by M. C. Beaton
She ran after him. His coat dropped from her shoulders to the beach, but she ran on.
“Stop!” she shouted, catching his arm and hanging on for grim death. “Do you want to marry me?”
“I’ve changed my mind anyway,” he said pettishly. “Let go of my arm.”
“You fool!” Jean screamed. “I thought you wanted me as your mistress.”
He stopped abruptly. He looked at her intently, and then his eyes began to dance. “You have a smutty mind, Miss Morrison, not at all suitable in a governess. You shock me.”
“Is this some game? Are you mocking me?”
“No, Miss Morrison, I can think of nothing I would like better. I shall get a special license and we will be married in, let me see, two weeks’ time. It will need to be the little church in St. Giles, or the vicar can come to the house and marry us. Yes, perhaps that would be better. We shall have such splendid fun. How many children shall we have, do you think?”
She looked up at him pleadingly, her hands on his shoulders. “Do you really love me?”
He wrapped his arms around her and bent and kissed her full on the mouth. Her lips were cold and salty but gradually warmed under the insistent pressure of his own. He decided vaguely that kissing Jean Morrison was the most wonderful thing he had ever experienced, and so he continued to kiss her with increasing passion and force. Cold, stinging rain blew in from the sea, but neither of them felt it. He had all the single-mindedness of the aristocrat, and he had forgotten everything else about him. He drew her down onto the wet sand and held her tightly against him while his hands caressed her face and body with increasing urgency. He unfastened the little buttons at the front of her dress and kissed her breasts while her moans were whipped away by the salt wind.
And then a great, curling wave, racing ahead of its fellows on the fast incoming tide curled right over the passionate couple writhing in the sand. Jean gasped and choked and struggled upright, fumbling at the buttons on her wet dress, her face scarlet. Laughing, he stood up and pulled her to her feet. “I nearly forgot to wait until my wedding night,” he said.
He put his arm around her waist and led her back to the castle, leaving his coat forgotten on the beach. “I know the servants will be pleased,” he said. “We must make our announcement as soon as we are dry and changed.”
But when they entered the great hall, wet and disheveled, they stopped at the sight of all the staff lined up in front of a trestle table that bore bottles of champagne, glasses, and ice from the icehouse.
“How did you know?” the viscount asked.
Dredwort grinned and slowly held up a small brass telescope. Jean blushed furiously and buried her hot face in the viscount’s wet shirt.
“Then wait until we have changed, you reprobate,” the viscount said with a grin.
The party went on for the rest of the day as tenants and farmers, estate workers and grooms, heard the news and came to drink the couple’s health.
But Jean longed for them all to go away until she could be alone with him again.
The viscount, it turned out, had other plans.
“I have arranged for you to stay with Farmer Tulley until the wedding.”
Jean looked at him in dismay. “But why?”
“Because if you stay here, I do not think I could stop myself from visiting your bedroom this night. I have told Tulley. I should write to my parents and invite my friends to this wedding, but I have decided to let it be just for us and the people of Trelawney. We can be married again in London later.”
So Jean went reluctantly off with Mr. and Mrs. Tulley to sleep in a tiny room in the farm and wait for her wedding day.
She thought the days would drag past, but there was her dress to be made and all the preparations for the celebrations. Then Mrs. Tulley wanted to make use of this governess while she had her under her roof and had begged Jean to instruct her daughters in the social arts. Jean saw very little of the viscount, and when she did, she was strictly chaperoned by Mrs. Tulley. He was so light and cool and formal that Jean began to wonder whether he might be regretting his proposal.
And then she received a visit from Letitia and Ann Pemberton. The Pembertons had heard of the wedding plans, for all the shops in St. Giles were abuzz with the news as orders poured in from the castle. Letitia and Ann felt it was a direct snub. The viscount was the only eligible bachelor in the neighborhood, and he had shunned their beauty to marry a common Scotch governess. After some debate among themselves, they decided he was being forced to marry her to allay scandal. They wondered if Miss Morrison knew that and decided it would be better to tell her. They had called at the castle and learned where she was staying. Mrs. Tulley led them into the parlor and left them alone with Jean.
“We are come to felicitate you on your forthcoming marriage,” Ann said haughtily.
“Thank you,” Jean replied quietly.
“But we were also concerned for you. It must be sad to feel the groom is being constrained to marry you.”
Jean forced a laugh. “Why should he feel that?”
“Well, all the gossip, you know. And Lady Conham and Eliza did see you leaving his … er … bedchamber.” The viscount had remembered to write to Lady Conham explaining what Jean Morrison had been doing sleeping in his bed, and Lady Conham had dutifully spread the reason about, but neither Ann nor Letitia were going to let Jean know that.
Jean stood up, went to the door, and held it open. “Be off with you,” she said furiously. “Jealous, spiteful cats.”
Letitia and Ann left well satisfied. For they knew by the mixture of fury and distress on Jean’s face that some of the poison had sunk in.
Jean hardly knew what to do. She knew now that the viscount, for all his apparently frivolous ways, was a man with a strong sense of duty. The sensible and forthright thing would be to ask him outright. But then he might feel obliged to lie. He had kissed her with such passion, but he had not said he loved her or uttered one word of love in all that disgraceful writhing on the beach.
Her doubts tormented her right up to the wedding day, right up to the temporary altar that had been erected in the hall, and right up until he turned and looked down at her. His face was altered with love. She went through the responses, wondering whether she might faint from sheer happiness.
And then at last they were man and wife. The weather had turned dark and threatening, and scarlet and brown leaves whipped about the lawns in a crazy spiraling dance between the marquees that had been erected to shelter all the people of Trelawney estates. Everyone sang and danced. Dredwort made a speech, amazing for its pompous tone and salacious content. Mr. Tulley made a speech, forgot halfway through what he meant to say, and sat down abruptly. The viscount made a speech, thanking them all, and then, with Jean on his arm, left the festivities.
He led her up the great staircase. “Where are we going?” Jean asked, suddenly shy.
“To bed.”
“In the middle of the afternoon! I am not tired.”
“You will be, my sweeting. You will be.”
In his bedchamber she stood before him, plucking at the stiff white folds of her gown with nervous fingers. “Why so downcast?” he teased. “Am I such an ogre?”
“I was thinking of the girls,” she babbled. “I cannot help feeling they should have been here.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “At such a time and such a place. I refuse to think of those hellions. Come here. It’s time you started thinking of me.”
“Do … do you l-love me?”
“I am rampaging with love, I am dying with love. Kiss me! I will love you till the end of time, my Jean.”
And she did kiss him, at first shyly, and then warmly, and then passionately until somehow she found herself in bed and under him without the least recollection of how her clothes had been removed.
Clarissa stood in the dairy beside the butter churn. She had been put in the charge of one of the older girls, a tall, sleepy blonde with a slow smile called Tabitha. “Finish
ed?” Tabitha examined Clarissa’s work. “Good,” she said. “Very good.”
Clarissa felt a glow of achievement. She had been told if she worked hard, then she might have gooseberry pie for dinner.
Over in the carpentry shop a young carpenter’s apprentice, John Buxtable, was showing Amanda how to use a plane. He had an easygoing nature and laughed hard at all Amanda’s tantrums. Amanda had tried to run away twice, but on both occasions she had been caught by staff, who were used to catching runaways. Initially she had been taught in the carpentry shop by a tall, morose girl who had complained bitterly to Mrs. Davey when Amanda had tried to stab her with a chisel.
Mrs. Davey had pondered over Amanda’s character and had hired John Buxtable, a good-looking country boy. He had instructions to flirt a little with Amanda but not to go any further. And so as he showed her how to use the plane, he let his strong, brown, muscled arm brush against her own.
Amanda blushed and giggled.
Mrs. Davey, watching from the door with Mrs. Grimshaw, turned away. “I knew it would work,” she said. “Nothing like a handsome, lusty man to bring a slut to heel!”
Part VII
The Glitter and the Gold
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 1
MISS FANNY PAGE had come to the conclusion that nothing exciting was ever going to happen to her. It was a year since she had left the seminary in Bath, where she had been very happy. The principal had told her father to remove her as the fees had not been paid for a year.
Returning home, expecting to live on gruel and stale bread, Fanny had discovered, to her surprise, that her feckless parents were still living in a fairly grand way. Her father had countered her complaints about the abrupt termination of her stay at the seminary by saying blithely that she was too old to be educated and that intelligent women were highly unmarriageable.
Her seventeenth birthday had just passed. There seemed to be no plans for her future. Her parents were a bright, frivolous pair in their thirties, seemingly without a care in the world. So she settled down to amusing herself as best as she could. There did not appear to be any young people in the immediate neighborhood whom her parents considered to be suitable companions, and so she passed her long days in reading novels and dreaming of handsome men. She still wore her hair down and was dressed in the gowns she had worn at the seminary, which were becoming increasingly short at the hem and tight at the bust.
Despite her added height, she was only a little over five feet tall, and to her despair did not show any signs of turning into the tall, statuesque lady she longed to be. She had a mass of glossy black curls that rioted down her back, rosy cheeks, an elfin face, and huge, brown, sparkling eyes.
Her home, Delfton Hall, despite its grand name, was a square box of a place in the middle of the Oxfordshire countryside, its harsh red brick walls unrelieved by creepers. There were no flowers in the gardens, only shaggy lawns cropped by sheep.
Then, just as she was returning to the house one day after a long walk in the wintry grounds, she was told her mother wished to see her, a rare summons.
Mrs. Page was a small woman with improbably colored fair hair and highly rouged cheeks. She was dressed in the latest fashion of thin muslin, despite the chill of the drawing room.
“Ah, Fanny,” said her mother, “come here and let me look at you, child. Tch! Tch! Too much color in your cheeks. You should not walk so much in the cold. You will get a blowsy look. And that gown! What a fright!”
“If you supply me with some cloth, perhaps I can make a new one,” said Fanny, thinking bitterly of all the times before when she had made such a request—only to have it turned down.
“I wish there was time to send your measurements to London,” said Mrs. Page, narrowing her eyes and scrutinizing her daughter. “Never mind. Miss Clement from the village is coming to alter some of my gowns for you. You must look your very best.”
“And why is that, Ma?”
“I do wish you would call me Mother. Did that seminary teach you no style, no grace? We are having a little turtle supper next week. Squire Deveney and Mrs. Deveney are returned from London. We have not seen them this age.”
Fanny frowned. “If I have it right, you said six months ago that Squire Deveney was a wastral and a gamester … and the Deveneys had not a feather to fly with.”
Mrs. Page trilled out a laugh. “You must be dreaming. I adore the Deveneys. Sound family. Good English stock. You must look your prettiest. As a matter of fact, their son, Sir Charles, is due home quite soon.” She kissed her fingertips. “Such a delightful young man. Knighted for bravery, too. Fought like a Trojan.”
“Charles Deveney must be … let me see—twenty-nine, Ma. That’s not young.”
“Hark at the child! In the prime of life, my sweet.” Mrs. Page put her head on one side and her sharp eyes raked her daughter up and down. “Must be white muslin, but not too girlish. And your hair!”
“I did want to put it up.”
“Long hair is not the thing. You need one of the new crops, like Caroline Lamb. Mr. Tulley will need to do it. I’ll send John to fetch him.”
“I do not think our local barber knows anything about fashionable crops.”
“Don’t quibble. Be a good child and be guided by me.”
Well, thought Fanny in a dazed way, later that day—after her hair had been shorn and the local dressmaker was picking out some of Mrs. Page’s very best gowns to alter—you never really knew what was going to happen. She looked at her reflection in the glass. Her hair was surprisingly pretty, now a cap of black glossy curls. Poor Mr. Tulley had been so nervous of cutting it that he had dropped the scissors several times. Charles Deveney, now Sir Charles. What would he be like? She could not remember much about him. Yet she knew she had met him a long time ago, when she had been ten. But he had seemed to belong to the world of grownups. She had a vague memory of someone tall and fair. Would he turn out to be the hero of her dreams? The boredom of her days had turned her into an excellent dreamer, and so the picture of Sir Charles, at first hazy, grew in her mind and took shape and form. He would be battle-hardened, a seamed, lined face tanned by the Spanish sun. He would be very tall and strong.
She passed the time pleasantly—once she had made a face and form for him—in writing scripts for Sir Charles. At first he would dismiss her from his mind as being too young, but … Ma’s little donkey carriage would run away with her and she, Fanny, would ride to the rescue, hair streaming—No. She ruffled her short crop. No more hair to stream. But he would be impressed. He would see the rescue, and the light of admiration would bring warmth to his stern face. They would walk together in the gardens under a full moon and he would look down at her and murmur, “Your beauty unmans me.” Fanny experienced a qualm. She did not think herself beautiful at all. But a man in love would think her so, and everyone knew that love was blind.
Fanny had expected Sir Charles to accompany his parents to the supper party—and so it was with dismay that she learned that he had not yet returned home. Only Squire Deveney and his wife were to be the guests.
Still … she must do her best to please these future in-laws, for Fanny had made up her romantic mind that she was to marry Sir Charles.
On the morning of the important day she escaped to the kitchens to have a gossip with Mrs. Friendly, the cook, and found a new butler busy showing the footman how to polish a quantity of gold plate.
“Is that really gold?” asked Fanny, goggling at the glittering plates and knives and forks. Mrs. Friendly drew her aside. “It’s only for this evening, Miss Fanny,” she whispered, “as is that jackanapes of a butler. He was lured over from Lord Tandy’s for the day. Lord Tandy is on the Grand Tour, and it’s my guess that’s his lordship’s gold plate, for it came
with his butler and goes back with his butler when the supper is over.”
“But why such trouble to entertain the Deveneys?” asked Fanny curiously. “I seem to recall someone saying they were not at all well-heeled.”
Mrs. Friendly folded her plump red arms across her starched apron. “I think it is all for your benefit, Miss Fanny.”
“Me?”
“Seems the son, Sir Charles, made a great deal of prize money in the wars and your parents are anxious to make a match between you. With the Deveney family having such expectations, the master and mistress don’t want to look poor.”
“No, I suppose not.” Fanny felt uneasy. Part of the romance about Sir Charles was that she had believed him to be as poor as herself. She had always been aware that her lack of dowry made her singularly unmarriageable.
Her hopes of Sir Charles as a future husband received a further blow when his parents walked into the drawing room that evening. Mrs. Deveney, a thin, dried-up-looking woman with sharp features and sandy hair was bedecked in diamonds. A diamond tiara glittered on her dusty hair and diamonds blazed at her withered neck. The squire was not the bluff John Bull of Fanny’s imaginings but a sly-looking man like a horse dealer.
But she was bewildered by their praise of her—her gown, her hair, her beauty. Fanny glanced surreptitiously at a mirror over the fireplace and was startled to see that, to her, she looked much the same as ever.
Then they summoned their servant to bring in a picture of their son. Fanny, who had been expecting to see a miniature, was startled when a full-sized canvas was carried in and unveiled. “This was painted by one of his officers,” said Mrs. Deveney proudly. “A most talented young man.”
The picture was unveiled. The servant carried forward a candelabrum. Fanny gazed on that picture and all her nagging doubts and fears about a borrowed butler and borrowed gold plate melted away. Here was the very stuff of dreams. The picture portrayed a young cavalry officer on a rearing white charger, a drawn sword in his hand. He had midnight black hair and a strong, rather cruel face. Behind him tumbled an approaching thunderstorm. Round about him lay the dead bodies of French soldiers. She had remembered Sir Charles as having fair hair, but perhaps it had darkened later in life.
