The American Heiress: A Novel by Daisy Goodwin (5)

The Black Pearl

MRS CASH WAS ARRANGING FOLDS OF TULLE around her neck. By candlelight, in the foxed silver of the pier glass, the effects of the accident were almost unnoticeable; only the shiny tautness where the flesh had been burnt showed up in this forgiving light. For anyone sitting on Mrs Cash’s right side there would have been no reason to suspect there was anything wrong; it was only when she turned her head that the ravages of the fire were revealed. At least, thought Mrs Cash, her right profile had always been generally the more admired. She had been lucky, the flames had not actually reached her left eye, although the area around it had been singed. The scars as they formed had pulled the skin tight, so that in this half-light the damaged side of Mrs Cash’s face was a grotesque facsimile of youthfulness. She half closed her eyes and through the blur she could see the spectre of the girl she had been. She pulled at the hairpiece of curls she wore so that the tendrils covered the misshapen lump of flesh that had been her left ear. As she felt the waxy smoothness of the scarring, she flinched. The doctors had told her that she had been fortunate that her skin had healed so quickly, but she hated touching its smooth deadness, which she minded even more than the shooting pains she still felt. She straightened up and began to dust her face with powder.

There was a knock at the door and the butler came in with a letter on a silver salver.

‘This has just arrived for you, ma’am. From Lulworth.’

Mrs Cash had not heard of Lulworth but judging from the little pause the butler made before he pronounced the name, she guessed that it was a place of some significance. She took up the letter and recognised, to her surprise, her daughter’s loopy scrawl.

‘But this is from Cora. Why is she writing to me? I thought she was hunting?’

The butler bowed his head. Mrs Cash’s question was rhetorical, although as the letter was unsealed, every servant in the house could have given her an answer.

To the butler’s surprise Mrs Cash did not gasp or reach for the sal volatile when reading her daughter’s letter. Indeed, if the butler had been on Mrs Cash’s right, he might have seen the beginnings of a smile.

In the servants’ hall, Bertha was mending a lace nightgown that Cora had torn because she was too impatient to undo the buttons before pulling it over her head. It had been one of those nights when Cora had come upstairs from dinner noisy and truculent after an evening spent listening docilely to Lord Bridport’s views on crop rotation. Bertha hadn’t unlaced her fast enough and Cora, snatching the nightgown from her, had pulled it over her head, ripping the two-hundred-year-old Brussels lace that covered the bodice as she did so. Cora hadn’t even noticed the tear but Bertha, who looked forward to the day when the nightgown and the lace would be passed on to her, had felt the ripping cloth as a laceration. The lace had been made by nuns, the work so fine and exquisite that it was almost an act of worship. It was taking all her concentration to sew the jagged cobweb edges together seamlessly. She had been so absorbed in joining one filigree flower to its mate, marvelling at the intricacy of the net showing white against her brown fingers, that she had missed the entrance of the groom from Lulworth with the letter for Mrs Cash, but now she caught Cora’s name in the conversation between the housekeeper and the cook and she looked up from her sewing.

‘Miss Cash was lucky that she didn’t break her neck like the poor Duke that was. It was the new Duke that found her. Lucky he was in the woods, otherwise she might have been out there all night,’ the housekeeper said.

‘I don’t think it was luck that put the Duke in that wood. Remember what day it is.’ The cook looked at Mrs Lawrence the housekeeper with meaning. The housekeeper gave a gasp of remembrance and bowed her head.

‘Is it the anniversary today? I’d almost forgotten. That poor young man and so soon after the old Duke’s death too.’ She closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them she saw Bertha looking at her.

‘Looks like you’ll be going over to Lulworth, Miss Cash.’ Bertha started at the name. Mrs Lawrence had told her when she arrived that all the visiting servants were known by the name of their employer, but still it felt strange.

The housekeeper continued, ‘Your lady had a fall out hunting and she’s been put to bed over at Lulworth. The groom came over with a letter for your young lady’s mother. Mr Druitt is up there now waiting for a reply.’ At the sight of Bertha’s face, the housekeeper softened her tone. ‘She’ll be all right. If there was anything wrong, the Duke would have come himself.’

The cook chuckled. ‘I expect he didn’t want to leave Miss Cash’s side. There’s an awful lot of holes in the roof.’

‘The Duke’s not married then, Mrs Lawrence?’ Bertha felt that the cook’s hint had given her licence to ask. But she knew she had to be careful, the line between an innocent question and a liberty was a fine one. Soon after she arrived she had asked Lady Beauchamp’s maid what her wages were and had been made to realise her mistake. As Miss Cash’s lady’s maid she was accorded a certain seniority in the servants’ hall – she took precedence over the parlourmaids going into dinner, for instance – but her status did not allow her to ask questions. Mr Druitt had taken her aside and told her that while such things as wages and so forth might be the subject of much talk where she came from, here in England some things were kept private. Bertha had bowed her head and learnt her lesson.

Despite her lecture from the butler, Bertha was enjoying her stay at Sutton Veney. At home she ate at the bottom of the servants’ table with the other coloured girls. Here she went into dinner every night on the arm of Sir Odo’s valet. The first night she had retreated to her room, but Mrs Lawrence had sent one of the housemaids up to tell her that her presence was required in the servants’ hall. Jim the valet had blushed when Mr Druitt had told him to take Miss Cash’s maid into dinner. Their conversation was limited as Druitt liked to hold forth, but every time Bertha glanced his way, Jim would be looking at her. He was handsome enough; at least he looked as if he had been raised in the fresh air, unlike so many of the servants whose pasty complexions suggested they had spent all their life underground. Since that first night, Jim had been waiting for her every evening to take her into dinner and she found herself bumping into him on the servants’ staircase two or three times a day.

Bertha looked at the two women, waiting for them to rebuff her. But the cook did not draw back at Bertha’s question; in fact she looked rather pleased at the opportunity to show off in front of her rival, the housekeeper.

‘No, the new Duke’s a bachelor. I used to work in the kitchen over at Lulworth before I came here. Slave labour that was. They still cook over an open range in the kitchen there and forty people sitting down for dinner. Things are better here even if Lord Bridport is always asking after yesterday’s joint. I was there when Miss Charlotte came to Lulworth. They were always together, Lord Ivo and Miss Charlotte, playin’ with their bows and arrows. They used to come down to the kitchen begging for food to take out on their archery expeditions. Shame she had no money, Miss Charlotte would have made a handsome duchess.’

‘Some more tea, Mrs James?’ interrupted the housekeeper, clearly nettled at this exhibition of superior knowledge of the Duke.

Bertha picked up her work basket and went up the back stairs to Cora’s room. The room was in the right-hand wing of the house and looked over the park at the front and the stable block at the side. The light was beginning to fade and Bertha could see the footman walking round the stable yard with a torch, lighting the lanterns. The yellow balls of light hung in the grey dusk like jack o’lanterns. The lamplighter had reached the lamp nearest the entrance to the arch when a rider came in. As he put his torch up, Bertha could see a gleam of blond hair under a riding hat.

Bertha pressed her forehead against the cold glass. She wanted a glimpse of the blonde woman’s face but the hat was tilted too far down for her to see anything but the curve of a smooth cheek. The rider flung her reins to the groom and swung down from her horse, revealing a glimpse of white beneath her blue habit. As she turned, the lower half of the woman’s face became visible and Bertha saw that her mouth was curved upwards in what might have been a smile. Bertha shivered. The room suddenly seemed empty without Cora.

For the first time since she had arrived in England, Bertha felt homesick – not for the half-remembered smell of her mother, she had long ago learned the futility of that – but rather for the well-lit certainties of her American life, where she had one hundred and fifty dollars in her sewing box and she knew the price of everything.

She went to the wardrobe and began to take out Miss Cora’s most elaborate costumes. Whatever happened next, she knew that her mistress would want to look her expensive best.

Mrs Cash had wanted to leave Sutton Veney as soon as she had received her daughter’s note, but Lord Bridport had persuaded her that it would be better to go in the morning. As she sat down to dinner, Mrs Cash was grateful for the opportunity to find out something more about the man she now thought of as Cora’s duke.

‘You must be beside yourself with worry about your daughter, Mrs Cash,’ said Odo Beauchamp, who had been seated tactfully on her good side. ‘What an unfortunate accident, and your daughter such a fine horsewoman too. Charlotte and I saw her riding out this morning looking splendid. Quite a number of people said they would have thought she was English.’

Mrs Cash sighed. ‘Cora assures me that she is unhurt, merely a little shaken. So kind of the Duke to insist on her staying at Lulworth till she is recovered and to invite me to stay with her. I shall go over there tomorrow,’ she smiled. ‘I am quite intrigued to meet an English duke. We were lucky enough to entertain the Duc de Clermont Tonnere when he was in Newport last summer, and he could not have been more gracious, so much more so than the Grand Duke Michael of Russia. He travelled with his own plate as if he didn’t think there would be anything sufficiently magnificent in America. But I fancy he saw the error of his ways by the end of his visit.’

Mrs Cash’s ducal reminiscences were interrupted by the footman serving the soup. Lord Bridport insisted on dinner taking no more than an hour, so each of the seven courses remained for only a short time in front of the diner. Mrs Cash, who found that the prospect of Lulworth had awakened her appetite, realised that she must focus on the lobster bisque. As she concentrated on conveying the soup to the undamaged side of her mouth, Odo took his chance. As the sole heir to a considerable fortune and due to inherit even more from his maternal grandfather, Odo was not abashed by Mrs Cash’s wealth, nor was he in the least interested in her catalogue of foreign titles.

‘I quite envy you going to Lulworth, if it weren’t under such dramatic circumstances. It’s a lovely house, one of the few really fine houses around here. It’s not a great big dukery like the ones up north, it’s more subtle than that. Lulworth has charm,’ Odo tittered, ‘if a building can be said to have charm. And you must see the chapel, it’s exquisite, a little rococo gem.’ He made a circle in the air with a finger to indicate the curves of the chapel. ‘Of course I haven’t been there since the old Duke’s funeral, but I gather things have gone downhill since then. Wretched death duties I suppose.’ Odo looked down the table to where his wife was sitting and raised his voice a little.

‘I almost feel sorry for Ivo. He was such a perfect younger son, excellent shot, popular with the ladies, clever. There was some talk of the Diplomatic after he came out of the Guards, but then Maltravers, his elder brother, broke his neck eighteen months after the old Duke died, and it all came to Ivo. That was about a year ago, and since then he has become such a bore. He’s shut himself up at Lulworth and won’t come out to play. Didn’t come to town for the season, nobody’s seen him for months. Even Charlotte can’t tempt him out and they used to be such friends.’

At the mention of her name, his wife began to talk with uncharacteristic animation to the Rural Dean on her left. If Mrs Cash had not been in the habit of only observing what was directly connected to her own interests, she might have noticed the flush spreading across Charlotte Beauchamp’s cheeks. But Mrs Cash’s attention was all with Odo.

‘So there is no Duchess at Lulworth?’ she said as nonchalantly as she was able. She didn’t remember seeing Wareham’s name in the list of noble bachelors in Titled Americans, a magazine she would never admit to buying, though she was exhaustively acquainted with its contents. She was certain she would not have missed an eligible duke.

‘Not even a dowager,’ said Odo, looking at Mrs Cash directly, his exophthalmic blue eyes glistening. He had noticed his wife’s animation and the sudden colour in her cheeks. His tongue darted over his lips involuntarily. He paused to drink some claret. He knew he had Mrs Cash’s full attention, and he was aware, too, that she was not the only listener; his wife was still chattering to the clergyman but she would hear every word.

‘No, the moment the old Duke died, Duchess Fanny was off. Barely out of mourning before she married Buckingham. Of course everyone knew what special friends they were, but still…She was probably worried that someone else would snaffle him up, although who else would want poor old Buckingham, God knows. But the Double Duchess couldn’t be happier.’

‘The Double Duchess?’ It was the closest Mrs Cash had come to a squeak since childhood.

‘First Duchess of Wareham and now Duchess of Buckingham, first woman I know to have done the double.’ Beauchamp smiled. ‘Some people think that poor old Wareham died just in time. Duchess Fanny had spent a fortune on Lulworth. She even had a branch line built so the Prince of Wales could get there faster. But now she entertains him at Conyers – Buckingham’s place. The shooting is better at Lulworth, but dear old Buckers has the wherewithal.’

Mrs Cash pulled at the tulle covering her damaged left cheek and wondered why her neighbour was being so forthcoming. At home she knew to a cent how much her friends and enemies were worth and whether they figured in the Social Register or were on Ward McAlister’s list for the Patriarchs’ Ball. But things were different here. Mrs Cash had taken great pains to learn the order of precedence among the English nobility – she liked nothing better than a set of rules. But she had been astonished, not to say shocked, to discover on her arrival in London that she was as likely to encounter an actress like Mrs Patrick Campbell as a countess at the smartest society events. In Newport or even New York you might engage such a person to perform at a party but it would be quite unthinkable to entertain them on equal terms socially. When she made this point to Mrs Wyndham, whom she had persuaded, at some cost, to introduce Cora and herself into society, Mrs Wyndham had reacted in such a way that Mrs Cash had felt the unfamiliar and unwelcome sensation of being laughed at. ‘Oh, you can go pretty much anywhere now if you are amusing enough,’ said Mrs Wyndham. ‘Or rich enough,’ she added, narrowing her gaze at Mrs Cash.

Mrs Cash had resented the implication very much and had considered breaking off her relationship with her sponsor. But, as Mrs Wyndham knew very well, Mrs Cash needed her help. Cora was rich enough and beautiful enough to be sought after, but only Mrs Wyndham was prepared to tell her that Lord Henry Fitzroy had syphilis or that Patrick Castlerosse had been named as the co-respondent in the Abagavenny divorce. So Mrs Cash was surprised and delighted to find Lord Bridport’s nephew so willing and indeed eager to satisfy her curiosity about the Duke of Wareham.

‘But when you say that the Duke has shut himself away, is there any reason why he should? Is he ill?’ Mrs Cash was wondering whether the Duke of Wareham’s health was another of those topics that was common knowledge only among those who belong.

‘Nothing wrong with him at all physically. Mentally, well, I really couldn’t say. He’s a Catholic of course, like all the Maltravers, so Lord alone knows what twisted Papist fancies are at work. Oh, don’t worry, Mrs Cash,’ said Odo, seeing the expression on her face. ‘It’s a very old Catholic family, they’re not converts. No, I think the Duke is having money troubles. Lulworth is a huge estate but rents are down. Duchess Fanny spent every penny and more on entertaining Tum Tum, and then old Wareham and poor Guy died so close together, which meant paying death duties twice.’ Mrs Cash assumed that Tum Tum was the Prince of Wales, and that this was a nickname that, as a foreigner, she would not be safe in using.

Odo was still speaking. ‘No wonder Ivo is lying low. Shame really, because what he needs is a nice rich wife. Who knows, Mrs Cash, perhaps you will spirit him back to Newport and find him a lovely young heiress? She’ll have to be beautiful, though. Ivo is very particular.’

Mrs Cash was deciding how to reply when a small hubbub erupted at the other end of the table. Charlotte Beauchamp, who had been fingering the choker of black pearls around her throat, had inadvertently touched upon a weak link in the stringing, and the necklace snapped, the pearls exploding across the table, rattling across plates and ricocheting off the crystal glasses. Charlotte, making a sound somewhere between a shriek and a laugh, was trying to recover the pearls as nonchalantly as she could. The Rural Dean found one in his claret and embarked on a long-winded allusion to Cleopatra’s dinner with Antony.

‘She said she would give him a priceless dinner, so he was very surprised to be given indifferent food and then Cleopatra took off one of her pearl earrings, dropped it into her glass of wine where it dissolved and she offered him the glass to drink. What a magnificent gesture. I can’t claim to be Antony of course but, my dear Lady Beauchamp, you are surely a modern Cleopatra.’ The Dean stopped, rather amazed at where his unexpected eloquence had taken him.

Charlotte was busy trying to retrieve the pearl with a teaspoon when her husband called out, ‘I hope, Dean, that you are not suggesting that my wife should have herself delivered to you in a carpet, the better to seduce you. You really mustn’t put such fancies in her head.’

The Dean looked rather pleased with himself. ‘Age cannot wither, nor custom stale her infinite variety.’

‘Eighteen, nineteen, twenty,’ said Charlotte as she counted the pearls rolling about on her dinner plate. ‘Only one missing. Is it in your waistcoat pocket, Dean, I wonder?’

‘I will ask Druitt to have a thorough search afterwards,’ said Lady Bridport hastily, alarmed equally by the thought of Charlotte going through the Dean’s pockets as by the Dean’s willingness to quote Shakespeare at a civilised dinner party. She rose and gave the signal for the ladies to withdraw.

When Odo went to visit his wife’s bedroom later that evening, he found her in her peignoir at the dressing table. He noted the blue veins that threaded her slender arms as she pulled the silver hairbrush through her long fair hair. Cleopatra was altogether too coarse an image for Charlotte, he thought. She had the head of an Italian Renaissance beauty. When he had last been in London, Snoad the dealer had shown him a painting by the Sienese painter Martini of Bianca Saracini. She had long fair hair and a high forehead like Charlotte’s, in her hand she held a snowball to signify her purity. He must have Charlotte painted, although he could think of no one who could do her justice. Meanwhile, he would buy the Martini and give it to Charlotte for her birthday. She liked presents.

‘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:

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.