Amy Lake (20 page)

Thinking of Lady Regina, wondering where she was.  Worried and exhausted, Talfryn fell asleep.

* * * *

The next morning he forced himself to sit still long enough to enjoy the simple breakfast prepared by Mrs Riddpathe.  In a hurry as he was, ’twould still do no good if he fell off his horse on the journey south.

Where was she? 

Talfryn couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong.  The story of sending Lady Regina to Belvoir was a fiction concocted by the earl, but why?

The housekeeper continued to chat as he finished a cup of coffee.  Neither she nor her husband had really questioned Lord Davies about his visit to Cumbria, but it must have seemed very strange to them that he had come all this way.  The couple was eager to ask about Lady Regina, and quite thrilled that he had seen her recently, or at least relatively so.

“You won’t find a better young lady than our missie,” said Mr Riddpathe.  “It’s she what pays our wages, really.  His lordship used to send a bit now and again, but Lady Regina makes sure we’re paid proper.”

The viscount frowned at this.  Why was a society miss paying the household wages?

“Aye, and ’twas only a few weeks ago now, weren’t it?”  Mrs Riddpathe sent a questioning look at her husband, who nodded, apparently understanding his wife’s reference.  “Our young lady sent a letter and told us there’d be some extra coming, very soon.”     

This caught the viscount’s attention, and he looked up sharply.  Extra funds?  Did Lady Regina really have the impudence, the effrontery to begin distributing Lord Davies’ money before they were even—

“Twenty five pounds!” said Mr Riddpathe.

Talfryn closed his eyes and drew a long breath. He called himself the fool that he was.  Twenty five pounds?  That was a pitiable sum.  Twenty five pounds spoke of scrimping from pin money, not an advantageous marriage.

“Does his lordship not send you funds for the estate?” he said, without thinking.  ’Twas bad form to question another man’s dealings with his own property.  But really—

Such scruples did not trouble the Riddpathes.  They both shrugged.  “No,” said the woman.  “That’s what we be saying, your lordship.  Our young lady tries to take care, but there’s roofs that need mending, and just a few months ago Bessie Ann’s husband got sick, their cottage bein’ so wet, you know, and—”

The viscount knew all about cottage roofs from his own estate.  If the thatching was not kept in repair they were miserable places to live.

Where was Lady Regina.  He must find her.  But—

“Have my horse brought round,” he told them.

Something flickered in the man’s eyes.  “At once, your lordship,” he said, and turned on his heel.

Talfryn returned briefly to his room to collect the few items he had carried with him, and searched until he found a quill and a bit of ink.  When the horse was ready, Lord Davies handed the Riddpathes a scrawled note and thirty pounds.  He could sleep in stables on the way back to London if needs be.  He’d done it before.

“Have the roofs repaired,” he told the couple, who were staring at the money in shock.  “And at once.  If your man has any question, give him my direction in London.”  Talfryn indicated the note.  “Tell him that he’ll answer to the Viscount of Cardingham if the work is not properly done.”  

He swung onto the horse and was gone.

Chapter 39: The Portrait in the Attic

I found it difficult to keep the image of Lord Davies waltzing with Lady Anne out of my mind, and they now appeared regularly together in my dreams.  Ι carried on valiantly at Sydney Place, nevertheless—having no alternative, I suppose one might say.  It must be easy for
ton
society to forget, I grumbled to myself, with so many balls, and fetes, and whatnot to occupy their time.  I missed my friends, and occasionally found myself wondering why no-one other than Cassie had bothered to write.

Then I remembered.  Oh, yes.  None of my other friends knew I was in Bath.

Why had I ever left London?  Why did I not go back?

Not that I was lacking for anything to do.  The garden was coming into its own now, later in the summer, and the entire household spent days in sugaring down fruits and preparing vegetables for pickling.  Edward now regularly consulted with me as to the evening meal, and was quite enthusiastic about doing so, as he was curious about London tastes in fine cookery.

“But no mutton, you say?”

I assured him not. 

I did not bother visiting the pump house, but kept up my aunt’s tradition of long evening walks along the Avon, and became passably acquainted with the season’s wildflowers.  The walks gave me plenty of time alone, to think, but that could not be helped.

My father had given me an ultimatum of . . . a few weeks, was it not?  Three?  I wondered how much time had passed since that letter—the days seemed to run together—and what the earl would do if I did not come home.  And what I would do.

* * * *

The dogs continued to generate the most astounding chaos in the house, and after one particularly vexing incident, involving Aeschylus and a basket of clean laundry, I finally asked why my aunt put up with them.

“Oh,” said Janie, “Mr Fletcher loved dogs, you know.”

“Mr Fletcher?”

“Yes, indeed.  He wouldn’t hear a word against those animals.”

Mr Fletcher and the dogs seemed to be one of Janie’s many non sequiturs, which had been known to spin off into explanations that became more and more confusing, until one threw one’s hands in the air.  I was busy with mending and did not enquire further.     

Then one day Mrs Baxter decided that we should undertake a complete cleaning of the attic storey.

“’Twill be ever so hot!” both Janie and Alice protested.

“Aye, and in the winter ’tis ever so cold,” said Mrs Baxter.  “We’ll start first thing in the morning.”

Alice didn’t give up.  “Sophie don’t like us throwing her things out.”

“Exactly,” said Mrs Baxter.  “So now’s our chance.”

I had no idea that a garret in one modestly sized house could hold so much.  At first I tended to side with Janie; what right had we to discard anything?  But a few mornings spent in the dust and gloom of that top floor brought me around and I was soon bundling up old underclothing and badly ripped sheets to be sent to the rag-man.

One afternoon Mrs Baxter called me over to assist with a large item that I had seen tucked under the eave; it turned out to be a truly enormous trunk whose lid required both of us to lift.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Mrs Baxter.  “I always wondered where she’d put it.”

The trunk held a number of old lace-edged table linens, yellowed with the years.  And on top, carefully wrapped in silver-paper, was what looked like it might be a painting, of similar size to the portrait I had seen in Aunt Sophie’s bedroom.

“Is it a painting?” I asked.

“Indeed it is,” said Mrs Baxter, and she unfolded the silver-paper to show me. 

The attic light was dim, but I could see a clear-eyed Aunt Sophie gazing out at us, perhaps five or ten years younger than she was now.  She was posed similarly to the portrait hanging in her bedroom, with the same folding fan, and I saw that the fan itself was also in the trunk, laying to one side.

This painting was unfinished.  The face was complete, and the gown nearly so, but the background was only sketched in.

“I suppose she couldn’t bear to see it,” murmured Mrs Baxter.

“Why isn’t it finished?” I asked her.  ’Twas an innocuous question, really.

 She looked at me in surprise.  “Finished?  He died, of course.”

“The artist?” 

“The artist—  Well, yes.  Mr Fletcher.”

Mr Fletcher, I thought, remembering Janie’s comment.  He liked dogs.  And apparently was a rather fine portraitist. 

As I said, the light was dim, and it was probably for that reason that the most obvious thing about the painting was only now becoming apparent to me.  It had been painted by the same person—Mr Fletcher, as it seemed—who painted the portrait in my aunt’s bedroom.

  “How unfortunate that the man died before he could finish this,” I said.  “’Twould make a fine pair with the other.”

Mrs Baxter stared at me, and seemed shocked, for no reason I could understand.  “’Tis rather more unfortunate,” she said tartly, “that he left dear Sophie a widow.”

* * * *

I had never seen a letter addressed to my aunt.  Why should I have?  And at the pump room ’twas always Sophie this and dearie that and—well, I just never knew.

Chapter 40:  Mr Fletcher

The details only came later, but I will tell the whole of the story now.  Lady Sophie Knowles was a young woman of the London
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when her father—the old earl—decided to have a series of portraits made, of himself and his two children, my grandmother having died in the birth of my father many years before.  Mr Benjamin Fletcher came highly recommended by some duke or the other, and the first portrait was completed without difficulty, but in Lady Sophie’s case Mr Fletcher made the mistake of falling in love with his subject.

And she with him. 

“Those days were some of the best of my life,” my aunt told me, much later.  “He would arrive at Roselay first thing in the morning, and I sat for him for hours, which everyone said would be tedious, but the time seemed to fly by.  We talked and talked.”  Aunt Sophie laughed.  “Except when he told me I must be still.”

One might think that my grandfather would have appreciated the pain of hopeless love, and indeed he acted more charitably than he might.  He did not send his daughter to Belvoir, or Three Stags, nor marry her off to the first likely candidate.  He merely forbade the association, and when Sophie and Mr Fletcher ran away to Scotland—

“Goodness!” I said at this point.

—he settled on her, eventually, a sum of money sufficient to maintain a household.  This sum proved to be more than enough over the years as, sadly, there were no children, and Mr Fletcher developed into a rather successful painter.

“My father could have ruined him, of course,” said Aunt Sophie.  “But he did not, and it even became quite a thing in London society, to have one’s portrait taken in Bath.”

Bath was where the new couple chose to live, and in the beginning their home ’twas only a modest one near Walcot Church; only later, as Mr Fletcher’s fortunes improved and the plan of the town was enlarged, did they find themselves at 5, Sydney Place.  During their first years together they made an occasional trip to Italy, and these became more frequent over time.  Benjamin Fletcher spoke fluent Italian, Aunt Sophie was learning, and Florence became almost as much a home to them as England.  They spent longer and longer portions of the dreary English winter abroad, and would have closed up the house for those months, except that here Mr Elliott—our ostensible clock-winder—makes his appearance.

“None of the rest of us knew Sophie back then,” said Mrs Baxter, “except Mr Elliott.  He was an old friend of Benjamin’s.”

Mr Elliott stayed at Sydney Place, in charge of the few servants during the absence of Mr and Mrs Fletcher, and after a few years of this pattern it became impossible to dislodge him.

“Sophie always said that was the start of it.”

 Meaning, as I eventually heard, that Mr Elliott’s vague manner, his brandy consumption and tendency to nap at all hours, were not the consequence of his age but had been with him all along, and as a result the household became familiar with fending for themselves.  Old servants left and new servants arrived, but the streak of independence remained.

This was a matter of some amusement to my aunt, who got all the credit—or blame—for running such a progressive establishment, when it was Mr Elliott all along.

* * * *

And this was why she had never answered my letters.

“I thought it best at the time that we not associate.  ’Twas such a scandal,” said my aunt,  “an earl’s daughter, marrying a portraitist!  It blew over in time, but for a young girl to keep company with me might have revived the old gossip.  And your father remembers—”

“Ah.”

“Yes, exactly.  It affected everything, even his own prospects.  He never forgave me.” 

* * * *

Some of this I only learned much later, of course. 

The broad outline of events, however, Mrs Baxter told me that day; that Aunt Sophie and her husband had lived together in great happiness for well over two decades, and then—five or six years ago—Benjamin Fletcher had died.  And Sophie’s portrait, the one he was painting at that time, was put away in silver-paper, never to be completed.

* * * *

One last thing, which I must tell.

The old earl, as it turned out, was not the genial, card-playing grandfather of my imagination, whose love for his daughter led him to give her sufficient funds for a house in Bath, to ensure that she was never in need.

“He would have kicked me to the street,” Aunt Sophie said,  “Without a second glance.  ’Twas your father who insisted that I was cared for, even angry as he was.”

My father.

Chapter 41:  Lord Davies Returns

Carys and Isolde had assured Miss Barre that the viscount would be in a state when he returned to London, but even his sisters had not predicted the depth and compass of his bad temper.

“Dabbs!” Talfryn bellowed, striding across the front hall.  He wanted—well, he must have a bath, he supposed, although ’twould take an hour, but if he arrived at Roselay smelling as he did now—

The twins were in the hallway before the valet, almost as if they had been waiting for him.

“Tal, what is the matter?  And where on earth have you been?” asked Isolde.

“Cumbria.  I told you so,” said the viscount.  Hadn’t he?

“Cumbria!  But—”

“Dabbs!”

“I’m right here, your lordship,” said the valet, unperturbed.  He was already removing the viscount’s coat, keeping it extended at arm’s length.

“Oh, dear heavens—” said Carys.

“—what is that
smell
?” finished her sister.