Distant Choices (18 page)

‘No, Mrs Stangway. I've got more sense. A site with a tommy-shop has more frayed tempers, more drinking which leads to more brawls and more accidents – and more production lost because of it – than any other. I won't have it. Sub-contractors have a go at it now and again on my sites and I chase them off. So – as I've already told you – until your shopkeepers get out there and sell to my lads, then Lord Merton is likely to go on losing his rabbits. And his grouse and partridge as well, in season, I shouldn't wonder.'

‘That is scandalous, Mr Keith.'

‘It's a fact, Mrs Stangway. It's the price his lordship seems likely to pay for his station. Not
too
high, I reckon, if you take into account what he charged us for the land to build it on. Maybe he ought to look at it that way. And what I'm just about to ride over and tell him is that if he goes on setting man-traps in his woods and just one of my lads loses a leg with the gangrene because of it, then I'll sue him.'

‘Mr Keith!'
Evangeline, not only on Lord Merton's behalf but for the sake of her entire class and creed, was truly scandalized. ‘A man is entitled to protect his own property – surely?'

‘Not when it comes to maiming other men for life, he isn't – on account of a rabbit stew. And – that apart – if it ever happens and the man concerned turns out to be well-liked then his mates will see their own kind of justice done. A brick or two through his lordship's stained-glass windows one dark night, for instance …'

‘And
of course
, you couldn't possibly stop them …'

‘I may not even be in the neighbourhood, Mrs Stangway. I have seven sites in full operation between here and Carlisle. I could be at any one of them.'

‘You have – foremen? – one supposes.' Evangeline wrinkled her nose as she spoke the word, making a show of finding it rather quaint even though, at close quarters, it might well turn out to have a bad odour. ‘Foremen?' she repeated experimentally, as one does with a foreign and decidedly ungainly language.

‘Yes. I have foremen.' Mr Keith, whose own odour was an aggressively expensive one of good cigars, top quality hair-oil, boot polish and leather, gave her a hard look. ‘Men who've come up through the ranks as I have myself – I don't hide it …'

‘Ah – as to that …' murmured Evangeline, conveying through her purring smile that, in her view, the concealment of Mr Keith's origins – so common, alas – would be impossible.

He looked at her, very hard, again, his patience so obviously near its end, the temptation so strong in him to pronounce the vulgar word, the damning insult she was inviting, thus abdicating effectively and forever from his not yet fully acquired status as gentleman, that Susannah Saint-Charles' interruption may even have been welcome.

‘Oh, Mr Keith – Mr Keith …' She had not really heard his conversation with Evangeline. She had simply been waiting for it to end and now, when the pause came, she rushed in, already pink and agitated and breathless, ‘Mr Keith, I must – I really must enquire about Sadie Clough – as I promised her parents. Much as the subject pains and offends me – I must.'

Her words did not, for a moment, appear to register any meaning to him and then, turning slowly, he stared at her for a long moment, waiting quite deliberately it seemed until her blush had deepened from pink to a damp crimson.

‘What did you say?' he asked, his tone making it quite clear that, whatever it was, he did not care.

Drawing in a deep breath, standing as tall as she could, which even then did not bring her to Garron Keith's broad shoulder, she began to recite quickly, while her courage and his patience should last, ‘Sadie Clough. The girl who was enticed away from loving parents by one of
your
labourers and is now living – in one of
your
huts on Merton Ridge – in a manner which is causing immeasurable distress to her father who is a churchwarden – and her mother who is – well – who keeps her house quite
spotless
. Will he marry her, Mr Keith? Sadie, I mean.'

Once again Mr Keith took his time and quite possibly even his pleasure in watching the spread of her blush, before answering curtly, ‘I shouldn't think so.'

‘And there is nothing you can do – or
will
do? How terrible.'

Terrible too, for Susannah, had Mr Keith's temper slipped its leash and gone snarling for her throat. As seemed rather more than likely, until suddenly, almost shockingly, his scorn converted itself into a veritable battery of charm, turned full upon Susannah with a force that made her gasp for breath and clutch, quite visibly, at her decorum.

‘Come now, Miss Saint-Charles,' he said in a tone Evangeline would have called caressing. ‘Is it so terrible? For the girl, I mean?'

‘Mr Keith – she was to have been married …'

‘Aye. So I hear. To one of these puny farmboys you grow hereabouts. A good, steady lad, they tell me – which might just be another set of words for dull. And these strapping buck-navvies of mine aren't dull, you know. Rough and ready, I grant you. But then, some of these girls from spotless homes and church backgrounds have a funny sort of craving for that. Wouldn't you think so, Miss Saint-Charles?'

And he smiled down at her, allowing his eyes to rove a little over the thin, childish, utterly virginal body, raising an amused eyebrow as if wondering just what
she
might make of a buck-navvy of her very own.,

An act, of course, of deliberate cruelty, witnessed quite gleefully by Evangeline who saw no reason to end it; by Francis who could think of no tactful way of doing so; missed entirely by Kate who was far too busy with the immensity of her own emotions; taken note of with some understanding for both parties by Oriel.

What a nuisance you are, Susannah. What a holy fool. Yet, just the same, Mr Keith, this is not kind – not even worth the poor impression you are making.

Stepping forward, she opened her white lace, silk-fringed parasol with a practised hand and began to fan herself – making a pleasant little stir about it – with one lace-topped white glove. ‘My goodness, Mr Keith, how hot it must be on Merton Ridge,' she said as if carrying on a general conversation about the weather. ‘Although I have never been there yet …'

Instantly – as she had neatly calculated – the mouse Susannah was not only rescued from this giant alley-cat but – less happily, perhaps, in Susannah's own opinion – entirely forgotten by him.

‘I should be delighted to take you there, Miss Blake. You have only to say the word.'

‘Thank you, Mr Keith. You are very kind.'

But she had not spoken the word he wanted, had not said ‘Tomorrow', ‘Next month'or even ‘One of these days', had simply distracted him, drawn his fire, and then, adjusting the angle of her parasol, looked around, in the manner of well-bred young ladies, for her mother.

‘Mamma, dear – you are standing in full sun.'

‘Heavens …' Evangeline's cry of alarm sounded altogether genuine. ‘So I am. And you too, my love. Francis, dear … I do feel …'

He came forward at once, a knight-errant to her service.

‘My dear Mrs Stangway, how unforgivable to have kept you standing here so long in the glare.'

Not unforgivable, perhaps, she smiled to him, but certainly unwise, no porcelain-pale lady of fashion caring to turn – by such an oversight – the weatherbeaten colour of a pedlar, or a fishwife, or a navvywoman.

And so, by Oriel and Evangeline's competent hands, the company was dispersed, Mr Keith riding off on his tall, livery-stable roan mare, kicking up the gravel, on his way to take issue with Lord Merton, if he could be found, at his Abbey; Francis Ashington escorting the ladies with all due ceremony through the heavy iron-studded oak door of Dessborough.

The house was smaller than Matthew Stangway's High Grange Park and rather older, a tower of guard at its beginnings, into which the reigning squire would barricade himself at need to fend off the marauding Scots, and to which each generation of his ancestors had added a room, here and there, all of them small and low with thick walls and narrow mullions to conserve heat and keep out the worst of the Yorkshire weather. Rooms opening one from the other, the older ones stone-flagged and uneven, the more recent panelled in carved, blackened wood heavily scented with beeswax, their atmosphere quiet and dim, oppressive, furtive almost to Francis, yet speaking their welcome at once to Oriel as she moved easily across each threshold, sure of her direction, at ease with the house, quietly, profoundly content with it as she knew it to be content with her. The house and the woman, waiting both together with the same deep patience for the same man.

Allowing the others to fall behind, perhaps at Evangeline's contriving, Oriel was the first to cross the galleried hall and enter the drawing-room, the scents of wax polish, the musk of old tapestries, the freshness of garden flowers through the open window blending in her nostrils as she heard Francis whisper ‘Oriel – may I have a moment of your time – alone somewhere – today?'

‘Yes, Francis.'
Yes
. Her time and the whole of herself with it, so her slow, dreaming smile conveyed to him as she turned her alabaster head towards him, her body beneath the ice-blue gown made of alabaster too, he imagined, very cool and smooth to touch. And he knew he would be touching it very soon now. Rose Oriel, to be taken one fragrant petal at a time, a woman – a body – over which to dream and linger, to spend the whole of an erotic night, a dozen such nights, delicately drawing out her sweetness before penetrating the source of it. He would always treat her with courtesy and gentleness and go on wooing her long after she was won, if for no other reason than to provide the challenge he knew he needed and which ought surely to give a constant impression of her own value to her.

‘How lovely you are,' he said, a connoisseur as yet rather than a lover, by no means mad with desire – as he had been maddened once – but reassured by the stir of it in his obedient body, neither too urgent nor too violent but enough, he judged, to make its consummation very pleasant.

‘Yes, so lovely. The loveliest girl in England.' And because he had meant to say ‘I love you. Please marry me,' and knew he
would
be saying it before the day was done, he smiled at her through a long, warm silence, enjoying her elegant head, her fine, cool body with no awareness whatsoever of the tumult he was stirring within it, not only of love and devotion and all her woman's tenderness but a dim, uncertain, yet growing – growing – desire of her woman's body for the male caress of his. The first hesitant acknowledgement of her sensuality which he – since she continued to meet his gaze with such composure, such a calm elegance of manner – missed entirely.

‘Any man,' he said, thinking how well that smooth elegance would suit the position of Dessborough's first lady, ‘would consider himself fortunate …'

Was it the beginning of a proposal? She smiled at him, her heart crashing violently against the wall of her chest, yet her expression remaining no more than attentive.

‘Yes, Francis?'

She was inviting him to go on, offering the only encouragement a lady ought to give in these delicate circumstances. Rose Oriel, her heart on fire, yet waiting, as all her life she had waited, with the exquisite politeness of those who are never quite sure of their position. Waiting to be invited, to be included, to be
asked
, her heart already wildly crying out ‘I love you, Francis. Forever', her voice calmly pronouncing the correct formulas she had been taught – by Society, by Necessity – for the occasion.

‘Oriel …' Should he settle it now by taking her in his arms and be discovered kissing her by her mother who, surely not far behind, would know exactly what to make of it? But no. This girl deserved a more thoughtful, more accomplished proposal than that.

‘We must talk,' he murmured and allowed her to see his regret as Kate and Susannah Saint-Charles came jostling each other through the narrow doorway, both of them exclaiming about the length of sari silk tossed over a chair by the open window.

‘What is
that
?' demanded Kate.

‘How pretty,' said Susannah, sounding by no means certain, needing Maud, perhaps, to tell her whether it might, in fact, be gaudy: or even improper.

‘One supposes it to be something Indian,' said Evangeline, coming in behind them. ‘Have you been sorting out your souvenirs, dear Francis?'

He had come across it, in fact, that morning at the bottom of a storage chest, sent years ago, he supposed, as a gift from his mother to his aunt, the old squire's lady. Both women were dead now, the gift unused, forgotten, and he had taken it idly to the open window and held it to the light, wondering if he might make a gift of it to someone in his turn. Idly wondering, and then, with slow-building agony, remembering. A length of gossamer-fine silk shot through with gold and orange and the wild, hot pink which still touched raw places in his mind, the glorious flamboyance of India still faintly spiced with sandalwood, which looked so garish – he well knew – to these rain-coloured English eyes.

So, for a while, had he remembered, suffered, and then, carefully, gently, had draped the silk across the chair-back, taking pains with its arrangement as he would have taken pains to seat a fragile woman. And he had left it there in the pale, northern sunshine, this mild, subtle season which passed for summer, knowing the garment to be empty, as were all other garments, since his wife's body had never touched it. Knowing himself to be empty since he would never touch that body again. Knowing, as the pain receded, that his own male body could desire other women no more than physically, desire and even enjoy them without betraying Arshad, without ceasing for one moment to acknowledge her as ‘the woman', all the rest remaining in a category which was neither higher nor lower but quite simply
not her
.