The Marlows

by Rosalind Laker

  He was torn with uncertainty, and felt himself a boor to persist. Her whole face was innocent, her attitude frank and trusting. How could he harbour those nagging suspicions instead of putting them from his mind completely?

  “I just can’t understand why you couldn’t have confided in me about your worries, don’t you know,” he said.

  She leaned slightly forward to rest her hand on his across the small circular table, her expression loving. “To you least of all, beloved — you would have swayed me with your tender words and I should have come no nearer to solving my dilemma.”

  “Then you could have talked to Tansy or — or —” He did not care to mention Judith’s name, fearing to reawaken all the old distress, but she completed the sentence for him as if to prove her recovery.

  “ — Judith?” She shook her head, her smile wan and sweet. “How could either of them have understood the special strength of my love? Had I been selfish I’d have given no thought to whether our marriage should or should not take place, but your happiness was more important to me than my own. I had to be sure, and now I am. You have proved it to me over these past weeks.”

  “But to wander about in the darkness!” he persisted.

  She dropped her lashes, with a little frown, almost as if she was losing patience with him, but when she swept them upward again he saw he must have been mistaken, so dewy was her gaze. “I was born in the country. I’m at home with the trees and the grass and the flowers. The quietness of the night amid woods and meadows was balm to me. Is that so difficult to comprehend?” She gave a tinkling little laugh. “Anyone would think you imagined me to be stealing off to meet a Romeo.”

  So naturally was it said, so openly and with such innocence that he laughed with her, suddenly reassured. Consumed by a swift rise of desire for her, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. She flustered prettily, always shy and quick to restrain him whenever he became demonstrative, and he told himself he could not imagine that she — of all people! — would indulge in an amorous escapade.

  “This is Paris, my darling,” he said happily, noticing how she glanced about in case they were observed. “The city of lovers.”

  Lovers. The word hung like a tiny shadow. No, he didn’t doubt her purity, but he knew himself condemned ever after to watch her like a hawk. When they were married he’d see that she paid him back for all the unnecessary worry and torment she had caused him, and the coin he’d take from her would be smelted in the passion and ardour that had yet to thaw the ice that enclosed her.

  Tansy would have left them in Paris and travelled on home if it had been possible, but Nina could not be left without a chaperone and in any case was as demanding as ever of her company, no longer for constant mothering, but for advice and companionship when ordering and buying the vast amount of clothes, bonnets, and shoes deemed essential to her trousseau. Tansy, filled with a hungry longing to see Dominic, whose company she had missed desperately at the time when she had needed him most, took solitary expeditions whenever the chance was presented, wanting to be on her own, and she enjoyed visits to the Louvre and strolls in the parks and under the autumn-tinted chestnuts by the Seine. Twice she climbed up to Montmartre, buying a picnic luncheon of crusty rolls and cheese on the way; there she sat on the grass amid the turning windmills and gazed at the city spread out below.

  They stayed long enough in Paris for Nina’s wedding gown to be designed, fitted, and completed, and it was in time for Christmas at the Manor that they returned to Cudlingham and found it covered with a blanket of new-fallen snow. As the carriage passed Rushmere, Tansy looked out at it closed and shuttered in the late afternoon dusk. Selwyn Hedley had gone unmourned by any. Not even Silas had shown the slightest sign of grief, although he had been consumed by bitterness for the personal loss of an influential master, who must have paid him handsomely, if nothing else, but the concern to save his own skin had been uppermost in his mind and his talk had been solely to that end. He managed to get away with it, it being impossible to set up any concrete evidence against him. In spite of everything pointing to Silas having been in the box room until the sound of the gun going off had sent him scrambling back out of the window, Brett could not swear to seeing him or to remembering anything except the rug slipping under his feet. Silas must have overheard all that passed on the landing, but he had known that his innocence at Redstead had already been established even if the silk kerchief was proven to be his master’s. Tansy’s threat of the laundry mark had been the biggest bluff of all. She had indeed marked each article, but what she had not told Hedley was that she removed each coloured cross-stitch mark when she sorted the clean laundry back into individual piles. Often she was haunted by the dark, vicious look Silas had given her when he had learned the truth of it, and she could not shake off the feeling that he would seek to get even with her if ever the chance came his way.

  At the Manor she was given a room next to Nina’s. She had dressed for dinner in a Parisian gown of creamy velvet, a gift from her future brother-in-law in appreciation of all she had done for Nina and himself, when a maidservant came to tell her that Dominic had called to see her. She hastened at a run down the long corridors, her wide crinoline caught in both hands to lift the hem free of her winged feet, and she came at last to the head of the grand staircase and saw him waiting in the hall below, his cape over his arm. “Dominic!”

  She had only breathed his name, but he turned his head sharply and stared up at her with an exultant look of love and longing. Then he was speeding up the stairs to her, and she was flying down. They met halfway, she throwing herself passionately against him, he receiving her with open arms that crushed her to him, their mouths lost in ardent and unassuageable rediscovery. He was still kissing her when he swept her down with him toward the entrance doors.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, laughing and breathless.

  “To Ainderly Hall. For once I owe you some money and I intend to settle the matter without delay.”

  “I don’t understand!”

  He would give her no explanation, but threw his own cape about her, too impatient to let her fetch her own, and he bore her out to his carriage through the falling snowflakes. Within minutes they were at his home. He took her at once into his study, sat her down at his desk, and brought forward an almost new ledger with a shiny, red leather binding, which he opened and set before her.

  “There, look at that! See the first entry? Seventeen pounds. That was your first repayment to me of your father’s debt. Now see how I invested it.”

  Incredulously she studied the entries, seeing how he had gambled with the money, placing bets on one horse and then another. There were some losses, but more wins, an accumulated amount being put on Young Oberon at a time when odds were still long against him, and when he had raced home first past the winning post it brought her small original sum to more than a thousand pounds. Not content with that, Dominic had gone on to bet with those winnings again, and now as she stared at the total figure she could scarcely believe her eyes.

  “It more than covers my father’s debts and the mortgage on Rushmere,” she said in a whisper. Then she pressed her fingertips to her lips, too choked for further speech, seeing he had swept away the last barriers between them.

  He twisted her chair round on its swivel and crouched down beside her, taking hold of her wrists as he looked into her face. “You’re free of me now, my love. In truth, you’ve been free of me from the start, but it would have been no good trying to convince you. I tore up those promises of payment from your father the day I heard that he had died and shoved the pieces in a packet in my desk intending to throw them on the fire, but I was interrupted and forgot about them until the day you first came to this house with such animosity toward me in your eyes that I knew if I let you go I should never get near you again. I burned them after you left.”

  She gave her head a self-admonitory shake. “I was foolish and stubborn. I blamed you for everything. How could I have
been so blind?”

  “It’s all over now.” He stood up, drawing her to her feet with him, and put his arms about her. “I loved you from the moment you came bursting into that village tavern with your hair dishevelled and your eyes blazing. I knew that you were the woman I had been waiting for all my life and the reason why I had never met anyone else I had wanted to marry. I made up my mind then and there that somehow I would have you for my own. My methods may have been unorthodox, but desperate straits need desperate measures.”

  A little smile played on her lips and she put up her hands to rest them lightly against his face. “I don’t know when I first began to love you. Perhaps it happened then, too. I only know that I was aware of and resented the magnetism that existed between us, but the more I tried to resist it as time went on the more prone to it I became.”

  “Say you love me now. Say you’ll be my wife.”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed, her lids drooping, her face loving and tender and ecstatic. “I love you now and for always.”

  That Christmas gave her the greatest happiness she had ever known. On her finger she wore a betrothal ring of a diamond set with pearls. Dominic was included in the Manor party and amid the games and the festivities it was their greatest joy to snatch a few minutes alone together to exchange yet another kiss, to whisper and laugh and kiss again. On the morning of Boxing Day when the hunters were brought out and saddled for the benefit of those among Edward’s house guests who wished to ride to hounds, Tansy viewed the new stables, the work of rebuilding having been completed before the Lord of the Manor’s return. According to Edward, who was well pleased with all that had been done, Adam was already engaged in building assignments of importance elsewhere.

  Nina, stem-waisted in her riding habit, was to ride with Edward, who was a handsome figure in his hunting pink, but Tansy, who had no stomach for the chase, merely went to watch the huntsmen gather for the local Meet on the green in front of The Winner. The morning was cold and frosty, the breath of riders and their mounts alike hanging in the air, and she was glad to share the stirrup cup. Dominic toasted her with a smile and a secret look from the saddle of his black hunter as she sipped the warming punch with its thread of curling steam. It was then that she saw Adam come riding up, soberly dressed in the riding clothes he had worn when riding to hounds while living in Hampshire. Ever afterward the aroma of hot, spiced punch was to remind her of the moment when she saw Nina turn her proud head from chatting to someone and sight him no more than two yards distant from her. Nina’s face blanched beneath her veil, her eyes growing enormous with an unguarded look that cried out its passion. Then she had wheeled her horse away and lost herself among others gathered there. Adam’s gaze followed her, his face all hard, young bones, his mouth set, and instantly, as if the truth had been shouted at her, Tansy understood what had lain behind those night time walks of Nina’s and was astonished that she should have been so unsuspecting, so completely and utterly taken in.

  Shortly after Christmas, Tansy and Nina moved back to Rushmere, taking with them a respectable spinster to act as their housekeeper and chaperone, together with a couple of maidservants whom they were now able to afford. Dominic wanted to marry Tansy without delay, but she insisted that she must see Nina through to her wedding day, for after what she had observed at the Meet she was desperately concerned, convinced that nothing but trouble lay in wait and that she might be needed by her sister as never before. When he pressed her for a date for their own marriage she declared that she did not want it to be the grand county affair that Nina and Edward’s wedding was to be, but begged for a quiet ceremony, to which he readily agreed.

  “Let’s get married on the morning of Derby Day!” she suggested eagerly. “The quietest wedding of 1849 on the busiest day of the whole year!”

  He laughed and embraced her. “Anything you wish, my love.”

  Nina kept her promise to Edward and there was no more going out at night on those supposed walks. She did not occupy the box room again, but moved into the room next to it, which was larger and more comfortable while sharing the same view of the orchard over the roof of the kitchen rooms below the windows. Tansy gave Nina many opportunities to speak out about her love for Adam, but her sister kept her own counsel and there was nothing that Tansy could do except watch and wait and hope that all would be well.

  One week followed another, doing nothing to dispel the old feeling of foreboding, which had returned to plague her once more, and at times her thoughts went to Silas, for she was unable to shake off the conviction that she had not seen the last of him. Spring banished winter, and the flat-racing season started again. In the garden the daffodils that Amelia had planted made golden seas of the flowerbeds at Rushmere. As they faded, so did the days leading up to Nina’s wedding to Edward melt away with surprising swiftness, the time taken up with innumerable last-minute tasks and arrangements, the wedding gifts pouring in to create a confusion of tissue paper, boxes, and silken ribbons. It was a need to have a quiet hour in each day that prompted Tansy to get up extra early every morning and walk up to the gallops to watch Roger put Young Oberon through his paces.

  As she watched the colt streaking away in the distance she knew she should be returning to Rushmere to waken Nina and launch into the eve-of-wedding excitement, the ceremony being at noon the next day. After her sister and Edward had departed on their honeymoon to Italy she would be without family at Rushmere for the first time, but there would be much to keep her occupied, for the house was to be sold and the furniture that she did not want to keep disposed of. To date, the highest bid for Rushmere had come from a gentleman of the Turf who had stayed in it while Hedley had been there, and she hoped the sale would go through, knowing that her father would have been pleased that a keen racegoer was going to live in it.

  How it would have delighted Oliver’s heart to see his son and his colt making record time back along the gallops again! Tansy watched them thud past her once more, hooves flashing, and then she slid off the wall and retraced her steps home to Rush-mere. Later in the morning when Nina was flying about with frantic haste, being due at the Manor for a variety of appointments, Tansy knew her sister’s nerves to be at snapping point, so frantic was she when anything went slightly awry, so desperate her gaiety, so false her merriment. Tansy found herself no longer able to keep silent, many months worrying about Nina reaching bursting point.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind about marrying Edward,” she cried out compassionately. “I know you’re unhappy. Let me help you.”

  Nina’s hands, tying her bonnet ribbons before a looking glass, paused briefly before completing the bow firmly. “I’m marrying him,” she stated with a stubborn thrust to her chin, her voice toneless as though she were repeating aloud a phrase that she had reiterated times without number to herself. “That’s what I want and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “I beg you to reconsider! I’ve wanted to reach out to you a thousand times, but always you have silenced me with a fierce look or a sharp word. Now I can keep quiet no longer.”

  “My attitude hasn’t changed.” She tugged at the ends of the ribbon bow with a dangerous impatience.

  “I know how important security is to you. And to me. Do you think I don’t remember those times when Papa had had a bad season and there was little money throughout the winter months for food or fuel to keep us warm?”

  “He always had enough in his pockets to wager at cockfights and a bull-baiting.” Bitterly. “We were the ones who went without. I have many memories to erase from those days, and Edward will do it for me.”

  “How can he do anything for your happiness when you love someone else,” Tansy implored. “Don’t go against your heart, my dear!”

  Nina was very still. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Tansy spoke softly and gently. “I saw how you and Adam looked at each other at the Boxing Day Meet. I know you’ve been seeing each other again since.” There was a poignant pause. “Adam has
used the kitchen roof to get into the house as ably as Silas ever did.”

  The guilty colour swamped Nina’s cheeks and she spun about, her hand over her heart as if to calm its beating. “How did you find out?”

  “Did you think you and I could live together in this house without my guessing sooner or later?”

  “Why haven’t you said anything before?”

  “I wanted to, but it wasn’t for me to interfere. I could only wait and hope that you would make your choice freely for the man who must mean so much to you without any coercion on my part.” She clasped her hands urgently. “Adam can’t offer you the riches that Edward can, but he’ll take care of you. He’ll always be hard-working and industrious —”

  “— and willing to take chances. Willing to stake all on a promising project. Willing to risk bankruptcy for the opportunity to put one brick upon another in some grandiose scheme that could come to nought.”

  “He loves you — and you love him.” To Tansy it was the only valid argument.

  One corner of Nina’s mouth twisted wryly, and her shoulders seemed to sag resignedly. “That’s true enough. I love him, but I’m going to be Edward’s wife.”

  “No, no, you mustn’t be so cruel!”

  Nina’s whole face flashed with a kind of desperate misery. “I was well schooled from earliest childhood. Mama never liked me and Papa never loved me. You and Judith were always close, but I was the outsider to you all, the odd one out. I soon learned that what I wanted from life I should have to grab for myself. Well, I’ve known love from one man as few could ever know it and I’m gaining security and everything else I’ve ever wanted from another. The best of both worlds, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Nina, I implore you! For Adam’s sake and for your own — and Edward’s, too. Don’t go through with this marriage. You’ll regret it to the end of your days.”