Chapter Fifteen #3
He examined her expression warily, not yet appeased.
‘Come and see the best bit,’ he said, and led her up to the next floor.
All along the garden front was the nursery suite: day nursery, night nursery, bathroom and nanny’s room.
‘That’s something we must get on with,’ he said in parenthesis, ‘finding a good nanny.’
The day nursery was long and light with big windows, a shining parquet floor, and built-in cupboards and shelves for toys and books.
It was unfurnished, which made it look enormous for one small baby.
But her attention was diverted by a glorious rocking-horse, standing in solitary splendour in the centre of the room.
It was dappled-grey, with a black mane and tail of real horsehair, brown glass eyes, and a saddle and bridle of red leather.
She drew a breath of delight. ‘Oh, my goodness!’
‘I had it made specially,’ he said, pleased with her reaction. ‘If she’s anything like her mother, she’ll love horses.’
‘I always wanted a rocking-horse when I was a child,’ she exclaimed. ‘And this is the finest one I’ve ever seen.’
‘Nothing’s too good for my little girl,’ he said. He led her over to a window. Each had a cushioned window-seat. ‘When she’s a bit older,’ he said, ‘can’t you just imagine her kneeling there, looking out at the trees and birds? Surveying her kingdom?’
She could.
He looked down at her. ‘I was afraid you didn’t like the house, the way we’ve done it.’
She had to choose her words carefully. ‘It’s just that it seems so large and so grand, and I don’t feel like a large, grand person. I think a bit of me is still plain Miss Sanderton with no fortune and no prospects. It will take time to get used to being a millionaire’s wife.’
He winced at the word. ‘Money’s all very well, and I wouldn’t want to be without it. I wouldn’t want you to be without it. But there’s other ways of being grand, and you might have to get used to them.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve something to tell you. Some news. It’s the reason I went up to London.’
He looked so serious that she was suddenly nervous. Some big change was heading towards her. She suddenly wished she was back in the little house in St Mary’s Street. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Don’t look so worried. It’s nothing bad. The opposite, in fact. I went to see the prime minister yesterday. Then we went together to see the King. They’re making me a lord, Nina.’
‘A lord?’ she said blankly, trying to adjust her thoughts. She never could have expected this.
‘I’m to be made a baron. For services to the King, and also because the government wants me in the House of Lords, to advise on business, and lead debates on manufacturing and exporting and suchlike.
So, you see, we’ll not be Mr and Mrs Cowling any more.
We’ll be grand enough to need a house like this. ’
Her mouth was dry. ‘How long have you known?’ was the question that eventually surfaced.
He gave her a guilty smile. ‘You’ve guessed it.
That time I got called away just when Amelia was being born, the King said something about it, but it was made clear I wasn’t to tell anyone until it was settled.
I had it in my mind it might be a knighthood, but then the prime minister got this idea to have me in the House of Lords.
This is going to be such a great thing for us!
’ His enthusiasm burst out of him. ‘I’ll have to spend a lot more time in London, at the House, and in Whitehall in meetings.
Then you and I will be entertaining important people in Berkeley Square, foreigners and royalty and all sorts.
And this’ll be our country seat, for weekends, for having people to stay in the summer, and hunting parties in winter.
I’ll probably have to go abroad a bit – the prime minister’s already talking about Germany and Sweden.
I hate to think of leaving you, but when you’re asked… ’
‘I know,’ she said, with an effort. ‘When the King sends for you, you have to go.’
‘I’ll be doing something important for my country,’ he said earnestly.
‘We will. You’ll be a political hostess, like Lady Derby at Hatfield House.
I know you’ll shine at that, so beautiful and clever as you are!
And I tell you this, I couldn’t have said yes, I couldn’t think of it without you at my side. ’
‘I can’t take it in,’ she said.
‘Aye, it’s a lot,’ he said simply.
This house, then, was the stage set for a very different sort of life from the one she had expected.
A political hostess? Entertaining people of power, politicians, diplomats, people whose opinions and decisions mattered?
She quailed inwardly. Was she capable of this?
She imagined dinners and soirées, the glittering company and the intense talk, herself planning, directing, putting guests at ease, making sure the right people met each other, that others were kept apart.
Guest lists, menus, placements – and all on a grand scale.
She had never done anything like that. Suppose she made a mess of it?
She had never felt more like plain little Miss Sanderton in her life.
‘So I will be Lady Cowling?’ she said, and her voice sounded small and weak.
He looked oddly shy. ‘I’ve chosen to be Lord Wigston. I thought I’d better keep myself reminded of my origins in case I got too big-headed.’
‘An auriga!’ she exclaimed.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘When Roman generals paraded through Rome, celebrating a triumph, they had a slave called an auriga riding behind them in the chariot, whispering to them, “Remember thou art mortal,” so that the gods wouldn’t get jealous and punish them for hubris.’
‘You see!’ he said delightedly. ‘Trust you to know something like that. You’re fit to be a great lady.’
No, I’m not! she cried inside her head. I can’t do it! I’ll let you down!
‘I had to go and see a fellow at the College of Arms,’ he went on, following his own thoughts. ‘The herald in waiting, or some such title, to talk about what I wanted on my coat of arms. Imagine that: Joseph Cowling, the cobbler’s apprentice from Wigston, with a coat of arms!’
‘You’ve come a long way,’ she said.
He gave an odd little grunt of assent, a comfortable sound.
He was not daunted by his advancement, only pleased, and it calmed her a little.
He put his arm round her and drew her against him so that they stood side by side looking out of the window at the dusty green of late summer or early autumn, where soon the leaves would begin to gild, and then fall.
‘We’re building a kingdom,’ he said.
Well, she was not Miss Sanderton any more, she was a wife and, more importantly, a mother.
She was grown up. What life demanded of her, she would have to face up to, even if it scared her.
And the new Wriothesby House had been built for that future.
Even houses like Chatsworth must once have been brand-new and unblemished, probably not homelike at all, but their families had come to love them and belong to them.
Of course, they were earls and dukes and probably had a different view of houses…
Perhaps he would be a duke or at least an earl one day…
It happened…Or if not him, one of his descendants… Her descendants…
‘In that case…’ she began, and realised she had said it aloud.
‘Yes, my love?’ he asked absently, his eyes on what would one day be the park.
She felt foolishly shy. ‘We ought to try to have a boy next time.’
He looked down at her with his heart in his face. ‘Would you? Really? Shall we have another?’
She nodded. ‘I’d like Amelia to have a brother,’ she said. ‘I don’t want her to be an only child, like me. It’s a lonely thing.’
‘I was an only child as well,’ he said. ‘But I’m not lonely now. Oh, this is…!’ He seemed lost for words. ‘This is so good!’ he managed at last. ‘This is the beginning of great things for us.’
I will get used to it, she thought.
When a woman married, her future was placed in her husband’s hands.
If he fell on hard times, for instance, she would have to stand by him and scrape along as best she could.
Oddly, she could imagine herself in that situation, bravely making do, being thrifty, mending clothes, scratching together meals from odds and ends, using up candle stubs.
Her fate had been the opposite, to be plunged into a life of unimaginable luxury and consequence.
It was rather funny, in a way, that she found that future harder to accept.
But she was a soldier’s daughter, she remembered: she would have to square her shoulders and get on with it.