The Sleeping Sword (14 page)

‘I suppose I must say he is, since he looks like you.'

‘Thank you, darling. And will you say yes when he asks you again?'

There was no danger of that, I decided. It had been a whim on his part, no more, some quirk of his complicated nature which had picked up my sympathy that day at Galton and converted it into something which had briefly attracted him. Certainly he would not ask again, would be more inclined, I thought, to thank me for my good sense in refusing him, and if he still felt the need of a wife would already be gravitating towards Diana Flood. Yet it was Miss Flood herself who showed me my mistake, for when I met her a day or so later, having extended my visit to Listonby at Blanche's request, her manner was taut and miserable and she had no more to say to me than a forced ‘Are you well, Miss Agbrigg?'

Miss Flood herself clearly was not well, and I felt myself wince slightly at Venetia's casual, ‘Oh—Diana. Well, she'll just have to find herself a real squire, won't she—the genuine, beefy variety—and make the best of him.'

I returned to Fieldhead and to the centre of a storm, a glacial Mrs. Agbrigg losing no time in enquiring why I was so little to be trusted, for Gervase, it seemed, had not only informed his mother and possibly Miss Flood of his intentions, but had ridden home to Tarn Edge that same day and for the first time in years, perhaps the first time ever, had asked his father's help. Mr. Barforth had driven at once to Fieldhead and made his proposition to my father. I was the girl he wanted for Tarn Edge. My father might have some reservations about Gervase but the marriage-contract could be as tight as my father liked. I could have, in the way of pin-money and housekeeping money, anything I desired. Mr. Barforth was ready to be generous, and although he would expect my father to be the same, he made it clear that my welfare would be his personal concern. Gervase Barforth, in fact, would make me happy or would answer to Nicholas Barforth for it. And feeling the need to finalize the matter in case Gervase should change his mind, he went next to Galton and warned his wife—to my everlasting regret—that she would be well advised to be pleased about it too.

‘You should not have told your father,' I reproached him when next we met.

‘I know that. But a desperate man will stoop to anything.'

‘I wish you would not describe yourself as desperate. It sounds very foolish.'

‘My father seems highly delighted with the state I am in. And I can't quite get over how natural it seemed to turn to him.'

‘Perhaps you should make a habit of it.'

‘Do you think so?'

‘I think you would be happier if you could.'

‘I'd like to. I need you to show me the way.'

‘What nonsense, Gervase—'

‘No,' he said, his eyes turning that wild transparent green again.

‘No—not nonsense at all, I'm afraid. Grace, you won't stop me from coming to see you? I'll be calm. I'll behave—'

The only ally I found was, of all people, my father's wife.

‘This is all quite ridiculous,' she said. ‘Jonas—you must put a stop to it.'

‘It is for Grace to decide,' my father told her sadly. ‘I will neither force her nor persuade her in any direction. This is the most important decision of her life—perhaps the only real decision she will be called upon to make. I cannot interfere with her right to make it.'

But although I declared firmly and frequently that I had already decided, that I had refused him once and would do so again, no one appeared to believe me, being too involved with their own desires to notice mine.

I should be sent abroad again, Mrs. Agbrigg decreed. I would be gone soon enough, my father replied, and for the first time since his marriage stepped firmly between us and ordered her to leave me alone. I was not to be rushed, Mr. Barforth agreed. I was young and it was a big step to take. I could take it, thought Mr. Barforth, in my own good time, provided I made haste, saw reason, bowed—as a woman should—to the highly convenient workings of Fate. And quite soon, each time I opened my mouth to say no, there was no step to take, I couldn't marry him, I had a nightmare sensation that no one heard me, that I was voiceless or that my words were somehow being converted into a foreign tongue.

‘An excellent match,' wrote my Grandmother Agbrigg from her home in Scarborough, for she had been a Miss Hannah Barforth herself and liked the idea of the Barforth money remaining in the family.

‘I said you would be our next bride,' Grandmamma Elinor wrote enthusiastically from her winter retreat in Cannes, for she too had been a Barforth, a pretty, dimpled Miss Elinor who had married once for money and once for love, and was still exceedingly romantic.

‘You would be very rich,' said Blanche, ‘with more pin-money, I daresay, than I have, since Listonby seems to cost a great deal and Westminster—now that Dominic seems set on having a go at politics—will cost even more.'

But Mr. Nicholas Barforth, taking my measure more accurately, sent Venetia to assure me that the position awaiting me at Tarn Edge would not be without its element of authority and freedom.

‘I know you hate the whole idea,' she told me, dropping down beside me on my bedroom sofa, ‘and will probably end up hating me for talking about it. But my father says—if you come to us—that you should pay no heed to me at all. I am just the daughter-at-home who has nothing to say to anything, and since mamma is never there you would be as much the mistress of Tarn Edge as if it already belonged to Gervase. Father says you could engage servants or discharge them as you wanted and make changes to suit your fancy—the house is so badly run, he says, that
any
change must be for the better. And Mrs. Agbrigg, you know, would never, absolutely never, be able to get past father. We just wondered if you realized that no one at all would stand in your way—'

I had not wished to realize it, suspecting how much it would tempt me. And now, being tempted, I was forced to consider it, my desire for a free and independent existence stirring me to a considerable discomfort. It would not, of course, be total freedom, for at the end of every road I would have a husband and a father-in-law to answer to. But within the confines of four very splendid walls I would have as much authority, as much liberty, as any woman could expect; more of it, perhaps, than I would ever be likely to find elsewhere. And, my mind leaping from one idea to the next, as Mr. Nicholas Barforth may have known it would, I was quick to see the scope of what he was offering, its potential and its extent; quick to realize that, since marriage was the only career open to me, I would be unlikely to find one more advantageous than this.

Of course I had no intention of marrying Gervase, since there was far more to be considered—far more—than advantage. But just supposing I did marry him, then I saw no reason why the two sides of his nature, his double inheritance, could not be reconciled.

I saw no reason, in fact, why he could not enjoy both the sporting estate of Galton, the Barforth mills, and Fieldhead besides.

Someone
, in fact, must take care of Tarn Edge, for Mr. Barforth eventually would grow old and Venetia, I was sure of it, would not marry Gideon Chard nor anyone else of whom her father would be likely to approve. Her choice would be idealistic, soft-spoken, sweet-natured, a dreamer like Charles Heron who would fare no better in the mills than Gervase. When the time came someone would have to be there with a level head and a practical disposition, someone who knew how those mills had risen from the ground and did not want to see them sink back again.

Naturally, it would not be Grace Agbrigg, but Grace Agbrigg could do it if she wanted to, could make a life for herself at Tarn Edge and for some others, could provide herself with that commodity so rarely available to females of her station: some
real
work to do. And although these pressures, these enticements, would not in themselves have swayed my resolution, they moved me, step by slow-moving step, in their chosen direction to a point where the challenge of Tarn Edge seemed matched by the challenge of Gervase's complex nature; to a point where I began to ask myself, with a decided loss of composure, why he wanted me.

It was not money, as with many men—perhaps with most men—it would have been; and I was ready now to admit how much the dread of being courted for my fortune, used and subsequently set aside, had haunted me. Perhaps I was even ready—although I am not sure of this—to admit a certain disappointment at the rapidity with which Gideon Chard had withdrawn from me, having made up his mind, I supposed, that if he obstructed Mr. Barforth's plans on my account he ran the risk of losing his employment and his chance of Venetia with it.

No, Gervase Barforth did not want my money. What then?

‘Darling, you're beautiful,' cried Venetia.

‘Nonsense—utter nonsense!'

‘Oh, yes, you are. I've always envied you that mass of dark hair and those blue-grey eyes, you know I have—and you have
presence
, Grace, simply heaps of it. When you come into a room people look at you, and when you talk they listen. And in any case, none of that really matters. You're beautiful because I love you.'

‘Gervase doesn't know me well enough to love me.'

‘Now that,' Venetia declared, ‘really is nonsense. Lord! it took me all of half an hour to fall in love with Charles, and now—only look at me—I love him more and more by the minute. And it's
good
for me. I actually think it makes my hair curl and even Princess Blanche, who never notices other women, asked me the other day what I was using to give my skin such a glow. Not a jar
she's
likely to dip into, I can tell you, or perhaps I should tell poor Noel. But, Grace—don't you want to be loved?'

Yes. Yes, of course. For even studious little girls who grow to be sensible, efficient young women have indulged in a little romantic dreaming, especially when, as in my case, childhood had been cool in terms of affection, girlhood sometimes quite barren.

‘My dear,' murmured Mrs. Rawnsley, who badly wanted to be the first to know, ‘that poor young man is so smitten that, really, one would need a heart of iron not to pity him. And when one remembers how wild he was—my dear, you have scored a triumph.'

‘He loves you,' Venetia told me again. ‘Don't ask why, just be glad of it. What else in the world can compare with
that
?'

And quite soon it came about that, although I still maintained I had no emotion to give him, I was fascinated by his.

He did not give me the easy assurance of ‘I love you, I cannot live without you', but, pacing Mrs. Agbrigg's drawing-room with the taut, nervous step of a caged feline, carrying from one corner to another his chagrin that once again I had turned him down, he told me: ‘I'll wait. I was too hasty before. Don't say anything now, Grace—please don't say a word. Just consider—
Please
.'

‘I
have
considered. I think you are mistaken in me, Gervase. I believe your mother cannot approve of this—'

‘She will forgive me. She will see that, with you, I will be steadier and easier—because I will be happier. She will see that everything will turn out to her satisfaction just the same. Grace, they are equally my parents. Is there any reason in the world why I shouldn't please them both?'

‘I think it can be done.'

‘I believe you. I thought it altogether impossible, but now I believe you. I have to have you, Grace.'

And so, due to the highly organized communications system of Mr. Nicholas Barforth, it became known in Cullingford and in Scarborough, in certain areas of London and the South of France, that in fact he did have me; that I had become the exclusive property of the Barforths upon which any other aspiring male would be ill-advised to trespass.

Annoying, of course, when the other young men I knew kept their distance, or when Miss Mandelbaum murmured to me softly: ‘My dear, it seems you are to be congratulated, although I fear Miss Tighe will be disappointed. She was relying on you to organize our petition for woman suffrage and you will have no time now, of course—and no inclination.' Annoying to feel myself manipulated by the powerful Mr. Barforth, yet exhilarating too, sometimes, to realize that his approval was not easily won and to wonder if I had the skill to retain it.

And increasingly, almost daily, there was Gervase,
present
in my life, absorbing more and more of my time and my attention, confusing and exasperating me, making me smile, warming me, sometimes touching me, sometimes making me cruel and sometimes kind—but present.

‘What a nuisance you are, Gervase!'

‘So I am.'

So he was, casting me those looks of mute reproach across everybody's drawing-room; but if, the next day, he did not come to find me, did not appear in some doorway just a little dishevelled, a little pale, that transparent look in his eyes, quite soon I began to wonder why, to watch for him, to expect him, to miss him.

There was an evening of acute misery, an Assembly Rooms Ball, when, in a low-cut dress of white lace draped up over black silk roses, I danced with a flattering variety of young men, aware at every step—when I had been so determined not to notice it—of a silent, suffering Gervase leaning like a spectre in the buffet corner, his face drawn and strained by his inexplicable burden of wanting me. And when we did dance together I could feel no flesh on his hands, simply the bones crushing my fingers, wanting to hurt me.

‘You have no right to be jealous, Gervase—no right to be so miserable.'

‘There is nothing you can do about it, Grace. I am jealous. I am miserable.'

I made up my mind, with great firmness, that I would not be influenced by his misery. I would be pleasant and reasonable but cool, until this strange emotion of his, which had risen, like fretful summer fires, from nowhere, should burn itself out. But when he strode from the ballroom, leaving me, as he said, to my pleasures, I worried, wanted him back again, not because I actually wanted
him
—of course not that—but because he had looked so pale, so reckless, so very likely to bring down his horse on the cobbles or get into a fight, and already I was beginning to feel responsible.