The Love Child

I felt very tender towards her. Beside her, I felt worldly beyond imagining. She had lost her first husband when he was very young and had lamented for him over many years, deceived into thinking that he was the perfect gentle knight when, all the time he had been professing devotion to her, he had been Harriet’s lover. Yet my mother had overcome that to walk into a lifelong romance with my father. In a way life had protected her as it never had me. I had loved and borne a child out of wedlock; I had been caught up in intrigue and had spent such a night with a man who seemed to me like a monster of iniquity; and now I was living the quiet country life like a matron who has never strayed from the conventional paths. There was so much which I could not explain to my mother.

But now we both feared for the men we loved and that brought us together. There were times when I almost told her what had happened to me, but I restrained myself in time.

So, there were those occasions when Leigh came home and we planned for the future, but although I longed for him while he was away, when we were together we never quite reached that blissful contentment which I knew should have been ours. Always the memory of Beaumont Granville would be there to torment me, to jeer at me, to remind me of my humiliating submission. If I could have disguised this from Leigh I should have been happier, but he was aware that something was between us and deeply hurt by it; and I began to fear that in tune it could corrode our relationship and ruin our marriage.

Damaris was a quiet, reflective child. She was clever at her lessons and Emily’s favourite. I was glad of that. Emily’s devotion to Carlotta had waned a little, which was largely due to the behaviour of Carlotta.

Carlotta was wild, impetuous, given to flashes of temper when she would say whatever came into her mind. Damaris was gentle and never hurt anyone. I remember the day during a very hot summer when she came running to me in great distress, telling me that the poor world was broken. She had seen cracks hi the parched soil and it had distressed her because she thought that anything which was broken must be painful.

She loved animals and more than once had brought me a wounded bird to heal. One was a gull she had found on the beach. “It had a broken wing,” she cried, “and the others were pecking at it.”

Damaris was a pretty child, but before the blazing good looks of Carlotta, any child must seem insignificant.

There was no doubt that Carlotta was going to be a great beauty. She had never gone through any plain stages as so many beauties-to-be do. That outstanding colouring was always there. The soft, dark, curling hair and the vivid blue eyes. Her hair was not as dark as Harriet’s and her eyes were of a lighter blue. I had only seen one person with those violet eyes and near black hair and that was Harriet herself. But Carlotta had the same sort of beauty, and many people remarked that Carlotta took after her mother, which never failed to amuse Harriet.

Carlotta at thirteen was well formed, in advance of most girls of her age. She had been born with the art of attracting people, and I had to confess this gave me some cause for alarm. She was a little like my grandmother, Bersaba Tolworthy. They had something apart from beauty which drew men to them. Harriet had it even now when she was a little plump, and my grandmother had retained it all her life.

Carlotta was often at Eyot Abbas. She was very fond of Harriet, still believing her to be her mother. But it was not so much this supposed relationship which held them together as the fact that they were two of a kind. Harriet gave entertainments at her house and often staged plays. Carlotta always wanted the chief part in these and Harriet was content to give these to her.

“For the sake of the play,” she said. “Carlotta should have gone on the stage. Of course it’s looks mostly. She would have brought them in! If King Charles were alive he would move heaven and earth to get that one into his bed.” She laughed at me.

“Now you are looking like Prim Priscilla. That child will have lovers, mark my words.

What we have to make sure of is that it doesn’t happen too soon and with the wrong one.”

Carlotta had escaped from Emily Philpot’s jurisdiction and we had engaged a governess for her, a pleasant young woman who, like Christabel, had come from a vicarage. “Always the best background,” said my mother.

So Amelia Garston entered our household, and Carlotta spent certain reluctant hours in the schoolroom. Emily did not resent this because she had long realized that Carlotta was too much for her to handle, and in any case she had my dear, gentle Damaris, who responded so cleverly to learning and was a good child into the bargain.