by M C Beaton
“You know what I think?” said the colonel wrathfully. “I think you got hold of an old piece of gossip and tried to pass it off as new coin. We had better rescue Mrs. Budley.”
“Pooh, pooh,” said Sir Philip, relieved now that the worst was out. “She is probably already on her way back here. He will have told her she is no relative of his. The gossips say that matchmaking mamas have been trudging out to Warwickshire in droves with their charges. He will think she is after him and send her packing. Betty and John are there to protect her. He won’t know she meant to thieve. He can only be flattered that such a pretty lady appears to favour him.”
“Have you thought about the shame of it?” exclaimed Miss Tonks. “Poor Eliza. She must be suffering dreadfully!”
Chapter Three
I hate the town, and all its ways;
Ridottos, operas, and plays;
The ball, the ring, the mall, the Court,
Wherever the beau monde resort;
Where beauties lie in ambush for folks,
Earl Staffords and the Dukes of Norfolks;
—HENRY FIELDING
MRS. BUDLEY rose early. Apart from a dry mouth, she found she was not suffering overmuch from the effects of her drinking the night before. What was alarming her was the marquess’s intentions. A man who could no doubt have any woman he wanted would not settle for mere companionship. And yet if he wanted her in his bed, she would need to oblige to make up for having betrayed the others. Her experience of the intimacies of married life had been far from pleasant, and so the idea of a handsome marquess taking her in his arms filled her with nothing more than fear.
Her scared mind rattled into the gloomy future like a runaway coach. She would become pregnant. She would be in disgrace. What if the others cast her off? She would sink to the demi-monde and then, because of her age, very quickly to the streets. A courageous and determined woman, she felt, would take the marquess to the lawyers first and get some sort of financial arrangement hammered out. All she wanted to do was to run away and pretend all this had never happened.
Betty helped her dress, saying colourlessly that my lord was waiting for her in the dining-room. At least there wasn’t a breakfast room, thought Mrs. Budley. She could hardly be expected to engage in bright and flirtatious conversation down the length of that enormous table.
But when she entered the dining-room, the table had been pushed to one side and a small round table spread with a white cloth set before the fire.
She had hoped the marquess might seem less formidable in the broad light of day, but in black coat, leather breeches, and top-boots he looked more awe-inspiring than ever. He held out a chair for her and she sat down and raised large scared eyes to his.
He looked down at her with a shadow of impatience in his black eyes. “If you are to entertain me, Mrs. Budley,” he said, “then you must strive to be more comfortable in my company.” He crossed to the sideboard and said over his shoulder, “What may I serve you? Kidneys? Ham?”
“I would be more at ease,” said Mrs. Budley, “if there was one chair in this whole household not made for a giant. My feet do not touch the floor. Some toast, if you please. And tea.”
“You should see my town house,” he remarked as he served her. “My uncle was a huge man, as were his ancestors. I do not think any of the marchionesses of the past had any say in the furnishings. You will observe from some of the portraits in the long gallery that the ladies were all quite small. I thought that perhaps riding might be too strenuous an exercise for you, so I shall take you out in the carriage.”
The butler came in and placed a small pile of morning papers beside his master. “Excuse me,” he said, and picking one off the top, began to read.
Mrs. Budley nibbled her toast and drank her tea.
After some moments, she timidly picked up another newspaper and settled down to read. Normally she only read the social column, but anxious to take her mind away from her predicament, she settled down to study a glowing account of the exploits of the American commodore, Stephen Decatur.
He had managed to escape the British blockade of New York Harbour, totally unaware that peace with the British had already been signed at Ghent. His ship, The President, pursued and outnumbered, he was obliged to surrender only to find when he was taken on shore as a prisoner at Bermuda that the peace had been signed and there was therefore no chance of escape or of revenge against the British. But the court exonerated him and praised his courage and seamanship. The people of America evidently felt the same way. When Decatur arrived at New London, the townsmen, who were celebrating Washington’s birthday, manned a carriage and towed him through the streets. In New York, the ships’ carpenters pledged sixteen hundred days of work to provide Decatur with another frigate to replace the one he had lost.
She moved on from there to strikes in the shipbuilding industry in Tyneside and to poverty in England in general. The writer harked back to Lord Byron’s maiden speech in the House three years before: “I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces in Turkey, but never, under the most despotic of infidel Governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return in the very heart of a Christian country.”
Mrs. Budley shivered, remembering the days not so long ago when the shadow of the workhouse had loomed over her. Her relatives had blamed her for marrying Jack, and his relatives blamed her for being a bad influence. She had been glad to cast them off, secure in her new “family.” And now, by her folly, she had put that very family at risk. She gave a little sigh and looked up to find he was watching her.
“If you have finished,” he said, “I think you should change into something warmer. I cannot understand why you ladies will consider flimsy muslin suitable dress for all occasions. If you do not yet know the way back to your quarters, you will find a footman stationed outside this door to show you the way. Shall we say half an hour? In the hall? It is an open carriage.”
Glad to escape for however brief a time, Mrs. Budley rose and curtsied and scurried out. There was, as promised, the footman, and she followed him back through the castle labyrinth to where Betty was stolidly waiting.
John was with her. “His lordship has a secretary,” he said gruffly, “and the gossip in the servants’ hall this morning was that this secretary, a Mr. Wage, was sent off last night to London with instructions to find out as much about us as possible. We’d best hope it’s favourable.”
“There is nothing more he can find out than what I have already told him,” said Mrs. Budley, striving for dignity. “My carriage dress, Betty, and the felt bonnet with the cock feathers and my half-boots.”
Betty did not move. “And where are we going, madam?”
“I am being taken driving by my lord,” said Mrs. Budley impatiently. “No, I am not going to escape. I would not do that.”
“Reckon as you’ve done enough already,” grumbled Betty, moving towards the bedroom.
Mrs. Budley stamped her foot in exasperation. She had never been able to control servants at any time in her past, but the grumpy Betty in such circumstances was too much to bear. “I will not be spoken to in such a manner,” she said to Betty’s retreating back. John sketched a bow and walked out.
Lips primmed in a thin line, Betty efficiently helped Mrs. Budley into her clothes. “May I suggest some paint, madam?” she said. “We are pale.”
“We are going to stay as bloody white-faced as we feel like staying,” shouted Mrs. Budley, and swirling her shawl about her shoulders she stalked out, leaving an open-mouthed Betty staring after her.
It was only when she arrived in the hall, her cheeks still flaming with an angry colour which owed nothing to rouge, that she realized with a little shock of pride that she had actually found her own way there.
The marquess looked approvingly at the diminutive figure in the green velvet carriage dress and the green-and-gold shawl. He led the way out to a smart phaeton pulled by two matched black horses. He helped her in and climbed in
himself. The groom stood away from the horses’ heads. Mrs. Budley looked back. There was no footman, groom, or tiger on the backstrap. No chaperon.
He did not talk as they set off and she contented herself by admiring the countryside, golden in the sleepy September sunshine, a Brueghel landscape of wooded hills and the long silver snake of the Avon.
He drove her first to Leamington, slowing his horses to an amble as he explained that it had been only a sleepy village until a few years ago, when it had become a spa, so that it was now an elegant little town with twelve palace-like inns, four large bath-houses with colonnades and gardens, several libraries, card-, billiard-, concert-and ballrooms, one for every six hundred people, and a host of private houses which had sprung out of the earth like mushrooms and housed only visitors. He said he had no intention of tasting the waters, as the same water was used for drinking and bathing.
The marquess then drove her to a place not far from Leamington and a league from Warwick called Guy’s Cliff, and Mrs. Budley temporarily lost her fear of him in exploring this oddest of houses. The proprietor was abroad and so they were shown round by the housekeeper. Part of the house was reputed to be as old as Warwick Castle and under it was a deep cavern on the shores of the Avon, where legend had it that Guy of Warwick after many adventures at home and abroad retired to close his life in pious meditation. After two years of searching for him, his wife found him dead in his cave and in despair threw herself down from the rocks into the Avon. In later times a chapel was built into the rock to commemorate this tragic event, and adorned by Henry the Third with a statue of Sir Guy. But during the days of Cromwell it was so mutilated by his troops that it was little more than a shapeless block.
Opposite to the chapel were twelve monks’ cells hewn out of the rock, now used as stables. The chapel itself had been recently renovated. A passage led from the chapel to the house. Mrs. Budley fell in love with the drawing-room. It had such a cheerful, cluttered, home-like air. Pictures adorned the walls, tables were covered with curiosities, and light and graceful furniture had been placed about in agreeable disorder. The drawing-room was lit by two long windows. One window stood above a rock which rose perpendicularly from the river. In the middle of the river was a lovely little island, and behind it a grand prospect of luxuriant meadows and beautiful trees, and tucked away in the background, a village half buried in a wood. At a short distance and to one side was a mill which the marquess said was supposed to have been in existence since Norman times.
A little farther off on a woody hill, a high cross marked where Gaveston, the infamous favourite of Edward the Second, was executed by the lords Warwick and Arundel.
The other window looked out onto a perfect contrast: a pretty French garden in which porcelain ornaments and coloured sand mingled their hues with the flowers and terminated in a beautiful alley overshadowed with ivy cut into a pointed arch.
The housekeeper served them a cold collation on a small table set in the window recess overlooking the garden. The marquess chatted about the history of the countryside. He was very much at his ease, somewhat remote, and Mrs. Budley, cheered by the food, the pretty surroundings, and by this non-threatening marquess, began to relax so that when he began to ask her about herself, she talked quite naturally. She had not been in love with Jack because it was an arranged marriage, she said. Her family, she added artlessly, were not rich enough to allow her to marry for love.
“But I thought I was very lucky,” said Mrs. Budley, “for Jack was very handsome and very amusing. At first it was quite fun, the balls and parties, the Season.” She bit her lip.
“You can tell me,” he said. “Your husband is dead.”
“It still seems disloyal. But perhaps because I shall not see you again after this visit, it would help to talk about it. He drank a great deal, sometimes six bottles, but then most men drink like that. But he became … coarser. I began to dread his return in the small hours.”
A faint blush rose to her cheeks and her ridiculously long eyelashes dropped to shield her eyes, conjuring up for the marquess by her embarrassed silence a vision of a drunken and demanding husband crashing into her bedchamber.
“What was quite dreadful,” she went on at last, “was that I began to pray for his death.”
“And so, when he did die, you felt you had wished it?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Very usual,” he said calmly. “You are not God, Mrs. Budley. His time had come.”
“I knew he had been spending all his money and borrowing more,” she said, “but it still came as a shock when he died and I realized the enormity of the debts. I am so grateful to Lady Fortescue, and yet I have betrayed her to you. Please do keep to your promise.” She faced him bravely. “I will do anything you wish.”
“Oh, my dearest Mrs. Budley,” he said, his eyes glinting with laughter. “You read too many novels. I am not going to have my wicked way with you. You amuse me, but you have no reason to fear me.”
She looked at him doubtfully. “You really do mean you only want to share my company for a few days?”
“That is all; my word on it.”
“Oh, my lord!” She smiled at him, a slow, warm smile that lit up her face. “Now I can be happy and perhaps eat a little more because worry was quite spoiling my appetite.”
* * *
In the days that followed, Mrs. Budley chattered and laughed and felt young again. Betty and John were obviously puzzled. It was clear to them both that the widow was sleeping alone and they felt she was putting the security of them all at risk by remaining celibate.
Mrs. Budley had managed to forget about her predicament. She simply enjoyed the marquess’s company and the outings and looked forward to having dinner with him in the evenings, especially as conversation was easy now that they shared the smaller dining-table. But on the fifth day, everything was spoiled for her in a way she dare not voice.
They had been to a fair in Warwick because Mrs. Budley had wanted to see the Intelligent Pig and was still in rhapsodies over this gifted animal at the dinner-table. “I’ Faith,” he said, his black eyes dancing, “I never thought to be jealous of a pig.”
She laughed back, meeting his eyes. And then, out of nowhere, love struck her and she quickly lowered her eyes and felt her heart hammering against her ribs. A sheer burst of pure joy and elation was quickly followed by the depths of misery. Her situation as part hotel owner, in trade, had made her unmarriageable. All her ease in his company left her. All she wanted to do was escape before she said or did anything to betray herself.
When she spoke, she was surprised to find her voice sounded quite normal. “I must return to London tomorrow, my lord. The others will be expecting me.”
She was aware of his eyes on her but could not look up. “And you returning empty-handed?” he said. “I suppose you must go, although I have enjoyed our short holiday.” He began to talk about a review of a new play in the newspapers and she was sure afterwards that she must have replied, must have said something, but could not remember anything other than her longing for him, her fear of him, and her desire to escape.
John and Betty heard her news that they were to travel back to London without any comment other than Betty’s foreboding remark of, “Well, her ladyship will have a few words to say to you on this matter.”
So Mrs. Budley stood like a doll while Betty prepared her for bed and when she was finally alone succumbed to a fit of bitter weeping. She had often had dreams of marrying again, but in her heart of hearts she had always known they were nothing but dreams and no man had ever entered her life to make her regret her situation at the hotel. Now there was the marquess, living in her mind, making her body ache in a way it had never ached for poor Jack.
Heavy-eyed, she made her way down the now familiar passages and staircase of the castle in the morning. He was not there for breakfast and when she asked for him, she was told he was in his study and had requested that he was not to be disturbed.
The butler han
ded her a letter as she made her dreary way out to the carriage. She took it almost absent-mindedly, her whole being willing the marquess to appear so that she might see him just one more time. But as she climbed into the carriage, the front of the castle remained blank and empty.
The coachman cracked his whip and the carriage dipped and swayed as John scrambled up onto the roof. It was a sunny day: Darkness as the carriage moved out under the two portcullises and then sunlight again, flooding the countryside which was already full of memories for her. She let down the glass and leaned out and watched and watched until battlements, turrets and ramparts had faded from view. Then she sank back in her seat with a sigh and broke the seal of the letter that had been handed to her.
“Dear Mrs. Budley,” she read, “My thanks for your company. I enclose something which I hope will help your finances and keep your nefarious companions from berating you on your return. Yr. Humble and Obedient Servant, Peterhouse.” And there, inside the stiff parchment, was a banker’s draft for five thousand pounds.
She looked down at it in dismay. Paid off for services rendered. Paid for having amused one bored aristocrat for a few days.
“What’s that?” demanded Betty suddenly from the seat opposite.
“His lordship has generously given me a banker’s draft for five thousand pounds,” said Mrs. Budley in a colourless voice.
Betty’s gypsy face cracked in a smile of pure admiration. “Why, you clever lady!” she exclaimed, raising her hands. “Ain’t you the slyboots.”
“Betty, I have made allowances to date for your insolence,” said Mrs. Budley quietly. “This payment is because of his lordship’s goodness of heart and not because of anything I have done. In future, you will address me with respect.”
“Sorry, madam,” said Betty, looking startled and then contrite.
It was the first time in her life that Mrs. Budley had been able to put a servant in her place, but she did not realize this little victory as the miles rolled under the wheels, pulling her away from where her heart lay.
