‘Amy?’
‘Yes, dearest, I know how difficult this is for you. I realize, too, that you will not want advice, yet I must tell you that I believe Rupert to be a thoroughly wretched young man. Mother didn’t like him at all. And Camilla is so nice. I think Mrs Smythe has doted on her son—’
‘Because Camilla is ugly,’ sobbed Margot, ‘while Rupert is so good-looking.’ She rubbed at her eyes. ‘I shall see him tomorrow and find out what is going on.’
‘No, please don’t chase after him, Margot.’ Was it too late for such advice? Had Margot wasted her precious body on that bone-idle, stupid, self-indulgent creature? ‘You are too young to settle down just yet. Look, Mr Mulligan is determined to open the hydro in a few months. Think of all the people you would meet there. You could be in charge of the stables, riding lessons and so forth.’
‘Please, Amy.’ Margot did not want to think or talk of anything except her dilemma. Panic flooded her veins, causing her heart to beat fast, her palms to sweat, her pores to open. ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered. ‘And please, I beg you, Amy, don’t discuss this with Eliza.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Amy had not been sure about Eliza for some time. Since gaining partial rein on her own behaviour and reactions, Amy had become more acutely aware of the behaviour of close companions. Eliza was deep. The happy-go-lucky girl who had sung in the woods, the sweet, well-behaved darling daughter of Louisa Burton-Massey, the demure pianist, the seamstress – was any one of these the real Eliza?
‘Amy?’
‘What?’
Margot wiped her eyes. ‘I think I don’t trust Eliza. It’s as if I don’t . . . as if she’s a person I’ve only just met. She has changed since Mother died, she is a stranger.’
‘The consummate actress,’ mumbled Amy to herself. ‘Like the two of us, Eliza has probably been in shock,’ she added, in a clearer voice.
‘If everything goes wrong between myself and Rupert, I don’t want Eliza running around me and being kind. It would be too much to bear.’
‘I understand.’
Elspeth Moorhead knocked on the door. ‘It’s Mr Mulligan,’ she said. ‘I’ve put him in the drawing room.’
After a final glance at her distraught sister, Amy followed the ageing housekeeper downstairs and found James Mulligan pacing in front of a roaring fire. When Amy entered, he made a cursory bow, then placed his tall, unfashionable hat on a tea-table. ‘The inn is sold,’ he said, without preamble.
Amy placed herself in a Victorian nursing chair just inside the door. ‘Good,’ she replied. ‘But why are you telling me?’
He opened his mouth, closed it, glanced at the ceiling, then at Amy. He wished with all his heart that he could be somewhere else, but he was here and he must get on with his business. With his eyes fixed on a point somewhere between the picture rail and Amy’s head, he began again. ‘The inn is sold,’ he repeated lamely.
Amy decided not to encourage him. Occasionally, the annoying man drifted back into his old, silent ways, but when talking business involving the Burton-Massey family, he was sometimes at his dramatic worst. She knew that he was capable of normal – well, of near-normal – behaviour, so she simply waited.
‘The estate will, eventually, revert to you.’ He cursed himself, knew that he sounded like a phonograph needle stuck in a scratch on a record.
She nodded. ‘Yes, you have said that before.’ It was plain that he continued guilty and embarrassed about the misdeeds of his father. ‘It is very generous of you,’ she added, trying to put him at his ease. Where James Mulligan was concerned Amy often disliked herself since she knew his kindness was real, yet she persisted in tormenting him. This had to stop, she ordered herself. Why was he here on this occasion? Just to repeat himself yet again?
He shifted about, moved the focus of his attention lower until he was looking at his companion’s hair. ‘The yard businesses bring in a living, but I fear that Pendleton Grange would bleed you dry. The roof needs fixing, then there’s some dry rot and the—’
‘I am aware of the state of the house, James.’
At last, he looked directly into her eyes. ‘I am sorry to keep labouring these points, but I must beg you to listen, since I know that you will soon run out of money. If you continue here, turn the Grange into a hydro which can be run by others, open the dressmaking business, then—’
‘Then we shall all die of over-exertion and nothing will matter.’
‘You will be comfortable,’ he said, rather sharply. ‘And occupied. Now, the price I have received for the inn will pay off some of the mortgage on the Grange, though it will not stretch to cover improvements. The choice is between paying off a proportion of the loan or using the money to make a hydro. Which is it to be? Or shall I sell the Grange and give you the money?’
Amy raised a shoulder. ‘This is very kind of you, but it is not my concern. Do as you will.’ She pulled herself up again. ‘Look, I don’t mean to be unkind or to sound ungrateful, but it is so long since we lived in the big house that I can hardly imagine owning and running it. As for selling it, would you get a good price while it is in need of modernization? And . . . well, I do have other concerns.’
‘I know.’ He lowered his tone. ‘How is Margot?’
‘Head over heels in love with Rupert, I fear.’
‘And Rupert?’
‘Head over heels with himself. His mother, in spite of her emancipation, is keen to marry him to someone with better expectations.’
James stood up and walked to the window. ‘Would you have me tell Mrs Smythe exactly what Margot’s prospects are? After all, were you to sell everything after I go home, or were we to sell up now, you might even be rich.’
‘Tell her nothing,’ said Amy. ‘He doesn’t deserve my sister.’
‘And you feel I may renege on my promise and keep everything myself?’
Strangely, that possibility had never occurred to Amy. This man said what he meant, meant what he said. ‘There are few trustworthy people in this world, James Mulligan. You happen to be one of the few. But, as I have said before, the property is yours. Should your circumstances change, then your priorities would shift.’ Amy lowered her tone. ‘You are not like your father. Wipe that idea from your mind, marry if you wish.’
He walked back to the fireplace. ‘Eliza played very well today,’ he said.
Amy felt tension settling in her spine, making her stiffen against the back of her chair. She had mentioned the possibility of him marrying; immediately, he had spoken of Eliza. Why did the concept of a marriage between James and Eliza bother her?
‘She sings well, too,’ he added.
‘Eliza is gifted,’ she replied.
He picked up his hat. ‘You will come for Christmas, I hope. We are to celebrate in the kitchen, because that is more homely. It will be a mixed bunch, no ceremony, no master, no servants.’
‘I see.’ She rose and followed him into the hallway. ‘Then who will cook the meal?’ she asked.
‘Mrs Kenny. She will have help.’
‘So the servants will cook?’
At the front door, he paused. ‘Will you go through the rest of your life splitting hairs, Amy? Does everything have to be so carefully thought out, analysed and criticized? No matter who cooks or cleans or washes dishes, we shall be a family on Christmas Day. In fact, I may decide to do the cooking myself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
He smiled, then placed his hat on his head. ‘Never mind, so,’ he smiled. ‘There’s only one of you, then the mould got broken.’
When he had marched off, Amy closed the door, closed her eyes, leaned against the wall. He disturbed her. She didn’t know why. She didn’t want to know why.
Twelve
Margot was feeling out of sorts. She was experiencing nausea, headaches and a general lassitude whose sole benefit was a marked diminution of anger. There was no space, no energy for temper. When aimless thoughts
landed on the subject of Rupert Smythe, the resulting resignation was completely alien to the character of the youngest Burton-Massey. He did not want her. She could do nothing to force him to love her. Amy was right, as usual – few affluent young men would choose to be connected with a family as impoverished as theirs.
She sat as still as stone at the window, her gaze floating loosely across the snow-covered stretch of lawn and flower beds. Beyond the boundary walls, heavy cloud seemed to be sinking on to moortops as if threatening to drop a cargo of lead. The house was cold. Winter had moved in without invitation, had settled his refrigerated essence in every corner, spreading ice-tipped fingers along thin glass, breathing frosty air throughout the rooms. Fires had little effect, warming just a small apron in front of each hearth, leaving Winter to do his dramatic worst.
She sighed gloomily. She didn’t want to be here in this sooty parlour with its walls stained by smoky exhalations from a faulty chimney. Parlour? Elspeth Moorhead had christened the room, and the housekeeper was right. At Pendleton Grange there had been drawing rooms, warmth, light, space. Here, there was no fire in Margot’s bedroom until evening, while even the dining room was unheated. These days, meals were taken in the parlour, served on a wheeled table with semicircular wings. ‘Poverty,’ she mouthed. ‘I bet it’s warmer outside.’ Yes, perhaps the house might feel more cheerful after a stroll.
In the hallway, she dragged on coat, hat, scarf and boots. Dusk was beginning to descend as she closed the door in her wake, but the silvery-white earth seemed to produce a light all its own as she crunched her way alongside footprints left by her sisters. Amy and Eliza had gone to town in search of Christmas presents. They had travelled with Mr Mulligan who, Margot felt sure, was falling in love with Eliza.
The woods were beautiful, bare trees dripping crystal icicles, leafless limbs stretching upward to embrace a clear sky. Margot kicked the ground, creating tramlines in four inches of white carpet. She sat on a stump and worried about not being worried. The concept of pregnancy should be terrifying, yet she remained so stupidly calm. It was almost as if she watched someone else, as if the problems were not connected to her at all. Even when she concentrated on the idea of her family’s further ruination, she continued unmoved. But was she truly concentrating? Was she capable of that?
Rupert. He was the only one; he was the father. Counting the months, Margot decided that her baby would be due in the middle of June. She was almost three months pregnant, yet her belly remained as flat as it had always been. Amy would have to be told, of course. What then? A home for mothers and babies, adoption? Margot harboured no sentiment for the child or for its father; she simply breathed, ate, slept, tried not to vomit. The trouble her predicament would cause meant nothing at this point. Just occasionally, a mild unease would creep over her, unattached, unconnected with anything real. Although she was in trouble, she was not particularly troubled.
She thought about the spring and summer, her silly obsession with James Mulligan, her passion for Rupert Smythe. Six months ago, Margot Burton-Massey had been alive, vibrant, mobile. She had wanted to work with horses, not with fabric and thread. There had been dirt under her fingernails, a sparkle in her eyes. Mulligan’s stables were now filled to bursting with fine, purebred horseflesh. Eliza still visited the Grange to play that rather fine piano while he listened and lusted, no doubt. Margot had not been near the big house for weeks – even the wild, unbroken horses could not drag her in that direction.
It didn’t matter, any of it. Sometimes, Margot wondered whether she would experience any pain at all, even if run through by a sword. ‘I’m dead, I suppose,’ she told a nearby tree, ‘and still talking. Talking to a tree.’ She was a fool. Like a witless schoolgirl, she had twice imagined herself in love, each time with an unsuitable person. Mulligan, taciturn and, on occasion, as cold as tonight’s frost, then Smythe, that self-centred mother’s boy with no thought for anything save his own comfort. ‘A fool,’ she declared aloud, the two syllables emerging on a small cloud of breath.
Something moved. She turned her head, half expecting to see a cow bent on escape, but it was a man, a stranger. He was quite the ugliest creature she had ever seen. Shivering, Margot rose from her uncomfortable seat and backed away. The chill in her bones came from the inside. She was feeling something; she was experiencing fear. ‘What . . . what do you want?’ she asked, the words stumbling on their way out.
He smiled. She was a snow queen, alabaster-skinned, finely etched, a living expression of all that seemed magical in the world. Weight seemed to have melted away from her face, rendering her more fragile than she had seemed earlier in the year. Oh, what a prize. The Guardians in Texas were content for the time being, happy to receive young women capable of toil. But the Light needed to attract the educated, too, people like the Burton-Masseys, those who had attended excellent schools, folk with good manners. In spite of the cold, Peter Wilkinson’s palms were slick with sweat. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘I saw you sitting there so still. That can be dangerous in low temperatures. Frost can kill. You should be inside or, if you insist on being out of doors, keep moving.’
Margot’s teeth chattered.
‘I love the woods in wintertime,’ he continued, ‘so pretty, like a Christmas card.’
Terror gripped her heart. It wasn’t just his appearance – there was something in his eyes. He looked like . . . like a dead salmon before a slice of cucumber covered its dead eye. When had the Burton-Masseys last enjoyed a full salmon? She shook herself. There was no expression in the man’s countenance. Yet evil lived in his face, almost unnoticeable but definitely there.
‘So I’m trespassing,’ he continued. He delivered what he imagined to be a reassuring grin.
Margot cleared her throat. ‘Sniggery Wood belongs to Mr Mulligan,’ she said. The teeth were horrible, she noticed, stumpy, uneven and stained.
‘The woods were yours until the gambler took them,’ he snapped. ‘Double standards, double dealings, double Dutch.’ He bared the incisors once more. ‘Latin. I ask you, who wants to hear Latin in church? They use it to fool the congregations, you see. Plain English is good enough, wouldn’t you say?’
It was clear that he expected an answer. ‘I don’t know,’ she managed finally. ‘We’re C of E.’
‘Quite.’
Spurred on by a panic for which she could find no real reason, Margot rushed off in the direction of home. Why was she running? It was his ugliness, she decided, and ugliness, like beauty, was merely skin deep. The eyes, though. Oh, those hideous orbs belonged in the face of some cloven-hoofed creature . . .
He was not following her. Relieved beyond measure, she leaned against Caldwell Farm’s boundary wall. It was the relief that finally touched her core. For a few seconds, Margot looked at her home from the outside, was happy to see lamps and firelight. She wanted to live, wanted to see tomorrow with all its glaring faults and disappointments. After Christmas, she must confide in Amy.
Eliza smiled tentatively at her companion. They were in a little coffee house next to Bolton’s Moor Lane bus station, a hut erected by some entrepreneur with an eye to profit and poor taste in coffees. ‘Amy’s shopping,’ she said, in an attempt to break the ice.
‘And Mulligan?’ Eliza’s companion raised an eyebrow perfect enough to belong to a woman.
‘In his office,’ she answered. ‘Dealing with racehorse pedigree papers. I am to meet them both there in twenty minutes.’
Rupert Smythe placed his cup in its saucer. ‘So,’ he drawled, ‘are you game, Eliza?’
She pondered, dusted a cheap napkin across her lips. It was true that Margot seemed to care no longer for this young man, yet the situation remained awkward. ‘I can’t,’ she replied, after a short pause. Yes, she could. Surely, she must? Why couldn’t life be simpler? she asked herself.
‘Why not?’ He raised creamed and manicured hands. ‘It’s London, Eliza. London. I shall be doing something or other in the City, living in a flat provided b
y darling Mama . . .’ He drew breath slowly, elegantly. ‘Two bedrooms. There will be no hanky-panky, darling – please be reassured on that front. What is there here for you? And why should I be lonely in a city of strangers? We can help one another out.’
She stared into the middle distance, allowing his narrow, handsome face to blur at the edges. If Amy decided to open A Cut Above, who would help to run it? Margot’s sewing was acceptable, no more. And what about design, cutting, fitting? But London, with its theatres, bright lights, concerts, markets and cinemas, was a powerful magnet. This might well turn out to be Eliza’s sole chance in life. She focused on him again. Rupert Smythe’s reputation was far from unsullied. ‘How can I be sure?’ she asked.
‘Sure of what?’
She hesitated momentarily. ‘Of your intentions.’
Eliza was lovely, so much more beautiful than her younger sister. Eliza would take some persuading, he felt sure of that. Margot had been easy, too easy, no challenge at all. But this one would not step readily into his arms. Ah, well, anything worth having was worth fighting for. ‘You have my word as a gentleman,’ he told her.
Eliza sipped at her muddy coffee. It seemed that she had two choices, neither of which promised to be perfect. She could remain at Caldwell Farm, safe, secure and bored, the only chance on the horizon a possible job in a possible fashion store. Had Mother lived, Eliza would have felt obliged to settle for that. But here sat the physical embodiment of a second opportunity, a totally unsafe option. By its very nature, London could never be safe. Rupert Smythe would always be dangerous.
‘Well?’ he asked.
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