TWO

After that Natalie would not go with Sir Thomas to Waverton Court, but when he received a summons from Lady Bridewell inside an envelope with a black border, he made a point of showing it to her. He knew she would not put up any resistance when he said they must pay a call to show their sympathy, and she did not. She only said, ‘Who was Lord Ansdrie?’

And now he sat with Lady Bridewell and her only son, the newly designated Lord Ansdrie, in their drawing room. The intricate plasterwork above their heads, the heavy tapestry curtains on either side of the stone-mullioned windows and the dark oak panels on the walls made the large room appear to close in on Sir Thomas; he preferred the light, airy rooms of his own house. But he sat as calmly as he could opposite Lady Bridewell, whose head always tipped just slightly to the right so that she looked more interested in those she spoke to than she actually was.
Sir Thomas waited for her to explain the reason for her summons.
Lord Ansdrie sat at an angle to Sir Thomas, which made it impossible for him to keep them both in his line of vision; he had to turn from one to the other. Lord Ansdrie wore a dark suit, a black armband and a black cravat and his mother’s mourning dress was of the darkest black silk and crepe; she wore no jewellery. Perhaps Sir Thomas should have worn mourning dress. He braved the subject and apologised.
‘I thank you, Sir Thomas, but your apology is quite unnecessary,’ said Lady Bridewell. ‘You did not know my brother.’ She sat very straight. ‘We were in Scotland for the
funeral last week.’
‘I am sorry for your loss.’
Lady Bridewell nodded and her dark headdress shook. It looked like a large spider. She clasped her right hand over her left and then her left over her right. The death of her
brother was obviously causing uncharacteristic agitation, but she said nothing more.
Through the windows at the north end of the drawing room Sir Thomas saw Lady Bridewell’s daughters, the Ladies Millicent and Augustina, walking across the lawn.
They wore black silk dresses trimmed with black crepe and dark little hats with short dark veils. Between them walked Natalie, her yellow dress like a shaft of sunlight in a dark
wood.
‘My brother and I were estranged,’ said Lady Bridewell, at last, ‘but his management of Ansdrie has proved even worse than I feared.’
So, not his death, then, but his bad management. Astonishing that she was telling him this; she had never related such details before.
‘The house has been dreadfully neglected. There is only one manservant left and the revenue,’ she whispered the word, ‘from Ansdrie’s coal is quite gone. The mines have
faulted and flooded. There are death duties to be paid. Only the sheep remain and they alone will not keep the estate.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear it, Lady Bridewell,’ said Sir Thomas, his voice pitched higher than he had intended. He tried to control his amazement, but she had never spoken to him before of the one thing upon which every human being depended, the thing he had spent so much of his life successfully accumulating.
Was she about to ask him for a loan? Or to act as guarantor? He must, clearly, prepare for more surprises.
‘As you know, Sir Thomas,’ said Lady Bridewell, half turning to her son, ‘Ansdrie inherits from his uncle.’ She called him by his new title as if he had been born to it. ‘But until he marries he shall not live in Scotland.’
She stood, so Sir Thomas stood and made a half-bow and then she walked, or rather, stalked, towards the window. Sir Thomas watched her movements and noticed, for the first time, that the vertical edges of the curtains she stood by were ragged: threadbare patches were made cruelly obvious in the sunlight.
Lady Bridewell raised her lorgnette to the young party outside and then, turning back to Sir Thomas, she said, ‘I should like to present Miss Edwardes at Court in June. When I present my own daughters.’
Sir Thomas fell into a flurry of exclamation. His daughter would be honoured to be presented. He would be honoured. She would prove most worthy of Lady Bridewell’s kind patronage. He spoke too quickly and he tried harder than usual to lengthen his vowels, but he sounded so unlike himself when he said arsk instead of ask or take instead of tek that he often ended up speaking in an odd combination of accents. And then, when embarrassment surfaced through the froth of his stream of speech, he stopped, abruptly, and Lady Bridewell said how well Natalie looked and how her childhood friendship with her daughters was bound to strengthen during the Season. And then she said, ‘My son must take a wife with him to Ansdrie, Sir Thomas. It will make the transition so much
less . . . difficult.’
‘Indeed it will, Lady Bridewell,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘And I wish them well.’ He turned to Lord Ansdrie and then back to Lady Bridewell. ‘But how will he and his wife live at Ansdrie when it is in the state you say it is in?’
He glanced back at Lord Ansdrie and then looked quickly away. It was very peculiar to discuss him as if he were not in the room. But Lady Bridewell looked directly at Sir Thomas and smiled broadly, a very rare thing in his experience, and then she swooped towards him with a rustle of dark skirts.
‘I am quite certain,’ she said, ‘that between us all we shall reach a very happy arrangement.’
Between us all? Very happy? Could Lady Bridewell be about to suggest what he thought her about to suggest?
She sat down, so Sir Thomas also sat down, but so quickly that he forgot to flick his coat tails away and so he had to lean a little backwards. And then Lord Ansdrie stood up.
‘I should like,’ he said, walking towards Sir Thomas, ‘to become better acquainted with your daughter.’
They’d been neighbours for thirteen years.
‘I have been so often away at school and, lately, with the Waterfirth Reservists,’ he said, ‘that I do not know our neighbours as well as I should.’
Sir Thomas tried to keep his mind from forming conclusions.
‘These are, of course, only the preliminaries,’ said Lady Bridewell.
‘We simply wanted,’ said Lord Ansdrie, who was marginally less cryptic than his mother, ‘to inform you of our plans, to make our intentions clear.’
‘Trawton will assist with Miss Edwardes’s gowns,’ said Lady Bridewell.
Natalie had a perfectly good lady’s maid of her own, but perhaps Trawton would dress her better? In the correct style?
‘I shall chaperone her myself,’ said Lady Bridewell. ‘She will be an Ansdrie avant la lettre.’
Sir Thomas folded his lips inward so that his moustache and beard hid his delighted smile. He was glad Lady Bridewell could not see the images that crowded into his mind, for he saw himself again and again at receptions and balls, soirees and dinners, presenting his daughter, the future Lady Ansdrie. But he also understood very well that it was Natalie's dowry that prompted Lady Bridewell to consider her a suitable daughter-in-law. But, in time, his daughter would charm them all and Lord Ansdrie would discover what a brilliant choice he had made, in every respect.

‘When shall you speak to my daughter?’ said Sir Thomas, finding his voice at last and trying to control his lips, which would not be persuaded out of a broad grin.
Lady Bridewell answered, instead of her son. ‘I shall inform Miss Edwardes she will have a Season,’ she said. ‘But otherwise,’ she turned to her son, who nodded, ‘we think it better not to inform her of any but the most peripheral arrangements at this stage.’
Again Lord Ansdrie elaborated. '‘I should like things to take their natural course,’ he said. ‘I should like to get to know Miss Edwardes and I should like her to get to know me, without the obligation that would accompany her knowledge of our - of my - intention towards her.’

Lady Bridewell stood beneath the red-brick portico while Sir Thomas handed Natalie into his landau, a courtesy she never usually extended to them, and then she said, ‘I shall not expect my children to remain in mourning for longer than three months, Sir Thomas. They never knew their uncle and besides he deserves no more.’
Naturally, Natalie questioned him about the short period of mourning as they travelled back up the hill to Hey Tor House, but he only said, ‘You shall discover soon enough, my dear.’
When Sir Thomas was alone in his study at Hey Tor House, when he sat at his desk and looked out through the wide Georgian sash windows towards the wooded hill that led
to Waverton Court to the south and out across the moor to Hey Tor to the west, he did his best to control his feelings of gratification. But it was difficult: he was about to become connected to one of the foremost aristocratic families in the land. He, a man who had risen, in one generation, from grocer to owner of a successful tea-planting enterprise.
He shifted in his chair and turned to look up at the portrait of his late wife. She would not have been impressed with his delight. Nor would she have approved of the whoop of triumph he let out when, later that morning, he tramped across the moor. For Lily Ann never wanted Lady Bridewell to think him a gentleman instead of a man who worked for his living. She took pride in the good, honest man of trade that he was, without affectation. Before they married, when Sir Thomas showed her a Change of Name Deed and said, ‘See here, Lily Ann. See how refined our name will become with the added e,’ she only said, ‘What a family does and how a family behaves is what matters. Fiddling with a name won’t make the slightest difference.’
Sir Thomas turned back from the portrait just in time to catch sight of his daughter riding past the window. She wore a cap, a jacket and breeches and looked for all the world like a stable boy. Sir Thomas stood up and raised his arm to attract her attention, but she did not, or would not, see him. He turned to the west window and watched her open the wooden gate and set off across the moor. He would tell her, at dinner that night, that she must no longer ride alone, and certainly not in those clothes. For she was about to begin a new, elevated life among the very best, and it would not do.