Rutherford Park (32 page)

“What, all summer?”

“So I believe.”

“My God. Harrison is saying as much in the kitchen. He says they’ve been seen in the parkland, the woods. Some of March’s boys saw them. And the maids told you?”

“The maids don’t need to tell me. I’ve seen it for myself. It’s not the house it was. The devil is in it.”

Bradfield frowned. “And what of his lordship?”

Mrs. Jocelyn turned to face him, hands on hips. “You’ll stand by him?”

“I was here before she came.” He considered in silence for a moment, then: “He ordered us out of the dining room last night. There was something then between the three of them.”

“The maids say she went to his lordship. They saw her cross over the gallery; she threw open the door. They heard them inside. Her weeping. Voices raised. They could hear it as they went up the stairs, past midnight.”

“What has Cooper said?”

“Nothing. Cooper went with him to Paris this last time, but he tells me not a word.”

“Amelie is the same.” The pair of them, identically but unconsciously, drew their mouths down in distaste. The valet and lady’s maid were a law unto themselves, rarely mixing with the other servants. “They think themselves too high,” Mrs. Jocelyn added.

Bradfield shook his head, stared at the floor, then straightened. “Thank you, Mrs. Jocelyn.”

“It’s a bad day,” she told him as he opened the door to go. “I’ll not believe this story of Madame de Montfort. I’ll not believe it of his lordship. Her ladyship was hysterical in London; she’s of that type. You know that as well as I. A nervous hysteric from the first, not a shred of dignity. Running about after him and the children. Barefoot in summer. Laughing at dinner. You’ve seen it; you’ve seen the way she’s always been. The young master, now…” She paused. “Well, I won’t say he’s cut from the same cloth. He’s sown his wild oats, I daresay. He shall regret it, but then that is men. But the young mistress, Louisa…there’s one like her mother.” She was now furiously, blindly folding and refolding the sheets. “The fact is, her ladyship’s beneath this house. I don’t mind saying it. I
shall
say it. I’ve said as much to her. She knows my mind. She’s brought bad behavior into it from the first. She’s not aristocracy; she’s never been right.”

Bradfield did not comment. He was regarding Mrs. Jocelyn with mute horror; when she looked up at him, he hastily rearranged his face to show its usual emptiness. “It will blow over,” he murmured. “It will pass.”

“Pass?” she repeated. “
She’ll
pass. She’ll go with him, the American. You mark my words.”

“I hope it won’t come to that.” Bradfield stepped out into the corridor. Looking back, he saw her wagging her finger in his direction.

“God sees,” she told him, and there was a glint of triumph in her eye. “God sees, and he takes His vengeance.”

* * *

H
arry had gone out at first light, taking the Metz.

It had been months—probably almost a year—since he had driven it, yet it had started the first time. He supposed that he had Jack Armitage to thank for that, although he was under no
illusion that Armitage would do it for him—it was more likely that he did it for the love of the car. It took Harry one or two miles before he adjusted to it, and he started to sing as he bowled along the empty lanes in the summer morning—something he had heard from
Hello, Rag-Time!
—a stupid song that got into a fellow’s head; he put back his head and shouted, “‘All they do is talk like babies, Hear the way they bill and coo! Poogywoo, poogywoo…’” He started to laugh. The road whipped out along the river and then rose a little; in a moment he could look back to Rutherford, just its chimneys above the trees. He put his foot down and was through the village in seconds; he saw a boy wandering through a field with a stick urging on the dairy cows; in a house by the church a woman was hanging out washing. The world went whipping by. “‘All night long he calls her snooky ookum, snooky ookums…. ’”

It was a silly song. It was a silly morning, spent in glorious gadding about. But as he came back through the gates of the park, he slowed down, stopped laughing, stopped singing, and drew up in front of the house. He couldn’t help thinking that no matter how much life there was out here, there was none in there anymore. Anyone could see that his mother and father were at loggerheads; probably it was still over bloody Charles de Montfort.

Harry got out and slammed the door. Well, the blighter could go hang, he thought to himself. Harry would often conjure up Charles de Montfort’s face simply in order to imagine himself spitting in it. He hoped fervently that what Father said was true, and that there would soon be a war in which Charles de Montfort would be obliged to fight. The French would call up all their reservists; de Montfort would be out of Paris before he knew what had hit him. And Harry hoped that something would hit him. Some bloody great Austrian bullet between the eyes. It never occurred to him what his Father would think of that, but in all honesty he didn’t care.

He would go to Upavon and get his license, which was all that concerned him. Mother and Father must work out the whole damnable mess on their own, though he pitied his mother being cooped up here. She was no better off than the prize pigs down at the tenant farm; she would be trotted out at the summer fair and made to give out prizes for the best bloody potatoes, or some such rot. He would try to be kind to her today, he decided. She had little enough attention as it was.

He opened the front door and stood for a while surveying the great hall. He remembered sliding down here, the whole length of the hall, on some sort of Indian mat when he was three or four years old, and Bradfield blustering about it. Mother had just laughed. Father had never known; he had been a distant presence. He had memories of being in his mother’s lap, and of her stroking his hair by a fireside in the nursery, comforts that were absent when his father was home from Parliament. The world would suddenly become more formal then, and he and his sisters would be paraded before Mother and Father before dinner—three in a row: “My little crop of flowers,” Mother would say. He recalled Father always telling him to stand up straight. And he would—yes, he would, such was his hero worship of his father then—he would stand as tall as he could, and earn himself a pat on the head. The kisses would come surreptitiously behind his father’s back from Mother as she shooed them away back upstairs. He would lean into her for a snatched second, inhaling the delicious scent of vanilla and roses that always identified her. Mother and flowers, Mother and flowers. He smiled now to himself as he stepped inside and shut the door.

As if she’d been summoned by the power of thought, he saw Octavia come out of the drawing room door. She was holding a letter in her hand. “Where is your father?” she said.

Harry walked forward, taking off his gloves and throwing them
on the reception table. “I don’t know,” he told her. He smiled, but then saw the expression on her face. “What’s the matter?”

She looked down at the piece of paper that she was holding. “It’s Louisa,” she said dazedly. “It’s from Louisa.” She held it out to him; he took it.

“I thought she was coming up today?”

“She is. She was. With Charlotte.” Octavia was staring behind her. “The library,” she murmured. “He must be in the library.” As she went to look for William, Harry looked down at the letter.

Harry read it twice. “Dear God in heaven,” he murmured. His hand dropped, holding the letter loosely, and he tried to remember the conversation he had had with his sister all those weeks ago. She had told him that she had met a man who was French. She had told
him the name. And he had made a joke of it. He looked again at the letter, and saw that the date was yesterday.

His mother came running along the hall, with his father behind her. She held out her hand for the letter and, when William reached her, passed it to him. A deep color suffused the older man’s face as he read it; then he looked up.

“Did you know anything of this?” he asked his wife.

“No, of course not.”

William nodded. “Because you were not there,” he said.

Octavia stared at him; she gasped a little, and then bit down on her lip. Cutting as it was, it was the truth, and was said simply as a fact, not as an accusation.

“Louisa told me, not Mother,” Harry said.

Both of them gazed at him.

“She told
you
?” William demanded. “When?”

“I don’t mean that she told me she would run off with the blighter,” Harry replied indignantly. “I mean that she said she had met a man who claimed that he knew me. A Frenchie.”

“Whose name was…?”

“Frederick,” Harry confirmed, nodding towards the letter. “But I knew no one called Maurice Frederick. I told her so.”

“And she was seeing him?” William’s tone was completely scandalized. “How could that happen?”

“I got the impression it was by accident somehow.”

“While she was in the care of the de Rays.” Fury contorted William’s face; he turned on his heel and strode back in the direction of the library. Octavia and Harry followed him, Harry holding the studded leather door for his mother when it swung hard back on its hinges and almost slammed in her face. William was already lifting the telephone receiver, asking for the London number of
the de Ray house. There was an agonized minute or more of silence while he was connected and he waited for the number to be answered. He asked for de Ray himself, but, by the inflection of voice that answered him, it was evidently his wife. William listened with twitching impatience, holding the receiver slightly away from his ear. Then, “Please put her on,” he said.

“What is it?” Octavia whispered.

“The daughter,” William told her.

Octavia held her hand out for the receiver. “William,” she said. “Please.”

He hesitated, and then handed it to her. She pressed it to her ear. “Florence,” she said. “It’s Lady Cavendish.”

“She didn’t tell me,” she heard Florence say at once. “I’ve only just discovered the note. We were about to ring you. She said last night that she would get Devenish to drive her at six, and that we weren’t to bother seeing her off because it was so early. But I did get up, and she was already on the step. She seemed so excited; I thought it was that she was at last going home to Rutherford. Devenish said he dropped her at St. Pancras and got a porter for her bags. But she didn’t get Charlotte’s train, Lady Cavendish. She just simply didn’t turn up for it.”

“And Charlotte? What has happened to Charlotte?”

“The Gardiners took her to the railway station at seven. They waited for Louisa; when the time came, Charlotte insisted she would go by herself.”

“Oh, my Lord!” Octavia exclaimed.

“It’s all right,” Florence told her. “Mr. Gardiner got on the train with her himself, rather than let her be by herself. He has property in Leeds. He told his driver that he was quite happy about it. The driver came around here just ten minutes ago. He brought a note saying that Louisa had missed the train. And then I ran upstairs
to her room. I don’t know…. I just had an awful presentiment then…about her excitement. It suddenly seemed…not quite right…and I found the note, addressed to us all.”

“Read it to me,” Octavia instructed.

The content was much the same. “Who is this man?” Octavia asked. “Do you know him?”

“He…” She heard Florence stop and begin to weep. There was a shuffling sound, and muffled voices. Then Hetty de Ray’s voice came loud, clear and furious along the line. “Octavia,” she said. “My dear, I feel so responsible, but I had no idea at all. We can barely believe it of Louisa.”

“It’s no one’s fault,” Octavia replied. She heard William hissing his disagreement. “But what does Florence know?”

“She says that Louisa spoke of him; she believes she met him secretly. Four days ago she went with Louisa to Hyde Park to meet him. I promise you, Octavia, I was not told about this; I would have absolutely banned it. Louisa said that it was to bid good-bye to this man. He was leaving the country.”

“But she has not said good-bye. She has gone with him.”

“Yes,” Henrietta de Ray replied. “I cannot think how; I cannot think why….”

“Who does Florence say he is?”

“He worked at the French Embassy. He is Parisian.”

“Parisian?” Something very cold entered Octavia’s bloodstream and chilled her to the core. “What age?”

“Her own age, I think. Florence says perhaps a little older.”

“Please let me speak to Florence again, Hetty.”

The telephone was passed back. “Florence,” Octavia said. “What is this man like? What did he say?”

“I don’t know what he said, other than good-bye,” Florence whispered. “Louisa told me they had parted.”

“Is there an address on the note, a place where she is going?”

“No, Lady Cavendish.”

“But it is Paris.”

“She said…she said his mother lived near Montmartre. He said that she was…that she knew painters….”

“She’s a
painter
?”

“No, no. I can’t think how she phrased it. Perhaps it was just an impression. But she kept saying as we walked home that his mother was alone and that she would keep her company if Maurice went to fight. That they would help each other because he would be gone.”

“Oh, God,” Octavia whispered. She covered the receiver and stared at William. “She’s gone to this man’s mother. Because he was going home, she went with him.” And then an expression of complete and utter horror crossed her face. She reached blindly behind herself for a chair and dropped into it, the receiver still in her hand. “Montmartre,” she whispered.