Shadows & Lies Page 2

  Thank God for that, thought Sebastian, suppressing a groan at the thought of the Cashmores. An empty house, without his mother’s support in his approach to his father, would have meant a wasted journey. It would have been even worse to have arrived to find the place full of the same set forever encountered in one country house or another – but he frowned. “My mother, ill? And no one let me know, Mr Blythe – why was that, I wonder?”

  “It was nothing serious, I understand. She is much improved.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  “Yes, quite well again, though I believe she is resting at the moment. Sir Henry is in the business room.”

  “In that case,” said Sebastian hastily, “I won’t disturb him. Have my bags seen to, there’s a good fellow. I’ll just have a wash and then I’ll go and see my grandmother.”

  “You will not be regarding this – attachment – with any seriousness, of course, Sebastian,” stated his grandmother, Lady Emily Chetwynd, approaching her subject at once, but smiling. “Dalliance with a village maiden is all very well, dear boy, almost a rite of passage, one might say, but you have enough good sense to be aware that one – especially you – must always have regard to the future.”

  Sebastian automatically returned her smile – a reflection of his own, a sideways smile and one that showed great charm. He wasn’ t particularly handsome, or not quite so obviously so as Harry had been, but he had an open, pleasingly mobile face showing a quick intelligence, and a readiness to smile that quickly endeared him to people. Folding his long legs and perching on the stool near to where his grandmother sat, very upright on the edge of her chair, declining the use of the backrest for support, he reached out and took her hand, bending his head over it to avoid her quick old eyes. Gently he adjusted her rings, which had recently been enlarged to fit over the swollen knuckles and which consequently slipped about loosely above them. The softness of her hands was eloquent testimony to the fact that she’d never had need to do a day’s work in her life, but even Lady Emily was mortal, and arthritis was no respecter of persons. Apart from a stick to help her rise from her seat more gracefully, however, she allowed no concessions to painful joints.

  Sebastian, though exceedingly fond of his grandmother, was in fact surprised by how angry her words had made him – in so far as he ever was angry, for he was too easy-going to let such emotions trouble him overmuch. But Louisa, to whom Lady Emily was referring jocularly (though not by any means as jocularly as a stranger might suppose) was not in any circumstances to be regarded as a subject for jest.

  “Dash it, I only gave her a lift from Town. You’ve got it all wrong, Grandmama. There’s no question at all of any – attachment, as you put it. Louisa’s a jolly girl, but there’s nothing remotely like that between us. Too clever for me, for one thing.”

  “Yes, I’m quite aware of Louisa’s intelligence – and my admiration for her knows no bounds,” she returned drily, “but being a clever young woman with strong opinions does not preclude the possibility of falling in love with the wrong person. On the contrary, I’ve often observed that people of high intelligence do not always possess much common sense.”

  “Well then, since I don’t know anybody with much more common sense than Louisa, you needn’t be afraid she’s in the least in love with me,” returned Sebastian, with a laugh that was not quite as light as he might have hoped. “And besides —”

  “Besides what, my dear boy?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  He knew this was an infuriating reply. His grandmother, much as he loved her and admired her indomitable courage, invariably had the effect of reducing him to the language and attitudes of the schoolroom, though he hoped she didn’t mean to. But devil take it – Louisa! She was coming down a bit hard on someone he’d known all his life, someone he’d always thought she liked. Not good enough in her eyes for a Chetwynd, of course (Lady Emily was herself the daughter of an earl), especially not the heir. As children, the Chetwynd and Fox families had played together without any of the stuffy social distinctions so many people thought fit to perpetuate. To his mother indeed, with her transatlantic tolerance, such nuances – or so she declared – were absurd, they could have played with the under-gardeners’ children for all she cared. Besides, the Fox’s were so charming, all of them, with their easy manners and good looks. Even Sir Henry hadn’t objected to friendship with them, and was civil enough with their father when he invited him to dine at Belmonde, as he ritually did, once or twice a year, in the interests of good neighbourly relations. Eccentric as Augustus Fox was, his was a decent family, after all. Not the same class as the Chetwynds, but respectable. Louisa’s maternal grandfather had been an archdeacon, and Augustus himself had been a much esteemed Oxford scholar in his day.

  The only problem, as far as Sebastian was concerned, was: who would be good enough for Louisa? A question which had recently begun to occur to him with surprising and troubling regularity.

  Lady Emily picked up her tapestry, destined for a fire screen, in which game birds and other fauna gambolled wantonly together amongst autumn foliage, and dexterously threaded her needle with scarlet wool. Despite her painful fingers, she did a little work on her project each day, as a discipline. “Well, it’s good to see you,” she said, changing the subject. “How long is it since you’ve been down, you disgraceful boy?”

  “Too long, perhaps, Grandmama,” Sebastian admitted. “But I’m forever bumping into Mama in London, you know – and Father, too, sometimes, though he’s always so dashed busy, seeing to his affairs. When he’s there, that is.”

  Lady Emily did not immediately reply. Sebastian, too, thought he had better not elaborate this point. It was becoming all too increasingly obvious that his father was inclined to spend less and less time away from Belmonde, that Adele was often left to attend social functions alone in Town and elsewhere; though this left her free, of course, to entertain and be entertained, to attend concerts, theatre and the opera, all of which were anathema to her husband; to shop or to slip across to Paris to visit her dressmaker. To do as she wished, in fact.

  The silence lengthened between them as Lady Emily stitched on, and thought about Sebastian. It was all very well to say let the boy sow his wild oats, as his mother did – he was a young man, and young men needed their diversions; a gay life was only to be expected – but that sort of thing could not go on forever. He had been through the requisite wild, reckless period but she was optimistic that it was now over, though she did not care for some of the young bloods he called his friends, such as George (Inky) Winthrop, his old schoolfellow, who spent too much time at the races, or so she heard through the grapevine. And he still showed more inclination to gallivant around Greece and Italy with a sketchbook than to find himself a useful occupation which might be the making of him: the Army, perhaps, or even politics, like her second son Monty, though not, she thought, the Church. He was in no hurry either, it seemed, to look for a suitable wife who would provide him with a son and heir, and she was afraid of that independent streak in him that might at any time make him marry someone unsuitable: Louisa Fox, for example.

  He said abruptly, in the way he often had of picking up her thoughts, “It’s all a nonsense, isn’t it? I’ve never wanted – all this, you know, Grandmama.” He had no need to elaborate his meaning, but he added, “Harry would have done it so much better than I.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  For a moment darkness lay between them: things which could not be said. Not for the first time, Sebastian wondered how much his grandmother knew – or guessed – about Harry’s private concerns. Then she rallied. “It cannot be helped, the way life turns around. Don’t sulk over it, Sebastian dear. It’s not in your nature. And the sooner you accept the inevitable, that you are now the heir and there is nothing you can do about it – and a great deal more you should be doing – the happier we shall all be.”

  It was briskly said, though Lady Emily had not meant the advice unkindly. It was
what her grandson needed to hear, little as he wished to. At the moment, his mind was as stubbornly set as his father’s.

  “There’s no hurry. You know Father wouldn’t thank me for pushing my nose in. He must do everything himself, doesn’t trust anyone else.”

  Lady Emily sighed. Indeed. She must speak to Henry. It was high time her eldest son came to his senses and realised that he and Sebastian had both taken up a stance from which it was difficult to back down, though one of them had better do so. It might seem to her grandson that there was no hurry, but Lady Emily was no stranger to the sudden vicissitudes of fortune and knew it was dangerous to discount them – look at what had happened to Harry. And Henry did have an alarmingly high colour at times, just like his father, who’d died of an apoplexy when he was fifty, leaving Henry with a mass of debts, enormous death duties, a run-down estate and not much idea how to go about setting things right. Given his nature, however, Henry had immediately buckled down and learned how to do so. Since then, he’d become more and more wrapped up in Belmonde, giving little thought to anything other than the conviction that his heir should never be left to pick up the pieces as he had been – in itself an undoubtedly laudable ambition. The irony of it was that Henry and his son were at loggerheads not, Lady Emily was sure, because Sebastian was unwilling to learn how to shoulder his future responsibilities but rather that he was convinced – with some justification – that his father couldn’t accept that everything would not run away out of control should he let go of the reins for one single moment. While Henry chose to believe his son was congenitally bone idle. She often felt she would like to knock their heads together.

  It was Sebastian’s turn to change the subject. “What’s all this about my mother being ill?”

  “Not ill, my dear, just a trifle under the weather. I don’t think it’s anything much, though I do believe she’s worried about Sylvia – which, of course, is the last thing she would admit. Your sister has apparently taken up with this frightful woman from India who has persuaded her to join some peculiar sect.”

  “Annie Besant,” returned Sebastian gloomily. “I have heard rumours.”

  “That’s the name, Annie Besant.” Lady Emily’s lips pressed together. The woman was dangerous, a radical. A person who took up with one cause after another. To be sure, her championship of those poor little girls who worked with phosphorous in the match factories had caused some improvement in their terrible working conditions. But she was also outspoken on taboo subjects such as birth control, and had indeed – quite rightly – been prosecuted for publishing material on the same subject as likely to deprave or corrupt those whose minds were open to immoral influences. Well, at least Lady Emily couldn’t see Sylvia being caught up in anything like that …though one had hardly thought her inclined to religion, either. Perhaps it was her childless state, after seven years of marriage, which was, contrary to appearances, worrying her and causing her to turn to whatever might bring her hope.

  “I am right in assuming, am I not,” she enquired with a dangerous inflection, “that this Besant woman now calls herself a Theologist?” She drove her needle through the red eye of a particularly haughty-looking pheasant.

  “Theosophist.”

  “Theosophist, then. Let us not split hairs.”

  Sebastian, knowing her views on the subject, thought that he had better not add that Annie Besant was also a sympathiser with the women’s suffrage movement. One dangerous thing at a time.

  “No wonder your poor mother is worried. It’s worse than I thought. I believe those people believe in Buddha and reincarnation and no red meat – and free love to boot, I have no doubt,” Lady Emily stated with ill-informed exaggeration.

  Sebastian shrugged. “Algy should put his foot down.”

  “Algy? Oh, my dear!”

  Well, no, perhaps not.

  Sylvia had married well, but Algy Eustace-Bragge was – in Sebastian’s words – an awful muff, despite being able to give Sylvia every material thing a woman could want. Her grandmother, however, suspected Sylvia did not have it all her own way, something which she understood and rather approved of: a man should be master in his own house, while at the same time, a woman should be capable of getting what she wanted, without resorting to outright dominance. She herself had never had any difficulty in bringing Chetwynd around to doing exactly as she wished. It was something upon which she and her daughter-in-law were at one. Henry was putty in Adèle’s hands, though she was clever enough not to let him know this. Which was just as well, because Henry, ever since he was a child, could only be pushed so far. Since his marriage, his mother had learned that applied to his wife, too.

  Despite herself, she had become quite fond of Adele, able to overlook the fact that her father had made his fortune in meatpacking in Chicago, and not only because she had most certainly saved the fortunes of the Chetwynd family – if only temporarily. From the fastness of her own unmodernised wing at Belmonde, where nothing, not a stick of furniture or a piece of wallpaper, had been changed for half a century, Lady Emily observed with a keen eye the changes Adele had brought to Belmonde, and while she certainly did not approve of everything, she had found it expedient, on the whole, not to interfere. Adèle was not, as she had expected a daughter-in-law to be, biddable. She knew how to charm, but she had an iron will and was unscrupulous in getting what she wanted, despite being deceptively softly-spoken, and entirely agreeable. Indeed, she quite often got the better of her mother-in-law, which few people did.

  There was no denying Adele was hopelessly extravagant, renowned for her hospitality and the lavish parties she loved to give, never mind that Henry thought them – and most of that circle of those so-called clever people she liked to call her friends, come to that, largely a waste of time and money; he was terrified of being cajoled into joining them in their after-dinner pencil and paper games; he could not have composed an epigram if his life had depended upon it.

  “Speaking of your mother,” said Lady Emily, glancing at the gold fob watch pinned to the armour-plated elegance of her splendid bosom, and putting an end to disagreeable thoughts for the time being, “I told her I would join her for tea. Shall we go along?”

  Chapter Two

  “Don’t light the lamps, Margaret. It’s so pleasant here in the firelight, with the rain outside.”

  Louisa, now warm and dry, leaned back and settled her head against the comfortably cushioned inglenook seat and stretched her legs to the great fireplace, heaped with blazing oak logs. Her father and her sister Margaret, a fair-haired woman of mild disposition, sat on a similar seat, opposite. Between them was a laden tea-table, and behind them the large, shadowy room that stretched across the width of the house. The firelight winked on shining brass and copper and polished floors, throwing long, leaping shadows on to the low ceiling and into hidden corners, and Louisa thought how lovely it was to be home. Yet for all that, she would not permanently exchange it for her freedom, her frugal little room in London.

  This need for independence (she was studying at the London School of Medicine for Women in Bloomsbury) was something Margaret would never completely understand. Louisa caught the anxious glance cast in her direction before her sister turned to spear a crumpet on the two-foot long toasting fork and hold it to the fire. She ought not worry so much, it made her look every one of her thirty-five years, though she probably couldn’t help that by now; it had become a habit.

  Margaret’s next words reproached Louisa with their sweet concern. “You look tired, Louisa, are you sure you’re not at your books too much?”

  Louisa smiled and shrugged, though if the truth be told, she did feel a trifle listless, an unusual state for her. She might be small, but she made up for it in energy.

  “Fiddle-faddle!” their father intervened robustly, taking another scone. “Since when did studying ever hurt anyone?”

  “Not you, at any rate.” Louisa smiled affectionately. “What are you working on now, Father?”

  “I must show
it to you.” He became loquacious, explaining his latest enthusiasm, a contraption he’d made, involving two revolving glass plates and a thin metal wiper, a machine designed by a fellow called Wimshurst to demonstrate the workings of electricity. Now that he’d finished it, in time to show his small grandsons when they came to visit, he could get back to The Book. For as long as Louisa could remember, Gus had been engaged in compiling a tome (which no one, not even himself, realistically ever expected to be finished), comprehensively and ambitiously entitled “The Complete Lepidoptera of the British Isles.” Now retired from his practice as a doctor, he spent most of his time scratching at his manuscript – when some new experiment or idea wasn’t catching his fancy – poring over his butterflies and insects or venturing out to catch them with his net. His disinclination to kill other wild animals did not endear him to the local hunting fraternity, but this worried him not one whit.

  “There’s too much flame on the logs, you’ll burn that crumpet, Meg,” said Louisa. “I’m only tired because I was up late last night after attending a meeting.”

  “Your suffragettes?” Margaret nearly lost her crumpet in the fire as she turned to gaze at her sister. “Oh, my dear, I do hope you’re not going to become too involved!”

  “Of course not, you know I can’t afford to let anything get in the way until I’ve qualified. I’ve no time for anything else,” answered Louisa impatiently.

  “At least that’s something to be thankful for. How can these women submit themselves to the prospect of such degradation? How can they be so unladylike? Disgracing themselves. Screaming, being carried off kicking by the police! And as for hunger striking …I’ve read that there’s talk of actually feeding them by force.” Margaret’s indignant face was vividly flushed, perhaps from being too near the fire. She herself would never dream of being associated with anything of the sort, but one could never be sure with Louisa. The twelve years’ difference in their ages might have been thirty, so differently did they view life.