The Sleeping Sword

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘Good heavens!’ she said, diverted, as I had intended, into matters of genealogy. ‘He is no such thing.’

  ‘Indeed he is,’ Aunt Faith said quickly, understanding my motive.

  ‘Faith, he is no such thing. Her grandmother married his father, and what sort of a relationship is that? But on our side of the family, her mother was your sister and my first cousin. She married my brother’s son, although the least said about that the better—’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ murmured wicked Blanche. ‘For my part I find Gervase much improved. I am sure Grace does too.’

  ‘And what would Grace know about Gervase?’ Aunt Caroline snapped, her eyes, bright with the dawning of a new suspicion, flashing from one politely smiling face to another. ‘You surely haven’t been seeing him, have you, Grace?’

  And although she was both deeply mortified and deeply shocked—for how could I be so shameless and what effect might it have on Gideon’s inheritance?—at least it distracted her sufficiently from Liam to enable us all to drink our tea, while I took my first uninterrupted stare at Miss Madeley-Brown.

  She was, indeed, the kind of girl who, in her first appearance in London’s drawing-rooms is acclaimed a ‘beauty’, a tall, in fact a very tall girl with fine, broad shoulders, a bosom which even now, in the seventeenth or eighteenth year of her age, was magnificent, a lovely if rather vacant face and a haughty manner, coils of bright gold hair doing exactly as they had been bid beneath an expensive, much beribboned hat.

  ‘You will be pleased with Tarn Edge,’ Aunt Caroline told her. ‘It is not a palace, of course, but for a town house, and for this part of the world, I do not think one could do better. My father built it for my mother and I must confess it has been sadly neglected since she left it. My brother’s wife, Mrs. Nicholas Barforth, took no care of it, my niece Venetia even less, and now, although my son has made many improvements since Mr. Barforth retired to the sea, it is sadly in need of a woman’s touch. I know it will please you.’

  Hortense Madeley-Brown smiled, a dazzling exposure of strong, pearl-white teeth which did not waver for one moment when Blanche, who had raised pained eyebrows over Aunt Caroline’s deliberate failure to mention my own meticulous housekeeping, now lazily enquired: ‘I dare say it will. But tell me, Aunt Caroline—for I am often puzzled by it—to whom does Tarn Edge actually belong?’

  She received no answer, Aunt Caroline detecting a bee somewhere in the branches above her head; Aunt Faith quickly handing round more chocolate cake, which Miss Madeley-Brown, with the keen appetite of youth and something not too much under six feet of thoroughbred blood and bone, began placidly to consume.

  She would look superb, I thought, on horseback, her riding-habit cut so tight that her maid would be required to stitch her into it every morning. She would be a luxurious adornment to any man’s table, that creamy bosom half-revealed in the candlelight. Those pale, slender limbs of hers—I could not dismiss the image, no matter how hard I tried—would look more than enticing on the satin sheets Gideon now used to cover his bed. She was the kind of girl I had expected him to choose when Venetia died, the kind his mother had always wanted for him, rich, conventional, not too bright, who would obey him and please him, produce for him a pair of healthy, uncomplicated sons; a girl who would bring out the worst side of him and stifle the rest. Vapid creature, I thought, sitting there sipping her tea with nothing in her head but how pretty she looked, a bosom like a Renaissance Venus and a brain no bigger than a pea—how could he demean himself by wanting a girl like that?

  I must not think of it. I drank my tea too quickly and too hot, burning my tongue in my determination not to think of it. It made no sense. I had given him up and in order to do so effectively had hurt him and made him despise me. Now, because of the increasing bitterness between him and Liam Adair, he must despise me even more. I had known quite well I must face him sooner or later. The time had come. And if it was to be made more painful by the presence of his mother and his recently acquired fiancée, then I would have to grit my teeth a little harder and bear it. What else could I do? Certainly it was not the moment to begin examining my own feelings towards him, and as Blanche—more perceptive than she used to be—drawled: ‘Here comes Gideon now’, I arranged myself carefully and decided to model my own behaviour on his, whatever it turned out to be.

  If he had really wanted me as much as he had said he did just six months ago—if—and if I had hurt him as much as I had intended, then the situation might have been difficult for him too, although nothing in his manner, trained first by Lady Chard and then by the rigours of a particularly harsh public school, betrayed it.

  ‘Aunt Faith,’ he said easily, kissing her cheek with the degree of affection exactly appropriate to a nephew. ‘Have I kept you waiting? I do apologize.’

  ‘No. You are just in time,’ Aunt Caroline answered instead, squeezing the hand he held out to her across the table in vigorous welcome. Blanche received no more than a nod from him, a smile and an almost imperceptible wink, a familiar, friendly greeting quite suitable for the woman who, as he must know quite well, was making both his brothers happy. And then: ‘Hortense. How are you?’ he said very quietly, the whisper of the accomplished, successful lover who can create a moment of intimacy while still permitting others to hear. And taking her hand he kissed it lightly but so near the wrist—bringing his head too close, in fact, to that splendid bosom—for casual gallantry.

  ‘I am very well,’ she told him, which so far was the longest sentence I had heard her speak.

  And it was not until Aunt Faith, fearing he did not mean to speak to me at all and hoping to cover the gap, had placed a teacup in his hand; and even then not until he had slowly helped himself to milk and sugar, stirred his tea, replaced the spoon in his saucer, that he glanced in my direction, nodded curtly, and said, ‘Grace.’

  ‘Good-afternoon, Gideon.’

  ‘Do you know,’ Aunt Faith said brightly, ‘I believe it is the warmest afternoon we have had this summer.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so, mother,’ murmured Blanche. ‘Last Sunday was scorching and the one before it. What do you think, Hortense?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ she said, ‘scorching—quite.’

  And thus we settled it.

  He took his golden young Amazon strolling in the rose-garden soon afterwards—the same roses, I supposed, which Venetia used to admire with Charles Heron—and no sooner were they out of sight than Aunt Caroline leaned towards me and said crisply, ‘Well then, Grace, I was not prepared to speak of this matter in Hortense’s hearing, since it could concern her very closely, but I suppose you are in a better position than most to have some inkling of my brother’s intentions. Does he intend to remain in Scarborough, which is quite bad enough, or is he so lost to reason as to contemplate setting that woman up at Tarn Edge?’

  And turning to Aunt Faith she made a wide gesture, half anger, half distress. ‘You understand me, Faith, I am sure of it. Here is my poor Gideon, after all he has done—the work, the responsibility—and all he has suffered—yes, here he is without even a home to call his own. Tarn Edge, as you well know, belongs to Nicholas and I cannot tell you how much I regret making over my share in it to him when my father’s property was divided. Yes, I know, I was paid handsomely, or so I thought at the time, but those few paltry thousands—I forget how many—would be no compensation at all for seeing that woman in the house my son has earned. Yes, Faith, earned—not only by his labour, and he has laboured very hard, but by the insult he has endured there. The Madeley-Browns are great people, Faith—this is the best marriage I could have made for him—and he must have somewhere decent, somewhere fitting, to take his bride. And you, Grace, I cannot tell you how deeply it shocks me to learn you have been in contact with Gervase. He has been over to Scarborough too, I hear, making up to that creature, so one must assume his travels have taught him on which side his bread is buttered. He has just bought three hundred acres of Winterton land adjoining his
own, my son Noel tells me, and since I have not heard that he has sold any Barforth shares to pay for it—and my son Gideon would be sure to know—one may safely assume that the money was a gift from my besotted brother Nicholas. Certainly the world is changing.’

  For Aunt Caroline it was and for that reason I found it easier to be patient, accepting her scolding as I would not have done in the days of her social glories. But her husband, the Duke, had declined rapidly this last year or two, and when he passed away his land, his title, his property, would pass with him, placing Aunt Caroline in the same dilemma from which on her first husband’s death she had extricated herself. A new duke would take possession of South Erin the very day the old one was carried out of it, bringing a new duchess to preside at his table, giving Aunt Caroline nothing to do but hand over her keys and the family jewels and take her leave.

  She would have been surprised to know how well I understood her bitterness. She was a strong-willed, intelligent, forceful woman who had nevertheless accepted one of the roles traditionally assigned to her sex and had played it brilliantly and to the full. She had devoted herself entirely to the ambitions, interests, property of others, living her life not through her own achievements but at second-hand through theirs, and was now beginning to find that one by one those who had depended on her to create an atmosphere in which they could achieve were in their different fashions leaving her.

  She had raised Listonby from the dust to create a splendid home for her husband and a fitting inheritance for her eldest son, had surrounded herself for years with influential, possibly quite boring men, who might one day make a Cabinet Minister, a Prime Minister, of Dominic, only to find that he preferred tiger shoots and polo games and—and she surely knew this—brown-skinned women. And then there was Noel, who should have been a general by now—she would have been a general by now in his place—content to roam about the farms with none of the dash and swagger she had bred into him, refusing, for all her coaxing, to restore the Listonby Hunt Ball because it would be ‘too much’for Blanche. Only Gideon remained and I knew how fiercely she would defend him against all comers, against Camille who, apart from the luxuries which would be lavished upon her, might further complicate the Barforth inheritance by producing a bastard but much-loved son; against the existing son, Gervase, who might worm his way back into his father’s favour; against that son’s former wife who, if she became his wife again, might claim Tarn Edge and more besides.

  I understood and so, following Aunt Faith’s example, I drank tea, smiled, made sympathetic noises or indignant ones as required, said, ‘Really?’ ‘How very provoking’, while Blanche, sitting between us, fell gracefully but deeply asleep.

  ‘Wake up,’ said Aunt Caroline, prodding her with the handle of her parasol. ‘Gideon is coming back and Hortense would be very surprised to find you in that condition. They are very well-connected, Faith. She has one uncle a bishop, another who is very high up at the Treasury, and one who has some kind of a place at Court. How very gratifying to find a girl with all that money who has breeding too, and who is young enough to be adaptable—who will allow herself to be moulded, for she has a most pliant disposition. Gideon will have not one moment of anxiety with her. Hortense, dear, did you enjoy your stroll?’

  Hortense agreed that she had enjoyed her stroll, Aunt Caroline beaming at her fondly, her good spirits entirely restored as she contemplated this rare find, this biddable, beautiful girl who—unlike her other daughters-in-law—would run her home and raise her children as Aunt Caroline told her, who would even be glad of her advice.

  ‘We must be off now, Faith,’ she said, drawing on her gloves. ‘For we are to make quite a little tour with Gideon—the estate at Black Abbey Meadow, the mill of Low Cross and the new property beyond—’

  ‘New property?’ said Blanche, asking the question which burned the tip of my tongue. But for once Aunt Caroline was not being astute or malicious or inquisitive, simply talkative in the manner of ageing aunts, and looked vaguely for assistance to Gideon.

  ‘Why, yes—there has been some more property investment. Where did you say it was, dear?’

  But he was not at first inclined to be very precise.

  ‘It seemed advisable,’ he said, smiling beyond his mother at Miss Madeley-Brown, who seemed intent on examining the lace flounces on her sleeve, ‘in view of recent difficulties, one wished to be certain of one’s hold in the neighbourhood, should one wish to expand again or to house an additional work-force. And so as certain properties became available, it seemed pointless to let them go elsewhere.’

  I looked pointedly at Blanche and, knowing as well as I that he was up to something, she asked obediently: ‘Which properties, Gideon?’

  ‘Oh—whatever came to hand, here and there around Low Cross—and Gower Street. A buyer’s market certainly, at the moment. In fact I have seen nothing like it. If one judged by the willingness of landlords to sell, one might think the hordes of Genghis Khan were encamped about a mile away—that or the Black Death. One can have just about any house one wants at the moment, for a very decent price, around Low Cross—and Gower Street.’

  But I had endured long enough and taking up my gloves to give my hands an occupation, I said with a calm I at least thought creditable, ‘What is it you have bought in Gower Street, Gideon?’

  And I did not need his voice, merely his faint, malicious smile and the glint of satisfaction in his eyes to tell me it was the offices of the Star.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  ‘So he is our new landlord, is he?’ said Liam. ‘Well, well, I suppose we must look for a hefty increase in our rent.’

  It came heftier than we had supposed, and we knew there would be worse to follow.

  ‘Well, I reckon there’s just about one thing left for me to do,’ said Liam. ‘I’ll give him a run for his money. But while I’m about it you might look around, Grace, and find us another address before he puts me and my old presses into the street.‘

  But rehousing the Star, as Liam—and Gideon—had foreseen, was no easy task, for the healthier buildings in Sheepgate and Kirkgate and the new business premises which were raising their handsome heads these days, from Market Square to the fringes of Blenheim Lane, were either beyond Liam’s price range or their owners—quite often friends of Miss Tighe—did not view our tenancy with favour. While in the poorer quarters of the town everything I inspected was too small or too squalid, a verminous tenement in Leopold Street where the rotting floors could not have supported our presses, a slightly less flea-bitten address a street away but directly alongside a slaughter-house where the stench of death and panic, the squealing of sheep as their legs were broken to render them easier for butchery, was unacceptable; in fact, nothing at all.

  ‘You’d best have a word with our advertisers,’ Liam told me, ‘in case they’ve heard rumours—which wouldn’t surprise me.’ And so, in my smart blue velvet hat, wearing enough jewellery to inspire confidence, I made the rounds of the small business men and tradesmen whose services were publicized, playing Miss Agbrigg of Fieldhead Mills to those who might respond to it, flirting discreetly with some others, calling a spade, in some quarters, a plain shovel; assuring one and all that, whatever they may have heard to the contrary, Cullingford’s Star would continue to shine. Nevertheless, a certain amount of business was not renewed and it seemed certain we would soon be obliged to retrace our steps to a single edition a week.

  ‘I’d best be off to Cannes for a word with Grandmamma Elinor,’ said Liam. ‘That is, Grace, if you can manage a week or two without me—and if you can lend me the fare?’

  ‘I could save you the journey altogether, Liam, and pay your rent.’

  ‘So you could. And when I’m desperate enough no doubt I’ll ask you. But I reckon I can manage till then.’

  ‘As you like. But at least you can forget about my salary for the time being.’

  ‘Now that’s very sporting of you, Grace,’ he said, easy and debonair as always, although I couldn
’t miss the occasional wariness in his face. ‘But considering the pittance I pay you—well, you may as well have it as not, for I know what it means to you. In fact, while there’s still something left, how about me taking you to the theatre in Leeds tonight, and then to supper?’

  We saw a melodrama, as I recall, from the splendours of a stage-box, his arm resting on the back of my chair more from force of habit, I thought, than real interest, his eyes on my décolletage from time to time as we ate our discreet and very expensive supper largely because that was the correct way to behave in a private supper-room. He even enquired in a roundabout but extremely good-humoured fashion if I would care to spend the night and expressed a pleasing degree of equally good-humoured disappointment when I decided it would not be wise.

  ‘They say you are my mistress already, you know.’

  ‘So they do. But you have mistresses enough, Liam. I think you have more need, just now, of a friend.’

  ‘And I think you may be right. We’ll drink to it.’

  We drank deep, returning to Cullingford on the last train, at a scandalous hour when no decent woman should have been abroad.

  ‘Of course you’ll not let me in?’ he said as we reached my door.

  ‘Of course not.’ But I had no objection to the kiss he lightly planted on the corner of my mouth, and went inside still smiling at his assurance that if Miss Tighe happened to be awake—and it could surprise no one to learn that she never slept—and if she happened to be standing on a footstool at her back landing window, she would, with a certain acrobatic skill, be able to see us in an embrace about which she would draw her own conclusions.

  A pleasant evening, a happy time, but, as the summer progressed, each day hotter and more malodorous than the next, the game of baiting Low Cross Mill continued nightly, any tenement lad who could break a window or steal a few bricks, who could show off the tooth marks of a Barforth dog, a cut lip or a black eye received from a hard-handed navvy, being declared king of his own particular muck-heap the next morning.