by Deryn Lake
And as she had vanished from view, leaving the heir to Sutton Place hopelessly staring after the retreating wheels, from Mary Webbe Weston’s trembling fingers had fallen a ball of paper that had once been a letter. She knew every word of it by heart. It said:
My dear Mary,
I am writing to your parents and John Joseph by the same post but wanted to tell you personally that I am once more to be stationed abroad. The young Queen of Portugal — she has yet to see sixteen years — is widowed and all the world presses for her hand. It would seem that her many suitors require a translator and as the British Foreign Office wishes to maintain its interest — I am sure you will mentally add an exclamation mark as do I — I am to play Dan Cupid.
I enjoyed being with you all very much on my last leave — so did my mother and father, Rob and Violet. But sadly it seems to me that at least one year will pass, if not two, before I see Sutton Place again.
I know that when I return you will be married — one of my premonitions — and so, in one sense, I bid you adieu but eagerly await my meeting with a new member of your family. My fondest affection to you all,
Jackdaw.
She had wanted to die. Why did his ridiculous second sight not tell him that she loved him? And then came the horrible suspicion that perhaps it had — and that this was his way of ending her sad little hopes.
If only anger had followed in the wake of that thought. But it had not. If she could have but considered him silly, playing ridiculous Army games and trying to speak a hundred languages as if they were his native tongue. But she could not. He was the most sensitive man of her limited acquaintance; irresistibly gentle, irresistibly tough. A combination fascinating to any woman on earth. She adored him wildly and forever.
She had answered an advertisement in The Times: ‘Gentleman residing in Paris, requires Companion for his two daughters, one aged three years, the other three months. Full staff kept, nurserymaid but no nanny. English household.’
She had replied instantly. If Jackdaw could leave the country for two years, then so could she. She would show him her mettle. And, as if fortune favoured her bravado, the answer from France had come by return offering her the post of paid Companion in the household of Mr Robert Anthony.
Mrs Webbe Weston had fallen into a prompt but elaborate swoon on hearing Mary’s request to go abroad and it had only been the intervention of her father that had saved the day.
‘Strange business. There ’tis. Nothing here. Girl’s life.’
So Mary had accepted and arrangements had been finalized by letter. Miss Webbe Weston was to commence her employment on October 1, 1835, and passage out would be paid by her father. Passage home — should that prove necessary — by her employer. And that was how she came to be beside her brother, who stood so wretched, staring back towards England’s fast-receding coastline with such a dire look in his eye.
Yet, even as she watched him, he braced himself. He had been made an utter fool by Marguerite Trevelyan, but still the blood of Westons — however thinly — flowed in him and Mary saw him square up his shoulders and deliberately turn his back on the past.
He was taking the most adventurous step of his hitherto uneventful life: he was going direct to Vienna, with no prior application to the Inhaber of a Regiment — which was the stipulation for Catholic gentlemen of extraction foreign to that of Austria — to join, or attempt to, that crack force of fighting men, the Imperial Army of the Emperor.
‘Will you be happy?’ Mary asked, lost in admiration for his resolve in the face of humiliation.
‘I will endeavour. If all else fails I shall buy a house in Vienna where we may live, the four of us — grumpy old bachelor and his three spinster sisters.’
‘Heaven forbid!’
‘At least it would be better than rotting in the shadow of Sutton Place.’
‘Oh yes — anything but that. Oh, John Joseph, is it the curse that has brought us to this?’
‘Who knows.’ He kicked irritably at a knot in the deck’s planking. ‘Who can ever know the truth about what is half legend and half supposition?’
‘But if it is true — and I think it is — what of poor Matilda and Caroline? You cannot be serious about a house for all of us to share?’
John Joseph tipped his sister’s chin so that her eyes looked directly into his.
‘Better that than dying slowly as slaves to an ageing mother.’
‘But what will become of them really?’
‘Caroline will secure herself a good match, have no fear. She has beauty and ability — and she knows how to use both.’
‘You sound so bitter about women.’
‘I shall be bitter until the moment I die. And yet, for all Marguerite has done, I still love her. I would have her back tomorrow if she would consent.’
‘But what of your pride?’
‘With her I have none.’
Mary turned to stare out to sea. ‘At least I have that. I could never beg Jackdaw.’
‘Then in that you are fortunate. Marguerite has made me a creature with no respect for his soul.’
Mary squeezed his hand.
‘I pray that you will meet somebody some day. John Joseph, do you remember the dreams you used to have? When we first went to Sutton Place, and shared the nursery so long ago?’
‘What of them?’
‘Do you remember you dreamed of having a wife? You said she had red hair and that it was beautiful. May that not come true?’
‘If it does then I am doomed.’
‘Because part of the dream was of death on a battlefield?’
‘Yes.’
Mary turned thoughtfully towards him. ‘We must all die one day so you could say, by that token, that all of us are doomed. Perhaps to go in battle would be fine. Clean and brave and without lingering.’
‘But it was not quite of that nature,’ answered John Joseph quietly.
From somewhere deep in the ship a bell sounded.
‘Come along. We are called to dine.’
John Joseph proffered his arm. ‘May I escort you below?’
‘Only if you will propose a toast?’
‘And what is that?’
‘That John Joseph and Mary Webbe Weston may return from their journeyings in triumph.’
‘I’ll agree to that.’
He paused at the top of the steep steps that would lead them, jostling with the other passengers, into the quarters below deck.
‘Mary ...’
‘Yes?’
‘Is it better to love like the proverb — to the point of self-destruction — rather than not at all?’
Just for a moment she reminded him of the bossy little girl she once had been — for her mouth took on a firm, compressed look.
‘I know nothing of the world, as you can vouch, but to me the answer can only be yes.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Because otherwise one may as well not have drawn first breath. What else can we give to life if it is not our fine feelings?’
‘But those can be expressed through art and literature, surely?’
‘But what would art and literature be without the pains and pleasure of love?’
For the first time in a long while a smile crept round John Joseph’s mouth.
‘You are a very astute young woman for all your sheltered upbringing.’
Mary laughed up at him suddenly.
‘We are the legatees of Sutton Place, John Joseph. If it can give us nothing else beside its darker side, surely it can give us knowledge of old truths.’
‘I’m glad you think as you do,’ he said, linking his arm with hers. ‘Without the benefit of wine let me say the following: here’s to endeavour and a hostage to fortune; here’s to a finger-snap in the Devil’s nostril; here’s to destiny — and the sweet, sweet blood of challenge.’
‘And here’s to winning against the chance.’
And with that the heir to Sutton Place and his sister plunged into the steamy depth
s of the cabins below to drink to their new lives and to good fortune.
10
The beginning of a new age — of an era that would see Britain take the great step from the Age of Elegance to the Age of Empire — began quietly enough.
In the hours just after dawn the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, went by closed carriage to Kensington Palace and there a little girl — under five feet tall and only one month past her eighteenth birthday — was awakened from her sleep. Putting a shawl over her nightgown she received him in an ante-room and he knelt to kiss her hand.
‘The King is dead,’ he said. ‘Long live the Queen.’
She tried to look dignified but a big smile that showed all her teeth spread over her face. The days of her prison-like existence were over; the tyranny of her elders was at an end. And a few minutes later, after Melbourne had gone and when the Duchess of Kent — her mother — called out in her guttural German voice, ‘Vikki, go back to bed,’ the reply came, ‘No Mother. I wish to watch this morning come up.’ The rule of Her Majesty Queen Victoria had begun as it would continue.
In that very same morning, the British people — unaware of the change that had taken place during the night — rose from their beds and set about their various affairs.
Anne, the Countess Waldegrave, stared out over the green lawns of Strawberry Hill and sighed. Another dreary day avoiding a quarrel with George — who had run the family into hideous debt with his extravagance and wild living; another day of desperately missing the Earl; another day of wondering how on earth she was going to marry off Annette — now aged nineteen — without a proper dowry, not to mention Horatia who had developed a shapely bust and could no longer be thought of as a child.
Another day when she would express her fears for the future of the girls out loud to her son. And another day when he would merely give his attractive grin and say, ‘Don’t worry, Mother. They’re pretty; they can always go into the theatre, you know.’
‘I can’t think how you could speak so,’ she would answer. ‘They are your sisters — not common little nobodies.’
George would always laugh uproariously at that and say, ‘The day that being the sister of the Earl Waldegrave cuts any ice in polite society is the day I’ll know I’m getting old.’
Then Anne would stamp her foot and storm out of the room — just as she had done with his father before him. She considered it quite the most dreadful fate in the world to be a young widow with three unmarried daughters and two irresponsible sons.
And at Pomona House — though very far from being a widow, as Mr Webbe Weston (‘Good health? Very! Daily riding. That’s the trick’) never had a day’s illness — Mrs Webbe Weston had similar thoughts. She could hardly afford at present — should Matilda or Caroline be lucky enough to receive a proposal — to dress them for the wedding and give them a slice of cake afterwards, let alone the dowry. Since the departure of Mrs Trevelyan, Sutton Place had only had one tenant and now stood empty, so there wasn’t even a month’s rent to ease the situation. What a wretched affair it was, to be sure. She gave a deep sigh.
But there were, at least, two rays of sunshine. Mary, thankfully — and she felt guilty for thinking like that for surely every mother should wish to dance at her daughter’s wedding? — had spared them the expense and had married in France. Mr Robert Anthony, Miss Webbe Weston’s employer, had turned out to be a widower of only thirty-five and within six months Mary had forgotten about her girlhood passion for Jackdaw and slipped his ring upon her finger.
And as for John Joseph — well, what a triumph! He had taken to the Army as if it had been what he wanted always.
‘Which perhaps,’ Mrs Webbe Weston thought, ‘it might well be.’
Despite the fact that he had not applied beforehand he had been accepted into the Emperor’s 3rd Light Dragoons and had — in the two years that had passed since he joined up — risen to the rank of Captain. He had justified his slow start completely. He was not twenty-four till next month and yet he was already an established officer and gentleman. He had more than caught up as a soldier of fortune.
In Hastings Helen Wardlaw had slightly similar thoughts to those of the two other mothers. Not that she had any money worries — the General’s pay was more than enough to keep them in comfort and both Rob and Jackdaw were totally self-supporting. No, it was really about how her children were growing up that she was concerned. Or, to be perfectly honest with herself, it was how Jackdaw was developing. They had been so close when he was a child but from the time he had gone into the Army a type of inner privacy had grown in him — almost as if he were deliberately taking a step away from her.
He was not like other young men. He had never had a sweetheart — though she suspected that he was well favoured by the girls that followed the regiment — and somehow he had grown more and more introspective. He was like a man with a secret and she often wondered if he was looking for something hidden. She thought about the girl he had mentioned when he had been a little boy — the girl he had seen as a new-born baby. She had been called Polly, or something of that sort. Was he still thinking of her?
Helen got up from her chair and went downstairs to where Violet was practising the pianoforte. Seating herself on the stool by her daughter’s side Helen said, ‘Have you had a letter from Jackdaw recently, my love? The wretch has not written to me in a month.’
‘Yes, Mama. He wrote from Portugal that he was off on quite the most secret of postings and could not even hint as to where. Did I not tell you?’
‘No. What with that and Rob transferred to the Bengal Cavalry, I wonder if we shall see either of them this year.’
‘Poor Mama. Do you miss your boys?’
‘Of course I do.’ Helen hugged the little dark-headed creature to her. ‘But you are more than enough consolation, my dearest.’
Violet kissed her on the cheek and said, ‘But nonetheless it is worrying about Jackdaw, isn’t it?’
*
‘Good Heavens,’ said Mary. ‘I have never seen anybody so divine. John Joseph, you are handsome enough to make a woman faint.’
She pushed her brother to arm’s length, twirling him as if he were a Maypole. He was a vision in a uniform of light blue, frogged across the chest with gold and trimmed with black fur at the neck, wrist and borders. In the style of the Dragoons and Hussars the jacket was draped over his shoulder, only one arm being in the sleeve, the other hanging loose and casually, while his free hand rested lightly on the hilt of his sword. In the other he carried his shako — such an attractive style of headgear, Mary thought — gorgeously decorated with gold frogging and chains and topped by a cockade of tall black feathers.
‘What a dash!’ she breathed rapturously.
John Joseph clicked his heels and gave a military bow. He had not set eyes on his sister since he had escorted her into the home of Robert Anthony two years before. Now he was rather amused to see that she was huge with child and that her old habit of giving orders had returned, encouraged no doubt by the fact that she had her own establishment, complete with husband and two stepchildren. To say nothing of a houseful of servants.
‘I am glad you approve.’
‘You look better in every way.’
He had lost the hunted air which had come upon him during his affair with Marguerite. Now he stood up straight and looked around with a merry blue eye, while his skin was no longer pale but tanned and firm. He still sported a moustache which suited him enormously as he had grown up enough to carry it off stylishly.
‘You wait till they see you in England. Mama will swoon over the sherry and Papa will say: “Well done. Real man. Heart bursting. Could weep.”’
They both laughed and John Joseph said, ‘How are they? I have had so few letters that I know little. What has happened to Sutton Place?’
‘I believe it had one more tenant after Mrs Trevelyan — who has produced a child at her age, which everyone says cannot possibly be Lord Dawe’s.’
John Joseph groun
d his teeth but made no reply and Mary went on, ‘Caroline wrote to me that everyone believes it to be her coachman’s — a great hulking brute who could impregnate a harem — but that Lord Dawe is as pleased as punch and calls the wretch “Papa’s little miracle”.’
John Joseph looked fractionally sick and Mary, realizing rather suddenly how tactless she was being, changed the subject.
‘But Sutton Place is empty again and in a terrible state, I believe.’
‘And what of Cloverella?’
‘She wandered off after you went away, apparently not saying goodbye to anybody, just taking her things and leaving. Old Blanchard thinks she may have gone back to Wiltshire to stay with her mother’s people. A bit of a mystery altogether.’
‘How strange.’
‘Mama wondered if she could have been expecting a child. John Joseph, you may be frank with me. Could that have been possible?’
‘Are you saying could I have been the father in such an event?’
‘Please speak truly.’
‘Then the answer is yes, Mary. Towards the end of the affaire — when Marguerite was refusing to see me — I did sport with Cloverella ...’
‘John Joseph!’
‘There’s no need to look shocked. I lost my virginity to her years ago, if you really want to know.’
‘I don’t think I do really want to know. Certain things are best left to the imagination.’
Her belly suddenly heaved as the child within her moved strenuously and John Joseph, patting it with his hand, said, ‘Seems to be catching, doesn’t it?’
They both shrieked with laughter — just as they used to in the nursery of Sutton Place — and it was on this scene that Robert Anthony walked in, not quite sure what face he ought to be wearing.
He was a stout, jolly young man with rather a squirrel-like appearance — bright of eye and inclined to dart about in fits and starts — and was an ideal husband for Mary, ignoring her when she was in a mood to give commands while spoiling her with sweetmeats and presents when she was kind. Seeing that all was well with her now he joined in the laughter heartily.