“No, you’re not. I know all about that, and it’s not your fault, true enough, but it means you’ve no right to tell other people what to do.”
“I only tell servants what to do, Mr Plowman. To your daughter, I merely offered my opinion and she then decided to call off the wedding. Her decision, sir, entirely hers.”
“Don’t you bandy words with me, missy.”
He puffed himself up like some kind of farmyard cockerel, and Izzy could not help laughing. There was no point taking offence. He was a preposterous little man, in many ways, just a jumped-up sheep farmer or mill owner or some such, thinking himself so grand as he mingled with the gentry in his stiff, new coat and his valiant efforts with his cravat. But she respected a man who stood his ground when she played the great lady. She liked to have her rank acknowledged, but there was nothing she despised more than abject obsequiousness.
“So how are you planning to salvage this marriage, Mr Plowman?” she said silkily. “You have a plan, I take it? Or are you merely hoping to browbeat her into submission? For I have to tell you, purely as my opinion, you understand, that I do not see such a strategy achieving your aims. Miss Plowman does not strike me as a girl who is susceptible to being browbeaten.”
“Aye, you’re in the right of it there,” he said, with a rueful laugh. “And is it your opinion, miss— my lady, that she can be persuaded any other way?”
“Sydney can be very charming when he wants to be,” she said thoughtfully. “If he wants your field badly enough, he will set himself to win her round.”
“He doesn’t seem to be putting much effort into it,” Mr Plowman said, nodding to the side of the room, where Sydney was engrossed in conversation with Sophie, with smiles on both sides and a great deal of laughter.
“They are old friends,” Izzy said, but she was puzzled, all the same. Sophie had talked often about Sydney’s sisters, who had been her childhood friends, but never a word about the man himself. In town, during the season they had all shared, she had been brought out under the aegis of Mrs Davenport and was often in Sydney’s company, yet Izzy could not recall any sign of closeness. Yet now they were as cosy together as if… No, surely there was no attachment between them?
But there was no time to investigate this new idea, for they were called into dinner just then, and Izzy was fully occupied in finding an amusing companion.
Despite the bad feeling against her, Izzy was not ostracised. There was a certain stiffness from the ladies, but it was reassuring that despite everything, several of the men jostled for the right to escort her into dinner. The Davenports were not starchy enough to care about precedence, which was just as well, for Izzy would have been the lowest ranked guest in anyformal arrangement. Even so, it hurt to find herself accorded no privilege at all. She was accustomed to being offered the place of honour beside the host, or very close to it, so to find herself in the middle of the table, far from the best company and the best dishes, was not at all what she was used to. It stung, there was no doubt about it.
However, evenings were her time to shine, and she was not one to let such a trifling matter stand in her way. She had one of the cousins and the husband of one of the sisters on either side of her, and she set herself to entertain them as only she could do. The rest of the table might be serious or silent or downright dull, but Izzy kept her companions in a constant ripple of amusement. By the time Mrs Davenport rose to lead the ladies away, both men gave every appearance of being half in love with her. She still had the power to bewitch, then.
Back in the saloon, she began her usual restless prowling. An hour and a half of sitting still at the dinner table left her needing to move about, to stretch her legs and give her an ever-changing view of the room. The rest of the ladies disposed themselves in small groups about the room, but Izzy was not minded for female conversation. Normally she could entertain them with her inexhaustible supply of town gossip, or else talk of fashions or children or servants or the horrors of travel if that pleased them. Only the weather was too dull ever to be worthy of comment. But tonight her own problems pressed close about her like a chill fog, and it was hard to sustain her spirits for long. Being light-hearted and amusing could be so exhausting.
Izzy drifted towards the window. It was still light outside, and she wished she could escape to the gardens again, but she could see the trees and shrubs being tossed about by the ever-present wind and the doors to the terrace remained firmly closed.
So often at Stonywell after dinner, Ian had found her gazing through the window like this.‘Fancy a quick walk?’he would say, although as often as not it would turn out to be a long walk, she talking non-stop about anything and everything, and he saying very little, as always. Only when it was full dark would they turn back to the welcoming lights of the house. How long was it since they had last taken a walk together? Not since last summer… or the one before.
Where was he now, this not-really-a-husband of hers? Was he at Stonywell, looking out at the more benign landscape of Nottinghamshire? Was he doggedly following her from inn to inn? Was he thinking about her at all? Or was he, like her father, already contemplating his next wife, one who would be meek and demure and not throw plates at him? One who would give him a son.
So foolish to be thinking of him now, feeling tears welling over a man she had never loved. She could not have sat tamely at Stonywell waiting for him to return with a special licence and then go quietly to the parson to be married again, as if nothing had happened.Thatwould be the pretence, to go on as if everything were just as before.
Yet now she felt bereft, empty. Unrooted. Her home, her family… all gone. Her place in society, that she had always been so proud of, had vanished like a puff of smoke. She had married Ian because he could give her that — a noble title, a lineage almost as long as her own, a son who would grow up to be a peer like his father. As Lady Farramont, she could move in the highest circles in the land. All of that was lost to her.
But if she married Robert…
She was veering into sentimentality again, and that would never do. Music! That would calm her, and lift her spirits again. She spun round, about to move towards the instrument, then saw that the men were returning and hesitated. Cards, perhaps?Or just more interesting conversation. Men talked about more lively matters than the purely domestic. Some of them had no thoughts in their heads beyond crop yields and heads of cattle and repairs to barns, and that was deadly dull. But politics — now that was exciting! She loved to preside over dinners at their Brook Street house, with every seat occupied by a government minister or a diplomat or a general, hearing the dramatic truth behind the carefully worded reports in the newspapers. Brook Street… another house lost to her.
One of the sisters bustled over to her, a false smile affixed to her face. Was it Tabitha? Izzy could not tell one of Sydney’s sisters from another. They all had the same round faces framed by blonde curls, and slightly protuberant blue eyes, like the glass eyes on a china doll that had not been pushed in far enough.
“Lady Farramont! May I prevail upon you to play for us? Your performance is so superior, but I believe our instrument will not disappoint you.”
Well, that settled that. Music it was to be. It was a good instrument, Tabitha was right about that. Izzy played, then sang a little. Before long, she had attracted a little audience around the pianoforte who took turns to join in duets with her, or with each other. Then Tabitha… or perhaps it was Phyllis… rounded up most of them as the card tables came out. Izzy played on, only barely attending to what her fingers were doing, until she realised she was playing one of Ian’s favourite pieces. She had a sudden vision of him sitting watching her play, that gentle smile on his face. He always smiled as he watched her, and he always watched her.
Her fingers froze. This was foolish! Everything she did reminded her of Ian, and surely there was nothing in that to distress her. After five years together, there were innumerable memories they had shared. Everything she did from now on, whatever became of her for the rest of her life, there wouldalways be these sudden moments when he would rise forcefully to her mind. There was nothing remarkable in that, nothing to upset her. Nothing to bring this odd lump to her throat.
Except that he was gone. Perhaps she would never see him again. No, more likely they would be distant acquaintances, meeting now and then in town. She would enter a ballroom or a drawing room, and there would be that distinctive head of red hair, visible like a beacon above all the other heads. But he would not be watching her and smiling, as he used to. Perhaps he would see her and nod politely, or perhaps he would pretend he had not noticed her at all.
She crept from the saloon and fled to her room before her tears overwhelmed her.
11: Anger And Disappointment
Anger. That was a safer emotion than this corroding sentimentality. She must never forget her rage at Ian for allowing this situation to arise in the first place. Even though her rational mind whispered that he could not have foreseen the disaster and could not be blamed, the irrational part of her screamed thatsomeonewas at fault, and it was not her, so it must be Ian.
Izzy raged in her room for some time, allowing the tears to flow, and, because her disordered senses could not abide order, hurling all her clothes to the floor in a jumbled heap. There was a very pretty pair of figurines on the mantel above the fire, and it took inordinate willpower to resist hurling them to the floor, too.
Her room proved too small to contain her overflowing emotions, but she remembered the long gallery, and there she paced up and down, up and down until her legs were aching and she had driven her tears away with anger.
