Soon the strains of the inevitable waltz could be heard drifting through the house as the musicians rehearsed. Soon the carpets were rolled up and Masters gave an approving nod of his head at the gleaming floors. Great tubs of flowers were carried in from the hothouse and banked against the walls.
Tilly was wearing a daringly low-cut dress of white silk chiffon, swathed over her bosom to mold her breasts and pulled tight at the waist to accentuate her hourglass figure. Her husband had sent her a long box containing the Heppleford diamonds, beautifully cleaned and reset. Even Francine was awed into silence as she clasped the heavy gems around Tilly’s neck and secured the blazing tiara in Tilly’s hair, where it seemed to catch fire from the vivid red color and blazed and sparkled.
As she was prepared to leave, Francine gave a final tweak to Tilly’s curls and then kissed her gently on the cheek. “Be careful,” she whispered.
Tilly laughed. She was young, she was in love, and she was married to the most handsome man in the world.
Lord Philip, Marquess of Heppleford, watched his wife walk into the ballroom, his eyes glowing with admiration. She looked magnificent. He was overcome with tenderness and admiration for the lumpy schoolgirl who had managed to transform herself into a woman who turned all men’s heads. He was not aware of Cyril Nettleford watching him narrowly from the corner. Cyril’s stomach felt as if it had just experienced a journey in a very fast-moving lift, especially as he noticed that the marquess’s gaze was returned by a warm and glowing one from his wife. It was then he remembered the copy of the second will that he had obtained from the solicitors and which was now reposing among his luggage upstairs.
Tilly’s newfound confidence and happiness leant wings to her feet. She seemed to float over the floor, laughing and chatting with her partners, her little dance card swinging from her wrist, full of names.
Aileen, who was looking like the fairy her mother called her in silver and white gauze, laughed and chattered and quite charmed her reluctant fiancé. Even the Duchess of Glenstraith shook the floor in a lively set of the lancers, while her reedy husband pirouetted around her like some Don Quixote about to tilt at a particularly lively windmill.
Finally Tilly was in her husband’s arms, moving dreamily through the long rooms to the sound of a waltz, under the flickering flames of hundreds of candles, since the marquess considered old-fashioned lighting more suitable for a ball. Watching from the doorway, Masters heaved a sentimental sigh. My lord and my lady were obviously very much in love. He should never have listened to Miss Francine, not that mademoiselle didn’t have her mistress’s interests at heart, but then how could a foreigner judge the heart of an Englishwoman? Ecstatic with happiness, Masters smiled on his master and mistress as they glided past him in each other’s arms. They danced at regulation fingertip distance, but they might have been clasped close together from the expression in their eyes.
All Tilly’s past humiliations vanished. She could even find it in her to smile on Aileen and the duchess.
At long last, after the supper was over and after a few more dances, the visiting guests went home, the lights of their carriages bobbing off down the long drive. The weary house guests took themselves off to bed.
Tilly smiled up at her husband, suddenly shy. He bent and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Tonight,” he whispered, and she nodded mutely. “I will see you in your rooms presently,” he murmured. “I will not be long.”
As Tilly sat in front of her dressing table, Francine brushed out her long red hair and arranged the lacy folds of her negligee. She turned down the lamps, all except one in the sitting room and one in the bedroom, and formally curtsied and left.
Tilly was suddenly very nervous. Should she sit on a chair and wait for him? Should she climb into bed? She eventually decided to sit up in bed with a book and read until he appeared.
The gentle sound of the door opening made her heart beat faster. She looked up at him as he approached the bed with her heart in her eyes. He was wrapped in his dressing gown and his fair hair was still damp from the bath. He sat down on the edge of the bed and gave her a heartrending smile. “Love me, Tilly?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Tilly shyly. She wanted to say she loved him more than anything in the world, but a little cynical voice in her brain seemed to be crying caution.
“Then I shall make you love me,” he said, smiling. He stood up and removed his dressing gown, and Tilly quickly averted her eyes from his naked body. He lifted the bedclothes and climbed in beside her, his long, hard muscular body pressing against her own. Tilly experienced a terrible spasm of fear and unreality. And then his mouth came down on hers, almost savagely, and each long, hard kiss seemed to take the fear away, bit by bit, until she could feel nothing but aching, overwhelming passion.
Then she realized he was asking her something, his voice seeming to come from very far away. She struggled to the surface of the sea of passion. “What?”
“That damned crackling sound,” he said, propping himself up on his elbows and leaning over her. “Have you got newspapers or something under your pillows?”
“No!” said Tilly, startled. “At least I don’t think so.” She twisted around and felt under the pillow with her hand, drawing out a long folded piece of parchment. “It’s that will!” said Tilly in amazement. “No, it’s a copy, a copy of your father’s will. What on earth is it doing here?”
But the marquess was laughing. “You sly puss,” he said. “You knew the terms of the second will after all.” He wrapped his arms around her. “Well, my papa never guessed what a pleasant duty making an heir could be.”
Tilly went rigid in his arms. “What if you don’t produce an heir?” she asked faintly.
“Oh, you know,” said her husband, laughing. “The first will said I had to marry to inherit, and the second said that not only had I to marry, but to produce an heir as well. Isn’t it rich? My papa was more eccentric than I had imagined. He was so keen on keeping on the direct line. What’s wrong, Tilly?”
Tilly sat bolt upright in bed and gave him a violent push. “Don’t touch me!” she gasped. “You don’t l-love m-me at all. You’re only obeying your father’s will. This is nothing more than another business contract. Oh, God, I’m so ashamed.”
“Don’t be a ninny,” said the marquess, trying to take her in his arms. “You love me, don’t you?”
With that last sentence the marquess proved he was not the expert lover, the Don Juan he had fondly believed himself to be. Had he said “I love you,” Tilly might have forgiven him. But as it was, she crouched up against the bedhead and glared at him with the savagery of a wildcat.
“Get out!” she yelled. “OUT! OUT! OUT!”
“Now, look, my dear,” began her husband, trying to be reasonable and finding it to be rather difficult while stark naked. But Tilly’s next remark stopped him short. She had been feverishly searching her mind for something to say that would hurt him as much as he had hurt her. Suddenly changing her voice to calm, measured tones, she faced him. “It would not have worked anyway,” she said. “After all, I am inexperienced in the arts of love… and I could only go on pretending you were Toby Bassett to make it all sufferable for a certain length of time.”
“Toby! Are you trying to tell me you are in love with Toby?”
“Yes, only I’m married to you, so I thought I ought to try to make the best of it.”
“You thought—why, you naive little cat. You’re trying to make me jealous!”
“I only wish I were,” said Tilly sadly, her hurt driving her to acting heights she had never guessed she possessed. She began to cry, “Oh, Toby, if only you loved me!”
To the appalled marquess it had the terrible ring of conviction. He did not know that all Tilly had wanted to do was utter the heartfelt cry of, “Oh, Philip, if only you loved me.”
He stood up and shrugged into his dressing gown.
“I bid you good night, madam,” he said, glaring down at the sobbing figure
on the bed.
Tilly raised her tearstained face. “I suppose you’ll be rushing off to that trollop in Paris.”
“An excellent idea,” he grated.
“You know your trouble,” said Tilly, hitting wildly on the truth, “your trouble is, you can’t recognize genuine love, because you’ve only paid for it or found it in some bored married woman’s arms.”
There is nothing more devastating than the truth.
The marquess slapped his marchioness full across the face.
Tilly’s anguish fled before an overmastering burst of rage.
“You cad, sir!” she cried. “You unutterable bounder.”
And with that she punched the marquess full on the end of his aristocratic nose.
Before he could recover from that attack, Tilly had flown to the marble washstand and, picking up the copper jug, emptied the contents over his head.
He turned abruptly on his heel and slammed his way out of the room.
Tilly threw herself facedown on the bed and cried her eyes out.
Only when the birds began to stir in the ivy outside and a bright sun rose over the horizon, heralding the beginning of a beautiful day, did she fall into an exhausted sleep.
The first thought she had on awakening some hours later was that Francine had gone too far. Tilly was in no doubt that the lady’s maid had somehow known about the contents of the will and had placed the copy under her pillow. The marchioness sat up in bed and grimly rang the bell.
But Francine’s surprise and dismay were all too genuine. The other servants were called in and questioned and all were vehement in their denials. It was then that Tilly remembered Cyril Nettleford and his hints about the will.
“Let me see the will,” said Francine. She bent her head and read it carefully. “But it is evident, my lady,” she cried. “It says here quite plainly that if my lord does not produce an heir, then Cyril Nettleford will inherit. And furthermore, my lady, I watched his lordship last night and he looked to me like a man very much in love, and I said to myself that I have made the mistake regarding him.”
“I told him I was in love with Toby,” wailed Tilly. “But it was his own fault. Why didn’t he tell me about the will?”
“I think he would have done—eventually,” said Francine. “After all, he seemed to feel guilty about his behavior after the wedding, so it follows that he could not immediately come home and ask you coldly to fulfill the terms of his father’s will, now could he?”
“I suppose not,” said Tilly reluctantly. “Oh, he won’t want to look at me again after last night. I—I punched him on the nose and threw water over him.”
Francine bit her lip to suppress a smile.
“You must go on as if nothing has happened. Visit your tenants. It is your duty to see them.”
“I don’t think they’d really like that,” said Tilly, remembering Mrs. Pomfret. “I was always poking my nose in at Jeebles and keeping them off their work.”
“But you shall only drop in, say, for a few minutes. Just to shake the hand, non?” said Francine. “And we will get rid of our house guests.”
But the house guests proved to be hard to dislodge. The more sensitive souls admittedly took the well-worn hint presented to them in the form of the railway timetable laid on their bedside tables, with the fastest and soonest train underlined in red ink, but the ducal family Glenstraight clung on, as did Toby Bassett and Cyril Nettleford. During the next three days, the marquess was mostly absent, only returning very late at night. He did not look at or talk to Tilly. He certainly snubbed his friend Toby on every occasion, which went completely unnoticed by that gentleman, since he was now in his usual state of semioblivion.
It was only during one of his rare periods of sobriety that it finally penetrated Mr. Bassett’s well-soaked hide that his friend, Philip, was looking daggers at him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” asked Toby plaintively.
“I’m looking at you like ‘that’ because you’re a bloody snake in the grass,” snapped the marquess. “And I wish you’d toddle off home and stop philandering with my wife.”
“Philandering with—I say, you’re talking rubbish. What about a drink, Philip? The sun’s over the yardarm.”
“The sun’s barely over the anchor chain, you unmitigated twit. Leave my wife alone or I’ll knock your head off.”
“I haven’t touched her,” complained Toby, trying to concentrate on what the marquess was saying. “Look, old man, we’ve been friends for years. Explain the whole thing, but slowly. My head’s in not too good a shape.”
“Very well,” said the marquess coldly, finally reciting what Tilly had said after the finding of the will.
“Who put it there?” asked Toby simply.
“What?”
“I said, ‘Who put it there?’” repeated Toby patiently. “Someone put it there to make trouble.”
The marquess stared at his friend for a long minute. Then he said slowly, “Of course, she could have put it there to pick a fight with me. Dear God, d’you know what she said? She, Tilly, my wife, said that she was in love with you and that the only way she could endure my lovemaking was to pretend I was you.”
“Tell you what,” said Toby wildly, “I’m not asking you for a drink, I’m ordering one!”
“I’ll join you,” said the marquess gloomily.
Toby ordered brandy, “for shock, you know” and poured a sizable amount down his throat. Another few thousand brain cells hit the dust, but the survivors were galvanized into feverish action.
“It’s all very strange,” said Toby, frowning horribly under the pressure of all this unaccustomed thought. “I made Tilly promise not to tell you, because I felt such an ass, but here goes.”
He told the amazed marquess of hiding under the bed with the duchess and Lady Aileen. “For heaven’s sake!” cried the marquess, “you’re all turning my marriage into some sort of French farce.”
“I thought you were doing that pretty well yourself,” said Toby with rare nastiness, and before his friend could reply, he hurriedly went on. “Has it dawned on you that we haven’t thought of Cyril Nettleford? He’s the one who stands to inherit if you don’t produce an heir.”
“Of course!” The marquess put down his glass. “That’s it! He always was a nasty piece of work. You remember that scandal with the Quennell’s footman? But, laddie, that still does not explain my wife’s sudden passion for you. Tilly’s a good girl, for all her nonsense, and she wouldn’t say anything like that if it weren’t true.”
“I had a bit of a crush on Tilly,” said Toby while his friend scowled horribly, “but I got over it. And I’ll tell you how I got over it, apart from drinking whisky under your bed. I saw that Tilly was head over heels in love with you.”
“Then why would she…?”
“Hurt,” said Toby, who like most habitual drunks was an expert on the subject. “Thought you were only romanticating her cos you needed an heir. So she says the first thing she can think of to hurt you. But she ain’t in love with me. Wish she were.”
“I thought you were over it?”
“I am. I am. But, I mean, compare Tilly with my fiancée. Not in the same league. Tilly’s all fire, and Aileen’s all milk and water and bitchiness. Pity. She looks like an angel.”
“So,” said the marquess, ticking the points off on his fingers. “Tilly is in love with me. She said those things about you to hurt me. Nettleford put the will under her pillow because he had found out somehow that she didn’t know the terms. Fine. Now we come to the other unanswered question. What were Her Grace and your fiancée doing under my bed? If that alarm bell hadn’t rung, you’d all have been there listening…. It doesn’t bear thinking of.”
But Toby’s powers of concentration had worn out. Nonetheless, he made one last effort. “If you want to know what the duchess was doing under your bed,” he said, in a lazy, slurred voice, “then you’d better ask her.”
The marquess, whistling, went o
ff in search of Her Grace.
He felt immeasurably more cheerful. The duchess, when he questioned her, was sulky and defiant. She had been about to talk to him for his own good and had waited in his rooms, not dreaming for a minute that he would… er… visit his wife so soon after that Paris episode. Anyway, Aileen had come to warn her and she and her daughter had hidden under the bed.
Why?
The duchess turned puce. Well, if Lord Philip would face facts, she was still… harrumph… an attractive woman and Tilly might have suspected the worst.
The marquess stared at Her Grace in amazement, reflecting that many supposed do-gooders seemed to have absolute sewers for minds.
“Anyway,” pursued Her Grace, “I may as well tell you now what I meant to tell you then. You’ve got to tell that wife of yours to lay off Toby. She’s a bad influence, and the poor chap has taken to the bottle again. She even tried to throw me off the track by setting me on that repulsive Nettleford fellah.”
“Are you trying to tell me that Tilly has been making advances to Mr. Bassett?” asked the marquess stiffly.
“Well, no,” said the duchess fairly. “But she’s getting herself up like a tart, encouraged by that brassy maid, Francine. She took Francine away from my fairy and now she’s going to take her fiancé away as well.”
“Piffle,” said the marquess rudely. “You got Toby when he was drunk, the pair of you. You don’t want it spread around London that Lady Aileen can’t get married unless she tricks some poor chap into it.”
“And who would spread about such a malicious and untrue piece of gossip?”
“Me,” said the marquess cheerfully and ungrammatically. He was not in the least afraid of the formidable duchess.
“I should never have brought my fairy to this sink of iniquity,” raged the duchess. “You can tell that Bassett fellah the engagement is off!”
As if on cue, Aileen sailed in to be told the news, which she received with surprising calm. “I am glad you have settled this for me. I know the news will break poor Toby’s heart,” she said, “but I cannot spend the rest of my life with a drunk.”
Edwardian Candlelight Omnibus Page 52
