The Buttonmaker’s Daughter. Merryn Allingham

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СКАЧАТЬ teetering on the tallest of ladders with one of his boys holding its feet, while he strung bunting from tree to tree. There were men everywhere, it seemed – scurrying, carrying, calling to companions. A few women, too, who had come from the village and were setting up stalls from where tomorrow they’d sell toys and fruits and home-made sweetmeats.

      This morning her mother had insisted on her company in the morning room, and she had spent the last few hours reading while Alice sewed. But every so often, she had laid aside the book and glanced longingly through the window. If she were not allowed to escape completely, at least she might do something practical. Perhaps join the scene unfolding below. She could run errands for the women on their stalls or organise refreshment tables for the big tent. Mrs Lacey was busy enough without having a marquee foisted on her – the housekeeper would welcome her help, she knew. But she was not allowed to be useful. Her function was purely decorative and her mother’s morning room was where she must spend the day.

      Her spirits had been high when earlier she’d watched Joshua leave for a drive to Worthing. He had wanted her to go with him, but she’d excused herself on the pretext of a lengthy journey. His pursuit of another precious vase for his collection was likely to take some time. With her father absent and the gardens filled with noise and movement, she’d hoped to slip from the house and make a swift visit to the temple. But her mother had swooped on her directly they rose from the breakfast table, and she’d had no opportunity. She wanted to speak to Aiden, wanted that he attend the fête tomorrow, for amid the hustle of the fair they could surely meet and talk unnoticed. She had barely seen the young man these last few weeks, now that her walks had been curtailed and Joshua’s presence constant. Her father seemed always to be just out of sight but sufficiently near to be aware of her every move.

      Unless she could get a message to the young architect, he wouldn’t come. Perhaps it was as well that he didn’t; she found herself wanting to see him a little too much, and it worried her. Last year, she’d returned from London clear in her mind that her world needed no man. She certainly didn’t want to marry. She looked at the Pankhurst women – they led splendid lives, lives of power and excitement, and not a man in sight. And really, why should she want to see Aiden Kellaway so much, since she’d met him for a matter of minutes only? Yet she knew she did.

      She was fascinated. He was like no other man she’d encountered: not the awkward boys at the few local dances she’d been permitted to attend, or the fulsome young men of the London Season with their smooth tongues and uncaring hearts. Aiden stood apart and his difference entranced her. She loved his misty green eyes, his soft brown hair, the lilt in his voice. Or was it his intelligence, the way he could cut through pretence and divine what was real, what was important? He was clever, that was certain, but it wasn’t that either. Was it then his enthusiasm for life? Or the sadness she’d glimpsed behind the things he didn’t say? Perhaps it was all those things.

      She had drifted through the past few weeks wearing what she hoped was an impassive face, but all the time she’d been fighting a joy, that despite her best efforts, bubbled within. It was silly, ridiculous, but oddly liberating. Liberation, though, could play false, and her new sense of freedom might well end in disaster. If she doubted the danger, she had only to remember that the friendship with Aiden was not one she could admit to, let alone proclaim. She would do well to stay heart whole.

      ‘Come away from the window, my dear,’ Alice urged. ‘If you lack employment, why not work on your embroidery? It’s an age since you last took it up.’

      She looked with dislike at the half-finished tablecloth tossed to one side. French knots and satin stitch had long ago lost their appeal and she couldn’t prevent an audible sigh.

      ‘What is it?’ Her mother was immediately anxious.

      ‘Nothing, Mama. I am a trifle tired, that’s all,’ she lied.

      Alice was nested comfortably deep in the wing chair that was her favourite, but at this she put aside her crochet work and folded her hands in her lap. She is preparing to offer me unwanted advice, Elizabeth thought in irritation, but still she could not prevent a stab of pity. Her mother looked old and careworn beyond her years.

      As a child, she had instinctively sided with her father. He’d been the one to pet her, to buy her the most expensive toys or take her to the most exciting places. Once, when they’d been living in Birmingham – though now she could hardly remember it – he’d taken her to a factory he owned. The noise of the machines had been like thunder in her ears but it was a thunder that produced miracles – the smallest, most beautiful buttons she had ever seen: tortoiseshell and jet, ivory and glass, silk and abalone, the latter hand-crafted from the fragile Macassar shells fished from East Indian seas. She still had a linen bag full of Joshua’s exquisite designs. No wonder she had thought him king of the world.

      It was her mother who had been the enemy, who had made her do things she didn’t want to do, or stopped her from doing things she did: Pull up your stockings, Elizabeth; Smooth out your dress; stop running; sit quietly. For years, her mother’s unhappiness had barely touched her. Until lately. Lately, she had begun to realise just how much Alice had suffered.

      She picked up the hated tablecloth, hoping to deter any homily, and had placed just one listless stitch when the door flew open and her father marched into the room. He was back already. The excursion to Worthing had been unusually swift and this visit to her mother’s morning room even more unusual – she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him here. Almost certainly, there was more trouble brewing. She had a moment of panic, thinking someone had told him of the few meetings she’d had with Aiden, a chance observer that neither had noticed.

      It was not the young architect, though, that was on her father’s mind, but Henry Fitzroy. Joshua strode across the room to glare down at his wife. At any moment, she thought, Alice might disappear from view, shrinking into the very fabric of the chair.

      ‘He’s coming, did you know that?’ When his wife did not answer, he raised his voice. ‘Henry Fitzroy. Your dear brother. He’s coming to the fête.’

      ‘That is surely good news,’ Alice said at last. There was only the slightest tremor to her voice.

      ‘And how do you come to that conclusion?’

      ‘If Henry attends, it will say he is happy for us to hold the fête. It will be an endorsement. An approval of Summerhayes.’

      ‘What kind of rubbish is that?’

      Alice blinked. ‘It’s hardly rubbish. If Henry attends a fête that his family has hosted for centuries, he will recognise our right to be here, your right to create the gardens. Recognise that it’s just for us to take water from the stream.’

      Elizabeth was unconvinced by her mother’s logic, but at least it seemed to be circumventing Joshua’s immediate rage.

      ‘If you like to see it that way.’ He grunted in a dissatisfied fashion.

      ‘I think we should. Being at odds with Amberley is pointless, and if we have the chance to talk to Henry, it could prove useful.’ Elizabeth saw her mother give him a meaningful look, but Joshua merely grunted again.

      She must interrogate Alice on that look, and was deciding on the best time to broach the subject, when the heavy crash of a body against the wood panelling of the morning-room door brought the conversation to an abrupt halt.

      ‘What the devil!’ Her father spun round.

      ‘I’ll find out what’s going on,’ she said quickly, abandoning the embroidery to a nearby chair.

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