Chapter 19
Nineteen
The concubine set a riddle for her king.
“The man who makes it doesn’t want it, the man who buys it doesn’t use it, the man who uses it doesn’t even know about it. What is it?”
The answer was a casket, but her king said instead:
“If I am the man who makes it and doesn’t want it, it is war . . .”
— The Concubine and Her King. Unpublished MS.
Henry thought Susannah could not be more beautiful today, with little flecks of sun on her hair under the oak tree.
“Grandfather didn’t know what to do. He looked sick,” Mina told Susannah. “I let him read your letter to me, too.”
“Is that right?” Susannah said, leaning towards Mina but looking at Henry.
She sounded a trifle dreamy. She and Henry had gotten back to Bledsoe Park yesterday, and they’d lain in bed last night and talked and touched until dawn like they were young lovers.
But they weren’t, and an afternoon nap would not go amiss for either of them. That would be its own kind of pleasure, to lie with her in the middle of the day, their bodies touching, their minds floating away.
Neither of them had really had a good night’s sleep since their cozy and loving night in Susannah’s narrow bed in the cottage.
They’d eaten bread and cheese in the kitchen—him in the brother’s enormous shirt—and then gone to bed early and slept until they were awoken in the morning by Susannah’s brother’s cursing.
As it turned out, a neckcloth was the culprit. Henry was no Carruthers, but he managed a fair Osbaldeston tie for the groom’s cravat. The blushing giant had thanked him and then said that his wife-to-be wanted “the lord at the wedding because no one else has ever had one.”
So Henry and Susannah had attended despite Susannah’s worries that he, Henry, might take attention from the bride. They’d gone to the ceremony and gone to the breakfast, and Henry had made sure to pay several compliments to the bride, even fuss over her a little.
If Henry had displaced anyone, it had been the bride’s father. Henry didn’t think much of Ned Greenway, only that the man was still far too pretty given his age had to be near the earl’s.
Henry had merely kept one hand on Susannah as much as possible and looked daggers at Greenway when circumstances did not allow the other.
The entire wedding breakfast party—absent Mr. Greenway, who enjoyed his own wares far too much—saw Susannah and Henry off in Henry’s carriage.
Susannah embraced Dando and then held him at arm’s length. “You won’t leave the cottage without telling me first.”
Dando’s face went red, and he looked at Henry, who quickly turned earlish and got himself and Susannah into the carriage immediately.
“Your brother and his wife will be staying on,” he told her as the carriage rolled out of Much Wemby.
“But—”
“Please, Susannah. Please let me do this. Neither of them want to go.”
“But—”
“Susannah.”
Their first disagreement. He remembered other disagreements with a different woman. Vases breaking, shrieks of rage. His own immovable, glacial superiority.
He started again. “I will let you speak, but know I only mean to make some inquiries about the turnpike, see if there’s a way to keep coaches and horses and travelers coming to the village.”
“You would do that?” She’d gone from protestation to astonishment in the matter of a few seconds.
He nodded. “And if I am not able to mend the situation, we will put our heads together and decide what to do next. I know you want someone in the cottage in case your brothers return.”
“Oh, Henry!” She threw herself into his arms and had a sweet cry and let him kiss away her tears.
The rest of their journey back to Bledsoe Park had been filled with a great many kisses. And more than kisses.
“I don’t mind if you write a book about a girl,” Mina was saying now. “And I like the name Willa.”
“Wonderful,” Susannah said.
“But you must never run away again, Miss Beasley.” Mina took on a lecturing tone. “And Grandfather shouldn’t, either. It’s not honorable.”
Henry had thought he didn’t want a wife to manage him. He must take care that his granddaughter didn’t see that as her birthright, instead.
But Mina had been managing him all along, hadn’t she?
“We must defer to your grandfather in matters of honor,” Susannah said to Mina, but she still only had eyes for Henry.
“Oh,” Mina said and pointed. “Look.”
An enormous, gaudy carriage was coming down the drive, pulled by a team of prancing white horses. There was only one person in England who would both own that carriage and come to Bledsoe Park unannounced.
“It’s a queen,” Mina breathed.
“It won’t be a queen, Mina,” Susannah said but asked Henry in a low voice, “Will it?”
“A princess, then,” Mina said.
“No,” he said grimly. “It will be a marchioness. Come. We will meet her together.”
But the carriage was moving at a very fast pace and beat them to the house.
“Where?” he asked Eakins.
“The brown drawing room, my lord.”
Yes, of course. Eakins would know immediately that the brown drawing room—never once used in all the years of Henry’s tenure as earl—was the right place to put the Dowager Marchioness of Chalfont.
He heard Mina say to Susannah with awe in her voice, “We’re going to the brown drawing room.”
As a youth, Henry had been equally besotted with and terrified by his aunt. But he was not alone in this. Samuel Johnson had once famously said of the marchioness: “There are two kinds of men in England: those who fall in love with her and those who have never met her.”
But Henry had no worry about becoming besotted now. Every bit of him only yearned for one woman—Susannah. The fear, however, remained. He anticipated the marchioness had come to chide him for finding his own wife.
He entered the drawing room first and bowed to the seated marchioness.
“Henry,” the marchioness said.
“Lady Chalfont.”
Susannah and Mina came beside him and curtsied.
“Lady Chalfont. Miss Beasley,” but someday I will say Lady Ashthorpe instead, “and Miss Kirby.”
The marchioness nodded. “Yes. Yes. Very nice, et cetera. But we have very little time to waste. I had hoped we would be beforehand, and we are, but only because Darnley drove like a demon. ”
She wasn’t here to upbraid him. Henry had had a far too inflated sense of himself to think the marchioness would come to inflict a mere scolding. But now the fact that she would rouse herself to leave London only added to his sense of danger.
“What is the urgency?” Henry asked. He remembered the letter from Sir John D’Oyly. “I have the message—”
“Hastings.”
The marchioness snapped her fingers, and Henry noticed the young man standing by the window for the first time.
Good God, where did his aunt find these Adonises to act as her secretaries?
This one was of a piece with the one who had brought her letter.
Tall and square-jawed, with nary a blemish to be seen.
In any other setting, it would have been impossible to ignore him.
But, of course, with Lady Chalfont in the room, he served as mere accessory to the marchioness.
The young man produced a document from a satchel.
“Sit, Henry. You need a chair for this.” But the marchioness did not wait for him to sit. ”Your son will be here shortly.”
Henry sat. Charles was, at last, coming. He was going to see his son.
Susannah’s hand gripped his shoulder. Of course, she understood how he would be overcome by equal parts joy and apprehension.
“This will not be a happy reunion, Henry.” The marchioness pointed a finger at Mina. “He comes to take away the little girl.”
Mina climbed into Henry’s lap and hid her face against Henry’s waistcoat.
He held Mina tightly. “Away?” Saltpeter, screams, cannons, blood.
“It was his birthday yesterday. He has reached his majority. The child, by law, is his. The will, Hastings.”
The young man handed the document to Henry, but he would not release Mina and fumbled with it. He could not read it anyway, his eyes were so blurred by smoke.
The marchioness sniffed. “The will has Charles as Hal’s executor. But it was badly done since Charles was only eighteen at the time of his brother’s death. No one had anticipated Hal would die so young, of course, but what is the purpose of a will except to guard against the unexpected?”
Susannah’s hand grasped his shoulder even more tightly, and she said quietly, “He’ll come, and he’ll see how happy Mina is, and he won’t take her away.”
“I heard news of Charles’ return to London and had him pay a call on me yesterday.
He is a very rigid young man. Very self-righteous.
” The marchioness raised her eyebrows. “Like someone else I know. But he is also very angry. He is absolutely set on the notion that the child does not belong in your care.”
Of course, Charles believed that. What else could he think of his father? The man he had known had been cold, immovable, unloving.
Henry stood abruptly, still holding Mina. “We will away. We’ll hide.” He looked at Susannah.
Her eyes were troubled.
“I vowed I would never run away, and then I did. I could have missed all this. I could have missed you.” She laid her hand on Henry’s arm. “One should never run from. Only run to.”
The marchioness laughed. “I like this girl.”
Susannah turned to her. “I’m not a girl, my lady.”
“Now I like you even more. Very few dare contradict me.” The marchioness leaned forward on her stick. “But you’re wrong. We all have a little bit of girl in us. Even me.”
She thudded her walking stick down on the carpet. “But, yes, you have a great deal of woman in you. I see it in my nephew’s sleepless eyes and the smug look of a man well-pleasured—”
“The child, Aunt,” Henry said, putting a hand over Mina’s ear.
“Yes, the child. It’s the child I’m thinking of. Do you think I would leave London and all the pressing business of running the country for any other reason? But the child should be in the nursery so I may speak with my accustomed vulgarity.”
Susannah reached out to take Mina from Henry.
“No,” the marchioness said and pointed her walking stick at Susannah. “You will stay. I need another woman to talk sense to. Call for a nursemaid. And—” She snapped her fingers and pointed to the floor. “Let me speak to the child.”
Henry loosened his arms, let Mina slide down his body. He felt he had already lost her just as he had lost so many others.
“Swift?” Susannah asked him, and Henry nodded mutely. She went to the door, and he could hear her tell Eakins to fetch Swift.
Mina stood in front of the marchioness, and a miracle happened. His aunt smiled in a way Henry had never seen before. It was not a scheming or seductive smile. Not a gratified smile. It was genuine, warm, friendly.
“I have an admirer who sent me this.” The marchioness held out her hand, and the secretary produced a doll from somewhere.
It was about a quarter of Mina’s size and dressed in a pink silk dress from the last century, complete with panniers and little purple slippers and all the ruffles a little girl’s heart could desire.
“He had her made based on his memory of my court dress from May, 1785. The hair is real. The face and hands are wax. And there are glass eyes. I would like you to have her.” The marchioness offered the doll to Mina.
Mina looked at Henry.
“Ah,” the marchioness said. “Good God, I love a house full of wise women. Yes, I see you are not a fool either, little Mina. You’re scared and won’t be placated by a mere doll.
But your grandfather and all of us are going to make sure all is well with you, forever.
You have a great great-great-aunt who is the most powerful woman in England. ”
“The queen?” Mina asked.
“No, Mina. No. Me.”
“You only are my great-great aunt,” Mina said staunchly. “You added one too many greats.”
“Clever, clever, clever. But, you see, the first great describes my greatness, not the degree of our relation.” The marchioness let out a guffaw before pursing her lips.
“Now, Mina. You will always have me watching over you. And when you are old enough, if you like, but only if you like, I will take you to court, and you will meet the queen and realize she is a kind, overly fecund woman with the most atrocious German accent who takes all her direction from me.”
Henry had never needed a society wife for Mina. Mina had the Dowager Marchioness of Chalfont on her side. Mina would be able to go to court or not go to court. Go to balls or not go to balls. Marry a duke or not. Nothing was impossible for Lady Chalfont.
Yes, the marchioness might die before Mina married, but it was unlikely. The marchioness had once declared she would live a century, and she did not make idle threats.
“Would you like the doll? I ask for nothing in return but your thanks.”
Henry couldn’t believe the time Lady Chalfont was taking when his world was about to end.
But she was doing it for Mina. It was all for Mina.
He reached for Susannah’s hand and held it, and she looked at him with her soft, brown eyes, and he took comfort.
He was still in the battlefield, but she was with him. All hope was not lost.
Mina carefully plucked the doll from the marchioness’ hands and curtsied. “Thank you.”
“Do you like her?”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yes, I am. Now what will you call her?”
“Please, my lady, what is your name?” Mina asked politely.
The marchioness shook her head. “No, child, you don’t want to call her by my name, I promise you.
But I would like you to go upstairs with your nursemaid,” she nodded towards Swift who had appeared in the doorway, “and think of ten of the most beautiful names in the world and later we will talk them over with Miss Beasley and pick which is best.”
Mina nodded. Henry did not want to frighten her further, so he just patted her head and murmured, “All will be well, Mina.”
She left with Swift, hugging the doll. The door closed behind them.
“We must make a plan,” said the marchioness.
The godlike secretary took a seat at a table and prepared a quill.
“And Hastings will take notes,” she added.
“This is a private matter,” Henry said.
The marchioness poked her walking stick in the direction of the secretary. “Hastings?”
The young man did not look up from his knife and quill. “I am the soul of discretion, my lord.”
“And?” the marchioness prompted.
“And,” the young man’s dark lashes fluttered down over his perfect cheekbones and his sculpted lips curved upwards, “Lady Chalfont will crush my ballocks if I ever betray her confidence.”
The marchioness snorted. “I believe I said I would cut your career short, not your codsack.” She turned her attention back to the earl. “Satisfied?”
Henry’s words would not be repeated outside this room. The secretary appeared sane, and no man in his right mind would dare cross the marchioness.
“Now,” said the marchioness, all grim determination once again. “What the devil are we going to do?”