A Promise Given

by Michelle Cox

  “Even if their mother is French and poor?” he said bitterly. “If you think that doesn’t matter to him, then you’ve judged him very wrongly.”

  “What’s done is done …” Clive began, but then he paused to consider something. “Was it legal?” he asked skeptically.

  Wallace shot him a look of deep offense. “Of course it was bloody legal! It was in a church, too, in case that’s your next question. St. Ignace in Reims,” Wallace said disgustedly and looked away at the fire.

  “Tell us about her,” Henrietta suggested tacitly. “She’s so elegant, so beautiful,” she went on, clearly trying to draw him out. “She obviously loves you very much. I can tell by the way she looks at you.”

  Privately, Henrietta was of the opinion that Amelie must indeed love Wallace very much in order to have agreed to be hidden away in secret in the English countryside while her husband lived at the manor house, dancing with his mother’s young female houseguests and becoming the subject of many a mama’s matrimonial aspirations. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t have been so conciliatory.

  Wallace glanced at her and gave her a grateful smile, letting out a deep breath. “She was a nurse at Rouen, where I was sent from the front to convalesce. I was there for about two months, long enough to fall in love with her, by wartime standards, anyway.” He looked down at his hands, balled up in his lap. “I used to lie there and count the minutes until she would come on duty each day. It was agony if she had leave or was off for the weekend. It was all I lived for for a while.” He looked up at Henrietta again before going on, eagerly now, as if glad to finally tell someone the story.

  “Her smile in the morning as she did her rounds, her laughter and her … her kindness as she helped me learn to walk again became everything to me. And then I discovered, eventually, to my despair, that she was married to a French private who had been taken prisoner early on. From the little I could get out of her, I suspected it had been a hasty marriage before he had gone off to war.” Wallace shifted his attention to Clive now. “I was utterly shattered by this, but I couldn’t help being in love with her. I let myself believe she shared my love, but I couldn’t act on it, and neither did she.” He paused, gripping his hands tightly now. “In truth I had dreams about stealing her away, but I had too much honor back then to steal a man’s wife after what we had all been through at the front. I have to confess, though,” he said quietly, “I hoped he would die. God knows I hated myself for thinking that,” he said bitterly and exhaled, deep in thought. When he spoke again, his face was grim.

  “I was eventually sent back to England, though I think she prolonged my convalescence as long as she was able. I asked if I could write to her, if only to relate my progress with my leg. She agreed, and we wrote back and forth a few times until her letters stopped coming. I told myself that it was for the best, really, and tried to forget her, which I proved miserable at.” He was silent, then, and sat absently rubbing his bum leg through his thick trousers.

  “And then?” Henrietta asked, prompting him.

  Wallace looked up at her and, after seeming to consider it, decided to continue. “Then, about two years ago, I received another letter from her, telling me that Jules, her husband, had passed away. That he had indeed been taken prisoner and gassed. He was an invalid after that, and she spent years nursing him before he died, poor sod. She wrote to me, assuming I had married and had a big brood of children around me by this point, to wish me well and to tell me, for what it was worth, how much she had loved me. For what it was worth,” Wallace repeated, shaking his head faintly.

  He glanced at Clive, who was listening intently, and then back at Henrietta. “I left immediately and found her living in a small house near her parents outside of Reims. We married there, and the month I spent with her was one of the very best of my life,” he said with a smile. “Eventually, however, reality set in, and I knew I had to return to England. Amelie begged me to take her with me, and I’m ashamed to say I had not the fortitude. I wanted to break it to Mother and Father gently, to ease them into the idea, as ridiculous as that sounds. God knows what nonsense was going through my mind! I knew of my father’s despair over the estate and my mother’s schemes to marry me to a rich heiress, and it was all I could do to face them, much less present them with their new, penniless daughter-in-law.”

  “But surely they would have come around eventually,” Clive said, giving Henrietta a quick, knowing look, to which she smiled.

  “Yes. I suppose. But I’m a coward at heart, Clive,” Wallace said despondently. “I’m not like you … or Linley, for that matter. I can face a line of Huns firing artillery at me, but I can’t seem to stand up to my own father. I’ve tried to get him to let go of the estate, for example, to turn it into something useful—like a school or a home for shell-shocked soldiers. Amelie and I have so many ideas … I don’t bloody give a damn about being a lord or sitting in parliament or having bloody Stevens scurrying about serving me biscuits and tea. It’s too much to be borne, really!” he said, flinging himself backward.

  Clive raised an eyebrow, a reluctant smile forming as well. He was about to comment, but Henrietta interrupted.

  “How is it that she came to live here in this place, then, if you had left her in France?” she asked. “Was it the baby?” she guessed.

  Wallace, his face looking pained now, nodded. “She wrote to say she was with child, so I brought her here. I meant to tell them … honestly, I did. It just … it just never seemed the right time.”

  Amelie conveniently appeared then, pulling the door softly shut behind her as she tiptoed down the couple of steps and sat down beside Wallace, taking his hand in hers. “Zo ’e ’as told you zee story, zen?” she said with a smile.

  “La partie importante,” (The important part) Clive began in perfect French. “Je dois présenter mes excuses pour mon comportement plus tôt, Mme Howard. Vous avez mes félicitations sincères. Je vous souhaite et Wallace serez très heureux ensemble. Vraiment.” (I must apologize for my behavior earlier, Mrs. Howard. You have my earnest congratulations. I hope you and Wallace will be very happy together. Truly.)

  At the sound of his words, Amelie’s face lit up. “Tu parle français!” she said with a smile. “Amélie, s’il vous plaît. Et merci pour vos bons voeux. Mais je dois le mien offrir ainsi. Votre femme est très belle.” (Amelie, please. And thank you for your good wishes. But I must offer mine as well. Your wife is very beautiful.)

  “Oui, merci,” Clive said, his eyes grateful. He turned to Henrietta, who was watching him in amazement at his ability to speak French. “She says you are very beautiful,” Clive repeated to her.

  Henrietta continued to stare at him, wondering what else she didn’t know about her husband and felt a new surge of attraction for him as the French rolled off his lips.

  “All those years at prep school, darling,” he said, his mouth twitching. “They had to amount to something. Came in handy in the war, I suppose,” he said, giving Wallace the slightest wink.

  “’ave you not ’ad tea yet?” Amelie asked, looking around. “Wallaze!” she said, standing up again to prepare it. “Excusez-moi,” she said to Clive and Henrietta. “Eet will juzt be a moment.”

  “Oh, let’s forgo the blasted tea!” Wallace said, looking back at her as she went to the kitchen. “I’ll open some wine. Would you like wine?” he asked, turning to Henrietta and Clive.

  Clive nodded eagerly, obviously preferring that, and Henrietta followed suit, though she had actually been very much in the mood for tea, chilled from their sojourn in the car. The fire had gone a long way to warming her, however, and she felt she could rise to the challenge of something stronger.

  “I’ll get it,” Wallace said, standing up. Amelie, her large belly preceding her, brought out four wine glasses from the cupboard, Henrietta watching. From the moment they had entered, she had been reminded of Helen’s cottage and suddenly missed home very much. She wished, as she had done many times before, that this simple existence
could be her life with Clive. She felt immediately guilty, however, that she was ungrateful for all that had come, and would come, to be hers, and she supposed that Amelie and Wallace’s days as idyllic peasants were as numbered as hers and Clive’s. Still, Wallace’s mention of his plan to do something useful with his eventual estate struck her, and she resolved to bring it up later with Clive. No matter what Wallace’s faults or politics were, she decided, she admired his concern for the average man.

  “Let me come with you,” Clive said, standing up and following Wallace into the kitchen as Amelie sat down next to Henrietta.

  In the little kitchen, Clive watched as Wallace opened a corner cabinet and pulled out a bottle of 1897 Saint-Emilion, holding it up for Clive’s approval.

  Clive whistled. “Doesn’t quite go with the setting, old boy. I was expecting elderberry or some such nonsense.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. I’m full of contradiction. I pilfer it from the cellars at Linley, if you must know,” he said with a wry smile. “Add it to my list of sins. But I figure it’s mine anyway, or will be, plus it keeps bloody Stevens on his toes. Makes it impossible for him to keep an accurate inventory. He suspects a thief, of course. Currently he suspects Compton, I’m afraid, so I’ll soon have to set him straight. That or make him suspect it’s someone else.”

  “Does Compton know? The truth, I mean, about you?” Clive asked quietly, wondering if a lie had slipped past him.

  “Not exactly,” Wallace said, exhaling. “He obviously knows I go off. He’s covering for me now. You don’t honestly think I’d lock myself in my room for days like some spoiled twit, do you?”

  Clive shrugged.

  “He doesn’t know where I go, however. So whatever he told you is probably true, as far as he knows. I didn’t want any of the servants to know, to have to keep my secret. I’m a scoundrel, to be sure, but not such a one as would add to the burdens they already labor under, poor devils. They don’t need me to compromise their situation.”

  “You’re not a scoundrel,” Clive said. “A fool, maybe.” He smiled here, and Wallace laughed.

  “Perhaps. I’ve made a right mess of it, Clive,” he said more seriously now. “What am I to do?”

  “I think you know.”

  Wallace sighed. “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “We’ll come back for you in the morning. It’s too late now, and you won’t all fit in that contraption, anyway,” he said, referring to the motorbike. “Where’d you get a thing like that, by the way?”

  “It’s a long story,” Wallace said with a smile as he pulled on the cork with a rudimentary corkscrew. He let out a deep breath. “I should have done this long ago. Now that I’ve decided, however, or, rather, now that it’s been decided for me …” he said, looking up at Clive ruefully, “I’m eager to get it over with. It will be better for Amelie, anyway, though, on my honor, I thought I was saving her from the volley of unpleasantness that’s sure to unfold tomorrow. However, maybe I’ve done her a disservice, prolonging the inevitable. But we’ve been happy here.” He paused, ruminating. “Oh, I’m not sure what to think anymore,” he said wearily, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “Doubtless you think I’m an odd duck, tucking my wife and child away for almost a year.”

  “Not as odd as you might imagine,” Clive said quietly. They were quiet then for a moment, each in his own thoughts, before Clive continued. “You’ll have to face the inspector as well, you know.”

  “Yes, yes,” Wallace said, waving his hand as if swatting away a fly. “But first my father. The inspector’s questions will be easy after his. Bloody damn fool, what have you done now?” Wallace boomed out, imitating Lord Linley.

  It struck Clive as peculiar that, unlike Wallace, he did not see Lord Linley as a formidable character in any way. To him he was a blustering old gent who liked to blow off steam, but who was essentially harmless. It made it difficult to understand Wallace’s trepidation around him, but he supposed a dynamic existed between fathers and sons known only to them. “He does love you, I’m sure of it,” Clive said, feeling a twinge of regret for all the distress he had caused his own father.

  Wallace shrugged, and Clive could not help but wonder if Wallace was really willing to give up the whole of the estate for a cause, but then suddenly realized he had come close to doing something very similar for much less noble reasons.

  “Tell me,” Clive said, looking over at him, “are you a socialist?” Wallace looked at him for several moments before answering. “Would it matter if I was?”

  Clive considered the question. “I suppose not.”

  Wallace let out a deep breath. “I am a socialist, in a way. But not really the militant I portend to be. I’m more of a Fabian, really.”

  Clive raised his eyebrows. “A Fabian? They still around? I thought they were all for imperialism and all that. Hardly what you eschew these days.”

  “The Victorian Fabians were all about imperialism, of course, but Fabian thought has evolved, especially after the war. We want a peaceful, gradual shift in society to one that is fairer for all. Free education, a fair wage, housing and medicine for the poor. Surely we can’t go on this way as a society, Clive.”

  “I suppose not,” Clive answered, not really sure what the alternative would be, however.

  “How can you go back and live in the splendid palace that is Highbury when there are bread lines in your own city?”

  “I don’t know, Wallace,” Clive said, irritably. “I’ve already been through this. I’m trying to see my way clear.”

  “For me, anyway, I can’t be master of Castle Linley. How outrageous and nauseating! When father dies, I’m going to turn it into a school for underprivileged boys, raise up a new generation of thought based on Cole and Laski and Tawney.

  “The Labor party will love you,” Clive couldn’t help but say with a smile.

  “Joke if you want, Clive. It’s not going to change anything.”

  “Well, perhaps you have the right of it.” Clive watched him for a few moments. “Was Amelie part of your rebellion?” he asked thoughtfully.

  “No,” Wallace said tiredly. “I know it seems that way, but I actually do love her. With all my heart. And Linley, of course.”

  “So you were just going to run away with them with a murder charge on your head rather than reveal the truth?” Clive looked at him disbelievingly.

  “I told you—I wasn’t thinking clearly. And I’m a coward when it comes to my father. I should just tell him my plans for the estate now instead of waiting for him to die. No, I’ve been wrong, Clive. I see that.”

  “Shall we?” Clive said, nodding toward the front room, where the women were waiting.

  “Quite right, old boy,” Wallace drawled as he picked up the bottle of wine. “I apologize about our limited ability to accommodate you for the night,” he said as he moved past him.

  “Not at all. We are, as it happens, booked in tonight at the Palace, speaking of privilege. Shame to waste it,” he said, winking at Wallace.

  “Ah, young love,” Wallace said with a teasing smile, as if he were Clive’s elder and not the reverse. “Wait till you get a little nipper running about.”

  Clive smiled, suddenly conscious of how relieved he was that Wallace was innocent—of the murder of Earnest Jacobs, at least. He had been deceptive, true, but regarding a whole different matter, not something underhand as he, and everyone else, had been given to suspect. It brought him more satisfaction than he was expecting, perhaps because Wallace and Linley were the closest thing he had ever had to brothers, and now he only had Wallace left. As the two of them moved toward the door that separated them from the ladies beyond, Clive spoke again. “I’m sorry for the subterfuge, Wallace. For trailing about after you.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Wallace said, laying a hand on Clive’s shoulder. “I was an arse. I should have trusted you. Sometimes it’s, well … it’s hard.”

  “Yes, I know,” Clive said, and they went in, then, to find the ladies deep in convers
ation, Clive having saved Wallace, if not from the socialists, as he had been wont to imagine, but from a very different sort of fate.

  Chapter 23

  It was cloudy and overcast and bitterly cold, with even a few stray flakes of snow making a sporadic appearance, heralds perhaps of a bigger storm to come, when Clive drove the Bentley up to the entrance of Castle Linley. Wallace was seated in the front next to Clive, while Henrietta and Amelie, with Linley on her lap, shared the tiny back seat. Henrietta could tell by the way Amelie kept brushing Linley’s fine hair into place that she was nervous. Henrietta gave her hand a comforting squeeze. Amelie hesitantly returned the gesture, but with no accompanying smile, her face instead frozen. Clive had telephoned ahead to Stevens, explaining that they were returning from Buxton earlier than planned and that they would be attended by Mister Wallace and two guests, should Lord and Lady Linley wish to be on hand to receive them.

  “Might I ask their names, sir, so that I might inform his lordship?” Stevens’s dull nasally voice crackled over the telephone.

  “It’s a surprise, Stevens,” Clive had said from the telephone at the front desk of the Palace Hotel, to which the elderly butler had responded with a perfunctory, if not slightly disappointed, “Very good, sir.”

  If Stevens was disappointed when at first only Mr. Wallace stepped out of the Bentley, his face did not reveal it, an indication of his extreme correctness, but Clive thought he saw perhaps a flicker of surprise when a woman holding a child then stepped out from the back after a footman opened the door for her. Doubtless in all of his years of experience, Stevens could have probably predicted what was coming next, but he, of course, remained silent as the little group climbed the stone steps and huddled in the front hall.

  Clive had asked Wallace the night before if he wanted him to be present while he faced his father, but Wallace, though he said he would have appreciated the moral support, replied that no, he would present his wife and child privately. It was not to be, however, because before Stevens could even lead them through to the drawing room, Lord and Lady Linley had uncharacteristically come out in their haste to see Wallace, his disappearance yesterday only coming to light just this morning, when it was discovered that he had not slept in his bed—again.