“Trust you to discover that,” said Carleton half mocking, half admiring.
“And what is going to happen to these wicked people?” asked Matilda.
“Shrewsbury is dying, and Buckingham is living openly with Lady Shrewsbury. The King has expressed his displeasure but has forgiven Buckingham. He is such an amusing fellow, and in any case Charles is too much of a realist to condemn others for what he practises so assiduously himself.”
“Not duelling,” said Charlotte.
“No, adultery,” added Carleton. “Charles hates killing. He thinks Shrewsbury was a fool. He should have accepted the fact that his wife preferred Buckingham and left it at that.”
“Kings set the fashion at courts,” said Charlotte. “How different from Cromwell.”
“One extreme will always follow another,” pointed out Carleton. “If the Puritans had not been so severe, those who followed might not have been so lax.”
“Oh, dear,” sighed Matilda, “what a pity things can’t be as they were before the war and all these troubles arose.”
“It’s the perpetual sighing for the old days, I fear,” said Carleton. “They seem so good looking back. It’s a disease called nostalgia. It affects quite a lot of us.”
He was looking at me, resenting the happiness I had had with Edwin, believing that in spite of what I had discovered I still remembered it.
The celebration took place shortly after that conversation. It began as a happy occasion and almost ended in disaster. For several days they had been preparing for it in the kitchens and our table was a credit to the servants. We had the family and the Dollans and the Cleavers and another family who came from a few miles away. The two boys were with us and everyone was complimenting me on Edwin’s healthy looks and saying that there could be little wrong with a boy who could recover so quickly from a virulent fever.
Harriet somehow managed to make herself the centre of attraction just as she had in the old days. She sang for us, and as she sat there strumming her lute with her lovely hair falling over her shoulders, my mind went right back to the days in Congrève when she had seemed to me like a goddess from another world.
That she seemed just that to Uncle Toby was obvious. He was so proud of her, so much in love, and it occurred to me that even if she had contrived to marry him for what she could get, at least she had made him happy.
I was pleased too that Matthew Dollan was there, and Charlotte, too. Charlotte seemed to be quite happy, although she could not rid herself of that suspicious attitude which seemed to say, I know you’re only being pleasant to me because it’s polite to be so.
When the children had gone to bed we went to the ballroom which had been made ready for dancing, and there the musicians played and we were very merry.
As Carleton led me into the dance, he asked if I felt it was an occasion worthy of the reason for having it.
“I think it goes well,” I said.
“A thanksgiving because our young Edwin was snatched from the gates of death?”
I shivered.
“What a fond and foolish mother you are, Arabella! The boy is completely healthy. You should be thanking the fates for my return to you, not his from the aforementioned gates.”
“It is to celebrate two happy events.”
“So you are glad to have me back?”
“Have I not made that clear?”
“On occasions,” he said. “I say, look at Toby.”
I looked. He was dancing with Harriet. His face was overred I thought and his breaking a little short.
“He drank too much wine,” I said.
“Not unusual, I’m afraid.”
“Harriet shouldn’t let him exert himself like that. Will you speak to her?”
“I will. When the dance is over.”
But that was to prove too late, for there was a sudden cry, and a hushed silence. I looked round. Toby was on the floor and Harriet was kneeling beside him.
Carleton rushed over and examined his uncle. “He is breathing,” he said. “We must get him to his room. Arabella, send them for the doctor.”
That was the end of the dance. Toby was carried up to his room and in due course the doctor came and told us that Toby had had a heart attack. It was due, it seemed, to overexerting himself. I sat with Harriet at his bedside. She was very subdued. There was anxiety in her face and I knew that she was thinking of what her position would be if Uncle Toby died.
He did not die. In a few days it was clear that he would recover. The doctor said that he had had a warning. He had overexerted himself and must, in future, remember his age. He must go very carefully now.
“I shall insist,” said Harriet. “I am going to look after you, my darling.”
It was pathetic to see the way in which he relied on her, and I have to say that she nursed him well.
Carleton said: “It’s probably a good thing that it happened. It’s brought home to him the fact that he’s not the young man he has been thinking he was.”
Spring came. Edwin was himself again and Sally’s theories about witchcraft seemed ridiculous. The boys were very fond of Harriet and she seemed to be a model wife to Toby. She was soon exerting the old fascination over Edwin and Leigh as she had over my brothers and sister. She was always singing and acting for them and they enjoyed being in her company.
Uncle Toby’s eyes followed her wherever she was. “What a mother she would make,” he said.
Although I suspected her motives for marrying him, I must say that she made him happy. She was never irritable or bad tempered with him. She always called him “my darling husband” and to him she was always “my love.” He put such a wealth of feeling into the endearment that it was never used lightly, as in some cases.
Carleton had turned his attention to Edwin. He accused me of pampering him and said it was time someone took him in hand. I was a little afraid at first. I thought that he was going to wreak his resentment on my son. It occurred to me that I didn’t really know about Carleton everything a wife should know of her husband. I knew that he was strongly drawn to me; I knew that he desired me and that desire had not yet abated with familiarity. But sometimes I felt he wanted to be revenged on me. He had a strange, wild nature.
However I could not stop his supervising the outdoor education of my son, and as Leigh was with him, I supposed that it really was good for Edwin to have a man to teach him. I myself was giving them lessons and Harriet insisted on helping me. It reminded me so much of the old days at Congrève. There was a great deal of acting in the schoolroom and of course the boys loved that.
It was Carleton who said that we should have a tutor for the boys. They could not be taught forever by two women. “Besides,” he said, “I can see you making excuses that you have your schoolroom duties when I want you to come with me to London.”
It was like Carleton to act immediately, and within a few weeks of his announcing that the boys should have a tutor, Gregory Stevens arrived.
Gregory was an extremely good-looking young man, the second son of a titled family and therefore without great means but with some expectations. He was an excellent sportsman and as he was something of a scholar and interested in young people, he had decided to become a tutor for a while until those expectations were realized. Carleton said he possessed all the necessary qualifications for teaching the boys, and he was right. Gregory was strict, but he won the boys’ respect and it seemed a very good arrangement.
Harriet still insisted on going to the schoolroom to tell the boys about plays and act for them. Although Gregory Stevens had thought this unnecessary at first, he was soon agreeing that Harriet’s special knowledge and her ability to interest the boys in the literature of the day and of the past was beneficial.