She swung round, red-faced — with anger not embarrassment
— at the sound of his footstep. “If Harriet’s new dress is ruined I want
Miss Morecroft dismissed upon the spot.”
Roland put out his hand to help Cecily to the ground. “I wonder if
their expedition will be as successful as last time?” His tone was mild.
“Harriet and August tell me they captured a dozen inmates for their new worm
farm.”
Cecily glared at him. “I do not share your amusement, Roland. Miss
Morecroft is impulsive and wayward and as such, highly unsatisfactory.”
Unsatisfactory? With an effort Roland kept his expression neutral as
an image of Miss Morecroft’s lovely face, eyes dancing with merriment, mouth
trembling with barely suppressed laughter, appeared before him.
Steeling himself against the extraordinary and dangerous yearning to
possess that which he knew could only bring heartache, he asked through gritted
teeth, “How could I refuse Godby’s wife?”
Cecily stamped her foot. “What Godby did to you, not to mention to
his men in battle can never be forgiven. His daughter is cut from the same
cloth, Roland. Do you see the way she courts attention? It’s a good thing
Cosmo’s returning to his own home-”
“Miss Morecroft may not be as docile as her mother led us to
believe, but she is capable and the girls are fond of her.”
Cecily glanced over Roland’s shoulder at Venetia’s portrait and her
eyes narrowed. “Surely you are not suggesting Caro model herself on Venetia!”
Roland turned away from the venom in her eyes, even though he
acknowledged the many good reasons Cecily had to despise his late wife. “I am
suggesting nothing of the sort.” Though his response was mild he could feel the
blood pumping through his veins, under great pressure. Normally he avoided
Venetia’s name, but now he felt it was pertinent.
Striving to keep his growing anger in check, he went on, “However
Venetia was her mother. I believe Caro tries too hard to be everything Venetia
was not.”
“Of course Caro must endeavour to be everything Venetia was not!”
Cecily flared. “And if you think I am responsible for the whispers, you are
wrong.”
Roland looked at her steadily. Her face was red, knots of anger
protruding from her scrawny neck. Anger had been his first impulse, too. Now he
merely felt sorry for Cecily. How cruel of his brother to have made no secret
of his enduring love for Venetia, while happy to take Cecily’s money. Hector
and Venetia should have married. They’d have made each other miserable very
quickly instead of drawing the rest of them into it … the survivors who had to
keep living with the memories.
“I have always admired your discretion, Cecily. It is the servants
who are not so reliable.” He seated himself on the window seat and beckoned to
his ugly, red-faced, trembling sister-in-law who was not a bad woman by nature,
but who had never got over being so ill-used. He sympathised. It was hard to
live with the betrayal of the only person one has ever loved. How much worse,
though, to be a woman, seeing oneself age with little, if any, prospect of love
on the horizon to ameliorate the damage of the past.
She sat, and he took Cecily’s clasped hands between his. “I have
long suspected that Caro has been aware of the whispers.”
Cecily jerked her head up. “You must refute them. Deny everything!”
With a sigh, Roland dropped her hands, and rose. Changing the
subject, he said, “You will, of course, launch Caro next season. I trust it’s
not an imposition for I realize I am sometimes guilty of taking your good
offices for granted. Perhaps you might enjoy a little enforced gaiety.” He
managed a smile.
Cecily was in no mood to respond with similar good humour. “I
consider it a duty I am happy to discharge, Roland,” she said through pursed
lips. “Hardly a pleasure! Ugly old women like me are fools if they deck
themselves out in frills and furbelows to seek out pleasure.”
“Good,” said Roland, ignoring her last remark. “In the meantime I
thought a little practice in advance of Caro’s come-out would be in order. I
plan to hold a small ball at Larchfield for Caro’s seventeenth birthday next
month. Just twenty or so people from the neighbourhood. Caro will, of course,
hate the idea but I think Miss Morecroft might be just the person to bring her
round.”
Seeing her stiffen, he tried a final approach. “Come now, Cecily,”
he cajoled. “With your deft touches and skill at organization the evening is
sure to be a success.”
* * *
“It’ll be a disaster!” wailed Caro, twisting her handkerchief around
her fingers and looking at Sarah as if for corroboration.
Unmoved, Sarah bent over Harriet’s shoulder to correct her French
translation. Caro, opposite her, gripped the back of Augusta’s chair as she
fixed Sarah with a tragic look.
“The evening will be a disaster, or you will be?” Sarah enquired,
gently, not looking up.
With a huff Caro began pacing around the table. “Both,” she said,
finally. “I will be a disaster and so bring great shame and embarrassment to
Papa.”
“Oh, so you do recognize the correlation,” said Sarah, as if
discussing a lesson in logic. “I’m glad, Caro. It’s time you learned that how
you deport yourself reflects upon those who reared you. If you behave
charmingly your father’s guests will go home saying, ‘How fortunate Mr
Hawthorne is to have a daughter with such pleasing manners. What a credit she
is to him’.”
Caro was not such a fool she could not recognize the sarcasm in her
governess’s tone. But when Sarah looked up she was taken aback by the anger in
the young girl’s eyes.
“You understand nothing!” Caro hissed. She thrust herself across the
table to glare at her governess. Harriet and Augusta looked up in alarm. “No,
nothing!”
Sarah eyed her with concern. “Calm yourself, Caro,” she soothed. She
did not fancy another hysterical outburst with consequences worse than last
time.
“Do you think I’m insensible to every nuance of my voice?” demanded
Caro. “Or that I am not afraid every time I smile that I might be creating the
wrong impression? If I smile ‘charmingly’ as you put it, how is that different
to the enticing way my mother smiled? She used her ‘pretty manners’ and
enhanced her beauty to enslave men. Do you think I wish to be called a harlot,
too?”
Sarah did not interrupt. Her heart went out to the girl.
“This birthday ball of mine-” Caro put a hand to her temple and
closed her eyes briefly. “I shall feel like an-an animal in the zoo. Everyone
will be watching me, studying me, making comparisons. They won’t come with the
object of helping Mr Hawthorne celebrate his daughter’s birthday. They’ll be
there to see if his daughter is as beautiful as her mother, as flirtatious as
her mother, as gay and lively and … and likely to be as immoral as her mother.”
She sank down upon the paint-chipped nursery chair and covered her
face with her hands. Sarah stifled the urge to go to her. A brisker approach,
she decided, was safer.
“You’ve made some interesting observations, Caro, and with your
permission I should like to conduct an experiment.” She smiled from across the
table, her tone matter-of-fact. “I have an aptitude for charades and amateur
theatricals, I am told, which will enable me to show you how to create any
impression you want.”
Caro looked at Sarah as if she were speaking nonsense.
“But the experiment is to be conducted in the evening, when your
aunt and father are out visiting. I believe they are to play cards with Colonel
Doncaster and his wife tomorrow night?”
“What do you want me to do?” Caro sounded suspicious.
“Oh,
you
don’t have to do
anything, except observe and” - Sarah crinkled her brow - “supply me with one
of your mother’s old dresses.” She gave a satisfied smile at Caro’s look of
horror. “One of her most alluring.”
Despite Caro’s apparent reluctance, the girl’s curiosity clearly overrode
her aversion to looking through the scandalous, diaphanous wisps of fabric that
had once clothed her mother. A sense of devilry obviously made her select the
most scandalous, diaphanous of them all.
Sarah was still wearing her own evening gown when Caro came to her
tiny bedchamber while Ellen put the girls to bed. The garment had been
bequeathed to her by Mrs Hawthorne but Sarah had transformed it into an
eye-catching sheath of peony-red
gros de
Naples
with three rows of gold trimming around the hem. She’d noticed Mrs
Hawthorne’s gimlet eye stray towards the creation throughout the evening. Mr
Hawthorne’s ill-concealed admiration had, however, been more gratifying, even
though he’d addressed her with the same studied coolness.
“Wait for me in the drawing room,” instructed Sarah, relieving Caro
of her mother’s evening gown.
“Why can’t we go down together?”
“Because I am the one issuing instructions and it’s my desire that
you take a seat by the fire and pretend you are simply a guest. I shall come
down in one guise, take my seat at the piano, and pretend to entertain my
audience. Remember, you are merely to observe. I shall then leave, and return,
as another person-”
“You mean my mother.”
“It doesn’t matter. Perhaps I will pretend I am Lady Venetia, or
perhaps I will pretend I am Caro who is pretending to be her mother. You will
know, believe me. Just do as I say, Caro.”
She leapt into action the moment Caro had closed the door. Out of
her trunk she pulled the real Sarah Morecroft’s most hideous garment and, with
satisfaction, struggled into the drab grey merino gown with its ill-made
trimmings. She then rearranged her hair to fall in two unflattering loops over
the sides of her face and topped it with a poorly sewn toque adorned with a
sadly drooping feather.
Regarding herself with satisfaction she proceeded down the stairs.
At the door to the drawing room she turned her attention to her posture. With
shoulders slumped, neck thrust out, eyes darting suspiciously from side to
side, she made her way to the piano.
Executing a clumsy, self conscious curtsy as if she were about to
perform before a small audience, Sarah’s voice was a flat monotone as she
muttered in Caro’s general direction, “I shall play
Hey, Betty Martin
”. Placing the music onto the stand, she dropped
ungracefully onto the piano seat and began to play, haltingly. The music’s lack
of feeling was matched by Sarah’s unemotional rendering of the words.
Once Caro’s dutiful clapping at the end of the piece had died away,
Sarah rose. Staring over Caro’s shoulder into the middle distance, she
collected the music sheets, shuffled them nervously, then muttered an
incoherent thank-you before exiting the room.
She took the stairs two at a time. A few minutes would be needed to
transform herself though she did not want to take too long about it.
“Ellen,” she called in a loud whisper as she passed the nursery, and
was glad the girls had obviously gone to sleep so that Ellen was free to assist
her.
The nursery maid’s face was a picture of horror as she stared at the
barely decent dress Sarah held out to her.
“Quickly, help me put it on,” Sarah ordered, as she pulled off the
grey merino and stood in only her chemise and short stays.
“Lordy, what are you doing?” Ellen squeaked. “You’ll lose yer job!
That dress don’t belong to you!”
“The master’s out. This is for Caro’s benefit,” Sarah explained.
“I’m showing her the difference confidence and poise can make. And don’t look
at me like that. I charged Caro with the task of finding me something suitable
of her mother’s, and this is what she selected. Now quickly!”
The dress fitted like a glove, once Sarah had removed her chemise in
order for it to hang properly. Then, on an impulse of pure wickedness, she
dashed water from her pewter jug onto the garment and began to smooth it
through the folds. Admiring herself in the full-length cheval mirror she had
purloined from Caro she was gratified by the seductive effect created as the
diaphanous garment clung to her limbs.
“Dear Lord,” whispered Ellen, stepping back after she had hastily
worked Sarah’s hair into an attractive topknot of tumbling curls, “I’m right
glad the master’s out. He’d drop dead at the sight of you. Reckon it’s the
dress m’lady wore the night everything blew up with Sir Richard.”
“Who is Sir Richard?” Sarah had heard his name before.
“Another of m’lady’s lovers, only he were the worst.” Ellen looked
more scared than eager to impart gossip. “She met her match, alright. He were a
true villain. Gave her a pearl necklace wot cost more ’n diamonds so’s she’d
run off with him, only she soon came back, she were that scared.”
“Good Heavens. How many lovers did Caro’s mother have?” Sarah
adjusted a curl.
“Well, there were Mr Hector and of course-” Ellen shot Sarah a quick
look, hesitated, then added, “and … Sir Richard. So I s’pose that ain’t too
bad.” She bit her lip. “Just don’t let the master see you, for it
were
the dress m’lady wore when she came
back a week later and Mr Hawthorne had to fight Sir Richard.”
“Mr Hawthorne seems to be in the habit of duelling,” Sarah remarked,
her tone dry though her heart beat loudly.