The Love Knot Read online

  And best of all, he had no need to tell her that he loved her. That was not their relationship. He was the centre of her universe, from her he received unquestioning devotion, and he knew it. Words were not necessary. That alone was a blessing beyond measure. Most of all with her he did not have to be handsome, witty, or charming. He did not have to be good at bridge, or a brilliant seducer. He just had to be. And blessing upon blessing there was no husband, no children, no-one whose feelings had to be sacrificed to his pleasure.

  ‘You can open your eyes now, Sir.’

  The Prince of Wales stared into the hand mirror that Lady Angela was holding in front of him, but the image he saw reflected was not that of an overweight man in late middle age, but a small boy, no longer so frightened by everything that the very act of waking was always a moment of terror, knowing what was waiting, or might not be waiting, for him.

  ‘Ah. And now for…’ He turned and smiled at her.

  She too smiled, but she said in a firm voice, ‘No, Sister Nursey knows what is best for Sir. Eggies first, and afters – after.’

  ‘Sir’ sighed happily. How he had ever gone through a day without Lady Angela he truly did not know. What he did know was that because of her he no longer awoke frightened, wondering what was to happen to him, worrying that before too long it would all be over, the parade gone by, and he only a jester at the pageant.

  ‘Hold my hand, Dorey, please.’

  Dorinda did so, but even as she pressed her fingers she could not help herself starting to worry about Gervaise and what he would be doing, and whether or not Blanquette would have given him the message.

  ‘Don’t leave me, Dorey, please.’

  Dorinda looked down at Harry Montgomery. Her common sense was telling her to return home to Gervaise at once, but she could feel Harry’s need for her, and she knew his need at that moment was far greater than anything that Gervaise might be wanting from her. She and Harry had shared something of a life together, after all. Not the kind of life to which she would have liked to return, but a life nevertheless. They had swum together from a secret cove, walked together in fields with spring flowers, and sometimes, she suddenly remembered, they had even found themselves enjoying many of the same books. These things were not, after all, nothing.

  Of course she had not loved him as she loved Gervaise. Harry had only been a stepping stone towards something far more compelling, she realized now, but as such she bore him a duty, to be beside him in his hour of need, to help to nurse him, whatever the outcome.

  She scribbled another quick note to Gervaise, My friend grievously sick. Will return as soon as possible, Gervaise my darling. How I miss you! and sent it back with her coachman and the empty carriage.

  Of course Blanquette was the happy recipient of this tender communication, and of course, when Gervaise called again, late that evening, she was even happier to tell Monsieur Lowther that she had received no word from madame.

  ‘Not one word?’

  ‘I am so sorry, Monsieur Lowther, but not one.’

  Already quite drunk, Gervaise turned on his heel and walked despairingly off into the night. It was obvious now that Dorinda had left him to go back to her husband. She had returned to the marital fold, and he would have to find someone else who could enchant him. Except – and here he paused and leaned his head against a lamp post – who else would love him in the way that Dorinda had loved him? With such imagination, with such elan, with such sweetness? She was unlike any other he had known.

  From inside the house Blanquette watched with much satisfaction as Gervaise Lowther turned on his heel and went on to his late supper party without his Dorinda Blue. That she would undoubtedly lose her position if her deception was discovered was not a matter of the slightest concern to the young maid at that moment. Indeed any desire for security had quite fled in the face of the glorious possibility of causing her famous and beautiful mistress to lose her position in Society, and doubtless everything that went with it. The house, the carriage, the clothes, the jewels, the paintings, the furniture, the silk curtains, the porcelain, the silver, it would all go if Mr Lowther decided that it should.

  And now that he was most likely thinking that Mrs Montgomery had gone back to her husband, that might indeed be the case.

  Blanquette bit suddenly into her own clenched fist. The notion of Mrs Montgomery without anything except her street clothes, begging to be accepted back by an angry lover, was much more satisfying than anything she could previously have imagined, except of course seeing Madame Montgomery’s head in a basket. But alas – this was England, and that was not, as yet, a possibility.

  ‘Oh, Harry, we have had some fine times together, haven’t we?’ Dorinda stroked Harry Montgomery’s forehead, and seeing the look of compassion in the young nurse’s eyes as she sponged his forehead Dorinda knew, for certain, that she could not leave him until the worst, whatever that might be, was over.

  As to her darling Gervaise, she knew that he would understand. After all, he was so tolerant, so kind, so understanding. He would just laugh and say, ‘Come on, my Dorinda Blue, what are you going to wear tonight to please me?’

  * * *

  At the end of the private supper party later that night, so late it had in fact turned into the early hours of the following morning, Gervaise found himself leaving with a particularly appealing little blonde lady. She had been warmly recommended by Lord Faverdale, whose reputation and success with the ladies was something near to his own.

  ‘She’s a cracker, Lowther, an absolute cracker!’

  In the face of the fact that his adored mistress would seem to have returned to her wretched husband, Gervaise did not care whether the blonde was a cracker or not. Indeed, in his state of extreme inebriation, it would not have made the least difference to him, given that his Dorinda had left him, because he was, as it happened, at that moment, completely immune to all the charms of every blonde lady within the vicinity. That he had been left by his mistress for her husband was not the kind of news that any man wanted to receive, not now, not ever, but particularly not, as was the case with Gervaise Lowther, if the man concerned happened – damn it – to have fallen passionately in love with that same mistress.

  Before she opened her eyes the following morning Mercy said a prayer that what had happened the previous night at the ball would happen again, and again, and again. She wanted everything to happen all over again, up to and including the awful moment when her stepmother danced off into the mêlée on the ballroom floor in the arms of Sir Perry. It had all seemed suddenly to be so right, Sir Perry taking off the beautiful Lady Violet, when Mercy had ended up dancing with Mr Brancaster.

  All the way home in the family coach she had stared out of the window into the summer night remembering how he had laughed at her remarks, and, despite his being such a sporting man, how well he had waltzed. Mercy had never realized just what an intensity of emotion one dance with someone who was not your dancing master could generate, let alone two. It was wonderfully exciting, and yet at the same time frightening, because John Brancaster was not a young man. He was quite old.

  She thought for a minute. Yes, he was old. Indeed, he must be at least thirty-five years of age.

  But now that she had not just seen him in the Park and at the cemetery, but had danced with him too, she realized that he must be a very fashionable figure, for all that he was so much older. She knew that he must be unmarried or he would not have been asked to a ball to meet and dance with debutantes such as herself, girls just out and still, to the disappointment of their families, ignominiously unengaged.

  ‘At last, at long, long last, we were a success,’ Lady Violet had told her brother, who was waiting up for them in the library of the London house when they returned from the ball. ‘A great success. In the end we danced many dances, and all was as it should be.’

  ‘Splendid. So we will be taken into the conservatory before the end of the Season, and all will be well, I hope?’

  Lady Vi
olet, tall, beautiful, aristocratic and worldly, nodded at her brother behind Mercy’s back. It was a nod that said ‘Of course’, as if there was now no question of Mercy’s debut going in any other direction. Of course she would end up in the conservatory being proposed to, if her stepmother had anything to do with it. It was just a question of when, not if.

  ‘Goodnight, my dear. And, in the event, how very satisfactory the evening turned out to be.’

  Mercy climbed the stairs to her bedroom thinking of the disappointment she had felt in not being able to find Mr Brancaster to say goodbye to him, and worrying that she might forget him, as he had been. Most of all she worried that she would forget the sound of his voice, and the way he had of tilting his head back, away from her, when she spoke, as if – as if as she was speaking he wanted to see her better.

  Her maid was waiting to undress her, and for once Mercy could not wait to climb into bed, not so that she could read her newest book, but in order to remember a certain gentleman and his beautiful eyes, his dark hair, his tall, slender figure. For all that he was so much older than herself, she thought he was most dreadfully handsome, possibly the most handsome man in the whole room, and he had danced with her, Mercy Cordel, not once, but twice. It was more than she could possibly have hoped, or would ever have dreamed, could happen to her.

  Clarice handed Mercy a flower-decorated porcelain cup and saucer.

  ‘I’ve made you some hot milk and ’oney, Miss Cordel.’

  Mercy patted the end of the bed.

  ‘Sit down there, Clarice, and just wait until I tell you what a wonderful time I had at the ball.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Cordel, not a partner h’at last?’

  ‘Oh but yes, Clarice, and such a handsome one.’

  The two girls’ eyes met, knowing just what this might mean.

  ‘Who was it, Miss Cordel? Someone elegant and ’andsome?’

  ‘Yes, Clarice. The man we saw at the cemetery, remember?’

  The maid stared at her young mistress and a cloud came into her eyes, but seeing the innocence in Mercy’s expression she turned away, and put aside the warning that she would have delivered if she had been a friend. Nice men, Clarice knew, did not attend the funerals of unknown mannequins – unless they had known them in some way that was not, perhaps, convenable. But what use to say anything? It was clear that Miss Cordel was already what they called in the kitchens smitten.

  * * *

  Downstairs in the library her stepmother and uncle were sharing something more than the hot milk and honey brought to Mercy by Clarice. But they too were talking, and Lord Marcus, his reddish lips a little wet, his eyes strangely shorn of eyelashes, his face somehow reminding even his loving sister of a tortoise, wanted to know, ‘Well, Vile-lette’ – he always called his sister that – ‘did she fall for him?’

  ‘My dear Marcus, fall for him? The moment Mr Brancaster came up to her, I think she would have married him then and there.’

  Lady Violet laughed lightly, as she could and did quite often, and her beautiful eyes darkened with satisfaction.

  ‘She had eyes for no other, Marcus dear, no other.’

  ‘How perfectly splendid.’

  ‘It is indeed perfectly splendid.’

  Her brother nodded. ‘You have made a very good choice, but then you always do, and always have done. Not for nothing are you nicknamed the Season’s Godmother, my dear. No-one can touch you when it comes to matchmaking. But with good effect, for, as we all know, Brancaster needs someone younger, someone to give him children, and a settled home life. He has been a bachelor sportsman for far too long. If you stay a bachelor too long, people talk. I know. I have, and people have never stopped talking!’

  They both laughed, but only briefly because it was an old joke, and every Season, year in and year out, Lord Marcus made the same remark. Lady Violet did not really mind, because she had so enjoyed dancing with young Sir Perry that that was all she really wanted to think about at that moment. Dancing with Sir Perry she had felt quite seventeen again. She smiled at her brother, at her most benign and happy.

  It was really very satisfactory. Not just the ball, but the added excitement of causing just a little scandal by dancing off with poor Sir Perry. But then, as it had transpired, she had no alternative if she was to induce Brancaster to dance with Mercy. Yes, it had all been most satisfactory, not least because she had quite forgotten what it was like to see that particular light of admiration in a young man’s eyes, and she had indeed seen it in Sir Perry’s mischievous blue ones. She thought she really must make a note of where he had his hunting box.

  ‘Good night, Marcus, my love. Do not finish quite all my husband’s port, for we still have a little bit of the Season left to us.’

  Lord Marcus waved to her, once more seated at the eighteenth-century library table, most of the contents of the decanted bottle of crusty port already sitting comfortably in his ample stomach.

  ‘La-di-da, Vile-lette darling, la-di-da!’

  All in all Lady Violet thought she could not have put it better herself. It somehow summed up all the brilliance of the evening, as well as much else besides.

  Of course an early engagement at the very start of the Season was never to be desired, unless, that is, a girl had no dresses at all to speak of, but by the end of June, after Ascot, a girl’s dresses were meant to have been seen, and any mother – or in Mercy’s case, her stepmother – would want her to be safely engaged, and well on the way to the altar.

  Later, as she woke up from her second sleep of the morning, Lady Violet lay listening to her maid filling the bath in front of the fire. It was always a most relaxing moment. She liked to lie and listen to the water being poured, the fire being heaped, in the certain knowledge that such day clothes as she would be needing for the next few hours would have already been laid out. Her eyes on the plasterwork of the ceiling above her, she thought quickly ahead to Mercy’s wedding.

  It would have to be a London wedding, of course. To hold it at Cordel Court would be ridiculous, especially seeing that it still took two days to reach Somerset.

  No, it would have to be a London wedding, and not more than five hundred guests. More than that would really be rather unimaginable, if not vulgar.

  Naturally she would be able to steal the show from the bride, since not only was Mercy not pretty, she was not really stylish either. As the stepmother of the bride, Lady Violet thought she would wear a dress of muted blues, blues that would set off her marvellous colouring and her beautifully dark, shining hair. She kicked the bedclothes down to the foot of the bed a second after thinking of this colour, and as soon as she had, she changed her mind. No, she would not dress in blue, but in the very latest of fashionable yellows. Yellow was so striking, and seeing that she would be so much the youngest of her generation at the family wedding breakfast it would be immensely appropriate, it seemed to her, to be dressed in spring-like clothes. After all, with yellow she could team the Cordel diamonds, although she might allow Mercy to wear the family tiara. Nothing thrilled Lady Violet more than the Cordel diamonds, so old and so brilliant, and gleaming as they always did with the particular dull glow that told the world they were over a hundred years old. She had worn them all Season, and even the Prince of Wales had commented on the Cordel stomacher.

  It was a piece so cleverly re-made from other inferior items by Tarleton that it looked as old as the diamonds she had ordered him to take from other, duller, pieces that she never wore. This undoubtedly glorious centre to her long silken dresses and skirts was a decoration designed to draw all male eyes to the tiny waist and slender outline of Lady Violet Cordel, an outline whose beauty had never been thickened by childbirth, nor, thank goodness, was it now ever likely to be so.

  ‘Your ladyship’s bath is ready.’

  Her maid stood by her bed, and Lady Violet turned and smiled at her. It was a beautiful smile, a smile such as the maid imagined an angel might give.

  She stepped out of bed, past the maid, and tr
od over the patterned carpet to the fire where the bath, full and steaming, lay waiting for her, the kettles and the towels beside it, the maid treading reverently behind her, knowing, as they both did, that she was so very inferior, in every way, to her mistress.

  Lady Violet stepped out of her nightgown in such a way as to allow it to fall easily behind her into the maid’s grateful hands. She knew it thrilled the girl to handle everything to do with her ladyship, and that when Lady Violet was not looking at her she cradled the clothes close to her face.

  Not that she could be blamed. The nightgown was made of the finest of fine lawn and embroidered by hand by immigrants whose sole hope of scraping a living was to follow this line of work. Some stitched finely by hand, hour after hour, peering at their beautiful handiwork by the light of tallow candles, while others took it in turn to try to survive by dint of working in sweatshops where sewing machines turned from morning till night, and the sick and dying lay about in the same room as those who were stronger and more likely to survive to sew another day. The pay was terrible, the conditions worse, but the nightdresses that emerged from these traditions were very fine. Certainly Lady Violet could not have cared less how her nightdress had come to her, only that it had.

  As her maid sponged her back, admiring her ladyship’s white body and the thick dark hair that contrasted so beautifully with its soft texture, Lady Violet thought a great deal about the delights that might be ahead of her. There was Ascot, very, very soon, and then there was just a little touch of Henley, but not too much since she only liked to see people in boaters and watch men rowing for a small length of time.

  And now, after that, just as she would have been about to be bored and restless, there would doubtless be The Wedding. In July, she thought and then back to Cordel Court, and only a little bit of time until the hunting started and she would be off to her brother’s hunting box in Leicestershire. Or visiting friends, or staying at home with the South West Wilts…and on and on the delights of the year unrolled themselves to Lady Violet, until it seemed to her that she must surely be the luckiest woman on earth.