The Gates of Rutherford

by Elizabeth Cooke

Genres: Family Life; Historical Fiction; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

Return to the statley environs of Rutherford Park and the embattled Cavendish family—from the author of The Wild Dark Flowers.

The rain fell softly on the day that she was to be married…Sometimes the longing for the old untouched days at Rutherford would return to her; the innocence of it all, the feeling that England would never change…

Charlotte Cavendish has been dreaming of her old home at Rutherford Park. It is April 1917; she is nineteen years old. And everywhere there is change. The war still rages on the Continent, where her brother fights for the Royal Flying Corps. Her parents’ marriage is in jeopardy, with her mother falling for a charming American in London.

But not all is grim. Charlotte is marrying Preston, the blinded soldier whom she nursed back to health. Her parents couldn’t be happier about this. The young man hails from a well-established and wealthy family in Kent, and he’s solid and respectable. They hope he’s the one to tame their notoriously headstrong daughter.

But as time passes, Charlotte slowly comes to the realization that she is not truly happy. And for a reason she is only just beginning to understand. A reason she dare not reveal to the family—or the world…
 

Release date: September 1, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 384

Sample

Chapter 1

The rain fell softly on the day that she was to be married.

All night long Charlotte had been dreaming of her old home at Rutherford Park—she thought that the sound of the downpour outside was the water rushing through the red stones of the riverbed by the bridge. It was only when she awoke that she realized she was in London, in the Chelsea house owned by the American, John Gould.

It was half past five in the morning when Charlotte let herself out of the house and into the street. Cheyne Walk was barely stirring, and the road held only a clattering echo of her own running feet. She was at the Embankment wall in just a few moments, leaning on the edge, staring at the lively grey ribbon of the Thames. I shall be married, she thought, in a few hours. She turned her face up to the rain.

It was April 1917; she was nineteen years old. And everywhere there was change. On the fields of Flanders, history was being written in the harrowing of humanity; in the pretty eighteenth century house behind her, her own mother lived in what some called sin, but what Charlotte could see was a kind of correctness, a way of holding on to life. In Yorkshire, her once happy father habitually mourned in bitterness. The world rolled and altered.

She held on to the Embankment wall, feeling its granite strength. Someone had told her that the stones of the wall here had come from Cornwall, from Lamorna Cove. It was supposed to be wildly lovely there, but she had never seen it. She had, despite her nursing service at St. Dunstan’s, never seen France. Her brother, Harry, was back there now, advising the Flying Corps. She had never seen America, as Mr. Gould had done; she had never been to Italy. She had wanted to take the Grand Tour as her male ancestors had once done. But she doubted that she would now. She was to be a married woman.

She turned away from the river, trying to hold down the nonsensical impulse to throw herself into the water. She had nothing at all to be worried about, she told herself. This was just a morbid anxiety, a last-minute rush of pre-wedding nerves. She must grow up, and stop wanting some romantic notion of independence. After all, what did she have to be worried about? Michael Preston was a wonderful man, a brave man. His blindness was no barrier; they were, as he always joked, a good team. Her parents were pleased that she was about to marry into one of Kent’s oldest and most respected—not to say very wealthy—families; that she would be secure and cared for. That she would live a stone’s throw from her family’s London house in Grosvenor Square, in a lovely little mews cottage that Michael’s parents had bestowed upon them. Her father had even hinted obliquely at the grandchildren that she and Michael would provide, and she so longed to see him happy again. She was desperate not to bring further disappointment into his life.

Yet the old sense of suffocation threatened to overwhelm her.

She looked back through the trees at the houses on Cheyne Walk. John Gould now owned one of the prettiest, his gift to her mother, Octavia. They lived like two honeymooners here, and for the last six months Charlotte had come here often, absorbing both their scandal and their happiness in equal measure. She was to be married from here, and not the Grosvenor Square house where her father was now staying in solitary and temporary splendor among the dusty relics of his marriage. Now and then, in talking to him, it had become obvious that he expected his wife to eventually return to him. People called him an old fool for it, she knew. It was her older sister, Louisa, who tended to look after Father; Charlotte was drawn to her mother. But sometimes the longing for the old untouched days at Rutherford would return in her; the innocence of it all, the feeling that England would never change. The ancient conviction that the Cavendish estate of Rutherford and that charmed and luxurious way of life was eternal.

Charlotte smiled to herself. Well, they had all had that permeability knocked out of them now.

She wondered, as she looked at Cheyne Walk, at the other dramas that had played out in this London street over the centuries. In Number 16, Dante Gabriel Rossetti had lived out his final years with Fanny Cornforth; Number 4 was George Eliot’s last home. Just along the way was the Chelsea Hospital and the Physic Garden. And it had been here, last October, that Charlotte had sat with her mother and told her that Michael had proposed to her. In the seventeenth-century green oasis by the Thames, Charlotte had expected Octavia to tell her that she was far too young. In retrospect, she had hoped that this was indeed what her mother was going to say. She would have returned to Michael and told him that, without her mother’s approval, she could not possibly marry him, flattered as she was to have been asked. But, to her astonishment, Octavia had not objected at all. In her own half-dazed and happy state, she had simply clasped Charlotte’s hands and smiled at her, and given her blessing. But it was not her mother’s blessing that Charlotte had wanted. She had wanted her mother’s disapproval, and an excuse not to marry at all.

It was very strange, she considered, that in all these months, it had only been John Gould, her mother’s lover, who had carefully and subtly questioned her decision. “Shall you be very happy as a little wife?” he had said to her in a joking fashion last Christmas. She had looked at him gravely, the champagne glass in her hand as the dinner guests settled around the dining table on the day before Christmas Eve. “Don’t you think that I could be?” she’d replied. John, in his handsome and easy way, had considered her. “You always struck me as a wild bird waiting to fly,” he had commented. “Well, one can fly when one is married,” she’d told him. And then had blushed scarlet. “I mean, as a couple. We could fly anywhere, anywhere at all.”

If he had noticed her embarrassment, he hadn’t dwelled upon it. “Come to America when this lousy war is over,” he had said. “And see the house I’ve built for your mother on Cape Cod. I’m sure you’ll like it. America, too.”

Her heart had welled up inside her. Oh, she was sure that she would love the beach, the house, the country. The very words spelled out freedom and space. And of course she could go there with Michael—of course they would love to, she told John. She had then deliberately turned away from him and his piercing appraising gaze. She had spoken gaily to the woman on the other side of her; but about what, she had no idea at all.

Since then, she seemed to have been swept forward by events. Michael’s parents were charming; their grand home in its beautiful gardens outside Sevenoaks was charming; Michael himself was, of course, charming. But how “charming” grated on her to the roots of her soul! How maddening she found it. How ridiculously she had painted herself into this lover’s corner. Into maturity and security and all those other things that her father so approved of. She thought she should die of it.

“Stop it,” she said out loud, to no one at all but herself. “What a silly, selfish fool you are.”

She walked back to the house and let herself in the gate. In six hours, at midday, her father would come here in the Rolls-Royce he had lately acquired. They would be chauffeured to the parish Church of St. Margaret’s at Westminster Abbey, within sight of the abbey itself and the famous clock tower of the Palace of Westminster that was familiarly called Big Ben.

There would be crowds at the church door because society weddings were food and drink to a war-weary London, and because it was seen to be a great romance, this union of the blinded war hero and the youngest child of a loyal servant of the Crown. Police on horseback would hold back the throng; there would be cheers as she emerged from the car dressed in what she—oh so privately, oh so secretly—thought was a completely idiotic costume of a white silk dress and a vast tulle veil. Her sister, Louisa, would be there at the church door, laughing prettily and scattering rose petals. And, after the ceremony, the thunder of the Meistersinger march on the church organ would compete with the pealing of bells of St. Margaret’s. And she and Michael would stand together at the porch, smiling, arm in arm.

And all the time, she would be wanting to run.

The door of the house opened as she approached it, and there was the housemaid, looking frightened that someone was already outside as she reached to polish the door frame and the brass handle of the bell. “Oh, miss,” she said, beaming when she saw that it was Charlotte. “The happiest day of your life. We are all that excited, miss, if you’ll pardon me saying.”

Charlotte stepped over the threshold and shook off the coat that had become saturated with rain.

“Yes,” she murmured. “You’re quite right, Milly. It’s the happiest day of my life.”

Chapter 2

The Ritz hotel commanded one of London’s greatest thoroughfares, and was within sight of Green Park and Buckingham Palace. It was the new creation of César Ritz himself, and looked much like a French chateau that had been gracefully dropped in Piccadilly, complete with its modern refinements and Louis XVI furnishings.

The arrival of the Cavendish and Preston wedding party caused as much of a stir on Piccadilly as it had at the church in Westminster. A crowd gathered to watch the bride and groom emerge from the wedding car; but they were equally interested in the great and good of the nation that followed. Politicians whom they recognized only vaguely, whose top-hatted appearance was greeted with polite applause, were followed by officers in uniform, ladies of the aristocracy, and a small scattering of artists from the Slade. Murmurs of scandal and appreciation rose and fell like waves until the last guest disappeared behind the gilt-and glass doors.

Charlotte’s father, William Cavendish, the seventh Earl Rutherford, was well pleased with the overall effect of the wedding, despite the Oranges and Mauves. Privately, this was what he called the artists that his estranged wife, Octavia, seemed to so admire. Still, the gallant officers were rather more impressive, and he was glad that Charlotte, despite having inherited some of her mother’s more stubborn and outrageous characteristics, now appeared to be settling into a respectable life. William liked Michael Preston, and admired him for his stoicism in the face of his terrible injuries. One would hardly credit that the man was blind; his face bore no sign other than a few discolored lines around the forehead. He carried himself with dignity, and he was intelligent and modest. Such qualities might carry him far, William thought. He had even wondered if he might introduce Michael to those whom he knew in government when the war was over.

William stood now at the entrance to the large dining room and looked about himself. He and his daughter Louisa had arranged the wedding on Charlotte’s behalf. Or, rather, Louisa had done the majority of the arranging and he had done all of the paying. It showed in the room. The table displays were opulent, the flowers in full bloom despite it only being April. Each table bore its white damask cloths, its silver and glass and decorations of silk and ribbon, like stage sets. He saw that, in among the color on the high table, Charlotte looked rather lost. Dear girl, he thought. Something had overwhelmed her robust personality at last. She seemed to be very small there among the sea of society faces, and rather pale. He caught a waiter as the man walked past. “Take a glass of champagne to the bride,” he murmured. “And make sure she is served first.”

He smiled with pride. Louisa sat to Charlotte’s left, looking terribly pretty. Far to the right sat Octavia, Charlotte’s mother. He saw that she and Louisa briefly exchanged a glance of satisfaction, and he supposed that Louisa’s immaculate organization of the day perhaps had much more to do with his wife than he had supposed. Well, what did it matter? Octavia was largely shunned by society, but she had probably found a way to help her daughter. Women were subversive creatures, he thought. One never really knew. Never really knew at all.

He walked up to the top table. It took him some time; matrons of the beau monde would tend to leap up as he passed, and press him engagingly to their breasts as if he were an abandoned child. Over the last year, he had grown used to brushing them off with politeness. He was not abandoned, in his opinion. He was merely put aside for a while. Octavia—he was determined about it, determined to the point of being almost convinced—that Octavia would return to him once the American had grown tired of her. She would leave the little house in Chelsea and return to Rutherford where she belonged. He gritted his teeth and turned his face away in the meantime. She would come home. It was surely inevitable. Men like John Gould wouldn’t look after another man’s wife indefinitely. As for his own heart . . . he didn’t like to consider it at all. He had been brought up not to linger on the subject of feelings. He would present an equable face to the world, no matter how many nights he laid awake and wondered what the hell had happened to his marriage.

As he passed the final table before he sat down, he noticed a familiar face. It was Caitlin de Souza, his son Harry’s friend. She sat unmoving, her hands clasped in her lap, dressed in a somber outfit of pale brown with a lace collar.

“Caitlin, is it?” he said, and held out his hand.

“It is, your lordship.”

“On leave?” Caitlin was a nurse at the front.

“Yes, sir.”

“Grim as ever, I take it.”

“It is terribly grim, yes.”

“Heard from Harry?”

It was typical of William to talk in such abbreviated sentences. He saw no need to pontificate. He loathed small talk. Caitlin smiled, and at once he remembered why Harry, who was presently serving with the Royal Flying Corps, was so attracted to her. “He writes very often,” she murmured.

William lowered his face close to hers. “Persuade the old fellow to do the same for his parents, why don’t you?” he whispered. “Take it as a personal favor.”

He stood back up, squeezed her hand, and walked on. To the other side of the table, directly opposite Caitlin, he had noticed the disheveled form of Christine Nesbitt. At least, she looked disheveled to him. Why did these artists never run a comb through their damned hair, he thought. And she seemed to be dressed in something like a curtain. Good Lord, it was a wonder that the Ritz had allowed her across the threshold!

It was probably Octavia who had shepherded the woman inside. Octavia had taken a liking to the Bohemian type since she had moved to Chelsea. She had even hosted an art fair in Rutherford, to raise money for the Red Cross among the wealthy of the Yorkshire set. It had been a success, of course. Everything that Octavia turned her hand to was a success. She and Charlotte had run the whole thing last November, and made a great deal of money for the cause. Still, the presence of the artists themselves had shocked him. Peacocks and sluts, he had decided. Peacocks and sluts.

Christine Nesbitt, he could see, was smiling broadly at him now. He very pointedly ignored her.

•   •   •

After the speeches—thankfully brief—William took himself out into the side room that overlooked a small garden. He could see Green Park above the trees, and watched its soft horizon above the traffic while he lighted his cigar. He wished that he were back at Rutherford. My God, though, what a ripping send-off might have been arranged for Charlotte there! The great house open, the gardens sumptuous in spring. First hothouse roses, the vast lawns, the terraces all bright perfection, and room to wander after the meal. Room to breathe. London suffocated him now.

The days of his political life seemed far away since his heart attack last year. He went to the House occasionally, of course, and was received with deference. He had had dinner with Lloyd George himself last month, and was pleased to have found his own opinions listened to at some length. The Americans would soon come to the war; that was becoming ever more obvious since the Kaiser had ordered his submarines back into the Atlantic. William had heard a rumor only yesterday that their announcement might be imminent. He hoped to God that it would mean the end of the bloody carnage across the Channel. This year, or next.

At the thought of America, William frowned. He glanced back at the heavily curtained room where the guests were still milling around. One favor had been granted to him today: his wife’s lover, John Gould, had been absent. He had dreaded leading Charlotte into the church and finding Gould’s handsome, smiling face insulting him from a family pew. He had dreaded even more seeing Octavia hanging on the man’s arm. But he had been spared it. His wife had a grain of decency left in her, it seemed.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Octavia now appeared at the dining room door. His wretched heart skipped a beat as she walked towards him, smiling. She was prettier than the bride, he thought.

His wife wore dove-grey velvet, with some sort of coat affair in the same material, and an alarming hat—very tall, rather asymmetrical—in the same color. When he remembered what she wore to their own wedding those many years ago—those yards and yards of lace, that voluminous gown—a smile came to his lips. How different she was now. No longer an obedient girl, but just as slender. More so, in fact. A bell-shaped skirt revealed her ankles; around her waist the fabric belt was silver. She carried a little ivory walking cane—for affectation only. He had never seen a woman so lively, so little in need of any walking aid; her face shone with pleasure. Gould, he suddenly thought to himself. It’s because of that damned bastard that I am shown my own wife’s smiling face.

Still, she overwhelmed him, despite everything. Lightly kissing his cheek, she took his arm. “Shall we walk a little way? Out to the terrace perhaps? You’re feeling well enough?”

“I am feeling very well,” he told her.

As they walked, he could feel the spring in her step. “Do you think Charlotte looked charming?” she asked.

“Very charming.”

“She fussed so, you know,” Octavia mused. “About the veil, the dress. But then, she was always quite unlike Louisa.” She turned to him. “Louisa’s coming-out gown, do you recall, dear? And the pink ball gown, all in silk.”

“I do indeed.” It had cost him an absolute fortune.

“You would think that I had been dragging Charlotte across the Styx when we went to the dressmakers,” Octavia laughed. “But she will look back on it with pleasure.”

He doubted that.

“You did terribly well today,” she said quietly. “The new car was a delightful touch. A Silver Ghost at that! It was splendid. I recall the days when you would have thought a barouche much more the thing.”

“I am trying to be modern,” he replied.

“And succeeding beautifully.”

God, he wished that she were not so happy. Pretty compliments flew from her. He would much rather have had her silence, even the unendurable silences they once had together at Rutherford. He would have rather had her expressionless face at dinner than to dine alone, as he often did now.

He stopped walking; she looked at him inquiringly. “Shall you come to Rutherford?” he asked.

She paused, evidently considering. “Are you going back there?”

“This week.”

“Then I shall come the week after,” she told him. “There is something that I want to talk to you about.”

William frowned. “Not that subject.”

“No, dear. Not that subject.”

She had suggested a divorce last year, when Gould had suddenly reappeared at Rutherford after Mary and Nash’s wedding. A matter of hours merely, and she had been packing her bags. “I thought him dead,” she had said simply. “So did the world. So did you. But he survived the Lusitania. Don’t tell me that you didn’t hope he would never come back, William. But he is here, and there’s an end to it.” She had turned a calm, serene face to him. “You may divorce me if you wish.”

He had denied her. He would not see their name dragged through the court to the accompaniment of the horrific scandal that would ensue. More importantly, he would never—never, never—let her marry Gould. Dally they might . . . play the lovebirds. Even live together in their outrageous sin. He’d thought, when Gould had left two years ago, that she’d turned her face from her lover. Ridiculous in his hopes. But he would retain the reins, however slackly, in his hand. And one day she would come back, when Gould tired of her.

He was living for that day.

Octavia reached up and drew down one of the cherry blossom bows. “Such a dreary spring we’ve had,” she murmured. “I’m glad the sun shone a little today.”

“What subject, then?” he asked. “What subject are you coming to Rutherford to discuss?” He narrowed his eyes. “Where is Gould?”

“At home,” she told him. “Preparing to go to France.”

“What for?” William felt furiously irritated that she referred to the little Chelsea love nest as “home.”

She gave him an indulgent smile. “You know full well,” she said. “America is coming to the war. He is going to Arras. The push that’s going on. So that he can report back to his New York newspaper. ‘In the teeth of battle, the true picture of war, how we are needed’ . . . all that.” Her voice had traces of sarcasm and anxiety. “He says he will try to find Harry to speak to him.”

At the mention of his son’s name, William searched her face. “Have you heard from him?”

“Not a word this week.”

“Nor I.”

“John says that pilots must be trained in the States. He wonders if Harry might be sent there. As an instructor.”

“To America?”

“It would keep him out of France, at least.”

“It is a possibility, I suppose. If they come in.”

“John doesn’t doubt it.”

William was not interested in what Gould thought.

Together, he and Octavia surveyed the garden in silence, watching as more petals drifted from the trees and lay discolored on the ground.

•   •   •

Hundreds of miles away in France, Harry Cavendish had been thinking of Rutherford early that morning.

When he was a little boy, he had used to wander the great house at night. He doubted very much that his parents had ever known. In the dark now, staring at the sky just before dawn, he tried to remember how far he had gone along the winding stairs that led down to the kitchens, or along the gallery outside the upper bedrooms, or up the forbidden narrow steps to the roof. He must have been seven or eight when he had first discovered the way out onto the lead-covered valleys between the Tudor chimneys, and seen the rolling vastness of the Yorkshire Dales spread out, pinpricked with occasional lights, below him.

Sometimes he would wake in the morning and it would be hard to guess whether those discoveries had been real or only a dream. Even then, as a small child, he was intrigued by height, and a desire to fly. To stand at the edge of the roof and launch himself outwards and feel the air rushing underneath him.

It had been another dozen years before that fascination became a reality.

He was watching the airfield now, a beaten expanse of mud that had once been grass, just behind the town of Arras. His little sister was getting married today, he thought. Charlotte, the last person on earth whom he ever imagined to be shackled to a man and give up what poor rights she had. Still . . . if it was what she wanted, who was he to criticize her? He had met Michael only once, and although the former soldier was now permanently robbed of his sight, he seemed a determined sort of chap.

Even so. Charlotte a wife. Harry looked at the first streaks of dawn in the sky, a few short lighter glimpses among the clouds heavy with snow. Seventh of April, 1917. Just north of here was cider country, fields of apple trees. Somewhere beneath him, going east, he knew that the chalky earth was being tunneled; New Zealand and English engineers burrowing among the networks of underground quarries, the boves of the French. Beyond them was Vimy Ridge, where bombardment had started in the last ten days of March.

You wouldn’t know it now. All was silent; whatever activity was out there—and there was plenty—was smothered in the dark hours and by the threatening weather.

But God, his body ached. He shifted marginally from foot to foot, feeling the jarring in his joints. His knees grated as if bone skated over bone. It was two years since he had been shot down, danced along the ground in a shattering kite, rolled along the edge of a trench, and stood up somehow, yelling at the Northumbrians who came to carry him out.

Two years since he had met Caitlin. Two years since the series of operations in England. And, like a sickening addict, he had only thought of being back here and flying again. Having another chance at the Boche, skimming his old Farman over the flattened landscape.

Harry sighed, looking backwards and forwards along the line of silent planes—those flimsy-seeming craft. The waiting was the worst; he felt it now in the seemingly two-dimensional shapes of the planes, their silhouettes populated by ghosts. Harry watched the young recruits go up—they would be out as soon as they arrived—and he would try to ignore their youth and their enthusiasm. He trained them as best he could. But he would give them few words, because his words were all saved for the letters he would have to write later in the day. Fifty percent were dead within forty-eight hours of taking their first kite to the skies.

He had spent last night trying to compose something different to the parents of the man who had crashed behind enemy lines yesterday. “A fine fellow of utmost bravery. . . .” Had he said that last week or yesterday? Or the day before? A fine fellow indeed. Whoever he was. They all seemed the same to him . . . interchangeable characters. All about twenty, square-shouldered, the captain of the cricket team, the kind of good egg all-rounder beloved of his school. A school that he had left not so long ago. The description might fit any or all of them. Fine chaps indeed, but Harry had struggled to remember this particular recruit exactly. Had he been the one from St. Albans or Edgeworth? Haringey or Twickenham? Carlisle or Cardiff? He hadn’t been able to recall him. There were just too many molded in the same form, sprung from the same background, trudging through his mind waving their grinning and youthful good-byes.

And now would come Arras.

The word was that dominance in the air was vital for reconnaissance in this battle. More important than it had ever been, to accent the element of surprise. They simply had to get up there and go deeper than they had ever anticipated, drawing out the tumble of scribbled lines below them until it all made sense, and one could verify the lines of communication and support. They had to fly low and they had to fly slow to get as much information as they could. It was bloody dangerous, as his list of letters continually proved.

But last month something very odd had happened.

Harry was used to the Luftstreitkräfte—after all, why wouldn’t he be after his weeks of flying last year, and his months of observing this year?—and he thought that he recognized them almost by instinct. Thought he could sense them in the sky, feel the malignity of all of them, German and British alike, feel their dribble of decay, of fumes, of smoke and fuel, of manic obsession, of curdling courage left in the sky like streamers. He thought he knew that even better than he knew their actual shape and size or coloring—or the black and white crosses on the bodies and the tails. But he didn’t know the red plane above Arras that so man