by Lisa Berne
“I saw him at one of Mrs. Drummond-Burrell’s parties last year in Town,” Gabriel said, accepting from Miss Cott a cup of tea. He thanked her and went on, “She’s a notoriously high stickler, as you know, so I was more than a little surprised that he was there.”
Mrs. Penhallow sniffed. “Thane is notorious for his ability to exert a peculiar fascination upon women—the susceptible ones, that is—who will invite him everywhere.”
“Cannot his stepfather provide a—well, a calming influence, Granny?” Livia said. “Or his mother?”
“His stepfather is dead, I’m sorry to say, and Almira Thane is a pretty, empty-headed woman without a particle of commonsense. It’s Judith and the Duke who have undertaken to help raise the two children Almira bore after she married their son, as well as, naturally, Thane. They did their best with him, but he proved himself unmanageable from an early age.”
“Well do I know it,” remarked Hugo. “An unholy terror, loathed by the entire school.”
“What happened to Almira’s other children?” Livia said. She had set aside her sewing, and was holding, thanks to the quiet efficiency of Miss Cott, a plate which held a thick slice of seedcake, dotted with caraway seeds and fragrant with cinnamon.
“The boy, I believe, is presently at Eton,” replied Mrs. Penhallow, “and the girl is being educated at home.”
This boy, Katherine thought, was the heir to the dukedom, not Philip Thane. She found herself thinking, imagining: young Philip, having lost his father, is swept by his mother’s remarriage into a great aristocratic family. One of them, and yet not one of them. Outsiderness. Was that even a word? Maybe if you used it often enough, they’d put it in the dictionary. It was a word she herself knew very well. Oh, all too well . . .
“Judith,” Mrs. Penhallow said, abruptly recalling Katherine to the conversation, “has agreed to act as your guide, as it were—to take you about, ensure that you’re introduced to the right people, and so on.”
“Given that Aunt Judith dislikes Town life,” said Gabriel shrewdly, “it’s rather interesting she agreed to your request.”
Everyone watched in fascination as a slow, secretive smile curved the old lady’s lips. “I once did Judith a great favor. Now she is returning it.”
“What favor, Granny?” asked Livia.
But Mrs. Penhallow only shook her head and would say no more on the subject.
Hugo, watching her, thought how that faintly mischievous expression made her appear years younger. There was no doubt in his mind that Gabriel’s marriage to Livia had benefited not just them as a couple, but Aunt Henrietta also. She had softened somehow, had become—well, more human. It was as if some good fairy had waved a wand over the three of them.
Which reminded him. He looked now to Gabriel. “When you wrote to me last November, coz, you mentioned an odd little story concerning Livia and yourself.”
Gabriel, on his face a small, subtle smile, exchanged glances with Livia. He said:
“In October, when Livia had gone, and I didn’t know where she was, I ended up relying on the advice of a local woman, who evidently believes she has mystical abilities. She’d seen something in her tea leaves, she told me, which indicated that I should go toward the ocean. I was desperate—and so off I went. It seems that she was right. I found Livia in Bristol.”
“And you believe this was more than just coincidence?” asked Katherine, glancing, as if unknowingly, into her own half-full teacup.
Gabriel didn’t immediately answer. He was looking again at Livia, and for a moment Hugo felt as if he was seeing something so powerful, so private, that he ought to turn away his own gaze. Finally Gabriel said to Katherine:
“I don’t know. I’m not one to ordinarily place credence in such things. I only know that I found Livia, and that it seemed like a miracle.”
Slowly Katherine answered, “Forgive me, but we live in rational times now. Modern times. Those things—those beliefs—well, our scientists say they’re the product of a disordered mind.”
Gabriel laughed. “That may be so. I was definitely disordered at the time.”
“Oh, I was too,” exclaimed Livia. “I had run off, determined to take my fate into my own hands, then ended up, in a stupidly anticlimactic way, falling ill with the most horrible fever.”
“Thank God you did,” Gabriel told her. “Not that I’m glad you were ill, of course, but what you did—well, it woke me up.”
There was a brief silence. Abruptly Katherine said:
“Why did you run off, Livia?”
“It seems so silly now, but at the time, it was dreadful,” Livia answered. “Gabriel and I had had the most ferocious quarrel, and we broke off our engagement. Or I should say, rather, that he broke it off. In a very high-handed way.”
“I was never so shocked in my life as when I found out,” said Aunt Henrietta. “Pretty behavior for a Penhallow indeed!”
“You weren’t wrong to criticize me, Grandmama. In my defense, I was half-crazed.” Gabriel gave Katherine a little quizzical smile. “You’re looking at me as if I have three heads.”
She blinked and looked rather flustered. “I’m very sorry.”
“There’s no need to apologize,” he replied, pleasantly, and turned his attention to the efficient Miss Cott who was passing round further slices of seedcake. Hugo accepted a second serving, Katherine refused with a quick shake of her head and a word of thanks, and then rather dreamily Livia said:
“That local woman, Mrs. Roger, told me—” She paused, her eyes going to Gabriel, in their green depths a sweet glow, then added to the room at large, “What I mean is—well, it may be that there’s more to life than what we believe we know. Or perhaps there’s more inside us than we can know.”
Hugo found himself watching Katherine, upon whose face came again a look of deep abstraction. Very different she’d become in these past weeks, in her new gowns and so forth, with her hair done in a simple, elegant way that revealed the extraordinary beauty of her dark, gleaming curls, which in turn highlighted the dark brilliance of her eyes, the beguiling curves of her cherry lips. All of which he might look upon, but not touch.
He was staring, Hugo suddenly realized, like a lovesick boy.
“Speaking of pretty behavior,” said Aunt Henrietta, “our relation Alasdair Penhallow, up in the wilds of Scotland, has apparently been conducting a shocking courtship ritual. I’m told that he summoned to his castle the eligible highborn maidens of the Eight Clans of Killaly, in order that they might engage in a competition for his favor.”
“Like the one for Gabriel last year?” said Livia, with a saucy glance at her husband.
“One hardly cares to imagine,” replied Aunt Henrietta, “the astonishing reports of Alasdair’s disgraceful mode of life being what they are. Dear me! I do pity the poor woman who becomes his wife.”
2 March 1812
Dear Hugo,
Thanks very much for your letter and the five-pound notes for Frank and me. I spent mine on some maps and a new cricket bat as I cracked my old one swinging it round in the dormitory (I may have hit the foot of my bed rather hard), and Frank bought a great fat book, Spinoza’s Ethics. We’re getting on splendidly here, although Greek is dashed annoying (for me, not so much for Frank). Last week I kicked two goals in wall game and so we won. About the Lent Half holiday—Owen FitzClarence has invited us to go home with him to Northamptonshire. He’s a cousin of sorts, which makes it all right, doesn’t it? A capital fellow, I assure you, and wants me to tell you he’s not at all like his half-brother Philip Thane who he says is a rotter. Also Owen’s grandparents have quite a lot of horses and he says he’ll teach me how to jump. He is the heir to a dukedom which seems rather funny as he is only thirteen, like Frank and me, and exceedingly short.
Owen also wants me to let you know his old tutor, Mr. Dawkins, is coming to get him and will be with us the whole time. Do say yes.
Faithfully yours,
Percy
P.S. One of the old
er boys told us a ripping story he’d heard about you stuffing a drain with a handkerchief and causing a tremendous flood in the maths classroom. Is it true?
13 March 1812
Dear Hugo,
Thank you for your letter. Yes, Owen did write to the Duke and myself, and I think it’s a lovely idea for your brothers to accompany him home for the holiday. Owen will enjoy it so much. Mr. Dawkins is a thoroughly conscientious young man and will take good care of the boys.
We look forward to seeing you and Katherine in Town very soon.
Cordially,
Cousin Judith
22 March 1812
Dear Hugo,
Percy and I were very pleased to receive your letter. Yes, of course we’ll behave ourselves at Owen’s. Or I suppose I should say, more realistically, that we’ll try hard to. Thank you for those ten-pound notes. One feels very grown-up having money for traveling expenses.
By the way, Percy wants me to add that you never answered about that flood in the maths classroom. I asked one of the prefects about it and he only grinned and didn’t answer. Qui tacet consentire videtur, as the Latin proverb goes—‘he who is silent, when he ought to have spoken and was able to, is taken to agree.’ Would a single handkerchief have been sufficient to entirely stop a drain? One wonders.
Yours most faithfully,
Francis
On a bright, frosty day, in which the barest hint of spring was in the air, Katherine stood on the porch to Surmont Hall with old Mrs. Penhallow, Livia, and Miss Cott. The last of her trunks had been loaded into the carriages; her dresser Ellery had already taken her seat in the carriage they were to share. Katherine had said goodbye to Livia and Miss Cott, and now she turned to Mrs. Penhallow.
“Thank you again for your hospitality, ma’am, and all your guidance. I’m very grateful to you.”
“I hope you enjoyed your time here.”
“I did indeed, ma’am.”
The old lady looked keenly at her, but only said, “Give Judith and the Duke my warmest regards.”
“I will, ma’am. Well—goodbye.” Katherine started to turn away, but Mrs. Penhallow said:
“Wait.”
“Ma’am?”
“A few words of advice,” said the old lady. “Not that I’ve always followed them myself, I’m sorry to say. But for whatever it’s worth: to thine own self be true.”
“Hamlet,” said Katherine, trying to summon a smile.
“Yes. Goodbye. And—good luck.”
Katherine nodded, suppressing once again a mad, possibly desperate impulse to hug Mrs. Penhallow, then went down the steps to the graveled carriage-sweep. Gabriel had gone with Hugo to where his horse stood ready, and they were saying their farewells. A footman helped her up into her carriage, Hugo swung up on his horse, and so began the long-awaited journey to London.
They sat at dinner at a luxurious inn in Newbury. Without speaking. Wordless. Hugo looked at Katherine in her elegant gown of vivid blue, seeming very cool and composed to him. Like a sculpture you might see in a museum or, for that matter, in Surmont Hall—all gorgeously composed and still. Remote and untouchable.
There came to him a memory. The two of them were on the beach. It was early morning, the sky was filled with great hurrying clouds, and the wind had whipped around them, ruffling her blue dress with insistent force. It was the day he was to leave for Eton and on her face had been such grief—even he, a lanky, gawky boy of twelve, could see it—that in a way it was worse than if she had openly wept.
Well—goodbye then, Kate, he had said, hating his own inarticulateness.
Goodbye, Hugo, she managed to say in a small voice, though he could barely hear it over the whipping wind.
He had hesitated. He went a step closer and clumsily put his arms around her. She’d reached her own arms, just as clumsy, around his neck, and awkwardly they had embraced, just for a moment, and then stepped apart.
Well, Father’s waiting for me, he’d said. Goodbye again.
Goodbye.
He ran back toward his house, stopping once to look back and lift a hand in farewell. How small she looked on the shore—how tiny against the vast backdrop of the ocean and sky. Her blue dress looked just like a piece of the sky. She lifted her hand, he turned away, and was gone.
How strange, he now thought, to have remembered that moment from so long ago. How long had she stood there before trudging back to her house next door? The waiter came with the roast pheasant, and he accepted some, and began to eat it, but the image of Kate, on the beach, very small, stayed fixed in his mind.
Four days later, as Katherine walked up the steps to the Penhallow townhouse, she found herself strangely relieved to see that the front door wasn’t made of solid gold. Her dream had been wrong—though she continued to be dogged by that faint ghostlike sense of something missing, no matter that Ellery assured her that nothing had been lost along the way.
The door opened, a butler greeted them, and they went inside. Here were other members of the hired staff, all very pleasant and competent-seeming; next, the housekeeper took her around. It was no surprise to see that it was a magnificent dwelling, furnished and decorated in a spare, elegant, neoclassical style, with the first floor featuring a morning-room, a dining-room, a library, and various other saloons. Upstairs were the bedrooms, and in the bustle of arrival, with Hugo seeing to the horses and the carriages over at the mews, and the many trunks being ferried up the stairs, and maidservants coming and going, it was easy to discreetly communicate to the housekeeper about the need for two separate bedchambers. Shortly she was ushered into a spacious, high-ceilinged room, very handsome and comfortable, with a door that—she learned a little later, when she was alone—connected it to Hugo’s bedchamber.
She knew because she tried the knob, as stealthy as any spy bent on dark deeds, and peeked into it. And she searched her own room until she found the key, slung on a green silk ribbon, in a drawer of the table next to her bed, after which she quietly locked the door.
Still later she told herself, Well, everything is going splendidly. She had looked over the heap of correspondence already awaiting her, including a note from the Duchess of Egremont, who indicated her desire to call tomorrow, and together they would craft a plan for the week. Would Katherine and Hugo care to attend an evening-party at Lady Jersey’s house? And what about a ball on Saturday, at the Hedleys’? Also—
Katherine put down the note and looked around the sumptuous bedchamber. Yes, everything was going splendidly. She had dreamed of this moment for quite some time. Everything was working out just as she had hoped. She wondered, a little, why she didn’t feel happier. Maybe she was just tired from the journey. Tomorrow, tomorrow would be better; the Duchess was coming, for one thing, and also she was going to Rundell & Bridge, to purchase new jewelry for herself.
But, oddly, as it turned out, it didn’t seem better, even though she had had a pleasant time with the Duchess, a tall, thin, elderly lady, vigorous, blunt-spoken, weather-beaten and horse-obsessed; an undemanding conversationalist with a slightly distracted air, which Katherine attributed to her concern over her quasi-grandson, the notorious Thane. His mother Almira Thane had accompanied the Duchess. She was, as old Mrs. Penhallow rightly said, a pretty, middle-aged woman, tremulous, chattery, easily moved to tears and just as easily cheered.
And now, here Katherine stood before a counter at London’s premier jewelers, waited upon by not only two attentive clerks but also by Mr. Bridge himself. When the Brookes, last year, sallied into the store, occasionally a second clerk joined the first, in order to help with the Brookes’ many purchases; but never did Mr. Bridge join them. For Mrs. Hugo Penhallow, however? Why, that was a very different thing, Katherine knew.
She looked at the glittering necklaces, the pretty aigrettes; the sparkling rings, bracelets, brooches, and ear-bobs. She could choose anything she wanted. Nobody to tell her she must have this or that. Now was her chance. She thought about all those new gowns at the townhouse, care
fully unpacked and stowed away by Ellery. One wore jewelry with such gowns. It was expected. Everyone did it. Father had provided her with a great deal of money; she could afford to buy half the store if she wished.
Katherine lowered shoulders which she realized had been held rather high. “Yes,” she said, pointing to this and that. “Yes,” and again, and again.
Lady Jersey’s crowded, brightly lit drawing-room. Noisy. Cheerful. Even a little raucous. The scents of perfumes, sweat, tobacco, intermingling. Servants everywhere, bearing trays of champagne and lemonade, nimbly making their way among the guests, who gathered together in clusters large and small. Hugo watched as Katherine, striking in her crimson gown and rubies, stood in the center of a group of people, talking. Laughing. He watched until his own attention was claimed, and he turned away.
She was pretending to be a former schoolmate of hers, Lydia St. John, all sleek, well-dressed confidence she had been at the Basingstoke Academy; a great many girls, hoping to please her, went to her with secrets, gossip, the latest on-dits, all of which she would receive with a hard gleam in her eye, judging, evaluating, and, if sufficiently interesting or damaging, she would laugh, then ruthlessly pass them along.
“Oh, my dear Mrs. Penhallow,” someone said, “have you heard about Colonel Mackinnon? At Covent Garden last week he circled the entire theater by running along the boxes and knocking off as many of the ladies’ hats as he could. A most diverting feat! Quite acrobatic!”
“Yes, and don’t forget that banquet at the Lord Mayor’s!” somebody else put in, in a voice unstable with laughter. “Colonel Mackinnon stuck his head in a bowl of punch and kicked his feet into the air. He insisted on having the punch served after, too.”