The American Heiress (40 page)

Chapter 22

The Homecoming

T
OM, THE TELEGRAPH BOY, WONDERED WHAT
would happen if he removed his cap. It was expressly forbidden under post office rules but it was a warm day and there was no one to see him here in the Lulworth woods. On the other hand, if Mr Veale was to hear that he had been improperly dressed, he would be sent back to his mother in Langton Maltravers. Mr Veale had fined Tom sixpence the week before for allowing the silver buttons on his tunic to become tarnished; another boy had been dismissed for delivering a telegram with his stiff collar unfastened. Tom decided that the immediate relief of removing his cap, which was too small and rubbed painfully against his temples, was not worth the risk of being discovered. Mr Veale had a way of knowing when rules had been broken. He was fond of saying that he could ‘smell an infringement’. Tom had not been clear what an infringement was, until the incident with the buttons, and even now he wondered how they could be smelt. All five remaining telegraph boys reeked of the same things: inky serge, sweat and the bicarbonate of soda they used to shine their buttons. In winter they smelt a bit less and in summer a bit more.

It was three miles from the post office in Lulworth to the house. Mr Veale always sent Tom because he could walk the fastest. Twenty-one minutes on the way there and seventeen on the return journey, which was downhill. Mr Veale had told him to do it today in twenty minutes because the telegram was from the Duke. Tom was doing his best, bowling along at a loping pace midway between a walk and a run. He had set off at nine exactly and although he did not carry a pocket watch, he knew that he was making good time because he had heard the single chime from the Lulworth church bell which marked the quarter hour. He was at the part of the drive that curved behind a clump of beech trees before emerging into the open and revealing the house itself. There was no longer any question of removing his cap, Tom knew that he could be seen from any one of the glittering windows ahead of him. He loosened the strap under his chin a notch so that there would not be a red welt there, and thought of the glass of lemonade he would be given in the cool kitchen, as he pressed on towards the house.

Bertha spotted him from the window of Miss Cora’s room. Her mistress was still in bed, not sleeping but staring up at the canopy as if it was a map. Bertha was unnerved by this, as she was by Cora’s silence. She had heard the rumours last night at supper about the Duke’s return. Mr Bugler thought he would be home today and had all the footmen put on their dress livery. Bertha herself had put on her best cream silk tussore blouse. It had been Miss Cora’s, of course, but she had never worn it. As a rule Bertha avoided light colours because they made her appear darker but after an English winter her skin needed the glow of the pearly silk. She had laid out the pale green tea gown with the swansdown trim for her mistress, which to her mind was the most becoming of Miss Cora’s current ensembles. But Cora had refused to entertain the notion of getting dressed, shaking her head when Bertha tried to coax her out of bed. She had even refused Bertha’s attempts to do her hair, which lay in limp hanks on her pillow. Bertha was used to her mistress’s moods but she had never known them to interfere with dressing her hair before. Miss Cora could be tiresome but she didn’t give up on things. Bertha didn’t understand why her mistress was moping like this. All she had been doing for the last five months was wait for the Duke to come home, and now he was most likely on his way she was lying there like a corpse.

She turned from the window. ‘I can see the telegraph boy, Miss Cora.’

There was no reply.

‘I expect it’ll be from the Duke. Maybe he is coming on the afternoon train.’

The silence continued. Bertha watched as the telegraph boy started to climb the steps up to the house.

‘I reckon Mr Bugler will be bringing the telegram up here in a minute, Miss Cora. Maybe you want to get ready?’

Cora’s eyes did not flicker from her scrutiny of the canopy.

Bertha began to feel irritated. If Cora couldn’t see the truth of things, she would have to tell her. There were times of late when she felt more like Cora’s mother than her maid. She began to speak briskly.

‘If I was coming home after five months in India, I would like to see my wife dressed up and looking pleased to see me, not lying in her bed staring at the ceiling. Come on, Miss Cora, you don’t want Mr Bugler to see you like this.’

Cora gave a sigh and rolled over on to her side before pushing herself upright. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hands.

‘All right, all right, you can stop scolding me. You’re right, of course, Bertha. Bugler will go straight to Duchess Fanny, and then she will come up here and start interfering. Lord knows I thought my mother was bad enough, but the Duchess really is the end.’ She stretched out her hands and then let them drop in her lap. ‘I just don’t understand why Ivo didn’t come straight home.’

Bertha had almost finished pinning Cora’s hair in place when Bugler came in with the telegram on a silver salver. Cora opened it without haste and dropped the telegram on to the polished tray when she had finished.

‘The Duke will be here for dinner tonight, Bugler. If you could let Cook know, I am sure she will want to prepare something special.’

Bugler bent his head in the shallowest possible bow. ‘I believe the Duchess of Buckingham has already spoken to Mrs Whitchurch, Your Grace.’

Bertha was impressed by the way that Cora did not react to this. Instead, she smiled without showing her teeth, and said, ‘Indeed! How thoughtful of her.’ She put her hand to her hair and brought down one ringlet that she proceeded to curl round her fingers. Bugler hovered, clearly impatient to be gone but unable to move until he had been formally dismissed.

‘Will that be all, Your Grace?’

‘Yes, I think so, Bugler. No, actually, I do have one request.’ She spoke to Bugler in the mirror. ‘Duchess Fanny’s bouquet, the one from her first wedding. I thought I had asked for it to be removed from the long gallery. Kindly see to it before the Duke arrives.’

Cora caught Bertha’s eye in the mirror and tilted her chin. Bertha saw that her mistress’s face had lost its sulky heaviness and that there were spots of colour in her cheeks. When she had finished pinning Cora’s hair she stood back and said, ‘You look quite fine today, Miss Cora.’

Cora looked back at Bertha. ‘Do you really think so? I’ve changed so much though. When Ivo left, I was still in corsets. If he had been here, he would have had time to get used to me…swelling.’ She put her hands over her stomach. ‘When he is confronted with this, I’m afraid he will get quite a shock.’ She picked up the black pearl necklace from its green velvet home and handed it to Bertha to fasten.

Bertha slid the gold hook through the eye and pushed it into the diamond clasp. She wondered if the Duke would indeed be taken aback by Cora’s appearance. When he left she had been hardly showing; now her whole body had altered; as well as the round globe of her stomach, there were blue veins crossing her décolletage and her face was softer and rounder. Even Cora’s voice had changed; as her pregnancy progressed, it had become deeper and huskier, she had quite lost her pert American twang. But at least, thought Bertha, she no longer looks so like the girl in the portrait which had been left leaning unwanted against the wall of the gallery at Bridgewater House. Bugler was fond of describing the picture as shocking, even though to Bertha’s knowledge he had never actually seen it. She was the only servant at Lulworth who had set eyes upon the portrait, but when asked her opinion she had pretended ignorance. She knew that Bugler, for one, had not believed her, but she did not want to join them in condemning it. She understood that to do so was really a way of running down Cora herself; Bugler could not allow disrespectful talk of the Duchess herself in the servants’ hall, but the portrait was another matter. There had been times over the last few months when Bertha had wondered whether her decision to hold herself aloof from the gossip in the servants’ hall had been the right one, but some loyalty to Cora and a feeling that no concession to her fellow servants would ever make her belong stopped her.

She caught Cora’s eye in the mirror and said with more firmness than she felt, ‘I think the Duke will be happy enough to see you carrying his child.’

Cora nodded her head. ‘Perhaps. It is, after all, the thing only
I
can give him. An heir.’

The Duke’s telegram had simply said, ‘Arriving this evening. Wareham.’ Even allowing for the essentially public nature of the communication which would be read by the postmasters in London and Lulworth, not to mention the telegraph boy, Cora felt the economy of those four words keenly. There was nothing for her there, no hint that he was looking forward to coming home, to seeing her again. Even his letters to her from India had been signed, ‘Your affectionate husband, Wareham.’ At the time she had found ‘affectionate’ less than adequate as a term of endearment, but now she would have welcomed anything more conciliatory than this stark statement of facts. She still could not believe that Ivo had been in the country for two whole days without letting her know.

She had been anticipating the moment of his return for so long, rehearsing the conversations she would have with him in her head, planning the food, the company, the flowers. She had ordered the head gardener, Mr Jackson, to force hundreds of jasmine plants so they would be ready for his arrival, as he had once told her that it was his favourite flower. She had been practising the Schubert duets they had played together so that she could play her part from memory. She had spent many hours with Father Oliver trying to piece together the complicated narrative of the Maltravers family so that she could refer casually to the Fourth Duke’s stammer or the bloodlines of the Lulworth lurchers. She had done everything she could think of to be a convincing Duchess. An English Duchess, who knew the rules, who knew how to do more than spend money. But it had not occurred to her that Ivo might not be as eager to play his part in the reunion as she was. She had imagined him arriving post-haste from Southampton, salty and fervent. And yet here she was with the sort of telegram he might have sent to his butler. Surely she had done her penance for the portrait affair, sequestered here at Lulworth with nothing to do for months.

She decided that she would not go down to lunch. She had no desire for another skirmish with the Double Duchess. Perhaps she would send for Sybil and sort out some dresses for her.

There was a knock at the door and a footman brought in the second post of the day. There were two letters, one from London, the other from Paris. On one she recognised Mrs Wyndham’s handwriting; the other hand also looked familiar but it took her a moment to remember where she had seen it before. Those backward-leaning strokes that betrayed the author’s left-handedness she recalled from the ivory tablets that were used as dance cards at the Newport balls. She reached for the paper knife and opened the letter impatiently.

Dear Cora,

I hope I may still call you Cora. I am afraid I still think of you as Cora Cash even though I know that you are now that very august creation, an English duchess. I write to you because I am coming to London for the summer – I have been invited to share a studio in Chelsea and I have been furnished with an introduction to Louvain, whose work, as you know, I admire greatly. But of course the greatest attraction of England is that it is now the country where you live. I imagine that your days and nights are filled with your new duties but may I claim the privilege of an old friend and visit with you? If, in view of our last encounter, this prospect seems painful to you then I can only apologise in advance; but if you can think of me now as a friend whose affection is nothing but disinterested, then please send me word. We have known each other since childhood after all and I hope that our friendship may continue.

Your affectionate friend,
Teddy Van Der Leyden