Lament for a lost lover

“Harriet Main,” she repeated softly. And I guessed she was thinking of how Harriet had wantonly taken Charles Condey from her and then refused him. “I am going to change things at Eversleigh, Charlotte,” I said. “We shall have balls and banquets. I think we should. And then you will ...”

“Yes.“ she said.

“Perhaps you’ll find out that there are other men in the world besides Charles Condey.”

“Oh, I always knew that,” she replied, smiling at me.

I’ll do it, I told myself. I’ll bring her out. I’ll find a husband for her. I’ll stop her brooding on the past. I had freed myself from it. So should she. Yes, that was how I felt during the months that followed. I was free from the ghost of the past. Edwin had never really loved me. A bitter revelation, but it was proving helpful. I could not let my resentment against him smoulder. I was someone else’s wife now.

And Carleton. What can I say except that he carried me along on the waves of passion like a frail craft on hitherto uncharted seas? I began to wait to be alone with him, to long for him, to give myself up to him entirely.

I understood so much of what my mother had told me. I knew how she had fought against such a passion. I understood her story as I had never been able to before. She came to Eversleigh for the wedding celebration with my father and the rest of the family. Lucas could not come because his wife was having a baby. My parents were delighted. I could see they liked Carleton. My mother told me confidentially that she could clearly understand the attraction, and she was sure I should be even happier in my second marriage than I had been in my first. I realized then that, although she had considered Edwin a suitable husband, she had felt he was so young and not quite as serious as she would like the husband of her darling daughter to be.

Carleton talked a great deal with my father. They discussed the state of the country-my father from the military angle, Carleton from that of politics. They were clearly interested in each other.

After they had returned to Far Flamstead, my mother wrote frequently and they were all delighted at the prospect of the birth of my child.

Happy days they were. Uncle Toby was beside himself with delight.

“There is nothing pleases me so much as to see young people happily married. There is nothing like marriage. Married blissah, it should be the dream of us all.” He became maudlin when he had drunk too much wine, talking of all he had missed. And now he was forced to go and watch pretty women on the stage and try to live vicariously the adventures they portrayed there. If he had married he might have had sons and daughters by now. Ah, it was sad. Life had passed him by.

He was constantly going to London. Carleton said there was riot a play in London that he had not seen. He was either at the King’s House or the Duke of York’s. He was an honoured patron there and well known in the green rooms. “Poor Uncle Toby,” said Carleton. “He’s trying to catch up with youth.” Christmas came and went, and with the New Year I began to be more and more aware of my child. Sally Nullens was joyous. Nothing could delight her more than the prospect of having a baby in the house. “The boys are growing out of babyhood,” she said. “My word, they’re a handful. It will be pleasant to have a little one.” Carleton was the devoted husband. He was beside himself with joy, and I realized how frustrated he must have felt during all the years when he was married to Barbary. I knew he was thinking of a son. I kept reminding him that our child might well be a girl.

He said it wouldn’t matter. We should have boys in time.

“Pray allow me to deliver this one first,” I retorted.

Indeed, they were happy days. We bantered our way through them, always taunting each other, and there were nights tender more than passionate now that my pregnancy was advancing.

I was no longer mourning for Edwin. I realized that I had kept that grief alive. Someone had said that the wise drown their sorrows, and it is only the foolish who teach them to swim. I thought that was apt. I had nourished my grief, I had brooded on it; I had built a shrine to Edwin in my heart-and I had worshipped a false God. Feet of clay indeed!

I was longing for my baby to be born.

She was born on the seventh of July, and I called her Priscilla. Carleton tried to pretend that he was not disappointed by the sex of the child, but he was; but to me she was perfect, and from the moment I saw her I would not have exchanged her for any other.

Priscilla. My Priscilla. I was taken right back to the days when I had first held Edwin in my arms. How dearly I had loved him; he had been more than my own child; he had been the consolation for the loss of his father. Priscilla I loved none the less. I loved her because she was a girl. She would be more completely mine. If Carleton was disappointed in her sex, I was not.