Marrying the Mistress (22 page)

Placing Veronique's untouched glass of wine at my elbow and the three leather-bound notebooks on my knees, I turned up the wick of the lamp and opened the first and smallest of them. As I suspected, it consisted of payments to the grocer, the chandler, the butcher and fishmonger, the carriage-maker and farrier, money paid to his tailor, bootmaker and hatter, the snuff-maker and, before my time with him, a record of payments to the jeweller for trinkets, a fob-watch, chain, and quizzing-glass. Running my finger down the more recent pages, I saw expenses for Jamie—bed linen, a cot, a small chair and a walking-frame from the carpenter—though all his clothes had been made by myself and Mrs Goode from fabrics obtained from the shop, costing Linas nothing. Even my own clothes,
except for shoes, has cost Linas nothing. There were no surprises here.

The second notebook was no more than a catalogue of the volumes in his study on ethnography, geology and geography, on Greek and Roman sculptures and artifacts from Japan and India, on seashells and fossils, and rare plants from South America. Linas was never happier than when he was studying amongst his books.

The third one appeared to be a collection of his own essays on various topics, like one on Charles Townley's collection of antiques in his Park Lane house. That, I remembered, had been on our last visit together to London. Flipping through the pages, I saw another one headed ‘Greek Vases in the Sir John Soane Collection', and another, ‘On Earthquakes and Volcanoes'. I was just about to close it when I saw the familiar name of Helene, which I assumed would be Helen of Troy in that kind of company. It was his last entry, and I would have closed the book but for the word ‘Burl' that sprang out of the pages as if it had been written in red ink instead of grey-black.

I was intrigued, feeling once more like the eavesdropper choosing to listen in to someone's private musings. This was getting to be a habit. I closed the book and sat with my hand on the cover, hearing the voices of conscience yet again, then Linas's voice telling me to go on.

Open it. Read it. It's meant for you
.

I caressed the pages where his hand had rested, absorbing the touch of him from the faintly lined creamy paper. The voice faded and left me to my own devices and to the burning need to know why my name was
there with Burl's. There was no heading to this last essay, only the date, October 10th, 1805, which was only days before he was taken to Abbots Mere to live out the last of his time. It was addressed to me,
Beloved
Helene
.

Beloved? He had never called me that. ‘Love' was his only tag for me, the usual Yorkshire form of address to anyone remotely friendly. ‘C'mon, love,' he would call to me. Adjusting the book to catch the best light, I sat back in my chair and, to the sonorous ticking of the clock, began to read.

B
eloved Helene
. Dubiously, my gaze hung over the words.

The house is quiet now and I am unable to sleep
until this story is told, for I shall leave here in the next
day or two with little prospect of a return. You came to
me this evening with our Jamie, as always, to perform
those countless little services for me, too intimate to
delegate to anyone except family
.
I never thought a
three-
year-
old child could be so helpful or bring us
such happiness, nor did I ever think I would have the
love and devotion of a woman like you to take me to the
end of my life. Beloved, I am truly blessed, and I wish I
could say that I have no regrets, but, alas, that would
be untrue. I have. And it is those regrets that must be
explained while I still have time and strength, and
although I would prefer to have explained them to you
face to face, I fear that I would express myself so
clumsily, thus undoing any advantage of spontaneity.
No, I see you smile, spontaneity was never Linas's forte
,
was it? A planner, a deliberator, a scholar, perhaps, but
hardly a creature of impulse.

You will know by now the regrets to which I refer, for
although you never allowed that knowledge to colour
your devotion to me, it placed upon you an unfair
burden that was sometimes too hard for you to carry
.

Oh, Linas, it
did
colour my devotion. If only you knew.

To tell you how and why may not earn your forgiveness,
after all, but perhaps Burl will put in a good word
for me now that he is claiming what was rightly his to
begin with. How do I know that? Because I know my
brother well; he would not delay for a day on something
as important as this, and by now he will have begun his
re-conquest of you
.

You were seventeen when we met, beloved Helene
—no, Linas, I was not seventeen until April—
a flower of
a woman, a dazzling beauty who outshone every other
female at the Assembly Rooms on that St Valentine's
Day, and if I am not so articulate now, I was even less
so then. Tongue-tied. Mute. I did not stand a chance with
you. Together, Burl and I saw you enter, and I felt his
reaction immediately. Yes, felt it. Don't ask me to define
it. I cannot, except to say that his quietness took on a
different quality that only a close relative would recognise.
It was never his way, was it, to crowd in with the
others?

Nevertheless, it was not long before you stood up
with him, nor was it long before everyone who saw you
together knew that something momentous was happening
before their eyes, and when Burl introduced us, I
doubt if you heard a word he said
. I remember it better than you think, dear Linas.
Still, you politely danced
with me without realising that I was as smitten as he.
How could you have known that my desire was like a
pain, all the more intense because whenever Burl
looked at a woman, she was as good as his?

You could not have known how it was between us,
Burl and me, close-coupled in mind and spirit, though
not in body. The very best of friends, yet rivals in love.
Whatever woman came my way, Burl's magnetism drew
her irrevocably towards him instead. Any woman I
managed to attract, one-tenth of Burl's tally, would
also see him, and whether he responded to her or not,
I might as well have been invisible for all the attention
I won. I grew used to it, yet I resented it even though I
knew it was never his intention, and, although I did
have flirtations, I was glad to move to Stonegate where
the chances of keeping a woman to myself for longer
were marginally better
.

But that St Valentine's Ball, dearest Helene, was a
milestone for me, having just received from my doctor
a period of three years at the most in which to cram
every happy circumstance before it was too late. So live
life to the full, he advised me. I had never been strong,
as you know, but I think his prognosis surprised even
me. And now I had seen the woman of my dreams, the
one I wanted above all others, already beyond my
reach. What galled me most, I think, is that Burl's relationships
with women had always been fleeting
affairs before the inevitable diversion of another more
alluring creature. Yes, it was the hunt that Burl enjoyed
most—the chase, the capture, the capitulation. And that
night, I saw the possibility of you being caught, flaunted
and then left while I watched again from the side, seeing
my chances and my life slip quietly away together. He
was in love with you, there is no doubt of that, but then
so was I. Impotently, disastrously, angrily in love
.

But I knew something that, at the time, Burl did not
know, that you had no means, that your family were
unable to help you, that you had been supported by two
lovers for a short period, and that you worked for the
milliner and mantua-maker on Blake Street. How did I
know that? By overhearing the gossip that spread like
a forest fire through the ballroom while you and he were
dancing. You were vulnerable, chère Helene, and while
Burl would offer you the moon to hold for a few fabulous
weeks, or even months, I wanted to offer you the security
of my home and all the amenities that a mistress needs
who has nothing of her own. I had only three years left;
no long drawn-out sentence for you to endure and
better, I thought, than being yet one more of Burl's castoffs.
I was what you needed, dearest love, and you were
what I needed. You were all ready to fall into my
brother's arms. I decided to take matters into my own
hands, truly the closest I have ever been to being spontaneous
.

The next day I went to Abbots Mere, ostensibly to tell
Burl of my doctor's prediction for my short future. We
wept, trying to think of ways round the sentence, but
there were none. Our parents and Medworth should be
prepared, he said. It was only fair. He would see that I
had everything I wanted in my last years. Everything.
Nothing would be denied. What was it I wanted most?
Funds? To travel to Italy? Or Switzerland
?

Wanting only you, I saw my chance. ‘Miss Helene
Follet,' I said. ‘She is my only desire
.'

Oh, Linas. Dear Linas. Is this how it happened, then?

I recall how Burl went to stand by the mantelpiece,
resting his head on his arm across the shelf as if it was
too heavy for him, and his silence almost made me
change my mind. ‘Why?' he said at last. ‘Why her
?'

‘I need her,' I replied. ‘Three more years are of no
use to me unless I have her beside me, and I doubt I
could even live them at all, seeing her with you, Burl.
That's asking too much of me.'

It was asking too much of him too, I knew that, but
I was convinced that although he too was in love with
you then, it would not last and you would soon be
broken-hearted, bewildered, and no better off materially
than you were before. As love triangles go, this was
the worst it could get, I thought. I was wrong, as you
know
.

For a while, the light seemed to go out of him,
Helene. ‘What do you want me to do?' he said
.

‘
Leave her alone,' I told him. ‘Leave her to me. She'll
accept me, if only because I'm your brother and what I
can offer her will be too good to refuse. She needs a
patron, Burl. And anyway, I have only three years. If you
feel the same way about her then as you do now, you'll
be able to carry on from where you left off. She'll only be
twenty. But I want an heir, Burl. Sounds daft, I know, but
the thought of leaving without even a son to carry on my
line is the saddest thing that could happen. I've never got
a woman with child yet, but with her I could. I know it.'

‘
How can you be sure she'll accept you?' he said
.

‘
I've told you. She needs a place of her own and
long-term stability. If she becomes a mother to my child,
she'll be glad of my protection.'

‘
At Stonegate? Let her have Blake Street, then. It's
not far to walk.'

That much of the conversation I can remember
clearly, but I was winning him over, Helene. Blake
Street is his property, and he was already planning to
give you the use of it as if it was mine. Looking back, I
see that it must have given him some small pleasure to
know that you would be living in his house, even if you
didn't know it. He offered me the use of his servants,
too. And to pay all the running costs. He was always
generous.

He did, however, have some provisos of his own.
About the offspring. If it happened, he said, that you
were to produce a Monkton heir, then the child would
need a guardian, the obvious person being himself. I
must appoint him as such in my will. I agreed. It will
bind you two together for many more years after I have
gone, for one thing. Forgive me, Helene. I did it for the
best. If I had known then what I know now, I would not
have made such a fateful request of my brother, but
how could I have foreseen that Burl's passion for you
would burn so fiercely for so long? At the time of our
agreement he tried to put me off, saying you were sure
to be unreliable, a vision too good to be true. But my
heart was already yours, my dear, and my three years
already beginning to shine with contentment.

Ah, the unreliable part. I see now. But Burl's passion? Is that true?

He agreed to leave you alone, not to do anything to
attract you or to win his regard, not to allow you one
speck of hope or to add fuel to your desire for him. Oh,
yes, I could see it, dear Helene. You tried to hide it, but
yours are not the kind of emotions that can easily be
hidden. And though you did your best to hide your
anguish too, and your hurt, you kindly accepted my
offer for reasons I shall never quite understand except
that the arrangement would allow you to see the one
who had misled you about his interest.

No, Linas, that was the hardest part of all, seeing him. I accepted your offer because, as you said, I needed you and you needed me, and the fact that the house on Blake Street was so convenient for my work with Prue Sanders.

Naturally, I had to tell you of my lifespan and to give
you a choice; to do otherwise would have been
barbaric. But you bore the news well, and maybe it was
that which gave you a reason to put on a brave face and
to give me all I could have wished for in devotion,
nursing and loving. I always found it impossible to tell
you, dearest beloved Helene, that your loving companionship
was the heaven for which I had bargained with
my brother. I should have written to you sooner about
my adoration.

You may be wondering, beloved, when my regrets
began. Not during those nights of tender lovemaking,
to be sure, but on those days when we visited Abbots
Mere and I could see how well Burl stuck to the letter
of our agreement and, worse, its effect on you. There
were times when I wanted to revoke it, to beg him to be
a little kinder to you, but it was a risk I dared not take,
being selfish, wanting you all for myself. I know now
how very unhappy I made you even while you had my
protection, yet my regrets on that score were to multiply.

Two years passed without a sign of my much-wante
d
heir, and my doctor and I were forced to the conclusion
that the infertility was linked to my illness, not to you.
You may also have wondered why I never asked you to
marry me in those early years, but to be honest I saw
no reason to. You will be well provided for when I am
no longer with you, dearest Helene, for I have always
known that Burl will claim you and our son, especially
as he was so far-sighted as to lay claim to my heir's
guardianship, even before he knew the exact circumstances.
Moreover, widowhood brings its own complications
of inheritance and relationship and, in short, I
felt that for you to remain as a spinster would make
things simpler for Burl and for you to come together
without blame or scandal. For both your sakes, I pray
that it has already happened.