A Song Twice Over (46 page)

She chose to ignore the implications of that.

‘I don't suppose Mr Colclough would like it either, father. Let's hope he doesn't get to know.'

John-William snorted his contempt.

‘Makes not a ha'porth of difference, lass, whether he gets to hear of it or not. Because she'll never get him to the altar. And if his mother thought there was the least chance of it, then she'd put a stop to Linnet's game just as fast as Lizzie Braithwaite did. But she knows her Uriah. He'll go on saying his prayers another twenty years and then wed a fifteen-year-old with enough money in the bank to ease his conscience. And as for Miss Linnet she'd do well to lower her sights and settle for what she can get while she can get it. Because her looks won't last forever. There's the doctor, for instance. I keep asking him here, putting him in her way and hoping she'll see reason. A widower with a couple of hundred a year and four young children to bring up. That's the kind of husband she ought to be aiming for. Nice little practice in Far Flatley that she's quick and clever enough to help him develop. And she'd be a dab hand, I reckon – if she set her mind to it – in getting his children educated and set up in life. With the thousand or two I might settle on her he'd be glad to have her. And good to her. She ought to think about that.'

‘She won't,' said Gemma, feeling very certain. Suddenly quite distressed.

‘I know. Which is why you'll have to watch her, lass. She'll be here – like as not – in your mother's house, twisting your mother around her little finger. Taking the place over, given half a chance, and your mother with it. When I'm gone, I mean.'

‘Yes, father.' She saw no point in pretending that he might be immortal.

‘I reckon you'll have to give up the manor and come and live here then, Gemma. Because going back to Frizingley would break your mother's heart. And I can't have that, lass. Can I?'

No. She understood that he could not. Since it was he, after all, who had put the swaddling bands on Amabel's nature, giving her those tiny lotus-feet of a Chinese concubine on which she could never stand alone. Child-wife, child-mother, who would accept each and every sacrifice easily, naturally, without understanding that a sacrifice had been made, like any babe in arms.

Her mother and Tristan she had always bargained for. Not Linnet.

But what difference did it really make? Except to strengthen her growing conviction that when women of her sort hoped for freedom all they were really doing was waiting for others to die.

It shocked her. And hurt her. She bowed her head and accepted it. So be it. It had always been so.

‘I'll look after her, father.'

‘Good girl.' He had expected no less. ‘Although you'll have your work cut out, I'm telling you. Because when I'm gone your husband will be legally in charge of you – and of some of the brass I leave you.'

‘Oh yes, father. I know.'

‘I dare say you do. I'm no fool, my girl. I dare say you thought it over and came to the conclusion that you could keep him on a short rein. Well – and so you could if you had nobody but
him
to deal with. It doesn't take much to keep him happy. I came to that conclusion myself, when I agreed to let you wed him. But
she
won't let go of him, mark my words, once she finds out she'll never be Mrs Colclough or Mrs Anything else that's grand enough to suit her. She'll be at him all the time to do things he'd never think of on his own. To assert his rights. To take control. And you'll have to fight her tooth and nail, my lass, for control of him. And for your mother's peace of mind. There'll be no leaving him to his harmless amusements in the country – if that's what you'd planned – because they won't stay harmless, once she gets wind of her opportunities. She'll have him down at the mill, every verse end, plaguing Ephraim Cook and my lawyers and bankers for
my
money.
Your
money. Well – they'll give him a hard ride. I've seen to that. But what I can't tie up in a legal document is Miss Linnet's temper, and her spite, and all the ways she'll very likely find to upset your mother. Nor the way she can queen it over your mother, at your mother's expense. No, I can't do that. And neither can you, from Frizingley. Not if you want to make certain that it's
your
will that's done. So that's that, lass – once I'm gone.'

He had no need to ask if he could rely on her. She had no need to promise what she had been bred and conditioned to perform. He squeezed her hand, those old man's tears he so detested rising, as so often now, to his angry eyes. And he
was
angry, without knowing exactly why. If only she'd been a boy. If only Amabel had been a woman. He loved them both, in the only way he knew. The only way life had taught him. Had he done well?

‘So make the most of it, lass,' he told her gruffly, not caring to investigate his true meaning. ‘While you can.'

She drove back alone to Frizingley, having said her friendly, affectionate goodbyes to Tristan.

‘I hope the horse turns out to be a success.'

‘I don't really need another horse, you know,' he'd offered, perfectly ready to give it up should she think him extravagant. Wondering, just a little – as he sometimes did – what he was really doing to earn his keep.

‘My darling,' Linnet had murmured, patting an airy ringlet, an airy flounce of her muslin dress. ‘Can one ever have too much – of anything?'

‘If you like it,' Gemma told him flatly, ‘then buy it.'

‘I say.' He was, to his sister's evident amusement, rather embarrassed. ‘What a good sort you are, Gemma. Absolutely first-class.'

She thought of him on the drive home, seeing no reason to alter her opinion that he was a ‘good sort'himself. A man who would prefer to do right, if it could be managed without causing too much fuss, than to do wrong. A man of charm and beauty whose body, as she stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, had had no greater substance for her than a beam of sunlight on summer grass. A happy, shallow man who could never be deeply harmed.

She could still smile at his easy, sunbeam shadow as she had always done. Yet no weight had ever oppressed her like the brilliant gloom of Almsmead, the slow pavane she would have to dance there of duty and devotion to the child her father would leave her. What had he said to her, the man who had so inspired her last night? And this morning? ‘
I was not born to live in a cage and neither were you. I believe I was born to grow. And I must fight anything which stunts me or stifles me
.'

Yet how could she do that when what stifled her most were the ones she loved? At least – how could she fight for long?

What had her father said to her, speaking from unacknowledged regions of his heart and his conscience?

‘
Make the most of it, lass. While you can
.'

She walked the quarter of mile to the school-house as she often did, finding Daniel alone, as she had known he would be at this late hour of the afternoon, correcting exercises in the empty classroom, his mood restless enough – fevered enough, it seemed to him – to pack up and leave; yet too intrigued, involved,
moved
– dear God – to make up his mind to do it.

All day he had thought of Gemma Gage. All day. Her plight overtaking him so completely that at times he had stood inside the head, inside the skin, of a woman caged by her conscience. And he had not liked it. A woman of honesty and courage and worth. How could he go when she needed him? Yet that was captivity too. And if he had understood her need aright, how dare he even approach her, much less hope to fulfil it? For she was the last woman in the world he would run the risk of offending.

Yet when she came into the chalky, chilly schoolroom and stood before him in the slow-gathering summer twilight her face was calm and gentle, older in its female wisdom than his own, the hands she held out to him firm and steady, although once he had taken hold of them he did not know what else to do.

Should he kiss her again? It would be no hardship.

‘Daniel …?' And the naked honesty in her face, her awareness of the enormity of the risk she ran, her full acceptance of it, seemed marvellous to him. Beautiful. Exciting, too.

‘Gemma?' He wanted to kiss her now,
wanted
to know her and learn her and discover her. To unlock her and let the riches and the sorrows, all the hopes and joys and shades and textures of her nature come spilling out. Into
his
hands. But, smiling, she freed one hand and, with a light touch, held him back.

‘Daniel.' Could he doubt the pleasure it gave her to speak his name. ‘Let me tell you that I have only a little time – to myself, I mean. Just a short while, I think, to be myself. My father is old and ill, you see. And I shall be needed – at home – quite soon. As women are. And when the need arises then I shall go. I think you will understand.'

Yes. And far more. He knew now exactly what to do.

‘Gemma.' He said it clearly, precisely, meaning every syllable. ‘Shall we make love together now. As friends, who care about each other?'

The radiance in her face answered him, warming him beyond awkwardness to a point where making love to her seemed easy and natural. As if it had happened a dozen, joyful times before.

‘Yes, Daniel. As dear, close friends.'

It was a radiant, loving promise. And he knew that whatever promises she ever made to him she would keep.

Taking her to his bed – experiencing a moment's anxiety that his sheets might not be quite fresh – he saw the truth in her, the enduring strength, undressing her slowly, carefully, with deep reverence for everything in her that he so prized. A brave and desperate woman. A little brown cob of a girl lying trustingly beneath him. Sturdy. Serious. Sweet? He put his mouth to her shoulders, tasting the smooth, amber skin. Yes, sweet and very soft around the contours of her breasts, fragrant in the cleft between them and the place where they gave way to ribs and flanks, solidly,
sweetly
curved.

Kissing her body he fell into a dream over it, feeling it move gently, confidingly beneath him, whispering to him, timidly as yet, that although not virgin, it had never been truly touched before. And
that
, above all, must be his concern, his aim, his deepest joy.
Her
pleasure. Its slow gathering from limbs his hands roused at first to hope and expectation, over which his mouth breathed and caressed and made promises into every crease of her flesh, into which his own body finally sank as an instrument of her fulfilment, seeking it out, coaxing it from her with every dreaming, gentle, dallying stroke. Arousing harmonies and playing upon them, drawing them out, until he knew her to be throbbing with his music, every note of her leaping to its first crescendo. And then he held her for a long time, kissing her cheeks and her ears with closed lips, cradling her and murmuring to her, lavishing a shower of tiny, tender caresses upon her to guard her from any hint of shame.

‘You're a lovely woman, Gemma.'

‘Oh no.' She put a hand to his lips, no shame in her anywhere that he could see. ‘You don't have to say that, Daniel.'

‘I don't have to say anything. You're a lovely woman.'

‘I don't think so.'

And because she was not asking for compliments but stating her considered opinion he grew angry, on her behalf. And glad of it. Since he had now found something else to give her.

‘You'll let me be the judge, I reckon. And I'm not talking about height and colour. What's that? It fades. And one gets used to it in any case. I'm talking about
you
, Gemma. What you are. What you have inside you. And by those standards –
real
standards – you're a lovely woman.'

She smiled again and trailed a hand along his spine, rejoicing in him.
Rejoicing
. He knew it. Dear God, what had he done to deserve such bounty?

‘You're beautiful, Daniel,' her eyes said. Very soon her lips would open, as she had opened her heart, and she would dare to speak of love.

What answer could he give her then?

The marriage between Rachel Colclough and her Rochdale cotton spinner was celebrated, with as much pomp and circumstance as seemed compatible with her brother Uriah's Christian conscience, on a clear morning in September, the bridegroom looking well satisfied with his lot, the bride somewhat pale and bemused although few people paid any attention to that, being far too busy staring at her dress, the skirt stitched in overlapping layers like the petals of a flower, a water-lily with a pearl-encrusted stem rising from its centre, between two feathery, beaded waterfalls that were the sleeves.

And the whole congregation rose, it seemed, for the dress alone with a gasp of wonder, a murmur that, in another place – the Palace Theatre, for instance – would have been applause, no one sparing a second glance for Rachel's scared eyes and aching head which were well hidden in any case by the silver lilies and roses embroidered on her veil.

The mother of the bride, Mrs Maria Colclough herself, looked very well with far more black braiding on her cinnamon brown dress than had ever been intended. Her friend, Mrs Lizzie Braithwaite, was attired as usual in purple while her daughter, young Mrs Amanda Lord, known affectionately as her mother's ‘little shadow'came in pale lavender. Mrs Tristan Gage, usually overshadowed by her splendid husband, seemed – due no doubt to some artifice of Miss Adeane's – to have lost much of the stiffness which had always marred her figure, looking, indeed, so very well that a rumour was soon started that she might be in that special ‘interesting condition'again. Frizingley's ladies knowing of no other cause which could bring such a bloom to a woman's cheek, nor give her that particular air of dreamy, languorous bliss.

Mrs Amabel Dallam, her mother, was dressed very sweetly in pale blue lace over pale blue taffeta, Mrs Ethel Lord of the brewery in an outfit of dove grey designed, by Miss Adeane, for the express purpose of showing off a magnificent new rope of pearls. Mrs Ben Braithwaite – who had been Miss Magda Tannenbaum – presented a startling appearance, it was generally considered – and one not likely to please her mother-in-law – in a gown of gold and orange stripes, also by Miss Adeane, an artfully placed arrangement of gold satin chrysanthemums hiding the deficiencies of her bosom, the skirt so wide that there had been trouble with the carriage. While of the eight bridesmaids in their lily-of-the-valley dresses of white tulle with pale green watered-silk sashes – made, on the strict instructions of Mrs Maria Colclough, to a pattern which could in no way overshadow the bride – the loveliest, although also, by no means the youngest, was held to be Miss Linnet Gage.