1841. The carriage came to a halt. It hardly seemed a moment since she had climbed into it. But then the journey from Eaton Place to Belgrave Square was not worth taking out a carriage for and, if she’d had her way, she would have walked. Of course, in such matters she did not have her way. Ever. A moment later the postilion was down and the door had been opened. He held out his arm for her to steady herself as she negotiated the carriage steps. Anne took a breath to calm her nerves and stood. The house awaiting her was one of the splendid classical “wedding-cake” variety that had been going up for the previous twenty years in the recently christened Belgravia, but it contained few secrets for Anne Trenchard. Her husband had spent the previous quarter of a century building these private palaces, in squares and avenues and crescents, housing the rich of nineteenth-century England, working with the Cubitt brothers and making his own fortune into the bargain.
Two women were admitted into the house ahead of her, and the footman stood waiting expectantly, holding the door open. There was nothing for it but to walk up the steps and into the cavernous hall where a maid was in attendance to take her shawl, but Anne kept her bonnet firmly in place. She had grown used to being entertained by people she scarcely knew, and today was no exception. Her hostess’s father-in-law, the late Duke of Bedford, had been a client of the Cubitts, and her husband, James, had done a lot of work on Russell Square and Tavistock Square for him. Of course, these days, James liked to present himself as a gentleman who just happened to be in the Cubitt offices by chance, and sometimes it worked. He had successfully made friends, or at least friendly acquaintances, of the Duke and his son, Lord Tavistock. As it happened, his wife, Lady Tavistock, had always been a superior figure in the background, leading another life as one of the young Queen’s ladies of the bedchamber, and she and Anne had hardly spoken more than a few civil words over the years, but it was enough, in James’s mind, to build on. In time the old Duke had died, and when the new Duke wanted James’s help to develop the Russells’ London holdings still further, James had dropped the hint that Anne would like to experience the Duchess’s much talked-about innovation of “afternoon tea,” and an invitation had been forthcoming.
It was not exactly that Anne Trenchard disapproved of her husband’s social mountaineering. At any rate, she’d grown used to it. She saw the pleasure it brought him—or rather, the pleasure he thought it brought him—and she did not begrudge him his dreams. She simply did not share them, any more now than she had in Brussels almost thirty years before. She knew well enough that the women who welcomed her into their houses did so under orders from their husbands, and that these orders were given in case James could be useful. Having issued the precious cards, to balls and luncheons and dinners and now the new “tea,” they would use his gratitude for their own ends until it became clear to Anne, if not to James, that they were governing him by means of his snobbery. Her husband had placed a bit in his own mouth and put the reins into the hands of men who cared nothing for him and only for the profits he could guide them to. In all this, Anne’s job was to change her clothes four or five times a day, sit in large drawing rooms with unwelcoming women, and come home again. She had grown used to this way of life. She was no longer unnerved by the footmen or the splendor that seemed to be increasingly lavish with every year that passed, but nor was she impressed by it. She saw this life for what it was: a different way of doing things. With a sigh she climbed the great staircase with its gilded handrail beneath a full-length Thomas Lawrence portrait of her hostess in the fashions of the Regency. Anne wondered if the picture was a copy, made to impress their London callers while the original sat happily ensconced at Woburn.
She reached the landing and made her way into another predictably large drawing room, this one lined in pale blue damask, with a high painted ceiling and gilded doors. A great many women sat about on chairs and sofas and ottomans, balancing plates and cups and frequently losing control of both. A smattering of gentlemen, point-device in their outfits and obviously creatures of leisure, sat gossiping among the ladies. One looked up at her entrance in recognition, but Anne saw an empty chair at the edge of the gathering and made for it, passing an old lady who started to lunge for a sandwich plate that was sliding away from her and down her voluminous skirts when Anne caught it. The stranger beamed. “Well saved.” She took a bite. “It is not that I dislike a light nuncheon of cakes and tea to carry one through to dinner, but why can’t we sit at a table?”
Anne had reached her chair and, given her neighbor’s relatively friendly opening, considered herself entitled to sit upon it. “I think the point is that one isn’t trapped. We can all move about and talk to whom we like.”
“Well, I like to talk to you.”
Their rather anxious hostess hurried over. “Mrs. Trenchard, how kind of you to look in.” It did not sound as if Anne was expected to stay very long, but this was not bad news as far as Anne was concerned.
“I’m delighted to be here.”
“Aren’t you going to introduce us?” This came from the old lady Anne had rescued, but the Duchess showed a marked reluctance to carry out her duties. Then, with a crisp smile, she realized she had to.
“May I present Mrs. James Trenchard.” Anne nodded and waited. “The Dowager Duchess of Richmond.” She said the name with tremendous finality, as if that must bring all reasonable conjecture on the subject to an end. There was a silence. She looked to Anne for a suitably overawed response, but the name had given her guest something of a shock, if a pang of nostalgia and sadness can be called a shock. Before Anne could make any observation that might rescue the moment, their hostess was gushing on. “Now you must let me introduce you to Mrs. Carver and Mrs. Shute.” Clearly she had corralled a section of more obscure ladies whom she intended to keep out of the hair of the great and the good. But the old lady was not having it.
“Don’t snatch her away yet. I know Mrs. Trenchard.” The old lady screwed up her features in concentration as she studied the face opposite.
Anne nodded. “You have a wonderful memory, Duchess, since I would have thought I was changed past all recognition, but you’re right. We have met. I attended your ball. In Brussels, before Waterloo.”
The Duchess of Bedford was astonished. “You were at the famous ball, Mrs. Trenchard?”
“I was.”
“But I thought you had only lately—” She stopped herself just in time. “I must see if everyone has what they want. Please excuse me.” She hurried away, leaving the other two to examine each other more carefully. At last the old Duchess spoke. “I remember you well.”
“I’m impressed, if you do.”
“Of course, we didn’t really know each other, did we?” In the wrinkled face before her, Anne could still see the traces of the queen of Brussels, who had ordered things just as she saw fit.
“No, we didn’t. My husband and I were wished upon you, and I thought it very kind that we were allowed in.”
“I remember. My late nephew was in love with your daughter.”
Anne nodded. “He may have been. At least, she was in love with him.”
“No, I think he was. I certainly thought so at the time. The Duke and I had a great discussion about it, after the ball was over.”
“I’m sure you did.” They both knew what they were talking about, these two, but what was the point in raking it up now?
“We should leave the subject. My sister’s over there. It will unsettle her, even after so many years.” Anne looked across the room to see a stately figure of a woman, dressed in a frock of violet lace over gray silk, who did not look much older than Anne herself. “There is less than ten years between us, which is surprising, I know.”
“Did you ever tell her about Sophia?”
“It’s all so long ago. What does it matter now? Our concerns died with him.” She paused, realizing she had given herself away. “Where is your beautiful daughter now? For you see, I recall she was a beauty. What became of her?”
Anne winced inside. The question still hurt every time. “Like Lord Bellasis, Sophia is dead.” She always used a brisk and efficient-sounding tone to impart this information, in an attempt to avoid the sentimentality that her words usually provoked. “Not many months after the ball.”
“So she never married?”
“No. She never married.”
“I’m sorry. Funnily enough, I can remember her quite clearly. Do you have other children?”
“Oh yes. A son, Oliver, but…” It was Anne’s turn to give herself away.
“Sophia was the child of your heart.”
Anne sighed. It never got easier, no matter how many years had passed. “I know one is always supposed to support the fiction that we love all our children equally, but I find it hard.”
The Duchess cackled. “I don’t even try. I am very fond of some of my children, on reasonably good terms with most of the rest, but I have two that I positively dislike.”
“How many are there?”
“Fourteen.”
Anne smiled. “Heavens. So the Richmond dukedom is safe.” The old Duchess laughed again. But she took Anne’s hand and squeezed it. Funnily enough, Anne did not resent her. They had both played a part, according to their own lights, in that long-ago story. “I remember some of your daughters that night. One of them seemed to be a great favorite of the Duke of Wellington.”
“She still is. Georgiana. She’s Lady de Ros now, but if he hadn’t already been married, I doubt he’d have stood a chance. I must go. I’ve been here too long and I will pay for it.” She got to her feet with some difficulty, making heavy use of her stick. “I have enjoyed our talk, Mrs. Trenchard, a nice reminder of more exciting times. But I suppose this is the advantage of the pick-up, put-down tea. We may go when we want.” She had something more to say before she left. “I wish you and your family well, my dear. Whatever sides we may once have been on.”
“I say the same to you, Duchess.” Anne had risen, and she stood watching as the ancient peeress made her careful way to the door. She looked around. There were women here she knew, some of whom nodded in her direction with a show of politeness, but she also knew the limits of their interest and made no attempt to take advantage of it. She smiled back without making a move to join them. The large drawing room opened into a smaller one, hung with pale gray damask, and beyond was a picture gallery, or rather a room for displaying pictures. Anne strolled into it, admiring the paintings on show. There was a fine Turner hanging over the marble chimneypiece. She wondered idly how long she must stay when a voice startled her.
“You had a great deal to say to my sister.” She turned to find the woman the Duchess had pointed out as the mother of Lord Bellasis. Anne wondered if she had imagined this moment. Probably. The Countess of Brockenhurst stood, holding a cup of tea resting in a matching saucer. “And now I think I may know why. Our hostess tells me you were at the famous ball.”
“I was, Lady Brockenhurst.”
“You have the advantage of me.” Lady Brockenhurst had made her way to a group of chairs standing empty near a large window looking out over the leafy garden of Belgrave Square. Anne could see a nursemaid with her two charges playing sedately on the central lawn. “Will you tell me your name, since there is no one here to make the introduction?”
“I am Mrs. Trenchard. Mrs. James Trenchard.”
The Countess stared at her. “I was right, then. It is you.”
“I’m very flattered if you’ve heard of me.”
“Certainly I have.” She gave no clue as to whether this was a good thing or a bad. A footman arrived with a plate of tiny egg sandwiches. “I’m afraid these are too delicious to resist,” said Lady Brockenhurst as she took three and a little plate to carry them. “I find it strange to eat at this time, don’t you? I suppose we will still want our dinner when it comes.” Anne smiled but said nothing. She had a sense that she was to be questioned, and she was not wrong. “Tell me about the ball.”
“Surely you must have talked of it enough with the Duchess?”
But Lady Brockenhurst was not to be deflected. “Why were you in Brussels? How did you know my sister and her husband?”
“We didn’t. Not in that way. Mr. Trenchard was the Duke of Wellington’s head of supplies. He knew the Duke of Richmond a little in his capacity as chief of the defense of Brussels, but that is all.”
“Forgive me, my dear, but it does not entirely explain your presence at his wife’s reception.” The Countess of Brockenhurst had clearly been a very pretty woman, when her gray hair was still blonde and her lined skin smooth. She had a catlike face with small, vivid features, defined and alert, a cupid’s bow of a mouth and a sharp, pizzicato manner of speaking that must have seemed very beguiling in her youth. She was not unlike her sister, and she had the same imperious air, but there was a sorrow behind her blue-gray eyes that made her both more sympathetic and yet more distant than the Duchess of Richmond. Anne, of course, knew the reason for her grief but was naturally reluctant to refer to it. “I’m curious. I had always heard tell of you both as the Duke of Wellington’s victualler and his wife. Seeing you here, I wondered if I was misinformed and your circumstance was rather different from the version I’d been given.”
This was rude and insulting, and Anne was well aware she should be offended. Anyone else would have been. But was Lady Brockenhurst wrong? “No. The report was accurate enough. It was strange we were among the guests that night in 1815, but our life has changed in the interim. Things have gone well for Mr. Trenchard since the war ended.”
“Obviously. Is he still supplying foodstuffs to his customers? He must be very good at it.”
Anne wasn’t sure how much more of this she was expected to put up with. “No, he left that and went into partnership with Mr. Cubitt and his brother. When we returned from Brussels, after the battle, the Cubitts needed to find investors, and Mr. Trenchard decided to help them.”
“The great Mr. Thomas Cubitt? Heavens. I assume he was no longer a ship’s carpenter by that stage?”
Anne decided to let this play itself out. “He was in development by then, and he and his brother, William, were raising funds to build the London Institution in Finsbury Circus when they met Mr. Trenchard. He offered to help and they went into business together.”
“I remember when it opened. We thought it magnificent.” Was she smirking? It was hard to tell if Lady Brockenhurst was genuinely impressed or was somehow toying with Anne for her own purposes.
“After that, they worked together on the new Tavistock Square—”
“For the father-in-law of our hostess.”
“There were a few of them, as it happens, but the late Duke of Bedford was the main investor, yes.”
Lady Brockenhurst nodded. “I remember well that was a great success. And then I suppose Belgravia followed for the Marquess of Westminster, who must be richer than Croesus, thanks to the Cubitts, and, I see now, your husband. How well things have gone for you. I expect you’re tired of houses such as this. Mr. Trenchard has clearly been responsible for so many of them.”
“It’s nice to see the places lived in, when the scaffolding and dust have gone.” Anne was trying to make the conversation more normal, but Lady Brockenhurst was having none of it.
“What a story,” she said. “You are a creature of the New Age, Mrs. Trenchard.” She laughed for a moment and then remembered herself. “I hope I don’t offend you.”
“Not in the least.” Anne was fully aware she was being provoked, presumably because Lady Brockenhurst knew all about her son’s dalliance with Sophia. There could be no other reason. Anne decided to bring matters to a head and wrong-foot her questioner. “You’re right that Mr. Trenchard’s later triumphs do not explain our presence at the ball that night. An army victualler does not usually have the chance to write his name on a duchess’s dance card, but we were friendly with a favorite of your sister’s and he contrived to get us invited. It seems shameless, but a city on the brink of war is not governed by quite the same rules as a Mayfair drawing room in peacetime.”
“I’m sure it is not. Who was this favorite? Might I have known him?”
Anne was almost relieved that at last they had reached their destination. Even so, she was unsure quite how to manage it.
“Come, Mrs. Trenchard, don’t be bashful. Please.”
There was no point in lying, since clearly Lady Brockenhurst was fully aware of what she was going to say. “You knew him very well. It was Lord Bellasis.”
The name hung in the air between them like a ghostly dagger in a fable. It could never be said that Lady Brockenhurst lost her composure, since she would not lose that before she breathed her last, but she had not quite prepared for the sound of his name being spoken aloud by this woman whom she knew so well in her imaginings but not at all in fact. She needed a moment to catch her breath. There was a silence as she slowly sipped her tea. Anne felt a sudden surge of pity for this sad, cold woman, as unbending with herself as with anyone else. “Lady Brockenhurst—”
“Did you know my son well?”
Anne nodded. “In truth—”
At this moment their hostess arrived. “Mrs. Trenchard, would you like—”
“Forgive me, my dear, but Mrs. Trenchard and I are talking.” The dismissal could not have been more final if the Duchess had been a naughty housemaid still brushing up the cinders of a fire when the family returned to the room after dinner. Without a word, she simply nodded and withdrew. Lady Brockenhurst waited until they were alone again. “You were saying?”
“Only that my daughter knew Lord Bellasis better than we did. Brussels was quite a hothouse at that time, filled with young officers and the daughters of many of the older commanders. As well as the men and women who had come out from London to join in the fun.”
“Like my sister and her husband.”
“Exactly. I suppose, looking back, there was a sense that nobody knew what was coming: the triumph of Napoleon, the enslavement of England, or the reverse and a British victory. It sounds wrong, but the uncertainty created an atmosphere that was heady and exciting.”
The other woman nodded as she spoke. “And above all else, the knowledge must have hung in the air that some of those smiling, handsome young men, taking salutes on the parade ground, pouring the wine at picnics, or waltzing with the daughters of their officer, would not be coming home.” Lady Brockenhurst’s tone was even, but a slight tremble in the sound of her voice betrayed her emotion.
How well Anne understood. “Yes.”
“I suppose they enjoyed it. The girls who were there, like your daughter, I mean. The danger, the glamour; because danger is glamorous when you’re young. Where is she now?”
Again. Twice in one afternoon. “Sophia died.”
Lady Brockenhurst gasped. “Now, that I did not know,” confirming that she had known everything else. Obviously she and the Duchess of Richmond had discussed the whole story, countless times for all Anne knew, which would explain her manner until this moment.
Anne nodded. “It was quite soon after the battle, less than a year, in fact, so a long time ago now.”
“I am very sorry.” For the first time Lady Brockenhurst spoke with something like genuine warmth. “Everyone always claims to know what you’re going through, but I do. And I know that it never goes away.”
Anne stared at her, this haughty matron who had expended so much effort putting Anne in her place. Who had brought so much anger into the room with her. And yet the knowledge that Anne, too, had lost a child, that the wicked girl of Lady Brockenhurst’s bitter ruminations was dead, had somehow altered things between them. Anne smiled. “Oddly, I find that comforting. They say misery loves company, and perhaps it does.”
“And you remember seeing Edmund at the ball?” Lady Brockenhurst had dispensed with rage, and now her eagerness to hear something of her lost son was almost uncomfortable.
The question could be answered honestly. “Very well. And not just from the ball. He would come to our house with other young people. He was very popular. Charming, good-looking, and funny as could be—”
“Oh yes. All that and more.”
“Do you have other children?” The moment she said it, Anne could have bitten off her tongue. She remembered very well that Bellasis had been an only child. He’d often talked about it. “I’m so sorry. I remember now that you don’t. Please forgive me.”
“You’re right. When we go, there will be nothing left of us.” Lady Brockenhurst smoothed the silk of her skirts, glancing into the empty chimneypiece. “Not a trace.”
For a second, Anne thought Lady Brockenhurst might cry, but she decided to continue just the same. Why not comfort this bereaved mother, if she could? Where was the harm? “You must be very proud of Lord Bellasis. He was an excellent young man, and we were so fond of him. Sometimes we would get up a little ball of our own, with six or seven couples, and I would play the piano. It seems strange to say it now, but those days before the battle were happy ones. At any rate, for me.”
“I’m sure.” Lady Brockenhurst stood. “I’m going now, Mrs. Trenchard. But I have enjoyed our talk. Rather more than I anticipated.”
“Who told you I’d be here?” Anne stared at her calmly.
Lady Brockenhurst shook her head. “No one. I asked our hostess who was talking to my sister and she told me your name. I was curious. I have talked about you and your daughter so many times that it seemed a shame to miss the chance of talking to you. But anyway, I see now I have been wrong. If anything, it’s been a treat for me to discuss Edmund with someone who knew him. You’ve made me feel I have seen him again, dancing and flirting and enjoying himself in his last hours, and I like to think of that. I will think of that. So thank you.” She glided away between the chattering groups, stately in her progress, the colors of half mourning moving through the gaily brilliant crowd.
Seeing her gone, the Duchess of Bedford returned. “Heavens. I must say I had no need to worry about you, Mrs. Trenchard. You are clearly among friends.” Her words were more amiable than her tone.
“Not friends exactly, but we have memories in common. And now I must also take my leave. I am so pleased I came. Thank you.”
“Come again. And next time you can tell me all about the famous gathering before the battle.”
But Anne was conscious that somehow to discuss that long-ago evening with someone who had no investment in it would not satisfy her. It had been cathartic to talk about it with the old Duchess, and even with her more astringent sister, as they both had their links to that night. But it would not do to dissect it with a stranger. Ten minutes later, she was in her carriage.
Eaton Square may have been larger than Belgrave Square, but the houses were a shade less magnificent, and although James had been determined to occupy one of the splendid piles in the latter, he had yielded to his wife’s wishes and settled for something a little smaller. That said, the houses in Eaton Square were grand enough, but Anne was not unhappy there. Indeed, she liked it, and she had worked hard to make the rooms pretty and pleasant, even if they were not as stately as James would have chosen. “I have a taste for splendor,” he used to say, but it was a taste Anne did not share. Still, she walked through the cool, gray entrance hall, smiling at the footman who had let her in, and continued up the staircase without any sense of resisting her surroundings. “Is the master at home?” she asked the man, but no, it seemed James had not returned. He would probably race in, just in time to change, and she would have to leave their discussion until the end of the evening. For a discussion there must be.
They were dining alone with their son, Oliver, and his wife, Susan, who lived with them, and the evening passed easily enough. She told them of the Duchess of Bedford’s tea party as they sat in the large dining room on the ground floor. A butler in his late forties, Turton, was serving them with the help of two footmen, which seemed to Anne rather excessive for a family dinner of four persons, but it was how James liked things to be done, and she did not really mind. It was a pleasing room, if a little cold, ennobled by a screen of columns at one end, separating the sideboard from the rest of the chamber. There was a good chimneypiece of Carrara marble and, above it, a portrait of her husband by David Wilkie that James was proud of, even if Wilkie might not have been. It was painted the year before he produced his famous picture of the young Queen at her first Council meeting, which James was sure must have put up Wilkie’s price. That said, he did not look his best. Anne’s dachshund, Agnes, was sitting by her chair, eyes raised upward in optimism. Anne slipped her a tiny piece of meat.
“You only encourage her to beg,” said James. But she didn’t really care.
Their daughter-in-law, Susan, was complaining. This was so ordinary a state of affairs that it was hard to concentrate, and Anne had to force herself to listen to this evening’s litany of woe. The problem seemed to be that she had not been taken to the Duchess of Bedford’s tea party. “But you weren’t invited,” said Anne, reasonably enough.
“What difference does that make?” Susan was almost in tears. “Women all over London simply reply saying they would be delighted to accept and that they will be bringing their daughters.”
“You’re not my daughter.” As soon as she had said it, Anne knew this was a mistake, since it gave the moral high ground to Susan on a platter. The younger woman’s lip quivered. Across the table their son put his knife and fork down noisily.
“She is your daughter-in-law, which would mean the same as ‘daughter’ in any other house.” There was something harsh in Oliver’s voice that was more pronounced when he was angry, and he was angry now.
“Of course.” Anne turned to help herself to more sauce, deliberately making things normal again. “I just don’t think I would be justified in taking someone, anyone, to the house of a woman I barely know.”
“A duchess you barely know, and I don’t know at all.” Apparently Susan had recovered. Enough to fight her corner, anyway. Anne glanced at the opaque faces of the servants. They would soon be enjoying this down in the servants’ hall, but, like the professionals they were, they gave no hint of having heard the exchange.
“I didn’t see you in the office today, Oliver.” Mercifully, James found his son’s wife as tiresome as Anne did, even though he and Susan shared so many ambitions as far as the beau monde was concerned.
“I wasn’t there.”
“Why not?”
“I went to inspect the work in Chapel Street. I wonder we have made the houses so small. Haven’t we surrendered a healthy share of profits?”
Anne looked at her husband. However misguided James might be when dazzled by the glare of high Society, he certainly knew his business. “When you develop an area as we have done, you must build for the whole picture. You can’t only have palaces. You must house the supporters of the princes who live in the palaces. Their clerks and managers and upper servants. Then there must be a mews for their coaches and coachmen. They all take space, but it is space well used.”
Susan’s petulant voice reentered the fray. “Have you given any more thought to where we might live, Father?” Anne watched her daughter-in-law. She was a good-looking woman, no doubt about it, with her clear complexion, green eyes, and auburn hair. She had an excellent figure and she dressed well. If only she could ever be satisfied.
The issue of where the young couple should live was an old and tired one. James had offered various options as Belgravia was going up, but his ideas and theirs never seemed to match. They wanted something similar to the house in Eaton Square, while James believed they should cut their coat according to their cloth and start more modestly. In the end, Susan preferred to share a house that suited her pretensions rather than lower her standards, and so a kind of ritual had been achieved. From time to time, James would make suggestions. And Susan would turn them down.
James smiled blandly. “I’d be happy to give you the pick of anything empty in Chester Row.”
Susan wrinkled her nose slightly but softened her reaction with a laugh. “Aren’t they a little poky?”
Oliver snorted. “Susan’s right. They’re far too small for entertaining, and I suppose I have a position to keep up, as your son.”
James helped himself to another lamb chop. “They’re less poky than the first house I shared with your mother.” Anne laughed, which only served to annoy Oliver more.
“I have been brought up very differently from the way you two began your lives. Maybe I do have grander expectations, but you have given them to me.” Of course there was truth in this. Why else had James insisted on Charterhouse and Cambridge, if he had not wanted Oliver to grow up thinking like a gentleman? In fact, his son’s marriage to Susan Miller, the daughter of a successful merchant like himself, had been a disappointment to James, who had hoped for something higher. Still, she was an only child, and there would be a considerable inheritance when the time came. That’s if Miller didn’t change his mind and cut her out. James noticed that Susan’s father was becoming more reluctant to hand over money to his daughter in the way he had done when the pair were first married. “She’s such a fool with it,” he’d said to James once, after a liquid luncheon, and it was difficult not to agree.
“Well, well. We’ll see what can be done.” James laid down his cutlery and the footmen stepped in to remove the plates. “Cubitt’s had an interesting idea to do something with the Isle of Dogs.”
“The Isle of Dogs? Is there anything there?” Anne smiled her thanks to the footman as her plate was taken. Naturally, James was far too important for any such thing.
“The opening of the West India Docks and the East India Docks have made a hell of a difference—” He stopped, catching Anne’s expression, and started again. “Have made a terrific difference. Ramshackle buildings are going up every day, but Cubitt thinks we can build a solid community if we give respectable people—not just workers, but management—somewhere decent to live. It’s exciting.”
“Will Oliver be part of this?” Susan kept her tone bright.
“We’ll have to see.”
“Of course I won’t,” said Oliver curtly. “When was I ever brought in to anything interesting?”
“We seem to be failing on every count tonight.” James helped himself to another glass of wine from the decanter he kept by his place. It was an inescapable truth that Oliver was a disappointment to him, and the younger man suspected it. It did not make for a comfortable relationship.
Agnes was beginning to whine, and so Anne picked her up, hiding her in the folds of her skirt. “We’ll be at Glanville for most of next month,” she said, in an effort to lighten the atmosphere. “I hope you’ll come down when you can. Susan, perhaps you can stay for a few days?” There was a silence. Glanville was their house in Somerset, an Elizabethan manor of great beauty that Anne had rescued from the brink of collapse. It was the one place which, before his marriage, Oliver had enjoyed above all others. But Susan had different ideas.
“We will if we can.” She smiled briskly. “It’s such a ways.” He knew that, in addition to something splendid in London, Susan had her heart set on an estate near enough to the city to make the journey in no more than a few hours. Preferably with a large and modern house equipped with every convenience. The ancient, mottled, golden stone of Glanville, with its mullioned windows and uneven, gleaming floors, held no appeal for her. But Anne was undeterred. She would not give up the house or the estate—and James did not expect her to. She would try to encourage her son and his wife to appreciate its charms, but in the end, if Oliver didn’t want it, then she must find her own heir elsewhere. Which she was fully prepared to do.
Anne had been right about the servants’ pleasure in their account of the upstairs conversation. Billy and Morris, the two footmen who had served at dinner, kept the table in the servants’ hall in stitches with their telling of it. That was until Mr. Turton came in. He paused on the threshold. “I hope there is no disrespect on display in this room.”
“No, Mr. Turton,” said Billy, but one of the maids started to giggle.
“Mr. and Mrs. Trenchard pay our wages, and for that they are entitled to be treated with dignity.”
“Yes, Mr. Turton.”
The giggles had subsided by now as Turton took his place at the table and the servants’ dinner began. The butler lowered his voice as he spoke to the housekeeper, Mrs. Frant, who sat in her usual place beside him. “Of course, they’re not what they like to pretend, and it is only the more obvious when they’re alone.”
Mrs. Frant was a more forgiving person. “They’re respectable, polite, and honest to deal with, Mr. Turton. I’ve known far worse in households headed by a coronet.” She helped herself to some horseradish sauce.
But the butler shook his head. “My sympathy is with Mr. Oliver. They’ve brought him up as a gentleman, but now they seem to resent him for wanting to be one.” Turton had no problems with the social system then operating, only with his own place in it.
A sharp-faced woman in the black garb of a lady’s maid spoke up from farther down the table. “Why shouldn’t Mrs. Oliver have a house where she can entertain? She’s brought enough money to the table. I think it’s unjust and illogical of Mr. Trenchard to try to force them into a rabbit hutch when we all know he wants to be thought of as the head of a great family. Where’s the sense in that?”
“Illogical? That’s a big word, Miss Speer,” said Billy, but she ignored him.
“It was Mrs. Trenchard who provoked Mrs. Oliver at dinner,” said Morris.
“She’s as bad as he is,” said Miss Speer, helping herself to a large slice of bread and butter from the plate before her.
Mrs. Frant had more to add on the subject. “Well, I’m sorry to say it, Miss Speer, and I’m glad if you think her a good employer, but I find Mrs. Oliver very hard to please. You’d think she was an Infanta of Spain with all her airs and graces. But I’ve never had any trouble with Mrs. Trenchard. She’s straightforward in what she wants and I’ve no reason to complain.” The housekeeper was warming to her defense of their employers. “As to the younger pair—wanting houses and estates that are bigger and grander than his parents’, what’s he done to earn them? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Gentlemen don’t ‘earn’ their houses, Mrs. Frant. They inherit them.”
“We don’t see these things in the same way, Mr. Turton, so we’ll have to agree to differ.”
Miss Ellis, Mrs. Trenchard’s maid, seated on Turton’s left, did not appear to disagree with the butler. “I think Mr. Turton’s right. Mr. Oliver only wants to live properly, and why shouldn’t he? I commend his efforts to better himself. But we must feel some sympathy for the master. It’s hard to get the trick of it in a single generation.”
Turton nodded, as if his point had been proved. “I quite agree with you there, Miss Ellis.” And then the conversation turned to other topics.
“Of course you can’t tell her! What are you talking about?” James Trenchard was having the greatest difficulty keeping his temper. He was in his wife’s bedroom where he generally slept, even though he was careful to have his own bedroom and dressing room farther down the landing, as he had read this was customary for aristocratic couples.
The room in question was another tall and airy chamber, painted pale pink, with flowered silk curtains. Her husband’s rooms could have been the private apartments of the Emperor himself, but, as with all the rooms Anne had arranged for her own use, her bedroom was pretty rather than splendid. At this moment, she was in bed and they were alone. “But haven’t I a duty to her?”
“What duty? You say yourself she was very rude.”
Anne nodded. “Yes, but it was more complicated than that. The whole situation was so peculiar. She knew exactly who I was and that her son had been in love with our daughter. Why shouldn’t she know? Her sister had no reason to keep it secret.”
“Then why didn’t she just say so honestly?”
“I know and I agree. But perhaps she was trying to learn what kind of person I was before she would admit the connection.”
“It doesn’t sound as if she has admitted it yet.”
“She would have disapproved of it, fiercely, if she’d known at the time. We can be sure of that much.”
“All the more reason to keep her in the dark.”
James pulled off his silk dressing gown and flung it angrily over a chair.
Anne closed her book and put it carefully on the little Sheraton table by her bed. She picked up the snuffer. “But when she said, ‘There will be nothing left of us…’ If you’d been there, you’d have been as touched as I was. I promise.”
“You have taken leave of your reason if you think we should tell her. What can come of it? The ruin of Sophia’s reputation, the end of our chances as we label ourselves creatures of scandal—”
Anne could feel her temper starting to rise. “That’s what you don’t like. The idea that Lady Somebody will turn up her nose at you because you had a daughter who was no better than she ought to be.”
He was indignant. “I see. And you like the idea that Sophia should be remembered as a harlot?”
This silenced her for a moment. Then she spoke, more calmly this time. “It’s a risk, of course, but I would ask her to keep it to herself. Of course I know I couldn’t force her to, but I don’t think we have the right to keep it from her that she has a grandson.”
“We’ve kept it from them for more than a quarter of a century.”
“But we didn’t know them. Now we do. Or at least, I know her.”
James had climbed in beside his wife and blown out his candle. He lay down with his back to her. “I forbid it. I will not have our daughter’s memory defaced. Certainly not by her own mother. And get that dog off the bed.” Anne could see there was no point in arguing any further, so she gently snuffed out the candle on her side, settled down under the bedclothes, and lifted Agnes into the crook of her arm. But sleep was a long time in coming.
The family had returned to England before Sophia told them. The aftermath of the battle consumed James’s efforts for some weeks, but at last he had brought them all back to London, to a house in Kennington that was an improvement on their previous abode but hardly a fashion leader. He continued to supply foodstuffs to the army, but catering to an army in peacetime was not the same as dealing with the drama of war, and it was increasingly clear to Anne that he was bored with the work, bored with the world he was operating in, bored with its lack of possibilities. Then he started to notice the renewed activity of London’s builders. The victory over Napoléon and the peace that followed had stoked a new confidence in the country’s future. The figure of the French emperor had loomed over them all, more perhaps than they had recognized, for twenty years, and now he was gone to a faraway island in the South Atlantic, and this time he would not be back. Europe was free, and it was time to look ahead. And so the day dawned when James came into the house flushed with excitement. Anne was in the kitchen, supervising the stores cupboard with her cook. There was no need for this. Their life and income had overtaken the way they used to do things, as James never tired of pointing out, and seeing his wife in an apron checking groceries was never very pleasing to him, especially as he was still flying high from their experiences in Brussels. On this particular evening, however, nothing could spoil his humor.
“I have met an extraordinary man,” he said.
“Oh?” Anne stared at the label on the flour. She was sure it was wrong.
“A man who is going to rebuild London.” Anne didn’t know it then but he was right. Thomas Cubitt, a former ship’s carpenter, had devised a new method for managing a building project. He undertook to deal with, and employ, all the different trades involved: bricklayers, plasterers, tilers, plumbers, carpenters, stonemasons, painters. Those responsible for the commission would only ever have to deal with Cubitt and his brother, William. Everything else would be done for them.
James paused. “Isn’t it brilliant?”
Anne could see that there was considerable appeal in this system, and it might have a bright future, but was it worth throwing over a perfectly established career when James knew nothing about it? Still, she soon learned that he wouldn’t be shaken. “He’s building a new home for the London Institution at Finsbury Circus. He wants help with the funding and dealing with the suppliers.”
“Which you have been doing all your working life.”
“Exactly!” And so it began. James Trenchard the developer was born, and everything would have been as merry as a marriage bell if Sophia had not dropped her bombshell barely a month later.
She came into her mother’s room one morning and sat on the bed. Anne was at her glass as Ellis finished her hair. The girl waited in near silence until the work was done. Anne knew something was coming, something big, but she wasn’t eager to begin it. At last, however, she accepted the inevitable. “Thank you, Ellis, you may go.” The maid was curious, naturally; if anything, more curious than the mother, but she picked up some linen for the laundry and closed the door behind her.
“What is it?”
Sophia stared at her. Then she spoke in a kind of gushing sigh. “I’m going to have a child.” Once, as a young girl, Anne had been kicked in the stomach by a pony, and she was reminded of that sensation when she heard the words.
“When?” It seemed an oddly practical question, given the circumstance, but she didn’t see the point in screaming and writhing on the floor, even if it had considerable appeal.
“The end of February. I think.”
“Don’t you know?”
“The end of February.”
Anne counted backward in her mind. “Do I have Lord Bellasis to thank for this?” Sophia nodded. “You stupid, stupid fool.” The girl nodded again. She was putting up no resistance. “How did it happen?”
“I thought we were married.”
Anne almost burst out laughing. What tomfoolery had her daughter been put through? “I take it you weren’t.”
“No.”
“No, of course you weren’t. Nor ever likely to be.” How could her child have been so absurd as to think Bellasis would really marry her? She felt a sudden wave of fury at James. He had encouraged this. He’d convinced the girl that impossible things were possible. “Tell me everything.”
It was hardly an unfamiliar story. Bellasis had professed his love and persuaded Sophia that he wished to marry her before he went back into action. At the news of Napoleon’s march on Brussels, he had come to her, begging her to let him arrange a marriage that would be clandestine at first, but which he promised he would reveal to his parents when he felt the time was right. Either way, she would have proof of the ceremony if anything happened to him, and she could claim the protection of the Brockenhursts if she needed it.
“But didn’t you know you should have had your father’s permission for it to be legal? You’re eighteen.” She said this to provoke more self-flagellation from Sophia, but instead the girl just looked at her for a moment.
“Papa gave his permission.”
That brought a second pony kick. Her husband had helped a man to seduce his own daughter? She felt so angry that if James had walked through the door at that moment, she would have scratched his eyeballs out of their sockets. “Your father knew?”
“He knew that Edmund wanted to marry me before he went back to the fighting, and he gave his permission.” Sophia took another deep breath. In a way it was a relief to reveal it. She was tired of carrying the burden alone. “Edmund said he’d found a parson to marry us, which he did, in one of the army chapels they had erected. Afterward the man wrote out a letter certifying it and… that’s when it happened.”
“I assume the marriage was false?”
Sophia nodded. “I never suspected it, not for a moment. Edmund spoke of his love and our future, right up until the moment we were leaving his aunt’s ball on the night of the battle.”
“So when did you find out?”
The girl got up and walked over to the window. Below, her father was climbing into a carriage. She was glad he would be out of the house, giving her mother some time to calm down and think up a plan. “As we came out of the Richmonds’ house into the street, there was a group of officers on horseback, all in the uniforms of the Fifty-second Light Infantry, the Oxfordshires, Edmund’s own regiment…”
“And?”
“One of them was the ‘churchman’ who married us. So there you have it.” She sighed wearily. “He was a soldier, a friend of Edmund’s, who had turned his collar around to deceive me.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He never saw me. Or if he did, he pretended he had not. I wasn’t close and, of course, once I’d recognized him I shrank back.”
Anne nodded. The scene when they had left the ball together suddenly made sense. “Now I understand what put you in such a state that night. I thought it was simply Lord Bellasis leaving for the battle.”
“The moment I saw the man I knew I’d been taken in. I was not loved. I was not heading for a golden future. I was a stupid young woman who had been treated as a streetwalker, tricked and used, and no doubt I would have been thrown aside into the gutter where Edmund thought I belonged, if he had lived.” Her face seemed so mature in the daylight, the bitterness in her speech adding ten years to her age.
“When did you know you were carrying a child?”
“Hard to say. I suspected it a month later, but I wouldn’t admit it until any further denial was pointless. Edmund was dead, and for a time, like a madwoman, I pretended nothing had changed. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was at my wit’s end. I confess I have taken some foolish remedies, and paid a gypsy five pounds for what I am quite sure was sugar water. But they all failed. I am still enceinte.”
“What have you told your father?”
“He knows I was deceived. I told him that morning in Brussels when he brought me the news of Edmund’s death. But he thinks I got away with it.”
“We must make a plan.” Anne Trenchard was a practical woman, and one of her chief virtues was that she did not linger over a disaster but sought, almost immediately, to remedy what could be remedied and to accept what could not. Her daughter must be spirited away from London. She would have an illness or a relation in the north who needed caring for. They would have a story ready before the day was finished. Sophia must be four months gone at least, and now that Anne concentrated on it, the girl’s figure was thickening. Not noticeably so, yet, but it wouldn’t be long. They had no time to lose.
Anne was not kind to James when he returned that evening and found himself alone with his wife in his study. “And you never thought to consult me? When a rich viscount proposed a secret marriage that no one must know of, performed by a parson no one could vouch for, with a beautiful eighteen-year-old from an entirely unsuitable background, you never thought to talk to anyone about what his motives might possibly be?” She was trying hard not to shout.
James nodded. He had gone over it often enough in his own mind. “It sounds so obvious when you say it, but Bellasis seemed a nice young man and genuinely fond of her—”
“You think he would have confided in you that he was hoping to seduce your daughter if it could possibly be managed?”
She almost spat at him. “When you gave your permission, she was ruined.”
He winced. “Please, Anne. Do you think I don’t regret it?”
“I assume you regret it even more now.”
In time, Anne came to be sorry she had blamed her husband so entirely for Sophia’s fall. Because when the girl died in childbirth, he remembered the charge and saw her death as his own fault, his punishment for his vanity and ambition and self-importance. It didn’t seem to cure him of any of these failings, but the guilt never left him, nonetheless.
There had been no indication of what was coming, but then, as the doctor said at the time, there seldom was. Anne and Sophia had gone up to Derbyshire and taken a modest house on the edge of Bakewell, as Mrs. Casson and her married daughter, Mrs. Blake, a Waterloo widow. They had no friends or acquaintances in the area, but anyway they saw no one. And they lived simply. Neither of them took their maids with them, and Ellis and Croft went on to board wages until their mistresses returned. If they were curious, Anne never knew. At any rate, they were too professional to show it.
It wasn’t an unhappy time. Their life up there was pleasant enough, reading, taking walks in the park at Chatsworth. They made inquiries and enlisted the help of a highly regarded physician, Doctor Smiley, and he’d been pleased with Sophia’s progress. Anne came to suspect that he knew the truth, or at least that they were not who they pretended to be, but he was too well mannered to be openly curious.
Before they left London, they had arranged that James would find the child a suitable home. Even Sophia knew she couldn’t hope to keep it. The baby must be properly looked after, given a name, educated, but brought up with no awareness of his or her real identity. None of them wanted Sophia’s name to be dragged through the mud, and Anne knew her husband also feared that his own attempts at self-betterment would be dashed by a public scandal. If it had been their son who had fathered a bastard, it might be different, but for a daughter it was a crime with no possible forgiveness. James had acted swiftly, and with the help of the company spies found a clergyman, Benjamin Pope, who lived in Surrey. He was born a gentleman but the living was a poor one and so the extra money would be welcome. More to the point, the couple was childless and sad to be so. Sophia accepted the situation, when it was explained to her—not without a pang, but she accepted it. Armed with this, James made the final arrangements, and Mr. Pope agreed to adopt the baby as the “child of his late cousin.” The Popes would get a generous additional income, which would allow them to live reasonably well, while the child would be educated and a progress report would be sent regularly to Mr. Trenchard’s office for his private perusal.
Meanwhile, Dr. Smiley enrolled an experienced midwife, made every preparation, and came to the house to supervise the birth. And it should have been fine. Except when it was done and the boy was safely born, the doctor simply could not stop the bleeding. Anne had never seen so much blood, and there was nothing for her to do but hold Sophia’s hand and assure her that everything would soon be mended and that nothing was wrong. She never forgot how she had just sat there, lying and lying, on and on, until her little girl was dead.
She couldn’t look at the baby for weeks, this boy who had killed her daughter. Dr. Smiley found a wet nurse and a nursemaid and between them they made sure he survived, but still Anne could not look at him. She’d employed a cook and a housemaid when they first arrived, so life went on, with empty days parsed by uneaten meals, but still she could not set eyes on the child. Until one evening Dr. Smiley came to her in the little parlor where she sat by the fire, staring blankly at the book in her hands, and said gently that all she had left of Sophia was her son. Then Anne did allow herself to be coaxed into holding the baby, and having held him, she could hardly bear to let him go.
Anne often wondered if she had only learned to love the boy sooner, would she have tried to change the plan and insisted on bringing him up herself? But she doubted James would have allowed it, and since the arrangements were fixed, it would have been hard to renege on them. At last the house in Bakewell was closed and Anne traveled south with the nurse, who traveled on to Surrey to deliver the baby to his new home. The nurse was paid off and life returned to normal. Normal, that is, without Sophia. There was a tearful good-bye to Croft, whose services were no longer needed. Anne gave her a bonus as a farewell, but she was interested that the maid never showed any curiosity as to why her young mistress had died. Maybe she had guessed the truth. It would be hard to hide a pregnancy from a lady’s maid.
So the years passed. The original plan had been for Charles to be trained for the cloth, and this had continued as a goal while he grew through his teens, but he had early displayed a talent for mathematics, and as he neared the end of boyhood he announced that he wanted to try his luck in the City. It was impossible for James not to feel flattered by this development, as he reasoned it must be his own blood coming out in the lad, but still they had not met him. They could only judge the young man by the reports sent from the Reverend Mr. Pope. In truth, James longed to help his grandson, but he was unsure how to do so without opening the Pandora’s box that a revelation of his origins was bound to prove. And so they hung back, paying him a modest allowance that Mr. Pope explained to Charles was a gift from well-wishers, living for the letters that Pope would send, four times a year, as regularly as clockwork. The boy had been happy. They were sure of that. At least, they had no reason to think otherwise. On their instruction, he had been told that his father had died in battle and his mother in childbirth and that therefore he was adopted, but that was all. He seemed to have accepted it, and the Popes had grown fond of him so there was no cause for concern, but still, as Anne would say to herself night after night as she lay in the dark, he was their grandchild and yet they did not know him.
And now Lady Brockenhurst had entered the picture and complicated things further. Anne might not know Charles Pope, but at least she knew of his existence. She knew that her daughter had not vanished from the earth leaving no trace behind. Lady Brockenhurst had almost wept when she talked of their having no heir, while she, Anne, could have told her that her child had fathered a healthy and promising son. She had known James would forbid it, of course. Partly for motives she did not respect, but partly to protect the good name of their dead daughter, and that she could not simply dismiss. Hour after hour she lay with James snoring beside her, unable to resolve what she should do, until at last she slipped into a fretful sleep, waking early and unrefreshed.
It took a month of uneasy rest and sorrow before Anne decided on a course of action. She did not like Lady Brockenhurst. She did not even know her, but she couldn’t bear the responsibility of the secret. She was only too aware that, had their positions been reversed and she’d discovered Lady Brockenhurst had kept such a story from her she would never have forgiven her. So, one day, she sat at the pretty desk in her little sitting room on the second floor and wrote: “Dear Lady Brockenhurst, I should like to call on you at a time that is convenient. I would be grateful if you could find a moment when we might be alone.” It wasn’t hard to learn which house in Belgrave Square they occupied, since her husband had built it. She folded the paper, sealed it with a wafer, wrote the address, and went out herself to give it to the carrier. It would have taken her maid ten minutes to deliver her message to the door, but Anne was not anxious to have all her business discussed below stairs.
She did not have long to wait. The following morning there was a note on the breakfast tray that Ellis laid across her lap. She picked it up.
“It was brought by hand, ma’am. A footman delivered it this morning.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No. Just handed it in and left.” Naturally the question only whetted Ellis’s appetite, but Anne had no intention of giving any clues. She took up the little silver paper knife that had been laid on the tray and opened the envelope. A small sheet of thick, cream paper, embossed with a capital B under an earl’s coronet, contained a short message. “Come at four o’clock today. We will be alone for half an hour. CB”
Anne did not order a carriage. Lady Brockenhurst probably would not approve but she wanted no witnesses. It was a nice enough day, and the walk would be a short one. More tellingly, she did not even ring for help with her cape and bonnet, but simply went up to her room at twenty minutes to the hour and slipped them on herself. Then she descended the stairs and left. The footman in the hall held the door for her, so the excursion could not be a complete secret, but what could be in her life these days? With prying eyes upon them from the moment they woke?
Outside, she regretted for a moment not bringing Agnes for the walk, but then she decided it would only complicate matters, and she set off. The sky was looking a little darker than in the morning, but she turned left and walked until she came to Belgrave Place, then left again, and in less than a quarter of an hour since she had quit her own front door she was standing before Brockenhurst House. It was a large building, straddling the corner between Upper Belgrave Street and Chapel Street, one of the three freestanding palaces at the corners of the square. She hesitated but then she saw that a footman, lounging near the gate at the entrance, was watching her. She straightened her back and walked up to the front door. Before she could pull the bell, the door swung open and another liveried footman invited her in.
“Mrs. James Trenchard,” she said.
“Her ladyship is expecting you,” replied the man in the curious neutral tone, implying neither approval nor disapproval, that the experienced servant always masters. “Her ladyship is in the drawing room. If you would like to follow me.” Anne removed her cape and gave it over for him to lay on one of the gilded sofas in the hall, and then followed the man up the broad green marble staircase. They reached the top, and the servant opened one of the double doors and announced, “Mrs. Trenchard,” before closing it and leaving Anne to negotiate her way across the wide expanse of colorful Savonnerie carpet to where the Countess sat by the fire. She nodded.
“Come in, Mrs. Trenchard, and sit by me. I hope you do not mind a fire in summer. I’m afraid I am always cold.” It was as near to a friendly greeting as Anne suspected she was capable of. She took a seat on a damask-covered Louis XV bergère opposite her hostess. There was a portrait over the chimneypiece of a beauty in the style of the century before, with high-piled, powdered hair, lace décolleté, and panniers. With a slight surprise, she realized the picture was of Lady Brockenhurst. “It was painted by Beechey,” said her hostess with a chuckle. “On my marriage in 1792. I was seventeen. They said it was quite a good likeness at the time, but no one could tell that now.”
“I knew it was you.”
“You surprise me.” She sat, patiently waiting. After all, it was Anne who had requested the interview.
There was no getting around it. The moment had arrived. “Lady Brockenhurst, it seems that I am in possession of a secret that I have sworn to my husband never to reveal, and indeed he would be very angry if he knew that I was here today…” She paused. Somehow she could not make herself frame the words.
Lady Brockenhurst had no desire to be drawn into the complexities of the Trenchard marriage. Instead she said simply, “Yes?” Despite herself, Anne was impressed. There was something very powerful in her hostess’s composure. She must by now have deduced that something momentous was about to be revealed, but she could have been entertaining the vicar’s wife for all that it showed on her face.
“The other day, you said that when you and your husband go, there will be nothing left of you.”
“I did.”
“Well, that’s not quite true.”
Lady Brockenhurst stiffened almost imperceptibly. At least Anne had her full attention.
“Before she died, Sophia was delivered of a child, a boy, Lord Bellasis’s son.” At that moment, the large double doors of the drawing room flew open and two footmen arrived bearing trays of tea. They proceeded to put up a table, cover it with a cloth, and lay out everything, much as the Duchess of Bedford’s servants had done.
Lady Brockenhurst smiled. “I liked it more than I knew at the time, and I have taken to staging an imitation of my own every day at some point after four. I’m sure it will catch on.” Anne acknowledged this, and together they chatted about the merits of eating as well as drinking tea until the men had completed their work. “Thank you, Peter. We will manage by ourselves today.” To Anne it felt as if an age had passed, as if she were physically older by the time the men left.
Lady Brockenhurst poured them both a cup and handed one to Anne. “Where is he now, this boy?” She betrayed neither excitement nor revulsion. In fact, she gave away nothing. As was her habit.
“In London, and the ‘boy’ is a man. He was twenty-five last February. He works in the City.”
“What is he like? Do you know him well?”
“We don’t know him at all. My husband placed him, soon after his birth, in the care of a clergyman named Pope. He goes under the name of Charles Pope now. We have never thought it would be useful to make his origins public knowledge. He himself knows nothing.”
“You must protect the memory of your daughter, poor child. Of course I can see that. We must try not to blame her when she is to be pitied. You said yourself the atmosphere in Brussels before the battle was such that anyone could lose their reason for a moment.”
If this was supposed to be a defense of Sophia, it was not effective. “I do not blame her, and she didn’t lose her reason,” said Anne firmly. “She believed she was married to Lord Bellasis. He tricked her into thinking that a marriage had taken place.”
This was not at all what Lady Brockenhurst had been expecting. She drew herself up. “I beg your pardon?”
“He tricked her. He bamboozled her. He told her he had arranged for them to be married, then he persuaded a fellow officer to pretend to be a clergyman, and Sophia did not find out the truth until it was too late.”
“I don’t believe you.” Lady Brockenhurst spoke with absolute, unchallengeable conviction.
Anne was quite as firm. She spoke calmly, putting down her cup as she did so. “Of course that is your privilege, but I am telling you the truth. It was only when we left the ball, immediately before Lord Bellasis rode away to join his regiment, that Sophia recognized his partner in her undoing. The so-called parson was laughing and joking with his fellow officers, as far from a churchman as anyone could be. She almost fainted.”
Lady Brockenhurst had also placed her cup firmly back on its saucer and now she stood. “I see how it is. Your daughter was scheming to catch my wretched son in her net, no doubt encouraged by her parents—”
Anne cut in sharply. “Now it is my turn to be incredulous.”
But Lady Brockenhurst continued on her path, warming to her subject as she spoke. “When she heard that he was dead and his seduction had been for nothing, she concocted a story that would give her some excuse if the worst happened, and it did.”
Anne was bristling now, furious at this cold and heartless woman, furious at the dead Lord Bellasis, furious at herself for being so blind. “You mean, Lord Bellasis was incapable of such behavior?”
“I most certainly do. He could never have conceived of the very idea.” Lady Brockenhurst was getting carried away with her performance. She had become Indignation on a monument. She did not value Anne’s type, and so she could not see or judge the woman clearly. But Anne Trenchard was quite as much a fighter as she.
“Wasn’t his godfather Lord Berkeley?”
Anne could see at once the name was a slap across Lady Brockenhurst’s face. She almost flinched. “How did you know that?”
“Because Lord Bellasis spoke of him. He told me that when Lord Berkeley died in 1810, his eldest son was disallowed the use of his titles because his father had not truly married his mother before the boy’s birth, as she thought. It came out later that he’d gotten a friend to pose as a priest, so he might lure the unsuspecting girl into bed. They did marry later but they could not legitimize the child. You know all this to be true.” Lady Brockenhurst was silent. “I beg you not to tell me Lord Bellasis could never have conceived of any such idea.”
After a pause to regroup, Lady Brockenhurst recovered her style. Gliding smoothly over to the chimneypiece, she tugged at the embroidered bell rope, talking as she went. “I will only say this. My son was seduced by an unscrupulous and ambitious girl, aided for all I know by her equally ambitious parents. She wanted to use the chaos of war to bring about a union that would advance her beyond even her father’s dreams. But she failed. My son took her as his mistress. I do not deny it, but so what? He was a young man, and she was a pretty slut who threw herself at his head. And I won’t apologize for that because I do not care. Ah, Peter. Please take Mrs. Trenchard down. She is leaving.” She spoke to the footman who had come in answer to the bell. He waited in the doorway.
Anne could not, of course, reply in front of him, but she was too angry to speak anyway, just nodding to her enemy to avoid giving the servant any clue as to what had really taken place. She started for the door, but Lady Brockenhurst had not quite finished. “Funny. I thought you had some sentimental tale to tell me of my son. A happy story from his last days on earth. You spoke so well of him when we first met.”
Anne stopped. “I spoke of him as I knew him before that night. We did have fun with him. I wasn’t lying. And I didn’t want to hurt you. But I was wrong. You were bound to know the truth eventually. I should have been more honest. If it’s any consolation, no one was more surprised than I to learn what he was capable of.” She hesitated at the door. The footman had gone ahead of her along the gallery, and they were alone again for a moment. “Will you keep our secret?” She hated to ask but she had to. “Can I have your word of honor?”
“Of course you may have my word.” The Countess’s smile would have frozen water. “Why would I publicize my late son’s degradation?” With that, Anne had to accept that she’d allowed Lady Brockenhurst the final say on the matter. She swept out of the room, down the staircase, and into the street before she allowed herself to stop and take full account of her shaking fury.