Letitia Or The Convalescent Heart

by Catherine Bowness

  “An old-fashioned dynastic arrangement, I take it?” the Major suggested, unsure quite what was expected of him.

  “She has money,” the Countess confided darkly.

  “Ah – that’s always an attraction, is it not?”

  “It’s vastly more to be relied upon than romantic love,” the Countess retorted. “Generally lasts longer too!”

  She moved on to quizzing the poor Major on his status, hopes and intentions; it didn’t take her long to realise that his arrival at the Castle had less to do with his fondly remembered schooldays with the Earl than with his rather more recent encounter with Mrs Ripley.

  Having noticed the pleasure the four guests took in each other’s company, she began to see an opportunity to be rid of both the Denton women at the same time. She did not like them and knew they did not care for her either. She did not trust females so lacking in circumspection that they ran off with men before they had left the schoolroom – such women, it seemed to her, were rackety and improper, given to putting their sentiments before their duty and likely to cause endless trouble. In addition, she strongly suspected that neither would put up with her presence for more than a few weeks once they had their feet firmly under the table and their man securely attached. She would very likely be sent away to live in some horrid little house a few miles away – as indeed the younger, more tactless, creature had already threatened.

  She reasoned that the fact that the Dentons had already run off once made it all the more likely they would do so a second time; all that she had to do was to ensure that they ran off with the right men – the soldiers not the Meridews. It looked as if she would have to do very little to be rid of them. To this end, she turned her attention to her stepson, engaging him in conversation in such a determined manner that Mrs Ripley, who, it seemed to her, was amusing the Earl far more than she should be, became available for the Major.

  It was not until everyone was on their way to change for dinner that Lord Archibald arrived.

  Aspasia and Letty had already set their feet upon the bottom stair when there was a commotion at the front door, the footman opened it, Crabb scuttled forward and Lord Archibald, this time looking the very picture of romance with his black eye patch, silver-topped cane and halting step, entered the Castle. With the light behind him, his face was in shadow so that the hideous scar was almost concealed and his hair was burnished by the dying rays of the sun to a sort of burning gold. The effusive greeting offered him by the soldiers from his former regiment completed the image of a hero’s return.

  His brother exclaimed with pleasure and Lady Stonegate, no doubt alerted to his arrival by the noise, emerged from the saloon. Aspasia smiled warmly, and Letty froze where she stood on the bottom step. It was to her face that Lord Archibald’s eye was immediately drawn.

  Aspasia explained, “Letty and I were on our way to change for dinner, my lord.”

  “Then pray do not let my arrival detain you,” he said at once, kissing her hand. “Have you spent a pleasant day?”

  “Oh yes, very; we sat in the garden for some time – indeed we have only just come in – and we threw a bottle into the river when your brother told us it passed the spot where we were sitting. I don’t suppose you saw it though.”

  “I did not go down to the river. Did you put a note in it?”

  “Oh yes, I believe so, although I am ignorant of what it said.”

  “Letitia wrote it,” Stonegate said. “I hope you have come to stay?”

  “Yes, I thought I would.”

  Letty, now alone on the stairs, hesitated for some time. No one seemed to be interested in whether she went up or down; even her aunt had abandoned her and Lord Archibald, who had looked at her on entering, was now engaged in conversation with Aspasia and Stonegate. Tears sprang to her eyes and she turned and ran up the first flight before deciding that it would be even more miserable to sit in her chamber by herself, turned round and came down again.

  When she went into the saloon, she did not think that anyone noticed her except Archie, whose eye again flew to her and whose smile beckoned her closer. He was sitting with his back to the light so that, again, she could not see the scar clearly; what she could see was how closely his friends clustered about him and how animated all three were.

  She approached shyly and it was Archie himself who rose and invited her to join the group. The two soldiers fell back at once and made a space for her.

  Chapter 23

  “It turns out I do have some gardeners,” he told Letty as she sat down. “I’ve instructed them to clear some of the jungle surrounding my house.”

  “Oh, I hope they will not remove everything!” she exclaimed, adding to the soldiers, “It is the most romantic house – almost lost behind creepers.”

  “I thought you found it sinister. Shall I send a message to countermand my orders?”

  “You were not doing it for me, were you?” she asked, blushing.

  “Of course not!” he responded, also blushing. “But I remembered that you said it was difficult to walk along the path at the back and thought that, if you and your aunt were to visit again, you might prefer to be able to go out that way. It leads to the river and is a shorter route than the one we took so it would be easier for me too.”

  “In that case I cannot think why you did not do it before.”

  “I have not been there long and, to tell the truth, I did not think about it. I am afraid,” he added to his friends, “that I have been somewhat numbed by my injuries – unfortunately not so much in the matter of not feeling them, more in the matter of not being able to think.”

  “It was unwise to move away from the Castle,” his mother put in. “After all, here you have every comfort; there, you have very few.”

  “There is no doubt that it is a vast deal more comfortable here, Mama,” he conceded, his manner brighter than Letty had seen it before, “but I had already grown weary of pity and wished to be by myself.”

  “It is an unfortunate effect of being wounded,” the Major said, glad to find a topic of conversation on which he had some experience and which he hoped might be useful to at least one of those present, “particularly if one’s injuries are apparent. I was quite badly hurt a few years ago,” he explained to Letty and Lady Stonegate, “and people shied away from me but now – well, I think the scar makes me look more interesting.”

  “I am sure you looked perfectly agreeable before,” Aspasia said, “but it does not in the least detract from your appearance.”

  “You do not know what I was like before,” he pointed out, but he was smiling. “I am glad to hear you say that because I cannot pretend – and I do not think I would be doing Meridew a kindness if I did – that I have not worried about ladies’ reactions.”

  “Oh no!” Aspasia exclaimed. “On the contrary, sir, I believe many women positively like such a sign of a man’s courage!”

  “I suppose it is better to have a scar on one’s face than on one’s back!” he responded.

  “Will Archibald’s look like that in time?” the Countess asked, frowning.

  “Almost certainly! There is no need to despair, Meridew – the ladies will be fawning upon you in no time – and do not forget there is a great conversational advantage in having a visible scar. You need never want for something to talk of again!”

  Lord Archibald smiled sadly, but he managed to refrain from pointing out that there was only one woman he wished to fawn upon him – and she had made her feelings abundantly clear. By the time his scar faded she would be married to his brother.

  Shortly after this the party broke up while they changed for dinner. When they met again, there was a noticeably more congenial atmosphere, the soldiers’ affable manners affecting everyone for the better.

  Captain Sharpthorne, although he had suffered a slight setback in his admiration for Letty, nevertheless made her the centre of his attention for the rest of the evening; she was young and pretty and, if he had perceived certain defects in her char
acter earlier, they did not prevent him from enjoying her company, only from contemplating stealing her from his host.

  Major Fielding divided his attention between the Countess and Aspasia, the former displaying, for the first time for many years, something of what must have attracted the previous Earl of Stonegate. Indeed Aspasia, watching the mellowing of the woman she considered the greatest impediment to her niece’s happiness, began to wonder if he might be induced to take her off Stonegate’s hands and whisk her away to the north of England; she was probably no more than fifteen years’ his senior.

  The evening went well, the dinner was excellent and, when the Countess led the ladies to the drawing room afterwards, she displayed a happy countenance and even went so far as to say that she was glad they had encouraged the soldiers to call for it was her belief that her stepson did not have enough male company and her son – who had no company of any sort since he had returned from the Peninsula – had regained something of his old joie de vivre in their company.

  “Well, you know, I think he was feeling very low about his injuries,” Aspasia said, “and they have made him feel better, particularly Major Fielding.”

  “Just so!” the Countess responded with a warm look which made her appear, momentarily, more like the proud mother of a wounded son and less like an evil witch. “His looks are bound to improve,” she went on, “and then I believe it will be time to reintroduce him to Miss Pottinger.”

  “He is still young,” Aspasia said, “and has plenty of time – but will Miss Pottinger remain free, do you think?”

  “Oh, I am sure she is only waiting on him and will be in no hurry to find another. Indeed, I believe her to feel in some sense already spoken for by Archibald. No doubt he will make a declaration once his brother is married.”

  “No doubt. It often seems that, once one of the sons in a family has taken a wife, they all follow suit in short order.”

  “I own I am looking forward to the birth of grandchildren,” her ladyship said in what struck Aspasia as a spuriously sentimental tone. Since she showed little sign of being a fond mother, it seemed unlikely that she would prove to be a doting grandmother.

  Letty, irritated by what she judged to be another of the Countess’s attacks on her, sat down at the pianoforte and attempted to drown out the Dowager’s voice.

  “I wish you would not play so loudly,” the Countess shouted after Letty had ploughed through a sonata apparently by Beethoven – although it is doubtful the great man would have recognised the composition as his.

  She stopped abruptly, heaved a sigh and shut the lid of the instrument with a bang.

  “I am going outside,” she announced, opened the door and went out.

  Over the next few days the party settled into an agreeable group where the four men walked and talked together some of the time – Lord Archibald being unable to ride at present – and were joined by the ladies for a good portion of each day.

  Letty enjoyed being with Lord Sharpthorne. He was an easy-going man who paid her enough compliments to keep her happy without being so excessively flattering that she might have taken fright. He did not refer to their host as her fiancé and did not speak of her previous love for Lord Archibald – indeed he steered well clear of any talk of love which, if she had been a little more experienced, she might have suspected meant he had no interest in such a thing, at least not with her. They talked of this and that, he told her something of the amusements to be found in London, a good deal about those he had managed to discover on the Peninsula and kept her entertained with stories about the campaigns in which he had served. She soon grew relaxed in his company and treated him much as he treated her – more like a sibling than a suitor.

  The Countess, who kept to her own quarters during the day when the young people ‘rushed giddily all over the country’ as she put it, appeared most evenings for dinner and always in time to dispense tea when the tray was brought it. Observing the amount of time Letty and the Captain spent with their heads together, she began to hope that she had been right and the tiresome girl would run off again, this time with Captain Sharpthorne. She might not have been quite so optimistic if she had been privy to the innocence of their conversations.

  Aspasia also noticed the growing friendship between her niece and the Captain, but her judgment of its progress was markedly different from that of the Countess. She saw how friendly they were and how much Letty trusted the young man, but she also saw that his eye, although friendly and affectionate, was by no means smitten – any more than the Earl’s was - and she rather thought that he had the measure of the girl and had decided that she was not the kind of wife he sought.

  She also watched the reaction of the Meridew men to the presence of the soldiers in their midst. The Earl, whose fiancée spent considerably more time in conversation with the Captain than she did with him, appeared to be perfectly content with this arrangement; indeed, he too began to look happy.

  As for Lord Archibald, he smiled benignly upon the young couple and never intervened or attacked either of them, but his eye was rarely focused on any object other than Miss Denton when she was within view. Aspasia was forced to the conclusion that he loved the girl so deeply that he would not oppose a match between her and his friend if he were convinced it would make her happy. It was not, she realised one day when he caught her watching the pair, that he did not know his love’s drawbacks but that he loved her, faults and all, and assumed every other man would feel the same.

  Letty herself, rendered happy and carefree by the Captain’s undemanding attention as well as by Lord Archibald’s benign approval and increasingly amiable manner, began to relax around her former love, grew accustomed to his altered looks and began to take pleasure in his company in a way she had never had a chance to do before. Their previous encounters had been few, short and intense. Kissing had been their main occupation in the past so that there had been little time for discourse.

  “I know you have said you believe you and Letty will not suit but I cannot help wondering whether you are not a little afraid that you will lose her to Captain Sharpthorne,” Aspasia said one afternoon when, during a visit to a ruined abbey, they were sitting in the shade with a picnic, the others having wandered off to inspect a collection of fallen masonry.

  “No. Do you interpret his behaviour differently?”

  “What do you make of it?” she countered. “She spends practically every waking minute in his company.”

  “Indeed, but I have yet to see either of them showing any sign of being romantically involved. He has remained remarkably immune to her charms and she, although I think she likes talking to him, is indifferent to his.”

  “Yes; extraordinary, is it not, for she is an exceedingly pretty creature?”

  “Yes, but she is spoken for and Sharpthorne strikes me as an entirely honourable man.”

  “Hmn. Do you expect her to notice you again when he leaves?”

  He laughed. “I don’t think she ever noticed me, but I am hopeful that she will notice Archibald again some time. She no longer recoils from him.”

  “No, and it is clear that he is still oceans deep in love with her. I own, before I came to know him, I was inclined to think it fortunate that you had rescued her; I was relieved that you had saved her from contracting as miserable an alliance as I did. Now, I think he would have made her happy.”

  “He might have done,” the Earl agreed. “And, as I said before, I do find myself regretting my original intervention. But, if they had married then, it is by no means impossible that she would still have fallen out of love with him. He, you see, is some years older and knows his own mind – knew it then indeed - but she has still to discover hers.”

  “Do you think when she does she will find she still loves him?”

  “I do not know, but I think it possible that she may find she has grown to love him for himself rather than for his romantic looks. She might never have discovered that if they had married four years ago.”

&nb
sp; “She has hardly spoken to him since the Captain arrived, so I do not see how she can have learned much more about him.”

  “Indeed, but Sharpthorne will be gone quite soon and will have served his purpose in diverting her attention from what she is convinced is a past love. If she can treat Archibald with something of the same naturalness she has learned from the Captain, there is a good chance of her discovering his true qualities.

  “And what of you, Mrs Ripley? Will you miss the Major when he goes? I am sorry that I have not yet received an answer to my enquiries and cannot just at present reassure you that you are a widow. I am still hopeful that Colonel Mott-Ripley may be able to shed some light on the matter.”

  “I admitted earlier that I would be interested to know what has happened to him but whether I am a wife or a widow has no significance so far as Major Fielding is concerned.”

  “No? I think he would like to pursue the acquaintance with you once he has sold out.”

  “Do you? I am by no means convinced. He has not, in any event, said anything and, unless he does, it is unlikely our paths will cross again for he will no doubt go home to Northumberland as soon as he is released from the army.”

  “And you will return to Yorkshire?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. I shouldn’t think you would want me hanging around here after you are married.” As she spoke, she thought of her ordinary little house and her irritating companion and wished she did not have to leave the Castle – or its owner.

  “On the contrary, I would like it very much,” he replied.

  She smiled, rather sadly, and said, “I more or less demanded such an answer; you did not have to give it.”

  “No. I said it because it is true, although I am aware that my reasons for wishing you to remain are not altogether proper.”

  “What in the world do you mean?” she asked, startled.

  “I begin to wish I had not spoken if you are minded to interrogate me on my meaning. You surely cannot plead ignorance of the pleasure I take in your company and, although I have endeavoured to conceal it, the regard in which I hold you.”