The Regency (9 page)

She turned and put her arms around him, feeling him rigid
with the memory of his old anger. 'Come,' she said, 'come to
bed.' He resisted. 'It is enough now,' she said. 'Come, my own
love.’

In bed, when the candle was out, she felt him begin to relax
in her arms. Some things were easier said into the darkness.
‘So the young man, John Skelwith, is your son?' she said.
James grunted.

‘Does he know it?’

He roused himself. 'I don't know. I hope not. Mary always
said not. She said that was why she —'

‘
Why she would not see you any more? Well, my James, she
was right. You were angry with her for refusing to leave her
husband, weren't you?' He grunted again. 'But to compound
the fault could not have cured it, don't you see? She had
already agreed to marry another man, instead of you. It
would be both weakness and folly to take you now, on worse
terms than she had rejected you for. She had to make the best
of it, and do the best for the child.'

‘
You think she was right?' he said, but his indignation was
already less.

‘
I think she did the only thing possible. And if this John
Skelwith does not know you are his father, then she has done well, and you would not put all her trouble at nothing, would
you, love?'

‘
I wouldn't tell him, if that's what you mean. What kind of
a fool do you take me for? It would hurt him, to no purpose.'

‘
Is that how you see it? You are in the right, of course,' she said, and there was a silence. She felt him gradually relaxing,
his breathing slowing and steadying towards sleep, his body
growing heavier. 'And now I have a confession to make also,
my heart's love,' she said, choosing her moment.

‘Mmm?' he enquired sleepily.

‘
I knew already that this young man was your child.’

‘
What?' he struggled up from the edge of sleep. 'You knew?
Then why —?'

‘
I found it out today by accident; but I had to let you tell
me yourself. How would you have thought if I had come to
you, asking, like an accusation? It would have come between us — now, it is nothing.'

‘You —! You are —' he was at a loss for words.

‘
Very clever: I know,' she smiled into the dark. 'One of us
must be clever, my James, for it is certain you are not.'

‘
No? But there is something I am good for, isn't there?' he
enquired dangerously.

‘
Many things,
mon amant,'
she concurred, allowing herself
to be engulfed.
'Mais surtout —’

Surtout,'
he finished for her, 'to love you. As I do,
Marmoset. This will not come between us, then, this business?'

‘
Nothing can come between us, love,' she said. 'It is good
that Edward has asked John Skelwith to the ball. We shall
make him welcome, and treat him just like anyone else. He
will never suspect anything, and it will make up a little for the
past.'

‘
How can it, if he never knows?' James said, kissing her ear.
'Not for him: for you,' she said into his hair.

 
Héloïse lost no time in calling on Mrs Skelwith. The following
day, as soon as she had completed her morning tasks, she
ordered the carriage to be brought to the door in half an
hour, and went upstairs to dress, with Kithra and Marie at
her heels.

‘
What shall it be, Marie?' she asked, staring at her reflec
tion in the glass, while Kithra sat helpfully on the shoes she had just taken off. 'I must be smart, but not threatening. She
will wonder how much I know, and what I intend. We are not rivals, but she may feel so. I must make just the right impres
sion. It is a delicate business.'

‘Yes, madame,' Marie said reflectively.

Their eyes met. Héloïse thought suddenly of all this woman
had been through with her, of fear and betrayal and death
and exile, of poverty and privation and sorrow. There had
been days in Paris when the air was heavy with the smell of
blood; when if you walked abroad, you were careful to meet
no-one's eye; when you did not know from hour to hour
which friendly neighbour or faithful servant might betray you
to your death. Their King and Queen had been murdered,
and their country was taken from them for ever; and beside
all these things, any present preoccupation with the feelings
of a Yorkshire housewife must seem absurdly trivial.

Kithra, sensing an atmosphere, edged forward a little and
thumped his tail on the ground. Héloïse said suddenly, 'Marie,
do you remember my little dog Bluette? I wish I knew what
happened to her when we fled from France.'

‘
Oh madame,' Marie said, and suddenly their arms were
around each other and they were both in tears, while Kithra
whined and pressed his cold, wet nose between them. It was a
good and cleansing thing to do, to weep, and when they had
done, they dried each other's faces and felt restored.

‘After all, James was not locked up in a box until I met
him,' Héloïse said briskly, and chose the new cherry-red
pelisse trimmed with grey fur, and the velvet mameluk hat
with the jaunty tassel, and her big grey fur muff. There now,
she addressed her reflection, do your worst, Mary Loveday.
You have his son; but he is mine now. You cannot hurt me.

Her phaeton was being repaired, so it was in her prede
cessor's
vis-à-vis
that she was driven into York. There was the
usual crush of coaches and carts queueing to get over the
Ouse Bridge, and she had plenty of time while they waited
their turn to observe that the river was very high, and that
King's Staith was flooded again. A band of workmen was
labouring with grapples to rescue bales of wool from the ware
house there, and some barelegged children were gathering
driftwood from the murky waters.

It took a long time to manoeuvre round the junction of
Ousegate and Spurriergate, where the four streams of traffic
had jammed themselves almost solid, but then they were
trotting along Coney Street, and Héloïse caught a glimpse of
the tangle of hovels and filthy yards and tenements which lay
between the main street and the river. It was just like the
Paris of her childhood, she thought, where behind the rows of
great houses lay another teeming world of poverty, of ragged
children and dunghills and foraging pigs and chickens; and the thought was somehow comforting, as if her world were
not, after all, completely lost to her.

They crossed St Helen's Square, and now they were in
Stonegate. There on the corner of Little Stonegate was the
Maccabbees club, the heavy red velvet curtains at the upper
windows promising comfort and seclusion to men who wished
to escape from their wives, their duns, their responsibilities,
or their sorrows. She thought of James drinking himself to
forgetfulness there once a week during the years of his
marriage to Mary Ann, and was sad at the waste of it all.

She remembered the terrible anguish she had suffered
when she first heard that James and Mary Ann had a son.
Well, Mary Ann was dead, and the boy was dead; and now she
was going to visit another woman who had borne James a son.

The carriage halted outside the imposing stone frontage of
Skelwith House. Like so many York houses, it was an old
building with a modern façade, added not only to improve
the look of the property, but to comply with the new fire
regulations: inside, she knew, it would present the crooked,
humane proportions of a mediaeval frame house. Now that the
carriage was halted, Héloïse could hear the cathedral bells
rocking the air above the roofs, the top layer in a cacophany
of sounds which astonished her anew every time she came
into the city.

The footman stepped down and rapped at the door, and
when the servant answered, came to open the carriage door
for his mistress, and let down the step.

‘
Come back for me in a quarter of an hour,' Héloïse said.
The Skelwith servant was waiting, holding the house door
open for her. She thrust her hands into her muff, took a deep
breath, and stepped forward, inwardly rehearsing her opening
speech.

A few moments later she was being shewn into a parlour on
the first floor. It was a low-ceilinged room at the back of the
house, whose small casement windows let in little light; but
there was a bright fire burning in a modern hearth, and Mrs
Skelwith rose from a chair pulled up beside it to meet her.

‘
I hope you will forgive me for calling on you without
leaving my card first,' Héloïse said at once, 'but as I believe
you are an old friend of the family, I hoped you would
not think it an impertinence.'

‘
Not at all, Lady Morland. I'm very glad you did call,' Mrs
Skelwith said. The words were hospitable, but the tone was unemphatic. 'Indeed, I should have called on you after your
wedding, but I'm afraid I'm a sad invalid now, and rarely go
out, except to church, so I hope you will forgive me. Won't
you sit down?’

Héloïse sat down in the chair opposite and looked at her
properly for the first time.
Why, she's quite old,
was the first
thought that occurred. The former Mary Loveday was a thin
woman in whose face any youthful beauty she may have
possessed had been extinguished by years and unhappiness. There were unbecoming shadows around her eyes, two lines
of discontent drew down her mouth corners, and her skin had
the dry and unnourished look of a woman without a lover. Her hair was hidden by a cap whose lack of trimming was
almost defiant; her gown was of good material, but of a sober
brown, and plain except for some narrow black velvet edging;
and she wore a fine cashmere shawl round her shoulders as if for warmth, rather than for ornament.

Was this the woman James had loved? Héloïse thought in
astonishment. And yet, perhaps she might once have been
pretty. Why was she so sad? Had she really loved James so
much? But no, surely no-one could waste their whole life in
regretting something they could never have. She thought
guiltily about her own long exile from his arms, all the years
when he was married to Mary Ann, and felt a brief kinship with Mrs Skelwith. But then, she thought, I never mourned
and brooded and shut myself away like this. I tried to live my
life and love God, and I almost married. The room was
comfortably furnished with many signs of wealth; and a wealthy widow could always marry, if she had a mind.