The Land of Summer (3 page)

Mrs Nesbitt was not in fact in bed when Emmaline hurried into her room, but standing at the window overlooking the parkland. Emmaline realised immediately that her mother must have seen her walking with Mr Aubrey.

She turned as her eldest daughter came in, and smiled. It was a smile that Emmaline had seen all too often before. It was a smile that said, ‘Ruined that for you, did I not?’

‘Mother—’

‘Emmaline, it is simply not suitable for you to be seen alone in the park with a gentleman, without your maid. Just not suitable.’

‘Mother—’

‘No, Emmaline – no. You may be desperate, we may all be desperate for you, but that is one way to become worse than an old maid. That is a way to get yourself a
reputation
.’

Emmaline’s heart sank. She had left Mr Aubrey in such a hurry. He would surely not wait around for her. He would leave for England, and she would never see him again.

Chapter Two

THE ATLANTIC OCEAN
was rougher than it had been in an age, according to all the experienced passengers, with winds so strong and seas so high that on the first day out from New York grab lines were put up in all the public rooms and the captain found himself forced to consider returning to the safety of the Hudson river rather than risk the lives of his passengers by continuing his journey.

By midday the gale had died down a little, sufficient for the captain to keep his ship headed east, but the momentary lull was followed by a full-scale blizzard that lasted all night and the following morning, coating the ship’s decks with nearly a foot of snow, and keeping the seas rough enough for the next forty-eight hours to cause the great liner to pitch, roll, toss and shudder as violently as any of the crew could recall. Yet the seasoned captain stuck to his guns and continued on his course, his only concession being to change shipping lanes to find better waters
before
continuing to plough on through the still tempestuous seas.

Emmaline had never before left her home state of Massachusetts, her greatest distance of travel having been the hundred or so miles from where her family lived, on the edge of a small but prosperous town, to the great city of Boston. Now, however, she found herself crossing one of the largest oceans in the world on one of the greatest steamships in the world, RMS
Etruria
, the latest holder of the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing, heading towards a country which her father had told her was smaller than most American states. Moreover, she was travelling alone, without even a maid, since none could be engaged in such a short space of time. Instead of a maid it had been suggested that Charity, the eldest of her younger sisters, should make the journey as her companion, but this only posed the problem of what was to be done with the girl on the return journey, since Charity too would be without a maid, and was two years younger than Emmaline. As a compromise it was decided to find a chaperon from the passenger manifest with the help of a reliable contact in the shipping offices, someone personally known to the family. Finally, a middle-aged New York widow was approached, and discovered to be only too happy to agree to act
in loco parentis
in return for joining Emmaline in a first-class cabin.

In the event her services were hardly needed,
since
due to the violence of the crossing Emmaline spent most of her time in her cabin suffering from what her chaperon politely referred to as
mal de mer
, emerging for the first time only on the final day of the crossing when the sea subsided to a steady swell, allowing the great liner to regain its pomp and splendour and to steam all but undisturbed round the south coast of Ireland and on to Southampton, where she was due to dock mid-morning on the tide, the only time the waters of the port were able to accommodate such a vast ocean-going liner, and hardly more than seven days after the liner had been put astern and slowly edged out into the Hudson river by the cream of the shipping company’s tug boats.

‘As you know, my dear,’ Mrs Winfield said to her charge as they sat in the train waiting for it to begin the journey to London, ‘I am to accompany you only as far as the capital, where, as I understand it, you are to be met and escorted to your final resting place – I mean destination.’

‘I sincerely hope that Bamford in Somerset is not going to be quite that, Mrs Winfield,’ Emmaline smiled in return, happy to be on terra firma and not the violent, storm-tossed sea.

‘Oh, I see!’ Mrs Winfield laughed, putting one laced glove to her mouth. ‘No, of course not. I meant the place that is to be your new home. Tell me, is it really so, what you told me over breakfast this morning? That you have only met this gallant gentleman once?’

‘Twice, actually, Mrs Winfield. And yes, it does seem most unusual, I must agree.’

‘I am not being critical, my dear,’ her companion replied. ‘Just somewhat … somewhat wondrous. Such things I thought only happened in novels – yet here we are, in real life, with such a story being shown to be true. Pretty American miss meets handsome Englishman at a dance – is quite swept off her feet – and the next thing she knows she is travelling to England to be wed! My – that such a thing should be true.’

‘Yes, I know,’ Emmaline agreed, not knowing quite what else to say. Instead, she looked out of the train window at the last of the passengers hurrying from the great liner sheds on the docks to board the waiting train, which from the sound of it was now working up a preparatory head of steam. ‘It is all rather … rather unusual, I suppose.’

‘I think it is
deeply
romantic,’ Mrs Winfield sighed. ‘My own fatal collision, as the Greeks so like to call the meeting of two souls, was considerably more mundane. We were both schoolteachers, in a small town near Conway, New Hampshire.’

‘I am not very familiar with New Hampshire, Mrs Winfield.’

‘No matter. I meant it only as a reference. But as I was saying, we both taught at the same school in a very small community, so small in fact that finally I was the only eligible young woman of suitable age really, and that was that.’

‘I feel sure there is quite another side to the story. He had probably loved you for a very long time before he declared himself.’

‘I do so wish,’ Mrs Winfield sighed. ‘But alas, until the day he died I would swear my husband did not even know the colour of my eyes.’

Mrs Winfield fell to silence, her hands clasped on her lap as she too turned to look out of her window, seeing not the scurry and hustle of the passengers but rather the day just over a year ago when she had buried her late husband, a white-bearded mathematician twenty-six years her senior.

‘So,’ she said, coming out of her reverie as the guard blew a shrill whistle. ‘Off we go then, my dear, I to my valetudinarian sister in Greenwich, London, and you to your wonderful romance. And in case I fail to do so in the hustle and bustle of our arrival, I do wish you the very best luck in the world, and hope that you will enjoy a marriage as happy as the dreams from which it is so obviously spun.’

With the noise of the train’s departure – the clanking of the coach couplings, the sudden vigorous exhalations of steam, the shouts of the officials, the slamming of the doors and yet more shrill whistling – conversation understandably ceased for a while, allowing Emmaline to sink into her own thoughts. The speed of events back home, the exhausting preparations for her sudden departure from the family, and finally the initial excitement and subsequent woes of her first sea
journey
, had left her little time for reflection until now.

It had, as everyone kept saying, been just like a dream – the ball, held on her twenty-fifth birthday, her fateful meeting with the handsome and debonair Julius Aubrey, his waiting for her after their walk in the park to tell her that she would be hearing from him as soon as he reached England; and six weeks later the extraordinary summons to her father’s study, where she had been informed that Mr Aubrey had requested her hand in marriage and her father had been only too pleased to give his consent.

Emmaline had found herself briefly wondering why her father should be so pleased to give his consent when she herself had not even been consulted, but since her own feelings for Julius Aubrey were already apparent to her, and she was really very frightened of her powerful and influential father, she had not dared pose the question. Besides, the more she thought about the prospect of marrying a man of such elegance and urbanity, so blessed with good looks, the more absurd it seemed to her to question the proposal. After all, as everyone, most of all herself, was all too aware, Emmaline might be clever, but she was certainly no beauty. She might have a fine pair of green eyes and a slim figure, she might have a pretty enough mouth and a nose that was not over-large, but the whole put together was not so much beautiful as pleasing. She considered that her only real asset was her thick, dark brown
hair
, over which she took much trouble, brushing it and dressing it with as much care as the grooms in her father’s stables bestowed on the Nesbitt horses.

Her unremarkable appearance was something that Emmaline had come to accept, telling herself, as she grew to maturity, that in place of looks she would just have to concentrate on cultivating beauty of character. Her sisters, on the other hand, were all beauties, and they knew it. The three younger Nesbitt sisters had only to look in the mirror to know that God had favoured them, because they were all as pretty as flowers.

‘I cannot believe he
really
wants to marry you!’ her second sister, Ambrosia, had kept saying, weeks earlier, as she followed Emmaline around their bedroom. ‘I am sure it is some sort of practical joke that will end with you falling on your face. You will reach England and there will be no husband-to-be, no handsome Mr Aubrey, only an old man with nasty ways come to meet you in his place. After all, no one has ever been to his house, no one here knows him, he is not an American—’

‘I do not think that a man of Mr Aubrey’s standing would play such a practical joke, Ambrosia dear,’ Emmaline had replied with as much conviction as she could muster, knowing that the wretched girl might well be right.

‘Perhaps it is just a way for Mr Aubrey to become better acquainted with the family,’
Charity
suggested. ‘And once he does and once he grows bored with poor Emmaline—’

‘Which he
very
soon will!’ Ethel, the youngest of the four Nesbitt girls, exclaimed. ‘How could any gentleman as dashing as Mr Aubrey not soon grow bored with our elderly sister?’

‘Before he started dancing with Emmaline I am sure he only had eyes for me,’ Charity continued blithely.

‘And the only reason he was not dancing with any of us was because he knew all
our
cards were full!’ Ethel laughed. ‘Mine was full before I ever even set foot on the floor,’ she added, smoothing down her dress.

‘Mine too,’ Ambrosia asserted. ‘You were not the only one.’

‘Well, that is neither here nor there,’ Charity went on, staring at herself in a hand mirror, loving what she saw. ‘Now, now, girls, we all know Mr Aubrey would rather have one of us, but Emmaline must marry, or
we
will all be left on the shelf, so we will
have
to let her marry Mr Aubrey!’

‘I do declare Charity is right. But as soon as the dashing Mr Aubrey tires of Emmaline here, he will deny ever wishing to be married to her and instead he will send for one of us, I am sure,’ Ambrosia announced.

The three sisters regarded each other unsmilingly. They knew that Emmaline must be married first, and yet the fact was that now the possibility of Emmaline’s betrothal had actually
become
a reality, it posed the question of whether any of them would be able to find a husband. Not only that, but Charity would now have to be married before either of the other two could leave home. For once the mouths of the garrulous trio remained firmly shut, and only their eyes reflected their fears. The marriage market was such a lottery that even very pretty girls sometimes turned into sour old spinsters.

Emmaline turned away. She loved her younger sisters, as a good sister should, but now that she knew she would be leaving them – whatever happened after her journey to England – she knew that she would be forever grateful to Mr Aubrey for removing her from her home when she had quite given up all hope. She was only too aware that thanks to her mother’s open despite for her eldest daughter, she had not really enjoyed any kind of life in the Nesbitt household, whether in Massachusetts or at their town house in New York. The truth was that in a prosperous family, with many servants, life held nothing for an unmarried young woman of twenty-five: so even if Mr Aubrey proved to be a cad or a bounder or even a bigamist – which she very well knew that he was not – Emmaline was quite certain that she would always be grateful to him for throwing her a lifeline. If it weren’t for him she would not be journeying to a new life, but sitting at home waiting for her mother to ring for her, or sewing some useless welcome cushion for the coming baby of a
happily
married friend, or an evening purse for an elderly relative.

So, as she sat and considered her situation while the train drew well clear of the dockland station and gathered speed for London, Emmaline reckoned that with all things being equal – as her father was only too fond of saying – she most probably was facing no worse a prospect than she had faced back at home, and possibly a far, far better one. At the very least she would be getting married to a man with a flourishing business, whose personal and professional contacts were substantial. That at least was certain.

None the less, one thing concerned her, something about which she had been unable to seek advice before leaving the shores of her homeland, although it concerned so many young women with similar upbringings. While she was sure she could cope with the social side of marriage, however complicated the rules of class and behaviour in England might be, when it came to other aspects of intimacy she drew a complete blank. She could never ask her mother, and certainly not her father, what she knew she must learn about how to make a happy union, and she certainly could not ask any of her sisters, for they were just as ignorant as she was. True, the maids were often caught sniggering about the summary dismissal of one of their number, but the reason for the dismissal was never, ever disclosed to the Nesbitt sisters, despite the fact that hints were often given that nine months later the individual
concerned
had been seen in the company of a baby, and, if she was lucky, its reluctant father.