The Winter Journey

Book 20: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

In 1851 the fortunes of the Morland family are more buoyant than they have been for years. Morland Place is recovering under Benjamin's steady hands - happy at last with Sibella. Charlotte, now Duchess of Southport, is shortly to give birth to hersecond child and on the point of opening her modern hospital for the poor. Cavendish's engagement to the ethereally beautiful but slightly silly Miss Phipps causes a stir in the drawing rooms of Mayfair and his wedding causes his family some misgivings. Then the storms in Europe spill in to Britain when the army is forced to defend Turkey against the Tsar. Within weeks Cavendish is in the Crimea and disappears in the Charge of the Light Brigade. Another moving and beautifully portrayed episode in the riveting Morland saga.

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 640

Sample

1851

It was cool when they rode out in the morning, with that pale, clear coolness of a June day that is going to be hot. The dew
was thick, and darkened the horses’ legs as they brushed through the long grass; the sky was almost white, the sun still below
the trees. The dogs ran ahead, noses deep in the hedgerows, pausing now and then to look back encouragingly. They never stayed
the whole ride. Sooner or later they would turn aside after something that simply had to be investigated; then finding the master and mistress gone out of sight they would give up and work their way slowly home.


Benedict and Sibella rode in silence, glad just to be alone together. It had been a crowded year, and times like these had
been rare. Morland Place always kept them busy, but Benedict had been away from home a great deal too, helping shape the Great
Exhibition in London. This most troublesome brain-child of Prince Albert had finally opened to the public on the first of
May, in Paxton’s glorious great greenhouse in Hyde Park, which a newspaper had dubbed ‘the Crystal Palace’.


Benedict’s former colleague Robert Stephenson had been involved with the Exhibition from the beginning, and he had been quick
to call on the services of old friends. Benedict had been summoned to London every other week, not only for his engineering
expertise, but for his persuasive powers, which had been honed in the service of the York and North Midland Railway. Stephenson said no-one could
get into a pocket like Benedict Morland, and still leave the victim smiling.


Benedict had enjoyed his involvement. The business of creating the Exhibition was interesting in itself, and there was always
a great deal going on in London. And he had met up with old friends – Stephenson, Charles Vignoles, Brunel and Lyon Playfair
– and made lots of new ones. The disadvantage was that it interfered with the work of the estate, and took him away from Sibella.


It was a glorious day for a ride. The horses were happy to be out, swinging along at an eager walk, ears and eyes everywhere,
nostrils fluttering, absorbing the morning with infectious delight. The country was beautiful, the grass dense and juicy,
the hedges and trees in glossy full-leaf and stiff with birdsong. As they rode past Low Field, the mares lifted their heads
only briefly from the serious business of grazing, but the new foals raced down to the fence to goggle and snort. They cat-jumped
with excitement, flirted their teeth at each other in mock ferocity, and stilted away up the pasture again at full gallop,
mad with with the joy of their own speed.


Sibella met Benedict’s eyes and they both smiled. ‘What pleasure could be superior to this: riding about one’s own land, with
one’s own wife?’ he said.


‘I take it that is a rhetorical question,’ Sibella said. Her happiness was so profound she could almost taste it. She had
been in love with Benedict since she first met him, when she was fifteen years old and he was a railway engineer – grown-up,
handsome, dashing, and with all the gypsy romance that hung about the great men of the Workings. She had been just a school-room
miss in pigtails to him, then: he was in love with someone else. When he married the someone else, hope went out of life for Sibella; so that when later a business colleague of her father’s offered for her, she accepted, thinking nothing
mattered any more. Sir Samuel Mayhew was very rich, and forty years her senior; but he was madly in love with her, and Sibella
thought that he would be like an indulgent father. She would be comfortable, have her own establishment, and be free of her
mother, which was a great object.


She had not reckoned on Mayhew’s insane jealousy: he set his servants to spy on her, and fell into wild rages if she so much
as spoke to a groom or a porter. She had not reckoned on the misery of being under constant suspicion, of enduring false accusations.
And she had not reckoned – how could she? – on the horrors of physical intimacy with an elderly man she neither liked nor
respected.


She blamed no-one but herself: the match was convenient to her father but she knew he would not have forced her to marry against
her will. She had done her best to be a good wife, to live in conformity with her husband’s freakish rules; and schooled her
mind never, never even to think of his dying, for fear she might come to hope for it. But it was his death, of course, which
released her, a few years after the death of Benedict’s wife. Benedict, miserably married to a woman who deceived and cuckolded
him, had learned belatedly to value Sibella’s translucent qualities. As soon as she was free, he went to find her, to claim
her and carry her away like St George of old.


In her memory, Sibella’s first marriage was not so much a dragon as a dark cave, from which she had emerged, blinking, into
brilliant sunshine. And now, surprisingly quickly – for they had been married not quite three years – the whole Mayhew business
had receded in into unreality, like something ugly glimpsed from a railway train and left instantly far behind. She glanced
at Benedict as they rode, and he seemed so familiar and dear they might have been married for thirty years instead of three. Their lives together were simple and satisfying. There was the Morland
estate to run and the children to raise, and they did these things in partnership, sharing the duties and the pleasures equally.


By the time they turned homewards the sun was high, and the promised heat lay like crystal over the land, holding it in a
spell of stillness. The birds had fallen silent; only a little breeze moved shadows about beguilingly under the leaves, with
a sound like water. And the horses’ hooves thudded a soft heartbeat as they trod their short shadows, their heads nodding
now, and their ears eloquent of home and feed. When they passed through Ten Thorn Gap they found Kai, Benedict’s old bitch, lying in the cool of the hedge waiting for
them, her yellow eyes glowing strangely in the shadow. The young bitch Brach, Mary’s wolfhound Dog and Sibella’s pointer Dancer
were nowhere to be seen.


‘Superior loyalty,’ Benedict said, pleased, as Kai fell in at Monarch’s heels.

‘She’s too old to run as far as the others, that’s all.’

‘Don’t listen, Kai. Missus is just jealous.’ Kai smiled and waved her tail, perfectly in agreement. They rode on. After a
little, Benedict glanced at Sibella, and asked, ‘What is it?’


‘I’m sorry – what did you say?’

‘I wondered what you were thinking about. You looked so serious.’

‘Oh, I was thinking about how nice and cool it will be inside the house. And about lemonade straight from the cold-house.
And how hungry I will feel when I’ve stopped being so horrid thirsty.’


He laughed. ‘God bless your appetites! Is all your happiness rooted in the here and now?’

‘It’s enough for me at present,’ she said. ‘I’ll think of heaven nearer the time. Oh, look!’ They had come over the rise and the house lay before them at the foot of the shallow slope.
‘There’s a carriage just leaving.’


It had come out from under the barbican, over the drawbridge, and was turning onto the track in the direction of York.

‘It’s Harry Anstey’s barouche,’ Benedict said.

‘How can you tell from this distance?’

‘I recognise the horses, of course – I sold them to him. Mary must be home!’ And he pushed Monarch abruptly into a trot, making
Ebony toss his head as he tried to follow and was checked by Sibella in the interests of good equine manners. Benedict’s eagerness
to see his daughter was such that he had disappeared into the yard before Sibella had even reached the drawbridge; and Mary
had only been away a week.


She was still in the great hall when Benedict entered, shedding her gloves and trying to fend off the overjoyed hounds, who
threatened to knock her over: Dog was as tall as her when he stood on his hind legs to wash her face. Malton, the butler,
was waiting to receive her mantle, as was his duty; but Father Moineau, the chaplain-tutor, had beaten everyone to the post
and was untying Mary’s ribbons with his own hands, while several servants who had no real duty there were hovering about the
hall, beaming.


Everyone adored Mary, and none more than her father, who had a moment, unnoticed in all the fuss, to look at her unobserved.
At a week less than fourteen years old, she was still as small as a child, no more than four feet and ten inches tall; but
in every other way she was a woman. In her tight-waisted, full-skirted, three-flounced gown, her plaid mantle and fashionably
small bonnet, she looked like a miniature of a grown-up lady. And she was not just pretty, but truly beautiful, with lovely features, wide violet eyes and a skin like blush-roses, framed with long
curls of shining gold. She was the image of her mother, Benedict thought painfully. Many of her little gestures and expressions
she must have caught from her mother in early childhood. They had been very fond of each other.


But Mary’s face had an animation and expressiveness which Rosalind’s had never had. Rosalind had been a pretty doll, but Mary
was intelligent beyond the norm. Father Moineau cherished her mind, and it was for her sake that he had given up his wandering
life and settled at Morland Place, to spend his sunset years in contemplation of a miracle. With him Mary did lessons that
would have taxed most adult men; and she enjoyed the exercise of her own intellect so much she would play with Latin epigrams
as other children played with balls and hoops.


This great intelligence, which had made it impossible for the last two years to treat her as a child, she did not get from
her mother. Rosalind could read and write, but never troubled herself with either. No, Benedict believed that the extraordinary
qualities of Mary’s mind came from her father.


Now she had seen him. Her face lit and she ran to him, her arms wide with unselfconscious joy. ‘Papa!’

‘How is my angel?’ he enquired tenderly, bending to receive her kisses. ‘You look rosy enough. Are you well again?’ She had
had one of her troublesome colds, which Dr Holland said had been made worse by excessive studying. To get her away from her
books, Benedict had sent her to stay with friends in York.


‘I’m perfectly well,’ she said emphatically. ‘It was only a little cold, Papa. You didn’t need to send me away.’


‘But did you have a pleasant time, all the same?’

‘Oh yes, very pleasant! I always do, you know. Aunt Celia is so kind, and I have such interesting talks with Uncle Harry.
But I’m glad to be home.’ She looked round her with satisfaction. ‘Home is best.’


‘I’m glad you think so. Is that a new bonnet?’

‘Aunt Celia bought it for me. And look, she’s shown me how to put up my hair.’ She pulled off her bonnet and turned to show
him the back of her head. The back hair had been drawn into a neat, braided chignon: only the side hair was in the long, loose
curls he loved. ‘Don’t you like it?’ she asked anxiously, turning again to see why he was silent.


‘Oh yes, very much,’ he said; but he could not fob her off. ‘I wish you wouldn’t grow up so quickly.’

‘I am nearly fourteen,’ she reminded him gravely. ‘Juliet was married at fourteen.’


‘You, however,’ he said firmly, ‘will not be.’

‘I don’t think I want to be,’ she said judiciously. ‘Boys are so very silly. They don’t know anything, and they roar and push
and go red in the face and say stupid things.’ This, Benedict reflected, was an accurate description of the effect she had
on lads of her own age. ‘And anyway,’ Mary added, ‘I shall always love you best.’


He made himself laugh. ‘I’ll remind you of that when you have a husband!’

Sibella arrived at that moment, and Mary went to kiss and greet her; the same questions and answers were exchanged; and then
Mary exclaimed, ‘Goodness, I’m hungry! Will luncheon be soon? Is there time to go and see my darling babies first, Mama?’


It was a piece of the purest kindness that Mary had always called Sibella Mama without being asked.


‘There’s time, if you’re quick,’ Sibella said. ‘Papa and I have to change, in any case.’

‘Come with me,’ Mary begged. ‘I’m sure they must want to see you almost as much as me.’


‘Well, as it happens, some messages came in while we were out which I ought to attend to,’ Benedict said. ‘Malton, can we
postpone luncheon by half an hour?’


So Sibella and Mary went upstairs together, while Benedict and Father Moineau walked away towards the steward’s room. Mary
chatted about her stay in York and Sibella studied her as she listened. Mary was a lovely girl, in every sense: lovely, loving,
and lovable. If there had been anything about her to dislike it might have made it easier for Benedict; but he had adored
her since the moment of her birth, and not until it was too late to take back his heart had he found out that she was not
his own flesh and blood. From the very beginning, Rosalind had cuckolded him. This shining jewel of a child had in fact been
fathered by Rosalind’s lover, Sir Carlton Miniott, and that was where Mary had her intelligence – for Miniott had an extraordinary mind, while Benedict was no more than clever.


Mary was not Benedict’s daughter and there was nothing of him in her; but he loved her, and had dedicated himself to making
sure she never discovered what her mother had done. Only Father Moineau and Sibella knew the truth. Sometimes Sibella wished
Benedict had not told her. Knowing was like trying to sleep in a bed in which you’ve lost a sewing-needle: you never knew
quite when it might run into you, but you were sure that sooner or later it would.


Sibella brought her mind back to what Mary was telling her, the details of a legal problem that ‘Uncle Harry’ was dealing
with. Harry Anstey was a solicitor, Benedict’s man of business as well as his childhood friend. ‘Do you really understand
all that?’ Sibella asked at last. It seemed immensely complicated to her.


‘Oh yes,’ Mary said, with faint surprise. ‘It isn’t difficult to follow. You see—’


‘No, don’t tell me again,’ Sibella protested, laughing. ‘It sounds like one of those fiendish conundrums! I don’t think I
have a legal mind.’


‘Probably I don’t explain it properly,’ Mary said tactfully. ‘Uncle Harry has such a clear way of putting things.’

‘He talks to you a great deal about such things, doesn’t he?’

‘Well, I do find it interesting,’ Mary said almost apologetically. She knew it was not what was expected of females. ‘He said
yesterday it was a great pity I wasn’t born a boy, so that I could go into the law.’


‘Should you have liked to?’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said judiciously. ‘A great deal of it is dreadful nonsense – things done a certain way because they always have
been, not because it makes sense. Often it doesn’t even work.’


‘Work?’

‘I mean, it doesn’t achieve the desired result. One thinks of justice, I suppose; but after all, it’s more a matter of maintaining
the structure as it is.’ She frowned, away on a train of thought. Sibella waited patiently for her to come back. ‘But,’ Mary
went on at last, and with an unconscious sigh, ‘I do often wish I’d been a boy, because there doesn’t seem to be anything
a girl can do. I wonder sometimes—’


‘Yes?’

‘Why God bothered to give us brains at all. When I see how little females are expected to think about anything. And,’ she
added as if this were more to the point, ‘how difficult it is to have intelligence when there’s nothing you can do with it. It’s like – like being shut in a tiny room with a huge restless dog.’


Sibella thought the illustration very striking. She searched about for comfort. ‘You have your studies. Aren’t they a pleasure?’


‘Yes, but they don’t lead anywhere. One ought to be useful as well,’ Mary said with childlike certainty. ‘But a girl can only
be a wife and mother.’


‘Isn’t it useful to be a wife and mother?’

‘I suppose so; but one doesn’t need any brains for it. Look at cows and sheep.’

‘Thank you,’ said Sibella drily.

‘Oh,’ Mary said, disconcerted, ‘I didn’t mean you.’

‘It’s all right. I know what you meant. But you can use your brains to educate your children, can’t you?’

‘Only if they’re boys,’ Mary said.

‘I can’t argue with you,’ Sibella laughed. ‘You always have the last word.’

They reached the nursery. George, Sibella’s firstborn, was almost two – his birthday was two days before Mary’s. He was beginning
lessons with Mary’s former governess, Miss Titchell, who was painstakingly teaching him to make his loops and tails. He was
a solemn, chubby boy, very like Benedict to look at, except that his hair was darker and straighter and his eyes, surprisingly,
were blue; and like Benedict in early childhood he had a passion for animals, preferably those small enough to be carried
about in his pocket. George adored Mary, and as soon as she appeared he rushed to tell her in a breathless babble about a
nest of earwigs he had discovered in the garden since she went away. The long-suffering Miss Titchell had learned to be wary
about any small boxes she found lying about in the nursery.


Little Edward – Teddy, as he was known – was as yet no trouble to anyone: ten months old, a happy baby, arms held out indiscriminately
to anyone who would pick him up and make a fuss of him. He was really still the province of the nursery-maids, but sometimes when they had a lot to do they left him with Miss Titchell, to sit on the floor and play
with his toys while she taught Georgie. She accepted his presence with surprising equanimity, making the excuse that it would
‘prepare him for the discipline of learning’. Sibella suspected, however, that Miss Titchell had felt rather hurt when Mary
grew too clever to be taught by her, and was trying to make up quality with quantity.


When they left the nursery again, Sibella asked Mary, ‘By the way, wasn’t Arthur there, at Uncle Harry’s?’

‘Oh yes, he was there,’ Mary said neutrally.

‘You didn’t mention him at all.’ Sibella looked at her closely. It was unlike Mary to say so little about any subject, and
Arthur – Harry and Celia’s only son – had been a friend and playmate all her life. He was three years older than her, but
because of her intelligence they had always seemed much of an age. ‘You haven’t quarrelled with him, have you?’


‘We don’t quarrel,’ Mary said. She slid her eyes sidelong. ‘He’s got awfully silly,’ she explained.


‘Silly?’ Sibella queried. Mary seemed unwilling to say more, but Sibella thought she understood. Arthur was seventeen, after
all, and Mary was very, very pretty. ‘Never mind, darling, he’ll grow out of it,’ she said, suppressing a smile. ‘And if he
doesn’t, in a year or two you might be glad of a devoted swain, to dance with at parties and fetch you ices and pick up your
shawl.’


Mary’s reply was an unfeminine snort of derision.

The following day business caught up with Benedict and he was forced to disappear into the steward’s room. It amazed Sibella,
who had been brought up in a house which had nothing more than pleasure-grounds, how much work the owner of a large estate
had to do, even with the help of bailiffs and agents. One day a month was all her father had had to dedicate to such matters.


The weather was too good to waste by staying indoors, and she did not care to ride alone. Her mind turned naturally to Mary.
Mary’s outside tutors would not be coming again until next week: she was studying with Father Moineau, and Sibella did not
feel guilty about interrupting him with a request that Mary be released.


‘You know Doctor Holland said she mustn’t study for too long at a time. She needs fresh air and exercise. And what’s more,’
she added, meeting the priest’s eyes across Mary’s bent head, ‘so do you.’


‘I hope you do not propose to get me up on a horse,’ Moineau said. He patted his circumference. ‘God did not design this body
with horses in mind.’


‘Oh no,’ Sibella said. ‘I have a picture in my mind of you walking slowly round the moat with a book in your hand, and then
discovering that sitting on a bench and watching the swans is really more to your taste this morning than Socrates.’


‘Sophocles,’ Mary corrected, looking up from the book at last.

‘It’s all the same to me,’ Sibella said with perfect truth.

Moineau smiled. ‘You are a wise woman. At my age, one ought not to waste such a lovely day as this. Well, Mary, what do you
think?’


Mary hardly hesitated. ‘I haven’t had a good gallop for a week,’ she said wistfully. ‘Has someone been exercising Linnet for
me, or will he buck me off the moment he sees grass?’


‘He had leading exercise yesterday. And I had him out for an hour the day before.’

‘Oh, is that all? We’d better go out on the moor, then, hadn’t we, and get it over with. May I, Father?’

‘Go, child. Sophocles will wait another day.’


Linnet, Mary’s chestnut, was fresh, and communicated his bad manners to Ebony, so they had a lively ride of it until they
could get out onto Marston Moor and let them gallop. Then when the horses had got the itch out of their feet they rode a wide
circle home, walking side by side and chatting pleasantly: Sibella always found Mary good company when they were alone together.


When eventually they came in sight of the house again, Sibella had a strange feeling of reliving the past, for there was a
carriage standing at the end of the drawbridge. ‘Now who can that be?’ she said. ‘We weren’t expecting anyone.’


‘It’s a hired phaeton. And one of Willans’s jobs,’ Mary said, recognising the horse with an unerring horseman’s eye. ‘It’s
that wall-eyed roan that kicks. You remember it almost caused an accident in Micklegate last week?’


‘Well, the visitor must be a stranger, then,’ Sibella said. ‘Everyone in York knows better than to let Willans fob them off
with that beast.’


‘Oh, yes, there he is,’ Mary said. ‘I don’t recognise him, do you? It must be someone come to see round the house.’

Yes, now Sibella saw him, a man standing with his hands in his pockets and his head thrown back, gazing up at the barbican
with the rapt air of the practised tourist.


‘I think you’re right,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘What a nuisance, when your papa is so busy.’

She was not particularly surprised at the circumstance. Morland Place had been included in the latest edition of the local
guide book, and two or three times a week parties would arrive, drawn by the promise of a ‘fine and most rare example of a
fortified manor house’, complete with moat, drawbridge and portcullis, fifteenth century chapel, Exceptional Cantilevered Staircase, and collection of family
portraits by Leading Artists of Every Age.


Benedict had decreed that visitors should be shown only the hall, dining room, chapel and long saloon: Morland Place was a
comparatively small house, and there would otherwise be no end to the disruption of normal daily business. Even so he had
been known to bolt wildly for the steward’s room at the first sound of strangers’ voices at the door.


‘Fancy going to look at houses all alone,’ Mary said. ‘Do you suppose he hasn’t any friends?’ Visitors always came in parties.

‘Perhaps he’s studying architecture,’ Sibella suggested.

Mary stared. ‘Isn’t there something strange about his clothes?’

‘The cut is odd, perhaps,’ Sibella agreed. ‘And there’s something very queer indeed about his hat.’

Mary giggled. ‘Perhaps he’s a lunatic escaped from his keeper.’

‘I hope your father has had time to go into hiding.’

‘Poor man,’ Mary said, suddenly sorry for him. ‘Are we going to avoid him too?’

‘Malton can show him round, or Mrs Hoddle,’ Sibella said firmly. ‘What does one keep servants for?’

‘They don’t mind, anyway,’ Mary said. ‘They nearly always get a half crown for it.’

‘Do they?’ Sibella was often surprised at the things Mary knew.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mary. ‘It’s quite the usual fee. But in some houses the master makes them give it up to him. Malton told me,’
she added, seeing the question in Sibella’s eye.


‘I suppose Malton doesn’t mean to offer it to your father?’

‘He’s saving. He wants to make Mrs Hoddle an honest woman.’


Sibella burst out laughing. ‘Mary! The things you say!’

‘Oh, it’s only what Malton told me. Shall we go round to the back door, then?’

‘Too late. He’s seen us.’

The stranger had turned and was doffing his peculiar headgear in automatic courtesy. Sibella saw that he was young – about
eighteen or nineteen, perhaps – and well-built, though the loose fit of his clothes had made him look scrawny from a distance.
His hair was blond and wiry, his face weather-tanned, his eyes pale blue, with thick sun-bleached lashes – like an albino
horse, Mary thought. His straight nose was freckled, his wide mouth seemed designed for smiling. He scanned their faces eagerly
as though he hoped he might recognise them.


‘Good morning,’ Sibella said politely.

‘Good morning, ma’am,’ the stranger replied. He bowed to Sibella, taking sidelong glances, like little sips, at Mary. ‘Would
this be Morland Place?’ he said, but without waiting for an answer shook his head and went on, ‘No, I guess that’s a stupid
question. There can’t be two places like this, not even in England. And besides, here it is, right where it’s supposed to
be.’ He tapped the guide book triumphantly.


His accent was strange, and Sibella couldn’t place it. ‘Have you come to look round the house?’ she asked.

‘Oh, Lord, have I just?’ the young man said fervently. He clasped his hands together at chest-level as though he were about
to pray. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this moment the whole of my life – well, since I was five years old at any rate. I
just can hardly believe I’m really here. May I ask, ma’am, would you be the lady of the house?’


Sibella admitted that she was.


The youth beamed. ‘Well, ma’am, I am mighty proud to meet you! Just how proud I guess you’ll understand when I tell you that
my great great grandfather was born in this very house, a hundred and fifty years ago, give or take a year. And my great grandfather
was born exactly one hundred years ago this year, which makes it kind of special for me being here at this particular time,
although he wasn’t actually born in Morland Place. But he stayed here a lot, and I guess he looked on it as his home.’


Sibella could only stare at him helplessly, bemused by the flood of words. Mary, however, had managed to follow him.

‘Your great great grandfather lived here?’ she asked.

He turned towards her with an eagerness which suggested he had only been waiting for an excuse.

‘Yes indeed. He was a Morland and a son of this house – which makes us kind of cousins, I guess.’

‘You are no cousin to me, sir, I’m afraid,’ Sibella said. ‘I’m only a Morland by marriage.’

The young man’s smile wavered, he looked disconcerted, and turned his hat rapidly round and round by the brim. ‘I beg pardon,
ma’am. I hope I haven’t said anything to offend. I didn’t mean to be forward.’ He coloured under his tan, and lowered his
gaze. ‘Naturally the connection being so distant, I shouldn’t expect to be noticed by the family. But I did understand that
the house was open to visitors—’


Sibella felt as thou