Rutherford Park (5 page)

She had once told him all this. It had been last summer. The phrase had amused him completely. “A willing girl.” He had drawn her close, to her astonishment and horror.

“Is there something I can do?” he asked.

She looked down at the box. “Perhaps you might look after me,” she whispered.

“Look after you?” he echoed.

“If I were ill.”

“But of course,” he said, smiling. “And are you?”

She couldn’t say the words. They were there in her mouth, but she couldn’t repeat them. “If I…” But they wouldn’t come.

“But you’re not going to be ill, Emily,” he said. “Not like your father. Not now that you live here.” He kissed her again, looked behind him. “I think you ought to go,” he admitted. “Bradfield and Jocelyn and all that.”

She gazed into his eyes; he put the box into her hand. “I suppose,” he said, “that I should get you into awful trouble if this went on.”

“Went on?” she repeated.

He made a rueful face. “I mean, if it became…” He stopped. “You’ve been such a wonderful girl, really, Emily.”

He began to walk away, got halfway down the path, and then glanced back at her, where she was standing like a statue beside the orchids. With a gesture of helplessness, he spread his arms. “Awfully pretty,” he said. “Do try to wear it, if you can.”

As he went away, and the door of the glasshouse closed behind him, she looked down at the box, but she saw nothing.

Nothing at all.

* * *

T
he gentlemen had joined the ladies in the drawing room; it was almost midnight.

Octavia sat with her two daughters, Louisa fondly holding her mother’s hand. Charlotte—at fifteen, this was the first time she had been allowed to join the Christmas Eve dinner—perched rigidly as if to keep herself focused and awake, a sign that she was completely bored. All three were listening to Harry tell some endless story about Blériot.

“I should love to do it; wouldn’t you?”

“But, Harry, flying? It seems so dangerous and pointless.”

“Pointless!” he exclaimed. “Mother, it’s the most wonderful thing.”

“But simply to drift about, like the ballooning people do…” Louisa said.

“It’s not drifting about,” Harry answered scathingly. “Don’t you remember Beaumont two years ago?”

“I remember you going to Harrogate and getting crushed by a great horde of idiots,” William interposed.

“He flew round Britain and got ten thousand pounds,” Harry retorted. “I think it was ripping.”

“I heard that the Bellingtons woke up one morning in Dorking and one was stuck in their trees,” Louisa said. “I mean, it was just hanging there.”

“What was?” Harry said, frowning.

“The balloon. They called out to the people in it and they said they were going to Dover. Can you imagine?” Louisa dissolved into one of her peals of laughter. “It’s hardly…well,
dignified.
”

“Do you ever concentrate on any topic of conversation for more than ten seconds?” Harry said.

“Harry,” Octavia interjected. “Enough, darling.”

“It’s simply a fad,” William opined.

“But they are sending letters by air now, aren’t they?” Edward Stanningfield asked. “Very efficiently, too.”

“The practical applications will be limited,” William replied.

“Beaumont won three races,” Harry said. “Paris to Rome, Circuit d’Europe…”

“And his colleague was killed,” William answered. “And two others were blown up by their own gasoline tanks.”

“Oh, William, no,” Octavia murmured. “It’s Christmas Eve, after all.”

“Well,” Harry said, “I shall learn how to do it.”

“If I approve it,” William replied. “And I am not likely to do that. There’s more than enough to occupy you on the ground.”

Father and son stared at each other; Louisa stroked Harry’s knee as William lit his cigar.

Octavia tapped Charlotte on the arm. “Play the piano, darling,” she murmured. “The sight of Harry smoldering is quite off-putting.”

“I don’t know what’s got into that boy,” William muttered as he took Louisa’s place next to her.

“Youth,” Octavia replied. “Just that, William. Youth.”

Helene was standing in front of the French mirror that had been brought from Paris; she was engaging Alexander Kent in what seemed to be a lengthy conversation. Elizabeth Kent was eyeing her coldly from the nearest sofa. Helene wore a fabulous blue gown, remodeled, she had told Mrs. Stanningfield at dinner, from a ball gown she had worn in 1890. “I am awfully circumspect with money,” she had said, laughing lightly. “Paris is so expensive.”

Ida Stanningfield had been complimentary. “It’s very pretty—the figuring…”

“It’s the Bluebird satin. I had various things made. My own design.”

“Bluebird?” asked the older woman. Octavia could see that Ida was struggling with the vision of Helene, trying to discern whether any of Helene’s racy reputation still clung to her after all these years. Helene had once been scandalous, but only she and William knew quite how scandalous. Now, if you looked at her, one would be hard-pressed to believe it; Octavia, rather guiltily and entirely privately, always thought that Helene, decked out in her finery, looked suspiciously like a man in a frock. She had a very defined way of walking and standing; it overwhelmed one. She wished Helene would not look at William as if they shared some deliciously private joke; she thought that almost certainly Helene did it to score some obtuse point, but even now, after all this time, Octavia could not guess what that private point might be.

Looking at her objectively across the heavily laden table, the artfully arranged fountains of flowers, Octavia had thought that one had to give Helene her due, nevertheless: although admittedly
rather outré, she was nevertheless gracious. Too modest to expound on her heritage, Octavia had leaned helpfully forward.

“The Bluebird plantation in Jamaica,” she explained to Ida, “was William’s great-grandfather’s.”

“Oh, I knew that,” Ida rallied. “And so, the satin…How clever.”

Octavia smiled at her. She was fond of Ida and Edward; second-generation cotton from Manchester, they might usually have been declined a place at any titled table, but her insistence had prevailed over William’s obstinacy. Edward Stanningfield couldn’t hook a fish in a barrel, William had declared; he was a rotten shot; his voice was too loud. As a wife, Ida was too…But there, William’s opinion had faltered. “Ida is too jolly?” Octavia had said, with one raised eyebrow.

The fact was that the Stanningfields were trade, their immense wealth coming from Manchester cotton, and not Yorkshire wool, like her own fortune. But they were generous people; they had even built decent cottages for their workers. They had taken an interest in Octavia as soon as they had learned, twenty-seven years ago, that she had lost her father; word had traveled fast in the industry, and Edward Stanningfield had kept an eye on the management of Octavia’s own mills from a discreet distance.

They were quite a contrast, she had to admit, to the other guests: the pale, ascetic-looking Lord Dalling, Humphrey Villiers, and his new wife; the Kents—of extreme poverty and enormous pedigree—who owned prime grouse moors farther north; the pretty little Gardiners, newly wed, and the Gardiner parents, all of them neighbors to the Cavendishes’ London house. It was a happy party, everyone determined to be decent company; everyone sweetly complimentary of the tree, the candles, the food, the wine, the astonishing hall with
its towering Gothic roof, the soft and sumptuous drawing room dominated by the Parisian glass.

At which Helene now was smugly displaying herself.

The Gardiners were discussing the coming London Season; it was the year that Louisa would be presented at Court.

“When will you go down to the London house?” Octavia was asked.

“Oh—March, I should think. Before Easter, to arrange the fittings for Louisa’s dresses.”

The women smiled at one another, exchanging sympathetic shrugs at this draining and expensive exercise. Gertrude Gardiner patted Octavia’s knee. “Louisa can’t fail to be a wonderful success,” she reassured her. “And is this man Gould coming up to Rutherford later in the year?”

“What man is that?” Octavia asked.

Gertrude waved her hand. “Oh, he’s been to us all, my dear. Rather dashing, you know, terribly American. He’s writing some sort of book about old families.” She sighed reflectively. “Good company, I suppose, but a dilettante, if you want my opinion, rattling around Europe to no obvious purpose.”

Octavia smiled, recalling now. “I think William mentioned someone. The Goulds are bankers or some such, aren’t they?”

Gertrude sniffed. “Trade, dearest.” She glanced at the Stanningfields, immediately realizing her faux pas. “But awfully sweet, they say. The man is…
quite
distracting.”

Octavia lowered her voice. “Henrietta de Ray told me…” She glanced across at William to make sure that he could not hear. “That he’s rather…”

Gertrude laughed softly. “Oh, he is
rather
,” she replied. “You had best keep Louisa out of his way if you don’t want her spirited away to New York.”

The fire was drawing down; Octavia, aware that Bradfield and the footman, Harrison, had been standing for at least five hours since dinner, now nodded to William to let them go. “I think it’s time to go up, darling,” she murmured. “Don’t you?”

The company rose, the ladies retrieving their shawls and bags. Octavia noticed how the newlyweds almost raced to the door; it was so sweet. The parents held back, Alicia Gardiner intrigued by the series of tiny framed sketches by the door.

“They were for sale in Bond Street the last time we were down,” William explained. “Not my cup of tea, you know, but Octavia liked them.”

“Just little portraits,” Octavia said. “Lautrec.”

“What is he, a painter?” Villiers asked.

“French painter of some sort,” William replied, as Bradfield opened the door.

Octavia looked at Villiers’s wife, a plain woman who seemed to possess considerably more common sense than was usual in an aristocrat, and they exchanged complicit smiles.

* * *

O
ne could feel the cold in the hall; even in an hour the temperature seemed to have fallen dramatically.

Allowing her guests to go ahead of her, Octavia paused for a moment on the stairs while Ida Stanningfield stopped to consider Octavia’s Singer Sargent portrait; then she watched them go to the left along the gallery. There was a hush of doors closing to the guest rooms; along the landing, the lights were all turned down.

Octavia looked up at the huge window; it was three stories high, and the panels of glass at each side had been replaced by William’s father with stained glass of vines and trees. The tracery was a very delicate color, but now the reflection from the snow shone faintly
through it, framing the view of the drive and the parkland sloping away to the river.

As Octavia stood silently in the half darkness, she heard a movement below. She looked down and for a moment could see nothing, and then William emerged from the drawing room, glancing over his shoulder. He had gone back for something; she was about to call out to him. He stopped, looking at his feet. Bradfield came out of the room; the two men spoke. And then Bradfield walked away, turning to take the green baize door close to the stairs.

There was only the glow of the dying fire in the hall now; traces of its color flickered on the high stone walls. There was a murmur, a flash of blue in the doorway. Helene came out; she said something in what seemed like an urgent voice. William made a motion with his hands. The same kind of motion that he had made when denying Harry his ambitions: one flat, rigid palm facing the floor.

Octavia saw Helene grip William’s arm; their heads were together. And she heard him say something. It might have been, “I shall not. I will not.” The last word echoed a little, full of tension. Something shifted in Octavia’s chest, a sort of low thrill of horror, of distant recognition, like the replaying of the long-ago dream of destruction.

And then Helene kissed her husband. She pressed herself against William and put her lips to his lingeringly. Octavia saw him take a step back, and then another. But, when he stopped, his arms went around her.

She turned away.

She turned away and closed her eyes. And then she picked up the fabric of her dress and tried to walk upstairs. Somehow, as she hurried, she tangled herself in the material of the several underskirts. She stumbled against the ledge of the window, put her hand out and inadvertently touched the glass.

All she could think of was that it was bone-deep icy cold, and an inch away beyond the glass was an ocean of white, and that the house was adrift in that white-cold sea where there was a scar of the cut-down tree and the long dark line of the drive….

And someone walking.

Octavia leaned closer to the glass.

Out there, alone in the snow, alone in the dark, Emily Maitland was walking towards the river.

H
arry lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

Just lately he could never get to sleep here. In Oxford, it wasn’t so bad: he was inconspicuous among the rows of little rooms. He rarely went to lectures; his tutor told him that he was a Beckforth as if he would never amount to anything, which made him laugh once out of the man’s sight. It was true, he supposed, for six generations of Beckforths had gone to Oxford and six had come back without an ounce of worthwhile knowledge: their wits had kept them alive and wealthy, their cunning and cruelty—not an education. And sometimes sheer laziness. Sometimes one of the generations had just lain about like hogs wallowing in their own sloth and terribly pleased with themselves, bleeding the local people dry and wasting a fortune here and there on Court intrigue and women. He didn’t see why he needed an education at all; it wasn’t as if he was ever going to be allowed to use it.