“No, he hasn’t forgotten,” Fanny said seriously, as they turned towards the house once more. “He knows he’s betrothed to you, and he remembers you well enough, for we’ve been talking to him about you ever since he arrived. But seeing you out here, and unexpectedly — that’s something which throws him. If he’d met you in the drawing room, having been warned in advance that you would be there, he would have had no difficulty.”
“Lord Tarvin said something of the sort, too. He wanted to be present when Ulric and I first met, so that he could smooth things over, but you managed it beautifully, Miss Peterson.”
“Fanny gets on very well with Ulric, don’t you, dear?” Lady Peterson said. “She’s the ideal person to advise you on the best way to manage him.”
“He doesn’t need to be managed, Mama,” Miss Peterson said, flushing slightly. “He’s perfectly sensible if he’s not taken by surprise.”
Sensible… that word again. Ulric was sensible, but Tess was not.
Oh, this was madness! What was she thinking of, marrying a man like Ulric Frith?
The answer was instantaneous. Her fortune. She was thinking of her fortune. The thought of it stiffened her resolve.
Lady Peterson wished to speak to the gardeners on some matter regarding some danger to her precious plants — thrips, it might be — so Fanny and Tess walked back to the house alone. Tess thought it politic to address head on the matter that most pricked her conscience.
“Miss Peterson, I am deeply grateful to you and your parents for the welcome you have accorded me today, and your forbearance in what must be a very difficult situation for you. I would not have you removed from your home if there were any other way of proceeding, but I understand how distressing it must be for you all.”
“For Mama, perhaps,” she said. “She’ll miss this garden so much. There’s scarcely a shrub or flowering plant that she hasn’t planted and nurtured with her own hands, and the prospect of starting again in a new garden is one she dreads. As for my father, he has good friends amongst our neighbours here that he will be loath to leave behind. He loves his card parties, and he’s a beloved figure to all the tenants. But for myself — a house isjust a house, Miss Nicholson. It’s not the loss of Myercroft that upsets me. It’s Ulric’s future that gives me sleepless nights.” She stopped abruptly and clutched at Tess’s arm. “You will look after him, won’t you? Take good care of him for me. Stay with him, play his simple card games, ride with him, because if you simply marry him and then leave him here, he’ll have no friends looking after him. His trustees will be gone, and I’ll be gone, too. He needs someone to take care of him, and protect him from—”
She stopped, biting her lip.
“From his mother,” Tess said crisply. What was it about mothers that made them such a trial to their children? It was an excellent argument for never having children.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Miss Peterson said. “I shouldn’t even have thought it. That was very bad of me.”
“I have asked Lord Tarvin to continue his watchful care on Ulric after his marriage,” Tess said. “He will not be a trustee any longer, but I believe Ulric can be persuaded to permit him control of his affairs.”
“But he won’t be here!” Miss Peterson said with a flare of passion. “Ulric needs a friend always by his side. Lord Tarvin lives in London, or else at his own house. Even as trustee, he only comes here a few times a year. Papa takes care of the day-to-day management of the estate. If you were to live here… but you’ll marry him to fulfil the terms of your father’s will, and then abandon him.”
Tess could hear the bitterness in her voice. “It is true that I do not care for Ulric in the same way that you do,” she began hesitantly.
“Nobody cares for him as much as I do,” Miss Peterson said, subdued suddenly. “I wish with all my heart that I could stay with him. If I’d known he wanted to marry, I’d have married him myself, and I think… I truly believe that would have been better for Ulric. Forgive me for speaking plain, but it’s what I think.”
***
For several days, Lady Peterson painstakingly showed Tess over the whole house, from the kitchens in the basement to the lumber rooms in the attics, and from the crimson saloon, kept only for the most formal occasions, to the balcony of the clock tower on the roof. She saw the coal, wine and silver stores, looked into the linen cupboard, was formally introduced to the butler, housekeeper and cook, had the workings of the still room explained to her and was shown the account books. She even saw the nursery, empty but immaculately clean and ready for occupation. For a strange moment, Tess had a vision of it filled with children, but not with Ulric’s golden hair. Instead, it was Edward’s stern visage that rode the rocking horse and played spillikins. How odd.
Outside, she toured the stables, and won the respect of the head gardener by admiring the still fruitful kitchen garden. In the evenings, she played cards with Ulric. He still frowned at her if he met her somewhere unexpected, and once he yelled, “What are you doing here?” at her, but luckily Miss Peterson was with her, and able to smooth things over. Otherwise, in the dining and drawing rooms, at least, he called her‘Cousin Tess’and seemed to understand that he was shortly to be married.
Yet Tess herself was less and less sure of it. Miss Peterson’s words echoed in her head —‘I’d have married him myself, and that would have been better for Ulric’.Tess could not find any point of disagreement. Yet this was the only way to have both her fortune and her freedom.
One afternoon, Edward had gone out riding with Ulric, and the Peterson ladies were out in the garden, accompanied by a pair of gardeners. Tess found a sheltered spot on the terrace and, wrapped in her warmest shawl, watched the little group crawl from one flower bed to the next. Footsteps behind her causedher to turn her head, but it was only Sir Ernest, emerging from his library in daylight hours for once.
“May I join you?” he said. When Tess assented, he sat on the other end of the bench she occupied, but he said nothing, seeming content to watch the party in the garden, just as Tess was.
“What are they doing, do you know?” she said. “They seem to spend an age over one plant, then they move along a little way, and begin again.”
“Lady Peterson is selecting plants which she wishes to take with her when we leave Myercroft,” he said. “Not the whole plant, necessarily, but seeds or cuttings. Favourite blooms that she would miss greatly.”
“How you must hate me,” Tess said sadly.
“Not in the least, I assure you. Myercroft is Ulric’s house, and if he wants it back, he must have it. We cannot stay here once he has a wife.”
Unless the wife is Fanny Peterson.
The instant the thought entered Tess’s head, she knew it was the right thing to do. If Ulric were to marry Fanny, the Petersons would stay on to manage the house and estate, Sir Ernest could oversee financial matters and Ulric’s mother would not need to move to Myercroft at all.
It was the obvious solution… thesensiblesolution. The only question was whether Tess was unselfish enough to relinquish Ulric. It was the primary question that kept her awake at night.
