Indiscretion (35 page)

‘Thank you — I think. What did Isabella say?’

‘Oh, Bella adores you,’ he said, shaking his head as at some pitiful aberration, ‘and you know she’ll go to any lengths rather than think the ‘worst of someone.’ He unfolded or ungangled himself and stood. ‘Well, no doubt we shall hear more. Quite the most enjoyable fuss we have had in Wythorpe since Farmer Stride’s bull got in the wheel-yard.’

‘I wish I could share your enjoyment, Mr Milner,’ Caroline said — and then, hearing how pathetic she sounded, laughed wearily. ‘Dear me, now I’m being as dramatic as Mr Downey.’

‘Put it from your mind. Nine days’ wonder. Ah, look, Matilda has made you her first offering. Come and dine with us tomorrow.’ He was gone: somehow, unseen and in passing, briefly pressing her hand.

She could not quite put it from her mind: it was always there, like a rough place on a tooth to which the tongue keeps returning. The evening at the Rectory passed with typical pleasantness: an early dinner, backgammon with her uncle, some chapters from
Evelina,
a long session of play with Matilda and a ball of wool, chat with Aunt Selina who, unobtrusively, asked if all was well with her and did not press when she said yes, a good supper with tartlets and cheese and wine; and throughout Caroline kept thinking indignantly: And this is what Matthew Downey supposes I do not value in the slightest, compared to fawning on his wretched aunt!

Then the anger would turn inside out, and she would feel sorry for him, considering how hard he had worked to please Mrs Catling; and before bed she even contemplated writing a letter to that lady herself. First she would ask Mrs Catling to confirm that it was not she who had communicated the information — that was for her own peace; and then put in a word for Matthew. She even took a sheet of paper and mended a pen — but it would not do. Any kind of ingratiation with Mrs Catling was beyond her. She wanted to demand why getting engaged to a girl of low birth was so shocking, and why she couldn’t just divide her money between Matthew and Maria, and make everyone happy. She wanted to call Mrs Catling a prune-faced, flint-hearted old dragon. Instead she screwed up the sheet of paper into a ball and amused Matilda with it until the kitten curled up to sleep inside her shoe.

The same sapped and instant tiredness toppled Caroline into bed, though for some reason she turned restless a little later, and woke to find herself amorously, inexplicably embracing the bolster.

Frost chalked the Rectory roofs and crisped the lawns the next morning. It was as if winter, like an invading army breaking through defences, had stolen nearer overnight: it was a day of gunmetal skies, dead leaves in black heaps, stark air smelling of woodsmoke: a day that touched the instincts and prodded you to go outdoors, because soon you would not be able to. Caroline took a long cheek-tingling walk that turned into a call on the Hampsons and then — although she was to dine there later — a call at the Manor too. In spite of Stephen’s assurances, she wanted to know that she still had Isabella’s good opinion.

The door was answered by a maid, but it was Fanny who appeared breathlessly in the doorway a moment later and hustled her aside. ‘Go, go, Jane, I’ll see to this. Carol Oh, my dear Caro — will you allow me
... ?’

To her intense surprise Caroline found herself being tightly embraced by Fanny, who then glanced over her shoulder at the empty hall and whispered: ‘Now, before you go any further, I want you to know: I do not believe a word of it.’

‘Oh! Oh, you mean what Mr Downey said. Well, I thank you, Fanny, very kindly for saying so
—
I did hope
—’

‘Oh, not that! Though that too — but you know there is more, much more. Of course you wouldn’t know
—
but you soon will. Lord, such uproar as we have been in! But as long as you bear in mind that
I
do not believe it. Come, I shall take your arm as we go in.’

‘Fanny, you alarm me — what more? What has happened?’

Fanny fixed her with a solemn look, though her cheeks bloomed with excitement. ‘Mr Downey was here again early this morning. Mr Leabrook was with him. Mr Downey was going to Brighton to see his aunt, and so Mr Leabrook was driving him in his gig to the coach-office at Huntingdon — but they stopped off here. To talk to Isabella. Oh, Lord, such uproar! — but we had better go in.’

Had her bewildered mind been in a state to judge, Caroline would have classified the scene in the drawing room as peculiar confusion rather than uproar. One of Fanny’s dogs had knocked down the tea-tray, but no one seemed to have noticed: Isabella was rapidly and strenuously walking up and down —
ploughing
up and down, as if through mud: whilst Lady Milner, who had plainly been in tears, was making a perspiring Captain Brunton search her reticule for sal-volatile, an exercise to which his large hands were wholly unsuited.

Then they all saw Caroline, and everything stopped.

‘Yes, she is here, you see,’ said Fanny, at her side, ‘and I have told her that
I
do not believe a word of it.’

‘Whatever is the matter? Bella?’ All at once Caroline felt as if she were breathing gauze. ‘Won’t someone please tell me what’s going on?’

‘Miss Fortune, it is all very shocking, and I am not sure — I am not at all sure we should be receiving you here,’ Lady Milner said, regarding her as if she were an unpleasantly bright light. ‘It is all so very unprecedented, I hardly know what to do for the best — but probably you had better go away
—’

‘Nonsense, Augusta,’ said — to general surprise — Captain Brunton. ‘Miss Fortune is the very person who should be here, to settle this matter once and for all. But as it chiefly concerns Miss Milner, I think we should leave her and Miss Fortune to talk alone.’ He put his hand firmly under Lady Milner’s elbow. ‘And you, Miss Fanny, I’m sure are wholly in agreement.’

‘Oh! yes — to be sure,’ said a staring Fanny, allowing herself to be piloted out.

‘But, Edward — what about Stephen?’ Lady Milner protested. ‘He really should be consulted.’

‘And will be, as soon as he can be found, and as he must be somewhere about the estate, I’m sure your man will bring him back soon,’ Captain Brunton said, with renewed firmness; and presently the door was closed, and Caroline faced Isabella, who was still restlessly ploughing.

‘My dear Isabella, if you want to polish the floorboards, there are easier ways,’ Caroline said with a tentative smile.

‘Captain Brunton,’ Isabella said, as if she had not spoken, ‘surprising
—
a crisis brings out the best in him. I think it is only ordinary life that makes him awkward.’

‘I don’t like the sound of that
crisis.
Bella, please stop walking up and down.’

‘I can’t. If I do, I think I shall faint.’

‘Well, then sit down. Here.’ Caroline drew up a chair. The sight of her friend’s stricken white face turned her sick. ‘I think I must sit down too. What
is
this about? Is it what Mr Downey said? I wanted to come and see you about that. It is—’

‘Mr Downey’ Isabella repeated blankly, as if trying to place the name. She sat down and looked at her hands. ‘Yes, I suppose it begins with Mr Downey. Began. Oh, Caroline, I wish I could suddenly wake up.’

‘Fanny said he had been here. With
—
your fiance.’

Isabella nodded. With her gaze still dully fixed on her hands, as if the words were written there, she said: ‘We had heard about Mr Downey’s aunt disinheriting him. And how he blamed you. Surely not true, we all thought. But Richard
—
Richard had different ideas. He confessed to Mr Downey that he was not at all surprised
—
that he was sorry to say that he
could
believe it of you. Mr Downey wanted to know why
—
and so Richard came out with it. And once it was out, he thought I had better know at last, and he stopped here this morning to talk to me about it. What happened when you were together at Brighton.’

‘Good God,’ breathed Caroline, ‘he
told
you?’ And then: Oh, no. Stupid, stupid Caroline. No, no.

With great effort Isabella met her eyes. ‘He said he was sorry that he had not spoken before
—
but he knew I was fond of you, and thought it best to leave it — but now with what had happened to his poor friend Mr Downey, he could not keep silent. He was willing to believe you had changed, but this showed otherwise.’

Caroline experienced the odd sensation of simultaneously feeling the heat of the fire at her side whilst being cold, absolutely cold from toe to crown.

‘What did he say happened in Brighton?’

Isabella’s eyes went to her hands again. ‘He said you threw yourself at him most shamelessly. That you several times put him in an embarrassing position, even though he made it clear he was engaged to be married. That at last, one night at the Castle, you actually offered yourself to him, which was why he felt he ought to leave Brighton at once. He said he could understand it,’ Isabella hurried on, as Caroline launched herself from her chair, ‘for you were plainly unhappy with your situation, and longed to escape it — at any cost. And he felt that instead of just rebuffing you, he ought to have warned you about the likely consequences of your conduct. When he learned that you had lost your position, he suspected some such behaviour had driven Mrs Catling to your dismissal, though again he did not like to say so, because of our friendship. It has been a great difficulty to him
—’

‘And, oh, Bella,’ Caroline cried, unable to contain herself any longer, ‘do you believe him? Do you believe that what Mr Leabrook has just told you is the truth?’

‘Richard is the man I love and am to marry,’ Isabella said slowly, ‘and so in that sense I must believe him. But, Caro, there is nothing I would rather not believe than this. I’m lucky, I have never been in a dependent position such as you were at Brighton, so I don’t know what the discomfort of it can drive you to — and I do not want to judge you harshly
—
but to think of you knowing he was engaged to be married — and how you have said nothing of this episode all this time, and been so composed
...’

Caroline stood looking down at her friend, and all at once the anger cooled down to a leaden, ashy sorrow.

‘You do believe him,’ she said, and in a few moments her mind seemed to take in whole tracts of understanding. He has done this because he fears me, she thought lucidly, and the fear has been building up, and now this accusation of Matthew’s has given him an opportunity: he has seen a chance to get his blow in first, and he has taken it. Just as he saw me in Brighton as a chance for a cheap
amour.
Richard Leabrook is at heart an opportunist. Also he is a worse man even than I supposed, and he will surely make Isabella miserable. And there is nothing I can do, unless
...
‘Unless you choose to believe my account, Bella, I don’t see how we can go on. And I’m so very sorry for that. It’s what I have most feared, and why I haven’t spoken. Will you hear it?’

Isabella trembled, but she nodded. ‘Yes, Caro. Of course.’

Succinctly, plainly, and as unemotionally as she could manage, Caroline told her. She had so often imagined and rehearsed this in the toils of her indecision that it felt odd, almost unimportant, to be actually saying it at last. Almost — for as Isabella listened, motionless but for the rapid rise and fall of her breast and the visible ticking, like a smothered watch, at her throat, Caroline suspected that no more important moment had ever occurred in her friend’s life — and even perhaps in her own.

‘I’m not going to wake up,’ Isabella said dully, when she had finished. ‘This is real. This is not a dream.’ She got up and began walking again. The frantic swish of her skirts afflicted Caroline’s ear like fingernails on slate.

‘Bella, that is the truth of what happened at Brighton. I wish, I so wish it were not. But I cannot defend myself against — against what is being said about me, without telling it. And if I have appeared composed, then indeed I have not been so inside. Ever since I first heard your fiance’s name, and realized who he was, I have been desperately troubled. I have thought over and over again what was best to do. It has been a horrible burden, especially because I could see no happy resolution either way.’

‘If this is true,’ Isabella said, pausing with her back to her, ‘then he cannot love me. But why — why would he do that? We had had no quarrel when he went to Brighton — everything was as it should be — and when he came back he was kind and affectionate as ever. Was his love gone then
... ?’

‘All I can say is with me it was not a matter of love at all. I was to be — an adventure. A conquest. Bella, I was to be his doxy.’

Isabella turned: there was an emergent look of sympathy; then she shook it off. ‘This — no, I cannot believe this, not of Richard. If he were like this, I would never have — no, his character is quite otherwise.’

‘It appears so. But I am afraid you are deceived.’

‘Yes. One way or another, I am surely deceived.’ Isabella went to the window, confronting the bleached wintry light. ‘You were not going to tell me this, Caroline — were you? It seems not: for it has only been forced out of you at last.’

Caroline spread her hands. ‘I did not know what to do. I saw you so much in love, so eager to marry, so full of anticipation — and was I to destroy this? I don’t ask you to put yourself in my position, with all you have to think of — only it
was
difficult.’ Even to her own ears, this sounded thin, impoverished stuff. ‘In the end I thought I shouldn’t interfere, that my best course would be to wait and — and
—’

‘And bide your time?’ Isabella said, with a bubble of bitterness. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Caro — only — only if it is possible that I have been deceived in Richard, then is it not equally possible that I have been deceived in you? That you invent this — account, merely out of your own jealous designs, in order to destroy what Richard and I have?’

Caroline could say nothing except: ‘Oh, Isabella.’ It issued from her as a pure extract of sorrow.

‘I know. It sounds dreadful. I want to cut out my tongue for speaking of you so. But, you see, you are asking me to make just such an adjustment in my view of Richard. And it is so hard. I don’t know if I can do it.’

‘I fear you would have to sooner or later. It must surely come out. He was no novice in Brighton, Bella: he knew very well what he was about. I only wish I could convince you that my one concern, all the time, has been for you not to be hurt. And yet now
—
now the hurt has come.’

‘True,’ Isabella said, gasping back tears. ‘I am hurt
—
and confused
—
and
—
’ she covered her eyes ‘
—
tired, for some curious reason. What I must do
—
I must see Richard. I must face him. Look into his face, yes,’ she added to herself. ‘And I must think.’ Now she looked up at Caroline
—
but not quite at her; and there was something heartbreaking in that. ‘And for now, Caro, I must
—
I’m so sorry
—
I must think alone.’

Blindly, somehow, Caroline got out.

Well, it could hardly have gone worse, she thought, standing in the hall in such blank perplexity that she simply did not know where to find the door. It could hardly have gone worse
—
and then she looked up to see Stephen enter: windblown thatch, pale eyes, outdoor smell.