“I think we saw each other at the soirée here a while ago,” said Anne pleasantly.
“Did we? It may be so.” Lady Templemore was trying to work out how to leave and take her daughter with her before any more trips to Bishopsgate were arranged.
“Hello, Mrs. Trenchard,” said Maria, for the first time employing a friendly voice.
“Hello to you, my dear. I hope everything is well.” Anne took the girl’s hand in hers.
Lady Templemore found herself bridling at their familiarity. How could Maria know these people, do these things, without her knowledge? Was this woman here to arrange another visit to Bishopsgate, too? She felt as if she had let slip the traces of her daughter’s life. “We are celebrating the announcement of Lady Maria’s engagement.”
“Oh?” Anne was as surprised as she was sorry. She really had not believed this would ever happen.
“It was in the papers this morning,” said Corinne.
“I must have missed it. I shall look when I get home.” But Anne glanced at Maria, and nothing in the young woman’s face indicated that anything out of the ordinary had happened. She simply stared ahead, took a cup of tea from Lady Brockenhurst, and drank it.
“I’m going to leave you,” said Anne. “I’ll come back another time.”
“No, don’t.” Lady Templemore was standing. “We’re going now. We have a great deal to talk about. Maria?”
But the girl did not move. Instead she said calmly, “You go, Mama. I want the chance to catch up with Lady Brockenhurst’s news. She will be my aunt, you know.”
Caroline nodded. “That’s right, my dear. And you will be my niece. You go, Corinne, and we’ll send Maria back in the carriage later on. She will be quite safe with us.”
“I can stay,” said Lady Templemore.
“I wouldn’t hear of it. You have much more important things to do. William, please escort Lady Templemore down to her carriage.” She spoke like a tsar issuing a ukase, and it was clear she would brook no further argument. For a moment it looked as if Lady Templemore might put up a fight even so, but in the end she thought better of it and left. The footman had accompanied her and the other women were alone.
“I’m not going to marry him, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Maria spoke as if she were defending her position, but of course she was among friends.
“Am I allowed to say I’m glad?” Anne sat down again.
“And me,” added Caroline. “Although I dread the conversation with my brother and sister-in-law. John would have offered you a great position, but position isn’t everything, and if I say that, it must be true.” They laughed, Maria with relief as much as anything else.
Then she spoke. “How is he?” she asked, her cheeks flushing.
None of them needed to inquire as to whom they were discussing. “Very well, I think,” said Caroline. “At least, I haven’t seen him since I saw him with you. Mrs. Trenchard?”
“I haven’t seen him either.” She hesitated. Should she discuss her grandson in front of Maria, even if the girl was in love with him? That much was clearer than ever after the exchange she had just witnessed.
“Go on,” said Caroline. “It is vulgar to be mysterious.”
“No, it wouldn’t interest Lady Maria.”
The young woman protested at once. “Anything to do with Mr. Pope interests me a great deal.”
But before she could go further, the footman returned. “What is it, William?”
“The Countess of Templemore is outside in her carriage, m’lady. She is waiting for Lady Maria.”
“Thank you, William,” said Caroline. “Lady Maria will be down in a moment.” The man knew he’d been dismissed and he left. The three women looked at one another. “You’d better go, my dear. There’s no point in antagonizing her any more than we need to.”
“If you see him, give him my love.” Maria had clearly accepted that her mother would win this round. “And tell him not to believe what he reads in the papers.” In another moment, she had gone.
“Now, tell me,” said Caroline, settling back in her chair.
“Very well.” Anne nodded. “My son recently paid a visit to Manchester. I think he went for the sole purpose of finding something to Charles’s discredit. While he was there he met some men who’d been involved with Charles in business. They accused him of obtaining the mill in an underhand way, and of cheating Customs and Excise.”
“I don’t believe it,” said the Countess.
“Nor do I, and nor does Mr. Trenchard. But what disturbs my husband is that he believes Oliver’s motive for traveling north and delving into Charles’s history is because he is jealous of the attention James has paid our grandchild. Now Charles does not want to come between father and son.”
Caroline thought for a moment. “In other words, the deceit is getting out of hand and threatening the unity of your family. I think,” she said slowly, as if still ruminating over an idea, “I think I should like to acknowledge Charles.”
“What do you mean?” Anne’s heart was in her mouth.
“Let me speak. I know there is nothing to this nonsense, but your son is obviously determined to show Charles in the worst possible light. For some reason he has taken against him, and that will only get worse. Now Maria Grey will be harassed by her mama in an effort to force her up the aisle with my worthless nephew. All of this can be resolved if you will only allow us to give him a name and a position and publicly include him in our family. You know Henry Stephenson? The bastard son of a duke, but he married the daughter of an earl and they are to be seen everywhere. We already know that Maria will kick and scratch until she’s allowed to be with Charles. Lady Templemore will not be pleased, of course, but she will fight less furiously once she knows we are behind the match and her daughter will always be welcome in this house. My dear, please think. A good life is waiting for Charles if you will allow me to give it to him. Let this business be the crisis that takes us to a resolution.”
It was quite a speech, and every fiber of Anne’s being was crying out against it, but as she listened, she was forced to acknowledge that there was logic in the Countess’s words. James would not agree, but what could her argument be here and now? “Do you intend to make some kind of announcement?”
Lady Brockenhurst almost laughed. “Certainly not. I shall simply let the news slip out. I shall privately acknowledge that Charles is Edmund’s son, and that will be that.” Caroline smiled, delighted with her decision. “Of course, we have a little time. I shall have to inform Lord Brockenhurst, and there is the question of how we break the news to Charles.…” She tapped her fingers together and walked toward the open door of the balcony.
“What about Sophia?” asked Anne.
“Yes.” The Countess nodded. “We have to think what we do about Sophia.”
“When you tell him Edmund was his father, he’s bound to ask questions about his mother.”
“Might it be better not to tell him anything? Wouldn’t you prefer to keep her name away from public knowledge?”
Anne looked at her. “You mean, to wipe her out of the story altogether?”
“I am only thinking of her son. He can have a good, rich life, with an excellent marriage and the best Society. Of course, you’ll say these things would not have mattered to her—”
“No.” Some impulse was forcing Anne to be honest. “No, they were important to her. She would have appreciated what you want to do for Charles.”
Lady Brockenhurst smiled, but more gently than usual. “That is kind of you. And I am touched. Are we agreed, then?”
“I must talk to James,” said Anne. But she already knew that nothing either of them might say would make a difference.
Quirk took her back to Eaton Square. He told the others downstairs later how silent she was, how thoughtful, as they made the short journey. She spent the entire time sitting in silence, staring ahead of her, lost in thought.
When they arrived at the house, Anne went straight to
James’s library and found him reading at his desk. “She’s going to tell him,” she said, almost wringing her hands in misery. “Lady Brockenhurst is going to acknowledge Charles as her grandson. She says they can survive his being illegitimate. Society will still accept him if they see that he is part of the Brockenhurst family. She’s already chosen his bride.”
“Charles would never put up with that.”
“No.” She held up her hand, forced to be honest again. “He loves her. So do I, if it comes to that. She’s charming. But she will take him further out of our reach.”
He stared into the fire. “And Sophia? What part does she play in this happy story?”
“Lady Brockenhurst thinks she should play no part. He will be Edmund Bellasis’s son and his mother will be a mystery love, vanished into the mists of time. In that way, Sophia’s reputation will be safe and we will pay no price.”
James stared at his wife. “Then he is lost.”
She couldn’t understand him. “What do you mean, he is lost? Charles? It’s Sophia who will be lost.”
“No.” James shook his head. How could his wife, his normally very clever wife, not see the truth? “He is lost to us.”
“In what way?”
“If he is acknowledged as a Bellasis, then, for the sake of our daughter, and indeed for all concerned, we must fade into the background and no longer try to include him in our lives.”
“No.” Anne found that tears were coursing down her cheeks.
James continued. Anne might as well be clear about it. “It’s true. If the Countess keeps her word and does not name her, then we owe it to Sophia to protect her memory. The more we see of him, the more we risk someone making the connection. If we love our daughter, we must give up our grandson.”
The wave of grief was overwhelming. To Anne it felt as if her beautiful, determined child were dying all over again.
James took her hand in his, trying to give her strength to bear the blow. “We have lost Charles to the Brockenhurst family for good. Let us wish him well and go on our way.”
John Bellasis was furious. He hated being backed into a corner, but most of all he hated the fact that a servant, a butler, had got the better of him. John considered himself to be a man of the world; he was smart, knowledgeable, sophisticated, and yet he had not seen the man’s treachery coming. He shivered with annoyance as he sat in the back of his carriage on the way to the Reverend Mr. Pope’s village of Buckland in Surrey. In the end, he’d paid the extra twenty pounds to the odious Turton to see the first page of the letter and, crucially, learn the address. It had occurred to him that he could probably have found out which parish Pope presided over, but how long would it have taken? He blamed himself. He should have started the process sooner. Because if he were really going to make this situation pay, for him and his father, he needed to confront the Reverend Mr. Pope and harvest all the facts before he tackled his aunt.
As he drove through the village, past the duck pond and a flock of scratching hens and screeching geese, John was reminded why he lived at Albany. Some would call the village a rural idyll—there was the blacksmith hard at work and, on the other side of the green, a wheelwright bent double, forcing spokes into a hub—but John cared nothing for such bucolic charms. The country bored him and fresh air made him cough.
Next to a sturdy Saxon church, with a large and well-populated graveyard, John found the rectory. It was pretty enough with its rose-filled garden and mellow stone façade although, he noted thankfully, smaller and less grand than his father’s house in Lymington. He should have been reluctant to admit that Charles’s upbringing had been on a par with his own. He instructed his coachman to wait before he marched up the garden path.
“Sir?” An elderly housekeeper answered the door. Bent over, with her gray hair scraped back under a cap and a long beak of a nose, the woman had the appearance of a vulture John had once seen when a friend took him on a private visit to the new scientific zoo in Regent’s Park. Having explained his business and given his name as Mr. Sanderson, John was escorted to a modest parlor. It was warm and comfortable, with a fire in the grate, and over the chimneypiece was a pastel he recognized at once as a portrait of a younger Charles Pope, perhaps by the same artist who had fashioned that picture of the Reverend Mr. Pope in Charles’s office. It was rather a romantic image, with the sitter posed in an open shirt and his hair arranged in becoming, tangled curls, but there was a hint of strength in the blue eyes. John felt slightly uncomfortable looking at it, considering his motives for being there.
“Good afternoon, sir,” came a female voice.
John turned. A middle-aged woman, perhaps in her early fifties, stood in the doorway in a simple, undecorated black dress. She was plump, with kind eyes, her hair neatly arranged with a small widow’s cap pinned on her head and tidy ringlets framing her face. “Good afternoon to you, madam,” he said.
She waved him to a chair by the fire, sitting herself. “How may I help you?”
“I was rather hoping to speak to your husband.”
“Then I’m afraid you have had a wasted journey. The Reverend Mr. Pope is no longer with us. He has been dead a year this coming Tuesday. In fact, you were lucky to find me here. I must be out soon to make way for the next incumbent.”
“That’s very hard.” John was all concern.
“Oh, no. He gave me twelve months to go and that was generous. You have no need to worry about me. My son is carrying me up to London to live there with him, so I shall have a whole new adventure, which is a privilege at my time of life.” She blushed with pleasure at the thought of it.
John was annoyed with himself. Why hadn’t he found all this out? There was movement at the door, and the old woman who had admitted him staggered into the room with a tray of tea things and laid it on a table in the corner. Mrs. Pope stood and started to pour as soon as they were alone again. “Was it something I could help with?”
“Well, in a way it is of your son that I wish to speak.”
She smiled. “Do you know my son, Mr. Sanderson?”
“We’ve met.” John couldn’t decide how much to lie right at the outset. “I’ve been to his offices in the City.”
“And there you have the advantage of me.” But her gentle eyes were bursting with pride.
“He’s doing so well,” said John. Clearly, he would get a lot more out of her as Charles’s friend than as his enemy.
She almost laughed with pleasure. “I know. And in the cotton trade, too. It’s so far from anything his father had expected at the start but, thank the Lord, he lived long enough to take pride in Charles’s achievements.”
“You say he had expected something different at the start?”
“We both did. In those days the best idea for his future seemed to be the cloth, but as he grew older it was clear that his true talents lay elsewhere.” She ran on happily, remembering those dear days of long ago.
John sipped his tea. “Why did you say ‘at the start’?”
This was disconcerting, but she did not yet guess anything was amiss. “Well, I mean, when he first—when we first—that is, when he was a baby and we began to plan his education. He was such a good pupil.” She obviously felt she had regained the shore, and she reached for a biscuit as a reward.
John decided to take the plunge. “Do you have any children of your own, Mrs. Pope, or is Charles your sole charge?” She stared at him. He raised his hand in a deprecatory manner. “I should have explained myself. I am a friend of James Trenchard. That is really how I know Charles.”
She relaxed, her momentary concern smoothed away. “Oh, I see.”
“It’s a wonderful thing that Trenchard should have taken such a responsibility for the boy from the very beginning. He’s been so generous.”
“Oh, very generous. Always.”
“Was he the only person to watch over young Charles once he had been taken in by you and your husband? I suppose what I mean is, was anyone else involved? Did you receive any
other income for the child?”
But now, at last, Mrs. Pope seemed to sense that all was not quite as it seemed. Her brow clouded and she put down her cup. “What exactly is it that you want from me, sir?”
“Nothing, really.” In a way John had what he wanted already, so he wasn’t too worried that the situation might be dissolving. “I have heard so much of you from James that I was curious to meet you when I was passing this way.”
But she had been running over their conversation in her head, and she heard it differently from before. “If that is so, why did you not know that my husband was dead?” She stood. “I do not believe you, sir. I do not believe you know Charles, or, if you do, I do not believe you wish him well. And now that I think of it, I do not believe that Mr. Trenchard has ever spoken of us to you or of you to us. I shall however certainly report to him that you have called on me.”
Since John had given a false name, this did not concern him. “I am sorry to have upset you, Mrs. Pope, but if you’ll just—”
“Will you please go, sir?” She strode across the room to seize the bellpull and, giving it a stern yank, she waited in silence until the old woman appeared. “Janet, Mr. Sanderson is leaving.”
John stood. “I am sorry to have offended you, madam. Thank you for my tea.” But she did not say another word, only waiting until he had left the room. Then she sat down at her desk and began to scribble furiously on a sheet of writing paper.
Susan Trenchard had come to Isleworth to have it out with John, or at least to confide her fears to him. But he hadn’t listened. He was too preoccupied, even as she gave herself to him in the lovers’ nest she had come to know so well. Now he’d told her why.
“Are you serious?” Susan rolled over to see his face. She hadn’t been feeling all that well when she arrived, but the news he’d just told her drove any such considerations from her mind. She was astonished.
“Quite serious. He’s a man, isn’t he?” John looked at the clock. He really should be getting dressed. There was a dinner to get back for, but he was loath to leave. This woman really was becoming something of a habit. He ran his hand over her warm, soft skin, and it was a habit he was finding increasingly difficult to break.
Julian Fellowes's Belgravia Page 27