Ravenscliffe

by Jane Sanderson

  ‘Henry!’

  Thea’s voice rang down the staircase to the marble hall where Henrietta still stood. She began to walk up the stairs and could see Thea at the top, her face lit with excitement.

  ‘Henry, Anna’s here, we’re about to see my room. Will you come too, take a look?’

  Thea’s redecorated quarters didn’t hold much immediate appeal for Henry, who longed for a few very specific comforts after the journey home: Maudie’s deft fingers unbuttoning her travelling gown and brushing her hair, the particular luxury of a warm bath in daylight hours. But it would have been churlish to say no, so she followed Thea along the wide landing to where Anna Rabinovich – summoned by Mrs Powell-Hughes when she had known for sure what time the countess would arrive home – stood outside the locked door to Thea’s private rooms. Anna held the key.

  ‘If you don’t like, please say,’ she said to Thea. ‘In any case, I will know, whether you say or you don’t.’

  Thea winked at Henrietta. ‘Thrilling, n’est-ce pas?’ she said and then, to Anna, ‘Go on then, open up.’

  Anna turned the key and pushed open the door, and Thea walked in. Facing her, painted onto the wall and almost filling it, was a white clapboard house, set into a permanently sunny day on a Long Island beach. The blue of the sky extended onto the adjacent walls, fading into paler hues the further it was from the focal point. Seabirds wheeled about the room; one appeared to perch on the wide shelf of a window surround, others seemed further away, twisting in the sky, revelling in flight. The house had a porch and steps that ran down directly onto the sand, and its door was wide open; warm colours spoke of comfort and hospitality inside. The wooden slats of the house seemed to possess an extraordinary texture, blues and greys giving shade and depth to the white. At the windows of Thea’s room, curtains of white silk had replaced the pink damask, and they were tied back in soft folds with plain blue cord. They looked like summer clouds against the blue walls. Thea moved across the room to the painted house and touched it. She still hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Golly,’ Henrietta said. She looked at Anna. ‘This isn’t redecoration, it’s art.’

  ‘Same thing,’ Anna said.

  Thea turned; she was smiling, but there were tears in her eyes.

  ‘How did you know?’ she said.

  ‘You mentioned it once, remember? Your perfect house? Of course, I don’t know yours – I had to use pictures in books. I hope it’s something like.’

  ‘It’s perfect,’ Thea said. ‘It’s utterly perfect. It feels like home.’

  Clarissa sat at her mirror. Behind her, Flytton moved efficiently around the room setting out nightclothes and bundling discarded linens into a chest for removal to the laundry.

  ‘What do you make of the Great Work?’ Clarissa said. She meant the painted walls of Thea’s room, which Flytton immediately understood. The maid pulled a face: non-committal, though erring on the side of disapproval.

  ‘Quite,’ said Clarissa. ‘Rather de trop in my view, though perfectly fitting for Dorothea, who is rather de trop also. Could you unpin now?’

  Flytton immediately ceased her tidying and came to stand behind Clarissa, running expert hands over her head, pulling out the pins that held her hair in its elegant twist. Released, it fell down her back. There were streaks of grey now, quite distinct from the dark blond that had been Clarissa’s natural colour all her life, and it had a coarser texture than the blond. She lifted a hand to a strand of the new shade and looked at Flytton in the mirror.

  ‘How ghastly,’ she said.

  ‘Hardly, your ladyship. And when it’s up, none of it shows.’

  ‘I was thinking of a cut. The chignon looks a little passé, don’t you agree?’

  ‘If you mean out-of-date, then no, I don’t. It shows off a slender neck like nothing else.’

  Clarissa tilted her head to one side and then another. Her neck was slender, certainly. But she had seen the way Thea’s hair swung when she moved and though nothing would drag a compliment from Clarissa’s lips, she wondered if, as Duchess of Plymouth, she might be at liberty to cut a more modern figure than she had as Countess of Netherwood.

  ‘You’ll come with me, of course,’ she said to Flytton, omitting the question mark.

  Flytton looked at her, puzzled. They had been discussing hair.

  ‘To Denbigh Court,’ Clarissa said. ‘I can’t go without you.’

  ‘Oh, your ladyship, I’m sure you could manage perfectly well with the duke’s household,’ said Flytton.

  Clarissa gave her a hard look. ‘You do know that isn’t true, I suppose?’

  And Flytton did, though she thought she might not capitulate immediately. There were very few occasions in life when she had found herself in a bargaining position, but this was certainly one of them, and the Duke of Plymouth, she had heard, had very deep pockets indeed.

  Chapter 56

  The study door was closed and, as in the late earl’s day, this was an unequivocal sign that the occupant shouldn’t be disturbed. Three months’ absence from Netherwood meant there was a good deal of business to be seen to, and Mrs Powell-Hughes knew as well as anyone that Lady Henrietta would have enough on her plate without being further burdened. But the housekeeper still hadn’t shared with anyone the story told to her by Anna all those weeks ago, and it had begun to feel like a guilty secret. The injustice done to Eve MacLeod was somehow compounded by the fact that Mrs Powell-Hughes knew all about it yet had done absolutely nothing. This, it should be said, was how the housekeeper saw it: Anna had no such complaints. She had sought nothing but the satisfaction of revealing Absalom Blandford’s true nature to a wider audience, but Mrs Powell-Hughes, having heard the sorry tale, felt a responsibility to her new friend to take action. In the subsequent weeks she had kept a close eye on Absalom and had even, once or twice, crossed the yard with the intention of challenging him directly. But in his years as bailiff he had cultivated an aura of such remote and unapproachable self-sufficiency that she hadn’t quite found the nerve. She was afraid of him, that was the truth of it, and his position seemed unassailable. He had not a single friend in the world, and yet no one openly spoke ill of him, unless it was to comment – more in wonder than in criticism – on his unrelenting professionalism, his dedication to the duties of bailiff, the seriousness of mind that was always evident in his expression and his bearing.

  So Mrs Powell-Hughes had abandoned all thoughts of heroically grasping the nettle. Instead, she had temporarily turned her back on the many tasks of the day yet to be accomplished, and had knocked at the closed door of Lady Henrietta’s study. There had followed an unnerving silence. Behind her, Agnes had appeared from the morning room with a tray of used china and whispered, ‘Is everything all right, Mrs Powell-’ughes?’ for which she had received a withering nod and a dismissive flap of the hand.

  ‘Come in.’

  Lady Henrietta’s voice had a distracted quality, and indeed she seemed deeply engrossed in paperwork when the housekeeper entered the room, looking up only when her eyes reached the end of the document that was laid on the desk before her. Surprise registered on her face when she saw Mrs Powell-Hughes, though she politely and swiftly replaced it with a smile of enquiry.

  ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, Lady Henrietta,’ said the housekeeper. ‘I know how busy you must be and I’m reluctant to add to your long list of concerns, but I find I must turn to you on a matter of some great delicacy.’

  ‘Goodness,’ said Henrietta. ‘How alarming.’

  She set down her pen and gave the housekeeper her full attention.

  Secure in his orderly office, blissfully unaware of any impending disruption to his peace of mind, Absalom Blandford followed a list of figures in his ledger with the nib of his pen, his agile mind calculating the sum total as he went. These were the monthly accounts from Eve’s Puddings & Pies: clear profit again, half of which he was excessively pleased to say still belonged to the estate. Not once in the difficult weeks and months following
Lord Netherwood’s death had Absalom had cause to question his actions in protecting the family’s interests. Not once had he wavered in his certainty that he had done entirely the right thing, and because he was blessed with the happy knack of self-delusion, he now believed – truly believed – that he had been motivated not by an unhealthy hatred of the scheming Mrs MacLeod, but by a pure and noble loyalty to the family he worked for. The facts of the matter had been manipulated in his mind to present a more satisfactory version of events in which his own role was above suspicion. When the dear late earl’s natural generosity wandered into the realms of foolhardiness, his able helpmeet Absalom Blandford had stepped in to protect not only Lord Netherwood’s reputation, but also the fiscal interests of the estate.

  This wasn’t to say that his loathing of Eve had diminished in any way. On the contrary, it still burned with white heat at the core of his being, and as far as he was concerned it always would. Being a man of limited emotional range, Absalom had always kept a tenacious hold on the few feelings that did thrive in his near-barren soul. But his success in thwarting Eve’s progress on the road to financial independence had purged some of the poison, and he found he could deal with her accounts with something approaching equanimity, even though it was her own despised hand that had entered the figures he now studied. He had cured himself, too, of the habit of watching her. There seemed to be less need, since some sort of revenge had been exacted. Absalom was quietly proud of this self-control. His superiority over lesser mortals was never much in doubt, but it was nice anyway to have it confirmed.

  All of these thoughts were running in a contented loop through his mind when Lady Henrietta rapped on the door of his office and entered. He jumped at the sight of her, lost as he had been in his private world. She closed the door behind her and for a moment simply stood and stared at him in a manner he found profoundly disturbing. A flush began to spread upwards from his neck and he reached involuntarily for the pot pourri. Then, a little late, he remembered the protocol and stood up, though she at once ordered him down again, making him feel as if he was somehow bungling a perfectly simple situation. This, in turn, made him defensive, so that by the time she began to speak, he was already thoroughly rattled and all of his expertise was required to maintain a front of unruffled calm.

  ‘I have just been told a most extraordinary thing,’ she said, getting immediately to the point in the interests of a swift conclusion. There were few people in Henrietta’s world who made her feel uncomfortable, but Absalom Blandford was certainly one of them. ‘I have just been told that you defied my late father’s wishes and denied Mrs MacLeod his gift to her.’

  There it was: the charge, laid squarely at his feet. But without evidence, it was merely hearsay and tittle-tattle. And there was no evidence.

  ‘If you mean Mrs MacLeod’s insistence that she was promised the business in its entirety, then I must protest my innocence,’ he said. ‘I have always discharged my duties with irreproachable efficiency, but I received no instructions to that effect from your late, lamented father.’

  ‘Forgive my bluntness,’ Henrietta said. ‘But I think you did.’

  He blanched, then flushed again, but his eyes never fell from her face. Calm, he told himself. Calm, calm.

  ‘I think my father made his wishes absolutely plain to you,’ she went on. ‘But then he was taken from us, and you saw this as your opportunity to defy him for your own mysterious reasons.’

  His face assumed an expression of injured innocence.

  ‘Your ladyship, you do me an injustice,’ he said. The sound of his own voice, steady and grave, was almost enough to move him to tears of righteous indignation. ‘My purpose here is to serve the estate, and I hope I have always done so with the utmost rigour and attention to detail.’

  ‘Mr Blandford, your purpose here is to do as you are bid. Did my father instruct you to make a gift to Mrs MacLeod of her business at the mill?’

  He looked at her, and his silence eloquently expressed his sadness at being doubted.

  ‘He did not, your ladyship. Had he done so, I would have carried out his wishes to the letter.’

  ‘Mr Blandford, please don’t be hasty.’ She moved closer, close enough to lean with both hands on the desk. He could only imagine the mess her fingers would be leaving on the polished mahogany. ‘Please think carefully before you answer so unequivocally. Could you, perhaps, be mistaken?’

  For a fraction of a second, he wavered in his confidence. Something in her manner unnerved him. Then he rallied.

  ‘There is no mistake, your ladyship, except that of Mrs MacLeod in spreading this lamentable misrepresentation of my character.’

  ‘Mrs MacLeod has never spoken to me of the matter. From what I understand, she has no wish to seek justice, preferring to expand her business at her own expense and without recourse to you. However, I have been told a story this morning by a trusted individual. I am minded to believe this individual because although I barely know you, Mr Blandford, I knew my father very well indeed.’

  She paused. Still, he held her gaze.

  ‘My father held Eve Williams – Mrs MacLeod – in very high esteem. He admired her independence, her industriousness, her business acumen and, more than likely, her beauty, because, after all, he was only human. To present the business to her as a wedding gift seems to me exactly the sort of thing my father would have done.’

  The bailiff’s face twitched visibly under the effort of remaining impassive.

  ‘And yet,’ he said, ‘he didn’t.’

  ‘And so,’ she said, as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘I did something I have never done before. I took my father’s journal from the shelf.’

  Absalom’s mouth dropped open and he snapped it shut again. Here, indeed, was an unforeseen difficulty.

  ‘I have it still, back in the study, open at the page in October last year when he notes in his meticulous fashion that he spoke to you regarding his plans for Eve. How odd, then, that you have no such recollection.’

  The bailiff opened his mouth again to defend himself but found himself, for once, lost for words. Henrietta watched his face closely, and was satisfied; the trap had sprung and he was caught. He closed his eyes. To continue to protest his innocence remained an option; whatever the earl may or may not have written in a journal was evidence of a sort but, still, it would hardly be upheld as definitive in a court of law. And yet in the face of Lady Henrietta’s clear-voiced case for the prosecution, Absalom Blandford, master of the cutting rejoinder, was powerless to respond.

  She was in his office for ten minutes. Mrs Powell-Hughes knew it, because she had noted the time when Lady Henrietta left the house through the kitchen door, and noted it again when she returned. It was hardly time to boil a kettle, she remembered thinking, hardly time to make a pot of tea. Lady Henrietta had gone back to the study to resume her business there and Absalom Blandford, the housekeeper couldn’t help noticing, had left his office shortly afterwards and had climbed into one of Lord Netherwood’s Daimlers. Phillips had been driving. They were gone for half an hour, and later, when Mrs Powell-Hughes had engineered a chance encounter with Phillips, he told her he had been asked by Lady Henrietta to drive the bailiff to Mitchell’s Mill. No, the young chauffeur had said; he had no idea what Mr Blandford’s business there was. Mr Blandford, said Phillips, was not the sort of chap to welcome cheerful enquiries about the whys and wherefores. This, conceded Mrs Powell-Hughes, was incontrovertibly true. She had returned to the house resigned to the fact that though something was clearly up, she had no idea what it was. Yet.

  They were busy with the lunch service at the mill when Absalom Blandford entered the kitchen and asked for a private word with Mrs MacLeod. She was absorbed in making a batch of puff pastry, a labour of love requiring cool hands, a pound of best butter and a patient temperament. Ginger stepped in front of her as the bailiff approached and Nellie, who was tenderising a batch of beef shin, stepped forwards too with the wooden mallet still in her hand. Betwe
en them they might have pulverised him, but Eve looked up and saw from his face that he was already altered. The perpetual sneer was missing, and the arrogant tilt to the chin. He looked shifty rather than threatening, so she showed him through to her office, though she left the door wide open just as a precaution. In his hand he held a thick file of papers and in a curiously gauche and childlike gesture he thrust this at her the instant they were alone.

  ‘What’s this?’ Eve said. She held the file gingerly, as if she couldn’t trust it.

  ‘The deeds to Ravenscliffe,’ he said, the words coming out in a rush in the end, though he’d been sure in the car on the way from Netherwood Hall that he would be unable to utter them. She stared at him, uncomprehending.

  ‘It’s yours,’ he said. ‘Lady Henrietta wishes you to have Ravenscliffe, rather than to continue to pay rent on the house. She asks me to wish you much joy, and she asks that you accept this gift as a formal apology from the estate, for failing to carry out her father’s wishes with regard to the business.’

  Eve looked down at the bulky envelope then back at the bailiff.

  ‘Her father’s wishes,’ she said, faltering a little, ‘were thwarted by you, Mr Blandford.’

  He closed his eyes briefly, as if her words caused him pain. When he opened them again she was watching him steadily.