That odd look Dirk gave her on his day of departure haunted her for years. Had he spoken to her father the previous night and had the difference between a favoured artist and an aspiring son-in-law been pointed out to him? Her father could cut and wound more deeply than anyone else she knew and she was horrified to think Dirk might have been on the receiving end of an unrestrained mauling. Or had he taken her lack of an immediate enthusiastic response as a ‘No’, not appreciating the complexity of marriage traditions among the gentry?
Eleven telegrams had come for Dirk during his stay and they were all to do with commissioning work – she knew because she’d read them. Those he dropped carelessly on the table beside the easel, but the last one he had folded and put in his jacket pocket. Was his mother really ill, or had he invented the story to give credibility to his reason for leaving?
At the end of a fortnight she didn’t think she would appear too forward if she wrote to him at his home address – after all, if she had said a straight ‘Yes’ to his proposal, they would be engaged by now. It was a friendly letter – she had her pride and didn’t mention love or the future, making sure to ask at length after his mother’s health.
She haunted the front hall waiting for an answer, but none came.
Her father didn’t mention the scraped-off hand. Did that mean Dirk had arranged with him to return at some time to repaint it? She didn’t ask. Her portrait remained propped against the wall after the other three were hung.
She spent long stretches of time in her room crying, or riding her horse too fast and too hard.
Dirk had either lost interest in her, she concluded, or been sensitive to her father’s disapproval and for her sake had withdrawn. Or had he taken justifiable offence and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble? It’s not as if he’d be short of admirers, and why go where he wasn’t wanted? Worse than all that, though she couldn’t believe it, was the possibility that she was nothing more than a diversion he had made use of while he was in the house. Did he make advances to all his young female sitters? He seemed too genuine for that, but how could she be sure when she knew so little about men of her own class, let alone those of another?
Nothing that happened in the year that followed could raise her spirits. She went over and over in her mind what had been said during the sittings, trying to understand things from Dirk’s point of view and castigating herself for her own behaviour. Should she have said or done this or that, or not said or done this or that? Should she do something now?
“I’ve just the man for you,” Algernon said from behind his newspaper the following autumn, a week after she’d turned twenty. “He’s ideal. He has 19,000 acres, a mansion, a string of horses, a title and he’s your cousin. He’s my second cousin, so that would make him your second cousin once removed.”
The words ‘horses’ and ‘cousin’ made a small ripple in the dark pool of gloom in her mind.
“He called by yesterday when you were out riding and fell in love with you or, to be more precise, your portrait.”
He went on to say Major General Lord Waldron Blackshaw had recently inherited his father’s title and land, so the onus was on him to find a wife to supply an heir. Before his father’s death he had been stationed in India, and was so career-orientated he hadn’t felt the need to find a bride. By rights Verity, being the elder, should have been the chosen one, but Waldron wouldn’t be deflected from Edwina after he had seen her likeness in the painting. He wasn’t even worried that the missing hand might be true to life.
“I’ve invited him to stay for a month beginning next week, so he and I can talk about old times in India and you can have a good look at him and see what you think. It’s only fair to warn you that he thinks there are two things you might find unacceptable, though personally I don’t see why you should – both minor compared to all he has to offer. So unimportant they’re hardly worth mentioning, but I thought I’d get them out of the way before you meet him.”
He’s probably an ugly bore, Edwina thought. “What are they?” she asked aloud.
“You might think he’s a bit on the old side.”
Worse than being an ugly bore, thought Edwina, remembering Dirk’s delicious youth. “How old is he?”
“Around my age.”
Disgusting. “What’s the other thing?”
“His estate is in Ireland.”
“Ireland?”
“Yes, Ireland. Don’t look so shocked. It’s only next door. They do speak English over there, you know – well, most of them do by now.”
Was this an arranged marriage he was talking about? “Do I have to marry him?” she asked in a small voice.
Her father lowered his newspaper for the first time during the interview and looked directly at her. “Of course not. Just a hope that you two might get on. The best way to keep a fortune in the family is through marriage. And here’s your chance – you’re both Blackshaws so you won’t even have to change your name. My father lost out as a second son, so it would be nice for the wheel to turn full circle. You share a great-great grandfather but, even though you have the same name and come from the same family, his side got the lion’s share of the wealth.”
The idea had its tempting aspects. A cousin would be more tolerant of her deficiencies as he probably shared them. She would please her father. And then there were the horses . . .
But the only man she wanted was Dirk.
Before her cousin arrived in his role of suitor, she felt she must finally find out if something had happened to Dirk to prevent him from answering her letters. Perhaps, after all, his continuing silence hadn’t indicated a loss of interest in her but something else entirely, something perfectly innocent and understandable that would be cleared up as soon as they met face to face, giving her the strength to stand against her father and dismiss her cousin out of hand.
She travelled by train to Dirk’s village of Burnstaple and, trying to hide any outward show of nerves, went into a teashop across the street from Armstrong & Son Emporium, the large shop to which she had addressed her letters.
“Just passing through,” she said to the friendly middle-aged woman serving her, and went on to ask after Dirk in as casual a manner as she could affect. Wasn’t this where a friend of her brother’s lived and had the woman by any chance heard of him or his family? The Armstrongs?
The woman smiled. “You mean the good-looking one? The artist? Father owns the shop over there?”
“Oh, I hadn’t noticed it. Yes, that’s the one I mean.”
“I have the pleasure. He was knee-high to a grasshopper when my late husband and I bought this place, and I watched him grow up. Know his mother well. A real lady. Often brings her sisters in here. Had a bad turn last year –”
So it was true.
“– but back in the pink now and very proud of having an artist in the family once they got over the shock of him wanting no part of the shop and him doing so well.”
“So he has done well?” Edwina pulled out the chair beside her. “I would be pleased if you would join me.”
Impressed by the authority of Edwina’s accent if not her years, the woman said, “Don’t mind if I do.” She fetched herself a pot of tea and sat opposite. “Lovely to take the weight off my feet before the afternoon-tea rush. I’ve just sent the waitress to collect the clean linen. Now, where were we? Your brother’s friend, you said. Is Dirk doing well, you ask? I can tell you this, he would be doing a lot better if people did the decent thing and didn’t refuse to pay him . . .”
“Pay him?”
The woman leaned in close and lowered her voice. “Well, his mother doesn’t know all the facts and Dirk doesn’t like talking about his clients, but his father got it out of him. Well, it was obvious when he returned after six months with little money and he’s not a gambler or a drunk or anything and it appears that one old general refused to pay a penny because he said his nose couldn’t be that large and purple – but he kept the painting, mind – and then some spoilt daughter or another had a hand missing. Not in real life, mind, but in the painting and the father didn’t pay for the whole family as he said the contract wasn’t honoured and hadn’t Dirk been living off the fat of the land for five months at his expense? Which just goes to prove that people like that know how to keep what they have.”
Edwina spilt her tea over her hand.
The woman rushed off to fetch a cloth and a glass of water.
“There, dear,” she said, dabbing the red patch with the wet cloth. “That hot tea can give you a nasty scald.”
Two ladies came in and she went off to serve them. After she had taken their order and brought them their tea and cream cakes she returned to Edwina and examined the hand.
“That’s not too bad. No permanent damage by the look of it. You were lucky the tea had cooled off or you might have been scarred for life.” She leaned in again. “To finish my story. Dirk had intended to return to finish painting the hand but after he got the letter he was so disgusted he cut his losses rather than go back there. He had his pride. You were lucky you didn’t meet him as he’d spoil you for anyone else and you’re too young for that and it wasn’t as if he was just handsome but he was good to his family and a man’s man into the bargain. He got a girl into trouble –”
Edwina’s throat contracted.
“– and I’m not telling secrets out of school as everybody knew. They were married and they’re over in Ireland at the moment and he’s painting the Duke of some Irish name or other I can’t spell or remember and his family, and I hope he has better luck this time now he has responsibilities and will you leave your name and I’ll tell his mother your brother was asking after him?”
“Of course.” Edwina was finally able to gulp down the tea she had been holding in her mouth. “No need to do that. My brother will be contacting him. As I said, I was just passing through and thought I’d ask. My aunt wanted to commission a portrait, but it looks as if she’ll have to wait. It was nice talking to you.”
“You too. Mind how you go, and I hope you’ll call in again some time.”
Was there a knowing look in her eyes? Does she suspect I’m another girl who got into trouble? Edwina, flustered, left with as much dignity as she could command.
Later she wished she’d asked the owner of the teashop the date the wedding had taken place. Could her unanswered letters mean Dirk was already committed to someone else at the time she wrote the first one? Did he take up with his future wife so quickly after leaving her because he thought she didn’t love him? Was the lucky woman waiting in the wings, ready to have an ‘accident’ as soon as possible? Was he wooing the two of them simultaneously?
Had her father’s refusal to pay any bearing on the decisions Dirk made after he returned to Burnstaple?
If Waldron were in any way presentable she would marry him. He wouldn’t intimidate her, being a cousin, and her father would be proud to welcome him into the family as a son-in-law. As a bonus she might even run into Dirk in Ireland, its being such a small place, and from her secure position as a married aristocrat, find out the details of why he had forsaken her.
Waldron was dignified, mature, interested, quiet and respectful when she first met him. Her mother and father acted as if they had discovered a unique work of art.
“This will amuse you. Your cousin is quite a wit,” her father said after the betrothal had been finalised. “When he first saw your portrait he said he hoped he wouldn’t ask for the wrong hand in marriage. Isn’t that a good one?”
Edwina laughed, gratified that she was responsible for her father’s satisfaction in seeing his daughter transformed, by virtue of one decision, from an odd spinster to a woman of significance.
If only she had known then what she knew now. Nine years later she reinterpreted those qualities that had first impressed her, and saw Waldron as nothing better than an arrogant, drunken narcissist. Had she been a bad judge of character back then or had he been a good actor? For the sake of her self-respect, she clung to her belief that he had deliberately misrepresented himself for as long as it took to win her acceptance.