“But she knew you did.”
“She wouldn’t care about me. She would regard me as a fellow sinner.”
“I told her I knew. It came out. I had to.”
He nodded. “I would have expected you to. You could never hide your feelings. My dear, honest Arabella.” He came over to me and put his arms about me.
“We will be on our guard,” he said. “And now … let us forget her.”
So Harriet was once more with us and this time she was in her rightful place. She had become an Eversleigh—one of us.
Uncle Toby’s pride in her was touching. His eyes followed her; he was bemused as though asking himself how such a glorious creature could possibly have married him. She had aged a little, although she concealed this with artifice and it was only occasionally that it was noticeable. Then I saw that there were light shadows under her eyes and fine lines about her mouth. But she would always be outstandingly beautiful and everyone must admit that.
It was amazing how she settled in. That Matilda was cool to her did not affect her. Nor did the fact that she had been my late husband’s mistress. Her manner of shrugging these facts aside was disarming.
She was very eager to see Leigh, and when I took her to the nursery he was with Edwin. She looked from one to the other, not knowing which was her son.
Both boys regarded her with some sort of awe.
“You’re a stage actress,” said Leigh. I suppose he had heard the servants talking.
“You’re Uncle Toby’s new wife,” added Edwin.
She told them they were both right, and very soon she was telling them about the stage and the plays she had acted in and they were clearly fascinated.
She had lost none of her charm. Uncle Toby was her adoring slave and that was easy to understand, but when I saw her exert it over the boys, I knew that she had lost none of her gifts and I remembered how little Fenn had adored her.
What was almost incredible was that I found myself being caught up in the old spell. My resentment was gradually weakening. Although I still thought of her and Edwin together now and then, it no longer angered me. She made a great effort to win back my friendship and she was gradually succeeding.
She had a gift of narrative and it was not long before I was hearing about her adventures.
“I knew it wouldn’t last with James Gilley,” she told me. “But I had to go. What else could I do? What life could I have given Leigh? I had to think of my baby. I knew that you would look after him and that with you he would have a good life. So I forced myself to part with him. It was a wrench. You don’t know how I suffered …”
I narrowed my eyes and smiled at her.
“You don’t believe me. I understand. I don’t deserve your trust. I can see how you feel. But Edwin was so persuasive and I was half in love with him. He wasn’t good enough for you, Arabella. I used to tell myself that and it would salve my conscience. I used to say if I was not the one, there’d be someone else. Better for Arabella’s sake that I should be the one.”
“That’s an odd way of looking at it.”
“I thought at first he would marry me, Arabella. I think he would have if he’d not been so weak. But he had always done what he was told and what the family expected. Then when I realized that he was going to marry you, it had gone too far to stop.”
“You were so deceitful, Harriet.”
“I know. It was forced on me. You know how I have had to battle. Nothing came easily to me. I used to tell myself: Once you are married to a man who can keep you in comfort then you can repent your sins and start to be a good woman.”
“So you are now embarked in that path of virtue?”
“I am. Arabella, I assure you I am. It can happen you know. Look at Carleton.”
“What about Carleton?”
“What a rake he was and now he’s reformed. He is a model husband now, I am sure. He glances neither to left nor to right. His eyes are firmly fixed on his Arabella.”
I looked at her sharply. Was she laughing at me? Was she hinting at something?
She read my thoughts. “No, I mean it. He’s turned into the devoted husband. Well, now I shall turn into the devoted wife.”
“I am glad to hear it. I should hate Uncle Toby to be hurt. He’s such a darling.”
“I agree with both those sentiments. You must admit I have made him a happy man. I shall keep him so to the end of his days. Oh, he was so good to me. He used to come to the playhouse whenever I was playing, and when I heard who he was, naturally I pricked up my ears. I was Roxalana in The Siege of Rhodes when he first saw me. He came backstage afterwards, and you can guess how excited I was when I heard he was Toby Eversleigh. I asked him a good many questions about his family when we supped together, and over the wine of which he partook more freely than I did, I heard of you and what was happening here at Eversleigh Court.”
“And decided to join us.”
“Not just then. I had to wait until I was asked. It was after I was Carolina in Epsom Wells that he was so deep in love with me that he had reached the pestering stage. He was different from others. He spoke of marriage right from the first. Of course I was reluctant. What a situation! And I told him, No I could not think of it, and the more I said No the more determined he became. Then I made my little confession …”
“When you were sure of him, of course.”
“Of course, and I had to forestall Carleton whom I wouldn’t have trusted to keep quiet. And he said no matter what I had done, he loved me. I was the most beautiful woman in the world. He wanted me to marry him and so on. And I thought: To go back there … to live under the same roof as Arabella … You may not believe it but those were some of the happiest days of my life at Congrève. I enjoyed them. I loved little Fenn and Angie and Dick. You remember the play we did? And those Lambards. Wasn’t it fun? I wanted to recapture all that. Besides, I wanted the standing of a married woman. I could have gone higher. Oh, yes, I’ve had lovers. The King noticed me one night. He would have sent for me but the plague came and the theatres were shut. Then there was the fire and after that there was Moll Davis and now Nell Gwyn. Young girls really. When I was their age …”
“You would have outshone them all.”
“Youth! How wonderful it is! I never did like things that didn’t last, and there’s nothing more perishable than youth.”
“You were still young enough to capture Toby.”
“Toby’s an old man. I was wise to choose an old man. It’s one way of keeping perennially young. When he is sixty I shall be …” She smiled at me mischievously. “Still in my thirties. Quite a girl in his eyes, you see.”
Yes, she was winning me over. I was already forgiving her.
But I should always be wary.
The autumn came in wet and blustery. One day Lord Eversleigh, who had been to London, returned with a shivering fever. He was wet through to the skin and had come from the inn where he had spent the night, riding throughout the day in the heavy rain.
Matilda was most distressed to see him. She set the maids scurrying for warming pans and got him to his bed. He would be all right in a few days, she insisted, and he should have known better than to get wet through and stay wet all those hours. He knew very well it was bad for his chest.
I had rarely seen her so anxious—and not without cause. Lord Eversleigh developed a cold and in a short time his lungs were congested and there was a hushed pall of anxiety hanging over the house.
Carleton had been in London with the King, who was still interested in the Roman finds, but he hurried back to Eversleigh. He was too late to see his uncle alive.
It was a very sad, dark day when we buried him in the family vault in the Eversleigh churchyard. He had been a quiet, unassuming man for all his position, and he had been generally respected. Matilda was beside herself with grief. She told me she could not imagine life without him.