Iris would not be deflected. ‘The bride’s family is supposed to arrange the wedding. How can I feel free to invite all the people I’d like to invite when this isn’t my own home?’
‘But it will be my home. I want to be married here. It pleases David and the Countess that I want to be married here. And in any case, there’ll only be a dozen or so people here ‒ apart from the estate workers, who’ll all be invited. Oh, it’ll be a delicious wedding. You’ll have every newspaper and magazine in London angling to be asked, not just putting it on the list like all the other old weddings …’
‘If you insist on marrying in such haste, you must know what people will say. What they’re already saying. That you have to get married. And a wedding down here in the country … as if you’ve something to hide.’
‘You mean they’ll say I’m pregnant? I wish I were. But David’s rather too much the gentleman for that. Besides, when we’re going to be married so soon, one almost feels one should wait. That’s why the wedding will be so special, too. We might even spend our honeymoon here at Lynmara. After all, we have to get up to Oxford so soon after …’
Iris looked at her, her face twisted with fury and frustration. ‘You are the most ungrateful, selfish ‒’
‘I know, Aunt Iris. But since I can’t possibly please everybody, I’ll have to try to please myself. What would make you happy, wouldn’t suit me at all. Now, I’ve kept my promise, haven’t I? I did the season in all the proper style. I showed myself everywhere I was invited ‒ even to Carrickcraig, which was a mistake. Now, honestly, Aunt Iris, if there’d been no Harry Blanchard, if I’d simply said at the end of the season that I was going to marry David, you’d have been quite pleased, wouldn’t you?’
‘There is nothing wrong with marrying David Ashleigh,’ Iris said tightly. ‘It’s the way you’re doing it.’
‘And he’s only going to be an earl, not a duke.’ Nicole added softly. But even she could hear the malice in her tone. What she did not, could not say, was that fulfilling that promise to Iris had cost her Lloyd Fenton. And then she quickly dismissed that thought because there was not, had never been, any guarantee that Lloyd Fenton would have married her, if there had been no visit to Scotland, no Harry Blanchard. And because of that, there was David and Lynmara … always Lynmara.
‘Are you perfectly certain, Nicole?’ Charles asked her. ‘Perfectly certain? I mean … it seems a good marriage, and David is such a … well, I suppose most girls would love to marry him. But it’s such a short time. Can you be sure?’
Nicole and Charles walked on the terrace of the North Front of Lynmara, a side that had been much altered and extended during the first half of the eighteenth century, the great age of English country houses. Nicole liked it less than the other parts of the house, which seemed truer, more personal, warmer in style. But there it was, grandiose, as that period had been, with a terrace and formal walled gardens which took the upper level of the gentle slope on which the house was built. The afternoon sun was warm, and the perfume of the roses came to them, along with the dry smell of threshed barley from the fields beyond the great park.
‘What’s certain, Uncle Charles?’ She slipped her hand through his arm as they walked. ‘You can know a person all your life and end in a mess. Would it help at all if I waited, as Aunt Iris wants me to, until next summer, and had a very grand wedding, with half London there? David and I would see each other a few times in between. Sometimes, when the magic is going, one should just go along with it. It’s like … it’s like when the mackerel are running. You’re either there for the catch, or you’re not. It doesn’t come again.’
He looked down at her, frowning. ‘I wish you didn’t sound so old, Nicole. But then, I thought that the first time I spoke with you.’ He sighed. ‘Well, you seem to know what you’re doing, which is more than one can say for most young people who get married. And having turned down the heir to the richest dukedom in the kingdom, no one could ever say you did it for the title or the money …’
‘Or the house?’ Nicole added. ‘Wouldn’t some girls do it for the house, Uncle Charles? It’s a marvellous house. The park, the woods, the river, the downs. You feel as if you’ve got the whole thing gathered here ‒ the whole of England. A precious bit of England put together in one place, by one family …’
He said dryly, ‘I didn’t know England meant so much to you.’
‘I didn’t either. Until now.’
And how or why she did it, she never knew ‒ how she remembered the words so well, why she felt the need to say them ‒ but she heard herself repeating the words spoken by Richard that last afternoon in the orchard at Fenton Field, the world of a long time ago, when she had believed herself innocent and happy.
‘… Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.’
Most of all at Lynmara she loved the Long Room. Here the quiet was something she almost could touch, and she fancied that if she stood still enough, she might hear the rustle of the silk gowns of the generations of Ashleigh women who had taken their exercise walking here during bad weather. She listened to the sound of the stiff silk of her own gown moving as she walked the Long Room alone that same evening before dinner. She had dressed early so that she could come here, to pace gently this length of shining floor and dark oak panelling, where the portraits of the Ashleighs looked down on her. At the end she paused at the west window where the sun still gave warmth, her eye traced the path lined with beeches which wound to the dark grove where the tower of the chapel raised its blunt height. She smiled to herself, and turned again.
He was approaching her in the same unhurried way as he had that first morning when she had sat drinking sherry with the Countess ‒ Lord Manstone, the man her mother had called ‘Johnny’.
‘All alone?’ he said. She was aware that until this moment, since the first evening, he had avoided being alone with her, even avoided her gaze, when he could. But she was also aware that he had watched her, had weighed her in cold judgement, her words, everything she did. He could not be charmed, so she had offered him none. She had not smiled at him, or attempted to appease him. He would never be a friend. Something in her hoped that he would turn out to be a worthy enemy.
‘Alone?’ she countered. ‘No … I don’t think so. There are the ancestors, Lord Manstone.’
‘Yes, the ancestors. Shall we look at them?’ They began to pace back down the length of the gallery, the girl in a dress of ice-blue silk, the man in a red velvet jacket.
‘Gainsborough,’ he said, and then added, in a low tone, ‘You’re still determined to marry David?’
‘Kneller,’ she nodded towards the next one, the portrait of a plump-necked lady in green. ‘David is determined to marry me. Did you take my mother on this tour, Lord Manstone? Wasn’t it a bit too much for her?’
‘Suppose we leave Anna out of this.’
‘How can we? She’ll always be here ‒ in my mind she’ll be here.’ They paced back and forth, back and forth. The pictures came and went by rote … Reynolds, Raeburn, a Stubbs. She talked softly; in a very soft tone she told him about Brooklyn, softly she told him about Lucky Nolan, about her grandfather’s will. ‘Does it sound sordid? On the surface it does, and yet you look beneath, and you see that Anna did everything she did because she never wanted me to feel afraid or uneasy in a place like this. For me she built a great façade of lies. You caused that ‒ you and your mother.’
‘Then why must you compound the wrong by marrying David? Aren’t you building another façade of lies? To start a marriage that way … it won’t work.’
‘I will see that it works.’ She stopped short. ‘You don’t understand, do you? I told you I lost the man I wanted to marry. So that kind of love is gone ‒ for me, it’s gone for ever. What am I to do with my life? It seems that to devote it
to David, to David’s children, is as good a thing as any. God ‒ I might even bring some life into this house! Think of it …’
‘I am thinking of it. I grow cold with horror at what you are attempting to do. To marry a man knowing you don’t love him … And he is hopelessly in love with you. What can the end of it be …?’
She sighed. ‘Please, let’s stop it. David wants to marry me. Wants to. Your mother has accepted me. I say accepted. I don’t know if she likes what she sees, but she has accepted the situation. Does she suspect, do you think? Do I look very much like Anna? But she is certain of one thing. David is in love with me. Is she thinking, do you suppose, that she interfered with your life, and she has doubts about interfering with her grandson’s? Perhaps she even thinks it might have been better if she hadn’t interfered? Was your marriage successful, Lord Manstone? ‒ or was it just socially suitable? Does your mother have doubts this time, do you think? Is she afraid of what she might do … or has age mellowed her?’
She was shaken into silence. She found surprisingly hard hands on her shoulders. ‘My marriage is not for discussion. Not now, or ever. You have no right. You may be taking over everything else, but there are a few things you may not have. Take anything you want, but leave my affairs alone. Take David, if you must. But by God, you’d better make a success of it. You’d better make him the sort of wife he has the right to expect. I’ll be watching you ‒ oh yes, I’ll be watching you, you bloody little bitch. Of all the rotten luck ‒ that David should find you!’
‘Luck? …’ She pulled free of his hands. ‘No … luck, good or bad, had nothing to do with this. I told you it all has the feeling, for me at any rate, that it was inevitable. Something that was meant to be. I believe it more strongly. I have the feeling that I was meant to be here.’
‘Rubbish!’ he said. ‘You’re too young to be a fatalist.’
‘Too young? I feel as if I’ve never been young. There’s never been time, in my life, to be young. Perhaps now, here … at Lynmara …’
She stopped. His face showed ‒ what? Hatred ‒ no, not that. His fear for David didn’t leave room for that. Fear and pain mingled there, the aloofness suddenly wiped out. For the first time she thought of him as human, someone who could be hurt. She saw him even as someone who could love, and be loved. She began, for the first time, to understand that passion of more than twenty years ago, the time that Anna had called him ‘Johnny’ and had loved him.
David stood and watched him as they stood beneath the Kneller portrait of the lady in green. He saw them turned to each other in deep conversation. He admired what he saw, the girl in her ice-blue dress, the hair sensuously dark against that white skin, his father standing tall above her, the red jacket complementing his fair good looks. He was happy at what he saw, these two people he loved drawing close together.
He could not, however, hear what they said to each other. Nor could he see the intensity of the grip with which his father took Nicole’s arm as they became aware of his presence.
‘There you are. I’ve been looking for you .. .’
Since Nicole’s back was to the light in the west window he could not see the way she suppressed the cry of pain as Manstone’s fingers tightened further on her arm. He did not hear the words his father murmured. ‘You’d better do well by him. You’d just better. If you don’t, I’ll find some way ‒ some way to be rid of you.’
2
The engagement was announced in The Times and the Press began telephoning Lynmara and asking for interviews and photographing sessions. Iris was uneasily suspicious of Nicole’s ready acceptance of all this, her efforts to please those who came, to co-operate. She and David were photographed for the Tatler and Country Life, photographed in the Great Saloon of Lynmara, photographed with the dogs of Lynmara, the golden and black labradors, on the terrace. There were photographs of them at the foot of the great staircase and in the Long Room. The papers which had made the most of the expected engagement to Lord Blanchard in their gossip columns, were happy to speculate in ambiguous terms on the new twist of events. Iris’s lips twisted sourly at the picture of Nicole, smiling with deceptive sweetness at the camera, holding David’s arm on the steps of the tiny Norman chapel in the yew grove. ‘Romance of the year. Couple to wed in family chapel …’
‘I’ve never known her to welcome this sort of attention before,’ she said to Charles. ‘Now she’s positively inviting it. And to think it could have been Lord Blanchard.’
‘Iris, it could never have been Harry Blanchard, and be glad of it. And as for the publicity … well, I wouldn’t complain. Maybe it just means the girl is happy, and wants everyone to know it. Only natural, after all.’
‘Well, she’s doing exactly as she wants, after all. All this nonsense about a simple wedding … It’s more trouble, far more trouble to arrange here than in London. Every time I try to plan something, I find I have to ask that old glacier, Lady Manstone, if it’s all right. The bride’s family, after all! Pruned-down guest lists, and all the rest of it. So inconvenient, here in the country. I’ve had to book out the entire Swan Hotel in Feathersham, and the whole of the Rose and Crown, and the Black ‒’ she rustled papers irritably in her hands ‒ ‘the Black Bull or whatever ridiculous name it’s called, in Hawkinge. And even that will only accommodate your family, Charles. Heaven knows what we shall do with all the others we should invite. I could, of course, book a special train from Waterloo, but then how shall we accommodate them all in that stupid little chapel? I try to discuss the reception with Lady Manstone,’ she flung her hands wide to indicate the whole of the house about her, ‘Heaven knows, this place is big enough to accommodate three wedding receptions. But she won’t have this moved, and she won’t have that moved. She’s afraid of damage to the pictures. She’s afraid of too many people crowding into the Long Room and bringing down the ceiling in the Saloon. Oh, it’s impossible. And all this to plan in about three weeks, and Nicole’s clothes as well. Impossible!’
‘I’m sure you’ll manage, Iris. You always have done so splendidly before.’
Charles said it automatically. He knew Iris would manage. He was staring at the photo of Nicole and David in the Tatler, and wondering, despite the smiling loveliness of her face, what had happened to that kind of radiance he had glimpsed so briefly for a few weeks during the season and which now had gone again.
Nicole was more than patient with photographers and the lady journalists who asked her what seemed to be silly questions. She wanted every photograph, every paragraph they were willing to give her. She was certain that somewhere, at some time, Anna would see one or other of these tiny items of trivia which attached to the engagement of the season’s most talked-of débutante to an extremely eligible, handsome young man. She spun out facts which were not facts, just to make the paragraphs. She was endlessly patient with the photographers, posing where they wished her, changing her clothes as many times as they suggested. She soothed David’s impatience with this invasion. ‘It’ll soon be over. Completely. The whole thing. In a few weeks we’ll be rid of them for ever, David. Isn’t that better than a nice, properly long engagement, and you and I losing our tempers over guest lists and all that rubbish? In a few weeks we’ll be married, and then it’ll be no one’s business but ours …’ And he had smiled at her, and settled, with a sigh, to do what she asked him. She was so right. Get it all over with quickly. How few girls would have given up a big London wedding, with months of planning, the grand trip abroad for a honeymoon … So he agreed patiently to the next request.
‘David, just one last thing. You know Country Life is rushing through an article on Lynmara to come out next month for the wedding …’
‘To my certain knowledge that will be the third article Country Life has done on Lynmara in the last ten years …’
‘Well, they’re asking, as a special favour, if Lady Manstone and your father will pose with us ‒ and Aunt Iris and Charles ‒ in the Long Room. Do you think your grandmother …?’
He patted her hand. ‘Granny loathes photographs, but she knows the next few weeks belong to you. So I’ll see that she does exactly what they want.’
‘Your father too?’
‘If Granny says yes, then Father will fall in with it. Granny still rules the roost here. I wonder … Nicole, I wonder how you’ll get along with Granny when you both live here? She won’t give up gracefully. My mother lived such a short time. She never really did take over the reins from Granny. And yet she’s old now, and a young woman as mistress of this house would be a good thing … don’t you think?’ His gaze on her had the look of pleading. ‘She’s a stubborn old lady, Nicole. But I think she respects you …’
‘We’ll get along, David. I can be very accommodating when I need to. So long as I let her know that she has a lot to teach me … I think she might enjoy teaching me.’
He smiled with relief. ‘My clever girl, I might have known you’d find a way around it. So long as Granny thinks she’s running things …’
‘I’ll see that she does, so long as it’s necessary. And your father …’
‘It will be best of all for my father. God knows, but I don’t know, what he’s done with himself all these years. Of course it’s ridiculous that he’s never married again. He should have married. It’s been so damn lonely for him. After I went away to prep school, there was hardly ever anyone in the house except at holiday times. He certainly put himself out during the holidays to see that I got a good time. I was allowed to invite half the school if I wanted to. At one time we had enough boys and their sisters staying here to get up a scratch cricket team against the village children. Of course the village beat the pants off us, probably because we had three girls on the team. At Christmas I can remember having little Indian rajahs and Arab sheiks staying here because there wasn’t time for them to get back home. Anybody at all could come to Lynmara if it would make me happy. But I never knew what it was like when I wasn’t here. He’s hardly ever used the London house. He hardly ever left here. Nicole …’ He looked at her again with that half-pleading expression. ‘It’s absurd to suppose there haven’t been women in his life. One can’t have expected him to live like a monk all these years. But we’ve never known anything about them. At least I haven’t. Granny may have, but she never says. Having you here will make a great difference for him, I’m sure. And if there are children …’
The Lynmara Legacy Page 25