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‘Do you remember what it was like at Rowangarth, Alice, before Sir John was killed? I reckon there’d be some fine old shoots, here on the estate?’
Alice didn’t know about the shooting, she said, but she remembered one or two parties.
‘They’d just had their silver wedding when the master was taken. My, there was half the Riding at that do. But I’d only been here a couple of months, then the house went into mourning when Sir John was killed.’
‘A motor accident, wasn’t it?’
‘Aye, and all the fault of King Edward and his speeding.’ All because the King had driven at sixty miles an hour, would you believe, along the Brighton road. After that, every motor owner had donned cap and gloves and goggles and tried his damnedest to do the same. But the Prince of Wales – they’d hardly got used to calling him King when he died – had waited so long to get his throne, Cook said, that he lived life fast and furious as if he’d known he’d get less than ten years out of his crowning. ‘Sir John tried to drive faster than the King, you see, and skidded at a bend, and –’
‘And that’s why her ladyship won’t have a motor,’ Tom finished, matter-of-factly.
‘That’s why. And Mr Giles and Miss Julia both able to drive and desperate for motors of their own and not daring to buy one. Miss Sutton in London has a motor – it’s at Aunt Sutton’s house we’ll be staying when we’re in London. Oh, who’d have thought it? Someone like me maiding Miss Julia!’
‘And what do you mean by that?’
‘Well, someone – ordinary.’
‘But you aren’t ordinary, Alice Hawthorn.’ He stopped, resting his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him. ‘You’re extraordinary pretty, to my way of thinking.’
‘Pretty?’ Her eyes met his and she felt trapped and excited and peculiar, all at the same time. ‘Oh, but I’m not! If you’d wanted to see what pretty is, you should have seen her ladyship tonight. So lovely she was, and all shining in satin. And no jewels at all, ’cept for her earrings. And her orchids, Tom; her own special orchids, all creamy-white, same as she carried to her wedding to Sir John.
‘They were special between them, those orchids. Oh, mustn’t it have been wonderful, them loving like that – and romantic, to be given orchids. But listen to me going all soft. No one will ever give me orchids,’ she sighed.
‘Happen not, pretty girl, but it isn’t all women are suited to orchids, and you are one of them. You, lass, are more in keeping with –’ he bent to pluck some of the flowers that grew wild in the grass at their feet, smiling as he tilted her chin – ‘to these. You’re a buttercup girl, Alice. All fresh and shining you are, so hold yourself still so I can see if you like butter.’ He held one of the flowers to her throat and smiled at the golden glow that shone from the whiteness of her skin. ‘Oh, aye, you’re a buttercup girl, and no mistake.’
‘I am?’ She closed her eyes because his mouth was only a kiss away and she had wanted so long for him to kiss her.
‘That you are. Let them keep their fine flowers, Alice. I’ll give you buttercups, my lovely lass, and they’ll be more special between us than the rarest orchid that ever grew.’
He touched her lips gently with his own and fire and ice ran through and left her shaking and afraid to open her eyes lest he should see what shone there. And when he gathered her to him it was like a homecoming, and she lifted her arms and wrapped them gently around his neck because it was the only way she knew to tell him that she would like to be kissed again.
‘You’re my girl, aren’t you, Alice?’
He had never expected it would be like this; never thought he would feel tenderness for her along with his wanting, nor once imagined he would feel like throttling with his own hands any man who threatened to harm her innocence.
‘I’m your girl, Tom …’
‘So we’re walking out steady, now, and you’ll sit by me in church?’
‘When I’m back from London.’
‘Then look at me, and tell me so.’
‘Tom?’ All at once it was easy and she looked smiling into his eyes and whispered, ‘I’m your girl, Tom Dwerryhouse, and I love you. There now, does that suit you?’
‘It does, sweetheart. It suits me very nicely.’ His eyes loved her as he handed her the buttercups. ‘Very nicely indeed.’
She closed her eyes again and sighed tremulously. In her lonely youth she had longed for this; yearned to be close to someone, and special. Not so long ago she had been so happy about London she had told the rooks she was fit to burst of it, but this was different. This was even better than happiness. Tonight, Tom had kissed her, and she was loved.
2 (#ulink_63f50c22-38a7-59ff-9787-b8c874aaec66)
London seethed and shimmered and sang with magic: nothing but houses in streets and terraces and squares; trees in May leaf and parks pink and white with blossom; elegant ladies and elegant shops; costermongers yelling their fruit for sale; motors honking, and cab drivers shaking their whips at motors for frightening their horses and oh, just everything.
‘I said you’d like London, didn’t I, Hawthorn?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She did, now that she had become as off-hand about it as Miss Julia; used to the size and the speed and the sound of it and learned to keep out of the way of motor drivers and cab drivers, all determined to run her over. Already they had window-gazed and walked in Hyde Park and St James’s Park and visited Westminster Abbey and stood, shaking with excitement, at the gates of Buckingham Palace – though not so much as a glimpse of the King and Queen had there been. And now they sat, feet aching from the London pavements, in the kitchen of Aunt Sutton’s tiny, tucked-away house, eating sandwiches and drinking tea and discussing where to go tonight.
‘We mustn’t waste money on theatres and things, Hawthorn. A lot of London is free, if you know where to go. Soon we shall take a trip on the Underground, but tonight we must try to find a meeting.’
‘A meeting, miss?’ Alice frowned, all the while thinking fearfully of trains that hurtled through dark tubes dug deep beneath London.
‘You know what kind of meeting.’
She knew, but like riding on a tube train, Alice was determined not to think too much about it, though it wasn’t any use ignoring the fact that Miss Julia was looking for a political meeting – a Votes-for-Women meeting – and if Lady Helen ever got to hear about it there’d be no end of a to-do.
‘Take care of my daughter, Hawthorn. Don’t let her lead you a dance,’ she’d said as they left Rowangarth, but when Alice thought about it, there wasn’t a lot a sewing-maid could do if her young mistress was set on going to one of those meetings; nothing, save go along with her because that, really, was why she was in London. But downright ridiculous it was, and a waste of time, because what would a woman do with a vote, even supposing she got one? At least that was what Cook wanted to know when they talked, one teatime, about the suffragettes who’d been sent to prison for causing an affray and had straight away refused all food. And the prison warders were compelled to force-feed them – for their own good – which couldn’t have been very pleasant, Alice remembered thinking.
‘Force-feed,’ Tilda scathingly remarked. ‘Isn’t nobody can make you eat if you don’t let your throat swallow.’
‘Happen not. But they force a tube down your throat,’ Cook had retorted, red-cheeked, ‘then they pour slops down it, so you’d be forced to eat. Force-feed, see? That’s what they mean by it.’
‘Meeting, miss?’ Alice closed her mind to the horror. ‘One of Mrs Pankhurst’s meetings? I don’t think her ladyship would like that, nor Miss Sutton.’
‘But my mother isn’t here, nor Aunt Sutton.’
No. Nor Miss Sutton’s maid, either. Indeed, they were alone in this house – apart from the cleaning woman who came mornings. It was unheard of, Alice brooded. Lady Helen would never have allowed the London trip had she known her sister-in-law’s live-in maid would be away in Bristol for a family wedding, and staying on there for a holiday.
‘I don’t know why Miss Sutton didn’t think to mention it to her ladyship – about us being here on our own, I mean.’
‘Nor do I,’ Julia grinned, ‘but I’m glad she thought she’d mentioned it.’ Always forgetful, her father’s elder sister – when it suited her, that was. ‘And you aren’t going to mention it when we get back home, are you, Hawthorn?’
Alice said she wasn’t, though she didn’t like being a party to deceiving Lady Helen. Suffragette meetings were illegal now; had been since last year when there’d been terrible trouble over breaking windows and knocking off policemen’s helmets and the forced feeding in prison. But Miss Julia was set on going, though if they ran away quickly when the police arrived, then surely no one need be any the wiser.
‘If we were to find one of those meetings, miss, you wouldn’t do anything awful, would you?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t. I just want to be there, that’s all. Oh, isn’t it nice doing exactly as we please and no one at all to boss us about?’
Alice had to agree that it was. It was better than nice, in fact, because Miss Julia was no end of a good sport who, since they’d been in London, had treated her almost like an equal. And wasn’t she being stupid, Alice asked of her conscience, to start making a to-do about a meeting that might never come about when she was having such a fine time?
Where was the wrong in one forbidden gathering when Miss Julia hadn’t so far done anything awful, like meeting a young man or going without a gentleman escort to a music hall, even though she had the spunk to do either had she been of a mind to. Miss Julia had more about her than her brother Giles, who was quiet and bookish. Julia Sutton, it had more than once been remarked upon, should have been born a lad, so much devilment had she in her.
‘Exactly as we please? We won’t be looking for trouble, will we? Well, I am responsible for you and –’
‘You? Responsible for me? Oh, Hawthorn, you’re only a child!’
‘I’m eighteen!’ Well she would be, come June.
‘And I will be twenty-one soon, so it is I who must look after you.’
She was right, Alice conceded silently. Not only was Julia Sutton older but she was wiser, too, if you thought how far afield she had been: to Switzerland and France and to London ever so many times; whilst she, Alice Hawthorn, had never set foot outside the Riding until now.
But she was here: just to think how it would be when she got back, with everyone demanding to know what London was like, and gasping and exclaiming when she told them about sitting in a ladies-only first-class compartment, and riding through the crowded London streets to the house of Miss Anne Lavinia Sutton, so near to Hyde Park you could see the tops of the trees from your bedroom window. Indeed, the whole of Holdenby village would be curious about it. The comings and going of the Garth Suttons and the Place Suttons provided a fair proportion of Holdenby gossip – not to mention the goings-on of Mr Elliot Sutton.
What a journey it had been: such speed, and the two of them eating luncheon as the rest of the world rushed past the window of their compartment. It was only the second time Alice had been on a railway train, the first time so long ago that she couldn’t recall it at all and had had to take Aunt Bella’s word for it. So she wasn’t going to say anything about them being alone in Miss Sutton’s house, nor about trying to find a Votes-for-Women meeting, because these two weeks in London would stay with her for the rest of her life and be brought out fresh and bright when she was old to be lived through again. And the things she would have to tell Tom!
She smiled to remember that night – the buttercup night – and the yellow flowers which now lay carefully wrapped in tissue paper and placed inside her Bible at her favourite place. Luke, Chapter Two: And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn … Tom’s buttercup, and the Christmas story.
‘Hawthorn! What are you brooding about now?’
‘I – er – just about what you’ll be wearing tonight. Best tell me, miss, so I can give it a brush and a press.’
‘Something plain I suppose, and ordinary. Well, I shan’t want to look frivolous and uncaring, shall I? Women getting the vote is important – to be taken seriously.’
‘And you agree with it, miss – that some women should be given the vote?’
‘Not some women – all women over twenty-one. And not given it. It should be theirs by right.’
‘Yes, miss. I’ll put out the blue costume and the pale blue blouse, then?’
‘Whatever you think. And Hawthorn – nothing will happen tonight and, anyway, there mightn’t even be a meeting because they don’t exactly advertise them now. Wouldn’t do to have the police waiting to stop it before it had even started, now would it? So don’t look so worried.’
‘All right.’ There wasn’t anything else to say, come to think of it, because tonight something would happen, she was sure of it, though whether good or bad or a mixing of both, she couldn’t for the life of her tell. But they would be there, the two of them, at Speakers Corner, hoping to find a meeting. And finding trouble, like as not …
‘Thank you, Mary.’ Helen Sutton smiled as the parlourmaid set down a tray bearing afternoon tea.
‘Is it muffins?’ Her son lifted the plate cover.
‘No, it is not. Muffins are consolation for winter, Giles. It’s May, now, so it’s egg-and-cress sandwiches, I hope. Now pour my tea, won’t you? I feel like being spoiled today.’
‘What did my sister say in her letter?’ Giles Sutton demanded, passing the cup.
‘Julia seems to be having a grand time and says that Hawthorn is, too.’
‘Dear little Hawthorn. I miss her.’
‘Don’t you mean that you miss her looking after your dog?’
‘Well, I’ve got to admit that Morgan misses her too, but giving him his outings does get me out, once in a while.’
‘I don’t know why you spend so much time in that dull old library.’
‘I like it there.’ He liked the library better than any room in the house: the smell of old books and wax-polished furniture, the slow, soothing tick of the clock, and dust-motes hanging sunlit on the still air. Peace, there, and words for the reading. It was all he ever wanted, come to think of it, except to go to his father’s old college at Cambridge. ‘But how do you feel, Mother, now that it’s all behind you?’ He referred, hesitantly, to her period of mourning. ‘It’s good to see you out of that dreary black.’
‘That dreary black was necessary. I wore it for your father, Giles. Not because society demanded I should, but because it suited my mood.’
‘You still miss him, don’t you, dearest?
‘I miss him.’ And not so old, yet, that she didn’t want him, too, and the comfort of his nearness. ‘And I don’t know what your father would have thought to both his sons still being unmarried. One son interested only in tea-growing, and the other never so happy as when he’s got his nose in a book!’
But they were men, both of them, for all that. It was just that neither had yet decided upon a suitable wife. And at least they didn’t flaunt their masculinity like some not so far from this very house. Why, even the other night at Clementina Sutton’s dinner party, Elliot hadn’t been able to keep his eyes – or his hands, if she hadn’t been mistaken – off the parlourmaid who helped at table. She could almost feel sorry for her brother-in-law’s wife and the embarrassment their eldest son must cause her.
‘Why the sigh, Mother?’
‘Nothing, really. Just a sigh. A coincidence, I suppose, that I happened to be thinking about your cousin.’
‘Elliot? It’s a butcher’s daughter now, I believe. And trouble, so I heard.’
‘Giles! You mustn’t listen to kitchen gossip!’
‘Not even when it’s true? They were talking about it in the stables. I heard them. The man’s a fool. Why can’t he do his carrying-on in London, though I suppose he’s at it there, too, when it gets too hot for him around here.’
‘I think you’re right. One of these days, Elliot will find himself in real trouble.’
‘Which he’ll be promptly bought out of with old Nathan’s money.’
‘I fear so.’ She stirred her tea reflectively. ‘What that young man needs is a good whipping, and more’s the pity his father doesn’t give him one before he’s beyond redemption.’
‘Don’t blame his father. Like me, Uncle Edward was born a second son.’
‘And second sons must shift for themselves – I know; though it seems that both you and your uncle would have been better suited to the academic life. For Edward it was a choice of the army or the Church – so the poor man chose Clementina.’
‘Aunt Clemmy chose him, don’t you mean?’ Giles laughed, making his mother wonder why this serious, bookish son of hers didn’t laugh more often, and why he didn’t marry and give her grandchildren; for it seemed that her other son, whose duty it was to provide an heir, had little intention of doing so in the foreseeable future.
‘Must go, dearest,’ Giles kissed his mother’s cheek with affection, ‘and give Morgan his outing. When will Hawthorn be back?’
‘Not for a while yet; and Giles,’ Helen murmured, eyeing his pocket with mock severity, ‘that animal will always be fat if you insist on spoiling him with titbits.’
‘Just a macaroon. He’s very fond of them.’ He grinned, boyishly disarming, which made his mother love him all the more and send up a small prayer of thanks that her younger son at least did not prefer India to the springtime greenness of Rowangarth.
Rowangarth. So dear to her. Built more than three hundred years ago at the time of King James’s dissertation on witches and the evils of their craft. Small, by some standards, for the home of a gentleman of ancient title, but built square and solid against the northern weather, and with a rowan tree planted at all four aspects of the house, for witches feared the rowan tree and gave it a wide berth, their early ancestor had reasoned. And should a rowan tree die of age or be uprooted in a high wind, another was always planted in its place. It was still the custom, and thus far the Suttons had prospered, having had no generation without a male heir, so the descent was direct and ever would be, Helen Sutton fervently hoped. And above all else, Rowangarth was a happy place in which to live – which was more than could be said for her brother-in-law’s home, if one could call Pendenys Place a home.
‘Pendenys,’ she murmured, shaking her head. Completed little more than twenty-five years ago, the newness was still on it, with its carefully arranged trees little more than saplings still, and the house proud and cold and loveless. It made her feel sorry for her husband’s younger brother, and the need for him to love where money lay. Edward Sutton had not been cut out for clerical orders, and even to think of being a soldier had left him cold with apprehension. So he had married Clementina, daughter of Nathan Elliot, an Ironmaster of prodigious wealth, whose ambitions for his only child were boundless. Thus brass, so local talk insisted, had married breeding, as so often happened these days.
Clementina had come to Edward Sutton possessed of a dowry that built Pendenys Place. The house had been named for Clementina’s grandmother, Cornish-born Mary Anne Pendennis who, talk had it, had scrimped and saved and even taken in washing to help fund that first, long-ago Elliot foundry.
Yet Clementina had done her duty by her marriage contract, Helen admitted with scrupulous fairness, and had given Edward three sons in as many years, then straight away closed her bedroom door to him, enabling him to live his own life again, more or less, and return, duty done, to his beloved books. And his wife, secure in her loveless marriage, ruled Pendenys like the martinet she was, doing exactly as she pleased, for it was she who paid the piper.
Helen clucked impatiently, wishing Clementina would mellow just a little, be less belligerent. Clemmy was so insular; could not forgive anyone she deemed better born than herself; still clung unconsciously to her roots and sheltered behind the power her father’s money gave her. Defiantly, she had called her first son Elliot, determined her maiden name should not be forgotten; her second-born she named for her father, Nathan, and her third child for her father’s father, Albert. Her eldest son wanted for nothing, and coveted only one thing: the knighthood his father had not received, despite the many and bountiful donations made by his mother to Queen Victoria’s favourite charities.
Now Elliot secretly hoped that pestilence would strike down his Rowangarth cousins Robert and Giles, thus ensuring the baronetcy would pass, eventually, to him. Not, Helen frowned, that she could be sure that Elliot thought it, but she was as certain as she could be that he did.
‘And her servants,’ Helen confided to the vase of lilac reflected in the window-table. ‘She screams at her servants, too.’
Clementina harangued her domestic staff as no lady would ever do. Reprimands to servants should be given to the housekeeper to pass on, for a lady never stooped to such behaviour. Not ever, Helen sighed. And now, she supposed, she must return Clementina’s kindness – if kindness the recent dinner invitation to Pendenys had been – and ask her to Rowangarth. And since her husband would find an excuse to decline, he being so embarrassed by his wife’s loud voice, and since it always left him pained to visit the home he had been born in; it would be Elliot Sutton who would accompany his mother to Rowangarth, and his braying laugh and doubtful jokes would be a discomfort to all, except to his doting mother.
Helen set down her cup. The tea had gone cold and she decided against sending for a fresh pot. The servants would be taking their own tea now, and it wasn’t kind to send one of them hurrying to answer her ring.
She sighed again, tears rising to her eyes. Instantly, she blinked them away. ‘Oh, John,’ she whispered to the empty room, ‘I do so miss you, my dearest.’
