26 Home #2
“I have no objection to all that,” she said, laughing, “but you need to be near the woods, and preferably in the middle of them.”
“We must find you a house somewhere,” the duke said. “Or build one! We have two architects in the family now, after all.”
“I have a better idea,” Cal said. “What do you say to Briar House? It’s buried deep in Frickham Wood, but it’s very suitable for a lady.”
The duke let out a long sigh.
“Suitable for a duke and duchess once, I’d guess,” Cal said.
“Marquess and marchioness,” the duke said.
“I was still the Marquess of Losseter then. Ah, my poor Caroline! Two years, that was all the time we had together, living in Briar House, but they were the happiest days of my life. You will forgive me for saying so, Lily, but it is true. One’s first love…
nothing that comes later can quite compare.
I could never take Jane there… my second duchess.
I did not want to contaminate my memories.
For a long time, I used to go there regularly.
On Caroline’s birthday, an anniversary or just when life seemed unbearably cruel…
but I have not been there for years now.
Not since Lily brought sunshine into my old age.
You will have your work cut out to make it habitable, Garford. ”
“You have no objection, then?” Cal said.
“None at all. You can put the portrait of me in the attic.”
“A portrait? Of you as a young man?” Lily said. “Oh, that I should like to see!”
“Then we must get up an expedition,” the duke said. “Have a look round, see what needs to be done, that sort of thing. And you may see what your husband was like in his prime, my dear.”
The visitor most avidly awaited was Richard, but he was disarmingly pleased that she was once again a wife.
“If only I had known you were married,” he said, beaming at her.
“I congratulate you, Mother! And he is a Garth, too — a perfectly respectable family. There could have been no objection, and we could have had a proper wedding in the village. I should have been delighted to give you away. I cannot understand why you wanted to keep it secret. There has been altogether too much secrecy, if you ask me. If I had known, I would never have resorted to such desperate measures, but I felt, I truly felt I had no alternative. Can you ever forgive me?”
Whether because of her happiness at being reunited with Cal or her own placid temperament, Cora had recovered sufficiently not to be angry with Richard.
After all, he was still her son, and when one had watched a child grow from mewling infant to sturdy boy to slightly pompous but well-intentioned man, it was hard to maintain a quarrel with him.
If he had berated her or uttered the slightest criticism, matters might not have gone so well, but as he confessed to being utterly wrong in the most abject manner possible, begging her forgiveness in words whose sincerity could not be doubted, she was inclined to be lenient.
“You were doing your duty as a man and protecting your womenfolk from my bad influence,” Cora said.
“Your methods were a trifle harsh, that is all. No, no more apologies, Richard. It is over and done with, I was rescued in very short order and I am none the worse for the experience. Of course, I shall never again get into a carriage with you without Cal to protect me,” she added, with a teasing laugh.
Richard had the good grace to look sheepish.
“I shall never live it down, shall I?” he said, with a wry smile.
“When I die, engraved on my headstone will be the words ‘Kidnapped his mother and locked her in a lunatic asylum’. I shall be a cautionary tale for all the children of the parish… several parishes, probably. ‘Behave yourselves and respect your mothers, or you will become a byword for foolishness’. I should have respected you, Mother. I should have listened to you.”
“Sometimes one’s mother really does know best,” Cora murmured.
“I am glad Garford — Garth — was able to find you,” he said.
“It could not have been easy, but he was very determined. It seems that you are in good hands, Mother. And Souter, too,” he added, nodding to the maid who was glowering at him from her corner of the room.
“She it was who got the duke out looking for you.”
“As soon as Mr Garford left, I went straight to his grace, and told him everything,” Souter said, lifting her chin defiantly. “I knew he could find madam if anybody could. He was very cross about it, Mr Merrington. He’d disinherit you if he could, so he said.”
“So he said to me, too,” Richard said. “As for Rowena—! She rang such a peal over my head as I shall never forget — my ears are still ringing. All the girls, too, and Hester! She seems so mild-mannered, but my goodness, I felt about eight years old. And yet it was the women I was trying to protect, in my foolish way.”
But Cora could not help wondering if she had been the foolish one, in insisting that any marriage should be secret. When she saw how proudly Cal talked of ‘my wife’ and ‘Mrs Garth’, she could only be glad, for his sake, that it was all out in the open now.
***
The expedition to Briar House turned out to be a somewhat larger affair than Cora had anticipated.
Everyone wanted to see it, so a procession of no fewer than four carriages and the gig made its stately way down the Staineybank drive, along the river and then onto the road towards High Frickham and Frickham, turning aside after a couple of miles on the narrow lane that led to Briar House.
It was just as Cora remembered it, although the duke had brought the keys, so this time they entered through the front door.
The hall and sitting room were just as before, clean and neatly draped in holland covers.
But while the party was exclaiming over the portrait of the duke in his youthful vigour, Cal ushered her into the dining room.
Here there had been a total transformation. Gone were the decades of accumulated dust and cobwebs, and everything was in pristine order, beneath clean holland covers.
“Someone has been busy,” she said. “Did the duke send some servants here?”
“Timmy and I have been cleaning up one room at a time,” he said.
“The principal downstairs rooms, the stairs and a couple of bedrooms are done so far. Timmy’s mother’s been helping a bit, too.
She’s the one who’s been keeping the hall and sitting room clean for the duke all these years. Still plenty to do.”
“This is your talent for planning ahead on display again,” she said, smiling. “You thought we might end up here, so you set about making it habitable.”
“Well, I’m a gardener, and if you want to eat peas in summer, you have to plant them in spring, and you’d better have dug the ground properly the autumn before, so thinking ahead comes with the job.
Besides, I couldn’t imagine a house better suited to the two of us.
A proper house for you and trees all round for me. ”
Cal showed the company all the clean parts of the house, and then set off to lead them around what could be called the garden. Cora went back to the sitting room where Hester, unable to walk so far as the rest, was lingering over the teacups.
“Another cup?” Hester said.
“Oh, please.”
When the cup was in her hand, she said, “Are you disappointed in me, Hester?”
“Because you married him? You must make up your own mind on that score, Cora dear. I admired your bravery in dispensing with matrimony in the first place, but if you now feel more comfortable surrendering your freedom, then—”
“No,” Cora said in a low voice. “That is not how it was at all. I loved being free, and Cal never gave me any grief over it. He only ever wanted me to be happy.”
“Then what changed?”
“He wanted to marry, and naturally I want him to be happy, too. It seemed an unbridgeable gulf between us, but then he wrote me a letter…”
From her reticule, she retrieved the folded paper. She had read it so many times, she knew it by heart.
‘My dearest, most beloved Cora, holder of my heart now and for all time, I do not know if this letter will accomplish anything but I feel I must say these words, all the same. If ever I should have the great good fortune to be your husband, I swear by Almighty God that I shall never expect you to obey me, that you will always be free to come and go as you wish, to act as you feel is best and to live your life in whatever manner pleases you. All I ask as your humble and devoted servant is to share some part of your life, as much or as little as you choose, and to love and cherish you for all our lives. To this promise I hold by my honour as a gentleman, and thus I set my true name this day, Calvin Montgomery Garth of Lampton Priory, Gloucestershire.’
“Oh, Cora!” Hester said, in awed tones. “What a magnificent letter! No wonder you married him at once. ‘Holder of my heart’ ‘Your humble and devoted servant’ ‘To love and cherish you for all our lives’ Oh, Cora, how lucky you are to find such a man, because there are very few of that type. Most are arrogant and overbearing to a greater or lesser degree.”
“Like Richard,” Cora said drily.
“A little, yes, although he has seen how badly wrong his own instincts may lead him, so he may improve, in time. Perhaps, too, when he has a son or two in the nursery and he’s grown used to the tremendous responsibility that will be his one day, he will be a little less… dictatorial, shall we say?”
“Do you think that is what makes him so tetchy? He used to be far more easy-going, apart from money matters.”