A Falling Star, page 10
part #3 of Wintercombe Series
Charles saw a fleeting look of irritation cross Louise’s face, but she said, clearly and patiently, ‘Cassandre est la soeur de Hector, et de Paris aussi. Dites-moi, chère Amy, qui est le père de Cassandre, de Hector et de Paris?’
Amy had noticed Charles. With a certain pride, she answered in that rather plodding, and unmistakably English accent, ‘Priam est leur père. II est le roi de Troie.’
‘Et qui est leur mère?’
‘La mire de Cassandre, c’est Hecuba,’ said Amy. She smiled triumphantly at her brother. ‘Isn’t my French good now! I’ve made such progress, haven’t I, Louise? And it won’t be long before I can read Cassandre for myself.’
‘A little while yet,’ said Louise. She put the book down with some relief. There was a limit to the quantity of this weighty and convoluted romance which she could read at one sitting without becoming bored or, worse, for Amy was absolutely enthralled, openly disclosing it by yawning. ‘Hullo, Charles. You look remarkably out of sorts.’
Charles opened his mouth to declare that indeed he was, and with good reason. Then he closed it as he remembered that in fact, Alex had, astonishingly, been almost generous. It had not seemed like that at the time, and so arrogant and infuriating had been his cousin’s manner that the gift of the Abbey Green house had passed almost unnoticed, and certainly unthanked. And yet to Charles, who had spent the earliest years of his life in conditions of poverty, despite his mother’s efforts, Wintercombe was, and always would be, the palace of his dreams, the yardstick by which all other places were measured, and the home of his heart. He had lived here for nearly eighteen years, he belonged here, he had worked to enhance it and had come to think of it, however mistakenly, as his own. And now this interloper, who in all justice had no right to it save by inheritance, had supplanted him, threatened to turn him and his mother and sister out of doors, and finally offered him, with gracious condescension, the lease on a poky little house in Bath with a back yard overlooked by an inn of dubious reputation, as if it were the answer to all his prayers. True, it was better than nothing, and at least Bab and Amy would have a sound, if restricted, roof over their heads. But Charles would, at that moment, have given anything for the audacity, or the foolhardiness, or even the opportunity, to throw Alex’s patronising and spurious generosity back in his face.
‘What is it, Charles?’ his sister asked, rising gracefully to her feet, her lovely face anxious.
Hastily, he pulled his mouth into something resembling a smile. ‘Oh, nothing bad, I promise you. In fact, the reverse. Alex has told me that he is prepared to assign the lease of the Abbey Green house in Bath to Mother for her lifetime.’
Amy gave a little gasp, and put her hands to her mouth. ‘But that’s not good news! He is going to turn us out — out of our own home! Oh, Charles, can’t you persuade him to let us stay? We’ve lived here for so long, I can’t even remember anywhere else. And poor Mother — it will break her heart if we have to leave.’
‘You try arguing with him,’ said Charles grimly. ‘You might as well turn the wind around. Oh, Amy, please don’t cry. At least we’ll have a house to call our own, and you can visit the shops or stroll round the Baths whenever you like.’
Amy’s tears stopped in mid-flow. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said ingenuously. ‘I don’t want to leave Wintercombe, I don’t, not really, I love it here, and so do you — but to live in Bath, and see all the Quality, every day…’
‘Only in the season,’ Charles reminded her. ‘Out of it, the place is almost as quiet as any other small country town.’ He drew a deep breath, and gave her an encouraging smile that did not in the least reflect his true feelings. ‘Don’t worry, Amy, we’ll be happy, you’ll see. Mother has her pension, enough to keep us in modest comfort, I have the money which Uncle Nat left to me, little though it is, and you have the dowry he gave you — we’ll catch a husband for you yet.’
Amy had brightened all the while as he spoke, and at his last words let out a squeak of delight, and cast her arms about him. ‘Oh, Charles, Charles — thank you, thank you so much!’
‘It’s Alex you should thank, not me,’ said her brother reluctantly. He disengaged himself from her embrace and stood holding her hands lightly in his, looking down into the lovely, flawless face. ‘And it isn’t — of course it isn’t — the best solution. In a perfect world, we would stay at Wintercombe — I would like that beyond anything, anything at all. But we don’t appear to have much choice in the matter, and so we must be cheerful, and make the best of it.’
‘Of course,’ said Amy. It was apparent to Louise, watching, that an excitingly frivolous life in Bath was already eclipsing the more worthy, but tedious, rural beauties of Wintercombe. For one whose mind was taken up with fashionable fripperies, new gowns, dancing, the latest styles of hair, and everything modish from French romances to ivory fans, the opportunity to exchange this dull backwater for the hurly-burly of the town, where everyone who was of the Quality came to take the waters, to promenade and to mingle with those of like degree, was irresistible.
‘I’m glad, Charles,’ said Silence, who had listened to his words with approval, her sewing laid aside. ‘I knew that Alex would not be so callous as he appeared — and I’m sure it’s the best possible solution for everyone. Have you told Bab yet? Because I think it would be a good idea to make sure that she knows of this as soon as possible, to set her mind at rest. And although Alex should really be the one to speak to her, I think it might be kindest if you did.’
Charles gave her a rather apprehensive smile. ‘Yes, Grandmother — I suppose it would. She has been much better today. Perhaps her good night’s sleep has removed all memory of what happened at supper, for she hasn’t mentioned it to me at all, and she seemed quite cheerful, didn’t she, Amy?’
‘Yes, she did,’ said his sister. ‘Shall I come with you?’
‘No need — I think it might be best if I saw her alone,’ he told her, to her evident disappointment. ‘Despite Alex’s…generosity, she may not take kindly to the idea at first, and you would only be upset. Let me tell her, and you can come up later, in an hour or so perhaps, when she’s had time to become used to it.’
He left them with a rather formal bow, disguising his nervousness, and both Silence and Louise came independently to the conclusion that it was somewhat optimistic to expect that Bab, apprised of the imminent and complete disruption of her life, could be brought to calm acceptance of it in less than a week, let alone an hour.
*
‘Ah, dearest — come in, come in!’
Charles had been steeling himself for some time before actually raising his hand to tap on the door which led into his mother’s rooms. His tentative knock had been swiftly answered by Beck, Bab’s maid, a plump, stalwart young woman who seemed genuinely fond of her mistress. She conducted him through the dark little closet to the wide, lovely chamber that lay above the library and shared its generous proportions. These, however, were disguised by the clutter all around: ribbons, pins, books, the painted guitar which she had once strummed to captivate William St Barbe, unplayed now for years, jars and bottles of remedies and physic, jars and bottles of ointments, unguents, scented waters, creams for the skin and colours for the face, and a prie-dieu, always ablaze with candles, partly screened off in a corner.
Any conversation with Bab in her chamber was invariably punctuated by the snores, snuffles and ill-tempered growls of her tiny red and white spaniel, Floss, who was no respecter of persons, and could nip with astonishing ferocity for a dog of his diminutive size. His grape-round eyes bulging belligerently, he struggled out of Bab’s arms to stand yapping on the edge of the bed, his stout body, from snub nose to plumed tail, stiff with ridiculous aggression. From long and bitter experience, Charles gave him a wide berth. He resisted the temptation to speak sharply to the little dog, who was still growling defiance, and greeted his mother with a kiss on her plump, powdered cheek. Bab called Floss back to her, with much cooing persuasion, nonsense talk and endearments, as if, Charles thought irritably, the wretched creature were a human infant. At last the little dog was tucked up inside her robe, his pop eyes fixed unwaveringly on the intruder. He allowed himself the luxury of one more warning growl, and then subsided.
‘Are you feeling better, Mama?’ he asked, wondering how he was going to broach the subject of their forced removal from Wintercombe without inducing further hysteria.
‘Oh, a little, dearest — as much as one can expect when my heart is so bad. But I think that when I have eaten my dinner, if I feel well enough, I just might, might be able to take a little turn about the chamber — with dear Beck’s help, of course.’
‘And mine,’ said Charles at once. It was strange: away from his mother’s overwhelming presence, or even if he was beside her in company, he found her embarrassing and ridiculous, with her dramas and crises, her headlong rush from one extreme of emotion to the other, and her obsession with the condition of her undoubtedly quite healthy heart and lungs. But here in her chamber she seemed neither suffocating nor foolish, but the devoted, adored mother of his childhood.
He took a deep breath and put his hand, broad and square, on her soft plump fingers. ‘Mama, I have some good news for you.’
‘Good news?’ Bab looked at him fondly, an indulgent smile on her face. ‘Oh, Charles, how wonderful! I knew that dreadful Alex would let us stay after all!’
With a sigh, Charles shook his head. ‘No, Mama — no, I’m afraid not. But he has promised to lease you the Abbey Green house for your lifetime, at no more than a peppercorn rent — and really, I do think that it’s the best solution.’
As he had dreaded, his words opened the floodgates. Bab threw herself, flesh quivering, into a paroxysm of grief and rage. Wintercombe was their home, they had always been made welcome, Nat had been so kind, and now Alex, cruel and vindictive, was going to cast them out of the only real home they had ever known, the only place where, said Bab, sobbing into a lace-edged kerchief, she had ever known true happiness. ‘And it’s so unjust, so unfair!’ she wailed, as Charles put his arm across her shoulders in ineffectual comfort. ‘When you did so much to help your uncle while that man was wenching in London and Holland and couldn’t have cared less about Wintercombe — you worked so hard and now he’s taken it all away from you, and it shouldn’t even be his, by rights!’
‘I know,’ said Charles, who was of the same opinion. ‘But unfortunately he has inherited it from his father —’
‘His father? Nat wasn’t his father!’
Astonished, Charles stared at her. Bab’s eyes were red and swollen with weeping, but her face was implacably hostile. He glanced round and saw Beck, out of earshot he hoped, looking anxiously at her mistress. He gave the maid a reassuring smile and turned back to his mother. ‘What do you mean? Of course he’s Uncle Nat’s son!’
‘I doubt it,’ said Bab. The tears had vanished, to be replaced by a look of vindictive satisfaction. ‘He doesn’t look in the least like him. Nat was not a tall man — not as tall as you, in fact — and very slender. Think about it, dearest. Alex is more than two yards high. Is it likely that he is Nat’s son?’
Put like that, it did seem rather improbable. Charles collected his churning thoughts and tried to muster some rational argument from them. ‘But Uncle Nat never doubted it, I’m sure,’ he pointed out. ‘And he was a very clever man.’
‘Perhaps — but besotted with his wife, none the less. And she was no better than she should be. The talk of Somerset, she was, with her flirting and her frivolity, and he, poor man, could never see the truth. Even when we came to Wintercombe and she’d been dead for years, there was still gossip about her.’
Gossip to which Bab, evidently, had listened greedily. Charles felt a twinge of distaste, but his own curiosity overcame it. ‘Do you believe it, Mama?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Bab. She dabbed at her eyes once more, and the expression on her plump face became more openly malicious. ‘Nat’s wife was a lightskirt, and known for it. Alex was born after nearly four years of barren wedlock, and bears little resemblance to his supposed father. Five more years without a child, then Phoebe — who, I grant you, does look more like Nat. And there’s no smoke without fire. Oh, I’m sure of it, dearest. And if that is the case, then that man has no more right to Wintercombe than the King of France.’
Charles stared at her stupidly. ‘But his father — Nat — he bequeathed it to him in his will.’
‘But would he have done that if he’d known the truth? I don’t think so,’ Bab said. ‘And if Alex is not his son, then the next male heir, dearest, is you.’ She smiled in gleeful triumph. ‘Wintercombe should be yours, but instead that man has stolen it from you.’
The implications of what she had said were too enormous, too overwhelming, for him to comprehend all at once. He passed a hand across his brow, still bewildered. Eventually, he said doubtfully, ‘Even if it is true…we can’t do anything about it. In law, he is his father’s — Nat’s — heir, and his mother has been dead for well over twenty years. How can we possibly prove it? And without proof, the law will not help us.’
Bab looked at him peevishly. ‘Oh, Charles, dearest, don’t make such difficulties. There must be something we can do. It isn’t right, it isn’t fair, what that man has done. Are you just going to stand by and let him steal your inheritance from you, let us be turned out of Wintercombe when it should be ours? Charles, for my sake, for Amy’s sake, you cannot just let him do that!’
‘But I must,’ he said, seeing with dismay the tears beginning to flow again as she clutched at him urgently. ‘Oh, Mama, can’t you understand? We’re helpless. We have no money to speak of, and certainly not enough to mount a lawsuit. And even if we did, to claim Wintercombe purely on the basis of malicious gossip more than twenty years stale… We’d never win, Mama, we couldn’t. Our claim would be laughed out of court.’
It took him a long time, with repeated explanations, before he could convince her of it. She sat like a disappointed child, sulking, her precious schemes spoilt, and glowered at him as if he were the architect of their doom. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m just a foolish old woman.’
‘No, no, of course I don’t,’ Charles said hastily. ‘But you must understand, Mama, that proof is needed before anything can be done — and proof, after all this time, will be impossible to obtain. I know it is a very bitter pill to swallow, but we can do nothing.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Bab said, sniffing. She grabbed Charles’s arm suddenly, with a strength that was almost painful. ‘But, dearest, please, please, promise me something.’
‘If I can, I will,’ said her son.
‘Promise me — if ever an opportunity offers to turn the tables on that man, to obtain justice for us — you will take it, won’t you? Promise me, Charles, dearest — promise me!’
Ashamed of his doubts and his carefulness, he promised her, knowing that such an opportunity would be most unlikely to occur. What she had told him was no more than spiteful lies, surely: it did not seem possible that Nat could have been cuckolded so openly by the wife he had adored.
And yet, and yet, the idea, once implanted in his mind, could not be ignored. For if it was true, then Alex was indeed an interloper at Wintercombe, enjoying the fruits of an inheritance to which he had no rights at all, and which should belong to Charles. And how could he live in acquiescent obscurity in Bath, and ignore the terrible injustice that had been inflicted upon him, and his mother and sister?
*
It was perhaps fortunate that Alex chose the next day to visit Bath and the attorney who, with his father before him, had looked after Nat’s affairs. In the meantime his behaviour, although still caustically infuriating, had not again reached the depths of that first night. He spent much time going through papers, and was closeted for some hours with the bailiff, William Crowe, greatly surprising him with the speed of his understanding and his grasp of estate management. He rode out twice, in Crowe’s enthusiastic company, to inspect the lands which lay immediately around Wintercombe. He even apologised to Bab with an insouciant charm which did nothing to alter her opinions, either of his character or of his origins.
In consequence, mealtimes were ostensibly calmer, though as the rest of his family remained on tenterhooks in case of further unpleasantness, they were no less dreaded. Louise, mindful of her grandmother’s words, behaved with impeccable decorum, as demure as a schoolgirl, or as Amy. Only Phoebe, always a rather detached and ironic observer of human frailty, might have offered some lively conversation, but as she was confined to her chamber with a severe cold, Alex was deprived of the acid comments of the one person who had never minced her words to him. When he left for Bath, on a cold raw morning with promise of later rain, the inhabitants of Wintercombe breathed a collective sigh of relief, and looked forward to a peaceful day or two, undisturbed by his presence.
The attorney, Philip Cousins, lived in a pleasant house in Westgate Street, with a wife and several children whose presence, unseen but not unheard, could be discerned from the sounds of juvenile dispute and distress which filtered down from the upper part of the house. He was a young man, his rising status indicated by the elaborately curled wig, the gold lace on his coat, and the cosy, elegant warmth of the room in which he received his clients. Cousins had liked and respected Sir Nathaniel, and regretted the division that had arisen between him and his only son. He had never met Alex, having served Nat only in recent years, since his own father’s death, and on receiving the message that the new master of Wintercombe was to visit him, had spent no little time imagining, somewhat luridly, what manner of man he would prove to be.
The reality was quite, quite different. This was no flabby, pouch-eyed drunkard, full of oaths and uncouth manners, but a very personable, and physically impressive man, uncommonly tall and dressed with a casual, almost slovenly elegance that revealed wealth, taste, and a certain individuality of mind. Apart from his densely black hair and very vivid blue eyes, there was no resemblance to his dead father that Cousins, accustomed to sizing up his clients from acute observation at first encounter, could readily discern. His bow was courteous and correct, from a gentleman to a professional almost his equal in prestige, and surpassing him in learning. Cousins, not usually susceptible to charm, found himself the recipient of a remarkably disarming smile.
