The Love Knot Page 3

  ‘Mrs Dodd!’

  Madame Chloe would never dream of addressing her old friend in anything but the most formal terms, especially in front of her own assistants and mannequins, girls that she liked to keep ‘under her thumb’ and treat as, in her opinion, all girls should be treated – strictly.

  ‘Madame Chloe.’

  Madame Chloe seemed to swim towards Mary Dodd. Despite the similarity of their backgrounds she and Leonie curtsied to each other, and then Mrs Dodd sat Leonie beside her on the small upright red velvet ‘duenna’s sofa’ that was placed in one of the windows of Madame Chloe’s first floor rooms.

  ‘This is my goddaughter, Miss Lynch.’

  Now Madame Chloe, having observed the formalities for the sake of her staff and her own sense of what was fitting, nodded and smiled at Mrs Dodd in silent congratulation as she turned Leonie’s pretty head from one side to another, examining her really quite perfect profile with evident satisfaction.

  ‘Well, well,’ she said finally, bending slightly sideways and speaking behind her hand, ‘we shall take great pleasure in having the dressing of this beautiful young lady, shall we not, dear?’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Mrs Dodd murmured, and she too smiled, because considering they had grown up together the formalities that they used in public were all a bit of a charade, albeit one that they both hugely enjoyed. In front of the world at large they were careful to behave quite differently from the way they would be to each other in private life when Madame Chloe was ‘off duty’ and went round to her old friend’s house, usually late of a Sunday afternoon. At these times they would take tea together and have a great laugh, not to mention a most enjoyable talk about the old days.

  ‘So, now, it is time to begin.’ Madame Chloe clapped her hands, and into the room stepped the first model. ‘Here we have a walking costume.’

  As soon as Leonie saw the model, took in the cut and the cloth, the hat, the gloves, every fine detail of that costume, she wanted to rip the girl’s clothes off and put them on herself, but instead she sat very still in her home-made navy blue dress with its formal little sailor collar, and her small hat which sat atop a head of rich, thick blonde hair, as Madame Chloe pointed out all the tailoring details of the coat and skirt.

  It seemed hours, but was most likely actually not more than one, before Leonie was at last allowed to try on Mrs Dodd’s choices of day dresses and coats and skirts, not to mention two evening dresses, and a cloak.

  ‘Is this part of my uniform for Sister Angela’s Nursing Home?’

  Mary Dodd laughed such a rich laugh that, although she felt embarrassed at her own ignorance, it could not but remind Leonie of frankly indulgent things like dark fruit cake and port, and the velvet interiors of jewel boxes, and the red leather, pliant and buttoned, that made up the seating in the Dodd carriage.

  Leonie’s turquoise eyes turned to Mrs Dodd. The enquiry was genuine, for she had never expected to be indulged by her godmother in quite this way, and certainly not so soon. She had expected to have to work hard at her nursing for what she was being given, but doubtless the price that she would have to pay for such luxuries would come later?

  ‘These clothes are for when you are off duty!’

  This time they both laughed, understanding exactly, together, and for the first time, that Sister Angela’s Nursing Home was only a stepping stone to something much, much more exciting.

  Any time that is not spent on love

  Is wasted.

  Two

  Dorinda Montgomery sighed impatiently. She hated the way her husband, Harry, always disappeared the moment their train or boat arrived. She really disliked how he seemed to delight in going off at that precise second in search of something quite negligible like a newspaper or a buttonhole. It was so intensely irritating to watch him strolling off in the opposite direction that she always, and immediately, felt like screaming. Not that Harry would notice if she did scream, of course. She could scream and scream and scream if she wished, and he would remain totally unimpressed. All he would do would be to look in the opposite direction until such time as she had stopped screaming, and then resume whatever conversation they happened to have been having before she started to yell.

  Life had not been good to either of them since they had married two years before. Each of them had been a disappointment to the other. She because she could not settle to a quiet life in the backwaters, and he because he could not learn to make ends meet, which meant that they had spent the first two years of their marriage in small, run-down boarding houses in Jersey or the Scilly Isles or France, while Harry tried to make up his mind how his life should go – and, sometimes, but not so often, Dorinda’s too.

  Finally, unable to bear it any longer, Dorinda had packed up their suitcases and gone down to the harbour, purchased two tickets, sent for a porter, had the suitcases put on the first boat to England, and stepped up the gangplank, in company, as she had fondly imagined, with her husband Harry. But no, a few minutes later, back down the gangplank went Harry, and disappeared.

  At first Dorinda tried not to react to his absence, but just stood forlornly waiting for his return, as time ticked on and on, and on. With no further sight of her vanished husband, up and down went Dorinda’s small, elegant foot, tapping with impatience.

  He was meant to have gone for the wretched Morning Post without which it seemed he could not start his day, but as it was he seemed to have gone altogether. Various whistles blew, and blew again. Another man hurried up the gangplank, and for a few seconds her hopes were raised, only to be dashed again as she saw that the man whose outline she had been following was someone quite other than Harry Montgomery, although wearing what had seemed like an identical suit.

  Dorinda leaned anxiously over the side of the ship and stared up and down the quay below them. Any minute now the gangplank would be pulled up and she would be quite alone.

  ‘Harry!’ she started to call frantically. ‘Harry!’

  Inevitably there was no reply, and as she started to move towards the gangplank, hoping to delay the boat by running down it to find her slowcoach of a husband, a hand pulled at the base of her tight-fitting jacket, and a voice said in her ear, ‘It’s no good. The gangplank is about to come up. It’s too late!’

  ‘But my husband!’ Dorinda cried, and without turning she shook herself free and plunged off in the direction of the gangplank. ‘Harry!’

  In the event the voice that had spoken from behind was right. It was too late. The gangplank had been raised, and all made ready for the ship to sail from the harbour. Now below her for the first time Dorinda could see her husband strolling – literally strolling – towards the ship, and then, seeing it was indeed moving off, starting to increase his speed, but far, far, too late, until finally he was left on the quayside, waving to Dorinda, as if he had suddenly changed his mind about sailing with her at all.

  ‘Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?’

  She turned away, but as she did so she found her way blocked by a tall, sophisticated man with greying hair, informally if impeccably dressed in a tweed suit with half-belt. His eyes attempted solemnity as he raised his boater to her and bowed politely.

  ‘In the circumstances, madam, your husband being left on the shore, surely the only answer is to accept an invitation to lunch with myself?’

  Dorinda, who had been just about to burst into tears, promptly stopped.

  She stopped for many reasons. First because she suddenly realized what a complete bother it was to burst into tears – such an effort really. And then to have to put cold flannels on her eyes, that too was a nuisance. Next, she was not quite sure that she really cared that much about leaving Harry on the shore anyway. He had been nothing but a prize idiot, going off like that at the last moment, and just for a newspaper.

  As a matter of fact, the realistic part of her applauded the fact that for once her dire warnings, warnings that Harry always seemed to so enjoy ignoring, had left him where he so richly deserved to b
e, not only high and dry, but upstream and without a paddle. For, she realized, turning, he had left not only his suitcase with her, but his Gladstone bag containing a great deal of what was left of their money.

  Having decided not to burst into tears, and after an appropriate if quite short pause, Dorinda smiled suddenly and brilliantly at the middle-aged man who was still holding his jaunty straw boater in a gallant salute.

  ‘I have a private cabin. May I invite you to take luncheon there? It would be so nice to be able to make up to you for your terrible distress.’

  Dorinda knew that she should not accept. She was a married woman, and married women were not expected to take luncheon alone with men in their private cabins. But Harry had proved such a crashing ass, never listening to a word she said, and not minding too much about how she felt about anything either. Therefore, instead of saying no which of course, in the normal way of things, she would have done, she heard herself say, ‘Thank you, I should be delighted.’ And the dreadful thing was, she was delighted, not least because, in a somewhat lame attempt to save every penny of their money for their longed-for journey to England, Dorinda had not actually eaten properly for many days.

  ‘I have just ordered enough lobsters to feed a party of six, so the thought that I am to have a guest is too delightful.’

  ‘Lobsters! I adore lobsters. But…what shall I do with my luggage?’

  ‘Why, Mrs…?’

  ‘Montgomery, Dorinda Montgomery.’

  ‘Mrs Montgomery. And I am Gervaise Lowther.’

  ‘What shall I do with my luggage?’ Dorinda asked again, as if a man who could have the foresight to order lobsters for luncheon must surely have the same kind of command over suitcases.

  They both stared at the suitcases. With the exception of the really rather new Gladstone bag, all the Montgomerys’ luggage was pretty shaming, and shabby. It was not the kind of shabby that was acceptable either, not worn down with genteel age, just worn down from only a few years’ existence because it had been so very inexpensive in the first place.

  Gervaise Lowther stared from it to Dorinda, and back again to the luggage.

  ‘I tell you what, Mrs Montgomery, why don’t we leave it here, just for a while ...’

  ‘Not the Gladstone bag. That I will take with me.’

  Dorinda, ever practical, quickly picked up that particular piece of luggage.

  ‘No, perhaps not that, but the rest can surely be left?’ Gervaise Lowther’s eyes swept over the Montgomerys’ suitcases in such a way as all at once to make them seem like just so many brown paper parcels containing clothing for the poor and needy. ‘As a matter of fact, why not have a porter come for it and put it in the hold? And we will take ourselves off to my cabin where I hope we may enjoy our luncheon in peace and quiet.’

  She was a married woman, she was going to lunch, quite alone, with a stranger, but suddenly Dorinda could not have minded in the very least.

  She turned her most dazzling smile on Gervaise Lowther and taking his arm as if it was the most natural thing in the world, the other hand firmly gripping the Gladstone bag, she sauntered off towards his private cabin.

  Afterwards, long afterwards, Dorinda would, privately, put down her fall from marital grace to too much wine, and the rocking of the ship, both of which, combined with the starvation to which she had, due to lack of funds, subjected herself in the previous days, had meant that, after several glasses of champagne and the most wonderful luncheon she had ever eaten – lobster mayonnaise being just the entrée – she had succumbed to Gervaise’s

  obvious charms all too terribly and beautifully easily.

  At that particular moment, however, all she felt was blissfully happy, for such is the effect of hindsight that what has given an individual nothing but pleasure and delight at the time, can in retrospect need a more moral, or understandable, explanation.

  So much so that, with the passing of the years, Dorinda could even persuade herself that she had felt sorry for Gervaise, that he needed comforting. Or she would feel moved to pity for the poor innocent that she had once been – on board a ship for England, all alone, still only twenty, starved with hunger, and with an uncaring husband. Tears of sorrow for her young self would easily well up into her large, violet blue eyes, but if sorrow for herself developed over a distance of years, at the time, in reality, she took nothing but delight in her situation.

  The truth was that she would never have married Harry Montgomery had her pushy mother not made it quite plain to her that if she did not she would make her become a stenographer, or put her in a convent, and not even as a nun, but as a domestic. Since neither course of action was in the least appealing to such a spirited young girl, Dorinda, half French and half Celtic as she was, decided to take a sanguine view of her future, and married the dull and unappealing Harry Montgomery.

  Over lunch with the sparkling Gervaise Lowther, however, her more wild and romantic side re-emerged. Besides revelling in the delicious food, she found she was quite able to enjoy herself without her husband, and, what was worse, cared about neither her future nor her past, and only for the present delectable moment.

  The fact was that Gervaise Lowther was perfectly wonderful company. Not only was he urbane, and reasonable, he told her stories, and he laughed and joked, and – even more impressive to Dorinda – he knew everyone there was to know in London Society.

  From the very start, inexperienced as she was, Dorinda realized at once that her lunching companion rubbed shoulders with the kind of people she had only read about in that same wretched Morning Post that had caused her husband to miss the boat. Gervaise Lowther referred to people in the highest circles in such a casual and amusing way that it seemed to Dorinda (all too conscious of her own provincial background) that just by lunching with him she was already curtsying to royalty.

  ‘One thing so often leads to another, do you not find?’ he asked her, laughingly, after they had not only lunched, but – inevitable when two attractive people have eaten and drunk so well – made love.

  Dorinda lay against the mountain of pillows that seemed to her to be so terribly essential to the kind of lovemaking that she had just experienced and nodded, quite unable to speak. The past uncountable minutes had been extraordinary. She had been awakened to lovemaking, indeed passion, of the most wondrous kind, of the kind that made her realize just what she had been missing in the past two years.

  ‘Should we, I wonder…again?’ she asked him, drowsy as a bee on a summer afternoon.

  Gervaise Lowther looked down at her and burst out laughing.

  ‘My dear, I only wish that we could, but the white cliffs of Dover are approaching. We will be arriving within the hour, and you surely need to take some rest after your activities, really you do!’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh no, oh well!’

  Dorinda clutched the sheet to her but insisted on kissing him nevertheless, a kiss that could have led to more and more, and more and more, had he not straightened up, laughing, and shaken his head.

  ‘No more, my dear. You must rest.’

  ‘And after I have rested?’

  ‘Like every other lady – you dress. But can you– –’ He looked at her suddenly alarmed. ‘I mean, can you dress, without your maid?’

  Of a sudden he seemed far from sophisticated. Indeed, he looked panic-struck, and it was immediately obvious that if Dorinda had expected him to help her it would have been hopeless.

  In two seconds flat Dorinda understood what was required of her and quickly replied, ‘Oh, yes. I have done so before, although I really don’t like it,’ and this despite the fact that she had never even realized, until that minute, that no real lady ever dressed herself. That was definitely not something her mother had told her, stupid woman.

  ‘Well, well, well, you are certainly a young woman rich in many talents if you can dress yourself too.’

  ‘Yes, but you will have to help me with the laces on my corset.’

  Gervaise Lowther, forty-f
ive, man about town, experienced lover, racehorse owner, friend of the Prince of Wales, bon viveur, sighed with relief and lightly touched Dorinda’s cheek with the tip of his finger.

  ‘That is not all I will help you with, my dear. I shall also help you have your luggage thrown into the sea. After which I would advise you that you are going to come and live with me in St John’s Wood, where I have a house, which shall be yours until further notice, that notice being dependent on your being as good a girl as you are at the moment, which is to say – very good indeed.’

  Dorinda frowned, and thought, How strange. She quite imagined that she had just been bad. She looked down at her wedding ring. She knew she was married, but just at that moment she could not even remember what Harry Montgomery looked like. Or rather, she could remember what he looked like, but not what he was actually like. Nor even what clothes he had been wearing that morning when he had strolled off in search of the wretched Morning Post. Nor even quite how his voice sounded. Her meeting, so out of the blue, with Gervaise Lowther had swept all those details from her twenty-year-old mind, and what was more the mere mention of having her own house had swept everything else out with them too.

  She gazed out of the window at the sea. She was going to have her own house! It did not seem possible. After all those dreary months and weeks in run-down boarding houses, she was going to have a house in a place called ‘St John’s Wood’, wherever that might be.

  ‘Can I also have the use of a hansom cab when I want?’

  Gervaise turned round and stared at his newest mistress.

  ‘Have the use…have the use of…of a hansom cab?’ He opened his mouth to laugh at such a notion, but on seeing Dorinda Montgomery’s innocence of expression he quickly smiled instead. ‘You are not going to use a hansom cab,’ he told her gravely, watching as he did so the expression of happiness fading from her eyes, ‘no, no hansom cab for you. You are going to have your own carriage and your own horses, and dresses and ball gowns, and some jewels, not the best, but some fine ones none the less. Provided you go on being as good as you are now.’