by M C Beaton
Annie put down her coffee cup and placed her hands on the table. “And who is Miss S.?” she demanded in a harsh voice.
“Friend of mine,” remarked her husband. “And, talking about friends, I hear you’ve been moving in political circles. Or rather Mr. Shaw-Bufford’s circles. Where on earth did you meet him? I can’t see my parents giving him house room.”
“I met him at Britlingsea.”
“Britlingsea! Good Heavens! What were you doing in a dead-alive dump like that?”
“Perkins recommended it.” Perkins was the butler.
“Oh, that explains it. You shouldn’t listen to Perkins. He’s a terrible snob. You must have been bored to death. Anyway, did a confirmed bachelor like Shaw-Bufford simply walk up to you and introduce himself?”
“No, I went to his house.”
“Curiouser and curiouser. Who introduced you?”
“A Miss Mary Hammond.”
“Never heard of her,” pursued the marquess, his irritating good humor unimpaired. “What does she do?”
Anyone the marquess had not heard of must “do” something since anyone he had not heard of could not possibly just “be” someone.
Annie flushed, remembering her man-hating madness.
“She’s got something or other to do with Votes for Women,” she said awkwardly.
“Indeed? Well, be very careful. I don’t want to have to bail you out if you’re going to take up smashing shop windows and sniping at trains.”
“I should have known you would sneer,” said Annie hotly.
“I’m not sneering, my love. I am simply disapproving of some of the militant methods that have been used. For my part, I think women should get the vote. But to return to the question of Mr. Shaw-Bufford, what does he want from you?”
“My company,” said Annie coldly.
“He is a most ambitious man and I would have said he did not like women at all, particularly young and pretty ones. Has he asked you for any money?”
“No. How dare you… how could…?”
“He will,” said the marquess equably, picking up his newspaper.
Now Annie had meant to ask her husband why he had married her in a reasonable, grown-up, woman-of-the-world manner. But his careless good nature, his lack of contrition for having abandoned her for so long, made her control snap completely and she fairly screamed at him, “Why did you marry me? Why? Was it solely to humiliate me? Or was it for my money?”
He lowered his paper again. For one split second, his eyes looked as cold as ice, but in the next he was his old amiable self again.
“I thought I knew,” he said. “But I have not such clear-cut motives as you yourself.”
“I? I have not said anything on the subject.”
“If my memory serves me right, you told me that you married me simply to get revenge on your sister.”
He studied her thoughtfully as her eyelashes fell to veil her expressive eyes.
“I must have been drunk,” she whispered.
“Oh, you were,” he said sweetly. “You were, indeed. But your voice had the ring of truth. So I decided that, having given you what you wanted, I would make myself scarce.”
Annie writhed in misery. Then her anger came back. “You should have told me,” she snapped. “You should have said something. Not simply gone away.”
“Did you miss me?” he asked curiously.
Annie lowered her eyes again. “I was too furious to know what I felt.”
He gave a cavernous yawn and then picked up the paper. “I do love these marital discussions,” he murmured. “They do clear the air. Are we going to the ballet tonight? I seem to recollect that I have tickets somewhere.”
Annie blushed. “I-I h-have promised to go with Mr. Shaw-Bufford,” she said miserably.
“Don’t worry,” he said from behind his newspaper. “I’m sure I can find someone else.”
“I’m sure you can,” Annie flashed back bitterly.
The door opened. “Lady Marigold Sinclair,” announced Perkins.
“We are not at home, Perkins,” said the marquess, without even bothering to look up.
“Very good, my lord.”
Annie looked at her husband in awe and admiration. “Is it as easy as that?”
He put down his newspaper. “Oh, yes. You don’t have to bother about people you don’t like, particularly at this time of the day. Anyway, she’s probably come to tell you about her engagement.”
“Engagement!”
“I heard at the club that young Bellamy was about to pop the question.”
“But Harry Bellamy is only an Honorable!”
“And since you always compete, you are surprised she settled for less than a duke? Ah, but there’s the question of an heir, you see. Since she has already gone out of her way to hire a private detective to find out about my… er… pleasures, she is probably convinced that she will be got with child first.”
“Hired a… Oh, even Marigold…”
“Surely you did not think that Marigold was in the habit of reading the French newspapers, did you?”
“I’ll sue her, I’ll murder her, I’ll…”
“Well, before you do all that, perhaps you might allow me to read my newspaper? I have been reading this same line over and over again.”
Annie sat and watched him in smoldering silence. How dare he make her feel so guilty! How dare he sit there calmly after that horrible revelation!
Gradually, she began to plan her day. She would collect her new gown from the dressmaker herself and wear it that very evening. And she would not sit around waiting for her husband to notice her. She would take herself for a drive in the park and show the fashionable world that the Marchioness of Torrance did not care in the slightest that her husband had come home!
The day was gray and mournful. The leaves in the city never seemed to blaze with the red and gold of autumn but simply to crinkle up to a dreary brown.
Still, she felt very mondaine as she sat in the marquess’s open carriage with the splendid coachman in front and the two enormous footmen at the back.
And then, all at once, she recognized Aunt Agatha’s coachman seated on the box of a carriage approaching down Ladies Mile from the other direction.
She called to her coachman to stop and the Winter carriage promptly stopped alongside, so she and Marigold were eyeball to eyeball, so to speak, each dressed to the nines and sitting in their open landaus.
Marigold was seated beside a willowy young man who had a thick, fair moustache. Annie recognized the Honorable Harry Bellamy.
“Congratulate us, sis,” cooed Marigold, all feminine flutterings. “Our engagement will be in the newspapers tomorrow.”
“I should kill you,” said Annie, “for having the check to set a detective on my husband.”
“But how did you…?” began Marigold, and then blushed a guilty red.
Annie’s temper snapped. She was carrying a frivolous little parasol, closed and held beside her because of the absence of sun. “I hate you!” hissed Annie, getting to her feet and standing up in the perilously swaying landau.
Carriages halted beside them, lorgnettes were raised, rouged lips whispered behind fans. “Yes, I hate you,” repeated Annie, deaf and blind to the watching crowd.
Marigold shrank back artistically against Harry Bellamy. “You always were jealous of me,” she said.
“Oh, I say. I say,” bleated Harry Bellamy.
“And what’s more,” said Marigold, rising to her feet, her eyes glittering, “everyone knows you married Torrance out of spite.”
Annie looked ready to leap into her sister’s carriage and strangle her. Her coachman flashed a look of mute appeal to the coachman in Marigold’s carriage, and both drivers promptly set their teams in motion. Both sisters crashed back down into their seats and, turning their heads, glared at each other.
At last Annie jerked her head around. She became aware of the curious stares from the carriages on either side.
&n
bsp; What a scene! Her husband would hear of it. He would hear how his marchioness had behaved like a scullery maid, standing up in her carriage, shouting at her sister, broadcasting to the world at large that Marigold had hired a detective to follow him.
She felt very small and silly.
The Marquess of Torrance held back the curtain of the study window and looked thoughtfully at his wife descending from the carriage. Color was flaming in her cheeks and she looked like an angry kitten. His coachman looked flurried and harassed.
He wondered what on earth she had been up to.
Annie did not see her husband. She did not even know he was in the house. All she wanted to do was to escape to the privacy of her room. The coachman would tell the other servants, the servants would be shocked, and one of the upper servants might consider it all in the line of duty to tell the master.
Why had she not just congratulated Harry Bellamy and Marigold in a dignified way? She searched around for something to distract her. Then she decided to try on her new purchase, which was a wickedly seductive French corset. She realized she had given Barton the day off, but it would be better to try it on by herself without Barton or one of the housemaids wondering if her ladyship had gone mad. For the corset was black, and everyone knew that ladies never wear black underwear. But Annie had fallen in love with it. She had dropped in at Maison Lucy in Bond Street after she had collected her gown. They were having a fashion show of all the latest underwear. Annie could never quite get used to seeing all those haughty mannequins wearing underwear over plain black dresses—since for decency’s sake, they could hardly model it any other way—and often wondered if they felt as ludicrous as they looked.
But her eye had been caught by the corset. It was, first of all, a sensation because it was black. A naughty, frivolous thing ornamented with eau de nil roses on the garters and fine black lace at the bosom. It was shorter than the long Empire corset that Annie usually wore since it only came down to the top of the thighs. Feeling very daring and wicked, she had bought one.
After she had bathed and brushed out her hair, Annie slipped on the corset and managed to lace herself into it without much trouble.
Then she fastened a pair of cobweb-fine black silk stockings on to the garters. She did not dream of going to the looking glass to study the effect because she had not yet put on her drawers and to see herself in such a stage of undress would be far from ladylike.
She was about to cross the room to the chest of drawers to look for the rest of her underwear when a familiar, lazy, amused voice from the doorway said, “Very fetching.”
The marquess, wearing, as far as her shocked eyes could see, nothing more than his dressing gown, was studying her with appreciative interest.
Annie let out a scream and rushed wildly about looking for her wrapper, miserably conscious that she was wearing only the corset, her stockings, and a pair of high-heeled evening shoes.
He took two quick steps across the room and caught her in his arms.
“What are you doing?” Annie flamed.
“Competing with Marigold.”
“You’re mad.”
“Not in the slightest. I am in a baby-making mood. I said to myself, I said, why should Marigold’s offspring get all that lovely money?”
“Let me go—”
His mouth had covered hers and he was forcing her back toward the bed. She fought and struggled and scratched, but he clipped her hands behind her back and knocked her back across the bed with the simple tactic of falling on top of her.
“Now,” he said, “I am going to carry on exactly from where I left off on our wedding night.”
The fight went out of Annie as her treacherous body burned and throbbed under an onslaught of kisses and caresses. Probing, clever, sensitive hands moved here and there, causing her sudden, sharp pain and making her cry out, and then somehow causing her to wind her arms tightly about him.
At one point he put a hand behind him, took off her shoes, and threw them across the room. “Your heels are making holes in my back,” he complained before moving again, inside her, over her, always holding back until she called his name in the high, sharp tone of complete abandon.
“Now,” said the Marquess of Torrance, thoughtfully, “I shall remove this very fetching corset, and since I began at the end, so to speak, I will go back to the beginning.”
“You are snoring. Wake up!”
Annie awoke with a jerk. She almost expected to find herself in her husband’s arms, but she was in Mr. Shaw-Bufford’s box at the ballet and she could see his pale eyes glaring at her in the dim light.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, trying to focus her eyes on the stage. “I’m tired.”
Annie had never felt more exhausted in her life. Her husband had finally given her a light kiss on the nose and had left her to struggle into yet another bath. The wreck of the pretty black corset lay in ruins in the corner where it had been thrown.
It had been like a slap in the face to go downstairs eventually, dressed and ready, to find that her husband had already left.
And he had not said one word of love to her.
She could tell at a glance when Mr. Shaw-Bufford arrived to collect her that he was not pleased with her appearance.
She had put on very heavy white makeup, not only on her face but on her chest and arms. There was an enormous love bite on her neck that she had tried to disguise.
And now she had disgraced her escort by falling asleep and snoring.
The lights on the stage and the darkness of the theater made her yawn and yawn, and she was relieved when the interval came.
Relieved until she saw her husband in a box opposite with a very handsome, dark-haired woman. Not once did the marquess look around the theater to see if Annie was there. Annie felt a lump rising in her throat, and Mr. Shaw-Bufford looked at her with increasing irritation.
He had heard of the fight in the park—who had not? He was an ambitious man and he did not want to have his name coupled with that of a woman who behaved so disgracefully. But he needed Lady Torrance for just one thing…
Annie did not look at the stage once for the rest of the performance. She studied her husband and his companion through her opera glasses, searching for some sign of intimacy. There was no doubt that his companion was a lady and that made her doubly dangerous in Annie’s eyes.
Mr. Shaw-Bufford was anxious to be alone with Annie to ask one all-important question. He had told the driver to take them back to St. James’s Square the long way around.
Annie was too tired to notice that they were heading down Northumberland Avenue instead of going through Trafalgar Square and along Pall Mall. She did not notice anything until they were passing the Houses of Parliament. The square in front seemed to be full of women, silent women, hundreds and hundreds of them, just sitting or standing.
“What on earth are they doing?” she asked.
“They’re keeping a silent vigil,” said Mr. Shaw-Bufford indifferently. “They’re the nonmilitant women who want the vote.”
Annie looked out at them in wonder as the carriage passed through Parliament Square. She found the spectacle very moving; all those women, standing out in the cold, so quietly, so silently.
“Lady Torrance,” began Mr. Shaw-Bufford, edging closer to her on the carriage seat. “There’s something I wish…”
“Poor things,” said Annie, still looking out and not hearing him. “Poor things. And yet how I admire them.”
Mr. Shaw-Bufford rapped on the roof of the brougham with his cane. “Why are we going in the wrong direction, man?” he called to the driver. “St. James’s Square immediately.”
Then he leaned back, a smile beginning to curve his thin lips. For all at once he knew how to get Annie to give him what he wanted.
Annie said good night to her companion and climbed the stairs, desperate for sleep. But although she slept deeply and heavily, she awoke suddenly in the middle of the night and began to bum with jealousy—although sh
e did not recognize the emotion for what it was.
She imagined her husband lying in bed with the dark-haired woman in his arms, doing all those delicious things to her that he had done to Annie.
The nightmare seemed to become reality, and all at once she was sure he had taken the dark-haired woman to his room. He was holding her, and they were both laughing about the stupidity of the silly little marchioness.
She lit the bed candle and, seizing it, walked out into the corridor. The door to her husband’s suite was at the other side of the stairs. She walked silently along and gently turned the handle of the door. It would not budge. Locked! And there could only be one reason for her husband locking the door.
Rage burned in her. Fury. Hate. If he thought he was going to lie in there enjoying his extramarital lust, then he had another think coming!
She walked into an adjoining bathroom, picked up a hand towel, and carefully stuffed it along the bottom of his door. Then she bent down and lit it with the candle. It burned badly but created a lot of nasty smoke, which was just what Annie wanted.
She retreated to the top of the stairs and started to scream at the top of her lungs, “Fire! Fire! Help! Help!”
There was the thud of feet as the first of the servants pounded down from the attic. Soon the whole house was alive with running, terrified people.
Perkins ran down the street in his nightshirt, howling for the fire brigade, before he remembered he could have used the telephone.
Annie had put on her dressing gown. She had wanted to keep watch on the marquess’s door to see the guilty pair emerge, but Perkins, already seeing the morning headlines, “Butler Saves Noble Family,” had forced her to go out into the street while he ran back to rouse the master.
But the fire brigade arrived on the scene, horses steaming, bell clanging, and would not allow Perkins his moment of glory. Without waiting to see if there was any smoke or flames, they began to run the hose into the house. The towel under the marquess’s door smoldered on and only a small trickle of smoke was escaping. It was enough for the fire chief. “Here, men!” he called. They ran the hose up the stairs. At last the marquess, aroused by the commotion, opened his bedroom door (it was inclined to stick and had not been locked at all) and received a cascade of water full in the chest.
