by Jane Toombs
A quick, involuntary glance told Deirdre there was no evidence of a scar on his forehead, not that she had really expected to find one there.
Seeing her, Clive smiled as swept off his gray top hat. He trotted up the steps, looked down at her, blinked in surprise and looked again. “Deirdre,” he said, taking both of her hands in his, “how changed you are, how very much the young lady."
"And what was I before?” she wanted to know.
"A girl, albeit a most delightful one.” Leaning down, he kissed her lightly on the forehead, then took one of her hands in his and strode into the house with Deirdre at his side. “Grandmama!” he called.
"If Mrs. Deirdre Fenshaw is your grandmother,” he had told long ago, “I insist she be mine as well."
"She may be in the drawing room,” she told him.
He threw open the door and, seeing Mrs. Fenshaw sitting near the fireplace with her embroidery on her lap, he released Deirdre's hand and flung wide his arms in greeting. “Grandmama!"
The elderly woman rose and he embraced her.
"You probably think I traveled here to visit with you and Deirdre,” Clive said. “Not so, I came for one purpose and one purpose only. To gorge myself on your apricot tarts."
Mrs. Fenshaw frowned. “My tarts?” she asked vaguely. “Did you once tell me you favored my tarts? Yes, I seem to recall that you did."
He hesitated, holding her away from him to look down at her, not certain whether she was teasing him or whether her memory had begun to fail. “Is it possible?” he demanded. “Could you have forgotten my passion for your tarts? The tarts I always praised as the most delicious in all of England?"
The old woman put a blue-veined hand to her chin. “I do seem to recall—” she began uncertainly.
"Grandmama is funning you,” Deirdre interrupted with a smile. “I happen to know she baked two batches of apricot tarts this very morning. She made them especially for you, Clive."
While they feasted on the tarts as they took their tea, Clive talked engagingly of the social bustle of London, gave Deirdre letters from her father and her new stepmother, both telling her how eager they were to have her with them in town at the earliest possible moment. As they talked, Deirdre noticed, Clive frequently glanced at her with a perplexed frown on his face, only to look quickly away.
After eating the last of the tarts, he rose and, standing with one hand on the mantel, became serious. “As for myself, I have gone, as I have heard young men say, ‘to list for a sojer.’”
At first Deirdre failed to understand. “Do you mean you intend to enlist in the Army?"
"Not intend to enlist in the Army, I have enlisted. Last month I purchased a commission as a captain in the cavalry and you now see a man on his way to Portsmouth where I board ship to join the Army in Spain."
"Under the command of Lord Wellington?” Deirdre asked. “Have I remembered his new title aright?"
"You have indeed. After being born Mr. Arthur Wesley, he was sent to a post in India where he became Mr. Arthur Wellesley. Only this past winter he was made the Marquis of Wellington by order of the Prince Regent. Wellington's summer campaign on the Peninsula begins soon, and I intend to be there as a captain in the 11th Hussars."
Deirdre's mind was all awhirl, startled by this unexpected news, alarmed for Clive's well-being, especially when she recalled the scar she had seen in her dream, excited because he was obviously elated by his news, and confused as she attempted to reconcile her expectations regarding his visit with Clive's announcement. Was this the sum and substance of the momentous news her father had promised? Or was there more to come?
Glancing at her grandmother, she noted that the older woman's face showed but one emotion, an abiding sadness. “How eagerly young men go to war,” she said softly.
"This endless war is almost over,” Clive said, “with Bony back in his lair in France after being humbled in Russia, with the Prussians and the Austrians threatening him from the east, and Wellington advancing from the southwest. This is a time when England expects every man to do his duty,” he said, echoing Nelson, “and I intend to do my part as best I can."
"Yet you have no uniform,” Deirdre said.
"Ah, but I do, purchased only last week in town and now stored in my luggage. Lord Wellington strongly believes that his officers should only wear their uniforms while on duty.” He picked up his teacup and, with one hand behind his back, raised the cup. “A toast. To the defeat of Napoleon; to the end of tyranny wherever it may be found."
Deirdre's grandmother nodded. “To the end of this terrible war."
Deirdre raised her cup and when she spoke her voice trembled with emotion. “To your safe return, Clive,” she murmured.
Later that afternoon, as she had half suspected he would, Clive suggested she accompany him on a walk into Ashdown Forest. He had changed into what he called his “country squire garb” of frock coat, buckskins, and top boots. As was his custom, though certainly not the fashion of the day, he wore no hat.
They left her grandmother in the garden at the side of the house snipping off dead rose heads. Gardening was her passion and, during the growing season, she spent as much time as she could among her roses, tulips, carnations, sweet peas, pinks, and other flowers. No matter how tiring, she liked nothing better than to spend a day collecting seeds and making cuttings.
"While living in town this past year,” Clive told Deirdre as they left the garden and started up the path to the heath, “I often found myself fondly remembering our treks into the Forest. So, before leaving for Spain, I want to go back and see it all again.” He looked at her in a most unsettling way. “I came here half expecting to find my memory had deceived me, expecting to discover a smaller, diminished world, but then when I saw you standing at the top of the front steps..."
He stopped abruptly, shook his head and then strode away from her, turning back after a few moments to peremptorily wave his hand. “Come along, Deirdre, follow me,” his gesture said.
She stared at him. How strangely Clive was behaving! An apprehensive chill ran along her spine as she wondered whether she had been mistaken after all. Could it be that he had come here to tell her he was on his way to Spain and nothing more?
You must be patient, she counseled herself. Take heed of Grandmama's words of caution, wait until you have all the facts before you speak your mind. “Wait!” she called after him.
Clive stopped and stood with hands clasped behind his back until she reached his side and then they started off together at a fast pace. In a silence that she felt grew more awkward with every passing minute—why did he not speak?—they followed a path to the top of a low hill. As they stepped onto the moors, a rabbit burst from the heather to race away at the sound of their coming, finally disappearing amidst the bracken and gorse.
Coming to a rutted track, they walked along its grassy verge, stepping to one side to watch a heavily-laden wagon from the stone quarry rumble past. From afar, they heard the thwack, thwack of a woodman's ax felling trees for the timber desperately needed to build ships to replace those lost in the war.
By tacit consent, she and Clive were on their way to the glen, their glen, where the brook known as the Miry Ghyll cascaded over a small falls into a shaded pool. He means to say nothing until we arrive at the glen, she told herself. And then—
Still on the dirt track, they turned to the right and saw, fifty feet farther on, an arched stone bridge crossing the brook. Deirdre ran ahead to lean over the wall at the side of the bridge, gazing down at her reflection in the clear water of the Miry Ghyll. From the corner of her eye she saw Clive, who had been striding after her, stop to pluck something from a vine growing up and over the end of the wall.
When he came to her, she turned and he handed her a pink wild rose—he knew she loved roses—but when she lifted the flower to breathe in its faint scent, several of the petals fell off and drifted down onto the dirt of the roadway. Gazing at the forlorn remnant of the rose, at what she took to be an
omen of misfortune, Deirdre blinked back stinging, suppressed tears.
"Pray allow me to pick you another,” Clive said.
Not quite understanding why, she shook her head, carefully slipping the rose into a pocket of her white muslin gown. Again looking down at the brook in a vain attempt to hide her foolish, unreasonable tears, she said, “I intend to keep your rose, the better to remember this day.” The better to remember you, she added to herself.
When he failed to answer, she glanced at him only to find his attention had been drawn downstream to the far side of the brook. Following his gaze, she gave a start when she saw a short, unremarkable looking man seated on a flat rock with a small sketchbook perched on his lap. When the stranger looked up and saw them watching him, he gave a curt nod before returning to his drawing.
They crossed to the far side of the bridge where they found a pony-drawn gig tethered beside the track. Skirting the gig, they walked along a path until they were standing a short distance behind the stranger, a carelessly dressed man in his thirties, a homely man whose nose was too large for his face just as his black broad-brimmed hat was a poor match for his loose brown coat and baggy brown trousers.
He glanced at them, his gaze fixing on Deirdre for a long moment, then resumed his drawing only to put down his pencil after a few minutes. He motioned them to approach. Looking over his shoulder at his notebook, Deirdre saw a pencil sketch of the bridge with herself and Clive standing behind the stone wall, Clive proffering her the rose. Below the drawing was the inscription, “The Bridge Over the Miry Ghyll."
Without rising, the artist said, “Joseph Turner of Twickenham."
"The celebrated water colorist,” Clive said.
Although Turner shrugged when he heard the compliment, he appeared happily embarrassed at being recognized.
After Clive introduced himself and Deirdre, Turner said, “On my way from Twickenham to the southern coast for the fishing boats and the sea and the sky. Nature's grandeur.” He paused, then said, “As you see here,” and turned the page of his sketchbook.
Deirdre saw another drawing of the bridge, but this was a much smaller bridge, the work of man seeming small and insignificant compared to the trees rising on both sides of the bridge and the menacing arc of the clouds filling the sky above.
He turned to a blank page in his sketchbook. “May I?” he asked Deirdre in his abrupt way. She hesitated, not certain what he meant, then realized he wanted to sketch her. “Only a moment,” he said.
"Of course,” she agreed.
He studied her intently, gave a quick nod and began to draw, his pencil flying over the paper. “The vivid red hair,” he said, almost to himself, “the high cheekbones, yes, I have the line of the chin, the face and form of a goddess. Romney would have been enchanted."
Deirdre blushed at what she considered an excess of compliments. Clive, looking over the artist's shoulder, glanced from the drawing to Deirdre. He blinked. His expression showed—What? Confusion? Perplexity? Indecision?
When Turner finished the sketch, he swiftly printed his initials, “JT,” at the bottom, tore the page from his sketchbook and handed the drawing to Deirdre. “Never been much for portraits of late,” he said, favoring Deirdre with a shy smile. “You tempt me to try my hand again."
When he flipped his sketchbook back to his original drawing of the bridge and began penciling in the clouds—a storm might well arrive before nightfall, Deirdre decided—they thanked him and quietly made their way along the path that led downstream away from the bridge.
"Since I made you the gift of the rose,” Clive said, “would you consider giving me your portrait in return?"
She smiled, handing him the sketch and watching as he looked from the drawing to her before carefully folding the paper and placing it in his inside pocket.
A walk of some ten minutes brought them to a thick screen of brush. After holding the branches aside for her, Clive followed Deirdre into the cool shaded darkness of the grove of trees standing guard at the entrance to the glen. When they started down a steep hill along an animal track, she heard the water in the brook far below them murmuring an invitation.
As they neared the bottom of the gorge, the vegetation became lush, almost tropical, Deirdre thought, with leafy vines twining up the trunks of the trees and ferns growing profusely among moss-covered rocks, the ground dappled by the sunlight slanting through the branches overhead.
They left the track and Clive, his hand protectively on her elbow, helped her descend a steep cleft cut into the rocky slope to the broad flat rocks at the foot of the falls. Looking down into the pool, Deirdre saw bugs skittering across the surface while in the shadowed depths a fish darted this way and that before disappearing beneath a rock.
"This must be what the Garden of Eden was like before the fall,” Clive said. “If ever I feel the need to refresh myself, to wash away the grime of the city, this is where I would come."
After she and Clive sat side by side at the edge of the pool, Deirdre waited expectantly for him to go on, to talk of this, their secret place, to talk of her and their future together. Instead, he began telling her of London, of the war with France, reminiscing about her grandmother, speaking by fits and starts. As he talked on, Clive, his thoughts seemingly elsewhere, picked up small stones and skimmed them across the surface of the water. She had never known him to be so distracted.
At last, during a lengthy lull in their one-sided conversation, he rose and walked away from her to the far edge of the rock shelf. He returned to stand next to her, looking down at her. He started to speak, shook his head, and once more crossed to the edge of the pool.
He folded his arms across his chest as he stared down into the pool. He glanced to one side at the foaming water at the bottom of the falls, he looked up at the sky as though he might have felt a drop of rain strike his face. With an abrupt nod—he must have come to a decision of some sort, Deirdre decided—he swung from the brook and came to stand over her.
Was it possible, she wondered, that Clive was finally about to ask for her hand in marriage? His actions earlier in the day seemed to argue that he was not, but since she had never in her eighteen years received a proposal of marriage, she was uncertain how Clive or any other gentleman might behave when he arrived at such a fateful moment in his life. Did he fear rejection? Or, perhaps, might he secretly fear acceptance?
"Is there something you want to tell me,” she asked encouragingly, “even while you fear what my response might be?"
Clive sat at her side and took her hand in his. “I have wonderful news.” His gaze fixed on her hand, he bit his lip as though uncertain how to go on.
"I always welcome wonderful news,” she told him.
"Deirdre...” He stopped, then began again. Once started, his words came tumbling one over the next. “Deirdre, while in London I spent many hours with your father, he was very kind to me, and through him I became acquainted with Mrs. Sybil Langdon, now your stepmother, and her two daughters, Phoebe and Alcida, and last week, after purchasing my commission as a captain in the Army, I asked Phoebe—a most charming and beautiful young lady—to be my wife, asked her to marry me on my return from Spain, and I had the great good fortune to be accepted."
Deirdre stared at him in horrified incomprehension. Clive meant to marry Phoebe Langdon, her new stepsister? Impossible.
"When we were growing up together,” Clive told her, “I recall saying that you were like a sister to me. Think on it, Deirdre, soon you will be precisely that, my sister, not in fancy but in fact. Can you possibly imagine anything more wonderful?"
CHAPTER 3
Deirdre, accompanied by Agnes, rode to London in her father's new traveling chaise, stopping every ten or twelve miles at a posting house. There the ostler of the inn cried, “Horses on,” and two fresh pairs of horses were harnessed to the chaise and ridden by two post boys resplendent in their high white beaver hats, blue jackets, red waistcoats, white neckcloths, short white breeches, and shining top bo
ots. The boys rode to the next stop where they dismounted and came to the Darrington coachman for their fares before riding the tired horses back to their home posting house. After five changes of horses, they left the dirt, clattered onto the cobbles, and entered London.
Before she left the country, her grandmother had said, “When I was your age, Deirdre, I often thought my life was over after some young man or other—how strange it is that I no longer recall their names or even what most of them looked like—after some young man did something to disappoint or hurt me. But, being eighteen, after suffering through a miserable week or two, I seemed to recover sufficiently to start anew."
Did her grandmother suspect how she felt about Clive, Deirdre wondered, and how devastated she had been by his announcement that he intended to marry Phoebe Langdon when he returned from Spain? Ever since she could remember, her grandmother had surprised her by being able, or so it seemed to Deirdre, to read her very thoughts. Grandmama was mistaken though, if she expected a quick recovery, for Deirdre knew with a despondent certainty that she would never be the same again.
Very shortly she would face the ordeal of meeting her stepmother and her two stepsisters, but, even more distressing, she would have to live as a member of the same household as Clive's “charming and beautiful Phoebe” until he arrived back in England to claim his bride.
Deirdre vowed to show no ill will toward her new sister. All she desired, she reminded herself, was Clive's safe return from the war against Napoleon followed by a life of happiness. Perhaps, in time, if she tried with all her heart, she might even become fond of Phoebe.
The chaise stopped, startling her. So soon, so soon. The carriage door swung open and one of the footmen handed her down to the pavement. When she looked up at her new home, the magnificent house that Mrs. Langdon had brought to her marriage to Roger Darrington, her hand flew to her mouth to stifle her cry of astonishment. Though she had never in her life been in this section of London, Deirdre was almost certain she had seen this magnificent redbrick mansion before. But where? Had it been in her dream, her dream of Clive on his wedding day?