“It is a good likeness,” he said, with difficulty, for his throat was unaccountably tight.
“Jude thought so too,” she said, her voice subdued.
The noise from the rest of the room suggested that the children were becoming restless. The two Macs whisked them away for milk and cakes, followed by naps, and as the company now gathered into one group, there was no further opportunity for private conversation. Nathan was rather glad of it, for it gave him a chance to compose himself and to wonder why he was so unsettled by the actions of a man who was now dead.
That night was only the second dinner he had shared with Nell, and again he claimed the pleasure of sitting beside her. If she had always looked entirely the lady in her day gowns, in evening dress she was magnificent. Black silk with black lace and a single black ribbon in her hair were all the ornamentation she allowed herself, with not a bit of jewellery apart from her wedding ring, but Nathan was almost speechless with admiration. It was as well that the table did not depend upon him for conversation, for he said next to nothing, but sat watching her. He could scarcely take his eyes off her.
But she was not silent. He had to agree with Meg that the cool, composed and reserved lady had flown away. In her place was a vivacious and quick-witted woman who could tell an amusing anecdote or argue point for point with Harry, and yet was never unkind or in any way overstepping the bounds of ladylike behaviour. Occasionally, some casual remark would distress her — Harry mentioned the dead Duke of Falconbury once, and that was enough. Then she would grow quiet for a while, the conversation swirling around her until she felt able to join in again. But no one was so impolite as to remark upon it, and she recovered each time.
After dinner, she insisted on hearing Harry reciting Shakespeare, and although the two Macs twittered a bit — ‘Nothing too unseemly, dear Mrs Caldicott, not on a Sunday’ — Henry V was deemed suitable. Nathan had to admit that Harry was a fine orator, and the original could hardly have been more stirring. Harry stood before the fireplace, his voice echoing around the room, holding them spellbound.
‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage.’
When he had drawn to a close, there was a stunned silence until Nathan jumped to his feet. “Give me a sword, someone, and let me have at these surly Frenchmen. God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”
They all laughed, and Nell laughed too and gazed at him with something in her eyes. Something that was not cool or composed, and he could not be at all sure it was even ladylike.
His breath caught. The world faded to nothingness and there was only Nell, Nell with her shimmering blue eyes fixed on him, and a smile playing on her lips. Those eyes… as blue as the ocean and as deep. A man could drown in those eyes.
Drown…
An infelicitous word, under the circumstances, but perhaps he was drowning. He was certainly out of his depth. Oh Lord, were Meg and Harry right? Was he falling in love?
~~~~~
JUNE
Nathan found some excuse to visit Percharden House every day after Nell and Louis returned there. Sometimes he rode, sometimes he went in the carriage, and often there would be some little gift — a wooden horse for Louis, some marzipan for the ladies, a new piece of sheet music for Nell. Some days he hardly saw her, but one day he found her out in the garden all alone, sketching the house.
“No Louis today?”
“Jessica has taken him into town to procure new pantaloons for him.”
He had nothing to say about pantaloons, so he peered instead at her drawing.
“Your eye for architecture is improving,” he said, pushing her discarded bonnet and shawl aside, and sitting down on the bench beside her.
She laughed. “Ah, but it is so much easier when the object is directly before me. In York, I had seen the Minster only briefly and through a downpour, and it is not easy to study a building in such conditions. Has it stopped raining in York yet?”
“Days ago, just as it did here.”
“Indeed? You astonish me. I thought it always rained in York. It is a rational conclusion, since I have never seen York when it is not raining.”
That made him laugh. “You must come again when the sun shines, which it does with tolerable frequency,” he said, smiling at her. Was he smiling too much? He rather thought he was.
“I should very much like to. Have I told you how much I enjoyed my stay at your house, Mr Harbottle?”
“About a dozen times. Thirteen, now. And Meg and I enjoyed your visit too.”
“And Henny? Was she put out to find her family home invaded by a pestilential boy?”
“Henny is never put out by anything,” he said, his voice softening as he thought of her. “She is a delightful child.”
“She is, and so very like you.” She turned and smiled at him as she spoke, but there was no condemnation in her manner. She was surprisingly direct, but not judgemental. And then, in that deft way she had, she changed the subject. “Have you heard from Mr Smethurst yet? I trust he arrived safely in London.”
“He did.” He hesitated, but there was no point in pretence, and he wanted no secrets between them, so he went on, “You are right, of course. She is mine. A natural child. May I tell you about it? I should like you to know.”
She set down her sketching book and turned to face him fully. “I should be honoured by any confidences you wish to share with me, Mr Harbottle.”
So formal… If only she would call him by his name! He longed for such intimacy. Taking a long, slow breath, he said, “I was nineteen, and she was seventeen. So young, both of us. This happened in Edinburgh, so you would not know her, but her family was… is respectable. We had been acquainted for some time, so she was a good friend, but nothing more until that summer. Then, I do not quite know how it was, but one day everything changed. There was a pleasure excursion — a drive into the country, a picnic, you know the sort of thing. I was allowed to take her up in my curricle, and somehow, everything fell into place. We set out as friends, and we returned as lovers. My father approved, so I courted her openly. We never made any secret of it, and her mother made no demur, on the contrary, she encouraged us. Her father was away at the time, but we had no reason to doubt his approval. I made my declaration, she accepted me and it needed only her father’s return for us to marry.”
He paused, mesmerised by the intentness of Nell’s gaze as she listened, rapt. Her face, normally so calm, showed interest but also solicitude, knowing how the story would end. With difficulty, he continued.
“As you will have guessed, he refused to give his blessing. She was too young, I was too young, there was another young man who would suit her better… he came up with a dozen excuses, but when I pressed him, he confessed that my father was too ramshackle a connection to admit to his oh-so-respectable family.” Nathan could not keep the bitterness out of his tone. “Never mind that they were poor as well as respectable, never mind that I could bring money to the family, never mind that his daughter’s happiness was at risk. He would not have it.”
“Whatever was so ramshackle about your father?” Nell cried. “The brother of a baronet? His social position was unimpeachable, surely.”
“True, but an English baronet is of little account in Scotland, and my father was deemed to have lax morals. There were rumours of a mistress, although I never knew the truth of that. There were also questions about Meg, and whether she was legitimate or not. We never found her mother’s marriage lines. Even if the marriage had been valid, there were those who questioned my father’s judgement in marrying such a person, and raising the offspring as a lady. In the beau mond
e, such things are of little account, but to my betrothed’s father it was of greater import than the Harbottle name or money.”
“Who could possibly object to Meg?” she said indignantly.
“Exactly!” he said, basking in the warmth of her approval. “But he did, and there was no persuading him. We did not need her father’s permission to marry, not under Scotch law, so we pressed ahead with our plans, and of course we did not quite wait for the wedding. But he forestalled us. He sent his daughter away to a cousin in Cornwall, and there she stayed, even when her condition was discovered. That was a lesser shame than marrying me, it seems. In time, the whole family moved to England, and I never saw or heard from any of them again. Only the solicitor communicated with me, to ask for money for Henny, who had been fostered out. I told him that I was more than willing to fulfil my obligations, but I wanted the child with me, to be brought up as the gentleman’s daughter that she is. She has been with me since she was a year old, and is the greatest delight to me. She brought me some comfort during the long years when I grieved for my lost love.”
“That is a sad story,” Nell said thoughtfully. “To separate two young people so deep in love, and without any serious reason for objection is very cruel. Whatever your father may have done, there was no blame attached to you. But did your betrothed never write to you, or try to return to your side?”
“I do not know what she may have tried, but she certainly never succeeded, and it is not so difficult to write a letter, surely? In all these years, surely she could have written, if only to tell me that she was well and content with her situation. It has torn me apart, imagining her suffering just as I did. If I had only known what became of her…” He stopped, voice quavering as the old emotions boiled up inside him. He rested his head on one hand, shading his eyes. “Forgive me…”
“No forgiveness is necessary,” she said. To his surprise, she reached out and took his other hand in hers, gently stroking the back of it. “I am so very sorry, Nathan.”
At her touch, a shiver rippled through him. Without gloves, the softness of her hands on his was as delicate as the touch of a moth’s wing, but the effect was as intense as fire, making his heart thunderous and his breath ragged. He lifted his head but he could not — he dared not — look at her. Hoarsely, he said, “You do not, then, condemn me for what I did? For seducing her?”
“You were both young and lost in love and shortly to marry. The consequence of that is almost inevitable.”
“But I should have had more restraint. I should have—”
“Hush.” She placed one finger on his lips, sending another ripple through him, stronger than the last. “‘Should have’ will not pay the butcher, as my old nurse used to say. What is done is done. You must not take all the blame upon yourself. The lady permitted it, after all, and it was her father who created the disaster. Implacable fathers cause so much tragedy.”
“You understand,” he said wonderingly, looking her in the eye at last. Gently, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it, the most feather-light, yet intimate, of kisses.
Her eyes widened a little, but she made no protest. Instead, to his astonishment, she smiled and said, “Of course I understand. Who better? For did I not do exactly as you did? And I too paid a dreadful price,” she added in a low tone. “Mr Harbottle… Nathan… you have shared your history with me. May I repay the compliment and tell you my story?”
He could scarcely breathe. “I should be greatly honoured… Nell.”
She nodded, and settled herself more comfortably on the bench, although she did not withdraw her hand from his, and began her tale.
20: Another Unexpected Visitor
Nathan sat, mesmerised, as she spoke, enchanted by this abrupt shift to intimacy. Her hand rested trustingly in his, and occasionally, when emotion overcame her, she squeezed it a little, as if to draw comfort from it.
She talked first of her meeting with her future husband. For her, too, it was a summer romance, and it drew to the same conclusion — a couple desperately in love and a father violently opposed to the match. Since they were subject to English law they could not marry without his consent, so Nell tried to force his hand, creeping out one moonlit night and offering her lover her virtue. She achieved her object but at a terrible cost — the loss of her family and even her dowry, as she discovered later.
For a time, they were happy. Louis was born, her husband’s ships were doing well, there was money and society and a joy in life. But there were blacker moments, too, when her husband’s true nature showed itself.
“Some business he wanted fell through at the last minute,” she said, her voice faltering. “He flew into a rage. Even though his anger was not directed at me, it was frightening. But the storm blew over and we were in harmony again. Then the disaster happened…” Her voice trailed away to nothing, and the grief in her face was almost unbearable for Nathan to see.
“You do not need to speak of it if it distresses you,” he said softly.
She straightened her back. “But I wish to. It is good for me, especially now that I know so much more about him. Or perhaps less.” She smiled, then, and he kissed her hand again, although he knew not why. She did not object. “I was increasing again, and it was winter. We had had snow, and then even colder weather. Jude told me to stay at home, it was too icy underfoot, too dangerous… but he was a dreadful worrier when I was increasing, so I took no notice. Besides, there were some new bonnets in from London, and so…”
She stopped, withdrawing from his grasp and covering her face with trembling hands. Nathan was overcome with grief for her. He so badly wanted to hold her in his arms, as if he could shield her from the hurts of the world, but for her it was far too late. She had already seen the worst of man’s evil.
“Bonnets!” she said abruptly, with a harsh laugh. “Such a trivial thing, but it destroyed us. My vanity destroyed us. I went out, I fell, I was carried home insensible. Jude was distraught.” A long pause, but then she burst out, “Oh God, if only I had listened to him! We might have been happy yet. He might have been alive yet.”
“Such regrets do no good,” Nathan said fiercely. “You must not think that way. It is a tragedy to lose a baby, but—”
“Oh, but I did not, not then. No, I recovered well, but Jude… Jude had two ships then, a larger one which he commanded, and a smaller one, which John Delanoy captained. Jude had an important cargo coming up, very profitable, it would make us rich, he said. The next cargo was always the one to make us rich, yet somehow we never were. But because of the fall, he was too concerned about me to go, so he sent John instead and that was the true disaster.”
“The ship sank?”
She nodded, eyes full of tears. “All hands were lost. The cargo was lost. Our chance of riches was lost. And the worst of it was that the insurers would not pay out. John was not properly qualified, they said, they had only insured the ship on condition that Jude captained it. He got virtually nothing. Far from making our fortune, we were ruined. That night—”
Again she stopped, and now the tears were flowing in earnest. Quite unable to help himself, he put one arm around her shoulders, and she leaned towards him trustingly.
“That night,” she went on, her voice stronger, “he went out and got drunk. I had never seen him drunk before. I was in bed when he came home, and he was in such a rage. I tried to reason with him, but he yelled at me, screamed at me… and then he started hitting me. It was all my fault, he said. I had destroyed everything. He wished he had never married me, and on and on. I was trying to fight back but he was bigger and stronger than me. He kept hitting me, until I was on the floor and screaming in pain. And then… then…” She heaved a sobbing breath. “Then he kicked me in the stomach. That was when I lost the baby. Oh God, the blood! So much blood. I… I don’t remember much after that. For weeks I was ill. The physician was afraid I might die, but I wished for death. Can you understand that?” She turned a tear-streaked face towards him. “It
was wrong of me, but I… I felt I had nothing to live for. But Maria kept bringing Louis to see me, and eventually I realised that I did have a reason to live. Or to endure, anyway. Because we could never go back. Even if he never hit me again, I would always be afraid that he would.”
“But he did,” Nathan said.
“Oh yes. Five times, in all. That is not much, is it? Five times in three years. Most of the time he was almost like the man I married, loving and gentle, although the lack of money wore him down. He was always anxious about it, and especially so as the Quarter Days drew near. Then he would get restless and start grumbling that we ought to have more money, and it was all my fault for spending too much. Or it was my fault that the Helen of Troy went down and left us poor. It was always my fault, he said.”
“It was not your fault!” Nathan hissed, too angry to be conciliatory. “It was not your fault that the ship went down or that the insurers would not pay. It was not your fault that an unqualified commander took that ship out. That was your husband’s decision.”
“True, but I must shoulder some of the blame. My foolish vanity triggered all the evils that later beset us. Vanity and disobedience. The disaster came about in part because I disobeyed my husband. I caused the breach with my family because I disobeyed my father. Everything that has gone wrong in my life is because I disobeyed. So I became the world’s most dutiful wife. Everything Jude told me to do, I did without question. None of it helped. He would grow despondent and turn to drink, and then… sometimes…”
“Did you never think of laying a charge against him? Applying to your family for aid? Or leaving him?”
The Widow (Silver Linings Mysteries Book 1) Page 20