“Oh, mama!” Felicia looked out of the window. They were now rocking their way along the driveway and approaching Tavy Castle. “Oh! Percy!” She pressed her hand flat on the glass and began to smile.
It was the sweetest smile that Theodore had seen.
THEODORE JUMPED DOWN from the cab. Mrs Rush came forward from the house, clutching some coins to pay the cab driver, taking the role that would have fallen once to the house steward. She bustled with a new purpose and it was good to see.
Felicia did not wait for her father to help her out of the carriage. She half-stepped, half-slid to the ground and rushed forward into her husband’s arms. Percy gripped her tightly and put his head close to her ear. Theodore looked away discreetly, somewhat embarrassed.
When he looked back, he was surprised to see that Percy was leading Felicia away from the castle and into the grounds. They disappeared into the trees. He looked around but Mrs Rush had gone back into the castle.
Captain Everard was waiting for him. He was leaning on a stick, his hands bandaged up, and he had a sickly pallor to his face. But he was grinning widely, and Lady Agnes was by his side, standing with a closeness that suggested a certain degree of familiarity had been reached between them. Adelia emerged from behind them, looking as confused as Theodore felt.
“What’s going on?” Theodore asked.
“Oh, everything seems to be going rather well, all things considered,” Captain Everard replied. “The old chap seemed to think that his good lady wouldn’t want to be sleeping inside, under the circumstances. I mean, we’ve stopped any further seepage of poison but you know it will linger. At least in memory, if not in reality. So he’s cobbled together one of his outdoor sleeping arrangements and I believe he intends to begin introducing her to the ways of the explorer. They are playing at safari in the woods.”
“But she is a lady!” Adelia gasped in horror.
“I rather fancy that she needs to get used to the new style of living.”
“Why?”
“I think he wants her to travel with him.”
“She is unwell!”
“You can be unwell at home or you can be unwell somewhere else. It is all the same, in the end. And she won’t be unwell any more, will she? She was unwell because of the castle, that’s my understanding of the matter.”
Adelia looked at Theodore and mouthed, “Do something!”
He shrugged.
Lady Agnes and Captain Everard retreated back into the castle. Theodore held out his hand. “Come along. Let’s see what sort of ‘arrangements’ this man has made for our daughter. Are you sure you chose the right sort of husband?”
She grimaced at him, and they sneaked off, as best they could, into the woods behind Felicia and Percy.
And in the end, they needn’t have worried.
A tent of the sort used on safari, tall and wide and quite capable of providing all one’s home comforts, was set up by a sheltered cove in a slight hill, and there was a campfire already merrily burning, and lanterns ready in the trees, and a tea kettle hanging on a metal pole above the fire, and a faint smell of crumpets in the air.
They could not see Percy or Felicia.
But they didn’t need to.
Carefully, quietly, they retreated and left them in privacy.
Thirty
Adelia and Theodore had been back at Thringley House for a month. And she was still grateful to wake up in her own bed every morning. The year had been an eventful one and she felt as if she had traversed the very length and breadth of the country. Of course, having seven daughters married to seven very different men did rather impact on one’s own previous social obligations and conversely it widened one’s social circle greatly.
Especially when one of them was an explorer.
She was reminded of that when she found a letter from Felicia in amongst her correspondence. She had asked for her letters to be brought into the breakfast room that morning. Theodore was hidden behind a vast newspaper, which was the best place for him when he was eating eggs so messily. The October day was promising to be one of those very chilly and very clear ones, with golden sunlight already streaming in through the windows. Outside, the trees were turning orange and yellow, and today with the dazzling light behind them, they seemed to glow. It was the sort of day that reminded one that though the year turned and ageing and loss were inevitable things, yet there was a beauty to be found in things still. The layers of memory that a long year or a long season or indeed, a long life, added to a view brought more depth and meaning, perhaps. A consolation of impending dotage, Adelia thought, feeling serenely wise for a moment.
It didn’t last, of course. She shook her head before maudlin sentimentality could seize hold of her, and she turned to the uppermost letter of the pile alongside her. She recognised the handwriting at once. The envelope was battered and marked with many stamps, and that alone told her that it had come from a far-flung place.
It was a bright, cheerful, chatty sort of letter. Felicia wrote with breathless enthusiasm about their four-week tour across the continent as they worked their way south towards the Mediterranean. Percy, it seemed, was easing his wife into the travelling life. They sounded as if they were taking some very slow and comfortable forms of transport. River cruises, sleeper trains, hired coaches. “I cannot wait to get to Egypt, however,” Felicia wrote, and Adelia thought that she would be in for a shock when she swapped paddle steamers for camels. “I do so wish to see the pyramids.” She went on to say she had no
