The Love Knot

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Mr Chantry, please forgive me, but I think I will call Lady Angela.’

  There was always something so comforting in Lady Angela’s demeanour when she examined a patient herself. Her eyes were always so calm, her touch so gentle, that it seemed to Leonie anyway that however ill the person they immediately felt, if not better, at least as if they were going to be better.

  Gabriel’s eyes looked from the older woman’s face to Leonie.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I would say that you have what we here now all call regal appendicitis, Mr Chantry. I shall send for Mr Finlay. He assisted at the King’s operation and a more dependable surgeon you will not find. Always so calm, always so patient.’

  Lady Angela hurried off as her patient suddenly put out a hand to hold that of his young nurse.

  ‘I might be going to die, mightn’t I, Miss Lynch?’

  ‘No,’ Leonie told him, firmly. ‘You are not going to die.’

  ‘How do you know? How can you be sure?’

  ‘For the very good reason that I am not going to let you, Mr Chantry.’

  And again she remembered her foster mother’s little birds, and held tight to her patient’s hand.

  It was not an easy operation, and he was so terribly ill after it that every now and then Leonie had cause to remember her words, and to wonder at her own confidence. In the event Gabriel Chantry had very nearly died, but with careful nursing and twenty-four hour attention he finally seemed to be pulling through.

  Dorinda visited him so much that Gabriel finally confided to Leonie that she was tiring him out with her chatter, and Leonie had to pretend not to look relieved when Dorinda at last announced that she had to go to her house in Sussex. She commanded that they both came to stay with her just as soon as Gabriel was allowed to travel.

  Of course the fact that Gabriel had found Dorinda’s chatter ‘tiring’ gave Leonie tremendous hope that he was not perhaps as infatuated with her famously beautiful friend as she had feared. Not that it was any of her business, she told Mrs Dodd, for she had long ago decided to dedicate herself to nursing, a notion that made Mrs Dodd’s eyes roll, once Leonie had her back safely turned to her.

  ‘Shall we take a train together, down to Ruddwick?’

  The voice was Gabriel’s, but he was not in the nursing home, but at Mrs Dodd’s London house, where Leonie’s godmother had insisted that he spent his convalescence.

  ‘Do you think you would enjoy that?’

  ‘With you,’ Gabriel told her, ‘yes.’

  Leonie smiled up at her dominoes opponent. Gabriel was now so much her friend that it was strange to think of a time when he had not been. She had even accepted his explanation for not dancing with her at Dorinda’s ball, having, it seemed, been too overcome by the previous incumbent, by which he meant that he felt that he could not compete with the King.

  ‘We can’t play dominoes on the train, the pieces would fly everywhere.’

  ‘No, but we can go on talking, and that is as good, I think. I don’t think we have stopped talking since I came round from my operation.’

  ‘That is an exaggeration.’

  ‘You are a wonderful nurse.’

  ‘Don’t try to distract me because I am winning! That will not fool me, Mr Gabriel Chantry.’

  ‘Perhaps not. Or, perhaps!’

  Listening outside the drawing room door, Mrs Dodd smiled. Mr Chantry was so suitable. From the moment he had come to stay with her she had singled him out as being just about the most suitable choice for Leonie. Not so aristocratic as to mind her illegitimacy, and not so wealthy as to think that he could do better.

  More than that he was kind. He was handsome. He was funny. All day long when Leonie was not at the nursing home Mrs Dodd was happy to observe that she heard nothing but laughter coming from the garden, or the drawing room, as they played dominoes, or spillikins. Naturally they were more like brother and sister to each other now, but given some fresh country air, and good food, she hoped they could be encouraged to be rather more than that.

  Mrs Dodd sighed every evening when she thought about it and her palpitations sometimes increased at the very idea that it might not happen. But it would be such a feather in her cap if she could see her beloved goddaughter married and settled before the end of the year. Madame Chloe she knew would be interested in making the dress – at trade, naturally, and they could have attendants to match, and – her thoughts hurtled on, her excitement growing at the prospect. Mrs Leveen, having taken such an interest in Leonie, would doubtless lend her house for the wedding breakfast – as a matter of fact either house would do. Well, more than ‘do’ – either of Mrs Leveen’s houses for the wedding breakfast would be out of this world.

  But, Mrs Dodd knew only too well, no amount of machinations, alas, can ever make a man propose, however great his passion, at least not until such time as he feels that he will not be refused. When that would be, she really had no idea. All she could do was to hope, and pray.

  Dorinda had felt so full of remorse, following Mr Gabriel Chantry as he was removed from her house on a stretcher, that she had quite driven darling Mr L and Mrs Goodman demented with her lamentations.

  She feared at first that it had been the entrée, and then the strain of bringing the furniture up, and so on, and so on. Such was her guilt that she had been unable to drag herself from the poor young man’s bedside, even managing to privately convince herself that it had been something in the entrée that had actually brought on the wretched appendicitis.

  However, with the news that Mr Chantry was now out of the woods and being nursed at Mrs Dodd’s house, Dorinda at once saw that she had a wonderful chance to make it up to him for his having been taken ill at her London house. At least she imagined that she had. Her plan was to ask him, and Leonie, naturally, down to Sussex for a period of convalescence. She had of course observed that Leonie was more than devoted to the antiquarian, and while she had always listened with great patience, and a serious expression, to Leonie’s protestations of devotion to her profession, left to herself Dorinda thought that a girl as beautiful as Miss Lynch had about as much chance of remaining single as – well, as she herself would have had.

  And so it was really delightful to Dorinda that she could go ahead to her country house in Sussex determined on making everything quite, quite beautiful for Gabriel and Leonie’s stay. But shortly after she was assured that there were flowers of every kind in every room, that there were plans for picnics in the bothy, boating trips on the lake, and so on, Leonie arrived alone.

  ‘I thought you were coming together?’ Dorinda asked her, looking at her singleness astonished. ‘I thought you were both coming by train? It sounded so – so adventurous, just the two of you on a train with only Mrs Dodd’s maid!’

  ‘Mr Chantry wanted to go to his house first, and to visit the shop. He will be here later, towards teatime, he said.’

  ‘I expect he is collecting – something.’

  In Dorinda’s imaginative eyes she could see Gabriel Chantry perhaps choosing Leonie a beautiful antique ring from some cabinet in the back of his shop, and pocketing it before coming on to her house. That had to be the reason why he had suddenly decided to go first to his house and his shop, surely?

  ‘It is a miracle he is here at all, isn’t it?’ she asked Leonie. ‘And do you know I still feel, because he was taken ill in our house, that it was in some way our fault.’

  ‘That is always the case. Someone has only to slip on one’s front doorstep for one to blame oneself for having a door,’ Leonie agreed.

  ‘I have to say that we were all convinced that he would die. Thank God he did not.’

  The expression on Dorinda’s face remained serious as she remembered Gabriel Chantry doubled up and moaning, and to take her mind off the frightening image she put her arm through Leonie’s and squeezed it.

  ‘Is he not an angel though, our Mr Chantry?’ she asked Leonie, and tried not to notice the way her friend’s eyes looked away
at something that was definitely not happening on the edge of the ha-ha.

  ‘He is a very nice man,’ Leonie agreed, blushing, and she thought of Gabriel standing among all his precious items in his shop, or looking through his books perhaps. He had told her that he loved everything that he bought, and so found it difficult to sell anything.

  ‘I dare say once Mr Chantry gets amongst his furniture and his paintings, his silver and his antiques, we will be lucky if he returns.’

  They prepared themselves for tea, and waited in the library. Tick, tock, the beautiful, large, serious faced Victorian clock’s gold hands moved, it seemed to them both, now too slowly, now too fast.

  ‘I think he must have had to meet someone at his shop,’ Dorinda reassured her friend as the servants cleared away the large tea, left uneaten by both the ladies.

  ‘I hope he is feeling quite well.’

  Leonie stared out of the window. Perhaps he did not want to come? Perhaps he did not want to stay with Dorinda, with only Leonie for company? Perhaps that was the kind of invitation that a young man, once he was quite better, could find dull and unexciting, and that was why he had decided to travel alone?

  Six o’clock came and went and the hands of the clock now seemed to be moving faster and faster as they both glanced at it every few minutes in a fatigue of anxiety, as in both their minds Gabriel Chantry became ever more handsome, ever more charming, ever more irreplaceable than he had ever been before.

  A knocking at the great hall door brought immediate relief, and Dorinda, forgetting all the proprieties, immediately ran out into the hall, hardly able to bear the relief that she was feeling at the idea that he had at last arrived. Inevitably she was followed closely by Leonie.

  As it transpired it was not Mr Chantry but someone quite other calling from the village to ask for funds for the local orphanage. Dorinda was so exasperated and disappointed that she immediately donated what looked to Leonie, and doubtless to the lady concerned, to be enough money to support not one but two orphanages.

  The hall door closed behind the fund-raiser, and as her housekeeper stared in astonishment Dorinda stamped her foot and exclaimed, ‘Do you know, having nearly killed Mr Chantry, I could now murder him!’

  The two young women trailed desultorily back to the drawing room door where a footman was waiting, but as he opened for them a voice from across the hall called, ‘Shoot, Mrs Leveen, shoot, right to the heart!’ and a tall figure which now proved itself to be Gabriel Chantry appeared between the great doors at the opposite end of the hall, removing his hat and bowing.

  ‘Oh, you wretch, we had quite given you up,’ Dorinda cried and she darted across the hall to drag her guest back to the library, making sure to take his great coat herself, noticing with some satisfaction that before she was allowed to hand it to one of the servants Gabriel took from one of its pockets an old leather box in which could only be housed the all-important ring.

  Well satisfied that he had the look of a man about to propose – half sick with fright and at the same time really rather thrilled with himself – Dorinda shut the library doors behind the lovers, and went to order champagne to be brought in to them some ten minutes later.

  As to herself, fainting with the relief of his arrival, she took herself off for a hot bath and a nice lie down before being dressed for dinner by her maid. Really she thought she should appear in the guise of Cupid himself, so satisfied was she that she must have brought about the engagement of Gabriel Chantry and Leonie Lynch.

  * * *

  Dorinda’s encounter with Mercy in Chelsea having entailed helping Josephine to put John Edward to bed, not to mention kissing him goodnight, had the all too inevitable result on his visitor – in the event, a most happy result. The following year a little girl was born to her and Mr L. Since the birth took place, by special permission, in Mrs Blessington’s nursing home, and since Mercy and Dorinda were now so close, it was natural to the two young women to immediately decide that their children should, when the time came, marry.

  Leonie on the other hand, having herself married Gabriel Chantry and being happily ensconced with him in a small town house at Ruddwick, had to wait to view Dorinda’s baby until her friend at last brought the two month old Oriana to enjoy the fresh air at her Sussex estate. As soon as she was installed, Leonie, leaving Gabriel with a promise to return by teatime, went to visit and admire what she realised had to be a beautiful baby, born as she had been to such a beautiful woman. Oriana was indeed beautiful, but Leonie, having admired her inordinately, was, after an hour of exclamation, a delicious tea, and a yard or two of gossip, sent smartly on her way. For, as Dorinda remarked, bearing in mind Gabriel’s handsome looks and charming ways, ‘My dear, an attractive man cannot be left for more time than it takes to boil an egg …’

  As to Mrs Dodd, she visited her goddaughter and her husband several times a year, but when in London there was nothing that her friend Madame Chloe and she liked better than to remember Leonie’s wedding to Gabriel Chantry.

  Their teatime sessions together would always begin with the taking out of the photograph albums, and the placing of the newspaper cuttings upon the white lace tablecloth, the cuttings now so yellow that they looked like Chinese wallpaper.

  Mrs Dodd, having had a generous amount of tea, would sit back while Madame Chloe purred over the compliments heaped by the fashion writers on the cutting and excellence of Miss Lynch’s wedding dress, on the numbers of exquisitely turned out page boys (eight in all), on the list of presents – a rose bowl graciously sent by the King and Queen, a set of gold vases from the Maharajah of Raipur, a bracelet set with love knots from Mrs Lawrence Leveen, whom our readers may better remember as Dorinda Blue.

  And so on down to the list of guests who enjoyed the wedding breakfast at Lawrence House, the Princess Polignac, the Duke and Duchess of Claremore, Lord and Lady Londonderry, Lord and Lady Hervey Davidson, the Lady Balniel of that Ilk, the Hon. Mrs Hugh Morrison ...

  Each and every detail of the wedding was delicious to Mrs Dodd and Madame Chloe – the length of the embroidered train, the satin breeches on the page boys, the ten flower girls, each of whose dresses took ten yards of organza and the same of taffeta, not to mention thirty rosebuds each for their headdresses.

  The two women never tired of the details or their teas together, both appreciating that it had been a long way from Eastgate Street to Mayfair, but in the event, not so long after all. And as to Leonie, she never enquired of either Mrs Dodd or her heroine, Lady Angela, as to who her real parents might have been, taking the sensible view that it was their secret, not hers.

  Epilogue

  Standing under the street lamp’s kindly light the woman looked up at the outside of her little Chelsea house, reassuring herself that while her nanny’s light was still burning her little boy’s nursery light was not. The man standing beside her also looked up, as if to reassure himself too, and then taking off his immaculate top hat he bowed to her, and kissed her hand.

  Tomorrow morning they both knew that she would be up and gone before the lamp under which they were standing was put out by the early morning lamplighter, but just at that moment less serious matters occupied both their thoughts, as they must do, when a man and a woman, greatly attracted to each other, have had a rare but mutually enjoyable evening dining and visiting the opera.

  Bending over her small, ringed, white hand he kissed it lightly, his dark hair, greying at the sides, covered seconds later by the shiny opera hat. As his arms retreated back into his opera cloak the lining showed beautifully and magnificently red.

  The woman was not such a puritan that she could not appreciate her companion’s elegance and style, and not least his exquisite and elegant manners.

  ‘Thank you. It was a lovely evening.’

  ‘May I call again? Please say I may.’

  She hesitated for what seemed to him to be a thousand hours.

  ‘Yes, you may, but – you know – nowadays my evenings off are rare. Perhaps i
n two weeks?’

  ‘Whenever you say. Send me a message and I will be waiting, always.’

  The woman smiled back at him from her front doorstep before fitting her key into the lock of her front door.

  ‘We enjoyed ourselves, didn’t we?’

  ‘I am only ever happy when I’m with you, you know that now.’

  The woman nodded, seemingly unmoved by the intensity behind the man’s words, but nevertheless she kissed the tips of her fingers to him, and closing the front door behind her she leant against it for a few seconds, listening to the sound of the hackney horse trit-trotting its way into the distance of the London street.

  The nanny leant over the banisters and smiled down at her.

  ‘Nice evenin’, Mrs Brancaster?’

  Mercy nodded and smiled.

  ‘You look lovely in your opera clothes. I love you in that yellow.’ Josephine nodded with satisfaction. ‘And Mr Brancaster?’

  Mercy paused, her large eyes thoughtful. ‘He is – well, Josephine, quite well, if not quite – better.’

  ‘Well, that is good, then. John Edward has been fast asleep all the time you was out, I’m here to tell you.’

  Mercy followed the nanny upstairs as she chattered away about her charge. Soon it would be morning, and other matters would be upon her, but just at that moment Mercy was more than content; it seemed to her at that moment that she might actually be happy.

  THE END

  THE KISSING GARDEN

  by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘A perfect escapist cocktail for summertime romantics’ Mail on Sunday

  As children, George Dashwood and Amelia Dennison loved to roam the Sussex Downs and, just as their two very different families were friends, so too were they, until they are caught in a thunderstorm. Sheltering from the elements, the now mature George realizes that the way he feels about Amelia has changed. But it is 1914 and the declaration of war cuts across any romantic plans that the two might have.