by Katy Moran
‘No,’ she said, pushing him away, ‘no. It can’t happen again, do you see? I loved her so much, and it must never happen again. Why do you not understand?’
And so Hester turned her back; and Crow saw that she was quite irrevocably destroyed by the life he had led her to, and he lay awake watching the room fill with unrelenting sunlight.
66
The sun had long since risen above the jumble of London rooftops one saw from the morning-room at the Russian Embassy. Dorothea always ordered breakfast to be served there for those who wanted it, claiming that no one could bear the gloom of the dining-room so early in the day. Still wearing the clothes he had ridden out in the night before, Kitto came in and pulled out the chair furthest from Nadezhda’s, who had been breakfasting alone at the polished walnut table beneath the window, early sunlight striking off the silver knives and forks.
‘I suppose you’ve been out all night,’ Nadezhda said over the rim of her coffee cup, watching him spread greengage jam on fresh bread: he was astonishingly hungry. ‘I, on the other hand, was sent to bed after supper. Countess Lieven told me I must keep my good looks for when she introduces me to London society.’
‘It sounds like a dead bore,’ Kitto said, tossing the letter he had found in the holland-covered quiet of Lamorna House on to the table; doubtless it was only another bill he hadn’t a cat in hell’s chance of paying until the next quarter of his allowance was due. ‘At least you don’t have the headache I’ve earned for myself.’ He let Dorothea’s footman pour his coffee, pushing away an alarmingly distinct series of memories: the inside of White’s, scant details of a disreputable supper party in Will MacAllen’s rooms at the Albany where Crow’s name had been liberally toasted and Castlereagh recommended to eternal damnation; after that, there had been powdered limbs, bare feet and perfumed hair, crumpled linen, and not Nadezhda lying at his side on the grass beneath a vast Russian sky.
Frowning, Nadezhda tugged at the tight, puffed sleeve of her gown as she pored over that day’s copy of the Morning News. ‘It says here,’ she said, ‘that some Archbishop of Canterbury has proclaimed that the Royal Marriages Act ought to be contravened in the light of the current constitutional crisis invoked by the French Occupation. He says my mother’s marriage should be declared legal, and myself legitimate. Who is the Archbishop of Canterbury? Should I care what he has to say? And how absurd it all is when she was never even married in the first place.’
‘It means they’re turning public opinion towards you,’ Kitto said. ‘I don’t know how they’ll do it, but they will.’
‘Lord Lamorna said they won’t claim the tsar is my father, but one of his cousins who died, and that he and Princess Sophia were married in secret. I suppose I’ll have to give up my own church and join yours, but I’d say a grand duke would do just as well for you all as the tsar.’
‘Something damned Gothic like that, I should think,’ Kitto said, ‘but anything’s better than Castlereagh.’
Nadezhda put down her coffee cup with a rattle of china against gilded saucer. ‘Oh, let’s not,’ she said, looking at him, her nut-brown face alive with tension. ‘Please let’s not just pretend none of this has happened, Kitto.’
He remembered her standing before him in the meadow outside Chudovo, saying that she would marry him. She must have known then that she could never do so. ‘What in Christ’s name do you want me to say?’
‘I don’t know.’ She grasped the handle of her knife, sawing distractedly at the edge of the table, then let it fall to her a plate with a discordant clatter of silver and ivory.
They both fell silent at the sounds of footsteps in the marble-tiled hallway outside, and for a moment she held his gaze, and Kitto knew he would soon have to say goodbye to her, this riddle of a girl he had ridden with across the great Russian steppe, and that in all likelihood it would be years before they met again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, quite suddenly. ‘Whatever happens, I want you to know that I loved you first, more than anyone.’
‘I know,’ Kitto said. ‘Nadia, I know you did.’ He leaned forwards across their coffee cups, crooking his forefinger beneath her chin, turning her face up to his. He kissed her, one last time, beneath the stunned gaze of Dorothea’s footman, and they broke apart just moments before the doors were opened and Dorothea herself came in, staring with icy disbelief from one to the other, as though she had seen them through three inches of lacquered oak – perhaps it had been the expression on her footman’s face that gave them away so comprehensively?
‘Tea, if you please, James,’ Dorothea said in her scarcely accented English. ‘I suppose you won’t have heard the news about Prince Volkonsky and Countess Orlova, Kitto? Nadezhda, you won’t know him, although of course you know the countess.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Tatyana and I were at the convent together – more years ago now than I care to recall.’
‘Volkonsky?’ Kitto said, and Countess Orlova’s gilded ballroom felt like a half-forgotten dream here in London with the grey skies and familiar streets, and the swift exchange of insults between the link boys and a butcher’s lad delivering rolled joints of beef and hams along the street.
‘He’s dead,’ Dorothea said. ‘They’re both dead. My poor husband was quite distraught this morning – Sasha was a cousin of his, you understand. It’s said he led a suicidal rearguard attack on the French as they reached the border with Sweden, all because he was grieving for my dear Tatyana, who died only the week before, quite by herself, with only her maid. The grand duchess may write me as many letters as she chooses, but no one will ever convince me that Tatyana didn’t take her own life – it’s appalling. People can be so cruel, and so hypocritical, and I’m sure she was no worse than anyone else, but without reputation a woman is nothing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kitto said, for want of anything else, not sure what other part he was to play in this tragedy that had moved even Dorothea Lieven to tears.
‘Well, love is a game for children and idiots, they say. And usually both.’ With that pointed utterance, Dorothea sat down and began to peel a pear from the silver dish with her knife and fork, and had quite recovered herself by the time Hester came in alone, clad in a half-mourning gown of light grey silk.
‘Will you only consider this?’ With a surprising dose of her old crispness of manner, Hester let a folded letter fall on to the linen tablecloth. ‘There’s one for you, too.’ She tossed one on to Kitto’s plate, and he began to sincerely wish that he’d never come in to breakfast.
‘Where’s Crow?’ he asked, wary. ‘What’s he done?’
‘You may well ask!’ Hester stabbed at slices of preserved oranges in honey, and let them fall one by one on to her plate as if each were slaughtered prey. ‘He’s gone.’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Dorothea said, looking up sharply from her tea, which she still drank with lemon and honey in the Russian fashion, even after so many years in London. ‘Really? What has he done now?’
‘He has behaved with his usual high-handed disregard for anyone else’s feelings.’ Hester spread butter on to her bread with savage flicks of the ivory-handled knife. ‘Kitto, read yours.’
He had already unfolded the letter, staring down at his brother’s familiar, untidy handwriting, listening to the clock on the mantelpiece tick with methodical unconcern as he read. You’ll perceive that it will be better for Hester—
‘Blame myself for his death?’ Hester snapped, and Kitto guessed that her own letter had mirrored the entirely breathtaking contents of his own. ‘I’d be more likely to help him on his way. I’ll scalp him. I’m completely serious.’ She passed her own letter to Dorothea. ‘Go on, read it, I don’t care.’
‘But he’s giving up everything for you.’ Dorothea stared down at the folded sheet. ‘He grants you permission to divorce him, Hester, with you to retain your title and possession of Nansmornow until Kitto marries, at which time as you would become the dowager, with Borlaze, Hexham or Oakhurst at your disposal, should the sma
ll dower house at Nansmornow not please you.’ She paused, as if it were a struggle to choose the right words. ‘My dear, he is behaving as no man ever does. He’s extinguishing himself in every way that he can without actually taking his own life.’
Nadezhda just watched them all in silent astonishment, and Kitto let his letter fall to the table and stood up, dizzy with mounting fury. ‘He’s renouncing the title so that I inherit,’ he said. ‘I’m going after him.’
‘Of course he can’t renounce the title,’ Dorothea said sharply. ‘That’s not even possible. It’s not legal. He’s raving. The only way Crow can cease to be Earl of Lamorna is by dying.’
‘Which is what he’s been trying to do for weeks – can’t you see that?’ Kitto said. He couldn’t bear to repeat what Crow had written to him, not before Dorothea, not even before Nadezhda:
Left to my own devices I would put period to my existence; however, I have been brought to realise that this would cause distress to those whose regard I scarcely deserve. Instead I must content myself and look after the interests of all those who depend upon me by organising affairs so that my life appears extinguished.
Kitto crumpled the folded paper. ‘He’ll get all his papers in order and that’ll be it. He speaks six languages, you know. Six at least. He’ll join some foreign regiment as a sell-sword and get himself killed just like Prince Volkonsky did. I’m going after him.’
‘But how do you know where he’s gone?’ Nadezhda said.
‘Cornwall,’ Kitto said, looking at Hester. ‘He needs the attorney. He’ll have to go to Nancarrow’s in Penzance before he does anything. Who in God’s name does he think he is, moving us all about the place as if we were his knights and pawns, without any consideration for what any of us might actually want? Are you coming? He travels damnably fast – it won’t be a comfortable journey if we want to reach Isaac Nancarrow before Crow gets to him.’
‘Do you really think I care how comfortable it is?’ Hester spoke with measured rage. ‘You’re escorting me to Cornwall after breakfast whether you like it or not.’
*
The tsar’s daughter stood by Dorothea’s side at the library window overlooking the street below. Together, they watched the carriage roll away and Nadezhda remembered Kitto mounting the golden Turkoman mare behind her, and the warm heat of his body against hers, the hard muscle of his belly and the strength in his arms on either side of her as he had clung to the mare’s mane. She knew quite well that the moments of greatest freedom in her life had come and gone, now all quite unattainable like so many dandelion seeds blowing away on the wind.
Sighing, Dorothea passed her a handkerchief. ‘He’s just a boy, darling. I don’t promise anything about who you’ll one day have to marry, regardless of whether we get you on the throne or not, but there will be others. Pretty ones too, as long as you’re careful about them.’
‘I’ve told what feels like such an awful lot of lies,’ Nadezhda said, ‘but the worst one was when I said I’d marry him.’ She turned to Dorothea, as fierce as she was tearstained. ‘It wasn’t completely a lie, you know. I did want to, in my heart.’
‘I’m afraid that with your parentage you would never have been given a choice about something so important as marriage, any more than I had a say myself. Captain Helford was only so incensed about being treated as a chess piece because he has always expected to order his own existence. You, my dear, must learn as I did to direct the course of the game even as others move you about the board. I’m only sorry you had to endure Ilya Rumyantsev,’ Dorothea went on. ‘But we women must learn greater strength than men ever suspect. You performed this duty with your father’s blessing, and it will all be to the greater glory of Russia.’
‘Poor Countess Orlova, though,’ Nadezhda said. ‘Did she really kill herself, do you think?’
Dorothea turned to her with a considering expression that made Nadezhda suddenly afraid. ‘Perhaps it was just as well Lord Lamorna plunged Tatyana into a scandal. Did you not know there were rumours that she and Sasha Volkonsky associated with the Green Lamp? That even Alexei Pushkin does, too? Those people might seem like only silly, romantic fools, but they are rebels who seek to undermine your father, Nadia. Sometimes even a tragedy is for the best.’
Nadezhda looked down at her feet, so unfamiliar in stockings and slippers of pale satin, filling in the yawning space between what Dorothea said and what she meant. ‘Countess Orlova wasn’t a wicked woman,’ she said firmly. ‘What if she’d told all of St Petersburg that I was riding around dressed as a boy? Then even my father couldn’t have saved my reputation.’ Just how would she have then been disposed of? Strangled or stabbed, and put into the cold Neva? She wished with all her soul that she had ridden away down the street with Kitto and the sister-in-law he loved so much.
‘Darling, you were such a clever girl. Don’t upset yourself by thinking Tatyana acted out of any concern for your happiness.’ Nadezhda stood very still as Dorothea caressed a loose curl near Nadezhda’s ear. ‘But let me drop you a hint,’ the countess went on. ‘You know your papa loves you. Wouldn’t he be saddened to learn that you of all people felt sympathy with someone like Tatyana Orlova, who had no self-control or respect for her own honour, let alone for her tsar? Are you not obedient to him at all times?’
‘Yes, madam. Of course I should never feel sympathy for such a person.’ Nadezhda closed her eyes against the warning and thought of Kitto standing behind her in the green waters of the River Kerest, and of the moment she had turned to face him when it seemed that she was no longer acting out a part ordained for her by others, but living just as she wished, free as a bird on the wing. And so she had done, even if only for a little while.
67
It was early in the morning yet, with seagulls wheeling and skrailing in the grey sky, but everyone on the cobbled quay stared at Catlin as she stepped off the mail-boat with Morwenna in her arms, the maid sucking two fingers: a bad habit in a child, but after so many months of hiding and then keeping quiet and out of the way of the brothers at the priory, what choice had there been other than to let the maid soothe herself as best she could?
One of the old boys from the mackerel-boat alongside the quay limped over after a muttered consultation with his fellows. ‘Word was you’d drowned on the Curlew, maid,’ he said, eyeing Catlin critically from the crown of her head down to the worn-out toes of her boots. ‘You and the little tacker.’
‘Well, you can see that we’re still living and breathing, Mr Simmens,’ Catlin said, wondering just how many times she would have to have this conversation.
Unperturbed, he jerked his head at the cart, half loaded with creels of shining mackerel. ‘Word from London is that his lordship is still like to hang,’ he said. ‘But he’d want to be sure you’d got home safely, Mistress Rescorla. Nat’s driving the trap over to St Buryan directly: he’ll take you to Nansmornow, my dear.’
Catlin found herself thanking him even as she wondered if her letter had ever reached Master Kitto; in fact, she longed to walk alone along the coast path, with the ocean turquoise beneath and all this heavy wide grey sky above. Catlin wouldn’t have minded the rain in her face, but the maid was tired, pushing her round head into the hollow beneath Catlin’s chin as she clung to her fichu. And so Catlin was handed up into the cart and sat between two creels of mackerel with the child in her lap, the skirts of her gown spangled with scales, and her lungs full of the fresh-fish scent of salt water. The boys on the quay stared at her as though she were St Piran come walking smack up the beach, clean out of the sea. As the cart rolled away everything she saw seemed to pass all mixed up together, as though someone had swirled a brush through the middle of one of Hester’s paintings before it had dried. It was all a whirl of grey granite walls speckled with lichen, and cobbled streets, and the honeyed scent of gorse flowers when they left Penzance behind and came up on to high ground above Newlyn where all the little fields were split with flower-strewn hedges: cornflower, yarrow and crimson sea campi
on. They passed the turning down to Lamorna Cove and the village of Nantewas, and up the hill past the Rosemerryn cottages just within sight beyond the trees, and the lane snaked around to the right-hand side, leaving the coastline and tacking inland to St Buryan. Here were the gates of Nansmornow, just where the lane began to creep inland. The cart rolled to a halt, and Nat Simmens helped her down, so that Catlin stood by the grey granite bulk of the lodge-house, hefting Morwenna against her hip, watching the cart roll off down the lane.
‘Where, Cat?’ Morwenna asked, and Catlin ignored her nerves. After half a year apart, would the child even remember her parents? Not that she’d see his lordship again, but Hester might yet be safe. Perhaps there was even a letter waiting here at Nansmornow, perhaps there had been a little bit of good to come out of these months, which had been like living through a succession of fevered nightmares: just as you thought one was over, another began, and no matter how much a body sweated and wept it never seemed to end.
‘You’re home, maid,’ Catlin said, wishing she’d had half an hour to wash the child’s mucky linen cap, even as she wondered where she herself would go, in the end. Who could be housekeeper to a dead man and a missing woman? In reality, Hester would not be here, could not be here, and yet the maid belonged to Hester and his lordship. Catlin herself would not be allowed to keep her: there would be letters, and attorneys, and testaments, and the worst outcome would be the child sent to Hester’s mother’s family, the Dukes of Albemarle, who would treat her as less than human and doubtless clap her up in some seminary as they had done with Hester’s beautiful, half-Irish mother. Innocent of all that lay in store, Morwenna sat down on the carriage drive and began to play with sycamore seeds drifted into the grass as Catlin stood like some kind of mazey fool, gazing at the great wrought-iron gate. She had no notion what would even happen to Nansmornow: surely it would pass to Master Kitto, but a wild boy away at war would not want to keep up a family seat the size of this place. It would be let out, or all the furniture sheathed in holland covers and most of the staff laid off, and Mr Hughes would be gone, off back to London, she supposed, to work for another fashionable family. He’d doubtless left months ago.