by Mary Mackie
‘Will?’ was all she said, and he replied, ‘Good morning, my dear. Yes, Swift, I’ll have coffee – and ham and eggs and kidneys.’
Nothing was ever said about his absence – not in my hearing, anyway.
My own appetite had fled, but Father seemed hungry and disposed of a hearty breakfast. Finally, draining his cup, he blotted his mouth and tossed his napkin aside before pushing back his chair. Only then did he look directly at me, saying, ‘You’d better come and show me what you’ve been doing, Rose.’
I searched his unreadable face, wondering at the import of this. Was he angry?
‘Well, girl? Are you coming? I asked them to have the horses ready for us. It seems you’ve been riding Dandy.’
Swallowing a lump of apprehension, I said, ‘Yes. He needed exercise and—’
‘I had it in mind to sell him,’ Father said. ‘Maybe I was wrong. You always did want a horse of your own. Well, shall we go?’
And so, in his own oblique way, he gave Dandy to me.
It was a fine clear December day, frost remaining in shaded places even though the sun was bright. As we toured the farm I remained on edge and defensive, but Father neither harangued nor criticised, only pointed out one or two errors of judgement I had made. I gained the impression that, overall, he was pleased by the way I had managed.
When I confessed about the troubles with Sir Arthur, and the letter I had written, his eyes gleamed, though the rest of his face remained stern, as if carved in weathered oak.
‘He’s a bad-tempered old fool,’ he said. ‘But I’ll best him yet, see if I don’t.’
Though he never openly encouraged me to help about the farm, neither did he forbid me. Whenever I chose to ride the lanes my presence was accepted and though Father resumed the management I continued to do the books, to learn and to observe, unobtrusively. I was not filling Victor’s place, not completely, but I felt sure I was of use and that comforted me.
We didn’t speak about my future, whether I should stay or not, nor did he mention my long exile. I was home again, and that was that: ‘Least said, soonest mended,’ as Narnie would have said.
* * *
As the first snows fell, confining me more to the house, Grace came home. She had learned a few new airs and graces from her stay with the Kinnersleys, and she was forever praising their taste, their house, their clothes, their friends, and quoting her friend Miss Maria Kinnersley, who had opinions on every subject from fashion to flirting. Mama found the gossip diverting.
One afternoon shortly before Christmas we were in the parlour, Grace occupied with embroidery while Mama worked on a picture she was making from scraps of coloured paper. Narnie was mending lace on a pillowslip and I had a book in my hand, a novel borrowed from the circulating library.
White light invaded through lace curtains, shining from the snow which lay inches deep on the surrounding countryside, but the sun was shining in a blue sky and I could hear a blackbird singing. I also heard a tinkling of bells, and wheels rattling up the drive. Bored with my book, I got up to look out and see who was coming.
It was a lady, all alone, driving a neat trap with a four-in-hand of miniature ponies, their harness strung with tiny bells. She came up to the porch and stopped, set her whip in its bracket and climbed down to tether her horse, glancing up at the house as she did so.
I must have made some small exclamation, for Mama said, ‘What is it, Rose? A visitor?’
Surprised into immobility, I watched the lady take a laden basket from the trap, lifting her skirts clear of the wet ground as she stepped up to the door.
‘It’s the Princess of Wales!’
I have seldom known such fuss and bustle as they all leapt to their feet and frantically began tidying themselves and the cushions. Mama declared she was going to faint, then decided there was no time for that, while Grace went to a mirror and began to press her lips together and pinch her cheeks to bring more colour to her face.
Feeling that a personal welcome might be more pleasing on such an informal visit, rather than waiting for Swift to announce the visitor I went into the hall as the maid was opening the door. I saw her goggle and drop a wobbling curtsey before stepping back.
The princess caught sight of me and her sweet smile beamed out as she sailed across the hall with her hand extended. ‘My dear Miss Hamilton! No, no!’ she chided as I automatically bent my knees in respect. ‘Not here, remember. Here I am at home and we are friends. Look what I’ve brought – some Christmas dainties from my kitchen. I made the biscuits myself – Bertie loves them. My dear… how are you?’
That visit was the first of many. We eventually got used to welcoming Her Royal Highness into our parlour, where she made herself at home, but on that first occasion we were all over-anxious and tongue-tied until the princess’s own natural sweetness put us at ease. She did not stay long, but the brief visit cheered us all.
When she had gone, we rehearsed every word and nuance over again, all of us enchanted by our visitor. Mama and Grace were thrilled to think that we were on the verge of a close relationship with the big house. We should undoubtedly receive invitations. What opportunities that would provide for Grace and me!
We fell to discussing ball-dresses. Grace, of course, knew all about current fashions and promised us that her friend Miss Kinnersley would help us to procure the very latest patterns.
‘We really must take every care to be up-to-the-minute,’ she said. ‘All the other ladies of the district will be sure to…’ She stopped as a stray thought intruded, making her face glow as she exclaimed, ‘I quite forgot! One piece of gossip that Maria heard only recently… Listen to this, Rose, you may be interested. Mama, have you heard of a young lady named Lucinda de Crecy?’
The name raised unwelcome echoes for me. My heart seemed to pause, holding its breath, as memory swept me back to an autumn day three years before…
I had been on my way to meet my young lover, anxious as I took the familiar path through the woods. Geoffrey was going to Italy, where his aunt was sick. This was our last chance to meet. If he wasn’t there, if he didn’t come… Growing ever more desperate, I picked up my skirts and ran—
Straight into Hal Wyatt. Tall and fair, with the coldest eyes.
For a moment I struggled wildly with him, then I broke free and backed away. He was barring my path, his smile pure malice.
‘You’re in a hurry, Rose,’ he observed. ‘Where are you going in such a rush? Going to meet Dev again?’
I hung there, gaping at him stupidly, my brain paralysed with horror. ‘How—’
Hal laughed at me. ‘How do you think? He’s a friend of mine. He told me. Men do, you know. Talk about their conquests. Their little village whores.’
Fear and anger made me lash out at him, but Hal parried the blow and swung me round against a tree. He wasn’t angry, he was enjoying himself. ‘Has he told you he loves you? Has he told you he’ll marry you?’ A rich chuckle erupted from his throat. ‘You’re a fool if you believe that. Marry you? He’s as likely to marry a scullery-slave.’
I began to struggle, but he held me fast, his hands like bands around my arms.
‘Use that educated head of yours,’ he mocked me. ‘Sir Arthur has financial problems. Everyone knows that. He’s deep in debt and he needs his son to marry money. Didn’t you know they already have a bride picked out? An heiress. A very wealthy heiress. It’s been understood for years that she and Geoffrey would marry some day.’
‘It’s not true!’
‘It is true!’
‘Then what’s her name? Tell me her name!’
‘Lucinda de Crecy. The Honourable Lucinda de Crecy. Lord Elston’s daughter. Why don’t you ask Dev if she’s real or not?’
But I hadn’t had a chance to ask Geoffrey. I hadn’t seen Geoffrey. The man who came eventually and found me weeping was my brother, Victor, summoned by the backus boy, who had seen me quarrelling with Hal. Victor, ‘doing what was right’, had taken me back to face Father.<
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Emerging as if from mists, I heard Mama say, ‘No, I don’t believe I have, my love. Who is she? Another friend of the Kinnersleys?’
‘According to Maria, she’s an heiress,’ Grace confided, her face alight.
‘And did you meet her, my love?’
‘No, Mama!’ Grace laughed. ‘Maria told me about her. But I might be meeting her soon. We all might, since she’s going to be living quite near. The fact is, Miss Lucinda de Crecy… is about to announce her engagement… to…’
She paused, teasing every ounce of drama from the moment, while I stared at my book, unable to move, immobilised by a hand that seemed to have fastened about my heart.
‘To whom?’ Mama asked a little impatiently.
‘To Mr Geoffrey Devlin!’
The hand about my heart squeezed viciously. It was true then. Just as I had been allowing myself to believe again, here was proof of Geoffrey’s duplicity. Hal Wyatt hadn’t lied. Lucinda de Crecy did exist.
Four
‘Why, that is news!’ Mama cried. ‘Mr Devlin to be married. Rose, did he mention this when he was here? Did you know about it?’
‘Why should I be concerned with such inconsequential tittle-tattle?’ I retorted. ‘Besides, it may not be true.’
‘Of course it’s true.’ Grace was indignant.
‘Well, whether it is or whether it isn’t, it’s of no importance to me who Mr Devlin might marry.’
‘But aren’t you intrigued?’ Grace gasped. ‘I mean, everybody’s been speculating about it for years. There was talk about him and Felicity Wyatt, if you remember, though Mama always said that was all nonsense – wishful thinking on Mrs Wyatt’s part – didn’t you, Mama? Anyway, this is the truth: Maria Kinnersley is acquainted with someone who knows the family and she’s told me all about it. The de Crecys live a good deal in Italy, but their family home is in Kent. They’re related to the Dukes of Devonshire, and they’ve known the Devlins for years – Lady Devlin has family in Italy, too, you know. That’s where Mr Devlin met Miss de Crecy. Maria Kinnersley says the announcement has been expected for some time. Miss de Crecy is an only child, very beautiful, and very wealthy. But then that was to be expected, I suppose. Sir Arthur wouldn’t allow his only son and heir to marry a nobody, would he?’
On New Year’s Day, 1866, the betrothal was officially announced: The Hon. Lucinda de Crecy, only daughter of Lord Elston, to Mr Geoffrey Devlin, only son of Sir Arthur Devlin, Bt. As I was soon being informed by all the women of my acquaintance, New Year’s Day was the intended bride’s birthday. She was eighteen years old.
Only eighteen? – the news puzzled me. If it were true, then Lucinda had been only fourteen that summer when Geoffrey and I had been lovers. How long had the match been arranged? Just when had Geoffrey decided that he wanted to marry this wealthy child?
Not that it mattered. The announcement drained the last dregs of illusion from my heart, as surely as a pig-sticker’s knife drains the blood from a sow. In Geoffrey Devlin’s life I had been nothing but a diversion, a dalliance, an amusement to keep him from boredom.
Recalling our conversation in the firelit parlour, I concluded that my return to Orchards must have stirred his conscience – and his fears. What he wanted of me now was my silence.
* * *
Guests at Sandringham Hall that winter included members of several European royal families, together with aristocracy, artistes and any other person who happened to interest the Prince of Wales. The men went out shooting almost daily, their ladies joining them for lunch, or they would ride with the prince on inspections of his estate. Some of them joined the West Norfolk harriers for an outing after a fox. It became quite usual for us, when riding the lanes or walking the fields, to be greeted warmly by the Prince of Wales and his wife, and often introduced to their guests.
The byways were also busy with newspapermen, and spectators come for a glimpse of royalty. West Norfolk in winter had never been so frequented. However, around the end of January, when pheasant-shooting finished, our royal landlord and his wife left Sandringham to return to their court duties. The big house resumed its slumbers, life settled back to normal and winter work went on, the lambing being our main concern.
My weekly routine revolved around work on the farm and in the office. On Mondays I was usually a party to the haggling that ensued when the stock-buyers came visiting, and some weeks I went with Father to the Tuesday market in Lynn. He liked to linger, gossiping with his friends, and often dispatched me home alone on the train while he stayed behind, sometimes indulging so long at the inn that he had to stay overnight in town. I had a feeling that he saw his Tuesdays as a welcome escape from the wearying company of womenfolk.
Through a relatively mild winter the usual crop of coughs and fevers took its toll. We lost several of our own folk, among them old Beecham, the best hedger in the district; he died of influenza at the age of eighty-four, leaving his idiot son to be carted away, grinning, to the workhouse. The old man had worked all his life to prevent such an eventuality and it saddened me. But a greater sorrow was the death of children who succumbed to one disease or another.
Grace and I did what we could, visiting the sick with dainties from the killing of our pigs, or bones to make broth, or a bottle of Mrs Benstead’s home-brewed elixir. We comforted the bereaved, ran errands, sent for the doctor or the rector, or sat with the ailing.
If my homecoming still caused ripples of curiosity, I discovered an equable demeanour to be my best defence – ‘brazening it out’, as Narnie would have said.
I did not see Geoffrey Devlin, nor did I wish to. I knew that I must forbid him even from my thoughts, but that proved impossible. When I pictured him with his beautiful heiress, pain sliced me to the heart – pain that turned into anger at myself for being such a fool.
* * *
In Dersingham I renewed my acquaintance with Pam Chilvers who had been in service with us. She and Ben shared a comfortable cottage with their two small daughters and the Widow Playford, relict of the old carpenter. Their parlour was clean and cheerful, cluttered with toys and photographs and cheap ornaments, with the old woman nodding in a creaking rocking chair by the fire and the children running in and out. Above the mantel an embroidered sampler read, ‘Happy the Home where Love Abides’. And so it was.
The Chilvers’s cottage became my oasis of peace, not least because Grace would never accompany me there: my half-sister felt it not quite proper to cultivate a friendship with such people, especially when Ben’s father had been ignominiously dismissed from Orchards after protracted troubles and open insolence towards Father. The surly Amos Chilvers had never been a friend of any Hamilton. He now worked for the Devlins and had a cottage at Ambleford, so I took care only to visit his son’s family when there was no risk of his being there.
That February, Pam Chilvers produced her third child – her first son, and to everyone’s relief born without deformity. Only the middle child, tiny Alice, had inherited her father’s club foot.
While I nursed the new baby, little Alice came hobbling to my knee and clung there, beaming up at me as I repeated nursery rhymes. Her bright button face appealed dearly to my heart, making me reach out to touch her cheek as I thought of my own lost daughter.
‘You ought to get married and have one of your own, Miss Rose,’ Pam Chilvers said.
Despite a knife of pain inside me, I laughed. ‘Goodness, who would have me?’
‘Any young man’d think himself lucky to have a wife like you. My Ben, he alluss say “Miss Rose deserve someone special”, he say.’
The news made me smile. ‘That’s kind of him.’
‘I hear as how Mr Basil Pooley is a regular caller at Orchards,’ she remarked. ‘And that there Mr Turnbull, too. Fine young men, both of ’em, and both doin’ well for themselves, so I hear tell.’
‘You hear a deal too much,’ I chaffed. Concentrating on her sewing, she formed a delicate stitch and drew the thread through in a smooth, practised motion
whose skill I envied. ‘They say that Mr Hal Wyatt got himself wed over in America.’
‘Yes, that’s so,’ I agreed.
Her needle bit cloth again, paused, and her hands relaxed as she looked across at me. ‘That’s not my place to say, and I hope you’ll not take it wrong, Miss Rose. But me and my Ben, we’re fond of you. You’ve always been a friend. So mebbe I can say… we was glad your father sent you away. Away from harm.’ She glanced at old Mrs Playford, whose rocking chair had paused in its creaking rhythm. From beneath the lace of her mob cap, the old woman was watching intently. ‘Pity nobody done the same for Ben’s sister, Meg,’ Pam added, and the silence lengthened as she smoothed out the work in her lap.
Puzzled, I tried to recall what I knew of Meg Chilvers. ‘She’s a housemaid at the Grange, is she not?’
‘She was,’ Pam amended, and as she lifted her head I saw her mouth tighten with anger. ‘Truth is, Miss Rose, she was led astray. Got herself in the family way. Got herself dismissed.’
Before I could find words to reply, she went on, ‘’Course, he denied it all. Hopped off to America, quick as you please. Leavin’ her stranded. That was terrible to see her, a-cryin’ and a-mopin’, wonderin’ what was to become of her. Our Davy – my brother, Davy Timms… he offered to marry her and give the child a name. But she wun’t have him. Well, you’ve seen him, Miss Rose, hen’t you? You seen him at the station, the night you come home. Lost his good looks, hen’t he? Meg called him a monster. She say, “I’d as soon walk the streets as wed with a man what look like somethin’ out of a bad dream”, she say. Then she run off. Went to London. Ben went after her, but…’ Glancing at the door, she lowered her voice to add, ‘They found her in the Thames, Miss Rose. Drownded. She died like a dog with no one nigh nor by to help her. All on account of that Mr Hal Wyatt.’
Hal Wyatt?! I had known he was a rake, but this… Appalled by the tragic story, I could think of nothing to say.