‘There’s no one else coming to tea?’
Kitty grinned mischievously. ‘Now why would I possibly want to share you with anyone else?’
Arthur had no idea how to respond to such a question and simply smiled back, until he remembered something. ‘Just a moment.’
Reaching inside his jacket pocket he drew out his purse. He quickly counted out some coins and handed them over to Kitty. ‘For the lunch.’
‘Thank you.’ She palmed them quickly and tucked them into a small sewing box beside the chair before glancing towards the door.‘I should warn you,Arthur, that my brother is inclined to see any male that I seem to favour as a potential husband.’
Arthur was shocked. ‘He’s not trying to offload you, is he?’
‘On the contrary. He seems to think that I am too good a catch for any would-be suitors.You see, he’s hoping to inherit an earldom soon, and dreads being associated with some tainted stock I might marry. Not that you’re tainted stock, Arthur. I know you’re from a good family. I just wanted to give you fair warning, in case Tom seems a little odd when you meet him.’
‘Odd?’
‘Cold, unfriendly. That sort of thing.’
Hardly had she spoken when the door swung open and a plainly dressed man stepped into the room. He looked to be some years older than Arthur, and his features were as plain as his suit. He did not bother to smile as he strode across the room and offered his hand to the officer who had risen from his chair for the formal greeting.
Arthur smiled. ‘You must be Tom. I’m Arthur Wesley.’
‘I know. Kitty’s told me all about you.’
Arthur’s heart sunk.
Oh God! What has she said?
‘Do relax. It’s not all bad.’ A smile flitted across Tom’s features. ‘I’m sure you won’t mind if I join you for tea?’
He didn’t wait for a response and glanced round, looking for another chair.
‘Here.’ Arthur gestured to the chair he had been seated in. ‘Have mine.’
‘That?’ Tom looked at the chair. ‘That is not yours to give. Don’t be an ass, Wesley. Sit down. I’ll pull up another.’
He chose a dining chair and placed it a short distance from the others before he sat down, looming over them despite his small stature. Arthur could see at once that Kitty had been right about her brother’s anxiety over his status.
Tom slapped his hands down on his thighs. ‘So, Arthur, tell me a bit about yourself.’
‘There’s not much to say.The family’s from Meath. Not too far from Pakenham Hall. I’m sure you have heard of us.’
Tom pursed his lips and nodded slightly as if he might recall the family name, and Arthur forced himself not to rise to the affected slight. Kitty’s brother really did have ideas above his station. He continued. ‘I hold a lieutenant’s commission. I’m an aide at the castle and member of parliament for the borough of Trim.’
‘Trim?’Tom frowned, then his expression suddenly cleared and he smiled. ‘I remember! You gave that damn fellow O’Farrell a good thrashing at the polls, didn’t you?’
Arthur nodded, relieved at last to have made some kind of favourable impression on Kitty’s brother.
‘Fine piece of work that, Wesley! You showed those damned radicals a thing or two. Well done. So do you aim to make your name as a politician?’ He frowned.‘Can’t say that I’ve read a single mention of you in the Dublin papers since the Trim election.’
‘It is customary to keep in the background while one learns the ropes. I’m sure that I will be given a more meaningful role in due course.’
‘Only if you actively pursue such a role. Like your brothers. Now they are making something of an impression over in England. Why aren’t you chasing ’em, in their footsteps, eh?’
‘I have other duties.’Arthur gestured at his uniform.‘The army makes an equal demand on my time.’
‘Tosh! Any fool knows that the peacetime soldiers are just a bunch of idlers.’
‘I imagine that the French will soon be putting an end to our … idleness,’ Arthur replied icily. ‘From what I read in the papers, it’s on the cards. The French seem to want to persuade other nations to adopt their revolutionary ideas - at the point of a bayonet.’
‘I read the papers too, you know.’ Tom shook his head. ‘Nothing will come of it. Mark my words. The Frogs will have their fill of these absurd reforms before the year’s out. King Louis will have his hand on the tiller again and everything will be back on course.’
‘I hope so, Tom. I really do.’
‘And without a war you’ll have to buy your way up through the ranks.’
‘True,’ Arthur conceded. He realised that Tom was still trying to estimate his worth. ‘But I should be able to afford a captaincy this year or the next.’
‘A captain’s pay is paltry stuff.’ Tom’s eyes brightened at the prospect of a cheap pun. ‘Chickenfeed! That’s what it is!’
Arthur met Kitty’s eyes and both joined in her brother’s laughter.Tom’s merriment quickly faded and he fixed Arthur with a scrutinising stare. ‘The pay isn’t enough for a married man to live on. I know that much.’
‘Tom!’ Kitty was scandalised.‘Arthur’s my friend. I didn’t invite him to tea just so that he could be insulted by you. I’m sure a captain’s pay is perfectly respectable.’
‘It ain’t, and that means a fellow’s got to borrow money to make it up. That’s right, isn’t it, Wesley?’
Arthur said nothing, but stared down at his boots.
‘When’s that bloody tea coming?’ Tom muttered.
When it arrived, a cool silence lingered across the fine china and the neatly arranged slices of cake.They drank tea and nibbled delicately, and all the time Arthur wished that a hole would open up beneath his chair and swallow him. Better still, that it should open up right under Tom, so that Arthur could continue his pursuit of Kitty in peace. But Tom sat and stared out of the window as his heavy jowls masticated away with a dull steady rhythm. Once the footman came to clear away the tea things Arthur made a determined effort at small talk but was comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Tom who had the smallest talk that Arthur had ever encountered, and managed to bore effortlessly about the rise in property prices and commercial rents in Dublin for nearly an hour. At length Arthur surrendered the field to Tom and beat a hasty retreat, thanking Kitty for her hospitality and arranging to meet her again at the next castle ball. She promised him the first dance and as he took her hand and bent to kiss it he felt her squeeze his fingers affectionately before he straightened up.
When he returned to Merrion Street Arthur went up to his room and took out his violin. As ever, the disciplined co-ordination of fingers and mind helped to calm his churning emotions. But as he played, his mind went back over the afternoon tea at Kitty’s house. He knew he had made a poor impression on Tom, and could fully understand the latter’s point of view. A captain’s pay was not enough to provide Kitty with a decent home, and he was not even a captain yet. Worse still, he was in debt. No more so than most army officers, but it was still something of a burden and an embarrassment for a man seeking to impress Tom Pakenham.
Unless there was a war, Arthur’s progression through the ranks would be stultifyingly slow. And if there was a war, Tom would hardly be happy for his sister to be courted by a man who stood every chance of being killed by shell, bullet or plague. Even if he wasn’t killed, Arthur might be wounded and come back a cripple. He imagined Kitty looking at him in pity or - nightmare of nightmares - as an object of ridicule. He would rather die.
So, if the army was not the best route to fame and fortune, what of politics? In that at least Arthur should be able to make a small impact. With Richard firmly installed in the Treasury in London, and William cutting his political teeth in the House of Commons, with a little nepotism, Arthur would be able to climb the political ladder swiftly enough. Swiftly enough to impress Tom, he hoped. But would Kitty be prepared to wait that long?
He stopped playing abruptly, and slapped the bow against his thigh angrily. What was he thinking? Kitty had called him a friend.What if that was all that he meant to her? And here he was projecting wild fantasies of matrimony without any firm evidence that his passion was reciprocated.Yet even without firm evidence he had a feeling in his heart that she must feel something akin to his passion for her. He had seen it in her eyes, heard it in the warmth in her voice, felt it in that squeeze of his fingers as he had taken his leave.
Very well. Even if she did have feelings for him, Arthur would have to do a great deal more to win the respect of her brother. Otherwise Tom would do everything in his power to stand between his sister and the impecunious officer who had the temerity to seek her hand in marriage.
For the rest of the year Arthur turned his attention towards improving his political stock. He began to take part in some of the less important debates where his raw speaking skills could be refined without the risk of making a fool of himself in front of a packed house. And with the situation in France worsening by the month there were many occasions when the members of the Irish parliament crowded the benches to engage in fevered arguments about the impact of the French revolution. It was clear to all that the ideals of the revolutionaries were seeding themselves in Ireland and the ground was proving to be frighteningly fertile.
In November, Charles Fitzroy bustled up to Arthur in Parliament and thrust a pamphlet into his hands.
‘Read that! This is going to cause trouble.’
The pamphlet, penned by ‘A Northern Whig’, went far beyond the liberal ambitions of Grattan and came perilously close to an open call for Ireland to cut its connections with Britain and become a separate republic. As the sales of the pamphlet extended into the thousands, the public clamoured to know the identity of the author. At length it was revealed to be the work of a young Presbyterian intellectual by the name of Wolfe Tone. Arthur was stung by the criticisms Tone made of the way Ireland was being ruled. One phrase in particular acted as a spur to Arthur’s determination to emerge from the anonymous ranks of the ordinary members of parliament - the people that Tone referred to as the ‘common prostitutes of the Treasury Bench’.
By the end of the year Tone’s Society of United Irishmen had all the hallmarks of being the first Jacobin club to open in Ireland. Arthur began to see the sense of his oldest brother’s plan to cut his ties with Ireland.With men like Tone coming to the fore, there would be trouble on the streets of Dublin and across every tenanted estate in the land.
When a buyer had been found for Merrion Street Arthur was forced to move back into more humble quarters.The small rooms he rented were comfortable enough, but they were eloquent proof of his financial limitations. What made his situation more painful was the affection that Kitty openly admitted to as the year came to an end. She loved him.
She told him so one night at a dinner, when they had crept away to a small alcove as the other guests listened to a recital. He kissed her hand, then her cheek, his heart beating passionately in his breast, and he told her that he loved her too.That he had loved her since they first met at the picnic. They held each other, relishing the physical contact they had been denied for so long. Even as Arthur felt happier, more content, than ever before in his life, he knew that unless his circumstances changed, this moment would taunt him for the rest of his days.
Chapter 72
Spring, 1793
As Arthur Wesley walked his horse up the drive towards Pakenham Hall he felt his heart quicken. On either side the landscaped park stretched out. Only last year it had seemed so inviting. As the backdrop to his developing affection for Kitty it had no equal. Through a thin screen of ancient oak trees the waters of Lough Derravaragh glimmered in the morning sunlight. Close by was an ornamental rosebed that eschewed the geometric perfection of most country parks, and swept across the lawns in a seemingly random manner that was somehow pleasing to the eye. Further off, low hills rolled around the park and basked in a brilliant emerald against the azure sky. A gentle breeze was blowing, tossing the tops of a stand of conifers and rustling through the bare branches of the chestnut trees that lined the drive. Arthur glanced up and almost smiled at the scattering of flawless white clouds that drifted over the land with stately grace.
Over a year ago, when he had first begun officially to court Kitty, the approach to Pakenham Hall filled his heart with a peace and contentment that he had never felt before in his life. All the long years of searching for some kind of purpose to his life, some kind of fulfilment, seemed to be over. In Kitty he had found someone with whom he felt certain he could spend the remainder of his days. Of all the women he had known, only she had provoked that sense of freshness to life that made the prospect of each new day something to be welcomed rather than endured. He would marry Kitty, clear his debts, rent a modest house in Carrington Square, and spend the evenings with his new wife in the parlour, reading or perhaps playing the violin. And then to bed.The thought came at once into his mind, and the scent of her hair and the graceful sweep of her pale neck were almost palpable. An unworthy, unromantic thought, he chided himself, but God, she was beautiful!
Since autumn he had been lost in dreams of matrimony. Each time he rode out to Castlepollard to see Kitty there was always the ecstasy of thinking that she felt as passionately about him. Certainly, the way she looked at him, the contentment she seemed to enjoy in his company, and the occasional kiss she bestowed on him indicated more than a fondness. But when Kitty visited Dublin for one of the endless cycle of balls and picnics, her sparkling wit, and natural beauty drew other officers to her as gaudy bees to a flower.Then every smile she gave them, or sudden burst of delighted laughter, pierced Arthur’s heart like a cold steel blade, and the fears of losing her to another man dripped into his mind like poison.
So, he knew the courting must come to an end, one way or another. Either she would be his wife, or … the alternative was too painful to contemplate.