The Imagination of the Heart

by Judith Glover

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

In other people's eyes, Kitty van der Kleve is privileged. Despite her humble origins as an orphan and workhouse girl, she is now married to a gentleman of wealth and social standing in Victorian Tunbridge Wells. But Kitty would willingly change places with any of her admirers. There is one quality her husband, Oliver van der Kleve, can neither demand nor give, and that is love. Trapped in an ill-omened marriage, hated by Oliver's sister Beatrice, Kitty becomes increasingly unhappy. Her only consolation is free-spirited artist Jonathan Rivers. Inexorably, Kitty is drawn to him, little realising that what seems to be a route to happiness will lead to both tragedy and a new life. Set in the mid-nineteenth century The Imagination of the Heart is Judith Glover's fifth historical romance novel and bears the same superb qualities that marked her Sussex Quartet, The Stallion Man, Sisters and Brothers, To Everything a Season, and Birds in a Gilded Cage.

Release date: June 18, 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 352

Sample

Catherine March.

That was the name she had been given twenty years ago. Catherine, because it happened to be next on the overseer’s list; and March, after the month in which she’d been found abandoned on the steps of Tonbridge Orphanage.

She hated the name. It was an institute name, a label to identify an unwanted child; and in defiance she’d always called herself Kitty, which wasn’t half as grand but at least was something of her own choosing. Kitty was the real her, a very private yet spirited young woman kept hidden carefully from the world, whereas Catherine March was a different person entirely – the outward skin which she wore as protective disguise. And it was Catherine March who this morning was to be married to a man she did not love, a man she scarcely knew, a man of whom Kitty for all her brave mettle was secretly a little afraid.

Oliver van der Kleve.

That Mr van der Kleve was a gentleman of some wealth, holding a good position in society, ameliorated the situation only somewhat. He was twice Kitty’s age, a widower with a daughter; though he was not unattractive, the coldness of his manner and the superior detachment he adopted towards her had caused his wife-to-be a good deal of puzzlement as to his reasons for wishing to make her the second Mrs van der Kleve.

She was not a vain young woman, but she had only to look in a glass to know that she was beautiful, and only to see the admiration reflected in the eyes of men to know that she was desirable. Therefore it seemed strange that her suitor had never once spoken either of beauty or desire, but only of compliance, and docility, and dutifulness, words she had heard all her young life from the overseers of one institution or another, but which went ill with what she supposed was the tender intimacy of marriage. On the day he had asked that she become his wife, Mr van der Kleve had made his proposal a command, not an invitation; and she who had been trained to obey authority from infancy had complied, acknowledging the extraordinary honour being paid to her – a no one, a foundling, a charity child – with “if such is your wish, sir” longing, but not daring to enquire of him the reason why.

Kitty yawned and arched her back, easing away the slight stiffness from her shoulders; and rising from the edge of the bed, crossed the dim room to the casement window. Dawn was breaking at last to end the dragging hours of the night, hours in which she’d lain staring into the darkness while the slow tick of the long case clock outside the door marked off the seconds taking her towards this changing point of her life. The past lay charted out behind her like a road running through familiar country, signposted along the way with memories. Ahead, the future covered an entirely new landscape through which she must now journey; a foreign country beckoning her with its promise of a world of which before she could no more than dream. She was terribly afraid – yet at the same time exhilarated by the dazzling adventure she was about to embark upon.

She pushed aside the piece of net at the window and looked out into the street. In the east, above the rooftops of Tunbridge Wells, the pale grey light of an April morning was beginning to creep across the skyline. Beyond the open slopes of the Common where sheep and cattle grazed, the gas lamps were being extinguished slowly one by one along the length of Mount Ephraim. When a new dawn broke, the world would still be the same; but she would be in a different room, bearing a different name.

Catherine van der Kleve.

The young woman repeated it out loud, her warm breath clouding the glass. However many times she said it, it sounded awkward and unfamiliar still, that of a stranger. Catherine van der Kleve. Oh, but what a fine ring it had, to be sure – a name to impress tradesfolk. Once it was hers, would it change her at all, she wondered with a sudden nervous thrill of excitement. As Catherine March, of unknown parentage, she’d had only her striking beauty to speak for her, that, and her quick intelligence; but as Mrs van der Kleve, wife of a well-to-do merchant banker, she would acquire all the advantages of class which such a position in society was bound to attract.

Could she still remain the same? Still, beneath all the traps and trimmings of wealth, the same Kitty who had learned from the unloving years of the orphanage and the spite and mockery of being a charity scholar at Miss Meyrick’s Academy, how to protect herself from hurt and loneliness behind the façade of being Catherine March? Who could say? Only one thing was certain, that the whole tenor of her life was about to be altered in the most radical fashion.

She rubbed away the condensation from the panes, and leaned to look out to the left along the dawn-lit street towards the blackly silhouetted spire of St Bride’s Church. There in five hours’ time, she would be required to repeat a formula of words, receive a ring upon her finger, and thereby bind herself to a man whom she regarded as the personification of authority, to be obeyed in all things and in every way.

The thought of it sent another little shiver running through her, though whether that was the anticipation of the wedding ceremony itself, or the realisation of what an extraordinary future was being offered her, she could not tell.

“Oh, beg pardon, miss –”

The sudden unexpected sound of a child’s voice made Kitty turn quickly.

“Only I didn’t knock in case you was asleep still.”

The small face peering in a halo of lamplight round the opened door was almost hidden beneath the frills of a large and not very clean muslin cap which Kitty recognised as the uniform of the workhouse children employed here at the Academy as domestic labour.

“Madam said to light you a fire first thing,” the child continued, advancing herself a little further through the doorway, “on account o’ you wanted to bathe yourself, miss.”

There was a smile. “Yes. Yes, that’s right.”

The cap promptly withdrew and reappeared again moments later together with the rest of its owner’s small thin body, accompanied by a scuttle of coal which was brought into the room by the simple expedient of dragging it backwards across the carpet to the black-leaded grate.

Kitty observed this exercise in pitying silence. During her first year as a pupil here at Miss Meyrick’s Academy for Young Ladies, she too had been required to rise at dawn and see to the lighting of fires in the private quarters of the large, draughty house, and she well recalled the weight of a coal scuttle carried up four flights of stairs from the back yard.

While the child fetched in the lamp from the corridor, the young woman took up her wrapper from a chair and drew it over her high-necked flannel nightgown before seating herself. Last night at supper in the dining hall below she had been treated to a most sickening display of deference from Miss Meyrick, as though this forthcoming marriage to one of the board school’s principal benefactors had expunged the past entirely and wiped clear all memory of the unhappy humiliations she’d been made to suffer at its proprietress’s hands. She who had formerly been the despised charity scholar had found herself invited to a place at the top table; and it had proved a most curious experience indeed to be up there on the dais looking across the bowed and silent heads of pupils to the bench at the back of the hall where once upon a time she’d been required to take her own meals apart.

She could never call this place home; yet from the age of eight she had lived here, her board and education paid for by the orphanage scholarship she’d won, and after the past two years spent abroad it was the only roof she had to return to from which to be married.

Interrupting her thoughts, the little skivvy clattered the coal tongs into the hearth and twisting round awkwardly on her knees, said cheerfully, “I’ll make you up a good bright fire, shall I, miss? You won’t want to be a-catching a chill for the church, I’m sure.”

Kitty responded with another friendly smile. Then, for the sake of sharing a kind word, asked, “What is your name, may I know?”

“It’s Em’ly. Em’ly, miss.”

“Well, Emily, and have you been working here long?”

“Only since Christmas, miss.” The small hands, already scullery-roughened and red, began laying sticks of kindling across the screws of oily newspaper in the grate.

“Do you like it?”

There was a hesitation, and then a too-hurried nod of the muslin cap.

Seeing that was all the answer she would get to her question, Kitty went on conversationally, “And how old are you, Emily?”

“Twelve, miss.”

“Twelve? What a big girl you are, indeed. I came here first when I was eight.”

“Lor’ –! You was no more’n a little ’un, was you, miss.” A shower of sparks from the Vesta match lit the child’s face for a moment.

“And I remained for ten years before leaving.”

Emily directed a look over her shoulder as if she could not quite believe that anyone could stay so long in this place and not bear some outward scar of the experience. “Meself, I’d be dead afore then,” she commented philosophically, turning back to tend the small flame kindled among the paper.

There was a short silence; then, on a note of some caution – “Beg pardon for asking, miss, but is it true? Is it true what Cook says, that you’ve been away in foreign parts?”

“Oh, is that what Cook says?”

“Yes, miss. France, she says.”

“I wonder how she knows of that.”

“Oh, she knows everything, does Cook, Miss. To hear her talk, you’d suppose there wasn’t a thing could happen in Tunbridge Wells wi’out her being first to learn of it.”

“And what is it she has to say of me?”

“Well –” The child seemed embarrassed suddenly.

Kitty at once regretted letting her curiosity prompt her to ask that question, and was about to change the subject when the answer came a trifle awkwardly.

“She says the gentleman you’re to wed paid money to have you turned out a lady, miss.”

Turned out a lady … Put like that, it sounded so cold, nothing more than the business investment which, in truth, it no doubt was for Mr van der Kleve.

“You’re not offended, I hope?” The pinched face under its incongruous cap looked towards her with something approaching real fear. “It’s lies I’m sure, miss. Anybody can see you’re quality born. Janet says.”

“Janet?”

“The scullery maid, miss. It’s her as is fetching your hot water up directly.”

Having suddenly reminded herself of this fact, Emily at once began heaping lumps of coal upon the crackling wood, at the same time continuing hurriedly, “You went to France to be finished, that’s what Janet says. To learn how folk there dress theirselves, and mind their manners, and talk, an’ all. She says belikes you dined off frogs’ hind legs and snails – you didn’t truly, did you, miss?”

This last was added almost disbelievingly with another snatched glance across the shoulder.

Kitty shook her head. Such questionable gastronomic delicacies had not been part of the fare offered to those young women attending the English finishing school in Paris to which Oliver van der Kleve had paid for her to be sent two years earlier, in 1863. It was true, though, that she had learned to be ‘a lady’ – to conduct herself at all times with dignity and decorum; to understand the art of entertaining and the management of a good table; to control servants and inferiors with fair yet firm discipline; to hold pleasing conversation on divers topics; to appreciate the etiquette of dress; to know the significance of social customs such as ‘at homes’ and visiting cards and be able to observe them correctly – all these and a hundred other things which marked the invisible boundary of class and cultural division in Victorian society.

“There –” Emily announced, jerking her head as sounds from without indicated the arrival of the water jugs. “That’ll be Janet now.”

Rising from her knees she made for the door, the lamplight throwing the shadow of her cap grotesquely against the ceiling, and a whisper of conversation ensued outside in the corridor before both came in together and set about preparing the hearth, fetching an enamelled hip-bath from the dressing room, filling it, and erecting a screen around to give the bather both privacy and some protection from draughts.

When the pair had gone, two peas from the same pod almost, dipping curtsies from the door, Kitty discarded herself of wrapper and nightgown and got into the tub while the water was still pleasantly warm. The fire had burned up now, taking the edge off the chill in the room, and she sat for some minutes with her knees up beneath her chin enjoying the sensation of gentle heat on her nakedness. While she’d been a boarder here at the Academy, pupils were required to bathe dressed from chin to ankle in a coarse grey sackcloth garment so that no part of the body was exposed: only the worst type of female showed her limbs, said Miss Meyrick, and it was an offence verging upon grossness to look at oneself or one’s neighbour whilst in a state of undress.

Kitty’s friend Harriet – her only friend – said that gentlemen actually paid to see ladies thus. And worse, that husbands slept quite naked with their wives (though for what purpose she was unclear). The thought of sharing a bed with an unclothed man, husband or no, had quite horrified Kitty at the time; and it horrified her still, though with a tinge of curiosity. Would she be expected to oblige Mr van der Kleve in such a fashion? Would he demand that she removed her drawers and chemise and allow him to see her with no other cover to her shame than a bedsheet?

The blood coloured the young woman’s cheeks. Slowly she lowered her knees to glance down at herself, pushing back the heavy waves of honey-pale hair from her shoulders. The firelight gilded the tips of her full, firm breasts and glistened on the drops of moisture pearling her skin. “A vessel of corruption, fair without and foul within” – that was how Mr Pugh the minister had often described the female form in his hour-long Sunday homilies to Miss Meyrick’s pupils. “The Devil’s own bait to lure menfolk into sin.” Perhaps that was why he had married a wife with a face like a dead cod, Harriet said – to keep himself from being tempted.

Kitty took up the cake of hard yellow soap and began to lather her legs. The dancing master at her finishing school had complimented her frequently upon the grace of her carriage and had one day embarrassed her greatly by referring to the length of her jolies jambes as though long legs were a most admirable asset to a woman. She herself had never given much thought to them, apart from being thankful that they were straight and not bowed apart by rickets, or else lamed like poor Harriet’s so that one was shorter than the other. The same dancing master had complimented her, too, upon the trimness of her waist; and in her final week at the school had even gone so far as to kiss both her hands at the end of a polka waltz, a gesture which had thrown her into considerable confusion.

Kitty looked down at herself once more in critical examination; then, ashamed at such indelicacy, applied the soap with increased vigour until her skin was covered with a lather of iridescent suds. If indeed husbands and wives slept together in the same bed unclothed, as Harriet said, might that perhaps have something to do with the begetting of children? She had no idea how a woman came by babies, except that they were formed within her body through some association with the monthly courses. Would her future husband wish her to bear him a child? She supposed so. He already had a daughter by his first wife, but no son to inherit his place in the family bank of van der Kleve Lindemanns.

True, he’d never spoken of wanting an heir; but then, their conversations together had scarcely invited such confidence, being the stiltedly overpolite exchanges of almost-strangers. The only occasions upon which he ever passed personal comment were when he expressed satisfaction with the gowns and the jewellery which he himself had chosen and bought for her.

“He has a heart somewhere, to be sure,” Harriet Seymour had put when writing to Kitty upon her betrothal in the summer of the previous year. “I pray that you find it, dearest, and when you do, that you discover it is not made entirely of marbled stone.”

Rinsing the lather from her creamy skin, the young bride-to-be fervently hoped that such might indeed be the case, and that once they were wed her husband would reveal a warmer and kindlier side to his nature. He had invested a good deal of both time and money in having her fashioned into the type of wife he seemed to desire, therefore he must at least like her. That was something upon which she must endeavour to build, for where there was a liking, affection was bound to follow in due time. Such things, Kitty reflected in a spirit of brave optimism as she reached for the towel, were surely a natural outcome of the married state.

Her life so far had been a cold, unloved existence, a joyless discipline of regulation and rule. This union with Mr van der Kleve offered security and comfort and status, the opportunity to reach towards undreamed-of horizons, to be mistress of the kind of household where she might very well have found herself employed as servant had Fate gone otherwise.

It would have been unthinkable to reject his proposal.

“Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of Matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health –”

In the echoing stillness of St Bride’s the minister’s voice had a sepulchral quality to it.

“– and, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

Kitty’s lips parted but no sound issued from them. Beside her she was aware of Oliver van der Kleve, and behind him the small congregation, all waiting for her to make her response. Mutely she stared at The Book of Common Prayer held open in the minister’s hands, and sensed rather than saw her bridegroom’s head turn towards her and his mouth tighten impatiently.

There was a clearing of the throat and the Reverend Mr Edward Terris repeated himself.

“And, forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?”

The young woman met his eyes. They held a professional smiling sympathy. She was not the first bride who had been struck dumb at the altar rail, nor would she be the last.

He leaned forward with a prompting murmur. “Say ‘I will’, my dear.”

The trembling cascade of orange blossom held beneath her breast betrayed the rapid pounding of her heart. She felt herself shaking in every limb with a nervousness that was part apprehension and part a strangely heady excitement.

She drew in a breath; then, huskily, with a quick little nod – “I will.”

But it was Catherine March, not Kitty, who spoke that promise; and Catherine van der Kleve, not Kitty, who a short while later lifted back her wedding veil and offered her mouth to her husband for his kiss.

From the first, Beatrice van der Kleve had not approved of her brother’s proposed marriage. While he’d remained a widower she was in effect mistress of his house; but another wife meant she must yield her place and be forced to hand over the management of the household into the care of the newcomer.

Being a woman who enjoyed her superior position, she could not stomach being thus deprived of all authority. For the past six years, since the death of her sister-in-law Maria, she had devoted herself to the running of Sion Place with a meticulous discipline which was reflected in every aspect of the domestic scene. Each minute of each day had its routine and rule and regulation, and woe betide the servant who forgot. She was respected by the tradesmen of the town, but not liked; she was liked by her few friends, but not loved. In fact, the only one person ever to love Beatrice van der Kleve was her motherless niece Angelina, and that was with the fawning, self-interested affection of a spoilt child.

She was now in her forty-fifth year, a tall woman with strong, square features framed by heavy plaits of dark hair, and watchful, unsmiling eyes which seemed to hold criticism of all they looked upon.

Those eyes at this moment were observing the second Mrs van der Kleve, seated beside her new husband at the wedding breakfast in the terrace room of Sion Place.

What on earth had possessed Oliver to cumber himself with the wretched girl, Beatrice could not think. His decision was his own, and she must of course respect it; but the wisdom of such a choice left itself greatly open to question.

“She is a work of art which it is my intention to acquire,” he had answered one day when his sister pressed him for some explanation of his behaviour. “Should I say, an unfinished thing of beauty which I believe may be moulded into the ideal.”

He had first set eyes on this ‘unfinished thing of beauty’ some four years ago, when little Angelina had gone as a day pupil to Miss Meyrick’s Academy for Young Ladies on the London Road. Catherine March was then sixteen, a quiet and seemingly tractable girl being educated on a charity scholarship awarded annually by the Church Orphanage Trust, to enable a suitable female to be trained for the post of governess.

For some months Oliver had covertly followed Miss March’s progress, and on her seventeenth birthday had arranged that she remain at the Academy as assistant teacher to the reception class. The first intimation Beatrice had of his personal interest in the girl was a tearful complaint from Angelina that Miss March was wearing her Mama’s best India shawl; and upon making enquiry of her brother, she was informed that indeed, he had given the shawl as a gift, feeling pity for the girl that her own was so patched and darned.

That he should pay such a singular favour – that shawl had been his late wife’s favourite – had set Beatrice against Catherine March from the beginning: had she been a person of any moral sensibility she would have refused to accept it, not flaunted it about her shoulders for the admiration and envy of her fellow boarders. Then, two years ago, the sly creature had accepted Oliver’s offer to send her abroad to a finishing school to put a gloss upon her manners; and naturally, when he later proposed marriage, the answer was a foregone conclusion.

Beatrice van der Kleve eyed her new sister-in-law with narrowed dislike. To look at her, sitting there so quiet and demure in her Westbourne Grove wedding gown, one would think butter wouldn’t melt in her pretty pink mouth.

Aloud she said smoothly, “You gave us all quite a fright, Catherine dear, when you faltered in your responses at the altar. We thought perhaps you may have had a change of mind.”

“That was nerves, Beatrice! Nerves, nothing more.” The Reverend Mr Edward Terris spoke up in Kitty’s defence before she could answer for herself. “I’ve scarce ever known a young woman not stumble upon her words. A good sign, that. Shows how solemnly she has set her thoughts upon the gravity of her marriage pledge.”

He inclined himself with a smile towards the bride, the smug assurance of his expression emphasising the slight pomposity of an otherwise handsome countenance; and at the sight of that smile Beatrice’s pale, narrow lips tightened a little more.

Edward Terris was her brother’s friend, and a frequent guest at Sion Place. He was of that breed which attracts itself strongly to the emotional hunger of a certain type of woman, being both a bachelor and a clergyman; though in the case of Mr Terris, his lack of a wife was not due to any fear of the female sex, but simply to the fact of having been wounded in love early in life. He had yet to meet another woman with sufficiently pleasing attributes to win his whole-hearted affection. Beatrice had long hoped that she might be that one. She had inherited an independent income under the terms of her father’s will, and had given generously to St Bride’s Church over the years; but while Mr Terris repaid her with the unction of friendship and conversation, he was careful to avoid any turn of talk which might lead towards a deeper and more personal involvement.

To see him now, being so attentively agreeable to Oliver’s new wife, added further fuel to the older woman’s resentment, and she came back just a little sharply with – “Nerves, you say, Edward? Indeed? I thought myself how remarkably composed the bride appeared. As cool as a lily. Did you not think that too, Oliver?”

Her brother broke off his discussion with the guest upon his right and glanced towards her. The soft April light filling the room through the tall double windows lent a flush of warmth to the pale, elegant features, a warmth echoed faintly in the smile which curved the corners of his mouth while failing to reach his eyes.

“Perhaps Catherine herself should be the one to answer that.”

Conversation from the half-dozen or so other guests at the table quietened at something in his tone subtly at variance with the lightness of his words.

“Well, my dear?” He turned to his bride. “Let us not wait in further suspense. Which is correct, Edward or Beatrice? Was it sudden want of courage which caused you to fall silent, or a considered review of your desire to become my wife?”

His grey eyes, beneath dark straight brows, made a critical study of Kitty’s expression as she raised her face to him.

“Well –?”

“It was a moment’s confusion, sir,” she answered obediently, not meeting the appraisal of his glance but looking beyond him to Harriet Seymour, further down the table.

Harriet winked.

“And I apologise to Mr Terris for causing him to have to repeat himself.”

“My dear Mrs van der Kleve – upon my soul, if every bride were to apologise for so slight a matter, I should very soon weary of hearing it!” Mr Terris exclaimed at once, helping himself to some more of the excellent mayonnaise of cold salmon.

Then, shifting the conversation with an adroitness born of practice – “I must congratulate you, Oliver, upon the magnificence of the wedding breakfast. My goodness me, you have a treasure indeed in your kitchen if your Cook prepared but half of this.” A gesture of the head indicated the starched white linen cloth decorated with silver epergnes of artificial silk mock-orange flowers, and laden with assorted cold dishes to accompany the Bouchie Fils et Cie champagne.

“Cook prepared it all,” he was pertly informed by young Angelina van der Kleve, “and I heard her declare that she hoped it would poison the lot of us.”

“Now, Angelina –” her father sought to silence her sharply, “that is enough of your silliness, if you please.”

“But, Papa, she did!”

“I said, that is enough.”

This time there was a note of warning in the admonishment, and Angelina’s face coloured up, reddening the cluster of pimples around her sulky mouth.

At fourteen years old, she was a plump, plain child, her features betraying the stolid Dutch blood of her paternal forebears, without any of the delicate fine-boned grace which had been her mother’s before that lady’s untimely death in childbirth in 1858. Neglected by a father who could not bring himself to love her, and over-indulged by an aunt whose toleration only served to encourage her sulks and tantrums, Angelina had grown into an unlikeable young person who expressed herself in acts of petty spite if thwarted of getting her own way. The servants disliked her, and with good cause: her tale-bearing to her aunt had brought about the dismissal of more than one member of the kitchen staff for supposed laxity or insolence, and dismissal without reference for a maid was a disgrace almost as serious as pregnancy.

Her attitude towards her father was an ambiguous one. Resentful that he should show himself so indifferent to her existence, she tried to win his attention by behaving in a noisy, pettish manner, creating scenes over imagined grievances, or suffering phantom illness to arouse his pity, or boasting falsely of the praise which her teachers paid her schoolwork at the Academy.

Her pique when she had discovered her father’s interest in Catherine March soured quickly to a child’s angry jealousy – jealousy fostered and fed by her Aunt Beatrice. It was rooted in several separate resentments: Miss March was a nobody, a nothing, a common workhouse foundling, trying to pretend she was as good as her betters; Miss March was stealing Papa’s attention and occupying the notice he ought rightly be paying to her, his own daughter; Miss March would replace her dear, dead Mama if she could, and feather her own nest in the process, as Aunt Beatrice said; and worst (and most unforgivable of all) Miss March was beautiful and people admired her, even liked her.

Seeing her father’s eye still coldly upon her, Angelina ducked her head and began picking sullenly at the fringes of lace trimming on her sleeve. I hate her, she thought with a sudden furious intensity; I hate her. I’ll make her wish she’d never come to live here. And Cook did say that, she did, she did. I heard her tell Rose Maguire she hoped we’d all be sick as cats.

The attention of the wedding party was now with a Mr Lockyer, chairman of the governors of Tonbridge Orphanage, who had been invited to give Kit