‘How extraordinary, to have two handmaidens to your genius,’ Lady Morgan remarked, relishing both Hamish’s and Lavinia’s uneasiness.
Behind them, the riders trotted back to the stables and the onlookers moved gaily onto the grass. Soon the playing field was speckled with brightly coloured bonnets and sober grey and black silk top hats as spectators diligently pressed the upturned grass back into place, pushing at the clods delicately with the tip of a pointed shoe or the toe of a riding boot.
Lady Morgan led their small group determinedly towards the crowd, propelled as much by the possibility of an advantageous encounter as obligation. The others followed somewhat reluctantly.
‘You do both of us a disservice; we are more than handmaidens,’ Hamish said as he sidestepped a pile of horse manure.
‘Indeed? James, are you to foist another tome onto the innocent public?’
‘Several, my dear—one on the rituals of the Amazonian Indians, another on the jungle’s flora.’
‘Such dedication from all three of you. The Colonel’s study must be a veritable hothouse.’
The Colonel knocked a grassy sod with his walking stick; it went flying. Ignoring his evident irritation, Lady Morgan continued merrily.
‘Whatever your roles, you do make a très jolie ménage à trois.’
Outraged, Hamish took her arm and marched her away from the others.
‘You have overstepped the mark, Lady Morgan. Surely I am the true cause of all this peevishness?’
Opening her parasol, Lady Morgan tilted her dismayed face away from him. Staring down at the torn grass—so carefully cultivated, so easily destroyed by a game—she realised with a jolt that the last remnants of affection between them, and all possibility of seduction, had evaporated. Feeling very old indeed, Lady Morgan looked around at the crowd, the young women vying for the attention of the handsome polo players. So much of her identity had been invested in this notion of eternal beauty: a masquerade she had maintained her whole life. For two decades she had used her lovers like an elixir, their youth inspiring her wit, their presence generating an allure to dress up an aging façade.
Those who wavered she won over with gifts or the tantalising promise of social promotion. For those who were offspring of the merchant class, Lady Morgan offered an invaluable introduction into an elite circle that offered not just prestige but extraordinary professional opportunities.
‘Morgan’s Finishing School’ was the satirical moniker by which the young blades referred to the wealthy widow. An affair with her was an almost obligatory rite of passage, and most certainly an entry into the season and its ever-important business contacts. They may have ridiculed her in the clubs, but many of her former lovers still carried a secret appreciation for her passion, her ability to enrich their notion of culture—both the getting and cultivation of it, and, finally, for the core of sentimentality buried under her famous irony.
Oh, ingrates, all of them! Furious, and profoundly saddened, Lady Morgan forced herself to wave at a passing acquaintance. How wrong I was to advise Lavinia Huntington to ignore her husband’s indulgences, she concluded, her fixed smile aching as she strove not to appear in the slightest part dejected.
‘Did you hear me?’ Hamish insisted, frustrated by her aloofness. ‘I will not have my good friend and his wife insulted.’
Embarrassed at being confronted in a public place surrounded by her peers, many of whom would relish her discomfort, Lady Morgan hoped that her flushed face might pass as a reaction to the summer heat.
‘Mr Campbell, I will not tolerate such intimidation. Does the wife know about the true nature of your friendship with the Colonel?’
‘And I will not tolerate your attempts to manipulate me into an affection I do not feel. Good afternoon, Lady Morgan.’ He tipped his hat to her and walked away.
On the other side of the field, Lady Gillingham lowered her binoculars.
‘It appears that dear Lady Morgan has lost the last of her flock,’ the stately dowager remarked to her younger companion, the recently widowed Lady Dove.
‘I have always thought it prudent to keep one’s paramours within the aristocracy,’ Lady Dove replied.
‘Indeed. One may expect a greater degree of discretion in the right circles. Not to mention cleanliness.’
Squinting again through the binoculars, Lady Gillingham noted a minute breach in Lady Morgan’s composure, a slump of her shoulders that suggested an unexpected vulnerability. In the next instant, she was as before, gaily laughing and entirely ignoring Hamish Campbell and his companions. However, the fatal observation had been made.
‘It does seem that, finally, poor Frances has faltered,’ Lady Gillingham concluded with satisfaction.
Lavinia immersed herself in a novel by George Sand as a distraction from the discomfort of the bumpy highway. The Huntingtons were returning from the polo match and had offered Hamish Campbell a place in their carriage. The three sat in absolute silence. Lavinia imagined herself as one of the author’s misunderstood heroines, noble in her pursuit of love over conventional expectation to marry for position and security. Surely there can be nothing more laudable, she concluded, looking across at the Colonel.
The countryside rolled past in a series of tableaux. Lavinia, drawn from her book by her thoughts, stared out of the window. A farmer ploughed a muddy field; a group of men were busy raking straw into a stack, the dried grass thrown up like snow in a storm; a young girl herded a flock of pigs down a country lane, a terrier snapping at the creatures’ muddy trotters. Lavinia thought how Aidan would have enjoyed seeing the snorting animals.
As they entered a village, the rutted lane became a cobblestoned road and Lavinia could hear the horses’ hooves clattering on the hard surface. They passed a Tudor inn that had probably stood there for the past four hundred years, the rim of its thatched roof almost buried in the wildflowers that grew in clusters around the building. Beside it stood the town hall, built of Georgian grey stone; next to that, two tenement-style houses of garish red brick, newly built, the scaffolding still jutting out like an awkward skeleton.
A recently constructed railway station came next, and Lavinia guessed the tenement houses must be accommodation for the railway workers. Many of the villages on the outskirts of London were expanding, boosted by the influx of workers now able to commute on the new railway system.
A duck flapped lazily across the glassy surface of the pond in a small green at the centre of the village. Soon, even this quintessentially English landmark might disappear, Lavinia observed.