Lament for a Lost Lover (38 page)

“Alas, they do. But this is no mockery. This is true and binding. We shall go straight back to Eversleigh and I will tell my uncle that we are married, but I shall not tell him when the ceremony took place. I’ll promise you he will insist on our being married in the Eversleigh church with many spectators and a feast to follow. Then you will not be able to say it is like a mock marriage.”

I felt an odd elation, a desire not to look beyond the moment. I was too excited to be unhappy.

By a stream we paused to rest awhile. We tethered the horses and sat on the grass.

Carleton took my hand and said: “So at last it has happened.”

“You always knew it would, didn’t you?” I said. “You made up your mind and what you decide you want you get eventually.”

“It seems to work that way,” he admitted with unaccustomed modesty.

I looked at the ring he had put on my finger. I had taken off that which Edwin had given me and had left it in a drawer in my court cupboard.

He took my hand and kissed the ring. Then he put his arms about me and drew me down beside him.

I said uneasily: “We should be going.”

He answered that we should celebrate our marriage.

I knew what he meant and I tried to rise. “Someone could come past,” I said.

“This is a very isolated spot. Besides, I want you now. Do you realize this stupendous fact? You and I have just been married.”

Then he held me to him and laughed and the leaves fluttered down on us as he made love to me.

The notion came to me that it would always be what he wanted unless I firmly resisted which, I promised myself, I should do if the inclination so moved me.

But I would be honest. I was elated. I didn’t know whether this was happiness. It was not what I had found with Edwin, but I wanted no more of that.

Excitement, passion, satisfaction. How much more appealing than romantic love!

I never intend to be hurt again, I told myself.

Carleton was right. There was great rejoicing when my father and mother-in-law were told the news.

“You sly dog,” cried Lord Eversleigh, gripping Carleton’s hand. “Marrying in secret, eh? Keeping it from us.”

Matilda embraced me warmly. “My dearest daughter,” she said, “for that is what you are to me. Nothing could have pleased me more.” She whispered: “You will be so good for Carleton … after that unfortunate marriage. It makes everything so
right
.”

“Why did you keep it secret?” asked Charlotte; her voice was cool but there was a strange edge to it.

Carleton was ready for her. “We decided on the spur of the moment. We knew that if we announced a formal betrothal, you would have wanted us to wait and do everything in style. I know you, Aunt Matilda.”

“Yes,” said her husband, “that would have been just like you, Matilda.”

“Naturally I should have wanted to have had a beautiful wedding. In fact …”

“It’s coming,” said Carleton. “What did I tell you, Arabella?”

Then Matilda said that of course if would be pleasant to have another celebration. That could be done. “Everyone will be so disappointed if we don’t. We owe it to everyone on the estate …”

Carleton looked at me and smiled.

“We’ll consider it, eh, Arabella.”

I said we would, for I could see that Matilda was already making her plans.

She thought that we should have a ceremony in the church—people never really liked those secret ceremonies—and there would be a reception afterwards at the house. The servants should have theirs in the hall beyond the screens. It was traditional.

“We must let everyone know that it is a repeat performance,” said Carleton.

“Oh …” said Matilda, a slow smile spreading across her face.

Then she turned to me and embraced me. “You have brought great happiness to Eversleigh, Arabella … as always.”

Charlotte sought an opportunity to speak to me. I was passing her bedroom and she called me in to show me, she said, how she was progressing with a piece of tapestry she was working. That was just a pretext, I quickly realized.

“I am thinking of working in a new shade of red, so you think it would be the right thing to do?”

I said I thought it would be very good.

“So you are already married to Carleton?” she went on.

“Yes.”

“It seems so strange. I thought you didn’t like him. Were you pretending?”

“Of course not. It was just … our way.”

“You always seemed to be sparring together … trying to score over each other.”

“I suppose we were.”

“Then how could you be …?”

“Relationships are complicated, Charlotte.”

“I see that they are. You were different with Edwin.”

My lips tightened. “Yes,” I said.

“You loved Edwin dearly. It was a terrible tragedy. People suffer when they fall in love. Perhaps it would be better not to.”

“That’s certainly a point of view.”

“Was Carleton implying that you are already …?”

“I am going to have a child,” I said.

“Is that why … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It was just that it was such a surprise. You and Carleton, when I thought you disliked him. Of course I knew he was interested in you … but then, if all accounts are true, he is interested in lots of women.”

“From now on,” I said lightly, “he will have to be interested in one only.”

“Do you think that you can make a man interested in you only?”

“I believe that is what a wife must find out for herself by trying, of course.”

“You are attractive, Arabella. I’ve always seen that. It was only when that woman came …”

“You mean Harriet,” I said firmly.

“Harriet Main,” she repeated softly. And I guessed she was thinking of how Harriet had wantonly taken Charles Condey from her and then refused him.

“I am going to change things at Eversleigh, Charlotte,” I said. “We shall have balls and banquets. I think we should. And then you will …”

“Yes—” she said.

“Perhaps you’ll find out that there are other men in the world besides Charles Condey.”

“Oh, I always knew that,” she replied, smiling at me.

I’ll do it, I told myself. I’ll bring her out. I’ll find a husband for her. I’ll stop her brooding on the past. I had freed myself from it. So should she.

Yes, that was how I felt during the months that followed. I was free from the ghost of the past. Edwin had never really loved me. A bitter revelation, but it was proving helpful. I could not let my resentment against him smoulder. I was someone else’s wife now.

And Carleton. What can I say except that he carried me along on the waves of passion like a frail craft on hitherto uncharted seas? I began to wait to be alone with him, to long for him, to give myself up to him entirely.

I understood so much of what my mother had told me. I knew how she had fought against such a passion. I understood her story as I had never been able to before. She came to Eversleigh for the wedding celebration with my father and the rest of the family. Lucas could not come because his wife was having a baby.

My parents were delighted. I could see they liked Carleton. My mother told me confidentially that she could clearly understand the attraction, and she was sure I should be even happier in my second marriage than I had been in my first. I realized then that, although she had considered Edwin a suitable husband, she had felt he was so young and not quite as serious as she would like the husband of her darling daughter to be.

Carleton talked a great deal with my father. They discussed the state of the country—my father from the military angle, Carleton from that of politics. They were clearly interested in each other.

After they had returned to Far Flamstead, my mother wrote frequently and they were all delighted at the prospect of the birth of my child.

Happy days they were. Uncle Toby was beside himself with delight.

“There is nothing pleases me so much as to see young people happily married. There is nothing like marriage. Married bliss—ah, it should be the dream of us all.” He became maudlin when he had drunk too much wine, talking of all he had missed. And now he was forced to go and watch pretty women on the stage and try to live vicariously the adventures they portrayed there. If he had married he might have had sons and daughters by now. Ah, it was sad. Life had passed him by.

He was constantly going to London. Carleton said there was not a play in London that he had not seen. He was either at the King’s House or the Duke of York’s. He was an honoured patron there and well known in the green rooms.

“Poor Uncle Toby,” said Carleton. “He’s trying to catch up with youth.”

Christmas came and went, and with the New Year I began to be more and more aware of my child. Sally Nullens was joyous. Nothing could delight her more than the prospect of having a baby in the house. “The boys are growing out of babyhood,” she said. “My word, they’re a handful. It will be pleasant to have a little one.”

Carleton was the devoted husband. He was beside himself with joy, and I realized how frustrated he must have felt during all the years when he was married to Barbary. I knew he was thinking of a son. I kept reminding him that our child might well be a girl.

He said it wouldn’t matter. We should have boys in time.

“Pray allow me to deliver this one first,” I retorted.

Indeed, they were happy days. We bantered our way through them, always taunting each other, and there were nights tender more than passionate now that my pregnancy was advancing.

I was no longer mourning for Edwin. I realized that I had kept that grief alive. Someone had said that the wise drown their sorrows, and it is only the foolish who teach them to swim. I thought that was apt. I had nourished my grief, I had brooded on it; I had built a shrine to Edwin in my heart—and I had worshipped a false God. Feet of clay indeed!

I was longing for my baby to be born.

She was born on the seventh of July, and I called her Priscilla. Carleton tried to pretend that he was not disappointed by the sex of the child, but he was; but to me she was perfect, and from the moment I saw her I would not have exchanged her for any other.

Priscilla. My Priscilla. I was taken right back to the days when I had first held Edwin in my arms. How dearly I had loved him; he had been more than my own child; he had been the consolation for the loss of his father. Priscilla I loved none the less. I loved her because she
was
a girl. She would be more completely mine. If Carleton was disappointed in her sex, I was not.

Great events might be happening away from Eversleigh. I could not think seriously about them; my life was centred round my child. When I heard that the Dutch fleet had sailed up the Medway as far as Chatham and had made themselves masters of Sheerness, I said how dreadful it was, but I was not thinking much about it. The
Loyal London
, the
Great James
and the
Royal Oak
were burned by the enemy and fortifications were blown up. I shuddered, but my thoughts were all for my child.

“We had never been so disgraced,” cried Lord Eversleigh, and I knew how deeply shocked my parents would be by the news.

But I could only think that Priscilla was gaining weight, that already she knew me and would stop whimpering if I took her. Already she would smile at me. I delighted in her.

The boys came to see her, and were amazed at her little hands and feet.

“She’ll never be able to run fast with little feet like that,” declared Leigh.

“Silly,” said Edwin. “She’ll grow big, won’t she, Mama? We were little like that once.”

“I was never as little,” boasted Leigh.

“Oh, yes, you were, I saw you,” I told him. I could never look at him without thinking of Edwin and Harriet together. I wondered when he had been conceived. It was before Edwin had been, because he was the elder.

I had to stop thinking of that because it was affecting my attitude to Leigh. It was not his fault that his parents had both deceived me so blatantly.

Uncle Toby was always making excuses to come to the nursery. He was enchanted by Priscilla.

“You lucky man,” he said to Carleton. “I’d give a lot to have a child like that.” Then he would talk sadly of his misspent youth and how different everything would have been if he had settled down and become a family man.

“It’s never too late,” said Carleton. “Shall we find a bride for him, Arabella?”

“We’ll have a house party,” I said. “We’ll invite as many eligible ladies as we can muster …”

And I thought: Someone for Charlotte. Poor Charlotte, she seemed to have grown even more unhappy of late. It was almost as though she had been affected by my marriage. I suppose it was seeing me with the children.

There was great jubilation when peace was declared with the French, the Danes and the Dutch, but Carleton told me that people were beginning to murmur against the King for concluding a peace which it was said was dishonourable.

“The country’s honeymoon with Charles is long over,” he said. “They are now murmuring … not so much against him as against his mistresses.”

“Which is somewhat unfair of them.”

“Alas, dear Arabella, the world often is unfair.”

I agreed it was, and we talked about Uncle Toby and the possibility of his finding a wife.

“We really must bestir ourselves,” I said.

As it happened there was no need for us to do that.

That September Uncle Toby went to London for a brief visit and it became a long one.

He wrote back to us that he was enjoying life in London. He was at the playhouse most days. He had seen Nell Gwyn as Alice Piers in
The Black Prince
, and better still in Dryden’s comedy
An Evening’s Love
as Donna Jacintha. He wrote lyrically of the charms of Nelly and how the rumours were that the King’s attentions were now fixed on her and poor Moll Davis was nowhere in the running.

“It appears he is enjoying the London scene,” said Carleton. “That will compensate him for all he has missed as a family man.”

Then quite suddenly came a letter which was addressed to Lord Eversleigh. We were all shown it and read it again and again. Carleton laughed immoderately.