Chapter 3
Chapter Three
N o sooner had Merelda and Mr Wilde exited the grove than Adelaide, with the timing of an actress following her cue, walked into it through the archway. She was carrying a bottle of champagne in one hand and clutching her silk shawl around her shoulders with the other. She swept towards Kit.
‘Kit, darling, there you are. I’m sorry I took so long getting here. Do you know, I actually took the wrong turning and went right instead of left almost as soon as I came in. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘Never mind,’ he said, taking the bottle of champagne that she waved in his direction. ‘You’re here now. Where’s Oliver?’
‘He was busy being quizzed by some old dear about her pregnant goat, so I didn’t bother asking him. Millicent spotted the bottle, but I pretended I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t find your brother or sister, so I came by myself. It will be nice to spend some time together alone, won’t it. We can catch up properly now.’
He’d been back in Yorkshire for nine weeks but had only seen Adelaide twice before the engagement party. They were long overdue some time in each other’s company. The air was strongly scented with roses, and some of the flowers winding up the pergola were fully open. It was unusual for them to be so awake at this time of night. Kit inhaled deeply, as a pigeon flew over and settled on the top of the hedge, staring down at him.
He sat down on the bench, beckoning Adelaide to join him and drummed his fingers on the edge.
‘Do you find it odd to think that one day this place will be ours?’
Adelaide sat beside him and kicked off her shoes. Her toenails were varnished bright red. As she flexed her feet, they looked like beetles trying to burrow into the gravel.
‘I suppose it’s a little odd, but we’ve always known it was going to happen. It could be decades in any case until you inherit it properly. Not that we want that to happen too soon,’ she added.
‘No of course not,’ Kit agreed. ‘Though Father has told me that when he is sixty he will hand over all the responsibilities to me and go off to play golf in Scotland for six months of the year. I’m not sure he has shared that plan with Mother, however, so we’ll have to see.’
Adelaide made a non-committal noise.
They sat silently for a few minutes. Kit had discovered some silences were amicable, where the people present were comfortable enough in each other’s company not to need to speak. Others were more awkward in nature, brought about by having nothing much to say. He was aware that it was the second type that they were now observing.
Adelaide looked as if she was feeling it too from the way she was twisting her engagement ring back and forth around her finger.
‘I was talking to Merelda and Mr Wilde before you got here,’ Kit remarked.
‘Mr Wilde? Who is that?’
‘The gentleman you were dancing with.’
Adelaide’s eyes widened. ‘Do you know, I had completely forgotten his name! I’m going to be such a terrible hostess when we are married. I shall have to give all our guests little buttons with their initials on whenever we do a Saturday to Monday party.’
‘You won’t be a terrible hostess,’ Kit said loyally. ‘You’ll be perfect.’
‘We’ll have hundreds of parties, so I’ll get lots of practice,’ Adelaide said.
She leaned forward and kissed him softly on the cheek. Not the cheek with the puckered scars, that would involve a level of courage that he’d expect from no one.
‘That’s for being so brave my love,’ she whispered before leaning back and taking a deep breath. ‘I’m so very proud of you, Kit, you deserve all the honours that comes your way for what you have done for our country.’
He nodded at her words, all the while knowing how greatly he was undeserving of them, no matter how much Adelaide might think otherwise.
Shells. Guns. Screams. Pleading.
He blinked rapidly in an attempt to rid himself of the ghosts that flashed before his eyes.
He was such a hypocrite. Such a damned, undeserving fraud.
He pulled his hand away from Adelaide’s and reached for the champagne.
‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said, twisting the cork and letting it shoot off into the air.
There was a fluttering of wings and he looked up to see the pigeon flying off. The poor thing must have been startled by the cork. Adelaide hadn’t brought glasses, so he drank from the bottle then held it out to her. But she was sitting on her hands, gazing at him solemnly.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘The way you change the subject. At some point we’ll have to talk properly about our experiences in the war,’ she said. ‘Tell me what it was like for you.’
Kit drew in a juddering breath as his stomach clenched. Bursting shells. Screaming voices. Flashes of artillery in the blackness.
‘You’ve read the newspapers I’m sure you know what happened. You must have heard what happened to the men who came back, too. Raving and weeping. Insensible with shellshock.’
‘I know. I saw them when I nursed,’ Adelaide snapped.
Kit half-lifted his hand to his face then forced it down. ‘Then what more do you need to know?’
‘I need to know what it did to you ,’ she whispered. ‘Because we’re going to be married and we shouldn’t have secrets.’
Kit slumped against the back of the bench. She really wouldn’t want to know his secrets. ‘Maybe in a couple of years I’ll be able to face talking about it, but it’s too soon now.’
‘I understand,’ Adelaide said quietly. ‘That is, I don’t because I can’t imagine. You’re right. Nursing was an adventure. Taking responsibility. Having freedom. It sounds dreadful to say it, but my life expanded and I did things I never believed I was capable of. Some of the men I nursed spoke of friends in the trenches, and fun in between the battles. There were good times for me. Were there no good times for you, at all?’
A boyish grin beneath a barely there moustache. “Don’t suppose you’ve got a box of Lucifers?”
Kit dropped his head. Already feeling tense, his throat filled with a bitter taste that the bubbles from the champagne did nothing to help. ‘There were. But all my friends are gone. Everyone I loved over there died.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Adelaide said. She leaned against him, her shoulder pressing up against his. ‘You’ll make new friends and of course I’ll be able to introduce you to new faces at the wedding and afterwards. All my friends will be able to visit us, and I do need to stay in touch with them.’
There was pain in her voice that Kit had never heard before. It occurred to him that although the marriage would be a bit awkward for him, it would be harder for her; she would need to uproot herself from everyone and everything she knew.
Meadwell Hall had been a feature of Adelaide’s life since birth and Kit was so used to her coming and going that it had never occurred to him it had never actually been her home. The villagers and neighbours were acquaintances rather than friends, and the leisurely pace of village life was no substitute for a thriving town and the frequent trips to the capital she took. It wasn’t the same as knowing his friends were dead, but he could see how, in a slightly clumsy way, she was trying to cheer him up, and he was grateful.
‘We can have as many parties as you like,’ he said.
‘And of course we can go down to London very often,’ Adelaide said, reviving slightly.
‘Well perhaps not both of us so often,’ Kit said hesitantly. ‘You know I am rather a country mouse. The local players doing a spot of Gilbert and Sullivan is enough culture for me.’
Adelaide pouted then laughed. ‘I don’t imagine you’ll want to come to fashion shows, but you can go sit in the reading rooms at the British Library or go to the museums or galleries, and then we can spend the evening doing exciting things.’
Kit bristled slightly at the implication that the museums and galleries that he loved weren’t exciting. ‘You’d probably have more fun taking Charlotte or Millicent,’ he suggested.
He meant it helpfully, but she frowned at him. ‘I don’t want to be taking my spinster cousins around London when all my friends will be there with husbands or fiancés. Do you know, in some cultures when a husband dies the widow is buried alive with him, or thrown onto his funeral pyre.’
‘I have heard of such a thing,’ Kit said.
‘Well, I don’t intend to be buried alive before you’re even dead! Even the country mouse visited the city.’
‘I haven’t said that I won’t,’ Kit snapped. ‘Just not as frequently as you’ll want to. I’m going to be busy running the estate, and I’m hoping to continue some of my studies in my spare time, too. I want to learn about advances in biology for cultivating new crops and perhaps strengthen the breeding pedigree of the deer. Besides trips to London will cost an awful lot.’
Adelaide tossed her head. ‘Lucky we’re going to have my money then, isn’t it!’
It was the first time she’d ever openly referred to her wealth. Kit drew a sharp breath.
‘Addie!’
Adelaide gathered her shawl around her shoulders defensively, fingers tightening in the silk. ‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it. We can dress it up as much as we like, but even though your branch of the family tree owns the orchard, my branch has got much more fruit.’
‘That’s a dreadful metaphor,’ Kit retorted.
She snorted and reached for the champagne bottle that Kit was still holding, tugging it from his hand. She lifted it to her lips, swigging quite a lot of it in one go.
‘Steady on,’ Kit cautioned.
She lowered the bottle and gave him a contemptuous look. ‘Yes, far be it from me to want to have some fun,’ she sneered, emphasising the final word heavily. ‘I’m going to go back to the house. There will still be some dancing. Are you coming?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then I’ll have to find a different partner!’
She tossed her head and stalked off. Kit leaned back and closed his eyes. The argument had erupted from nowhere and he felt quite in shock. Remembering Adelaide’s temper tantrums in childhood, he suspected the best thing he could do now was give her some space.
He gave it ten minutes, then went back through the ornamental gardens. Although much of the land belonging to Meadwell had been given over for wartime food production, the grounds immediately surrounding the house were well kept and beautifully landscaped with hedgerows, flower beds, fountains and statues. He walked past three statues before something caught his attention and he spun around.
Someone was standing in the shadow of a statue –this one was a youth dressed in an indecently short tunic that showed off the muscles in his well-formed thighs, while he reached over his shoulder for an arrow with a knowing look on his stone face. Kit’s first thought was that the person was male but then Mr Wilde’s companion stepped towards him and he realised he’d been mistaken.
‘Why are you still lurking around in the garden?’ Kit asked.
‘I saw your fiancée return but you weren’t with her.’
‘And what is that to you?’ Kit snapped, wondering what Adelaide’s expression had been like. It was bad enough that they’d rowed, without a complete stranger knowing of it, especially when the woman was connected to Silas Wilde.
She pouted. ‘It’s nothing to me. I just saw her. She didn’t see me. In answer to your first question, I wanted to be quiet for a few moments and listen to the night birds.’
She tilted her head and looked up at the sky. Kit followed her gaze. There were no birds but a dozen or so stars had emerged from behind the clouds while he’d been in the maze. He took a deep breath and smelled mimosa, the scent momentarily transporting him back to a childhood summer in Nice.
Her eyes glinted. ‘Do you favour the youth or the woman?’
Fire coursed through Kit’s veins, heating his cheeks. Had someone been spreading gossip, or was this woman particularly perceptive? ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
She gestured around. ‘The statues. I was beside a woman before. Now I’m standing beside a man. I wondered which statue you preferred.’
Kit swallowed and his heart began to resume normal speed. ‘I’ve never given it much thought. They’re just garden ornaments.’
‘Would you like a nut?’
The question was so unexpected that Kit assumed he must have misheard, but the woman held her hand out.
‘Will you take a nut from me?’ She uncurled her palm and cupped in it was a single walnut, the shell unbroken. Even if Kit had wanted to accept, walnuts were notoriously annoying to crack and he had nothing with which to do it.
‘No thank you. I’m not hungry,’ he answered.
‘It isn’t for eating,’ she said, looking at him from beneath her lashes.
‘What is it for then?’
She closed her palm and drew her hand back to her side. Kit could have sworn that it was already empty and glanced at the ground in case she had simply tossed the nut away but he couldn’t see it.
He’d met a Welsh corporal in the trenches who could do tricks with cigarettes and empty shell casings. He’d tried to teach Kit how to make them disappear, but Kit never had the knack. He was grudgingly impressed at the woman’s dexterity.
She put her hand to his chest, the movement quick and unexpected. Her fingers pressed into the soft cotton of his shirt and a blush of heat crept across his torso. He gulped.
‘What do you think you are doing?’
She looked pained, then contrite.
‘I'm sorry, I can be a bit over-familiar at times.’
‘I’ll say!’ He imagined the hand twisting at an angle of ninety degrees, so the fingers were pointing downward, slowly walking their way lower, over his abdomen, down to the waistband of his trousers.
She took her hand away and stepped back. ‘Sometimes when I like people, I forget that they may not like me back. Where I come from, we are a little bit more passionate in our actions.’
‘And where do you come from?’ Kit asked. ‘I've been trying to place your accent.’
‘Oh, quite far away. From a long way. I doubt you would have heard of it.’
So it did seem as if she might be a refugee from the war. Poor thing. Little wonder that she and her devilish friend were trying to charm themselves into local society.
‘I’m going inside,’ he said. ‘Don’t stay out here too long.’
He walked away, purposely not looking behind him. The party sounded still in full swing, but the thought of being in company was unbearable and he decided to return to his rooms in the Second Tower (oddly named, because as far as anyone knew there had never been a First Tower).
The tower had been added in the early seventeenth century and was accessible from the grounds as well as from inside the Long Hall. Kit was grateful, given his uneven emotions, that Meadwell was a house of many exits and entrances, so it was easy for him to slip back inside unseen. Perhaps he should suggest that he and Adelaide took a flat in London. It couldn’t be in one of the fashionable areas, because even with Adelaide’s money that would be a stretch, but they could manage somewhere that they’d be able to travel into the centre on the underground. He often pondered what his parents and grandparents would do if he announced that he intended to rent a property in one of the nearby towns of Helmsley or Malton.
The subject had never arisen, because the entire family assumed that as heir to the house and estate, Kit would live at Meadwell his entire life. His father had, and his father before him, and so on, back as long as Kit was aware. It was how things were done. Younger sons were expected to enter the church or military or law, or otherwise find a respectable profession. Daughters, obviously, would marry and leave to join their husband’s household but the eldest son was expected to stay at Meadwell.
The family resided in the North Wing at the other end of the Long Hall but at the age of sixteen, Kit had been shown to the second floor of the Second Tower, where the heir to the estate traditionally resided in what was known as the Buck’s Apartment; a suite of rooms comprising a pair of linked bedrooms, a sitting room, bathroom and study. Kit loved the independence it gave him. He’d spent all his holidays from St Peter’s School there, and had continued to do so throughout his studies at Oxford.
Naturally, he had returned after being demobbed from the Green Howards after the war ended. Once he was married, he expected Adelaide would move in with him, and claim the study as her personal sitting room.
He set a pan of water to boil on the small spirit stove in the sitting room and walked into the bedroom to undress. As he unbuttoned his shirt, he caught a glimpse of himself in the cheval mirror and his stomach heaved at the monstrous vision that stared back.
One half of his face looked boyishly handsome, the other not only aged him but transformed him into a ghoul. He raised his left hand and his reflection did the same, fingertips running over a cheek that was mottled red and white, the skin puckered and stretched. When the bandages had first been removed and he was handed a shaving mirror, he had screamed at the sight for a full five minutes. The scarring caused by the mustard gas and shrapnel would never fade.
He took hold of the walnut frame with both hands, tilting it back on the stand. Closer, his uneven vision gave the mirror-Kit a halo of greenish purple. He blinked and the skin beneath his right eye drooped at the corner, the eyelid taking longer to return to fully open. The mirror-Kit’s nails dug into the cheek, stretching and pulling it. Though Kit could see his reflection doing it, felt the pressure with his fingertips, he felt nothing on his face. There was barely any sensitivity to his skin.
He wouldn’t blame Adelaide if she preferred to furnish the third-floor rooms, currently used to store junk, and live up there, rather than sleep next to him and have his ruined face be the first thing she saw as she opened her eyes. He wouldn’t even blame her if she chose to live in a London flat most of the time rather than in the countryside with him.
The room became unbearably oppressive. Kit wiped his eyes harshly with the back of his arm, walked to the window, flung up the sash and leaned out, letting cool air whip around his bare torso.
The party guests were starting to leave. Cheerful voices rang out and silhouettes swung torches back and forth as neighbours made their way to the bridge. Others were leaving in motorcars, sounding discordant horns. Soon the noises died away, leaving only the distant clattering of the staff stacking bottles outside the kitchen door.
Adelaide and her family were staying below Kit, in the guest wing on the first floor of the Second Tower. The inner door opened and closed, and their voices rose in laughing whispers as they went into their rooms.
The water in the pan had boiled away almost to nothing and there wasn’t enough for a cup of tea. Kit’s well of tolerance for what should have been a pleasant evening had boiled dry, too. He went back into his bedroom. He left the window fully open and threw himself onto the bed without bothering to undress further. Somewhere in the distance he heard the distinctive barking of a fox, followed by howls from every dog in the area.
Kit closed his eyes and eventually fell into a fitful sleep. He had been plagued with nightmares for months but tonight the usual shrieks of pain and bursts of gunfire were replaced with foxes cracking walnuts and pigeons drinking champagne.
* * *
‘Walnuts and sympathy? Is that the best you could do?’ Silas’s voice dripped with disdain. ‘A pretty boy like that and you couldn’t capture him? Not even a dance? The touch of your hand on the back of his wrist to make his blood rush? An enticement to ease his sorrows in your lap?’
‘He didn’t dance, other than with her.’
She had touched him of course. His heart had practically left his chest when she’d laid her hand over it and he’d so clearly wanted her to touch him more intimately. It was both pathetic and endearing how prim and proper he was. That was none of Silas’s business.
‘He stood and watched and glowered, full of pity and anger. You saw that. His mood wasn’t fit for anything else. Especially not after he argued with her.’ She smiled smugly. ‘But you didn’t know about that, of course.’
Silas cocked an eyebrow, digesting that new information. ‘A lovers’ argument. Thank you for telling me.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Were you only Valentine?’
‘I think he saw me in between, though I expect he thought he had imagined it.’ Valentine recalled the flash of shame that had almost exploded from Kit when she’d mentioned the statues.
‘Perhaps you should try being Valentin,” Silas suggested.
‘Perhaps you should try for him yourself,’ Valentine retorted, with a glint in her eye that contained the barest trace of rebellion. She was no longer a common doxy to be used as her master commanded.
Silas peered down his nose. ‘I thought about it, but that side of him is closely buried. Very wise, too. Their kind sniff out difference and call it an atrocity. No matter. He is not necessary. She is the one I came for. I want her. I need her.’ Silas smiled at a nugget of knowledge Valentine wasn’t party to. He rolled his head back and growled deep in his throat. ‘She captivates me. I will know no peace until I have won my lady.’
Trophies and conquests. Valentine sniffed contemptuously. Silas turned to her with a scornful look.
‘You do want him, though he is of no use?’
‘He’s pretty,’ she muttered.
‘Pretty, but so consumed with self-pity that the spark of courage in him isn’t hot enough to singe a feather. What good would he do you? Could he fight for us?’
She recalled the gentle smile as he offered to get her a glass of water and cautioned her against the river. Valentine bit her lip, keeping to herself the offer of help Kit had selflessly given. It would have been so easy to entwine him that it had felt unfair.
‘I rather think he is done with fighting for now. He’s full of grief and anger. There is strength beneath it but he resists the call.’
Silas laced his fingers, looking thoughtful. ‘He is a truth-teller. He has a brain. I saw a little of it tonight when we spoke in the maze.’
‘There we go, then. He thinks the world he lives in wants nothing of him, and he wants nothing of it. But given the time he could be changed.’
Silas laughed good-humouredly. ‘You still have the capacity for optimism. How heartening. But time is running short, and I cannot waste it searching this world any further. We will have to make do with the resources at our disposal. I shall continue to work on my path, you on yours. He released her tonight without really understanding what he agreed to.’
He began pacing around the room. She watched him striding back and forth, flowing like water, then he paused at the window and stared in the direction of Meadwell.
‘Time for bed, my child. Tomorrow we will walk the countryside, speak to whom we meet and recuperate. We will return to Meadwell on the day of the fete and see if the seeds I have sown have bloomed enough to be picked. A fateful day it will be.’
He laughed at his own pun then walked back to her and lifted her chin, fingers gripping tightly enough for her to feel the power coiled in him. His eyes flickered from violet to deepest emerald.
‘You’ll have to try harder at the fete if you want him.’
‘If I want him.’ Valentine shrugged indifferently. ‘He’s rather pathetic, truth be told.’
Silas rolled his eyes, obviously not fooled by her protestations. He let his clothes drop to the floorboards until he was naked. The moonlight caressed his long, lean form, lightly tanned from head to foot. She paid no attention, having seen his body enough times to be unmoved to desire. He sighed then climbed into his bed and drew the furs over himself with a rustle.
‘Sleep well,’ he murmured.
She threw herself back on the narrow cot and watched Silas long after he fell asleep. She had never needed more than three or four hours of it a night since she’d been a child. This was her own time, when no one could command her. The scent of fresh grass and the humming of night insects on the breeze called to her. She slipped from the cot and tiptoed to the open window and leaned out, tempted to leave the ground behind for a while. An owl hooted, answered by its mate and she drew back inside. Too dangerous to go out there when she might become easy prey. One day, if Silas’s plan worked, she might be her own woman again, and then nothing and no one would keep her tethered to the form she wore.