Belgravia (16 page)

Caroline Brockenhurst looked at her. She no longer disliked this woman as much as she had at first. Anne had led her to Charles, and for that she ought to be grateful, or at least forgiving. She glanced into the hall. “I think the Cathcarts are leaving,” she said. “Will you forgive me if I go down to say good-bye?” And she glided away, descending the stairs so smoothly she could have been skimming over the surface of the steps.

The ride back to Eaton Square felt like an eternity. All of the passengers in the carriage were so full of the evening’s events that no one said a word. The coachman, Albert Quirk, was a man more usually interested in the changing elements and the strength of the cognac he kept in his flask than the vagaries of the family he served, but this evening he could not help but notice the mood. “If that’s what they’re like when they’ve been out at a party,” he said much later to Mrs. Frant as he sat drinking a large mug of tea
at the servants’ hall table, “they’d be better off staying at home. Don’t you agree, Miss Ellis?” But the maid said nothing as she continued to sew on a missing button.

“You’ll get nothing out of Miss Ellis,” snorted Mrs. Frant sourly.

“Which is just as it should be in a lady’s maid,” said Mr. Quirk. He rather approved of Miss Ellis.

James had decided that attack was the best form of defense. Caught out in his secret dealings with Charles, he decided to blame the whole fiasco on his wife. If she’d kept their secret, none of it would have happened. Which was of course true, except that it conveniently absolved him of leading a double life, knowing his grandson, enjoying his company, and leaving his wife in the dark.

Anne could hardly look at him. It felt to her as if the husband she had known and loved had been spirited away by wicked fairies and a hostile being put in his place.

Oliver was just as angry with his own wife, but for more traditional reasons. She had ignored him all evening, flirting continually with John Bellasis, who had barely deigned to notice Oliver. He was furious with his father, too. Who was this Pope fellow, anyway? And why did his father’s face light up when he entered the room?

As for Susan, she was torn between depression at the dreariness of the family she had married into and wonder at the world she’d dreamed about for so long and had at last been allowed to see. Those drawing rooms and staircases, those gilded galleries and eating chambers, all vast and magnificent and packed with a glittering assembly whose names read like a journey through English history… and then there was John Bellasis. She glanced across at Oliver. She could see he was spoiling for a fight, but she didn’t care. She studied his doughy, petulant face and thought with longing of that other face, that very different face, she had been looking into until only a few minutes before. She knew her husband was angry, but that was because he was not used to the ways of the
ton
. No one else there would grudge a
respectable married woman the odd flirtation, an amusing evening in the company of a witty, handsome stranger. She paused as she thought about the word. Would he always be a stranger? Was that all she was destined to know of Mr. John Bellasis? The coach drew to a halt. They had arrived.

“Thank you, William. I can manage from here. You may go.” Oliver loved to talk to the servants as if he were in some play at the Haymarket Theatre. But Billy was used to it, and he quite enjoyed valeting. Even for Mr. Oliver. It made a change from cleaning the silver and waiting at table, and he was sure he could get a job as a proper valet when he was ready to leave. That would be a step in the right direction, and no mistake.

“Very good, sir. Would you like to be woken in the morning?”

“Come at nine. I’ll be late for work, but I think I can be forgiven that after the night I’ve just been through.”

Naturally, Billy would have loved some more detail, but Mr. Oliver was already in his dressing gown so he’d missed his chance. He might try to raise the subject the next day. With a slight bow of the head he retreated, closing the door softly behind him. Oliver waited for a few moments, indulging his irritation at everything: Susan, Charles Pope, his stupid valet who wasn’t a real valet anyway, just a footman. Then, when he’d decided that Billy must have left the gallery, he slipped out of his dressing room and pushed into Susan’s bedroom without knocking.

“Oh!” said Susan. He had succeeded in startling her. “I thought you’d gone to bed.”

“What a terrible evening.” He spat out the words as if he’d released a bung from a barrel, which, in a way, he had.

“I thought it was fun. You can hardly complain about the people who were there. There must have been half the Cabinet in the room, and I’m sure I saw the Marchioness of Abercorn talking to one of the Foreign Office ministers. At least I think it was her, only she was so much more beautiful than the portrait they engraved in—”

“The evening was damnable! And you made it more so!”

Susan took a deep breath. It was going to be one of those nights. She was acutely aware of her maid, Speer, hovering, frozen, by the door. She was keeping still so they would forget she was there. Susan knew that well enough. “You may go, Speer,” she said, keeping her voice even and light. “I shall ring for you in a little while.” The disappointed maid withdrew. Susan turned to Oliver. “Now, what is this about?”

“You’d know if you hadn’t spent the entire evening staring into the eyes of that scented degenerate.”

“Did Mr. Bellasis wear scent? I hadn’t noticed.” But his comment interested her as it was clear from her husband’s phrasing that John was not the main cause of his anger.

“Behave like a slut and you’ll be treated as one. You don’t have carte blanche, you know. Just because you’re barren, it doesn’t give you an open ticket.”

Susan was silent for a moment, gathering her thoughts. This was becoming rather more unpleasant than she had bargained for. She looked at Oliver calmly. “You should go to bed. You’re tired.”

He regretted what he’d said. She knew him well enough to see that. But, being Oliver, he couldn’t apologize. Not possibly. Instead, he changed his tone. “Who is this man Pope? Where has he come from? And why is Father investing in his business? When did he ever invest in my business?”

“You don’t have a business.”

“Then when did he ever invest in
me
? And why was Lady Brockenhurst guiding him around the room the whole time like a show pony? How did he manage that? When she barely spoke a civil word to either of us all evening.” There was a catch in his voice, and for a moment Susan wondered whether he was actually crying.

Oliver began to pace the room again. Susan watched, thinking over her own experience of Brockenhurst House. She really had enjoyed herself. John had been very entertaining. He’d made her feel attractive, more attractive than she’d felt for years, and she’d enjoyed the sensation. “I liked the Reverend Mr.—” She looked at
her husband quizzically. Her mind had gone blank. “Bellasis. Of course. Mr. Bellasis’s father. They seemed a nice family.” She was trying to bring her long and very public conversation with John back to more neutral territory. Hopefully, Oliver was sufficiently taken up with his rage against Mr. Pope to accept her unspoken explanation for her behavior.

“You know who he is? I mean, apart from that man’s father.”

“Do I?” She wasn’t sure where this was taking them.

“The Reverend Mr. Bellasis?”

Oliver looked at his wife. Did she really not know who the man was? He had not been completely idle with his time since his father’s rise, and he understood the truth behind the legend of most of the senior aristocratic families, but he thought he had taken Susan along with him. Surely she had some clue? “He is Lord Brockenhurst’s younger brother. He is his heir, or more probably his son, John, will inherit, since Lord Brockenhurst looks considerably healthier than his younger sibling.”

“John Bellasis will be the next…?” Susan was slipping away, down some sugar-covered slope in her dreams, lost in her own fantasy.

“The next Earl of Brockenhurst. Yes.” Oliver nodded. “The present Earl’s only son died at Waterloo. There is no one else.”

It was creeping toward three o’clock when Lady Brockenhurst finally sat down at her glass, taking off her diamond earrings, while her maid, Dawson, removed the pins from her hair.

“It sounded as if everyone was having a wonderful time, your ladyship.” Dawson removed the last pins carefully and lifted off the heavy tiara. Caroline shook her head. She enjoyed wearing her jewels; she had a taste for magnificence, but it was a relief when they came off and she was free. She scratched her scalp and smiled.

“I think it did go well,” she declared brightly.

There was a light tap at the door. Lord Brockenhurst’s head appeared. “May I come in?”

His wife answered. “Please.”

He entered the room, slipping into a nearby armchair. “What a relief when they’ve gone.”

“We were saying how well it went.”

“I suppose. But there are only so many times in an evening one can inquire after somebody else’s health, or delight in the news of the Queen’s pregnancy, or ask how they’re going to spend the summer. Who was that fellow in the cotton trade? And what was he doing there?”

Caroline scrutinized her husband’s face in the glass. Had he guessed? Could he not see how alike Charles was to her beautiful Edmund? Those eyes. Those long fingers. The way he laughed. The boy was pure Bellasis. Wasn’t it obvious? “You mean Mr. Pope?”

“Pope? Was that the name?” Peregrine smoothed down his mustache and winced a little. His shoes were pinching. “Yes,” he mused, gazing at one of his wife’s watercolors of Lymington Park. “I thought him a nice chap, and more interesting than the women you stuck me with at supper, but I still don’t understand why he was standing in our drawing room.”

“I’ve taken an interest in him.”

“But why?”

“Well…” Caroline paused, and so did Dawson. The maid held one brush in her right hand, another in her left, her head cocked to one side in anticipation. It was one of the most interesting aspects of her job, helping her ladyship undress after an evening in Society. Tongues were always loosened by a little wine, and the tidbits she picked up were good currency for discussion in the servants’ hall. “You see…”

Then Caroline caught Dawson’s eye and stopped herself. There was nothing she wanted more than to tell her husband the truth, but she had given her word. Did that apply to husbands and wives, she wondered? Weren’t they breaking a commandment by keeping secrets from each other? Didn’t the Bible say so? But even if that were true, Caroline could see that it wouldn’t be quite right
to launch Charles socially on a tidal wave of servants’ gossip. Dawson might be discreet as a rule, but you could never count on a maid’s discretion. She could just as easily spread it all through Belgravia before the butcher’s boy arrived with the bacon joint at five. The servants really were worse than the rats, the way they went from house to house, passing on God knows what to whomever they pleased. She knew how much they talked downstairs, even those who were loyal. No. She couldn’t tell her husband now, whether or not she did later. So Caroline did what she always did when things became complicated: She changed the subject.

“Maria Grey has grown up to be a pretty girl,” she said. “She used to be so serious, her head always in a book. Now she looks enchanting.”

“Hmm,” agreed Peregrine. “Lucky John. I hope he deserves her.” He slipped off his shoes, attempting to summon the energy to go to bed.

“She seems to have taken her father’s death in her stride.”

“Terrible business.”

Dawson picked up a hairbrush again and went on disentangling Lady Brockenhurst’s tresses. She’d heard this story before, how Lord Templemore had fallen from his horse and smashed his head against a rock while out hunting. “Lady Templemore was full of praise for Reggie.”

“Reggie?”

“Her son. She was telling me that he is more or less running the estate. And he’s only twenty. She says their agent is a good man, but even so.”

Peregrine grunted. “He’ll need more than a good agent if he’s to keep it safe from the bailiffs. I gather his father left it weighted down with debt like a sack of stones.”

Caroline sighed sympathetically. “They had new dresses on tonight, mother and daughter. I did rather wonder at it. But then, I suppose they knew John was coming, and it doesn’t do to look impoverished. Certainly not in front of one’s intended.”

Peregrine placed his head in his hands, overcome by a sudden
wave of sadness. There was something about the arrival of summer, so much hope in the air, so many people whirling from gala to gala, every one of them filled with plans to escape the heat of the city. And watching John tonight, flirting with the pretty daughter-in-law of the curious Mr. Trenchard… what was he? Thirty-two or -three? There wasn’t much in it. Edmund would have been forty-eight by now, a man still in the prime of his life. But he wouldn’t be escaping to the north coast of France or the mountains around the Italian lakes. He was trapped in his tomb, like all those gallant young men who had died on that morning in June so long ago. Peregrine had hoped the move to the new house in Belgrave Square, with its splendid rooms for entertaining, would have given them both a new lease on life, a new energy. But somehow, tonight, he felt the opposite had happened, that the sight of the frivolity, the clothes, the chatter, the diamonds, had only served to illustrate the folly of human life, which must always end in a cold and lonely grave. He heaved himself to his feet and started for the door. “Better turn in. Busy day tomorrow.”

Caroline could feel his sadness; it hung in the room like a cloud. She longed to tell him the news, now that she was sure. Edmund had a son. We have someone we can love again.

“My dear.” He looked back. She paused. “Sleep well. Maybe things will look different in the morning.”

James Trenchard was dreading tomorrow. And the day after, for that matter. He was dreading however long it took for the scandal to break. It was like a clock slowly ticking toward doomsday, he concluded, as he lay in bed staring at the intricate white cornice above him. It felt like some soldier’s grenade waiting to go off. No wonder he couldn’t sleep. He’d been stretched out for an hour, listening to the silence. He knew Anne was not asleep either. She lay next to him, her back toward him, rigid. He could sense her tension.