The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [315]
Why hadn’t Wyndham Martell been to see Fanny?
On the face of it his excuses might be reasonable enough. He had come there to get to know Sir Harry Burrard and he wished to place himself at that gentleman’s disposal. Indeed, Sir Harry had kept him quite busy, both in conversations with himself and in meetings with other people of local importance like Mr Drummond. It was surely right to attend to these matters first and it would certainly have been wrong to raise Fanny’s hopes with the prospect of a meeting that might have to be deferred. There was, besides, another problem. It was by no means clear that he would be welcome if he did call at Albion House and he wasn’t sure he really wanted to be thrown out a second time. Seeing Fanny, therefore, was not without complications.
But couldn’t he at least have sent her a message of some kind during all the days he had been there? He could have and he hadn’t.
The truth was – and he knew it perfectly well – he had deliberately kept her waiting.
He liked her, certainly. No, he conceded, he liked her very much. She was kindly and intelligent. She was wellbred. She came from an ancient family and she was a modest heiress. If he were to marry her, it might not be called a brilliant match, but then, as he had overheard a young blood remark jealously in London a week before: ‘With two fine estates, that damned Martell can marry anyone he pleases and still look a hero.’
If he secured one of the Lymington parliamentary seats and married the heiress of the Albion estate he had no doubt that his father and his friends would say he had done well, and he wouldn’t deny that such things were important to him. And if, perhaps, secretly he yearned for something more than such conventional pleasures, he supposed his own political career might provide it.
There was something else he liked about her too. She was modest and she had not attempted to captivate him. Many women in London had tried to do so; it had been flattering at first but soon became a burden. He didn’t mind when some cheeky girl like Louisa Totton set her cap at him, because, whatever her drawbacks, he didn’t think she was sophisticated enough to deceive him much, and she was amusing. But Fanny was an entirely different case. Fanny had a simpler, purer nature, as well as being more intelligent.
And she was waiting for him. If he chose – and he wasn’t sure he did, yet – she was waiting to be his. He did not fear competition. He liked to play and win. But in the matter of marriage, if there were competitors, there was always the chance that the woman’s heart had been divided. And Mr Wyndham Martell wanted a heart that belonged to him and him alone – first to last.
He did not care for games, therefore, in matters of the heart. Unless, of course, it was he who was playing them. Every man knew that if a woman is waiting for you it is no bad thing to make her wait a little longer.
She would be there tonight at Mrs Grockleton’s ball, waiting.
Some people might have said there were too many plants. But the infallible maxim had been applied: if there is any doubt about the appointments of a room or the quality of the guests, then fill the place with flowers. And, so far as the September season allowed, this was what Mrs Grockleton had done. Every imperfection was masked by a late rose or a shrub. The entrance to the Lymington Assembly Rooms this evening might have been mistaken for a plant house.
‘Mr Grockleton,’ she declared as, accompanied by her husband and her children, she surveyed the verdant scene, ‘I am quite in a flutter.’ And if a stout lady in a ball gown can be said to be fluttering, she was. ‘We have refreshments, dancing, cards. I’m sure I’ve done my best. And the guests are …’ She trailed off.
The guests were what in social terms might be described as mixed. Their core, naturally, was provided