‘I shall not be alone - Millicent will come with me. And besides, it is not really travelling, to go two miles into the city. There is no snow, the weather is perfectly fine, and I shall be back before dark. Now what is there to worry about?'
‘Still, you should have someone with you, in case of accidents. Let me send a groom with you.' India frowned again, and opened her mouth to argue, and Matt added, ‘No, better still, let me ask Arthur to accompany you as far as your cousin's house. I know he is going in to York on business today, and I'm sure he would not mind taking you there, and collecting you on his way back.'
‘I do not like to trouble him,' India said, and then sighed and smiled. 'Well, if it will make you easy in your mind, dear husband, I shall let you ask him. But pray tell him it was not my idea.’
Matt smiled and took her hands. 'Always so thoughtful,' he said. 'Don't be afraid, I shall make sure he knows it is my foolishness that binds burdens on him.’
India stepped close to him and kissed him, lightly like the touch of snowflakes upon his lips, and cheeks, and eyes. 'My dear, thoughtful husband,' she murmured. 'I do believe that no woman was ever so fortunate in her husband as I.' Trembling he closed his arms round her, and when she eventually pulled away, it was to look into his eyes with an expression that made his blood rush about his body in hot tides.
‘Tonight, dear husband,' she whispered. 'Tonight. I think we have waited long enough, don't you?’
*
India reported her elderly cousin to be in such poor state that she was obliged to visit her on most days through the rest of December and January. Arthur's business in York made it possible for him to accompany her during the Christmas season, but when Christmas was over he left Morland Place to go back to Henderskelfe. By that time, however, Matt had become inured to the idea of the daily visits, and as long as India went accompanied by Millicent, he raised no objection. She was never away long and, in any case, since they had resumed sexual relations he was in a dream of bliss where anything she asked for could be hers. He went about his work during the day with a remote smile upon his lips, living for the night-time.
Clovis went back to London as soon as Christmas was over, for matters were boiling up in Europe, and in February war was finally declared between the Triple Alliance and France and Spain. The Usurper appointed Marlborough as his commander-in-chief, and King Louis responded by appointing Berwick a general under the commander-in-chief Villars, and on his recommendation recalling the Marechal Comte de Chelmsford. Annunciata wrote to Clovis of this; their correspondence had had to be carried on in increasing secrecy since the Act of Attainder, but with Clovis's connections there were always ways.
‘Karellie seems much changed to me,' she wrote, 'quieter and so much older; not at all like the child who shocked and amused us all so many years ago at Morland Place. He remains very attached to Maurice, and spends a great deal of time in Venice, and talks with warmth of Maurice's host and his daughter. The latter is, however, a child not yet ten, and so I have still no hopes of his marrying and getting an heir. He seems not much interested in women, though they are very much interested in him.
‘The King received him very kindly. He seems disposed to be generous to my family, for like his father he is very faithful where he loves. He has appointed Aliena as maid-of-honour to the Princess Louise-Marie, as his father promised to do, but indeed he is fonder of Aliena than the Princess is. The three of them are much together, but as Aliena has shared the King's lessons for so long now, the conversation is mostly theirs, and they are like two brothers with a younger sister.
‘My dog Fand died in his sleep three days ago, and with Banner gone, I seem to have lost all contact with Morland Place. I cannot replace either of them here. How I long for home, how far away it seems!’
On the day that this letter arrived, the Usurper suffered an accident while out riding, for his horse tripped on a mole-hill, and tumbled him off. He broke his collar-bone, but it seemed that he must have done other damage to himself as well, for a week later he was dead. There was no one to mourn him; indeed, in the taverns people drank a toast to 'the little gentleman in black' whose excavations had hastened the Usurper on his way to a better place. He had been a foreigner, and that was an unforgivable sin as far as Londoners were concerned, and there was great rejoicing at the accession of Princess Anne, who was English through-and-through. This was not the time, Clovis could see, for renewing the Jacobite cause. But Princess Anne was thirty-seven, and though that was not a great age, she had had seventeen pregnancies, and was stout and gouty, and could not be expected to make old bones. When she died, that would be the time to recall the King to his throne.
Clovis had never failed in his attentions to Princess Anne all through the Usurper's time, and now that she was Queen, she was disposed to be grateful to those who had stood by her in less propitious days. Clovis began a delicate negotiation with her, the more delicate because its purpose could not be spoken of directly. The situation was complicated by the fact that Karellie was now a marechal in the French army; but Annunciata had been lady-in-waiting to Princess Anne's mother, and had known Princess Anne since she was a small child, and in her own person was no more guilty than many another Jacobite not in exile. Moreover, Annunciata was a blood-relative, even if it was on the wrong side of the blanket; and Princess Anne had continual, if brief and quickly dismissed, stirrings of guilt over her abandoning of her father and brother. Clovis worked gently and delicately upon her, in between talking of horses and promising the Princess first refusal of the best of the new batch of Morland colts.
The Coronation took place on St George's day, 23 April 1702, and on the following day Clovis wrote to Annunciata with a description of the occasion, and a carefully phrased invitation: if Annunciata cared to come home, she might. Anne could not receive her at Court, but would allow her to live quietly in whichever of her houses she chose, without molestation or persecution.
While King James II was alive and the Usurper on his throne, it was not an invitation Annunciata could have considered, for it would have been an act of gross treachery in her eyes. But things were different now. James III was a minor still, and it was possible to regard Anne's possession of the throne as a regency, and to expect the King to take his proper place when Anne's death came to her. Annunciata had been in France for thirteen long, weary years; she was fifty-seven-years old, and she longed inexpressibly for home.
Chelmsford House was vacant, and as it had been carefully tended it was the work of days to prepare it for the Countess, to hire suitable staff and to air and clean the rooms. Birch came up from Morland Place to supervise the preparations, more glad than she could ever tell anyone to be leaving India's domaine and to be returning to the service of her true mistress. Clover, who was approaching fifteen, came too, needing no prompting to be where Clovis was, and eager for the excitement of London and the return of such an illustrious person as the Countess, of whom she had heard stories all her life. She became Birch's right hand, and under her direction smoothed covers and arranged flowers and directed the hanging of newly-cleaned pictures and tapestries.
Finally the news arrived that the Countess and her household - Chloris, Dorcas, Gifford, and Daniel, Nan having stayed behind to serve Aliena at St Germain - had landed at Greenwich and were coming up the river in a sailing barge. They landed at London Bridge, where Clovis met them with a fast oared boat, to bring them on the Whitehall Steps, leaving directions for the luggage to be brought on after them. It was June, and nearing the longest day, and the sky was full of light. The river smelled sweet with mallow and fern and reed, and the banks were heavy with the intoxicating froth of elderflower, and high above the swallows skimmed back and forth and shrilled their high sweet cries. From Whitehall Steps it was but a short walk to Chelmsford House, and at nine in the evening the Countess of Chelmsford stepped over her own threshold once more and into the great black-and-white-tiled hall. Jane Birch was there to meet her, made her deep curtsey, and
then just stood and stared with trembling lip. She and the Countess were old women, and they had not expected ever to meet again.
‘Oh, my lady -' Birch said. Annunciata shook her head.
‘Don't cry. Please don't cry,' she said desperately; but it was an impossible request. Annunciata wanted to put her arms round her old servant and friend, but Birch's rigid propriety made that impossible, and the two women stood stiff as soldiers, four feet apart, and wept.
BOOK TWO
THE THISTLE AND THE ROSE
Coquette and coy at once her air,
Both Studied, tho' both seem neglected;
Careless she is, with artful care,
Affecting not to seem affected.
With skill her eyes dart every glance,
Yet change so soon you'd ne'er suspect them,
For she'd persuade they wound by chance,
Tho' certain aim and art direct them.
William Congrave:
Hue and Cry after Fair Amoret
CHAPTER EIGHT
Annunciata celebrated her return to England by taking to her bed with a severe rheum-and-ague, and once there, displayed no strong desire to get up again. As if exile had itself been a sickness, she came home like a convalescent, weak, uncertain, weary. Her own bed with the grey taffeta drapes and the scarlet brocade counterpane was a haven, both comfortable and elegant — comfort and elegance having been in short supply in France. On the wall opposite her bed was Wissing's portrait of her, shewing her son Rupert offering her his sword; to the right, on the black lacquered dresser, stood the silver ewers and basins engraved with the Ballincrea arms that had once belonged to her son Hugo; to the left, in the corner, stood the almost life-size black marble statue of a negro boy which her first husband had brought back from Naples. All around her were her own treasured possessions. It was enough to lie there in peace, watching Birch and Chloris moving about the room as they unpacked and inspected her clothes, remembering happier times.
Many visitors came to the doors of Chelmsford House, for although the Countess' presence in London was unofficial, there were old friends wanting to greet her, place-seekers hoping for advancement, and others who simply wanted to gawp at this notorious woman. But few were admitted, and her illness made a convenient excuse for Gifford who, splendid in a new livery, had been rewarded for his faithfulness by being made major-domo. Even after Annunciata had risen from her bed, and was venturing so far as to walk about her garden, or drive in the little chariot in St James's Park, she maintained her seclusion, receiving her contact with the outside world by means of the daily visits from Clovis. Apart from one short visit to Morland Place, he had stayed in London since June.
‘How will they manage without you?' Annunciata asked him one day as they breakfasted, late and leisurely in the garden, upon cold beef, Wensleydale cheese, white bread and black cherries. 'Won't everything come to a halt without your direction?'
‘I hope I have trained my subordinates better than that,' Clovis said. 'Besides, Matt has been taking over more of the responsibility over this last year. I think the time will soon come when I can leave everything to him.'
‘Not before time, I should think,' Annunciata commented shortly. 'He is no longer a minor.'
‘He is only just eighteen,' Clovis protested, 'and running the whole Morland estate is a huge task for a boy who has only recently become a man.'
‘His father did it from the age of fifteen,' Annunciata said.
‘But his father was an exceptional person,' Clovis said gently.
‘Yes Annunciata said. Here in this garden, on this very seat, she and Martin had sat eating cherries on the day Hugo came home to destroy their peace.
Clovis watched her face for a moment, and then said, ‘He does so long to see you. Will you come home? Even if only for a visit.’
Annunciata came back from a long distance, frowning slightly as she tried to grasp his meaning. Then she said, ‘Oh, you mean little Matt.'
‘Not so little now. He has started growing again in the past year. He will be taller than his father. Will you come home? We could choose you a horse,' he added temptingly. Annunciata smiled at the blatant bribery.
‘Oh, not yet, not yet, Clovis. Let me be for a while. I want just to savour being home for a while, enjoying the peace. Next year - after Christmas. And,' she added firmly, 'I shall not only choose a horse for myself, I shall want a dog, too. Tell little Matt I shall certainly come and be his guest next year.’
They had much business to catch up on, and Clovis had to render in detail an account of how he had taken care of her property in the years she had been away.
‘The wars have been a drain on us all,' he told her on one of his visits. 'On you more than on the main Morland estate, for as you know it is land tax that pays for the wars, and for Matt the land tax is partly balanced out by the higher price of exported wool and cloth. But your revenues are all from property. However, I think you will be happy with the way things have gone overall. Besides paying a pension to you, I have been able to make some good investments on your behalf in the East India Company, and there is a considerable surplus in hand.'
‘Enough to rebuild Shawes?' she asked. He looked sideways at her, not knowing if she was serious or not. She had been talking about rebuilding Shawes for thirty years.
‘That would depend on how ambitious your plans were. Do you really mean to do it, after all this time?'
‘Well I have to live somewhere, and Shawes is, after all, my home.'
‘You could stay at Morland Place.'
‘No. I don't think so. It would be too - painful, after all that has happened. Besides, little Matt will have his own family to house and care for. There won't be room for me.' She looked over the pages of neatly written accounts, and said, pointing, 'Whose hand is this? It is not yours, I know.'
‘Oh, that's Clover's writing. She casts accounts very neatly, doesn't she? She often helps me that way.’
Annunciata looked amused. 'What else do you teach her, I wonder? I'll wager it isn't to dance and flirt.' Clovis was defensive. 'She is a happy child, and does all the things children do. If she likes to be with me and help me with the running of the estate, what harm is there in that?'
‘No harm, except that mathematics will not help her to get a husband.'
‘She's too young to be wed. In time -'
‘Clovis, she is fifteen by my reckoning,' Annunciata said seriously. 'You must not make the same mistake as Ralph and Martin made with her mother. She is a pretty girl with nice manners, and she has a good fortune. You must bring her here this winter for the Season, and we'll soon find someone for her.’
Clovis searched about for an excuse. 'But you will not care to go into society, even in a good cause. You said you wanted to be peaceful.’
Annunciata patted his hand. 'Please don't worry about me. I can entertain suitable candidates quietly at home. I have influence enough, even if I am here unofficially.' She looked at his downcast face with sympathy, and added gently, 'Your special friendship with her will not be destroyed, only altered. You must not be selfish with her.’
He placed his own hand over hers. 'You left Aliena at St Germain. How did you find the strength?’
She looked away, her eyes distant again. 'I thought of my mother, who sent me to Court, and never troubled me again. She did not even come to my wedding - my first wedding, I mean. But I have come to understand it. It is enough that she exists. I love her, she is all I have left of him; but she is her own person, and must make her own life, as I have made mine. Being alone will make her strong. I would not have her weakened by my shadow.’
In the silence that followed, Clovis sighed. 'You are right, of course. I will bring her back to London. I think she will want to stay until India has had her confinement, but after that -’
India was brought to bed on t October of a second son, whom they named Robert. At Chelmsford House, Annunciata and Clovis drank a toast to the new child before Clovis departed to pay his
congratulatory visit to Morland Place and fetch Clover to London for the Season.
‘What is she like, this wife of Matt's?' Annunciata asked curiously. 'You have hardly mentioned her. Where does she come from?'
‘Her father was Neville the merchant, with the big red house on Fossgate,' Clovis said.
‘I remember,' Annunciata said. 'He married that pale, wispy little creature whose father had an estate at Holtby.' Clovis told India's story, and Annunciata went on, ‘Well that seems satisfactory - and the Nevilles are perfectly respectable - but what is the girl like?'
‘Strong and energetic,' Clovis said vaguely. 'Pretty, too. Matt adores her, that's plain to see. I thought at first he would never settle down to his work, for he was always hanging about her when he should have been attending to business, but once Jemmy was born things changed. I think she probably set him straight. She has a mind of her own.'
‘Strong and energetic with a mind of her own,' Annunciata said musingly, and turned down her mouth. 'However, she is evidently fertile, and that's the main thing.’
Clovis burst out laughing. 'My dear Countess, imagine Ralph's relations saying that of you when you married him!'
‘That was entirely a different matter,' Annunciata said, but she smiled all the same.
*
Christmas at Morland Place was a jolly one, and the house was full to overflowing. Annunciata remained at Chelmsford House, but insisted that Clovis should take Clover home for the month. Cathy was too ill to travel, and stayed at Aberlady, with Mavis and little Mary to bear her company, but Sabina, who had been staying at Emblehope for the hunting, was brought to Morland Place by the Francombs, and Arthur and John were both home.
India, quite recovered from the birth of little Robert, was brimming with energy, and invited a number of young bachelors of good family from York to stay, in addition to one or two families.
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