The first thing she saw was a pair of legs only a few feet from her head, and with a sinking heart she looked up to see her uncle Allen Macallan looking down at her with mild surprise. He was stripped to his shirt, with the sleeves pushed up, doing something to a small, spindly tree. He was wearing a carpenter’s apron, out of whose capacious front pocket protruded the handle of a pair of nippers, and the end of a ball of twine. Jemima watched him apprehensively. Of all her uncles, he was the one she knew least –of the uncles at home, that was: of course Uncle Thomas, who was a captain in the navy, had been away at sea all her life, and she had seen him for the first time last Christmas when he had come home to recover from a wound, got at the capture of Portobello and exacerbated by the scurvy. Uncle Charles, the botanist, travelled round the world all the time collecting strange plants, and his visits home were so infrequent that Jemima could not even remember what he looked like.
But though Uncle Allen was at home, she saw less of him even than of her father. He was a quiet, retiring man, and he shared Papa’s work, acting as a sort of deputy or assistant, and when he was not working he took a book to his own room and read or wrote letters there. Now Jemima surveyed his face as she rubbed absently at the various parts of her body that hurt. He was a small, slight man, with a small face, fair-skinned, and with large pale blue eyes and very long eyelashes like a girl’s. He wore his own hair, which was dark brown, but had it tied back at the moment in a queue, presumably to keep it out of the way while he worked. His nose and mouth and chin were strongly-marked and firm, and his hands looked strong and capable, but though he did not smile, there was nothing grim about him. Indeed, the corners of his mouth seemed to turn up slightly, as if only waiting for the right excuse to break into laughter.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘When I heard the scrambling about on the other side, I thought it was one of the boys.’ He didn’t seem much surprised at her presence, nor angry, but still Jemima held her silence, knowing how unpredictable adults could be. ‘Are you hurt?’ he asked her after a moment, nodding to where she was rubbing her elbow with her hand.
‘Not much,’ Jemima said. ‘I banged my elbow on the ground. And I’ve cut my hand on something.’
‘Let me see.’ He hunkered down in front of her and took up her hand and spread it open, palm up. The mound of the thumb which had taken her weight as she landed was grazed and dirty, and he began brushing the grit away very gently with his fingers. His hand holding hers was warm and strong, the sort of hand that animals surely trust. She watched his face as he frowned over her injury, seeing his golden eyelashes fan down on his cheeks. Close to, he smelled nice, she discovered, like warm grass. The eyelashes swept up, the blue eyes looked for a moment into hers, and the concentrating tuck of the eyebrows straightened as a spot of colour appeared inexplicably in his cheeks.
‘Do you always stare like that?’ he asked, but not in anger.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jemima said. ‘My mother says it is rude, but I can’t help it. I don’t mean to stare, I’m just—’ She puzzled how to explain herself.
‘You’re just interested?’ he offered. She nodded with relief. ‘I see,’ he said. He took out his handkerchief, moistened it and cleaned away the last of the dirt and grit. ‘It’s just a graze,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘I know,’ Jemima said, hoping he would not release her hand, for it felt so comfortable in his; but he did. ‘What were you doing to the tree?’ she asked. He glanced back at it, and then sat down on the grass in front of her, drawing up his knees and clasping them with his hands. She had never seen an adult sit like that, and it enchanted her.
‘I was grafting on a slip – a young shoot from a different sort of tree. As described in your Uncle Charles’s book.’
‘What for?’ Jemima asked. He looked at her for a moment, as if gauging her interest or her capacity, and then said merely, ‘To improve the stock.’
‘Oh,’ said Jemima.
‘And what were you doing on top of the wall?’ he asked. ‘I don’t suppose anyone knows you’re here?’
‘Not unless they saw me from a window,’ she said, and explained how she had run away. ‘I thought if I could find Papa—’
‘That he would make it all right? But where were you going?’
‘To Twelvetrees. I thought he would most likely be there.’
Now he smiled for the first time, and Jemima thought now nice he looked when he smiled. ‘You would be right more often than wrong in assuming so, I grant you. But not today. Today he is over at Shawes, riding with the Princess.’
Jemima knew that this was her father’s nickname for Marie-Louise, the Countess’s granddaughter. ‘Why do you say it like that?’ she asked abruptly.
‘Like what?’
Jemima was at an age when she often felt things she had no words for. She struggled now. ‘As if he should not be. As if – don’t know. As if it made you angry.’
He cocked his head a little. ‘You’re a funny, noticing little thing, aren’t you? But I don’t think you’d understand. Tell me about you instead. I don’t know anything about you. Wait – we must be comfortable first. If I am to be your host, I must provide you with refreshment. Come on.’
He got up and held out his hand to her, and pulled her to her feet, and, still holding her hand, led her across the orchard to where his coat was flung across a wooden bench. He took it off, dusted the seat with his hand, and bowed her to it with mock ceremony which amused her. Then he seated himself by her and, out of his coat pocket, produced a horn bottle of water-and-wine, and a cloth which, when unwrapped, proved to contain some little cakes and a handful of ripe yellow gooseberries.
‘Enough of a feast, so soon after dinner,’ he said. ‘Now, help yourself, and tell me about you.’
So Jemima told him about herself, about how her mother loved her brothers and disliked her, about how she hated sewing and reading sermons and learning to be ladylike, about how her father kissed and petted her on the rare occasions she saw him, but had no time to talk, about how Augusta was prettier than her, and how she was always in trouble for being untidy and disagreeable and asking too many questions and staring at people.
‘I wish I was a boy, like my brothers,’ she concluded. ‘I like to be good at things, and I’d be good at being a boy. I’m no good at being a girl. I’m not even pretty.’
‘No, I wouldn’t say you’re pretty,’ he said judiciously, studying her, ‘but one day you’ll be better than pretty, you’ll be beautiful. Then you may have the laugh of Miss Augusta.’
Jemima sighed, as if she would like to believe it, and then she said, ‘Now you tell me about you. About why you mind my father being with – with the Princess.’ She watched his face carefully. ‘Is it because you are in love with her?’
Allen did not answer directly. He said, ‘When I was younger, before you were born, I was sent to Shawes to be brought up with the Princess, because we were about the same age. Your father hoped we might fall in love with each other, and that we might get married, because she is very rich, and it would be a way of providing for me. I should have been rich myself, you see, but my father was killed in the rebellion, and all the property that should have come to me was confiscated.’
‘But it didn’t work,’ Jemima suggested.
‘Only partly. I fell in love with her, but she did not fall in love with me. Without my property, you see, I was no match for her. I’m completely unimportant.’
‘Like me!’ Jemima cried eagerly. ‘I’m unimportant, because of my brothers.’
‘I’m even more unimportant than that,’ Allen said. ‘You at least may be hoped one day to marry someone rich or influential.’
‘I hope not’Jemima said with a shudder. ‘I don’t want ever to go away from here. Still’ she brightened, ‘perhaps I could marry and stay here, like my uncles Robert and Edmund. Though, of course, they are men. Everything’s always different for men.’
There was a brief silence as they looked
at each other, pondering over the unfair ways of the world, and then Allen said, ‘I tell you what, shall we walk over towards Shawes? Perhaps we’ll meet your father coming back. Because, you know, unless we can persuade him to speak for you, you’re bound to be in trouble for running away.’
‘Won’t you get into trouble for not finishing your work?’ Jemima said hesitantly.
He stood up and offered her his hand. ‘I can finish it later’ he said.
Jemmy and Marie-Louise were walking the last half mile home, leading their horses to cool them off. They had the reins hooked negligently over their arms, while they strolled slowly, their other arms linked, through the long lush grass on the far side of Shawes’ lake. Marie-Louise’s horse, Sovereign, was one of the prettiest horses in the world, and had been chosen by Jemmy as a gift for the Princess for that very reason. He was a chestnut, but his coat was remarkably pale: if gold were such a liquid as milk, and could put up a cream, his coat was the colour that cream would be. His mane and tail were slightly darker, and his large golden eyes darker still. His bridle was decorated with gold medallions that glinted and chimed with the drowsy nodding of his head as he walked; round his ears hung a drooping crown made of daisies, which Jemmy had fashioned while he and Marie-Louise sat together in the grass of a secluded meadow.
But, Jemmy thought, as he strolled along, feeling the light pressure of her arm through his, and listening to her pleasant, sweet voice as she chatted to him and swung her hips so that her skirt would swish the grass as she walked, however pretty Sovereign was for a horse, he could never be as beautiful as Marie-Louise was for a woman. At twenty-three she was fully mature, her well-shaped body lithe beneath the snug-fitting habit of thin midnight-blue worsted, the severity of its cut lightened by the absurd froth of lace at throat and cuff. From out of the lace rose her slender throat, and her little chin, always poised so high and proudly, and her handsome face with its clear-cut features and those remarkable, lustrous golden eyes. Her vivid, coppery hair was drawn back from her face and fell behind in a long tail of glossy ringlets from under her broad-brimmed, feathered hat. Again and again Jemmy searched for her mother in her face, but the likeness was so transitory and so elusive that he sometimes thought he must imagine it; yet he could never have enough of simply gazing at her.
‘Of course, no one is pleased about the higher taxes,’ she was saying, ‘but apart from that, I think grandmother is actually very glad about the war with Spain.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought she cared much about our merchantmen being attacked by the guarda-costas,’ Jemmy said vaguely. ‘Though of course, war with Spain has been building up for years—’
‘Of course she doesn’t care about that sort of thing,’ Marie-Louise said robustly. ‘But she says that France is bound to side with Spain, because of their family ties, and that will mean King George is France’s enemy while King James is France’s ally, and then France will be bound to help King James regain his throne. And when the people discover that the war is costing them too dear, they will blame King George for biting off more than they can chew, and turn against him, and welcome back King James so that they can have peace again. And besides, there’s bound to be war soon over the Holy Roman Empire, and King George will go rushing off to protect his precious Hanover, and the people won’t like that. Grandmother says that two wars at once will see the Hanoverian off.’
‘She’s very optimistic,’ Jemmy said. ‘It sounds a slender hope to me.’
Marie-Louise shrugged. ‘And to me; but grandmother ought to know. She’s been intriguing all her life. And now Maurice is furious because she’s started writing letters again, to the Scottish lords and to the King in Rome.’
‘The Scottish lords?’
‘Seven clan chiefs, who can raise a good number of men, and want French aid. Of course Cardinal Fleury likes peace, but if he has to go to war because of his compact with Spain, he might well back the Scottish lords for an invasion.’
‘And Maurice is worried for your safety, I suppose?’
‘Not entirely,’ she said with a grimace. ‘Maurice has financial worries. His friend Handel isn’t doing too well, with all the competition from Buononcini’s Italian school, and though Maurice always managed to keep a foot in both camps, one foot is slipping now that Queen Caroline is dead. King George never entirely trusted him, you know.’
‘I’m surprised that Maurice didn’t make friends with the Prince of Wales when he set up in Leicester House,’ said Jemmy. Prince Frederick, who had quarrelled with his parents over finances, had caused a scandal three years ago by quitting St James’s Palace with his wife, Augusta, when she was actually in labour, and setting up a rival Court at Leicester House, just as his father had done before him in competition with the Elector George Lewis. Whatever the King and Queen liked and supported, Frederick and Augusta hated and opposed, and vice versa. While the King and Queen loyally attended the Haymarket Theatre and Handel’s entertainments, the livelier rival faction crowded round the Prince and Princess of Wales at the opera house to listen to Buononcini’s works.
‘He left it too late,’ Marie-Louise said. ‘Besides, he did not like to offend Queen Caroline. She hated Frederick, you know. She called him a monster, and said if she saw him roasting in Hell, she’d help to stoke the fires.’
‘Still, Maurice can’t be too badly off. At least he still lives rent-free in Chelmsford House; and he has the title. That must be worth something.’
‘A little credit, but not much more. He has written a new opera, in the Italian style, which he hopes will recoup his position, but it takes money to stage it with all the effects people like, and he’s afraid if grandmother starts plotting again, she’ll come to him for money. About the only thing left to sell is Chelmsford House itself.’
‘She would never sell that, surely?’
‘No, but she might want to rent it out, which would mean evicting Maurice and his family. Well, Maurice got Nicolette off his hands, marrying her to that Russian Prince, and grandmother’s negotiating for a marriage between Clementina and John Ballincrea, but that still leaves Maurice with his wife and Apollonia and the boys to support, and I believe that Rupert is already very expensive. Ever since he became Baron Meldon, he’s been running up dreadful debts on the strength of it, which Maurice has to pay. So Maurice has written to me to ask me if I mind if he tries to persuade grandmother to give him Chelmsford House. She has always promised to leave everything to me, you see.’
‘Of course,’ Jemmy said gravely. She spoke of it so easily, as if the fortune in question were no more than a few pieces of furniture and old dresses. ‘And do you mind?’
‘I suppose not. After all, I’ll have Shawes and everything else, and if she did leave Chelmsford House to me, I suppose I’d have to let Maurice go on living there, or else have him to live with me here. One does seem to be burdened with the necessity of looking after relatives, doesn’t one? If she gives him Chelmsford House, I’ll be let off lightly. I dare say you’d feel the same, wouldn’t you? After all, you had to provide for all your brothers, one way or another.’
Jemmy nodded. There were times when he felt almost weighed under by his dependants. It was true that Thomas had been no burden on him, for although he was at home now, recovering from his wound, he had hardly been home nine months in all the nineteen years he had been in the navy. Merit had got him his promotion to lieutenant, and merit had got him his presentation at Court, which in turn, by the influence of Queen Caroline, had got him made captain in 1735. He had not been particularly lucky in the matter of prize-money but, being always at sea and having no wife or children to support, he had always managed to live on his pay and had never asked Jemmy for anything.
Charles, too, after his time at University was finished, had been no burden, spending a great deal of time abroad on ‘herborizing’ expeditions, financed by the Society of Apothecaries and the Royal Society and other interested bodies; and when he was not on those expeditions, he was as likely t
o be staying with his mentor, James Sherard, or with one of his botanist friends in Scotland, as at Morland Place. As to Allen, the work he did on the estate more than paid for his keep: Jemmy would have been lost without him.
But on the other hand there was George, who did nothing but wear out horses and eat and drink at Jemmy’s expense. There was Edmund, who despite the fact that war had been declared with Spain nearly a year ago, was still more often at Morland Place than at Hull Barracks; and his wife, who only left Morland Place to visit Shelmet, and his children who were being brought up at Jemmy’s expense. And there was Robert, whose two sons were also living at Morland Place and being tutored by Jemmy’s chaplain. Jemmy sometimes felt that he worked from morning till night to provide a living for a host of people he cared nothing about, with scarcely a moment for his own pleasure. It was for that reason that he sometimes ignored the clamour of duty and rode over to Shawes to take Marie-Louise out riding, or to converse with the Countess who, although she was now well past ninety years old, still had a clearer mind and a sharper memory than most people half her age.
‘Morland Place is my duty, and Shawes is my pleasure,’ he said now, ‘and since I come here to be pleased, let us not talk about my brothers. Tell me instead about the ball you went to at Beningbrough last week. Who did you dance with? Did you have any flirting? Tell me what you wore, and how you dressed your hair.’
Marie-Louise pressed his arm and laughed, her golden eyes shining. ‘There is nothing I should like more. But I fear we must talk about brothers after all. Look where one of them comes!’
Jemmy looked, and cursed softly. ‘And my brat with him. Now what’s to do?’
Dynasty 8: The Maiden: The Maiden (The Morland Dynasty) Page 15