The Fortune Hunter Read online

  Charlotte shivered, acutely conscious of the fingers that were now stealthily grazing her shoulders. ‘I think even Fred would admit that he is not the rider that you are. And besides, at this moment I am very much in favour of anything that makes him cross.’

  ‘Did he give you a lecture on unreliable cavalry captains, by any chance?’ Bay said.

  ‘He was anxious to remind me that I can do nothing without his consent. Which means Augusta’s consent, of course. I am not sure Fred is still capable of independent thought.’

  ‘Poor Fred. He is entering into a life of servitude.’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t mind. To be married to a peer’s daughter is enough.’

  Bay touched one of the vertebrae above her neckline, and Charlotte gasped.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t remember what we were talking about before? Perhaps this will remind you.’ Bay bent down again and blew lightly into her ear. ‘It was such a delightful conversation.’

  Charlotte dug her nails into the sofa. ‘Perhaps I do remember, just a little. It’s not the sort of conversation I am used to, after all.’

  ‘Every conversation is different, but none more charming than with you.’ He ran his nail down the groove in the nape of her neck and was gratified to see Charlotte arch forward like a cat. But the sudden movement was noticed by Augusta, who was not so lost in her music that she was unable to monitor the situation of the sofa. It was time to intervene.

  She stopped playing and called out, ‘I have been playing long enough, it is someone else’s turn. Charlotte, won’t you give us something?’

  Charlotte shook her head. ‘Oh, but I am a wretched player compared to you. You are being very unkind to everybody here if you make me perform.’

  ‘Nonsense, Charlotte, there is nothing wrong with your playing that a little practice wouldn’t remedy. And I think we would all like to hear you. Isn’t that right, Captain Middleton?’ Augusta said pointedly.

  ‘Perhaps I might offer to entertain the company too? I can’t play but I like to sing.’ Bay turned to Charlotte. ‘Can you play “Maud”?’

  ‘Yes, if you don’t mind a few wrong notes.’

  ‘Perfection is boring. Shall we?’ He put out his hand to Charlotte. ‘That is, if you don’t mind, Lady Crewe.’

  Lady Crewe nodded and smiled, while Augusta, realising that she had been outmanoeuvred, left her post at the piano to stand next to her fiancé. As Bay passed she said, ‘I had no idea you could sing, Captain Middleton.’

  ‘I am an only child, and as my mother was very fond of music, I had no choice. But as to my ability, you had better reserve judgement.’

  * * *

  Charlotte sat at the keyboard, Bay standing just behind her. As she began to play the introduction, he put his hand on the piano, brushing her shoulder as he did so. She immediately played a wrong note and he looked at her her and smiled.

  Come into the garden, Maud,

  the black bat, night, has flown,

  Come into the garden, Maud,

  I am here at the gate alone.

  His voice was powerful and true, a warm baritone that wrung every shade of meaning out of Tennyson’s lush lyric. When she hesitated over the accompaniment he slowed down so that they were always in step. When he reached the line ‘And the planet of Love is on high’, he looked at Charlotte with meaning. He was singing, it was clear, to her. On the last line, when the melody went up an octave and he had to sing, ‘Come, my own, my sweet’, he looked straight into Charlotte’s eyes and held her gaze while the final chord died away. There was a moment’s silence, which was broken by Lady Lisle, who was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  ‘That was one of my dear late husband’s favourite songs. But I don’t think I have ever heard it sung so well before. Thank you, Captain Middleton, for bringing back so many happy memories.’

  Bay made her a little bow. ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Will you sing something else?’

  Bay looked at Charlotte, who nodded.

  ‘Play me a G minor chord.’

  Charlotte played the chord and Bay sang,

  Alas, my love, you do me wrong,

  To cast me off discourteously.

  For I have loved you well and long,

  Delighting in your company.

  Charlotte recognised the tune and began to accompany him in earnest, ‘Greensleeves was my delight’.

  As he sang the chorus, he gestured at the green velvet ribbons that punctuated the puffed white sleeves of Charlotte’s frock. When the song was finished, Bay took Charlotte’s hand and kissed it.

  ‘Thank you for playing so beautifully.’

  ‘I think you encouraged me to be better than I am.’

  ‘I don’t think that is possible, Miss Baird.’

  Augusta broke in, ‘You must be sure to serenade the Empress tomorrow, Captain Middleton. She is from Vienna, and we know how the Austrians love their music.’

  Bay did not miss a beat. ‘I think you may have an exaggerated idea of a pilot’s role, Lady Augusta. I doubt if I will be talking to the Empress, let alone singing to her. I am merely a guide, a flag for her to follow, not a troubadour.’

  Augusta folded her arms, but made no reply.

  Lady Lisle got to her feet, her widow’s streamers fluttering.

  ‘What a perfectly splendid evening, but I am ready for my bed. Charlotte, dear, will you hold the candle for me on the stairs? You know how shaky I get in the evenings.’

  ‘Of course, Aunt,’ Charlotte said.

  They made their way to the door, Charlotte following in her aunt’s wake. All the men rose and made a movement to open the door, but Bay was there first. As Charlotte passed him, he touched her elbow. ‘Unfinished business,’ he whispered.

  * * *

  In her bedroom, Charlotte held up her candle close to the cheval glass so that she could examine her face. It was not, she knew, a beautiful face, and yet Bay had kissed her nonetheless. For a moment she wondered whether he had been kissing her or the Lennox fortune, but she pushed that thought away. If Bay was a fortune hunter, he was very good at disguising his cupidity.

  The door opened and Grace the housemaid came in. Charlotte did not have her own maid, since the superior French personage who had attended to her in London had given in her notice after an accident involving silver nitrate and lace. Charlotte did not miss her; she had hated the way Mam’selle Solange had made a sharp intake of breath every time she did her hair.

  ‘I meant to be up here sooner, miss.’ Charlotte sighed with relief as the maid loosened the strings of her corset. ‘But we were outside in the hall listening to the music and I lost all track of the time. Was that Captain Middleton singing? What a fine young gentleman! He was doing tricks earlier on his horse – standing on his head and all sorts of stuff. Had us all laughing our heads off. He makes it all look so easy.’

  ‘Yes,’ Charlotte agreed. ‘He does.’

  She caught sight of her reflection again in the glass. She looked better now in her chemise, with her hair down.

  ‘Grace?’

  ‘Yes, miss?’

  ‘Do you think you could do my hair differently tomorrow? Perhaps with some ringlets hanging down. Do you think that would look nice?’

  ‘You leave it to me, miss. I will make sure that Captain Middleton has eyes for nobody else.’

  A Flawless Complexion

  Ten miles away in a much larger bedroom, Countess Festetics was laying strips of raw veal on her mistress’s face.

  Sisi had been looking at her face in the mirror before she went to bed and decided that her complexion was dull. This was unacceptable, as she wanted to look radiant at her first English hunt. Everyone would be looking at her, she knew, trying to decide whether she lived up to her reputation. Her silhouette was still good; her waist was as small as it had been when she married. She knew that on a horse from a distance, she looked like the dashing Empress that people wanted to see.

  She would wear a veil, of course
, with the riding habit, but then there was the moment when she lifted the veil. Sisi could not bear that look of disappointment when her audience was forced to replace their mental image of fairy-tale beauty with the worn reality before them. She had hoped that her visit to England might be anonymous, her real identity known only to a few; but that had been a fantasy. Stories about the beautiful Empress with her ankle-length hair sold too many newspapers, even here, for her identity to remain a secret. On the way down to Easton Neston she had spent the night at Claridge’s. During the night word had got out that she was staying at the hotel, and when she left in the morning there had been a small crowd outside the door who had come to see the Austrian Empress. She had looked out over the sea of faces, most of them female, and seen that combination of expectation and disillusion that was so difficult to bear. A young woman at the front had held out a bunch of violets to her and Sisi, seeing how desperately she wanted to be chosen, had taken them with a smile. As Sisi got into her carriage, she heard a voice say, ‘I thought she was lovely too, but did you see her teeth?’

  Sisi knew that it was hopeless to live up to the fairy-tale princess with stars in her hair of the Winterhalter portrait, an image that sold everything from chocolates to liver salts in Vienna, but she found it impossible not to try. Beauty was her gift, her weapon and her power, and she dreaded its passing.

  There were some things she could do, like remaining slender. She liked the rigour of her morning exercises, the ache in her arms as she pulled herself up on the rings. But maintaining her nineteen-inch waist had meant that her face had lost its youthful plumpness. There were days when, confronted by an unexpected mirror, she saw a gaunt, middle-aged woman looking back at her. Festetics had found her crying after one of these glimpses of mortality and had told her about the beauty regime of the Princess Karolyi, her grandmother, who at the age of eighty had skin ‘as soft and smooth as a baby’s’. The veal had to be fresh and pounded very thin, but if used once a week it would keep the complexion radiant for ever.

  After she had covered the Empress’s face entirely with the raw meat, save for the eyes, nose and mouth, the Countess Festetics took a leather mask out of its case and put it gently in place. She fastened the tapes that tied it at the back so that her mistress could move her head in the night without the meat falling off. The mask was also a necessary protection against the Empress’s wolfhounds, who had once mistaken the beauty treatment for an evening meal.

  There were times when the Countess had regretted telling her mistress about the secret of the flawless complexion. It had been a family story, much embroidered in the telling, that she had pulled from her memories in a desperate attempt to comfort the weeping Sisi. She knew from ten years’ experience that the only thing to do when her mistress was consumed by one of her spells of self-loathing, was to distract her as quickly as possible. Therefore she had turned her vague memories of her grandmother’s soft and scented cheek into the elixir of eternal youth. Sisi had insisted on sending for some veal immediately; the next morning she had declared that the treatment was indeed a miracle. Countess Festetics was not as sure as her mistress as to the veal’s efficacy, but she had long ago realised that Sisi had only to believe in something for it to be true. If she had convinced herself that veal would restore the lustre to her complexion, then there was no reason to disabuse her.

  ‘I will wear my green habit tomorrow, I think.’ The Empress’s voice was muffled by the layer of meat and the leather mask.

  ‘An excellent choice, Majesty. You always look so fresh in it and the colour perfectly sets off your hair.’

  ‘And be sure to tell the servants that I will need a very hot bath when I come back tomorrow. I haven’t hunted for weeks and I don’t want to get stiff.’

  ‘I have already told them, Majesty.’

  ‘Thank you, Festy. I would be lost without you.’ The Empress pointed to her face and tried to laugh.

  ‘I am sure that the English milords will be astonished when they see you tomorrow. I have seen pictures of their Queen and she is small and completely round like a Zwetschkenknödel.’

  Sisi shook her head. ‘Oh, I am sure she was young and slender once. How many children did she have? Her husband must have found her attractive.’

  ‘Or maybe he was a Coburger with a taste for Zwetschkenknödel,’ said the Countess drily.

  ‘I suppose if you are Queen in your own right, it doesn’t matter what you look like.’

  ‘Perhaps the English don’t know that a queen can be beautiful, which is why you will dazzle them tomorrow. But I think you must sleep now, Majesty. You know that the veal will only work if you rest properly.’

  ‘What you mean is that you are longing for your own bed. Run along then, Festy, but make sure you call me in good time tomorrow. I want my hair to be perfect.’

  ‘Of course, Majesty.’

  * * *

  As she looked at the Empress one last time before closing the bedroom door, Festetics wondered what the world would make of the modern Helen of Troy if they could see her now – wearing a leather mask with veal juices running down her neck, and her hair tied to the ceiling in two long ropes. But no one save the Countess would ever see her like this; it was their secret.

  The Lennox Diamonds

  The three housemaids sat awkwardly on the nursery sofa. They were trying to hide their work-roughened hands under their skirts, or by twisting them together on their laps. Charlotte wanted to tell them not to worry, she wanted to see the hands in their reddened, chapped reality, but she knew better than to say so.

  She waited for them to settle and then she said, ‘When I raise my hand, I want you all to take a deep breath and say “bosom” as you exhale.’

  The housemaid on the left, the prettiest one, began to giggle.

  Charlotte sighed. ‘I know it sounds peculiar, but saying the word will put your mouth into the right shape for the photograph. Look what happens when I say it.’ She stepped away from the camera and said the word, exaggerating the dignified pout that the final syllable gave her mouth.

  ‘Bosom’, ‘bosom’, ‘bosom’; the maids tried the word out, but the giggles were spreading and soon all three were shaking with laughter.

  Charlotte walked over to the window to hide her impatience. She wondered when the hunting party would return. She had hoped to go out with her camera that morning and take pictures at the meet, but there had been too much snow. She turned back to the maids and clapped her hands.

  ‘Are you ready? I only have you for half an hour, so if we don’t take the picture now it won’t get done.’

  The maids heard the sharpness in her voice. Sitting up, they tried to compose their faces. Charlotte looked at them through the viewfinder. She asked the pretty one, Grace, to sit in the middle and then posed the other two in profile. Every so often one of them would shudder with suppressed laughter. She waited for a moment and then she raised her hand.

  ‘Bosom,’ the maids whispered. Charlotte held her breath. Would they keep still for the whole minute? Twenty-five, twenty-six – she could see that the maid on the right was going red with the effort involved in not laughing. Fifty-one, fifty-two – she saw a tear sliding out of Grace’s eye. Fifty-nine, sixty. She dropped her hand and the girls collapsed together in a quivering heap.

  ‘Thank you, girls, you can go back to work now.’ She had wanted to do several poses, but she could see that they were never going to stay still for long enough.

  ‘But ain’t you going to show us the picture, miss?’

  ‘I have to print it first. Come back tomorrow and I’ll show you.’

  The maids clattered out, their voices echoing down the back stairs.

  * * *

  Charlotte looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. Ten minutes to five. She should be downstairs having tea, but she couldn’t face all the talk about the wedding. Augusta and Fred had settled on a date in March and Lady Crewe was telling everyone who would listen that the trousseau would never be ready in
time. Charlotte knew that she ought to be taking an interest in the arrangements, but she found it hard to concentrate on the endless chatter about the best place to buy Valenciennes lace.

  Grace returned and put her head round the door.

  ‘Lady Crewe was asking if you wanted some tea sent up, miss.’

  Charlotte sighed; the message meant that her absence had been noted and disapproved of. She would have to go down now. Another day she might have pleaded a headache, but that would mean missing Bay at dinner.

  ‘Thank you, Grace. Please tell Her Ladyship I will be down directly.’

  * * *

  Bay had still not returned by the time the dressing bell sounded. Charlotte lingered in the hall till the last possible moment, but there was no sign of him. Fred and Chicken Hartopp had come back halfway through tea. Charlotte had waited till Fred had stopped telling them about the depth of the snow to ask him, ‘And Captain Middleton, wasn’t he with you?’ Fred had laughed. ‘Good God, no, we didn’t see anything of Middleton all day. He was too busy with the Empress, or should I say, Countess Hohenembs.’ Clearly Fred had not been introduced to the royal party, for which he blamed Middleton. Charlotte decided not to press him.

  Instead she looked over to Chicken Hartopp.

  ‘What did she look like? Is she as beautiful as they say?’

  Chicken shook his great head. ‘Really couldn’t tell you, she was surrounded the whole time by flunkeys. She must have had at least six men with her. Austrians and such. She could have had her own hunt.’

  ‘It makes you wonder why she needed Middleton,’ said Fred. ‘Surely the Austrians know how to take an English fence. They ride well enough.’

  ‘Perhaps Middleton’s fame has reached Vienna,’ said Augusta, ‘or should I say his reputation?’ She looked hard at Charlotte as she said this, but Lady Crewe lumbered to her feet at this point and the group broke up.

  * * *

  Charlotte thought, not for the first time, that her wardrobe was not adequate for her stay at Melton. She had imagined that three evening dresses would be enough, but she realised her mistake when she saw that Augusta appeared to be wearing a new dress every single night. Her choice was between the blue moire, the pink figured silk or the white with the green trim. She decided on the pink; in truth she would have liked to have worn the white dress that had inspired Captain Middleton to sing ‘Greensleeves’ the night before, but she knew that Augusta would remember and would make some remark. The pink was pretty enough, and at least the bustle had this season’s narrow silhouette.