‘Where do you go this time?’
‘He is off to Edinburgh. I only have to go to Rugby.’ But even Rugby was too far when he would rather be riding with these two sisters of his. ‘I hope you enjoy your outing.’
‘I would enjoy it more if you were with us,’ Euphemia said. ‘It will be dull without you.’
But as it happened, she was wrong.
Chapter 9
The bridle path that ambled through an avenue of lime trees in London’s Hyde Park, linking the great houses of Belgravia with the greater ones of Grosvenor Square, was a most exclusive place, reserved for the gentry and those nouveaux riches who had enough wealth to run a string of good horses and enough daring to dress in the latest fashion and brave the disparagement of the elite. It was always crowded on summer afternoons during the season, particularly when the weather was fine and all the young bloods were out to dazzle one another.
Caroline and Euphemia rode every afternoon whatever the weather. They were both good horsewomen and they both had excellent mounts, and very pretty riding habits too, which they wore with green top hats trimmed with yards of green veiling floating out behind them. It was fun to canter past the amblers with their full skirts ballooning and their veils streaming, and even better to outstrip the young men who had been saying foolish things to them the previous evening. And all without the need for a chaperone, impropriety being deemed impossible on horseback. Tom Thistlethwaite was required to wait at the park gates with the carriage so that he could drive them home, and there were two grooms in attendance to lead the horses, but that was all.
‘I could ride for ever and ever,’ Caroline shouted as she and Euphemia thundered down the ride. ‘No chaperones! No silly men grimacing!’
‘Oh Carrie, be fair! They don’t all grimace,’ Euphemia called back, thinking of Will.
‘They do too,’ Caroline shouted. ‘I haven’t seen one worth looking at.’
And saw one at that very moment.
He was trotting towards them, sitting very straight on a splendid palamino, and dressed in the very height of fashion, in a brand-new pair of snow-white breeches, blue riding boots and a superbly cut mustard coloured jacket. But although his clothes were splendid, it was his face that made her notice him. He had dark curly hair and dark brooding eyes, and a long pale face, dominated by a long pale nose, very straight and aristocratic and accentuated by the peculiar cut of his sideburns which were little more than a fringe of dark hair but had been grown so low that they curved about his jaw. He wore his beard and moustache in the Spanish style, with two comma-shaped wings of hair above a well-formed upper lip and the neatest triangle of beard below a voluptuous lower one. And he held his head high, his chin up like a guardsman, looking neither to right nor left, so that he seemed to have his eyes fixed upon some distant horizon unseen by anybody else. It gave his face an expression at once romantic, haughtily aristocratic and distant. It was as if he had set himself apart from the ordinary run of mankind.
Caroline reined in her horse abruptly. ‘Who is that?’ she said.
‘Who is who?’ Euphemia panted as she passed, reining in her horse more gently.
‘Why, the gentleman in the …’ Caroline began. But the palamino suddenly kicked up his hind legs, like a trooper’s horse, snorting and tossing his white mane until it flew like feathers. His beautiful rider was thrown from side to side and finally unseated, slipping sideways out of the saddle and landing with a crunch just out of range of his horse’s hooves.
Euphemia hung back, because the path was full of riders, but Caroline bullied her way through them and was beside him in an instant.
‘Are you hurt, sir?’ she asked, looking down at him where he sat on the path, collecting his senses and dusting his breeches. ‘Do you need assistance?’
‘Devil take that damned animal,’ the young man said furiously beating his trousers. ‘No, no I ain’t hurt, devil take him.’
The palamino was grazing between the trees a few yards away, as meek as a lamb.
But Caroline was more interested in the young man’s left foot, which still lay twisted beneath him in an ominously awkward position. ‘Can you stand, sir?’ she said.
‘Devil take it,’ he swore again. ‘Of course I can stand. Do you take me for a fool, ma’am?’
‘You may not be a fool, sir, but you are horribly ill-mannered.’
He ignored her rebuke, put his hands on the ground to steady himself and started to stand up, saying crossly, ‘Of course I can stand.’ But his left foot had no sooner touched the ground than it gave way beneath him.’ Hell fire and damnation!’
‘Quite,’ Caroline said, with some satisfaction. ‘You will need a carriage to take you home. Do you have one?’
‘No I do not.’
‘A groom then?’
‘No, devil take it.’
‘My carriage is at the park gates,’ she said. ‘I will send my man to collect you and a groom to lead your horse, since you are in no fit state to lead him yourself. I would advise you to call a surgeon when you get home, if you can persuade one to attend upon you when you are so ill-mannered, which I very much doubt. Good afternoon to you, sir.’
He sat on the path looking up at her again and suddenly gave her a smile of quite melting sweetness. ‘I am a wretch,’ he said. ‘A foul-tempered wretch and I don’t deserve your kindness and that’s the truth.’
She was mollified but she didn’t show it. Instead she turned her horse’s head ready to walk away and give Tom his instructions. ‘Where shall he take you?’ she asked.
‘South Audley Street,’ he said, cradling his foot in both hands. ‘I’m uncommon grateful to you, Miss …?’
‘Easter,’ she told him. ‘Miss Caroline Easter.’
‘You jest!’ he said. ‘You cannot possibly be called Easter.’
‘Indeed I can, since that is my name.’
‘Extraordinary!’ he said, smiling at her again. ‘Then if that is truly the case you must allow me to present myself. I am Henry Osmond Easter, of Ippark, in the county of Sussex, and pleased to make your acquaintance.’
‘Good heavens!’ she said as Euphemia picked her way across the now empty path to join them. ‘Euphemia, this gentleman is called Easter. Henry Osmond Easter. What do you think of that? My cousin, Miss Euphemia Callbeck.’
‘Your servant,’ Henry Osmond said pleasantly. ‘My father had cousins by the name of Callbeck. One of them called upon us once, I remember. A Mr Simon Callbeck from Calcutta. Do you know of him?’
‘My father, sir,’ Euphemia explained.
‘Then that accounts,’ Henry Osmond said. ‘We must all be related.’
‘So it would appear,’ Caroline said, ‘but this ain’t the time to talk of it. You should be at home and having that foot attended to. I will call upon you tomorrow to see how you are, which you don’t deserve, but I shall do it, notwithstanding, because I am a woman of principle. Stay where you are. My man will collect you.’
‘He could hardly do anything else,’ Euphemia said as they rode back to the gates, ‘with his ankle swelling up before our eyes, poor man.’
‘He ain’t a poor man,’ Caroline said. ‘He’s the rudest creature I ever met in all my born days.’ But quite the most handsome. Quite the most thrillingly handsome. ‘Oh Euphemia, dear, dear Euphemia, we are like warrior maidens, rescuing an injured knight-at-arms. What a tale we shall have to tell when we get home!’
Bessie’s forehead crinkled into instant concern when she heard they’d arrived at Bedford Square on horseback. ‘Whatever were you a-doing of,’ she asked, bustling them up the stairs, ‘riding through the streets when you had a carriage to fetch you? Anyone would think you were gypsies.’ But when the story of their daring rescue was told, instead of being impressed and pleased, she scowled more darkly than ever. ‘Well, I don’t know what your Pa will say, I’m sure,’ she grumbled. ‘Easters from Ippark! I don’t know!’
‘She’s getting old and cantankerous,’ Caroline said, w
hen Bessie had taken away their boots and riding habits and gone grumbling off downstairs. ‘Wait till we tell Nan.’
And Nan was certainly a better audience, although she already knew who the young man was, which was rather a disappointment. ‘Henry Osmond,’ she said. ‘That would be Sir Osmond’s second son.’
‘I couldn’t say.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘I could invite him here to our next ball on Thursday, if he’s able to stand,’ Caroline suggested hopefully, ‘and then you could see.’
‘Aye, I daresay you could,’ Nan said, ‘and I suppose you will.’ But although the words apparently gave permission, they were said too grudgingly for Caroline’s liking.
‘What is the matter with them all?’ she asked Euphemia, when dinner was over and the two of them were waiting for the carriage to take them to the theatre. ‘You’d think they’d be glad we’d found another relation. But no, they all start huffing and puffing as if we’d done something dubious. I don’t understand it. Do you?’
Euphemia admitted her lack of understanding too.
‘And another thing,’ Caroline went: on. ‘It’s curious that I’ve never heard a word about these Ippark Easters until today, don’t you think so?’
‘Yes,’ Euphemia said. ‘It is. Very curious.’
‘Perhaps we have uncovered a mystery,’ Caroline said. ‘A family mystery. Now that would be truly romantic, would it not?’
‘Will might be able to tell us,’ Euphemia suggested, intrigued by the thought. But Will was still on his travels.
‘We will ask him the minute he gets back,’ Caroline said, putting on her gloves. ‘But tomorrow I shall visit Mr Easter, no matter what. We will see what he has to say about it.’
‘You won’t ask him anything directly will you, Carrie?’ Euphemia said rather anxiously, for you never knew with Caroline.
‘Oh come!’ Caroline said. ‘I’ve more tact than that. No, no, I shall winkle it out of him. You’ll see.’
So the two of them set off for South Audley Street with Bessie as chaperone as soon as they’d finished their ride the following afternoon. It was a first-rate house, which was only to be expected of the son of a person called Sir Osmond Easter, but the furniture was old-fashioned and the decor dull, and even though a manservant brought them cakes and tea on a silver stand, there was a general air of discomfort about the place which Euphemia found disquieting and Caroline noticed with disapproval.
But their host was charming.
‘Can’t rise to greet you, I’m afraid,’ he said, when his servant ushered them into the room. ‘I’ve to sit here for the next four days with my foot on this wretched stool and not move an inch, so the surgeon says.’ But although he kept his heel on the stool the rest of his body was remarkably active, twisting and turning to offer cakes and pour tea, or to give his entire attention first to one and then the other, making sure that Bessie was comfortably seated and urging tea upon her too, his whiskers very glossy and handsome in the muted light of the room.
They learnt quite a lot about him too, for he was very forthcoming and not a bit bad-tempered.
‘Quite right,’ he said cheerfully, when Caroline told him what Nan had said of him. ‘Second son of the late Sir Osmond Easter, that’s who I am. Married twice did my old man. Brother Joseph belonged to his first wife, and don’t we all know that. Jane and I were his second brood, heaven help us.’
‘You have a sister?’ Euphemia said, ignoring the bitterness in his account and trying to steer their conversation into something more pleasant.
‘Jane?’ he said. ‘A dear girl, Jane. Married last year though, that’s the pity of it. Married and went off to Cumberland.’
‘You must miss her,’ Euphemia commiserated.
‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘I do rather. Being orphans and all that sort of thing you know.’
‘Are both your parents …?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted, shrugging his shoulders as though it was of no importance. ‘The old man died in ‘36. Took a fall out hunting. Broke his neck. It seems we are rather prone to fall from our horses, we Easters.’ He gave them a deprecating smile. ‘My mother died in the cholera epidemic when I. was seven.’ And his long face was suddenly drawn with such a brooding sadness that both girls felt a rush of sympathy for him.
‘I am an orphan too,’ Caroline said, to show him he wasn’t alone in his sadness. ‘My mother died when I was born.’
‘It’s a hard world,’ he said, smiling his sweet smile straight into her eyes. ‘Pray have some more cake.’
So they ate cake while the girls tried to think of something positive to say, and Bessie tried to signal to them that the visit had gone on quite long enough, and despite himself, Henry remembered the days when his mother had still been alive.
He and Jane had been loved and petted then, and taught to read and write and cipher, and encouraged to fish the trout streams and ride to hounds. And after her death they’d done well enough, left in the care of a series of rough-handed nannies and generally allowed to run wild. But when their father broke his neck and their half-brother Joseph inherited the estate and the title, their lives had been horribly changed. Oh, horribly changed. What a long time ago it all seemed.
‘I daresay you went to school, did you not?’ Euphemia said gently.
He shuddered. ‘Did I not! I should just say I did.’
So he told them about Harrow and Mr Oxenham, ‘a terrible man, flog you as soon as look at you. He used to drop off to sleep in our lessons. Sound asleep. Snoring. We used to put curl papers in his hair and he never noticed.’
‘Weren’t you afraid he’d wake up and flog you?’ Caroline asked.
‘He’d wake up and flog us no matter what we were doing,’ Henry explained. ‘I think he enjoyed it. Oh no, there was no use worrying about being flogged. People were flogged all the time. When we were fags the seniors used to beat us with thorn sticks they’d pulled out of the hedges.’
‘Whatever for?’ Euphemia said.
‘Oh anything,’ Henry said airily. ‘If we couldn’t keep up at football. If we were late back with their beer. That sort of thing. The blood fairly poured down our jerseys. It was the very devil to get clean.’
‘But that’s barbarous!’ Caroline said, quite horrified at such a story. ‘It oughtn’t to be allowed.’
‘It’s the way of the world,’ he said. ‘All schools are like that.’
‘Ours wasn’t,’ Caroline said firmly, and she was just about to tell him about Mrs Flowerdew, when his man soft-footed into the room to announce that the Fortescues had arrived. So to Bessie’s relief, the visit had to be cut short.
‘I brought you an invitation to our ball on Thursday,’ Caroline said casually as they stood to go.
‘Honoured, Miss Easter,’ he said, taking the little card. ‘I shall be there, depend upon it, whether I may dance or no. If I can’t dance, then I will shuffle, I promise you.’
‘Goodbye Mr Easter,’ Euphemia said, holding out her hand.
He took it and kissed it. ‘You are very kind to visit the sick as you do,’ he said.
‘We could hardly have left you lying on the ground,’ Caroline said tartly because it irritated her to see Euphemia being kissed like that.
He swivelled in his seat and gave her his full attention, taking her hand and holding it tightly so that she was forced to step towards him. ‘Indebted for ever!’ he said. ‘When I am a world famous poet I shall let it be known that it was Miss Caroline Easter who rescued me in my hour of need.’
‘A poet?’ she asked, thrilled by the information. ‘Are you really?’
‘Of course,’ he said, still holding her hand. ‘What else could ‘I be?’
‘A published poet?’ Well, well, so Miss Artenshaw wasn’t the only one with a poet for a friend.
‘Well, not exactly published yet,’ he admitted. ‘I haven’t quite gathered enough poems for a full volume.’ Actually he’d only written three short lyrics so far,
but there was no need to tell her that, especially when she was gazing at him with such flattering admiration.
‘How thrilling!’ she said. ‘Do you write every day?’
‘Oh no,’ he said, shocked at the idea. ‘You have to wait for inspiration, you know. It ain’t the sort of thing you can do to order.’
‘Perhaps you would let us read one of your poems some day,’ she hoped.
‘I might,’ he said. ‘I might indeed.’ And he kissed her fingers, gazing straight into her eyes all the time.
The touch of his lips gave her the oddest sensation, as though her heart were turning a somersault in her chest, so perhaps it was just as well that at that moment Mr and Mrs Fortescue and their son and daughter were shown into the room. At least it gave her a chance to recover her composure. They exchanged pleasantries and said how much they were all looking forward to the Easter ball on Thursday and the Fortescue ball the following Monday, and Henry Osmond said goodbye to the two girls all over again, only this time without kisses.
Oh, it was a most successful visit.
‘Do you think he will come to the ball?’ Euphemia wondered, as Tom Thistlethwaite drove them back to Bedford Square.
‘No,’ Bessie said firmly, ‘he won’t.’
‘It’s of no consequence to me whether he does or not,’ Caroline said with splendid aplomb.
But he did. So that was all right. And Nan seemed quite pleased to meet her new relation and asked after his brother and sister as though they were old friends. So that was all right. And despite his bandaged ankle he managed two waltzes, one with each of them. And that was the best thing of all, and quite the most romantic, for his gloved hand held her so firmly in the small of her back and their faces were so close together that she could see her own candle-lit reflection in the pupils of his eyes. I am dancing with a poet, she thought. It’s a wonder I don’t swoon away.
The next Monday he was at the Fortescue Ball and his ankle was so much better he’d removed the bandage. This time he danced three times with each of them and Caroline was sure he would have asked her a fourth time if such a thing had been acceptable, and if she hadn’t already filled her dance card to help her brother.
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