They’d spent a great deal of the afternoon together, those two women. Perhaps Madelaine found Lady Frances easier company, having got to know her on the journey. Perhaps Lady Frances was more amused by his wager than he’d presumed. But he also thought it likely she was genuinely starting to like Mrs Ardingly. Lady Frances appreciated a sharp turn of mind and didn’t suffer fools gladly, though she often enjoyed pretending to be one. It was a game she played, and thensnap, her wit would show its teeth at the very moment her gullible victim reached the height of their condescension. His wager would be more than half won if Lady Frances decided to befriend Mrs Ardingly for real.
He congratulated himself on having found a rare specimen of a woman in the widow. Something had made her catch his noticeat Mrs Fishbourne’s saloon party. Twice he’d seen her, and twice he’d noticed her, and now here she was, being everything he’d imagined she could be.
The afternoon was growing late, the shadows stretching as the sun began its descent—night still falling early at this time of year. There were perhaps two hours of light left.
For his part, he couldn’t understand the appeal of a picnic. A better meal could have been more comfortably eaten at home. But while there was a vogue for picturesque nature, he supposed the picnic trend would endure. Many of their party were extremely drunk, stretched out on the grass or the rugs, either somnolent or laughing loudly. The barons of beef had been carved, and some of it even eaten. The half dozen cold roast fowls that had been among his own contribution had been picked over in between the champagne and fruit punch, served cold from Lady Frances’s ice crate. The ducks and ham and lobsters had been toyed with and removed, the salads poked to scraps; the potted stewed fruits, attracting wasps, had been hastily cleared away, and the various breads and biscuits and cakes and confectioneries were crumbs on rugs and careless laps. A group had persuaded the stately string band to play a few reels and had spent half an hour capering around until one fell over and the others protested they felt sick. Leighton had already gone, a match in the morning. Handley was sulking. Pembroke had drunk enough to start talking, though only to his brother, Beckford, who sat with him but not listening, staring in rapture at the young Miss Howarth whom Lady Frances had brought as her guest.
Lady Frances herself was considerably merry, cheeks flushed red, bonnet discarded, laughing riotously. At her side, Mrs Ardingly looked as serene as when she’d arrived, smiling faintly but, he noted, now hiding a yawn behind her hand.
He doubted she was drunk. He’d only seen her sip at the plentiful champagne, and he had a high enough opinion of her good sense to know she wouldn’t risk her performance to sloppy inebriety.
No, she’d be as sober as he was—as he always was—perhaps the only two of their party to be so. Even the servants had been helping themselves to abandoned glasses, as they inevitably did, tipping the dregs back when they thought they were out of sight behind the tent. Warm, flat champagne. He pulled a face at the thought.
Mrs Ardingly glanced up, raising a questioning brow at his expression, but then bent her head back to Lady Frances at whatever she said next. He wasn’t close enough to hear them, only the occasional peal of laughter. It had seemed wiser, somehow, to keep his distance, especially when the two women were together.
But they made a pleasing picture, sitting side by side. One he was eager to make his mistress. The other he was satisfied he’d soon make his wife.
There he went, feeling smug again, but who could blame him? It was so very easy to get exactly what one wanted in life. He couldn’t understand these people who lived in chaos and despair, their whims and wishes unmet, not even strived for.
Look at Beckford, mooning over that girl and not even daring to go speak to her.
Mrs Ardingly yawned again, blinking rapidly. She was tired, starting to flag. No doubt the day had been exhausting for her.
Had she enjoyed it? Or would she rather have spent the day walking the slums, handing out bread, darning rags for orphans, and writing pointless letter after letter, all of them unheeded?
Today probably felt futile to her, but it was far from it. Here were peers, tastemakers, politicians, men with votes in either House. Here were men and women with more money than theyknew what to do with. Here, in this dissolute, frivolous picnic, was where Mrs Ardingly might begin to gather the threads of power and influence she so desperately needed.
If she trod carefully. If she had help.
He finished his champagne, only his second glass of the day, and winced, finding it, too, had gone flat and warm. As he stood, some friends came over, talked drunken nonsense to him for ten minutes, then ambled off to see what amusements the river might hold. When he looked around, the widow had gone.
It didn’t take long to find her. A tall silhouette moved up the slope—yes, in stately elegance, he was pleased to see—heading to where the low, wispy clouds were just being touched by the coral-pink fingers of setting sun.
Sebastian followed. She came to a stop on the other side of the low ridge, where the crest at her back hid her from the picnickers' sight.
She stood with her feet set apart, the elegance abandoned. Her hands were on her hips, and she surveyed the sunset as a pirate might, standing firm against the sliding deck of his ship’s deck.
He smiled, sure it was a relief for her to drop the act. It was the way he pulled free his cravat at the end of each day, a long breath taken in the quiet solitude of his room.
She heard his approaching step and glanced around. Though she tensed, she didn’t seem surprised to see him.
“Someone told me all about the palace that used to be here,” she said as he came to stand by her side. “Henry VIII used to live there, and all manner of great kings and queens before him, and now there’s nothing left of it except a gatehouse, apparently.”
Sebastian waited, his shoulder six inches from hers. She seemed to be going somewhere, following her nebulous point as one follows a will-o’-the-wisp in a dream. Perhaps she’d drunk more than he’d thought.
“Isn’t it strange how important all those people once were, and now they’re nothing but names.”
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow…The Shakespeare quotation came to mind.Life’s but a walking shadow…But he didn’t speak it aloud.
“The town I live in is full of that sort of thing,” she continued, her gaze still on the sunset. “I think about it often. There’s Camber Castle—another of Henry VIII’s buildings—now a crumbling ruin. But the whole town itself used to be one of the cinque ports, incredibly important, supplying ships to the navy. The sea had other ideas, as it so often does, and moved the river, moved the whole shore itself, and now Winchelsea sits stranded at the top of a low cliff, a nothing, nowhere town. They say that below it, where the sheep now graze on the flat marshes, used to be sometimes covered by sea—it still floods—and it’s not hard to imagine great and powerful ships sailing where the birds now fly. Nothing seems very important, not when you stand by the wall there at the edge of town and look out and think about that.”
“And is that what you do when you’re not in London? Stand there and think of that?”
“Sometimes. And whenever I see any view at all, really. Like this.” She swept a hand at the low countryside, the pinking sky, rooftops here and there in the distance beyond rivers of green trees. “Something about the distance ofsightalways puts me in mind of the distance oftime. But it is so…so ineffably sad to think about ancient things. It reminds you how very short your life is, and how unimportant, and how…how everything ends.”
For a moment, Sebastian, too, looked at the view. Distant rooks turned and wheeled above the trees, their harsh cry at the edge of hearing.Sound and fury, signifying nothing…The picnic was louder behind them. The music still played; people still laughed.
“You must have married very young.”
