CHAPTER THREE
Elizabeth’s every worst fear about the horse that her uncle had selected for her was fulfilled.
It regarded her with patent suspicion, as someone likely to want it to go at a pace it had little inclination to attain.
It had four legs, yes, but calling it a horse was, in her opinion, an error.
What her uncle, who was well aware that she was a considerable horsewoman, was thinking when he selected it, she could not imagine.
Perhaps, as Amelia had said, he had reverted to thinking about what he would select for his daughter, if she had to ride in London.
On the other hand, it prevented her passing the highly polished barouche of Lady Rendlesham without exchanging courtesies, just as she emerged from Hyde Park at the conclusion of her inadequate ride.
Lady Rendlesham was not a rider, but it did not take an expert to tell that Elizabeth was mounted upon a hired beast of dubious worth.
It was therefore too good an opportunity to be wasted.
Lady Rendlesham commanded her coachman to halt, waved her gloved hand and nodded, smiling, at Elizabeth.
‘Dear Miss Ashling, riding out in the fresh air so early, I see. No doubt it is good for the complexion, or is it indigestion? I never can remember, never having been worried by either. Lady Cumnor – oh, have you been introduced … yes … Well, Lady Cumnor and I were saying how well you look upon a suitably mettlesome steed. You were accounted quite the horsewoman, as I recall.’
With a condescending nod of her elegantly bonneted head, indicating dismissal, Lady Rendlesham had her carriage move on.
Elizabeth gritted her teeth, and smiled as falsely as the ladies in the barouche.
Even when upon horseback, it seemed, London was determined to ruin any chance of not only pleasure, but even contentment.
How could one feel liberated upon a creature as uninspiring as the one she had been given to ride?
It was therefore an out-of-temper Miss Ashling who returned to Mount Street, a little dusty and most displeased with life.
Her mood was not improved by finding that, in her absence, Mr Escott had called, been cast into apparent despair by her absence and had left a bouquet of garish red roses with a message, which turned out to be in rhyme.
This offering, at which she took one appalled glance and then flung upon the table in disgust, was pounced upon by Amelia.
It sent her into whoops of laughter, which were only curtailed by 36her mama’s arrival upon the scene to deliver an admonition on unladylike ‘yelling’.
‘I am sorry, Mama, but this … Oh, it is just too funny! Mr Escott has written a poem to Elizabeth.’
‘Then it is hardly your place to be reading it, surely, Amelia,’ remonstrated Lady Chalford gently.
‘Oh no, Aunt,’ interposed Elizabeth, still fuming. ‘At least if it gives Amelia some merriment it has done something, other than fill me with the strong desire to stamp these roses into your new carpet.’
‘Oh dear! Is it that bad?’
‘Worse, if possible. Go on, Amelia, read it out, if you can bear to do so.’
Amelia tried to school her features into a semblance of disinterest, cleared her throat, and promptly choked over the first line. It took her three attempts before she managed to recite the short stanza.
‘Fairest of fair, yet beauteous dark,
Alas, your absence in the Park
Leaves me disconsolate and low.
For without speech you cannot know
The heights to which your vision bright,
Carried me speechless, yesternight,
And these poor flowers, no words possessing,
I leave, my stolen heart confessing.’
Tears were streaming down Amelia’s cheeks from laughter.
‘I think,’ enunciated Elizabeth slowly, ‘that I feel ill.’
‘He is very young, and working under strong emotions,’ remarked Lady Chalford soothingly.
37‘Then he should spend his time in curbing them, rather than in producing such nonsense.’ Elizabeth was clearly not mollified.
‘Are you not being a trifle harsh, my dear?’
‘Harsh? No, for “nonsense” seems a generous term.’
‘But you will not be uncivil to him, will you, when next you meet?’ Lady Chalford gave a small, nervous smile. ‘You must not be seen as cruel and unfair.’
‘Nobody would think me cruel if they had to read that,’ Elizabeth fumed, pointing at the note, ‘but since, thankfully, they will be spared it, I suppose I shall have to appear unmoved.’ She sighed.
‘He only had one dance with me. What perversity of fate made him select me, of all people, as his latest goddess?’
‘He did not actually call you a “goddess”,’ noted Amelia judiciously.
‘No, but he will, I have no doubt. That, do not forget, was merely written upon finding me not at home. Oh goodness, what if he writes pages of it?’
‘Or there is a literary soirée, and he reads them,’ declared Amelia, collapsing once more into helpless laughter.
Her mama glared at her and sent her immediately to her room to compose herself, and sit for an hour with the book of homilies that her Aunt Risborough had sent her.
Levity, she said repressively, was not to be encouraged in excess.
With Amelia gone, Lady Chalford set about soothing her niece’s ruffled feathers, with limited success.
‘You might be making too much of this, my dear. It is most provoking, I am sure, but is in no way your fault, as anyone would accept. Young men in the grip of the poetic 38urge may select their muse upon the flimsiest of premises, but thankfully their interest tends to wax and wane quickly, and they transfer their fleeting adoration elsewhere. It is just bad luck, like catching the mumps.’
At which point, with the analogy of Mr Escott as a disease, even Elizabeth began to laugh.
The subject was carefully avoided at luncheon, and afterwards Elizabeth set off to visit her friend, declining the offer of the landaulet, and stepping the short distance to Brook Street accompanied by a footman. She found Lady Godmanchester reclining upon a sofa, but looking in good health.
‘I am not near as invalidish as I must appear, Elizabeth, but I have been recommended to put my feet up as often as possible. I do find myself in need of rest if I am to go out in the evening, and later, as one becomes larger, it does help prevent one’s ankles from swelling.’
‘You seem very unperturbed by the prospect.’
‘Well, one is less concerned, the second time, I think. The loss of one’s figure is sad, but once the sickness passed, and the baby quickened, I have to admit I was very content whilst carrying George, and Godmanchester is a perfect dear about it all, putting up with the odd humours that afflict ladies when increasing without complaint.
’ Her eyes misted. ‘He even said he thought me beautiful when I was positively huge, and waddled rather than walked, and once I was safely delivered, came down to London, and bought me the most beautiful sapphire bracelet, “for being brave”. As if one had a choice!’
39‘Marriage suits you, Helen.’
‘My husband suits me,’ she corrected. ‘I am very well aware that many women are not nearly as fortunate as I am. I dread to think what marriage must be like where there is no mutual love, or even deep affection. Can you imagine being married to Lord Newlyn, who never does anything but find fault, or a man with an erratic temper?’ She shuddered.
‘No. I am blessed with the best of husbands, so how could marriage not suit me?’
She was entirely sincere, and Elizabeth could not, though it went against her every experience, find a fault in what she said, nor indeed would have had the heart to disabuse her, had she been able to do so.
The memory of her parents’ devotion was clouded by the ensuing misery of loss, and that was the only relationship that she had seen as truly complete.
The major problem that Elizabeth foresaw was that her dearest friend, and only true confidante, would not be able to comprehend her actions.
How could a woman so happy in the bonds of wedlock see that she recoiled from them in distrust and even fear?
It created a chasm between them, which Elizabeth regretted.
However, she was perfectly willing to share the baleful news of her couplet-writing admirer.
‘I did not encourage him, I swear, Helen. Indeed, one might more readily have complained that I was too aloof and distant.’
‘By which, you know, you probably placed yourself upon the pedestal to which he raises his eyes,’ Lady Godmanchester remarked sagely.
40‘Tell me how I might leap down from it immediately and I will be eternally grateful! It is horrible! What if his verses become known?’
‘I hardly think they will. Printing and binding is quite expensive, I believe.’ Lady Godmanchester’s eyes danced, as her friend’s widened in horror.
‘Published? No, please, tell me that is in jest!’
‘Oh, Elizabeth, of course. Unless he has a patron, of course.’ She giggled.
‘You are being cruel, Helen. Very cruel.’ Elizabeth pouted theatrically. ‘If you only knew …’
‘Go on then, tell me what he wrote.’
‘I threw it away.’
‘Shame. Can you not remember any of it?’
‘Remember? It still haunts me. It began with something like “Fairest of fair, yet beauteous dark, Alas, your absence in the Park, Leaves me despondent, sorry, disconsolate, and low.”’
‘Dark and, er, park, what fortuitous rhyming.’
‘I am sure,’ declared Elizabeth repressively, ‘that giggling is bad for the unborn child. Too much bouncing up and down might jangle its nerves.’
‘Really?’ Lady Godmanchester laid a hand on her barely rounded stomach. ‘And I thought it might make Baby a happy little soul.’ She smiled. ‘Seriously, having a poet dragging about after you, sighing, and singing your praises, is an encumbrance, but scarcely your own fault.’