21

Cambric: a fine, lightweight French cloth of linen or cotton often used for shirts, handkerchiefs and ruffs. The thread is also used for lacemaking and needlework.

The opportunity came even sooner than I’d hoped. Louisa’s letter arrived the very next day, with an invitation to visit the coming weekend.

But my delight and excitement were tempered with anxiety: how would I be welcomed by Ambrose, whose character I had impugned and whose motives I still mistrusted? How would Peter have changed, after all this time? And most of all, the question with the highest stakes: how to raise the subject of Henrietta Howard with my sister?

All my concerns slipped away when I alighted at Westford Abbots and saw Louisa waiting at the cross with Peter. Yes, it really was my boy, although he seemed to have grown so much that I had to look twice to be certain. He was turning into a young man before my eyes.

‘It’s been far too long,’ my sister said as we embraced, so warmly it was as though nothing harsh had ever passed between us. ‘We have so much to catch up with.’ Indeed, I thought to myself. More than you can imagine.

Peter collected my bag and we began to walk. ‘How are you, Peter? Are you enjoying being back at school?’

He muttered something inaudible, face to the ground.

‘Reply politely to your aunt, Peter,’ Louisa prompted.

‘Yes, thank you, Aunt Agnes,’ he allowed.

‘You wrote about the apple blossom. I hope you will come with me to show me the brightest displays.’

Louisa filled the silence. ‘Of course we shall walk. The blossom is a joy to see, after this long horrid winter,’ she said. ‘And the weather is set to be fair for the next few days, so the farmers say.’

‘I have school tomorrow, Ma,’ he said. ‘In case you have forgotten.’

‘I do not appreciate this new tone of yours, Peter,’ she said, sharply. ‘We shall walk after school, if the weather permits, and you will join us. What do you say?’

‘Yes, Mama.’

Not even this uneasy exchange could dampen my spirits. My baby was no more, nor even the little boy who enjoyed hugs and stories and who I could entertain with drawings or castles built of wooden blocks. But what a fine young man he was becoming.

As we passed the marketplace a group of young women ceased their gossiping, their heads turning. One called, ‘Good afternoon, Master Peter,’ while the others giggled.

He responded with a smile so flirtatious, a mixture of bashful and bold, that it jolted me to the core. For the first time, I saw in his face an unwelcome resemblance to another charmer with dark, dancing eyes. Pray God that Peter would not also inherit Tobias’s arrogant, brutish nature.

As we waited for Ambrose to arrive home that evening, nerves seemed to make my stomach curdle. I’d been contemplating the best way of handling our first encounter and decided that a quick, simple apology would help to clear the air right away.

‘Please forgive the hasty words in my letter,’ I said, when he had taken off his coat.

‘Think no more of it, sister-in-law. Consider that to be in the past.’

For all his piousness and pomposity and for all that I feared him, Ambrose’s behaviour was never less than that of a perfect gentleman, which only made my knowledge of his darker side even more chilling. He was the model of affability throughout supper, tendering polite enquiries about how the business was faring and listening with great attentiveness. The words ‘landlord’ or ‘rent’ never passed our lips. Convinced that he had engineered Mr Boyson’s visit as some kind of warning, I was all too aware of how vulnerable it had left me. It would have been very unwise to mention it.

‘And did you have a pleasant Easter weekend?’ Louisa asked, as we sat down to supper. I described my Easter jaunt to Chiswick, meeting the Garricks and our visit to Marble Hill House.

‘She built that house herself?’ Peter asked.

‘Not with her bare hands, I don’t suppose,’ Louisa said.

‘But it must have cost a fortune to build a palace like that.’

‘Some people are so rich they cannot think what to do with all their money,’ I said, hoping that he would not ask how Henrietta had made hers. Of course I made no mention of the gown. I was saving that until Louisa and I could be alone.

After the meal, as usual, we retired to the drawing room, Ambrose to his study and Peter to a game of chess with his friend. Louisa took up her handiwork – she’d moved on to making socks for the deserving poor.

‘I hope I am properly forgiven now,’ I began. ‘In my haste I wrote words that were ill-considered, and even disrespectful.’

‘Think nothing of it, dearest,’ she said. ‘My husband may be quick to anger, but he is also quick to forgive.’

‘I was so relieved to receive your letter, and to learn that the village was free from the typhus.’

She told me how concerned she’d been when Ambrose insisted on visiting parishioners suffering from the fever, placing himself, as she put it, directly in harm’s way. ‘But he’s strong as an ox, my husband.’ Her face lit up with genuine respect, and I wondered once more how she remained so admiring when in private he could be so harsh. ‘Thank the Lord he seems healthier than all of us, despite his years.’

‘It must have been a difficult time for you all.’

‘Especially for Peter. He was so bored without his friends. His nature is changing, as you have surely noticed. It is hard to get a word out of him sometimes.’

‘Except perhaps when there is a pretty girl in sight?’

‘Indeed.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘He dares not flirt like that when his father is around.’

‘It is no surprise the girls notice him. He’s turning into a very handsome young man.’

‘He is a popular boy and his schoolwork is still excellent. We are very proud of him.’

I was burning to tell her my discoveries about Henrietta and the silk, but still I hesitated, fearing to stir up her anger once more. In the end, it was she who inadvertently introduced the topic.

‘This vicarage is so dull, do you not think, with these whitewashed walls and plain furniture,’ she said with a small sigh, resting from her knitting for a moment. ‘I should so love to introduce something to delight the eye. Like those Chinese wall-paintings you described. But Ambrose would never allow it. He’d call it ostentatious, overly indulgent.’

‘Marble Hill House is just a showpiece, not a place where one could ever really feel at ease,’ I said. ‘You are blessed with a comfortable home. But I have to say that those Chinese designs did remind me of something.’

‘What is that, dearest?’ I looked at the top of her dear head bent again over her work, and almost faltered, fearing to risk antagonising one of the people most dear to me in all the world. But if I stopped now I would never find the truth.

‘When we were admiring the wallpaper, it reminded me so much of the silk I showed you, the one with the pagoda design. And would you believe it,’ I pressed on, ‘we discovered that Henrietta Howard has a gown made of the very same silk.’

She stopped to pick up a dropped stitch. ‘I’m sorry, I do not understand your meaning. Why is that so surprising?’

How should I answer? It felt as though I was about to blunder into a thicket, hacking forward without any notion of what dangers it might pose, or where it might end. Would it not be better simply to turn back along the clearer, well-trodden paths of our relationship, rather than pressing on into the unknown? I took a deep breath.

‘Mr Garrick told us that Henrietta probably had several children by the king. She fostered two of them with her brother, so they believe that she is their aunt. Can you see the parallel? That is just what we have done, between us?’

Needles clicked loudly in the silence and then, when she spoke, her voice was calm and soft.

‘I wish you would not speak of this, Agnes. Have we not agreed? And anyway, I cannot see the relevance.’

‘What about the other children? Whatever happened to them?’

‘What others?’

‘The babies she did not keep. She must have given them away to someone, somewhere.’

Her forehead furrowed with irritation. ‘What babies? Really, your riddling is beginning to try my patience.’

‘It is a riddle to me too, dearest sister, one that I have been trying to unravel ever since I found that silk. Our mother left me at the Hospital with a piece of Henrietta’s silk gown as a token. I have since learned that silk was woven under the cloak of greatest secrecy, and the merchant dealing with it was under strict instructions to hand over every piece of it and not to show the design to anyone. So who else could have a piece of it, except Henrietta?’

‘What merchant is this?’ Her eyes snapped up, holding mine in a gaze so piercing it was almost painful.

‘The one who went bankrupt, whose silks were in the auction.’

She scoffed. ‘It doesn’t sound so secret to me, when you were able to buy a piece of it.’ She rose suddenly, throwing down her knitting. ‘I am tired of this conversation, Agnes. I cannot understand why you are telling me, or where it is leading.’

‘Did you know Henrietta Howard?’ I blurted.

‘Now you’re just being silly.’

‘I think she might have been your mother, Louisa.’

‘For heaven’s sake.’ She went to the door and closed it, before turning back to me.

‘To be perfectly honest I am beginning to fear for your sanity, Agnes. Are you actually suggesting that you and I are the illegitimate children of the king’s mistress? I’ve never heard such poppycock. You seem to have become obsessed with this piece of silk and have concocted this fantasy on the basis of some dubious information about a token, of which you have no proof whatsoever. So what if the silk was Henrietta Howard’s? That has no relevance to me, or to you, or to anyone else in our family.’ She shook her head, exasperated. ‘Are we not happy to have found each other?’

I nodded.

‘Is Peter a happy, contented boy, growing up in a loving family?’

‘Yes, Louisa, he is.’

‘Do you have a successful business and good friends in London?’

A tear formed and trickled down my cheek.

‘Then please, dearest Agnes, be content with what we have.’ She leaned down to squeeze my hand. ‘Now, I am going to make some hot milk for Ambrose before we retire to bed. Would you like some?’

I knew of course that she was right: why could I not learn to cherish every happy moment, rather than always searching after that missing piece of the jigsaw? Being part of a family – however imperfect or incomplete – is a very great blessing. And as I was about to discover, one that can so quickly be torn away.