Chapter I — The Woman in the Garden

Belvoir Castle, Leicestershire — November 1878

There are families which appear to have been created by Providence for the particular purpose of demonstrating to the rest of mankind the advantages of ancient blood, inherited wealth and an almost supernatural capacity for regarding obligation as a form of happiness. The Montclares of Rutland belonged to this distinguished class. For nearly three centuries their name had stood upon deeds, monuments, parliamentary records and the brass plates of gentlemen who had been buried with considerably more ceremony than affection. They possessed land in four counties, a London residence in Belgrave Square, a hunting lodge in Leicestershire, a private chapel, a collection of portraits sufficiently large to discourage visitors and, above all, the ancient title of Duke of Rutland.

The present holder of that title was Charles Montclare, a man of thirty-six years, handsome in the severe fashion which becomes a gentleman accustomed to being painted, observed and obeyed, and possessed of that particular reserve which is sometimes mistaken for wisdom and occasionally for indifference. He had inherited the dukedom nine years earlier when his elder brother died unexpectedly abroad, and with it the enormous obligations which the dead so conveniently leave to the living. From the moment the coronet descended upon his head, Charles had been told what he must preserve, what he must protect, whom he must receive, where he must appear, what sort of wife he must choose and, above all, what sort of man he must never permit himself to become. He had obeyed, and that, perhaps, was the beginning of his trouble.

For although Charles had never given his family cause for scandal, there was a growing suspicion within himself that respectability was not quite the same thing as contentment. His life had been arranged with extraordinary care. His estates were prosperous, his tenants reasonably satisfied, his horses well bred, his London house admirably furnished and his correspondence conducted with the punctuality expected of a man whose ancestors had been making decisions for other people since the reign of Charles II. He dined where he was expected to dine, attended the House when duty required it, hunted when the season permitted, received visitors at Belvoir and spent a considerable portion of every year in rooms where people spoke about everything except what they actually thought.

On a wet November afternoon in 1878, he stood before the tall windows of the library at Belvoir Castle, looking across the gardens towards the distant park. The formal terraces were empty beneath the rain. The fountains had been covered for the winter, the gravel walks shone beneath the grey sky and the clipped yews stood in solemn rows beside the stone balustrades as though they too had been instructed to maintain appearances. Beyond the gardens the great lawns descended towards the woods, where the deer had gathered beneath the bare branches, while farther still the old hedge maze disappeared into the mist. Behind Charles burned a fire of enormous logs. Around him stood books which had been purchased by men who had died before reading them. Above the mantel hung the portrait of the seventh Duke, whose painted eyes seemed to follow Charles wherever he went, which was perhaps the painter's intention and certainly the sort of family surveillance which Charles had endured since childhood.

His secretary, Mr Bellweather, entered carrying a silver salver.

“Your Grace, the afternoon post.”

Charles did not turn.

“Leave it.”

Bellweather placed the letters upon the desk. There were invitations, estate accounts, a note concerning a tenant dispute, two communications from London and an envelope which bore the printed name of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, which Charles noticed.

“From whom?”

“An invitation, Your Grace.”

He opened it. The card announced an evening performance and bore the name of the principal actress in elegant black letters: Miss Catherine Walters.

Charles had heard of her; everybody had. Catherine Walters was one of those women about whom society had somehow agreed that an opinion was compulsory. She was beautiful, certainly, and beauty had always been a convenient form of currency in London. She was also celebrated, independent and, according to those who had never spoken to her, considerably more dangerous than any woman had a respectable right to be. Gentlemen admired her with an enthusiasm which they disguised as theatrical criticism, while ladies who had never been known to enter a theatre seemed nevertheless to possess remarkably detailed knowledge of her dresses, her admirers and her habits.

Charles read the name again. He had known beautiful women all his life: there had been daughters of dukes, daughters of earls, foreign princesses and young ladies whose mothers had considered a marriage to Rutland sufficiently desirable to overlook almost any other inconvenience. He had danced with women covered in diamonds, dined beside women whose portraits hung in galleries and received letters from families who had calculated the advantages of an alliance with him more carefully than they had calculated the happiness of their daughters. Beauty was therefore nothing new, but what was new was the desire to see a particular woman whom he had never met.

He placed the invitation upon the desk.

That evening he attended dinner at the house of Lord and Lady Wexborough, where the company was sufficiently distinguished to make every conversation appear important and sufficiently bored to make none of them interesting. Lord Wexborough spoke at length about a railway dispute, two gentlemen disagreed about the government and the ladies discussed a marriage which had taken place in Hampshire and which everybody present agreed had been a mistake, although none of them could explain why until the dessert had arrived.

Charles participated when required. He answered questions, laughed at the proper moments, and listened to Lord Wexborough's account of a political difficulty which he had already heard twice before. He even made some observation concerning the weather which Lady Wexborough considered sufficiently amusing to repeat to the lady beside her. Yet throughout dinner there remained another thought beneath all the others: Catherine Walters. He disliked himself for thinking of her, but he thought of her again on the journey home.

By midnight the rain had begun to fall heavily against the windows of his London house, and Charles found himself standing in the library with the theatre invitation in his hand. He had no reason to go, and that was precisely why he decided to attend.

The following evening the Theatre Royal was crowded. London society had gathered in all its variety beneath the chandeliers, and the private boxes were filled with ladies in silk and gentlemen in black coats who had come to the theatre partly for the performance and partly for the opportunity to discover who else had come. Charles occupied his box alone, having declined the company of two friends who had offered to accompany him.

When Catherine Walters appeared upon the stage, he understood immediately why the city had been talking about her. She was beautiful, but beauty was not what arrested him: it was vitality. She possessed something which Charles could not have named because he had never encountered it in his own world. She seemed entirely alive. There was nothing dutiful in her manner, nothing carefully arranged, nothing of that polished submission which society admired in women of rank. She moved beneath the theatre lights with an ease which suggested that she had never once asked permission to be herself.

Charles watched her throughout the performance. He forgot the audience, the gentlemen in the boxes opposite, and that he was the Duke of Rutland. For the first time in years, he was simply a man looking at a woman who had awakened something in him which he had believed permanently asleep.

When the curtain fell, the theatre applauded while Charles remained seated. He had seen beauty before, but he had never seen freedom, and the distinction troubled him.

That night he returned to Belgrave Square and went into the library without lighting the additional lamps. The fire had burned low, and the portraits upon the walls were almost invisible in the darkness. He stood before the mantel and looked at the things which surrounded him: silver inherited from his grandfather, books inherited from his father, paintings inherited from generations before either of them, and upon the centre table a miniature of his mother painted when she had been young.

All his life he had been taught that beauty was something to be possessed: a beautiful house, a beautiful estate, a beautiful wife, and a beautiful name. He had never questioned the principle because everything around him confirmed it. The gardens were cultivated to be beautiful, the horses bred to be beautiful, the women presented to him for marriage selected partly for their beauty and the family name preserved because it was beautiful in the eyes of those who possessed it. Yet the woman he had seen that evening had seemed beautiful precisely because she belonged to nobody.

The thought followed him into his bedroom, and he did not sleep well.

The next evening he returned to the theatre, and the evening after that. He told himself that the performances were unusually good, that Catherine Walters possessed an uncommon talent, and that his interest was merely intellectual — men have always been capable of giving respectable names to dangerous desires. Within a fortnight he knew the hour at which Catherine usually arrived at the theatre, which entrance she used, which evenings she performed and where her carriage waited after the curtain fell. He had learned these things without intending to learn them, which was the sort of distinction men make when they have already begun to deceive themselves.

Catherine had noticed him, and that much became clear one evening when, beneath the theatre lights, her eyes found his box. She did not smile; she simply looked at him. The glance lasted no more than a second, but it occupied his thoughts for the remainder of the night.

Their first conversation took place after the performance several evenings later. The theatre had emptied, and Charles had remained behind while the corridors became quiet. Outside, carriages moved through the wet London streets, their lamps shining through the mist. Somewhere backstage a door slammed, followed by the sound of laughter, and then Catherine appeared at the end of the passage. Without the stage lights she seemed younger. There was no audience now, no applause, and no performance — she was simply a woman standing beneath a gas lamp in a theatre after midnight.

Charles bowed, and she recognised him.

“Your Grace.”

He had expected to feel the peculiar awkwardness which accompanies an introduction to someone one has already observed too closely from a distance, but instead, he felt strangely calm.

They spoke for several minutes. Catherine asked him whether he enjoyed the performance, and he said that he had. She asked whether he always attended the theatre alone, and he said that he usually preferred it. She looked at him with an expression which suggested that she had already discovered something about him which he had spent years concealing from everybody else, and then she left.

It was a small encounter. Nothing improper had been said, and nothing had happened which could possibly have interested society. Yet when Charles returned home that night, he stood for some time beside the window of his library and watched the rain falling over Belgrave Square.

He thought about Catherine, her voice, and the strange freedom in her manner. Most of all, he thought about the fact that she had spoken to him without appearing impressed by his title, which was something no woman of his acquaintance had done for years.

The following morning Charles received a letter from his mother concerning an introduction to a young lady whom she considered suitable. He read it once and then placed it upon the mantel. He went instead to the window.

London was beginning to wake. Carriages moved along the square, servants crossed the pavements and the houses opposite stood behind their railings in perfect rows, each one containing families whose lives had been arranged with the same care as his own.

For the first time Charles wondered whether a life could be too carefully arranged. He did not yet know that Catherine Walters would become the answer to that question; he knew only that something had entered his existence which did not belong there. And, having spent thirty-six years preserving everything that belonged, he found himself unexpectedly fascinated by the one thing which did not.