“I understand enough to know how Vernon’s rudeness must make you uneasy—to send your friends and relations away—he has a very strange notion of hospitality and charity.”
“I neither expect nor desire charity, cousin, as any of my acquaintance ought to understand. Nothing could be so offensive to my husband’s memory as to have his wife and daughter become the objects of charity.”
Sir James looked upon her with bewilderment and made no reply. He concluded that it was too early to expect any moderation in her grief. Within a few weeks, he would no doubt receive a letter from her expressing a change of heart and a desire to come to Derbyshire.
Lady Martin bustled up to them and gave her niece a hearty embrace. “If they do not suit you at Langford, you will always have a home with us. Come, James, we cannot delay or we will be on the road after sunset and then who knows what will befall us!”
Sir James kissed his cousin’s hand and then addressed Frederica, insisting that she be a faithful correspondent and assuring her that it would take only a line from her to bring him to their aid.
The carriages departed, the women retired to their rooms. They did not come down to dine, and so Charles Vernon dined alone, eating little and drinking a good deal of Sir Frederick’s excellent port.
chapter twelve
On the following day, Lady Vernon rose from her bed and went directly to her writing desk, where she sat down to calculate how little of her husband’s debt was outstanding, how far his rents had increased, and how frugally they had lived over the last half-dozen years. By these tallies, she determined that Sir Frederick may have left as much as thirty thousand pounds with his estate.
Lady Vernon resolved to address Charles at the earliest opportunity on the matter of how she was to be recompensed; she was sensible of the indelicacy of raising the subject so soon after her husband’s funeral, but she could not trust the firmness of his promises as far as Sir Frederick had. If his memory of them was not fixed while she and Frederica were before him, it must dissipate when they were out of his sight.
Vernon steadily avoided all discourse by keeping himself away from the house as much as possible. For the first days after his brother’s funeral, he rode out very early or found some concern that took him into Churchill, and at last, with no notice whatsoever, he departed for London, where the unhappy presence of his sister and niece were not always before him. There, the society and its diversions soon eased him into the conviction that whatever assurances he may have given his brother had only been the sort of necessary lies one is compelled to give to an invalid. Would not a gentleman who had a wife and four young children to maintain (and who must keep himself in some style when he was in town) need far more than a widow who was not without rich relations, and a daughter who was of an age when she would soon marry?
Soon Vernon was persuaded that there had been no promise at all, only an informal understanding that Lady Vernon and her daughter would not starve.
Lady Vernon could not believe that Charles meant to stay away from Churchill Manor until after she and Frederica departed, but when a week passed with no word from him, she dispatched a letter to his address in town.
She did not post this letter but sent it with the housekeeper who was to take charge of the Portland Place residence, and instructed her to carry it directly to Mr. Vernon’s lodgings in town. She would dearly have loved to send the portrait of Sir Frederick to Portland Place as well, but she conceded that its place was in the gallery at Churchill among those of his forebears, and so contented herself with a likeness of him set into her locket.
She then turned her attention to separating her personal possessions from what property belonged to Churchill and distributing Sir Frederick’s clothing to the menservants and the poor. There were gloves to be dyed and bonnets to be divested of trimming and swans-down and lined with crepe. She and Frederica took leave of the neighborhood, exchanging particularly affectionate farewells with the Chapmans.
Instead of any reply from Charles, Lady Vernon received a visit from Mr. Barrett, the attorney from the village of Churchill. He hemmed and hawed a great deal and presented Mrs. Barrett’s compliments and after making every possible observation upon her loss and the weather and what a pretty note their housekeeper had got from Mrs. Bentley, who had married Lady Martin’s doctor, and how Mrs. Barrett had so often joked that she had rather married a doctor or an apothecary at least, “as seven children will go through so many illnesses and sprains and fevers that it would be a great savings if their father were in the trade, while the cost of bringing them all up upon the earnings of a country lawyer would leave them nothing left over to bequeath to any of them,” he got around to the purpose of his visit.
“It would have been a great benefit to address the family together, but Mr. Vernon was obliged to be in town and he was most particular that you know how matters stand before you depart.” He then gave her the dubious satisfaction of knowing that her calculations had been quite on the mark, and that Sir Frederick had, indeed, left a fortune of some thirty thousand pounds—which, owing to the language of his will, was to be disposed entirely upon Churchill’s heir.
“The generosity of your relations, in adding to your settlement at the time of your marriage, when added to the three thousand pounds given over to you by Sir Frederick at the time that Vernon Castle was first purchased …” He groped about for words, which trailed off into something like “… your house in town … the kindness of your relations … the Martins may always be depended upon …”
This remark served only to call up Lady Vernon’s aversion to charity—she would not allow Mr. Barrett to suppose that she was left so indigent as to have to beseech the Martins’ aid. She assured him that she would be able to manage very well and conveyed her warmest regards to Mrs. Barrett.
The following day Lady Vernon and Frederica walked to the churchyard to lay flowers upon Sir Frederick’s grave, and the day after, with a last, unhappy glance at her family home, Lady Vernon, accompanied by her daughter and Wilson, set off for Langford.
Volume II
Langford and Churchill
chapter thirteen
The journey from Churchill to Langford was to take the ladies through Bath, where they would stop for the night at the home of Lewis deCourcy.
When they had dined, Wilson retired to her sewing and Miss Vernon was invited to form her opinion of the rose garden. Lady Vernon took the opportunity to discuss the matter of her finances with Mr. deCourcy. He listened carefully and asked a good many questions about the particulars of the language of Sir Frederick’s will, then made every attempt to alleviate her anxiety.
“I am not ready to believe that you have any real need for concern yet,” said he, “though your acquaintance with Mrs. Manwaring’s situation must make you sensible of the evils of having your money under the control of one who deliberately withholds it from the intended object. There may be some working of the law that must take place before Charles can make good on any promises given to Sir Frederick. An inheritance will always come with some matters of unfinished business, and in my experience, the law does nothing so well as prolonging what ought to be swift. I advise you to wait a little longer—once Mrs. Vernon and the family are settled, Charles will be at leisure to address those points of honor that his more pressing obligations have deferred. In another month or very shortly thereafter, this will all be resolved, and if it is not, I will be more than happy to intercede on your behalf.”