by Lisa Berne
“Would have thought he’d go out and buy you a new one,” Father rumbled in disapproval. “Bigger. Shinier.”
“Your appearance is so bare,” added Mother, her frown deepening. “Si démodé. Rowland, take out those diamond strands.”
“I’m not your servant,” Father said, and thrust the case rather forcefully at her. “You do it.”
Katherine said, interrupting the quarrel which was just about to begin in earnest, “I’ll choose my own jewels when I get to London,” then added, airily, “Well—goodbye.”
And without a backward glance, she made her way toward the front door.
To freedom.
Their cavalcade stopped for the night in the town of Keswick, pulling up into the capacious inn-yard of the large and luxurious White Lion. The roads had been rough and even in the beautifully sprung carriage Katherine had been jolted about; she winced as Hugo handed her out, for those flickers of pain in her back were more severe than usual.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she answered, flustered, taking a few stiff, awkward steps, then heard one of the twins laughing. For a brief, terrible moment she thought he was mocking her, but realized he was instead grinning at his brother, who was walking with long, wide, comically exaggerated strides, as if rendered bow-legged after his long hours in the saddle.
“What’s so funny, Frank?” he said, with an air of oblivious innocence, then straightened up when Francis (she supposed) leaped upon him with a boisterous clinch-hold.
“Aren’t you going to stop them?” she asked Hugo, watching, mystified, as the twins mock-wrestled with loud shouts of laughter.
“God, no.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
He laughed. “You’re looking at them as if they’re a pair of tigers escaped from a zoo. It’s just the excitement of the trip, you know.”
“If you say so.”
“Better they get it out of their systems now, instead of at dinner. As long as they don’t actually roll in the mud and dung, I’ll be pleased.”
“How strange boys are,” she said, and he only smiled.
It wasn’t long before Katherine was in her room, a handsomely appointed chamber which she surveyed with deep satisfaction. If there was a truckle bed, she didn’t want to know about it. Ha. Didn’t need to know about it. Mother had had one of the other maidservants sleep in Katherine’s room after Céleste had run away, and tried to force Katherine to bring on her honeymoon someone from Brooke House but she had adamantly refused. Not, perhaps, a practical response, but who cared?
As if on cue, there was just then a tap on her door, and Katherine admitted one of the inn’s own servant girls to help her dress for dinner. She was eager to please, but not adept, and so when Katherine sat down at the table in their private parlor she wasn’t surprised when one of the twins blurted out:
“I say, your hair’s all sideways.”
“Percy,” said Hugo.
“He’s right,” Katherine said. “I look like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.” Perhaps, she thought, a slight improvement over resembling a Shetland pony, and wasn’t it a nice change to select for herself what she was going to wear? Katherine spread her napkin across her lap and looked across the table where Hugo sat, her eyes traveling from his strong, capable-looking hands, up the length of his arms, to the sturdy column of his neck and to his handsome face. He looked so cheerful, so calm. Not, she had to admit, as you would picture a groom on his wedding night. Not like someone who could barely wait for the evening to pass so that he could seize his willing bride and have her up against the wall of their room, so great was his violent passion—or maybe he’d lift her up in his strong arms and so sweep her off to the bed—would he fling her onto the bedcovers, or lay her down, gently as a feather? Which would be better? And by “her” who did she mean exactly? Was she imagining herself, or some other, made-up person?
“Katherine,” Hugo said.
She jumped. “What?”
“Would you care for a little of this chicken?”
“Chicken?”
He smiled. “Yes. This roasted chicken.”
“It’s very good,” put in one of the twins. “I’ve already had two servings.”
“So have I,” said the other one. “They had chicken at your house earlier on, Katherine, even though it was supposed to be a breakfast. I’ve never seen so much food in my life. It was ripping. Frank, how many servings did you have of the chicken?”
“Only two, but I had five slices of the ham and seven or eight potatoes.”
“Is that all? I had that and some of the pheasant.”
“There was pheasant? Damn—I mean, blast it. I missed that. Did you try the gooseberry pudding?”
“Yes, and the ices, too. Also some of the cakes.” Looking very pleased with himself, Percy (she supposed it was him) took an enormous piece of the broiled salmon and resumed eating.
“Katherine,” said Hugo, with unabated patience, “may I give you some of this chicken?”
“Yes, thank you,” she answered, and so the meal proceeded, concluding when a chocolate roll was brought in. Hugo and his brothers each took a large slice, and oh, she would have liked to have one, too, but the very fact that she wanted it so much brought on an all too familiar wave of shame. So she refused it, then eyed the others resentfully and finally said, trying to keep her tone neutral:
“Aren’t you worried you’re going to burst from eating all that food?”
“No,” answered Percy (if it was him), and had another slice.
“Cook says we have hollow legs,” Francis (she guessed) said, doing the same. “Which always makes Bertram tell her about human anatomy—muscles and bones and blood vessels and so on. The dear old chap,” and his twin added:
“It’ll be splendid to bring him with us next year. He’ll love it. It’s all thanks to you, Katherine. We’re awfully grateful.” He smiled at her, and she flushed all over again, embarrassed, and changed the subject.
“How on earth do people tell you apart? You look completely alike.”
“Oh, it’s easy. Percy is the ugly one.”
“And Francis is the stupid one.”
Laughing, the twins began trying to hook their feet around the other’s legs, and in a minute or two the table began to shimmy.
“That’s enough,” said Hugo affably, and they stopped it at once.
When they all went upstairs, Katherine was further embarrassed to see that Hugo’s room was right next to hers. Of course, you fool, she chided herself, why wouldn’t it be? Why, oh why, hadn’t she realized ahead of time how difficult this was going to be? She’d been so busy daydreaming about freedom, picturing herself in the Season to come, making over in her mind all the unpleasant and painful events that had happened last year, that she hadn’t focused on more imminent concerns.
“I get to be in Hugo’s bed!” exclaimed one of the twins, “you get the truckle bed,” and dove into the room, and the other one said, “Very well, blast you, but we switch tomorrow,” and went inside in a more leisurely fashion. Hugo came to where she stood at her own doorway, and she noticed that she was feeling more than a little breathless, and that her heart was beating hard within her, so hard that it seemed to make her back sting and throb, and that she was suddenly very warm all over, and—
“Well, Katherine?”
“Well, what?” She folded her arms over her chest. To make herself seem confident. Also, to try and subdue that willful thumping heart of hers.
He said, “What would you like for me to do?”
Oh God, she didn’t know, she didn’t know. What did he think about all this? Had she wounded him by demanding separate bedchambers? How might she have felt if he’d done that? Rejected? Dejected? What did she want him to do? She had no idea. Wildly bargaining for time she said, “For one thing, not stand here in the hallway where anyone could see us. Come inside.”
She whisked herself into her bedchamber, and quickly, stiffly, she sat down in a
chair set near the fireplace. Hugo came near, but remained standing, on his face a quizzical expression.
“Are you going to sit down?” she said, making herself sound brusque, desperate to disguise the fact that she felt all soft and warm. Vulnerable. Confused. And deeply, deeply afraid.
“That depends on you, Katherine.”
“Go ahead then,” she said with deliberate rudeness. “Sit down.”
Without hurry he complied, sitting on the chair opposite hers, and crossed one long booted leg over the other. He was looking steadily at her, calm, friendly, patient. She had a sudden image of herself with her gown on fire, her hands flapping at the flames in an urgent attempt to put them out, only the flames felt very good, which meant they were actually very bad and wrong—
Almost at random she said, “I never dreamed you’d share a room with your brothers.”
“It seemed a logical choice under the circumstances.”
“Yes, but it’s all so—so awkward.” In her voice was just the right touch of hauteur, she congratulated herself, and she pictured in her mind the flames all beaten away, her gown all black and charred, but no longer was she flaming hot. Good, good.
“Katherine,” he said patiently, “tell me what you’d like me to do, and I’ll do it.”
A flame leaped up. She blurted out: “What if I were to ask you to stay with me?”
“I would.”
“Do you want to?”
Hugo was silent, and Katherine watched with bemused fascination as a slow smile curved his mouth. It was an alluring smile. A warm and horribly seductive smile. Finally he said:
“Yes.”
The charred gown of her imagination burst into flames again, but frantically, fearfully, she beat them down. Because she was in control. Because he had agreed to her terms. She said firmly, “Well, I don’t want to.”
Hugo said nothing. She saw his smile fade. But still he looked at her, calm and steady.
Hugo found himself thinking of the time he’d been marching with his men out of the Pocatière settlement, with orders to rejoin their regiment at Fort George. They’d gone about five miles or so, when scouts had returned with the unsettling news that to the east of them was a detachment of French foot soldiers; to the west was Mohawk territory and apparently the site of a recent and rather nasty massacre; and directly ahead was a large encampment of excitable—and hostile—Americans.
He’d turned them around and had them retreat to La Pocatière, where its disgruntled townsfolk, he knew, would not be pleased to see them, and might even try to keep them from reentering.
But that’s the way things went sometimes.
Sometimes a situation was just plain bad.
And so here he was with his new bride, who gave every appearance of disliking him. Holy hell. He would have liked to stay and consummate the marriage, although not, of course, with someone who was glaring at him the whole time.
And yet—
And yet he had the oddest feeling, somehow, that once again there was more going on here than what she was saying. More beneath that hard, brittle demeanor of hers.
Why was it, he wondered, that women were so hard to understand? Why were they so confoundedly complicated?
Men, on the whole, were simple creatures. She’d asked him if he wanted her and he said yes. And then been promptly rejected. Still, he wasn’t sorry about being honest. Not only did he hate lying, he was bad at it and it was obvious when, on the rare occasion, he did prevaricate.
Hugo repressed a sigh. Just as returning to La Pocatière had been the lesser of the various evils, so too did discretion now seem to be the better part of valor: he had the distinct impression that no matter what he said, he would somehow make things worse. Perhaps if he had been one of those eloquent, articulate sort of fellows, who went about mesmerizing women with a rakish smoldering gaze and quoting epic poetry left and right—well, there was no use even contemplating it, because he wasn’t. Regretfully, then, he relinquished his earlier anticipation of a night spent in connubial joy. Which was just as well, because Katherine said:
“I’m tired. I’m going to sleep. Good night.”
She was pretending she was an empress—the indomitable Hatshepsut, for example, or the iron-willed Wu Zetian—dismissing a lowly subject.
A disloyal, maddening, horribly forthright subject.
With every evidence of an unruffled temper Hugo stood, said, “Good night, Katherine,” and left the room. The moment he shut the door behind him she brought knuckled fists to her eyes, because she wasn’t going to cry, because everything was fine, because she’d gotten everything she wanted. Because Hugo had kept his word and hadn’t leapt upon her in a wild frenzy of unbridled lust and instead had behaved in a perfectly gentlemanlike manner.
Damn him.
Twenty minutes later, having sent downstairs to the kitchen for a large slice of chocolate roll and disrobed in a maelstrom of haste, Katherine was back in her chair near the crackling fire, clad in her ugliest cambric nightgown and with her plate in hand, her copy of La Divina Commedia (it having arrived, luckily, the day before Céleste had decamped for parts unknown) waiting on the little table set between the two chairs.
She cast a scorching glance at the empty chair which had recently housed Hugo’s large delectable frame.
Was there, she mused, staring at the Commedia, Dante’s equally scorching Divine Comedy, a suitable punishment for husbands who had the gall to abandon their wives on their wedding night? (That is, who had the gall to graciously accede to what was essentially an order to leave?)
Viciously she took a bite of chocolate roll.
And then another.
And another, and when it was all gone, she put the plate onto the little table and reached for her book. She could at least find some comfort there.
But instead, she got up and, moving with a surreptitiousness that was silly, given that she was alone in her sumptuous bedchamber, went to the wall which separated her from Hugo’s room. She pressed herself against it, feeling all at once so lonely that she wished her atoms could disengage, penetrate the elegant flowery wallpaper and plaster and wood, and emerge on the other side, where she’d be reconstituted to her original form, and possibly even as a better version of herself.
Suddenly she heard a faint thumping sound issuing from the room next door. Somebody—it sounded like one of the twins—yelped. There was another thump, and then a crash, as if furniture had been knocked over, and one of the twins gave a high-pitched yip.
Katherine caught her breath in horror. Good God, was Hugo—
Was Hugo beating them?
Had he left the room so secretly infuriated by her rejection that he’d gone and taken it out on his brothers?
Was it her fault?
There was another thump, and Hugo’s voice saying, “You’re in for it now, lad,” and Katherine waited no longer. She ran from her room and into the corridor, heedless of anybody who might see her only in her nightgown, and banged on Hugo’s door.
She could hear one of the twins saying “Uh oh,” and then the door was opened, and there was Hugo, in breeches and unlaced shirt, his feet bare and his hair rumpled, a pillow tucked under his arm. He looked down at her, surprise and concern in his expression.
“Everything all right?”
“Let me in.” She shoved her way past him—even though he practically filled up the doorway—and into the room which looked like a storm had just roared through it. In the dim light of a single branch of candelabra set high atop an armoire, she could see that the bedclothes were in a wild tangle of comforters and sheets, pillows were scattered, a truckle bed was pushed higgledy-piggledy into a corner, an end table lay on its side . . . and there were the twins, one standing on a sofa and the other half-concealed behind a column of draperies, each holding a big, plump pillow and looking rather guilty.
The three of them had been having a pillow fight.
And obviously a rollicking one.
“Oh, hullo, Kathe
rine,” said the twin on the sofa, “sorry for all the noise, we were laughing like maniacs,” and then the other one said, in tones of deep respect:
“I say, Katherine, your hair. You look just like a Valkyrie. All you need is a flaming sword.”
“Or one of the Furies,” said the first twin, getting into the spirit of things, “descending upon unwary mortals. It’s simply ripping.”
“Why do you keep it all scraped back during the day?” asked the other.
“You look better with it loose.”
“Percy,” said Hugo from behind her, “and Frank. That’s enough.”
Oh, her wretched hair. Katherine clutched at it. When she’d been getting ready for bed she hadn’t even bothered trying to braid it, and here she was, with her untamed riot of curls, in all probability looking as if she’d been in a pillow fight.
Which she never had, of course. What, she now wondered, would that be like? She pictured herself swinging a pillow hard, with all her might, and landing it with a gratifying thwack—
“Did we say something wrong?” said Percy (she supposed), “I was complimenting Katherine,” and his twin put in, “It’s just that we were surprised, Hugo, she looks so different,” and then Hugo said, from right behind her now, in his deep voice an urgency that startled her:
“Katherine, your back is bleeding. There’s blood on your nightgown.”
Had she been embarrassed before? It was as nothing to the raging torrent of mortification which subsumed her now. “It’s nothing,” she said quickly. “I’m fine. Well—good night.” She turned, saw that Hugo had gone to one of the trunks—what was he doing? Avoiding looking at her?—and made her way to the door in a kind of blind confusion.
Then she realized that Hugo had caught up to her and was carrying a small wood box.
“I’ll be right next door,” he said to the twins.
“I say, is Katherine all right?” one of them (Francis?) said.
“Can we help?”
“Should we send for a doctor?”
