Joan Wolf (2 page)

“It shouldn’t be, I know,” she replied. “But somehow ... it is.”

* * * *

When Lady Maria saw Mr. Templeton at the church the following day, she realized that Laura had been speaking the simple truth about his looks. He was not a big man, but Laura herself was small, so that hardly mattered. And he was handsome—beautiful, almost, thought Lady Maria, regarding his fair-skinned, delicately chiseled face and his cap of shining golden hair.

The organ began to play, and along with the rest of the congregation, Lady Maria turned to look down the aisle to see the bride advancing on her father’s arm. Sir Charles looked splendid and dignified next to the small figure of his daughter. And Laura—she is so young, thought Lady Maria suddenly. All that gravity, that grace—and so young. She blinked away a tear. Good heavens, she scolded herself, I must be entering my dotage!

The entire Dalwood family had assembled beneath the roof of the Manor for Laura’s wedding, and they were all in great spirits. As well they might be, Lady Maria reflected, as she watched the oldest son, James, talking to his wife after dinner in the drawing room. She had had a very frank talk with Lady Dalwood the previous evening, and it appeared that Laura’s marriage was nothing short of a godsend to the family. James, his wife, and their one child lived at Dalwood with his mother and father. Edmund, the second son, had taken orders and would take over the Dalwood living as soon as it became vacant—which would not be for another year or two at least. In the meanwhile, he was acting as curate for a neighboring parish. And Henry, the youngest son, had a commission in the Guards. All of the boys depended, in one way or another, on Dalwood for their finances. And Dalwood was mortgaged. Mortgaged to put three sons through Eton, two sons through Oxford, and to buy one son an army commission.

There had been nothing left for the daughter. But Edward Templeton had not wanted money with Laura, Lady Dalwood told Lady Maria. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he had paid heavily to get her. The mortgage on Dalwood had been redeemed and Mr. Templeton had given Sir Charles some excellent advice about investments. All in all, the financial future of the family seemed assured.

“He wanted a wife to give him consequence, I gather,” said Lady Maria bluntly.

Lady Dalwood smiled a little. “Templeton Hall is a much finer place than the Manor. But it wants that graceful beauty of age that Dalwood possesses. Mr. Templeton is a fine young man as well. And a gentleman. But he wants that security of position, which only old families possess. Laura will give him that. She does like him, you know. We would never force her choice.”

“Who is he, Louisa?”

“His father was in the City. Edward was sent to Eton and Cambridge, and when his father died he sold the business to a partner, came to Devon, and built Templeton Hall. I assure you, Maria, his manners are as gentlemanly as anyone we know. He himself never had any connection with the City. He is, like us, a landowner—only, unlike us, he is very wealthy. I have no fears for Laura.”

Lady Maria wondered. It seemed to her that in their eagerness to acquire the Templeton money, the Dalwoods had not inquired too carefully into the man’s background. If he were interested in setting up as a rich landowner, why on earth had he chosen Sydenham Damerel—an obscure section of Devon that looked over the river Tamar into Cornwall? Lady Maria considered herself a great deal more worldly than her friend, who had spent the last thirty years buried in Sydenham Damerel. To Lady Dalwood, Sydenham Damerel was the center of the world. To Lady Maria it was rather an outpost of civilization. She was a little concerned about Laura, but at this point there was really nothing she could do.

Chapter Three

Lady Maria had a house of her own in Bath, where she spent the greater part of the year, going up to London for a month or so every Season. When in London, she always stayed at Cheney House in Berkeley Square, which her brother the Earl was kind enough to staff for her visits. He himself rarely visited London anymore.

She was staying in Berkeley Square during May of 1815 when Mark also came up to town for a few days. Lady Maria had not seen him since his wedding; it was at Christmastime last year that Robert had died, and the Earl had had no heart for festivities this year. Consequently, she was delighted to hear from Robertson, the butler, that her nephew had arrived while she was out at a reception.

“Commander Cheney said you were not to wait up for him, my lady. He went to Watier’s for the evening and said he would see you in the morning.”

Lady Maria went to bed in a happy frame of mind, looking forward to a reunion with the boy she had always loved as well as if he had been her own son. She had been disappointed not to see him at Christmas, and had tried to tell herself that his new duties and responsibilities made his coming up to Bath to see her an impossibility. Her brother was not well. And Caroline—happy, happy news—Caroline was expecting a baby. Mark was needed at home.

He was not at Cheney House when she arose in the morning, either. He had gone off to the Admiralty, Robertson informed her. It was not until almost noon that he returned, looking in on her as she sat in the morning parlor answering her mail.

“Good morning, Aunt,” he said from the door, and came across the room to kiss her, tossing his hat on a sofa as he passed it.

“Mark!” Her strongly featured face was alight with pleasure. “How lovely to see you, my dear. And how splendid you look. William is right— you ought not to resign your commission. It would be a pity to give up that marvelous uniform.”

He smiled a little. “As it happens, I am not resigning, Aunt Maria. I am on leave at the moment.”

She took his hand and drew him over to a pair of chairs positioned near a sunny window. “Sit down and tell me about yourself. How is Caroline? My congratulations. I hear you are to be a father.”

There was not a flicker of expression on his face. “Yes,” he said coolly. “Papa is beside himself with delight.”

“And you?” she asked, disturbed by the look of him.

“Of course.”

There was a brief pause, and then she said, “What were you doing at the Admiralty this morning?”

“I went up to see Lord Melville, the First Lord, and Mr. Dalrymple from the Hydrography Office. They wanted to know if I would undertake a survey of the coast of Ireland.”

“And will you?”

The sun from the window gleamed on his thick light brown hair, flecking it with gold. He shook his head, and the lights in his hair danced. “No. What is needed first, I told them, is a land survey of Ireland. And I cannot leave Castle Dartmouth at the moment. Papa is not well. I do not think he has long to live.”

“Robert’s death took the heart out of him.”

“I know.” Mark had always known that Robert was his father’s favorite, just as he himself had been his aunt’s golden boy. He smiled at her now. “It is good to see you, Aunt Maria. You at least never change.”

“I suppose that was meant as a compliment,” she said with dry humor. But she was not feeling at all amused. She was, in fact, alarmed. Something was the matter with Mark. He was almost unnervingly composed. And his smile did not reach his eyes.

“It
was
a compliment,” he said decisively. “I have a few days to spare in London. Do you want an escort for any of your parties?”

Her sharp brown eyes were soft with affection as they rested on his beloved face. The planes of his cheekbones looked harder than she remembered. He had almost completely lost his boyish look. “You don’t want to spend your evenings with an old woman,” she said.

“Not with an old woman. With my favorite woman.” And this time the smile reached his eyes.

She was deeply touched. She was also, upon reflection, deeply apprehensive. If she were his favorite woman, where did that leave Caroline?

* * * *

After a week Mark went back to Devon, and in mid-June Lady Maria returned to Bath. Two weeks after her arrival home, the news from Castle Dartmouth arrived: Caroline had borne a son.

They called him Robert, at the Earl’s request, and he was baptized with great ceremony at St. Peter’s Church, where his parents had been married almost exactly nine months earlier. Lady Maria had not seen her brother so happy since before the other Robert’s death. He had presented Caroline with a magnificent set of matched pearls and she wore them around her slender neck on the day of the christening.

Lady Maria thought that Caroline looked as if childbirth had taken a great deal out of her. She was too thin, too delicate-looking. Her great blue eyes dominated her narrow, pointed little face. She had not been able to nurse the baby, the Earl informed his sister. She was under orders from the doctor to stay in bed and to rest.

Mark was pleasant, courteous, attentive to his father, his wife, his guests. He did not appear to be overly interested in his son. Lady Maria found something slightly disturbing about his extreme self-possession.

* * * *

The Earl of Dartmouth died in August. It was an occasion of sorrow for his family, but it had not been unexpected. Everyone drew consolation from the fact that he had lived to see his grandson.

It was the death of Caroline Cheney in October, almost exactly one year after her marriage, that shocked the family and the county. Lady Maria posted down to Devon from Bath immediately. It was Mark who gave her the dreadful news. “She killed herself, Aunt Maria.”

“What!”

“Yes.” The impression of formidable reserve he had given her on their last meeting was stronger now than ever. His face was absolutely shuttered. “She cut her wrist. I found her lying on her bed. She had been dead for several hours.”

“Dear God, Mark!”

“Yes,” he said again. “Quite.” They were sitting in the library of Castle Dartmouth, and now he got up from his chair and went over to look out the window. “I have told the magistrates that it was an accident, that she was opening a letter and the knife slipped. No one believes it, of course, but they didn’t dare ask too many questions. She will be given Christian burial from St. Peter’s. I’ll need you to stand by me, Aunt.”

Lady Maria stared for a moment at his back. His broad shoulders looked absolutely invulnerable. “Of course I will stand by you, my dear. I am so terribly sorry.”

He turned back to her. “One can always count on you,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”

Meeting his steady, unreadable eyes, Lady Maria understood why the magistrates hadn’t been able to ask him questions. His air of remoteness daunted even her.

They buried Caroline the following day. Her mother and her brother sat with Mark and his aunt in the front of the church, and the grief that never appeared on her husband’s face was all too evident on theirs. Sir Giles, in particular, looked shattered. He and Mark scarcely spoke, except for a few minutes at the graveside. At that time Lady Maria caught something in Giles’s blue eyes that frightened her. Good God, she thought involuntarily, surely he can’t blame Mark for this tragedy!

She stayed at Castle Dartmouth for several months after Caroline’s death, running the house and helping to look after the baby. During that time it was made perfectly clear to her by a few of the upper servants, whom she had known for years, that Mark and Caroline had not been happy together. Why that was, no one knew. Lady Maria disliked gossiping with the servants, but the issue at hand was hardly one she could ignore. And she simply could not talk to Mark. On the subject of Caroline he was unapproachable.

They had not been happy. Mark, apparently, had always been scrupulously polite to his wife. But he had been distant. “He stayed away from her, my lady,” Mrs. Irons, the housekeeper, told her bluntly. “He kept up a show in front of others—especially his father. But once the old Earl died, it seemed as if he even ceased to make that effort.”

“But what could have happened?” Lady Maria asked in great bewilderment. “He was so in love with her.”

“I don’t know, my lady. But I do know that talk is circulating that it was his coldness that drove her to her death, poor lass.”

“Oh, no!” cried Lady Maria on a note of pain.

“I don’t like to repeat gossip, my lady,” said Mrs. Irons a trifle grimly, “but I thought you should know.”

Chapter Four

Lady Maria stayed at Castle Dartmouth until the following April. She stayed mainly because she felt her presence helped in a small way to diminish the gossip about Mark. She had been alarmed and horrified by the extent and the malignity of that gossip.

Where it came from or how it had started, she did not know. But people blamed him for the death of his young wife. It was there in their eyes whenever he entered a drawing room, a local meeting, the church. She felt that her presence was a demonstration of good faith on the part of his family and as such was necessary. She was not necessary to either the house, which was run most efficiently by Mrs. Irons, or to Robin, who was in the very competent charge of his nurse. She was needed, she thought, by Mark.

It was in April that she received a second shocking communication containing tragic news. It came this time from Sydenham Damerel. She was sitting staring at her letter in obvious distress when Mark came into the morning parlor. “What has happened?” he asked instantly.

She looked up at him. ‘‘What is it that Claudius says to Gertrude, something about sorrows coming not in single spies but in battalions? I’ve just received a letter from my old friend Louisa Dalwood. Her daughter, Laura, who is also my goddaughter, was married last year, shortly after you were. Her husband is dead of typhus. He was only thirty-four.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mark. He came and sat down across from her on a rose-colored sofa. “It does not appear to have been a lucky year for marriages.” There was a note of audible bitterness in his voice.

“No,” she replied quietly. “Not, at least, for you or for Laura.”

There was a pause, and then he said, in quite a different voice, “I had a rather important letter myself, Aunt Maria. From the Admiralty.”