Page 64 of A Lady’s Fortune

‘Well, a carriage full of ladies of uncertain repute was seen on its way into the Abbey drive. The old Earl would throw wild parties for his friends. Lord knows what those young sons were exposed to!’ Mrs Mildmay’s hand fluttered to her face but there was a certain glee in her eyes. Leonora felt as if a blade had pierced her soul. What a fool she was to think she knew Lord Rokeby’s heart. What a fool to think it belonged just to her, with neither beauty, fortune, nor noble blood to distinguish her.

She turned away, so that Mrs Mildmay would not see how stricken she was. In a muffled voice she said as brightly as possible, ‘I will look forward to seeing Charlotte again. Until tomorrow!’

The following day dawned even hotter, with no overnight storm to clear the air. Leonora’s spirit was oppressed. She returned to her packing now that George Lockwood would be taking up residence at last. This was a melancholy task as she wrapped in paper and put into boxes the Delft porcelain her mother had collected and loved, her own books, the miniature portraits of her ancestors, her jewellery and clothes. Overcome with heat and growing despair, Leonora decided to walk to the orchard to collect some wild flowers to welcome Charlotte home.

In the shade of the lane, her spirits revived. There were so many flowers in the verges she hardly needed to walk as far as the orchard to collect a big bunch of bluebells, cow parsley and wood anemones, inhaling their heady scent as she turned for home. Passing the wall of the Rokeby estate, Leonora heard distant shouts and laughter; the higher timbre of female voices floated towards her like sirens. She climbed over the broken-down wall that she and Charlotte used on their clandestine visits to the lake. Irresistibly drawn onwards despite her dread, she walked with careful stealth over the mossy ground, her heart pounding. Soon she came to the fringe of the woodland and looked down on the lake – her lake.

Five men – some bare-chested, having stripped off their shirts, others barefoot, with their breeches wet to the knees – were chasing four women in the flimsiest of chemises, their hair loose down their backs. They squealed, flitting in and out of the shade at the water’s edge. Leonora was appalled. There was her majestic oak tree, her lake, all treated with scant regard by these careless, libidinous friends of Lord Rokeby’s. She strained her eyes in search of him but could not see his dark-haired figure amongst them. She gasped, recognising one of the bare-chested men as Rufus Dearlove just as he caught a young woman in his arms, kissing her as she giggled, and his hands moved up beneath her chemise. She wriggled free and he set off in pursuit again as she pirouetted to flick water at him with her toe.

Leonora turned away in a terrible confusion of feeling: shame that she was clandestinely prying on a scene she was never meant to see; horror that this licentious party was hosted by the man she thought loved her alone; shock at the jealousy and misery that gripped her spirit. How much she hated this feeling and hated what she had become: a sneaky, overwrought woman, humiliated by her presumptuous hopes and marked by ignorance.

Leonora scrambled back over the wall, pulled sticky grass from her skirts, and hurried home. She put the flowers into a jug of water and ran upstairs to throw herself on the bed and allow herself to cry.

Eventually, she recovered herself, splashed her face with cold water, and slipped into one of her favourite evening gowns, made by her and Nanny P in emerald tiffany. She could not resist a wry smile as she was taken aback by her image in the looking glass, noticing how green the fabric made her hazel eyes appear, how flaming her hair. She hoped her unhappy, jealous heart was not as evident to others. Leonora brushed and rearranged her hair and for good measure, slipped a pink satin rose into the waves she had managed to secure into a passable chignon.

She and Mrs Priddy set out to walk up through the adjoining Vicarage garden, scents of spring flowers hanging in the humid air. As they entered the house, they were greeted by a radiant Charlotte who flew into Leonora’s arms. ‘Oh, Leonora, I have told Mama Mildmay and the Reverend everything. They are so happy too that I have a father who lives, and my mother also. I saw her at Lady Dundas’s.’ Charlotte reached for Mrs Mildmay’s hand. ‘She wants to meet my family who cared for me and in time, will come with her husband to live in the Gardener’s Cottage at the Manor.’ Charlotte slipped her arm through George Lockwood’s and said with utmost tenderness, ‘But most gratifying of all is my Mr Lockwood, my…’ she hesitated, her fair skin colouring at the thought of the intimacy of using his name. ‘…my George. How can I not be happy when the man I love loves me?’

Leonora looked up into his beaming face. How at home he seemed, dressed in his comfortable country clothes, smiling down into the beautiful, flushed face of the woman he had chosen for life’s adventure. Leonora could envision them in ten years’ time, affectionate and indulgent parents to their family of small children clustered round the table, and she smiled. This was just what her much-loved Hasterleigh Manor needed, a new young family to love and care for it as she had done.

Leonora’s own pallor and lack of vitality was unnoticed in the general light of happiness that spilled from Charlotte and George Lockwood as they sat together at the head of the table while a good roast goose was carved and eaten. There was ceaseless chatter and laughter as Charlotte and Mama Mildmay caught up on the village gossip, the deaths and newborn babies, the welcome news that Richard Fopling, not his father, would be managing the Fopling estate, with a more benign hand. George Lockwood added, to laughter, that Beau Beacham had been so charmed by his newly betrothed that he had commended his stepson for the first time in his life for his unrivalled good taste.

Nanny P was sitting next to Leonora and she realised something was troubling her. She slipped her hand under the lacy tablecloth to take Leonora’s and give it an encouraging squeeze. Leonora roused herself to take greater part in the discussions and add something to the night’s celebrations. She caught Charlotte’s eye and raised her glass to toast her. ‘From the moment I first met Mr Lockwood, I determined he should marry Charlotte so that it would be her who took my place at the Manor. And I could not be more delighted this has come to pass. Who else but she can grace this place and make Mr Lockwood happy?’ Everyone round the table raised their glasses to drink to Charlotte’s and Mr Lockwood’s health, laughing and grateful that Leonora had been so magnanimous about giving up her family home.

Leonora and Mrs Priddy left early to return to the Manor and bed. As they walked through the warm scented night, Mrs Priddy took Leonora’s hand. ‘My dear, I know something is troubling you, and it’s no longer just about losing the Manor. Tell me.’

‘Oh, Nanny P, I can’t, not yet. It’s just I’ve had a harsh awakening to the folly of dreams. And my foolishness in believing in them.’

‘We are never foolish to believe in dreams, my dear. Only sometimes to act on them is not wise. Come on now, you’re hot and tired.’ She patted Leonora’s arm and Leonora hugged her.

‘Oh, Nanny P, how would I ever have got by when my mother died if it hadn’t been for you? Then when Captain Worth—’ her voice broke with a stifled sob ‘—when he was killed, I couldn’t see a way forward. But you have always been by my side. Thank you,’ she said in a muffled voice as she buried her face in her old nanny’s shoulder.

The spell of stifling heat did not break. Leonora arose from fitful sleep to dress in her lightest white muslin. She had been tempted to leave off her stays but felt that would be going a bit far into déshabillé, especially as George Lockwood was in the house. He had suggested she take as long as she wished to move into the Lodge as he still had a thatcher there sorting out the roof ridge where birds had nested.

Everyone’s nerves were frayed by the unseasonable heat. Leonora’s hair had curled into damp tendrils against her forehead, and she sought the cellar as the coolest place in the house, deciding to pack the china there into boxes. She heard a knock on the front door and a gentleman’s voice talking to Milly.

As Leonora emerged from the cool dark, she was hit by a blast of heat and dazzled for a moment by the sun. There, in dark silhouette, was a man she knew well. ‘Lord Dearlove!’ she cried and took his hands, before she remembered she had seen him cavorting half-naked by the lake and was feeling very cross with him, and Lord Rokeby too. ‘Would you like to come in?’ she asked in a less welcoming tone.

Rufus Dearlove looked as handsome and untroubled as he always did, particularly now his forehead and cheekbones were burnished by the sun. ‘Miss Appleby, I’m on my way back to my estate but did not wish to leave Berkshire before wishing you well.’

‘Have you been visiting in the vicinity, my lord?’ she asked with an ingenuous smile.

‘Yes. The most bang-up reunion of us old soldiers at the Abbey. Rokeby certainly knows how to throw a good party.’

‘I thought he did not much care for society.’

‘Well then, something must have loosened m’lord’s stays and upped his spirits.’ The young buck laughed, little knowing the volcanoes of passion he was unloosing in Leonora’s breast.

She hated herself for asking, but she was held tight in the toils of fear and jealousy. ‘So, a gathering of you men with no ladies present?’

Lord Dearlove did not even look sheepish as he replied in his sunny way, ‘No, no ladies at all. A few days of eating, drinking and gambling into the night. It’s restored our energy and good humour. But I must be going if I’m to get back home before nightfall.’ Leonora followed him to his curricle and nodded at his groom. As he swung himself into the driving seat he said, ‘Oh, congratulations to young Miss Blythe. That George Lockwood is a fine man, rich too. My sister Livia was rather taken with him but is now betrothed to that cod’s head Cholmodley.’ He was irrepressible as he snorted with laughter. ‘An absolute fool but well-oiled, thirty thousand a year from his northern estate. But she won’t be happy exiled to the wastes of Northumberland, so far from London.’

‘Please offer her my regards and congratulations.’ Leonora was surprised how weak her voice sounded. His lordship then tipped his hat, wheeled his magnificent pair of black horses and set them off in a brisk trot as he drove his curricle back to the lane in a flurry of dust. Leonora was now hot, sticky and dusty and her mood was not improved.

She returned to her toil in the cellar and had been busy for about an hour when she heard a horse’s hooves trot up to their door, followed by a rap. No one seemed to be available to answer the call and so she emerged from her cool dark sanctuary and opened the door to Roddy, Lord Rokeby’s chief groom. He offered her a note, addressed to Miss Appleby in black ink in a large cursive hand she recognised with a jolt. ‘M’lord said I should wait for a reply.’ Leonora’s heart was hammering as she unfolded it and under the gilded Rokeby crest, read:

Would my favourite and best piano-forte tuner be able to attend Rokeby Abbey at two tomorrow?

And it was signed with a flourish, R.