When the visitors had gone, and Clarissa had drifted back to the card tables with the child on her knee, Hope found Hugo in his new office, hard at work on the accounts. She liked the way he had fitted out the room, with his desk under the window, but a pair of chairs beside the fire, too, and some rugs for comfort. It was a small, plain room, but with the addition of some wood panelling and a few pictures, it would be very cosy. When he saw her, he tossed down his pen, and ran his hands through his hair.
“Can you believe it?” he said. “So many extra servants! And the horses! Have you any idea how many pecks of oats and trusses of hay a horse needs per week in the winter? They sit in those stables, with nothing at all to do, eating their heads off.”
“The estate can afford it, surely? You have always insisted that we needed more servants — a second footman, another housemaid and scullery maid, and at least two more gardeners, or so you said only a few weeks ago.”
“Oh indeed, we do need more, but acquired slowly, here and there, not all at once, and with not the least idea of what work they might be capable of. And there is no necessity for so many coach horses, for no one can use so many carriages all at once, not in the usual way. Nor do we need so many travelling coaches. One is enough, and something smarter for paying morning calls or going to Brinchester, but one set of horses would do for both, you know. And lately Ernest has been making noises about a hunter and a hacking horse, and if she wants to ride, too, that will be a great deal of expense.”
“It is his estate now, and if he wants to spend his money that way, he may do so, I suppose. He has three thousand a year, after all. He ought to live in some style.”
“Two thousand eight hundred,” Hugo said automatically, then, as Hope giggled, he added, “What is so funny?”
“You always say that — whenever anyone says ‘three thousand’, you say ‘no, it is only two thousand eight hundred’, as if it is vastly different.”
“It will do no good, however great his income is, if he is planning to feed an army of extra servants and horses, not to mention the consumption of coal and wine. And above all, it is outrageous to do all this without the slightest notice, not a word so that we might have prepared adequately, and he must have known for weeks. It is too bad of Ernest, truly it is. But he sees no difficulty! He says blithely that it is a large house, as if the walls might expand and the number of rooms multiply overnight to accommodate all his friends and his wife’s servants. If they are all servants, for who can tell? They have no proper uniforms, or any sense of hierarchy. It is the outside of enough! We are doing our best for him, but he is not helping, not in the slightest.”
Hope could see that he would run on in this vein for some time, arms waving wildly. She hated it when he became so agitated, for he never seemed to know when to stop, and accept the situation in resignation. Instead, he would rant about it, working himself up into a lather of indignation that lasted for days, sometimes. It unnerved her, and she knew of only one way to settle him.
“Shhh,” she said, bending down over his chair to put her arms around him and kiss the top of his head. “Do not let him make you angry, for I am sure he finds that very humorous. Everything is a great joke to him.”
“He is too frivolous by far,” Hugo said, but his tone was calmer.
“I know. He will begin to appreciate the importance of his position in society in time, by your example.”
She kissed the top of his head again, and then, finding him compliant, his forehead and nose and mouth. He smiled then, lifting his face to hers, and reaching with one hand to play with a stray curl that fell over her cheek. “Ah, my little wife, come and sit on my knee so that I may kiss you properly.”
She was very happy to comply, and for a while no words were spoken, and the only sound was the gentle crackle of the fire, and the tick of a small clock on the mantel. Even the dogs were quiet, dozing in front of the fire.
“What do you think of her?” he said after a while.
“Clarissa? She has not been here above four hours. I may perhaps have formed an opinion of her by Christmas.”
“Hmm. It seems to me that people reveal their innermost natures very soon, even when they try to hide behind a mask of goodness,” he said seriously. “Which she does not, at all. You must surely have been shocked by her manners, or rather, her lack of them.”
“It would be unkind to make an instant judgement of someone who has been torn away from her home, and forced to journey, entirely alone, through a country quite alien to her. I make allowances, for now.”
“Not entirely alone,” he said, pointing to his list of the servants she had brought with her. “You are all generosity, Hope, but confess it, for all she is married to a gentleman, Clarissa is no lady.”
She laughed, telling him the story of ‘Lady Clarissa’, but he saw no humour in it.
“I am entirely with Ambleside on the point,” he said, his face darkening. “She is as bad as Ernest for not taking anything seriously. One cannot call oneself whatever one wishes. It is just as well that she has been corrected at the outset, for think how awkward it would be to introduce her all around the neighbourhood as Lady Clarissa, and have everyone bowing and curtsying to her, and then to find out it was no such thing!”
“It was awkward enough as it was, for I was in the middle of introducing her to Mama, and then I did not know whether I ought to be introducing Mama to her. It was very distressing. I was quite at a loss, for I needed to know if she was the daughter of a duke or a marquess, and therefore outranked Mama, and if she were an earl’s daughter, I should have needed to find her father in Debrett’s to see if his title was older than Grandpapa’s. So perplexing! Fortunately, Mama was equal to it, and managed it very tactfully. I thought Mr Ambleside was quite rude at first, when he insisted on knowing who her father was, but he was perfectly right, it turns out.”
“And who is her father?” Hugo said. “One of the plantation owners, I expect, and I am very sure he never married her mother. It is not uncommon in the West Indies, so I have heard. The mulatto children are treated well by their fathers, just as natural children often are here, and settled in respectable trades and useful occupations. Some are raised as ladies and gentlemen.”
“That is true,” Hope said. “Connie has seen several mulatto ladies in town, and they are just as fashionable and accomplished and well-educated as any other lady. Clarissa is certainly fashionable and educated, and her accent is very good, with only an occasional word wrong. And she is very beautiful, I think.”
“I daresay, but beauty is not the primary prerequisite for the mistress of an establishment such as this. Her manners leave a great deal to be desired.”
“She was very rude about Alice Graham, too, and that I do not condone,” Hope said. “Clarissa will need the support of people like Lady Graham if she is to establish herself creditably here, and insulting her daughter is not the way to achieve that. Although Alice is very thin and pale,” she added fairly.
He laughed at that, and gave her a squeeze. “You are very calm about all this, little wife. You were so worried about the possibility of Ernest appearing at the last minute, yet now that he has, you are not weeping and wailing, as might be expected.” He nuzzled her neck gently. “I am very proud of you.”
The compliment made her glow with pride, but she lowered her head diffidently. “I suppose now that the worst has happened, there is not much left to worry about. Being married makes a difference, though. I have you to think about now, and therefore I cannot spare so much thought for Ernest and Clarissa. I am very afraid of what will happen to us, that cannot be denied, for everything is uncertain, but whatever the future brings, we will face it together.”
He stroked her face gently, smiling at her. “I like being married to you, Hope. You are warm and generous and kind and thoughtful and, no matter how bad everything seems, you always make me feel better. You are everything a wife should be, and I am a very lucky man.”
He pulled her close for another kis
s.
15: Paying Calls
The first evening with Clarissa was the strangest Hugo could ever recall. The new butler seemed to have no idea of his duties, and sat in the drawing room before dinner with Ernest. When they went through to the dining room, he helped to hand round the soup, to the great amusement of his friends, and then took his place at the table in the manner of any regular guest. Fortunately, William had brought in a couple of grooms to act as extra footmen, which concealed any deficiency.
By some quirk of the seats, Hugo found himself sitting next to Ernest, and having had little opportunity to talk to him socially, he now began to ask the questions that burned in his mind. One of his greatest curiosities was to discover, if he could, what had caused the quarrel between Ernest and Frank, a quarrel so violent and final that Ernest had resorted to forcing his brother aboard a ship. But Ernest’s face darkened to an angry red when Frank’s name was mentioned.
“Him!” he said, throwing down his fork. “You will not talk to me of that man, not if you have any compassion for my feelings. He betrayed me utterly, and although it worked out well for me in the end, his action was still most foul. But he has paid for his wickedness, for he is dead now, and serve him right!”
Hugo could not hide his surprise at this, so very different from the story he had heard from Frank himself, who was very much alive.
“Ah, you may well look shocked,” Ernest went on, mistaking Hugo’s reaction. “We were so close as boys. No two brothers could ever have been closer, and even though we were never alike in looks or wit — poor Frank was second in those areas, as in age, being the younger by ten minutes or so — still, I regarded him as my closest and dearest friend. But in Liverpool, he was drawn into bad company. I am ashamed to say such things of a brother, but he frequented the gaming hells with the sole intent of defrauding honest players of their money by sharp practices. I did everything I could to deter him, and to prevent him from employing his nefarious techniques, and he grew angry with me.”
Here he was distracted by the appearance of the pheasant, and for several minutes he was engaged in shouting down the table to his wife at the far end, encouraging her to try it and shrieking with laughter as she pulled a face and declared it to be the foulest meat she had ever eaten. Then all the others had to try it too, and a lively discussion ensued between those who thought it divine and worthy of the King’s own table, and those who thought it fit only for the pigswill. In the end, Ernest ordered it sent back to the kitchen, together with another dish that had failed to please Clarissa. It was some time before Hugo could attract Ernest’s attention again.
“You were telling me about Frank, and his evil ways,” he said, as soon as an opportunity arose.
“Was I? So I was! Well then, I had always had it in mind that we should go to sea, for that would have been the greatest adventure, as it seemed to my boyish self. But in Liverpool we heard so many dire tales of the misfortunes likely to befall even the best of ships, that we decided not to risk it. Then the next idea was that we would go into cotton, and perhaps establish a mill or two, for Lancashire is a perfect place for spinning and weaving of all varieties, and Aunt Lucy had associates who would have helped us get a foothold. But that would not do for Frank. His cheating ways were too profitable for him to give up. In the end I wore him down, and he agreed to it, or so I thought. But the night before we were to leave, he took me out to the theatre to celebrate, and as we made our way home, we were set upon by his cronies, who kidnapped me and carried me away to a ship which immediately set sail for the West Indies.”
“Good God!” Hugo said. “But how do you know that the dreadful deed was executed by Frank’s cronies? It could have been any group of villains, surely?”
“Any normal group of villains would have taken both of us, which these did not. No, it was all arranged by Frank, with the complicity of Aunt Lucy, for I discovered later that the mill to which she planned to send us did not exist. Frank was ever her favourite, for he followed her lead in everything. They wanted to get me out of the way so that Frank could continue their wicked ways, and if I had died on the journey I daresay it would have been all the same to him. It is a dreadful feeling to be betrayed by your own brother, Hugo.”
“I can well imagine it. But you said that Frank died? You went back to Liverpool to look for him, then?”
“Not at all. I discovered that sea travel was just as uncomfortable and dangerous as I had feared, so when I arrived safely in the West Indies, my gratitude was so great that I swore never to leave again, nor did I until this year. I moved here and there, and eventually settled on Jamaica. But I had many friends there, amongst them a number of ship’s captains who plied back and forth to Liverpool, so I was able to make enquiries through them. Frank had cheated once too often, it seemed, for a customer pulled a knife on him one day and took revenge for his losses. Frank is dead, and just as well for him, for if I had ever met him again, I should have killed him myself.”
Hugo was too discomfited to make any response, and Ernest turned back to his friends.
Later, when Ernest and Clarissa were established for a night at the card tables, Hugo returned with Hope to their little apartment, and there, settled in front of their own fire with cups of tea, he told her the story.
“Is it possible we were deceived?” he said to her. “Perhaps Frank truly is dead, and we were taken in by a clever impostor.”
“One who answered all the test questions?” she said. “Impossible! It could only have been Frank.”
“Yet you did not recognise him.”
“He was always the nondescript one, the one no one remembered,” she said, thoughtfully. “Ernest was much more memorable — no one could forget that nose! He was very much the leader of the two, always first into whatever mischief they got up to. Although to be sure, it was Frank who was the inventive mind behind most of their schemes, yet everyone assumed it was Ernest. He got the credit, but he also got the blame, and he never could lie convincingly, whereas Frank could say the sky was green and everyone would believe him. His face was all innocence, with just a hint of being hurt that you would even consider questioning his word. Frank got away with a great deal.”
“Then he is well-cast as a card sharp, if that is what he is,” Hugo said. “For myself, I think that more likely than this talk of making sure the customers are not cheating the club. He has drawn a handsome picture of himself as a respectable man of business, but gaming dens are always on the take, if you ask me.”
“It is Papa’s naming curse at work,” Hope said, giggling. “We are all named for virtues, but we each turned out to be quite the opposite. Amy is supposed to be so amiable, but she was so shy that she never said a word, or else panicked and was rude to people. Belle — poor Belle! — was hardly the beauty her name implied. Connie should be the faithful, constant one, yet she could never make up her mind about anything. And as for not-so-sweet Dulcie! And then Grace is so clumsy, and I am always worrying, and anything but hopeful. Now we know that Frank is a liar and a cheat, and Ernest is not at all serious. He thinks life is nothing but a joke provided for his entertainment.”
“Well, I was named after one of Mama’s brothers, who was a dreadful wastrel, by all accounts,” Hugo said. “Life is a great deal easier when nothing very much is expected of one.”
~~~~~
Hope was afraid that Clarissa would not like the idea of paying morning calls on their neighbours, and expected that she would have to work hard to convince her of the necessity. To her surprise, Clarissa was eager to participate.
“Oh, I want to be a real English lady, so of course I must pay calls. You may tell me who we should go to see, and when we must stay at the house to receive callers in our turn. We did something of the sort at home, you know, although it was not quite so formal, and the hours were different. We would go out in the early morning, and then be back home before noon to avoid the worst of the heat. But here it will take me hours, I daresay, to wrap myself in enough
furs to keep out the frost.”
“The weather is quite mild at the moment,” Hope said.
But Clarissa laughed loudly at this. “Mild? What a divine sense of humour you have, my dear. Mild? There was ice on the inside of my window this morning. Ice! On the inside!”
Hope said nothing more, but she wondered how Clarissa was to get through the winter if she thought a crisp autumn morning anything extraordinary.
On several days each week, therefore, one of Clarissa’s huge carriages was called into service, and Clarissa, Hope and Lady Sara drove out into the countryside to pay calls on the gentry in their part of Brinshire.
All Hope’s fears regarding the unfashionable nature of Clarissa’s gowns were quite swept away. Every day she emerged from her room attired in the first style of fashion, as if she had stepped directly from the pages of one of the London journals, and Hope felt like a country dowd beside her. And yet she could not quite understand how it was that a lady from such a hot climate could have so many woollen dresses and tweed pelisses and fur-lined muffs.
“Did you buy some clothes in Southampton?” she asked one day, as they bounced over the frost-hardened ruts in the road. “For these are too warm for the West Indies, I suspect.”
Clarissa laughed, a deep, fruity laugh that made her whole body quiver. She was a generously-proportioned woman, with a shapely figure that slender Hope could only envy. “I bought myself a seamstress in Southampton,” Clarissa said. “I told her I wanted to be as well-dressed as any great English lady, and she chose the materials and made everything as we travelled north.”
“She sewed in the coach?” Hope squeaked, astonished.
“Sometimes, if it was work that needed no great precision, like hemming. But we would stop for a day or two here and there, for travel is so fatiguing, is it not? And then she would be working away, stitch, stitch, stitch, and so each garment was made.”
“Ah, so that is why your journey was so slow,” Hope said. “How clever of you!”
Hope (The Daughters of Allamont Hall Book 6) Page 13