high, my mother had been telling me ever since I could remember: Don’t settle, she’d say. There were no lullabies, for me: only Aim high. Don’t settle.
‘I didn’t settle,’ she’d say, and look at me.
Back in those days I did only have eyes for her; there was no one else in my little world. What I saw of her, usually, was that long straight back of hers as she strode busily around our house. If she’d have settled, she - farmer’s daughter - would’ve become a farmer’s wife; she’d have married a tenant farmer and had a big, busy farmhouse to run. But she’d aimed high and married a gentleman’s son who himself was aiming high and had become a successful lawyer. So, she had a big, busy manor house to run, with tenants to farm our land.
I grew up with the belief that there was work to do in the world: the work of bettering oneself. Our chaplain talked of having one’s God-given place in the world, yet we as a family seemed intent on leaving our place behind. My mother’s way around it was to believe that it was our place to better ourselves. Bettering ourselves, she said, was what God intended for the poor-relation Tilneys. ‘God has been kind to us,’ she’d say, ‘and enabled us to work hard and we’ve done well, we’ve been able to make a good life for ourselves.’ She never looked happy when she said it, though, she never looked pleased; she looked as if there was always so much more to do.
‘All this,’ she’d say sometimes, in wonder, when she paused in the garden and looked back at our house. But try as I might, I couldn’t see what she saw. The house was all I’d ever known, and, beautiful though it was, it was just a house. If there was no house, what would there be? Nothing: just grass and mud; openness, emptiness, a clearing. The wonder in her voice scared me, the implication that what we had - all this - was unexpected, accidental, just as likely to not be. Grass and mud and wind and no shelter were just as likely. From how she said it, all this had been built by my parents’ will alone, and the strength of their will alone kept it standing. But for how much longer? Whenever my father was home from his lodgings in London, I overheard tense exchanges on the rising cost of the stables, the expense of ordering new livery for the servants.
I grew up knowing that I had a part to play in keeping that house standing: I could make a good marriage, make connections. A good marriage - mine - would shore us up; we’d no longer be the poor relations isolated in our beautiful house in that clearing. I was my parents’ only child and their fear for me was that I’d slide away into obscurity. Little did they know that there’d come a time when my obscurity was all we’d wish for.
Back then: Watch and learn, they urged me of my forthcoming time at the duchess’s; soak everything up and do your utmost best at all times. I’d be working hard to help run a big household, as well as learning Latin and Greek, mathematics, music and astronomy, but the reward, ultimately, would be my own wealthy, well-connected household in which - God willing - I’d be raising my husband’s heir and our many other eminently marriageable children. It all sounded good to me, or certainly good enough. At eleven years old, I knew of nothing else to wish for.
Make people want you, Catheryn, my mother said. Make yourself the girl who people want for their family, she said. Because, yes, it’s all down to money, in the end, to dowry and social standing and there’s nothing, she’d tell me, that you can do about any of that: that’s for us to worry about, and we’re doing the very best for you that we can. But there is something else: character. There are so many girls, Catheryn - more and more, these days - and so little to choose between those of you with your kind of dowry and background, but you can tip the balance in your favour. You can make yourself the girl who people want as their daughter-in-law, their son’s wife, the mother of their grand-children. You can be the girl who lights up the room, catches eyes, warms hearts. Make yourself the girl that people want to be running their son’s household. You’ll need to show an eye for beauty and quality, she said, but a nose for value. A head for figures and a good hand for letter-writing. You’ll need to give the impression you can deal with servants - keeping them in line whilst winning them over — and keep a good name with merchants and suppliers. Don’t stand for nonsense but curb your tongue and keep your temper, and never take sides. Have a ready smile, be quick to lend an ear, a helping hand, and have an eye for who’s to be trusted. Keep your counsel, but don’t be secretive.
Be respectful to your elders and betters, she insisted. Never waiver in that, never be tempted for a single moment to think that you’re quicker-witted or clearer-eyed than your elders and betters, because once you start that, you’ll never be able to stop, and no one’s interested in clever girls. Wittiness never got a baby to sleep, or a draper paid.
Make sure you’re always looking neat and tidy and clean, she’d say, but other than that, don’t worry about your appearance. You’re not bad-looking, as it happens, she’d tell me, but looks fade before you know it, and then what are you left with? Beauty draws the eye but for all the wrong reasons. Keep your eyes down, Catheryn. Don’t look at boys. Don’t even look. Don’t get distracted. Don’t let any silly girls fill your head with talk of romance. Girls can be very silly, Catheryn, when they haven’t had what you’ve been lucky enough to have: a proper upbringing. It’s a silly girl who gets her head turned. Get your head turned, she said, and you’re lost.
You’re no one’s fool, she’d say to me, and there was something in how she said it that suggested it was a secret between us and, for reasons I couldn’t fathom, not an entirely comfortable one. A burden, almost, perhaps.
There was such a lot to remember about how I should be; I worried I’d never remember it all, let alone one day actually manage to be it. None of this would ever have been said to Katherine: she had no mother to say it and, because she’d been born into England’s principal family, there was no need anyway for it to be said. And so she came unencumbered to the duchess’s; whereas for me, my mother had spoken so compellingly that, in my mind’s eye, I could see the woman I was to strive to become, the calm and capable, well-loved and much-valued lady, warm-hearted and cool-headed. She was a wonderful prospect, that lady, but always at a distance from me; such a distance that she seemed to have nothing to do with me, striding away into the future, and when I arrived at the duchess’s I didn’t know if I’d ever keep up or even ever dare take a step in her direction.
All that talk at home of the Howards’ wealth, but when, on my journey from home to the duchess’s, the leading rider called back that we’d arrived, I assumed we were stopping off somewhere for an overnight stay of which I hadn’t been informed. We were approaching a timber gatehouse, behind which was a moat and what appeared to be a jumble of barns. Hours earlier, we’d ridden away from the family home that my father had had built: a symmetrical, brick-built house gazing big-windowed over formal gardens. Clattering over that old drawbridge, I craned enquiringly towards my old nursemaid, Mrs Kent, but received only a smile in return. The drawbridge took us to a porters’ lodge, beyond which was a courtyard like a farmyard: a flock of ewes being shepherded across it, and a dozen or so labourers yelling and hammering, hauling and slamming down plough-shafts, scythes, cartwheels and crates.
A couple of labourers took our horses, and a liveried man arrived to greet us, requesting that we accompany him. Duly, we tottered across cobblestones, avoiding the smears and dollops of dung. The man’s grey jerkin had a subtle shimmer to it. My own servants were dressed in a flat, glaring blue. Someone wealthy, then, was staying here: a party from the duchess’s, perhaps, to meet us and then take us on with them in the morning to her splendid, elegant house. I asked Mrs Kent, ‘Where is this?’
‘It’s where the duchess lives.’ She sounded surprised that I’d asked.
I was weary from the ride, lacking patience. Servants will believe anything, I’d been told often enough. ‘No, it isn’t,’ and I laughed to muffle my irritation.
She
