by Dorothy Eden
What could he do?
She was overwrought and hysterical, or she would not be imagining that disasters could follow a simple refusal to marry a man she did not love. She would go down to dinner simply to disprove any accusation of cowardice.
And as it happened, the conversation at the candlelit table couldn’t have been more innocuous.
Hamish Barlow, impeccably dressed, was calm and seemingly contented. He had turned the conversation to his youth, comparing it with that of the children today.
‘Our toy soldiers wore a different uniform,’ he said. ‘The Duke of Wellington was the great hero. Poor old Boney was in prison, and harmless, but we still played at battles defeating him. Then we had hoops, and skipping ropes, and of course marbles. By the way, Marcus seems to be grieving about the loss of his marbles. Do you know anything about them, Miss Fanny?’
It could not have been a more innocent question. She could only wonder why the table seemed so silent.
‘I never saw them here. I think they must have been left behind on the ship. Yes, he has complained about their loss.’
‘If that’s all he wants,’ Uncle Edgar said, ‘we must get the little fellow some more. Nothing could be easier.’
15
UNCLE EDGAR SENT A message to Fanny that he must talk with her. She found him in the library, strolling up and down, his thumbs tucked in his waistcoat pocket—he was wearing a silk waistcoat of maroon stripes on silver grey that gave him a peacockish air. He had a habit of showing small vanities in his dress that was pleasing because he carried it off with such an air of boyish pleasure. He was, Fanny saw at once, in an affable and relaxed mood.
She hoped the traces of her own disturbed night didn’t show too clearly on her face. Last night she had never felt so alone. There was no one to whom she could talk or turn to for sympathy. Hamish Barlow’s taunt had kept returning to her, ‘To choose to be a poor relation, a governess!’ and at last she had wept into her pillow. Courage belonged to daylight. In the morning, she would face her chosen future more calmly.
‘Well, Fanny,’ said Uncle Edgar pleasantly, ‘Mr Barlow has been surprising me.’
‘Surprising you, Uncle Edgar?’
‘Indeed, yes. I didn’t think you would be foolish enough to refuse an offer such as, speaking candidly, you are never like to receive again. You have decided hastily, of course.’
So Uncle Edgar wanted this to happen. Probably Aunt Louisa did, too. Only by marriage would they be rid of her. Otherwise she was likely to remain an encumbrance to them, and later to George or Amelia, until the end of her life.
Fanny bit her lip, and answered, ‘Hastily, perhaps, Uncle Edgar. But quite finally.’
Uncle Edgar smiled and patted her shoulder. ‘Finally is a long word, my dear. Mr Barlow will be here another three or four weeks. He understands young women can be over-emotional and too precipitate. He will give you an opportunity to change your mind.’
‘Would you have me marry a man I not only don’t love, but actually dislike?’
‘There you are, you see. You are over-emotional. Now sit down and let us talk about this. What is it about Mr Barlow that you don’t like?’
‘How can I explain that? It isn’t a list of criticisms, it’s a matter of one’s senses.’
‘Illogical, too!’ Uncle Edgar chuckled gently. ‘I told Barlow you wouldn’t be able to put a finger on your reasons for refusing him.’
‘But I can!’ Fanny cried hotly. ‘It would be terrible to travel to a foreign country with a man one didn’t love. To spend the rest of one’s life…’ She paused a moment, contemplating the appalling prospect. Then she added more quietly, ‘Besides I can’t leave the children. I have promised them.’
‘The children don’t come into this question.’ For the first time Uncle Edgar’s voice had a hint of harshness. ‘You can’t sacrifice your life for them. They will be cared for very well whether you are here or not. After all, you didn’t have a kind Cousin Fanny when you came here as a child. And you survived, didn’t you? So put them out of your mind, and think of the brilliant future you can have. Mr Barlow has told me his financial position, and his prospects, and all I can say is that for a young woman without a dowry you are extraordinarily fortunate. Now, Fanny, your aunt and I won’t let you throw away this chance.’
‘But Uncle Edgar, marrying Mr Barlow is the last thing I wish to do.’
‘The young man has been a little impetuous, I grant you. I told him so. But you must be tolerant, Fanny. He is quite infatuated with you. By George!’ Uncle Edgar chuckled again, ‘I’ve never seen a man so smitten. I want you to reflect again. For instance, would you regard my brother’s children as an obstacle if you were really in love?’
If it were Adam Marsh who had sat in the gently rocking boat telling her of his undying love? Fanny’s eyes fell. What could she answer?
‘You want to be rid of me,’ she murmured.
Uncle Edgar leaped up, his face flushed with distress.
‘Fanny! Don’t you ever dare suggest such a thing again! Haven’t you always been one of the family! Haven’t George and Amelia been a brother and sister to you? This makes me ashamed. How have I failed you?’
Remembering a thousand things she remained mutinously silent. If she showed gratitude at this moment she would be lured into making a promise she could never keep.
She watched Uncle Edgar stare at her with such earnest appeal that at last she had to say defensively, ‘It’s just that I won’t marry a man I don’t love.’
‘And you think your unfeeling and heartless uncle is forcing you to? I won’t force you, child. But I will do my best to make you change your mind. Have you contemplated the life of an unmarried woman in this country?’
‘Do you imagine for a moment I haven’t!’
‘And yet you still say no to such an eligible suitor? Illogical, emotional, romantic… I think you have more than a little of your Irish mother in you, my dear. Amelia, three years your junior, has far more good sense.’
(But Amelia has a dowry and is free to choose. The wonderful forbidden wealth of that word, choose!)
‘All the same,’ Uncle Edgar had regained his comfortable placidity, ‘I think you will come to look at this matter in a different light. Mr Barlow is remaining with us until after Amelia’s ball. Between now and then I expect you to have a complete change of heart.’
It was an order. Uncle Edgar’s most serious orders were always given in that over-soft kindly voice.
Fanny lifted her chin.
‘Am I the kind of person to have a change of heart, Uncle Edgar?’
His eyes narrowed.
‘It is a possibility for everyone. Everyone, my dearest Fanny. What is more, your aunt and I will give you as fine a wedding as we intend for Amelia. And you will make a very beautiful bride.’ He patted her hand again. ‘Now run along and make Amelia jealous. She always expected to be the first to marry, the little rogue.’
Amelia, it was true, was full of curiosity, but it was Aunt Louisa who behaved in the most disturbing way. While Fanny was being fitted for her ball gown Aunt Louisa said to the dressmaker, ‘You had better make arrangements to stay on for a little while, Miss Egham. Miss Fanny will be requiring a bridal gown.’
‘But I won’t, Aunt Louisa! Didn’t Uncle Edgar tell you—’
Aunt Louisa behaved as if she were nothing but a dressmaker’s dummy.
‘She has a pretty waist, hasn’t she, Miss Egham? I am always telling my own daughter to control her appetite for sugar plums.’
‘Fancy, ma’am! And where will you be going to live, miss?’
Miss Egham’s eyes were popping with curiosity. The roundabout question was intended to give her a clue as to whom the bridegroom was to be. If there were to be one, since this seemed to be a remarkably reluctant bride…
But the question presented a much bigger problem to Fanny. Where would she be going to live when this dismal affair was over? Supposing they wouldn’t let her stay wit
h the children…
‘You have made the waist pinch a little, Miss Egham. Aunt Louisa, can’t we discuss this—other matter another time?’
‘Certainly, my dear. But I wasn’t aware there was anything to discuss.’
So Aunt Louisa had adopted her husband’s bland attitude that Fanny would allow herself to have a change of heart. A reluctant bride was no uncommon thing. She was none the worse for that in the end.
Amelia, knowing Fanny’s stubbornness, was not so certain. She was only cross that Fanny refused to talk to her about either Hamish Barlow or her own feelings.
‘A proposal and you won’t tell me how it happened,’ she sighed. ‘Fanny, you are mean. Did he kneel at your feet? Did he kiss your hand? Or your lips, Fanny? Is that why you won’t tell me?’
George said nothing at all. He only seemed to be around more than usual, seldom now going out to ride although he was inordinately proud of his new hunter. He watched Fanny, but he watched Hamish Barlow even more. For once Fanny was not afraid of what he might do. She even had a dark dream of Hamish Barlow at the bottom of the lake, tangled in the waterweeds…
It was inevitable that Nolly should sense what was happening. She said very little, but it was difficult to persuade her to eat, and Dora reported that she pined all the time Fanny was not in the room. Fanny worried, and wondered what to say to the child, and then was saved an explanation by Nolly herself suddenly clinging to her and saying fiercely, ‘You promised! You promised!’
‘I promised what?’
‘That you would never leave us. Marcus thinks you’re going to leave us.’
‘Then you must tell Marcus that he’s wrong.’
Nolly’s face was taut and unchildish. She wouldn’t let it relax.
‘I don’t think he will believe you.’
‘Then he’s a silly little boy. I’m sure you have much more sense, and know that people don’t leave other people they love. Nor go away with people they don’t love…’
The child’s black eyes bored into her. What she saw must at least have satisfied her for she gave the smallest nod.
‘That’s what I told Marcus,’ she said.
What Adam Marsh thought—and he must surely have heard such a brilliant piece of news through Amelia—she hadn’t the faintest idea. She only suspected that he, too, didn’t care for Hamish Barlow. Or had she imagined that faint antagonism when the two men had met?
There was no reason for antagonism, she thought bitterly. Mr Barlow must have noticed how Mr Marsh was Amelia’s lapdog, a role that couldn’t have suited him less. But perhaps it would get him what he wanted, where Mr Barlow’s own tempestuous tactics in love had failed.
It was as well that the night of the ball was almost on them, and there was little time during the daylight hours to think of anything else.
16
HANNAH HAD BEEN SENT away to see that Amelia was safely dressed and not prostrate with too much excitement. Louisa and Edgar were alone in their bedroom. Louisa’s face already echoed the wine colour of her low-cut wide-skirted velvet gown. She wore the diamond earrings which Edgar had given her just a few minutes previously.
He had kissed her brow, and murmured, ‘A mere trifle, my love. Just a memento of the coming-out of our daughter.’
It seemed a very short time ago that Edgar had been preaching economy. Louisa didn’t understand business, but she imagined the stock market must have greatly improved, or some other windfall which naturally was her husband’s affair, had come Edgar’s way. Nevertheless, her delight over the unexpected gift was vaguely tinged with uneasiness, she didn’t know why.
‘So that explains Mr Solomon’s visit.’
‘As usual you are right, my dear. Well now,’ Edgar adjusted his waistcoat, and took a glance at his sideview in the mirror, ‘isn’t it time we went down? Let me say you are looking extremely well. If Amelia looks as well, she’ll be safely launched.’
Louisa preened herself, knowing very well that for all her weight, she was still a fine figure. But she was too hot already. Whatever had made her choose velvet? She had thought it a regal material, forgetting its suffocating warmth. She waved her feather fan jerkily. Although the windows were wide open no coolness, only a dark tide of warm air, came in.
‘Edgar! I’m worried about Fanny.’
A little of the satisfaction left Edgar’s face.
‘So am I. Does she show signs at all of changing her mind? Tonight is her last chance.’
‘She doesn’t confide in me,’ said Louisa shortly. ‘I know there’s that problem, too, but what I’m worried about is tonight. She’s in a strange mood. She can spoil Amelia’s ball.’
‘Spoil Amelia’s ball! Come, my dear!’
‘You know how she can be if she sets out to gain attention. Nobody looks at anyone else. Certainly not men. She has only to lift her eyes and give them that bold look.’
‘Bold? Fanny bold?’
‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ Louisa said snappishly. ‘She has never learnt it in this house, but she knows how to use her eyes, in a way our innocent daughter never will. I believe men feel they are drowning, or something equally stupid. Mr Barlow tried to explain it to me, but of course he’s in a state of ridiculous infatuation.’
‘I am quite aware that Fanny has magnificent eyes,’ Edgar said slowly. ‘And also great vivacity when she pleases. Sometimes, I am reminded—No never mind. What makes you think she won’t behave well tonight?’
‘Because she is desperate. She will finally have to marry Mr Barlow, of course, but first she may throw discretion to the winds. And you have insisted in dressing her in a gown that will make every other woman in the room look insipid,’ she added bitterly.
‘I haven’t even seen her gown,’ Edgar said mildly.
‘Oh, well, perhaps that was Amelia’s fault. She insisted the rose-coloured silk was Fanny’s colour, that pastels didn’t suit her.’
‘Then haven’t you taken care that Amelia looks just as well?’
‘Amelia is suitably dressed in white. She looks like a rose. But Fanny will look like—I don’t know—a poppy perhaps. Something too vivid.’
Edgar smiled reassuringly.
‘You’re understandably suffering from nerves, my dear. At least Adam Marsh seems to prefer a rose to a poppy, and that, I can make a guess, is all Amelia wants of this night.’
‘That’s another thing, Edgar. Who is Adam Marsh? We have never satisfactorily discovered. Oh, I know Sir Giles has heard of Matthew Marsh the famous collector. But it has never been proved he really is Adam’s father. We’ve never met any of his family. I grant you he’s a pleasant young man, but how do we know he tells the truth?’
‘That’s a thing we can go into another time,’ said Edgar, with faint exasperation. ‘I believe Adam’s aunt is arriving to live at Heronshall in a week or so. So that will be someone of his family whom you can meet. Our immediate worry, and I’ve emphasised this to you before, is to see that Fanny accepts Hamish Barlow.’
‘Yes,’ said Louisa, following her own thoughts. ‘I think it will be a relief to have her out of the house.’
‘We will miss her, naturally. But we must think of her future. It is vitally important that she should do this. Vitally important.’
‘Edgar!’ Louisa’s vague unexplainable uneasiness had come back. ‘You speak as if she has no alternative.’
‘Neither she has. Now I believe I hear the first carriage. It’s time we went down.’
Amelia was by no means prostrate. She was revolving round her room in a waltz, making the candles dip madly, and catching glimpses of herself, a fairytale figure, she thought, in the mirror. Hannah and Lizzie were watching admiringly.
‘Do you think my dress will be admired, Lizzie?’
‘Only them as is blind wouldn’t, Miss Amelia,’ Lizzie said, unable to take her eyes off what she thought was the most beautiful dress in the world. Its low round neck and puffed sleeves showed Amelia’s pretty, plump neck and arms, the crinoli
ne skirt, looped up in front and trimmed with white roses, revealed a crisply flounced underskirt. Amelia’s bead-trimmed reticule hung on her wrist, her fan was made of silk and ivory, her white satin slippers peeped beneath her wide skirts. She looked like a dressed-up ringletted very shining and clean doll.
Then there was a tap on the door and Fanny came in. Lizzie went on thinking loyally that Miss Amelia was the prettiest thing ever, but Hannah was aware at once of the superior elegance of Miss Fanny.
The rose colour was not fashionable, her shoulders were too thin, there were faint hollows at the base of her throat (she seemed to have grown thinner in the last week), but when the heavy dark lashes of those blue eyes, the exact blue of the jewel she wore round her neck, lifted, then who could not be shattered by their brilliance? Certainly not that little man from the East, or any other man, unless his thoughts were entirely on a fortune in the bank, and not on what he might hold tenderly in the curve of his arms. Hannah was an old woman and had not missed any of the aspect of life which came within her province of bedroom and upstairs sitting room. She saw her ladies before and after gaieties, she saw them unrobed or in their finest feathers. She saw their smiles fall off like their gowns, their undisguised weariness, their boredom, their secret hopes, and their unsuccessfully hidden fears. She heard the chatter of women alone, or the whispers of the husbands, the scufflings, the sometimes raised voices, or the muffled sobs. She had learned human nature in the most revealing room of all, the bedroom.
And she knew in that moment that no one could meekly make Miss Fanny take second place, or marry a man whom she detested. She would rather proudly remain alone all her life.
‘Fanny,’ said Amelia, ‘you look very nice, but I do think that dress needed a little decoration. Miss Egham thought so, too. Some beading, or at least some ribbon bows. It’s quite severe, isn’t it? Now me, don’t you admire my roses? And the necklace Papa gave me?’ She fingered the pearls round her neck. ‘He got it from that Mr Solomon. He says I am too young for diamonds, but they’ll come all in good time. He is such an indulgent Papa.’