‘Keep that before him, Mother,’ said Sam. In the role of doting waiting woman, Mrs Brown could obviously be of enormous value. ‘But for heaven’s sake, let us have less of the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet; and white lambs and ravening wolves for the future are out of it! Discretion, my dear madam, is the better part of histrionics. And Gilda, for you also, discretion, child, discretion… And of all things, in a crisis cast your anguished glances anywhere but at the second footman; you know that James is uncontrollable once he has a fit of laughter.’
‘Oh, well — he may come no more,’ said Gilda, comfortably yawning. Already the success began to seem less amusing than the pursuit had been.
But he called again next day and this time no distressing recollections marred the delight of the evening. He remained for an hour and went away visibly enchanted. Came again and was permitted to stay even longer; took to calling every day and sometimes twice. The affair however was conducted with the utmost discretion and the admirer fortunately seemed also inclined to circumspection: to court her too openly would only suggest that the Unattainable Lady was after all as other women, and invite rivalries. And beside, there was the small matter of his betrothal to the Honourable Jane Harrington. A betrothal was almost as binding as a marriage; and to be known to be setting up house with a lady of the town even while wedding preparations went forward, would perhaps be not quite comme il faut. On the other hand…
On the other hand — and yet perhaps for this reason — he plied her with roses, with the message oft repeated, with innumerable attentions — but so far had made no proposals. And one day Brown Eyes would return from abroad, and then… If only he had been a little less — well, whipper-snapper, thought Mrs Brown, reverting ever to her favourite epithet for him: if only Marigold had liked him just a little bit less — coolly. ‘We must think of a plan,’ she said to the boys, ‘to bring about something more positive.’ They had over-reached themselves, she suggested, in the matter of her ladyship’s birth and breeding; in fact, they’d been mad, surely, to make so much of it, to build up the supposed fortune in Italy. How could a man persuade himself that such a woman was available as a mistress?
‘It’s grown up gradually, from the sending of the bouquets. We were too anxious to attract only the highest; not to give the impression that she was just some cheap lorette.’
‘Her supposed breeding we can’t undo. The fortune, however, we might dispose of…’
The ravening wolves therefore had better be brought back into play, the lady should be found disconsolate and sob out a tale of sudden and shattering poverty… ‘Only, let me alone with him, for heaven’s sake!’ said Gilda. ‘I’ll have no Mother MacCready white-lambing me and no sputtering footmen, either. Jake must do the honours, he can out-act any of you and still keep his countenance. I’ll account for the absence of the rest of you. But, Master Jake, so much as one grin behind your hand—!’
They leaned over the banisters to watch him as, small and portentous in his rich page’s suit, he marched across the hall, took his lordship’s amber cane and three-cornered hat and threw open the door of the withdrawing-room. ‘My lord the Earl of Tregaron, to wait upon my lady…’ And then in a voice of most convincing dismay: ‘Oh, my lady — forgive me—!’
For she sat there alone upon her sofa: very piteous and pale, the white dress rumpled, the grey-blue eyes made huge in her face by the darkness around them; the only colour the glow of her hair in the late afternoon sun peeping in at her tall windows. He dropped the red roses on the floor at her feet and knelt down beside her. ‘Dearest and loveliest — my sweet love, what is the matter? You’ve been weeping.’
‘No, indeed — it’s nothing, my lord: I was not expecting you; see, my dress is disordered. My servants are off duty for one reason or another; the child should not have admitted you…’ But she made no attempt to run away and repair the damage, only drooped on the sofa still, and seemed not even to observe that his arms were around her. ‘I am a little unhappy, my lord, but — it’s nothing.’
‘It’s everything,’ he said. ‘To me it’s everything — to see you for one moment sad, is an agony to me, to see these lovely eyes veiled with tears, to catch a sigh on this mouth that was made — was made only for kisses…’ And he blanched and trembled and caught her in his arms and looked down on the beautiful upturned face and whispered at last: ‘For my kisses!’
A prettyish little whipper-snapper kind of a fellow — but those arms were like bonds of steel about her, his mouth was hard on hers, his white teeth crushed her lips with a true man’s rough passion. A flame rose in her in response such as she had never known or thought to know, the dream of white roses was a far away memory, the heavy scent of the crimson blossoms at their feet was all about her. And he murmured a question into her ear and half swooning, she dragged herself free from him and, spent with desire unfulfilled, stumbled to the door…
She went up to her bedroom, alone: the bedroom that had long ago been prepared for this day, the satin and sandalwood, the frilled muslin draperies, all the delicious paraphernalia of the fashionable poule de luxe. The family had retreated before her and now huddled in a group in the doorway, almost scared by the blank, bemused look on her face, by the slowness, by the silence… She stood by the high four-poster bed with its cupids, one at each corner, trailing ribbons of cerulean blue, and her shaking hands clung to the carved wooden spiral. Mrs Brown blurted out at last: ‘For God’s sake, child, speak! What has happened?’
She seemed to start awake — opened the grey eyes wide, clapped her hand to her mouth and spewed into it a sudden great hoot of laughter, still incredulous, utterly astounded. ‘What on earth do you think?’ she said. ‘The very worst! He’s asked me to marry him.’
CHAPTER FOUR
THE PAGE BROUGHT A silver tray with wine and glasses. ‘And a message, my lord. Milady is with her maid and begs a few — a few moments of your lordship’s patience—’ stammered Jake, a little short on rehearsal; and added in a rush, ‘—while she composes herself.’ He stood staring at his lordship with great round eyes. (The news had evidently already spread through the household. In that case, surely she must mean to accept him?) My lord, in his feverish uncertainty, caught at the first means of distraction and entered into conversation. ‘Do you like sugar cakes?’
‘Well — yes,’ said Jake. (‘When they’re fresh,’ he did not add, ‘but we know now that you never touch them and these are two weeks old.’)
‘Well, then, put a few in your pocket. I can’t bear sugar cakes myself,’ confided the Earl, ‘and yet don’t care to offend Mrs Brown who so solicitously provides them for me.’ He leaned in elegant ease, his hands languidly playing with a snuff-box of tortoiseshell and silver; but the child, alert and eager, saw that every muscle was tense, ears cocked for returning footsteps, bright dark eyes watching for the opening of the door. ‘Don’t go. Eat your sugar cakes and talk to me.’ He cast about visibly for some subject of common interest. ‘Have you been long in your position here?’
‘Not long, my lord,’ said Jake indifferently, diving into a pocket and beginning unwillingly to nibble at a stale sugar cake.
‘What next? A footman, I suppose? — one day a major domo? Is that a page’s ambition?’
‘Who — I? A major domo! I — I mean, my lord,’ corrected Jake hurriedly, ‘that that is not my ambition. I want to be something quite — well, quite different.’
‘Come tell me then. Perhaps,’ said the Earl, his eyes on the door, only half listening, ‘I might help you to it.’
Jake laughed. Accustomed to the company of indulgent elders, the man, as a man, had no terrors for him; and as for his rank — after all, thought Jake grinning to himself, he’s only my future brother-in-law. And he liked him; no sly, insinuating blade, handing out bribes for a peep through a lady’s window, skulking in the shadow of bouquet-bearing footmen — but a real man (even though he might look somewhat womanish and dress a trifle over-foppish) who carried his own flowers and
paid his own court honestly, riding up boldly to his lady’s door: and sat his horse like a king what was more — Jake was sensitive to good horsemanship; back home in the Cotswold country all the family had been bred to the saddle: were as much at home on a horse as on their own feet. He grew confidential, drawing a little closer. ‘I don’t think your lordship could help me in my ambition.’ And he leaned forward, almost whispering, his eyes bright with dreams of excitement and daring. ‘I want to be a highwayman,’ he said.
If the Earl looked a little startled, at least, unlike less intelligent adults, he did not burst into derisive laughter. ‘What, ride the High Toby? You’ve been reading too much of the Weston brothers and Sixteen String Jack.’
‘They say he wears a fine brocade suit laced with silver, and eight ribbons at each knee of his breeches. And at his execution, sir, a highwayman may commonly have as many as half-a-dozen fine ladies to sup with him in the prison, the night before he dies—’
‘And so he dies,’ said Lord Tregaron. He smiled rather wryly. ‘If you’re so hot after the women, young sir, there are other ways of dining with them than by inviting them to Newgate.’ And he laughed and put on a quizzical air. ‘But, come, I may yet be of use to you after all. We have a fine mob of just such villains operating from a lair close by to my home in Carmarthenshire. Y Cadno — The Fox — they call their leader, from the name of the hamlet where they have their den — a chapel and a smithy, no more, which in Welsh is called Cwrt y Cadno, that is to say The Court of the Fox or The Den of the Fox.’ He laughed again. ‘Shall I commend you to these gentry with a few handsome words of reference?’
‘You smile, my lord; but one day—’
‘One day you will swing from the Three-Legged Tree, my boy, if you cling to such visions as these; with friends paid to hang upon your legs as you dangle there, strangling, and so the sooner put an end to your agony. Who cares for the plaudits of a silly crowd? — that hears them only through ears muffled with laudanum (if he’s fortunate) and clasping his own shroud and coffin — if he’s rich. Do you know the average length of a highwayman’s life? Twenty three years — and that’s putting it high, I assure you. Isaac Darkin they accounted successful and famous, and he died before he was twenty-one. McLaine, the hero of them all was but twenty-six. Though I confess,’ he added, ‘that The Fox outlives most of his contemporaries and must by now, by five or six years at least, have outstayed his time.’ But there came a step upon the stairs and he raised his head sharply, all else forgotten. ‘Is that your lady?’
But it was the waiting woman. ‘Oh, my lord — she’s a little discomposed, as is but natural; lying down upon her bed and begs you will excuse her… Later, perhaps? If your lordship would call again this evening? She’ll receive you this evening, my lord, and — and I know you will be made happy…’ She turned and scuttled out again, pausing only for one of her nid-nodding curtseys. The would-be highwayman, hugely grinning, conducted his lordship, willy nilly, to the door.
Upstairs, however, the heroine was by no means lying upon her bed but standing with her back to the fire in the old, familiar attic sitting-room, roundly declaring that nothing would induce her to become a countess. ‘I’ve been a marchioness already for near three months, and the dullness of it is beyond enduring. What, sit all the rest of my life in a box at the playhouse—?’
‘Once you’re married, Gilda, you need never hear another murmer—’
‘Pouff, that’s all you know! The place is stiff with dowagers on the nights when the solemn pieces are played, sitting poker-faced, bored to a thousand tears. To go is an obligation, and to take along with them such poor, down-trodden daughters-in-law as they may have acquired. The only fun is in the boxes where the harlots entertain. Oh, who could have dreamed,’ mourned Gilda, wringing her hands, her genuine despair tempered, as ever, by laughter, ‘that he would want to make me an honest woman?’
‘Child, you’ll be rich beyond your wildest dreams.’
‘What’s the use of being rich if we may not spend our money as we wish to? He’ll immure me down there in wild Wales, I shall moulder away in the damp till my hinges grow rusty, moss will grow over me, great cracks appear in my structure…’ She made up her mind. ‘I shall tell him the truth; if he loves me so much, he will still, surely, take me for his mistress?’
The family burst into protestations. A tiny house, a few jewels, an all-too-uncertain tenure — against lands and title as great as any in the Kingdom. ‘Once he has a wife, of course the town house will be opened. Dear heaven, child, you’ll be queen of society — Marigold, Countess of Tregaron—!’
‘Marigold the Cow of Carmarthen,’ said Gilda. ‘For heaven’s sake, Mother, don’t call me by that name! Besides, what of the Honourable Harrington?’ Hope rose in her. ‘He is long ago formally affianced, he has no right to ask me.’
‘That’s between him and his family — and hers. He has evidently made all right. You’re sure, though,’ said Sam, suddenly anxious, ‘that it was a proposal of marriage? You didn’t misunderstand?’
But she had not misunderstood. ‘Do you think I don’t know a proposal of marriage from the other kind? I’ve had one or the other, God knows, from every hickory-stick in Gloucestershire.’ And that gave her fresh hope again. ‘We could never get away with it. Once he’s my husband he’ll make it his business to investigate the fate of my fortune in the paws of the ravening wolves. He’ll discover then the whole deception, from Gloucestershire onwards.’
‘Once he’s your husband,’ said Mrs Brown tartly, ‘what does it matter? He can’t un-marry you because you were never in Italy.’
‘He could leave her,’ said Bess.
‘But not unprovided for. She’ll still be his countess. Whereas if she were merely his mistress—’
‘An hour ago,’ said Gilda, ‘it was the height of your dream that I should be his mistress.’
Sam gave a warning glance at his mother. He sat down in the old, shabby armchair and pulled his sister on to his knee. ‘Come, sweetheart, consider this thing calmly, there’s no need for dissension: you fly off at the slightest word, like a sitting pheasant.’ And he held her lightly, lovingly, in the old brotherly way and talked to her gently and quietly. ‘No one wants you to do what is not for your happiness. What is it you’re afraid of? As a man — don’t you care for the fellow?’
‘Oh, as to that…’ She would have burst out into ridicule of the muff and the snuff-box and the clouded-amber cane, but the memory came flooding back over her, of those arms that had closed about her so passionately, of the fierce, hard lips pressing down, parting her own: of the fire that so utterly unexpectedly had blazed up within her, until it had all but consumed her… She knew that her cheeks were aflame and bent down her head to conceal it. ‘As to that — he’s too fond of a satin waistcoat to be quite what I take to be a man; but he’s well enough, I dare say.’ His conversation, however, she insisted, appalled her with its dullness. ‘And why not? What’s there for him to talk of in this terrible Carmarthenshire, but sheep and cattle?’
‘There are highwaymen,’ said little Jake, eagerly. ‘They live in a place called the Court of Foxes.’
‘Oh, very well then, that settles it. If I’m to have foxes to converse with as well as sheep and cows, what more’s to be desired for me?’ And she burst into a fresh spate of laughter, tinged with hysteria now, at the thought of having left the wet wilds of the Cotswolds only to end up in the still wetter wilds of Wales, shivering in coronet and goatskin in some medieval keep in Carmarthenshire: and leapt up and thrust a cushion upon her head and clutched the worn hearthrug about her in a wild parody of high living among the Welsh aristocracy…
But when he came that evening she told him — as she had all along known that she must tell him — that she would become the Earl of Tregaron’s wife.
Now the Unattainable Lady appeared at the playhouse no more. The flower stall was closed, the gallants disconsolate; outside the little house in South Audley Street a footman
replied to all those who in their extremity dared to call, that the Marchesa was indisposed. The flower girl, indeed, still full of initiative, had set up her little booth again at the street corner, for any who wished to leave messages of condolence for the invalid; but with the falling-away of all those who had cared more for the wagers than in fact for the lady, trade was not very brisk; and moreover in the cold light of day, the well-worn condition of the blossoms became so apparent as to force frequent renewal, which cut down the profits most depressingly — only his lordship remaining faithful in huge purchases of red roses. So funds were very low; and the sooner, decided the family, that the Earl made good his promise, the better it would be for all concerned. Moreover, he must somehow be persuaded to keep the whole thing as private as possible. The expensive necessity of providing for a wedding had not been taken into consideration when their plans were laid.
So her ladyship sat in the little drawing-room with her lover’s hand in hers and asked very prettily if when the time came, it might all be done very quietly; and raised her eyes to the portrait, smiling so tenderly down upon her, and said that for the sake of that dear friend (and he had been little more than a friend, she had been almost a child then — and his child, since he had brought her up, almost from babyhood — just a kind father) — for the sake of his memory she would prefer no outward parade of rejoicing…
He was disappointed. ‘I wanted to show my prize to all the world. The Prince himself had promised to be there.’
‘The Prince?’
‘His Royal Highness is my intimate friend. He was the first I went to when I knew I was to be the happiest of men. He was delighted. He has never really cared for—’ He broke off abruptly, bit his lip a little, shrugged it all off. ‘The — er — the lady concerned was from the other set: there are two divisions in our present society, as no doubt you know, those who circle about the court and those who attach themselves to the Prince, who is of course not at present persona grata with his papa. So that — well, as I say, he would have undertaken to dance at my wedding; and confided to me, dearest, by the way, that it had been in his mind to send you flowers, but that you appeared so adamant in refusing all acquaintance that he dared not: for the Prince of Wales can hardly afford an open rebuff.’ (Oh lord! reflected the Unattainable, there we went too far!) ‘But he greatly admires you and would be more than happy to give our marriage his blessing.’
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