Chapter 2: Chez Nous

The moment I had seen Caroline when the cab had turned into Queen Street all the love I held for her came flooding back like a tidal wave, sweeping away any and all doubts. As Annette Blanchard had predicted, once re-acquainted with Caroline my love for her would be as strong as the last time I had seen her. Annette Blanchard had known me better than I knew myself, and I remembered the dear sweet lovely woman with deep affection and love.
Would I have fallen in love with Annette Blanchard if Caroline had remained in England? Who can say, but I retained the unsettling thought Annette may have been a surrogate for Caroline Ashford, and the love I felt for the one was a reflection of the love I held for the other. But what of the night with Annette at Chateau Blanchard when we became one, and I believed myself in love with her? Would I be able to achieve a similar state of union with Caroline?
As we gazed into each other's eyes, with her clasping our son to her bosom, I knew that I would.

The next afternoon I called at her house in Berkley Square, and asked her to marry me. The butler showed me into the withdrawing room, a cosy room at the front of the house, and I waited until he removed himself and closed the door before enfolding her in my arms and showering kisses on her face, her lips, her eyes, and her neck. Caroline responded with matching ardour. Had she not kept a cooler head than mine we would finished up the chaise longue removing clothing, eager to attain the objective which we both desired since the moment our eyes had met the day before.
"Much as I want you inside me we must curb our lust until a more fitting time and place." Caroline gasped, pulling herself away from me with difficulty, her face flushed with passion and her breasts heaving. My plunger strained against my trousers, and I was breathing like an old man after running a hundred yards. I reluctantly acknowledged mounting my hostess in her withdrawing room, before even taking tea, inappropriate, and I took charge of my emotions.
We sat on the chaise longue, and it was then I asked her to marry me. I went on my knees before her; took her hands in mine, gazed into her eyes and hoped all my love for her was showing in mine. "My dearest love. Marry me, and make me the happiest man in the world."
"Of course I will, sweetheart, and how romantic you are." We kissed, holding each other tightly, then, as our passion mounted, broke off the embrace before things became too indecorous.
"I shall get a Special Licence from a magistrate tomorrow and we can be married by the end of the week." I announced.
Caroline sighed. "Alas, much as I would like to be your wife by the week's end I'm afraid the Attainder Laws prevents our marriage until the end of November of eighteen nineteen at the earliest."
"The Laws of Attainder? But they were used in cases of treason and suchlike, how does our marriage come to be subject to those antiquated laws?"
She settled beside me and explained. "It was made clear to me, or rather to my father, when Jarvis and I married the Braxton-Clarks would evoke a schedule in the Attainder Laws to entail the Ashford lands and titles should I remarry in less than three years after the death of my husband, or five years if I divorced him."
"I never encountered such a schedule during my time as an apprentice scrivener. I shall ask my brother Isaac whether the Braxton-Clarks have any recourse to law. I believe the main articles of the Law of Attainder were repealed over twenty years ago."
Caroline shook her head. "For reasons I will explain later I do not wish the Braxton-Clarks have any cause to interfere or investigate into my life, especially into a marriage with you." She pulled the bell rope which summoned the house maid. "We shall have a dish of tea served now, Emily. Please ask cook to include some of those pastries bought this morning from Mister Fortnum's establishment."

Emily placed the tea pot and the accompanying receptacles, with a plate of what appeared to be rather inviting pastries, on a small round table. Caroline poured two dishes of tea, and I burned my fingers on the hot bowl. She noted the etiquette of tea drinking and I were strangers and gave me instruction in the art.
"It is better to wait a few minutes until the fierceness of the heat disperses, and then lift the dish by the rim, twixt thumb and forefinger of both hands." Caroline lifted her dish and drank with a dainty ease; I followed her movements less daintily.
After finishing her tea she spoke in a lowered voice. "The staff in this house are hired from an agency and are not my own retainers, other than Domina, the Bermudian girl who is John-Jarvis' nursemaid. Gossip is a currency here in London, and every household's servants pass tittle-tattle and titbits of information to the scurrilous rags that serve as the capital's newspapers." She gave a sniff of disdain. "My father held those papers, especially the London Gleaner and the Citizens' Inquirer, in the deepest contempt, as do I. Father thought neither paper worthy to be used even to wipe his ar ... to wipe his backside. I know the editors of those so called 'newspapers' are eager to be the first to print something derogatory about me. Both men are friends, or rather acquaintances, of Cornelius Braxton-Clark and since the death of his son, for which he holds me responsible, he has determined to bring down the Ashford Family. Discovering me in a compromising position, or flouting the social niceties of widowhood, or planning matrimony in defiance of the Laws of Attainder would be his ideal."

There was something Caroline did not want bruited abroad, and here in the town house, without her trusted family retainers on hand, she needed to be circumspect in her dealings, and especially in any activity which would have the eyes of Cornelius Braxton-Clark or the newspapers drawn to her. However, she had accepted my proposal of marriage and I asked when our wedding could take place. "I want to marry you as soon as possible, wherever and whenever will be agreeable to me, I just want you as wife at the earliest opportunity."
Caroline kissed me. "My love, I can't bear to be apart from you for a moment. We have already suffered for an inordinate length of time, but the earliest date we could marry would be the twenty fourth of November, eighteen nineteen. Three years to the day my husband died." She was too polite to add " ... the day when you shot him."
"The twenty fourth is my birthday."
"Then I will ensure you will receive a gift you will enjoy unwrapping." She smiled and continued. "As for a venue I should like to be married in the church of the Holy Cross in the village of Bearsted, where I lived until I was twenty. Ashford House has been the seat of my family since Rafe Ashford was ennobled nearly two hundred years ago. However if you would prefer to be married here in London, or at your own birthplace..." She stopped mid-sentence. "Where were you born? I know so little about you but here I am discussing our wedding preparations." She laughed and hugged me. "We have so much to learn about each other, and it will be a supreme pleasure finding out all about you."
"I was born in Grantham – a small market town in the County of Lincolnshire." I said.
"I have heard of both the town and the county; my father corresponded with a Lord Brownlee, or some such name, who lives near Grantham, but I could not point to it on a map. I imagined it far to the north, perhaps near Scotland?"
I burst out laughing. "No my sweet, nowhere near Scotland, and I'm surprised someone who travelled all those many miles to Bermuda does not know her own country. Although I must confess I did not know where Bermuda lay until Anne..." I stopped, but too late.
"Until Anne? Come now Elijah, complete what you were about to say." Her voice soft, but with a hint of acerbity.
"Until Annette Blanchard showed me the island on the globe in her study. I had returned the body of her son, killed at Waterloo, to Chateau Blanchard."
Caroline apologised immediately. "Oh, do forgive me Elijah. I have no right to ask you these things. There is much you don't know of me, and I should not press you for details until we can both apprise each other of our lives before we met."
"You have every right to ask all you wish to know of me, my love. You hold my heart, and therefore also deserve to hold the knowledge of all I have been, and done."
"I shall travel back to Kent tomorrow." She said after a pleasant interlude with our tongues and arms entwined. "This town house can be closed and the staff returned to the agency. Once in the company of my loyal servants I will be able to speak more freely to you... " She gave me one of those lascivious looks which I remembered from the night of passion we had spent in the White Hart. " ... and we can make unrestrained love, without worrying about our cries of pleasure being noted, although it might keep the animals in the fields and horses in the stable awake. Can you leave London sometime soon and join me?"
"I am to report to Horse Guards in the morning. Colonel Slade may not need me, and I am due time to recuperate after my injury. I shall take furlough and come down to Kent as soon as I am able." We agreed I would send a galloper to Ashford House when knowing the day I would leave London for Kent, and how many days I intended staying. We made a lingering loving farewell and I made my back to 18 Queen Street walking on air — a betrothed man.

I elected to walk from Caroline's house to Queen Street. I could have made my way across Green Park and then St James Park, but the former was a well-known haunt of whores and the latter of footpads. I had no desire to meet either class of citizen so instead walked along Piccadilly to its junction with Whitehall at Charing Cross. Dusk had fallen by the time I passed Horse Guards, and lamp light streamed out from many of the windows. I briefly considered calling in on Colonel Slade, but thought it better to meet him when fully refreshed in the morning, so continued on to Queen Street. It was just as well I didn't visit the Bureau as on entering my house my nostril were assailed by the aroma of Mrs Bridges' well acclaimed steak and kidney pudding. I then remembered I had guests for dinner.

The dinner party consisted of Matilde, sat in the place of honour on my right, with my sister Becky on my left. To Becky's left sat Patrick Jane, my companion on the wild dash to Bristol in the failed attempt to stop the sailing of Western Star. On his left was Zinnia Teazle, daughter of my erstwhile employer, and my sister's friend and companion — indeed they shared a house in Bloomsbury Square. To her left sat my good friend Doctor Sebastian Armitage – Krish to his friends – and to whom I owed my life twice over. He had been the lover of Caroline Ashford, long before I met her. The idea of them having a past sexual relationship did trouble me somewhat — and I was jealous of his longer, and more intimate, knowledge of her.
It was a convivial dinner. The three girls had been shopping and sightseeing and Matilde expressed her delight in the many attractions of London. Patrick Jane hardly took his eyes from her during dinner, and I could see he was smitten – I hoped Matilde would treat him gently as I was well-disposed towards the young man, who had an encyclopaedic knowledge and the capacity of memory to service it.

My sister Becky, or Rebekah to give her baptismal name, was somewhat subdued. She was an accomplished author, writing under the nom de plume of Becky Sharpe, and I wondered if she was having trouble completing her latest novel. I am aware that authors sometimes suffer 'writers block', when inspiration is replaced by perspiration, and nothing creative is produced.
I resolved to have a word with her after the meal. We had finished dessert. The gentlemen had glasses of brandy and the girls glasses of a rather pleasant hock, when Zinnia, who had been giving me searching glances throughout the meal, said. "Matilde was greatly impressed to be introduced to a Countess: how fortuitous was it that she should be outside the house when your carriage arrived." Before she could continue Matilde interrupted.
"Ah oui, a very gracious lady. She greatly reminded me of my late, much loved and sadly missed, employer, Madame Annette Blanchard. Did you not think the same, Jacques?"
I nodded my agreement, while wondering why, if Caroline was so eager to keep our association a secret, she had turned up to welcome me home, and how the dickens did she know I would be returning on the day I had.
Krish saved the day, as he had so many times in the past.
"Lady Caroline and I are childhood friends. She is an accomplished playwright, and had heard Becky giving a reading from of one of her novels at the Earl of Monmouth's town house a week ago. Caroline wished to discuss the idea of performing a previous novel of Becky's, 'Grantus', on stage. I had mentioned to her Becky's brother would be returning home which might be an opportune moment to meet her at his residence in Queen Street. I think Caroline felt she would be intruding when she observed such a crowd waiting, and was about to leave when Matilde and Jack arrived."
Zinnia suspected something. She had a lawyer's instinct when the truth is being skewed, and said, in a musing tone of voice.
"Why would she stop and speak to Jack and Matilde if she felt it not quite the time or place to speak to Becky?"
I was struck dumb; my mind whirled as I thought of what best to say, but it was Matilde who answered.
"Lady Caroline stopped to ask Jacques if he would pass her visiting card on to his sister, and then asked who I was, and Jacques kindly introduced me. Was that not what happened Jacques." I nodded, thankful for Matilde's quick wits.
"I neglected to pass on the card, Becky." Fortunately I was wearing the waistcoat wherein I had placed the card, and withdrew it with a flourish and handed it to Becky, who glanced at the card with little interest.
"I doubt the countess will want to collaborate with me on such an old novel which has been published for at least four years, not when a book reputed to be written by Shelley has just been published." She pushed back her chair from the table and rushed from the room, leaving us all open-mouthed at her action.