CHAPTER NINE #2
Hetty Goodworth was caught between fear of Lady Holdenby and delight at being included in an evening invitation, and spent rather too much time over the next few days worrying about what she ought to wear.
Louisa tried to be understanding, for the poor woman had, she kept reminding herself, been a parson’s wife whose society had been genteel but rarely aristocratic.
Louisa did not worry about the dinner, but she did worry.
Part of her was pleased at the thought of spending an evening with others, and she felt old Lady Holdenby had more wit in her twisted little finger than most in the vicinity, so she was interesting, but part of her also wanted to stay at home and hem a petticoat for Emily.
That was the worry. Was she coming to be reclusive at twenty-five?
That was a rather horrifying prospect. Once she was out of first mourning she would make the effort and do more than go to church and visit the tenants.
After all, the locality was not swarming with single men seeking to lure her from the security of independence.
She shut her mind to the inner voice that said it only needed one man, and he was already on hand and too often in her thoughts.
Even as she wished he was not, that meant she thought of him the more.
It was not his looks that threatened her.
He was, she admitted calmly to herself, a good-looking man in his way, with the fine figure and soldierly bearing, and the blue-grey eyes that seemed dangerously understanding.
His damaged hand did not affect her in any way, other 143than to make her feel for the limitations it put upon him.
She had seen it, seen it almost at its worst perhaps, and not been cast into a swoon.
It did not disgust her, nor frighten her.
What frightened her was that it was so easy to fall into relaxed conversation with him, to enjoy his company, to want to share things with him.
He exuded dependability, a much maligned virtue, since it was so often linked to being boring.
Yet he was not boring in the least. What she felt for him was nothing like the feeling she had experienced when Dembleby offered for her.
As Major Barkby had suggested, and it was still hard to change his title, she had experience of marriage, but not love.
If she was honest with herself, what she feared was that she was falling in love with him, and that would ruin all, for she would let herself be trapped once more.
She would find out that beneath the man she saw, because she wanted to see him that way, he was just another man who would deny her the right to be herself, despite his protestations to the contrary.
She must fight her feelings, using good hard sense.
Louisa had not told Lady Holdenby that the dinner engagement was for two days after her full mourning ended, and dressed for the evening with a degree of excitement that ran close to attending one’s first grand ball.
Sitting before her mirror dressed in a silk gown the colour of rich plums that did, as the Bath dressmaker had said, show off her hair and complexion to the best advantage, she felt a new woman, even though her only jewellery was a pair of jet earrings.
She would rather have nothing about her 144neck than jet beads, or worse, some mourning jewel that had links to Dembleby.
No, this felt right. The gown was beautifully made, with a ruching about the neck, with the neckline forming a slight V at the front and a black silk tasselled cord about the high waist, not overdone, but with style.
She was disappointed that the Misses Lewisham were among the eight ladies present. Other than the hostess, there was herself and Hetty Goodworth, Mrs Lipscomb, Lady Honoria Corby, Lady Molesley and the two sisters, who seemed to be one creature, and not a very pleasant one.
Lady Holdenby greeted her with warmth, and an appreciative eye.
‘Glad to see you out of your blacks, my dear, and very fine you look. Pity there are no gentlemen here to appreciate the ensemble, but there. Had I known … but I sometimes have dinners like this, where the conversation does not bore poor men, and it means that those of us on our own are not merely “awkward numbers”. It is the problem with the single or widowed state when it comes to parties and dinners, not that I care for parties at my age. Too much standing about and food too fancy. You’ll find my table fairly plain, but all done well.
Now, you know everyone, I take it? Good.
’ Her ladyship, having said all she wished, nodded at Hetty Goodworth, and said no more.
Louisa smiled, and looked at the assembled ladies, who smiled, but in a strangely distant way.
Something felt odd, and she had no idea what it might be.
She was seated at dinner next to Lady Holdenby herself, not only because she was the most senior in rank, but, declared the old lady 145with a crack of laughter, so that her hostess would not have to cup her hand to her ear to hear her.
‘They say’ – and she did not specify who ‘they’ might be – ‘that I should use an ear trumpet, but if I have a good hand why not use it instead of looking an imbecile with some cornucopia sticking from my head.’
Louisa agreed, and could not help her lips twitching.
‘All very well for you, my girl, but the time will come, fifty years hence, that you will be in my place. Glad I won’t be about to see the world then.
The way women are dressing is getting more and more as if they were in their nightgowns.
In half a century they might be wearing scarce anything at all.
Damping their petticoats, that is what some Society ladies are doing, I have heard.
Hmm, acting like lightskirts in my view. ’
Louisa rather enjoyed Lady Holdenby’s pithy animadversions upon modern society. She was less amused as she overheard Barkby’s name in the conversation of the other ladies, who, since it was a very informal dinner, were chattering like jackdaws.
‘Poor man. And a cripple too. How will he manage, do you think? And him only used to the army.’
‘You speak as though the new Lord Barkby is some sad creature warped of mind and body and incapable of running an estate.’ Louisa’s voice had an edge.
‘If he can command a squadron of cavalry, I am sure a Somerset estate will not be beyond him, and he lacks but the fingers of a hand, not his arms and legs, or a brain.’
‘But he will be the last, of course,’ sighed Mrs Lipscomb.
‘The last, ma’am?’
146‘Of his line.’
‘How odd. Perhaps it is only thought so in Somerset, but as far as I know, the lacking of fingers does not render a man incapable of siring sons.’
Mrs Lipscomb looked horrified, but Lady Holdenby laughed out loud.
‘Aye, no need to be too mealy mouthed. You are talking twaddle, Augusta.’
‘But what woman would marry such a man?’ enquired Miss Euphemia Lewisham nervously.
‘Any woman with sense,’ responded Lady Holdenby, with alacrity. ‘Good family, nice estate, man of honour and honest as the summer day is long. Pity it is I am not fifty years younger or I would be setting my cap at him myself.’ Her eyes twinkled.
‘But that hand …’ Miss Euphemia Lewisham shuddered.
‘… is repellent,’ finished Miss Lewisham.
‘If all you look at in a man is his hands, then no wonder you are spinsters still.’ The old lady was being outrageous, and having enormous fun. It was one of the few privileges of great age, and she was using it to the full.
‘A man may achieve much without a whole limb, let alone if he is deprived of part of a hand,’ said Louisa, striving to control her tone. ‘Admiral Lord Nelson lacked his right arm.’
‘Yes, but he was a sailor,’ declared Miss Lewisham, as though this made a huge difference. Lady Molesley opened her mouth, and then shut it again. It would serve no purpose to enquire.
‘Lord Barkby shot a burglar and thereby saved the life 147of my footman,’ said Louisa quietly, ‘and with his left hand. He can also write with that hand, perfectly well.’
The Misses Lewisham exchanged glances.
‘You have been corresponding with him?’ Lady Honoria look disapprovingly at Louisa.
‘He notified me upon the death of his father, that is all, ma’am.’ Louisa felt annoyed at feeling the need to be so defensive. ‘I wrote a letter of condolence to Lady Barkby thereafter.’
‘As he did to me also,’ added Lady Holdenby, ‘and a good hand it was too, I thought, if slightly larger than most. Mind you, with my eyesight these days, I prefer it to spider-scrawl.’
‘Yes but you have …’
‘… known him since childhood,’ said the Misses Lewisham, between them.
‘I fail to see what that has got to do with anything.’ Lady Holdenby sniffed, and requested the buttered carrots be passed to her. The other ladies made small noncommittal noises, and silence reigned for a few minutes. Eventually, Lady Honoria looked at Louisa, and nodded at her.
‘Out of your blacks. Did you sustain them for the full period, Lady Dembleby?’
‘Of course.’ Louisa frowned. ‘Why would you think otherwise? Dembleby died upon the twenty-second of January last year.’
‘And you were ready and prepared to discard full mourning as soon as possible.’ The disapproval was back.
‘Its end hardly came as a surprise. Blacks become monotonous.’
148‘They are a mark of respect.’
‘And were worn for the required term, ma’am. I do not flout convention merely for the sake of it.’
‘Yet you entertained gentlemen.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Lord Barkby stayed at your house.’
‘Lord Barkby came to my house because he sought to catch the criminals who had been plaguing the district, and had intelligence that Elliston Court was to be the next residence to be burgled. We, Mrs Goodworth and I, gave him dinner prior to him setting his trap for their apprehension. I hardly think that expecting him to turn up only once the house was preparing for bed would have been seemly. Mrs Goodworth and I had nothing to do with what followed. I think “stayed” implies far more than I would wish.’ Louisa omitted any mention of having tended the injured.
‘And I am sure all of you who did not lose property are very glad that Barkby did so. Had the criminals not been taken, whose house would have been next?’ Lady Holdenby looked about the table, challenging any of them to deny it.
They lowered their eyes and contemplated their plates.
Miss Euphemia Lewisham cleared her throat and glanced for a moment at her sister, who nodded.
‘Your husband was not an elderly …’
‘… man, Lady Dembleby?’
‘No, he was seven and thirty.’ Louisa found their method of conversing very odd indeed.
‘Most unfortunate. Did he succumb to …’
‘… some terrible illness?’
149‘Impertinence,’ growled Lady Holdenby.
‘He fell from his horse when hunting.’ Louisa said it without any emotion. ‘It slipped in the mud after a fence others had taken. The ground was cut up, so it was said. He broke his neck. What interest it could be of—’
‘So you did not …’
‘… murder him?’ Miss Lewisham uttered, in a trembling voice.
Louisa stared at the pair of them, her eyes widening in revulsion.
‘Why would you think that?’ she managed, her voice very low and deliberate.
‘We do not, but we heard …’
‘… from Lady Simmondley, whose friend …’
‘… is a dear friend of Lady Dembleby …’
‘… the Dowager Lady Dembleby.’
‘My mother-in-law says I murdered her son?’ Louisa spoke in a shocked whisper.
‘That you killed him …’
‘… So we thought …’
‘No, you did not think.’ Louisa stood up from the table, and leant her palms upon it.
‘You did not think, either of you, and nor will the busybodies of the shire. My reputation, my honour, my honesty, are traduced and you all will believe a whisper because you do not think. My “crime”, my only “crime” was not giving her and her oh-so-precious son an heir before he died.’
‘Sit down, child.’ Lady Holdenby’s voice was not loud, but it did command.
Louisa, shaking now, sat. ‘Well, if any of you want my opinion, which is, alas, unlikely, this 150is the nonsense of an hour and best forgot. I never credited the pair of you with the brains of a ninnyhammer between you, but this evening you surpass yourselves, and have the effrontery to bring lunacy to my dining table, presumably to give me the indigestion.’ She glared at the Misses Lewisham, whose protuberant eyes bulged even more than usual, and then turned to Louisa.
‘And I credited you with more sense, my girl. Rumour is a foul thing, but truth will quash it, and even more so the next foolish gossip to replace it. Sit tight, weather the storm, smile sweetly, and it will all be forgotten in a sennight.’
It might be sound advice, but Louisa Dembleby was white faced, stricken. She felt physically sickened.
‘Since you ladies are now the first to have the truth, you can spread it among your whispering friends with the pleasure of bringing the new, not repeating the old. You will be doing so.’ The ‘will’ was stressed.
The old lady’s stare would have made grown men quake.
The Misses Lewisham nodded, and squeaked something that was presumably assent.
‘Now, my dear’ – she looked at Louisa – ‘I recommend the chiffon cream.’
Louisa looked not so much at her but through her.
Just as she was emerging from the black shadow of Dembleby into a new and pleasant existence he was, through his mother’s poisonous words, trying to ruin her from beyond the grave.
It was so very wrong, and so very, very unfair.
Lady Holdenby had said she should sit tight, weather the storm and smile sweetly.
Right now she was not sure she could do any of those things, let alone all of them.