Joan Wolf (3 page)

“Yes?” She looked at him inquiringly.

“They have offered me command of the frigate
Glasgow.
They want me to undertake a survey of the southern coast of Turkey.”

“Turkey?”

“Yes.” His golden-brown eyes, fringed by lashes many shades darker than his hair, were more alive than she had seen them in months.

 “The Turkish coast should be able to provide us with valuable naval ports. England has a steadily growing commercial interest in that part of the world, you know. We have no accurate charts of the south Turkish coast—almost four hundred miles of it!  Lord Melville writes that this expedition is being launched to remedy a serious chasm in geography.”

“And they want you to command it?”

“Yes. I will be posted to the rank of captain.” He grinned at her. “God, Aunt Maria, this is like the answer to a prayer!”

“But, Mark, for how long will you be gone?”

“Several years, I expect.”

“Several years! But what about your son? What about Robin?”

His face darkened. “He has his nurse. He is only a baby. He doesn’t need me.”

Lady Maria was silent. After a minute he went on, his voice a little strained. “I think it will be better for everyone—Robin included—if I go away for a while. It will give old wounds a chance to heal. When I come back, perhaps I will be able to be a better father. But right now, I can’t. I just can’t.”

It was the first crack she had seen in his composure. He was very pale. “If you want,” she said gently, “I will stay at Castle Dartmouth.”

“No.” His eyes were brilliant with feeling. “No. You have done enough, Aunt Maria. More than enough. You have your own home, your own life. I appreciate more than I can ever say what you have done for me this last year. But I won’t take advantage of you any longer. If you feel you can make an occasional visit to check up on Robin’s welfare, I would be very grateful. But you have neglected your own life for my sake for too long. You must return to Bath.”

In the end, that was what she had done. Mark sailed for Turkey, and life for Lady Maria resumed its accustomed round. The situation at Castle Dartmouth remained stable for almost a year. Then Robin’s nurse sent notice to Lady Maria that she was leaving her position. Lady Maria posted down to Devon at once. Someone else would have to be found to look after Robin, who was now a sturdy toddler of almost two. And, as she had received a disturbing letter from her goddaughter, Laura Templeton, in the same post as the nurse’s resignation, Lady Maria dashed off an invitation to Laura to come to stay with her at Castle Dartmouth for a visit.

* * * *

Laura thought she had never seen anything as magnificent as Castle Dartmouth. It was rather as if one had stumbled upon an Italian Renaissance palace in the midst of a mellow English landscape. The great baroque dome of the central hall dominated the building, which stretched out in graceful elegance over an indecent amount of space. To the west of the house were avenues of cedars leading to the stables and the hothouses. To the east was a glorious deer park studded with fine old oaks and graceful ponds. A fountain, which looked as if it might have been designed by Bernini, was the focal point on the south front lawn.

Lady Maria gave her goddaughter a house tour. “My father and my brother bought most of the furniture, pictures, statuary, and china that you see,” she told the wide-eyed Laura. “We have some very fine pieces, I understand.”

“Yes,” breathed Laura, awestruck by the magnificence in evidence everywhere
.
I should rather think you must!”

Laura was also introduced to Mr. Robert Cheney, age twenty-two months, and she immediately fell in love. Robin was an extraordinarily beautiful child, with bright golden curls and huge, angelic blue eyes. “However can she bear to leave him?” she asked Lady Maria after his nurse had taken him back upstairs for his supper. The two ladies were having tea in the family drawing room.

“Mrs. Stebbins’ brother has retired from the navy and needs her to keep house for him. She has been kind enough to say she will stay until I can find a replacement, however.” Lady Maria stirred her tea. “And now, my dear Laura, tell me about yourself. Are you sorry you sold Templeton Hall after your husband died?”

“No. I could not live there, Godmama. I’m not sorry I sold it.” She sighed. “But I can’t live at home either, it seems.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, Papa and Mama are forever after me to ‘do something with myself.’ They want me to go to Bath. They want me to go to London. They want me to get married again is what it all comes down to.”

“And you don’t want that?”

“No!”

Lady Maria looked with concern at the lovely, unchildlike face of her goddaughter. “You are only eighteen, my dear. You will marry again one day.”

“I don’t see why,” said Laura calmly. “I have money—more than enough to support myself.” She looked up from her lap to Lady Maria’s face. “You never married, Godmama.”

“That is true.”

“You have a good life. You are allowed to have your own house, to go your own way.”

“Is that what you want, Laura? To set up your own establishment?”

“Yes, I do. But Papa and Mama won’t hear of it. They would not have complained if I had stayed at Templeton Hall, but when I talk of buying another house, they act as if they are horrified.”

“I see.” Lady Maria ran her finger gently over the decoration on her teacup and looked reflectively into Laura’s smoky blue eyes. “I was not eighteen when I left home, my dear. I was twenty-nine.”        Laura opened her mouth to say something, and Lady Maria continued serenely. “Nor was I beautiful. You, on the other hand, are both eighteen and beautiful. Of course your parents are concerned about your setting up on your own.”

“I am not a child,” said Laura firmly.

“No, I don’t believe you are.” Lady Maria smiled at her reassuringly. “I think I may have an idea that would suit you. Let me think about it for a little.”

“Oh, Godmama, I should be so grateful!” Laura sighed wearily.

* * * *

In the end, Lady Maria made her suggestion and Laura fell in with it eagerly. She was to live at Castle Dartmouth for a time and help look after Robin. “I don’t mean to suggest this as a permanent arrangement, my dear,” Lady Maria had said
.
I don’t wish to turn you into a governess. But as a temporary solution to both our problems, it may serve.”

The temporary solution served so well that it stretched from months into years. And the more time that passed, the more impossible it appeared that Laura would return to Sydenham Damerel. After the first year her parents protested that it was time she came home. After the second year they seemed resigned to their daughter’s continued absence. Laura simply would not leave Robin.

She and the little boy had formed an almost instant bond, and it was a tie that grew stronger with every passing day. Robin’s nurse had been a competent, conscientious woman, but she had not had a warm personality. The child was starved for affection, starved for a mother. And Laura desperately needed someone she could love. It was not long before she was fiercely devoted to her small charge. She felt, in fact, like his mother.

Lady Maria came periodically to visit Castle Dartmouth, and with her came the only news they ever had of Robin’s father. The Turkish survey was going very well. Lady Maria reported. “Besides his marine surveying, Mark seems to have become a determined antiquarian,” Lady Maria told Laura on one of her visits. “The last letter I received from him was full of lamentations about his lack of Greek and Latin. Evidently the Turkish coast is studded with the remains of ancient cities. When he is not out in a boat. Mark appears to be an obsessive prowler of ruins.”

“I thought all boys studied Greek and Latin,” Laura observed.

“Mark did not go to school like your brothers, Laura. He joined the navy at age eleven, and while there was a schoolmaster on board to instruct the midshipmen, Greek and Latin was not part of his curriculum. He did manage on his own to acquire a much more liberal education than was offered. I’ve sent him literally hundreds of books myself. He reads French and Spanish. But not the classical languages—a gap over which he is apparently now beating his breast.”

Lady Maria shared some of her nephew’s letters with Laura, who was unabashedly curious about the father of her darling. Some of the things she had heard about Lady Maria’s nephew had been decidedly sinister—very different from the picture that her godmother always painted of her nephew.

He certainly appeared to be a good naval officer and scientist, whatever else might be true of his character. He inquired periodically about the welfare of his son, but to Laura’s alert sensitivity, the inquiries were definitely perfunctory. Quite clearly he did not care about Robin, a situation that only made Laura love the little boy even more.

The only person who seemed to care about Robin beside herself and Lady Maria was his uncle, Sir Giles Gregory. He lived at Cadbury House, a few miles from Castle Dartmouth, and came over at least once a week to visit his nephew. He was very fond of Robin, who was his only family since his mother had died.

Sir Giles was a handsome, eligible, well-off young man, and clearly he liked Laura. The neighborhood kept expecting to hear an announcement concerning the two of them, but somehow nothing more than friendship ever developed out of their relationship. Laura herself didn’t quite know why Giles kindled no sparks in her breast. His blond, blue-eyed good looks, so like his nephew’s, were certainly very attractive. He had given her clear indication on more than one occasion that if she gave him any encouragement he would declare himself.        But that encouragement had not been forthcoming, and soon they settled into an easy comradeship that suited them both. Certainly it suited Robin, who was always delighted to see Uncle Giles. He was the closest thing to a father Robin knew.

On the subject of Robin’s real father, Giles was reticent. He was willing to concede Mark’s scientific and technical brilliance. But he always gave Laura the impression that it was an effort for him to speak well of his brother-in-law. In fact, Laura rather got the feeling that Mark’s early years at sea had painfully hardened his character. “One sees so much cruelty in the navy,” Giles said to her once. “The floggings, the impressments, the battles. Mark went into the navy when he was eleven, you know. I am not myself in favor of sending such young boys to sea. It cannot be good for their characters to be exposed at so young an age to the brutality of life on a ship of war.”

Laura was inclined to agree with Giles about the folly of sending children to sea so early. From all she had heard about him, it seemed that the Earl of Dartmouth was a tough character with little concern for the feelings of others. His marriage had not been a success, and the blame for that was generally laid at his door. There was a very pretty girl in Dartmouth, now respectably married, whom Giles had pointed out to her once grimly as “my poor sister’s rival.” Mark evidently had not been faithful to his marriage vows for very long.

It worried Laura. She did not like to think ill of Robin’s father. And she was afraid of what would happen when he returned. She had come to regard Castle Dartmouth as her home. Certainly the servants all acted as if she were the mistress of the house. She had made a number of friends in the neighborhood. And— surpassing all else in importance—she had her boy. What would happen when the Earl returned? It was an uncertainty that she tried to think of as seldom as possible.

II

The intent of matrimony is not for man and wife to be always taken up with each other, but jointly to discharge the duties of civil society, to govern their families with prudence, and educate their children with discretion.
—The Lady’s Magazine,
1774

Chapter Five

The first week of November brought some unusually fine weather to Devon, and Laura and Robin took full advantage of it. Robin had been given a pony for his fifth birthday in June and the two of them went out riding for hours every morning. On Tuesday they returned to the stables at one o’clock and were met by news that sent Laura’s heart plummeting into her stomach. “His lordship arrived about an hour ago, madam,” John, the head groom, informed her gravely.

Laura felt herself go white. ‘His lordship,’ said in that tone of voice, could mean only one person. “Thank you, John,” she said a little tremulously. Then, taking a steadying breath, she turned to the child by her side. “Did you hear that, Robin? Your father has come home.”

They walked together up the avenue of cedars, and Robin was unusually quiet. Laura took his hand and he looked up at her out of troubled blue eyes. ‘Do you think he will like me, Laurie?”

“Of course he’ll like you, darling. He always asks after you in his letters to Aunt Maria; you know that. You might feel a little ... awkward with him at first, but that will be only because you don’t know each other,” She reached over with her other hand to ruffle his sunny locks. “Don’t worry about it.”

Laura went in by the front door, something she rarely did, and Monk, the butler, greeted her with unusual solemnity. “His lordship has arrived, madam. He asked that you join him when you came in. He is in the library.”

There was no mention of Robin, and Laura turned to him with a smile. “You go upstairs, darling, and wash up. I’ll bring your father up to see you in a little while.”

He nodded vigorously, gave her a little smile, turned, and raced up the stairs. Laura smoothed her own hair down and walked through the great domed central hall toward the library wing. She would bring Robin’s father up to meet him, she vowed, if she had to knock him unconscious to do it.

The library door was open and she said from the doorway, “You wished to see me, my lord? I am Laura Templeton.”

He was standing by a window looking out at the sunlit fountain on the south lawn, but at her words he turned. “Yes, do come in Mrs. Templeton. I am pleased to be meeting you at last.”