The American Heiress Read online

  ‘I’m sorry about your necklace, Charlotte. Such an exotic colour. Have I seen it before?’

  Charlotte’s hair flickered in a sudden storm of static. Odo took the brush from her and began to brush it himself. He liked to pacify it into a shining sheet. Charlotte flinched and avoided his eyes in the mirror as she said, ‘It belonged to my great-aunt Georgina – you know, the one who was in India. I never thought to wear it before but, faced with all those American sparklers, I didn’t want to appear dowdy.’

  ‘Pearls before swine, eh?’ He put the brush down, and pulled back her hair so he could kiss her neck. ‘Such a pity I lost you today at the meet. Where did you get to?’ Odo began to pull the fastenings of her peignoir.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, my stirrup kept twisting and by the time I had fixed it, you had gone. Had to spend hours dodging that buffoon Cannadine.’

  Odo squeezed her nipple hard. ‘Cannadine indeed. Poor Charlotte. But you know I don’t like it when you disappear. I shall have to punish you.’

  He picked up the hairbrush.

  In the servants’ hall, Bertha was finishing her supper. She was eating some kind of pudding laced with currants. It was a dish that everyone else seemed to relish, but she found it hard going. She longed suddenly for an ice-cream sundae. That had been her treat on her afternoons off at home, ice cream from the drugstore in Newport. She would go there dressed up to the nines in one of Miss Cora’s fanciest cast-offs, with a parasol and a bonnet with a veil. Bertha could just pass for white, and in her secondhand Paris finery the man behind the counter was not about to question her colour. It was the combination of cold ice cream and hot chocolate sauce that made her gasp with pleasure. She couldn’t understand why Miss Cora, who could have all the sundaes she wanted, didn’t eat them night and day. That was luxury all right.

  There was a tap on her shoulder. She looked up and saw Jim. ‘Think you dropped this, Miss Cash.’ He put something in her lap. It was a handkerchief, not one of hers, inside which was a tiny screw of paper. She hid it up her sleeve as she knew that Druitt and Mrs Lawrence were watching her.

  As she walked out of the hall, she unfolded the note and read it by the light of her candle. In careful rounded script she read:

  Meet me by the stables. I have something for you.

  Yours ever,

  Jim Harman

  He was waiting there by Lincoln’s stall, stamping his feet in the cold. When he saw her, his face relaxed into a smile.

  ‘You came then. Good girl. You won’t be sorry.’

  ‘I should hope not, I could lose my place for this.’

  ‘Look.’ Jim held out a clenched fist to her. Bertha hesitated. ‘Go on, open it’.

  Bertha pulled back his fingers one by one. There, on his outstretched palm, was a black pearl. Under the lamplight she could see its faint iridescent sheen like a slick of oil on a puddle. It was as big as a marble and almost perfectly spherical. Bertha took it and rubbed it against her cheek.

  ‘It’s so smooth. Where did you find it? You did find it, didn’t you?’ She looked at his face, hoping he would meet her eyes. He didn’t flinch.

  ‘I was waiting at table tonight, on account of it being such a big party, and just as I was coming round with the savoury, one of the ladies went and broke her necklace by fidgeting with it at the table. She thought she picked ’em all up but this one rolled under my foot and I stood on it tight until all the ladies went upstairs. I wanted to give it to you. You’re a black pearl, Bertha, that’s what you are and it’s only right that you should have it.’

  Bertha looked at him, astonished. No one had ever talked to her this way before. Honey talk, that’s what her mother would call it. ‘Honey talk is fine and dandy but make sure you get the ring first.’ Bertha’s mother had never had a ring though. The man who had seduced her had been white, so there was no question of marriage. Mrs Calhoun had kept her on in the laundry after Bertha was born. The Reverend called it an act of Christian charity, but Bertha’s mother never looked grateful. But Bertha did not pull away as Jim leant down to kiss her. It was different from all the other kisses she had had, softer, more tentative. His hands were holding her head as if it was made of glass.

  When he drew back she said, ‘Don’t you mind?’

  ‘Mind what?’ he whispered.

  ‘My skin. Don’t you mind kissing a coloured girl?’

  He didn’t answer but kissed her again, this time with more urgency.

  Finally he said, ‘Mind? I told you, you’re my black pearl. When I first set eyes on you in the servants’ hall I thought you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. When old Druitt told me to take you into dinner I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’

  There was no mistaking the sincerity of his tone. Bertha was touched. She felt for his hand and squeezed it. She saw Jim’s blue eyes go round with concern.

  ‘You’re not cross, are you, that I kissed you? You just looked so fine standing there, I couldn’t help myself. It wasn’t that I thought I could, I don’t think you’re fast or anything.’ He looked so worried that Bertha laughed and swung his hand.

  ‘No, I’m not cross. Not at all.’ She leant towards him, the better to show him how far from cross she was, but they heard footsteps and Jim drew away.

  ‘I must go. Save this for me.’ And he touched his finger to her lips and was gone.

  Bertha turned back towards the house, rolling the pearl between her fingers. It grew warm in her hand. She slipped it into the bodice of her dress and as she walked into the house she could feel the glow somewhere just above her heart.

  Chapter 6

  A Link in the Chain

  IF MRS CASH HAD BEEN EDUCATED AS ELEGANTLY as her daughter, if she had read Byron, or had pored over Doré’s engravings of Dante, she would have recognised Lulworth with its turrets and its twisted chimneys silhouetted against the shining sea as a glorious example of the Picturesque. But Mrs Cash was the daughter of a colonel of the Confederate Army, and when she had been growing up, there had been no call for poetry. Mrs Cash was a crack shot and could command an army of servants but she had not had a sentimental education.

  After the Confederate surrender at Appomatox, Nancy Lovett, as she then was, had been sent North to stay with her aunt in New York. She was a handsome girl with dark hair and a delicate but firm jaw. Her mother had sent her into enemy territory with misgivings, but Nancy had not looked back. She liked the rich colours of her aunt’s house, the wide skirts, the elaborate pelmets. She enjoyed the plentiful food and rosy prosperous company. When Winthrop the Golden Miller’s son had proposed, she had accepted gladly. Her mother had sighed and thought about what might have been, but her father was by then in the institution where he would die three months later. Later, as Nancy the bride solidified into Mrs Cash the society matron, she had felt some of the lacunae in her education; she could not speak a word of French, for example. But for a woman with such a natural talent to command, her inability to talk to the French Ambassador in his native tongue was the faintest of setbacks. Colonel Lovett had been a keen disciplinarian before his ‘indisposition’ and he would have appreciated his daughter’s ability to impose order.

  So Mrs Cash did not gasp, as so many visitors had before her, at the romantic charms of Lulworth. The house with its four turrets flanked by lacy Jacobean wings studded with mullioned windows was imposing but delicate, like a queen whose coronation robes cannot disguise the slenderness of her waist or the fragile tilt of her head.

  No, like the commander she was, Mrs Cash sized up the strengths and the weaknesses of her new billet. She could tell from the irregular façade with its towers and battlements that the food would be at best tepid by the time it reached the dining room. Driving in through the park gates, Mrs Cash looked up only briefly at the bronze stag over the cast-iron gates; she was far more interested in the dilapidated state of the gatehouse windows. By the time she was halfway up the drive of two-hundred-year-old elm trees she had made a realist
ic assessment of Lulworth’s plumbing.

  But even Mrs Cash could not fault the magnificent matching pair of footmen who handed her out of her carriage. The Lulworth livery of green and gold was certainly elegant, she had never seen shoulder tassels of such splendour. She would have smiled with appreciation, if it hadn’t been so painful. She had to husband her smiles for more important occasions. Perhaps the Duke might give her the name of his livery maker.

  A voice murmured in her ear, ‘Welcome to Lulworth, Madam. His Grace has asked me to take you to see Miss Cash and then he hopes you will join him for lunch.’ She followed the butler up the stone steps through the great arched door into a vaulted hall with a carved stone chimney piece at one end. The blackened oak of the roof timbers was not to Mrs Cash’s taste, she preferred her wood gilded, but she felt its weight.

  ‘If you would like to come this way, Madam.’

  Mrs Cash followed the servant up a wide wooden staircase lit by a glass lantern roof. There were fantastical beasts on the newel posts: gryphons, salamanders and lions. Mrs Cash admired the carvings but noticed that they had not been carefully dusted. At length they reached a wide gallery and the servant turned left and proceeded until he reached a door about halfway down.

  Cora was lying in an immense wooden bed hung with green damask with carved angels at each corner. She looked pale and, to Mrs Cash’s irritation, rather plain. Much of Cora’s charm lay in the vividness of her colouring: the bright chestnut curls, mossy green eyes and rosy skin. Lying there with dark circles under her eyes and with her hair limp and unkempt against the snowy mounds of linen, she did not look at all like the belle of Newport. Mrs Cash, for the first time since her daughter’s accident, began to worry about the extent of her injuries. She hoped that her daughter had not been, in some way, damaged.

  ‘Hello, Mother.’ Cora smiled.

  ‘Cora, I am so relieved to see you.’ Mrs Cash bent over to kiss her daughter’s cheek and stayed there for a moment before sitting down on the bed, making sure that her daughter had her right side and saying, ‘What an unbecoming nightgown, it makes you look quite sallow.’

  Cora’s smile vanished. ‘It belongs to the Duke’s mother.’ She started to play with one of her limp ringlets. ‘Mother, did you bring Bertha with you?’

  ‘You would think that a duchess, a duchess twice over, would be ashamed to wear something so shabby. The cheapest kind of cotton and not a scrap of lace. I wouldn’t even give this to my maid.’ Mrs Cash pinched the cuff of fabric round her daughter’s wrist. Cora pulled her hand away.

  ‘Mother, did you bring Bertha?’

  Mrs Cash was looking at the canopy above the bed. She lowered her head slowly and met her daughter’s gaze. ‘Bertha is following in the Bridport governess cart. You surely didn’t expect her to travel with me.’

  Cora sighed, and lay back against her pillows. She had found it difficult to sleep last night in this strange house that creaked and shivered in the dark, prey to fears she could not give shape or name to. The doctor had said she might feel some light-headedness for a few days, but had said nothing about hallucinations. But the irritation and annoyance that pecked at her the moment her mother began to talk was reassuring. Her mother was real enough. This part of her mind, at least, was unharmed.

  Mrs Cash was wandering through the room on a tour of inspection. She turned to Cora. ‘These English houses are so haphazard. There is no planning, nothing matches. I could do so much with this house.’ Mrs Cash paused and narrowed her eyes a little as if mentally remodelling their surroundings. Those casement windows with leaded frames – so antiquated and dismal. The English had lived in their houses so long that they no longer noticed them. It took a New World eye like hers to see them as they really were. The situation here was really quite good, if a little isolated. How long, she wondered, would it take to build a new house worthy of an American duchess?

  Cora read her mother’s thoughts. ‘Mother, you know that my being here is nothing more than an accident.’

  Mrs Cash chose to misunderstand her. ‘My poor girl, how frightened you must have been. Still, it was really most fortunate that you should have been rescued so promptly. And by such a Samaritan.’

  Cora realised that nothing would prevent her mother from believing that her accident and subsequent rescue was a sign that Providence was supporting her ambitions for her daughter. Cora might think she was a free agent but Mrs Cash and the Almighty knew better. Indeed, Mrs Cash was prepared to concede that Fate’s method of bringing her daughter within proposing distance of a duke was more ingenious than anything that she might have engineered. The only blemish in the divine plan was that Cora’s injury was not so serious that she would be obliged to stay at Lulworth indefinitely. A broken ankle would have been so much more definite. Really, there was nothing more appealing than a pretty girl confined to a sofa. Still, it couldn’t be helped. The important thing was to get Cora out of that hideous nightdress into something more becoming. She began to regret leaving Bertha behind, perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad to have brought her in her coach. But she didn’t want the Duke to think that she was the kind of woman who travelled with the help. A pointless scruple it turned out, as the Duke had not been there to greet her in person. Was that intended as a slight, or was there something in the impenetrable English rule book which meant that hosts above a certain rank never waited at the door to welcome their guests? It was one of the many things she would ask Mrs Wyndham.

  She turned to Cora. ‘I must leave you now, Cora, the Duke is expecting me at lunch.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be disappointed, Mother. Maltravers is everything a duke should be. But I wouldn’t make your dissatisfaction with the décor too plain. I have the feeling that he is very attached to this house.’

  ‘As if I would do anything so ill-bred! Really, Cora, sometimes I think you forget that I am mistress of a house quite the match of this one.’

  ‘I am not sure the Duke would agree. I don’t think he is in the habit of comparing himself with others.’

  Mother and daughter glared at each other. Cora closed her eyes in feigned weariness. But Mrs Cash was not to be silenced so easily.

  ‘Even dukes can count, Cora,’ she said, sweeping from the room.

  Cora lay back, imagining her mother’s impatient progress through the house. Unconscious when the Duke had brought her to Lulworth the day before, she had so far only seen the inside of the bedroom and a glimpse of the dark corridor beyond. If only Bertha were here. She needed to see the house for herself, but she couldn’t very well wander the corridors in the Duchess’s second-best nightgown. Not for the first time, Cora cursed her mother’s notions of propriety.

  Mrs Cash found a footman waiting outside her daughter’s room, ready to escort her to the dining room. The wide oak boards creaked as she walked carefully down the polished steps.

  The footman opened the library door.

  ‘Mrs Cash, Your Grace.’

  Mrs Cash wondered if she should curtsy, but thought on the whole not. She had been expecting one of those milky Englishmen whose youthful slimness was almost a reproach to the corpulence to come, but the Duke was darker almost than any Englishman had a right to be, his hair was black and his slightly hooded eyes were a golden brown. She couldn’t make out his age. She knew he couldn’t be more than thirty but there was nothing youthful in the grave way he took her hand. Deep grooves ran from his nose to his mouth and there were flecks of grey at his temples.

  ‘Mrs Cash, welcome to Lulworth. I hope your stay will be a pleasant one even if the reason for your visit is not.’ His words were cordial enough but he did not smile or meet her eyes. For the first time in many years, Mrs Cash felt awkward. She had come here expecting to assess the Duke’s suitability as a match for her daughter, but the man before her was not acting like a suitor. Perhaps he was not aware of the prize that was within his grasp. But from what she had seen of Lulworth, he could not afford to be indifferent.

  She repl
ied in her most gracious tones. ‘Your Grace has been most kind in taking in my unfortunate daughter. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t found her. A young girl, alone and hurt and so far from home.’

  The Duke replied, ‘Oh, I don’t think she would have come to much harm in an English beech wood, and from what little I have seen of your daughter, she seems more than able to take care of herself. American girls have so much spirit.’

  Mrs Cash was not encouraged by this speech. It sounded as if the Duke had judged her daughter and found her wanting. She felt at a disadvantage, an entirely unfamiliar and unwelcome sensation.

  The Duke led the way into the dining room where they were joined, rather to Mrs Cash’s surprise, by a priest.

  ‘Mrs Cash, may I present Father Oliver. He is writing a history of Lulworth and the Maltravers.’

  The priest, whose face was as perfectly round and smooth as a balloon, advanced towards her beaming. ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs Cash. I am so fond of your country. I was in New York only last year staying with Mrs Astor. What a peerless woman. Such manners! And taste!’

  Mrs Cash smiled weakly. She wondered if Father Oliver knew that her acquaintance with the fabled Mrs Astor was not as intimate as she would like. Was everyone here determined to wrong-foot her? She might throw the most talked-about parties in Newport but so far Mrs Astor had never accepted one of her invitations. It was one of the reasons that she was so anxious for Cora to marry splendidly. Even Mrs Astor could not look down on a duchess, or the mother of a duchess.