Kate Morton - The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

She shivered lightly and for a moment I thought that Teddy would take off his jacket and drape it around her shoulders the way heroes did in the romantic novels Emmeline liked to read. He did not, rather said something else, something that caused her to look again toward the sky. He reached gently for her hand, hanging lightly by her side, and she stiffened slightly as his fingers grazed her own. He turned her hand so that he could gaze upon her pale forearm then lifted it, ever so slowly, toward his own mouth, bending his head so that his lips met the cool band of skin between her gloves and stole.

She watched his dark head bow to deliver its kiss, but she did not pull her arm away. I could see her chest, rising and falling as her breath quickened.

I shivered then, wondering whether his lips were warm, his moustache prickly.

After a long moment, he stood and looked at her, still holding her hand. He said something to which she nodded slightly.

And then he walked away.

She watched him go. Only when he had disappeared did her free hand move to stroke the other.

In the wee hours of the morning, the ball officially over, I prepared Hannah for bed. Emmeline was already asleep, dreaming of silk and satin and swirling dancers, but Hannah sat silently before the vanity as I removed her gloves, button by button. Her body temperature had loosened them and I was able to remove them with my fingers rather than with the special contraption I had needed to put them on. As I reached the pearls at her wrist, she pulled away her hand and said, ‘I want to tell you something, Grace.’

‘Yes, miss?’

‘I haven’t told anybody else.’ She hesitated, glanced toward the closed door and lowered her voice. ‘You have to promise not to tell. Not Myra, nor Alfred, nor anyone.’

‘I can keep a secret, miss.’

‘Of course you can. You have kept my secrets before.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Mr Luxton has asked me to marry him.’ She glanced at me uncertainly. ‘He says that he’s in love with me.’

I was unsure how to answer. To feign surprise felt disingenuous. Again, I took her hand in mine. This time there was no resistance and I resumed my task. ‘Very good, miss.’

‘Yes,’ she said, chewing the inside of her cheek. ‘I suppose it is.’

Her eyes met mine and I had the distinct feeling I had failed some sort of test. I looked away, slipped the first glove off her hand like a discarded second skin and began on the other. Silently, she watched my fingers. A nerve flickered beneath the skin of her wrist. ‘I haven’t given him an answer yet.’

She continued to look at me, waiting, and still I refused to meet her eyes. ‘Yes, miss,’ I said.

She met her own gaze in the mirror as I slipped off her glove.

‘He says he loves me. Can you imagine that?’ She regarded herself as if for the first time, as if trying to learn her own features for fear that next time she looked they may be changed.

Why didn’t I tell her then, all that I had heard? The machinations leading to what she imagined was a spontaneous declaration? I suppose I didn’t think she was giving serious thought to his proposal. She was flattered by his attentions-that was understandable, he was a handsome and successful man. But marriage? She had made her feelings about marriage clear.

And perhaps I was right. Perhaps at that time she had no intention of accepting. Was merely savouring the thrill of having been chosen. It is hard to say. Whatever the case, it hardly matters. For later that night something happened to change everything.

Just before dawn, far across the plains of England, Frederick’s factory caught fire. It was swift and spectacular and utterly devastating. According to the newspapers, the building was completely destroyed, stripped so that only a shell remained. Mrs Townsend’s cousin who lived on the road to Ipswich, wrote that the motor cars inside were like carcasses, charred black and covered by soot. Her letter said the smell of burning rubber hung about the village long after the last ember stopped glowing.

The fire brigade was called but by the time the engines arrived it was too late. The men could only stand and shake their heads and say what a pity it was, and how unusual for a factory to burn like that in the middle of winter. Not like summer, when the sun made metal hot and all it took was a piece of overheated machinery to ignite the timber frame and send the whole building up. No, an inferno in the middle of winter was damn near unheard of. And then the police were called.

There were whispers in the local village. About Mr Frederick and the troubles he’d been having making payments to his staff. His foreman, Jack Bridges, had waited a month for his last cheque and-as he told Mrs Bridges, who in turn told the ladies of her church group, one of whom was Mrs Townsend’s cousin-if Lord Ashbury hadn’t been such a good man he’d have told him to stick his job, would’ve gone back to working at the steel factory in the next town which had a strong union and where employees were paid above the award.

Of course, none of these details were known to us at Riverton for a week or two. The fire happened on the Sunday and the house party continued through to Monday. The house was full of guests who had come a long way in the middle of winter and were determined to have a good time. Thus, we continued our duties, serving tea, making up rooms and delivering meals.

Mr Frederick, however, had no such compunction to carry on as normal and, while his guests made themselves at home, eating his food, reading his books and tut-tutting about his factory, he remained sequestered in his study. Only when the last car pulled away did he emerge and begin the roaming that was to be habit with him until his last days: noiseless, ghost-like, his facial nerves tightening and knotting with the sums and scenarios that must have tormented him.

The lawyers began to make regular visits and Miss Starling was called from the village to locate official letters from the filing system. There were whisperings about unpaid insurance bills, but Mr Hamilton dismissed them and said we were not to listen to idle gossip. The Master was not the sort to be lax where business was concerned and it was bound to be a mix-up of some kind. Mr Hamilton’s gaze would then be cast in Miss Starling’s direction, hungry for a confirmation that was never forthcoming. Day in, day out she was required in Mr Frederick’s study, emerging hours later, clothes sombre, face wan, to lunch downstairs with us. We were impressed and annoyed in equal measure by the way she kept to herself, never divulging so much as a word of what went on behind the closed door.

Lady Violet, still sick in bed, was to be spared the news. The doctor said there was nothing he could do for her now and if we valued our lives we were to keep away. For it was no ordinary head cold that had her in its grips, but a particularly virulent influenza, said to have come all the way from Spain. It was God’s cruel show of attrition, the doctor mused, that for millions of good people who survived four years of war, death was to be a caller at the dawn of peace.

Faced with the dire state of her friend, Lady Clementine’s ghoulish taste for disaster and death was tempered somewhat, as was her fear. She ignored the doctor’s warning, arranging herself in an armchair next to Lady Violet and chatting blithely of life outside the warm, dark bedroom. She spoke of the ball’s success, the hideous dress worn by Lady Pamela Wroth, and then she declared that she had every reason to believe Hannah would soon be engaged to Mr Theodore Luxton, heir to his family’s massive fortune.

Whether Lady Clementine knew more than she let on, or merely plied her friend with hope in her hour of need, she showed a gift for prophesy. For next morning, the engagement was announced. And when Lady Violet succumbed to her flu, she drifted into death’s arms a happy woman.