sitting opposite her, flanked by Oliver and the tiresome Grace. He caught her eye, nodding at the perilous situation evolving in front of them.
“I believe your aunt is interested in one of Mr. Pope’s enterprises,” Anne suggested eventually, abandoning her own quail and wishing she had held on to the salmon mousse. At least it was soft enough to swallow. As it was, she could barely eat a thing.
“I have business with the local butcher,” said John indignantly. “But I don’t invite him to the supper table.”
“I don’t think Mr. Pope is quite the local butcher,” replied Anne as diplomatically as she could.
“Don’t you?” said John, as he stared across the room at Susan and smiled. She had been so angry to miss the last chair at that table and was trying to be content with a group of politicians who were ignoring her. But now, after John’s smile, she felt ready to burst into song.
It was almost time to leave before Anne managed a private word with their hostess. Even then she had to catch her on the landing of the main stair and pull her into the columned recess of a window. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
“I am getting to know the grandson you concealed from me for a quarter of a century.”
“But why so publicly? Can’t you see that half the room is asking who this strange young man could possibly be?”
The Countess smiled coolly. “Of course. That must worry you.’
And then Anne saw the trap she had walked into. Lady Brockenhurst had promised that Charles’s identity would remain a secret, and she was honor bound to keep her word, but she hadn’t the slightest aversion to others guessing the truth. Her son had enjoyed an affair in Brussels before he died. What did that say about him that Society was not bound to forgive? Nothing. He’d had a fling before he was married. There could be few men in these crowded drawing rooms who had not done the same. The illegitimate offspring of a gentleman might not be quite as easily absorbed into Society as they had been a century before, but there was still no
thing new to it. And if someone did venture an opinion, Mrs. Trenchard would surely not expect Lady Brockenhurst to lie? She might not volunteer the information, but she could hardly be expected to deny it. “You want them to guess,” said Anne, as the scales fell from her eyes. “You want them to guess, and you wanted us to witness it.”
Caroline Brockenhurst looked at her. She no longer disliked this woman as much as she had at first. Anne had led her to Charles, and for that she ought to be grateful, or at least forgiving. She glanced into the hall. “I think the Cathcarts are leaving,” she said. “Will you forgive me if I go down to say good-bye?” And she glided away, descending the stairs so smoothly she could have been skimming over the surface of the steps.
The ride back to Eaton Square felt like an eternity. All of the passengers in the carriage were so full of the evening’s events that no one said a word. The coachman, Albert Quirk, was a man more usually interested in the changing elements and the strength of the cognac he kept in his flask than the vagaries of the family he served, but this evening he could not help but notice the mood. “If that’s what they’re like when they’ve been out at a party,” he said much later to Mrs. Frant as he sat drinking a large mug of tea at the servants’ hall table, “they’d be better off staying at home. Don’t you agree, Miss Ellis?” But the maid said nothing as she continued to sew on a missing button.
“You’ll get nothing out of Miss Ellis,” snorted Mrs. Frant sourly.
“Which is just as it should be in a lady’s maid,” said Mr. Quirk. He rather approved of Miss Ellis.
James had decided that attack was the best form of defense. Caught out in his secret dealings with Charles, he decided to blame the whole fiasco on his wife. If she’d kept their secret, none of it would have happened. Which was of course true, except that it conveniently absolved him of leading a double life, knowing his grandson, enjoying his company, and leaving his wife in the dark.
Anne could hardly look at him. It felt to her as if the husband she had known and loved had been spirited away by wicked fairies and a hostile being put in his place.
Oliver was just as angry with his own wife, but for more traditional reasons. She had ignored him all evening, flirting continually with John Bellasis, who had barely deigned to notice Oliver. He was furious with his father, too. Who was this Pope fellow, anyway? And why did his father’s face light up when he entered the room?
As for Susan, she was torn between depression at the dreariness of the family she had married into and wonder at the world she’d dreamed about for so long and had at last been allowed to see. Those drawing rooms and staircases, those gilded galleries and eating chambers, all vast and magnificent and packed with a glittering assembly whose names read like a journey through English history… and then there was John Bellasis. She glanced across at Oliver. She could see he was spoiling for a fight, but she didn’t care. She studied his doughy, petulant face and thought with longing of that other face, that very different face, she had been looking into until only a few minutes before. She knew her husband was angry, but that was because he was not used to the ways of the ton. No one else there would grudge a respectable married woman the odd flirtation, an amusing evening in the company of a witty, handsome stranger. She paused as she thought about the word. Would he always be a stranger? Was that all she was destined to know of Mr. John Bellasis? The coach drew to a halt. They had arrived.
“Thank you, William. I can manage from here. You may go.” Oliver loved to talk to the servants as if he were in some play at the Haymarket Theatre. But Billy was used to it, and he quite enjoyed valeting. Even for Mr. Oliver. It made a change from cleaning the silver and waiting at table, and he was sure he could get a job as a proper valet when he was ready to leave. That would be a step in the right direction, and no mistake.
“Very good, sir. Would you like to be woken in the morning?”
“Come at nine. I’ll be late for work, but I think I can be forgiven that after the night I’ve just been through.”
Naturally, Billy would have loved some more detail, but Mr. Oliver was already in his dressing gown so he’d missed his chance. He might try to raise the subject the next day. With a slight bow of the head he retreated, closing the door softly behind him. Oliver waited for a few moments, indulging his irritation at everything: Susan, Charles Pope, his stupid valet who wasn’t a real valet anyway, just a footman. Then, when he’d decided that Billy must have left the gallery, he slipped out of his dressing room and pushed into Susan’s bedroom without knocking.
“Oh!” said Susan. He had succeeded in startling her. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”
“What a terrible evening.” He spat out the words as if he’d released a bung from a barrel, which, in a way, he had.
“I thought it was fun. You can hardly complain about the people who were there. There must have been half the Cabinet in the room, and I’m sure I saw the Marchioness of Abercorn talking to one of the Foreign Office ministers. At least I think it was her, only she was so much more beautiful than the portrait they engraved in—”
“The evening was damnable! And you made it more so!”
Susan took a deep breath. It was going to be one of those nights. She was acutely aware of her maid, Speer, hovering, frozen, by the door. She was keeping still so they would forget she was there. Susan knew that well enough. “You may go, Speer,” she said, keeping her voice even and light. “I shall ring for you in a little while.” The disappointed maid withdrew. Susan turned to Oliver. “Now, what is this about?”
“You’d know if you hadn’t spent the entire evening staring into the eyes of that scented degenerate.”
“Did Mr. Bellasis wear scent? I hadn’t noticed.” But his comment interested her as it was clear from her husband’s phrasing that John was not the main cause of his anger.
“Behave like a slut and you’ll be treated as one. You don’t have carte blanche, you know. Just because you’re barren, it doesn’t give you an open ticket.”
Susan was silent for a moment, gathering her thoughts. This was becoming rather more unpleasant than she had bargained for. She looked at Oliver calmly. “You should go to bed. You’re tired.”
He regretted what he’d said. She knew him well enough to see that. But, being Oliver, he couldn’t apologize. Not possibly. Instead, he changed his tone. “Who is this man Pope? Where has he come from? And why is Father investing in his business? When did he ever invest in my business?”
“You don’t have a business.”
“Then when did he ever invest in me? And why was Lady Brockenhurst guiding him around the room the whole time like a show pony? How did he manage that? When she barely spoke a civil word to either of us all evening.” There was a catch in his voice, and for a moment Susan wondered whether he was actually crying.
Oliver began to pace the room again. Susan watched, thinking over her own experience of Brockenhurst House. She really had enjoyed herself. John had been very entertaining. He’d made her feel attractive, more attractive than she’d felt for years, and she’d enjoyed the sensation. “I liked the Reverend Mr.—” She looked at her husband quizzically. Her mind had gone blank. “Bellasis. Of course. Mr. Bellasis’s father. They seemed a nice family.” She was trying to bring her long and very public conversation with John back to more neutral territory. Hopefully, Oliver was sufficiently taken up with his rage against Mr. Pope to accept her unspoken explanation for her behavior.
“You know who he is? I mean, apart from that man’s father.”
“Do I?” She wasn’t sure where this was taking them.
“The Reverend Mr. Bellasis?”
Oliver looked at his wife. Did she really not know who the man was? He had not been completely idle with his time since his father’s rise, and he understood the truth behind the legend of most of the senior aristocratic families, but he thought he had taken Susan along with him. Surely she had some clue? “He is Lord Brockenhurst’s younger brother. He is his heir, or more probably
his son, John, will inherit, since Lord Brockenhurst looks considerably healthier than his younger sibling.”
“John Bellasis will be the next…?” Susan was slipping away, down some sugar-covered slope in her dreams, lost in her own fantasy.
“The next Earl of Brockenhurst. Yes.” Oliver nodded. “The present Earl’s only son died at Waterloo. There is no one else.”
It was creeping toward three o’clock when Lady Brockenhurst finally sat down at her glass, taking off her diamond earrings, while her maid, Dawson, removed the pins from her hair.
“It sounded as if everyone was having a wonderful time, your ladyship.” Dawson removed the last pins carefully and lifted off the heavy tiara. Caroline shook her head. She enjoyed wearing her jewels; she had a taste for magnificence, but it was a relief when they came off and she was free. She scratched her scalp and smiled.
“I think it did go well,” she declared brightly.
There was a light tap at the door. Lord Brockenhurst’s head appeared. “May I come in?”
His wife answered. “Please.”
He entered the room, slipping into a nearby armchair. “What a relief when they’ve gone.”
“We were saying how well it went.”
“I suppose. But there are only so many times in an evening one can inquire after somebody else’s health, or delight in the news of the Queen’s pregnancy, or ask how they’re going to spend the summer. Who was that fellow in the cotton trade? And what was he doing there?”
Caroline scrutinized her husband’s face in the glass. Had he guessed? Could he not see how alike Charles was to her beautiful Edmund? Those eyes. Those long fingers. The way he laughed. The boy was pure Bellasis. Wasn’t it obvious? “You mean Mr. Pope?”
“Pope? Was that the name?” Peregrine smoothed down his mustache and winced a little. His shoes were pinching. “Yes,” he mused, gazing at one of his wife’s watercolors of Lymington Park. “I thought him a nice chap, and more interesting than the women you stuck me with at supper, but I still don’t understand why he was standing in our drawing room.”
Julian Fellowes's Belgravia Page 12