A Falling Star, page 17
part #3 of Wintercombe Series
She said, her voice held casually level, ‘Yes, he is. He has a magnificent stallion that he brought with him from the Low Countries, and he bought some mares from Cousin Jan in Glastonbury.’ She let the enthusiasm for his project creep into her voice, hoping that Nick would think that it was the horses that attracted her, and expounded at some length upon the opportunity that Pagan’s arrival presented for the future of horseflesh at Wintercombe.
Nick Hellier was not deceived, and later that evening, alone with his wife in the chamber that they had shared for the thirty-three years of their marriage, he mentioned his talk with Louise, adding casually, ‘She seems very taken with Alex.’
Silence looked up sharply from the table where she was making notes of the seeds sown that day in the garden. ‘Alex? Oh, dear.’
‘She did her best to hide it,’ said Nick. ‘And she did very well — almost, but not quite, as good as you. But I received the impression that she has…a certain fondness for him. Why did you say “Oh, dear”? Don’t we want to find her a wealthy husband?’
‘You haven’t seen him for years,’ Silence pointed out. ‘Yes, he is wealthy — but that is about the only suitable qualification which he possesses. If you really want your granddaughter shackled to an offensive drunken libertine with the arrogance of Lucifer and the instincts of a tom cat, then Alex will do admirably.’ She removed her spectacles and stared at him earnestly. ‘It grieves me greatly to think that Nat’s only son has turned out so bad — and I would not wish Louise to marry him, if he were the last man in Somerset.’
Nick shook his head. ‘Silence, Silence, it’s not like you to be so vehement. What is it about Alex that has upset you so much? He is Nat’s son, and Patience’s, he was such a charming child — I know he has a wild past, but surely he cannot have gone so far beyond redemption?’
‘He seems to have done,’ she said sadly. ‘Oh, I can see only too clearly why Louise is attracted to him. He has his mother’s looks, and his father’s intelligence, even if he does misuse it. And he can still be charming, when he chooses — he made himself very pleasant at Glastonbury, he even succeeded in mollifying Rachael, and as you know, that’s no easy task. But I have seen the other side of him, which I suspect, alas, to be the real Alex. And believe me, it was not pleasant. Louise is a delightful girl, full of life and happiness, but she’s as headstrong as Kate, I think.’
‘She can’t be — she’s still unwed, and she’s nearly twenty.’
Silence smiled wryly. ‘Unwed, yes, but perhaps not wholly innocent. That, after all, was apparently the reason Kate sent her to Wintercombe — there was considerable scandal in France, concerning the attentions of a certain gentleman, and the more so since he was married, and twice her age.’ She sighed. ‘Reckless, wilful — it must be the Hellier blood in her.’
‘More likely to be from your own family,’ said Nick, gently teasing her. ‘How else to explain Patience, and Alex, and Kate, and Louise — not to mention you yourself? There’s a wildness in you, my love, for all it’s buried so deep that no one else suspects it. Perhaps Louise and Alex are well matched.’
‘Then I shudder to think of their offspring!’ said Silence caustically. ‘Any such would doubtless be quite ungovernable. But Nick, I do mean this seriously. I cannot in all conscience allow Louise to enter into any kind of connection with Alex. She may seem to be an independent girl of strong character, well able to take care of herself — but if she becomes infatuated with him, she will be so vulnerable. He’ll use her, and cast her aside — and she deserves so much better than to be the leavings of such a man.’ She smiled rather bleakly. ‘She needs someone her own age, or just a little older, to laugh with her, and —’
‘And indulge and tolerate her foibles, she said to me,’ Nick told her. ‘There is a very practical streak in your granddaughter, have you noticed? She seems exceptionally level-headed, and quite clear-eyed about the whole business. I don’t think her feelings for Alex are within her control, or even very welcome to her. And she’s certainly in no hurry to wed — she told me so herself.’
‘She’s young, and there’s plenty of time — so long as Alex doesn’t leap in first and ruin her reputation,’ Silence pointed out. ‘Still, I have an idea or two still in hand. Perhaps it’s time for her to visit Tabby in Taunton.’
Nick looked at her, and began to laugh. ‘I know exactly what you’re thinking! But surely he’s too young?’
‘Bram is twenty-one, he’s clever, good-looking and a very nice boy indeed. Of course, he is her cousin, but that need be no bar. And he will inherit Jonah’s business, and doubtless expand it to great profit — he may forever have his head in a book, but he has a great deal of sense.’
‘He’ll have to cultivate an interest in horses to attract Louise,’ Nick told her. ‘In fact, I suspect that she has more in common with Alex than with Bram.’
‘And what did I have in common with you, pray?’ Silence enquired, smiling at him, and in the soft, buttery light her face looked for a moment as young and fresh as her granddaughter’s. ‘The shy Puritan wife and mother, and the roistering Cavalier captain? There is no accounting for love. Anyway, I have no intention of suggesting anything to Louise, or of trying in any way to influence her. She can go to Taunton, and meet Tabby’s family, and I will let matters take their course, or not. But nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see her come to an understanding with Bram.’
*
In complete ignorance of her grandmother’s hopes for her future, Louise welcomed the suggestion that she spend a few weeks with her Loveridge cousins in Taunton. The old restlessness had attacked her again, prompting her to wonder whether she would ever be truly happy confined in one place with a limited circle of friends. She was surrounded by affection, she was indulged, allowed to ride out whenever she pleased, able to do exactly as she liked, but somehow it had all become rather flat and unexciting; even, she dared to admit to herself, a little tedious. There was little to engage her interest at Chard, no surprises, no handsome and eligible young men, although several neighbours had been invited to dinner to meet her. She was bored, and felt decidedly guilty for feeling thus, for she was well aware of how kind her grandparents had been, and of how much she owed them. But the sense of peace and homecoming that had made her first weeks with them so pleasant had now evaporated, and she was ready for a change.
So she packed her bags with a light heart, consoled her maid Christian, who had developed an affection for one of the Chard grooms, said goodbye to Sarah and Richard and their children, and to Silence, who would not be escorting her the dozen miles or so to Taunton. Then she mounted her yellow mare, with Christian sniffing mournfully on the pillion pad behind her, and set off, with her grandfather as escort, to meet her Loveridge cousins in a mood of considerable anticipation.
She had learned quite a lot about them over the past few weeks. Tabitha Loveridge was Silence’s eldest and, probably, favourite daughter, who had once been one of the loveliest girls in Somerset, and much sought after by nobility and gentry alike. But she had spurned them all, however good-looking, rich and well-mannered, and at the age of twenty-seven, almost an old maid, she had married Jonah, a Taunton bookseller with radical views and very little money, and had lived happily ever since. They had had seven children, but only Bram, the eldest, and the girls Susan and Hannah, aged sixteen and eleven, had survived. Despite his father’s comparatively humble origins, Bram had been sent to Oxford, where he had apparently distinguished himself as a scholar, and he had returned to help his father in his business, making regular trips to London to consult others in the trade and to buy books. The two girls were still at school in Taunton, and had been joined, for her education and companionship, by another cousin, Elizabeth Orchard, who was fifteen and usually lived with her parents in Bristol. The prospect of four young people in the house was a pleasant one, and, much as Louise loved small children, the Loveridges had no squalling babies or demanding two-year-olds.
Taunton lay in the green, lush vale of Taunton Deane, the paradise of the West Country, thick with orchards and bees and apple blossom in the sunshine of early May. It was a prosperous place of several thousand people, famous for its cloth and cider, its markets for cattle and horses, and as a nest of Dissenters and radicals. Forty years ago, during the war, the town had been twice besieged, unsuccessfully, by the Royalists, and had suffered greatly for it. Less than a third of the houses had remained standing by the time Taunton was relieved, on the eleventh day of May, 1645, a date remembered with rejoicing ever since, despite the attempts of Tory mayors to ban public ceremony.
But there were no signs of such devastation now, although, Nick told her, all the eastern side of Taunton had been a smoking ruin. The houses no longer had the raw, naked look of the absolutely new, but lay on either side of the broad highway known as Eastreach, as if they had been there for centuries. They were built mostly of timber and plaster, with some of brick or the dark red local stone, and had a neat, prosperous air, like the people thronging the street.
Jonah Loveridge lived in a tall, narrow, half-timbered house just where East Street joined Fore Street, opposite the marketplace and Cornhill. It was, Louise thought as she dismounted, a prime site for any shop, although the quiet reflections of those browsing amongst her uncle’s stock would probably be rudely disturbed on market day. There was apparently no stabling behind the house, so, by long-standing arrangement, the horses were given into the keeping of the Red Lion, which stood almost directly opposite. Nick assured her that they would be well cared for, but Louise could not help casting a concerned eye over the stable yard, visible through the arch. Everything seemed neat, clean, and in good order, so she followed her grandfather across the street to the Loveridges’ shop.
It was immediately apparent why no one had come out to greet them, for the bookseller was occupied with a customer, and both men were deep in conversation over a large volume open on the table in the centre of the book-lined front room. One of them, a spare, grey-haired man of fifty or so, raised his head, peered at them through the gloom, and said briskly, ‘If you’d care to browse amongst my shelves, sir, madam, I will be able to attend to you shortly.’
‘By all means, Jonah,’ said Nick, smiling.
The other man blinked, and fumbled in the pocket of his plain dark coat, producing a pair of spectacles which he hastily balanced on his rather beaky nose. ‘Nick! A hundred apologies, man — I did not recognise you. Pray excuse me, sir,’ he added to the customer, a well-dressed and portly man who was obviously of some substance. ‘This is my wife’s stepfather, come from Chard — and my niece, on her first visit to Taunton, and I must give them welcome.’
‘Certainly,’ the customer said, in lordly fashion, and favoured Louise with a keen, lingering and appreciative stare, before returning to his perusal of the book. Evidently, the dusty ride on a warm morning had not had too detrimental an effect on her appearance.
‘Welcome to Taunton, Louise,’ Jonah Loveridge was saying to her with a smile. He was not, and probably never had been, a handsome man, for his nose was too prominent, his mouth too thin and his eyes bright and shrewd, despite the spectacles, beneath rather bushy brows, but she liked him at once. ‘I hope you have had a good journey,’ he added. ‘I don’t know where Tabby is — she knew you were coming, but she seems to have vanished, and Bram is out on an errand to the Grammar School, and the girls are at school themselves, of course.’
‘She hasn’t disappeared — I can hear her,’ said Nick, glancing up at the uneven plaster ceiling. And Louise, listening, heard sweet and faint, threading through the busy noise of Taunton at midday, the sounds of a keyboard instrument being played with uncommon skill. She felt an unworthy stab of envy, for she had never possessed the patience, still less the ability, to master any kind of music. She could not even sight-sing, apparently an accomplishment which many English men and women took for granted, although she had always enjoyed the private concerts which her stepfather had organised at the château for the family and their guests and neighbours. But her grandfather played the fiddle, well enough to provide evening entertainment, and her Uncle Richard had a fine voice and a sure touch on the virginals. If the sounds drifting down from above were any guide, her Aunt Tabitha had a gift to outshine them both.
‘We’ll go up and surprise her,’ Nick said. ‘You attend to your customer, Jonah — don’t worry about our bags, one of the grooms at the Red Lion is bringing them over.’
As Louise climbed the narrow stairs, her skirts held well clear of her feet — a fall now would not be pleasant — she heard the swift torrent of music come to an abrupt end, and footsteps approaching. A door opened as she reached the head of the stairs, and her Aunt Tabitha stood there to welcome them.
She had once been known as the loveliest girl in Somerset, and enough remained of that famous, ethereal beauty for Louise to see that the tale was true. Tabby Loveridge was tall, slender still, with an unusual face, pale and delicate of feature, that must have been quite exquisite twenty years ago, and a mass of thick, curling hair, honey-coloured and well streaked and frosted with silver, loosely knotted at the back and showing signs of surprisingly youthful rebellion. ‘Hullo, Louise,’ she said, taking her hands with a smile. ‘You’re not in the least like Kate.’
‘Oh, but she is,’ said Nick. ‘Wait until you see her eyes — and her smile. Not to mention her sense of mischief.’
And Louise, feeling that she was going to enjoy her stay in Taunton, was drawn into the sunny, west-facing parlour that lay above Jonah’s shop, and looked out on to the bustling marketplace. She had a brief impression of chairs, a settle piled high with cushions, a comfortably upholstered squab couch, a table covered with books and sewing, shelves loaded with more books and pottery, a black and white cat regarding her unwinkingly from a window seat in the sun, and a small hexagonal keyboard instrument, obviously the source of the music, and so similar to the épinettes that Louise had seen in France that she supposed it must be a spinet.
‘You were playing that?’ she said to her aunt. ‘It was absolutely lovely — I’ve always wished I could play, but I haven’t the gift, or the patience.’
‘I owe any skill I have in such things to Nick,’ Tabby told her. ‘He taught me to play, as a child, and somehow I have managed to keep in practice, despite all the distractions of domestic life. Now, you must be in need of refreshment after your journey — what would you like? There’s coffee, chocolate, cider, beer, even a little tea, if I can find the key to the caddy. And dinner should be ready in an hour, if you can wait that long.’
When a very young maid had brought beer for Nick and a pot of steaming, fragrant coffee for the two women, they settled down in the comfortable chairs around the table for a family gossip. The cat left its window seat and came to investigate Louise’s lap: it was evidently satisfied, for it settled down with a contented sigh on the thick folds of her riding habit, and began to purr.
‘That’s Jezebel,’ said Tabby, smiling. ‘She’s Pye’s great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter — has Mother told you about Pye? She was the cat we had at Wintercombe, when Nick and the other soldiers were garrisoned there. Since then, Mother has always had one or two of her descendants, and so have I, and the rest are catching mice and rats all over Somerset. I called this one Jezebel because she’s such a brazen hussy — and she has that rather smug look I always imagine that Jezebel would have, before her unfortunate end, of course.’
Jezebel, sleek and glossy with paws of a deceptively pure and innocent white, purred modestly under Louise’s stroking hand. She listened, sipping the strong dark coffee, while her aunt and her grandfather exchanged titbits of family news, reports on Sarah’s baby, the doings of the Loveridge daughters, and the recent events at Wintercombe. She tried not to look too interested as Alex’s name was mentioned and the rather awkward situation of Bab, Charles and Amy discussed. She wondered suddenly what had happened there, in the two months she had been away. Surely, if Charles and Alex had come to blows, they would have heard of it? Bab, who seemed to regard Silence as the family’s mentor, to be summoned at every crisis, would surely have sent news of any disaster. She felt guilty about poor Charles, who had been forced into an almost impossible position, compelled to rely for survival on the good will of a man he detested. There was no doubt of it, he was a much more sympathetic and pleasant character than Alex.
The mystery of it all was, why did Alex attract her so strongly, rather than Charles?
A thunder of footsteps up the stairs roused her from her thoughts, and Jezebel woke with a jerk. The door opened, and a young man stood there, flushed with exertion, his eyes going at once to Louise.
‘This is Bram,’ said her aunt, rather unnecessarily.
Louise hoped that he was not the only one of the family to inherit his mother’s looks: if his sisters had not, it would be very unfair. He had the honey-gold hair, sufficiently thick and curling to render a wig unnecessary, the fine-featured faun’s face and the hazel eyes, fringed with lashes that would have seemed long on a girl. There was a certain look of Jonah about his mouth, but the rest was all Tabby’s. The effect should have been weak and effeminate, but was emphatically not: there was a fierceness in his face, an eagerness that was at once invigorating and very attractive. She got to her feet, forgetting Jezebel, who slid off her knees with an indignant squawk and retired to the window seat, shaking her paws as she went to make her point.
