The American Heiress (49 page)

When Bertha went into the servants’ hall, the room fell silent.

‘Some hot milk for the Duchess, please,’ Bertha asked one of the kitchen maids who was looking at her with round guilty eyes. As the girl scuttled off to get the milk from the dairy, Bertha looked up at a silver cup that stood on a high shelf. Every year there was a cricket match between the house and the village. This year the house had won. Bertha had found the game quite baffling but she had enjoyed watching Jim running down the pitch, his sleeves rolled up, his long arms strong, and she had felt warm with pride when something he did provoked applause. She could not imagine such a scene at home, the masters and the servants on the same team. Then she looked down at the faces surveying her curiously, hungry for scraps about the American Duchess; this was her home now, she thought, but she belonged here as little as she had in Newport. She was always the outsider, the stranger who stopped the flow of conversation, who made people feel uncomfortable. She remembered the cabin where she had grown up but there, too, she knew she would be a stranger with her silk dress and her fancy accent.

She deliberately kept her eyes fixed on the cup until the milk was brought to her by the kitchen maid. She took the tray up the back stairs to the Duchess’s bedroom, hoping to see Jim, but no one was about. As she walked along the passage that led to Miss Cora’s room, she heard a door shut and a flash of red at the other end. Bertha started. Had Lady Beauchamp really been to see Miss Cora? After all that had happened? She hurried towards the bedroom as fast as the hot milk would allow her and opened the door. But her alarm had been unnecessary, Cora was fast asleep, her face slack, her arms outstretched. Bertha thought she looked hardly a day older than the girl who had asked her for kissing lessons. She put the milk down and pulled the covers around her mistress, tucking her into a linen cocoon. She pushed a strand of hair out of Cora’s face.

The room was dark but there was a sliver of moonlight coming in through the gap in the curtains. Cora opened her eyes reluctantly, she did not want to be awake now when everything was still and quiet. She had wanted to sleep through till morning when the bustle and urgency of the day would drive all her thoughts into a small manageable corner of her brain. But she was fully conscious now, her head humming with all the images of the evening before – Charlotte leaning over to turn the page of music, Odo whispering in her ear, the Prince’s touch on her arm, Ivo’s defiant smile and his opaque eyes. She got up and lit the lamp by her bedside. She pulled on her wrapper – she would go to the nursery. She wanted to feel Guy’s small warm body and smell his soft downy head. Her son, at least, was certain.

The nursery smelt of eucalyptus and baby. Cora walked in and put down her lamp. She could hear Guy snuffling in his golden crib. Through the nursery door she could make out the deeper rumbling snores of the nanny. She went over to Guy and picked him up, cradling him against her chest. She tried to think of nothing but the sweet smell of his scalp and the tiny arpeggios of his breathing. But she could not obliterate the image of Charlotte reaching over to turn the page of music. She remembered the way the Double Duchess had looked after Odo’s outburst, not shocked or surprised but assessing, as if she were calculating the damage.

Cora held the baby a little closer as she thought how everyone must have known except her. She found the thought of her ignorance almost as distressing as the thought of Ivo’s treachery. She felt like a sapling that had begun to put down roots, pushing into the soil for stability and nurture, only to meet with emptiness. She thought of the servants, Sybil, even Mrs Wyndham – had they all known that her husband loved another woman? Had they all smiled and smoothed things over so that Ivo could marry the fortune that had fallen so conveniently at his feet that day in Paradise Wood?

And then she thought of Charlotte, her ‘friend’, the only woman in London whose wardrobe she envied. She had thought that they were equals – in looks, clothes and position. They had caught each other’s eye over the drabness. Had Charlotte been pretending all along? She remembered standing in another room in darkness the night before her wedding, and the note she had found in the dressing case. ‘May your marriage be as happy as mine has been.’ Even then, she had known the note to be malign and she had destroyed it. She thought back for other signs that she had ignored. Was her ignorance her own fault?

The baby made a shuddering squeak and Cora realised that she was holding him too tightly. She tried to relax her grip and walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. The moon was over the sea now. She could see the bell-shaped shadow of the summer house stretched out across the silvery lawn. The metal spire sent a long thin stripe like a tightrope over the grass. But could she go forward like Blondin, never looking down?

And then she felt a hand on her shoulder, a breath in her ear. She turned round. Ivo’s face was in shadow but she heard him say, ‘I told you, Cora, I have everything I want.’ And even though she could not see his eyes, she heard the plea in his voice and she could not resist it. She let him put his arms round her and Guy and leant into him as he kissed her hair and her forehead. This was all she wanted too.

Chapter 27

‘Then all Smiles Stopped’

T
HE FIRST THING TEDDY FELT WHEN HE WOKE
that morning was the throbbing in his right hand, from where his knuckles had met Odo Beauchamp’s nose. But the warm pulse of pain was followed by a blush of shame. He did not regret hitting Odo, the man had deserved it, but he knew now that what had seemed noble the night before was, on reflection, quite selfish. He had failed to stop Odo from making his horrible revelation and had assuaged his guilt with violence. He thought of what his mother would say if she knew that he was knocking English baronets about. She would be embarrassed by his lack of self-control but she would be horrified by the emotions behind it. As Teddy tried to stretch out his bruised fingers, he knew that the man he had wanted to hit was not his actual victim but the Duke himself.

The door opened and a footman came in with hot water and towels. He set Teddy’s shaving things out in front of the mirror. When Teddy walked over, the footman saw his hand and winced sympathetically.

‘Would you like me to get some ointment for that, sir? It looks nasty.’

Teddy understood from the man’s knowing look that he had been in the gallery last night.

‘Yes,’ he said ruefully, ‘it is surprisingly painful.’

The footman took this admission as an invitation and continued, ‘Never mind, sir, you should see the other fellow! His valet was up and down all night with beefsteak and ice. And then this morning he had to get him all packed up as Sir Odo is leaving on the morning train. He has to go and see a doctor in London, thinks his nose is broken.’ From the smile on the footman’s face, Sir Odo’s injury was clearly a popular one.

Teddy said, ‘I didn’t realise I’d hit him that hard.’

‘Not sure you did, sir. But maybe he thought he wouldn’t be welcome any longer.’ The footman glanced at Teddy to see if he would be reproved for gossiping, and then he handed him the razor. ‘It’s Lady Beauchamp I feel sorry for. Whatever she’s done, it would be purgatory to be married to a man like that. My cousin was a housemaid there and the stories she told were shocking and I’ve been in service fifteen years.’

Teddy would have liked to ask what Sir Odo was guilty of, but he was in the middle of shaving and could not speak.

‘She said it was a terrible place. Even though the pay was good, she gave in her notice after six months.’

The footman handed Teddy a towel.

‘Are you joining the cycling party, sir? Will you be wearing the blazer?’

Teddy nodded.

The footman laid out his clothes and said, ‘Is that all, sir?’

Teddy felt in his pockets for a coin and held it out to him.

‘That’s very kind of you, sir, but I couldn’t take it. Reckon you did us all a favour there, punching Sir Odious.’

Teddy took his time getting dressed. Odo Beauchamp might have left but he had no desire to see the Duke at breakfast. He now regretted the impulse which had made him write to Cora and to accept her invitation. He would have done better leaving her alone. He had had his chance in Newport and he had not taken it. She had not replied to the letter he had written to her before her wedding, but it had been too late to tell her then that he loved her. If only he hadn’t been so squeamish about the encounter he had witnessed at Euston Station, that would have been useful information for Cora, not some redundant declaration of love. But he had not wanted to get his hands dirty, he had half hoped that Cora would renounce her Duke and confound her mother because he, Teddy, had finally made up his mind that he loved her. And now he was faced with the consequences of his own delicacy: Cora had married a man whose real nature she did not know and, worse still, she had married for love. Teddy remembered the way her face had changed when he went to see her in New York, how she had lost her glorious selfish certainty. And he had seen in the brittle set of her shoulders last night just how much Odo’s revelations must have hurt her. He could have warned her. But he had not been interested in protecting Cora then, he had just wanted her to choose him.

He looked out of the window at the water garden on the terrace below, with its statues and fountains. The evening before he had heard Lady Tavistock say to the Double Duchess as she surveyed the glittering parterre, ‘So glorious now. Say what you like, Fanny, there are uses for American heiresses and their money after all.’ Had Cora realised, he wondered, exactly what sort of bargain she had made? He was sure not.

And now? Now that she knew what kind of man she had married, how would she proceed? Would she carry on, happy enough with the title her money had bought? Through the window, Teddy saw a man scrubbing one of the fountains, scraping off the slimy legacy of the spring rains. Teddy felt angry on Cora’s behalf; she had been deceived so that the marble fountains of Lulworth could be scrubbed clean. She was, he thought, worth a great deal more than that. He could not offer her all this, this panoply of fountains and balustrades and princes, but his feelings for her were at least straightforward: he loved the woman, not the heiress. He could give her a way out. The scandal would be immense for both of them. He would surely have to abandon his commission from the New York Public Library but that was proof of his love. He had given her up before because of his art, now he told himself that he would put Cora first.

Yes, he thought, he would act. The world might be shocked that he would offer his love to a married woman but he did not care for that. He dismissed the thought of his mother’s hooded blue eyes and the pious rectitude of her Washington Square friends. He was not an opportunist or an adulterer but a man who would sacrifice everything to rescue the woman he loved.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror and smiled at his own look of resolution. Then he set off down the stairs to join the cycling party.