Isabella stared at herself in the mirror. The dress she wore was beautiful. Sewn into the bodice and gown were hundreds of small pearls. It fitted perfectly to her small waist. Against the darkness of her skin, which her aunt had always disliked, Isabella knew it looked well. She was like a portrait of a grown-up woman she did not recognize.
She stared into her own eyes as if they belonged to another. During the last few weeks she had lost weight, and her eyes seemed too big for her face and had shadows beneath them.
Isabella thought of Helena, of how she should be beside her this day. But she would not be here in this room if her mama were alive. She would not be in this house. She would be in her own house about to marry a man she loved. She closed her eyes quickly against her reflection. This was no time to remember Mama.
She moved to the window and looked out across the garden to the bay. The sea was like glass, too little wind for the white and tan sails of the small boats idling there. She looked across to the far side of Helford Passage. Verdant green fields and woods rose up from the water. She remembered the day she had arrived here, and that, despite her sadness, she had seen how beautiful it was.
From the open windows of the drawing room below her she could hear laughter and chatter. Soon she would have to walk down the aisle in her wedding dress and everyone would turn to stare at her. Isabella felt unsure she could bear it.
She heard her father’s voice and she tried to swallow the bitterness that rose up in her. She tried not to think of this as a second betrayal. For a moment she wondered what would happen if she changed her mind, if she refused to go down the stairs, get into the carriage, walk into the church. If she refused to marry a man nearly as old as her father.
Her heart jumped for a moment in hope. Then she thought of the consequences of having to stay here and they were more unbearable. There was also Sir Richard Magor to consider. He might be old – Isabella suspected he neared fifty – but he had always been kind to her.
There was a knock, and then the door flew open and Sophie burst in. Isabella’s small cousin stopped in the doorway and gasped.
‘Isabella, you look just like a princess. Why are you alone? Where is Lisette?’
‘I was thirsty so she went down to the kitchen to find me a drink.’
Sophie shut the door and came into the room. ‘Mama is coming presently to help Lisette with your veil.’
Isabella sat carefully on her dressing-table stool so that she did not crush her dress. Sophie was watching her intently in unaccustomed silence. Then she leant towards Isabella and said urgently, ‘Isabella, you do not have to do this. You look so sad in your wedding dress. I wanted to talk to you before Mama comes. I am sure she would learn to understand if you have changed your mind. So would your father … if you told them you are so unhappy …’
She trailed off. The words hung in the air and even Sophie did not believe them. Isabella smiled for the first time that day. Sophie was the only person she would truly miss. This youngest, plainest daughter; the clever one; the only one who did not resent her in any way.
‘You know I cannot remain here, Sophie. Your parents have been good to have me for so long. I am grown up and not their responsibility.’
Her father, confronted once more with the problem of what to do with Isabella, had made it plain that he intended to re-marry, to a woman called Charlotte Flemming, the daughter of a friend.
Sophie turned away, paced the room anxiously.
‘It is my mama who has driven you to this. You cannot help it if you are prettier than my sisters and far less stupid. It is as if she thinks you attract all the attention on purpose …’ She came and knelt in front of Isabella, her small, sweet face earnest. ‘I cannot bear you to throw your life away. You have been pretending you are happy to marry that old man all these months. I am so angry with your papa, Isabella. I am sorry to speak of him like this but he is grown into a very selfish man indeed.’
Her voice was so portentous in a girl of fifteen that Isabella laughed.
‘I think Papa is a man who is afraid of growing old and being alone in that huge house.’
Isabella got up from the stool and pulled Sophie to her feet, shook her hands so that she listened to her.
‘Sophie, in a moment your mother will be here. I made a promise to marry Richard Magor. I am not going to change it. I cannot remain here and I cannot return home … Help me to be strong …’ Isabella’s voice wobbled. ‘I need your friendship today, Sophie, more than I ever have. There are things I cannot change and I must make the best of them. I will especially need you when I return from Italy to my new home.’
Sophie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Isabella, he is so old, how will you bear …?’
Isabella interrupted her cousin swiftly. ‘He is kind to me, Sophie, and I believe he will go on being kind. I am going to live in a beautiful house by the sea. It is not so bad, and we can see each other often, can we not?’
‘Of course! I will come whenever you need me, Isabella.’ She hovered at the door. ‘Isabella, at night when I cannot sleep, I have such strange and lonely thoughts. What is the purpose of being a woman, apart from having babies? No one takes us seriously. I wish I had been born a man.’
Before Isabella could reply to this outburst, Sophie heard her mother downstairs and with a small moan disappeared quickly down the corridor to her room.
Lisette came in carrying a tray of tea for Isabella. ‘The kitchen is in turmoil. Your aunt is displeased with the flowers and Cook is having an argument with Tilly. For pity’s sake, Miss Isabella, you should have had this tea before we dressed you. Do not spill it down your dress. Wait, wait, I will cover you.’
Lisette threw a sheet over Isabella and she took her tea gratefully, for her throat felt parched.
Lisette watched her anxiously. ‘Now, let me throw your veil out upon the bed …’
Isabella waited. She knew Lisette well. She wanted to talk to her of intimate things but was having difficulty finding the right words.
‘I will be in the new house waiting for you when you return from Florence, Miss Isabella. Botallick House is a beautiful house, is it not? I believe you will be happy there.’
‘Yes. I am so near the sea I can walk to the beach from the garden. Did you know that, Lisette? There is a hidden path down to a small private cove. It was once used by smugglers.’
‘Indeed, Miss?’
‘Yes, it is true.’
‘I believe you will feel much … freer at Botallick, Miss Isabella, to be yourself. Why, you will be your own mistress!’
‘I think it will be very peaceful there. I believe I will grow to love that house.’
Lisette said gently, ‘I believe, too, Miss, that you will grow fond of Sir Richard, for he seems a kind man.’
Isabella’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. She bit her lip hard, but could not answer. Lisette made herself busy straightening her veil, then she said in a little rush, ‘Miss Isabella, at first … relations in marriage are not … easy. It grows easier with time. Your mother is not here, so I … I will tell you little ways of being more … comfortable. Do you understand me?’
Isabella nodded. She understood only too well. ‘Thank you, Lisette.’
It was a thing she tried not to think about. She had looked at women of her acquaintance who were married to old or ugly men and they appeared perfectly content, so it could not be too dreadful. Perhaps these women kept their eyes firmly shut.
Isabella’s aunt appeared at the door, positively joyful at the prospect of her niece’s departure, and today her voice held no edge. There had never been open hostility from her, she was much too well-mannered, but it had been implicit and had grown worse as Isabella got older.
Her aunt bustled round her. ‘You look very well, Isabella. Very well indeed. Your father will be proud of you.’
‘Thank you, Aunt.’
Isabella hesitated, then, risking rebuff, she said, for it was true, ‘Aunt, I know it must have been difficult to have yet another girl in your household for so long and I thank you for taking me in.’
Her aunt’s face grew red with surprise and something else Isabella might only guess at, for her aunt and her father were very alike in their transparency.
‘Isabella, you are my brother’s only child, what else would I do but welcome you into our house? Now, come along, it is time to leave for the church, your father waits downstairs.’
She touched Isabella’s arm briefly. ‘I wish you happiness, Isabella.’
Lisette adjusted her veil. Isabella wanted her to hide her face but Lisette would not let her do so until they had descended the stairs.
‘You will break your neck, Miss Isabella.’
Daniel Vyvyan stood in the hall looking upwards. She watched his face closely. She wanted to see the pain in it, although she knew that it was wrong to have these thoughts on her wedding day. She was quite aware of how like her mama she looked today and she wanted her father to remember this day, always. To remember Helena. To remember that Isabella was her daughter, a part of the life they once all shared and he was renouncing for the second time. She wanted him to remember her, exactly as she was at this moment, untouched, before he gave her away to an old man.
Oh, the pain was there, making his face suddenly grey and old, but it gave Isabella no pleasure, only sadness. She reached him and Lisette pulled the veil over her head, hiding her face, and they walked together, father and daughter, out of the front door, down the wide stone stairs to the waiting carriage. Her father had not said one word.
At the church her cousins waited in their creamy primrose dresses to walk behind her. Her father took her arm to walk her up the aisle.
‘How did you grow so suddenly beautiful?’ he whispered. ‘My God, you are like Helena. It breaks my heart.’
It was as if he was seeing Isabella for the very first time as a grown woman.
The dark chill of the church was a shock after the warm day and Isabella shivered. All eyes turned to watch her. Isabella wanted to run. She wanted to run, screaming her mama’s name, along the sea’s edge. She wanted to be free of this. She wanted to be free.
Her father, feeling her tremble, squeezed her arm. They stopped in front of the vicar and her father vanished suddenly from her side as he had always done, and she was alone next to Sir Richard.
Her eyes, hidden behind the veil, did not have to express anything as she looked into his face. He took her hand gently between his own, smoothed it as if he wanted to smooth away the ache in her heart. Tears sprang to Isabella’s eyes, rose up in her throat. She looked away, to the crucifix, to the vicar, and concentrated hard on his opening words. The tiny pearls on her wedding gown glistened and moved in the candlelight like thousands of tears.