Dancing the Maypole (50 page)

“It’ll mean you
have even less time for me.”

“Son, you’ll
soon leave home, and find a wife. I’ll think of you daily, and
wonder if I’ll get to see you before Christmas. I’ll miss you, but
I’ll understand. One week you’ll be on honeymoon, and the next
you’ll have six children. You’ll look in the mirror at the aged
version of the man you are now, and you’ll realise in horror that
the world looks nothing like your childhood. You’ll realise you’re
old; an alien in your own country. An alien in your own time. Your
daughter will marry, your sons will join the Army, and you’ll start
expecting to hear any week that I’ve moved into the crypt. Life is
a waltz with the woman you love; when you’re moving to the music
you’re sure it’ll never end until it ends abruptly. I have failed
you often, but never intentionally. I’m sorry for all the times I
let you down.” The horses were gently slapped with the reins, and
they were again moving. “You have many fine qualities Cosmo. You’ve
made mistakes, but that’s how we learn. Be c-careful, some mistakes
cost more than others…”

“Like marrying
the wrong woman?”

“I thought I
loved your mother. I married her because I thought it was the right
thing to do. You are a blessing not a mistake.”

“I don’t feel
like a blessing.”

“You have the
making of a g-good man. Follow your heart and you’ll soon find your
world revolving around a young lady.”

Cosmo sighed in
despair, “Aunt Agnes doesn’t think I’ll ever fall in love. She said
I’m doomed to fall prey to some pretty, cunning wench who knows
I’ll provide a comfortable home.”

“Your Aunt
Agnes should keep her d-doom to herself. You have enough mountains
to climb…”

Cosmo glanced
at his father, “You don’t agree with her, do you?”

“No…of course,
not.” There was an awkward silence that seemed to suggest the
opposite. “Remember, love is not a pretty face or…” His father
cleared his throat as if embarrassed. “…other pleasing
attributes.”

“Like a bank
account?”

“Oui.”

Cosmo watched
his father to see if he’d react, “I suppose the woman you plan to
wed has pleasing attributes.”

His father
visibly flushed. “Oui.”

“And a pleasing
bank account?”

“Marrying a
woman for her money is an abomination. I can understand a man being
tempted, but selling one’s honour can only bring misery.”

“Of course…”
sneered Cosmo. “That’s what you’ve always told me…”

“What are you
implying?” snapped Peter. “That I’d marry a woman for her
money?”

“How could I
imply anything when I don’t know who you plan to wed?” His father’s
scowl eased as if relieved to hear the answer. Cosmo couldn’t
resist verbally poking his father, “Would you love Mabel if she
looked like Mademoiselle de Bourbon?”

His father took
his eyes off the road to scowl at him in suspicion, “Why?”

“Just curious.
Do you think Mademoiselle handsome? I think she’s quite attractive
for an old woman.”

“Mademoiselle
isn’t old!” said Peter. “She’s eight years my junior.”

“It’s sad she
never married,” continued Cosmo. “With all that money, you’d think
she’d have found a sensible man who’d appreciate her breasts.
Overall she has a rather-pleasing shape, for a maypole, wouldn’t
you say?”

“Mademoiselle’s
person is not a fit subject of conversation.” Peter Smirke’s face
had that closed look which promised there would be no
discussion.

“Why not?”

“How would you
feel if Mademoiselle were to discuss your person with her
mother?”

Cosmo changed
tack, “Your Mabel must be in agony.”

“Why?” asked
Peter.

“It’s obvious
Mademoiselle is developing feelings for you. Mabel must be worried
you’ll change your mind and marry the woman with eighty-thousand
pounds, I know I would. Poor Mademoiselle, a maypole fated to watch
all the taller men marry shorter women. C’est la vie. Where are we
going to stop for dinner?”

“Mademoiselle’s
feelings are b-best left to the lady!”

“You shouldn’t
spend time alone with her. It might encourage her to hope, and that
would be cruel. Will we return to Bath after you sort out the
pigs?”

“No, there are
a few things I need to purchase in London.”

“Did you warn
Mademoiselle you might not make it back in time for her ball?”

“We’ll make it
back.” The quiet words were nearly lost under the sound of the
horses hooves and the wheels crunching over fallen twigs and loose
stones. The whip cracked and the horses picked up speed. Lulled by
the sound of galloping hooves, Cosmo’s thoughts turned inward as he
contemplated his doom-laden future.

The Chinese
bedchamber was a regal room typically left shrouded under dust
covers. The long dead Neilson who’d commissioned the royal suite,
in hope the reigning monarch and consort would visit, had chosen
the side of the house that caught the morning light. For an hour or
two, the rooms with their exotic silk bed hangings and matching
furnishings, all heavily embroidered in gold and silver thread,
glimmered like a fairy palace. By noon, any late-rising occupant
would need a candle to locate the gold-plated chamber pot hidden
away in an ebony chest of drawers located in a dark corner. The set
of rooms were as cold as a wine cellar and as magnificent as a
handsome man with a sack on his head.

Far from the
warming fire, Isabel sat shivering in front of her dressing mirror,
dismayed by her reflection. Lamplight cast dark shadows under her
eyes creating a corpse like pallor. The white gown, made for her
aunt, was obviously borrowed from an attic trunk. Even with the hem
raised, and the sleeves adjusted, Isabel looked as if she were
attending a costume ball. After eighteen years, fashion had moved
on. “I can’t wear this Mamma; I look a quiz. I want to wear my
brown and pink striped silk…”

“You’ll wear
it,” said Madame de Bourbon, “or I’ll tell Adderbury you hired his
mother to paint you eighteen times.”

Isabel pursed
her lips in contempt. “He knows. I told him.”

Madame de
Bourbon’s determined expression filled the mirror. “You’ll wear the
white dress or I’ll tell your father Adderbury was seen taking
excessive liberties with your person.”

Blushing,
Isabel glared at her mother’s reflection in the mirror. “We kissed.
C’est tout!”

By all means
wear your striped silk, but don’t forget to wear pockets and fill
them with clean handkerchiefs. You’ll need them to staunch the
blood after your father shoots your lover in the foot, unless he
misses and shoots him in the leg.”

Outmanoeuvred,
Isabel pursed her lips as if her mother were ordering her to drink
unsweetened lemonade. “Trés bien! I’ll wear the ugly old dress, and
everyone will think I’m going mad…”

“Not everyone;
Agnes thinks it will help Adderbury remember your first meeting.
Has she told you? Apparently, the man fell in love with you and
then somehow made himself forget you.” Madame de Bourbon shook her
head. “How could any man forget one of my daughters? What a
nincompoop! I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t abandon his
pregnant wife and four young sons to elope with you. Your liaison
dangereuse would have ended badly. A man who abandons a pregnant
wife won’t think twice about abandoning a pregnant lover moaning
and whining about her expanding middle, not that Adderbury would
have lived long enough to abandon you.”

Horrified,
Isabel turned to stare up at her mother. “I wouldn’t have run off
with a married man like Cousin Annette. Look what happened to her!
After her lover died, leaving her stranded in the snow, her father
forced her to marry that cabinetmaker with wooden teeth. Poor
Annette; she’s lucky she has nine servants.”

Isabel
stiffened under her mother’s sharp all-seeing expression. “Non!
Idiot Annette was lucky a good man offered to raise another man’s
child as his own. How many men, in the cabinetmaker’s shoes, would
have bought a set of ivory teeth because his bride complained he
looked funny with wooden ones? That poor cabinetmaker is in love
with your cousin, and is she grateful to have a good life? Non! She
mourns a dead aristocratic rakehell who lived for the next
conquest. He’s lucky he died before your uncle could kill him…”

“Lucky?” gasped
Isabel. “To be eaten by wolves? Why do you think the Duke got out
of the carriage instead of staying inside? If a pack of wolves were
making a meal of my horse and driver, I wouldn’t climb out to see
whether I could become dessert. At least her love-child wasn’t
ugly; the sullen wretch.”

“You’d be
sullen too if you were sired by a wealthy Duke, but born the legal
property of a cabinetmaker. Instead of growing up to take his place
in elite society, the young man is building wardrobes, chairs and
commodes. The fact Annette has blessed the cabinetmaker with
fifteen daughters must infuriate the boy. He’ll be expected to
clothe and feed them if they don’t find husbands.”

“Mamma…” Isabel
paused wondering if she dared ask the question, but she had to
know. “If Papa had been married…would you have fallen in love with
him?”

“He wasn’t
married.” Her mother’s flat tone indicated the question was
impertinent.

Isabel rolled
her eyes, “Obviously, but if Papa had been forced into an arranged
marriage and he was miserable…would you have met his gaze across
that crowded salon and lost your heart?”

“I’ve no idea.
He didn’t have a wife.”

“That’s no
answer Mamma. You must have thought about it. What if he’d been
married, but he looked up at you with that adoring look he gives
you. Would you have thought him very wicked?”

“I would have
discouraged his attentions.”

“Yes of course,
but what if you fell in love with him?” Isabel’s hammering heart
insisted she ask an even more impertinent question. “Would you have
been tempted to do something sinful?”

“Non.” It was a
tight little word that revealed nothing.

Isabel stared
up at her serene mother in disbelief. “Nothing? Not even a kiss? I
don’t believe you. You’re never happy when Papa’s at a distance.
Like that year we spent in Jersey. You never smiled. You were sad
all the time. Why didn’t Papa come fetch us home? Why were we
there, pretending to be poor?”

“The past is
best left in the past.”

“Bof! Unless
you decide to have me relive it? I’m thirty-six Mamma. Why can’t
you tell me what happened? Every time I ask Papa about it he stares
at me as though I’ve confessed a burning passion for Robespierre,
and waves me from the room like a bad smell. I remember arriving in
England. Papa seemed so big and happy to see us until he greeted
you. Then, he looked really small, probably because he was kneeling
on the ground sobbing into your skirts as if you’d come back from
the dead.”

“He didn’t send
us to Jersey.” Her mother’s voice was calm, but there was a haunted
look in her eyes Isabel had never seen before. “I packed his
children into a carriage and disappeared. He spent a year searching
France, but he couldn’t find us. Then, the revolution started. He
removed his mother and any other family he could persuade to leave.
He feared the worst until I wrote to my sister asking for funds to
pay for passage to England.”

Isabel stared
open-mouthed at her mother, “You left Papa? Why?”

Her mother
paused, silently staring into space and then exhaled a loud sigh.
“Love is a carriage journey along an unknown road. We can’t know
where it will take us or whether our companion will always wish to
remain in the carriage. Usually, the journey begins through
undulating fields under a sunny sky. You assume the road will
always be easy and pleasant until it starts to rain, and the road
is churned into a sea of mud. You may soon find yourself once again
in the sunshine travelling through flat lands at a gallop, but
eventually you’ll find yourself riding through rain or deep
snow…”

“As Cousin
Annette discovered.”

Madame ignored
Isabel’s interjection, “Eventually the road reaches a mountain
range and the carriage winds its way up along a cliff edge. The
passengers may be blithely ignorant, or they may stare out the
window and realise any moment they might fall to their deaths. For
weeks or years, depending on the road, the carriage will thunder
along a dangerous edge. Any slight wobble, and it will topple over
the cliff. If the carriage and occupants reach the other side of
the mountain, the road will wind downhill. This part of the road is
deceptively easy. The sun is shining, and you can see you’ll soon
be driving once again through undulating fields. The road ahead
appears so pleasant it doesn’t always occur to one of the occupants
that the other no longer wishes to remain in the carriage. I got
out while he was…sleeping.”

“What did Papa
do?”

“Something that
made me think he no longer wished to share the journey with me. I
thought it would be less painful to change roads.”

“But you
returned.”

“Yes. Love
can’t be computed like a mathematical problem. If you add heartache
to heartache, you don’t get a larger pain, you get a whole new type
of pain. Sometimes the right choice is to leave the carriage, but
it shouldn’t be done on impulse. The deep lines on your father’s
face…his iron-grey curls; I gave him those. He broke my heart, and
I broke his.”

The expression
on her mother’s face made it clear that questions concerning her
father’s sins would not be answered. Isabel sighed in relief, “I
can’t imagine Pierre doing anything that would persuade me to jump
out of his carriage.”

Her mother
laughed in amusement, and affectionately pinched her cheek. “He
will! There will be days you do things that make him think a road
in China might be worth exploring. Some days the journey is
blissfully easy. Some days it feels as if hell has been compressed
into a carriage for two. The weaving of two lives requires the weft
and warp of the fabric to take turns giving way. If only one gives
way you soon have a large knot. One must learn the rhythm of the
weaving; learn to know when to insist you have your way and when to
give way. Your father wants to be in France. I want to throw you a
special ball. He loathes my sister and hates this house, but your
Papa gave way because he knows I need to do this…and he loves
you.”