The groom unloaded our luggage from the trap that had taken us to the estate railway station; and the porter carried it to the platform.
‘At last! We can escape from the House and all its claims on us!’ I exclaimed.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Harriet agreed. Her smile was unnervingly polite.
It was true, of course, that we were only on our way to the home of one of my cousins. It had also to be said that Barrington was not my favourite relative – his military career, now sadly over, had taken him in a different direction from Mark and me – and it was equally true that neither of us was looking forward to it. If I was going to feel constrained, how much harder for Harriet must any weekend house party be. Yet if I praised her for her bravery she would certainly look at me askance, and perhaps might never forgive me. Socially, she might well feel awkward amongst all these leisured – indeed, idle – ladies because she was simply not one of them; her family had not had silver spoons at the ready, but a ladle of workhouse gruel if you were lucky. Indeed, unlike some of her fellow guests who could trace their roots back to the Conqueror, she had no record of any parents at all. Sometimes she claimed she was like Harriet Smith, a character in Emma, her least favourite Jane Austen novel, in that she was the natural daughter of somebody. But she had been loved, not by a spoilt brat of a girl but by hard-working women – housekeepers and others who had seen that she had the potential to be much more than just another tweeny. They had saved her from the predations of the employer who had deflowered her before she even knew what the word virgin might mean. I daily thanked God for these women, and for others who protected her, including the late Lord Croft, who had gently and chastely cherished her brain as if she were his own daughter. As a result of her amazing capacity for self-education, once she had put her housemaid days behind her, and taken over the running of the House, she had always been her own woman. She had never been ‘just’ my wife – however much I would be honoured if she were simply that. But I could never ask her to give up the authority she had enjoyed over the Croft household for nine years or more, with the right – indeed the duty – to speak her mind over matters pertaining not just to the household, but also to the new village being built on Lord Croft’s land. When she became one of the trustees overseeing the general affairs of the House and the estate, yet more responsibilities fell on her shoulders. Yes, at least as many as fell on mine, but she dealt with everything rather better, if I were honest with myself, than I could ever have done. But now this woman, in every respect my equal, risked becoming a mere cipher in the eyes of some of Barrington’s friends. Perhaps worse, she might be patronized by some as one of the poet’s Angels in the House – ‘that wretched Coventry Patmore’, she called him, with a venom that was not at all angelic. Or there might be an even more difficult problem. Rank snobbery.
Taking her hand, I kissed it. ‘Do you think Jemima’s toothache is real? Or is it just an excuse not to come with us? And can you manage without her?’
‘I managed without a lady’s maid for years enough, my love. You may not manage your own studs, but you are becoming a dab hand with lacing and buttons.’ She paused. ‘Actually, I suspect that a maid will be – what was that French term you used? De rigueur? If it is, I am sure our host’s housekeeper will provide a substitute. I would, in her place. And yes, I did believe the girl: her face was swollen and she was bracing herself for a trip to Shrewsbury and the dentist’s chair. Her eyes were puffy with tears too: she had really been looking forward to the excitement of a trip away from the House.’
I turned to face her, keeping her hand in mine. ‘But you are not, are you? Is there anything I can do to make it easier?’
‘If I can face the loathsome Lady Hednesford I can cope with anyone,’ she declared. She dropped her voice. ‘However, I am a little … anxious … about one thing. What if I meet people who once visited the House? Friends of her late ladyship? I cannot but feel that that would be embarrassing – for both parties. Perhaps for you, too?’ She squeezed my hand. She gave a snort of laughter, then dropped her voice so that she did little more than mouth her words. ‘But even more embarrassing might be to meet someone I served with or even employed. Very efficient gossip machines, servants. Ah! The train! Now all I have to do is manoeuvre this confounded crinoline aboard! Who on earth invented this inconvenient fashion?’
I always loved watching her face when we travelled by train. If I ever took my nephew to Hamley’s toy shop, his face would surely light up with wonder – but his joyful anticipation could be no greater than Harriet’s. She was alert to anything she had not encountered before. She evinced excitement even at a third-rate production of Shakespeare at a fair, and her delight at the art in Florence made me see even familiar paintings in a new light. Perhaps what my cousin assured me was an excellent library at Clunston Park would compensate her for any social difficulties, and the fact that she could do no more than watch me on the cricket pitch, not play herself. How had it come to this? My dear mama had once played for her village against the ladies of another. Not a single eyebrow had been raised, she assured me. But now it seemed her sex was too gentle, too delicate, to indulge in competitive games. Bea insisted that stays and corsets were to blame, not to mention Harriet’s bane, crinolines, which seemed to get wider and more cumbersome by the day. Harriet suspected that more complex reasons might be involved too. She tried to laugh away her disappointment by claiming to be too old, and that cricket was a young person’s game. But ever since we had received the invitation to the cricket weekend she had been working with me to improve my bowling technique – and moreover with a bat in her hands she had despatched even my fastest balls with an ease that few men could even dream of.
Now she was enthralled by a cluster of new houses, then by a cutting for another railway line. How could she marry such delight in fresh experiences with her dogged obedience to duty?
‘I believe we’re arriving! Yes, the train is slowing – and look how bright and new the station is!’
Harriet, now as excited as my nephew would have been, was right. We were not just in Herefordshire but actually pulling into Clunston Halt. I handed her down, consigning the luggage to a sandy-haired lad as I looked around. Waiting right across the station entrance, to the considerable inconvenience of passengers arriving late for their train, was an elegant barouche.
‘Look – Barrington has come to pick us up himself.’
Our host descended awkwardly and limped towards us. His period in the army had not been kind to him, except in terms of status. The athletic young man I admired at school, where he was a couple of years ahead of me, was prematurely bent, his once handsome face was scarred, as much with pain as with actual injury. He might have been in his sixties, not his late forties.
‘Matthew! Cousin Harriet!’ After a crisp salute and a stiff-shouldered bow for Harriet, Barrington shook my hand, his grip as firm as mine. Once the porter had stowed our baggage in a dog cart, driven off briskly by a young man in livery, Barrington took the reins himself – surprisingly not particularly well – giving us a commentary on the countryside through which we passed, listing all the improvements he would like to institute. ‘You know about these things, don’t you, Matthew? Perhaps you could give me your opinion.’
‘Surely your own agent—’
‘Had to leave for some reason. No suitable replacement yet. Now look at that!’ He pointed with would-be casual pride as we approached the Georgian-fronted residence that was his home. Despite her ready delight in lovely buildings – and the frontage was a gem – Harriet’s face became steadily less joyous; she returned my encouraging squeeze of her hand with a fierce grip.
We were greeted not on the steps but in the hallway by Lady Hortensia herself, tall, slender, pale yet composed. Was she pleased to see us? Her face had never been expressive, and her smile was polite, not joyous, belying her greeting. ‘How delightful to see you. Are you well? Excellent.’ She did not attempt to kiss Harriet; they exchanged the usual curtsy, hers decidedly less deep than Harriet’s, of course. She responded briefly to our enquiries about her baby son, then rang for the butler.
A tall, heavy-shouldered middle-aged man, with a face cast into an expression of sour disapproval, Biddlestone silently escorted us to our bed chamber. Declaring that we had missed afternoon tea, but that he would send refreshments to our room if we wished, he withdrew. I would have liked to place an order simply to annoy him, but of course it would not have been him who was inconvenienced.
Harriet looked about her. Her silence spoke volumes.
Presumably in an older part of the house, the room was small and furnished without elegance or even comfort. Our cases – far too many, one would have thought, for a mere weekend – awaited us. In the absence of the suffering Jemima, Harriet was soon unpacking and shaking out her gowns with the competence of practice, then dealing with my shirts. Even she acknowledged that I did a decent a job with my outer garments.
‘Almost as well as a valet would have done,’ she assured me, kissing me before turning so that I might unhook her dress. ‘Quickly: it will not do to be late for dinner.’
A tap at the door interrupted anything I might have said or done in response. Her under-the-breath comment probably matched mine, but her ‘Come in’ was as cheery and welcoming as anyone might wish. Creeping round the door came a child, her hair scraped back under a desperately ugly cap and her body swallowed by a faded print dress. She was perhaps ten, perhaps twelve – it was hard to tell as she was so short and thin – staggering under the weight of a huge jug of water. At last she whispered that she was Harriet’s acting lady’s maid. Clara. She reacted to Harriet’s thanks with a look of something akin to terror.
Feeling superfluous, I withdrew to the tiny dressing room to don my evening wear – nothing informal such as smoking jackets here – listening to Harriet’s encouraging comments and the poor, tight, monosyllabic replies as I wrestled with my studs.
‘Isn’t this beautiful!’ Harriet whispered, as we were shown into the impressive saloon, which was still decorated in the original colours, with gilt sofas and chairs that appeared to have been designed and made to fit the space available. The pictures were in proportion too. What a wonderful room. Harriet’s eyes opened wide in delight.
But she wasn’t here as a visitor to a gallery; she was a house guest meant to mingle. She was as elegant as any of the fashionable women. Lady Croft having died only three months ago, she was still in mourning, wearing a lilac gown trimmed with grey. Some might have dismissed her as a dove amongst a flock of parakeets, but I could not admire the vivid turquoises and yellows, the startling blues and almost alarming reds that many other ladies sported. My mama lived by the maxim that simply being able to do something did not mean you should: the word vulgar might have reached her lips. But she would not have said it aloud. She was as much a servant of the Church as my Archdeacon father, who had entered the Church as his vocation, not because it was simply expected of him: he always joked that if you cut open her heart you would find the Beatitudes written inside it.
I tucked Harriet’s arm into mine, so that I could escort her round to meet people I trusted would be old acquaintances. I saw none.
A quirk in the acoustics meant that the sounds of thirty or forty people – some house guests like us, others invited for the evening only – engaged in civilized conversation rapidly became a maelstrom of noise. Many of those present had probably spent hours on the hunting field, so they were more than used to raising their voices. Harriet would always have been an onlooker at events like this, quietly checking that all the servants were fulfilling their duties. She would never have had to try to hold a conversation with a guest – and with a stranger at that. Somehow we had become separated by the swirling skirts and I almost panicked on her behalf. But at last I located her, near one of the sofas at the edge of the room. Her head at a solicitous angle, she was talking to – or being talked to – by a tall, straight-backed older lady who was bedecked equally with jewellery and wrinkles. Her features were blurred with age, but fine bones lay underneath. I inched nearer, but was intercepted by a footman clad in a vivid blue, silver-laced livery and the sort of wig our household had abandoned before I even arrived as the estate manager. He offered more champagne. A glass only just in my hand, I was clapped fiercely on the shoulder.
‘You must be Rowsley! Jameson – your vice-captain,’ declared a military man, much my age, good-looking enough, I suppose, in a square-jawed blond-haired way. He thrust out a hand to grasp mine and pump it, risking the glass as I hurriedly transferred it. ‘Need to talk to you!’
‘Of course.’ In my anxiety to support Harriet, I found myself temporarily nonplussed, needing a moment to realize that he was speaking about the next day’s match. ‘Do you think the weather will hold?’ I asked, a safe enough question while I gathered my thoughts.
‘Never known a drop of rain to fall during one of our weekends,’ Jameson said, as if affronted either by my temerity in raising the issue or the possibility of a meteorological hiccup. ‘Always good weather. I see no reason why this should be any different.’ He looked at me accusingly. ‘Not thinking of backing out at this stage, I hope?’ He thrust his ginger moustache into my face as if I were one of his subalterns, breathing cigar smoke over me.
‘Indeed no,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m really looking forward to a good game. But now, if you will excuse me—’ I edged desperately back into the maelstrom of loud, tall gentlemen in search of someone, anyone I could present as a friend to my poor stranded wife. Perhaps – but now Barrington was before me.
‘What’s this I hear about your withdrawal from the team? A fellow can’t just stand down, you know.’
‘Nor have I, Cousin. I merely asked about the weather we might expect and Major Jameson jumped to the most unwarranted of conclusions.’
‘Man’s very busy, you know,’ he said, as if that explained everything. Did something about his face suggest he did not convince himself? Or perhaps I read too much into the grimace of a smile which was all his scars would permit.
He limped away.
And then we were ushered in to dine.
There was no chance of my rescuing Harriet now. All I could do was pray that the gentlemen on either side of her might be congenial company – and could talk intelligently about something she knew about. If only I could have located Mark in the melee and pointed him in her direction. But it dawned on me that I had not even seen him. Surely he must be here? I must ask Barrington. It was too late now, however. I had to take my place between a gently lisping young lady scarcely out of the schoolroom, and a middle-aged matron who despite a silk dress and a wealth of jewellery smelt strongly of the stable. I turned first to the former, praying that further down the table some kind soul would be engaging my wife in the same gentle conversation that I embarked on now. Though with luck her interlocutor would prove more intelligent.