The Land of Summer (25 page)

‘Undoubtedly,’ Julius replied without interest, and yet again he picked up the invitation. ‘I suppose we shall have to go, although I cannot imagine why Her Majesty should choose to visit the Parhams. On her way to Osborne, perhaps? Is it not about time luncheon was served?’

‘Did anyone tell Cook?’ Emmaline asked him, trying not to laugh.

‘Is that necessary?’ Julius asked in return, looking slightly astonished. ‘It’s only luncheon.’

Even though it was
only luncheon
, Emmaline rang for Wilkinson to inform him that she and her husband were ready to lunch. Wilkinson nodded gravely and replied that he had taken the liberty of telling Cook this might be the case, so there should only be a slight delay in calling them to table.

‘I am so looking forward to eating English food again. I love French food, but there are so
many
rich ingredients,’ Julius confided, looking suddenly boyish and pleased to be home.

‘Is that where you have been, Julius? You have been in France?’

‘Yes, I was called to a château in the Loire which is the size of Windsor Castle and in total disorder. No one but no one knew where to begin, and in truth it really did not matter where we did begin, such was the state of the place. The Bastille would be cosier, and easier to alter.’

‘I wish you had told me that you were going to France, Julius.’

‘You do?’ Julius replied, giving her a puzzled look. ‘Why would you wish to know such a thing?’

‘I would like to have given you a list of some small items which you could have purchased for me, in particular some Breton lace, and gloves. French gloves are the very finest. And more than that, it would have been reassuring to know where you were, in case you suffered an accident.’

‘No matter,’ Julius said, consulting his fob watch. ‘I know where you are. I am afraid I have to go into Bamford this afternoon, I must have lunch as soon as is perfectly possible. I hate to be an imposition, but is it possible to eat very soon?’

‘We will eat as soon as lunch is ready, Julius,’ Emmaline told him in a firm tone, ‘and it is too bad of you to turn up as and when you think fit, having told no one of your whereabouts
before
. It makes life impossible for both wives and servants.’ As Wilkinson came into the room, she nodded at him. ‘Thank you, Wilkinson, we will go in, and many apologies to Cook from Mr Aubrey for not conveying to her at what time he wanted luncheon served.’

Emmaline swept ahead of Julius, a small and naughty voice repeating in her head,
I have written verses with which a young scholar is much taken, I have written verses with which a scholar is much taken
. And because of them she was able to hold her head high.

Julius followed his wife into the dining room, trying not to look as surprised as he felt. He did not know why, but Emmaline seemed greatly changed. Not outwardly, perhaps – her lovely thick brown hair was just the same, as was her slim figure, and she was wearing a blue day dress which he particularly liked, all that was the same. No, it was something else, something on which he could not put his finger, something of which he felt suspicious.

Julius did indeed hurry through his lunch, not speaking other than to tell her he would be away again the following week.

‘Where might you be going this time, Julius?’ Emmaline asked, trying not to look relieved.

‘Same as last time, I imagine. Although I doubt if even Hercules would have taken on this particular task.’

‘I would really like to go to France with you,’ Emmaline remarked carefully.

‘Have you not been to France, then?’

‘I think you must know that perfectly well, Julius.’

‘I would love to take you to France, one day, but not on this journey,’ he said, half to himself.

‘Would you, Julius? Would you really?’

Julius stood up without replying, so that it seemed to Emmaline that his putting his napkin down and walking from the room was a reaction to what she had said.
Would you, would you really?
Had it sounded all too much like a plea?

‘Will you be in for dinner, Julius?’ Emmaline called, but Julius was gone, replaced by Wilkinson, who had silently appeared through the pass door.

‘The master
will
be in for dinner, madam,’ the butler informed her, easing her chair out from the table for her as she rose. ‘I enquired before lunch, because Cook was becoming somewhat animated on the subject of Mr Aubrey’s coming and going, and he told me he will be in for dinner tonight.’

‘Thank you, Wilkinson,’ Emmaline replied. ‘It is possibly just as well one of us knows when Mr Aubrey will be in.’

By the time Emmaline settled herself down once more to write at her desk in the bedroom the rain was flinging itself against the windows as if it was begging her to let it in. The wind was howling round the house, while the fire in the grate smoked and doors rattled in the draughts. Emmaline could not help shivering at the sound
of
the wind, because it sounded more and more like a person, a person calling insistently and often, someone needing her, someone wanting to tell her something, but who could it possibly be?

To take her mind off such imaginings Emmaline opened her book of writings, and once again it was as if she was reading something from the hand of someone else, a total stranger, someone she barely knew. Yet it was perhaps because the poetry seemed to be written by another hand, in a voice she could not recognise as her own, that within no time at all she found herself beginning to write. At one point it was as if she was watching her pen move without any effort on her part, as if it was being held by someone else, and yet she knew that she was being swept along by emotions that came from deep inside, engulfed by passions and sentiments that arrived with a life of their own. She became so infused with the excitement of what was happening to her that when she stopped for a moment she found she had been writing with her bent forehead resting in her left hand and that the fingers of that same hand were damp with perspiration.

For a moment she stopped, leaving her desk and sitting at her dressing table, where she carefully wiped her forehead with a handkerchief dipped in lavender water, watching the stranger who was staring back at her in her looking glass. Once she was cool again, and her heart had slowed to its normal rate, she returned to her desk and saw that she had written two whole verses of
fourteen
lines apiece, both of them with hardly a correction – a word crossed out here, perhaps, and another moved two spaces back and another to the next line – and it seemed as if the poem had just flown out of her, until looking at the clock she realised she had been sitting at her desk for well over two hours.

She rang for Agnes and asked her to instruct Dolly to bring her tea up to her room, since she wished to continue writing for the half-hour she still had at her disposal. Then she sat back down at her desk to do some further corrections until Dolly appeared with the tea tray. While the housemaid went about her business, Emmaline stood at the window watching the trees in the darkened garden bending in the force of the wind, their branches waving signals of distress as the gale grew in force and threatened to break them in two. Unswept leaves swirled in eddies at their base, while the rain continued to be driven hard against the panes. Emmaline pulled the curtains and asked Dolly to build up the fire before she left the room, and then she went once more and settled herself at her desk.

She had hardly picked up her pen again when she heard a door bang along the corridor. Thinking that Julius might have returned home earlier than expected, she at once shut her notebook away, and went to peer out of her door and down the corridor.

She could see that the door of his dressing room was open and there was a light burning within,
yet
the longer she watched, the less it seemed there was any sign of her husband. She waited, listening to the howling wind, that voice crying out for someone, that anguished lonely voice.

All of a sudden the door of the dressing room blew wide open, seeming to acquire a life of its own, before trying to shut itself once more, and failing. It gave out a repetitive dull thud, as if the latch had jammed, and Emmaline hurried forward into the darkness of the corridor to close it. When she reached it she found that the latch was indeed stuck, and she could not free it with the use of just her finger, so she went into the room to search the dressing table and the top of the chest of drawers for some sort of improvised prop that would free the latch and put a stop to such an irritating noise.

First she tried using one of her husband’s boot hooks, but the hook itself was too big to fit the latch so she searched for something smaller, finally uncovering a small nail file that she thought would be ideal, which in fact it proved to be. On returning the file to where she had found it on top of the chest of drawers, her attention was caught by something unusual covered with a cloth and half hidden between the back of the chest and the wall. Peering more closely from one side and lifting the cloth, underneath she saw a large picture frame.

Her curiosity now well aroused, she hurried to the dressing-room door and peered out into the darkened corridor to make sure that there
was
no one down the landing or downstairs in the hall. The storm having stopped as suddenly as it had arrived, the house was absolutely quiet, and seemingly deserted, only the sudden distant sound of someone in the basement kitchen calling to someone else disturbing the eerie stillness.

Emmaline quickly returned to the dressing room, and easing the heavy chest away from the wall she pulled out the frame, which she immediately found to be not just a frame but an oil painting. When at last she had the picture propped up the right way she saw a portrait of a beautiful young woman in a white dress, a dress which seemed suddenly all too familiar.

She stared into the dark eyes of the beautiful young girl, and as she did so it seemed to her that it was this girl whom she had heard calling out above the sound of the howling wind, this beautiful girl who had been calling to her. Who was she, though? She had the air of a foreigner, and in her eyes was the look of someone who knew she was not long for this world.

She had little time for any more conjecture, for she heard a sudden noise in the hall, the sound she thought of someone at the front door. As quickly as she could, being careful not to damage the fine frame or indeed the painting itself, Emmaline slid the portrait back into its hiding place, replaced the cloth that had been covering it and finally eased the chest back into position before hurrying out of the dressing room, gently and silently closing the door behind her.

Someone was coming up the stairs. She could hear footfalls as the treads creaked under the weight of whoever was climbing towards her, and knew she had just enough time to get back into her own room before whoever it was reached the top of the staircase and began to walk down the landing. Hugging the wall as closely as she could Emmaline flew on tiptoes along the corridor, just managing to reach the bedroom and ease the door shut behind her before the unseen person came into view. Leaning against the wood, she heard footsteps approach her door and stop, as if whoever it was out there was intending to come in. Holding her breath, Emmaline remained where she was, her back against the door, her eyes tight shut, until to her immense relief she heard the person walk on down the corridor and open a door, a door which, since it only shut after a few attempts, gave her to understand that it might be having difficulty with its latch.

There was no exact way of telling whether or not it was Julius she had heard without going along the corridor to listen at his door, but once she was sure she was going to be spared a visit from her husband she hurried to her desk, locked the drawer containing her precious notebook and flopped herself down on her bed to try to work out why on earth Julius would suddenly decide to take down that portrait and hide it away in his dressing room. Was it perhaps of his sister who had married and gone to live in Canada? Was the wedding dress a family heirloom, and
was
that why he had behaved so oddly on their wedding day? Had she broken with some family tradition?

It was more than odd that Julius had not only taken the portrait down and hidden it away, but had also allowed her to believe that the missing painting had been of his father. The more she thought about it the less Emmaline was able to explain his actions, unless he had suddenly, for reasons known only to himself, taken a dislike to the painting and decided to remove it. But then why lie about it? Why, Emmaline wondered, yet again allowing despair to take her over, was he treating her as if they were not married?

Julius had met her – he had seen her, he had talked to her, he had danced with her, he had asked her father for her hand in marriage, then as soon as she had arrived in England, except for the rare occasions when he had caressed her hair, he had treated her in the same way that he treated his servants.

Unless, and this suspicion was starting to seem increasingly likely in Emmaline’s mind, unless Mr Julius Aubrey had always been playing out a deliberate and well-planned game, the all too common game of finding a plain little rich girl and marrying her not for love, but for her money.

The awful fact was that this interpretation was making increasing sense to her. After all, it was common knowledge that Julius had been over in America on business, and from the few idle conversations she had overheard between her
father
and her mother she had gathered that Mr Aubrey was keen for his company to be promoted nationally by Onslow Nesbitt’s own business enterprise, in particular his famous catalogue.

Yet Julius could surely have married anyone? For all his strange behaviour, she could not bring herself to believe that he was a fortune hunter. He had a good business, a fine house, paintings, silver, servants – he would not need to stoop so low, surely? She could perfectly understand that Julius had asked her to dance because he felt sorry for her, that she could accept. He might have agreed to dance with her, to pay some attention to the girl who seemed to be the wallflower of the family, for all kinds of reasons, but not that he would marry her as part of some sort of business bargain. Nor could she believe it of her father, for tough as Onslow always had been in business, and worldy and impatient in character, as a father he had never been anything but affectionate and generous to his wife and daughters, putting up with his wife’s affliction with as good a grace as he could muster, and with his younger daughters’ bumptious ways the same. So yet again Emmaline found herself unable to come to any conclusion about Julius, but this time the comforting knowledge that her verses were secreted away in her small Davenport gave her life a strange new reality.