by M. C. Beaton
“Mr. and Mrs. Witherspoon,” uttered Biggs in lugubrious tones from the doorway.
“We are not at home,” snapped Hubert.
“Oh, yes, Biggs, I shall see them,” said Mary blushing under her husband’s surprised stare. She opened her mouth to tell him of her promise to the Witherspoons in Brussels and then closed it again. He would surely consider her a fool.
So under his curious stare, she left to join the leering Witherspoons in the Green Saloon. They had Mr. Trimmer in tow and Mary suffered a most unpleasant ten minutes. The Witherspoons and Mr. Trimmer had learned of her social success and were anxious to stake their claim to her society. She firmly turned down their pressing invitation to go for a drive and subsequently endured Mr. Witherspoon’s particular brand of emotional blackmail.
When the Witherspoons and Mr. Trimmer had taken their leave, she returned to the breakfast room to find that Hubert had gone. She felt strangely flat and sick. Why should she trust him?
She trailed wearily up to her bedroom and fell into a hot, sweating, nightmare-racked sleep from which she arose some two hours later feeling worn out and depressed.
Although all the shutters were closed, the house seemed stifling and hot, and angry bluebottles buzzed over the gallipots with a monotonous drone. She dressed with more care than usual in a light, sprigged muslin gown with deep flounces at the hem and little puffed sleeves.
On descending the stairs again, she learned with some surprise that Viscount Peregrine St. James was waiting to see her.
He was standing in the Green Saloon with his back to the empty fireplace. His hair was powdered and tied at the nape of his neck by a black silk ribbon. This outmoded fashion seemed to add to his brutish air. He surveyed Mary with hot angry eyes.
“If I had a little wife like you waiting for me I would not waste my time philandering with old loves,” he said.
Mary put a nervous hand to the little necklace of seed pearls round her neck.
“I do not understand you, my lord.”
“Your husband and Clarissa. She told me they were going for a little drive in the Park for old times’ sake. Old times’ sake be damned. I know where they are. They are lying in each other’s arms right at this minute in an inn bedroom. An inn off the Chiswick Road called The Green Man.”
Mary began to tremble. “It can’t be true,” she exclaimed.
“I shall take you with me and we shall confront them,” he said heavily. “My carriage is outside.”
“No!” said Mary wildly. “I don’t believe you.”
“You must,” he said with an almost pitying note in his voice. “It is the only way. Unless you see for yourself, you will go on hoping… go on believing… like me.”
“I am loyal to my husband,” said Mary stiffly.
“But he is not loyal to you.” Viscount Peregrine’s flat, reasonable voice convinced Mary more than blustering or rage would have done. Her heart seemed to die within her and she felt faint. Then the faintness was replaced by a burning feeling of rage and desire for revenge. At least all lies would be at an end.
“I will go with you,” she said flatly. “Wait until I fetch my bonnet.”
Lucy Godwin slipped quietly away from the saloon doors and ran lightly down into the hall where she nearly collided with Biggs.
“Didn’t you see my lady?” asked Biggs looking surprised.
“She is driving out with Lord Peregrine,” said Lucy hurriedly. “I shall not trouble her this afternoon.”
“You should have let me announce you, ma’am,” said Biggs looking at her curiously.
Lucy’s beautiful eyes slid away from his gaze. “Yes, so I should,” she laughed. “Do not trouble to tell her I called. I shall let myself out.”
Lucy unfurled her parasol and settled back in her barouche, a malicious little smile of pleasure playing about her mouth. It served prim and proper Lady Mary right. She deserved an unfaithful husband! How dare she hold hands with Freddie! She, Lucy, would drive in the Park and enjoy the cool shade from the trees. Then she bit her lip. She had promised Freddie to go with him to see his mother. But there would be so many dashing gallants in the Park. Freddie must wait, as he had waited before. He would sulk, of course, but she could always charm him out of it. The barouche rolled forwards and turned the corner just as Mary and Lord Peregrine appeared on the doorstep.
Mary began to feel hot and anxious. She wished she had not come. Lord Peregrine was driving at a furious pace. He had chatted amiably enough to her, explaining that he had only just returned from France the evening before, as he skillfully negotiated the Kensington traffic. But once through Kensington turnpike, he had sprung his horses and had set a hell-for-leather pace down the Chiswick Road while Mary clung to the side of the carriage.
Flat, empty, hot fields flashed by on either side and then the carriage veered over as Lord Peregrine swung it off the road and down a network of country lanes.
“Please slacken your pace, sir,” cried Mary, hanging onto her pretty straw bonnet. “You will overturn us!”
“Nearly there!” he shouted over the rushing wind.
To Mary’s relief, the carriage slackened its nightmare pace, slowed and finally rolled to a halt outside a tavern.
“This is a common alehouse,” exclaimed Mary in surprise. “You must be mistaken.”
“Unfortunately, I am not,” said Lord Peregrine bitingly. “Clarissa likes this milieu. She says it adds edge to the excitement.”
Mary winced. She could almost hear Clarissa saying it in her laughing, mocking voice. She wished she had not come.
Everything was very quiet and still except for the dry wind rustling through the hedgerows and the creaking and rattling of the inn sign. The inn was low and thatched. There was no sign of any other carriage, but Mary assumed that the guilty lovers had hidden it round at the back, out of sight.
“Come!” said Lord Peregrine, jumping down and holding out his hand. Mary hesitated. In her burning jealousy and rage, Hubert, with Clarissa in his arms in some romantic inn, had seemed a reality when she left London. Now confronted with this silent hedge tavern miles from anywhere, she began to think the whole thing impossible.
“I was silly to come,” she began but Lord Peregrine held up his hand. “Hush!” he said. “I can hear that laugh of Clarissa’s.”
Jealousy is a marvelous thing. Mary listened intently and could swear that she, too, had heard Clarissa’s high mocking laugh.
Grasping her parasol firmly in her hand, she marched into the inn, followed closely by Lord Peregrine.
The tap was deserted except for a thick, heavy-set landlord who looked remarkably like Lord Peregrine.
“We are looking for a certain lord and lady…” began Lord Peregrine. Mary stared at the landlord hopefully. Now that she was actually inside the building, the whole business began to seem unreal. But to her dismay, the landlord jerked his thumb towards the back quarters of the inn. “In there,” he said laconically.
Mary pushed open a low door and found herself in a short narrow corridor. Lord Peregrine was so close behind her that she could feel his hot breath on the back of her neck.
With her heart thudding against her ribs, she walked forward and pushed open the door of the room.
Empty!
Nothing but a low iron bedstead covered with a greasy quilt. She swung around.
Lord Peregrine had his back to her. He was locking the door.
“Why?” said Mary through white lips. “You tricked me. Why?”
“Revenge,” he snarled. “I shall have from you what that husband of yours has been taking from my fiancée so freely.”
Mary began to scream. He studied her thoughtfully and then slapped her across the mouth.
“No one will hear you, I’ve paid the landlord enough,” he said. “But I can’t stand the row.” He began to tug at his cravat. “You can take your clothes off or let me rip them off for you. When I’m finished with you, you’ll have learned every trick I’ve picked up i
n about five hundred brothels between here and Rome.”
He moved toward her and she backed away, looking wildly around for a means of escape, but the only window was barred. Lord Peregrine put out a large, beefy hand and hooked it into the bodice of her gown. He pulled her into his arms and rammed his hot mouth down over her own.
With a demented strength she wrenched her mouth away and screamed “Hubert!” her voice like a clarion call.
Peregrine pinned her savagely down with his great bulk. Her hat was crushed over one eye and he wrenched it off and threw it into the corner.
“Now,” he said between clenched teeth. “Now.”
But it was like trying to rape an eel, he thought savagely, as Mary twisted and writhed. He held her down by the neck with one hand and drew back his fist to knock some sense into her when the lock of the door shattered in pieces as a pistol shot ripped the country silence.
Lord Hubert Challenge stood on the threshold, a smoking pistol in his hand and black murder in his eyes.
Lord Peregrine’s beefy face which had been flushed a moment before, turned ashen.
“Out!” said Lord Hubert, jerking his head at Mary. “Out and wait for me.”
On trembling legs, which were barely able to support her, Mary tottered past him. She clutched at his sleeve. “He will kill you, Hubert,” she whispered.
“Get out!” said Hubert savagely, “and don’t talk fustian.”
Mary tottered through the taproom. There was no sign of the landlord. Out into the dazzling sunlight she swayed and collapsed onto the grass verge of the lane, covering her ears with her hands. Lord Peregrine was so strong, so brutish, he was probably massacring Hubert right now. She must run for help.
But still she sat there, wincing at each muffled thump and cry from the inn. Then there was a great cry and a long silence.
She heard a sound and looked up.
Lord Peregrine stood swaying in the doorway of the inn. Blood was streaming down his face and one arm hung limply at an awkward angle at his side.
“Hubert!” she cried desperately. “What have you done with Hubert?”
But he said not a word. He pulled himself ’round the low building, hanging onto the wattle with one hand until he reached his carriage. He crawled into it on his hands and knees and painfully took up the reins.
Mary leapt up to her feet and ran into the inn, visions of her husband’s dead body flashing before her eyes.
Hubert walked into the taproom. His blue swallowtail coat moulded his form without a crease, his cravat was spotless. He looked down into her anguished face with a smile in his eyes.
“Dear heart,” he said gently. “What a mull we have made of our marriage.”
Mary fled into his arms, sobbing and crying. “How did you find me? Why is Perry so bloody and you untouched? Oh, Hubert, I am so sorry. I should never have believed him!”
“Hush,” he said, holding her tightly and putting his lips to her curls. “Lucy Godwin fortunately could not wait to tell me the news. Somehow she overheard Perry telling you lies. She seemed so disappointed to find me respectably driving in the Park, instead of philandering in Chiswick. Perry is all bully and bluster, but an arrant coward in a fight. Now have I answered all your questions?”
“Yes… no…” gabbled Mary quite overset. “Do you love me?”
His brown eyes held the old mocking glint.
“Come home with me and I’ll show you,” he teased.
Mary buried her aching head against his broad chest and sighed. Could he not have said, “Yes?”
“I must rest my cattle,” he said holding her a little away from him. “Let us see if this hedge tavern has a hair of the dog. You look as if you could do with one.”
“The landlord?”
“I… er… persuaded him to leave,” said his lordship, smoothing down the ruffles at his wrists. “Ah, what have we here? French brandy no less. Probably smuggled.” He found two glasses and stared at them thoughtfully and then, producing a large handkerchief, wiped them carefully.
With equal deliberation, he poured two large measures, holding one out to Mary and saying in a peculiarly colorless voice, “Now drink that down like a good girl. I shall ask you questions afterwards.”
Mary looked anxiously at him. “But Perry tricked me, Hubert. You know that. What questions?”
“Drink,” he commanded, holding the glass to her lips.
She drank the strong measure in one gulp, shuddered and blinked, and then smiled at him weakly.
He dusted a chair with his handkerchief and drew it forward for her. Sitting down opposite, he leaned back, his thumbs in his waistcoat, affording Mary an excellent view of his broken knuckles.
“You are hurt,” she exclaimed.
“It’s nothing,” he shrugged. “Tell me, why were you holding hands with Major Godwin last night?”
Mary flushed and looked down. She thought of the large Major and the pain in his eyes.
“It is not my secret,” she said at last, looking down into her empty glass. “I cannot tell you.”
“I don’t like you having secrets with another man.”
Her eyes flew up. “You have secrets with Clarissa.”
“No longer,” he said. “I explained all that, if you will remember.”
“Clarissa—she heard Lucy’s story too?”
He nodded.
“Then she will no longer be engaged to Lord Peregrine.”
“Oh, I think she will,” remarked Lord Hubert in a bored voice. “It titillated her no end. That sort of woman finds brutish indiscretions exciting.”
“And that is the sort of woman you have consorted with in the past? That explains…” Mary bit her lip. She had been going to explain that that explains his brand of violent love making on that night in Brussels, but lost her courage.
But he seemed to read her thoughts for he said gently, “I have not yet made love to you, Mary. I do not count that episode as love.”
Mary looked at him in embarrassed anguish. How could he sit there so coolly discussing such things which were surely reserved for the privacy of the marital bedchamber? One did not discuss such things with the hot sun blazing outside.
“Poor Mary,” he murmured. “So much to learn.”
He stood over her and raised her to her feet. She looked up into his eyes and then closed her own as his mouth came relentlessly down on hers.
The world swayed and spun. The floor seemed to disappear from beneath her feet and a heavy, drugged sweetness took possession of her body as his mouth moved against her own, parting her lips and exploring her mouth.
Still keeping his mouth against her own, he swept her up in his arms and carried her down the corridor toward the bedroom.
She pulled her mouth free. “What are you doing?” she cried.
“Taking you to bed,” he smiled.
“To… It’s the middle of the afternoon, sir!” cried Mary appalled. “That bed, no doubt, is full of livestock and you want to… oooh!”
He dropped her abruptly to her feet. “Not yet a woman,” he remarked coldly, his eyes like pieces of agate.
“Me, not yet a woman,” said Mary shrilly, hurt unreasonably. “I may not be one of the strumpets you are used to bedding but I am a lady, sir, and I will not soil my dress on that filthy bed.”
“Oh, really,” he said savagely. “Did you mean to keep it on? How quaint. Very well, madam. We shall return home and draw the shades and extinguish the candles and you may keep all your clothes on and, if it pleases you, I will go to bed in my boots and breeches, but have you I will.”
Mary was shocked. That anyone should dare to be so crude in the presence of a lady!
She folded her lips into a thin line and marched back down the corridor and through the inn. Then she saw with dismay that his horse, Vittoria, was tethered to a tree outside and there was no sign of a carriage.
“I could not bring the carriage to your rescue,” he said behind her. “It would have taken too much time.
With one horse I was able to cut across the fields. You must ride with me… on the horse I mean, my love, in case I have offended your delicate sensibilities with my boorish masculinity.”
She said nothing but allowed him to throw her up into the saddle. He mounted behind her and gathered the reins in one hand, holding her lightly with the other. She sat bolt upright, feeling faint at the sensations caused by that light touch.
The air was hot and humid and still, heavy with the scent of the hedgeroses, and the long shining grass still wet from last night’s storm.
She wondered bitterly whether her husband could sense the churning emotions in her body, but he said not a word until Chiswick Mall was reached and he rode into the yard of a posting inn under the curious stares of the ostlers. “We will bespeak a carriage here,” he said curtly. He swung her lightly to the ground and then turned and strode off into the inn, not once looking behind him to see if she were following.
Suddenly she remembered that quadrille on the night of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. Was she never to be free of Perry and Clarissa and the problems of Lucy and Freddie, not to mention the pushing Witherspoons?
“I am going to the opera tonight. So there!” screamed Lucy Godwin at her large husband. “And if you need feminine company, I suggest you go and hold hands again with Mary Challenge!”
“I thought we might spend an evening together like the old days,” said Freddie Godwin miserably.
Lucy stared angrily at him. He made her feel so guilty. If only he would shake her or beat her or do anything other than sit there like a great lummox.
But goaded on by the pain shown in his eyes, she went from bad to worse. “Don’t talk to me of the old days,” she sneered. “What a pair of little country bumpkins we were then.”
“Don’t call me little, Lucy.”
“Little, little, little. Awful little man!”
The Major took a step toward her and raised his hand.
“That’s right!” screamed Lucy. “Beat me like the brute you are.”
He dropped his arm and then said in a measured voice. “Very well, Lucy. Have your fun. But show one serious tendre for any man and I will shoot him first and strangle you afterwards.”
