Ivo pitched a larger stone so that it hit the edge of the cliff and curved upwards before disappearing.
‘We both knew that Guy was going to propose and that Charlotte would accept and it made us reckless. We couldn’t meet in the house because of the servants, so we used the chapel. I should have known better, but I have always wondered whether really deep down I wanted to be caught.’
Cora glanced at his face but he was looking straight out to sea.
‘Guy discovered us one afternoon in the organ loft. There could be no mistake. He didn’t say anything, he just went away. I should have run after him but I was glad he had found us. He would never marry Charlotte now. Then his horse came back without him that evening and I knew what had happened, what I had done.’
Cora laid her hand on his arm for a moment.
‘The day after Guy’s funeral, Charlotte asked me when we were getting married. “After all,” she said, “there is nothing to stop us now.” She couldn’t hide her satisfaction and I hated her for it. I told her that we had killed my brother. When she realised that I would never marry her, she went off and married Odo because he was the richest man she could find. I should have stopped her, I knew that Odo was vicious, always has been – his only talent is for making trouble – but I never wanted to see her again. As far as I was concerned they deserved each other. But then a year later I met Charlotte when I was out with the Myddleton. She told me how bad things were and I liked her more because she was suffering. We started again, it was a terrible mistake – we were both trying to find a way out of our misery, but it wasn’t a happy thing.’ He shaded his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Ironically it was Charlotte that brought us together. If I hadn’t been with her that day in Paradise Wood, I would never have found you lying there.’
Cora put her face in her hands; she realised for the first time how hot her face was, she simply had not noticed the sun.
‘You had been with her, in the wood.’ She started to get up but Ivo pulled her back.
‘You can’t go yet, Cora. Please let me finish my story.’
She subsided.
‘When I met you I felt as if there might be a chance for me. You were so bright and free and…’
‘Rich?’ said Cora.
‘Yes, rich, but dearest Cora, you were not the only heiress looking for a title, although you were,’ he made a little flourish with his hands and laughed, ‘by far the richest. Of course I had to marry a woman with money but it wasn’t your fortune I wanted, Cora, it was you. You were never going to be like my mother or even Charlotte. You can’t keep secrets and you are a terrible liar. You have no idea how to hide your emotions.’
Cora closed her eyes; she could feel the sun beating through her eyelids.
‘Then you will know how I am feeling now.’
‘You are angry and humiliated and I can’t blame you for that. I should have told you about my past with Charlotte but to do so would mean admitting what I had done to Guy.’
‘Your past with Charlotte, or your present?’ Cora was surprised at how angry she sounded.
Ivo stood up in front of her, so that the sun was behind him. Cora wondered whether he had done it deliberately because it meant that she could not see his face.
‘Don’t you understand, Cora? I would give anything, everything, never to see Charlotte again. Do you remember the pearls I gave you in Venice?’
Cora nodded her head a fraction.
‘I once gave a necklace like that to Charlotte. I gave you the same necklace as a sign to Charlotte that I loved you now. I wanted her to realise that our marriage was not some financial arrangement but a real thing.’
Cora said, almost involuntarily, ‘But how cruel.’
‘Maybe, but I wanted to drive her away. She got her revenge, though, by befriending you and introducing you to that painter.’
‘But nothing happened, Ivo.’ She stopped. ‘Louvain tried to kiss me once, but that was all.’
Ivo shook his head, batting her comment away. ‘I was so angry with you that night. That vulgar party, the portrait, everything. I thought the whole evening was about your vanity and that you didn’t mind humiliating me in the process. It was as if you were turning into my mother.’ Ivo laughed bitterly. ‘Charlotte knew that, of course. I should have realised that while you were perhaps a bit vain and certainly a little foolish, you were an innocent in all this mess. It took months for me to understand what had happened. Charlotte wrote to me every day when I was in India, and I began to see what she was about. It was the baby, you see, that made her so desperate.’
Cora remembered the look of hunger on Charlotte’s face at the christening.
‘When I came back to England, she found me. She begged me to start again. I told her that I could never be with her. There was a terrible scene. And then I came home and found you with the baby.’
Ivo picked a daisy from the bank and started to shred it with his fingers.
‘She must have been delighted when you asked her to Lulworth. I should have stopped you but I didn’t know how. And, well, you know the rest. She wanted Odo to make his revelation. I think she would sacrifice everything now if it would guarantee my unhappiness. They have that in common, those two, they both enjoy inflicting pain on other people. If you leave me, then she has won.’
Cora got to her feet. She could see the coast stretching away in both directions and she wondered which way was home. She stood in front of Ivo so that she could see his eyes.
‘I went to see Charlotte last night. I found one of your dress studs in her bed.’
‘In her bed?’ Ivo blinked. ‘Are you sure it was mine? Cora, I promise you I have never been near Charlotte’s bed. Not since we married. You must believe me. I know that I haven’t told you things in the past, but I have never lied to you.’
‘I am certain it was yours, Ivo.’ Cora pronounced her words slowly and sadly. She got up on to the seat of the donkey cart. ‘I am going back. I have a train to catch.’ She hit the donkey’s rump with her switch and it started to plod in the direction of home.
‘Cora, please! Wait.’
She did not look round but gave the donkey another switch. Now Ivo was running beside her.
‘It must have been an accident. I never went to her room, but she came to mine, Cora. Just before dinner. I said I had nothing to say to her but she threw herself at me. She – well, she knelt in front of me. I pushed her away but her hair got caught in my shirt. We were struggling. The stud must have caught in her hair.’
Cora looked down at him. She could see a bead of sweat forming on his forehead. She realised that she had never seen him sweat before.
But she did not stop.
Ivo ran in front of the cart and held the donkey’s head.
‘That’s all there is. All of it. I have no more secrets. If you want to leave and be with your American then I won’t stop you.’ He saw her surprise. ‘I know everything, Cora. Your maid told Harness, who came to me. He’s in love with Bertha and doesn’t want to lose her.’ He shrugged ruefully, acknowledging the similarity between master and man. ‘Maybe you can be happy with Van Der Leyden, he looks decent enough. But Cora, he doesn’t need you. He is free to go where he likes, do what he pleases, but I can only be the Duke of Wareham. You alone can blow away all the shadows, Cora. Before you came I lived in a world of secrets and lies, but you aren’t like that, you live in the light.’ He paused as if amazed at his own words. ‘I can’t imagine life without you now, Cora, I can’t go back. If you go now, I am lost.’
He stopped. Cora saw that he was close to the edge. His words had been underscored by the crash and churn of the sea below. His eyes were quite black, the pupils wide open. There was a muscle trembling in his jaw. She put out her hand and pulled him to her.
As soon as the cart had disappeared, Jim found Bertha. He put his hand on her arm but she shook him off and carried on pushing the baby carriage.
‘I had to do it, Bertha.’
Bertha di
d not reply but kept walking, her eyes fixed on the sleeping baby.
Jim walked alongside her, his blue eyes pleading with her. ‘I thought she would take you away, Bertha, and then there would be an end to us. I told the Duke that I want to marry you and that if he would give me a reference I would tell him what his wife was planning.’
Bertha looked at him for the first time. ‘You had no right to do that, Jim.’
Jim looked at her levelly. ‘I want you to be my wife, Bertha. I couldn’t just let you leave.’
Bertha stopped pushing the pram and turned to face him. ‘But that’s my decision, not yours.’
He put his hand on hers where it held the handle of the baby carriage. ‘But you were going to do the wrong thing, Bertha. You were going to give me up just because you feel sorry for a woman who doesn’t need your sympathy.’ Bertha took her hand away. ‘Do you think she would do the same for you, Bertha? Do you think that your precious Miss Cora would lift one finger on your behalf?’ Jim put his face close to hers. ‘You haven’t told her about me, have you? Because you know that she won’t like it. She doesn’t care how you feel, so long as you are there to do what she wants.’
Bertha knew that he was, to some extent, right. Cora would not be pleased to hear that she had a beau.
‘Maybe it’s not about Miss Cora, maybe it’s about me, Jim.’ She took a breath. ‘I got word yesterday that my mother is dead. She was all the family I had and now she’s gone. I have been with Miss Cora every day for the last ten years. Yes, I am only her maid but if I leave her, I leave everything behind. You say you want to marry me but remember I’m a foreigner; things won’t be easy for us. Maybe I just want a future I can understand.’
Jim put his hand under her chin to make her look at him. ‘Remember in New York, Bertha, you were too scared to hold my hand in public? Do you really want to go back to that? Nobody’s going to look at us in London. Everyone’s foreign there. I’m scared too, Bertha. I’ve been in service all my life, but I reckon that together we have a chance.’
She couldn’t speak; she started to push the pram up across the gravel towards the house. He didn’t move and when she turned her head to look at him he was standing there on the path, holding his hat in his hands, turning it over and over. She stopped. He had been wearing that bowler the day he had come back from India. Only then he had been jaunty, his hair blonder, his skin dark. She realised that she was beginning to fashion her own patchwork of memories, with him at the centre. She called to him, her voice loud and definite.
‘Walk with me, Jim, I need to take the baby back to the nursery. And then, maybe, we’ll see.’
He threw the bowler up in the air so that it landed on his head, and ran towards her.
There had been three trains that day from Lulworth and Teddy had met every one. Cora had told him that she would send a telegram to his club, but after he had engaged rooms for her at the hotel he decided to go straight to the station. He wanted to welcome her to her new life, he wanted to pluck her out of the steam and confusion of the station and take her straight to the future shining in front of her.
He looked up at the station clock – the next train was due in five minutes. He took out his cigarette case. He thought of Cora smoking in the dark by the summer house at Lulworth, the way she had touched the cigarette with her lips. He remembered holding her in his arms last night, her bony shoulders, her small, delicate ears.
A porter was walking along the platform whistling a tune that Teddy thought was ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. A woman in a straw boater rubbed at a smut on her face with a handkerchief. There was a small square of sunlight on the platform corresponding to a hole in the glass roof. Teddy looked up and saw that there were starlings flying in out and out of the iron beams. In front of him was a poster advertising the delights of Weymouth with ‘its health-giving sea air and salubrious surroundings’. He threw his cigarette end on to the platform and ground it out with his heel. He could not stand the waiting much longer. When she arrived, when he actually saw her, he thought he would lose the sick feeling in his stomach warning him that his life was about to be tinted a different colour, telling him that from the moment the train pulled in to the platform, he would always be known as the man who had run away with Cora Cash.
He heard the hoot of the locomotive and the platform began to fill with steam as the Weymouth train pulled in. Teddy stood back as the passengers swarmed towards him, families returning from a holiday by the sea, two men wearing black hats with crepe streamers on their way back from a funeral, an old lady carrying a pug. The crowd began to thin. The doors to the firstclass carriages were, Teddy could now make out, all open. He thought he saw a perambulator being taken out on to the platform but as the steam evaporated he saw that the wheels belonged to a bath chair. He held his breath for a moment. If Cora wasn’t on this train, it meant that she wasn’t coming. His mouth was dry, all his doubts from a moment before now replaced by a lurching hollowness in his heart. And then he saw two women coming down the platform towards him, both of them wearing hats with travelling veils; one of them was Cora’s height, the other walked slightly behind with a porter who was pushing a pile of cases on his trolley. Teddy began to walk towards them, his step quickening until he was almost running. Then he stopped, his heart thudding in his chest. It must be Cora, he thought; she was stopping to speak to him and yet he had never seen Cora move so gracefully. The woman lifted her veil and then he saw with shattering vividness the sweep of blond hair.
‘Mr Van Der Leyden. What a pleasant surprise this is.’ Charlotte Beauchamp gave him a crooked little smile, acknowledging the fact that they were both the losers in this particular game. ‘But I am afraid you were not looking for me,’ she continued. He looked at her as she said this and she shrank a little from the full force of his disappointment.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I wasn’t.’ She put a gloved hand on his arm. As she looked up at him, he could see that the whites of her eyes were touched with red. He could see his own pain and loss mirrored in her wide blue gaze. How strange, he thought, that this woman that he had disliked so much should be the only person who could understand him now.
She tilted her head to one side and blinked rapidly as if there were something in her eye.
‘I understand your despair, Mr Van Der Leyden. I know what it is to lose the thing you most desire. But you must be strong and wait. All you have to do is wait.’ With that, Charlotte Beauchamp nodded to him and walked off into the station, her maid following behind. Teddy looked after her, wondering how he could ever have mistaken her slippery grace for Cora’s urgent stride.
The platform was empty now, but he could not bring himself to move away from the spot where for a few hours he had had the future that he wanted. A pigeon flew down from its perch under the glass roof and began to circle his feet, mistaking him perhaps for a statue. With a great effort he started to move, feeling each step as a betrayal. Charlotte Beauchamp had told him to wait, but what, he wondered, was he waiting for? A quick stride on a platform somewhere one day or the morning when he would wake up without the band of misery that was already beginning to tighten around his chest.
In the nursery, Cora pulled her finger out of her baby’s fist. He was sleeping now. The sky was beginning to darken and soon she would go and dress for dinner. In her room, Ivo was also sleeping. She lay down on the bed beside him, putting her face next to his so that she would be the first thing he saw when he woke up. His features were soft now and although his eyes were shut, his countenance was quite open. Cora wondered if at last she had the measure of her husband. Whatever happened, she knew now, and the thought filled her with warmth, that he needed her. Then he stirred, a dream chasing behind his eyelids, and he stiffened as if he had been dealt some unseen blow. Perhaps she would never really know him. A year and a half ago that thought would have been unbearable to her, but now she had learnt to live with uncertainty, even to love it. Since she had come to England she had learnt to prize the rare br
ight and beautiful days which broke through the mist and murk, loving them all the more for their randomness. You could buy a more agreeable climate, she thought, but not that feeling of unexpected joy when a shaft of sunlight fell through the curtains, promising a sparkling new day.
Acknowledgements
The characters in this book are by and large fictional, but the circumstances they find themselves in are not. When it comes to the Gilded Age, the more fantastical the circumstance, the more likely it is to be true. There really was a magazine called The Titled American Lady and the gossip rags of 1890s New York were every bit as obsessed with celebrity as magazines like Heat are today. Here are a few of the books that give a flavour of that overheated era: The Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsam; The Mrs Vanderbilt by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr; The Memoirs of Lady Randolph Churchill; The Decline of the English Aristocracy by David Cannadine; The Duke’s Children by Anthony Trollope; The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett; The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton; Consuelo and Alva by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart.
Anyone familiar with the Dorset coast will know there is a Lulworth Castle, which I have supersized, but the Duke of Wareham and his family are, of course, entirely fictional. Readers who know their nineteenth-century royalty will realise that I have taken one liberty with chronology – Prince Eddy was sent away to India in 1888 rather than 1894 – but I couldn’t quite resist borrowing this for my plot.
This book has taken me an age to finish, and I must thank the London Library and the South West Railway London to Crewkerne line for giving me some quiet space to write. Along the way I was encouraged by my faithful and perceptive readers, Tanya Shaw, Emma Fearnhamm, Ottilie Wilford, Richard Goodwin, Jocasta Innes, Caroline Michel, Sam Lawrence, and Kristie Morris. I am eternally grateful to Tabitha Potts for her plot suggestions, and to Paul Benney for his thoughts on portraits. Thanks to Ivor Schlosberg for the pre-orders, among other things. Georgina Moore is a heroine among publicists. Derek Johns is everything you could want in an agent and it was a joy to work with Harriet Evans, albeit briefly. But the real thanks must go to Mary-Anne Harrington who is as brilliant as she is patient and to Hope Dellon whose emails were like getting gold stars for homework. And my thanks to Marcus and Lydia for sending me away right at the end. It made all the difference.
The American Heiress Page 40