“He is very sad, of course,” Lady Harriet said at last. “His letters are full of misery, but I suspect it is due to boredom as much as anything. Reggie could never be idle. He always likes to have something to do, even if it is just another card party or dinner with people he does not even like very much.”
“Oh dear,” Robinia said. “He must miss the season very much.”
“Nonsense! It will do him good to rusticate for a while, and he chose to go, you know. He could have stayed and simply kept out of your way. Town is so full these days that one might go for a fortnight without seeing the same face twice. So do not feel sorry for him. Oh look, Lord Milford is waving to you. Shall I stop? It might be amusing to cut him, do you not think?”
“Oh, please do not! We had better say good day to him.”
“Quite right. But we need not have any conversation with him if you do not wish it. Oh, the power one has over these lovesick men! You may make him deliriously happy or entirely cast down, and the choice is yours. Lord Milford! Good day to you!”
But Robinia had no wish to make anyone cast down, so she smiled and chatted to Lord Milford, although she had not the least idea what she said. For her head was full of thoughts of Reggie, kicking his heels at Drummoor, bored and sad and missing her. Her mind conjured up his face with its nondescript nose and the lop-sided little smile, and then the rest of him, always so impeccably dressed. She remembered how at ease she had always felt with him, that he had never made her feel uncomfortable or done anything to disturb her equanimity. Reggie would never ask her for money or expect her to sell her necklace or talk glibly about special licences and elopements, even to tease her. What was it he had said? ‘It is the responsibility of every gentleman to ensure that a lady is not exposed to any situation which might cause her harm or distress.’
Poor Reggie. And for a while her heart ached just a little for his familiar face, and his gentlemanly manners, and she wished he were to be one of those to drive her round Hyde Park in his curricle.
19: High Berenholme
Reggie found Drummoor just as dull as he had feared. Not that the house was unoccupied, of course. Drummoor was never abandoned, its antiquated furniture shrouded in holland covers. But with all the younger members of the family in town, the remaining residents were the elderly aunts and an uncle or two, no longer inclined for the bustle of London but quite happy to eat the marquess’s beef and fill his drawing rooms with whist tables every evening.
Mr Merton was also still in residence, the work on his new abode under way but not yet sufficiently advanced to render the house habitable, it seemed. Lady Hardy was visiting again, having undertaken the task of cataloguing the books in the library, aided by her cousin, Mrs Burford. Reggie was delighted to see the two ladies again.
“Is Burford not with you, Mrs Burford?” he said, as they drank their tea after dinner.
“He was here for two days before word came that Noel was unwell, and he rushed home again,” she said with twinkling eyes. “He frets so over the children.”
“It is usually a boy’s mama who worries about his health,” Reggie said with an answering smile.
“Indeed it is, but a boy’s mama usually knows how to comfort a sick child and I regret to say that I have no such ability. It tears at my heart to see a child brought low, which renders me helpless in the sickroom. Mr Burford, however, is quite wonderful with sick children, and has them right as a trivet in no time. Noel is better already. But let us not speak of domestic matters, Lord Reginald. How was London? And how will you fill your days here? If you have a mind to catalogue books, we have ten thousand or so ready for your attention.”
He shuddered. “Good Lord, is it so many? But no, books and I do not get on well, so I am more than happy to leave the task in the capable hands of you ladies. I… have no idea what I shall do, to be honest. I am accustomed to several engagements every evening, and any number of daytime activities, so I am rather at a loss just now.”
“But you did the right thing,” Lady Hardy said. “Much better to leave town for a while, until matters are settled.”
Reggie nodded, but said nothing, his throat tightening at the thought. Settled! Yes, before long matters would be settled indeed, for Miss Chamberlain would be married to Captain Daker. But she was not married yet, and so long as she remained unwed, he was at a standstill, unable to set her memory in the past and begin to move forward again. He told himself repeatedly that she was lost to him now, that she would never be his, but in a corner of his mind a sliver of hope yet remained and he could not quite give her up.
“If you are minded for some activity, my lord, I can find one or two tasks that might interest you,” Merton said in his dour way.
“Not paperwork, if you please. I am no better suited to mountains of documents than books, I assure you.”
Merton gave a thin-lipped smile. “No, indeed, my lord. I was thinking of something more in the nature of an excursion — to High Berenholme.”
“High Berenholme? The Kiddlestons? We used to call there, but not since old Mrs Kiddleston died.”
“I was not thinking of a social call,” Merton said. “High Berenholme is where your father met Amelia Gartmore, and I should dearly like to know what it was that induced such a man to have anything to do with a roughly-spoken chambermaid.”
“That is an interesting point,” Reggie said, much struck. “Father was said to be a notable rake at one time, but his tastes ran to bored countesses and the like, not chambermaids. Oh, I beg your pardon, Lady Hardy, Mrs Burford, I should not mention such matters before ladies.”
“We are married women, not delicately nurtured young maidens,” Mrs Burford said, smiling. “You need not fear to shock us. Indeed, we have talked about the question ourselves. It does seem improbable that such a man should dally with a chambermaid, and one who — if I may be indelicate — does not seem as if she were a great beauty, even in her youth.”
“If it were not for the Marford nose that her son bears, I should be inclined to suspect she invented the whole story,” Lady Hardy said.
“I believe there is some truth in it,” Merton said, “but I am sure she is concealing something from us, and I should very much like to know what it is. Ben Gartmore is the son of a marquess, there can be no denying, and therefore it is only proper that the family should do something for him, but Mrs Gartmore seems like a sponger to me. His lordship has made her a generous allowance, but every few days there is a letter from her asking for more. She always expresses her gratitude for his lordship’s generosity, but then there is a plea of hardship. It would please me greatly to find some reason to cast her off.”
“So you wish me to make enquiries at High Berenholme?” Reggie said. “About Amelia Gartmore? Yes, that might be amusing. That might be very amusing.”
~~~~~
High Berenholme was a manor house indistinguishable from a thousand other manor houses the length and breadth of the country. It sat solidly in a fertile valley, its mellow stone glowing in the early summer sunshine as it had glowed for hundreds of years, and would no doubt continue to glow for hundreds more. The Kiddlestons were not a great family, nor a particularly wealthy one, but they were respectable, having done nothing of note since time immemorial, and their roots drove deep into the heart of English soil.
Beyond the manor’s palings, its village stood, the church at one end and the inn at the other, with a single straggling road lined with small cottages. Reggie bespoke a room and a parlour at the inn, settled his valet, groom and horses there, and then set off to walk the short distance to the manor.
The present owner, Mr Tobias Kiddleston, a wiry old gent of some eighty years of age, received him with surprise, but no little pleasure.
“We get so few visitors, m’boy. Come in, come in! Some Madeira, Mrs Huddleston, if you please, and the good stuff, not that watery pap m’doctor insists on. And something decent to eat, not just cake. Not often we have a lord visiting. Have to celebrate a thing like th
at.”
The housekeeper bustled away, and Mr Kiddleston waved Reggie to a chair.
“Well now, Lord Reginald Marford. I can never keep up with all the great families, so you will have to explain where you fit in.”
“My brother is the ninth Marquess of Carrbridge, sir. I am the second son.”
“The spare, eh? Not a comfortable position. So who was your father?”
“The eighth marquess was Charles Marford, originally,” Reggie said. “He was the third son.”
“Oh, Charles! Remember him, Lord, yes. He hung about here a lot at one time. Pretty wild, Charles was. Up to every rig. A very bad influence on my two boys. But then he disappeared. We saw him occasionally after that, but then we lost touch. Family obligations, I daresay. Ah, excellent, Mrs Huddleston. No, just put the bottle here and bring me the glasses. I am not in my dotage yet, and I shall pour my own wine, thank you very much. There you are, m’boy. This is a good drop of Madeira. Laid down by my father.”
When Mrs Huddleston had arranged fruit and cake and slices of pie on a side table within reach, she and the housemaid withdrew, and Mr Kiddleston gazed at Reggie through bushy eyebrows.
“Well, now, m’boy, I suspect this is not merely a casual social visit, eh?”
Reggie shook his head. “We recently unearthed a by-blow of my father’s who appears to have originated here, with a chambermaid by the name of Amelia Gartmore. We would like to know a little more about her.”
“Gartmore! That name takes me back, m’boy. Not heard of the Gartmores for donkey’s years. Amelia Gartmore… I cannot remember much about her, except that she was no chambermaid. No, the Gartmores were distant cousins, but not two pennies to rub together. We took them in, both the girls, but—”
“Both!” Reggie exclaimed. “There were two of them?”
“Oh yes. No idea what the other one was called, or what became of them. There was something… but I’ll be damned if I can remember what it was. My good lady was very ill about that time, and I had no mind for anything else. Mrs Huddleston will know. Knows everything that happens in this house. Ring the bell, will you, m’boy?”
He was quite right, for Mrs Huddleston did know. “Oh, yes, my lord, I remember Miss Gartmore well, and her sister, Miss Annie. I was under-house-parlourmaid when they arrived, so we were much of an age. Miss Gartmore taught the younger Miss Kiddlestons and Miss Annie was more like a housekeeper than anything else. There was a butler in those days for the formal work, but Miss Annie ran the house, no doubt about it.”
“So Amelia was a governess?”
“Well… she was family, my lord, not an employee.”
“So, educated, then?” Reggie said. “A good accent?”
“Oh, yes, my lord! Miss Gartmore was a lady, every bit as much as the Miss Kiddlestons. She and Miss Annie dined with the family, and were included in every invitation. Pretty as paint, the two of them. Miss Gartmore was such a sweet, gentle lady — such beautiful manners! And so graceful when she danced. Miss Annie was the practical one of the two, if you understand me, my lord, always reworking bonnets and sewing new frills for their gowns. They had very little money, but they always dressed well, despite that.”
“And do you remember my father from those days, Mrs Huddleston? Mr Charles Marford, as he was then.”
“Oh yes! Such a handsome man! He was head over ears in love with Miss Gartmore, and there was a lot of talk of a marriage. He even went to London town to get a special licence from the Archbishop of Canterbury so they could be wed here in the house, so that Mrs Kiddleston could be present. But something happened — I don’t know what, but there was no wedding and Miss Gartmore left soon after, and Miss Annie too, and we never heard what happened to them.”
She paused hopefully, looking at Reggie, but he could tell her nothing more, except that there had been a child. That surprised Mrs Huddleston very much. “I’d not have said Miss Gartmore was that sort of young lady, not at all,” she said doubtfully.
Reggie now knew something of the story, but there were still puzzling gaps. This sweet, gentle Miss Amelia Gartmore, very much a lady, was someone he could imagine his father falling in love with as a hot-headed young man, but she was nothing like the Amelia Gartmore he had met. And what had become of her sister Annie? There was nothing for it but to visit Mrs Gartmore and try to elicit answers from her directly.
But politeness prevented him from leaving instantly. He declined an offer to stay at the manor, being quite content with the freedom of the inn in High Berenholme village, but he dined with Mr Kiddleston, helping him smoke cigars, drink wine and port and brandy, and listening to his lascivious tales of his youth, all in defiance of his physician’s orders.
“Worse than an old woman,” he grumbled to Reggie. “I am surrounded by old women, who order me about and stop me doing anything pleasurable. When I was younger it was the strictures of society that bound me, and now it is my weak old body, but dammit, if I cannot please myself a little at my age, I might as well be dead.”
Reggie could not quite imagine ever being free of the strictures of society, and was not at all sure that he would know what to do with himself without such guidance, so he smiled and let Mr Kiddleston talk. The following day he set off early to see the Mrs Amelia Gartmore who had brought her son Ben to Drummoor, and try to reconcile that uneducated, rustic woman with the cultured lady of High Berenholme.
Ottenham was a large, rather prosperous village to the north of York. Its encircling farms were orderly, its cottages were whitewashed, the rows of beans behind them were straight, and the village green with its chestnut tree and duckpond was picturesque. Even the ragged urchins running barefoot alongside Reggie’s curricle had an unusually well-scrubbed charm.
Willow Cottage had the same well cared for air as the rest of the village. Reggie had expected a small labourer’s cottage, two rooms downstairs and a couple of tiny bedrooms crammed under the eaves. He was surprised to discover a house of some size, the front door freshly painted, and a man working on the frames of the bay windows to either side. Two more men laboured in the garden, and when he rang, the door was opened by a maid in uniform who stared at him, wide-eyed, and then ran, terrified, into some inner fastness.
From within, female voices drifted distantly, but the maid did not return. Tentatively, Reggie stepped over the threshold.
“Hello, there! Is anyone at home?”
The female voices hushed abruptly and the maid’s face peeped out from a doorway across the hall. Then, a familiar face appeared behind her.
“Good day to you, Mrs Gartmore,” Reggie said. “Is this a convenient time to call upon you?”
“You!” she said, with a look that would have curdled milk. “What you doin’ ’ere?”
“I came to see you, Mrs Gartmore, if that is indeed your name. For I must tell you that I am today come from High Berenholme, and the description given to me there of Amelia Gartmore differs markedly from the person I see before me. I am at a loss to explain it, madam. Perhaps you may be able to enlighten me?”
For a moment, her chin lifted, as if she were about to defy him, but then her face crumpled. “Best come in, sir… milord,” she said, her voice subdued. She turned back into the room and he followed her in. Again he was surprised, for the room was sparsely furnished in a plain style, as would befit a labourer’s cottage, but every piece was new.
“You’ll not turn me out, sir?” she said, wringing her hands together. “Been my ’ome for more’n thirty years now, an’ I’d ’ate to ’ave to start over, not at my time o’ life.”
“That is for the marquess to decide. What is your real name?” When she hesitated, he went on, “The truth, if you please, for if you lie it will be the worse for you.”
She licked her lips. “Abigail Trotter, sir… milord. I was Ben’s wet-nurse, brought in when ’e was born. We wasn’t ’ere then. We was in York for ’er to ’ave the baby. We moved in when ’e was a few months old. She was never well, ’is ma, and she never
went out, so when I went into the village, folks assumed I was Amelia Gartmore. I never got round to correctin’ them.”
“So you took her name. But what happened to her?”
“She died, sir. Two years after we came ’ere. Buried in the churchyard as Abigail Trotter, may God forgive me. I never meant to deceive no one, sir, you must believe me. It just came about that way… that folks assumed.”
“So you were never at High Berenholme at all?”
“No, sir. But she told me all about it. Loved to talk, she did, about ’im — ’er man — and ’er sister and ’er man, and ’ow she married Mr Marford with the special licence and all, though sometimes she said she couldn’t do it in the end, for some reason I never understood. Never quite knew if they was really married or not. S’pose not.”
“They could not have been married, for my father married my mother while Miss Gartmore was alive, and he could not have done so if he had a wife yet living. So you stayed on here and raised Ben alone. But how did you manage for money?”
“I did work about the village, sir, or took in laundry, that sort of thing. Rented out rooms, a few times, this bein’ a big ’ouse. And I ’ad…” She went rather pink. “Friends. Gentleman friends, if you understand me, sir. And then Tom Cartwright — ’e’s Sir Peter’s pig man, up at the big ’ouse — ’e took an interest, and read all the letters, and thought to write to ’is grace. ’im bein’ a marquess and all.”
“He read the letters? What letters?”
“Aye, sir, the letters from ’im — Mr Marford. Lots o’ letters. ’e wrote every week, no matter what. She used to write back, when she was alive, but o’ course she couldn’t when she was dead, and ’e came ’ere to find out why she sent no more letters. Lovely gentleman, ’e was. Very sad, o’ course, to find ’er dead and buried. So romantic. Left a bag o’ money for Ben, not that it lasted us very long, and arranged for the parson to teach ’im ’is letters, and said we could stay on ’ere. You won’t throw me out, will you, sir? Or stop the allowance? Cos I still raised Ben myself, even if I’m not ’is ma.”
Lord Reginald (Sons of the Marquess Book 1) Page 18