‘I can’t stay here, Sherry. I only came to tell you that my mother had thrown me out, not to stay. I must find lodgings nearby. The concierge, everyone here, they would not like it if I stayed. It would upset them.’
Sheridan smiled down at her with passionate tenderness. He appreciated how she felt but it did not stop him, would not stop him, kissing her.
As for Celandine, Sheridan’s ardour reminded her that whatever turn her life took next, it would surely be worth it.
The days spent in the pension seemed to crawl by, and her room felt just as a prison room must feel. It was narrow, and cramped, and the washing facilities were of the most primitive. Celandine tried not to think of the heartbreak she had caused her mother, of how her reputation was now destroyed, of how she would never be able to return to Avignon, where her parents’ friends and relations would think of her as a fallen woman, for really, what was the point?
At last they were on their way, catching a train that would take them to the coast once more. And all the time there was Sheridan, nonchalant, carefree, looking about him first in the train, and then on board the ship, as if he knew exactly what happiness lay ahead of them, as if he could see no possible problems, smiling gaily at her, at the white-topped waves, at the other ships and boats, at the blue sky, sketching her happily, looking up still smiling, until he saw how pale Celandine had turned.
‘Oh, my poor darling.’ He flung his sketchbook down and ran to her aid. ‘Being sick is such a martyrdom,’ he murmured as he held her head.
Celandine lay back against the bench on which he had carefully helped her to lie down, and stared up at the sky above her, a sky that now seemed to be dipping and diving into her face, the morning sun as bright as it had ever been, making her feel dizzy. Tears rolled slowly down her cheeks as she realised her plight. Alone in the world, without anything but the smallest of allowances left to her some years before from her father’s estate, cut off from her family, never to see her mother again. Everything seemed suddenly hopeless until she felt Sheridan’s hand on her forehead and his handkerchief wiping her cheeks, a look of such devotion on his face that her tears turned from sorrow and sickness to relief.
‘I am so sorry to be causing you a fuss, Sherry.’ She tried to smile and failed, but Sheridan made up for her failure with his own smile, before he kissed his elegant index finger and planted it tenderly on her lips.
‘Don’t fret, my darling. We will be in Cornwall quite soon. You will love our lodgings at Mrs Molesworth’s house, where I stayed last year, really you will. But first we must go to Rosewalls, Aunt Biddy’s house. We can be married from there, and you will never have to go on a wretched boat again.’
Minutes later, leaving her dozing in the sunshine with his coat over her, he sat down on his camp stool, and despite the rocking of the boat and the screaming of the seagulls overhead he started to sketch the coils of rope and the other passengers, humming happily to himself as he did so.
Celandine opened her eyes for a second, but seeing Sheridan already happily engrossed, she quickly closed them again. Of one thing she was quite sure: she was in love with a man with a golden nature.
When they finally reached Cornwall, the coastline was obscured by mist, which meant that Celandine, although grateful in the extreme to put a foot, if not two feet, on dry land, was unable to observe the beauty of the harbour.
And it was raining.
Sheridan, who had stayed briefly with his Aunt Biddy at Porthrowan the previous summer, was anxious to marry as soon as possible, his anxiety being based on Celandine’s resolute refusal to live with him as his mistress.
The matter had arisen in Paris, during her sojourn at the down-at-heel pension. Celandine had been firm in her resolve.
‘I may be a fool to love you, Sheridan, but I am not such a fool as to want to live with you except as your wife. Besides, who would want me after, except as his mistress? No one.’
‘There would be no after,’ Sheridan had assured her, a little too blithely.
‘Women do not win at love, Mr Montague Robertson, and you know it.’
‘In that case we will most definitely go and stay at Aunt Biddy’s at Porthrowan. She will help us to be married. She is very practical. And very romantic. She has never married herself, you see.’
‘Doubtless that has helped her stay romantic?’ Celandine suggested, straight-faced.
Sheridan laughed. ‘Doubtless, my darling, but nevertheless it is to Aunt Biddy we will go.’
And so they arrived, still in pouring rain that flooded the narrow pavements and washed through the roads outside Aunt Biddy’s neatly kept house overlooking the harbour at Porthrowan. The sea was pounding against the harbour walls, anchored boats huddled together in brightly painted clusters swaying and rocking. Finally, after Sheridan had rung and knocked again and again, a black-costumed, white-haired maid opened the front door.
She nodded at Sheridan. ‘Good day to ye, Master Sherry,’ she said as if she had only just seen him an hour before. ‘I shall tell Miss Biddy you’re here, I shall. We’m been very busy with last of the dustin’, we’m have,’ she murmured, and before either Sheridan or Celandine could step into the hall, she promptly shut the door in their faces.
Celandine clutched her beloved umbrella, which was threatening to turn itself inside out, and stared questioningly at Sheridan from under her hat.
‘I thought you said your aunt was expecting us,’ she said, raising her voice above the wind.
‘She is. That’s just Gabrielle – Aunt Biddy’s maid. She’s always like that, a bit forgetful and so on.’
Celandine continued to struggle between her hat and her umbrella. ‘Let’s hope she remembers us in due course.’
They waited, the wind seeming to grow colder and the rain wetter before the door opened once more.
‘Miss Biddy says to come in, and I’ll send the boy down to the pavement there to get your portmanteaux. Russo, Russo, boy, boy!’ she cried urgently, turning away from them.
Not wanting a repeat of her previous performance, Sheridan quickly put his foot inside the front door just as ‘the boy’ came up from the basement, his white hair shining under the hall lamp, his faded grey wool-slippered feet sliding across the wooden floor in a manner that made Celandine immediately think of someone on skates.
Once they were inside the hall, however, away from the crying of the gulls and the pounding of the sea against the harbour walls, Aunt Biddy’s house seemed reassuringly warm and welcoming.
‘My dears!’
She stood at the entrance to her sitting room, her old-fashioned wide crinoline dress with its hooped underskirt swaying as she held out her arms in welcome to both of them.
‘How delightful this is, how delightful.’ She held Sheridan’s bent head against her ample, plum-coloured satin bosom before turning to Celandine. ‘The bride!’
Celandine too was held against the plump frontage, and then both of them were taken by the hand and led into a large room stocked with ornaments and tables, velvet armchairs and sofas. Indeed, so many and so varied were the furnishings that Celandine found herself looking nervously round, unable quite to respond to Aunt Biddy’s command to make herself comfortable.
Meanwhile Aunt Biddy arranged herself with fascinating aplomb on a large buttoned sofa upon which she perched herself sideways, which was only practical, considering the size of her dress.
‘Sit, sit, oh do!’ she cried, her plump white hands clapping softly against each other, her large rings catching the light. ‘This is so romantic,’ she went on, as both Sheridan and Celandine finally elected to sit opposite her. ‘My dear,’ she said to Celandine, ‘ever since Sherry sent me his letter to explain your situation, I have been so excited. Of course you will have to run away to Gretna Green, seeing that you are under the age necessary to marry in England without the permission of a parent, but run away you shall, and when you return we will arrange a delightful wedding party.’
Celandine swallowed hard. First Cornwall an
d now Scotland? ‘Is that entirely necessary?’
‘Oh yes, my dear, de rigueur. Everyone in your situation has to run away to Gretna Green. The Scots, you see, will marry anyone. You will have to be on your way tomorrow before your family catch up with you. So terrible of whomever it was that Sheridan wrote to me has threatened to horsewhip poor darling Sherry, and for no better reason than that he has fallen in love with you! Quite, quite shocking.’
Celandine shot a look at Sheridan, and quickly turned away, as he shrugged his shoulders and made a comical face to make her laugh.
‘Really, I cannot understand it,’ Aunt Biddy continued, unnoticing. ‘Such violence in the world without civilised people resorting to threats. Oh good, here is Russo with the sherry wine and herbal biscuits, so fortifying before a meal, I always find. You must partake before you change for dinner – it will help to keep the tingle tangles away: so discomforting to feel hungry before a meal, I always think.’
Russo, who was as white-haired as the maid, and as bent as an aged dressmaker’s pin, held out a trembling silver tray with the refreshments arranged on it.
‘Your suitcases are in your rooms, Master Sherry,’ he murmured, before wobbling back towards the door, his shoes making a strange sliding sound as if they fitted him not at all.
‘No point in unpacking everything before Gretna, my dears,’ Aunt Biddy instructed them through a mouthful of biscuit. ‘Really there isn’t. Good gracious, I have not known life to be so exciting since Russo took Gabrielle fishing for her birthday, some years ago now, you may imagine; at all events they were lost at sea for days and boats sent out to find them; so exciting. I quite despaired, of course, but you can imagine my delight when they were found. We had quite a celebration here at Rosewalls. And the relief for me, for I know I should never have found more devoted creatures than my beloved Gabrielle and Russo.’
As they excused themselves to change for dinner and were led up to their very separate rooms, Celandine whispered, ‘What is all this about you going to be horsewhipped? What could you have written to Aunt Biddy?’
‘Only the truth,’ Sheridan murmured. ‘I told her that you had been thrown from the family home because of our great love for each other, and we needed to take refuge from parental fury, which was why we had to come to Cornwall and seek refuge with her. I added that I feared being horsewhipped, which indeed I did, or do!’
‘Well, really! And now it seems we have to go to Gretna Green, in Scotland, of all places, and all because of your letter.’
‘It will be an adventure, you will see; and afterwards we can honeymoon all the way back down to Cornwall. Besides, Aunt Biddy is right, my darling; going to Gretna Green is indeed the quickest way to marry, because as she says the Scots will marry anyone. You will see, it will all be all right. Everything will turn out to be for the best in the best of all possible worlds, or something to that effect, at any rate.’
Celandine sat down on the edge of her bed. Her bedroom, like the sitting room downstairs, was over-furnished to a degree, but it was warm, it was welcoming, and most of all it was comfortable. Nevertheless, when she had removed her still damp hat, she found herself putting her head in her hands and letting out a great shuddering sigh as she realised how uncertain her future might yet prove to be. If she had not said she would go to the summer school in Brittany with Sheridan, if she had stayed behind in Paris with her mother and Agnes, she would not now be in a strange place, far from everything familiar, and about to have to run off to Scotland of all places to be married of all things.
There was a scratch at the door. Without waiting for her to call out ‘Come in’ Sheridan darted into the room, and seizing her hands pulled her to her feet and kissed her.
‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s for being so beautiful. And here’s my sketch to prove it.’
Seconds later he was gone, leaving Celandine to stare down at the water colour he had done of her on the boat, and remember just why she was there. The reason she was alone in a foreign country was six feet in height, dark-haired, hazel-eyed, and had just left the room. She started to change out of her travelling clothes knowing that there was no more point to remorse, and what was more, no turning back. Her destiny was set, for better or for worse, and she might as well accept it.
She dressed for dinner in a gown that her mother had chosen for her some months before, a memory which she now tried to push away, knowing that it would make her feel both guilty and melancholy. To drown these feelings she hummed the Wedding March to herself. She must think only of the future. It might be dark outside, and it might still be raining, but there was no reason not to think of blue skies to come, of sunshine, of the clear light of Cornwall, and all the joys of her new life.
When she rejoined Sheridan and Aunt Biddy in the drawing room Celandine was looking elegant and composed in grey silk, and she soon found herself feeling reassured by the many comforts of Rosewalls, her confidence returning as she agreed to everything Aunt Biddy was suggesting, from running off to Gretna Green, to coming back to a grand reception to be held later in the summer and to be arranged by Aunt Biddy herself.
‘You will find Cornwall so friendly, my dear. There is nothing that people will not do for you, I promise you, not just here at Porthrowan, but also at Newbourne, where I know Sherry here wishes to settle after the happiness he enjoyed there a year ago, before he left for Paris. It is just how it is. Nothing to be done about it. Friendliness everywhere you go.’ Seeing Russo at the door she added, ‘And now dinner, my dearest dears. Dinner.’ She sighed happily. ‘But only six courses, I am afraid. It is all Cook is up to nowadays – gout, you know; but we will take biscuits and milk up to bed to help us through the night.’
Sheridan glanced at Celandine and bossed his eyes at her to make her laugh, but she only turned away, remembering with some longing their impromptu café meals together in Paris and Brittany, the hilarious painting expeditions to the seashore where everyone’s concentration had been frequently interrupted not by the call of the seagulls but by the cries of the painters as they lost their easels among the sand dunes. Those carefree days now seemed a lifetime away. Soon she would have a ring on her finger and the responsibilities of a wife. She would have to concern herself with laundry lists and the ordering of meals, and Sheridan would become used to her in the way that Agnes and her husband were used to each other. And yet it seemed to her that there was nothing to be done. She must submit to her fate.
She switched her attention back to the easy banter Sheridan was swapping with his aunt, her eyes wandering round the dining room in which they sat as she inwardly scolded herself for being so unappreciative. After all, if Sheridan had been a different kind of man, he might have abandoned her, and she would have been forced to join the long army of young women who, having had their reputations ruined for ever, had to resign themselves to spinsterhood, or worse.
If Gretna Green sounded far away when it was first mentioned, it proved to be only just over the Scottish border, but the journey there was so tedious that the whole idea of being married in haste and repenting at leisure returned once more to haunt Celandine. Sheridan seemed to understand this, because he spent most of the long train journey trying to raise her spirits until finally, perhaps tired out from his efforts, he allowed himself to become exasperated.
‘If you don’t start acting more like the happy bride-to-be, I will find someone else to run off with, see if I don’t,’ he threatened, waving his soup spoon at her.
They were staying the night at a hotel near the famous lovers’ refuge, which should have meant that the wedding seemed excitingly close, and yet, despite her best efforts, bewildered loneliness had once more engulfed the future Mrs Montague Robertson, and it must have been showing a little too much for Sherry’s peace of mind.
‘What is the truth of your serious face, Miss Benyon? I have never seen you so lacking in good spirits. Not changing your mind about your choice of husband, are you?’
In spite of his light tone
the look in his eyes was worried.
‘No, of course not,’ Celandine replied quickly.
‘What might be the matter, then?’
He took one of her hands and kissed the palm. It was a romantic gesture which was usually most effective, but he could now see it was not having the desired response.
‘I haven’t a dress to wear. I haven’t a white dress. I have nothing suitable in which to be married,’ she finally confessed after he had coaxed her yet again to confide in him.
‘That doesn’t matter, my love. I don’t mind, I promise you. As far as I am concerned, you look beautiful in everything—’ Sheridan stopped. ‘Oh, no, it was wrong of me to say that, because you do mind. Of course you want to look like a bride, not just be one. Leave it to me, my darling. I will work a miracle, see if I don’t.’
He looked thoughtful, but made no more mention of the subject until the following morning when they came downstairs from their separate bedrooms and he pointed to a small lady in a tartan cloak who was seated, very upright, in the dark brown reception hall of the hotel.
‘Mrs McGregor is going to turn you into a bride before midday. Apparently she does it all the time,’ he added airily.
Celandine looked from Sheridan to Mrs McGregor and back again, and mentally closed her eyes. After Paris and the chic shop windows of the rue de Rivoli for which the Parisians were so justly famous, the sight of Mrs McGregor in her plaid coat and bonnet was hardly encouraging.
‘Follow me, if ye will. It’s not far, thanks be. We’ll have to hurry if we’re to have ye clothed before the travelling parson comes. He’ll nae stay more than a minute or two for anyone but the Almighty. For hasn’t the mon six more couples to wed before he goes for his wee dram?’
Celandine, her head bent against the wind, followed Mrs McGregor to her house, a most respectable-looking establishment not far from the place where they were to be married.
‘I fit up brides of all shapes and sizes and have done for many years.’ There was a trace of self-importance in Mrs McGregor’s voice, and when Celandine saw the choice of white gowns set about the sitting room, she had no trouble believing her. She stared round at the dresses ranged about the room, some spread on chairs and sofas, some hung against the cupboards. All the dresses were wide-skirted, quite obviously designed to be worn over a crinoline hoop such as Aunt Biddy wore. At the mere idea that she was going to be married looking about as fashionable as a teapot cosy, Celandine felt like catching up her cloak again and running back to the hotel; but realising, with a sinking heart, that she could hardly back out of the house without causing great offence, she pointed in vague desperation at a silk dress with small pearl buttons.
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