Even with half the furniture removed to the bedroom and the rest pushed back against the walls, the space left for dancing was pitifully cramped. After much initial embarrassment, toes stubbed and shins bruised on protruding chair and table legs, the lesson dissolved into hilarity. By the third afternoon, Louisa began to relax, to appreciate Tommy’s laconic sense of humour, understanding for the first time that in spite of a basic difference of temperament, the two men were much alike. Neither had much regard for English social mores; and once it had dawned on her that Tommy cared not a whit for the facts of her relationship with his friend, Louisa was able to relax.
At last, the two men agreed that she was quite able to dance the night away without disgracing herself. But that, as far as she was concerned, was only part of the problem. Later that evening, when Tommy had gone, Louisa voiced her real anxiety, which was of coming face to face with Rachel Tempest.
‘You know, I dread her seeing us together.’ She paused, pushing an erring chair back into place, and turned to look at him. ‘At one time, she’d have given anything to add you to her list of admirers.’
‘Oh, what nonsense,’ he muttered.
‘No, I’m serious. If you’d given her even one ounce of encouragement, Robert, she’d have played up to you like she did with Arthur Bainbridge. You were far more eligible.’
‘I wasn’t eligible at all,’ he corrected her, picking up the book he had been reading earlier. ‘But Darnley was, and Tommy, and a whole host of others. It was just that poor Arthur was the first to take the bait.’
‘Precisely. That’s exactly what I’m saying. But you were her first fancy, Robert. Believe me, you were. She hardly stopped talking about you in those few weeks after Sophie’s party – it nearly drove me mad, especially after...well, after you told me about Charlotte. It was only because you were keeping out of my way — because she hardly saw you – that she started chasing after Arthur. And she only went after him because…’
‘Because she wanted to be the first of her set to have a ring on her finger.’
‘Yes! That’s just it!’
‘Sweetheart,’ Robert said wearily, ‘I’ve seen it all before...’
‘But you think she’s just silly and empty-headed,’ Louisa declared passionately. ‘You don’t know her as I do. She has a greedy, envious little heart. All right when things are going her way, when she can have the best of everything, but not so pretty when she’s thwarted. I was her paid companion, Robert — she didn’t like me much, but she enjoyed playing Lady Bountiful when it suited her. How do you think she’ll feel when she sees I’ve walked off with the prize? She’ll hate it, and if she can’t get back at me in any other way, she’ll gossip as maliciously and vindictively as she knows how!’
‘Look, I refuse to let the Rachel Tempests of this world dictate my actions. Or yours, for that matter,’ he added dourly, slapping his book shut as though the matter were closed and done with. But his frown deepened as he paced the room, and a moment later he exclaimed: ‘That damned family! Must they always overshadow our lives? Does it matter what any of them think? They’re nothing, Louisa, nothing at all.’
‘I don’t much care what they think,’’ she said in agitation, ‘it’s what they’ll say to other people.’ Edward’s words were in her mind, and those last days in Tanner Row as a child: abuse and scorn, salacious comments, laughter, a woman spitting at her mother. Swallowing hard, she busied herself with small, tidying movements, plumping seat cushions, placing the newspaper in its rack by Robert’s chair; anything to dispel the vivid pictures in her mind, the stomach-knotting fear that suddenly possessed her.
‘It’s her father you’re frightened of, isn’t it?’ Robert asked, his voice gentler now, more willing to understand. ‘But you needn’t be, you know. He’s cut her off without a penny, won’t even let her across the doorstep. And we’ll soon be in Dublin: he can’t touch you there.’
‘It’s not her father!’ Louisa cried distractedly. ‘She’ll talk to anyone who’ll listen. The past will all be raked up — Mamma’s name will come into it – Edward’s –’
‘Good God Almighty!’ Robert exploded, his anger refuelled by her cousin’s name. ‘Do we have to worry about him, too? He can take care of himself!’
She did not answer, but simply stood there, hands clasped tensely, eyes downcast, lips compressed in a tight little line; looking at her, for a brief moment he hated all she represented. ‘Do you have to be so bloody English?’ he demanded, making the word an insult. ‘So bloody prim and proper? There are women who’d give their eye teeth to go to this ball, and you stand there, making excuses, frightened by a bit of gossip! For God’s sake, where’s your courage?’
His contempt cut her like nothing else could. For a moment she quailed beneath it, terrified of the gulf which yawned between them. Not for the first time, their relationship seemed little more than a fragile bridge between two vastly different worlds, and in the depths a torrent of ignorance and misunderstanding. In other circumstances she might have kept silence or tried to placate him, but the inference of cowardice stung her into furious retaliation.
Brushing past him, she exclaimed, ‘It’s not a question of courage. I’m talking about discretion, which is said to be the better part of valour. But that’s something you don’t seem to understand!’
‘Oh, I do understand it,’ he avowed, catching her arm. ‘I’ve practised it for eight long months. Coming here under cover of darkness, never taking you out except on the rarest occasions, pretending – even to Tommy, for long enough — that you meant nothing to me. I’ve done it because I love you — not because I enjoy it.’
She recoiled then, fighting against his grip, appalled by that unexpected revelation. For Louisa, the months since Christmas had encompassed the happiest moments of her adult life. Free from care, cocooned and protected by a veil of secrecy, for the first time she had learned to relax, and in the sun of Robert’s love had blossomed as a woman. If she had alienated her family in the process, it had, until now, seemed worth the sacrifice; yet in one fell stroke, and for what seemed to her the most trivial of reasons, he was threatening to destroy that precious security, threatening the very fabric of their life together.
‘Dublin is only a matter of weeks away,’ he reminded her. ‘You must learn to conquer your fear. Can’t you see how much easier it will be if you let me introduce you now? Your presence later will seem far less remarkable. And in such a crowd,’ he added reasonably, ‘who will notice you and me? Especially with half the county’s nobility present!’
The argument was now on well-worn territory. Exhausted by its familiarity, Louisa sank slowly into a chair, resting her forehead against his arm. Was she really a coward, she wondered; was she afraid their love would wither in the light of day? It was a question she had never asked herself before, and it was frightening to think what the answer might be. The months of happiness: were they simply illusion? That was the most daunting question of all. They had seemed to share so much; how bitter to realize that for him the pleasure had been blighted by the very secrecy she clung to. In weary confusion, she silently shook her head.
Unaware of those despairing questions, Robert saw only that negative gesture, and gave way to an exasperated sigh. On past form, he had hardly expected capitulation; nevertheless, disappointment bit deep. He loathed being at odds with her, but there were times when Louisa’s very intractability seemed to demand a show of anger, when he saw through that soft defencelessness and was forced to recognize a will as strong as his own. And while he might on good days respect it, at times like this he was left feeling resentful and very much alone. Somewhere deep inside, hidden and unacknowledged, lay a kernel of fear that, one day, love would not be enough, and she would leave him. It nagged at a corner of his mind, intensified by the unaccustomed humility of that bowed head. In a gesture of contrition, he reached for her, and traitorous fear was drowned by the awakening of desire.
Always after disagreement he wanted her
. Not perversely, but as a form of reassurance, a reaffirmation that, in bed at least, there were no barriers between them. He lifted her chin, making her look directly at him, and was faintly disturbed by the expression in her eyes.
‘Come to bed now,’ he whispered with a kiss. ‘It’s getting late and we’re both tired.’
She undressed silently, holding his gaze with that strange element of disappointment and pleading; even as Robert drew her into his arms, he was conscious of a difference in her, not unwillingness exactly, more a disconcerting passivity. A spark of residual anger flared in him, so that his kisses were suddenly more brutal than he intended, his hands hard and bruising. When it came, her response was fierce, almost unexpected, so that their love-making took on the nature of a desperate struggle, the moment of conquest brief and bitterly intense.
On a wave of reaction he clung to her, emotions still raw, tactile need unassuaged, knowing that small victory for what it was: a mirage, an illusion. Fear possessed him, bleak and recognizable. Convulsively he gripped her shoulder, burying his face against warm breasts. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, ‘I didn’t mean it.’
Oh, but you did, she thought, as his desperation reached her, and a confusion of half-formed thoughts and emotions tumbled through her mind like flotsam after a storm. Shame and sorrow, guilt and desire, a wanting of something frighteningly absent in their first coupling, made her draw him closer. She wanted to talk, to explain, but the words were locked behind a wall of uncertainty and despair; needing his compassion, she was suddenly afraid it was limited, that her own fears were in danger of driving him away. Their argument’s basis seemed so trivial, yet it revealed the gulf she had been so afraid of in the beginning. Robert had crossed it to possess her, and now he was demanding she do the same for him. As a gesture of faith it was necessary, but still the words refused to come.
She looked down at him. A thin shaft of moonlight illumined rumpled sheets and blankets and the outline of his body, wrapped around hers. A deeply shadowed indentation marked the length of his spine, smooth hard muscle curving up in cleanly-defined lines across back and shoulders. Against the round whiteness of her breast, his face seemed tanned, the black smudges of brows and lashes like charcoal on dark paper. Not for the first time she was stirred by his masculine strength and beauty, by the fact that such a man found delight in her; she knew she could not bear to lose him, to have him look at her with the shadow of regret and disappointment in his eyes.
Her fingers stroked the short, crisp hair, found the soft waves at the nape of his neck and travelled downwards, over those powerful shoulders. Like a child he stirred, seeking comfort at her breast; and as the nipple rose to touch his lips he slowly began to caress her, rousing and controlling with such delicate, exquisite tenderness it was almost unbearable.
‘Slowly,’ he murmured as she moved against him. ‘No more fighting.’
‘Did I fight?’
‘Like a tigress.’ The words, whispered against her mouth, became a kiss. Gently this time, he entered her; and with the fusion of their bodies all else was forgotten. But with the climax of their passion came a different kind of release. As he kissed and cradled her in his arms, Robert felt the chill of wintry tears in her hair. Patiently he hushed her distress, tried to make sense of the gulped, disjointed phrases until at last, when she was still and sleeping in the curve of his arm, he began to understand. She would not fight him. The battle, such as it had been, was over. He had won. He wondered why he felt so ashamed.
Fourteen
Simplicity: recalling the battle for it, Louisa smiled. Madame Marcelle had paled at the suggestion that she could create a ballgown in less than two weeks, and threatened tears over Louisa’s insistence on a simple design. Ridiculously simple, she had said, and quite impossible for such a grand occasion. Studying the result in the long pier-glass, Louisa wondered why dressmakers were so in love with frills and flounces; she felt uncomfortable in fussy clothes, and anyway, Robert preferred her in simple gowns. He said simplicity showed off her figure to advantage, and with another half-smile, she acknowledged that he was right.
It was a beautiful gown, silk, in a soft midnight blue, cut low to reveal the perfect whiteness of her throat and shoulders. She felt that it was very daring, and nervously ran white-gloved hands over the drapery at her breast, the tautly-boned bodice beneath accentuating a neat waist and rounded hips. Half a dozen tiny rosettes caught up the hem, and as she turned to view the train her petticoat frothed and swirled, revealing extravagant yards of lace beneath.
‘Wonderful,’ she murmured. ‘Just what I hoped for. Thank you, Madame.’
Unaccustomed to thanks, Madame Marcelle fluttered deprecatingly. ‘It is nothing. So simple, I confess I did not think it would work. Ma’m’selle will look like a poor governess, I said — I know, I remember! But I was wrong. Ma’m’selle has the regal look – ah yes, I insist! I have titled ladies who would give their all for the figure, the form, like Ma’m’selle.’
Louisa blushed, provoking a mischievous grin and a stream of rapid French, of which she caught only Robert’s name. On the two or three occasions he had accompanied her, the old woman had flirted outrageously, Louisa thought, and now she sighed dramatically, giving the impression that even thirty years ago she would have given Louisa some competition. On that first visit, months before, Robert had made it quite clear that all bills were to be sent to him, yet made no attempt to pass Louisa off as his wife. With a Gallic shrug of supreme indifference, Madame had taken her new client under her wing and set about transforming the dowdy cygnet into a swan. That the cygnet’s own ideas had caused many a tug-of-war seemed not to have affected Madame’s pleasure in the task.
While Louisa donned her outdoor clothes, Madame Marcelle made arrangements for the blue gown to be delivered the following day. With a sigh of pleasure and relief, Louisa stepped out into Lendal, crossed busy Museum Street with care, and paid her penny to walk home through the Museum Gardens.
It was worth it for such peace and tranquillity, for the pleasure of close-clipped lawns and neat gravel paths, and the ruined Gothic purity of St Mary’s Abbey. She found a bench sheltered by the walls and sat down; after the close atmosphere of the salon, the open air with its myriad scents was a tonic to be savoured. In the warmth thrown back by those ancient walls a solitary bee droned, attracted by the wallflowers growing in ragged profusion above Louisa’s head. Watching it idly, she envied its single-minded simplicity of purpose, for a moment regretting the diversity of human choice.
Two weeks ago, in the aftermath of that dreadful quarrel, agreement had seemed the only salve to a burning sense of shame, yet apprehension had returned tenfold, increasing as the ball approached. It had taken on a kind of graphic importance, illustrating in black and white all the differences between Robert and herself. No longer were there any comforting shades in which to hide, and the starkness of all she surveyed was little less than terrifying. As camouflage, the dress itself was small comfort; she was less afraid of not looking the part than of making some dreadful social gaffe. If people snubbed her, she knew she would never have the courage to repeat the experiment, and that worried her even more, for she had given Robert her promise.
Illumined by the glow of the westering sun, an ornamental cherry stood out in clear relief against darkly rolling clouds; rain threatened, but still Louisa sat, captured by its fragile perfection, a brief, exquisite flowering, unbearably poignant. With the first spots of rain, a sudden gust scattered a thousand petals like snow upon the grass, the wallflowers shed their heavy scent, and on the breeze came a sharp, earthy smell, cold as the grave. Shivering, she gathered up her parcels and went home.
Three evenings later, pulling on long silk gloves over ice-cold hands, she awaited Robert’s arrival, wondering how and why she had ever agreed to this. Her mother had come to help her dress, and without her Louisa knew she would still have been in her robe, rigid with fear. It had been impossible to eat; at the last minute Mary Elliott ha
d forced a glass of milk and some biscuits into her hand and stood over her until they were gone. Now she looked at Louisa and clicked her tongue disapprovingly.
‘You looked better at your Aunt Elizabeth’s funeral.’
‘Thank you, Mamma.’
‘Your face – you look like death itself. Where’s that brandy the Captain’s never short of?’
‘Brandy? I don’t want that.’
‘Yes you do — this is a medicinal purpose if ever I saw one. Where does he keep it?’
Sighing, Louisa perched herself on the edge of a dining chair. ‘In the far cupboard – with the glasses.’ Her eyes widened at the generous measure, but Mary Elliott insisted she drink it.
‘Get it down, it’ll put some warmth into you — and maybe some roses in your cheeks.’
Sipping at it, Louisa pulled a face, and with distaste sank the rest in one gulp. Her eyes watered as the spirit burned its way down, and she coughed twice, wondering how Robert could drink it for pleasure. Within a minute, however, she was feeling better, and by the time his step was heard on the stairs, warmth and feeling were beginning to return.
Except at a distance, it was the first time either of them had seen Robert in dress uniform. Mary Elliott sighed and walked round him several times; Louisa simply smiled, drinking in every detail of his appearance. From the high, gold-braided collar of his scarlet mess jacket to the toes of his highly-polished shoes, Robert was immaculate and impressive. Epaulettes, insignia, buttons; all gleamed beneath the shaded light above his head. He was quite dazzling, Louisa thought, delighted, in spite of herself, to be his partner for the evening.
Amused by their appraisal, he smiled down at them. ‘Will I pass?’ he enquired, eyes twinkling as he glanced from mother to daughter.
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