Distant Choices (13 page)

‘Francis Ashington.'

‘Yes?' He turned to her with immediate courtesy, his eyes which had been full of cool, green April blinking a moment in her tempest of colour.

‘We met once. You won't remember. I was just a little girl. I know all about you. I've read every word you've written for the papers. I didn't
know
you were here. I could hardly believe it.'

She believed it now. Francis Ashington, soldier, poet, explorer. And standing on tiptoe as if poised for some erotic flight she offered her hands to him and the whole of her naked, overflowing heart. The man who had done everything, who
was
everything she had ever dreamed of. The man who had not only set off for Arabia on a camel but who had arrived there. And come back again. To her.

It was true that he had come home to find a wife. A perfectly sensible undertaking in view of his marked liking for the world's jungles and deserts and any other wild places which offered a more than average chance of shortening his lifespan. And, as the last of the Ashingtons of Dessborough, a small but ancient property within both driving and walking distance of Merton Abbey, it was no more than his simple duty, before going off again to court death by thirst or fever or the bite of a poisoned arrow, to marry some suitable young woman and get Dessborough an heir.

Someone calm and dependable who would not mind being left to cope alone with her husband's manor and village, the many ups and downs of his land and his tenants, the raising of his children, while he set about making a name for himself in the field of reckless endeavour. Someone he could rely on not only to keep the manorial wheels smoothly turning in his absence but, when he did come home, to provide the cheerful tranquillity he needed to translate his adventures into enduring, and hopefully lucrative, prose.

Oriel.

None better. And Evangeline, understanding in a flash that Francis Ashington had been sent to her from Heaven, set swiftly to work. He was, quite simply, everything she had ever dreamed of, both as a husband for her daughter and a son-in-law for herself. No impoverished cleric or academic or ‘younger son'who would have nothing to offer, in exchange for Oriel's perfectly reasonable dowry, but a respectable rather than a noble name. No city merchant or coarse-grained opportunist like Mr Garron Keith, seeking to improve his social status. But a gentleman of education, good breeding, and
property
whose unconventional way of life so far, moreoever, might well incline him to overlook the irregularities of Oriel's birth. Handsome too, although this, in itself, made little difference to Evangeline to whom a positively evil countenance would have been a small price to pay for the single, glorious fact of his relationship to the Mertons.

His father had been the second Ashington son, packed off to India to save the reputation of lovely Celestine Merton who, having lost rather more of her virtue than anyone had suspected, had felt obliged to run off and marry him at sea, giving birth to her son Francis in Calcutta not quite nine months later. A scandal which, swiftly crossing the ocean, had endured until a succession of family bereavements had made Francis Ashington Dessborough's heir.

‘My wife was very fond of his mother,' Lord Merton had told Evangeline, those few words echoing in her mind like the sound of doors opening, not only to Merton Abbey where the young Ashingtons would be received by right, but to London and Monte Carlo and all the other exalted circles where Lady Merton, a woman of far less brains and beauty than Evangeline herself, received famous opera singers, artists, ministers of state and, once his lordship's tiff with Prince Albert had been mended, might well be entertaining prim and proper young Victoria herself.

And who better to show just how that tiff could be resolved, just how that fierce and fertile little queen might best be coaxed to eat her dinner at the Merton table, than Evangeline? It was a prospect which made her daughter's marriage to Francis Ashington of great advantage to one and all.

‘I want Francis Ashington for Oriel,' she told Matthew bluntly. ‘Do you object?'

‘Why should I?'

‘Because it will cost you money.'

‘My dear –' he shrugged and smiled. ‘So I would imagine. And rather a lot of it, I think, to satisfy the Mertons who will expect to be consulted and can be counted on to have their say. Not that he will be obliged to listen, of course. He is a free man and may do as he pleases.'

‘He will marry Oriel.'

‘If that is what you wish, my love, then I expect he will.'

‘And you will pay whatever is necessary?'

‘My dear wife,' he bowed to her, ‘if I refused would you allow me to know peace ever again?'

Returning his bow she gave him the lingering, purring smile which once – he remembered with neither pain nor pleasure – had so enchanted him. ‘Cheer up, my darling,' she said. ‘You will look so very well at the altar beside Mr Ashington when you give the bride away. He is so like you in appearance. Or rather, so like you used to be, dearest, before the world became such a wearisome place to you. Ought you, perhaps, to be flattered that a man with your young face can so move our daughter?'

‘Is she so moved?' He had seen no sign of it. But then, it was not his policy to look too closely at either of his daughters, growing ever more convinced that the only decent thing he could do for either was to leave them alone. And if all he had to give them was his indifference then, at the very least, he had no demands to make, no burdens to impose on their time or their emotions, no restraining cries of ‘Do this – or that – for me. You are neglecting me – or letting me down.‘ He saw no sense, no point, in caring for them. Nor did he wish them to care for him. Although he could see little chance of it in a girl so like Evangeline; a girl like Eva.

‘When the affair is sufficiently advanced,' he said, ‘I will have Quentin draw up a marriage settlement. You may negotiate the terms with him yourself, whenever the time seems ripe to you.'

‘Thank you, my darling. And will dear Quentin give me everything I ask for?'

‘Ah –' he smiled and bowed again. ‘One may – I think – assume he will not. Or not without a fight. And a certain amount of bargaining, perhaps, since there is a great deal they would all like me to do at the moment in the matter of school fees etcetera for Quentin's brothers. I expect he will take his opportunity to get something for himself out of everything he allows to you. But you will enjoy the encounter, my love. You see how solicitous I am, as always, of your pleasure. And since, in this case, Quentin will be defending family money which he does rather tend to think of as
his
, you might well have to struggle hard and long. Such a treat for you. And a treat for me, of course – I don't deny it – simply watching you …'

‘And will you agree to whatever I obtain?'

‘I will.'

‘Without question?'

‘Naturally. As you – I am sure, my love – will agree in your turn to whatever
he
obtains from me when he marries Kate.'

‘My darling – of course I will. You have my word.'

And although the dazzling quality of her smile told him she had not the least intention of keeping that word, he understood, nevertheless, that she had accepted the inevitability of Quentin as the future master of High Grange; a prospect which would seem far less grim to her if she could take refuge whenever she pleased with her married daughter at Dessborough Manor, or – far better still – with her friend Lady Merton in London or Monte Carlo.

It was part of the game they played. A game far more satisfying to Matthew, nowadays, than any act of love, far more exhilarating to Evangeline than such acts had ever been.

‘You do realize, Evangeline, my darling,' he purred to her with a quite demonic reassurance, ‘that when I am gone my nephew Quentin – Kate's husband by then – will look after you? I would not wish you to suffer any anxiety about the future. Quentin can be trusted absolutely to supply you with – well – such things as might seem appropriate for a widowed lady …'

This was part of the game too.

‘Such things,' she murmured, purring very expertly in her turn, ‘as Quentin might consider appropriate? A cottage on the estate as a dower house, perhaps, and an invitation to the squire's table on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day?'

They both expected her – one way or another – to do much better than that.

‘On top of what ever income I leave you, of course,' he almost whispered, having no intention of letting her know how much, or how little, that was likely to be.

‘Of course.' It was a rule of the game that she must accept the challenge. ‘Although are you quite certain, Matthew that Quentin and Kate will really marry?'

‘Dearest – how else could he be master here?'

‘Indeed. Yet – just the same – with his legal practice doing so well through his railway connections, and with Lord Merton asking him to keep an eye on his affairs … Or had you not heard about that? Quite a golden prospect, according to Letty, and for once one can hardly disagree. So golden, in fact, that one wonders whether he may still think it worth his while to take on – well – a wife who will not be much help to him. Or much comfort.'

His smile did not falter. ‘My dear,' he said crisply, ‘I married her mother.'

Her
smile was at its most radiant and alluring. ‘But you were never an ambitious man, my darling. You have never wished to make your mark on the world – have you? Like Quentin.'

The game, at least that day, was hers.

Yet, nevertheless, although her assessment of Quentin's abilities had been quite accurate, she had perhaps underestimated the size of his domestic burdens; four younger sisters for whom dowries would have to be found, five younger brothers who would have to be established, somehow or other, in business or the professions; a mother and aunt who adored him to distraction; a father who did not like him at all but who was more than content, nevertheless, to leave everything to him. The estate of High Grange, its neighbouring colliery, the money Kate would inherit on her twenty-fifth birthday from the Kesslers, were therefore of such vital importance to him that he made his long-awaited move to obtain them a few days later, proposing by the simple method of announcing, ‘I would like you to get into the habit of keeping a proper appointments book, Kate, as Oriel does. It would save a great deal of confusion and the possibility of giving offence, when we are married.'

She was standing in the South parlour, her hair hanging loose down her back as it should not have been at that advanced hour of the morning, looking as if she had just got out of bed or, more accurately, had scrambled through a hedge of brambles, an untidy bundle of old letters and invitations in her hands, many of them unread, all of them unanswered, through which she was frantically sorting for proof that she had
not
received a note from Quentin's married sister Constantia inviting her to a tea-party in honour of Constantia's new baby. And, therefore, could not be guilty of rudeness in not only having failed to appear herself but to call for Susannah, who had badly wanted to attend and had waited a full, tearful hour at the vicarage for the Stangway carriage.

Susannah, too, had written a note confirming the arrangement to which Kate – of course – had not replied. Her mother – poor Eva – had never answered letters or kept appointments either, as Maud and Letty in their separate fashions were quick to remind her when Letty drove over to complain. And so Kate had run off to rummage through the desk into which she thrust all her correspondence, followed by Quentin who, being somewhat prickly about the respect due to his family, had come first to lecture her and then to propose. Not even a question which required an answer, but a statement of a hitherto unspoken reality. She was to be his wife. Everybody expected it. Everybody saw it, even, as the final, indeed the only solution, to the problem of Kate. And even had she known how to tell him of her fascination, her obsession even, for another man, she did not think he would have taken her seriously.

She had breathed no word of it to anyone else, nor given any sign, not even to Oriel who would only have cautioned her – she supposed – to dignity and discretion, warning her of the possibility of pain which, no matter how much it might tear and torment her, she wanted nothing better than to clutch to her breast. She had fallen in love with Francis Ashington in the way an initiate might walk into a holy fire, actively seeking to be scorched by it until every part of herself that was not the lover, the devotee, had been burned away.

Perhaps it was not a healthy feeling.
Almost
she could see that. Too intense, perhaps, too absolute to be good for her, or for anyone, although, her life so far having lacked any sight or sound or any hope of love, she did not feel in any way fit to judge. She had, quite simply, met him. Her heart had exploded, something with the force and brilliance of forked lightning had ripped through her senses, opening them to such desire for him that, in her total inexperience, she believed it could never diminish, far less that it could ever end.

Remembering the pit into which love – or so they said – had cast her mother she had once feared her own capacity for emotion. Remembering the pained withdrawal, the flicker of disdain with which her father had invariably greeted any sign of feeling in anyone – particularly his wife – she had tried, very hard, often cruelly, rarely with success, to hide the vast joys and sorrows, the sweeping, ever-changing peaks and troughs which, from childhood, had boiled up, and then down again, in her bewildered heart.

She had been intensely and openly moved – once – by the colours and scents and sounds of every miraculous day, inclined to reach out and touch, to laugh with a huge delight when happy and, when miserable, to say so. A child to whom both rapture and agony came as easily and naturally as her need to look, to taste, to find out, to be heard and seen and to marvel – out loud and over and over – that anything so wonderful as the spring, the summer, the clear light of morning, the day's soft descent into evening, could ever happen again.