Another Heartbeat in the House (29 page)

‘He could be had up for poaching the next time he does that,' said St Leger with a laugh.

I gave him a curious look. ‘Why?'

‘Lord Abingdon dropped down dead taking a fence with the Red and Blacks last week.'

‘What has he to do with anything?'

‘He owns the fishing rights hereabouts. They'll pass to his son once the will has been ratified.'

Everything stopped suddenly. The breeze stopped ruffling the lake, the blackbird stopped singing, I stopped walking.

‘You mean the lake isn't yours?'

‘No. I lease the rights from His Lordship on an annual basis. He owns the hunting and fishing rights for miles around. Or rather, his son does now.'

‘But isn't that why you built the house? So that you could come here to hunt?'

‘I built a bothy, Eliza. The house was your idea.'

Clara Venus spluttered at my breast. I looked down at her, trying to think.

‘And I don't hunt here,' he continued. ‘I hunt with the Red and Blacks. There is no fox hunting hereabouts.'

‘But you're always going off shooting!'

‘Shooting and hunting are very different. You're such a townie, my sweet! It's rather endearing to know that you can be rattlebrained about some things.'

‘So unless you pay the new Lord Abingdon, you can neither hunt nor fish?'

‘That's so.'

I had got it wrong. So egregiously wrong. I had just learned that my house, my two acres of land and my little stretch of lakeshore were worth nothing.

‘I'll have to decide whether it's worth paying to keep the permit on,' continued St Leger. ‘Especially now that Sophia wants to remove to London.'

‘Why does she want to do that?'

‘Her father has expressed a preference that George be reared in England.'

‘He's
your
son!'

‘His future is there, Eliza. He'll be heir to the Roesworth estate one day.'

And your daughter will be heir to a poxy so-called hunting lodge in a poxy bog in the poxy county of Cork!
I wanted to say, but of course did not. It was imperative to keep my mouth shut and think strategically. But I couldn't think, I couldn't think of anything any more. All I knew was that the house I had gone to such pains to have built had suddenly become as cumbersome as Coleridge's albatross, and that if my cook put trout or salmon or bream on a plate in front of me from this day on, I could be had up for poaching.

‘Well, I'm sure George will make a very handsome country gent over there in Buckinghamshire,' I sniped. ‘Perhaps his sister could get a job as an under-housemaid at Roesworth House.'

St Leger gave me a sharp look, and I sheathed my claws at once. When in doubt, be winsome.

Clara Venus burped on cue.

‘Look at the pretty mite! Do you really think her ears stick out?' I said, dimpling up at him. ‘Perhaps I should take to winding a strip of linen about her head. They say that if you bind a baby's ears tightly enough, they will grow fine and regular.'

‘I will not hear of you binding our daughter's ears, Eliza! How could you think of doing such a thing?'

‘In Japan they bind their daughters' feet to keep them dainty.'

‘I'd rather her feet were the size of an elk's! Give me the child.'

He took Clara Venus from me and slid her under the lapel of his coat to keep her warm. A posset of milk had pooled around her mouth. I handed him her bib, and he wiped her clean.

‘Come, little jolly,' he said to her, as he descended the grassy bank that sloped to the shore of the lake. ‘Dance to your daddy!' He turned back to me, smiling. ‘Do you know the rhyme, Eliza?'

‘No.' No one had ever thought to sing nursery rhymes to me when I was an infant.

‘It goes: Dance to your daddy, my little lassie! Dance to your daddy, my little lamb!'

I pasted a smile to my face.

‘You shall have a fishy on a little dishy!' went on St Leger, bouncing the child in his arms. ‘You shall have a fishy when the boat comes in!'

Unlikely, I thought. Not from that lake. There'd be no fishy for me or for Clara Venus. No kedgeree, baked pike, smoked eel nor potted salmon. Nor – in spite of all the endeavours I had made to set myself up with a nice little nest egg in the form of Lissaguirra – had my boat come in. Yet.

Dear William
,

When are you coming? I had thought to have company here occasionally, but no one comes. During the winter it rained and blew and not a creature but a mad peddler selling gewgaws came to the house from November till March. I yearn for someone to amuse me and make me laugh. The only thing that makes me laugh now is the future I had pictured for myself, in the Best of all Possible Worlds. Here it is – the picture I painted of me, in my rosy future:

Sitting at my desk, in artful déshabille, I dip my pen into my silver-gilt inkwell and the words flow from my nib. Occasionally I lean my cheek on my hand, and gaze at the view beyond my window, seeking fresh inspiration. Once I have covered a ream of paper with my elegant script, I write FINIS. I smile to myself and pen a letter, which I send along with my manuscript to your venerable publishers Messrs Chapman & Hall, in London. Two weeks later I get the response I have been hoping for, and off I go to be feted and lionized. My book is a great success, and I am set up for life.

Isn't this how it happens?

Eliza

Dear Eliza
,

I am coming in August. Messrs Chapman & Hall want the Irish book that they paid me to write two years ago. From Dublin I intend to travel south before proceeding through Connaught and Ulster. Perhaps I will include a chapter on an idyllic hunting lodge in County Cork? Might you let me have a bed for a night or two?

Yours in haste
,

William

I told St Leger of the famous contributor to the
Times
of London who was visiting Ireland to write a guidebook. ‘His name is William Thackeray. He is very clever and erudite, and is much in demand by all the best publications.'

St Leger did not seem impressed by William's credentials. ‘He sounds like a bore,' he said. ‘Erudite people always are. Look at Silas and his dusty old library full of books that nobody but he wants to read.'

‘Mr Thackeray is a great friend of Charles Dickens,' I persisted, ‘and very entertaining. He is keen to visit obscure places, so I have invited him to stay here.'

We were lounging, all three of our little family, on my bed. Because I had not believed St Leger when he told me he had a wolfskin, he had presented it to me, with a red ribbon tied around its tail. Both my babies had lain swaddled on it after they were born, looking quite the little wolf-cubs. It now lay on an ottoman at the foot of my bed as insurance against cold weather.

I had lifted Clara Venus from her crib so that she could lie naked and kick her delicious legs in the air. Even at barely nine months old, it was clear that she had inherited the elegant dancer's legs of which my mother had been so proud. The evening sun was streaming through the window onto the counterpane, and she was bathed in a nimbus of golden light, talking in the mellifluous language only she understood.

St Leger had brought me several pairs of clocked stockings in a variety of colours. I was sporting the blue ones – complemented by an exquisite lace-trimmed garter – for his delectation.

‘Wouldn't you like to meet Mr Thackeray?' I asked, stretching out a leg to admire the fine embroidery. ‘I am sure he would be interested to learn about this country from the point of view of an absentee landlord.'

‘Don't call me that, Eliza.'

‘Why not? It's what you are.'

‘“Absentee” implies that I don't look after my estate. I do.'

‘While you are here, you do. Who looks after your tenants when you're away?'

‘I have a responsible agent. And I have scarcely any tenants now.'

‘What happened to them?'

‘I sold the larger part of my land.'

‘Why?'

‘It's not worth holding on to when I have no household to maintain.'

It took me a moment to catch the inference: he no longer needed the income from rent because his family was safely provided for in Buckinghamshire under the aegis of the Earl of Roesworth.

‘But you love Dromamore.'

‘I do.'

I tucked my legs under me and gave him a challenging look. ‘How do you know that your agent is a responsible man? Have you spoken to your tenants lately?'

‘Oh, you are a trying woman! Don't vex me.'

‘I vex you because nobody else dares to. When was the last time someone questioned your authority?'

‘Cerberos did, until I put manners on him.'

‘Who's Cerberos?'

‘My new pup.'

‘So your puppy dog and your mistress are the only souls in the world who stand up to you?'

‘Sometimes it's the other way round.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘
I
stood up for you twice this afternoon.'

I returned his oblique smile and moved in to kiss him, but a tremolo from Clara Venus distracted me.

‘Look at my bonny girl! She loves this time of the evening – it's when she gets her exercise. Look at her sturdy little legs!
Il n'y a rien de plus beau que la grasse sous la peau
.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘It's an old French saying. It means, “there is nothing more beautiful than a little fat under the skin”. Oh! I could spend a whole lifetime kissing her belly.' I leaned over my daughter and pressed my lips against her tummy, making her squeal with delight.

St Leger untwisted his fingers from my garter, then reached for his shirt and pulled it on. He got up from the bed, strolled to the window and leaned his elbows on the sash.

‘Christy has done good work in the garden,' he observed.

‘Yes. He has a knack. The kitchen garden is thriving, too, and the orchard. It will be a fine thing, to have our own fruit next year.'

‘And you're happy with your staff?'

I nodded, blowing on Clara Venus's belly button and producing another gale of giggles.

‘Are you feeding well?'

‘Exceptionally well. We even have poached poached salmon from time to time.' The tautology was intentional. I gave him a defiant look.

‘You little delinquent.'

‘I needed all the sustenance I could get while I was nursing your daughter. She has a prodigious appetite.'

‘You've weaned her?'

‘She's weaned herself. Once she got a taste of custard and boiled bread and honey she refused my dug for the first time.'

‘Doesn't she suckle at all now?'

‘Yes – for comfort.'

‘We should be taking every precaution we can against another pregnancy happening.'

‘I already have.'

‘How?'

‘Another invaluable secret I learned from that wise old
accoucheuse
in Soho.' I slanted him a smile and loosened my hair.

I had not told him about the sponge soaked in
eau de vie
. It was, in fact, a tip I had had from Maria, who swore by it, claiming that it had worked for her after the birth of her last child. Since her husband had died shortly thereafter it was hardly a proven method of contraception, but having recourse to the trick in conjunction with the fact that I was still producing milk meant that the chances of my conceiving again in the first year were slender – especially since I had given birth to twins. Everyone knew that Nature allowed a woman's body more time to recover after twins.

‘George is still latched onto his wet-nurse,' said St Leger. ‘Sophia says he'll be walking before he gives up the dug.'

Reaching for my hairbrush, I started on the first of my hundred strokes. ‘Hereabouts, I've seen infants of two years and more importuning their mothers for milk.'

‘Two? A child should be well weaned by that age, shouldn't it?'

‘The children are hungry, Jamie. And so are their parents. Christy tells me that there is real hardship amongst tenants. You know that most of them subsist on a diet of potatoes and buttermilk?'

‘They've lived on that for years. It's said to be the healthiest diet in Europe.'

‘Christy says if the potato crop fails it could lead to wholesale famine.' I tugged the bristles through a tangled strand of hair. ‘Oh! See how you've mussed me, you bad man! I shall need to take a fine comb to it. Imagine if I ever had lice! I should have to crop all my hair off. I would have a pate just like yours, Clara Venus!' I blew her a flurry of kisses, then teased my hair with my fingers. A moment or two passed during which I made inconsequential small talk with my daughter before I deemed it opportune to return to the subject of politics. ‘Christy says that Lord Faulkes's tenants live in such unsanitary conditions that they are falling prey to disease.'