Joan Wolf (18 page)

Charlotte Hamilton lived in a charming cottage near Oxford. Margarita had gotten her direction from Nicholas and written to her after Nicky’s birth. They corresponded occasionally since then, both of them carefully avoiding the one name they had in common.

Charlotte and John Hamilton had lived very quietly. He published several histories of medieval England that were well received in academic circles, but he never had a popular success. He lectured at Oxford, and the money from that, as well as from the articles he wrote for scholarly journals, was what they lived on. Charlotte had been living since his death on the money sent to her quarterly by her son. It was a modest but sufficient sum that had allowed her relative comfort for a number of years; she had long been accustomed to a limited income.  But Nicholas had increased her allowance considerably when he came into the title and the Winslow collection.

Charlotte was deeply surprised to have Margarita arrive at her front door. She welcomed her daughter-in-law and grandson with brisk kindness, allotted them rooms, sent off to borrow a baby cot from a neighbor, and saw about dinner. She fed Nicky and helped Margarita put him to bed. Then the two women sat down in the pleasant sitting room and Charlotte said very gently, “Perhaps you had better tell me, my dear.”

Margarita looked at Nicholas’s mother. Charlotte was in her late forties and looked younger. It would take a shrewd eye to pick out the silver hairs that blended in with the natural blonde of her hair. Her eyes were dark blue and the lines at the corners of them were very faint. She smiled encouragingly at Margarita. “What has Nicholas done?” she asked.

In a low voice, with her eyes on her tensely folded hands, Margarita told her an edited version of the events that brought her to Charlotte’s door. The fault, she earnestly insisted, was not Nicholas’s. “He was forced to marry me, you see. And he has been so good to me: reading to me when I was sick, teaching me to play cards and to dance, buying me new clothes, and cheering me up when I felt sad. No one could have been kinder. It was not his fault that I fell in love with him. But I did,” she said with devastating honesty. “I love him more than anything else in the world, and I cannot bear it that he does not love me back.”

This was a pain that Charlotte was only too familiar with. Her heart ached for Margarita, and for her son, who would not accept the priceless gift offered to him by his wife. “I needed to be away from him for a little,” said Margarita. “To try to understand what it is I must do. May I stay with you? It will only be for a little while.” It was a request that Charlotte could not find it in her heart to refuse.

Margarita sent a message to Nicholas at Berkeley Square, saying that she was safe and with friends and that she did not want to see him yet. She did not give him her direction.

Life at Morgan Cottage soon settled into a routine that revolved largely about the needs of Nicky. Charlotte was thrilled with her grandson and loved to take him out into the garden, where he crawled around on the grass, picking up leaves and worms and flowers. He was tanned and strong and happy and was beginning to drink milk out of a cup.

* * * *

Margarita, however, was not happy. Her mother-in-law was a kind, undemanding companion, and Margarita was grateful for her quiet understanding and for the sympathy she saw in her dark blue eyes, but somehow, being away from Nicholas did not help. She was even more unhappy than she had been in London. There was a great pit of loneliness deep inside her, and nothing, not Nicky, not Charlotte, could ever serve to fill it up.

She couldn’t sleep. She was convinced that she was a failure as a wife and as a mother. She had no patience with Nicky. He tired her unendurably. Charlotte was better with him than she was. His mother had only robbed him of his father and then neglected him herself.

She felt crushingly guilty all the time. She had no right to leave Nicholas. She had gone against the law of God and the law of the land in doing so. And for what reason? Husbands were unfaithful all the time. One week in London had taught her that. Many wives had to put up with far more than she. Nicholas, at least, was only unfaithful when she was out of reach.

She was bitterly, blindingly, unreasoningly jealous of his other women. She knew that. She even knew that she was more important to him than anyone else. But it was not enough.

Suppose I have another child, she thought to herself. Suppose I am sick in bed, for months, as I was with Nicky. How can I bear it, lying there, knowing he is making love to Catherine Alnwick? I cannot bear it. It is impossible.

One week went by and then another. Margarita was thinner, and there were dark smudges under her eyes. “This cannot go on, my dear,” Charlotte said to her one night “You are making yourself ill.”

“I know.” Margarita looked at her with great, haunted eyes. “I will write and ask Nicholas to come and see me. If he will take me back, I will go.”

“You cannot be more unhappy with him than you are here,” Charlotte said gently.

“Yes.” Margarita gave a slight shrug of her shoulders, and something in that small, resigned movement hurt Charlotte unbearably. She remembered so well what it felt like, to offer love and to have it rejected. She had worshiped brilliant, handsome Christopher Beauchamp when she married him. She could not believe that her son, her Nicholas, was the same kind of man as his father.

“If he will take you back?” she said now, carefully.

“Yes.” Margarita looked more closely at her face and hastened to add, “Don’t look like that. Charlotte. Of course he will take me back. But he will want to—arrange it—so that no one will guess that I ran away. I am sure he has given out some story about my whereabouts that he will want me to support.”

Under similar circumstances, Christopher would have taken her back, too, of that Charlotte was certain. But she would have paid for her transgression. She said now to Margarita, “I hope Nicholas won’t be too angry.”

“He will be angry because he will have been worried about me. But he will forgive me. Nicholas has the unfailing charity of the truly generous.”

After Margarita went upstairs to bed. Charlotte sat on for another hour, putting together in her mind all the things she had heard Margarita say of Nicholas, as if they were a giant puzzle. It seemed to her entirely possible that he was not as indifferent to his wife as Margarita seemed to believe.

The next morning Margarita wrote to Nicholas. She had a reason other than the one she gave Charlotte for wanting him to come to Oxford. She had grown very fond of her mother-in-law and hoped very much for a reconciliation between her husband and his mother. Perhaps if Nicholas came and saw Charlotte, he would relent in his hostility toward her. He might not come. He might just send the coach for her or send her a message. But she thought it was worth a try to get him to Morgan Cottage.

Whatever he wanted her to do, she would do. She had no choice but to go back to him. That was
“la realidad.”
She could not stay here forever. Unlike Charlotte, she had no other man to elope with. She could never leave her son, and he was Nicholas’s heir; he belonged with his father at Winslow. Duty, convention, the ties of love, all dictated that she return to her husband. She had not spoken to a priest since she left London, but she was in no doubt as to what the Church would tell her. She must go back to Nicholas and try to be a good wife to him. And what Charlotte had said was true: better to be miserable with him than miserable without him. She settled down to fill in the time until she received a response to her letter.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another!

Matthew Arnold

Margarita was correct in assuming that Nicholas had given out a story to explain her sudden absence from Berkeley Square. He told a few hostesses that a Venezuelan friend of hers received news that her brother had been killed at Carupano, and Margarita went to give what comfort she could to the family. He did not know when to expect her back, he said. He would stay in London until he heard from her.

As he did not want to occasion comment by drastically changing his style of life, he attended a few dinner parties and receptions. He was polite but distant to all his dinner partners; any lady attempting to get up a flirtation with him was rapidly discouraged by the frost in his manner. He did, however, have one encounter with Eleanor Rushton that could not be accurately described as frosty. She came up to him at a crowded reception and put a light hand on his arm. He turned, looked down, and when he saw who it was his eyes narrowed. She took one look at his taut, hostile, contemptuous face and removed her hand as if it suddenly burned. “You have done your damage,” he said in a low voice that seemed to cut through to the bone. “I never want to see you again.”

“Nicholas!” she said pleadingly, but the bitter, ruthless line of his mouth did not relax. He turned and left her. She did not go near him again.

He was in London for over two weeks before Margarita’s second letter came. The relief he felt when he saw her small, precise handwriting on the envelope was so intense that he had to close his eyes for a minute. He was by himself in the breakfast room and he carefully slit the envelope and extracted the letter. He read:

Morgan Cottage, August, 1816

My Lord,

If you will take me back I am ready to come. I have been staying here at Morgan Cottage with your mother for these last weeks. She has been so kind to me and to Nicky. Please do not be angry with her for not telling you of my whereabouts. I promised her faithfully that I would do that myself.

It was wicked of me to have run away. I know you must have been worried and I am sorry. I will try very hard to be a good wife to you in the future.

I would like it very much if you would come to Morgan Cottage to get me. If you feel you cannot, I shall understand. I will do whatever you want me to.

Your wife, Margarita Beauchamp

Nicholas finished the letter and then reread it. Margarita spoke excellent English but was less comfortable writing it. Nevertheless, something in the simple, almost childlike sentences hurt him savagely. With his mouth set in a severe line, he looked again at the opening sentence. So that was where she had gone. He knew she corresponded with his mother. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of that possibility before.

He rang the bell, and when Reid appeared he began to issue orders. “I shall be escorting her ladyship and Lord Seldon back to Winslow, Reid. I want a bag packed for me immediately. Have the carriage at the door in forty-five minutes, please. I also want Mrs. Wade, her ladyship’s personal maid, and my valet to return to Winslow today. I will be taking the carriage so you will need to hire a post chaise for them. See to it, will you?”

“Yes, my lord,” said Reid. He was almost smiling. Nicholas went upstairs to dress and in forty-five minutes was on his way to Oxford.

* * * *

It was a beautiful, warm summer day when the Earl of Winslow’s carriage stopped in front of a charming brick cottage with a front yard full of truly magnificent flowers. He told the coachman to take the horses to an inn in Oxford and wait for further directions. The carriage pulled away and he was left looking at his mother’s house. Very slowly, he walked up the path.

His knock was answered by a young maidservant, who showed him into a cozy sunny room with faded chintz and bowls of flowers. Mrs. Hamilton was
in the garden, she told him. Whom should she say was asking to see her?

“The Earl of Winslow,” said Nicholas.

The young girl’s eyes widened, and she left the room with rapid steps. After her footsteps faded, the house was quiet. Nicholas listened, but could hear no sound of either his wife or his son. He walked to the window and looked out at a beautiful rose garden. He was still standing there, looking at the garden, when his mother came to the door. The maid had not closed it, and he did not hear the light step on the worn carpeting, but quite suddenly he knew she was there. He had always known, he remembered, whenever she entered a room he was in. He turned around. “Hello, Mother,” he said.

Her hair was less silver than gold, he saw, and her eyes were the same vivid dark blue. He would know those eyes anywhere. She was very pale, but at his words the color flushed into her cheeks, making her look almost as young as he remembered her. She looked, searchingly, into his face. “Nicholas,” she said falteringly, and then, hesitantly held out her hands. He was across the room in two strides and had her in his arms.

Charlotte was the one to loosen her grip first. “Let me look at you,” she said softly, and reached up to cup his face between her hands. “You’ve grown so tall! Why you must be over six feet.”

“Six-three, to be precise,” he answered, smiling down at her. “It annoyed my uncle no end that he had to look up at me.”

“You get your height from the Holts,” she said. She turned him a little toward the window so the sun fell full on his face, then she let him go. “You’re even better looking than your father, and I always thought he was the most handsome man I had ever seen.”

“I seem to have inherited more than his looks,” Nicholas said, a strain of bitterness in his voice. “Can you ever forgive me, Mother, for my abominable behavior toward you all these years?”

“There is nothing to forgive,” she replied calmly. “I always understood how you felt.”

A muscle jumped along his jaw. “God!” he exclaimed. “The generosity of women! I totally ignore my mother for seventeen years and she says there’s nothing to forgive. I behave so outrageously to my wife that she is forced to flee from my house, and then she writes to tell me it was wicked of her to leave me, that she will try to be a good wife to me in the future, and will I please take her back. The both of yon ought to tell me never to darken your doors again.”

Charlotte was smiling at him. She picked up his hand and patted it. “We could never do that. Now tell me, do you want Margarita back?”