A most intriguing lady, p.24
A Most Intriguing Lady, page 24
He collected himself and strode towards her. “Very pleasant. I had no idea you were in London.”
“We arrived—Mama and I, that is—three days ago. We met your aunt in Carlsbad in March.”
“She mentioned the fact. You look different. Well. Very well, in fact. You have a glow.”
Mary smiled. “All those water cures must have agreed with me.”
“Very droll.”
“No, it’s true. Didn’t your aunt Louisa tell you that we learned to appreciate some of the baths? In moderation, mind you.”
Aunt Louisa! Was she teasing him? He’d forgotten that way she had of quirking her brow, that smile that was only just a smile. “My aunt said next to nothing of her trip, only that she had met you and the duchess, and took a great liking to you both.”
“Not enough to give me a peppermint, however.”
Tre smiled at her flippancy, relieved at this sign that she wasn’t as composed as she appeared to be. “I wonder where she is?”
“My guess is that she’s not going to join us. The benevolent despot has clearly decided you and I need to talk. Best get it over with,” Mary added, in his aunt’s plummy tones, “no point in flim-flam, life is too short.”
Tre laughed, then frowned. “Best get what over with?”
Her smiled faded. “Whether you are still willing to, as you so memorably put it, ‘explore the possibility of a future together.’”
It took him a moment to understand her meaning. His first instinct was to shout yes, and sweep her into his arms. In this last year, he’d had to work so damned hard to forget her, and now here she was, looking quite bewitchingly attractive, offering him a second chance. Or the possibility of a second chance. He turned away, needing time to compose himself. “I’d best go and confirm that my aunt is not joining us.”
“You were right,” Tre said, returning to the drawing room bearing a tray with the tea-pot and silver kettle. “I intercepted Aunt Louisa’s butler. She has gone out and is not expected back before dinner. What made you so certain?”
Mary indicated the tea things that were already laid out. “Only two cups.” She sat down, watching while Tre set about making the tea, with what was obviously practised ease. “She knew that I wished to speak privately with you. It was why I came to London.”
Tre continued to concentrate on the tea, spooning it from the burr walnut caddy. In Yorkshire, that day in the water garden, it must have taken a great deal of courage to speak from the heart as he did. That hadn’t occurred to her at the time. All she’d wanted to do was flee, just as he had a few moments ago. “Tre, if it’s too late, then I’d rather you told me now.”
“Milk or lemon? You used to prefer milk, but—”
“Tre!” Mary drew a shaky breath. “I’ve been thinking about this conversation, rehearsing it, for weeks now, but I appreciate it’s come as a bolt from the blue.”
He softened marginally. “Just as my suggestion must have seemed to you last year.”
“It did, and it scared me—you were right about that. I was frightened then, and I’m still frightened. I’m terrified that I’ve missed my chance with you. I’m terrified that even if I haven’t, I might still discover that ship has sailed. Oh dear, that sounds awful. You’re not a boat and it’s me that’s all at sea. Sorry.” Her hands were shaking. She took a sip of tea. “Before I make a complete fool of myself, will you at least tell me if I’m wasting my time, and yours?”
She waited, her heart in her mouth. Tre stared down at his cup, then set it, tea untouched, back on the tray. “Why should I hear you out? What has changed?”
Mary breathed out. “I have.”
“How, precisely?” he asked, uncompromisingly.
He wasn’t going to make it easy for her. Why should he? “I have decided to follow your aunt Louisa’s advice to stop hiding away and to grasp my life with both hands. When we met her in Carlsbad, Mama was playing the invalid and I her nursemaid, which is precisely what you predicted would happen.”
“It seemed fairly obvious to me. It’s what you do when you’re faced with difficult decisions: you hide away, play safe, find a different way to make yourself useful. I forced you into a corner while you were already reconsidering your ability to continue with your amateur sleuthing activities. Though Sir George was extremely grateful for what you achieved, you believed you had failed.”
“You know me a great deal better than I did myself at the time,” Mary said, considerably taken aback. “I’m not trying to excuse myself, I did run away and I was effectively hiding by becoming my mother’s nursemaid, but in my defence I had very few other options open to me. I don’t have any money of my own; I’m wholly reliant on my father for my bed and board; and if I hadn’t served a purpose playing Princess Beatrice to Mama’s Queen Victoria, the duke would in all likelihood have turned his mind to finding me a husband.”
“And marriage,” Tre said dryly, “as you’ve made clear to me from the outset of our acquaintance, is something you’d go to any lengths to avoid.”
“I don’t want a marriage like Mama’s or Victoria’s. I don’t want to be forced into the mould my mother was cast in,” Mary said, recalling the words she had spoken to the duchess more than a year ago. Her heart was thumping, now she was coming to the crux of what she wanted to say. “That doesn’t mean that I am determined to remain unmarried for the rest of my life, however.”
Tre’s brows shot up. “That is a radical turnaround.”
Mary took a sip of her tea. It had gone cold. She set the cup down, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve spent hours and hours rehearsing what I want to say to you, and it all seemed so clear in my head, but actually saying it is much more difficult.”
“Take your time. I’m all ears.”
He wasn’t running away. Not yet. He was still listening. Spit it out, she could hear Aunt Louisa commanding her. “I missed you terribly,” Mary said, heart racing. “I can’t imagine ever feeling for any other man what I feel for you. I can’t imagine any other man understanding me as you do. I would like to find a way to share my life with you, if that’s possible, but I don’t want you to be all I have in my life. There, that’s what I came to London to say to you.”
“Good God! Is that a proposal?”
“I suppose it is, though not the kind you mean. I am proposing that we decide once and for all whether or not we are suited.”
“Isn’t that what I proposed, back in Yorkshire? As I recall, one of your objections was the possibility of your father interfering and removing any element of choice.”
“It’s still a risk, but one that I will deal with if necessary, though I hope it won’t be, if we are discreet. I don’t want to be courted, to go to parties and dances and make polite conversation. I would like us to talk properly, to discuss what kind of marriage we would like.”
“What kind of marriage! Are there different types?”
“I think so.” She wanted to flee. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her. But she didn’t want to have to go through this again. “After more than forty years of marriage, my mother is only just beginning to ask herself the same questions I’ve been posing to myself. She has dedicated her life to my father’s wishes, taking over the projects he has no time to finish, deputizing for him, raising his children for him. She has done her duty, has been the perfect wife, and has been taken entirely for granted by the duke and all her children, myself included. I don’t want that, Tre.”
“Then what do you want?”
“A marriage more akin to what your aunt had, and what my sister Margaret now has.” Mary frowned. “I don’t mean exactly the same, but in the sense of a—a sort of tailored arrangement with their husbands. I want us to decide what will suit us both. I want us to share our lives, not inhabit separate spheres. I want a marriage where I feel I have an equal say, that I’m truly one half of a whole, and not just a small portion.”
“None of that sounds particularly radical,” Tre said, looking baffled.
“But it is! I obviously haven’t made my point properly. Tell me, what do you want from marriage?”
“The obvious things. A wife I love and respect. A family in the future, if I’m fortunate.”
“Yes, but what does that mean, Tre? You assume that your wife would simply become part of your life, that nothing much for you would change, while I would be—I would be subsumed by your life, I’d be the one who had to bend myself into a different shape. I wouldn’t be Mary anymore, I’d be Colonel Trefusis’s wife. Do you see?”
“You don’t think that being a wife, in the future possibly a mother, is enough?”
Abjectly, Mary shook her head. “I know that’s a shocking thing to say, but it’s true.”
To her surprise, Tre reached for her hand. “Why should it be any more shocking for a woman to say that than a man? Unless one is marrying the queen, we don’t ask husbands to make pleasing their wives their entire reason for existing. You want to be useful, to make a difference, don’t you?”
Mary heaved a sigh of relief, nodding.
“In this at least, you are entirely consistent,” Tre said, smiling gently. “I understand that; I always have done, for I’m the same myself. How do you propose to do that?”
“That is something I’m still working out,” Mary said, grimacing. “I know what I’m good at and what I enjoy doing. I know that the people I’d most like to help are women like Henny, who have even fewer choices in life than I do. That’s what I’d really like to do, Tre, to give them choices, opportunities.”
“Charity work, do you mean?”
“I am not the Lady Bountiful type, and I’m like you in that I prefer not to be in the limelight. There are charities such as the one my mother is involved in where there may be opportunities—but as I said, my ideas need to be thought through.”
Tre got up again to look out of the window, his hands dug deep into his pockets. “I don’t know what to say to you.”
“I’m not expecting an answer from you right now.”
“You’ve been very honest with me. It can’t have been easy.”
“No, but I knew that the suggestion would have to come from me. I have felt so dreadful about leaving you like that in Yorkshire. I want you to know that my going was nothing whatsoever to do with your condition. You do believe me, don’t you?”
“It hasn’t gone away, Mary. I have it back under control, but it hasn’t gone completely.”
“I don’t care.”
“But I do. I don’t want to be a source of pity.”
“Nor do I, which is why you have to promise me that if we discover that our ideas don’t tally, that they never will, then you will say so. If you are not certain, absolutely certain that you wish to marry me, then you must not feel obliged, even if we are the cause of speculation. I know you, you’re so honourable and loyal, so it’s important that you promise.”
“Pot and kettle, Mary?”
“Yes, but I will find the courage to speak my mind if I have to. I won’t consign both of us to an unhappy marriage because I was too cowardly to say no.”
“Very well then, I promise. What else?”
“There’s nothing else for now. Once you’ve thought about it . . .”
“I’ve thought.” Tre held out his hand and when she took it, pulled her out of her seat. “Here is to a fresh start. I really have missed you.”
“Am I asking too much of you?”
“You’re asking even more of yourself,” Tre said, sliding his arms around her.
She wrapped her arms around his neck. It was only the first step, but it felt like the right one. “We’ll have each other to rely on,” she said, and kissed him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cliveden
Cliveden, Buckinghamshire, Two Weeks Later
Cliveden had originally been built as a hunting lodge by the Duke of Buckingham, eminent rake, wit, and politician in the court of Charles II. The house had twice been burned down and rebuilt. The current reincarnation was designed by Charles Barry for the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, a startlingly beautiful Italianate villa with three stories, flanked by two single-storey pavilion wings with curved colonnades to the front. The rear of the house was perched on a long terrace with magnificent views down the parterres, which reminded Mary of Drumlanrig, and beyond to the sweep of the River Thames in the valley below.
The Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch had been regular visitors to Cliveden along with Queen Victoria in the Sutherlands’ time, but Mary had never been to Cliveden. The current owner, the Duke of Westminster, was married to the Duchess of Sutherland’s daughter. Whilst Mary’s father very much admired his fellow duke’s wide-ranging philanthropic endeavours, he could not admire his politics, for Westminster was a Whig.
It was Constance, Duchess of Westminster, who had invited Mary for the weekend, though it was Tre’s idea to engineer the invitation: “In the spirit of being creative about how we find ways to legitimately spend time together.” As a result, Mary had come to Cliveden armed with a plea for funding to expand the garden at the school where her mother had begun teaching. The Duchess of Westminster had been enthusiastic at first, but when she learned that the Poor Servants of the Mother of God school was a Catholic one, her eagerness waned. She would consider it at length, she had said, meaning that she would take her time to inform Mary that she didn’t wish to be involved. Since Mama had already secured funding from Aunt Louisa, it hardly mattered.
Mary and her maid, Clara, arrived in the early afternoon in her mother’s coach. The duchess had decided, much to Mary’s relief, that since she was almost twenty-five, she no longer needed a chaperone. She had been given a room on the ground floor of the west wing which opened out onto the garden. Tre was not due to arrive until later, so she decided to explore the grounds.
It was a beautiful summer’s day, and the Cliveden gardens were alive with colour. Bees hummed contentedly; doves cooed in the dovecot; and across the other side of the garden, the clock in the tower chimed the hour. Mary made her way round the house to the long terrace, then descended one of the stone staircases to the parterres with their triangular beds laid out in blocks of white and purple blooms. Her mother would immediately have set about calculating how many plants it took to fill each, though these days, the duchess was more concerned with how many radishes or carrots or cabbages could be grown in the considerably smaller beds which had become the school garden. Mama was now working at the school three days a week, and proving a resounding success with the other teachers and the children. Mary, in search of inspiration, had accompanied her twice, but all she had discovered was what she already suspected: little children simply didn’t interest her. She didn’t find their antics amusing, she did not enjoy the constant mopping and drying and wiping that they seemed to require, nor their endless repetitive questions. She was not destined to be a teacher.
The school was popular; the children who attended it were poor and often dirty, but they came from decent households, respectable, hard-working families, with a full complement of churchgoing parents. The one aspect of it that had caught Mary’s attention was the children who were not permitted to attend. Not those excluded on the grounds of religion but because of their lack of respectability. Children born out of wedlock, whose mothers were known to frequent gin palaces or whose occupation was deemed to be improper. What happened to those children of actresses, singers, flower sellers, thieves, and streetwalkers? And the children with no parents who could be seen, if one chose to look, lurking in doorways, digging in the mud of the river at low tide, scavenging in the docks along the Embankment? Where did they come from? What became of them? Where did they sleep?
She had asked one of the Sisters at her mother’s charity and was told the children came from workhouses and orphanages and factories. They lived on the streets and slept there, too, or in cheap lodging-houses if they had managed to scrounge the means to pay for a bed. They lived with criminals and inevitably they became criminals. Corruption bred corruption was the belief. There were too many other, deserving cases to worry about the undeserving. They would need to fend for themselves.
Mary reached the end of the parterres where a strange domed folly had been erected. The paths shelved steeply down to the river from here. The view was spectacular, with the keep of Windsor Castle just visible in the distance. The river flowed peacefully in soft curves; the banks were thick with greenery.
“Well, well, fancy meeting you here.”
She whirled around. “Tre! I wasn’t expecting you until later.”
“I caught an earlier train.”
“How did you know where to find me?”
“By the process of expert deduction. It’s a beautiful day. These parterres look very much like the gardens at Drumlanrig. Oh, and one of the gardeners told me he saw you heading this way. How many hours of our acquaintance do you think we’ve spent in gardens?”
“Goodness, I don’t know. The majority of them. Do you want to go back to the house?”
Tre shook his head. Checking over his shoulder, he caught her in his arms and edged them around the side of the little grotto out of sight. “We have gone to a great deal of trouble to engineer our presence here together. What I want to do is kiss you.”
“That is what is known as serendipity,” Mary said, lifting her face to his. “Because I want to kiss you, too.”
It was an unsatisfactory kiss. The domed building hid them from the house, but they could easily be seen from the river. “Cliveden has a history of intrigue and scandal,” Tre said, reluctantly letting Mary go, “but I don’t wish us to add to it.”
They took the path down to the river, where the view was delightful enough to distract Mary, or for her to pretend to be distracted. The ferry was tied up on the opposite bank, awaiting the arrival of more visitors to the house. They passed the ferryman’s cottage and continued past another in the Tudor style with half-timbered gables, which looked to be empty. Farther on, another larger cottage was undergoing renovation works of some sort.
