The Invitation

by Belinda Alexandra

  Lise kissed Claude’s cheek. ‘I’m very proud of him. He’s been working hard.’

  My mind was jumping all over the place. It went from watching Lise kiss Claude’s cheek and trying to interpret the meaning of it, to thinking about A Tale of a Lonely House. I should never have written that story in first person. Genevieve had welcomed Theron into her life and held nothing back from him, not her heart, not her home, not her fortune. And she had paid for that mistake with her life. Theron wasn’t a man to be trusted, but how could she have known that? He had been so loving. So kind. So perfect.

  Claude swallowed. ‘And you, Emma . . . have you been well? Is everything going to plan for your life here in New York?’

  He stared at me as if expecting an answer to a question I didn’t understand. I had no idea how to answer. Nothing was going to plan. It was all chaos. My brother-in-law was a murderer more or less, my sister an adulteress, and my niece a pawn in a terrible game. And the one person I had trusted as my rock had dissolved into sand.

  The world came crashing down on me like an enormous wave. I turned and hurried away. Claude called after me but I couldn’t hear what he said through the blood thumping in my ears.

  I had written about betrayal in my stories many times, but had never managed to describe it as precisely as I now felt it. A fog of hopelessness? A river of tears? Hands desperately digging into the dirt to try to stop yourself falling off a cliff? None of those metaphors came close to capturing it. I only knew that betrayal wasn’t something I had ever expected to feel with Claude. I had been faithful to him for five years, and now he had found someone else.

  It took all my courage even to sit up in bed the following morning. All I could see before me was emptiness.

  If I’d had a choice I would have stayed in my room all day, trying to determine when my relationship with Claude had come to an end and why. There had been no harsh words in our letters, no ill feeling between us. It was true that we couldn’t agree on the question of marriage, but if that were the reason surely Claude would have had the decency to write and explain his change of heart?

  Maybe this is how a man deserts one woman for another, I thought. He simply picks up his coat and hat and walks out the door. No explanation, no letter, nothing.

  I turned to the photograph of Grand-maman on the escritoire. ‘What shall I do?’ I asked her. ‘Something inside me has died.’

  My heart was broken, but I couldn’t let my grandmother down. She wouldn’t want me to give in to despair. She’d always said: ‘God is more interested in our character than our comfort.’ I knew she would want me to take my heartache and use it to improve myself in some way.

  When Jennie came into the room half an hour later to help me into my first glorious outfit for the day, I put on a brave face and smiled cheerfully. The maid would have had no idea of the utter despair in my heart. I was alive and breathing, but I was crushed. Yet I was determined that nobody should know it.

  Two days later, I was again summoned to join Caroline and Lucy in the drawing room.

  Caroline was aglow with excitement. ‘Lucy, tell Emma what has taken place!’

  ‘I have the most pleasing news,’ Lucy said, clasping her hands. ‘Lady Clara called on me to say the Duke has invited us all to Lyndale. It seems Isadora has quite charmed him.’

  ‘The Duke is very proud of his home,’ Caroline explained for my benefit. ‘He must want to find out whether Isadora will fit in there.’ She stood and paced the room, her delight turning to ambition. ‘This London season must be the most spectacular of all. I will write immediately to Worth in Paris and arrange some fittings. Isadora has to look glorious.’

  She came to a stop in front of me. ‘You must come with us, Emma. The Duke wasn’t very impressed with Isadora’s French — you must make her try harder. Speaking French fluently is important among the English aristocracy.’

  I suspected the Duke would have found fault with Isadora’s French even if it had been her native language. Still, I was keen to know what life on a grand English estate was like and to help my niece in any way I could. And perhaps seeing England for the first time would help me forget what had happened with Claude. I needed to keep moving. Every pause, every moment of reflection was a blade jabbing into my heart.

  Lucy shook her head. ‘We can’t wait until the London season, Caroline. The Duke and his companions are sailing back to England tomorrow. We must follow as soon as possible before the season begins. You forget that there are only two dukes in the United Kingdom currently eligible for marriage — and the other one is sixty years old!’

  ‘But the season here isn’t quite finished, and we must have time to prepare,’ said Caroline, twisting the rings on her fingers anxiously. ‘Isadora only has her gowns from last year. She needs an entire new wardrobe.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be worried about her clothes,’ replied Lucy. ‘An English father would never spend thousands of dollars at Worth or Paquin on a daughter. It’s not English girls we have to be concerned about. It’s Permelia Frances.’

  Caroline’s eyebrows knitted into a frown. ‘What has she got to do with anything?’

  ‘A friend of mine in London has informed me that Permelia Frances has been making enquiries about the Duke through a famous society matchmaker. Apparently her younger sister Vivien is exceptionally beautiful and witty to match. Darling Isadora may not be able to outshine her.’

  Caroline’s entire body stiffened. ‘Then I will summon Woodford now and tell him to arrange our passage.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The steamship we travelled on to Europe was luxuriously appointed. There was a Viennese-style café on the bridge deck where we ate apple strudel and drank black coffee served in glasses with whipped cream. In the ladies’ parlour, we sat on velvet divans under an enormous oil painting of Princess Margaret of Prussia. My cabin suite was decorated in carved walnut with leaf motifs, and big enough to allow my harp to travel with me.

  When we arrived in London, I was surprised to find it very different from Paris or New York. The air was smoky and dirty, and the houses along the railway line were drab, but when we reached Victoria Station there was no doubt we had entered the heart of the greatest empire in the world. The whole place seemed to be bustling with people from the four corners of the world: Australia and New Zealand, Canada, Africa, India and China.

  Not long after our train had pulled into the platform and its passengers were disembarking, another train arrived — a private one. From it emerged an Indian maharajah wearing a turban decorated with pearls and sapphires. Five wives came after him, bedecked in chiffon saris and tikas with jewelled drops. A small army of servants busied themselves unloading at least one hundred pieces of Louis Vuitton luggage.

  A stately carriage with a coachman, a footman and a pair of Cleveland Bay horses was waiting for us at the station entrance. The footman took our luggage and then helped us into the carriage. The rest of our things would arrive later with Caroline’s and Lucy’s lady’s maids.

  On our way to Mayfair we drove past Buckingham Palace and its gardens. I was awe-struck by the grandeur of the neoclassical building; and also by the Georgian magnificence of Apsley House, which Lucy informed us had been the London home of the first Duke of Wellington. Layers of history and tradition seemed to emanate from the buildings and streets, as if they were living things. Paris was the more beautiful and feminine city, I decided, while London was stately, imposing and masculine.

  The sombre brown exterior of Lucy’s residence belied the luxurious décor inside. A butler ushered us into a great hall that must have been at least a hundred and twenty feet high from floor to ceiling. A grand stone stairway occupied the centre of the hall and opened up to a gallery on the first floor. My eyes drank in the velvet-covered walls, the Brussels and Flemish tapestries and the magnificent eighteenth-century painting of a woman playing a harp.

  A maid accompanied me to my room, unpacked my bag and informed me that afternoon tea would be served in
the drawing room at five o’clock. She curtsied and left, and the room fell into an eerie quiet.

  I stared at the walnut bed with its elaborate cornice and scrollwork and its flame finials. ‘This is England,’ I said, sitting down in a tapestry-upholstered chair.

  It should have been a thrilling moment for a writer, but for some reason, I was filled with dread.

  We met for pre-dinner drinks that evening in an L-shaped drawing room where the sideboard was covered with photographs in silver frames surmounted by coronets. I recognised the portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales.

  An elderly man tottered in, and Lucy introduced him as her husband, the Duke of Dorset. With his stooped posture and balding pate he wasn’t at all what I had pictured. I’d imagined Lucy had been swept off her feet by a dashing aristocrat like the smouldering, romantic figures Adriaen Hanneman painted. The Duke of Dorset was at least twenty years older than his wife, and his red-rimmed eyes and pouched cheeks gave him a startling resemblance to a basset hound. I thanked God that at least the Duke of Bridgewater was much closer in age to Isadora than Lucy was to her husband.

  ‘It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Lacasse,’ the Duke said, covering me in his stale breath. ‘Should I drop off to sleep during dinner, I hope you will kindly nudge me. The preliminary parliamentary meetings were particularly tedious today.’

  ‘Where do you think Lucy’s children are?’ Isadora whispered to me as we mounted the stairs to our rooms afterwards, behind Caroline and Lucy. ‘I was hoping to meet them.’

  I had wondered that myself. ‘Perhaps the English truly do believe that children should be seen and not heard,’ I whispered back.

  Isadora rolled her eyes. ‘But in this case we haven’t even seen them. Have you heard the saying “An heir and a spare”? Apparently that’s all English nobles want wives for: to produce an heir and another son in case the first one dies. After that, they leave their wives alone.’

  Our eyes met and I knew for certain now that Isadora had guessed what this trip was about.

  Caroline turned to look at us, suspicious of our whispering. When I entered my room, she followed me, wandering around and examining the bed and chairs as if she were there merely to admire the decoration.

  Finally, she said, ‘You remember our agreement, don’t you, Emma?’ She was smiling, but the menacing tone was unmistakable. ‘When Isadora is married, I will pay off your debts so you may keep Grand-maman’s apartment and look after Paulette. Don’t let anything go wrong now. The debt collectors won’t be kept at bay forever.’

  Caroline wasn’t one for mincing words and I knew her threat was real. I had managed to forget my money worries while living in her world, but unless I obeyed my sister’s wishes, they would be waiting for me exactly where I’d left them.

  I shuddered when I recalled Monsieur Ferat, so gentlemanly, so proper — and so truly frightening. I would have been less scared of a thug.

  The Duke of Bridgewater sent a carriage to meet our train from London and transport us to his estate. I had heard that the countryside of England was picturesque and it turned out to be true. The quaint rural village with its thatched-roof cottages and the Tudor inn that came into view at the first bend was like something from a fairytale. From the market square to the old stone church, it looked as though nothing had changed for centuries in this part of the world.

  We drove alongside a meandering river bordered by willow trees, and passed through a wood where the branches of the oak, ash and hazel trees were laden with snow, before coming to a stop outside the entrance gates to the Lyndale Estate. The coachman called out and a porter came out of the lodge house to open the gates for us. He was dressed in livery and carrying a staff topped by a silver knob.

  The long driveway wound through a vast parkland with a lake at its centre. Swans glided over its silvery surface, and the banks were brimming with birds that hadn’t flown south for winter: pheasants, cormorants and snow geese. A herd of deer swept past us, their hooves silent in the deep snow.

  ‘I love deer,’ said Isadora. ‘For me they are as mystical as the fabled unicorn. They are heavenly messengers: angels in disguise.’

  ‘A good omen for our visit then,’ said Lucy.

  The coachman caught our conversation and raised his voice so we could hear him inside the carriage. ‘His Grace will release whole herds of deer this spring, along with thousands of pheasants and other game, in time for the shooting parties in autumn. The hunting is always good at Lyndale.’

  Isadora recoiled and brought her hand to her mouth. ‘I can’t understand men who hunt. I’m glad that Father —’

  Caroline stopped her with a sharp kick and said loudly, ‘The ladies join in sometimes too, I should imagine?’

  ‘Some of them,’ the coachman agreed. ‘Lady Clara is afraid to ride after a bad fall as a child, but her mother was known for her great prowess in stalking. If there was a hunt on, she was sure to be in it.’

  The carriage approached a stone bridge over the lake and glimpses of Lyndale came into view, teasing us with flashes of turrets and minarets between the trees. Then, as we crossed the bridge, we were treated to a full view of the building’s baroque grandeur. The central block and wings were Corinthian in style, and the columns of the portico and the pilasters on either flank resembled the entrance to a pantheon, while the towers at each corner were suggestive of the pylons of an Egyptian temple. It was far more dramatic and imposing than Buckingham Palace, and perhaps even Versailles. I was sure that Caroline had stopped breathing.

  ‘The palace building and its courtyards alone cover seven acres,’ the coachman told us. ‘It was designed by the architect Sir Christopher Wren, who is famous for Saint Paul’s Cathedral.’

  ‘I wish Harland was here with us,’ Caroline whispered to Lucy.

  I suspected that the planned new house in Newport might suddenly become English baroque in flavour instead of French. Caroline’s admiration increased when we passed under a stone arch with a statue of a coroneted lion on top of it savaging a rooster.

  ‘There is such power here,’ she remarked. ‘You can feel the command of it all.’

  The carriage came to a stop in an arcaded quadrangle where the Duke waited for us, along with a butler, housekeeper, three footmen and four glum-looking maids.

  ‘Welcome to Lyndale,’ he said with a smile. He seemed more relaxed than he had been in New York and even had a polite comment for each of us.

  To me he said that he hoped the train journey had given me some time to conjure up new stories. ‘I find that the scenery and the steady rhythm of the wheels on the tracks help to solve a myriad of problems that require the use of one’s imagination.’

  His comment to Isadora was that he hoped she found the beauty of the parkland to her liking. ‘Even though it couldn’t be more different from the bustle and hurry of New York, or London for that matter.’

  ‘The air is so fresh,’ she replied. ‘Even in winter it is alive with the fragrance of pine and the icy crispness of the lake.’

  The Duke’s eyes crinkled as if he was amused by Isadora’s observations.

  He introduced us to the maids who would be attending each of us. The maid assigned to me was a young, rake-thin girl named Patsy.

  We entered the immense hall, which was more like a guardroom than a welcoming space. The lofty ceiling was supported by fluted Corinthian columns, while smaller columns created an arched corridor that spanned a minstrels’ gallery. On the keystone was carved a coat of arms. Long vaulted corridors ran to the north and south wings. Paintings of hunting and battle scenes covered the walls, and the wainscoting was embellished with pistols and bayonets. In each corner stood a suit of armour. The hall had clearly been designed to impress — and subdue — guests rather than to please them.

  Tea was served in the library, which the Duke informed us was one hundred and eighty feet long. The fine stucco of the ceiling was beautiful, but the size of the room and the height of the ceiling only made it chil
lier. Lucy discreetly wiggled her toes to warm them up. I wrapped my hands around my teacup to relieve my frozen fingers but the heat had already vanished from the drink. The Duke seemed oblivious to our discomfort. He was probably used to the cold. Portraits of the previous dukes stared down at us as we nibbled on raspberry jam sandwiches cut into circles the size of an English penny and honey cakes.

  ‘Everything we eat comes from either the kitchen garden or the nearby farms,’ the Duke explained. ‘It’s rare to find food as fresh in London. We dine well at Lyndale.’

  The windows of the library overlooked an enormous area of ground interspersed with broken low walls. A statue of a mermaid surrounded by fish stood in the middle of it.

  ‘It used to be a water garden,’ the Duke explained. ‘It was my father’s dream to restore it to its former glory but there were other priorities during his time, such as repairing the roof and the bridge.’

  Restoring a water garden of that size would be a large financial undertaking. In fact, it would take an enormous amount of money to keep this house going at all. I glanced around: although the library furniture was glorious, the upholstery was frayed, the walls were showing signs of damp and the stone floor had some cracks in it. I understood now why the Duke was forgoing his childhood love in order to marry a wealthy heiress. I only hoped he had more than his ancestry and this museum of a house to offer Isadora.

  After we had finished our tea, the Duke gave us a tour of the staterooms, which, rather ironically I thought, were decorated in Louis XVI gilded style. In each of them hung tapestries of the first duke’s military victories over the French.

  When the Duke noticed the intense way that Isadora studied them, he told her, ‘The English and the French were often bitter enemies, but over time we have come to appreciate each other.’

  As we moved from room to room, we followed a path set out by a crimson carpet.

  ‘The main rooms are open to public tours on Tuesdays and Thursdays,’ explained the Duke. Glancing in Caroline’s direction, he added, ‘It is not for myself alone that I desire to restore Lyndale, but for everyone. I believe Lyndale could become the finest estate in the whole of England.’