All You Could Ask For

by Angeline Fortin

  They moved on to Greece and then to Vienna. As for seeing the world, it had been all that she had hoped for, even if the rest was not what she’d longed for in a marriage.

  Just after their first anniversary, they were called back to England when William’s father, the earl fell sick. In the months following the earl’s rapid decline and death, her husband had chaffed at the protocol of mourning which denied him the socializing he so enjoyed. They’d spent that allotted year at his family seat of Saint’s Haven in Dorset while Eve had her lying- in for the birth of their son Lawrence. William had deemed it an excellent use of their necessary absence from Society. Shortly after the birth of his heir, the earl insisted that they take up permanent address together in London.

  It was at that point that Evelyn finally came to two separate realizations about her husband. The first was that he was deeply enamored of the very Society from which she had long wanted to remove herself. He loved the propriety that was bred there, the stricture of the manners. He was exceedingly concerned, almost obsessed, with what was “the thing” and was fixated with Taste. The new Earl of Shaftesbury was extremely popular and sought after as the leading authority of male fashion and form.

  The second realization was that William had married her for one simple purpose, and it was not the duty of bearing him an heir. As she had come to suspect, she was nothing but an object of ornamentation to him, indeed a living trophy for him to show off, much as the display he created in their home from his collection of fine antiques, art and furnishings. When William Ashley-Cooper had come to New York with his father years ago, his purpose had been to obtain things that bespoke his wealth and influence.

  She was merely one of them.

  He’d followed her to England, engaged himself to her and added her to his collection. More and more he treated her as such. He paraded her and their son before Society much as he showed off his new plumbing and electric lighting.

  Eve became a thing rather than a person.

  Oh, it began simply enough. The earl chose all her clothing from style to fabric and then even went so far as to instruct her maid which outfit to lay out each day and instructed her hairdresser on a more fashionable or flattering hairstyle. It had chafed a bit but she’d let it pass not wanting to cause unnecessary ripples in their otherwise peaceful life. Perhaps she should have fought more in the beginning because subsequently, the control he asserted over her grew. As time went by, it expanded to encompass her entire life. He determined where she could go, with whom she could socialize. He became fixated with her behavior and its reflection on him.

  His countess must be perfect.

  He insisted upon it.

  Obsessively.

  When she tried to rebel or even misspoke in some social faux pas, he would have her meals withheld, restrict her freedoms or often keep her son from her. On numerous occasions he locked her in her room for days at a time before having her maid let her go, a maid chosen by William for her loyalty to him alone.

  Never one to bow down quietly, Eve endeavored again and again to talk reason to her husband: to explain to him that nobody expected her to be perfect, to insist that she was capable of making her own choices. Receiving little reaction to logic, she’d railed at him fervently over his treatment of her. Strangely, his manner to her never roused itself to anger. He was ever passive.

  Her arguments became many, his punishments coldly severe. Over time, they became more and more bizarre. There’d been the time she had shaken the American ambassador’s hand instead of offering hers daintily. Her maid had delivered twenty slaps to Eve’s open palm with a leather strap while her husband looked on with cold ferocity. Once, when she hadn’t curtsied deeply enough to a duke, he’d had her bound in a submissive bow with her cheek to the floor for a full night, the skirts of her courtly gown spread on the floor around her. He was as a maleficent schoolmaster.

  And she his unwilling student.

  Without Lawrence, her little Laurie, Eve felt as if she would have truly gone insane. Though William considered him a prime reflection of himself and his achievements, her son was her greatest joy, so adorable was he with his blond curls and green eyes. The only thing that might’ve made him more perfect in her eyes would have been if his hair were much darker and his eyes a mossier green.

  When thoughts would raise themselves, Eve banished them firmly. Nothing could change the hell that her life had become.

  In the fall of 1890, they’d taken up residence in Manhattan while the earl expanded his collections with American works of art. They lived in the house William had bought during their engagement in the low 800’s of Park Avenue, not far from her parents’ home, yet she might as well have still been living in a different country. She might see her family at balls and dinners, but never alone. Through threat and action, she’d become engulfed by William’s harsh world until there was little of herself left beneath the polish that the Earl of Shaftesbury cultivated.

  Posture: perfect. Voice: cultured, gracious. Actions: refined.

  Eve became but a shell of the girl she’d once been.

  His departure to Italy on a business trip that February had been a blessing.

  His failure to return, a miracle.

  But in the year since his death, her hopes for the future had not come to fruition: the hopes that things would change, that she might find her old self once more. A year of mourning hadn’t restored of any of those things.

  Even after all this time, she hadn’t been able to emerge from the persona her husband had erected around her. She’d withdrawn into herself. She hadn’t been able to find herself, the girl she had once been. If anything, she was even more restrained than before. Instead of feeling free, as she was sure she should, she had been unable to break through the years of training she had been given and punishment she had suffered.

  The façade he’d built remained strong.

  Cultivated perfection.

  Chapter 8

  Following the Crown’s investigation into the earl’s disappearance and assumed death, Eve and Laurie had been summoned by Queen Victoria to return to England. The Queen’s council reviewed the findings and confirmed its conclusion. William’s title and properties were conferred to Laurie. Eve was granted position as his legal guardian and trustee of the estates since William had no other surviving family. The Queen had insisted they reside in Britain at any of the earldom’s properties until the new earl reached his majority, so Eve couldn’t even return to New York for more than a long visit.

  Forced by the Queen’s hand to stay in England, she’d immediately let William’s entire staff go from each of his properties including Saint’s Haven and hired all new servants that she felt she could trust and rely on, none who knew of the humiliations her husband had rained on her. People she could trust to care for her son.

  Her little son, just five years old, was the Thirteenth Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the oldest titles in England. She was determined that he would become the best one ever. To that end, she’d hired a tutor and personally saw to his education several hours a day, but she was also determined that Laurie would be a little boy just as she had been allowed a childhood of her own. So, for the first time in his young life, they played each day as well. It was the only time she was ever able to let herself go even a bit. Eve taught him to ride his first pony—a luxury William would never have allowed since he despised riding horseback—gave him his own little bow and quiver full of arrows and was determined to travel soon to Scotland to begin his education in her favorite sport—golf.

  * * *

  Since the thought of travelling had been on her mind at that time, it had seemed almost as if the hand of fate stepped in when her dear friend Abygail Merrill from her boarding school days, now Lady Richard MacKintosh, had come to Dorset seeking a favor of her old school chum. Abby and Richard were staying not far from Saint’s Haven at her grandmother’s estate in Deal for the lying-in of her second child. Her first pregnancy, it seemed, had ended in a diffi
cult delivery, prompting the couple to stay closer to London and its more experienced doctors for this next event.

  When she had arrived, Abby had begged Eve to travel to Edinburgh for her. Two of Richard’s younger brothers had recently become engaged to a pair of sisters. Coline and Ilona Roper were the daughters of Baron Teynham, Abby had explained, a very popular family in Edinburgh. The MacKintosh family, headed by the Earl of Glenrothes, wanted to hold a full-scale formal ball and house party at their family’s ancestral home, Raven’s Craig Castle, to celebrate the engagement. It would be the height of the Edinburgh Season. Dinner, dancing, teas and so on. However, the girls had no female relatives capable of handling such a large-scale affair, and none of the other men in the family were married. Abby herself was unable to undertake the entirety of the task due to her delicate condition and imminent labors.

  The only one she trusted to see it done properly was the Countess of Shaftesbury. As incentive, Abby tempted Eve with her Edinburgh townhouse and the carte blanche the Earl of Glenrothes had proffered for the event. Anything Eve wanted would be hers.

  She’d been undecided, perhaps even frightened, if she were honest with herself. Go out in public? Back into Society? Nerves raced through her body. How could she put herself in a situation where this hated façade would be at its worse? It was one thing to be like that when William was alive and she’d no choice, but now? She wanted so badly to be herself once more, but what if she only discovered this was how she was, and was forever going to be? How could she explain that to her friend?

  Her feeble attempts to argue had been brushed aside. Even now it brought a reluctant lift to her lips to recall Abby’s tenaciousness in getting Eve to agree to do it. When the offer of the townhouse hadn’t been enough, Abby urged her to bring her own staff and bribed her with limitless finances.

  Then had come the coaxing. “Besides, Coline and Ilona Roper are sweet girls,” she had praised the pair of young brides. “You'll like them. If you don't help us to plan this ball, they’ll have to have their great-aunt Eleanor do the honors as hostess, since they have no other female relatives to help, and none of Richard’s other brothers have wives to help out. Eleanor is nearly eighty years old. She’d never be able to keep up with them.”

  “And I could?”

  “Heavens, Evelyn! Of course, you can. What are you thinking of?”

  “I’m thinking ‘Why is their mother not helping them’?”

  “She ran away with their coachman when Coline was twelve,” Abby had related, straight-faced.

  Evelyn snorted in a very unladylike way, very reminiscent of her old self. It had surprised and pleased her.

  When coaxing had failed, Abby had pulled out her trump card: guilt.

  Abby had swept a hand down her rounded figure. “I’m asking you as a friend to do this for me. Indeed, begging. I simply cannot do it. I will be here for several more weeks at least. I will barely be able to make it back to Edinburgh in time for the ball, and my strength will take some time to recover after the birth.” Evelyn merely shook her head at that weakly spoken statement. The argument may have been a good one if Abby had not managed to look disgustingly healthy while she said it.

  * * *

  Nevertheless, it had worked. So, here Eve was.

  She’d been in Edinburgh for almost two months now, working diligently on planning the engagement ball for Richard’s two brothers. She was a countess, after all, an accomplished hostess not only by William’s hand but her mother’s as well. She’d taken over Lord Richard MacKintosh’s Edinburgh townhouse and even brought some of her own staff along, since most of theirs had gone to England with them. She settled in, very much at home.

  Invitations were sent; menus for the engagement ball and for the week’s end house party were planned and printed. George II place settings and silver had been chosen, flowers ordered, centerpieces designed and commissioned, and additional staff engaged for the events at Raven’s Craig Castle. She escorted Coline and Ilona Roper to the dressmakers, helped them receive guests for their morning calls, and chaperoned them through the beginning of the Season. Their trousseaus and linens were ordered.

  She’d been busy from dawn ‘til dusk. Falling into bed exhausted was a pleasant change from the sleepless nights which had plagued her. But while she enjoyed the tasks, there’d been little opportunity to venture from her persona of perfection. In fact, the past months had only served to emphasize her social panache.

  Would she ever feel truly alive again?

  Chapter 9

  In every moment, the quality of your life is on the line.

  In each, you are either fully alive or relatively dead.

  ~ Dan Millman

  As the morning sun rose, Eve left the beach and strolled back to the castle, picking her way across the low stone outlines of what was once the bailey and outbuildings of the original fifteenth century Raven’s Craig Castle. Hundreds of years after its construction, only the main keep and two towers remained. She’d left Abby and Richard’s lovely townhouse on Moray Place in Edinburgh’s New Town district two days earlier to come to Raven’s Craig Castle to oversee the final arrangements for that evening’s ball and the house party to follow. In those two days, she had fallen in love with the historic castle. Though it was the ancestral home of the Earls of Glenrothes, the condition of the castle in years past had prompted the earldom to build a more modern estate for his primary residence at Glen Cairn. The current earl, it seemed, had taken an interest in the castle again and was in the process of restoring the ruined portions that remained. Eve wished she could be there to see it when it was done, for she felt he was doing a brilliant job of it.

  Coming through the main hall which extended from the front of the castle through to the back entrance, she could see through the open front doors an elegant carriage sitting at the end of the bridge that spanned the former moat.

  “Who has arrived, Godfrey?” she asked of the earl’s butler as she entered, offering him her bonnet, gloves and parasol. “We weren’t expecting any of the family to arrive until this afternoon.”

  “Lord and Lady Richard MacKintosh have just arrived, my lady,” the castle’s butler answered.

  “Lady MacKintosh is here?” In spite of Abby’s assurances, she hadn’t been expecting them back until long after the engagement ball was over. “Where have you put them?”

  “She has made herself quite at home in the rear drawing room.”

  “Of course, she has. It’s her home,” Eve admonished as she hurried into the room. “Abby!”

  “Evie!” her long-time friend returned with a wide grin as she struggled to rise from the chaise where she reclined.

  “Please don’t get up,” Eve urged as she approached.

  “What is that?” Abby asked with a wave of dismissal at Eve’s outstretched hands. “Give me a hug, silly girl. I’ve missed you!”

  I have missed you too! Eve thought as she awkwardly returned the embrace the other woman bestowed on her. After a moment, she sank into the hug thinking how wonderful it was to have a real friend.

  Abby gestured to the man by her side as he rose to greet Eve. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure you’ve met Richard. Have you?”

  Eve replied in the negative and turned to Richard as Abby introduced her husband. “I was so sorry I couldn’t make it to your wedding and didn’t have the opportunity to meet you before, Lord MacKintosh,” Eve addressed Abby’s husband formally as she perched on the edge of the sofa. The refreshment tray was delivered, and Eve set to portraying the perfect hostess. “I so wanted to come, but Shaftesbury did not think it a good idea.”

  Did not think it necessary, she amended mentally. The argument had cost her a week locked in her room.

  “Not at all, Lady Shaftesbury,” Richard replied. “The fault is mine for not meeting you while we were in Deal.”

  Pleasantries complete, Eve surveyed her friend. “My goodness, Abby, you look wonderful.”

  Indeed, for a woman who had given birth
to twin girls just four weeks before, Abby looked remarkably vibrant, though exhausted. “Truthfully, I am quite dog-tired, but I knew Richard would regret not making it back. Luckily, the train is fairly quick, and we had a private car, but the carriage from Edinburgh this morning was most exhausting.”

  When Abby lay her head back wearily on the chaise, Eve heard Richard whisper to his wife. “We shouldn’t have come, angel. I hate to see you suffer so. We could have missed this.”

  Eve watched as Richard caught his wife’s hand and pressed a lingering kiss to her palm. He smiled at his wife with a look of such love that Evelyn's heart twisted in a pang of envy as she turned away from the couple. How would it feel to be loved so? To have the love of a man showered on you so openly and fully? She couldn’t imagine.

  “Nonsense,” Abby replied briskly. “I’m fine, but who would have ever thought that two hours in a carriage might be more trying than twelve hours on a train?”

  “The fact that you spent the entire train journey abed in our private car might have made that leg a bit more comfortable,” her husband teased.

  Abby merely laid her head back against the chaise with a sigh, her unwillingness to argue a testament to her exhaustion. “At least I had company.”

  Finding their tender tones uncomfortable, Eve offered briskly, “Well, you should go up to your room then and rest. The evening ahead will be exhausting for everyone, and we have not your excuses to make. I’ll have a tray brought up to you and send a maid up to run you a bath.” Eve had been at Raven’s Craig for only a couple of days but found the castle’s staff to be remarkably well trained and very friendly.

  Abby raised a hand to stop Eve’s progress to the bell pull and shook her head. “Not yet, Evie. Please sit and tell me how everything has gone so far. I must say you are looking much better than when you left London. Your color is much better. Have you enjoyed yourself?”