by Deryn Lake
Lauzun tightened his hold on her. “When I heard how badly you were being treated I wondered if it was all my fault.”
“Do you mean that our affair started me on the road to ruin?” she said, her eyes laughing.
“Well, yes.”
“Put it out of your mind. I was looking for love and looking too hard. When you would not elope with me, for good and sensible reasons I see now, I reacted like a spoilt child. Why, I vow and declare that Louisa has more sense than I did then. Please, Monsieur, be assured that if it hadn’t been you I would sooner or later have gone astray with someone else.”
“Carlisle?”
“More than likely,” answered Sarah, and smiled a small secret smile.
“And now, is there anyone?”
She shook her head. “I have put passion behind me. It is too dangerous a fire to play with. I have been alone since William Gordon left me and, believe me, there is a certain satisfaction in it.”
“I find that hard to imagine,” answered the Duc, thinking that his own behaviour had, if anything, got slightly worse as he grew older.
“Then you must take my word. And for that very reason I think it best if you spend the night at Goodwood House. My brother will be pleased to see you, I know.”
“But it is snowing and cold,” Lauzun replied, making one final attempt.
“It is less than a mile away and John will escort you with a lantern. Armand, if you have any friendship left for one who treated you so badly, please do as I say. I have sworn to myself that I will do nothing to jeopardise my child’s future and any further scandal would be the finish of her. Louisa would become as big an outcast as I.”
The Duc got to his feet. “You have grown very beautiful, you realise.”
“And why is that?”
“Sorrow, motherhood, who knows? I hope you meet a man one day, Milady, who is of big enough heart to ignore your past and see only the goodness in you.”
“Yes, I would like that,” she answered quietly.
“What a shame that we cannot be together,” Lauzun said wistfully, and sounded almost as if he meant it. “But, alas, my wife is alive and my mistress would object.”
“And we mustn’t do anything to upset them,” answered Sarah, and laughed to herself at his quizzical expression.
*
They sat in the candlelight, listening to music, not talking, not touching, just being together after such a very long time. The usual politenesses had been exchanged; did the research go well, how marvellous that she had received such rave reviews, were Canadian winters very cold, what was it like to play in a château. All asked and done, and now just a peaceful silence.
“It’s late,” said Sidonie at last. “I must go to bed.”
“So must I or I won’t get over my jet lag for days.”
“Time’s a funny thing,” she answered reflectively.
“In every way. Listen, I know we are strangers again. I know that so much water has flowed under so many bridges we could drown in it, but let me say one thing.”
“Which is?”
“That even if we had been in each other’s company for the last ten months, we wouldn’t have stayed the same. No situation is ever static; from day to day things alter. We might well have spent an evening just like this, feeling our way, if we had had some monumental row. Do you see the point I’m trying to make?”
“That even if we’d been together we could still be unknown to one another?”
“Something on those lines, yes.”
“That the people we’ve met we would have met anyway and their influence on us would still have changed us slightly?”
“Probably that too.” He smiled at her and Sidonie realised that she had forgotten how green his eyes were, how nice his voice. “Very formally, then, Miss Brooks, may I ask if I can take you out to dinner soon?”
“I think it could be arranged.”
“Is that yes?”
“Yes.”
“In that case I’ll happily say goodnight and sleep well and see you soon.”
“Goodnight, Finnan,” and she turned to go, hiding her feelings.
“Oh, by the way, how’s Sarah Lennox?” he said, as he opened the front door.
“I don’t think she’s very joyful at the moment.”
“Will she be again?”
“Oh, yes, one of these days.”
“Your days or her days?”
“Both,” said Sidonie, kissing him rapidly on the cheek. And with that she went downstairs, immeasurably glad that Finnan O’Neill was home at last.
Chapter Thirty
The newspaper report was straight to the point and utterly obscene. It was dated 15th February, 1774, and said, “We are able to assure our readers that Lady Sarah Bunbury, née Lennox, at present residing in a dwelling on her brother the Duke of Richmond’s estate at Goodwood, is expecting a child fathered by her nephew, Charles James Fox. Lady Sarah will be remembered for her scandalous elopement with Lord William Gordon which resulted in the above named nobleman being forced to leave the country.”
As soon as he read it, it being his daily duty to glance through all the papers, the King felt such a tightness in his throat that he thought he would either choke or vomit.
“It can’t be true,” he moaned silently. “Oh, God, I know it isn’t true.” And he rang the bell on his desk for an equerry, realising full well that one of his periods of flurry was about to come on.
It was a new young man who stood bowing before His Majesty and George stared at him with some surprise. “Where is Colonel Gilbert?”
“He is indisposed, Sir. I am Major Woodford. I have only recently been appointed to your household.”
“Recent or no,” answered the King, trembling violently, “I have an urgent mission for you.”
“Name it, Sir.”
“You must take a letter to the Prime Minister, Lord North, at once, now, immediately.”
“Certainly, Sir,” answered Woodford, pleased to have such an interesting commission on the very first day at his post.
“And shall I tell you what it says?” said the King, going to his desk.
The Equerry was about to answer that he would not presume, that it was none of his affair, when he saw to his horror that the King was not only sweating profusely but shaking so badly he could hardly put pen to paper. It was in these moods, these bouts of anxiety, that he had been warned His Majesty should be humoured, so he said instead, “If Your Majesty is so inclined to tell me.”
“I’m writing this. ‘I can no longer tolerate the attitude of Fox as regards the American colonies in their disputes with their mother country. His behaviour is that of a lout, an abusive rabble rouser, he is as contemptible as he is odious. It is our wish that he be immediately dismissed his place on the Treasury Board.’ There, what do you think of that?”
Woodford’s first thought was that the King had taken leave of his senses to discuss a matter so delicate with a new member of staff, a johnny nobody, and in fact was puzzled to the extent that he burst out with, “I don’t know what to say, Sir. What has Mr Fox done exactly?”
“Made it a policy to torment me all these years and now, this …” And the King struck a copy of the Morning Post with his hand.
“What is it, Sir?”
“A libel, a calumny, yet another slur on one who is utterly sinned against.”
Woodford saw to his horror that His Majesty had tears in his eyes and the instructions of his superiors flashed through his mind. Should the Monarch become agitated in any way he must withdraw quietly and send for a physician to take the royal pulse.
“And who is that, Sir?” asked the Equerry, bowing his way out.
“The most beautiful woman in the world,” answered the King, and turned away to look out of the window, quite obviously remembering another, happier time, before depression and fluster had come to plague him.
*
“Do you know, His Majesty wept,” whispered Woodford to his wife,
when his tour of duty was temporarily over and he had a short home leave.
“About the story that Sarah Bunbury was expecting a child by her nephew?”
“Yes.”
“It’s said that he was once in love with her.”
“Still is, I reckon. Anyway, Fox got his cone as a result. I overlooked a copy of Lord North’s letter, and do you know what he had written?”
“Tell me.”
“His Majesty has thought proper to order a new Commission of the Treasury to be made out, in which I do not see your name.”
“How utterly cutting,” said Woodford’s wife, and laughed prodigiously.
*
Sarah’s cup, so bitter for so long, now overflowed with grief. Four months after the vile allegations had appeared in the Morning Post, followed almost instantly by Charles James’s dismissal from the Treasury, her beloved guardian, Henry Fox, Lord Holland, had died. But as if this were not enough, Caroline, who had adored her husband all her life, followed him to the grave twenty-three days later, after an agonising illness described as cancer.
In view of the salacious slanders being whispered about her, Sarah had fled to Castletown in Ireland to stay with her sister, Louisa Conolly, unable to cope with the added humiliation alone, cut off from human contact as she had been in Halnaker Farm. So it was from Ireland that she caught the packet boat to attend Caroline’s funeral, her sister and brother-in-law with her. And it was from the docks that she had travelled to Holland House, vividly reminded of her first journey there all those years ago when she had come from Dublin to take up residence with the Foxes.
And now both of them were gone, Sarah’s girlhood companions never to be confided in or advised by again. It was with a heavy heart, her quarrel with the Hollands entirely put behind her, that Sarah returned to Holland House for the wake.
Charles James was there, of course, dressed in black, his mood equally sombre. And as soon as they had a moment alone, he drew Sarah to one side.
“The King’s had me dismissed; you know of it?”
“Yes. It’s to do with that vile libel, I suppose.”
“Ostensibly no. In truth, HM hates me for backing the American colonists, yet I cannot help but think the timing of it all to be highly suspicious.”
“You don’t suppose he believed what he read, do you?” Sarah asked, her voice suddenly thin.
“God knows. One would hope not.”
“After all the filth that’s been spread about me I expect people are prepared to accept almost anything.”
“Well, I’ve put it about that when I discover the identity of the author I shall challenge him to a duel.”
“I truly wish I could do the same,” Sarah sighed sadly.
Charles James patted her hand. “It’s devilish hard for you, I know. If only I could do something more than just vigorously deny the calumny.”
“When all’s said and done, I’ve brought everything on myself. Give a dog a bad name and so forth.” Her voice shook. “I’ve served my sentence of ostracism four years now. How much longer can it possibly go on, do you think?”
The rogue politician looked at her shrewdly. “When the divorce is over and done people will finally lose interest in you. But until that time I think you’ll have to content yourself with being patient.”
“I hope to God all this is enriching my soul.”
Sarah’s nephew barked a laugh. “You can rely on that. They say there’s no victory without suffering.”
“What a sickening sentiment,” she answered, her old self momentarily blazing forth.
“What is?” asked Ste, coming to join them.
“Nothing of importance,” Sarah replied, surveying her other nephew with a certain alarm, for the poor creature looked terrible indeed.
Stephen Fox, the new Lord Holland, was now aged twenty-nine, as was Sarah herself, though he appeared to be at least twice that. Enormously fat and even deafer than before, he gave the unfortunate impression of being quite an old man. It was generally believed by the family that under the terms of Caroline’s will, Ste’s debt to his father’s estate, nearly £50,000, would be wiped off. It was also rumoured that Lady Holland had done the same for Charles James who, or so it was said, owed in excess of that! But even this generous bequest could not rid Sarah’s eldest nephew of a desperate need to raise money, which resulted in his having a permanently hangdog look about him.
“How are you, my dear?” he asked now, his breathing laboured and wheezy as might be expected in such a very large person.
“Well in health, a little miserable in disposition, I fear.”
“As are we all,” Ste replied fruitily.
Sarah looked round the black-garbed figures thronging the Gilt Room. “Lady Susan does not appear to be here.”
“No, unfortunately both she and Mr O’Brien are very poorly. They sent their deepest regrets, however.”
“I would have so loved to see her,” Sarah answered wistfully. “Since she returned from America we have met only twice, though we correspond as regularly as ever.”
And this fact had been something that Sarah had clung to in her isolated and solitary life. In 1770, Susan and her handsome Irish husband had come back to England from New York, settling at Winterslow, near Salisbury, close by Ste and his wife, Mary, who lived in Winterslow House. Most unfortunately, this mecca of pleasure, to which flocked a constant stream of guests and at which Ste had built a little theatre for the plays they all loved to perform, had been burnt to the ground in January, giving Sarah the uncomfortable feeling that 1774 was going to be a bad year for the Foxes. And so it had proved, the dreadful libel against her being followed by Charles’s dismissal and the two tragic deaths. With the fated feeling that the run of bad luck was not yet over, she turned to Ste once more.
“Have you seen Lady Susan’s new home yet?”
“No, but we hope to go there shortly.”
After the fire, the O’Briens had moved to Stinsford House, near Dorchester, an old manor house belonging to Lady Ilchester, Susan’s mother.
“Do report on it when you have visited. And now, if you will excuse me, I’d like to look round a little before I leave.”
It was like turning back the clock to walk through the great house, strangely empty and quiet with both the master and mistress newly dead. Treading softly so as not to disturb the silence, Sarah walked its length and breadth. Through the Crimson Drawing Room and the Dining Room, remembering how she had laughed there as a giddy creature as yet unspoilt by the world. Then on along the corridor to the drawing room given over to the young people of the house, then through to the bedrooms, now so empty and still. Finally, having seen enough, Sarah descended the sweeping main staircase to the floor below.
She did not go to the Chapel, where she had married Charles Bunbury what seemed like centuries ago, but went instead to the snugs and private studies in the east wing, coming at last to the den she had once shared with Susan. It was a beautiful room with an arched and decorated ceiling, a mullioned window at the far end, a cushioned seat below it. The window was set in one of the house’s many archways in which a door could be closed at night for security. But now the door was open, the light pouring in, and Sarah ran to the seat and knelt up on it as she had done so often in the past. Pressing her hands against the glass, she looked out.
She knew it was not possible, of course, but somehow the carriage sweep, distinctly visible from this vantage point, had gone. And the Inigo Jones portals which had stood so brave and fine at the far end of it had been moved and placed close together at the far end of the courtyard. Horrified, Sarah looked for the elm drive but that, too, had vanished. Furthermore, and this was the most horrid thing, strange people were wandering about in the grounds, grounds so drastically and violently changed that they were scarcely recognisable.
Disbelievingly, Sarah rubbed her hand over her eyes, then stared out once more, and this time shuddered with true fright. For her ghost was standing right outside the windo
w, gazing directly in at her. She had not so much as caught a glimpse of the thing in the last five years, not since the time she had seen it in the snow and fallen down in a faint which had caused her to go into labour. But now, after all this time, the woman who had dogged her footsteps ever since she had first come to Holland House, was there again. Frozen to the marrow, Sarah returned the creature’s stare.
And then an incredible thing happened. The woman smiled, the humorous mouth curving, and simultaneously held out her hand. From this one gesture alone Sarah knew that the being was aware of her plight, but did not in the slightest hold her in scorn. On the contrary, the creature seemed to radiate friendship and compassion. Utterly bewitched, Sarah found herself smiling, appreciating a gesture of friendship in a world turned so cold and cruel. She pressed closer to the window to see even more distinctly and the woman leant forward and also put her palms against the glass. And then the vision blurred, as if behind raindrops, and a second later was gone.
Sarah sat on the window seat, bewildered but reassured, no longer afraid of the ghost, or whatever she was, who had made it so clear she posed no threat but offered only kindness and understanding. And then the sound of approaching footsteps brought Sarah back to the present and awareness of her own dire situation came rushing back both to torment and hurt her.
*
It would have been nice, thought Sidonie, if she and Finnan had been able to pick up exactly where they had left off, if her conscience about Alexei could have left her quietly alone, if life in general could have been a little bit easier. But the truth was that the months spent apart had taken their toll and somehow they had not got back on the same footing.
“Big girls don’t cry,” Sidonie had repeated to herself, and then wondered if the situation might be easier if she did admit to having had a fling — and what a fling — while the doctor had been away. Yet she could not bring herself to the sticking point and it was only with the greatest reluctance that she finally raised the issue of other friendships during their first meal out together.
“When I was in Russia I met this amazing young violinist,” she began, with what she hoped was an extremely casual note in her voice.