Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor (8 page)

“But then you cannot have understood the state of my father's affairs at his death,” the Countess said, wheeling to face me. “You will recall that he passed from this life but a year before my arrival in England. In truth, his fortunes were sadly reduced. The plantations at Crosswinds—my childhood home—have suffered numerous reverses, due in part to the poor price of coffee, in part to disease among the bushes, and not least owing to unrest among the slaves who work the estate. Lord Harold Trowbridge's shadow has been thrust upon this house because our holdings are at their final extremity.”

“You have recent intelligence of the plantation's affairs?”

“I have it from Trowbridge himself. He is returned but six months from a survey of his West Indies investments, of which he hopes to make Crosswinds a part. He had not been in England a week when he obtruded painfully on my notice.”

“But what can be his power over you, Isobel, that he chose not to exert over your father?”

“Lord Harold is my principal creditor, Jane. He has bought up all my father's debts, at a considerable discount, and has chosen
now
to call in loans of some thirty years’ duration—at an exorbitant rate of interest,” my friend said, wringing her hands in despair. “I have no recourse, so Trowbridge tells me, but to hand him the land in exchange for a discharge of my father's debt.”

“I had no notion that your affairs were in such a state.”

“How could you?” Isobel said, with some distress. “It is a fact I would not have broadly known. But the fear of losing Crosswinds has directed my endeavours since my father's death. My determination to remove to England two years ago was formed with the primary purpose of finding a suitable husband—a man of solidity and fortune who could revive my faltering affairs. I believed I had found him in dear Frederick.” Isobel gazed up at her late husband's portrait, her face suffused with tenderness.

“That he knew of my troubles when he married me, Jane, I may freely own,” she continued, with a look for me. “I would not join my poor fortune to one such as his without revealing all. Lord Scargrave bore me such great love”—at this, she suffered an emotion that impeded her speech for an instant—”that he was willing to undertake my cause without a second thought. All that it was in his power to do, he would do; even to the extent of entertaining Trowbridge the very night of our bridal ball.”

“And you, Isobel? Did you bear him equal love?”

“I thought that what I felt might be called by that name,” my friend replied faintly, her hand going to her throat. “Perhaps I deluded myself from a wish to obtain that security he so nobly offered. Oh, how to explain the man that was my husband, Jane?” She sank once more to her chaise, her attitude all despondency.

“He seemed a respectable gentleman,” I observed.

“Jane! Jane! Such coldness for poor Frederick!” Isobel's eyes filled with tears. “Lord Scargrave was not young, as you saw, except in his vivacity of spirit and the energy he brought to each of his dearest projects. He was a man of great warmth and good humoui; yet could betray the iron of his ancestors when pressed. I admired Frederick, I respected him, I felt towards him a depth of gratitude I could not help but express—I
esteemed
him, Jane, as a daughter might esteem a father. Indeed, I wonder ofttimes if it was not a second father I sought when I threw myself upon the marriage market.”

“But love, Isobel?” I persisted.

She was silent, reflecting, her eyes upon the flames. Of a sudden she shivered, and I hastened to draw her lap robe over her. “You must not get a chill, my dear; for we have had too much of violent illness.”

The Countess smiled sadly and shook her head. “It is not the cold that would carry me off, dear Jane, but an enormity of regret.”

“For your husband?”

“And myself,” she replied softly, her eyes finding mine. “I had not known love as a girl. Silly flirtations I had by the score, of course—one could not help it. But the day I married the Earl I knew what it was to feel a deeper emotion, and God help me, it was not for the man I married.”

All speech was impossible at so painful a revelation. There can be no proper answer to such anguish—and anguish Isobel clearly felt, had felt during the brief tenure of her marriage, and could not silence even at her husband's untimely end. I could well imagine that the Earl's death had increased, rather than absolved, her sorrow, by heightening her sense of having done him a terrible wrong—a wrong now past all repair.

“The Earl had no notion?” I settled myself on a chair opposite her chaise and took comfort in the heat of the flames. The parkland beyond the Countess's windows was now utterly dark, and the sharp December cold pressed against the house.

Isobel shook her head. “I pray God he did not. Such a betrayal of his best impulses he could not have borne. For his sake, I adopted the strictest propriety; and Fitzroy did the same. No dishonour should come to the man he revered almost as a father while his actions could prevent it.

“That we may have betrayed our sensibility in countless small ways, I do not doubt, when I read that despicable letter,” she continued, gesturing towards Marguerite's note. “Not least among the emotions it causes is fear for my husband's sake. If
she
saw, who is but a servant, what may
he
not have seen, and kept to himself in silence?”

I hastened to reassure my friend. “A lady's maid may be even more in her mistress's company than her husband, Isobel. You know it to be true. Marguerite may conjecture only, and her stab in the dark has gone home. From your husband's easy good humour two nights past, I must believe he thought himself the happy man who had won all of your affection.”

“You speak with conviction, Jane.” Isobel's accent was eager. “Did you yourself believe it?”

“I did, until the very moment when Lord Payne dismissed the devil Trowbridge. The Viscount then betrayed a concern for your welfare beyond what is usual in a nephew towards a newly-met aunt. Oh, Isobel, how could two such people as yourselves, possessed of probity and good sense, forget what is due to propriety?”

A log burst of a sudden upon the hearth, scattering glowing embers at our feet, and Isobel started, her eyes on her husband's portrait. I bent for the poker and busied myself at the grate.

My friend touched a trembling hand to her lips. “It does seem mad, I will own,” she replied, “as only such love can be.” She drew breath, and with it perhaps, courage to go on.

“Fitzroy is the true companion of my soul, Jane; we think as with one thought, and when deprived of the chance to speak, may find converse in a look enough to sustain us.”

Her words had a particular power to strike at my heart, being virtually the same as those I had uttered once to myself, about another young man forever out of reach.
¹
Clumsily, I dropped the poker, and covered my confusion in retrieving it.

Isobel perceived my dismay, and misinterpreted its cause. Her next words were accordingly sharp. “But I cannot possibly make
you
know this with all the force of sensibility I feel; not for our practical Jane an indulgence in emotion. It will be enough to make you understand how it came about.”

I was wounded, I will own, for there was a time when such feeling was all I lived for; but that time is past. I resolved not to reproach Isobel for words spoken in the midst of trouble, and endeavoured to put aside self-interest. “Indeed, my dear, I would hear it,” I told her, retrieving my chair, “if it be that you wish to speak.”

Isobel had the grace to look abashed at my kindness, and turned without further preamble to her unfortunate history.

“I first met Fitzroy during the height of the London season, when my engagement to the Earl was already fixed, and my aunt and cousin Fanny had joined me at rooms in Town,” she began.

“I recall your letters of that period. They betrayed no unhappiness, but rather excited expectation of the months ahead.”

“How could they do otherwise?” my friend cried. “We were to embark upon that most frivolous and light-hearted of ladies’ enterprises—the purchase of my wedding clothes. My aunt is well-acquainted with the best warehouses, as you may imagine from having heard her discourse on mourning; and she was invaluable to me in the acquisition of a Countess's wardrobe. I should not have denied her the pleasure in any case; such a venture was to be but the rehearsal for her daughter's wedding, her dearest concern.”

“I may be thankful my own mother's inclinations are in a less material direction,” I said dryly, “for I should assuredly be the ruin of her hopes.”

Having met with my mother frequently while in Bath, Isobel could not repress a smile; but her sad tale reclaimed her attention. “Lord Payne was newly resident in his uncle's Town home, having left his estate in Derbyshire for the season. Fitzroy immediately became the object of my aunt Delahoussaye's excited speculation; for where one union is effected in a family, and the respective members thrown much together, another may well be formed; and to see her daughter as heir apparent to the title I was to assume, by marrying my
husband's
heir, became my aunt's primary object.”

“It reigns unabated among her schemes,” I could not refrain from saying; “I was nearly pulled from die dance die other evening in Madame Delahoussaye's eagerness to secure Lord Payne as her daughter's partner.”

“And that, after I had already asked Fitzroy to lead Fanny in the first dance, behind his uncle and myself. He detests nothing so much as dancing, however he excels at it; and he regards standing up with Fanny as a punishment. He should rather have partnered you, my dear Jane—he told me so himself.”

“I am flattered. But we digress.”

“In London, my husband-to-be was frequently attended by his men of business, and prevented from escorting me to the season's gaieties as often as he might like. Frederick found it no difficulty, however to send Fitzroy in his place, and my aunt was ready enough to have Fanny make a third.” Isobel stopped short, overcome by memory.

“How many hours the three of us strolled Bond Street, Jane, a lady on Fitzroy's either side; or took the air of the Park in our carriage, Fitzroy seated opposite with Fanny at his right hand. It gradually became a torment; his mind and mine were too much alike not to leap at the chance to converse; we found much in common that thrilled and moved; and yet behind the growing felicity in one another's company, there was a burgeoning despair. The inevitability of my fate approached—and to dishonour the man who had done so much for each of us was impossible. That we thought severally in this vein, without speaking of it to the other—that we had never spoken of the feeling that overcame us in one another's presence—I need not assure you. Such a speech could not but harm.” She fell silent, lost in despondency.

“Until?” I prompted.

The Countess hesitated, as if unwilling to repeat in speech the indiscretions of the past. “Until the day Fanny suffered a slight indisposition, due to her greediness for cold stuffing at dinner the previous evening.”

“It prevented her from accompanying you the next day?”

“It did. We had formed the design of a visit to Hampton Court, by barge up the Thames, and visit we did—though the party was formed of but two.” My dear friend's face was suddenly transformed. “The delight in those few hours, Jane! The carefree happiness of our day! What laughter, what meaning in silence, what trembling in my hand as I took his arm to promenade! We moved through stately rooms and terraced gardens as though they were ours and we had come into our kingdom. A marvelous charade. For a time, we might play at what we never could be.”

A little of Isobel's emotion affected my senses, and I strove for calm. “And you spoke, then, of the future?”

“How could we not?” Her glad aspect dimmed. “But it was a discourse saved for the waning of the day, when the long shadows proclaimed our liberty at an end, our paradise lost. In contemplating the necessity of a return, the duplicity it meant, Fitzroy found that he could not bear it; and in the shadow of a great tree in the Court gardens, he seized me in his arms and…kissed me, Jane.”

I was silent with pity and horror.

“The memory of it burns upon my lips still,” Isobel said, reaching a finger to her mouth. “It was to burn in my heart all that night, as I dined with poor Frederick; and dined with Fitzroy, who sat opposite as though turned to stone.”

My friend's hand found mine and grasped it tightly. “Have you ever felt, Jane, a crushing sadness while at the same time experiencing a heady euphoria?”

I could only shake my head, unwilling to share my own poor fortune.

“Then you have never been in love,” Isobel said decidedly, “and you did right not to accept Mr. Bigg-Wither.”

“But what was the outcome, my dear?” I persisted. “Did you never consider a full disclosure to Lord Scargrave?”

“No, Jane. That could not be. We declared our love, canvassed our mutual honour and the esteem we owed the Earl, and came to a tortured resignation. I could not destroy Fitzroy by dishonouring his uncle—as destroy him I should. To do so would bring misery upon all in the Earl's household, and burden the purer emotions we felt with regret and recrimination.”

“But how could you go forward?” I cried, all amazement.

Isobel looked her confusion. “I know that
you
should not have done so, dear Jane. With
your
strength and sense, you should have broken off the engagement and retired from the scene.” She hesitated, as though her next words caused her pain. “But I had Crosswinds to consider, and all that Lord Scargrave had vouched he would do. For the sake of my father's memory, I determined that I could not choose otherwise than to marry the Earl.”

“And Lord Payne? What of him?”

“We deemed it best to part company until the fateful day was achieved. Fitzroy offered the Earl some excuse, and fled to the country. I was married not two weeks later, toured the Continent for some three months, and returned to Scargrave for the Christmas holiday.”

“I wonder how you bore it,” I said.