The Victory (21 page)

‘
He'd be bored to distraction, my lady, with nothing to do,'
Docwra pointed out.

‘
I have it!' Lucy's brow cleared. 'He can take my horses to
Morland Place, and stay there. Ned will be glad of his help,
and then I can send for him if I need him.’

So it was decided, and the rest of the day was spent in
rearranging the house and settling in. Parslow and Stephen did the heavy moving, while Docwra and Marie looked out
linen and discussed her ladyship's approaching confinement
with professional interest. Héloïse took Lucy to the kitchen to
see Monsieur Barnard, who greeted her with respectful
rapture and promised her a dinner equal to anything she had
eaten in London.

‘
You have no competition from my cook,' Lucy assured
him. 'Good as he is, he has never approached your genius. Do
you remember my wedding feast? The cake you made was so
big, we all thought the trestle would collapse under it.’

Héloïse, noting the emulative gleam that arose in
Barnard's eye, hastily intervened and drew Lucy away to look
round the garden.

‘
I have been thinking,' she said as they strolled amongst the
scented shrubs, 'about your incognito. I shall speak to the
servants before dinner, and tell them that you are to be
known as Mrs Freeman, and that if anyone should ask, you
are a friend of mine from London whose husband is gone
away to the war. That will make no surprise, and much
sympathy.'

‘Your servants are to be trusted?'

‘
I think so. Besides, now that the Duc has gone away, we
shall have very little company, so there will not be the
opportunity for them to gossip.'

‘Servants always gossip. But it can't be helped.'

‘
What is to happen, cousin, afterwards,' Héloïse enquired
delicately, 'when the baby is born?' Lucy explained about
having to find a foster-home. 'We had better leave that to
Stephen,' Héloïse said. 'He knows everyone, and he is wonderfully clever at arranging things. He will find exactly the right
place for you.’

Lucy shrugged. 'It all seems so far off at the moment. I
can't think about it.'

‘The time will pass soon enough,'
Héloïse
said.

*

It was a wonderfully sunny, golden autumn, and under soft
blue skies the preparations against invasion went on apace. A
fifty-thousand-strong Army of Reserve had been balloted to
repel the French if they should manage to land; while, to
make sure they didn't, the navy patrolled the Channel with a
force in which volunteers outnumbered pressed men twelve to
one. All along the south coast Martello towers were built for
defence, and a series of beacons was set up across the entire
country so that news of a landing could be transmitted to
London within minutes.

With the invasion army camped ready and waiting at
Boulogne, needing only for the French navy to gain command of the Channel for a day or two to slip across, it was vital that
the Channel ports were never left unguarded. Admiral Corn
wallis commissioned victualling ships and water-hoys to take food and water out to the ships on the Brest blockade, so that they need never leave station. It was an unprecedented move,
and emphasised, if emphasis were needed, the gravity of the situation. The hoys also carried letters to and from the fleet,
so Lucy and Weston at least had news of each other.

She had little to tell him. After a week of feeling cramped
by the confines of the small house, she had settled in at Plaisir
tolerably well. The fine weather helped, for she could be out
of doors a great deal. She drove the phaeton and ponies every
day, exploring the area, and taking Héloïse and the children
for airings. Mathilde had greatly taken to her, and as she had
relieved Farleigh of the burden of Africa, so she often gave
Héloïse a morning's peace by driving Mathilde to look at
Rievaulx or Helmsley Castle, or to Sutton Bank to pick
bilberries.

For the rest of the time she walked in the garden, helped
with the apple-picking and jam-making, played spillikins with
the children, and spent what was left of the evenings sewing
baby clothes and talking to Héloïse . The latter was a new and
unexpected pleasure. She had never had a close female friend
before; indeed, she had never had any confidant apart from
Weston. She was little used to talking about her inner feel
ings, but as their intimacy increased, she not only welcomed
Héloïse's confidences but began to offer her own in return.

One evening they talked about Lucy's mother. 'She was a
truly great lady,' Héloïse said.

Was she?' Lucy said in surprise. 'I didn't really know her.
She never had time for anyone but my father and the estate.'

‘
She meant so much to me, more than just a mother. She
was home to me, and a star to guide me, and a place where all
good things met. She was holy, in a way.'

‘Holy?’

Héloïse smiled. 'It is hard to explain. But she was at the
centre of the house, and everything poured out from her. She
was holy a little — as Our Lady is holy, not as being God, but
as a channel for God to flow through. Do you understand?'

‘
No,' said Lucy frankly, 'but I should like to.' A few weeks ago she would not have added those words, but the thing that
had most struck her about life at Plaisir was its spiritual
dimension. Like other ladies of fashion, she was accustomed
to go to church on Sundays, usually to the Chapel Royal,
where she sat through the sermon with scant attention and
departed feeling her duty done. For the rest of the week,
religion rarely entered her head.

The household at Plaisir had its Sunday celebration, too,
but that was only an outward expression of what was there at
all times, every day. It was not that they talked about it
deliberately: it was as though it were impossible to leave it
out, as if it were a natural quality of everything that
happened. Nor did their faith make them solemn: it ran just
below the surface of things in a stream of quiet joy that so
easily bubbled over into laughter. It enhanced their pleasure
and comforted their sadness, and her own life, which had
always appeared to her full and rich, seemed curiously
monochrome in comparison with theirs. Lucy thought that if she could take a little of that away with her, she would have
gained something important from her stay.

*

At the beginning of November a breath of the outside world
reached Lucy in the form of a very welcome letter from Mr
Brummell. It had been addressed to her at Shawes, and sent on.

‘
My dear Lady Aylesbury,' it began, 'I am informed by
Lady Chelmsford that you are rusticating — and just when
the Little Season is about to begin. It is too bad of you! I am
just returned from Cheveley, where the Rutlands held court
for the Newmarket races, and your cousin Colonel Horatio
Morland was still much in evidence. Does he
never
mean to go
to the war?

‘
London is full of news, and all of it bad. I fear our friend
Captain Macnamara has been to Chalk Farm again, despite
his narrow escape there in April. He met Captain Manby,
favourite of the poor Princess of Wales. Fortunately there
were two misfires, and honour was satisfied — if honour was what was at stake — without loss of life. Why will people go
out, I wonder? Death and injury can be so inconvenient,
especially with the Season just beginning.

‘
But where, my dear ma'am, is Monsieur Frog? We are all
quite disgusted with him, and everyone except the Prince
begins to say that the talk of invasion was all a hum. His
Majesty, I am told, conducted an enormous review in Hyde
Park while I was away, and during the demonstration volleys,
a ball passed dangerously close to the Royal Wig. It was a
foggy day, so there is no knowing who was responsible, but
His Highness came perceptibly closer to the throne that day,
and so perhaps he can be excused for wanting to believe the
war is really happening.

‘
I think it very clever of me to be able
to
tell you that your
brother Captain William Morland has got his ship at last —
the
York, a
seventy-four. I got it from Admiral Scorton, who was in the pew behind me in the Chapel Royal with the Duke
of Clarence yesterday, and who tapped me on the shoulder on
purpose to tell me. He is to sail to Sweden — why I cannot
say. I meant to ask, but Lady Hester, who was beside me, at
that very moment pointed out a woman wearing the most
curious
toilette, which quite drove it from my head.

‘
I am now on the point of departing for Wolvercote,
where I am summoned to slaughter birds in the company of
Pierrepoint, the Bagots, the Granvilles, and any number of
Russells. The terrible Mrs Fauncett positively pursued me to
my box at the Opera on Thursday to tell me that she would be
there with her hideous daughter. I was in a quake, until I
understood that it is not me she is after, but Lord Aylesbury's new young friend, Knaresborough, who will be quite horribly
rich when he comes of age, and is, as yet, as innocent as a
lamb. One can only hope Lord A. will take good care of him.

‘
I wish you may return to civilisation before the hunting
season. Hoby has made me some very pretty new boots with
white tops — my own thought entirely — which I expect
everyone will soon be copying, but which I fear will not stay
clean beyond the first covert if there is the least dirt. I quite
long for you to see them.

‘Until then, adieu!

‘Your devoted friend, George Brummell.’

*

Weston woke and lay staring into the dark for a few
moments before he heard the sharp ting-ting of the ship's
bell. That would be two bells in the morning watch, five
o'clock, he thought drowsily. Two bells in the middle watch
had sounded as he went back to bed after being roused
because the wind was freshening. It was bitterly cold, and as
he moved slightly he felt the clamminess of the bedclothes
beyond the small area he had warmed with his body. The hot
water-bottle Bates had filled for him when he went back to
bed was long cold; but there was still Jeffrey, curled against
the small of his back like a lump of hot lead. The only thing
more astonishing than the heat of a sleeping cat, he thought,
was its weight.

He must have drifted off again, for the next thing he knew
was that Bates was hanging over him saying. 'Three bells, sir,
and Mr Osborne wants to shorten sail again, sir.'

‘
I'll come,' Weston said, feeling for himself, now he was
fully awake, how the movement of the ship had changed.
Jeffrey groaned and declined to move when he hauled himself
out of his cot. Bates was ready with his trousers, sidling about
the confined space like a crab to help him into the rest of his
clothes, and tucking the ends of his scarf into his coat like a nurse.