Shining Threads (28 page)

The Mayor and Corporation marched manfully into the market place. When silence was obtained and the children, who were inclined to be boisterous on this day of freedom from loom or mule or
schoolroom, were hushed, the Mayor said a prayer for Whitsuntide, since Pentecost was a religious festival after all.

The bands, of which there were at least half a dozen, struck up ‘God Save the Queen’ and when they were done the children who had been practising for weeks sang it in piping voices,
most out of tune and not one finishing at the same time as his neighbour.

Led by a marshal on horseback supported by two stalwarts with spears, both on foot, the procession moved on then for it was felt that some of its members were becoming restive, It must have been
two miles long, Tessa grumbled to Drew, and did they really need to stand and watch this endless assembly of Wesleyan, Methodist, Primitive Methodist, of Latter Day Saints, Catholic and established
religion as church after church went proudly by carrying its own treasured banner? There was to be a fair on Crossfold green with stalls, dancing and puppet shows, prize-fights and side-shows, a
fortune teller and later, when it was dark, a display of fireworks.

There were three or four annual fairs held at Crossfold, where trading took place, where household goods were bought and sold, where menageries and travelling shows drew folk from miles around,
and the excitement was intense. There would be clowns, they had been told, acrobats, peep-shows and freak exhibitions. Percy had whispered to Emma who had breathed of it to her young mistress as
she brushed her hair – almost back to its original length, thank God – that there was to be a goldfish pulling a boat in a glass tank, could you believe it? Oysters smoking a pipe
apiece just like a man, and, giggling, dancing girls exposing themselves to the public gaze for money.

Tessa had lately taken, much to the surprise of the Penfold Valley, to wearing an elegant gown when she was seen about Crossfold and had even been noticed coming out of Miss Maymon’s
dressmaking establishment, her mother’s coachman behind her staggering beneath an armful of packages. They could not, of course, explain it and neither could Tessa herself, seeing no
connection in her new preoccupation with how she looked and her love for Will Broadbent. It was as though that part of her which had been subdued for years as she rode madly at the heels of her
cousins had begun to drift lightly, awakened by his hands and lips, to the surface of her woman’s sensibilities. Now that she was a woman in the truest sense of the word, she needed to look
like one, even to act like one at times.

She had gone a time or two to Annie’s cottage in her new, stylish gowns, and to the Hall with Laurel, who had been invited to tea by the Squire’s lady. Stepping down from the
carriage in crimson taffeta, amethyst silk, honey-coloured velvet, turquoise satin, in cashmere of the softest hyacinth blue, tarlatan of palest peach, as bewitched by exotic and glowing colours as
her mother, it seemed, she appeared as an elegant, suddenly fashionable young lady when it pleased her to be, delighted by the sensation she caused.

Now, on this annual day of celebration she wore a gown of rich cream, simple and beautifully cut, fitting closely to her breast and waist, the skirt so full it had filled the carriage. Her hat
was like a flower garden of cream and apricot rosebuds, made from silk and lace. Her gloves were cream and so were her high·heeled kid half-boots and the dainty, lace-trimmed parasol it
amused her to carry. She was playing a game, as both Drew and Pearce were aware, delighted with its novelty, basking in the admiration which turned every head in her direction and brought an
appreciative gleam to each male eye which fell on her. When she was tired of this part she played she would discard it.

The green at Crossfold was an enormous pasture on the edge of town, reached by walking up the steep slope of Reddygate Way. It was packed from fence to fence with hundreds of tents and
side-shows, with stalls selling everything from sweetmeats to the very latest Bowie knife, made in Sheffield but fashioned, it was advertised, for American and Indian fighters. Painted and gaily
dressed clowns tumbled about the spaces between the tents. Acrobats performed the most amazing and seemingly impossible contortions with their elastic bodies. Jugglers juggled and showmen screeched
of the wonders of fat ladies and thin men, of sheep with two heads and a fish with a woman’s body. Bands played and the sky was blue and cloudless and when she saw him she felt her spirits
lighten and her curiosity sharpen but she would not, of course, show him that for one didn’t with a
real
gentleman.

‘There’s Nicky Longworth and Johnny Taylor,’ Drew said.

‘Who’s that with them?’ Pearce asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she murmured and it was not to Nicky and Johnny that her eyes were drawn but to the indolent figure of the man who strolled beside them. He was looking at her
with the exaggeratedly cool expression gentlemen of his class always seemed to assume when presented with a pretty woman but there was a leap of pleasure in his eyes which she knew was answered in
hers. He was tall, loosely put together, half a head taller than she, with crisp fair hair cut short and brushed smoothly about his well-shaped head. His eyes were a deep chocolate brown, narrowed
and speculative in his bronzed face, and when he smiled as he did now his lips parted on teeth which were white and perfect. His manner said quite plainly that his ancestors, like those of Nicky
Longworth and Johnny Taylor, had been of the privileged class, generations of them stretching back into time, of landed gentlemen, great soldiers, men of superiority and honour, but his whimsical
smile told her that it did not matter since what was it to her, whoever she was, and to himself at this special moment?

‘Drew, Pearce, good to see you,’ Nicky Longworth said enthusiastically, just as though he had not drunk himself into a stupor with them the night before, pumping their hands,
terribly glad to have them for his friends, it appeared.

‘And Miss Harrison . . . Tessa. How splendid you look, doesn’t she, Johnny?’ But Tessa, her hand bowed over by both her cousins’ friends, had not yet torn her eyes away
from those of their companion.

‘Oh, do forgive me. May I introduce an old school chum of mine . . . well, we were at the same school though Robby was at the end of his learning as Johnny and I were just beginning. He
was somewhat of a god to us, I can tell you. He has come up for the . . . Oh, I do beg your pardon, Tessa, here am I rattling on . . .’ To tell the truth Nicky was quite bowled over by young
Tessa Harrison’s striking beauty. He was accustomed to seeing her in her riding outfit, mud splattered and a bit of a tomboy, really, and now here she was looking as elegant and . . . well,
there was hardly a word to describe her radiance as she waited for him to complete his introductions.

‘May I present Robby Atherton? Robby, this is Miss Tessa Harrison . . .’

‘Miss Harrison.’

‘Mr Atherton.’

He bowed over her hand, his manners exquisitely good humoured, his education obviously expensive, as the Squire’s son’s had been, his air superior but his impudent smile
irresistible.

‘. . . and her cousins, Drew and Pearce Greenwood.’

For several moments there was well-bred confusion as introductions were completed and it was perhaps this which kept concealed from Drew and Pearce the attraction which had flared up between
their cousin and the gentleman to whom they had just been introduced. The polite conversation, the charming smiles and meaningless small-talk, hid the tension. Then Mr Atherton turned courteously
to Miss Harrison, drawing her a pace or two away from the rest.

‘You have been acquainted with Nick and Johnny long?’ he asked her, placing a confident hand beneath her elbow, leading her even further ahead of the others with the manner of a
gentleman who has the perfect right to do so if he wishes, but without being in the least discourteous.

‘For quite some time, Mr Atherton. Squire Longworth has been kind enough to allow my cousins and myself to join his hunt.’

‘Really? They are a charming family. Mine have been on friendly terms with them since before I was born, I believe, though this is the first time I have visited this part of the
world.’ But it certainly will not be the last, his admiring eyes said. I have never seen such beauty, such style, such splendour and having found it I do not mean to give it up lightly.

‘Oh, and why is that, Mr Atherton?’ She could feel the excitement effervesce inside her, foolishly perhaps, even dangerously, for such headlong and immediate attraction could not
possibly survive, but when had Tessa Harrison ever considered danger?

‘I have been in the army, Miss Harrison, and away from home since I was eighteen. A death in the family, my father’s brother, brought me home and I was compelled to give up my
commission. The estate, you understand.’ He shrugged his shoulders on which, his manner said, the whole burden of his family inheritance now rested. He was sure she would know what he meant.
‘And then there is the hunt in Leicestershire, and my own in Cheshire. The grouse, of course, and we have a lodge in Scotland. Deer stalking, you know?’

Oh, yes, she knew, for was it not the life she herself admired and should she not have known that this man was the kind to lead it? He was so amazingly handsome with his long and elegant mouth
and that whimsical half-smile lifting the corners, the smiling brown gaze from eyes that said everything his words, so polite, so correct, could not say, not to a lady such as she was.

‘My word, you must lead an active life.’ Her own trite answers were just as hidebound.

‘And you, Miss Harrison? What do you do with yourself? I know you ride to hounds for you have just told me, but surely that does not occupy all your time?’ So could not you and I be
somewhat more enjoyably employed away from these people, somewhere quiet and sun-filled, song-filled, and suitable for the delights we could show each other? But naturally, a gentleman conversing
with a lady to whom he had just been introduced could not speak the words out loud.

Her smile was dazzling. ‘No, indeed. I fill my days most pleasurably.’ But not, of course, as they were meant to be filled, the slanting, cat-like grey of her eyes told him.

‘I’m sure you do. Painting and fine embroidery.’

‘Not particularly.’ Her eyes dropped of their own volition to his curving mouth.

‘My word, Miss Harrison.’

‘Yes, Mr Atherton?’ she said breathlessly.

‘If we carry on like this for much longer I swear I shall be forced to believe you are as foolish as the rest of the young ladies whose aims and conversation are all the same and to whom I
have been introduced by the score, and I know you are not. So why are we conversing in this absurd manner, do you think?’ He grinned down at her engagingly, wickedly, then winked and her
heart soared with delight for it seemed his wit matched his looks and breeding.

‘You are teasing me, Mr Atherton.’

‘Am I, Miss Harrison? I believe I am, but please, my name is Samuel Robert Atherton, Robby to my friends and if I may I shall call you . . . ?’

‘Tessa.’

‘Tessa . . . Tessa, may we pretend we were introduced, let’s say three months ago, and are well acquainted. So well acquainted your cousins are looking at me with the obvious
intention of calling me out or beating me to death with their bare fists . . .’

She turned, startled. ‘Drew and Pearce?’ Why should they be concerned since she was so evidently accompanied by a gentleman of the highest pedigree, a friend of the Longworth family
and surely in safe hands? Then her enchantment with this new feeling was too strong to let her attention wander for another moment and she turned her brilliant smile back to him.

‘. . . but I’m sure they will not mind if I snatch you away and escort you round the fair. Now tell me what you would like to see first, Tessa . . .’ His voice deepened on her
name and his eyes assessed her in that completely male but gentlemanly fashion he had been brought up to assume with a lady. His admiration was very evident. He was quite old, she thought,
twenty-eight or nine, with wide shoulders which fitted his elegant coat with that perfection such English gentleman seemed so easily to achieve. His face was finely chiselled and his body
delicately balanced, every portion of him matching exactly every other. Moulded by the same culture as Nicky Longworth to repress embarrassing emotion, nevertheless his interest, his approval, the
warm excitement with which he regarded her, the open-hearted, light-hearted charm, a touch perhaps of complexity, a boyish air overlaid with the maturity of an experienced man, was
overwhelming.

‘Tessa,’ he said again, quite urgently, ‘call me Robby. Say my name.’ She knew precisely what he meant.

‘Robby . . .’ Her eyes smiled into his. Then, for the first time in her life, Tessa Harrison looked shyly away from a man.

‘We are to dine with the Squire tonight, Tessa,’ Drew said casually the next morning but his eyes were careful and Pearce’s, who had followed him into the breakfast room, were
the same as though, curiously, they were both waiting to judge her reaction.

She kept her face somewhat averted, pretending a great deal of interest in the fruit on her plate, making a determined effort to calm the tumult of her nerves, the exultation which surged
through her at the thought of seeing him again so soon. Of course, this was
his
doing, she knew it. It was he who had instigated, somehow, this invitation to the Hall, and though the three
of them dined there quite often, the suddenness of this command had surprised Drew and Pearce.

‘Well, and I may not be able to attend,’ she said airily, foolishly, for nothing in the whole world would keep her away, she knew, so why had she said it? She could find a dozen
reasons to stop her from going, couldn’t she, she asked herself, for even now something inside her called to her to halt this startling thing which had happened to her. It told her to be
patient and wait. Yet it was not like her to hesitate, to be cautious, particularly when it was something she wanted so desperately. It had caught her off guard, probably because it was so soon
after Will, she told herself, and really, should she not restore her heart to a sound and carefree condition before risking it again?