Chapter 19

19

Isabella slept soundly and woke refreshed. She would have been perfectly capable of getting up for breakfast, not being an invalid, but this was brought to her in her chamber on a tray, and as she ate she reflected that it might be best not to meet Captain Winterton's mother and all of the rest of his relatives over the breakfast table. People were apt to be lax over introductions before they'd taken in the first cup or two of tea or coffee, according to taste, and she would prefer to be perfectly clear which lady, currently unknown to her, was Mrs Winterton, her lover's mother, and which was Lady Louisa Pendlebury, most unusual of aunts, and which the authoress Lady Carston. This third lady was quite newly married (though apparently minus her husband on this occasion) but not, as far as Isabella understood, a very young lady, and so she might possibly be confused with one of the others. She would prefer to avoid any such confusion. All these introductions, and the party she was going into alone, might sound rather daunting, but obviously, to a woman of the world such as herself, they weren't in the least.

Her maid had laid out her riding habit along with a day gown; Lady Irlam was intending to go on a ride about the estate and would welcome her company if she cared for it, the woman informed her, but if not, the other ladies were in the morning room and would be glad to spend the forenoon with her. Without hesitation, Isabella chose the ride. It was quite likely, she considered, that Lord Irlam and his cousin the Captain would accompany them, and her new riding habit was extremely becoming, a fact of which Leo was currently and tragically unaware since she hadn't had a horse in London upon which to show it off.

A maid conducted her down a grand staircase to the morning room first, which was unavoidable, she supposed – it would be a dereliction of duty on Lady Irlam's part as hostess not to introduce her to the rest of the party now. At least the ordeal would be brief, which was, she was aware, not a very woman-of-the-worldly thought. She entered, and three very tall women whom she did not know rose to their feet, towering over her. No; that wasn't quite correct. Lady Carston, who was blonde and lean and athletic-looking, though not particularly fashionable or otherwise intimidating in appearance, was very tall indeed; the other two ladies were merely much taller than Isabella, which was after all not a difficult thing to be. Cassandra was there too, of course, and after making the introductions laughed as she said, ‘I perceive upon your face, dear Lady Ashby, the identical expression mine must have borne when first I made the acquaintance of this family. You see now why I invited you – I am so tired of having a crick in my neck when holding every conversation.'

‘I don't see why you should be, Cassandra,' said Lady Louisa. ‘You know I never stand when I can sit, and never sit when I can lie. I am very pleased to meet you, Lady Ashby.' She suited her action to her words and reclined back on the sofa she had recently quit. She was dark, like her niece Georgiana, with the same bright blue eyes all the Pendleburys seemed to share, and extremely handsome, with a lush, voluptuous figure clad in a very modish deep pink gown. She wore no cap and nobody would have thought to describe her as a spinster, though she was over forty and unmarried. It was perfectly true that she bore no resemblance to any other aunt that Isabella had ever encountered in her life.

Isabella murmured the appropriate response and turned to greet Mrs Winterton. She beheld a lady of a comfortable figure with a great mass of beautiful silver hair arranged rather haphazardly. She had a kind smile and a kind face; she somewhat resembled, in fact, Isabella's own mother, though Isabella would much have preferred it if she hadn't. She looked… motherly, with all that that implied. How much easier if she'd been sour and horrid. Not that Leo was likely to have a mother who was sour and horrid.

There was no time for awkwardness; Cassandra said they must not keep the horses standing, and drew her away, out through the great hall and down the imposing stone steps they had ascended last night, where the Earl and Leo and another couple of young men stood waiting on the carriage sweep, with grooms and horses. Mr Pendlebury, Lord Irlam's brother and unmistakeably so, was presented to her, as was his friend, and Cassandra's, Mr Welby. He was an excessively handsome young man, not tall, angelically fair with features of classical regularity, and Isabella couldn't have said why observing him mount up didn't raise her pulse-rate even a little, and why she was so glad that the Captain, not he, stood ready to throw her up into the saddle. Leo stood, inevitably, close to her as he helped her, his hands firm and strong about her waist, and as he lifted her he murmured, ‘That habit is extremely becoming. Excessively so. I am glad to see you in it and will be even happier to see you out of it. I hope you will say that it may be tonight. My blood is on fire as I look at you.'

She was aware of blushing furiously and hoped that if anyone observed it they would ascribe it to the cold and to the exertion of seating herself securely on an unfamiliar horse, a very prettily behaved grey which she assumed belonged to Lady Irlam, and which she was assured would not give her the least trouble.

Her new habit was very dark crimson, a striking colour expressive of her new attitude to life, and it did not follow the prevailing mode for high-waisted gowns, which Isabella sometimes feared made her look sadly dumpy. Instead, it was tailored very exactly to her frame, rather like a gentleman's scarlet hunting coat, but made up in velvet, and flattered, she hoped, her small waist and hourglass figure. The expression on Captain Winterton's face, and his whispered words, the very tone of his low voice, suggested that her hopes had not been in vain.

Isabella had spent half her childhood in the saddle, and it was exhilarating to be there once more, regardless of the company she found herself in. They rode out across the frosty landscape, and fell naturally into groups of two, since six persons plainly could not ride abreast without presenting a perfectly ridiculous appearance. The grounds of the Castle were immaculately maintained, and clearly had been conceived by Capability Brown or another of his ilk, and designed for an earl – Lord Irlam's grandfather or great-grandfather – who could never have lived to see the gloriously mature result of his investment. The land was gently rolling, picturesquely wooded with specimen trees, each notable eminence crowned with a temple or a folly or an obelisk. The building they were riding away from was large, rambling and obviously ancient in parts and more modern in others, but surrounding it was a very different landscape than the clifftop setting of Northriding Castle, where she had spent most of her married life with Ash after their honeymoon. That had been wild and starkly beautiful; this was tamed, controlled and gentler in its appeal.

‘Did you grow up here?' she asked her companion. He seemed entirely at ease in such grand surroundings, she could not help but observe.

‘In large part,' Leo said. ‘My father's estate – mine, now – is much, much more modest and only a few miles away. He died when I was quite small, and my mother and I have always spent a great deal of time here with my cousins. Hal and I grew up as brothers, in effect. After my uncle's and then my aunt's deaths, of course, which came in quick succession, my mother removed here more or less permanently in order to help look after the younger children; the twins were only five, poor scraps. But I was already in the navy by then.'

‘You have all suffered grievous losses,' she said. ‘I am sorry.'

‘It is the way of the world, is it not? Only a lucky few can escape it. I barely remember my father, if truth be told. The late Earl was like a kind and loving father to me.' He hesitated, then pressed on. ‘I know you had some qualms about coming here; have you overcome them?'

Such a question didn't really sit well with her new image of herself as wildly unconventional and thus indifferent to social difficulties, and perhaps therefore she should be irritated by his asking it, but she wasn't; she was a little touched by his evident concern. He was not so absorbed in his love for their hostess that he could not spare a thought for her. ‘I think so. Lady Irlam has been very kind to me and said nothing at all to make me uncomfortable, and I have met the rest of the ladies, including your mother, who seems most amiable.'

He smiled. ‘She is. And she has a rare and valuable quality among mothers: she doesn't pry.'

‘How fortunate.'

Their eyes met, and they coloured, and laughed, and then, conscious that they were falling behind the others, urged their willing horses on across the frosty grass to catch up before anyone thought to remark upon their dawdling.

Lord Irlam's friend Mr Wainfleet arrived later that day, and so the party was complete. It was quite true, as Cassandra had said, that he didn't appear to be in the petticoat line. It was possible that he admired Isabella – certainly he blushed fierily whenever he was obliged to speak to her or look at her – but it would have been a determined hostess indeed who attempted to matchmake, given his almost total inarticulacy and the expression of poorly concealed terror that seized his otherwise pleasant features when he was forced to converse with any female.

When the ladies withdrew after dinner, Cassandra apologised to Isabella on his behalf; the rest of the party appeared to be tolerably well acquainted with him and accustomed to his ways. ‘Hal says he's very amusing and often quotes his funny sayings, but I confess I can only take his word for it. He's very shy, poor man, in feminine company. It has occasionally occurred to us that he might have cherished a tendre for Georgiana, whom he's known for many years, in which case her marriage must have been a blow to him, but even Hal admits that he can't be sure. Of course – being men! – they have never spoken of the matter.'

Isabella was not comfortable with this talk of tendres, for all sorts of reasons, and so turned the topic, and the evening passed in pleasant conversation and light-hearted card games. Nobody pressed Isabella to sing and play the pianoforte, nor expressed an urgent desire to do so themselves, perhaps because there were no young unmarried ladies present who felt a compulsion to display their accomplishments to the four eligible gentlemen. It was in this sense an unusual party, and the more relaxing for it. The evening flew by, and soon it was time for bed; the ladies climbed the grand stairs together and parted to go to their various chambers along the many confusing corridors and galleries.

Or not. Isabella, perhaps because her new experiences had somehow removed the blinkers of ignorance from her eyes, believed that she had begun to sense undercurrents in the party which she didn't quite understand. Lady Carston, she knew, had been Lady Louisa's companion for many years, until her marriage a month or two since. Lord Carston was apparently a gentleman in his late forties who had been widowed years ago, and had several grown children, including an heir. Maybe it had been a case of love in later life, for him at least – he must be nearly twenty years older than his bride – but if so it was rather odd that he was not here. He was a family friend, and godfather to Lord Irlam, she had learned, so he would surely have been welcome. She thought… But perhaps she was imagining things. Perhaps the fact that she was currently engaged in illicit relations made her believe that everyone else was too. Perhaps she was obsessed and should be concerned about the tendency of her mind.

She would ask Leo. He would come to her tonight; they had communicated wordlessly downstairs, and she was waiting for him. It might take him a little while to extricate himself from his cousins and the other gentlemen, if they should happen to be playing billiards, or sitting up drinking, or anything of that nature. He would not want to provoke any comment or look at all suspicious.

She lay in bed in her new nightgown – a nightgown her mother would greatly have disapproved of, and all the better for it. It was the sort of thing she had worn, albeit briefly in both senses of the word, when she had been married to Ash. Those garments had mysteriously disappeared after his death, and she presumed her mother had removed them; they had never discussed the subject, and now never would. She experienced, as she often did when she thought of her mother, a disagreeable pang of guilt. She could not help but appreciate the thoughtfulness that had caused her mama to hide the flimsy, deliberately seductive night-rails; she could imagine herself coming across them in the weeks and months after Waterloo and collapsing in floods of tears at the tender, now painful recollections they called up. It would have been one of many such collapses, and she must be grateful to have been spared that one at least. Her mother had been endlessly patient, kind and thoughtful during the months of her illness, and she was not sure she had ever really thanked her for it. When she had begun to feel herself recovered, she had become impatient, touchy, quick to take offence. And then she had to all intents and purposes run away, to take refuge with Blanche. That must have stung. Poor Mama.

But she would not feel guilty that she was better, and no longer in a state of childlike dependency. She knew that it had been her mother's dearest wish that she should be restored to full health, and if the steps that she was taking to set the seal on her recovery were not quite what her mother would have liked – and they most certainly were not – well, she would never know it. She would be home at Harrogate soon and set about making amends as best she could. It was not as though there would be any shortage of time for them to regain their former closeness. It wasn't a particularly cheerful thought, but it was a necessary one.

Meanwhile… The door opened silently and with infinite slowness, and Leo, barefoot and clad in a silk dressing gown, slipped into the room and closed the door behind him with equal care. He had no candle; he must know the Castle well enough not to need one. She felt ridiculously shy suddenly and wished that she had not thought to lie in bed, like a bride waiting for her husband on her wedding night. Not that her wedding night had played out that way, they had both been so eager… But she would not think of that. Not tonight of all nights.