Lady of the Butterflies (54 page)

There were enough women occupying the inn’s benches to make my arrival relatively inconspicuous. Nobody paid me much attention, beyond pinching me as I made my way over. Richard saw me but did not acknowledge me, though the girl did. She sized me up, as if measuring me against her expectations and finding me even more negligible than she had imagined. She moved away, casting me a supercilious look. “You know where to find me if you want me,” she said seductively to Richard, trailing her fingers along his chest.

“Do you want her, Richard?” I found myself asking, forcing the question through the tightness in my throat. “Or have you already satisfied your wanting?”

He called the landlady over to refill his pot. “Sarah is just a friend. As you say that butterfly collector is yours. Surely you can have no objection to that?”

“James and I became friends and have remained so because we share a common interest. What interest do you share with that trollop, I wonder?”

“Gaming,” he said. “Sarah has a great liking for cards and dicing.”

She was watching me with hatred, because I had him and she did not. He was a man to inspire the fiercest jealousy and I was afraid of the jealousy I saw in that woman’s eyes. If Richard did not want her, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she wanted him, very much, and with the inexplicable intuition that women have for the characters of other women, I sensed she had made it, or intended to make it, nigh on impossible for him to resist her. Given half a chance she would dig her claws into him and rip us apart. She was opportunistic, scheming, not at all kind. There was a hardness, an almost chilling coldness about her, which made me desperate to get us both far, far away from her. “She is not your friend, Richard,” I said to him softly. “These people are not your friends.”

He stared into his pot, swilled the ale, drank. “It seems I have no others.”

“Oh, that is not true.” I reached out to touch the back of his hand, thinking I had never known anyone to feel things so deeply, to take everything so personally. “I am your friend. I shall always, always be your friend. I would have told you about Thomas,” I said. “I so wanted to tell you. I did not want to keep it from you. If only you had not become so embittered toward the rebels.”

“If only you had not risked your life and mine to save one of them.”

“You said you did not want to lose me,” I said quietly, seeking his eyes. “Do not let this battle become our battle.”

“It is you who have allowed that. It is you who harbored a traitor under our roof without telling me. Ah, but I forget. It is
your
roof, isn’t it?”

I was stunned that he should bring that up now, and I shrank back a little from him. “Does that still rankle with you so much?”

“It rankles that I have a wife who cares so little for my wishes and feelings.”

“If that is true, why am I here?”

“I don’t know. Why are you?”

I knew that the best thing I could do was to say no more, to turn my back on him and walk away, and that is just what I did. With tears streaming down my face and my heart breaking, I mounted my horse and rode back down Redcliffe Hill, past the bodies of the executed rebels, swinging from the gibbet.

So much damage had been done to this county, I feared it would never recover. So much damage had been done to my marriage, I feared it would never recover either. I still had not told Richard I was carrying his child.

As I rode out past St. Mary Redcliffe Church, the low autumn sun appeared from behind a cloud. A butterfly fluttered beside me, the kind that James and I had named Tortoiseshells, with bright red-and-blue shining wings. This one, though, was faded and ragged, like most of its kind at the end of the summer. But it flitted along beside me for a while, playing on the breeze that blew in from the estuary.

For all its faded wings, it was a symbol of hope, and I always was very willing to let hope enter my heart. The butterfly reminded me that there was still brightness and beauty in the world. It reminded me how happy I had been on my wedding day, such a short time ago.

Judge Jeffreys was returning to London. The Bloody Assizes were over. These had been dark days for all who lived in Somersetshire, but maybe they were at an end. Maybe that battle of Sedgemoor would be the last we would see fought on England’s soil for a while. Maybe Richard would find a way to lay past battles to rest, and I would find a way to win back his trust.

Anything was possible. Even that my husband would come galloping after me not long after I had passed through the city gates and turned onto the open road.

I heard the distant thud of a horse’s hooves behind me, but I hardly dared to turn round and risk disappointment. I counted to ten, closed my eyes and made a quick wish, then glanced quickly over my shoulder and laughed with delight to see him, some way off still, his cloak flying behind him, the hooves of his stallion kicking up a small cloud of dust. I had just enough time to wipe away my tears and arrange the heavy skirts of my gown and cape so they draped most appealingly around me before he reined in alongside, the tumult causing my mount to sidle. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.

“Why did you not slow down, Nell?” he demanded, but good-humoredly. His dark mood had dispersed as completely as mist burned away by sunshine and he was all gentle, devastating charm again. It was very unnerving and exhilarating at the same time, like skating on melting ice. I had once lived such a dull and quiet life, but never would it be dull with him.

I gave him a sidelong smile. “I did not slow, but you will note that nor did I urge my horse into a gallop to try and outrace you. Not that I would now,” I said meaningfully, resting a hand on my belly. “I must ride with care these next eight months.”

There was a silence. “How long have you known?”

“Not long.”

“Is that why you came to fetch me back? Because you are with child?”

I cocked my head, glanced at him sideways. “Well, it is true I would not rob another of my babies of the chance to know the man who had sired him,” I said. “Nor would I wish to rob Forest of another father, after he has already lost one.”

“I see.”

I reached out, waited for him to do the same, felt his fingers catch mine and hold on.

“More pressing than that, love,” I said, “is the fact that I cannot be another night without you.”

He gave me his most raffish smile, and after a while he said, “Do you know what we should do?”

“What’s that?”

“Some more shopping, I think. If you want to make absolutely sure I come home to you every night, we must see to it that your home is as inviting and pleasing as your own little person. And at present it is still as austere as a nun’s cell.”

Spring

1686

I
t troubled me that for some reason the news that I was carrying his child did not seem to make Richard nearly as happy as I had assumed it would. Where Edmund had anticipated the arrival of our children with real excitement, had been almost overly solicitous toward me and quietly so very proud, Richard did his utmost to ignore my pregnancy, even as my expanding belly made that increasingly difficult.

I remembered how longingly he had looked at me at Forest’s baptism, how he had spoken with such yearning of the children it seemed then that we would never have. I remembered what a good father he had been to Edmund’s son, and could make no sense of it at all. I wondered if deep down he was still upset with me, for the way I had shunned him after Edmund’s death, for deceiving him by giving shelter to Thomas Knight. Or was it something else?

He had made no further mention of shopping, and I kept quiet about it. Even in the mid-stages of pregnancy, the last thing I needed was to be jolted in a coach all the way to London and back. I soon found out, though, that my husband had never intended for us to do our shopping as we had before, with an expedition to the New Exchange. His aborted foray with the militia had not been entirely unfruitful. It seemed that he’d spent most of the journey to Axminster talking to John Smythe about the new craze for bestowing money and labor on beautifying mansions and gardens.

“John’s sister Florence has an eye for furnishing rooms with all that is being called modern,” Richard told me as I hunted in a trunk for Forest’s whipping top and little drum to pass down to the new baby. “But she does not waste time traipsing round to different merchants. She just sends a list of what she wants to an agent in London, a cousin who has room at the Inns of Court. He does all the buying for her and ships everything up here.”

“How convenient.” I stood and stretched, with my hands supporting the small of my aching back.

Richard caught me lovingly around my middle, but when he felt its growing girth, which had necessitated the loosening of the laces of my stomacher again, he let go of me just as swiftly, as if he did not want to be reminded. “I spoke to Florence some time ago and she kindly added some items for us to her list,” he said. “She is sending them over later today.”

“That’s good.” I watched his face. “Richard, you are glad we are going to have a baby?”

“Of course I am, sweetheart.” But his eyes, sliding away from me, seemed to tell a different story.

DURING THE FOLLOWING WEEKS dozens of consignments of boxes arrived on wagons from Ashton Court, with Florence Smythe trotting over on her pretty mare to escort them, after which Richard escorted her round the house, his hand courteously upon her elbow as she pointed with her elegant, painted-leather gloved fingers to one wall or corner or another, suggesting where the new looking glass might hang or where the clock and French glassware and Chinese porcelain might stand.

As I watched them together I was surprised to feel a stirring of jealousy. I knew it had to do with the fact that something was not right between Richard and me, and that I did not know what it was or how to make it better. I found myself wondering about that woman in Bristol. Sarah. What was she to him? What had she been to him? All those years, when I had kept him from my bed and he had gone to find solace at that Bristol inn, had he comforted himself with more than just a bottle of rum? He must have done sometimes, if not with her, then with someone else. And why should he not? But had he continued to see her since we were married? Had he seen her again since I had discovered them together? No. I was quite sure the answer to those questions was no. I did not listen to the voice in my head that said:
How can you trust him? His morals are not your morals. He was raised amongst Cavaliers.

I was at least sure that Florence Smythe was no threat whatsoever. She didn’t consider it even worth flirting with anyone who was not of the highest rank, much as Richard clearly sought her regard, as, of course, he had always sought everyone’s, male and female, yeoman and gentleman, simply because he needed so badly to be loved.

He looked over at me now, from where he stood beside the new japanned table at the far corner of the room. Florence was chattering away to him, but I could tell he was only half listening and his smile was for me alone. I smiled back. Rationalist that I was, doubter of magic, I’d have sworn there was magic in that smile of his. Just one smile and instantly all my worries were laid to rest. Just one smile, and all was well with the world once more.

I ran my hands over a pretty toilet set, comprising a mirror and basket and candlesticks set in silver with scenes of chinoiserie. I had always wanted to see these rooms filled with bright and pretty things. It was worth mortgaging some of our land to have silk quilts and striped muslin curtains, worth being indebted to the Gorgeses of Wraxall as well as to William Merrick for a house filled with silk damask armchairs and stools with tapestry cushions. I tried not to worry too much about the growing tangle of credit and mortgages within which Richard was enmeshing us. We could afford them, he said we could. As long as the rents kept rolling in and the harvests were good and the fisheries prospered. After the recent upheavals, nobody had the stomach even to mention drainage.

Florence stayed for tea served from the new silver tea service.

“John said you were considering remodeling the house and garden,” she said to my husband, sipping politely from her cup. “You could turn your great hall into a stylish entrance lobby, and your land is positively crying out for vistas and terraces and avenues and a fountain.”

“What need have we for a fountain when for half the year we have a whole lake to look at?” I asked, a bit alarmed at the prospect of such expensive and grandiose schemes.

She shrugged and stood to leave. “Well, be sure to let me know what else you want.”

Richard assured her that he would.

“We should have asked for more mirrors,” I said to him when she had gone. I loved the way that, even propped against the wall, waiting to be hung, they filled the rooms with light and made them look as if they went on and on. I studied my own silvery reflection, framed by gilded carving, then turned sideways and stroked the luminous folds of my saffron gown where it fell over my rounded stomach. “I could fill the whole house with mirrors,” I added. “If only it did not mean I should be confronted with my great belly at every turn.”

Richard came to stand behind me, slipped his arms over mine and linked our fingers. I pressed back against him, relishing the intimacy, relishing even more the fact that we were both cradling our unborn child. He looked into my reflected eyes. “Your belly is beautiful to me, Nell,” he said.

“Is it?”

He swept my hair aside, kissed the nape of my neck. “You are so beautiful, my Nell, it is only right that you should have beautiful things all around you.”

“These are fitting surroundings, then, in which to raise your child?”

His body tensed against me. “My firstborn,” he said, “who will be born into a house we have made beautiful, a house to which he or she will have no claim.”

Now I thought I understood the problem at last. And I had already considered this. Very carefully. “Our son or daughter will have Elmsett Manor,” I reminded him, twisting round in his arms to look at him properly. “A Glanville child will inherit the Glanville estate, which is as it should be. You must take us to see Elmsett, just as soon as the baby is born.”

“There is nothing worth seeing,” he said, letting go of me. “Nothing but a small moated manor left to rot during the Commonwealth.”

“Then we shall restore it, or have a new house built on the land.”

“I would have liked the very best for my children,” he said, a peculiar lifelessness in his eyes. “But even my firstborn must take second place.”