My Sweet Folly Read online

  Robert

  Bridgend House

  Herefordshire

  2 February, 1805

  I have thought a long time about your letter. I have hidden it; it frightened me, and yet I could not destroy it.

  I well know what I ought to do. I should not answer it. We should not write again.

  Red Fort

  Shajahanabad, Delhi

  22 June, 1805

  My dear Folly,

  Please. Please do not say I must not write to you. I promise to say no more to frighten you; you have my sworn word. I shall write nothing that you may not read aloud in your parlor.

  The weather has begun to be hot again. I have left the army garrison and moved here to a palace known as the Red Fort, an imposing edifice on a high rock overlooking the sacred river Jumna. The fort is quite beautiful, being a palace really, the seat of the Mughal emperor Shah Alam. It is full of open air arcades, long galleries of scalloped arches made entirely of white marble. There is a fountain shaped like an open lotus, its border inlaid with gold and silver. Thousands and thousands of red and yellow flowers in pots. (What is your favorite flower?) Persian carpets piled thick on top of one another, but no furniture, only cushions, except in my chamber there is a broken English chair, impossible to sit upon, but presented to me with such pride that I could hardly refuse it.

  I have my own elephant now. I like her; she has a tiny, merry eye; huge slow ears, a feminine taste for adornment, and an unpronounceable Hindustani name. If you would like to suggest one in English, I shall christen her immediately. In the meantime I just call her sweetheart. Although she can salaam and trumpet quite satisfactorily, her most pronounced talent is for finding her way home—it was her habit of meandering back there at any time she pleased that caused her to be such a bargain on the pachyderm market. But personally, I find it very reassuring to know I will always be home before dark.

  What else can I write about? Doubtless the monsoon rains will be heavy again this season. I am so afraid that you will not reply. I never wished to frighten you, my dear.

  Your Cousin,

  Robert

  Bridgend House

  Herefordshire

  17 November, 1805

  Dear Robert,

  Here I am, writing. Now we see what force circumspection plays in my character! None whatsoever. You are to name your homing elephant after me, of course. It would be much better if you had a ship to name after me, but we must make do as we can.

  I have thought and thought—how painful and knotty the world becomes, at the same time it is turned topsy-turvy and beautiful because you are in it. I wake each morning and my first thought is of you. I walk along the river Wye and see our white-faced cattle standing knee-deep and a salmon flash beneath the pool, and wish to tell you of it. I wonder at dinner if you prefer almond cheesecakes or apple tarts. How shall I say you must not write; how shall I look every day at my ink and pen and paper, feel my heart fill, and do nothing?

  I do not know how. I come to no conclusion. I am perhaps a little dishonest in my life; I pretend to love my stepdaughter, I pretend to love my husband—and it is not quite that I do not love them, but that they really do not love me, and so I cannot seem to hit upon what will please them. Actually I do not seem to see them very often; Melinda is at her academy for young ladies, being polished to a high sheen; and Mr. Hamilton is a crusading amateur florist and hybridizer. He is creating a new rose. He spends a great deal of time in travel on account of this endeavor, and the rest of it in his hothouse. We feel that a blue ribbon is infallibly in our future, as long as I do not make the mistake again of using the wrong buds for the dinner table as I did last year. I am very much ashamed of this; it was a cruel blow to Mr. Hamilton’s cutting schedule. I knew better, truly! Very stupid of me; I admit that I did not listen closely, or forgot; I hardly know. But it is a difficult thing for Mr. Hamilton to forgive, and I am still in disgrace. So I go about in the happy illusion that at least I must please you, sweet knight, you being at such a distance that I could hardly manage not to do so! It is a great comfort to me, you cannot know how deep and real my feelings for you run, my dear friend.

  I had never imagined anything of this sort would happen to me. It is harder than I had ever fancied.

  Your Folly

  P.S. My favorite flower is the yellow rose. I am not fastidious as to the subspecies. Fortunately for the future safety of his buds, Charles now specializes in a pink variety of the Ayrshire rose, which is a seedling hybrid from our Rosa arvensis.

  Red Fort

  Shajahanabad, Delhi

  12 April, 1806

  My sweet Folly,

  If you were mine…

  Searching for parlor chat—the weather has become hot again. The monsoon is still months away. My work is interesting; politics and religion. I have been learning to make scale drawings of the architecture, and collecting recipes and superstitions from the guuruus. Certainly I shall have a book out of this eventually. I ride out every day, but my homing elephant dependably returns me to our abode by sunset.

  If you were mine, sweet Folly, I should not leave you, not for a moment, not for any rose or any riches.

  Robert

  Bridgend House

  Herefordshire

  9 May, 1806

  Dear Cousin Robert,

  My husband, your cousin Charles Hamilton, died suddenly of a seizure on the 6th of May. He was visiting with friends in Surry; I am told that his passing was brief and painless.

  Mrs. Charles Hamilton

  Bridgend House

  Herefordshire

  17 May, 1807

  Dear Robert,

  I have received no letter from you for a long time; perhaps it was lost. Life is much as usual here. You will know of course that your father was named Melinda’s guardian in Mr. Hamilton’s will—at first I was concerned that communication to India would make this very awkward, but Mssrs. Hawkridge and James seem to have all necessary authority to act in his place. Mr. Hamilton left both myself and his daughter comfortably off, although Melinda’s marriage portion is by no means as well-endowed as one could hope. She is, however, growing so beautiful that I have no doubt of her future. She returned from the young ladies’ academy to live at home after her father’s death, and I am pleased that we have become better friends lately.

  I watched the cattle drinking in the river this morning and thought of you, sweet knight. I hope you will write again soon. If you do not, I feel that perhaps I shall do something wild and absurd, such as traveling out to Delhi to view this homing elephant for myself.

  Your Folly

  Red Fort

  Shajahanabad, Delhi

  10 October, 1807

  My dear sweet Folly,

  I am sorry. You received no letter because I have not written. I am married. All along, I have been married. Folie—I am sorry. You must not think of coming here.

  Robert

  ONE

  Herefordshire

  1812

  “He is a disgrace!” Mrs. Couch said. “A disgrace to the country, I say!”

  Folie, her mind having drifted to the wind-whipped apple blossoms outside the window, thought for an instant that her caller was referring to the disreputable object at which Mrs. Couch was staring in indignation. Folie sought vainly for an appropriate reply—certainly Master George Couch was a disgrace, but to agree with his vehement mother on this point seemed a trifle hazardous. Mrs. Couch was no feeble dame.

  George, uncowed by his mother’s fury, turned to Folie and said confidingly, “Yes, ma’am, and his water is purple!”

  “George!” Mrs. Couch gasped, turning an interesting shade of that color herself. “You must not—Oh!”

  Folie realized that the topic was rather to do with mad old King George than His Majesty’s untidy namesake regaling himself on lemon cakes in her parlor. “That is not drawing room talk, you know, George,” she said, with a sidelong glance at the boy. “We shall all swoon.”

  �
�Oh, I say! I should like that!” George asserted.

  “Yes, and Mama would adore it, so pray do not encourage her!” Melinda said, tossing her bright honey curls back.

  “I thought Mrs. Hamilton would like to know,” George said. “She’s interested in that sort of—”

  “George!” Mrs. Couch snapped.

  Folie smiled. “You may tell me later, George, out behind the dustbins.”

  “Mama!” Melinda said, in much the same warning tone that Mrs. Couch had used with her son.

  Folie merely replied with a superior smirk. For a full ten seconds Melinda, having matured to a beautiful and demure maiden of eighteen, managed to maintain a disapproving expression. Then her perfectly straight Grecian nose twitched, and she dropped her eyes to her lap. Several faint tremors disturbed her otherwise modest bosom.

  Fortunately Mrs. Couch, their primary hope for entree into Society for Melinda’s debut season, did not appear to notice this fall from grace. “It was the Prince Regent to whom I referred, George,” Mrs. Couch said firmly, and then lowered her voice to a heroic whisper. “If he should go mad like his father, I know not what we shall do!”

  “The first thing,” Folie mused, “if they do lock him up, would be to make sure our Ladies’ Committee gets supervision of the church bazaar. He owns such a number of extravagant objects, I vow we could rebuild the steeple this very year on a single estate sale.”

  Melinda properly ignored such disrespect toward the Prince Regent. “The papers say it is merely that he fell and sprained his ankle,” she said. “He has taken to his bed to recover.”

  Mrs. Couch began to argue that this certainly proved the regent’s mind to be weak, since any sane man of his enormous bulk must know that he could not accomplish a Highland Fling with any degree of safety. Folie watched the postman wander from door to door of the village’s main street, his collar blown up against his neck and his scarf tails whipping in the spring wind. She did not expect him to cross to her door. When he did, her eyebrows lifted.

  She stood up. “Now where is that Sally with more hot water for the tea? Do pardon me while I find her!”

  Closing the drawing room door on Melinda’s look of inquiry, she ran down the stairs in time to find the housemaid bidding the postman good day. There were two letters in Sally’s hand, a thin one and a fat packet.

  The cook, just coming up from the kitchen, gave Folie a dry look. “You make good speed on the stairs, ma’am, for a lady of your age.”

  Folie stuck out her tongue. “Just because I am thirty today! And refused to have a great number of cakes and a party, so that you have no opportunity to tell me that I eat too many sweets for my mature widow’s digestion!”

  “Perhaps there is a special birthday greeting, ma’am!” Sally said, proffering the post shyly.

  “Perhaps it is! From our solicitors!” Folie gave the packet a mock grimace. “Always so attentive, dear Mssrs. Hawkridge and James.”

  She looked down at the address on the letter. For an instant she held the paper between her two hands, frowning at it. Then her face grew still. She slipped the letter into her pocket, grasped the banister, and ran up the stairs. She paused at the landing and whispered, “Pray, Sally—tell Mrs. Couch that I’ve taken a blinding headache and must lie down!”

  Four years and three months it had been since she had seen that particular handwriting, that blue seal, the unmistakable Mrs. Charles Hamilton, the distinctive curl of the F in My dear Folly. She sat at her desk overlooking the red tulips and peeking green leaves in the back garden, smoothing open the paper.

  My dear Folly.

  She stared at her own name for a moment. For some reason, she hardly knew what, tears blurred the letters. She sniffed and blinked, looking up at the tulips. “Really, ma’am,” she murmured reprovingly to herself.

  It was nostalgia. It took her back so vividly. Four years ago, she had been just out of mourning for Charles. Good kind steady Charles, gone much too early at sixty-one. For five years before that, a married woman, she had smiled whenever she’d seen this handwriting in the post; smiled and grown as breathless as if she were falling from a high cliff, and run up the stairs to this desk just as she had today.

  My dear Folly,

  I have left you languishing on your lilypad for a criminal length of time, princess. Can you forgive me? A dragon distracted me, just a small one, nothing to worry about, but I pursued him into an uncommonly sultry desert (you know how India is) and seem to have lost my way there. To be candid, I recall very little of it—I have no sense of direction, which is a great trial for a knight errant—but in the end I seem to discover myself in England. I think there was a magic door or a key or something of that sort involved. At any rate, I am at Solinger and you and Miss Melinda are commanded to repair here directly. On the instant. I am her guardian, you know, since my father’s death. So I may command these things. And I do.

  Your Knight,

  Robert Cambourne

  Folie shook her head. She read it again, and laughed angrily, giddily, to herself. “You must be mad!” she whispered.

  An investigation of the fat packet and its contents showed that the travel plans and expenses had all been arranged by the efficient and attentive Mssrs. Hawkridge and James.

  The bedroom door opened. “Whatever is it?” As Folie turned, Melinda slipped in, her pretty face clouded with worry. “What’s the news?”

  Folie stood up from the chair. “Your guardian wishes to see you.”

  “Oh.” Melinda’s expression relaxed. “Well, that is not so bad! Sally and Cook said that from the look upon your face, it was something very shocking.”

  “It is shocking,” Folie said dryly. “Considering that he has not lifted a finger on your behalf in years!”

  “Lieutenant Cambourne? Well, he has been in India, has he not?” Melinda’s lashes swept upward. “Surely he does not expect us to travel out there!”

  “No, only as far as Buckinghamshire, I’m afraid. He is at Solinger Abbey.”

  “Solinger! Oh, I shall like to see that place! It must be very grand.”

  “As grand as all the gems in India can make it, I have no doubt. But happily for our self-respect, we need not concern ourselves with vulgar calculating designs on the Cambourne fortune. He is married.”

  “I shall pay him no mind, then.” Melinda gave a pert grin. “Besides, as a calculating hussy, I insist upon having all the sport of hunting down my own rich bachelor—perhaps a few years younger!”

  “Why, today of all days, is this household so haunted by allusions to decrepitude and old age?” Folie exclaimed. “The poor gentleman is but four years older than I. But never mind, if he is too dilapidated for your taste, you shall simper prettily at him anyway. We might move to his house in town for the season if—”

  “Of course! Of course! Oh, Mama, you are wicked!”

  “If the notion should happen to occur to him,” Folie finished gravely.

  “That will be no problem. You can wrap him about your little finger,” Melinda said.

  “I quite doubt that. He has not written since—” Folie paused. “Shortly after your papa died, God bless him. But we shall do our best to squeeze Lieutenant Cambourne for our own nefarious purposes. You are to leave for Buckinghamshire tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow! As soon as that?”

  Folie waved a limp hand at the packet. “Hawkridge and James,” she said helplessly. “You know how they are.”

  Melinda made an unladylike snort. “I know for a certainty that you can wrap them about your finger. Why should we hurry so?”

  “I see no reason to delay. Your spring wardrobe is quite ready.”

  “But the packing—”

  “Why, have you never stayed up all night to pack for a mad flight from your evil creditors? It is most diverting.” She walked past Melinda, sliding a finger under her stepdaughter’s chin. “Seize your gowns and what’s left of your jewels, my child, and you shall be off to skin fresh pigeons!”
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br />   “Such a shady character you are, Mama,” Melinda said fondly.

  “I know,” Folie said from beyond the door. “I really believe I should have been born a highwayman.”

  She finished packing for her stepdaughter at 4 a.m., long after a somnolent Melinda had fallen asleep in a chair and been coaxed off to bed. Folie decided it was best simply to stay awake until seven, when the post chaise was scheduled to arrive at their door. She made herself a cup of tea in the kitchen and sat alone at the table, reading the letter again.

  Her sweet knight. From half a world away, he had come to her through his letters, whimsical and intriguing, shy and flirtatious, a unicorn stranded in the solid beef of the Indian Army.

  She sipped her tea and toyed with the corner of the paper. It had been a woman’s dream, of course. All an impossible fancy.

  She had not been able to remain angry at him. In the days after his last letter, she had hated him; hated herself for what she had allowed to happen to her. But that had faded, slowly faded, with time and an eternity of heartache. How could she blame him for deceit, for drawing her into loving him, when she had slipped and skidded so easily down that slope herself? She could hardly remember the unhappy girl she must have been, to develop such a passion for a man who was no more than ink upon paper.

  It was best, the way he had done it. She did not doubt that. Folie knew herself; she had longed to write him, to maintain a connection, to remain friends. And yet at the same time she had known how impossible it must be—that she could not keep her heart out of it.