The Summer Fields

  She stares at him, quite at a loss. He looks up, and seeing her incomprehension says, ‘You see, my grief is not as yours was when you were a child. You had the privilege of a sorrow so pure I imagine it was like a sharp knife cutting deep but clean, and sooner healed.’

  ‘It is presumptuous of you to imagine another’s pain, sir.’

  ‘Yes, perhaps it is. All I know is that my grief is nothing like that. I am torn and muddied inside, full of regret that the opportunity to understand, perhaps in time to forgive, has been ripped away from me. I thought I had years ahead to unravel the mystery of the man whose blood I carry in my veins this very day.’

  ‘We must all find our own path to peace when someone who has filled our lives is taken from us, sir,’ she replies coldly.

  He narrows his eyes and says, ‘Something is very much amiss here, I think.’ When she does not reply he continues, ‘I hurried over to see you this evening because I needed your gentle council to help me with my pain.’

  ‘If your leg is causing you pain, I suggest you sit, sir.’

  Mordiford looks as startled as if she has struck him. ‘Miss Griffiths, you mock me. How has this barrier risen between us?’

  A great wave of frustration wells up inside her. In a tone she imagines he cannot mistake, she says, ‘With the arrival of Lady Arabella.’

  ‘I see. Yes, indeed. That was also a great shock. However, it has distilled my thoughts and led me to make a firm and definite decision. Having made it, I came with as much haste as I could to tell you.’

  ‘I do not wish to hear it.’

  Mordiford stares at her, his face riven with anxiety and despair. ‘I think I understand. You judge me for my actions this evening.’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘I accept I have caused great pain to a person whom I have always held in high regard.’

  The despair that she has felt all evening swiftly turns to anger. ‘That, I suppose, does you some credit,’ she manages to say.

  ‘I am glad you think so. You see, were I to turn away from what I know to be right, I would only add to the intolerable burden of regret that I already bear. I know absolutely and unequivocally that I cannot fulfil my duties here or at home unless…’ He sighs again and stares up at the ceiling. ‘…unless I marry.’

  By now she feels such a fury towards him, this revelation hardly rocks her. Her anger has created an emotional distance between them. She pities his dilemma yet feels no compassion for his struggle. The more he talks, the greater is her belief that he has come to seek her blessing. She cannot give it. Far better that had he quit the Continent without a word than come this evening to extract an absolution from her.

  ‘What would you have counselled me to do?’ Mordiford continues. ‘To falsely tie someone to me if I knew I could not offer her the life she had come to expect?’

  ‘I cannot answer this, sir,’ she says. ‘It is cruel of you to expect me to.’

  ‘Cruel? Then I am quite lost. I am without a compass.’ Grasping his stick, he limps across to the fireplace where he hangs onto the chimneypiece staring morosely into the fire. ‘How poorly I have judged everything. I mistook the pity you felt for me as love, the care you poured on me as devotion. I had thought myself renewed by my hardships and worthy of your regard. I see now it was my conceit rearing its ugly head again in a different guise.’

  ‘Your conceit, sir, is to come from the arms of one woman and seek the approval of another.’

  Mordiford starts like a spooked stallion and swings round. ‘What’s that you say?’

  ‘I walked down through the town. I found the house where you stayed. I watched you. I saw you with Lady Arabella.’

  ‘When we were locked in a brutal conversation?’

  ‘Brutal? That was not the word I would have chosen, having seen you lift her chin as a prelude to a kiss.’

  ‘A kiss?’ Mordiford says in disbelief. ‘A kiss?’ He repeats. ‘In all innocence, no kiss has passed this evening between myself and Lady Arabella.’ His stares at her, his face working as if he struggles to recollect the scene, until understanding lightens his brow and laughing quietly, he says, ‘Clearly you did not stay to see the tableau through.’

  ‘I could not stand to.’

  ‘If you had, you would have seen that by raising her chin, I forced her to look me in the eye so that I could be sure she understood the strength of my convictions.’

  ‘To marry her.’

  His forehead puckers with incredulity.

  ‘No! A thousand times, no. God damn it, Miss Griffiths! Are the words I have been speaking for the past ten minutes coming out of my mouth in Flemish for you to so misunderstand me?’

  ‘I understand you completely, sir.’

  ‘No, you do not. I told Lady Arabella that I could not face the task ahead of me without the woman who has been my saviour, the woman who has bewitched me, body and soul. That person stands before me now.’

  She rocks as if caught by a gust of wind. She fumbles at the edge of a table to steady herself.

  ‘And still she speaks not,’ Mordiford cries out.

  ‘And Lady Arabella?’ she manages to say.

  ‘Lady Arabella finally accepted my words as truth.’

  ‘Her mother?’

  ‘Ah, the mother was not so easily convinced. However, they embark for England tomorrow. That part complete, I summoned a carriage. I came immediately with news I foolishly imagined would bring joy to your heart.’

  She covers her face with her hands, the happiness she should be feeling overwhelmed by chagrin, filling her with a misery of the acutest kind.

  ‘I have made a terrible mistake,’ she says, unable to look at him.

  ‘It appears it is I myself who is most in the wrong. I imagined that the honourable way to act was to tell Lady Arabella of my decision before I came to you. You are angry with me for speaking plainly to her.’

  ‘I am not. I imagined the heart you must break was mine own.’

  ‘Never.’ He says this with such vigour she knows her foolishness has made him angry. ‘How little you must think of me to imagine that I could spend such a night with you and cast you aside the very next day.’

  ‘I beg you, sir. Do not raise your voice at me.’

  ‘Do not raise my voice? What else am I to do when you will not understand me?’ He strikes the floor with the ferrule of his stick, his shoulders heaving, his knuckles white where he grips the head of the cane.

  Still staring into the fire, he continues in a calmer voice, ‘My only anxiety was that my new station would test your affections and make you believe you must forsake all you have loved back in Wales for the passion you have found here. I was ready to challenge that view and promise you that having lived our lives beyond convention these past nine months, we could continue to do the same.’

  ‘Oh, Mordiford,’ she whispers, dropping her head in shame. ‘I am sorry. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me for so doubting you?’

  She hears him sigh. Presently he says, ‘I am not so sure that I can.’

  His words freeze her heart. Slowly she raises her head and looks at him.

  He has turned to face her but he no longer looks angry. His head is tilted to one side. He gazes at her with such intensity his eyes have never seemed so blue. ‘I might forgive this folly…’ He pauses before taking a faltering step towards her and gathering her fingers into his hand, ‘…if your foolishness extends to accepting the hand of this clumsy soldier who loves you with all the truth imaginable.’

  ‘You mean the soldier with the plooked face and the crooked leg?’

  ‘The very one.’

  She hesitates, unable to resist a mimic of his earlier tease, but she knows from the warmth of his eyes and his smile that at this moment he will not be gulled.

  Chapter 12

  December 1704

  Two whole months have passed since that evening of joy and celebration in the kitchen at the hospital in Nördlingen. Elen survived the cop
ious quantities of alcohol pressed on her by the Barkers to celebrate the news. She survived a tearful parting with Mordiford the following day, secure in the knowledge that he returned to Wales, not only to sort out his affairs, but also to seek permission from her father for her hand in marriage. She too survived the gruelling journey back to The Hague and the difficult sea crossing, much lengthened by the autumn storms.

  It was not until Elen arrived in London in the company of the Barkers and Dr Argyll that her worries crept up on her. Elen felt the cold clutch of reality when they stopped at The Black Swan in Holborn and Sarah pulled her into her bosom, saying, ‘Come the spring, Mr Barker and myself will hasten across the borders of Wales and see you – that’s if the Countess of Duntisbourne ain’t too grand to receive a surgeon’s wife.’

  She had filled the past months with thoughts of how her life would change, but the exact details remained hazy. When she thought about the passion of their final union, she imagined it occurring in the bed in the sealed chamber where she first learned to love Mordiford, not in a grand bedroom in the private apartments. When she thought of eating in company, she imagined Mordiford breaking bread with her family at their table. She could not imagine eating at the dining table in the south wing with Mr Antrobus, bending stiffly to serve her.

  As the stagecoach laboriously ate up the leagues from London to Wales, the doctor regales their fellow passengers with stories of the Duke of Marlborough’s glorious victory. Elen only half listens, her mind filled with concerns that, once plunged into a life she was never born to live, she will fail, and Mordiford’s love for her will falter.

  She comforts herself with the notion that their love has been strong enough to overcome the most terrible trials. At other times she has believed those trials were easy compared to a union that society at large would find impossible to accept. And by the time she glimpses the red earth of the Welsh marches through the window of the coach, her dread has moved onto a fear of living at Duntisbourne Hall. The place holds so many horrors for her. Even without them, she cannot imagine living in that cold and forbidding building, thronged with the ghosts of the past, her days filled with the tedium of a life without labour or purpose.

  * * *

  Elen wakes with a start. It is noon and they have arrived at the Three Cocks Inn on the Hereford to Brecon Road where they are to be met, according to her latest communication from Mordiford.

  The doctor helps her down from the coach and starts bidding farewell to his admiring audience who begin to head across the muddy courtyard in search of food and drink. Elen wonders if they too should partake of a little refreshment before continuing. The east wind whips around her as she waits for her bag to be unloaded. As the coach moves away towards the stables, she recognises a trap standing in the courtyard. It is the very one that Mordiford used to drive her over to Presteigne on the night he rescued her from the Knights of St Sebastian.

  The doctor bustles her into the inn. The atmosphere is thick with pipe smoke and the smell of bodies. The doctor peers into the bar room and catches the eye of the landlord.

  ‘A driver from Duntisbourne awaits us,’ the doctor says.

  ‘That’s right, sir. I’ll let him know you’re here.’ He disappears into the crowd.

  Elen takes a deep breath – this is the first contact with a servant from the hall. Does he know she is betrothed to his master? And how will he feel when he realises who she is, the dairymaid who nursed the viscount in the winter?

  Here he comes now, his tricorn already on his head, tipped down so that she cannot see his face. He isn’t wearing livery. Instead he is dressed in a frockcoat of dun-coloured wool over a simple waistcoat and brown breeches. She has time to wonder if Mordiford has banned formality among the servants, when the man raises his head and she finds herself looking into a pair of the clearest blue eyes.

  Mordiford snatches his tricorn from his head, tucking it under his arm. Taking her fingers, he presses them to his lips.

  ‘Good heavens above,’ Dr Argyll says taken aback. ‘Is that you, Captain Mordiford?’ He stops abruptly, momentarily lost for words before adding, ‘What on earth am I saying? I mean, Lord Duntisbourne.’

  Oh, no, she thinks. I cannot call him that – he will always be Mordiford to me. The landlord overhears and hurries across, wiping his hands on his apron and touching his forehead with a knuckle.

  ‘Lord Duntisbourne? I had no idea, no idea at all,’ he says, looking Mordiford up and down, before his drinker’s face flushes an even deeper crimson. ‘Come on through, my lord, into the parlour.’

  Mordiford claps his hand on the man’s shoulder and says, ‘Your ale is just as fine in the bar room but we must away now, thank you. These two fine people have been travelling for weeks and are looking forward to sleeping in their own beds tonight.’ He gives Elen a jaunty wink, which makes her blush almost as brightly as the landlord.

  As they walk across the courtyard, she notices he no longer uses a stick although he walks with a dip to the left, lifting the knee of his injured leg a little higher to swing the foot forward.

  ‘I think you quite meant to trick us, my lord,’ the doctor says, ‘coming in disguise like this.’ She is cheered by the doctor’s lack of deference; happy that the easy friendship they developed in Bavaria has not been damaged by the passage of time.

  ‘Disguise? This is no disguise. Do you not remember? I told you all in Donauwörth that I have no ambitions to ape my father’s life, and most certainly not his style,’ Mordiford says, pressing a coin into the hand of the boy helping with the bags before climbing up onto the wooden seat of the trap, helping his left leg up with his hand. ‘Come along,’ he says, holding out a hand of invitation. ‘Three of us can squeeze on here.’ Elen is sandwiched between Mordiford and Dr Argyll.

  Although the wind is keen, the sun breaks out from behind the scudding clouds and bathes the winter landscape in golden light. The track is dry and they make good progress.

  She wants to slide her arm into the crook of Mordiford’s elbow, but feels she cannot with the doctor sitting beside her. She wishes that, like the doctor, she could slip back to the easy manner they shared the last time they were in one another’s company, but she feels a crippling shyness and does not know how to overcome it.

  She thinks, all will be well once we leave the doctor at his front door – but the next stop will be Duntisbourne Hall, where all will not be well. She steals a look at Mordiford’s profile and sees the corners of his mouth twitch, then begin to smile. He looks down at her, his expression one of supressed excitement. Yes, all will be well, she thinks taking a deep breath. Somehow, all will be well.

  They reach the doctor’s house by mid-afternoon, refusing the refreshments pressed on them by Mrs Argyll and bid the doctor farewell. As the trap turns the corner and the doctor’s house disappears from sight, Mordiford hauls on the reins, tosses them down and gathers her up in his arms.

  ‘Elen, my darling Elen. I thought my old temper was going to rise and make me fling the doctor from the trap so that I could hold you in my arms.’ He sweeps her hair from her face, his gaze darting from her eyes to the tip of her nose, to her lips and back again. ‘This precious, precious face. You have returned to me and I am the happiest of men. But we must hurry if we are to make it back to Duntisbourne before nightfall.’

  ‘And to the dairy,’ she adds. He doesn’t reply but there’s a rascally glint in his eye.

  ‘I thought you could dine with me first,’ he says. ‘Your father is only expecting you in general.’

  The sun is dipping in the sky by the time the trap enters the estate. Elen sees the chimneys of the hall above the trees, and feels a pall of anxiety squeezing the happiness out of her heart. She does not want to dine at the hall. She wants to sit down to supper with Mordiford at the rough pine table in the kitchen, surrounded by her family who love her.

  To her surprise, Mordiford guides the pony onto the path to the right, which leads away from the hall. ‘Surely,’ she s
ays, ‘you’re not playing your father’s silly game of taking a roundabout route to the entrance, just to show the hall at its best, are you?’

  ‘I think it is too lovely an evening to head there just yet,’ he says and she frowns at him. Whatever is he planning? It is surely too cold for a picnic.

  On they trot, up through the woodland and out onto the fields high above the hall to the west of the estate. How lovely, she thinks, we will pass Maes yr Haf and, as they break free of the woods, there it is, tucked away at the top of a gentle valley, the stones of the handsome house glowing like amber in the low winter sun.

  ‘My mother loved that farmhouse,’ she says.

  ‘I know she did. Your father told me when I went and asked for your hand in marriage.’

  ‘Was he not exceedingly surprised?’

  ‘He was, and not a little worried, but I talked to him of my plans for the land, my determination to honour the debts left by my father and make Duntisbourne a great estate once more. I reminded him that his own marriage was a powerful example to follow and he talked a deal about the happiness he found with your mother. She must have been a woman of extraordinary good taste as well – Maes yr Haf is one of the prettiest houses on the estate.’ He gives her the most tremendous smile. He looks as if he is about to burst out laughing or fling his hat into the air and whoop with joy.

  ‘Whatever is the matter with you this afternoon, sir?’ she says.

  ‘I am overjoyed to see you,’ he says, slapping the reins across the pony’s rump as the trap speeds towards the large farmhouse.

  Elen gives up trying to read his mood and returns to admiring the proportions of the building ahead with its bay windows and stone mullions.

  As they near, the front door opens. A figure comes out and stands beneath the portico. Two tall young men join him, then a girl steps forward, holding a child by the hand, and Elen gasps – it is her family.

  ‘Why is Tad here?’ she says as the trap rattles towards them.