Forever and Ever (26 page)

“I wish my uncle could see me now,” she said to Jack one afternoon in the parlor. Connor was away in Tavistock, meeting with his party-committee cronies, and Maris had the day off.

“Why?” Jack looked up from the game of solitaire he was playing on a tray over his lap.

“Because he’s always wanted me to take up ‘feminine pursuits.’ Look at me, Jack. What could be more feminine than knitting baby booties?”

He snickered. “Yes, ee do look motherly like, no doubt o’ that. Will ee miss bein’ a businesswoman onct the cheeil comes?”

She rested her head on the back of the chair. “Yes, I expect I will. I like it, you know, the . . . purposefulness of it. And I’m good at it,” she added. “I like that.”

“Mayhap ee’ll be good at motherin’, too. Which also have a
purposefulness
, so to say.”

She nodded. “And Guelder will still be mine. Mr. Andrewson will take over the daily management, but I’ll still own it. I’ll make the big decisions.”

“Well, then. Ee’ll ’ave everything, won’t ee?”

She smiled at him fondly. He was a rougher, lankier version of his brother, and she’d have loved him automatically for that alone, even without his other lovable qualities. He was so proud of Connor, he couldn’t hide it, although he teased him mercilessly and called him “the Honorable Mr. Pendarvis, Member fer the world at large,” and other, far less flattering titles. He liked to talk about their childhood, and even though she knew it wasn’t good for him, she could hardly bring herself to tell him to be quiet. The tragedy of the Pendarvis family made her deeply sad, but there had been good times, too, and she loved hearing stories of Mary and Egdon and the children, and discovering that the affection in their mean little cottage had triumphed over the poverty.

A heavy knock sounded at the front door, startling them. They looked at one another inquiringly. It wasn’t Sidony’s day to visit, and the doctor wasn’t due until tomorrow. Sophie went into the hall and called down the kitchen steps, “I’ll answer it, Mrs. B.!”

It was William Holyoake, dressed in his Sunday clothes, a blue broadcloth suit and black bowtie. For a second Sophie worried that she’d forgotten some church function or other—she and William sang in the adult mixed choir, and William, in addition, had recently become a member of the vestry. He whipped off his hat and smiled rather stiffly, a big, plain, blunt-spoken man, as dependable as dawn. “Afternoon, Mrs. Pendarvis,” he greeted her.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Holyoake. Come in,” she invited, standing back and widening the door for him.

He hung back. “I’ve come to ask if I may speak for a minute wi’ Mr. Jack Pendarvis.”

“Ah.” She smiled through her foreboding, realizing at once that he’d come about Sidony. She could feel herself being torn, loyalties divided right down the center. “Come in, please.” He obeyed; he was so tall, he had to duck his head in the threshold. If Jack had been upstairs in his room, she could have given him a moment’s warning. As it was, William could see him in the parlor simply by turning his head. “Jack,” she said brightly, “you have a visitor. It’s Mr. Holyoake.”

“Don’t get up,” William said hastily when Jack started to throw off his blanket. “I won’t be takin’ up much o’ yer time.” He looked even more uncomfortable than Jack did, and startled as well, as if his rival’s physical condition was worse than he’d expected. Sophie thought she saw pity flare in his eyes before he looked down at the hat he was rotating in his big, strong hands.

“Well,” she said, smiling determinedly. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go and tell Mrs. Bolton something.”

Mrs. Bolton was making a pastry for tonight’s herring pie. The whole family was sick of herring, Jack most of all; but Dr. Hesselius insisted it was good for him, and so they all ate it to keep him company. Taking a seat on the bench at the long kitchen table, Sophie made desultory conversation with her housekeeper, taking up a knife and helping to chop dried quinces for the pie, all the while keeping an eye on the clock over the stove. She let ten minutes go by, then five more, before she rose and went back upstairs.

The parlor doors were open, so she went inside. “Jack?” He was staring out the window behind the sofa. He turned to her, and she started forward when she saw the grief in his long, thin face. “Are you all right?” He nodded. She hesitated. “Do you want to play hearts?” she asked—in case he wanted to pretend nothing had happened.

“You know ’im, don’t ee?” he asked hoarsely.

“William? Yes, I’ve known him all my life.”

“What’s ’e like?”

“Oh . . . he’s a good man,” she admitted finally.

He bowed his head. “Yes.”

“He’s . . .” She crossed to the couch and sat down on the edge. Surprised, Jack scooted over a few inches, giving her more room. “He’s been in love with Sidony for a long time,” she told him frankly.

He nodded. “Ee can guess what ’e wanted wi’ me, Sophie. Wanted to know what my intentions was. If they’m
honorable
, ’e says ’e won’t stand in my way. That’s if Sidony chooses me,” he added miserably. “’E’m rich, ain’t ’e?”

“No, of course not, he’s . . .” William was the bailiff at Lynton Hall Farm. With a pang, she realized that, compared to Jack, that made him rich indeed. “What are you going to do?”

His ashy complexion pinkened with emotion. “If I could get well,” he whispered. “If I could work again. I swear I’d take ’er from ’im and never let ’er go.”

She took his hand. Except for the paleness, it looked just like Connor’s, big and capable and long-fingered. “Sidony is a lucky woman to have two such fine gentlemen courting her.”

Jack sent her a wan smile, and went back to staring out the window.

XIX

“Good thing we’re telling everyone about the baby tonight,” Sophie threw over her shoulder as Connor came in from the bathroom, freshly shaved and smelling of bay soap. She pressed her palms over the swell under the basqued bodice of her shaded silk evening dress, regarding herself critically in the wardrobe mirror. Maybe she ought to change into the fawn-colored brocade—its velvet trim obscured the line of the waist better. Then again, why bother? After tonight her secret would be out; she could grow as fat as she liked and not have to worry about hiding it.

Connor stood in front of the dresser, tying his tie. “Oh,” she said, turning. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

He paused, looking down at the plain, dark blue coat and trousers in which he’d married her. “I thought so. What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing, it’s just . . . I thought, tonight, since it’s a special occasion, and Knowlton will be there . . .” Why did she have to explain? Tonight was their first formal appearance before the world as a couple. Her uncle had invited them to a reception for Clive Knowlton on the occasion of his retirement. He’d invited Robert Croddy as well, and this would be the beginning of Robert’s and Connor’s unspoken campaigns to win Knowlton’s favor. It was also the night Sophie had decided to announce that she was having a child. Tongues would wag; months would be mentally counted. Any who wondered why the belle of Wyckerley had eloped with a Cornish miner in the dead of night would have his—or more likely her—worst fears confirmed. Sophie would hold her head high and ignore the whispers, but in her ears they would sound like shouted accusations.

To say that it was a significant evening for the Pendarvises was to put it mildly: already her hands were perspiring. She’d snapped at poor Maris for fixing her hair wrong—and now Connor was wearing blue instead of formal evening black, with a necktie so awful she wanted to yank it out of his hands.

“These are my best clothes,” he said, trying not to sound belligerent. “This is the first I’ve heard that they’re not suitable. What would you like me to wear?”

She ground her teeth; they would be late if she had to dress herself
and
him. “I’ve told you, my father’s clothes are yours. Why don’t you look in his wardrobe for another cravat, maybe something a little more . . . subdued.” Something without little yellow checks all over it, she specified in private.

He turned away, but not before she saw his cheeks turn pink. She’d forgotten that there was one person in the world more prickly about his dignity than she was about hers. What a shame it had to be her husband.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m so nervous. I want everything to go well tonight.” He made a conciliatory sound, and it encouraged her to add, “It was so kind of my uncle to invite us, since he’s invited Robert as well. He didn’t have to, he could have let Robert have Clive Knowlton all to himself tonight. I think it’s an olive branch, Con. A new beginning for us.”

He gave a sarcastic sniff. “Think what you like.”

“What does that mean?”

“Dear Uncle Eustace hasn’t invited us out of kindness, Sophie. He saw a chance to show Knowlton how much smoother and more polished his protégé is than the Cornishman who married his niece for her money.”

“You can never believe anything good about my uncle, can you? He’ll always be a villain to you.”

“Maybe so. Every time I start to forget it, this reminds me.” He stabbed a finger at the scar on his cheek, glaring at her. “These are the clothes I’m wearing, Sophie. If I embarrass you, that’s just too bad.”

The evening went downhill after that.

But she was wrong about the whispers and raised eyebrows she’d expected in the wake of her announcement, which she made privately to individuals rather than to the group at large, that she was pregnant. Everyone seemed genuinely, unreservedly happy for her, and if they were hiding secret skepticism, she believed she’d have known it, because on this subject she was as sensitive as a fresh wound. No one, not even Honoria, was crass enough to ask the baby’s due date, but if anyone had been, she was ready with her answer: June. And when it came in mid-April, she was prepared to call it premature, and hang the consequences.

Sixteen people comprised Uncle Eustace’s “small, intimate supper party.” The guest list was man-heavy, as they used to say in her finishing school. But the reason for that was political, not social, and Sophie began to think Connor might have been right about her uncle’s motives. Robert Croddy had brought two of his conservative Whig cronies, Mr. Falkner and Mr. Turnbull, who evidently were to him what Ian Braithwaite was to Connor. He was outnumbered by three to one—four to one, counting Uncle Eustace. A conspiracy?

She had met Clive Knowlton only once before, years ago at a civic ball she’d attended with her father. Tonight she doubted if she’d have known him if she’d passed him in the street, he’d changed so radically. His hair had turned completely white, and he’d shrunk in stature by at least two inches. She’d been told that he wasn’t ill, only devastated by his wife’s passing a year or so ago. Her sentimental heart ached for him. He didn’t say much, but he listened carefully to the talk around him, and she thought the sad brown eyes behind his half glasses were shrewd.

At dinner, Honoria seated Sophie between the Carnocks, as far away from Clive Knowlton as it was possible to be, and it amused her to think her cousin found her charms so lethal that she must be kept in quarantine, so to speak. Connor, on the other hand, sat directly across from the MP, a placement that tended to bolster his theory that the secret agenda tonight was to embarrass him.
Ha
, she thought humorlessly. They would find out soon enough that they’d underestimated him. Still . . . she wished to God he hadn’t worn that odious necktie.

Dinner was complicated: there were eight courses, including two soups, a turbot with lobster sauce, lamb cutlets, roast saddle of mutton, marrow pâté with asparagus and peas, a green goose, a salad with cucumbers and endives and another of beetroot and anchovies, cream glacé and maraschino jellies, a fruit compote, walnuts, and coffee. Connor handled it fairly well (although once she saw him cut his fish with his knife, a gaffe she hoped no one else noticed), which must have galled Honoria no end—she hoped it did. The only politics discussed were local, and only in the most general and genial of terms. Sebastian Verlaine, Lord Moreton, spoke of the improvements he was considering for his tenant cottages at Lynton, and Christy Morrell talked about the fine harvest the glebe lands had yielded this year, the produce having been distributed among the poor in the district. When talk began to veer naturally toward taxes and poor rates, it was Lady Moreton who steered it gently back to a less controversial topic. Sophie sent her a grateful look. The news of her pregnancy had doubly delighted Rachel, who had confided in secretive tones that she too was expecting. She and Sebastian weren’t telling anyone yet, though—but she couldn’t resist telling Sophie. She looked beautiful, calm as a Madonna, and as happy as Sophie had ever seen her. Perhaps their babies would be born at the same time. Lovely thought. They could play together, be friends. Connor called her a snob, but who wouldn’t be pleased to have a countess’s little boy or girl for her child’s playmate?

Lost in her thoughts, she was surprised when Honoria rose, signaling it was time for the ladies to withdraw. If Connor was right, the true purpose of the evening was about to begin. She sent him a confident smile, and when she passed behind his chair she gave his shoulder a quick, encouraging squeeze.

Connor watched as the last colorful skirt passed through the dining room door, and listened as the sound of ladies’ voices faded and died. Behind him, a manservant poured port into his glass and offered him a choice of cigars from a teakwood humidor.

When every glass was filled, Vanstone held his aloft. “Gentlemen.” His guests copied him. “Let us drink to the honorable gentleman who has served us faithfully with integrity, wisdom, and absolute dedication for twenty-seven years. We thank him. We acknowledge humbly that his like shall not be found again. We wish him the happiness and contentment he richly deserves in all his future endeavors.”

“Hear, hear” came the heartfelt agreement of every man at the table. They drank, and Clive Knowlton smiled with pleasure and sadness and the innate modesty that had made him beloved in his district.

“Speech!” cried Robert Croddy.

Knowlton glanced at him sharply from under his bristling white brows, but only said in mild tones, “Thank you, gentlemen. I have no speech, only gratitude for my host’s too-kind words.” He meant it; he closed his mouth and busied himself with cutting off the end of his cigar.

Lord Moreton, whom Connor had seen but never met until tonight, looked too rakish to be an earl. He said something humorous about Knowlton being the only MP he’d ever known to turn down a chance to orate, and appreciative laughter lightened the momentary solemnity.

Vanstone led the talk around to politics, the progress of the crisis in China, army reforms since the Crimean conflict. Gradually the conversation turned from global to regional, and in a smooth transition Falkner, one of Croddy’s political advisers, brought up the subject of the property qualification for Parliament. Immediately there was a shift, a change in the atmosphere so subtle, Connor doubted anyone felt it but him—and Croddy and his two henchmen. “What side of the issue do you stand on, Mr. Pendarvis?” Falkner inquired innocently. He was a portly, round-faced, white-whiskered gent, with faded blue eyes that darted swiftly behind folds and bags of baby-pink fat. His political function was the same as Ian’s, but in manner and appearance the two men could not have been more unlike.

Falkner already knew how Connor felt on the question of the property qualification, since an article in the Tavistock
Trumpet
two weeks ago had outlined his position on it and half a dozen other current controversies. He said, “I’m opposed to it, sir,” turning the smoldering tip of his cigar around and around against the side of a heavy crystal ash bowl.

Croddy cleared his throat. “I favor it. I think tampering with it is tantamount to tampering with the constitution. The framers of the Act knew what they were about in 1710. A man’s property showed then, as it still does today, that he owns something that places him above dependence and need. It’s the proof of his incorruptibility.”

If he hadn’t known before, Connor knew it now: Croddy’s people had prepped him on the subject of the property qualification, and tonight he was going to debate it. Clive Knowlton had a front-row seat at a preview performance of his successor, trouncing the unskilled, unprepared upstart from Cornwall.

The nine gentlemen around the table were looking at Connor expectantly. Marshaling his thoughts as best he could, he said, “What the framers of the Act wanted to do was exclude Protestants from the throne of England. That and keep the trading class out of the Commons. But the trading class has come up in the world since Queen Anne’s day, and the property requirement no longer constrains them. It’s obsolete.”

“Nonsense,” Croddy replied with a huff of amusement. “You might as well argue that integrity is obsolete. I don’t say that poverty necessarily makes a man dishonest, but property stands as a pledge for his conduct. It shows he’s independent and not open to temptation. Open the Commons up to penniless men, and you open it to bankrupts, spendthrifts, and paupers—a refuge for them, mind you, a
haven
, unless you’re also prepared to repeal the laws protecting Members from arrest for debt. Are you, sir?”

“With respect, Mr. Croddy, that’s a smoke screen. I don’t believe men become more honest and clearheaded as they accumulate more possessions. I believe that as long as intelligent men from the productive and useful classes are excluded from the process of lawmaking, justice for working people will never come.”

Falkner sniffed audibly; Turnbull laughed outright. Captain Carnock, the only Tory in the room, or at least the only one honest enough to admit it, said, “Tut,” and poured himself another glass of port.

“You speak of smoke screens!” Croddy cried with false joviality. “The point is, the law prevents the entrance into the House of people without the means to devote all their time to parliamentary business. Change that, sir, and you change the very character of the Commons.”

“Exactly. It’s long overdue for a change.”

“I hope you’re excluding present company, sir,” Knowlton put in, eyes twinkling, and Connor sent him a gallant nod.

“Just as well you’re retiring, sir.” Croddy laughed. “If men like Pendarvis get into the House, God forbid, it’s not a place you’d want to be for much longer anyway.”

Connor leaned back in his chair and blew a smoke ring. His adversary wasn’t going to provoke him that easily.

“I imagine you ally yourself with the reformers,” Croddy went on with undisguised distaste. “Admit it, you wouldn’t stop there. If you and men of your ilk—Chartists and radicals disguised as Whigs, if you ask me—if you had your way, next you’d abolish property qualifications for the
voters.
”

“I’d certainly try.”

Captain Carnock looked shocked, but Dr. Hesselius—a taciturn man; Connor had no idea what his politics were—nodded his bald head in approval. Lord Moreton stroked his chin, regarding Connor with interest. Clive Knowlton kept still, sphinxlike, saying nothing.

“You surprise me, sir. People with your agenda aren’t normally so candid in professing it. I call it dangerous,” Croddy said loudly, glancing at Knowlton. “Are there any items in the Charter that you do oppose? Any at all? I deplore that kind of radical thinking. The march of democracy must be arrested. I say the manhood suffrage is the last step before anarchy.”

“I’ll debate democracy with you anytime you like,” Connor said quietly, stubbing out his cigar, “but let’s finish this discussion first. You’ll recall it’s about property qualifications.” Croddy flared his nostrils at him. “I believe membership in the House is a trust, requiring natural ability, not artificial wealth. Property isn’t the safeguard for Members’ intelligence and integrity. The real safeguard lies in the hands of the electorate. Why is—”