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Selfish? He was about to throw the word back at her and then something stopped him. It was hard to know what, exactly. The memory of the affectionate concern he had felt for Maude’s father came to him. It had felt good to care about the older man, to receive back his approbation, his trust. This difficult, demanding, selfish woman in front of him was his mother and in the depths of her eyes was, he finally recognised, pain and vulnerability.
‘Mother.’ It felt strange to say it like that, as though he meant it, as though it mattered. ‘Tell me what happened, why you defied your family and left home.’
‘No.’ But it was half-hearted. Something glittered in her eyes and he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. La Belle Marguerite took it, buried her face in it, exquisite paint notwithstanding, and wept. He sat, silent, not knowing what she would want him to do. Eventually she emerged, smudged, smeared and suddenly a middle-aged woman, no longer a diva.
/> ‘I fell in love,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t good enough for the daughter of a duke, they said. They told him that and he accepted it, promised not to see me again, promised to go to the family estates in the West Indies. Abandoned me.’ The handkerchief twisted in her hands. ‘I ran away to catch him before he sailed, but I was too late. He had gone, but there in the inn was an acquaintance of his. So kind, so helpful. I couldn’t go back, he told me. I was ruined. By the end of that night, so I was. But still I went home. I thought, you see, that I would tell them the truth and they would let me go after my love, out to Jamaica.’
‘But they didn’t?’
‘No. They shut me up, presumably to see whether I was going to make things worse by being with child. When it was obvious that I wasn’t, they told me that George’s ship had gone down in a storm with the loss of all hands. So I ran away again, fell in with a travelling troupe at Dover—you can guess the rest.’
Eden felt sick with an empathy he had never dreamt he could feel. ‘They cut you off?’
‘Yes. The old duke made all my brothers and sisters swear they would never speak of me again. I came back to London, a few years later, determined to try to see my mother. Then I saw a report in The Times of a marriage in Jamaica. My George. So they had lied to me about that, all of them. It taught me a lesson, at least.’
‘That you cannot trust anyone?’ Eden queried. ‘That you can lock away your heart?’
In answer she turned to him, put her arms round his neck and sobbed as though the heart he had never believed she possessed, would break.
‘Mother,’ he said gently when she recovered herself a little, ‘I love Maude Templeton and she loves me. The Ravenhursts are her best friends, almost her family. If I am to have any hope of marrying her and not destroying everything she holds most dear, then I must tell them who I am and seek their recognition.’ She moved convulsively in his arms. ‘This is not the generation that lied to you and banished you, Mother. These cousins know nothing about that old story. They admire you for what you are now.’
Marguerite sat up, her face with its ruined make-up stripped bare of artifice. ‘Then tell them.’ She managed a smile. ‘Will having a daughter make me look old, do you think?’
Eden’s third appointment of the day was at the very superior town house that Eva, Grand Duchess of Maubourg, and Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst kept for their regular visits to London. He wished, as he was ushered through into the salon, that he was wearing his stage costume, the diamonds in his ears, the ironic disguise he had used all these years to hide behind.
All he had now was his real name, the counterfeit appearance of a gentleman and the love of a woman he would walk over burning coals for. This, as the double doors swung open on to the eight people ranged around the room, felt rather more dangerous.
‘Good afternoon.’ Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst greeted him from his position by the fireplace. Under the portrait of his father, the third Duke of Allington, he watched Eden with sombre, assessing eyes. ‘You wrote to me and asked that we Ravenhursts who are Maude’s friends gather here to meet you. Perhaps you would care to explain why, Mr Hurst?’
‘Because that is not my name,’ Eden said. ‘My name is Ravenhurst and I am your cousin. Acknowledging me will bring you scandal and pain. You owe me nothing, certainly not recognition; by our grandfather’s decree my mother, your Aunt Margery, forfeited that years ago. But you all, I believe, love Maude Templeton and I am here to beg you, on my knees if I have to, for her happiness.’ He looked round, meeting eight pairs of serious, steady eyes in turn and waited on their judgement.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘I am not going.’ Maude sat defiantly in her dressing room in an old afternoon dress and frowned at Jessica and Elinor in their full glory of ballgowns, diamonds and plumes. ‘I told Bel I was not going.’
‘You said that when you were still feeling so poorly after the gas,’ Elinor pointed out. ‘You can’t mean to miss Bel’s ball, surely?’
‘I still feel poorly,’ Maude said stubbornly, feeling not unwell, but harassed. She did not want to go anywhere where she might be expected to smile and flirt and behave as though her heart was not broken. Soon, she would make the effort. Soon, she would do her duty and go and find herself an eligible and suitable husband in cold blood and give her father the grandchildren she knew he longed for. But not yet. Not while there was the slightest danger that she might simply sit down and weep as the sadness and despair swept over her. It felt like a bereavement, not the end of a love affair, and she wanted time to mourn.
‘You are perfectly well,’ Jessica said briskly. ‘It is not like you to be a coward, Maude.’
‘I am not,’ she retorted, stung. ‘I am unhappy. Do you expect me to plaster on a smile and go and cavort at Bel’s ball as though nothing was wrong?’
‘Yes.’ Jessica sat down with care for her silver net skirts and wagged her fan at Maude. ‘It is the big event in the Season for Bel, and you owe it to her to turn up and look as though you are enjoying yourself. Your father is going.’
‘I haven’t got anything to wear,’ Maude said, feeling cornered and guilty and miserable all at once.
‘Poppycock.’ Elinor jumped up and pulled the bell cord. Anna came in with a speed that showed she must have been waiting outside the door. Was everyone in the plot to harass her? ‘Anna, your mistress is complaining she has nothing to wear, which means she is feeling well enough to go. Now, show us her wardrobe.’
Resigned, Maude got to her feet. To resist any further was perilously like sulking and she never sulked. It would hurt, but she supposed it was like getting back into the saddle after a fall. ‘Very well. The new yellow gown, Anna.’
‘Now that,’ Jessica approved, ‘is lovely, like autumn leaves. So clever, all those layers and the different colours and the way the hems are cut so it flutters. Your amethyst-and-diamond set with it, I imagine?’
‘Yes,’ Maude agreed, trying to get into the mood. She had bought this gown expecting that Eden would see her in it, the thought lending pleasure to the choice of every detail. Now it was just another gown.
But she dressed and let Anna pile her hair up into an elaborate knot within the tiara and pretended that she cared enough to make a decision on which side the one long curl should drop to touch her shoulder. She put on her new bronze kid slippers and slid the fine cream gloves up over her elbows and hurried so as not to keep her friends waiting.
Her reward was her father’s face when she followed Jessica down the stairs to where he was waiting. ‘Papa, I thought you were gone by now.’
