‘But Harriet’s definitely on her side. “I have told Charles. He was going to horsewhip the drawing master from here to Norwich. I persuaded him not to,”’ Angelo read.
‘Adding scandal to scandal. Pregnant by someone who wasn’t only from a different class, he was from a different country. If Charles beat him up, it would just confirm the gossip and make things harder for Alice,’ Mariana said.
‘Now it’s September, and Carulli’s left. And here’s Harriet worrying again. “She does not show. I could send Alice to my sister in Scotland, until after.”’ Angelo frowned again. ‘You mean she’s actually thinking of letting Alice have the baby but then taking it away from her?’
‘To be brought up by someone else—it’s one possible solution,’ Mariana said. ‘Look here—she says she could go with Alice and they could come back and say the baby belonged to Harriet and Charles.’ She paused. ‘Except the servants, especially the ones who did the laundry, would know that Harriet showed no sign of pregnancy and Alice did.’
A week later there was another entry. ‘“Charles says it is settled. She will marry Robert Reynolds, his tenant at Manor Farm,”’ Angelo read. ‘“Charles will settle the farm on Reynolds, provided the baby is his heir.” We were right, then. It was a marriage of convenience.’
‘Harriet’s heartbroken about it, though,’ Mariana said. ‘Not because of the scandal, but because she’s afraid Alice will be unhappy. “My poor Alice. He is so much older than she is. But Charles is adamant. If we go to Scotland he will make us come back. He will not say that the baby is ours.”’
‘And that would add to the shame,’ Angelo said with a sigh. ‘Look, there’s another entry here. Charles has paid for the licence and the wedding is set for the first of October.’
‘There’s nothing in here about how Alice felt. But I guess she was trapped,’ Mariana said. ‘Carulli had gone back to Italy, and he might’ve confessed to her beforehand that he was married. Her only option was to have the baby and brazen it out.’
They pored over the diary again. ‘Harriet doesn’t say much about the wedding,’ Mariana said thoughtfully. ‘Just “It is done. Alice is married to Reynolds”. Instead of being the big society event, consolidating the relationship with another landowning family like they’d planned, it’s a quick and quiet wedding.’
‘Let’s see if there’s anything about the baby,’ Angelo said. ‘I need to know that she loved the baby.’
She knew what was getting to him, and reached up to kiss him. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ she said softly. And she didn’t just mean Alice. ‘Here we go. March. “Alice has been delivered safely of a boy. People will count on their fingers and talk, but no matter. Robert will stand up for her.”’ She paused. ‘I notice Harriet calls him by his first name now. I think she likes him.’
‘“Alice has been teaching Robert to write,”’ Angelo read. ‘So they’re managing to rub along.’
‘Even though he isn’t the man she fell in love with, the father of her baby, it sounds as if she’s happy,’ Mariana said. ‘I’m glad.’
‘I’m glad, too. Though I wish we knew more. Carulli said to his brother that he left under a cloud, so it’s obvious he knew about the baby. But was Alice just an idle fling or did he really love her? And did he really just walk away from a baby?’
She stroked his face. ‘I’m sorry. This must be so hard for you.’
‘It is. I know, I know, he was already married to someone in Florence and had children with her, so technically he couldn’t marry Alice, but how could he just walk out on his child? How could he walk out on any of them?’ He shook his head. ‘Even if you allow for infant mortality being high and parents being too scared to love their babies too much in case they lost them—that’s cold.’
Before she could say anything to reassure him, Jocelyn bustled back in to the dining room. ‘Sorry about that. All feathers smoothed over.’