Dido had long ago learnt the trick of being comfortable in a great country house, and she usually enjoyed her visits to them very much indeed. But this time things looked bad and she doubted very much whether she would look back on her visit to Belsfield with much pleasure. For the story which half an hour’s questioning had got from Catherine had an unpromising sound to it.
Things did not bode well for her niece’s future happiness, even if – as she prayed would be the case – the late discovery in the shrubbery should prove to be quite unconcerned with her affairs.
Chapter Two
By Catherine’s account, her troubles had begun at the ball three nights ago, the ball which had announced her engagement to the neighbourhood.
Before the ball there had been nothing to concern her? Dido had wanted to be clear about that.
No, there had been nothing… Well, almost nothing. Once or twice in the weeks before the ball, Mr Montague had been a little quiet, but he had said that it was nothing but the headache. She had had no reason to suppose he was unhappy in the engagement. And even at the ball…for most of the night he had seemed very well satisfied.
It had been a very grand affair and it ought to have been one of the happiest nights of Catherine’s life. A memory to store up for the future; a triumph of successful love and beauty.
For Catherine would have been beautiful; she appeared to particular advantage in a ballroom. Her figure was light and graceful; her complexion was clear and delicate and, though sometimes thought lacking in colour, it had at least the advantage of not reddening in the heat of a country dance; and her hair, curling naturally, did not, like many fine coiffures, become lank and disordered as the evening wore on.
And her character, too, was as well suited to a ballroom as her person. In company, with a great many to please and be pleased, the sunniest aspects of her disposition were in full play and the little peevishness was hidden.
Dido could imagine her moving elegantly through Sir Edgar’s state rooms, among his hothouse flowers and his well-bred guests, charming everyone; even Margaret, watching eagerly from her seat by the fire with the chaperones, had probably found remarkably little to criticise.
Of the young man on whose arm she would have leant, Dido had a less distinct vision, for she had never met Richard Montague. But the descriptions of Catherine’s letters and the miniature portrait that she carried did something to supply what was lacking. She could picture a tall, black-haired man of just three and twenty, with rather fine brown eyes and a face that broke easily into a broad smile.
In short, she imagined him as that phenomenon which, at sixteen, Catherine had declared she did not believe in.
‘I do not think,’ she had said solemnly once after a dance at Badleigh had proved a disappointment to her in some way which Dido could not now recall, ‘I do not think it is possible for a man to be handsome, agreeable and rich. I put it down as a kind of law of nature that he will always be lacking in one of those three cardinal virtues.’
Indeed, for several years Eliza and Dido had feared that Catherine had no wish to discover such a paragon and intended to marry – as the phrase went – to disoblige her family. It was a fear that Margaret had certainly shared. And when Catherine – after only a two-week acquaintance – wrote to announce her partiality for Mr Richard Montague, the only son of a baronet, she had acknowledged that her stepmother’s approval did rather tell against him. However, she had continued, I do not think I could give him up now, even for the very great pleasure of offending Mama.
Dido’s greatest concern had been for the suddenness of the attachment, but Eliza had foreseen trouble in its inequality. She had shaken her head sadly over that letter. ‘I fear it will be rather a matter of him giving up her,’ she had said. ‘She is in a fair way to get her poor heart broke.’
And Francis himself had admitted that his daughter fell short of any equitable claim to the match by at least ten thousand pounds and a knighthood in the family as near as, say, an uncle.
But, to the surprise of them all, Mr Montague had very soon not only asked Catherine to marry him, but had also gained his father’s consent to the marriage with remarkable ease.
It had taken four closely written pages to express all the young lady’s delight to her aunts. He is very kind, she had written – no doubt like many a young lady in love before her – and gentle and it is quite remarkable how we agree upon everything. It is impossible that we should ever quarrel. Indeed we have decided between us that we never shall.
She had found perfection!
And the ball had been her moment of public triumph. For three hours or more it had been blissfully happy. Catherine knew she was in good-looks, Mr Montague was charming and affectionate, and she felt that she had the approval of the entire company.
It was after midnight that the change happened.
In the ballroom the set had shortened a little, but very few guests had yet left. The company in the card room was animated and, under Lady Montague’s influence, everyone was playing high. The fiddlers were still hard at work and the french doors were open on to the terrace, letting in the air of a remarkably mild September night and the scent of the last over-blown roses. Catherine had been dancing with Mr Tom Lomax. She did not like Mr Lomax, but, she said, dancing with him had been a necessary attention on two counts: firstly because he was Mr Montague’s particular friend, and secondly because he was only the son of Sir Edgar’s man of business, and so was blessed with Margaret’s disapproval.
As her dance with him ended, Mr Montague came to her.
‘I have you again,’ he whispered as the musicians started a new tune and the set reformed. ‘I believe even your esteemed stepmother would agree that it would be quite proper for us to dance together again now.’
She laughed and leant on his arm as he led her to the dance. Her feet were hot and tired, but her head was light with dancing and night air and the smell of roses – and love. She gazed at him across the set, charmed even by the hair falling down into his eyes, the cravat slightly unravelling.
And it was then, before they started to dance, while they were still working their way up the set, that it happened.
A man appeared at his shoulder…
‘Appeared? Appeared from where?’ Dido asked quickly.
‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Catherine. ‘From among the lookers-on, I suppose. There was still a little crowd of people standing by, watching the dancing.’
‘And who was this man? Did you know him?’
‘No. He was a stranger to me. I had not been introduced to him. I do not even remember seeing him before during the evening – but there were a great many people, you know. I may not have noticed him.’
And yet he was a rather noticeable man. Catherine described him as being red-haired and strikingly tall; but with a thin face and a ‘business’ look about him.