Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (6 page)

She sank down onto the bench at her side of the table. Well, she was purged, purified. The day of her wickedness was over and she must never have another day like this. It would be wrong ever to think about how Daniel Horden had looked standing against her door or when he shouted out that she was being sent back to prison. Even thoughts must be controlled.

He opened the Bible at the Book of Revelation. “Before you have any supper learn by heart the final chapter and meditate on whether you wish to stand upon Mount Zion or be cast into the lake of fire.”

He got up and began setting a fire in the hearth so that he could cook the fish. She watched him for a moment and then turned her eyes to the book.

CHAPTER 5

Clifford Horden had set up his own coach when he moved into the house in the Strand and for Daniel the next few days were a blur of visits with the ladies sitting in the coach and the gentlemen escorting them on horseback. Daniel was a skilled horseman and eagerly boasted to Diana and Madeline that at the age of three he had taken a stool to the Horden stables and climbed onto his first pony bareback. They giggled but had the grace to appear a little impressed.

He was pleased to see that they were impressed too with the open spaces where they could take the air on these occasions, particularly the vast acres of Hyde Park. Their disparaging comparisons of London with Paris became less frequent.

He was himself breathless with the life of London and a little envious of his father’s prior knowledge. It was disappointing, though, to learn that his father’s friend the Earl of Branford was resting in the country after a fall from his horse. He made sure the French girls heard that his father had a close friend in the aristocracy from his Cambridge days and noticed that they began to treat him with more respect. One day they visited Westminster and Whitehall and Daniel was pleased to hear his father tell them that he had been among the crowds on the street the very day that Charles the First had ridden by at the head of a troop of soldiers to make his rash attempt to arrest the five members of Parliament.

“I fear that was the beginning of the end for him,” he commented. “It was a slight that Parliament was reluctant to forgive.”

Clifford interposed quickly, “We are all very ready now to accept a King who honours the great institution of Parliament. The nation is united as never before.”

Mother Bel whispered to Daniel, “This merchant knows which side his bread is buttered.”

Daniel grinned back but he was thinking, Clifford can speak of unity but has a rift within his own family as wide as an ocean. Why does he not strive to heal that and make life comfortable for his one granddaughter?

Clifford was keen to show them the Royal Exchange where much of his business was conducted and the headquarters of the Merchant Companies. Each of these was like a small village in itself, the central meeting hall being only the largest of many ornate structures. Separate buildings housed the treasury and the exchequer, and, for the lavish dinners served there, the buttery, the pantry and the kitchens.

Daniel couldn’t help thinking about Eunice in these amazing places that flaunted their wealth so ostentatiously. Her father had worked for Clifford before he turned impossibly puritanical. Had he and his wife ever taken Eunice as a small child to show her this world in which her grandfather had accumulated his riches? Was she too young to remember? He wasn’t sure how old she was at the death of her mother but surely she had had the beginnings of a comfortable childhood. How could she bear the restriction of her life now?

They were visiting the Baker’s Hall when this thought came to him and for the first time ever he gave thanks for his own parents. He looked at his father, head courteously bent to Clifford who was pointing out the carvings over the grand entrance, and compared him to the forbidding figure of William Horden. Nathaniel’s mild eyes and gentle features breathed good humour. He wore his own rather unruly hair not as flaxen now as Daniel’s but touched with the red of his mother, Grandmother Wilson. Beside the neatly bewigged Clifford with his thin, hard-lined face he looked pleasantly boyish.

Daniel switched his gaze to his mother who with Aunt Henrietta was watching Madeline and Diana disporting themselves at the bowling alley beyond the main courtyard. Bel was laughing at their antics with her usual exuberance. She looked a different breed from her tall stately sister, not as classically beautiful certainly but her square face had fine bone structure and her dark curls shone in the sunlight. Surely Eunice must have envied me parents like mine, Daniel thought, when that ghastly black pillar appeared to claim her?

Thinking of Eunice had made him weary of the French girls’ chatter and in this reflective mood he was content to stand near the older members of their little party and listen to their comments. Celia was enthusing about the gardens to Lady Horden.

“Clifford and I must visit Paris soon if you say there are gardens like these there but Clifford finds it hard to take even these few days from his business.”

Nathaniel was now asking Clifford, “And what are those low buildings over there?”

Clifford almost purred with pride. “Ah those are the almshouses. All the big companies care for their own members when they are sick or old. London is the best organised and most charitable city in the world.”

Daniel noticed that he curled his lip provocatively at Lady Horden but she did not rise to the defence of Paris in this category. His mother had heard the remark and stepping close to Daniel whispered, “All the same, we have seen many miserable streets where people live who have not the benefit of belonging to a great company. I wager William has immured poor little Eunice in one of those.”

Hearing her name spoken aloud released Daniel’s pent-up thoughts. He drew Bel aside ostensibly to admire a grapevine growing on a south-facing wall.

“Mother, I think of her so much. She reminds me of when I was a schoolboy and caught a moth in a little box. I thought I could keep it as a pet and I heard it flapping inside but I forgot about it and when I next looked it was dead. Could we not visit her before we leave for Northumberland?”

Bel looked up into his face. “Do you, son, think of her so much? Well, we
are
to visit her. Clifford and Celia wish us to and say they will send us in the coach to the house where they live. They believe it would be right to bid them goodbye before we leave for Northumberland.”

Daniel bit his lip. “Will that not inflame Cousin William?”

“That is what I said to Celia on her own, for I find she is more at ease when her husband is not by. But she believes that whatever William does or says the only way for her poor granddaughter to be rescued is through marriage.”

“Marriage!” Daniel struck one fist into the other. “Not with me I trust!”

Bel laughed. “Ah, I wondered. Your kindly soul is moved but there are limits drawn. Celia hinted of course that Clifford would give a substantial dowry.”

“And is that to move me further, Mother? You said you want me to marry for true love.”

“I do, I do, but you spoke up so in the child’s defence I thought you had come to some understanding that first day upstairs.”

“Nonsense. I had had scarce a word out of her.”

“That was enough for me with your father. When I saw him I knew if I ever married he was the one. You said just now you think of Eunice all the time. That was how I was. I couldn’t get your father out of my mind.”

The others were now beckoning to them. Daniel frowned down at his mother.

“It is to get Eunice
out
of my mind that I’d like to see where and how she lives. If it is not as bad as I fear I can forget all about her.” When he said it he was certain that was the truth. Forgetting Eunice and ignoring Madeline and Diana would allow him freedom to enjoy London and banish his fears of looming matrimony.

They began to drift towards the rest of the party.

“And if her life and her home are worse than you suppose what follows? An urge to rescue her?” Bel gave him her comical grin but seeing his frown deepen she quickened her pace and took her husband’s arm. “Dan showed me such a beautiful grapevine, Nat. I wish we could grow one at Horden Hall! I love grapes.”

“You shall taste the wine from the vineyards of Chateau Rombeau, sister,” Henrietta said. “There are two cases among our luggage. One we have already presented to Cousins Clifford and Celia and the other is to travel north with us to cheer you in the chill air of Horden.”

Daniel saw Madeline and Diana, who had abandoned their bowls, pulling faces at each other. They are determined to dread Northumberland, he chuckled to himself. I hope it is cold and wet and they beg to go home as quickly as possible. For himself, he realised, he was in no hurry to be back at Horden Hall while there was so much of London still to see.

The only part of every day he did not enjoy were the evenings. If they stayed in there was music or card games. Madeline and Diana sang and played, as Nathaniel had foreseen, on the virginals. Daniel would have been content to sit in a corner and listen if the sound had been pleasant but Diana’s voice was thin and squeaky and Madeline’s stronger but harsh. What was worse they kept begging him to sing with them and then teasing him when he wouldn’t. At Nether Horden church he sang out happily with the congregation now that his voice had broken and settled down a little but he had no intention of making an exhibition of himself as a soloist.

Then there were the card games. Clifford and Celia sometimes entertained friends with games of cribbage but the French family had brought with them cards for a variety of games which the girls explained more boisterously than clearly, contradicting each other frequently about the rules. While the older members of the party could sit and chat it was always assumed that Daniel would want to play.

On the whole though he feared the going out evenings more than the ones at home. Celia was eager to show off her visitors to friends and neighbours so several invitations had already been accepted which involved suppers followed by dancing.

“He has no sense of rhythm,” Diana and Madeline agreed after the first time he was compelled to stand up with each in turn. “He has the grace of an elephant.”

At least he had new clothes for these occasions and so had his parents. Lady Horden had ordered them early in their visit, saying she could not bring such presents from France. “You all had to be measured for them. I would never have guessed the height of this young man!”

Securing an invitation to a ball given by an earl and countess was Celia’s greatest triumph. Bel came into Daniel’s room that evening when he was struggling into his new shirt with sleeves more full and flouncy than he had ever worn before.

She looked at him with fond pride, then sat herself on the bed and declared with a mischievous gleam in her eye, “I think I should warn you that Henrietta has told me Diana is more in love with you than Madeline is. There is a possible French husband hovering back home for Madeline but we will see.”

Daniel was just going to blurt out that that was ridiculous as both girls treated him as a joke. Then it occurred to him that he might sound childish. As befitted his superior clothes he would be cool and indifferent.

He drew on his new doublet before he answered. “Oh yes I recall, you said all three girls would want to marry me. I wondered when something would be said about those two.”

His mother chuckled, not in the least taken in by this new pose. She smoothed out her dress of oyster silk, her fingers obviously delighting in its richness. “Well, you see, my dear mother had to make sure we would not disgrace her, since she used to call me a hoyden when I was a girl. I think she was relieved to find I had married so respectable a man as your father and produced a not unpresentable boy. Henrietta, whose under-garments I once chopped up with scissors, has also been pleasantly surprised.”

Daniel grunted as his bitten finger nails refused to tie the buttons of his doublet. Diana in love with him! He had seen no such signs.

“You can tell Aunt if you like that I am not interested in her daughters but I would still like to visit Cousin William before we go.”

“Of course. You want to see Eunice again, don’t you? You know you can tell me all, Dan?” She got up and fastened his buttons and peered into his face.

He shrugged his shoulders. Joining the navy was suddenly more appealing than ever. “Nothing to tell,” he said.

The ball did not break up till two in the morning by which time Daniel was already nodding on a velvet couch in the corner of the ballroom. Madeline and Diana had not required more than one dance each from him but were never without other partners. When his mother joined him he said, “You see, the French cousins have not pestered me for dances.”

“I would say Diana at least is hoping to make you jealous.”

He snorted. “She is no different from Madeline. All they both want is endless pleasure and I cannot give them that as a dancing partner.” He yawned and sat up. “How will they endure our quiet evenings at Horden Hall? I suggest we plague them with boredom till they plead to go home. Aunt will soon see that Northumberland is no place for either of them.”

With a small pang he thought he could have had some pleasure in walking or riding about the grounds and the village with Eunice, showing her a countryside which she could hardly know existed.