Rutherford Park by Elizabeth Cooke

Author:Elizabeth Cooke [Cooke, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

It was one o’clock in the afternoon when the Napier delivered Lord William and Harry back to Rutherford, coming straight from York. Watching the car’s arrival from the morning room, Octavia was still holding William’s letter in her hand; it had been set discreetly by her plate at breakfast.

I am anxious to be home, he had written. Tell Jack to bring the car.

When the Napier came into view, she could see the small plumes of dust from far down the drive. She straightened herself, put a hand to hair, and looked around the room. Everything was blue about the day: the bright blue of the sky outside, the blue-and-white Chinese porcelain in the display cabinets, the vast sprays of blue delphinium, the blue and gold on the spines of the books, on the figures in the carpet, on the blue-and-yellow edges to the enormous curtains that had been pulled back. She looked at her hands, at the ring that William had given her. Blue sapphires, the Bluebird sapphires and diamonds in a tight band above her wedding ring. She had once danced around this room in anticipation of William coming home. How many years ago was that? Eighteen, twenty? Danced around, dragging the great awkward bustled dress of the day, with the sapphires blazing on her hand. It had been a carriage that she had been watching for then, and when William had at last arrived she had run out onto the steps and thrown her arms around him. “Now, now,” he had said, in kindly admonishment. “The servants, dear. The servants.”

This room had been red and gold then, heavily tasseled wherever she looked. At least she had changed that, even if William had stopped her from clearing most of the furniture. “That was my grandmother’s chair,” he had protested as they had progressed through the rooms trying to choose what remained and what was to go. “That was my great-uncle’s Canterbury. For heaven’s sake, that must stay as it is.” His frowning face. “Don’t touch that, Octavia.” On and on, unbending. “One needs such things.”

“This?” she would plead, holding up some ancient, moth-eaten tapestry cushion. “This?” A piece of furniture that was not as old as it looked: the “Jacobean” sideboard that was half Georgian and half Victorian; or tapping her fingers on the outlandish ormolu clock with its serpents and cherubs locked forever in gilded combat. “This, William? Oh, please, do let’s modernize something.” But he had been impervious to her need for change. He let her alter only the color scheme, and then only to his family’s color. The blue of the bluebirds.

She had always supposed that Rutherford would remain in the Beckforth and Cavendish way, and that she would eventually mold herself to the house until she became part of it. She had tried, God knew. And occasionally succeeded. She had once heard William say that Rutherford had calmed her—it had been at some long-ago dinner—and he had smiled at her down the long table in

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