Her mind drifted back to that day.
A sharp rap on the carriage door caught all their attention. “Mr. Preston, sir?”
Lelan leaned to look out the window, then reached to swing the door open. “Mr. O’Connell? What can I do for you?”
The harbormaster tipped his hat to the ladies in the carriage and lowered his voice to Preston. “Mr. Preston, sir, I noticed yer carriage here today and having heard of yer gal’s man being on the Utopia, I took it upon meself to bring the captain of the Anglia here to ye so as ye dinnae ha’ to wait any longer.” O’Connell gestured to the other man accompanying him.
“Who is it, Mr. Preston?” Margaret asked.
Preston leaned back into the carriage and answered his wife, but watched his daughter as he spoke. “Mr. O’Connell is the harbormaster here for many years, Mrs. Preston. He has brought the captain of the Anglia here to us…”
All eyes turned expectantly to the captain, who, to his credit, did not look away or shuffle his feet. As his gaze met hers through the open door, Evelyn asked the question softly. “Do you have news of my husband, sir?”
The captain removed his hat and answered. “With regrets, ma’am, your husband, the earl, is not among those survivors we have aboard.”
Evelyn sucked in a breath and swallowed. “Is there any chance…?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, all survivors bound for New York were brought aboard the Anglia.”
“Thank you, Captain, for bringing word personally. It was most gracious of you.” Years of training brought the words to her lips, but Evelyn’s mind was already miles away.
“I am very sorry for your loss, ma’am.” The captain donned his hat and, touching the brim, turned away. The harbormaster also nodded at Lelan Preston and moved on with the captain.
“Oh, Evie!” Kitty flung her arms around her sister as Eve buried her face in her hands.
“That is it, then,” Preston grunted with a stiff nod, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “The earl is dead.”
Thank God, thank God… the thought echoed through her mind all night, making sleep impossible as guilt and remorse racked though her.
After six terrible years of marriage, she had become a widow.
An investigation by the Crown had followed the return of the Anglia and William had been declared legally dead several months later. She became a widow officially, a state of existence for which she could not find in herself to be sorry.
As she now sat overlooking the firth glittering in the morning sun, Eve closed her eyes against the wind that fanned her face and blew long wisps of hair across her cheeks. That minute bit of untidiness would have earned her reproach just a year ago, she thought. She raised her chin and savored the feel of the breeze over her skin. Her mind was at odds with the peace she exuded. The stillness of her body bespoke a calm she did not feel. There was still so much wrong in her life.
After so many awful years of marriage, she had lost vitality, energy… and hope. Marriage had done this to her, made her this person she barely recognized.
When her then fiancé, William Ashley-Cooper, had chosen to stay in New York in the spring of ’85 for the last three months of their year-long engagement, Eve had been grateful. Having not seen him in almost all of the previous nine months of their betrothal, Eve looked positively on the opportunity to spend some time together, to come to know him better before they finally wed. Thinking it best to put aside the nature of their engagement, Eve was determined to put her efforts into having the best marriage possible.
But still they did not spend a great deal of time together despite him taking up a residence just blocks away from her parents’ 5th Avenue Manhattan home. Just once a week, he would make an afternoon call. One night a week he would escort her to a dinner or opera. By the time they had wed that June, Eve still felt that she did not know William any better for their year’s acquaintance with the exception of knowing that he was very proud to have her as his fiancée and then his wife. He loved to have her on his arm, to show her off at each function they attended. His pride in her was very evident. If he would adjust her hair or accessories, Eve had been certain it was just so that she could look her best.
Following their wedding ceremony at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and reception, they finally departed New York for their wedding trip. Surely, she had thought, they would begin to know each other better. The nearly year-long excursion was a traditional time for newlyweds to become acquainted when the fashionable standards of courtship did not really allow it at all.
But on the crossing, the only time she spent alone with her husband were the few nights he slipped into her stateroom. Remembering the only kiss she had ever shared with another, Evelyn had tried to embrace the physical side of her marriage but found her husband interested in only the briefest of unions. His attentions were dispassionate at best, in private and in public. Eve had wondered if it was a circumstance of his age. He was, after all, almost twenty years older than she. Perhaps that age difference might also have been the reason that he did not seem to like her or have any real interest in her as a person. They had diverse interests which stretched like a gulf between them. Yet, while William didn’t seem to care for her company, he still insisted she accompany him each night for dinner with the captain and other notable figures aboard the ship.
In Paris, when Evelyn spent her days having her wardrobe completed by Monsieur Worth, William had been there choosing designs and fabrics so that she might spend her evenings as little more than a fashionable trophy on his arm at the theater and social events he scheduled. Still, if her marriage was not all that it could have been, Eve tried to be happy with what she had and embraced her opportunity to see Europe as she had always wanted.
Moving on to Italy, Evelyn had come to grasp the nature of the marriage William wanted from her. The polite distance. The public image. Realizing that there might never be any love lost between them, she had decided to enjoy her life on her own terms. Evelyn had loved Rome and Naples. For eight months they lived there. William wanted little to do with the region and more to do with the social life he participated in, leaving Eve to go her own way when he did not require her presence to adorn his arm. Evelyn spent her days exploring the region and had fallen in love with its history, architecture and romance while William worked and socialized with his associates.
They moved on to Greece and then to Vienna. As for seeing the world, it had been all that she had hoped for, even if the rest was not what she had longed for in a marriage.
Just after their first anniversary, they were called back to England when William’s father, the earl fell sick. In the months following the earl’s rapid decline and death, William had chaffed at the protocol of mourning which denied him the socializing he so enjoyed. They had spent that allotted year at his family seat of Saint’s Haven in Dorset while Eve had her laying in for the birth of their son Lawrence. William had termed it an excellent use of their necessary absence from Society. Shortly after the birth of his heir, the earl insisted that they take up permanent address together in London.
It was at that point that Evelyn finally came to two separate realizations about her husband. The first was that he was deeply enamored of the very Society from which she had long wanted to remove herself. He loved the propriety that was bred there, the stricture of the manner. He was exceedingly concerned, almost obsessed, with what was “the thing” and was fixated with Taste. The new Earl of Shaftesbury was extremely popular and sought after as the leading authority of male fashion and form.
The second realization was that William had married her for one simple purpose. It was not the duty of bearing him an heir. As she had come to suspect, she was nothing but an object of ornamentation to him, indeed a living trophy for him to show off, much as the display he had created in their home from his collection of fine antiques, art and furnishings. When William Ashley-Cooper had come to New York with his father years ago, his purpose had been to obtain “things” that bespoke his w
ealth and influence. Evelyn was merely one of them. He had followed her to England, engaged himself to her and added her to his collection. More and more he treated her as such. He paraded her and their son before Society much as he showed off his new plumbing and electric lighting.
She became a thing rather than a person.
Oh, it began simply enough. The earl chose all Eve’s clothing from style to fabric and then even went so far as to instruct her maid which outfit to lay out each day, and instructed her hairdresser on a more fashionable or flattering hairstyle. It had chafed a bit but Eve had let it pass not wanting to cause unnecessary ripples in their otherwise peaceful life. Subsequently, the control that he asserted over her grew. As time went by, it expanded to encompass her entire life. He determined where she could go, whom she could socialize with. He became obsessive fixated with her behavior and its reflection on him.
His countess must be perfect.
He insisted upon it.
Obsessively.
When she tried to rebel or even misspoke in some social faux pas, he would have her meals withheld, restrict her freedoms or often keep her son from her. On numerous occasions he had locked her in her room for days at a time before having her maid let her go, a maid chosen by William for her loyalty to him alone.
Never one to bow down quietly, Eve tried again and again to talk reason to her husband. To explain to him nobody expected her to be perfect. To insist she was capable of making her own choices. Receiving little reaction to logic, Eve had railed at him fervently over his treatment of her. Strangely, his manner to her never roused itself to anger; William was ever passive. Her arguments became many, his punishments coldly severe. Over time, they became more and more bizarre. There had been a time she had shaken the American ambassador’s hand instead of offering hers daintily. Her maid had delivered twenty slaps to her open palm with a leather strap while William looked on with cold ferocity. Once, when she hadn’t curtsied deeply enough to a duke, he had had her bound in a submissive bow with her cheek to the floor for a full night, the skirts of her courtly gown spread on the floor around her. He was as a maleficent schoolmaster and she his unwilling student.
Without Lawrence, her little Laurie, Eve felt as if she would have truly gone insane. Though William considered him a prime reflection of himself and his achievements, Laurie was Eve’s greatest joy, so adorable with his blond curls and green eyes. The only thing that might have made him more perfect in her eyes would have been if his hair were much darker and his eyes a mossier green. When thoughts would raise themselves, Eve banished them firmly. Nothing could change the hell that her life had become.
In the fall of 1890, they had taken up residence in Manhattan while the earl expanded his collections with American works of art. They lived in the house William had bought during their engagement, in the low 800’s of Park Avenue, not far from her parents’ 5th Avenue residence, yet she might as well have still been living in a different country. She might see her family at balls and dinners, but never alone. Through threat and action, she had become engulfed by that world until there was very little of herself left beneath the polish that the Earl of Shaftesbury had cultivated.
Posture: perfect. Voice: cultured, gracious. Actions: refined.
Eve had become but a shell of the girl she had once been.
His departure to Italy on a business trip that February had been a blessing.
His failure to return, a miracle.
But in the year since his death, her hopes for the future had not come to fruition.
The hopes that things would change, that she might find her old self once more. A year of mourning had not given her a return of any of those things.
Even after all this time, she had not been able to emerge from the persona that William had erected around her. She had withdrawn into herself. She hadn’t been able to find herself, the girl she had once been. If anything, she was even more restrained than before. Instead of feeling free, as she was sure she should, she had been unable to break through the years of training she had been given and punishment she had suffered.
The façade he had built remained strong.
Cultivated perfection.
Chapter 8
Following the Crown’s investigation into the earl’s disappearance and assumed death, Eve and Laurie had been summoned by Queen Victoria to return to England. Her council had reviewed the findings and confirmed its conclusion. William’s title and properties had been conferred to Laurie. Eve had been granted position as his legal guardian and trustee of the estates since William had no other surviving family. The Queen had insisted that they reside in Britain at any of the earldom’s properties until Laurie reached his majority, so Eve could not even return to New York for more than a long visit.
Forced by the Queen’s hand to stay in England, Eve had immediately let William’s entire staff go from each of his properties including Saint’s Haven and hired all new servants that she felt she could trust and rely on, none who knew of the humiliations William had rained on her. People she could trust to care for her son.
Her little son, just five years old, was the 13th Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the oldest titles in England. She was determined that he would become the best one ever. To that end, she had hired a tutor and personally saw to his education several hours a day, but she was also determined that Laurie would be a little boy as she had been allowed a childhood of her own. So for the first time in his young life, they played each day as well. It was the only time she was ever able to let herself go even a bit. Eve taught him to ride his first pony – a luxury William would never have allowed since he despised riding horseback, gave him his own little bow and quiver full of arrows, and was determined to travel soon to Scotland to begin his education in her favorite sport – golf.
Since the thought of travelling had been on her mind at that time, it had seemed almost as if the hand of fate had stepped in when her dear friend Abygail Merrill from her boarding school days, now Lady Richard MacKintosh since her marriage, had come to Dorset seeking a favor of her old school chum. Abby and Richard were staying not far from Saint’s Haven at her grandmother’s estate in Deal for the laying-in of her second child. Her first pregnancy, it seemed, had ended in a difficult delivery prompting the couple to stay closer to London and its more experienced doctors for this next event.
When she had arrived, Abby had begged Eve to travel to Edinburgh for her. Two of Richard’s younger brothers had recently become engaged to a pair of sisters. Coline and Ilona Roper were the daughters of Baron Teynham, Abby had explained, a very popular family in Edinburgh. The MacKintosh family, headed by the Earl of Glenrothes, wanted to hold a full-scale formal ball and house party at their family’s ancestral castle, Raven’s Craig Castle, to celebrate the engagement. It would be the height of the Edinburgh Season. Dinner, dancing, et cetera. However, the girls had no female relatives capable of handling such a large scale affair and none of the other men in the family were married. Abby herself was unable to undertake the entirety of the task due to her delicate condition and imminent labors.
The only one she trusted to see it done properly was the Countess of Shaftesbury. As incentive, Abby tempted Eve with her Edinburgh townhouse and the carte blanche the Earl of Glenrothes had proffered for the event. Anything Eve wanted would be hers.
Eve had been undecided, perhaps even scared, if she were honest with herself. Go out in public? Back into Society? Nerves raced through her body. How could she put herself in a situation where this hated façade would be at its worse? It was one thing to be like that when William was alive and she had no choice, but now? She wanted so badly to be herself once more, but what if she only discovered this was how she was, and was forever going to be? How could she explain that to her friend?
Her feeble attempts to argue had been brushed aside. Even now it brought a reluctant lift to her lips to recall Abby’s tenaciousness in getting Eve to agree to do it. When the offer of the townhouse had not been enough, Abby had u
rged her to bring her own staff and bribed her with limitless finances.
Then had come the coaxing. “Besides, Coline and Ilona Roper are sweet girls,” she had praised the pair of young brides. “You'll like them. If you don't help us to plan this ball, they’ll have to have their great-aunt Eleanor to do the honors as hostess, since they have no other female relatives to help and none of Richard’s other brothers have wives to help out. Eleanor is nearly eighty years old! Can you imagine! She’d never be able to keep up with them.”
“And I could?”
“Heavens, Evelyn! Of course you can! What are you thinking of?”
“I'm thinking ‘Why is their mother not helping them’?”
“She ran away with their coachman when Coline was twelve,” Abby had related, straight-faced.
Evelyn snorted in a very unladylike way, very reminiscent of her old self. It had surprised and pleased her.
When coaxing had failed, Abby had pulled out her trump card. Guilt.
Abby had swept a hand down her rounded figure. “I’m asking you as a friend to do this for me. Indeed, begging. I simply cannot do it. I will be here for several more weeks at least. I will barely be able to make it back to Edinburgh in time for the ball and my strength will take some time to recover after the birth.” Evelyn merely shook her head at that weakly spoken statement. The argument may have been a good one if Abby had not managed to look disgustingly healthy while she said it.
Nevertheless, it had worked. So, here she was.
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