Breakfast continued in its usual virtual silence. Alistair did not like idle chatter at the table, saying it disturbed his concentration while he was reading of world events. Flora glanced at her father from under her eyelashes. All she could see was his bald patch rising like a half-moon above his paper, wisps of greying red hair sprouting from just over his ears. How he has aged since the Boer War, she thought sadly. Alistair had sustained a gunshot wound, and although the surgeons had been able to save his right leg, he walked with a bad limp, supported by a stick. The most dreadful consequence of his injury was that the ex-cavalry officer, who had spent his life on horseback, now found himself in too much pain to ride out with the local hunt.
Even though they had lived under the same roof for nineteen years, Flora could recall no more than one or two conversations with her father that had continued past basic politeness. Alistair used his wife as his emissary to impart any wishes he might have for his daughter, or to express his displeasure. For the hundredth time, she wondered just why her mother had married him. Surely, with Rose’s beauty, intelligence and good family name – she’d been an ‘honourable’ before her marriage – she would have had a wealth of prospective suitors to choose from? Flora could only presume that her father possessed hidden depths that she’d never had the good fortune to find.
Alistair folded his newspaper meticulously, signalling the end of breakfast. A slight nod from Rose indicated that both girls could leave the table. They slid their chairs back and made to stand up.
‘Remember the Vaughans are coming tomorrow afternoon to take tea, so it’s baths for both of you tonight. Sarah, can you draw them before dinner?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Sarah bobbed a curtsey.
‘And Aurelia, you shall wear your pink muslin dress.’
‘Very good, Mama,’ Aurelia agreed as the two girls left the dining room.
‘The Vaughans’ daughter, Elizabeth, is making her debut with me,’ said Aurelia as they crossed the hall, her footfall echoing in the silence while Flora’s stockinged feet padded on the freezing granite slabs. ‘Mama says we visited them in Kent when we were younger, but for the life of me, I can’t remember it. Can you?’
‘Unfortunately, I can,’ said Flora as they mounted the stairs. ‘Their son, Archie, who must have been six to my four years, pelted me with crab apples in their orchard. I was bruised all over. He was quite the nastiest boy I’ve ever met.’
‘I wonder if he’s improved,’ chuckled Aurelia. ‘He must be twenty-one now, if you’re nineteen.’
‘Well, we shall see, but if he decides to pelt me with crab apples again, I shall simply return the favour with stones.’
Aurelia giggled. ‘Please don’t. Lady Vaughan is Mama’s oldest friend and you know Mama adores her. Well, at least I will know one person before I go to London. I hope Elizabeth likes me, because I’m sure the young ladies are far more sophisticated down south. I shall feel like a country peasant in comparison.’
‘And I am absolutely certain that’s not how you’ll be seen when you’re dressed up in all your finery.’ Flora opened the door to her bedroom and Aurelia followed her in. ‘You’ll be the most ravishing debutante of the Season, Aurelia, I’m sure of it. Although I don’t envy you,’ she added, crossing the bedroom to open Posy’s cage and allow the rabbit to run free.
‘Are you absolutely sure you don’t, Flora?’ Aurelia perched on the end of the bed. ‘Despite your protestations to the contrary, I’ve been worried that you might. After all, it’s not fair that I’m to have a debut when you didn’t.’
‘What would all my animals do without me?’
‘True, although I’d like to see your future husband’s face when you insist on sharing your marital bedroom with your menagerie!’ Aurelia scooped up Posy in her arms.
‘If he misbehaves, I’ll set Albert the rat upon him.’
‘Can I borrow your pet if necessary, then?’
‘With pleasure.’ Flora grimaced. ‘Aurelia, we both know the Season is simply about finding you a husband. Do you want to get married?’
‘To be truthful, I’m not sure about the marriage part, but I’d rather like to fall in love, yes. Doesn’t every girl?’
‘Do you know, I’m beginning to think a spinster’s life would suit me well. I shall live in a cottage surrounded by my animals, who will all love me unconditionally. It seems far safer than ever loving a man.’
‘But rather dull, don’t you think?’
‘Perhaps, but then I think I am rather dull.’ Flora picked up the dormice, Maisie and Ethel, in one of her palms and they curled up contently with their bushy tails wrapped around their heads, as she swept out their cage with her other hand.
‘Goodness, Flora, when will you ever stop putting yourself down? You excelled in the schoolroom, you can speak French fluently, and you draw and paint like a dream. I’m a complete dunce in comparison.’
‘Now who’s putting themselves down?’ Flora teased. ‘Besides, we both know that being beautiful is a far more prized quality in a woman. It’s pretty, entertaining girls that marry well, not plain old bones like me.’
‘Well, I shall miss you terribly when I do get married. Perhaps you could come with me to my new home, for I really don’t know what I’ll do without you. Now, I must go downstairs.’ Aurelia let Posy hop to the floor. ‘Mama wishes to speak to me about the London diary.’
As Aurelia left the room, Flora imagined herself rattling about in Aurelia’s future home – the maiden aunt that appeared so regularly in novels she had read. Sliding off her bed and going to her desk, Flora unlocked the bottom drawer and took out her silk-covered journal. Pushing up her sleeves so as not to get ink on the lace cuffs, she began to write.
10
The following morning, Flora hitched her pony, Myla, to the trap and drove into Hawkshead to collect the box of discarded cabbage leaves and old carrots kindly saved for her by Mr Bolton, the greengrocer. She knew her parents didn’t approve of her driving herself, feeling it inappropriate that the eldest daughter of Esthwaite Hall should be seen in anything other than a carriage, but Flora was not to be dissuaded.
‘After all, Mama, since you and Papa let our driver go, there’s only Stanley to drive me and I feel it’s terribly unfair to ask him, when he has so much else to do in the stables.’
Her mother couldn’t disagree and had eventually acquiesced. Recently, she had even taken to asking Flora to run errands for her while she was in the village.
Poor Mama, Flora thought with a sigh, imagining how difficult the continuing slide into penury must be for her. She still remembered visiting her mother’s childhood home when she was younger, which had felt like a veritable palace to her wide-eyed four-year-old self. Scores of footmen, maids and a butler whose face had seemed carved from marble had stood to attention as the daughter of the house had entered with her family. Both Flora and Aurelia had been whisked off by her mother’s old nanny to the playroom and Flora had never set eyes on her grandparents. Although, if she remembered correctly, three-year-old Aurelia had been taken briefly from the nursery to be introduced to them.
Having completed her business, Flora handed a penny to the boy whom she’d asked to mind the pony, and climbed back up onto the wooden bench with a crate full of vegetables and a paper bag of pear drops – Aurelia’s favourite – next to her.
The day was bright, and as she steered the trap out of Hawkshead, she decided to take the longer way around Esthwaite Water via the village of Near Sawrey so she could see the wild crocuses and daffodils beginning to burst into bloom. Even the air smelled lighter and the brief snow flurry of that morning had barely kissed the ground before melting. As she took the lane out of Near Sawrey towards home, she glanced up at the farmhouse just visible at the top of the rise to her left.
For the hundredth time, Flora thought about stopping and introducing herself to its lone resident, and reminding her of how they had met so many years ago. And what an inspiration she had been since.
Myla trotted on past Hill Top Farm and Flora was so deep in thought that, as she steered the trap over the hump-backed bridge across the stream, bubbling noisily over its pebble bed, she failed to hear the pounding of hooves coming full pelt across the open ground to her left. As she rounded the bend just beyond the bridge, a horse and rider appeared a few yards in front of her. Myla took fright, rearing up so high that the front wheels of the trap left the ground for a few seconds, shunting Flora across the bench as it tipped perilously to one side. Hanging on to its edge, Flora tried to right herself as the rider brought his own horse to a standstill, only inches from Myla’s flaring nostrils.
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?!’ Flora shouted as she attempted to calm her terrified pony. ‘Have you no road sense?’ At that moment, Myla decided to gallop home as fast as she could, away from the plunging bay stallion blocking her path. Flora lurched forward, losing control of the trap as the reins were wrenched through her hands, and Myla flew past the horse and rider towards sanctuary. Flora caught a brief glimpse of the shocked expression in the rider’s dark brown eyes.
It took all the strength she possessed to hang on to the bench with one hand while using the other to pull fruitlessly on the reins. Only when they entered the gates of the Hall did Myla slow down a little, sweat showing on her flanks. Flora arrived at the stables shaken and badly bruised.
‘Miss Flora! What on earth happened?’ Stanley, the groom, asked as he noted the whites of the pony’s eyes and tried to calm her.
‘A rider crossed our path out of nowhere and Myla took off,’ Flora said, close to tears as she handed the reins to Stanley and accepted his hand to help her climb from the trap.
‘Miss Flora, you’re as pale as a ghost,’ he said as, now on terra firma, Flora felt suddenly faint, and leant on Stanley’s broad shoulder for support.
‘Should I call for Sarah to help you up to the house?’
‘No, let me sit down in the barn for a while. Perhaps you could be kind enough to bring me some water?’
‘Yes, miss.’ After leading her into the barn and settling her on a hay bale, Stanley left to find her a mug of water. Flora found herself shivering.
‘Here you are, miss,’ said Stanley as he returned. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to fetch Sarah? You’re a rare colour and that’s for sure.’
‘No.’ Flora spoke with as much firmness as she could muster. Any whisper of her being seen out of control of the trap in public would mean her journeys – and, therefore, her freedom – would be instantly curtailed. ‘Please,’ she said, rallying her jelly-like limbs and standing up, ‘say nothing.’
‘As you wish, miss.’
Flora left the barn, her head held high, but her bones feeling as though they had been rattled around inside their bag of skin. As she crossed the lawns to the house, she knew that not a single flicker of her eye must betray to her parents what had happened.
Entering the kitchen, she saw Mrs Hillbeck’s harassed expression as she took a joint of lamb from the oven.
‘Where on earth have you been, Miss Flora? Your mother came down not ten minutes ago to ask us if we’d seen you. They’re already sitting down to luncheon in the dining room.’
‘I . . . was out.’
‘Miss Flora?’ Sarah approached her.
‘Yes?’
‘There’s a dirty smudge on your nose and your hair’s all over the place.’
‘Do you have a cloth?’
‘Of course.’ Sarah took one and cleaned her face, just as she had when Flora was a child.
‘Gone?’
‘Gone, but your hair . . .’
‘No time, thank you.’ Flora ran out of the kitchen, blindly putting her fingers through her stray locks to fasten them back into the chignon. Pausing at the dining room door and listening to the dull hum of conversation beyond it, Flora took a deep breath and entered. Six heads turned to watch her.
‘Please forgive me, Mama, Papa, Lady Vaughan, Miss Vaughan and Ar—’
Flora’s gaze had followed her words around the table until they came to rest on a pair of dark eyes, wide with alarm and surprise at the mutual recognition.
‘. . . Archie,’ she spat. So this was the wretch that had almost thrown her from the trap – the nasty little boy who had bruised her with crab apples all those years ago. Now grown up, but just as much trouble.
‘My son is now of age, so is to be addressed as “Lord Vaughan”,’ Lady Vaughan corrected her.
‘Forgive me, I did not know. Lord Vaughan,’ she managed as she sat down.
‘Where on earth have you been, Flora?’ her mother asked, her voice gentle, but her expression saying everything she could not. Flora noted her mother was wearing her finest tea gown.
‘I was . . . delayed on the way home due to a . . . cart tipping over and blocking the road.’ Flora settled on a half-truth. ‘Please forgive me, Mama, I had to take the trap along the back roads.’
‘Your daughter drives herself in the trap?’ asked Lady Vaughan, her sharp features forming a moue of disapproval.
‘Not usually, of course, Arabella dear, but this morning our driver was unwell and Flora had some urgent business to attend to in Hawkshead.’
‘Forgive me, Mama,’ Flora repeated as luncheon was finally served. Even though she did all she could to concentrate on the rather vacuous Elizabeth, Archie’s sister, next to her, and her talk of the splendours of her wardrobe for the forthcoming Season, she felt ‘Lord’ Archie’s apologetic eyes boring into her across the table. Aurelia had been placed next to him and was doing her best to engage him in conversation, but he seemed as distracted as Flora was. As she struggled through the main course of spring lamb, leaving the meat to one side, she comforted herself with the idea of luring Archie down to the stables, then delivering a swift punch to his arrogant aristocratic nose. At last, Alistair pulled back his chair and announced he was retiring to his study to attend to some paperwork.
‘Arabella, Elizabeth and I will adjourn to the drawing room.’ Rose stood up. ‘We have much to catch up on, don’t we, my dear?’
‘Indeed we do,’ replied Lady Vaughan.
‘Aurelia, perhaps you might like to escort Archie around the gardens? The day seems warm enough, as long as you wrap up. Aurelia suffered a dreadful cold a few weeks ago, but then that’s what comes of living in the godforsaken north,’ Rose explained to Lady Vaughan.
Being the only member of the party left without further instructions, Flora rose last and followed them out of the dining room. As she walked through the hallway, she saw that Rose, Lady Vaughan and Elizabeth had already disappeared into the drawing room, and Aurelia and Archie were gone through the front door to the gardens.
Flora walked slowly and painfully upstairs to her bedroom. Once safely inside, she locked the door and sank gratefully onto her bed.
Dusk was beginning to fall when she was woken by a soft tap-tapping on her bedroom door.
Rolling gingerly off the bed, she sat upright. ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me, Aurelia. Can I come in?’
Flora forced herself to stand and walked stiffly to unlock the door.
‘Hello.’
‘Archie told me what happened earlier. How are you feeling?’ Aurelia’s eyes were filled with concern. ‘He was so worried about you and felt absolutely dreadful about it. It was all he could talk about on our walk. He even insisted on writing you a note of apology and I promised that I’d deliver it. Here.’ Aurelia handed her an envelope.
‘Thank you.’ Flora tucked the letter into her pocket.
‘Are you not going to open it?’
‘Later.’
‘Flora, I do understand that the meetings you two have had so far have been . . . unfortunate, but really, Archie is awfully nice. I think yo
u’d like him if you gave him the chance. I do . . . a lot.’
Flora saw Aurelia’s gaze drift dreamily towards the window.
‘Good grief, Aurelia! You’re not soft on him already, are you?’
‘I . . . no, of course not, but even you must admit he is frightfully handsome. And so accomplished too. He seems to have read every book ever written and spent a year doing the Grand Tour in Europe, so he’s very cultured. I felt quite the simpleton during our conversation.’
‘Archie has had the privilege of a proper education, which, sadly, we females don’t seem to be worthy of,’ Flora countered.
‘Well . . .’ Aurelia knew that when her sister was in one of her moods, it was pointless trying to argue with her. ‘It’s just the way it is and as there’s nothing we can do to change it, we must accept it. Sometimes, I feel you don’t like being a woman.’
‘You’re right, maybe I don’t. Anyway,’ Flora continued, her countenance softening as she saw Aurelia’s discomfort. ‘Just ignore me, darling, it’s not only my body that has been bruised, but my pride as well. I presume our guests have left?’
‘Yes, but I hope to see a lot of them during the Season. Their London home is in the neighbouring square to Aunt Charlotte’s house. And Elizabeth was so kind to me, telling me about all the girls who will be coming out with us. Even Archie said he may come to a couple of the dances this year.’
There’s that look again, Flora thought, as her sister’s voice trailed off into a private reverie.
‘Are you coming down for dinner?’ Aurelia asked eventually. ‘I can always tell Mama you have a headache and she’ll have Mrs Hillbeck send up a tray. You’re very pale.’
‘Thank you. I think it’s best I stay in bed, I don’t feel myself tonight.’
‘I’ll come back and see how you are after dinner. Are you sure you don’t want me to tell Mama the truth?’
‘No. She’d only fuss. Really, Aurelia, I’m fine.’
Once her sister had left the room, Flora put her hand into her pocket and fingered the envelope that lay inside. Drawing it out, she considered whether she should simply tear it up and burn it on the fire, for whatever he had written could hardly matter. Curiosity getting the better of her, she ripped it open, noting the beautiful script, and read the contents.
The Shadow Sister Page 12