by Once a Rogue
She sat by her mirror, one trembling hand reaching for the hair brush, anxious for something to quell her restless fidgeting. “I don’t suppose old Winton will trouble me often,” she murmured, while Lance critically surveyed his own reflection over her head. “He has a mistress, a fat ale-wife in Cambridge, I understand.”
“Ah, but he needs an heir to inherit his title and estate, sister.” He winked at her in the mirror. “Best get to it at once. We wouldn’t want him bringing you back again, if you fail to fulfill your duty. No returns!”
She smiled stiffly. “Thank you for your counsel, Lance. I shall, as always, pay it the reverence it deserves.”
“Now, now, sister. I warn you only for your own good.” He ran a hand over his closely cropped hair. “And make sure it’s a son. Girls are next to useless, as you know.”
Frowning, she slammed her brush down on the dresser. “And when will you consider marriage, Lance? When will you fulfill your duty?”
He threw back his head, laughing loudly. “At the last possible moment before they put me in the ground.” Although their father had not so subtly pushed Lancelot in the direction of marriage for the last few years, her brother still dug in his heels. Being a man, he might take his time choosing a wife and his standards were impossibly high. Lucy knew why. With such ridiculous requirements and expectations to be met, Lance always had an excuse not to fall in love. Like her, he saved himself from heartache. In the Collyer family, emotions were anathema, a weakness they couldn’t tolerate in themselves or anyone else. For Lance, of course, it was more acceptable he behave that way. Men were supposed to hold their emotions in check and, as he often said, “A man is only as strong as his stiff upper lip.”
But Lucy, previously as impassive and impenetrable as her brother, currently suffered some strange, unwanted feelings. They careened in circles within her, like playful, rambunctious kittens escaping a basket. No matter how many times she caught them and put them back, the little rebels found a way out again, eager to go exploring. Her notorious Collyer indifference was apparently thawing.
Leaving her brother worriedly inspecting his faultless appearance in the mirror, she wandered back to the window and contemplated the bloody sunset dripping over a cluster of Norwich rooftops.
Where was her farm-hand now? Would he go back to the bawdy house? She didn’t like to think of him with another woman and that annoyed her. Until now she never knew herself to be the fussy, possessive sort and certainly had no right to be in his case. Oh, but the mere thought of him smiling at another woman sent her belly into a rapid churn.
While her brother chatted away behind her, she ran a fingertip along the lead strips in the window. All her life she’d stared out of windows like this one, wondering what happened on the other side. Now she knew.
As her father would say, knowledge can be a dangerous thing in the wrong hands. In her case, Lucy was inclined to agree.
After her nighttime exploit at the bawdy house, she’d expected to feel less stifled anger toward the hypocrisy and double-standard, yet the experience only made her view life with even greater dissatisfaction. Rather than diminish the hidden flame of rebellion, her one night with a stranger breathed more air into the fire, like a hearty pump of the bellows. She was afraid she might let something out if she didn’t soon manage to control it again, smother it along with all her other needs, wants and emotions.
“I suppose I’ll miss you, Luce,” Lance said, struggling to express a feeling he barely allowed himself. “If you need anything, you must write to me.”
He’d always been protective of Lucy, but in recent years she’d felt him drifting away, his sex giving him many freedoms to come and go, while hers kept her confined. Still, she realized helplessly how much she adored her brother, despite the inequity. If only he relaxed once in a while. What he needed, she thought with a sudden devious smile at her own reflection in the window, was a night like the one she just enjoyed. A night of anonymous pleasure, of letting go at last.
“I’m sure you’ll soon forget me, Lance. When you return to London you will have many distracting entertainments.” Swinging around to face him, she teasingly named the many and varied young ladies who chased after him, much to his mortification. “You won’t be able to avoid our father’s ambitions much longer, you know,” she added. “He grows more and more keen on the idea of you marrying Lady Catherine Mallory and you won’t wriggle out of it forever. You and Lady Catherine, the Earl of Swafford’s eldest daughter…”
His face reddened, his shoulders squared, and then he was off on a familiar tirade against that particular young lady, whom he swore he would not marry if she was the last woman left standing. She was, he declared, a vengeful harpy, a savage, with a very bad temper and possibly a tendency to insanity. He had not, in actual fact, seen the girl in some time and, as far as Lucy knew, all this fuss was simply because, years ago, Catherine Mallory bit him on the buttocks, right through his breeches. There was hardly a soul left in England who hadn’t heard the tale, or been shown the non-existent teeth marks. An elderly maiden aunt once fainted into her supper when Lance dropped his breeches abruptly to illustrate the story. He would never let anyone forget, nor would he ever forgive the miscreant, and although their father was eager for a match binding the upstart Collyer name to an ancient, noble family like the Mallorys of Dorset, whose pedigree reached back to the Norman Conquest, it would be an uphill struggle indeed to change Lancelot’s stubborn mind.
In the meantime, their father appeased his need for control by marrying his eldest daughter off.
Lance took her hand, bowed his handsome head and planted a kiss on her knuckles. “Now don’t forget. Write to me, Lucy, if you’re ever in need… of…anything.”
“And what shall you do?”
He straightened up, face flushed. “Help you, of course! You’re my damned little sister, after all. No matter how irritating.”
“Thank you, brother. I’ll remember that.”
“Yes…well.” He nodded, frowning. “Good night then and…good luck.”
Once her brother departed, she turned thankfully to her bed again, only to be stopped by yet another late-night visitor.
Sir Oliver Collyer was a tall, spare man with graying hair receding a good few inches from his brow, giving his head the appearance of a goose egg. To make up for the lack of coverage on top, he wore a bodkin beard and let his hair grow longer down the back, so it sat upon his shoulders and his wide, lace-trimmed ruff in a thin straggle. His second wife, for whom appearances were so important, constantly fought to make him cut his hair, but he stubbornly prevailed in the battle. He would not be told what to do, or how to cut his hair, by any woman.
His fortune was acquired through overseas trade and further increased by a successful money-lending service to various needy gentlemen, even the occasional peer of the realm. Twenty years ago he reached a pinnacle when he earned his Knighthood. Now he forgot how his own father was a mere shopkeeper, his mother an illiterate worsted weaver. Nothing was ever quite good enough for him. Other people disappointed more often than they pleased, and his eldest daughter knew she was the worst offender.
Rather than enter her chamber, he stood at the threshold, hands behind his back, head stooped so as not to bang his forehead on the lintel.
“I trust you’re well prepared for tomorrow,” he intoned gravely, his gaze skimming the room suspiciously, expecting, no doubt, to find several pots bubbling over with witches’ potions. All women were a mystery to her father, but none more than she. He never looked at her, she knew, without remembering she was the reason her mother died. Lucy had heard the servants say his first marriage was a love match, a most unusual thing, and her father had never fully recovered from the loss. In his eyes, it had been all Lucy’s fault. But surely, she thought sadly, since her mother almost died after Lancelot’s birth and had been advised by the physicians never to attempt another child, their father was at least partly to blame for the pregnancy occurring seve
n years later, bringing his daughter into the world and taking his wife out of it in the same breath.
As a babe she’d been left to the care of nurses, given every luxury money could buy, but no genuine love or affection. She found his late effort now oddly unsettling, so, once again, like her stepmother’s strange affections, his unusual attention fell upon cold, stony ground.
“Yes, thank you, sir,” she said, as it was the only thing she could think to say.
Again he glanced around the chamber. “It is good you finally came to your senses and agreed to this arrangement.”
It is good. Couldn’t he say he was pleased?
She supposed he looked forward to concentrating all his efforts now on the much worthier Anne, who was bound to make a very advantageous marriage to someone far wealthier and more consequential than Lord Winton. Anne was a paragon of virtue, that most precious of all things, an obedient woman. She was beautiful, empty-headed, unquestioning.
Her father put out his hand and Lucy, seeing naught else for it, accepted the gesture. They were like two relative strangers sealing a matter of business.
“You’re quite certain?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
There was something wary in his eye. Alarmed, she thought he might know something of her escapade the previous evening. But it passed. He nodded briskly, turned on his heel and was gone.
Closing the door behind him, she rested against it, regrouping her spinning thoughts. Why would he say such a thing to her now, on the last night? It was surely too late for second thoughts. What would he have done if she’d said, No, sir, I don’t want to marry Lord Winton. If ’tis all the same to you, I think I’ll run back to the bawdy house, find my lover and live with him instead?
Having endured her fill of family concern, she bolted her door and blew out the candle, determined not to receive another guest tonight. She ran to the bed and leapt under the covers, eager to dream of her once-in-a-lifetime lover while she still had his scent on her skin.
* * * *
The morning passed in a flurry, everyone darting around her, fussing over her gown and headdress, all those things that didn’t matter, but her mind was far away from it all, living in a strange fantasy, as if she still dreamed and nothing would wake her.
She imagined herself living on a farm with her lover. Her life was filled with work and she was never idle, but she was happy, as she’d never been before in her life, and she wanted to cry with gladness. She smelled lavender and honeysuckle. The sunlight was a warm kiss drifting across her brow and a tall iron gate cooed on its hinges before clanging shut, as if someone had just passed through it. She wore a loose gown, no crippling corset, and her hair was tied back with a simple, frayed, plunket ribbon. The image was all golden sunshine and the sweet song of birds, just as she thought heaven must be for those who deserved it, but she felt unworthy of her dream. Her heart, the organ she’d protected in a shell all her life, now ached. The barrier was breached. But she must have been happy before, at some point in her real life, surely?
No. Never like it was in her dream.
For as long as she remembered there’d been only fear, guilt and doubt crowding into her mind each day. Even as a child she’d had the worries of an adult pressing on her shoulders, no fancy for games and toys. There was no pleasure simply for the sake of it. There was trial, the constant struggle for her father’s forgiveness and approval. From her earliest years she was aware of dark things most children still were not. Knowing her mother had died, she lived in fear that death would take her father, too, and her brother. If it took one important person away from her, it could take anyone, could it not? Their father married again quickly and seemingly put it out of his mind, leaving his children to founder with a great gaping hole in their lives, unexplained, a matter never to be discussed. Lucy, for many of her childhood years, believed she was entirely responsible for her mother’s death. What else might account for her father’s cold distance, the way his eyes avoided her, the disappointment in his countenance?
Yet in this strange daydream which began the night before her wedding day, she was fully content, blissful. And she knew then that she’d never been truly happy. Sorrow and self-pity, that most wasteful of all emotions, ripped through her, left her torn in a thousand ragged, bloody pieces.
This was all his fault, she thought angrily. His fault for giving her something she’d never known existed until two nights ago, forcing her to feel, forcing her to know what it was to be alive for once. The little pastoral fantasy lived in her head now and wouldn’t come out. It was an infection, cruel and deadly.
But perhaps, finally, today she would raise a smile from her father’s lips. By marrying Lord Winton she would surely please him. Surely.
This morning, however, his expression was grim and dour. He avoided her gaze. He was more concerned about who would attend the wedding feast than about the bride’s welfare. There was no kiss upon her cheek, no whisper of pride, no tenderness. He looked over her gown briefly, ensuring she looked the part and wouldn’t embarrass him. Then he turned away.
It didn’t matter, she told herself. This was the way it was meant to be and she would go on as if the interlude with the stranger never happened. Feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t help. Thinking of her stranger wouldn’t help. He’d been for one night only. She knew that and had made the most of it. Now she must get on with her life, such as it was. This was the bargain she’d made with herself, so why was it so hard now to contemplate?
The more she tried to salvage her unraveled nerves, the more her stitches fell slowly apart.
“Are you all right?” Lance whispered in her ear, his breath gently moving the veil of her ornate headdress. “Luce?”
Looking down at her hand on his arm, she tried her best to stop trembling. Somehow her brother’s anxious expression made it all much worse. Shameful, childish tears threatened. Taking another stifled breath, she squeezed her brother’s hand until she must have crushed the bones in his fingers, but he was gallant today. For once he didn’t tease her.
She pictured her needle making another stitch.
Here I lived once. Remember me.
But she didn’t live, she existed. Only now had she opened her eyes, fully awake, to see the truth.
Chapter 6
The feast went smoothly. The toasts were said, the dances danced, songs sung and all the guests dutifully declared her a beautiful bride. They lied between their teeth.
Now she and her groom were carried to their bedchamber, amid much raucous hilarity, at which she must pretend to blush with maidenly timidity. Well, now Lord Winton would discover he was already a cuckold. Somehow it was not quite so amusing as it had seemed two nights ago. When the servants withdrew, the awful finality of her situation struck her.
Almost as hard as the back of his hand across her face, the moment his bedchamber door closed behind them.
Finding herself on the floor, dizzy and startled, she put one hand to her cheek and felt warm blood from the cut of his ring. A second blow and then a third left her numb, disorientated. She stared at his yellowed, over-long toenails. A long-legged spider ran by her line of sight, scuttling across the dusty floorboards and under the bed, narrowly missing his trampling feet.
“May that teach you a lesson, wife,” he said sharply, standing over her in his nightgown and a long overcoat of heavy brocade. “From now on you will pay attention when I speak to you and you will look at me without that countenance of smug disdain. Do you understand?”
His voice echoed inside her aching head.
“Get up.” He kicked her in the side. “I tolerated your rude manners all week, but for the last time. Yesterday you were still your father’s daughter. Now you’re my wife and your behavior is mine to correct, your discipline mine to maintain. We shall begin as we mean to go on.”
He moved away from her, limping heavily on his bad leg, and perched on the end of the bed to soak his feet in a bowl of scented water.
Slowly she sat up, wincing at the pain in her side, wiping her bloodied cheek on the sleeve of her shift. If he’d given her this, just for looking at him the wrong way, what would he do when he discovered she was not the pure maid her father once guaranteed?
She’d not known he possessed a violent temper. He always appeared too frail to be any physical danger, and, of course, he put on a gentlemanly act for her father, but tonight she felt the spiteful strength of those mean, gnarled hands, willing to cause hurt for even the slightest reason.
Still dizzy, she scrambled to her feet. He was stooped over, rubbing his aching corns. The sight of his thin, bony legs, so pale they were almost blue, disgusted her.
“Get on the bed and prepare yourself,” he instructed her grumpily. “I’ll be with you in due course. Lie on your back and lift your shift. Up over your breasts. I’ll need something to look at other than your sulky, defiant face.” He spat his words over one crooked shoulder. “Surely your maid warned you what to expect. I’ve no inclination to tutor you.”
Blood in her mouth. She must have bitten her tongue. She looked at that bed, an implement of torture, and saw the lump under the coverlet, where the servants forgot to remove the warming pan.
Lord Winton, apparently, hadn’t noticed the oversight.
She pressed one hand into her side, as another, deeper breath burned through her ribs. Stupidly, she’d imagined she might be able to go through with this, for practical reasons and in some vain hope of pleasing her father, but it was impossible. All of it. However other women managed, she was not one of them. She simply couldn’t do it, physically or mentally. There must be something wrong with her, but she was not willing to settle for duty, to lie down and have the life smothered out of her.
Winton was humming a tune, intent on the relief of his own aches and pains. She carefully removed the pan of coals from beneath the coverlet and stood behind him with it, her arms shaking.
