The Best of Men (13 page)

“Then I pray you will come back on another occasion.”

“Yes, indeed,” Beaumont said, untethering his horse.

“And do me the favour of greeting his lordship and her ladyship, when you are next at Chipping Campden.”

“I shall, sir. Good day.”

And with that, Beaumont mounted and galloped off.

“Well, well,” murmured Stratton.

When he entered the house, Margaret greeted him in a high, flustered voice.

“Would you be so kind as to bring me a light repast,” he told her, taking off his cloak and handing it over. “I have not eaten since breakfast and cannot wait for supper. Where is her ladyship?”

Margaret hesitated. “In … in the parlour,” she said eventually, as though revealing some dread secret.

Stratton was perturbed to find his wife collapsed in a chair, her shoulders quivering. “What is the matter?” he asked, as she rose to face him. “It’s not about Lord Beaumont? Has he come to some mishap? Is that why his son was here?”

Like Margaret, she did not answer at once; and he had a sinful thought, about Lord Beaumont’s will, and how he might benefit from it. “No, Sir Robert,” she said tremulously. “Mr. Beaumont was merely paying us his respects.”

“I see. My dear, you have been crying. Is it your time of the month?” She shook her head. “Come to table with me.”

He ushered her over, and they sat in silence until Margaret arrived
with a dish of pickled artichokes decorated with little slices of fried bread. She set it before them, along with a pitcher of barley water and glasses, and left.

“Have a morsel with me,” he suggested to his wife. “It will put the colour back in your cheeks.”

“I am not hungry,” she said, inspecting the vegetables as though they were laced with poison.

“Then I shall eat for you.” Between mouthfuls, he commented, “How remarkable to see Mr. Beaumont again. Though I hardly exchanged a word with him, I think he is greatly altered, would you not agree?” She did not respond. “He must have got his just deserts while in the army,” Stratton went on. “The rigours of such a life would prove a severe test for someone like him.”

“Why do you say that?” Diana inquired faintly, serving him barley water.

“Because he was no more than a pampered brat when he left. He had all the fortune in the world before him and an excellent marriage prospect, yet he tossed it aside. All he cared for at the time was to game, drink, and fornicate with whoever would have him.”

“Sir Robert!” she gasped. “What do you really know of him except idle gossip?”

Stratton speared an artichoke with his knife. “I am sad to inform you that it is not
idle gossip
, my dear. So often you do not see people for what they truly are. At Court, for example, some of your friends were very ill chosen. That scheming, conniving Isabella Savage for one. And did you know that bets were openly exchanged amongst the men as to how many of the younger wives they could seduce? Beaumont was probably one of the worst of those blackguards.” Diana’s mouth began to wobble as he finished speaking. “What is wrong with you?” he demanded, setting aside the knife.

“Nothing,” she said, as tears welled up in her eyes.

“If it’s not your health that ails you, there must be some other cause! My poor girl, perhaps you should rest for a while, and we shall speak when you are calmer. Margaret!” he called out. “Help your mistress upstairs.”

As he watched Margaret take his wife from the room, he remarked to himself how like little children women were, with their mysterious moods and fits of weeping. He must write to Lord Beaumont about his heir’s return, he mused next. It might provide another excuse to visit Chipping Campden. He was rather intrigued to talk to the son again, and discover whether the changes in him were as much internal as external. But such a look on Beaumont’s face when they had met, as furtive as that of a thief caught red-handed! And the fellow could not wait to escape.

Stratton froze, an artichoke halfway to his mouth. What if Beaumont had not changed? Could he have made some impertinent advance upon Diana? Stratton knew that many men admired her beauty, though she was always oblivious to the attention of others when he pointed it out to her. Sweet creature that she was, she had not a guileful bone in her body. In her very innocence, however, she might have encouraged Beaumont unwittingly. And how insulted she would have been by him, how utterly aggrieved, exactly as she had appeared today. Stratton felt disinclined to raise the issue, lest he insult her more. He would talk to Margaret, instead.

“Oh, Margaret,” said Diana, as her gentlewoman applied a cooling cucumber poultice to her swollen eyelids, “I know you disapprove. You think me a bad woman and a dishonest wife.”

“My lady, it’s
he
who is to blame. And when you first told me about him, you said you wouldn’t forgive him for vanishing as he did. What
happened to your resolve? Think of your family, of your position in society! Would you jeopardise everything again, just for a tumble?” Diana sighed and reclined on her bed. “It is not just that.” “It would be no more for him. I could tell by the way he looked at me that he considers all women fair game. He has a most degenerate face, and those eyes of his made my skin crawl. If I were you, I should never have let him near me. But my lady,” Margaret said, in a lower voice, “are you sure that Sir Robert never guessed about him?”

“If Sir Robert had, he would have confronted me,” Diana assured her, sniffing. “You know how he fears the slightest hint of scandal and is always so keen to impress others. Indeed,” she concluded, beginning to weep again, “it was his very eagerness to flaunt his noble connections that first brought Beaumont to our door.”

In the summer of 1635, after she and Sir Robert had been married some eleven months, he expressed a wish to call on Lord Beaumont, a kinsman whom he had mentioned with pride on many occasions. “I have heard that some sketches by the artist Van Dyke, to whom his lordship is most partial, have just come up for sale,” he went on. “I should be doing his lordship a favour if I alerted him.” They would pass a day or so at Lord Beaumont’s house in Chipping Campden, he told her, and then travel south to their property at Wytham.

Towards the end of their journey, as they drove up through the park, Diana was awed by the palatial dimensions of Lord Beaumont’s residence, built in a style far more modern than their London home, and when they were welcomed in, its owner charmed her instantly with his warmth and utter lack of affectation. She had to wonder whether he or his Spanish wife was most responsible for the continental atmosphere of the house, from the grandiose canvases and statues that decorated it, to the silver forks with which they ate their food at dinner.

And as they ate, she tried not to stare at Lady Beaumont, with her chiselled profile and those extraordinarily luminous eyes; and such a graceful figure, clad in a tailored gown that made Diana’s seem positively unfashionable in comparison. Her skin was not sallow, as Diana had expected, but golden in sheen, and her natural expression, enhanced by her long, straight nose and the slight flare to her nostrils, betrayed all the proud disdain for which her countrymen were celebrated. In her speech, however, no discernible foreignness could be heard, except for the odd soft consonant.

Her eldest son, Laurence, was apparently away in London. The younger boy, Thomas, a youth of about eighteen, greeted Diana bashfully, while the two little daughters were less shy, and chattered away to her until they were sent up to bed. On the following morning, Robert discussed the sale of Van Dyke’s work with Lord Beaumont, who had already commissioned a portrait from the artist and was most anxious to buy the sketches. Robert, pleased to act as agent, insisted on putting up the money himself upon receipt of the art, to be reimbursed at his lordship’s convenience.

Diana heard no more of it for a number of months. They retired to Wytham, where she moped about the dark, timbered rooms, dreaming of the Palladian splendour of the Beaumont house and yearning for city life. Then Robert announced an alteration in plan to suit them both: they would move back to London in late August. Lord Beaumont’s sketches were about to be sent, and the man selling them must be paid.

“I really don’t see the value of such unfinished studies,” Robert said, as they were unwrapped in the parlour of their London home. “Van Dyke will prove merely a passing fashion, as is so frequently the case with popular artists.” Diana wished to contradict him, for she hoped to be painted by the Dutch master, who had complimented her and her friend Isabella Savage at Court. “Why did I turn down that letter of credit when his lordship offered it to me,” Robert added, and she was
tempted to laugh. He had wanted to appear gracious and offhand about a sum that staggered him and left him short.

A few days later, they were entertaining friends to a light supper of winkles, ale, and a joint of beef when the servant told her that there was someone calling for Sir Robert. “I didn’t let him in, my lady, because the fellow looks a rough sort,” the servant explained. She said that she would go with him to attend to the visitor and excused herself, glad to escape a boring conversation.

As she opened the door to the half-light of dusk, she saw a tall man slouched against the wall outside. He turned, and she gasped at his uncanny resemblance to Lady Beaumont. In his face, however, she read a different expression, indolent and sensual. He had dark circles under his eyes, as if he slept very little, and he was unshaven and carelessly dressed. No wonder the servant had been suspicious of him.

“You must be Lord Beaumont’s son,” she exclaimed. “How can you forgive us our rudeness? The servant – oh dear – he did not know.”

Mr. Beaumont smiled at her, and she no longer saw his mother in him, for the smile wrinkled the corners of his mouth and lent the sweep of his brows an impish air. “Oh, it’s not his fault – you weren’t expecting me,” he said, as if he had known her for years. “I came with some money, from my father.”

“Have you eaten, sir? We are just sitting down at table.”

“Thank you, but I can’t stay.”

She found herself searching for a reason to delay his departure. “Sir Robert will scold me for my lack of manners if you do not at least take a glass of wine with us.”

“Well, then,” he said, with the same engaging smile, “I better had.”

She admitted him as she might some unpredictable animal, with no idea as to how he would behave, and led him to the chamber where they were eating, conscious of his gaze on her as she went ahead. Robert made introductions and had his best wine fetched, while his friends ogled the
new arrival. After handing Robert a leather purse, which was received with profuse thanks, Mr. Beaumont seemed disinclined to talk, sitting back in his chair and giving such monosyllabic answers that Robert was forced to resume chatting with the other guests. And all along, she felt Mr. Beaumont watching her with his captivating feline eyes.

When he rose to leave, she offered to see him to the door. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Robert’s friends weren’t to your taste.”

“They aren’t to yours, either,” he said.

His comment threw her for a moment. But before he could disappear into the night, she amazed herself by asking, “Are you ever at Court?”

“No, not often.”

“We shall be attending the reception at Whitehall in early September, for the Spanish ambassador. I expect you speak Spanish, Mr. Beaumont?”

“I do, yes.”

“Then you could translate for us.”

He laughed and shrugged. “I don’t like receptions – too much ceremony. Good night, Lady Stratton,” he said; and then he was gone.

When she rejoined the others, they were talking about him: how badly turned out he was, and what a trial to his family, and how he had debauched habits. This only fascinated her all the more.

The night of the reception was very humid, and Robert was nursing a headache. “You cannot miss such an important event,” he told her, and he arranged an escort of friends for her. She had a premonition that everything was unfolding, or unravelling, as if fated. She made her toilette with special care, hoping that her efforts would not go to waste, though she did not know for what, precisely, she was preparing herself.

At the Banqueting House there was hardly space to stand in the
galleries overlooking the King’s dais, and the combined perfumes and bodily odours of the crowd began to stifle her. Then she caught sight of Mr. Beaumont in the gallery on the opposite side. He saw her too, and signalled that she should go towards the doors. She whispered to her companions that she needed fresh air, and after refusing their offers of assistance and eluding her maidservant, she met him on the stairs.

“It stinks in here,” he said. “Why don’t we go out for a walk?”

“Mr. Beaumont, that would not be appropriate. I should fetch my maid.”

“Are you afraid to be alone with me?” he inquired, with his playful smile.

“No,” she said, though she was, deliciously so.

He took her down towards the river, not touching her except to steer her away from messes on the street as they walked, and he recounted to her what the ambassador’s delegation had said amongst themselves of the English court and its French queen Henrietta Maria. His salacious comments made her laugh despite her nerves, and his volubility was in marked contrast to his silence at Robert’s party.

“Please, sir, let’s not go any further,” she said, after a while. “My friends will be anxious if I am away too long.”

They had reached the bank of the Thames, where it was peaceful except for the cries of the watermen in the distance. He sat down on the grass and motioned for her to do the same, and so she did. “Now tell me about yourself,” he said.

“You would find it dull,” she said, but on his encouragement she described how she had grown up in the country with an oppressive father and a weak-willed mother, and how she had married Robert at nineteen, although he was not her first suitor.

“Why
him
?” asked Mr. Beaumont, and she guessed what he thought about Robert.

“Because he has a house in London, and he promised to have me presented at Court,” she answered, with more honesty than she knew was proper.