CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO #2
He said nothing, but swallowed hard. He wanted to hold her, kiss her; he wanted to love her, but he dared not disturb the calm of her.
Instead, he held out his arm, crooked for her to take, and smiled, his eyes full of love and pride.
She came forward, and as silently laid her hand upon the arm.
He led her downstairs, and Leece opened the door wide.
He walked slowly with her in a mutual silence that ignored the sounds of an early urban evening about them.
He felt her stiffen as they entered the Sydney Gardens.
The Duchess had taken a box to one side, and Lord Barkby saw Mr Gilmorton raise a hand.
People looked 374at Louisa, but if some of the women were outraged, most of the men were admiring.
She acknowledged nobody, and advanced like a purple ghost that others would see right through.
When she reached the box, she curtseyed to the Duchess, who smiled at her and held out a mittened hand.
‘Very good. You look magnificent, my dear.’
‘I … I do not feel it, ma’am,’ Louisa faltered.
‘Ignore them. Mostly jumped-up nothings, the lot of them, crowing atop their little middens. That I receive you will change quite a few minds, for no better reason than my rank. Fools.’ The Duchess was dismissive.
‘What Valeria Dembleby has been doing is beneath contempt. She thinks herself clever, but tonight we shall see her as she really is, a vicious failure of a woman.’ The old lady smiled, but Louisa thought it was the smile of the predator, about to pounce.
Caroline, who had hung back, came forward, and kissed her friend’s cheek, whispering as she did so. ‘All will be well. It will.’ She squeezed Louisa’s gloved hand.
For the first part of the evening there was a concert, and the Duchess, herself a little deaf, was quite prepared to comment upon the quality of the singers in a voice loud enough to be heard several boxes away.
She saw no need to mince her words, which were forthright.
A lady in the adjoining box rapped her daughter over the knuckles with her fan when the young lady sniggered.
Louisa could not pay much attention to the music.
She was too aware of the glances, the words spoken behind fans, though she did not let her face betray her feelings.
One of her hands hung down beside her chair, and was held, 375firmly, by Lord Barkby, though their touching could not be seen from without.
When the musicians left their seats for the first interval, during which a gentleman performed bird calls, the boxes emptied.
‘Trust me,’ Lord Barkby said softly, leaning closer to Louisa.
‘Remain impassive, and say nothing at all.’ He rose, and offered his hand.
She looked up at him, and there was such certainty to him it gave her courage.
She gritted her teeth and stood up. Mr Gilmorton gave his arm to the Duchess, and Hetty Goodworth and Miss Brailes walked behind, like ladies-in-waiting.
Mr Gilmorton’s height enabled him to see exactly where to deploy their forces.
He guided her grace to a position some yards behind where the Dowager Lady Dembleby was holding forth, and then left her, with Mrs Goodworth at her side.
He moved to be closer to Lord Barkby, who, with Louisa on his arm, came up to her nemesis from directly in front, and addressed her, cutting into her diatribe.
Before he opened his mouth she was already staring at him as if mad.
‘Good evening, Lady Dembleby. My name is Barkby. We have not met, but that has not prevented you from uttering slanders about me, and about your son’s widow, and about your granddaughter.
Had these slanders not been so specific they might have been dismissed as the rantings of a mind unhinged.
However, I am in a position to prove them false, since my presence on duty with my regiment at the time when “events” are meant to have occurred is a matter of record, and I will be securing those proofs before the case appears in court.
Of course, since you know it is all lies, you would be well advised to take 376out an advertisement in the Bath paper and admit that it was all fabricated, or have your name dragged through more dirt than that through which you have dragged mine.
’ He sounded very cold and hard, and his words were very clear.
‘Impertinent man.’ The Dowager looked daggers at him, but in the discordant tone was a thread of fear.
‘And I am one of those who can provide an affidavit to say his lordship had no furlough,’ added Mr Gilmorton, ‘amongst others, although a few who would have done so are now dead, having also served their King, and fallen in battle.’ It was histrionic, but effective, and there were murmurs from onlookers.
The poor man upon the stage, now imitating the sound of a skylark, was being totally ignored.
All eyes and ears were on the confrontation.
Louisa stood as lifeless as a statue, forcing every muscle to obey her will and hide her inner turmoil.
‘But at least I speak the truth, madam,’ continued Lord Barkby.
‘Your erstwhile daughter-in-law is very shortly to be spared sharing even your name, since she has done me the inexpressible honour of agreeing to become my wife, and I look forward to being a father to the daughter your son ignored for the fault of not being a son. I had never in my life met either of them until Lady Dembleby moved to Somerset last year, but you know that. In the time since, I have come to respect, admire and love her. She’ – and he laid emphasis upon the word – ‘is everything a lady, and a woman, should be.’
‘You cannot address me in this manner.’ The Dowager looked flustered.
377Lord Barkby, his part in the ‘performance’ complete, merely inclined his head, and turned away, taking Louisa with him. He halted a few yards further from her and turned to watch what happened next. From behind the Dowager came a voice of such iciness that it almost burnt.
‘It has always struck me as a peculiarly foolish thing to forbid something that has already taken place, but then, you always were particularly foolish – like your mother, whose follies I remember so very well. It would seem you are still incapable of controlling your natural spitefulness and desire to cause upset. One should not wonder at it, of course’ – and here the Duchess’s voice gained an edge of pity – ‘since your sire was equally destructive of others, in his own way.’
The Dowager froze for a moment, her face draining from the red of anger to a pallor that nearly matched Louisa’s.
The Dowager Duchess of Furness clearly knew her true paternity.
She turned slowly. The Duchess fixed a gimlet stare upon her.
Since she was by far the most senior lady present, courtesy demanded that the relict of a viscount defer to her.
The Dowager Lady Dembleby was suddenly the junior in the interchange, by rank and generation.
Under the stare she inclined her head, and executed a slow and deliberate curtsey while her brain assimilated the fact that the fearsome Duchess almost certainly remembered the rumours of a generation past, rumours that were true.
Illegitimacy was a strange thing, for it could elevate or condemn.
To be the lovechild of a king had proven the step to several ducal coronets, though not of Furness, and only the highest sticklers would look askance at them, and 378then very quietly.
Likewise, an acknowledged base-born child of a lowly female and a gentleman might achieve, through education and encouragement, a better situation than his maternal ancestry could have possibly imagined.
For the most part, however, it was a stigma that dragged down, that meant there was always a reserve, a wish to not be too closely associated with the shame of it.
Lady Dembleby had faced it when young. It was not so very rare in aristocratic circles, but it tarnished, and there had been a reluctance in some quarters to consider her as a potential spouse, and whisperings among the matriarchs.
Dembleby was not a catch, being somewhat boorish of manner, and with no distinguishing features, but he was quite prepared to ignore her similarity to the late Earl of Louth for the sake of the dowry that came from her brother.
Valeria Dembleby, by her marriage, had stepped one pace further away from the taint, and had spent thirty years putting even more distance between herself and her mother’s indiscretion.
Time had done much, as had her formidable and despotic manner.
It was forgotten, and she was a judgemental matriarch herself.
The very last thing she wanted was to have the ghastly truth resurrected now, in such a public way.
Looking into the face of the elderly Dowager Duchess of Furness, she knew that she stood upon the brink.
‘Your mama’ – and the Duchess paused, noting with pleasure that the Dowager took a sharp intake of breath – ‘was ever a bitter woman, and it appears that is another thing you have inherited, and to which you have added a degree of malice that is hard to comprehend. You 379have spun a web of poisonous lies because you dislike your daughter-in-law, and presumably because your other daughter-in-law has committed the same error in producing a daughter, and your remaining son has sided with wife over mother. He shows an unexpected degree of sense. You could not harm her, so you have lashed out at an easier victim, or so you thought.’ She looked down her nose at Valeria Dembleby.
‘Of all the falsehoods to spout, is not the one you have chosen the most ironic? In your case?’
‘No,’ blurted out the Dowager, and it was not a denial but a plea.
‘It is all lies,’ the Duchess declared, very deliberately.
‘Admit it now, before the edifice of your own self-consequence tumbles forever about your ears. Admit it to all, but most of all to the lady whom you have tried to ruin out of spite. Would you perjure yourself in court? Would you have old truths brought out into the harsh light of publicity? Are you that great a fool?’ The Duchess was enjoying herself immensely.
She might be arthritic and part deaf, and her looks were but a ghost and memories, but she was the centre of attention not for what she was, but who, which was not quite the same thing.
There was a silence, which was broken by the voice of the bird imitator. ‘And now, the cuckoo.’
It was chance alone, but it sounded to the Dowager as if even the little balding man in evening dress knew her past history.
‘It was false. All of it.’ She glared at the Duchess, and then spun around and pointed her finger at Louisa.
Her 380voice rose. ‘But it was your fault. You would not obey. In nearly five years all you gave him was a half-formed thing and a girl.’ She spat the word.
‘You and the other one are as bad as each other.’
Some spectators now looked at the floor, mostly those who had listened, believed and condemned.
Others looked pityingly at her. The provision of an heir was important, not a doubt of it, but the idea that it could be commanded was both bizarre and profane, and that of ruining the good name of two people, and damaging the future of her own grandchild, so outrageous as to be madness.
For a moment Louisa also felt pity, and then she thought of little Emily, and what harm the woman had tried to do to her, and it melted away. She looked up at Lord Barkby.
‘I have seen enough, my lord,’ she said quietly.
He nodded, and led her, not towards the supper box, but down the main path to where the smaller and circuitous paths led off.
She needed time without being gazed at by all and sundry.
People stood back, but this time it was respectful, not avoidance, and ladies nodded in both acknowledgement and approval; gentlemen bowed.
After all, she, the greatest victim of the slander, had stood as a silent observer.
Lord Barkby kept the pace almost funereally slow, so that no thought that she was seeking somewhere to hide might occur to anyone.
The pathways were lit with many coloured lights, though as yet it was not even gloaming, but a warm summer evening, an evening for pleasure.
Halfway down the straight main walk he turned aside, and led her away from the sound of voices.
It was too early for surreptitious 381lovers to sneak away for privacy, and they disturbed nothing more than birds upon the path. He halted, and turned to face her.
‘You were perfect, my brave Louisa.’ He squeezed her hands.
‘I was not brave,’ she said, ‘for I was hard pushed not to quake in my shoes.’
‘But you did not do so. It is done with. In a few days more you need never speak of Dembleby or his mama again. It would be your decision, but if you do not object, I would like Emily to take the name Barkby, because she too has no more to do with that family and to all intent and purpose I will be her papa, and she will have had no other.’
‘Oh, oh yes. I would like it, and if she were old enough to understand, so would she.’ There was a pause. ‘I am surprised in some ways that you have persisted in your wish to wed me.’
‘Why on earth should you think that?’
‘Because I have been weak and confused and …’
‘And under an enormous strain this last week or so. What loving mother would not have been as distracted? You have been strong, and prepared to face life relying upon yourself.’ He smiled lovingly at her. ‘I appreciate it has been hard to accept relying upon anyone else, even if they offer.’
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘At first I did not want to, then dared not, and at the last I realised not only that it was impossible to prevent but that it was the most wonderful thing. You have fair warning, though. When I am not at my wits’ end, you will discover in me a managing female 382who does not expect to refer all decisions to her “lord and master”. ’
‘I would not want it any other way.’ He took her into his arms, and bent his head to kiss her.
His mouth closed over hers; her body moulded itself to his, not submissive, but matching his own desire.
‘Your lord I may be, but I do not seek to be your master,’ he whispered eventually.
‘I did not fall in love with some subservient mouse. I fell in love with a glorious, beautiful, independent woman.’
‘Independent, but not alone.’
‘No, not any more, Louisa.’
She smiled.