The American Heiress (28 page)

They were too close to the house for Bertha to be able to kiss him, but she stroked his arm and said, ‘We’ve both been lucky.’

As they approached the house, and began to draw apart from each other, they saw a lady in furs hurry down the steps. Jim recognised her at once.

‘Good thing she didn’t see us. She’s a mean one, Lady Beauchamp. There were two housemaids as lost their place at Sutton on account of her. Said they were rude to her, as if that were likely – they were local girls who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. No, I reckon as they saw something they shouldn’t, they were sent off that quickly. Still, I suppose anyone would go sour married to that Sir Odious. I’d rather go back to being a boot boy than work for him again.’ Jim’s handsome face was grim at the thought of his former employer.

Bertha realised that she was fortunate. Miss Cora was hard work but they’d been together for eight years now and so she was Bertha’s hard work.

They walked down the area steps to the tradesmen’s entrance. Bertha could see M. Pechon the French chef piping rosettes of cream round a glistening mountain of aspic in which anchovies and sprats had been suspended as if swimming in a gelatinous sea. There were many days when Bertha envied her mistress, but today was not one of them.

Cora had been right in thinking that Mrs Wyndham would respond swiftly to her summons. Madeleine Wyndham was delighted when she saw the Wareham crest on the seal. Cora had been her greatest match to date, although in all honesty she could not take credit for having introduced her to Wareham. What, Mrs Wyndham wondered, did the young Duchess want her for? Cora had been different to most of the young American girls and their parents who came her way. Most of them were quite ‘au naturel’, beautifully dressed hoydens who had the manners of farm girls and had nothing to recommend them apart from youthful high spirits and, of course, money. But Cora had arrived already ‘finished’, there was nothing to improve. Indeed, the only thing that separated Cora from a well-bred English girl was her confidence. Serene in the knowledge that she was the heiress of her generation, she had an air of assurance quite unusual in a girl of her age. She was spoilt, of course, most of the Americans were; but on the rare occasions she failed to get her own way, she looked amazed rather than petulant.

Mrs Wyndham wondered if Cora was having trouble with her mother-in-law. She had met the Double Duchess at countless gatherings over the last twenty years, but every time they encountered each other the Duchess pretended never to have seen her before. She wondered if the Duchess would keep this up now that her son had married an American. When Madeleine had first arrived in London fifteen years ago, she had quite often been asked about the Natives in her country as if she had herself only recently emerged from a wigwam. She had once, in jest, gone to a masquerade ball dressed as an Indian squaw, only to have a number of dowagers ask her if she missed wearing her native costume.

But that had been at the end of the seventies, before the heiresses had started arriving. Mrs Wyndham did not come from a very wealthy family. Her father had owned a hotel in Manhattan and there was gossip that he had met his wife when she was working there as a chambermaid. Both her parents had always denied this but the rumour was enough to place a cloud over the family’s social prospects. Madeleine was well-liked at Miss Porter’s Academy but her friendship with the Rhinebackers, Stuyvesants and Astors stopped at the school door. It had been Mr Lester, Madeleine’s father, who had proposed going to Europe; he wanted, he said, to look at how they ran hotels over there. Within a month of arriving in London, Madeleine had met the Hon. Captain Wyndham, and within two months they were engaged to be married. Madeleine found the captain with his beautiful manners, resplendent moustaches and aristocratic family (his father was an Irish baron) far superior to any of her American beaux and accepted him gladly. She knew that when he proposed he had hoped that she was rich, but he had not flinched when he realised the modest scale of her fortune.

They had been very happy for the ten years of their marriage, which ended when the captain had taken a fence too fast and had broken his neck. He left his widow with a son and a small annuity which would hardly support them. But providentially her father had sent her a family from Philadelphia, who had stayed at his hotel in New York and who were curious to meet his aristocratic daughter. The eldest girl had been a beauty, thankfully a quiet one, and extremely rich and Mrs Wyndham had introduced her to Lord Castlerosse, an old friend of her husband’s. The marriage received huge attention in the American papers and soon Mrs Wyndham found herself a necessary stopping point on an American belle’s grand tour – somewhere between a visit to M. Worth and the Forum by moonlight.

At first she had not asked her charges for money, relying instead on ‘presents’ from the grateful milliners, jewellers, and dressmakers to whom she directed her American friends. But after a while she realised that her scruples were unnecessary. The American families that relied on her to introduce them into the best English society were happy to pay her; in fact the fathers preferred a commercial transaction to an unseen web of obligation and favours. And she soon learnt that the higher the price, the more her new friends valued her services. Mrs Wyndham had taste and tact, and she knew how to get her girls, and on not a few occasions their mamas, to look their best. There was a difference, she would tell them, between dressing smartly and overdressing. American girls were, on the whole, far more fashionable than their English contemporaries, but it did not do to rub their noses in it. Even though many of her young charges had sable cloaks and diamond tiaras, that did not mean they should wear them. Such things were best left for married ladies and even then she could not really countenance diamonds in the daytime.

When she had first come to London, Mrs Wyndham had been as bemused as her protégées, but having been punished by knowing glances and raised eyebrows every time she did something perceived to be ‘American’, she was now more English in her habits than the crustiest of dowagers. Growing up in a hotel, she had acquired a good memory for names and faces; after fifteen years in London she knew everybody and her command of Burke’s Peerage was unmatched. No genealogical nuance of the aristocracy was lost on her; she could talk with authority about the Spencer red hair or the Percy chin or the Londonderry madness, and she had long ago learnt never to comment on a likeness in a younger child when visiting an aristocratic nursery. Mrs Wyndham knew to within a sovereign every single girl’s portion and every man’s income. Her network of lady’s maids, French chefs and butlers, whom she was in the habit of ‘recommending’, kept her supplied with the kind of information that made her invaluable to her friends. She always knew the latest gossip, often before the participants themselves were aware of it. At a society ball, she was probably the only person, apart from a jeweller with a loupe, who could tell which jewels were real and which were paste.

But even Mrs Wyndham had very little to teach the Cashes. They had come to her because Mrs Cash wanted entry to the very choicest circles. Mrs Wyndham’s friendship with the Prince of Wales meant that in London at least, she was received everywhere. When Mrs Cash had heard about the royal connection, she had made hints about introducing Cora to one of the younger princes but Mrs Wyndham had refused to understand her. At last, exasperated by Mrs Cash’s persistence, she had told her that she could buy Cora pretty much any husband she chose within the ranks of the British aristocracy except for a royal one. If she wanted a prince she would have to go to Europe where you could find royal titles by the score.

As Mrs Wyndham drew up outside the neo-classical façade of Bridgewater House, the clock at St James’s Palace chimed eleven. It was early in the day for a call but Cora had implied in her letter that she wanted a tête-à-tête. Mrs Wyndham knew the house well: she had housed many of her American protégées there, and she had received a handsome commission when she had persuaded Mrs Cash to buy it for her daughter.

Cora was standing at the top of the long marble staircase. Looking up at her Mrs Wyndham saw at once that the girl was different to the one she had met the year before. Some of those changes were physical; Mrs Wyndham assumed that the Duchess was by now pregnant, but the new softness was more than corporeal. The bright stare had gone. Something had dented that air of ownership. Mrs Wyndham was surprised, she had not put Cora down as the type to be altered by her marriage, she had seemed so self-possessed.

‘Thank you so much for coming to see me, Mrs Wyndham,’ said Cora.

‘Oh, my dear Duchess, you can’t imagine how thrilled I was to get your note. I rushed over here as soon as it was decent. I hope you are pleased with the house. Such a pleasant aspect, I always think. It would be hard to find a more elegant street in London. And how is the Duke? I hear there was some trouble in Ireland.’

‘Yes, there was a rent strike and the bailiff was held up at gunpoint. Ivo came away most disheartened. I think he should sell the Irish estate and buy something in Scotland but he won’t hear of it.’ Cora’s tone was light but there was a note of petulance.

‘Well, no, Dunleary has some of the best fishing in Ireland. No sportsman would want to give that up. You know how attached gentlemen are to their sport.’ Mrs Wyndham smiled wistfully, conveying in her glance the dead husband who had fallen while hunting with the Quorn. A reference that was lost on Cora.

‘Ivo is attached all right. He missed the rehearsal for our wedding because he decided to go on a hunting trip. My mother was scandalised. Of course American men like their sport too but they have their occupations, they can’t just take off in the middle of the week. Only today Ivo has gone all the way to Windsor to look at polo ponies.’

‘Such a noble game, but I hope he will be careful. I remember what happened to his poor brother.’ There was a pause as both ladies reflected on the death of the Eighth Duke.

Cora gestured to Mrs Wyndham to sit in one of the Louis fauteuils by the fire (Mrs Cash had had them sent over from America).

‘It’s interesting that you should mention Ivo’s brother, Mrs Wyndham. I know so little about Ivo’s earlier life. And he so rarely speaks of it. Did you know the family well?’

Mrs Wyndham lowered her eyelids, she hated to admit ignorance. ‘Not well exactly, but I saw the Warehams from time to time in London, and I was there for Charlotte Vane’s coming-out ball, which of course was given by the Duchess. Such a beautiful girl, she did very well for herself, considering. Odo Beauchamp is independently wealthy even beyond what he will inherit from his father.’ Mrs Wyndham noticed that Cora looked suddenly alert when she mentioned Charlotte’s name.

‘You say that Charlotte Vane did well for herself, considering. Considering what?’

‘Oh, her complete lack of fortune. Her father was a gambler and lost it all at the tables. She was lucky that the Duchess took her in after her mother died, I don’t know what she would have done otherwise. Far too pretty to be a governess. But the Duchess and Charlotte’s mother were cousins on the Laycock side, and I suppose not having a daughter, she thought it would be nice to have a girl to dress up. She was very kind to Charlotte, I dare say she would have settled something on her if she could. Instead she did the next best thing and saw her well married. Odo is not to everyone’s taste but he dotes on Charlotte and gives her everything she wants. Of course with her looks she might have done better than a baronet, but better a baronet with money than a marquess with mortgages.’ Mrs Wyndham looked in her reticule for her lorgnette, so she could see clearly what effect her conversation was having on Cora.

‘She looks like she enjoys spending money. She is quite the fashion plate,’ Cora was going to add, ‘for an English girl’, but stopped as she wasn’t sure how Mrs Wyndham, who by now had almost completely lost the American twang in her speech, would take this remark. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Mrs Wyndham had grown up in Manhattan not Mayfair.

‘Indeed, I believe her picture was in the
Illustrated London News
. Most regrettable. A respectable woman’s name should only appear in the newspaper three times in her life: when she is born, when she is married and when she dies.’

Cora smiled faintly, thinking of the many newspapers and magazines which had printed her own picture in the last few months.
Town Topics
had doubled its circulation at the time of her wedding. She had not enjoyed the articles about her trousseau but she had found it hard to object to the photograph of her that had run in the paper with the caption: ‘Is this the definitive American Beauty?’ Mrs Wyndham really had become quite British. Ivo had the same disdain for the press.

‘Charlotte Beauchamp was here yesterday, asking me to a musical evening. She seemed quite anxious that I should go. I wondered if I should accept.’ She looked anxiously at the older woman. Mrs Wyndham realised that, for all her poise, Cora was nervous of getting it wrong. She would be delighted to advise her. It had taken her twenty years to learn how to get it right.