Come Be My Love Page 3

  I can vouch for the fact that the course of study planned for me by Lord Bladen completely changed my life. It pro­duced a whole world for me that had never before existed, a world of ideas expounded by great minds throughout history but that became co-joined in my head, one complementing the other, and by my own absorption and rearrangement be­coming to some extent my own. It was an exciting experience and one that I believe Lord Bladen enjoyed as much as I did. Whenever we discussed these ideas, he encouraged me always to give my own views. At first I was reluctant to do so, fearing ridicule at worst or to be discovered to be ignorant at best, but his patient, considerate attention at last overcame my fears until I was able to express myself freely, without qualm, to one who was an understanding teacher and who soon became my great friend.

  My education was not solely confined to books on the library shelves, for when it was fine, Lord Bladen would take me walking with him across the sweeping lawns, over the Palladian bridge, to the oak woods beyond, and he would tell me about the Wentworths.

  "My great-grandfather, like me, was a Septimus—Septi­mus and Darius have been Wentworth names for generations. Of course, he was very old when I knew him, but still a great wit. He helped form the Kit-Kat Club along with the Dukes of Marlborough, Richmond, Grafton, Devonshire and others in the time of Queen Anne."

  "I've never heard of the Kit-Kat Club."

  "It no longer exists, but then it was the gathering place for all the most powerful Whigs of the day. It was named for the mutton pies of a most excellent baker called Christopher Kat. The club was famed for its weekly dinners and its mem­bers' toasts to renowned beauties of the day, whose portraits were hung in the club room. Wait a minute. See that?" He stopped suddenly to lean down and examine the tracks of an animal. "A fox has been this way. Notice how the footprints form an almost perfectly straight line." Then, as we started to walk again, he resumed discussion of his great-grandfather Septimus, who had known Steele and Addison. "Addison favoured the Kit-Kat because it was founded around eating and drinking, possibly the only points about which men can agree."

  As we rounded a bend in the path, Lord Bladen stopped again with a cry of joy. "There! I knew there was a reason we came by this path this morning. What utter perfection!"

  Before us in the hedge was a swarm of bell-shaped heads of the deepest blue atop pale green lissom stalks, nodding in the morning breeze—the spring's first bluebells.

  "The bluebell stands for that which is most desirable-constancy in love—even that old cynic Voltaire said, 'Change everything, except your loves.' The bluebell's close cousin, the harebell, so like it in every way except that it blooms later, means submission—'O calm, dishonourable, vile submission!' to quote the Bard. Perhaps that is the reason I love blue-bells and give barely a passing glance to the harebell."

  I thought over everything Lord Bladen told me. Con­stancy was perfection. I would always be constant in my love for Darius. As for submission, I had seen all I wished of that ignoble posture in my mother and in others, too, married la­dies for the most part. Marriage to Darius would never be like that, yet as my mind expanded, I longed for a purpose in life as well as marriage. I saw and rejected the lot of others of my sex, decorative and bored, employing their hours at handcrafts or household tasks that began again as soon as they were finished, filling their days as inexorably as the waves had sur­rounded Canute's throne despite all his commands to them to turn back. I wanted more from life—more than Eugenia, pin­ing for admirers and balls; more than Cassy, wishing for beauty; more than Netty, playing with dolls and dreaming of motherhood; more than mother, distracted by a thousand lit­tle cares, none of which would have any meaning in a year, a month or even a week. Would the world ever offer me more? I made up stories in which it did, stories I copied into my jour­nal late at night when everyone slept, stories with one hero, Darius, a hero who championed right and justice and who always won the day, with me at his side, constant in love yet an active participant in life.

  I was at Charteris when Darius came home for the holi­days. Such preparations there were for his return as though he had been away a decade rather than a term. Hams were made and bacon cured and mock turtle soup liberally laced with Madeira wine and pigeon pies baked with the flakiest pastry imaginable.

  Margaret embroidered handkerchiefs with his initials, and Patience bought him a frame for the miniature of Lady Bladen. I wrote him a poem of welcome in my very best hand yet would not have had the courage to give it to him had not Lady Bladen seen it, loved it and immediately rolled it up and tied it with a lavender ribbon and placed it with his other presents.

  At the sound of his carriage on the driveway, everyone hurried to the doorway to see him spring down and bound up the steps, handsomer than ever, to greet his father and kiss his mother, then Margaret, then Patience. Turning to me, he tousled my hair before bending down to buss my cheek.

  "I see I've acquired another sister, and a very pretty one. What a fortunate man I am!"

  I found myself in heaven, to be with him daily, to have him as a companion on our walks, to hear him read aloud as we sat together after lunch when I found myself listening to and memorizing his voice rather than the content of the book he was reading. All too soon he returned to Oxford, but then I had his note of thanks for my poem, addressed "To the Most Amiable and Charming Poet of Seton Place." The envelope bore his seal; the note was signed with a flourished D. I slept with it under my pillow until, afraid it would crease, I put it between the leaves of my journal. Never a day passed without my rereading it, hardly a necessary act since I knew its con­tents by heart.

  He returned briefly upon graduation, only to leave again for a tour of Europe that was to last almost a year. I heard of the places he visited through the letters he sent home, all of which were shared with me.

  I dreamed I was with him in Paris and Versailles, at the site of the Battle of Waterloo near Brussels, in the Black Forest of Germany at Christmas and at last in Italy, where he stayed for so long that Lord Bladen began to fear he would join up with Byron and the exiles, never to return.

  But return he did, his skin bronzed by the Italian sun, a bronze that turned the grey of his eyes to a startling, piercing intensity. Until then I had always thought of grey as non­descript. He had changed little, except there was an easier grace and charm about him, a greater readiness to laugh, to enjoy life.

  "Is this really Alexandra, the frog saviour?" he had de­manded when he saw me. "Such a handsome young lady. Why, you must be as tall as Margaret."

  "I'm taller," I asserted.

  "But not as contrary, I hope. Promise you won't tease me as she does, for I swear I can't stand it."

  But of course he revelled in every minute of the love and affection with which he was held by his family. And he treated me just as one with his sisters, something I found difficult to bear, for my feeling for him was so far from sisterly. I wanted him to single me out, but not as he did.

  "You've no idea what you mean to father, Alexandra. Do you know he talks of you more than he does of his daughters, he is so proud of you. He knows of no other young lady who would employ her mind as you do."

  "Perhaps it is because so few have the opportunity to do so. Whatever I have learned I owe to his patience and kindness in teaching me. I am very fortunate."

  "No more fortunate than is he in having your compan­ionship. Everyone regards you as part of the family, myself also, and I must confess my delight at acquiring yet another sister—such a sweet, intelligent one at that."

  He squeezed my hand affectionately.

  "I know you are blessed with several brothers, but I should be honoured if you would consider me as one of them. If ever I can help you, you have but to ask."

  It was said with such sincerity, such depth of feeling, yet not with the feeling I desired to arouse in him. He admired me, yes, yet nothing in his remarks could be construed, even in my wildest imagination, as loverlike. While I thought of no one else, I had no reason to b
elieve that when I was out of sight, he thought of me at all.

  He soon left for London and its pleasures, and I remained with his parents' speculations on his future. They were anx­ious he should not become an idler in the clubs or embroiled in gambling with his friends. He was expected to follow in his father's steps, in the steps of those who had gone before him, leading an easy yet examined life, above all providing an heir for Charteris. My heart sank at the thought. I could not bear to see him marry anyone but me. Surely he must one day view me in a different light: not as a sister, not as his father's protégée but as a woman, a desirable woman.

  Margaret was presented at court that year, and the Bladens left to stay in their town house for her coming out. I continued going to Charteris in their absence, but I missed them. Constantly my thoughts wandered, even from my recre­ational reading of Tristram Shandy or Byron's Giaour or the po­etry I myself had begun to write, wandered to life on Great Stanhope Street. What were they doing, I wondered, but more especially what was that one person doing around whom my imagination was constantly centred.

  It was at tea one day that Mrs. Ramsey, Linbury's very own Lady Sneerwell, as Cassy and I secretly called her, told mother of Margaret's engagement.

  "Mr. Ramsey was in town last week on busin . . . on a matter requiring his attention, and he ran into Lord Bladen. Overjoyed he was, for Margaret is to marry Sir Nigel Armbruster, son of a friend of Lord Bladen's, someone he was up at Oxford with or something of the sort."

  I stopped in the midst of pouring tea. Marriage is like a flaming candlelight, we used to sing, placed in the window on a summer's night, inviting all the insects of the air to come in and singe their wings.

  Mrs. Ramsey lowered her voice very slightly. "They do say that Darius Wentworth is besotted with this year's favour­ite. I must say for my own part I'm sick of the sight of her name. It's impossible for a single issue of Lady's Magazine or Ackermann's to come out without some mention of her."

  "I know who you mean," mother nodded.

  "But I don't. Who is it?" I cried out in agitation.

  Mrs. Ramsey rarely wasted her gems of information on me—I was to be seen but neither heard nor spoken to—but in this instance, her news being of such import, she could not resist.

  "Why, Philomena, the Earl of Flaxton's daughter, of course." She turned back hastily to mother, lowering her voice again though each word was sharp and clear as though ad­dressed directly to my heart. "Of course Lord Bladen would say nothing on the matter, though Mr. Ramsey pressed him for details, but he didn't deny it, mind you. Mark my words, there'll be wedding bells twice in the Bladen family this year or my name's not Maud Ramsey."

  The cup of tea I was at that moment passing to Mrs. Ramsey clattered precariously in its saucer.

  "Do be careful, Alex," mother cautioned.

  "You're looking quite peaked," Mrs. Ramsey enjoined. "That's funny, because when I came in I thought you quite the blooming rose."

  "Roses fade," I said bitterly.

  "Hardly, at fifteen. But have you noticed the Fanshawes' eldest girl," Mrs. Ramsey warmed to a new morsel. "I saw her in the village just yesterday. 'Dear me,' I said to myself, 'dear me, they're going to have a time with her, no colour at all, and no money to boot.' "

  III

  The Bladens returned from London with Margaret and her affianced husband, Sir Nigel Armbruster, a likeable young man. Darius soon followed them, accompanying the Earl and Countess of Flaxton and their daughter, Philomena. She was all that the society columns had raved of: petite, perfectly proportioned, possessed of lustrous raven hair and imperious dark eyes. She was very, very beautiful and I hated her on first sight.

  She flirted outrageously with Darius, looking deep into his eyes and tapping his arm with her fan to emphasize her words, spoken in so low a tone they were impossible to over­hear. She seemed always to be chilled, for Darius was con­stantly placing her shawl around her shoulders; I observed how his fingers lingered there as he did so.

  Her dress was as elegant as unlimited wealth, doting par­ents and impeccable taste could command. I don't believe I saw her twice in the same attire. I had to admit that she wore each creation with an air of elegance and distinction that came naturally to her but to which I knew, even were I not wearing Eugenia's hand-me-downs, I could never aspire. She did not deign to notice me as she did Margaret and Patience, or, if she did, she never acknowledged me. If she came into the library when I was there, she might smile in an abstract fash­ion in the general direction of the chair in which I was sitting, but she never spoke a word to me directly. I'm not sure she knew who I was; if she did she certainly considered me com­pletely beneath her attention. I prayed that Darius would not marry her. I knew that prayer should not be used in such a manner and, as if to prove this to be so, mine went un­answered.

  It was from Eugenia, who had been presented at court the previous spring on the same day as Philomena and who had had some slight acquaintance with her afterwards at balls and routs they had both attended, that I learned that Darius had proposed, had been accepted, and that a date had been set for the wedding. Eugenia told me in confidence the day before the announcement was officially made, proud, I am sure, of being privy to Philomena's confidence rather than of the grief she was unknowingly causing me. I cried so much that night that I was unable to go to Charteris the next day; I was relieved at least of having to toast the health of the happy pair. I could not dissemble, I could not pretend to rejoice at their happiness, but I knew I had no right to dampen the Bladens' joy.

  The wedding was to take place in May at St. Mary's, our parish being situated more conveniently to London than the Flaxtons'. Eugenia was preening herself because Philomena had asked her to be a bridesmaid. I bitterly muttered that wantons marry in the month of May, but little good it did me; I knew I would have been only too willing to take Philomena's place in May or any other month. Particulars of their wedding tour to Europe were regaled to me with as much detail as could be discovered. I heard even more of the home they were to establish in Grosvenor Square, in a house given to them by the Earl as a wedding present. But at least I was grateful they were to settle in London; I could not have borne to see Darius in daily attendance on that frivolous creature, had they settled in our neighbourhood. As it was, I could not bear his all-too-obvious elation at his coming marriage. I avoided him when­ever possible, leaving the room whenever he entered until at last he asked whether he had done something to offend me and whether he might make amends. It was said in such friendly, affectionate tones that I burst into tears and ran home. The next day I apologized, putting the blame on Des­cartes' Discourse, which I had been studying.

  "Perhaps you are studying too hard," he suggested gently.

  "Oh, no, no," I hastened to assure him, fearing that I might be separated from the books that had become my only solace. "It's not that, I assure you."

  "Well, then, what is it? And don't say nothing, for I know there must be something. You don't talk to me as you used to; in fact you scarcely talk to me at all. You are downcast and wan. Father has noticed it and is quite concerned. I am also. Are you sure you are quite well?"

  "I am, I assure you I am."

  "Then leave this heavy stuff aside. Let me choose your reading for today, something a little light, a little frivolous. Frivolity becomes young ladies."

  "Frivolity is idle, empty. Why is it that men look for it in women?"

  "Frivolity is also gay and imponderable and therefore to be treasured." He handed me a copy of Fanny Burney's Eve­lina. "She is, perhaps, a little vacuous, but nevertheless fun."

  "But this is a romance," I protested. "Your father has little time for such stories."

  "I have no wish to denigrate my father's opinions. Never­theless, that heavy stuff he gives you needs some leavening. Today, as a favour to me, read Evelina. You may return to Descartes tomorrow if you wish. One romance will not mar your serious soul."

  And I did as I was bid, though I found the ta
le of that young lady's entrance into the world and her triumph-ant uniting with Lord Orville the more heartrending, reminding me as it did of my own shattered hopes.

  I must resign myself. I consoled myself that at fifteen I was far too young to marry, yet even when I tried to be brave, I knew I would never love any man in my life as much as I loved Darius at that moment.

  As the day of the wedding approached, I grew so thin and pale that mother threatened to dose me with Mr. Wilson's physic to bring the colour back to my cheeks; I would have willingly taken that horrid potion had it been a means of avoiding the ceremony.

  Eugenia delighted in her role in a wedding that had been the highlight of all activity in our neighbourhood ever since its announcement. When, three days before it was to take place, she came down with chicken pox, she reacted as though it were the plague. Actually it was a mild case. The only appre­hension mother had was that it might leave scars on her lovely complexion, but Eugenia wailed bitterly. It made her atten­dance on the bride impossible. Cassy tried on her gown to see whether she might serve in her stead, but not only was she shorter than Eugenia but she was also much plumper. It would require a new dress if she were to take Eugenia's place; being excessively shy, she protested vehemently at the very thought.

  It was mother who suggested, over Eugenia's out-ward vo­ciferations and my own equally vehement inner ones, that the dress might fit me. But mother insisted, and reluctantly I tried it. It was a perfect fit.

  "Thank goodness! I was so worried, for I couldn't bear for us to be the cause of disturbing such a carefully planned event. Not one alteration required, and Eugenia will tell you exactly what you have to do."

  "But I can't, mother," I wailed.