Cora laughed. She found Charlotte dangerously good company.
‘But English girls are trained for this life. So many things I should know. Ivo is quite tolerant but the servants are merciless. Every time I ask for something, they say just as you wish, Your Grace, and then I know I have sinned. I asked Bugler to light the fire for me in the library and he looked as if I had hit him. He said I will send a footman to take care of that, Your Grace. By the time it was done, I was shivering with cold.’ She made a little pout of mock distress.
‘You asked the butler to light the fire? But that is a serious case of lese-majesty. I am surprised Bugler didn’t hand in his notice. To be a duke’s butler is only a little less important than being a Duke.’ Charlotte gave an accurate impression of Bugler’s most stately expression.
Cora rang the bell for tea. ‘Well, at least the servants here in London are new, I don’t have to worry about hurting their feelings.’
Charlotte leaned towards Cora. ‘I am having a small party on Thursday. You must come. Louvain will be there.’ She looked at Cora through her lashes to see if the name registered.
‘The painter? I thought he lived in Paris. My mother tried to get him to do her portrait but he said he was too busy to come to America. She was furious.’ Cora remembered her mother’s wrath vividly. Louvain had not been too ‘busy’ to paint the Rhinelander girls earlier in the year.
Charlotte smiled. ‘He is very choosy about his subjects. I sat for him earlier this year. Fifteen sittings in his draughty studio by the river. He absolutely insisted on painting me in my riding habit – and he called me Diana all the way through the sittings. I would have given up but Odo was adamant I continue, and Louvain can be very charming when he wants to be.’ Charlotte shrugged, causing the feathers on her hat to quiver. ‘He has told everybody that he won’t do any more portraits, but I am sure if he were to meet you,’ she gestured towards Cora who was wearing a gorgeously beribboned tea gown from Madame Vionnet, ‘an American duchess, how could he resist?’ She stopped for breath as the footman brought in the tea things. ‘Oh Lord, is that the time? I must fly. So, Thursday then.’ Charlotte stood up, shaking out her mauve skirts so that the little train at the back fell perfectly on the floor behind her.
Cora thought about Louvain. His portrait of Mamie Rhinelander in her peignoir had divided New York society last year. Her mother had called it vulgar but Teddy said it was a masterpiece.
‘Well, there are things I have to attend to, but as far as I know we have no other engagements that night.’ It sounded rather ponderous but Cora was not minded to confide the news of her pregnancy to the other woman. Charlotte appeared not to notice the evasiveness, gathered her furs and left.
As the Double Duchess’s ward, Charlotte was almost an honorary member of the Maltravers family, hence her presence at Conyers; yet Cora could not remember Ivo ever talking about her. She had tried hard to find out more from her husband but Ivo, she was learning, could turn a conversation in any way he pleased, and it did not please him to talk about the Beauchamps.
Cora rang the bell for the footman to take away the tea things and went over to the bureau. She took out a sheet of writing paper which had an embossed coronet on the top (her mother had ordered the paper to go with the house) and wrote a note to Mrs Wyndham asking her to call. She had found the older woman rather alarming when she had first arrived in London, but now she could do with some of her unrelenting worldliness. She knew it was time for her to start taking on the mantle of Duchess; she remembered with dread the Prince’s threat to visit Lulworth. In New York she would have known exactly where to begin, but here she was nervous about making a mistake. Mrs Wyndham, she felt sure, would know where to start, and Cora had no qualms about asking her because she knew that her goodwill was essential to Mrs Wyndham’s ‘business’.
Cora had never asked her mother how much money she had paid for procuring their invitation to Sutton Veney but judging by Mrs Wyndham’s carriage and her charming house in Curzon Street, it had not come cheap. Mrs Wyndham was a woman who put a price on everything, a quality which Cora was coming to appreciate. The English were so peculiar about money. There had been Ivo’s reaction to the Rubens and then there was the matter of Sybil’s birthday present. Cora had sent her a sable wrap. Sybil had been delighted but the Double Duchess had pulled Cora aside for a word. ‘You really mustn’t give such extravagant presents, Cora dear, there is a fine line between generosity and bribery.’ The Duchess had even tried to make Sybil return the furs, but her stepdaughter had refused. The Duchess had been equally caustic when Cora had appeared at Conyers wearing the tiara that her mother had given her, instead of the Maltravers ‘fender’, a heavy edifice of diamonds which was impossible to wear without getting a headache. When Cora pointed this out and explained that her tiara had been modelled on one worn by the Empress of Austria, the Duchess had sighed and said that she had always been proud to wear the Maltravers tiara when she had been Duchess of Wareham. Cora, with Ivo’s permission, had sent the ‘fender’ to Garrards the jewellers to be remodelled, and had been astonished when a polite note had been sent back regretfully informing her that the tiara was not worth redesigning as the stones were not real. When she had told Ivo, he had laughed bitterly and said that he supposed that his mother must have sold the gems to pay her dress bill.
Even her charitable schemes had been found wanting. At Lulworth, Cora was full of ideas to improve the estate. Her first act was to separate the food left over from the Lulworth table into different courses before it was distributed to the poor. The servants had grumbled about the extra work, and the poor had done nothing to express their gratitude. She had proposed building a school for the children of the village – a scheme which Ivo had originally encouraged; but when she had had plans drawn up and started designing uniforms, he quashed the whole idea as too expensive and troublesome. When she replied that the money was not a problem and she was quite prepared to take on the running of the school, he sighed and said that there some things about English life that she didn’t yet understand. But because Ivo put his arms round her and kissed her as he said it, Cora had let it go. There would be time enough for philanthropy after the baby was born.
When the footman arrived to take away the tea things she asked him to take the note directly to Mrs Wyndham. With any luck she would come tomorrow. There was much that Cora needed to discuss.
Bertha was delighted when she found that she and Jim were to travel to London together alone. Even though they lived in the same house and saw each other every day, they were rarely able to be together for more than a moment. They had to be so careful. She felt constantly watched. Most of the Lulworth servants had been there for years so they were wary of newcomers, particularly foreign ones. Only butlers were allowed to marry and remain in service. Bertha was fairly confident that Cora would protect her, but she did not want to put Jim’s future in jeopardy. If he lost his post without a reference he would find it very hard to get another job, and if they were to marry, then his experience as the Duke of Wareham’s valet would be invaluable. The fashion for the new palace-type hotels meant that there was always work for experienced servants with impeccable references. If Jim could get a job at the Savoy, and she could find work at a milliner’s, they might be able to afford to get married. And Bertha was clear that marriage, rather than these fumbling encounters in corridors and shrubberies, was what she wanted. She liked Jim’s kisses, and the feel of his hands on her body, but she had no intention of letting things go any further without a ring.
Today was Bertha’s chance to raise the idea of the Savoy with Jim. They were travelling up to London together alone, as they were the only servants that the Duke and Duchess were bringing with them from Dorset. Mrs Cash, when she bought the house, had also engaged a full household staff, including a French chef and a Swiss laundry maid. But Bertha’s hopes of a conversation with Jim faded when she saw that they were the only occupants of their third-class carriage. Within minutes of
the doors closing and the train leaving the station, Jim pulled down the blinds and pounced on her. Bertha tried to resist him but he was so sweetly eager that she soon lost any desire to do anything but enjoy the present moment. And later on, when other people got into the carriage at stations along the way, she was too aware of his leg pressed against hers, the hand that kept brushing her fingers and the kisses that he would steal every time the train went through a tunnel to think about anything else. So she had suggested that instead of taking a hansom they go on foot to Cleveland Row from the station. The walk would be a good time to talk uninterrupted.
But Jim was excited to be in London. He sniffed the air around him like a dog. As they walked across Waterloo Bridge, he was enchanted by the view of Parliament in one direction and St Paul’s in the other. He bought her a bunch of violets from an old gypsy woman, who told him he had a lucky face but glared at Bertha. Although London was better in that respect than New York, at least no one jeered at them in the street. Bertha knew that Jim did not notice these things; it was what she loved about him – he thought she was magnificent and he expected everyone else to feel the same. They walked through Trafalgar Square and along the Strand, until they came to the Savoy Theatre and the hotel which stood next to it.
She pointed towards it. ‘They pay good wages in there, you know. We stayed there our first week in London, and the head waiter told me he was getting a hundred guineas all told, together with his tips.’ Bertha pointed out a magnificently dressed employee to Jim.
‘It’d be hard, though, getting used to all those different people. Everyone wanting things to be done differently. Lord knows His Grace is bad enough with his soft collars and hard collars and his bathwater just so, but fancy having a new master every week and some of them foreigners.’ Jim fingered his stiff collar.
‘Foreigners ain’t so bad, are they, Jim?’ Bertha put her arm through his. He smiled at her.
‘Some of them are tolerable, I suppose.’ He jerked his head back towards the hotel. ‘So this is what you have in mind for me? Is that the way of it then?’
‘Well if you found work there and I took a job trimming hats, we could make a living.’
Jim stopped and looked at her. Bertha realised she had gone too far and she laughed it off. Perhaps marriage wasn’t on Jim’s mind.
‘We will both need jobs if we lose our posts for being late!’ she said, pulling at his arm. A garden bus went by on the Strand. ‘Come on, this will be quicker than walking.’ They got on to the platform at the back and climbed up the stairs to the top deck. It was cold up there but the fug on the bottom deck was unbearable. They found seats at the front behind the driver. She looked at Jim’s profile; behind him there was a hoarding advertising Pear’s Soap, ‘For a Pearly Complexion’.
‘I’m sorry, Jim, I didn’t mean to presume.’ She put her hand on his arm. He squeezed it by way of reply and they sat in silence until the bus reached Pall Mall.
As they walked up Cleveland Row, Jim said slowly, ‘It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, Bertha, but service is all I’ve ever known. I was the boot boy at Sutton Veney and then when I grew tall they made me a footman and now I’m valet to a duke. I never thought I’d come this far. But I’m a lucky man. I met you, didn’t I?’
They were too close to the house for Bertha to be able to kiss him, but she stroked his arm and said, ‘We’ve both been lucky.’
As they approached the house, and began to draw apart from each other, they saw a lady in furs hurry down the steps. Jim recognised her at once.
‘Good thing she didn’t see us. She’s a mean one, Lady Beauchamp. There were two housemaids as lost their place at Sutton on account of her. Said they were rude to her, as if that were likely – they were local girls who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. No, I reckon as they saw something they shouldn’t, they were sent off that quickly. Still, I suppose anyone would go sour married to that Sir Odious. I’d rather go back to being a boot boy than work for him again.’ Jim’s handsome face was grim at the thought of his former employer.
Bertha realised that she was fortunate. Miss Cora was hard work but they’d been together for eight years now and so she was Bertha’s hard work.
They walked down the area steps to the tradesmen’s entrance. Bertha could see M. Pechon the French chef piping rosettes of cream round a glistening mountain of aspic in which anchovies and sprats had been suspended as if swimming in a gelatinous sea. There were many days when Bertha envied her mistress, but today was not one of them.
Cora had been right in thinking that Mrs Wyndham would respond swiftly to her summons. Madeleine Wyndham was delighted when she saw the Wareham crest on the seal. Cora had been her greatest match to date, although in all honesty she could not take credit for having introduced her to Wareham. What, Mrs Wyndham wondered, did the young Duchess want her for? Cora had been different to most of the young American girls and their parents who came her way. Most of them were quite ‘au naturel’, beautifully dressed hoydens who had the manners of farm girls and had nothing to recommend them apart from youthful high spirits and, of course, money. But Cora had arrived already ‘finished’, there was nothing to improve. Indeed, the only thing that separated Cora from a well-bred English girl was her confidence. Serene in the knowledge that she was the heiress of her generation, she had an air of assurance quite unusual in a girl of her age. She was spoilt, of course, most of the Americans were; but on the rare occasions she failed to get her own way, she looked amazed rather than petulant.
Mrs Wyndham wondered if Cora was having trouble with her mother-in-law. She had met the Double Duchess at countless gatherings over the last twenty years, but every time they encountered each other the Duchess pretended never to have seen her before. She wondered if the Duchess would keep this up now that her son had married an American. When Madeleine had first arrived in London fifteen years ago, she had quite often been asked about the Natives in her country as if she had herself only recently emerged from a wigwam. She had once, in jest, gone to a masquerade ball dressed as an Indian squaw, only to have a number of dowagers ask her if she missed wearing her native costume.
But that had been at the end of the seventies, before the heiresses had started arriving. Mrs Wyndham did not come from a very wealthy family. Her father had owned a hotel in Manhattan and there was gossip that he had met his wife when she was working there as a chambermaid. Both her parents had always denied this but the rumour was enough to place a cloud over the family’s social prospects. Madeleine was well-liked at Miss Porter’s Academy but her friendship with the Rhinebackers, Stuyvesants and Astors stopped at the school door. It had been Mr Lester, Madeleine’s father, who had proposed going to Europe; he wanted, he said, to look at how they ran hotels over there. Within a month of arriving in London, Madeleine had met the Hon. Captain Wyndham, and within two months they were engaged to be married. Madeleine found the captain with his beautiful manners, resplendent moustaches and aristocratic family (his father was an Irish baron) far superior to any of her American beaux and accepted him gladly. She knew that when he proposed he had hoped that she was rich, but he had not flinched when he realised the modest scale of her fortune.
They had been very happy for the ten years of their marriage, which ended when the captain had taken a fence too fast and had broken his neck. He left his widow with a son and a small annuity which would hardly support them. But providentially her father had sent her a family from Philadelphia, who had stayed at his hotel in New York and who were curious to meet his aristocratic daughter. The eldest girl had been a beauty, thankfully a quiet one, and extremely rich and Mrs Wyndham had introduced her to Lord Castlerosse, an old friend of her husband’s. The marriage received huge attention in the American papers and soon Mrs Wyndham found herself a necessary stopping point on an American belle’s grand tour – somewhere between a visit to M. Worth and the Forum by moonlight.
At first she had not asked her charges for money, relying instead on ‘presents’ fr
om the grateful milliners, jewellers, and dressmakers to whom she directed her American friends. But after a while she realised that her scruples were unnecessary. The American families that relied on her to introduce them into the best English society were happy to pay her; in fact the fathers preferred a commercial transaction to an unseen web of obligation and favours. And she soon learnt that the higher the price, the more her new friends valued her services. Mrs Wyndham had taste and tact, and she knew how to get her girls, and on not a few occasions their mamas, to look their best. There was a difference, she would tell them, between dressing smartly and overdressing. American girls were, on the whole, far more fashionable than their English contemporaries, but it did not do to rub their noses in it. Even though many of her young charges had sable cloaks and diamond tiaras, that did not mean they should wear them. Such things were best left for married ladies and even then she could not really countenance diamonds in the daytime.
When she had first come to London, Mrs Wyndham had been as bemused as her protégées, but having been punished by knowing glances and raised eyebrows every time she did something perceived to be ‘American’, she was now more English in her habits than the crustiest of dowagers. Growing up in a hotel, she had acquired a good memory for names and faces; after fifteen years in London she knew everybody and her command of Burke’s Peerage was unmatched. No genealogical nuance of the aristocracy was lost on her; she could talk with authority about the Spencer red hair or the Percy chin or the Londonderry madness, and she had long ago learnt never to comment on a likeness in a younger child when visiting an aristocratic nursery. Mrs Wyndham knew to within a sovereign every single girl’s portion and every man’s income. Her network of lady’s maids, French chefs and butlers, whom she was in the habit of ‘recommending’, kept her supplied with the kind of information that made her invaluable to her friends. She always knew the latest gossip, often before the participants themselves were aware of it. At a society ball, she was probably the only person, apart from a jeweller with a loupe, who could tell which jewels were real and which were paste.
The American Heiress Page 20