Page 40

Exhausted, Madeleine headed for her room and lay on the bed gazing at the ceiling, attempting to empty her mind of all the drama of the last few days. She fell asleep and was roused by a light knocking on her door. She could hear the butler, Moss, softly calling her name. ‘Miss Rose, her Ladyship requests you join her in the drawing room.’

With her heart in her mouth, Madeleine thanked him, then tried and failed to tidy her hair and made her way up the stairs to the drawing room. This was a room she only used to play the piano, preferring the greater warmth and intimacy of the library. Its grandeur was intended to trumpet wealth and status; the walls were hung with purple silk and portraits of the most important of their haughty ancestors. Rococo, gilded looking glasses reflected them in the dusky light. For once, the fire was lit and Lady Lockhart sat in the high-backed Jacobean chair on one side, a book in her lap. She motioned for Madeleine to take the smaller chair across from her, covered in Aubusson tapestry, its springs so soft that when she sat, she sank into its depths, made to feel even smaller.

Faced by her imperious aunt, Madeleine was struck by how predatory she appeared, wearing her black mourning clothes, so like a crow perched high in her carved chair. Madeleine knew she was in for an interrogation and clasped her hands together to give herself strength. Lady Lockhart’s voice was quiet and unthreatening. ‘Madeleine, I wonder if you have any concerns over your grandmother’s legacy that I could help you with?’

‘I do miss having someone to talk to about it.’

‘You don’t need to feel alone. All of us support your interests, you know. You are a Lockhart after all and have the Lockhart’s sense of honour and duty.’

‘But I don’t know what the right thing to do is.’

Lady Lockhart was still reassuringly silky. ‘Well, your duty is a good place to start. We Lockharts have a natural understanding of where the family’s best interests lie. I’m afraid in noble families, the individual’s wish is of less consequence than the good of the whole.’

‘But Edwin is my cousin,’ Madeleine protested weakly.

Lady Lockhart’s patience was quickly wearing thin. ‘Come now, Madeleine, from royalty downwards people marry their cousins. There is nothing out of the usual about it. It’s not as if you grew up together.’ She shifted restlessly in her chair. ‘If you mean that you lack romantic feelings for Edwin, that too is usual in families such as ours. Marriages are dynastic rather than marks of personal affection. My son will make a good husband and I’m sure esteem and warmer feelings will grow with time.’

Madeleine felt her soul shrivel at the thought. Were her dreams of love just foolish, youthful folly? She knew the man she loved could not be hers, but was she to be content the rest of her life with mere esteem rather than the passions that inhabited her heart and were given voice in her writing? She could not contain her feelings and said more fiercely than she meant, ‘But I don’t want a marriage like that. I’d rather not marry at all.’

Lady Lockhart’s self-control snapped and her natural asperity broke through. ‘Oh goodness, child! Stop being such a romantic ninny. All young women must marry.’

Madeleine pointed out the crux of this conversation. ‘But if I married, I’d lose all my fortune, my property, and the freedom Grandmama wished me to have.’

With a struggle, Lucinda Lockhart had regained her composure and her voice was once more persuasive. ‘I’m afraid that is the law of the land, made by men wiser than us, and for good reason, no doubt, given the weaker minds of most young women.’ Madeleine did not point out that few young women would gamble away their whole fortune and ancestral lands at the gaming tables, the cockpit, or illegal bare-knuckle bouts, as did so many young noblemen. But she noticed a glint come into her aunt’s gimlet-sharp eyes. ‘So, my dear, why would you wish to keep control of the Lockhart fortune, what would you wish to use it for, anyway?’

As Madeleine answered with enthusiastic candour, she knew immediately she should have kept such revolutionary ideas to herself. ‘I thought I could make a difference in the world. I could open a home for abandoned children in the dower house of Great Cheney.’ Her words died away as her aunt’s black eyes glittered, hard as obsidian, and her lips tightened into a grimace.

‘You have just proved why it is that the law thinks it safer to have the family money controlled by the men. What a numbskull idea! How foolish and dangerous, allowing those whores’ kitlings, all criminally sired, onto the family estate.’ Lady Lockhart’s intemperate speech surprised even herself, and usually disciplined and clever, she changed her tone when she saw the mulish look on Madeleine’s face. It was clearly an unproductive line of argument and she added, in more conciliatory tones, ‘But I’m sure if you could prove that this would not be a danger to others on the estate or a never-ending drain of income, then Lord Lockhart would allow you to indulge your ideas for social reform.’

As Madeleine stood up, ready to leave, Lady Lockhart tried her final ploy in a reasonable voice. ‘The thing to bear in mind, my dear, is that your grandmama knew the code of the aristocracy as well as anyone. She would never wish to disinherit her grandson and heir. The family matters more than any individual, this is engraved on the heart of everyone with an ancestral house and land.’ At the sight of her niece’s dubious expression, her tone hardened. ‘If you don’t restore the Lockhart fortune to the heir by marrying him, then we will instruct lawyers to argue that you put undue influence on a frail old lady to ensure she changed her will in your favour. I think we have a very strong case. My advice to you is to consider very carefully if you wish to be forced to testify in court.’

Madeleine put her hand out to grasp the door to steady herself. She had not anticipated this at all, and it shocked her that her own aunt and cousins could be so willing to risk everything, including their reputations and her own, to be able to reclaim the inheritance. Not wishing to give Aunt Lucinda the satisfaction of seeing how shaken she was by this new salvo in hostilities, she forced a smile. Controlling her breathing and voice, she said, ‘Thank you, Lady Lockhart. I shall bear that in mind.’ She left the room as fast as decorum would allow.

Her mind in turmoil, Madeleine dashed down the stairs to her room and quickly shrugged into her pelisse, placing her bonnet haphazardly on her head. Collecting Dot from the kitchen, she set off via the back door to head through the mews then north to Brook Street. There were only two people in the world she could contemplate turning to for advice. She knew she should not take this particular problem to Mr Shilton and wondered if Mrs Wolfe was at home. Madeleine had only just met her, yet felt she had known her all her life. She was so agitated, she barely paused to consider the propriety of burdening a near-stranger with her troubles.

The sun irradiated the western sky as it sank beneath the rooftops, leaving a glowing violet dusk, penetrated here and there by the first lighted candles guttering in a window. Madeleine barely noticed the tide of jackdaws ebbing and flowing overhead, chattering as they swirled home to roost in the trees of Grosvenor Square. All she was aware of was needing to talk to someone and unburden her troubles. She glanced up at the Shilton mansion as they approached and there he was standing at the window looking out at the sky, his face in shadow, but his fair hair caught in the rays of the dying sun. He looked like a god, her god, and her heart leapt in her chest.

Madeleine walked on quickly to the Wolfe house a few doors farther up the street. A chaise was waiting outside the door and it moved off as the two young women climbed the steps and knocked. Gibbons’s cheerful face greeted them and when Madeleine asked for Mrs Wolfe, she was told the master and mistress had just left for an evening party. She knew she must go back to her cousins’ house but felt if she could not talk to someone sympathetic and wise, she would collapse with nervous exhaustion.

Feeling utterly bereft, with neither friend nor close family to turn to, Madeleine thought it may even be worth marrying just to be less alone, to no longer be such a solitary creature, isolated on an ice floe drifting out to sea. Surely to belong somewhere, to have a place in the world, even if it was not the perfect place, would be preferable to this?

With unquiet spirits, she could not urge her tired limbs to walk past Mr Shilton’s house. He seemed to promise safe anchorage, if only for a while. She paused, summoning her courage and wits, and grasping Dot’s arm to steady herself, she walked up his front steps.

* * *

Ferdinand Shilton continued to stand at the window, gazing out on the encroaching dark, deep in thought, a glass of his best French brandy in his hand. The Wolfes had left, along with Billy and Mabel, and he felt contentment descend; the immediate care of the child was in Corinna’s capable hands. He was so relieved to have his old friends back in Town, he felt the muscles in his shoulders relax and his breath deepen. But their presence brought a new, more alarming anxiety.

They had met Miss Payton and it was obvious that she did not care for them and they did not warm to her. Corinna particularly seemed to be unimpressed by his new sartorial choices, gazing at her portrait of him over the fireplace wearing his favourite yellow coat, and then looking at the charcoal one he was wearing to please his betrothed. It was just as immaculately tailored across his shoulders and shapely at the waist as his favourite coloured jackets, but he knew his artist friend was thinking how dull, not our old Ferdy at all, and a part of him thought the same, and mourned.

And then there was the disturbing Miss Rose. What a shock to think it was she he truly loved. Was Corinna right? And if so, what was he to do about it? Lost in troubled thought, he crossed the hall to return to his library.

There was a knock at the front door and Maltby opened it. His voice, usually so lugubrious, was unexpectedly warm. Ferdy heard the name ‘Miss Rose’ and gripped his brandy glass so hard he feared it might shatter in his hand. He did not enjoy the confusion of emotion that surged through his veins. His heart suffered such jolts and somersaults, its rapid beat booming in his ears. Plagued by a strange longing to be with her, yet uneasy and distracted in her presence, he was struck by the folly, the useless, pitiable folly of it all. If this was an impossible love, how could there ever be any peace for him again?

Mr Shilton rose to his feet and greeted Madeleine at the door. ‘Good evening, Miss Rose. I presume some emergency has propelled you out at this hour? It’s most imprudent, you know.’ Then he saw her distraught expression and his sense of propriety was set aside. ‘You look like you’ve had a fright. How can I help?’ His smile was sympathetic as he took her hand. In his presence, her panic receded. Here was someone who would understand. She was right to have come.

Dot was about to leave them and head for the kitchen, but Mr Shilton put out a hand. ‘Please stay to chaperone your mistress.’ Turning to Madeleine, he said, ‘I care about your reputation, even if you don’t.’ She lifted her face to him and her smile, though wan, made the moment of time seem to falter. In his brain beat the mysterious words, Now we meet Fate together. Then his good manners reasserted themselves and he offered Madeleine something to drink. She demurred and he topped up his own glass with brandy as they sat opposite each other by the fire. Ferdinand Shilton crossed elegant legs in their grey pantaloons and asked in a soft voice, ‘Well, Miss Rose. What can I do for you?’

Madeleine clasped her hands together. ‘I have had a shock and I don’t know how to proceed. I thought I could ask Mrs Wolfe’s advice – presumptuous, I know – but I didn’t want to bother you with another of my predicaments. I know how outrageous it is for me to turn up so late at your door, but Mrs Wolfe had already left her house.’