Love Child

by Philippa Carr

  I laughed. “She is an adorable child,” I said.

  “Handsome, yes, but quite spoiled. She needs more discipline. I shall speak to Sally. You know, Sally is as bad as everyone else where that child is concerned.”

  “Sally loves her.”

  “Sally loves all babies. But I must say I think Harriet is rather an unnatural mother. She always was. When I think of her leaving Leigh as she did … when he was only a few months old …”

  “Harriet is a good friend, though.”

  My mother shrugged her shoulders. Although she agreed that it was a good, practical idea for the children all to be under one roof, she did not approve of Harriet’s action.

  That was why that year was a happy one for me. What I had so desired had come about in a natural way. I had my new baby and my own Carlotta and I was with them every day. Leigh was away a good deal and I was anxious for him, but I had the comfort of my children and I was happier than I had been since Jocelyn’s death.

  Then there was consternation in our household. My mother knew that if it came to war she would not be able to prevent my father’s sharing in it. One day he was missing and she found he had gone, leaving a note for her.

  I found her seated in the window, the letter in her hand and a look of blank despair on her face.

  “He’s gone,” she said. “I knew it was in his mind. I knew I kept him against his will.”

  I took the letter from her and read:

  My dearest,

  I could not tell you. I knew you would unnerve me. You would have made me stay. I cannot. I must go. So much is at stake. Our future depends on it … the future of our grandchildren. Understand, dear Bella, I must go. You will be in my thoughts every minute. God bless you.

  Carleton

  She murmured: “It is like an evil pattern. Oh, God, if he should be taken again … as he was before …”

  “Perhaps this will be over soon. They say the King hasn’t a chance.”

  “He defeated Monmouth.”

  “It was before he had shown that he was not a good King.”

  Then a terrible thought struck me. Leigh would be involved in this. He was in the King’s army. My father would be on a different side from my husband. I knew that Leigh had no great respect for the King, but he was in the King’s service and a soldier’s first duty was loyalty.

  I could not bear to think of what might be the outcome.

  As for my mother, I was afraid she was going to be ill again as she had been in Dorchester.

  The coming of William of Orange had set James attempting to rally men to his cause. There would be war, and the people remembered that other war of not so very long ago. The last thing they wanted was civil war—Englishmen fighting Englishmen. There was little glory to be gained and a great deal of sorrow. “No war!” declared the people.

  I rejoiced when I heard that the Duke of Marlborough had deserted the King and gone over to William. That meant that Leigh and my father would not be on opposing sides. Everybody was deserting the King. I could feel sorry for him, although I knew he had brought this on himself by his obstinacy and foolishness. His daughter was the wife of the man he would call the usurper; his second daughter, Anne, with her husband, the Prince of Denmark, had turned against her father and was supporting her sister and brother-in-law.

  That must have been a bitter blow for James. He would know then that the day was lost.

  As disaster and defeat descended upon him, our spirits rose. It looked as though the war was over. James had fled to Ireland, where the Irish rallied to him because of religious sympathies. But William was a brilliant general, and James had little chance against him.

  Both Leigh and Edwin fought in the Battle of the Boyne, which was decisive.

  The war was over. The revolution was successful. Few kings had been turned from their thrones with such ease.

  We had now moved into a new era. James was deposed and in exile. William and Mary reigned in England.

  A Visit to London

  NOW OUR LIVES HAD set to a pattern. Leigh continued in the army and we waited eagerly for those times when we could be together. The children were growing up. Damaris was six years old; Carlotta, thirteen. I was twenty-eight years old.

  “There is plenty of time to have more children,” said my mother.

  She was contented. My father was at home and she was glad that he was getting old.

  “Too old for adventures,” she said with a chuckle.

  But my father was the sort who would always be ready for adventure, as Leigh was. My mother and I were closer than we had ever been. We shared each other’s anxieties. She told me what a comfort I had always been to her. “Though when you were born,” she said, “I was disappointed because you weren’t a boy. But only for your father’s sake, of course. He always wanted boys.”

  “I know,” I said, with a trace of bitterness, “he made that clear.”

  “Some men are like that,” replied my mother. “They think the world is made for men … and so it is in many ways. But some of them can’t do without us.”

  I felt very tender towards her. Beside her, I felt worldly beyond imagining. She had lost her first husband when he was very young and had lamented for him over many years, deceived into thinking that he was the perfect gentle knight when, all the time he had been professing devotion to her, he had been Harriet’s lover. Yet my mother had overcome that to walk into a lifelong romance with my father. In a way life had protected her as it never had me. I had loved and borne a child out of wedlock; I had been caught up in intrigue and had spent such a night with a man who seemed to me like a monster of iniquity; and now I was living the quiet country life like a matron who has never strayed from the conventional paths. There was so much which I could not explain to my mother.

  But now we both feared for the men we loved and that brought us together. There were times when I almost told her what had happened to me, but I restrained myself in time.

  So, there were those occasions when Leigh came home and we planned for the future, but although I longed for him while he was away, when we were together we never quite reached that blissful contentment which I knew should have been ours. Always the memory of Beaumont Granville would be there to torment me, to jeer at me, to remind me of my humiliating submission. If I could have disguised this from Leigh I should have been happier, but he was aware that something was between us and deeply hurt by it; and I began to fear that in time it could corrode our relationship and ruin our marriage.

  Damaris was a quiet, reflective child. She was clever at her lessons and Emily’s favourite. I was glad of that. Emily’s devotion to Carlotta had waned a little, which was largely due to the behaviour of Carlotta.

  Carlotta was wild, impetuous, given to flashes of temper when she would say whatever came into her mind. Damaris was gentle and never hurt anyone. I remember the day during a very hot summer when she came running to me in great distress, telling me that the poor world was broken. She had seen cracks in the parched soil and it had distressed her because she thought that anything which was broken must be painful. She loved animals and more than once had brought me a wounded bird to heal. One was a gull she had found on the beach. “It had a broken wing,” she cried, “and the others were pecking at it.”

  Damaris was a pretty child, but before the blazing good looks of Carlotta, any child must seem insignificant.

  There was no doubt that Carlotta was going to be a great beauty. She had never gone through any plain stages as so many beauties-to-be do. That outstanding colouring was always there. The soft, dark, curling hair and the vivid blue eyes. Her hair was not as dark as Harriet’s and her eyes were of a lighter blue. I had only seen one person with those violet eyes and near black hair and that was Harriet herself. But Carlotta had the same sort of beauty, and many people remarked that Carlotta took after her mother, which never failed to amuse Harriet.

  Carlotta at thirteen was well formed, in advance of most girls of her age. She had be
en born with the art of attracting people, and I had to confess this gave me some cause for alarm. She was a little like my grandmother, Bersaba Tolworthy. They had something apart from beauty which drew men to them. Harriet had it even now when she was a little plump, and my grandmother had retained it all her life.

  Carlotta was often at Eyot Abbas. She was very fond of Harriet, still believing her to be her mother. But it was not so much this supposed relationship which held them together as the fact that they were two of a kind. Harriet gave entertainments at her house and often staged plays. Carlotta always wanted the chief part in these and Harriet was content to give these to her.

  “For the sake of the play,” she said. “Carlotta should have gone on the stage. Of course it’s looks mostly. She would have brought them in! If King Charles were alive he would move heaven and earth to get that one into his bed.” She laughed at me. “Now you are looking like Prim Priscilla. That child will have lovers, mark my words. What we have to make sure of is that it doesn’t happen too soon and with the wrong one.”

  Carlotta had escaped from Emily Philpot’s jurisdiction and we had engaged a governess for her, a pleasant young woman who, like Christabel, had come from a vicarage. “Always the best background,” said my mother.

  So Amelia Garston entered our household, and Carlotta spent certain reluctant hours in the schoolroom. Emily did not resent this because she had long realized that Carlotta was too much for her to handle, and in any case she had my dear, gentle Damaris, who responded so cleverly to learning and was a good child into the bargain.

  Carlotta never liked to be in one place too long. She visited Christabel now and then. Young Thomas adored her, in common with other members of his sex. I liked going to Grassland Manor. It was such a happy household. I had never seen anyone change as Christabel had, and the change never failed to delight me. Envy had spoiled her life and now it had completely disappeared. She was deeply contented.

  She admitted to me once that there was nothing more she wanted, then she qualified that. “Yes, just one thing. I’d like to have another child. Thomas would love another. Of course, we are lucky to have young Thomas—who is the most wonderful child in the world, although I don’t expect you to agree with me—but I should like to have given Thomas several more children.”

  “Perhaps you will,” I said.

  “No.” She shook her head. “You know I nearly died with Thomas. The doctor said that to have another would be dangerous. I think my dear husband would rather have me than another child … even if I could have it.”

  “I’m sure of that.”

  “I’m so glad it turned out the way it did, though I don’t deserve it. I really don’t.”

  “I never heard such nonsense,” I said; and she just smiled at me and shook her head.

  Carlotta was a frequent visitor at Enderby Hall. She had completely charmed Robert Frinton and I was glad that she went to see him, for he was a lonely old man. I often wondered what he would say if he knew of the relationship between them. I was sure he would be pleased.

  He had made a habitable residence of Enderby Hall but he never quite succeeded in dispelling the gloom. I could never enter that hall without feeling a faint twinge of apprehension, and on the rare occasions when I had been there alone, I would find myself taking furtive looks over my shoulder because I felt I was being watched.

  He had brought a small staff of servants with him and lived quite simply. He often visited us, for my mother was constantly inviting him. I noticed that as soon as he arrived he would look round for Carlotta, and if she were not present—for she often decided that she would go and stay with Harriet—he would be unable to hide his disappointment.

  Of course Carlotta was wayward and bent on having her own way, but she only had to smile at us and we were her slaves. All except Harriet, who made no attempt to please her and somehow managed to do it as well as any of us could.

  It was a sunny day in the June of the year 1695 when Harriet and I sat in the gardens of Eyot Abbas overlooking the sea, and as I made out the island just rising out of the sea mist, I remembered, as I could never fail to, that night I had spent there with Carlotta’s father. I thought of my youth, my innocence and the tenderness of our love, so beautiful in itself and the beginning of everything which had happened afterwards, culminating in that night of horror which still haunted my dreams and coloured my life. It was like a black cloud, ever present, menacing my happiness.

  Leigh and I were, of course, happy together, but the complete intimacy for which we both longed still eluded us. It was a mystery to Leigh, but I knew full well what it was. I could never feel completely at peace while the memory lay between us.

  I knew Leigh well—the kindest of men where his loved ones were concerned, but he was capable of a reckless fury over what he considered injustice. He had gone over easily to the side of William because, although he had sworn allegiance to the King, he did not respect him. His commanding officer, Churchill, had his wholehearted support; and if Churchill went over to William, then he believed it was morally right for him to do so. I often thought of the way in which Leigh had brought me back to the palazzo and then cold-bloodedly gone off the following night and half killed Beaumont Granville. He must never know. I was certain that if he did there would be no half measures. That would be the end of Beaumont Granville.

  “You’re thoughtful.” Harriet was watching me closely. “Thinking back to long ago? You shouldn’t brood on the past, Priscilla. You have to look ahead to the future. I want to talk about Carlotta.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “I feel she is my responsibility as well as yours. After all, I am her mother in a way. I feel my duty towards her, although you may not believe it.”

  “Of course I believe it. You have always been good to her. She loves you.”

  “She admires me, yes. I think we are a little alike, Carlotta and I. I’m thinking of her future. She’ll marry young.”

  “She’s a child yet.”

  “Some of us stop being children early.”

  “She is thirteen years old.”

  “How old were you, dear Priscilla, when you stayed the night on the island with your lover?”

  “It was unusual circumstances.”

  “Unusual circumstances are sometimes quite usual, which sounds a contradiction but is oddly true. They arise, these unusual circumstances, and catch us unaware. I am sure that a girl like Carlotta will attract such occasions as she attracts every male creature who comes within a few yards of her.”

  “I agree that we shall have to be careful with her.”

  Harriet laughed. “The more careful she sees us to be, the more reckless she will become. I know her kind … none better.”

  “Well, if we are going to be careful, what are we going to do?”

  “We’ll guide her … with invisible hands.”

  “Harriet, what do you mean?”

  “I have a bridegroom for her. One I have always wanted her to have.”

  “Harriet!”

  “Yes, my son Benjie. He adores her … but he doesn’t really know how much yet. Besides, he thinks she is his sister. He’ll have to discover that she is not, that she is no relation. It reminded me of you and Leigh … although he knew all along that he was not related to you. But he was brought up with you like a brother. You see, it makes a complicated situation. Suppose Leigh had not been looking on you as his dear little sister all those years, you would have been together from the start. It is Leigh you really loved. I always knew it. That idyll on the Eyot was the awakening … if you see what I mean.”

  “I see, of course, but it is not necessarily true.”

  “It is true. You and Leigh would have been lovers when you were fourteen … after all he was a man then. Then all those complications would not have occurred. Well, that’s all finished. Carlotta is in the picture now. I want Benjie to know that she is not his sister. It was wise of you to have told Leigh.”

  “You know I couldn’t
marry him without telling.”

  “Of course you couldn’t, and he understood. After all he is my son. I am very happy that you and Leigh are together, Priscilla. It makes you my daughter in a way. I could be very sentimental about that … if I were a sentimental woman. But what I am really thinking about is Carlotta’s future.”

  “Somehow I could not bring myself to tell my parents.”

  “Why not? Your father has not exactly lived the life of a holy monk.”

  “I know it, but he has always been rather contemptuous of me. No, that’s too strong a word. He has been indifferent to me.”

  “That has hurt you. There are times when I should like to give your father a talking to. He really is the most obstinate of men.”

  “I shall never forget what you did for me, Harriet … you and Gregory.”

  “He is a dear man and played his part well. He would do anything for me. But it is Carlotta whom we are discussing. You are not anxious to disclose the truth to your parents. … Perhaps not, but there is someone else who should know.”

  “You mean Benjie?”

  “Yes, later. But I was thinking of Robert Frinton.”

  “Robert Frinton!” I cried. “But why should he know?”

  “Because the child’s father was his nephew.”

  “But …”

  “You are depriving the man of his family. He loves Carlotta. He is a lonely old man. That was a terrible tragedy in his family. Just imagine what it would mean to him to find he had a family in this enchanting child.”

  “I don’t think it would be wise.”

  “Why not?”

  “We have guarded this secret so long. You, Leigh, Gregory, Christabel and I are the only ones…”

  I stopped suddenly in horror. There was one other who knew. I saw again vividly those lascivious mocking eyes. “Posing as a virgin when all the time you were there to have your little bastard!”

  Harriet had risen and put an arm about my shoulders.