Chapter 4
Half-Mourning
T he condolence visits had begun on the third day after the funeral and continued, with the steady persistence of a military campaign, for a fortnight.
I received them in the drawing room at Blackwood House, which I had arranged with the same precision I brought to every other aspect of my public life, because mourning, like everything else, is a performance, and the quality of the performance determines the quality of its reception.
The curtains were drawn to half-mast. The fires were kept low, producing a modest warmth that suggested a household in respectful retreat rather than the full operation of a Mayfair establishment.
White lilies stood in silver vases on every surface, their scent so thick and cloying that by the end of the first week I could smell them in my sleep, their perfume weaving itself through my dreams like a funeral pall.
I wore black crêpe of the first quality, with jet ornaments at my throat and wrists, and my hair was arranged in the tight, severe chignon that mourning prescribed, every pin placed with the exactitude of a surgeon's sutures.
The callers fell into categories so predictable that I could have arranged them in advance.
There were the duty callers, men and women who came because social convention required it and whose expressions of sympathy were delivered with the mechanical precision of actors reading from a script they had memorised but not internalised.
There were the curious, who came ostensibly to offer comfort but whose eyes moved over the drawing room with the appraising greed of people estimating the value of an estate.
There were the genuinely kind, a smaller group than one might expect, whose sympathy was authentic but whose authenticity made them, paradoxically, the most difficult to manage, because an authentic emotion requires an authentic response, and I had learned, over the course of three marriages, to simulate authenticity with greater precision than most people could summon it naturally.
And then there was Lady Ashford, who occupied a category of her own invention.
She arrived on the fifth of December, precisely at four o'clock in the afternoon, because Lady Ashford understood the tactical importance of punctuality.
To arrive early was to appear eager. To arrive late was to suggest that the visit was an afterthought.
To arrive at the appointed hour was to convey that one's time was valuable and that the allocation of a portion of it to condolence was a gift worthy of recognition.
She swept into the drawing room with the particular energy of a woman who has been waiting for an opportunity and has finally found one, her mourning gown a shade too elaborate for a condolence call, the jet at her throat so profuse that it resembled a small avalanche of black glass, her hat, as ever, an architectural achievement that defied both gravity and taste.
She smelled of violet water and ambition.
"My dearest Cecilia," she said, clasping both my hands in hers with a warmth that was as calculated as it was convincing. "How utterly, utterly wretched this must be for you."
The double utterly was a signature gesture, one I had observed her deploy on previous occasions when she wished to convey an emotion she did not feel.
The hands were cold, despite the warmth of the room, and she squeezed mine with just enough pressure to suggest intimacy without crossing the boundary into presumption.
Her eyes, sharp and blue beneath their careful arrangement of powder, moved over my face with the rapid assessment of a woman taking inventory.
She was looking for cracks. Signs of weakness.
Evidence that the grief she had come to perform sympathy for was, in fact, genuine.
I gave her what she was looking for, because denying an adversary the satisfaction of discovery is poor strategy when the same result can be achieved by feeding her exactly what she expects.
My lower lip trembled, very slightly. My eyes, which I had been training to produce tears on command since the age of nine, grew bright with unshed moisture.
I inclined my head in a manner that suggested I was too overcome to speak and gestured toward the chair that Dorothea had placed beside the fire.
"Penelope," I managed, in a voice that caught on the second syllable. "How kind of you to come."
The use of her Christian name was deliberate.
It established a tone of intimacy that would make her subsequent inquiries appear graceless, and it reminded her, subtly, that despite the disparity in our ages and the length of her tenure in society, I was the one who occupied the superior position.
I was the Dowager Countess of Ashworth. She was the wife of a baronet, a distinction that, while respectable, did not place her in the same tier.
She understood this, and the knowledge sat in her expression like a stone in a shoe, producing a small, involuntary tightening around the eyes that she could not quite conceal.
Dorothea brought tea. She moved with the practised efficiency of a woman who had been trained in service since childhood, the silver service arranged on a tray of Sèvres porcelain, the tea poured with a steadiness of hand that I had long valued.
She placed the tray on the table between us and withdrew without a word, closing the drawing room doors with a soft click that sealed us into the particular intimacy of two women alone with tea and enmity.
Lady Ashford took her cup and held it in both hands, the gesture of a woman composing herself for the performance ahead.
She had come, I knew, not to offer comfort but to gather intelligence.
The question of the Ashworth estate and its disposition was a matter of intense speculation in the drawing rooms of Mayfair, and Lady Ashford, who had appointed herself the unofficial chronicler of such matters, had a professional interest in being the first to report its particulars.
"You are bearing it beautifully," she said, after the first sip.
It was the kind of compliment that functions as a probe, testing the recipient's composure while simultaneously positioning the speaker as an authority on matters of bearing and beauty.
"Though I confess I worry about you, alone in this great house with only the staff for company. It cannot be easy."
"I have Edmund," I said, allowing a note of warmth to enter my voice at my brother's name. "And Dorothea. And the household has been extraordinarily kind."
"Of course, of course. But still." She paused, and her eyes moved toward the windows, as though the view of the square beyond them had suddenly become fascinating.
"The house is so very large, is it not? For one person.
One thinks of the Earl, and how he filled it, and one wonders what will become of it now. "
The question, framed as an observation, was exquisitely done.
She was asking about the estate, its disposition, and my intentions regarding it, without ever appearing to ask.
The technique was one I recognised from my own repertoire, and I observed its execution with the professional appreciation of a jeweller examining a competitor's work.
Competent. Not masterful. She allowed too long a pause between the observation and its implications, and her eyes betrayed her, moving to the mantelpiece, where a miniature of Richard in his Parliamentary robes stood beside a silver candlestick, as though to remind herself of what she was supposedly mourning.
"I have not yet given thought to the future of the house," I said, with a gentle firmness that invited no further inquiry on that subject. "The mourning period has scarcely begun. My only concern at present is to honour Richard's memory with the dignity it deserves."
This was, of course, a lie of the most polished kind.
I had given extensive thought to the future of the house, the estate, and every other asset that Richard's death had placed at my disposal.
The ledgers were in my study, and I had spent three hours the previous evening reviewing them with the concentrated attention I normally reserved for more delicate operations.
The Ashworth holdings were substantial. The Suffolk estate, Ashworth Park, comprised five thousand acres of productive farmland and woodland, with an annual income of approximately four thousand pounds.
The Kent property, Ashworth Grange, added another twelve hundred acres and a modest rental income.
The Mayfair townhouse itself was worth a considerable sum, and the art collection, which Richard had assembled with more taste than funds, contained pieces that would realise a handsome price if I chose to sell.
Combined with the wealth I had accumulated from the estates of my previous husbands, my total holdings now exceeded a hundred and sixty thousand pounds, a figure that placed me among the wealthiest women in England.
I had not earned this fortune through labour or luck.
I had engineered it, with patience and precision and a willingness to do what other women would not or could not conceive of doing, and I was not about to allow a woman of Lady Ashford's limited intellect and unlimited malice to interfere with its management.
"The house must be kept up, of course," Lady Ashford continued, undeterred by my deflection. "A property of this scale requires constant attention. The Earl, I understand, had been somewhat remiss in his stewardship of the Suffolk estate. The tenants, I am told, had begun to complain."
"The tenants," I said, with a coolness that I allowed to creep into my voice like frost across a windowpane, "have no complaints. I have already met with the agent and reviewed the accounts. The estate is in excellent order."