‘Perhaps she would not like to hear it. Perhaps she would be cross that we did not bring him to the farmhouse, where she could see him too,’ she said. Starling thought for a moment.
‘If we walked back along the high street instead of the canal, we might find something to take her, so she won’t feel so left out. And so she’ll know we’ve been busy, all this time,’ she suggested. Alice gave her a look that was half disapproving, half grateful.
‘A small present for her, to make up for us leaving her alone today,’ Alice agreed.
So they crossed the bridge and walked the length of Bathampton, and bought a handkerchief stitched with poppies and wheat sheaves from a huckster, which seemed to please Bridget well enough. And while Alice was too bright and nervy, and flew her anxiety like a pennant for the first few hours they were back, Starling found she had no such trouble with keeping a secret. She turned the memory of their visit from Jonathan over and over, like a precious stone in her pocket, and found that not telling Bridget was almost as much fun as the visit itself had been.
‘Who is Miss Fallonbrooke?’ she asked again, as Alice tucked her into her blankets that night.
‘Beatrice Fallonbrooke is just a girl who has never done anything to harm anybody.’ Alice sighed, and looked away. ‘She is the daughter of a very wealthy man, and she is intended for Jonathan.’
‘But… you’re going to marry Jonathan!’ At this, Alice smiled.
‘Yes, I am, dearest. But the course of true love never did run smooth. It is no fault of Miss Fallonbrooke’s that she presents an obstacle.’ She smiled again, though her eyes were sad. ‘You must not mention her, Starling. It is a secret that Jonathan shared with me, and now I have shared it with you. We must keep it secret. Can you do that?’
‘Yes, Alice.’
‘Good girl.’ Alice sealed the promise with a kiss, pressed to her forehead, and Starling slept soundly, well fed on secrets that were now hers to keep.
1821
My Dear Mrs Weekes,
I do hope this note finds you well and quite recovered from any distress you might have felt upon recently meeting my son, Mr Jonathan Alleyn. I am more grateful than you can know that you agreed to speak with him, in what must have seemed very peculiar circumstances. I can only apologise if his behaviour towards you seemed in any way uncouth. He suffers a great deal, and has been so long out of polite company that I fear he forgets himself and his good manners upon occasion. I pray that you will find it within you to forgive this, and see only the troubled soul that plagues him.
I can quite understand that the meeting was not a pleasant one for you, but it has given me cause to hope. My relationship with my son has been much strained both by past events and by his current malaise, and I regret to impart that he rarely confides in me. It causes me great distress. Forgive the candour of this letter – I thought it best to speak plainly: Jonathan has asked to see you again. It has been far too many years since he made any such request of any visitor, and it fills my heart with joy that he makes it now. So I must ask, though I have little right to: will you call here again at your earliest convenience? Whatever passed between you and my son upon your last visit, it must have had some beneficial effect, and so I have much to thank you for already. But I beg you now, please call again.
Yours &c
Mrs Josephine Alleyn
For several days, Rachel carried Josephine Alleyn’s note around in her pocket, and spoke of it to no one. She took it out and reread it often, and thought about throwing it into the grate and forgetting she had ever seen it. Surely if she did, she wouldn’t be invited to Lansdown Crescent again, and that would be the end of it. She would never have to see them again – the man who had attempted to throttle her, and his beautiful, unreadable mother, so highly regarded by Richard. When she thought of the house, and of Jonathan Alleyn, waiting in his darkened rooms like some ghoul, she shivered. Even his mother, who was gentility itself, and so graceful, had a lost and mournful air. She put Rachel in mind of a porcelain doll – lovely but frozen, and liable to shatter. But then, when Rachel thought what life must be like for Josephine, trapped with a mad and invalid son who scared all callers from the house, she felt a stab of pity, and of guilt. So she kept the letter, and never quite managed to throw it into the fire, however sure she was that she would not see Jonathan Alleyn again, even if attacking her had indeed been beneficial to him.
Though Richard Weekes chafed at the cost of the extra housekeeping Rachel had arranged, he chafed even more about widening their social circle, and about obeying Josephine Alleyn, and so was persuaded to fund them an evening at a public ball in the Upper Assembly Rooms. Rachel wore her new gown, recently back from the seamstress – plainly cut, wide across her shoulders and low at the neck, but of a wonderfully soft, heavyweight satin, silvery in colour, with long sleeves and a sheer muslin overlay. In spite of it, and the coat she wore over it, she felt the cold as they walked out of Abbeygate Street in search of a pair of chairs to carry them – since even Richard Weekes’s sense of thrift would not allow for arriving at a dance on foot. It was early October, and in the mornings the cold glass of the bedroom window was misted over with their night-time breathing. The air had a bite, even on sunny days; the leaves of the plane tree in Abbey Green had turned leathery brown and yellow, and made a clattering sound when the wind shook them. Rachel wrapped her arm tightly around Richard’s, and felt the breeze teasing her hair loose from its pins.
They arrived at around seven o’clock to a mêlée of carriages and sedan chairs; horses and people alike throwing their heads and stamping their feet. The scene was lit by oil lamps high up on the portico above the entrance, and by the glow from the tall windows, and Rachel felt a flicker of excitement. The place and the racket of footsteps and hooves and voices had not changed at all since her last assembly, when she’d been sixteen years old; only the fashions and everything about her own life were different. She glanced at Richard, in his best coat and cravat, who looked as tense as a schoolboy called up before the master. He was worried that they would have no acquaintances within, and would drift about all evening making no impression – which was entirely probable, Rachel knew, since the assemblies were always so crowded that even if you knew twenty people in the room, you might not manage to find any of them. But that evening she felt no urge to reassure Richard, so she merely gave him a thin, incomplete smile, and said nothing as they went inside.
A wave of heat poured out through the doors, and after the cold of the evening it felt smothering. From the cloakroom they moved through to the main ballroom, where the cacophony was almost too loud for conversation, and the press of bodies made it hard to move. Above it all, on a central balcony, the orchestra was playing a lively tune, and the floor had already filled with dancing pairs, who added the pounding of feet and the rustle of cloth to the swelling din. The room was a sea of faces, either flushed and happy or scowling and harried; the smell of sweat, perfume and powder was everywhere. Five vast glass chandeliers hung from the distant ceiling, glittering with hundreds of candle flames, banishing shadows from the elaborate plasterwork and columns of the walls. Rachel knew better than to stand directly below one of the lights. Once before, when she’d attended as a girl, the heat from the revellers had caused the candles to soften and droop, dripping hot wax into carefully coiffed hair and propped décolletages. Rachel felt a flush creep into her cheeks, and her underarms prickled with perspiration. Her dress was unfashionably plain, but at least the vogue for wearing few ornaments suited her situation.