‘Your contretemps with the horrid Queen of Naples,’ said Augusta.
Fred looked embarrassed. ‘I had not intended to cause offence. Didn’t think the walking backwards thing applied in the middle of a ballroom – dangerous business.’
‘Well, I am sure that the Empress will expect no such niceties tomorrow, Baird,’ said Bay.
‘Do you think you will be able to present me?’ said Fred, unable to conceal his eagerness.
‘If the opportunity presents itself. But, of course, I am only the pilot.’
‘Perhaps tomorrow, when the hunt is here at Melton, there might be a moment?’ Augusta came as close to pleading as her pride allowed.
‘I shall certainly do what I can,’ said Bay.
There was a general clatter and scraping of chairs from the other side of the drawing room as Lady Crewe announced her intention of going to bed. Augusta made to follow her and beckoned to Charlotte, saying, ‘That is our cue to retire. My mother does not hold with late nights.’
Bay bowed to Augusta. Turning to Charlotte, he said, ‘We must finish our conversation tomorrow, it seems.’
‘I look forward to it.’ Charlotte shook her head a little so that her diamonds sparkled.
‘So do I, Miss Baird, so do I.’
The Left Foreleg
When the ladies had been escorted to the door, Fred turned to Chicken and Bay.
‘What do you say to a game of billiards?’
Bay shook his head. ‘Not tonight. I want to check on Tipsy.’ And he left them before they could protest.
The temperature had dropped and Bay shivered as he stepped outside. But he was grateful for the cold, as he needed to clear his head. He was furious that Augusta had interrupted his conversation with Charlotte just at that moment. They had been almost there. But now his proposal would have to wait until tomorrow. It did not matter really – he was confident that Charlotte’s feelings would not change overnight – and yet he would have felt much easier in his mind if the matter had been settled.
For he had not been entirely accurate when he had told Augusta that he had been unable to form an opinion of the Empress’s looks. It was true that he could not say whether or not she was beautiful; his impression of her had little to do with her face. Yet he could draw a precise silhouette of the Empress on her horse – the straight back, the tilt of her head – as accurately as if she was standing in front of him.
The day had started badly. When Spencer had presented him to the Empress, she had given him the very briefest of nods and had resumed her conversation with two men, who from the colour and cut of their hunting clothes must have come with her from Austria. These courtiers made no move to acknowledge Middleton at all, evidently taking him for some kind of servant, and Bay found himself hovering awkwardly at the edge of the group, waiting for the hunt to start. When at last the huntsman blew his horn and the pack moved off, Middleton kept himself a few yards ahead of the Empress and her courtiers, who were riding abreast. At no point did she look at him or acknowledge his presence, and as Bay looked out across the sparkling fields crosshatched with black thorn, he cursed Spencer for spoiling a glorious day’s hunting. He had no desire to act as some glorified groom.
The hounds had picked up the scent and were travelling at speed towards a small copse. Between the pack and its quarry was a hedge at least twelve foot tall. The hounds had found a hole at the base of the hedge and were squirming through, one at a time, yelping with excitement. The huntsman had stopped, evidently deciding that the obstacle was too high for him to clear, and was making his way further down the hedge, looking for an opening. Bay could see that the rest of the field were following him down to the other end of the field where there was a gate. The hounds were all through now and Bay could hear them squealing from the other side. They would be well into the copse before any of the riders could get into the second field. They were all lining up behind the gate, politely waiting in turn to jump over it.
He hesitated for a second, thinking of Earl Spencer’s expectations and the web of obligation he was under, and then he felt Tipsy tremble under him and he felt his spirits lift as he pressed his heels hard into her sides and rode straight towards the hedge. He thought for a moment that Tipsy might refuse, but then she sprang and they were clear of the hedge and, by a whisker, the snowdrift on the other side. His heart was thudding in his chest as he slowed to a canter across the unbroken snow. This was what he loved, to be ahead of the pack with nothing to worry him but the going ahead. He could hear the yips of the hounds in the wood, and as he stood up in the saddle to see which way they had gone, he caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. He turned his head, a little piqued that someone else had dared to jump the hedge, and to his amazement saw the solitary figure of the Empress riding a few feet behind. She was sitting quite upright on her horse, looking as spruce as she had done at the beginning of the day, her elegant silhouette precise against the snow. That hedge had been a gamble, even for Bay, but she had taken it with ease and independently, it seemed, of her retinue.
Bay had not believed Earl Spencer when he told him the Empress could ride – he had assumed that this was the kind of hyperbole that hung around anyone of rank. But if anything, Spencer had underplayed it: the Empress could not only ride but she could ride almost as well as Bay himself. He couldn’t think of many men who could have taken that hedge, let alone women. He raised his crop to her in congratulation – realising as he did so that he was probably breaching some royal protocol, but he felt the need to acknowledge that, for the moment at least, they were equals.
Bay did not wait to see how she responded, since he could see the rest of the hunt beginning to gallop up the field towards them. He could just make out the green jackets of the Austrian contingent and he urged Tipsy forward into the copse. But as he plunged on into the wood, he did not have to look round to know that she was behind him.
She had been there at the kill. Bay had been surprised to see that the Empress had watched the fox being torn to pieces by the hounds without a tremor. Only when the huntsman offered her the brush did she appear to falter, waving him away.
On the way back, he noticed that she followed him rather than rejoining her own clique. The light was beginning to go, so he let Tipsy subside into a slow trot. He was thinking that Tipsy might be ready for the National in the spring when he heard her say, ‘Captain Middleton.’ He turned round, surprised and pleased somehow that she should remember his name.
‘I think your horse is going lame in the left foreleg.’ He had been riding just ahead of her so that he had not heard her to begin with, and she had had to attract his attention by tapping his arm with the leather fan that hung from the pommel of her saddle. Her voice was low and quiet, with almost no accent. It was the precision of her speech that betrayed her as foreign; she didn’t have the drawl or lisp of an English society woman. He looked down at Tipsy’s leg, but he could see nothing wrong with it.
‘I will take a look when we get back to the others, Your Majesty.’
She tapped the fan on her saddle. ‘I don’t think it can wait, Captain.’
He heard the note of command in her voice and he pulled Tipsy in and dismounted to have a better look at the foreleg. The Empress had been right, there was a small rock lodged in the hoof which was making Tipsy limp. He had not even noticed. He dislodged the stone with his pocket knife. The frog of the horse’s hoof was red and inflamed; if it had gone on any longer Tipsy could have been lame for weeks, and her National chances would be dashed. He was astonished that he hadn’t spotted it earlier. He put the horse’s leg down, and when he looked up he saw that the Empress had lifted her veil and was looking down at him.
‘Was it something in the hoof?’ Her face was pale in the fading light; he could only just make out her features – dark eyebrows against white skin, a straight nose, high cheekbones, a few lines around the eyes.
He held out his hand flat and showed her the rock. She reached over with her fa
n and poked it. ‘It was a good thing you caught it, Captain Middleton. It would be a pity if such a fine horse was to go lame so early in the season.’
‘I am in Your Majesty’s debt then, for I admit I had noticed nothing.’
‘I was brought up with horses, Captain Middleton. My father had not much interest in education but he did teach us all to ride.’
‘He was a good teacher, then, Your Majesty, if I am allowed to say that.’
She looked down at him and smiled faintly without showing her teeth.
‘If we were in Austria it would not be considered proper for you to talk to me so directly, but then we are not in Austria. I take it that you cannot show sixteen quarterings in your family tree?’ Middleton shook his head. He wondered what she would say if she knew exactly how humble his origins were.
‘Then you could not be part of the imperial household, Captain Middleton.’ The Empress’s face was serious.
Middleton got up on his horse. Now their faces were level, and the Empress smiled again, and a dimple appeared in one cheek. ‘But that is one of the reasons that I prefer the sport here,’ she said as she rode on.
The Leather Fan
Charlotte was woken by a noise that sounded like a thousand plates cascading onto a stone floor. It took a few moments for her to realise that it was the barking of the fox hounds. As they poured into the stable yard their yelping reverberated around the stone walls, creating a cacophony of sound that made sleep impossible.
She lay in bed listening to the sounds of the house coming to life. There was the clanking of the housemaids with their coal buckets, the hall boy leaving the polished riding boots outside bedrooms, the footmen and valets brushing and starching the hunting coats. The maids when they came in to light the fire were talking excitedly in low voices about the hunt, and the possibility of seeing the Empress. ‘Cook says that her hair comes right down to her ankles.’
At home, when the local hunt met at Kevill, Charlotte would bury herself in the innards of the house – developing prints in her dark room or retreating to the linen cupboard, where she liked to check the sheets that her mother had brought as part of her trousseau. Each one was embroidered with her monogram, DAB – Dora Alice Baird – and the little owl that had been her symbol. The second Mrs Baird had not had time in her brief life to make much of a dent on the surface of Kevill – she had been too busy with her horses and her parties – so Charlotte had few reminders of her existence apart from the jewels in the strongbox and an ever-dwindling number of Irish linen sheets. She would look for those small tears that, if snagged by an unsuspecting toenail, could cause a serious rent. It was satisfying work: catching the loose threads before they unravelled. It was her own way of preserving her mother’s memory.
Safe in the starchy cool of the linen cupboard, she could allow herself to remember the last time she had seen her mother. Charlotte had been waiting on the landing with her new doll, which she had christened by painting a red cross on its porcelain forehead. At last her mother had come down the stairs, her riding habit looped over one arm. Charlotte remembered the lacy borders of her mother’s pantaloons and the shining buttons on her boots. Every detail of her mother’s outfit lay crisp in her memory, but not the face. Her mother had laughed when she saw the baptised doll. ‘What a solemn little girl you are, Lottie.’ Charlotte could still feel the rough grain of the serge riding habit against her cheek and hands when she had pushed her face into her mother’s skirts. She could hear the click click click of the riding crop as her mother had trailed it against the banisters as she went downstairs away from her. Her mother had been so young, married at eighteen, dead at twenty-three. Her horse had stumbled over a fence, and Dora Baird née Lennox had been thrown head first into a ditch and broken her neck. They had brought her body back on a hurdle, covered with one of the huntsmen’s coats. Charlotte had watched from the nursery window, wondering what the pink speck was that the men were carrying so slowly across the fields, until her nurse had found her and taken her away.
Charlotte’s father had said after the accident that he would never hunt again, but the winters in the Borders were very long and the amusements were sparse, so his self-imposed exile from the Orrington did not last beyond the following Christmas. But he had been adamant that his only daughter would not follow the same route as her mother. The Shetland pony was sent away and Charlotte was sent to play in the nursery when the hunt came to Kevill. It was only when her godmother Lady Dunwoody had given her the camera and taught her how to use it, that Charlotte found an occupation that filled the long winter days with meaning.
But there was no escaping the hunt today. Of course, she could have pleaded a headache and kept to her room until the riders set off, but she wanted to see Bay. If she and Bay were to marry, she could not hide in the linen cupboard from November till April. Besides, she wanted to see the Empress.
Charlotte was curious to know if she was as beautiful as everybody said. She had seen an engraving in the Illustrated London News after one of the Winterhalter portraits, where she looked romantic and soulful, her long hair studded with diamond stars. But that image must be at least ten years old now, judging by the crinoline. Would Elizabeth still be as appealing a decade later? When questioned at dinner last night, Bay had not been very forthcoming. Charlotte had rather admired him for that. He had so clearly not wanted to descend to Augusta’s level by answering her questions. Of course, in matters of feminine beauty, men were not always reliable witnesses. There was, in Charlotte’s experience, a great gulf between the charms that men found appealing and the kind of beauty that could withstand female scrutiny. The camera lens was equally ruthless. The kind of women that were all ‘wriggle and chiffon’, in her aunt’s phrase, did not translate well to the photographic plate. All the conventional accoutrements of feminine charm – the pouting, the lowered lashes, the trembling bosom – were deadened by the long exposure time demanded by the photograph. To look unflinchingly into a lens for a whole minute was not easy, and in Charlotte’s experience women found it harder than men. Even though the new cameras meant that the exposure time now was shorter, the women who required sleight of hand to dazzle the eye were always disappointing in photographs.
* * *
After breakfast Charlotte went up to the old nursery to fetch her equipment. She looked at the photograph she had taken of Bay with Tipsy. His very pale blue eyes shone out of the print. Later, she thought, she would retouch the surroundings so that there was nothing to distract the viewer from the man and his horse.
Carrying her equipment across the Great Hall, she almost collided with a footman carrying stirrup cups on a silver tray. As he opened the door and she could see the red, black and brown mass punctuated by points of silver, hear the shouts and the snorts of the horses and smell the excited animals, she found she could not move. There had been exactly this combination of light, colour and sound the day her mother had set off on her favourite grey. She wanted very much to retreat into the cool gloom of the house and pretend that none of this was happening.
‘Stirrup cup, miss?’ The footman waved the tray in front of her. Charlotte picked up one of the silver goblets and took a gulp of the steaming liquid. She had imagined it was some kind of mulled wine, but it was stronger than anything she had tasted before, coursing like liquid fire down her throat and melting the butterflies in her stomach. A horse whinnied in the distance and she took another gulp.
By the time she saw Bay cantering across the park with Chicken Hartopp, the goblet was empty. As they jumped the ha-ha that separated the garden from the park, although she could not really see Bay’s face, Charlotte knew that he was smiling.
She took a deep breath and stepped out onto the terrace.
Bay pulled up his horse in front of her. From where she was standing on the terrace, she could look him in the eye. He tipped his hat to her.
‘No jewels this morning, Charlotte?’
‘I believe diamonds in the daytime are considered vulg
ar.’ Charlotte pursed her lips in her best imitation of Augusta. Bay laughed and leant towards her.
‘How I wish you were riding out with me this morning. It is such a glorious day to be hunting. There is really nothing like it.’
‘Unless you’re a fox, of course,’ Charlotte said.
Bay looked surprised at her tone.
‘I would love to have your company in my dark room today.’ The stirrup cup made it possible for Charlotte to say exactly what was in her head.
‘And I would happily attend you in your dark room. But I’m afraid Tipsy wouldn’t like it. Look at her, she is dying to be off.’
‘And you have an empress to look after as well.’
‘Her too.’ Bay waved his hand as if to brush the Empress away.
‘Is she here yet? I want to see her very much. I am hoping to take a photograph of her. I am becoming quite practised at riders and horses.’
‘The Empress isn’t here, though I believe she is riding over from Easton Neston. We can’t start without her, of course.’
‘Of course. But I thought punctuality was the politeness of princes,’ Charlotte said.
‘But not of empresses, it seems. The hounds have caught the scent twice already this morning. They are working themselves up into a frenzy. They’re desperate to be off – they know it’s a perfect hunting day.’ As Bay looked out over the horses and hounds he shouted a greeting to an elderly gentleman with a face red from years of hard riding and strong drink, mounted on a shiny chestnut horse.
‘Good day to you, Colonel. How is Salamander proving?’
The Colonel stopped, his head craning round as he heard Bay’s voice. As he turned to face them, Charlotte could see that his eyes were covered by a milky film.
‘Is that you, Middleton? Didn’t see you there for a moment. Salamander is doing very well. Worth almost every penny I gave you for her.’
Bay laughed. ‘I’ll take her back any time, Colonel, on the same terms.’
The Fortune Hunter Page 12