“Of course, Sir Thomas. There’s a letter from her ladyship.”
“Ah,” said Tom, who did not at all wish to read what his mother had to say. Gough handed him the letters all the same and then went to see about his bath.
Tom broke the seal and glanced at the direction. She was still at Felsham, which did not auger well. It was too close to Cromer for one thing. He scanned the letter.
“My dearest son,
I am a little uncertain how to interpret your last letter. I cannot believe that you have allowed yourself to form this attachment. I must repeat that I do not consider you in a position to offer your hand to Miss Rufford – and I very much hope you have not actually led her to believe that you are at liberty to do so. Lady Mary considers herself to be engaged and she is, as ever, anxious to gratify her father’s wishes and mine. I trust that your own considerable sense of duty will also prevail in this.
Miss Rufford might be a handsome, charming girl – and I am not so out of charity with you not to understand how she might have attracted you. However, any feelings that she might arouse in you must be considered entirely improper because of your position in relation to Lady Mary. This is the situation and you cannot avoid it. It would be extremely damaging to your reputation, not mention to Miss Rufford’s, if you were to act upon these feelings and talk any more of marriage to her. You know perfectly well that Caroline Rufford can never be your wife without alienating the hearts and repudiating the good opinions of those who love you most deeply – and in this I must include Lady Mary.
Forgive my strong words, but it is with the deepest concern for you that I write. I have also written to Miss Rufford explaining your situation.
Your loving mother, Arabella Thorpe.”
“What!” exclaimed Tom, throwing down the letter. “The devil she has!”
“Sir Thomas?” said Gough.
“I must dress at once. I must go to Miss Rufford immediately.”
***
Lady Amberleigh and her daughter had taken a large, elegantly furnished house overlooking the sea front, only a few minutes’ walk from Tom’s lodgings, and he walked there briskly as soon as he was dressed to Gough’s satisfaction. But reaching the house, he hesitated. He looked up at the bay window of the first floor drawing room where he knew Caroline would be waiting for him. Through the open window he could hear her playing the harp and he found himself turning away towards the sea.
It was nearly five o’clock and the sun was breaking fitfully through the grey sky, piercing the sea with spectacular shafts of light. The wind was still blowing and the sea was rough, dashing the shingles and groins with relentless force. Caroline began to sing – her sweet clear voice drifting down to him – the words of an Italian song about constant love. It was the song she had sung on the night he had decided he would make her his wife.
He walked away a little, towards the sea wall. He tried to think of Caroline but even the sound of her voice seemed unable to rouse his imagination. He was thinking only of the girl whose name he did not know, of her red-gold curls lying on the pillow, the freckles on her cheek and the wild glint in her green eyes.
Caroline finished her song and Tom went to the door of the house, trying to put aside the memory of the afternoon, like a man locking away the letters from an old affair. He could not allow it to confuse him. He had made her his offer and no man with any sense of decency or honour could back down from such a bargain.
***
“Well, Sir Thomas,” said Lady Amberleigh, a few minutes later, when the formalities had been got through and he was sitting with her in the drawing room. “It seems that someone is under a misapprehension here, and I hope for my daughter’s sake it is your mother.”
“It is,” said Tom. “She will have me marry Lady Mary and no-one else. But, I assure you, Ma’am, I have never given either my mother nor Lady Mary, nor her father Lord Wansford any grounds to believe that I consented to such an arrangement.”
“Then how, pray, has she fixed the notion in her head that you have?” said Lady Amberleigh. She might have been a well-dressed widow but her manner of cross-examination would not have disgraced a member of the bar. “You must have said something to her to suggest that you did not find the idea of the match abhorrent.”
“No, I have always been very definitely opposed to it. Do you think I would have addressed your daughter as I have, if I had believed I was not free to do so?”
“I do not know, Sir Thomas,” said Lady Amberleigh. “Ah, here is Caroline.”
Caroline had apparently quit the drawing room for some minutes when he was announced, presumably to compose herself. Tom thought she looked shaken. She was paler than usual – her usual fresh rose colour seemed banished, but she walked into the room with all her usual elegance.
He rose from his chair to greet her, and would have taken her hand, but he saw Lady Amberleigh frowning. Caroline confined herself to a curtsey and took her place beside her mother.
“What must you think of me?” he said, drawing his chair a little closer to her. “I have been trying to reassure your mother but can I say enough to convince you?”
“Your mother must have had very good reason for writing as she did,” she said at length.
“Because she does not wish us to marry,” said Tom. “That is the matter in a nutshell. She is a worldly woman and she expects me to seek worldly advantage.”
“But if Lady Mary’s affections have been engaged?” Caroline said looking across at him. She had dark brown eyes and there was a melancholy in them that he had not seen before.
“Then it was not my intention,” said Tom. “I swear to you I have done nothing to make her think that I was anything but an acquaintance. I believe my mother must have talked her into believing that she feels something for me. Lady Mary is a highly suggestible creature – and very young. She is but seventeen. She does not know what she feels.”
“Nevertheless,” Caroline went on, “her feelings have been engaged and her expectations have been confirmed by those whose opinions she values. If that is the case, I think she does have some sort of claim upon you. I do not wish to have such a thing on my conscience as another woman’s broken heart. She has a prior claim on you, Sir Thomas. I must recognise that.”
“You would not say that if you had seen her,” Tom said. “She is a schoolroom chit. She knows nothing about anything. She only does as she is bid.”
“That,” put in Lady Amberleigh, “is a sign of virtue in her.”
“It cannot be thought virtuous to pretend to love merely because your father tells you that you must,” said Tom. “Surely?”
Lady Amberleigh got up suddenly and said,
“That may be so. But I am more concerned that you are merely using my daughter in order to disentangle yourself from a disagreeable marriage. My concern is that my daughter shall be well married – and by that I mean that the man who is lucky enough to be her husband shall have a strong, pure-hearted regard for her. If you were to have fixed on Caroline as a solution to your difficulties, then –”
“No madam, I assure you I have not,” Tom said.
“I am glad to hear you say it, Sir Thomas, but I am still not easy. Your mother’s words were strong – and I cannot believe she would have written so strongly without good cause. This matter does you very little credit sir, and I must be given more proof of your good faith until I can give my consent to this match. I hope you do not consider this unreasonable.”
She stood over him as she spoke and Tom looked up at her. As he did so he had the strange impression that she resembled the girl from the Abbey. A fleeting similarity passed over Lady Amberleigh’s handsome, middle-aged face. There was something about the cheek bones and the set of the nose that recalled her to him and he found himself almost too startled to answer her for a moment.
“Sir Thomas?” she prompted.
“No, it is not unreasonable,” said Tom, blinking. “I am willing to do anything that might restore your good opinion of me.”
She nodded and Tom saw the resemblance vanish as soon as it had come. He felt relieved, although somewhat concerned.
“I will let you two alone until dinner then,” she said, and left the room.
When she had gone Caroline rose and walked into the bay window. She stood with her back to him, standing near her harp.
“I heard you playing as I came in,” he said. “I stood in the street and listened.”
She turned and smiled at him – but again he saw that melancholy that was new to him. Did she expect him to make love to her, to reassure her?
Part of him longed to blurt out a confession to her. She was the sort of woman to whom he had felt he could talk sensibly. It was one of the reasons he had been drawn to her in the first place and had made him decide he wanted to marry her. But now as she stood there, twisting her fingers together in unconscious anxiety, he could no longer enjoy that comfortable companionship.
Earlier that summer, staying at her brother’s house, a disinterested friendship had easily and pleasantly sprung up between them. After a while he had been persuaded that what he felt for her was love. But could it have been love when he had run so quickly into the arms of another woman so shortly after he had asked her to be his wife? Had he mistaken the playful conversations of a country house visit for love?
“I am a free man, Caroline,” he managed to say, hoping that he would not be tempted again, swearing to himself he would keep the bargain. He had promised her marriage. He could not disappoint her. “Please believe me.“
I know,” she said and held out her hand to him. “I knew it in my heart. You are incapable of insincerity.”
As she spoke, he knew himself all too capable of it. For from the corner of his eye he could see a dark figure on the beach, clambering along in the narrow margin left by the high tide. Irresistably he turned to see better.
It was the tall figure of a boy, the face hidden in a broad-brimmed hat and wearing an old fashioned redingote that was left open to flap in the breeze, a pack thrown over his shoulder. Am I really a free man, he wondered.
“What are you looking at?” she said glancing behind her.
“No-one,” said Tom, for now he looked properly the figure had vanished. “I mean, nothing. Nothing at all.”
Griselda found Hugh’s lodgings without much difficulty, but she did not go there at once. She spent the dinner hour walking the beach, trying to calm her nerves. She felt too wild with excitement, too ragged with regret, too entirely confused to do anything but crunch along the shingle and hope that she would find some measure of tranquillity.
But the light faded and there was no ducking it any longer. She had to make her way to his lodgings before darkness surrounded her.
A plump but pinch-mouthed woman opened the door to her.
“Yes?”
“I wish to speak to Colonel Farquarson,” said Griselda.
“And who might you be?” said the landlady, sharply.
“Miss Farquarson,” she said. The landlady did not look convinced. Griselda went on: “I am the Colonel’s sister. Please tell him I am here.”
“Very good, miss,” said the woman. “Whatever you say.”
After a short delay the landlady told Griselda to come in. She showed her to the half-open door of a parlour that opened off the hall.
“Miss Farquarson, sir,” said the landlady pushing open the door.
“Griselda?” Hugh said, staring at her as Griselda went in. “But I don’t understand. What on earth…?” He was struggling to get up from his chair and the effort it involved distressed her. He had, of course, made light of the injury to his hip and leg, but Griselda now saw how crippled he was by them.
“No, you mustn’t get up. You must not disturb yourself,” she said, going over to him and putting her arms around him.
“And how do you imagine I shall do that?” he said, disentangling himself. “With you turning up like this, dressed in such an outrageous fashion?”
“It is not that outrageous. I think my clothes are very sensible,” she said. “For travelling, nothing could be better. You should try travelling in women’s clothes, Hugh.”
He sank back in his chair. He looked seriously alarmed.
“What have you done?” he said.
“I have only travelled from Glenmorval,” she said. I had to come and speak to you in person. I could not think what else to do.”
“You have not travelled from Scotland alone?” he said after a moment. “Tell me you did not.”
“I did, and I shan’t say I’m afraid I did, because I feel I have nothing to apologise for.”
Hugh had put his hand over his face, presumably to hide his gawping astonishment. He shook his head.
“I cannot believe you could have done such a thing,” he said.
“Well, think what you like. What matters is that I am here, quite safe and sound, and that I am seeing my dearest brother at last!”
“You expect me to enjoy our reunion in such circumstances?” he exclaimed.